Thursday, January 15, 2009

Mutterings and Mumblings 1-15-09

Seal of the Martyr / Seal of Blood is stupid. Paladins shouldn't have to cut themselves to maximize their damage. You know who does that? Warlocks. Warlocks are the polar opposite of paladins. Paladins wear plate - warlocks wear cloth. Paladins hit stuff with big, honking weapons - warlocks set stuff on fire from a distance. Paladins can heal others - warlocks can steal the life force of others. There's a trend here, and none of it points to both classes sharing a commonality. I don't want to hurt myself to hurt you, this is all patently silly.

DPS who can't beat the tank in damage should have their DPS license revoked and forced into remediation classes on the first offense. Seriously, 1000 DPS wasn't acceptable at level 70 in T5+ raids, and it sure as hell ain't any rosier nowadays, especially when the tank is doing 1100+. There is no fight in WotLK that has such a difficult enrage timer that extraordinary DPS and raid stacking is necessary. If a group can't beat an enrage, that's an indication that at least some of the group needs to (and I hate invoking this term, but it's warranted in this case) L2P.

Divine Purpose works on King Ymiron's paralyzing scream thing. I need to make a list of what else it works on in PvE. Between a Divine Purpose-empowered Hand of Freedom and Every Man For Himself, I'm nearly unstoppable.

I need a new trinket. The Sphere of Red Dragon Blood is great, I love it - but it's time for an upgrade. I have a bunch of hit rating on other gear to replace it, like the bracers I picked up from Grand Widow on Tuesday. Should I invest in a Darkmoon Card: Greatness or just pray nightly for a Loatheb's Shadow?

Speaking of the bracers from Grand Widow, I'm going to actually listen to my (and the EJ community's) advice and enchant them as well as my gloves with AP... soon. Expertise is nice, but more AP is better.

I'm consistently dropping 10k crits from Judgement of the Martyr in 10-mans while my wings are up. That's ree-dick-you-luss.

I hate the Oculus. I want the red proto-drake, but I vowed never to go back to that instance after the last time I was there. Bleh, that sucked.

Does the blue proto-drake from Skadi even exist? BRK has one, I've seen it! I don't ask for much, I just want a sweet blue ride.

Okay, maybe I just want a proto-drake.

When 3.0.8 comes out, I'm buying the new Kirin Tor DPS ring. Expertise, strength, an extra Dalaran hearth... I wants it.

Is the mechano-hog plan worth buying? I don't know if there's much of a market for them.

I need to make some Saronite Bombs for Wintergrasp fun. Also, Megs is a genius.

12 comments:

Rohan said...

Well, an essential part of the paladin's nature is the notion of sacrifice, especially for one's comrades. See Blessing of Sacrifice and Divine Intervention. I think that Seal of the Martyr/Blood sort of taps into that vein, and makes those abilities reasonably paladinish.

Shwitz44 said...

@Rohan
Yea yea, we're self-sacrificing saps. My life for Aiur (oops, I mean the Light) and all that. Still doesn't make me happy about it - I thought I left the Sacrifice ability behind in D2. None of the paladins of lore in Warcraft use an ability anything like SotM/SoB, or give any inkling that they hurt themselves to hurt others. They're simply priests clad in armor and toting a big mace.

Darraxus said...

Lol I just had a Heroic run (actually completed the run) where I was top DPS while tanking.

Rolain said...

/Agreed with the self sacrfice silliness. On the bright side, it helps with mana regen via SA, right? It seems like the Darkmoon Card: Greatness would be very expensive and difficult to get. I got Loatheb's Shadow this week after clearing Naxx for only the last 5 weeks. (And still no bracers from Faerlina....jealousy rising!) But the Greatness card is still the best in slot...

Wait until your wings are up and you're standing in 2 or more sparks on Malygos....18k Judgement? I just did 1800 damage...to myself.

Anonymous said...

@Rolain,
Correction, ~5940 dmg done to oneself for a 18,000 crit. JoB inflicts 33% of dmg done.


@OP,
Yes, the whole Blood/Martyr nonsense sucks. For instance, I killed myself on Gluth last night ruining our Immortal achievement because I judged right after the decimate. And, at the end of every raid, I'm top in dmg taken! Sigh.

Jong said...

greatness is awesome. definitely worth farming for.

noob question: how do you make the item description appear when you just hover over the item name?

Anonymous said...

I know mechanics-wise the damage from martyr/blood doesn't come from the mob you're fighting, but that's how I prefer to envision it. The Warcraft paladin isn't compatible with the idea of hurting himself to increase his power, but he is with the idea of putting himself in danger to protect others. So the reason we do more damage when using these abilities is because we're being more reckless and putting ourselves in a position where we are more likely to get hurt. We consider this acceptable because it means the danger to our companions will end sooner. I mean, that's not really how the mechanics work, and certainly as players we do it because it does higher more consistent damage while filling our mana pools, and that's not exactly altruistic at all. But it's not like we're heroes in real life in the first place :).

Shwitz44 said...

@Jong
The Wowhead item description appears when you mouse over a link because I pasted a specific line of Wowhead HTML code in the source of my blog.

Anonymous said...

Also, the Nobles cards required for the Greatness trinket will probably come down in price post-patch with the new changes allowing Inks of the Sea to be traded in for Snowfall Inks. So I might wait until after the patch to see about throwing down gold on the cards.

Rolain said...

@Alarius

Thanks for the correction. I was confusing the seals proc coefficient with the judgement's coefficient. Now that I know I did 23% more damage to myself than I first thought, is not very comforting.

Anonymous said...

@Josh,

FYI I'm actually done with WoW, as far as going to cancel the account and giving everything away. Hit me up sometime on AIM?

Alex - aka Firelight said...

I had a look at the recount stats last night after the Naxx raid - and on self damage i was number one with over 800,000 damage done to myself in 3 hours!