Oh yeah, I forgot to mention something on my last Operation Spread the Love update: two weeks ago, Linna did complete one Paladin quest chain.
I'd forgotten how long of a grind it was to complete this questline. It's probably half as long as the Paladin mount questline is, but it still takes you far afield for a low level Paladin. The initial portion of the questline, defending Daphne Stilwell from the Defias, does take a minimum level to complete in the same way that a Mage's wand questline does**, but as long as you don't do anything stupid such as hit the wrong button you can complete it quickly enough.
This was before I hit said "wrong button". It wasn't until I was reviewing screencaps for this post that I realized that Daphne's hairstyle is the same as Cardwyn's. Go figure.
::ONE DEATH AND SEVERAL DAYS LATER::
At least she doesn't have the same hair color as Cardwyn.
If you've not done the quest chain before**, you'll be pleased to know that Daphne is not some helpless "damsel in distress". She has already been defending her and her husband's farm from the Defias Brotherhood for a while, and during the fight she is alongside you, taking potshots at the Defias with her gun. Given how cut off their farm is from the main rallying point at Sentinel Hill, she has to be tough enough to stand her ground.
Anyway, once that quest is complete you might be tempted to believe that's the end of that, but your superior, Lord Shadowbreaker, sends you up to Ironforge where Daphne's husband is stationed to inform him of the events back home. In gratitude for helping to defend his farm and Daphne***, Jordan offers to forge you a weapon worthy of a wielder of the Light such as yourself.
There's only one little problem: Jordan doesn't have what he needs to finish the job.
The solution? Well, you can handle a little shopping trip, right?
Apparently Linna could, because Jordan provided Linna with said shopping list, and she then went all over tarnation, from familiar places such as Dun Morogh and The Deadmines to farther away locales such as Darkshore and the Silverpine Forest.
There's a bit of a crowd at the gates of Shadowfang Keep. And yes, I took this screencap originally for that guild name, which reminded me of an ongoing joke in The Elder Scrolls Online, The Lusty Argonian Maid.
The labors weren't exactly the Labors of Hercules by any stretch, but it did involve some patience. While the Kor Gem you seek can drop off of the naga that roam the underground tunnels before you reach the instance itself, they're all elites and it takes some patience to kill them. To be honest, it's more effective to simply get a group for Blackfathom Deeps and just go run the instance.
Shirtless Kaldorei looks better than Shirtless Kirk, that's for certain.
Once you've obtained a corrupted Kor Gem and Thundris helpfully purifies it, you can then make the trek back to Ironforge**** and provide Jordan with the entire contents of his grocery list. In Vanilla Classic, there was no option to turn in parts of the list beforehand, you had to get the entire list first and then turn it all in. When your bag space is kind of limited, that's a bit of a commitment.
Still, Jordan is grateful and you do get the satisfaction of watching him work:
Completing an involved class quest is far more satisfying than, say, some of the one-off Mage class quests. I'm looking at you, Jennea, and your insistence on collecting water from Mirror Lake for a reason you refuse to tell me about. (Cardwyn still believes it was a test to see if you'll do whatever you're told to do without question, which irks her to no end.) Yes, you might get a good weapon at the end of it, but the journey is also very much worth it as well.
Now, about some of those Druid and Warlock quests...
*Trudging through the swamp to where Tabetha lives is pretty much a death sentence to any Mage attempting to do it the moment you get the initial quest. In Vanilla WoW, Mages don't have the ability to turn themselves temporarily invisible, so any critter within a mile of you in southern Dustwallow will be coming for you. (Don't ask me how I know that one.)
**I can't recall if it was removed from the post-Cataclysm Old World, but while there are entries in Wowhead it appears that if you bring up Verigan's Fist there's a line that says "This item's source is no longer available/removed."
***More like 'assist Daphne in her slaughter of the Defias', but I digress. If I ever get in a fight in a back alley, I want her on my side.
****I like to take a long trip back rather than use the Hearthstone to return to Stormwind and take the tram. So sue me.
Of course, that question is predicated on a lot of assumptions, such as "Why do people play the game?" and "What do the developers believe the players want?"
A college acquaintance had the LP and insisted I listen to it (among other LPs of his.) I'll admit I listened to part of it.
Although it wasn't a Legendary item in and of itself, my first experience with an item that "everybody" seemed to want actually predated MMOs and video games by years: the +5 Holy Avenger from AD&D.
Among players of 1e AD&D, the +5 Holy Avenger was the ultimate weapon in the hands of a Paladin, at the time one of the hardest classes to roll for --and play-- in AD&D. Sticking to the straight and narrow of Lawful Good --in TSR's original Deities and Demigods sourcebook, Galahad was considered a 20th Level Paladin and Lancelot a former Paladin and now merely a 20th Level Fighter-- meant that you couldn't really participate in anything resembling a heist adventure. Or really, depending on how strict your DM was, anything that involved stealth. You were very much the stereotypical Knight riding up to the cave mouth to challenge the Red Dragon inside.
The Paladin's quest* for a Holy Avenger, either the sword itself or something earth shaking enough to warrant the sword as a reward, was one of the high points of an AD&D campaign. The adventure Fedifensor in Dragon Magazine #67 --reproduced here on Wizards' website in PDF form**-- was notable in that it was one of the first published adventures featuring a Holy Avenger (Fedifensor) as well as the first adventure featuring Gith (Githyanki in this case) as the baddies who stumbled upon the sword in the Astral Plane.
The first page of the Fedifensor scenario by Allen Rogers, from Dragon Magazine #67 Page 37. (November 1982)
Still, despite the (supposed) rarity of a +5 Holy Avenger, it wasn't nearly as rare as the Artifact/Relic section in AD&D. Those were one-of-a-kind items that had boatloads of special powers but equally risky side-effects. The Hand and the Eye of Vecna --back in the day when Vecna was merely a powerful Lich who was supposedly dead-- were two artifacts whose first side effect upon grafting them to your body was to turn you immediately Neutral Evil. And the problems only got worse from there. Artifacts and Relics were nothing to be trifled with, even among mortals.*** By contrast, the Deck of Many Things was just a rare Miscellaneous Magic item, not a Relic of considerable power by itself that merited an entire D&D supplement.
Having the ultimate item in an RPG adventure has persisted through the years --what Witch or Wizard wouldn't want the Elder Wand, for example-- and so I suppose it's only natural to covet what is best. But if everybody has one, is it really something to covet versus just something to just acquire as part of the normal progression of things?
And what are game designers to do with game balance when accommodating an item of legendary power?
***
MMOs have a particular problem with this design, because the persistence of the game world and the constant addition of new content mean that what is currently game breaking may be no better than a basic quest reward a few years later. Or, worse, due to game design, that game breaking item might actually be worse than a basic quest reward.
Yes, I'm bringing out the old Nerfnow.com comic again for this post.
This was a particular problem in Vanilla Classic WoW, where it turns out that some quest rewards or dungeon gear drops were better for your class and spec than the raid specific "Tier" gear. For example, while the Mage's Tier 0 or Tier 1 set might look pretty, a variety of crafted gear and dungeon drops were better for Mages overall. This had its drawbacks, as the three piece Bloodvine set had no Stamina bonuses which meant a Mage or Warlock wearing it was extra squishy in a fight****, but there was no denying the superiority of the damage potential for that set.
However, there were two items that it seemed everybody coveted: the legendary items Thunderfury and Atiesh.
This meme is so old hat that you can now get it on a t-shirt. Yes, really. From Redbubble.
Thunderfury looked awesome, but Atiesh, not so much. It looked like a sulphur ball set atop a cane unless you looked closely.
I was not impressed. From Wowhead.
Still, there was the general perception that since the work involved to get either item was involved --and in the case of Atiesh it came in the Naxxramas raid, which very few raid teams back in the day completed-- only a few people ever got either item. Even in Classic WoW, guilds usually designated a few select people to be those to work on either questline.
Between that scarcity and the potential for guild drama, both items were rarely found in WoW.
I'm not sure where things changed, but gradually the desire for an item of legendary rarity became normalized to the point where access to such legendary items became easier to obtain.
When I started playing WoW back in 2009, I became aware of legendary items as a "well, unless you raid and you're of the right class and status within a guild, you're not going to get one" sort of item. However, by the time I reached max level the "Fall of the Lich King" patch was released. Yes, everybody remembers the Icecrown Citadel raid, but I remember the decidedly unsexy Patch 3.3 name for two items: Shadowmourne and Quel'Delar.
That first item, Shadowmourne, is the two-handed legendary axe that people could obtain after completing quests in Icecrown Citadel. I can't speak of the scarcity of Shadowmourne, but one of the last things to do before completing the questline and obtaining Shadowmourne was to actually kill Arthas, the Lich King. Given that took a while for a lot of guilds, and I've mentioned numerous times how smashing your head against ICC for months on end ruined guilds (including mine), I can't imagine a lot of people obtained a Shadowmourne in original Wrath.
Quel'Delar, on the other hand, was more obtainable although still a bit of a rarity.
***
While not a legendary item per se, in order to obtain Quel'Delar you had to complete a questline once you obtained the ol' Battered Hilt, which was a rare drop in the Heroic ICC 5-person instances.
Although the Wowhead entry for the Battered Hilt mentions a 1-2% drop rate, due to a bug in Patch 3.3 the initial drop rate was a bit higher, and a ton of Battered Hilts dropped before Blizz fixed the bug. I wasn't high enough, gear wise, to get into the instances where the Hilt dropped before the fix, so I had to wait for said Hilt to drop at the "proper" drop rate.
And wait.
From Wowhead.
And wait.
After several months of only seeing exactly one Battered Hilt drop (and losing that roll), I finally got tired of waiting and scraped together the 5000 gold necessary to buy one off the Auction House. It took me a month of steady dungeon running and selling ore to do so; I was going to buy Epic Flying then, but... To me, the questline was very epic, and since my Paladin Quintalan was a Blood Elf it fit perfectly into my race's lore.
Yes, I'm pulling out this old screencap from Eversong as proof.
***
Judging by how the game has progressed since December 2009, it seems that while Quel'Delar wasn't a legendary item in the same vein as Shadowmourne, Quel'Delar was enough of a success that it seems that Blizzard decided to move more in the direction of using the sword as a model for how to handle legendary items in WoW.
And with that has come a sense of entitlement from some MMO players that I find both confusing and off-putting.
If a legendary item is supposed to be rare and difficult to obtain, why does it seem that a lot of players expect to obtain one over the course of an expansion?
Perhaps Blizzard is at fault for this sort of behavior, because a lot of their modus operandi in WoW's design is "Awesome players doing awesome things", and what isn't more awesome than having a legendary weapon?
Well, the funny thing is, if Blizzard designs its systems around teams having one or more legendary items, if you don't have one you suddenly feel like you're behind the curve.
This really just covers commentary around
this phenomenon, so you don't have to read it.
This isn't just a Retail WoW phenomenon, because Classic WoW is infested with it too. Just look at all the people who lusted after Thunderfury or Atiesh or Shadowmourne and went back to Classic WoW just to get that. Or their Scarab Lord title and associated mount.
From Reddit. (And SpongeBob Squarepants.)
***
I guess the ultimate question is "Why should we care about motivations when playing an MMO?"
Well, ordinarily I'd be saying that it doesn't matter what others want to do, what you do matters, but when the game design focuses around certain game behaviors, it does matter.
Think about the Legion expansion and the Artifact Weapon:
Yep. Another blast from the past.
The concept of everybody getting an Artifact Weapon didn't appear out of nowhere. If you're going to be an awesome player doing awesome things, what better way to combat the (then) ultimate power in the WoW-verse than for everybody to have their own Ashbringer (or equivalent)? It was the desire for a Legendary item for everybody baked into an entire expansion. While that fed the desire for a legendary item, it also introduced the so-called Borrowed Power systems into Retail WoW, which had a huge impact on the game's enjoyment and understanding.
Good luck trying to explain Borrowed Power to a new player, for instance.
From Reddit.
So... What now?
Hell, I don't know. I'm just gonna do my own thing, but I worry about whether the player base in general --and Micro-Blizzard# in general-- aren't repeating old mistakes with each new expansion. Why would I think that?
Oh, no reason...
*Yes, Paladins would call them quests back then, denoting their outsized importance to the Paladin. Nowadays, people just call any task a "quest" of some sort, but back then a quest was very much in the realm of "rescue the maiden from the Evil Big Bad" sort of thing. No Kill Ten Rats here.
**I saved a copy locally on my PC just in case Wizards ever yanks the adventure, so I can upload it for future use.
***And yes, in the era of Elves living 4000 years, they were considered mortal.
****I was once in a Blackwing Lair Raid while wearing my Bloodvine set, and I kept dying during a specific set of trash pulls. A healer whispered an apology to me, saying that she'd keep throwing heals on me but I'd die before they landed. I told her I wasn't angry or anything because the Bloodvine set, while powerful for damage, meant I had absolutely no extra health to me at all. She was much relieved that I wasn't one of those asshole Mages who demanded that healers TRY HARDER for something out of their control.
I was on a couple of different toons the other night, talking with my questing buddy. She knows how to find me and has a standing invitation to ping me whenever, so when I was on and was just putzing around she pinged me and we chatted for a bit.
When I have nowhere to go and nothing to do, I tend to just roam around wherever. In this case, I was avoiding my guilded toons --Briganaa and Cardwyn-- so I was just cruising around on Neve, then Az, and then Linna. You know, hopping from flight point to flight point, riding around to nowhere, just chatting away without much of a concern of any mobs aggroing on me. Well, I was on Linna, just flying around and then landing and chatting, when I landed at Nethergarde Keep. I summoned up her warhorse and cavorted around the Keep for a bit, then around the outside of the Keep. While I was typing a reply, a flash of light caught my eye: the lightning that's near the Dark Portal. I sat there, captivated by it for a moment, and I got a sudden feeling.
The time is now.
So I rode south...
"Welcome to the nightmare. Indeed."
Dismounted...
Paused a moment...
And ran across...
"Well," I told my questing buddy, "I did a thing."
"What did you do?" she asked.
I sent her this pic via Discord in reply.....
"SQUEEEEEE!!!!"
"Bring on the clown gear," I replied, tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Truth be told, I have no idea what'll happen, as it's been ages since I played a Paladin in any sort of serious fashion. I never got that far with Linna here in Classic --she was my boosted character as a precaution in case the raid needed a Ret Pally-- and the last time I played any Paladin for any length of time would have to be Tomakan back in Cataclysm. Quintalan retired just before Cataclysm went live, after the pre-patch, and I stopped playing Balthan when Rades' Bloggers Guild faded away.**
But if nothing else, Linna can send letters back to Card while the latter recuperates from her time spent in Naxxramas.
Saints preserve us, because I'm sure I'm not ready for this. My gear is low-mid 50s Greens that you get from the boost, I don't remember the rotation much at all, and while my memories of Wrath Paladins were mostly positive, TBC/TBC Classic is an entirely different beast.
Oh well, here goes nothing.
*Yes, the tagline that Perry White of The Daily Planet used to say in the old 1950s Adventures of Superman television show. Those shows ended up on the afternoon cartoon/kids block on our local independent around my 4th or 5th Grade.
**For all I know, Balthan could still be the guild master.
When I got on at lunchtime today for an instance run, I was surprised at the server names of my compatriots.
Norgannon?
Ysera?
I did a double take, and yes, I was on Neve, and by extension I was on A-52.
"Did the battlegroups change?" I asked out loud.
"No, Blizz is doing away with them entirely."
Cue Handel's Messiah.
You know what this means, don't you? If I'm not careful, the next time I run a battleground as Quintalan I could be staring Ehna or Deftig in the face. (Which probably explains the dramatic improvement of the Alliance in BGs lately.)
Or have Tam, Rhii, or Linedan as puggees in a 5-man. And if some random toon tries to /lick me, I'll know who did it. ("Tam? Is that you?")
The possibilities are endless.
It could also make for an awkward moment in a BG, if I'm a member of more than one guild. "Guild One, meet Guild Two. Ouch, that had to hurt."
***
I have a confession to make: I haven't pugged 5-mans much lately. I'm not sure why, but I've found myself checking out a variety of different things on some of my toons. Q is grinding Netherwing rep for the Nether Drake mount, and he's also getting in on some BGs when he can. I've also been playing around with Q's rotation, and while I still don't like it much, I can live with it. In a 5-man, Zealotry is almost guaranteed to draw aggro, so you don't get much of a chance to use it. In a boss fight in a raid it'd come in handy, but for the non-raider I now see its utility limited to BGs for a big fat 20-second burst of damage. Just proc Zealotry, then spam Crusader Strike and Templar's Verdict as soon as each one is off CD.
With Tomakan, I've been doing the Explorer routine so I can get used to where things are from an Ally point of view before the Cataclysm changes everything.
Now Neve... I'm still trying to work out the Frost Mage routine, since I lost Blizzard as a low level AoE spell, but gained Ice Lance and the Water Elemental. I wasn't planning on learning how to handle a pet until later, but now it's been kind of foisted on me. Given the way that we're all kind of overpowered for the lower level instances, I don't get much of a chance to learn how to work a pet in a 5-man, because once I've set the elemental up to go do what I want it to I discover the mob fight is already finished. And if there's one thing I've learned in pugs, everyone hates a pet that causes problems, so I've tried keeping the elemental pretty tame. After a couple of instances of this, I said to hell with it and simply dismissed the elemental.
Right now, working out an acceptable rotation for a Frost mage is more important right now than dealing with a pet. And from what I've experienced so far, it's a big juggling act.
Ice Lance: Instant, hits for about the same (per second) as Frostbolt, but jacks up your threat very quickly.
Frostbolt: Old standby, still on a regular casting time, but because of that not much of a threat multiplier.
Arcane Missiles: Procs off of other spells, doesn't hit as hard as before, either. Kind of a so-so spell right now.
Blizzard: Gone until L52 (sob!), but given the increase in threat potential, have to be very careful in application.
Frost Nova: Still good for freezing people in place in a run to the tank. (Hey, Neve's got to get her exercise in, and pulling aggro is as good an excuse as any.)
Arcane Explosion: Good for those "Oh $%#^!" moments and you're in the middle of all hell breaking loose. Also good for finishing off weakened mobs. The drawback is that you get within interrupt range.
Cone of Cold: It's an okay spell, but I'm not convinced being within interrupt range is worth it.
Now, I have been able to put the crowd control aspect of the Mage to good use, keeping the ranged casters sheeped while we deal with the rest of the mob, for example. (Works like a charm in the Jammalan the Prophet portion of Sunken Temple.) But I can't help but get the feeling that something is missing in the Frost Mage setup, and don't exactly know why.
What do you think of your routine? Is there something missing, but you can't figure out exactly what it is?
Well, I got Quintalan set up talentwise, reestablished my glyphs, checked my gear, and tried out Drak'Tharon with three other guildies. In a taste of lowbie runs, there were three Pallys --one of which was the guy not from our guild as the healer-- and two as Ret. We also had a Druid as tank, and a Lock rounding out the DPS.
What did we learn? Oh, joy.
We had an incredibly slow run through Drak, all of us critiquing our stuff.
"XXX Druid ability has a CD now. Do not like."
"WTH happened to Art of War?"
"Flash of Light and Holy Light flip-flopped. Have to rework our buttons."
"I feel completely naked; I have no idea how I'm doing."
"Oh oh. This tanking ability is broken."
"I'm just seeing 300, 400, 500, then 9000 damage at a time. This just feels wrong."
Nobody died, which was a bonus, but it wasn't, well, thrilling. Holy Power is definitely the key to making some decent damage, but it's very clumsy right now. The cooldowns are s-l-o-w, and I felt like I was a fresh 80 doing miniscule damage. Art of War seems to take forever to proc now, and when it finally does it always seems to be on the last hit of a mob. Big whoop.
I know what I'm going to be doing the next couple of days: reading.
In this era of role silos, I’ve found that I like playing the jack-of-all-trades.
This isn’t exactly a revelation to anyone who has read our blog the past year or so, but I’ve found that leveling new Paladins on the Alliance side has reinforced that attitude.
I’m the guy who actually likes handling the stairs on Drak’Tharon: I can heal myself, use Righteous Fury and Consecration to draw aggro, and do enough damage by myself to keep the scourge from causing issues with the crew down below before Phase 2 of the fight. Healer getting overwhelmed with debuffs or damage in a scrum? I can step in and plug the gaps as needed. Tank losing aggro to the ranged DPS? A quick Hand of Salvation or a pull using Righteous Defense will drag that trash back into threat range, and a bubble will drop the threat right off of me, enabling the tank to reestablish control. Garfrost’s stacking debuff hitting everyone hard? Frost Aura will take a bite out of it. Those Ymirheim Flamebringers blasting everyone with AoE over in the Pit of Saron? Interrupts, Fire Aura, and Holy Wrath will stop that.
The bag of tricks that a Paladin has is an eerie echo of my own personal set of tools for work. I might not be the most knowledgeable person at my job, but I’ve got a wide set of homegrown tools that will assist me in whatever is thrown my way. By comparison, every Pally has the ability to heal, tank, and DPS right out of the box, but it’s the application of those various little abilities that let a Paladin really shine.
When was the last time you saw a Ret Pally switch out of Ret or Protection Aura to help mitigate damage? There are plenty of opportunities to do that in places such as Razorfen Downs, The Old Kingdom, the Scarlet Monastery, Halls of Lightning, and Pit of Saron, but why doesn’t it happen? Because the theorycrafters say that’s not optimal DPS? Why don’t Ret Pallys help out more with an occasional debuff removal? Because they’re in their own silo? Believe me, having run as a healer, if someone wants to assist with the occasional Cleanse, go for it. Don’t overdo things, because it’s not your primary role, but if you want to help out, a zap or two of Cleanse in the middle of your rotation makes my job easier and lets me concentrate on the tank more.
As an example, I was in Razorfen Downs with Tomakan last week. Tom’s reached that point where his Holy Spec gear isn’t being replaced fast enough, so he has mana issues. Rather than burden a group with Tom being underpowered, I queued him up as DPS and switched to the 2H Heirloom Axe. However, it was obvious that the healer and tank were struggling with the ranged DPS pulling aggro, so I pitched in with some debuff clearing and an occasional HoS or Righteous Defense to help out.
After about 10 minutes, the healer finally spoke up. “Tom,” he asked, “are you cleaning debuffs?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m guilty. I wasn’t going to say anything about it, though.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I’m having lag problems, so by the time I see it pop up it’s already gone.”
The next instance that night was Scarlet Monastery, and I was doing the same routine: clean debuffs when I can work it in, and help with crowd control without stepping on the tank’s toes.
About halfway through the instance the Priest healer piped up, “I don’t believe it!”
“What?” the tank –also a Paladin—asked.
“Paladins who clean their own debuffs! Not one but two of you! That never happens!”
You know, maybe it should happen a little more often. Working as a team means acting as a team, not just confining your actions to a specific set of keyboard strokes.
You know how I'd mentioned a while back that I rarely see another Ret Pally in pugs when I'm queued with Quint? Tomakan's Retardin failpug had been so long ago that I'd figured the WoW gods weren't planning on taking any sort of revenge for my post.
How wrong I was.
On last Tuesday after getting some lowbie WoW time in with Soul's wife, I pulled out Tomakan to run a pug or two. I wasn't exactly surprised to see the Scarlet Monastery in the load window, and truth be told, I was looking forward to it after having been in the other lowbie instances for a while. We zoned in, and I noticed that we had a Pally tank.
"Who's healer?" One of the DPS asked.
"I am," I replied.
My response kind of got lost in the scrolling text as we had our hands full with the quick pulls in the torture area of The Graveyard. Good thing the tank was a Pally, as he dropped a Lay on Hands on himself when he overpulled around the bend where I momentarily couldn't reach him.
Then I realized he hadn't used Lay on Hands. A Shaman was healing too!
"LOL!" he said. "I thought I was the healer!"
"Same here!" said another DPS, another Shaman.
"You mean we've got three healers here?" the tank asked.
"Yeah, Tom's healing!"
"Oh sweet, and two of us are Pallys too! Let's pull the entire Graveyard!"
I did not think this a good idea. At all. But at least I knew how to run back in case of a wipe (don't ask), so I figured why not.
The tank began pulling. And pulling. I think that it took three waves of pulling to clear the entire open area in the Graveyard, but I was able to keep the tank upright. Mana was good, and with two other healers around throwing down totems, we didn't lose anybody. There was a brief moment of concern around the bends getting to the bottom of the sepulcher where the final boss was, but once I got within LOS I was able to keep the tank upright.
"Oh, that was great!" one of the Shamans said as we finished. "We have to requeue again just so we can do that!"
So we did, and gave the undead in The Graveyard an encore performance. Two Paladins and three healers can fuel some insane ideas, I suppose, and if there was an undead heavy instance somewhere between Graveyard and, say, Strat or Scholo, I'm sure these puggers would have been game to try it. Thankfully, for my sanity's sake, there wasn't.
Two mornings later, I figured that instead of doing my dailies under Quint I'd run Tomakan through an instance or two. Lo and behold, I get The Graveyard again. Pally tank, but sadly no other healers. With everyone in the low 30's, the Graveyard is quick enough of an instance, kind of the A-N for lowbies.
We finished the instance, and three of us --the Pally tank, a hunter, and I-- queued up for another run.
And we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
"WTH?" the tank asked. "It's never been this long before."
"Must be the 5 AM crowd," I said. "I just hope we don't end up with Gnomer again."
"Me either."
What pops up after a 20 minute wait? Gnomer.
I start distributing blessings, and I noticed something strange in Pally Power. Where are all the...
"Hey!" the tank shouted. "Four pallys!"
Yes. Not two, not three, but four of us. I'm pretty sure this is quite a few WoW players' nightmare, but it gave me the chance to see how this was going to work out.
Ironically enough, it wasn't so bad. Okay, I'll admit that seeing Judgements flying around like they were pigeons in a park was very strange, but it wasn't the aggro hell that it could have been. We didn't have Retardins in the group, and conversation was more along the lines of when to jump to the lower level. I kept thinking why I couldn't have had one of these other three in the Razorfen Kraul run rather than the Retardin I did get.
But yes, this sort of grouping can happen, and people can survive this without wanting to claw each others eyes out. If it can happen with Pallys, I wonder what it would be like with Death Knights....
Today was the 24 hour downtime for the Area 52 and Ysera servers, which meant no access to my current stable of toons. Okay, I do have a Hunter on Stormscale, but I wasn't that interested in sitting down and figuring out which talent track to take.
So what's your friendly neighborhood Paladin to do?
Find another server and roll up a new Paladin, naturally.
(What? I like Paladins. Souldat likes tanks. Your point?)
I'd tried three of the four Paladin races --Blood Elf, Draenei, and Human-- so that meant I was rolling up a Dwarf. Besides, given the heat of mid-summer, looking at a nice frozen starting zone has its appeal.
Within five minutes of starting up and bapping wolves, somone got on Gen Chat and said, "Hey there. My server's down."
"Imagine that," I replied. "Same here."
I wasn't quite sure how I was going to handle having a liberal dosage of Gnomes running around, but the toons that I saw had dark hair --not pink-- and that actually makes them look halfway decent. Still can't stand the voices, though.
One thing that I found interesting about the Dwarf/Gnome starting zone is the presence of Trolls. Just how those Trolls ended up being detoured into the frozen mountains is beyond me --someone went a little too heavy on the mojo, mon-- but by my count that makes Trolls one of the most popular low level baddies out there, right up with Murlocs and Goblins. I can only imagine what it would be like for a Dwarf arriving in Northrend, having fought the voodoo gang all the way since the beginning, reaching the Grizzly Hills and exclaiming "Not these idiots again!"
Anyway, there's not that much to report, since I'd have to putter around this Pally a bit before I decide what to do with him. He'll probably end up something along the lines of my fourth string Paladin, but who knows? Maybe I'll actually try tanking with him.
I was perusing the Paladin talent trees courtesy of MMO Champion, and here are a few quick thoughts from the Ret and Holy Trees:
The boost to INT and STR are gone. I wonder how that's going to work out.
Eye for an Eye indicates a chance at an automatic Judgement if someone attacks you. I wonder if that is independent of your current CD or not. Additionally, that means that if you have aggro and all you want is auto attack (like, say, for the Zombiefest achievement) there's a good chance that you're going to be hitting a lot harder than you intend.
Judgements of the Wise seems to have been boosted to 1-3% of base mana. Nice increase.
Repentance will take longer to gain access (20 points in Ret talents = 40 levels, up from 30 points = 30 levels currently).
Righteous Vengeance is now way early in the Ret talent tree.
Aura Mastery is now waaaay down in the Holy Spec (20 points = 40 levels, up from 10 points = 10 levels).
Judgements of the Pure is far up in the Holy Spec, essentially swapping places with Aura Mastery.
Beacon of Light is also way up in the Holy Spec (only 10 points = 20 levels!), so you can fling that bacon around a lot earlier, and only taking a 6% bite out of your mana pool (as opposed to 35%). Having it earlier in the game means that the Pally had better concentrate on INT even more heavily than before.
There's a new healing talent, Inspired Judgement, which extends the healing of Beacon of Light from a Judgement you bring to bear to the Beacon's target. (!) I wonder if that includes Judgements from an Eye for an Eye as well.
Enlightened Judgements are now farther away (30 points = 60 levels as opposed to 45 points = 45 levels currently). For those tanks who love to push the boundaries of where a Holy Spec Pally can heal, take note that the Healadin might be within range of those blasted silence spells.
Improved Concentration Aura is now way down in the tree, reflecting when most people pick the darn thing up, I suppose.
I've heard stories from various websites and people I've pugged with about a peculiar breed of Ret Spec Paladin, the Retardin. Apparently this breed, like the Huntard and others of his ilk, has an overinflated sense of ego coupled with a lack of understanding of how to play the class. When you throw in tendencies to tell everyone else how to play their class, you've got the makings of a real ass that can give Huntards and Boomkin a run for their money.
Having played WoW for less than a year, I've not found that many Retardins out there using the LFD tool. Probably Cassandri's speculation over at Hots and Dots about how the tool matches people up is correct after all, since I rarely see another Paladin in the PUGs I've been in.
All that changed yesterday in Tomakan's run through Razorfen Kraul. I've been in Kraul a couple of times, but that's only at L80 working on Loremaster. Like I commented to Souldat while I was in the run, it's sure different when you're not steamrolling through here, and you've got competing egos to deal with.
The setting started with a Warrior tank, myself as healer, and Paladin, Hunter and Mage as the DPS. Almost from the get-go the Ret Spec Pally started on the tank.
"Use Challenging Shout!"
"Tank, USE CHALLENGING SHOUT!"
"Let him go," the Hunter said. "He's doing okay."
"He's L26!"
After the first boss, the tank had pretty much had enough. "I'm leaving," he said.
"Oh, the poor baby didn't get the helm?"
"No, my friend is on and I get more XP with him." And he dropped.
"That's okay," the Pally said. "I can tank while we wait for a new one."
Normally, you'd think that a four man group would slow down a bit to recover some more in between pulls, but the Pally kept going. I was doing okay, keeping my mana up by Judging Wisdom, until the pseudo-tank spoke up. "You're interfering with my buff," he said. "You Judge Light and I'll Judge Wisdom."
I bit back what I really wanted to say, and instead said "Just as long as you let me drink from time to time."
For the record, he did stop to let me and the Mage drink. Once.
We kind of limped along until we got to the area where the mobs can use silence. The first couple of mobs were okay, but the third mob was massive and nasty. The first time I got silenced, I stepped back, getting out of their range, but the pseudo-tank was at the far end of the mob, so I couldn't heal him without going back into range. And on that second round of silencing, the pseudo-tank bit it.
I then became the target of his ire. "Way to go standing in melee with mobs that can silence you," he sniped.
I ignored him.
"Why don't you learn to stand out of range?"
I ground my teeth and let him simmer. With this guy, it was like mud wrestling with a pig, and I wanted to spend my energy on finishing off the mob --which we did. Besides, with the profanity filter on, my barbs wouldn't have quite the same sting.
"Will you stop your whining?" the Hunter demanded. "We survived."
"But I lost my buffs, and you don't know the cost of repairing Heirloom gear."
If the Retardin had actually paid attention and inspected everyone in the group, he'd have realized that we all had Heirloom gear on before sending that little zinger out.
"Oh be quiet," the Hunter said. "We're almost at the end anyway."
We got to the last boss, and naturally I couldn't heal the Retardin because he ran inside and didn't pull the boss back out to where we all could reach her. I ran inside and slapped Naaru on him before I could get silenced or stunned, and then we finished the boss off.
Instance finished, the Retardin vanished.
"Why am I not surprised?" I asked nobody in particular.
Moral of the Story: Don't be an ass. The instance went fine for the most part, but the antics of one guy didn't make for a fun time.
Yes, I could have done some more smack talk in the instance, but it would have done me no good. Believe it or not, we were queued the entire run when we went 4-man, but no tank appeared. If I'd harassed the Retardin enough to where he dropped, we'd have been waiting a looong time to finish that instance.
Also, a corollary: silence does not indicate assent. Sometimes it does, when people ask if we're ready before a boss fight, but other times people might actually be running the instance rather than talking smack. When I'm DPS, I can talk smack all I want, but when I'm Healer or Tank my first responsibility is to the team. And I'm least interested in responding to an overblown windbag trying to tell me what I can or can't do when he drove one pugger out already. I've never stopped healing someone in an instance before, but don't tempt me into letting you be the first, buddy.
This little spell caught my eye in the new stuff in the works for Paladins:
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).
Do you know what this sounds to me? A Figurine of the Boar spell for Ret Pallys. Woo hoo!
Seriously, I never gave much thought to the aura I'm on when I was running an instance. Just turn on Retribution Aura and have at it. Okay, I've also been known to ignore the Crusader Aura that's been left on while flying around when the summons comes. And yeah, I occasionally forget to turn Crusader Aura on when flying.* (Stop laughing, Soul!)
But intentionally switching auras during an instance? Not on your life.
There were three pivotal moments for that in my aura education: taking out the Sons of Gruul; a forgettable Pit of Saron run; and perusing the details in the recount stats.
The sons of Gruul weren't an instance run. For those of you who quest, you already know that they're 5-man quests found in Blade's Edge in Outland, so why is this doing here? Because when I soloed those quests, I decided I needed more armor than what I was getting with all the buffs I was using, so I switched to Devotion Aura just prior to launching my attacks. Okay, my decision was also made in hindsight, because I felt that the first time I tried and failed to kill the first of the Sons of Gruul it was due to my taking too much damage. Since I wasn't about to simply replace my trusty old Sword of Justice (aka the tuning fork) that easily, I switched auras instead. That little boost seemed to do the trick as I was able to survive all of the encounters with the Sons of Gruul. Translation: even a Ret Pally can use Devotion Aura from time to time.
My second big learning came from a Pit of Saron run that didn't go quite so well. In that run we had one well geared tank who was taking a bunch of people new to the instance, and I was only on my second run at that. Well, we met Garfrost, and he had us for lunch. Twice. After that second wipe, I got tired of watching the frost stacks add up and switched on Frost Resistance Aura to help mitigate the frost damage. Between that and not having to run halfway across the area to find a boulder to break the contact for the frost debuff, we managed to survive that third time. (I believe the tank said "We have to find a boulder to break contact, don't scatter so broadly!" Hey, I was following the tank around. Me no dummy.)
That success with Garfrost gave me the insight that maybe it was better to switch auras more often, like when running up toward the final fight with Tyrannus. Or when the proto-drakes in Utgarde Keep start blasting fire.
My tweaking of the auras still bothered me, because I thought I was losing significant DPS just so I could mitigate the damage. On some of these high end instances my DPS count doesn't look very flattering, so I was wondering if I was hurting myself further in that area by switching out of Retribution Aura. Well, perusal of the recount data proved to me that I need not worry. Damage from Ret Aura was down in the pack after the Seals, Melee, and Divine Storm. With that knowledge in front of me, I felt better making smarter use of my Auras to help the team.
And besides, anything to help the healer works well with me.
*I have my excuses when farming for ore; Crusader Aura plus an epic mount mean that I zip by ore so fast it will occasionally not register in the searching. I've learned to leave Crusader Aura off when farming for Titanium.
