A Ret Primer For Strand of the Anicents

As always, Megan is always a step ahead of me. I wanna post about Wintergrasp, she throws a post up and pre-empts me. I wanna post about Strand of the Ancients, she's been there, done that. Well, you're hearing the ret P.O.V. on this BG anyway. Tough noogies.

Strand of the Ancients, henceforth referred to as SotA, is the newest battleground added in Wrath. The premise is basically a mini-Wintergrasp - there is a relic located behind several walls on top of a hill, and one faction must employ siege weaponry and explosives to blast their way off a beach, up the hill, and into the keep where the relic is located. The other faction must slow the attackers' advance up the hill by any means necessary - anti-personell guns, snares at choke-points, knockback effects, whatever. The Alliance starts as the attackers, and then the Horde gets a turn. Whoever captures the relic faster is declared the winner. 10 people per faction may participate.

As a ret paladin, there are several key things you should focus on in this BG. I'm going to assume you know the layout and basic strategy, and delve into a few specifics. First, when attacking:

1. Get a siege vehicle. Melee can't do anything to the walls without Seaforium Charges or Saronite Bombs, and the key is to get up the hill as quickly as possible. The ranged classes can at least contribute by taking out the gunners on the walls - as melee, you want to get in the siege tank and lob fiery death at the wall and/or ram it 'til it crumbles.
2. If you are cockblocked out of a tank, grab a Seaforium Charge and protect the siege. Is there a rogue trailing behind the siege, stabbity-stabbing away until it breaks? Show him the business end of your mace. Ensuring the siege tanks get to the walls in one piece is the best thing you can do for your team.
3. Are you at the wall? Do you have your Seaforium? Good! Drop it and protect it, every little bit helps the wall crumble faster.
4. As soon as one of the initial walls go down, mount up and bolt for the graveyard flag. Taking the graveyard will a) ensure a closer spawn point to the action, and b) allow for siege vehicles to be built closer to the front line.

On defense:

1. Get on the guns. Lead your targets a little and blast things to holy hell before they get to the wall. Concentrate fire on the tanks, if they can't get the tanks to the wall there's a good chance the walls will not fall.
2. If you can't get a gun, flail away at anything that comes into gun-range of the wall, siege tanks are the priority.
3. Defend the graveyard flag as soon as the wall is breached. You can do this by standing on the flag and introducing your mace to the face of anyone who approaches, or by falling back to the second wall and manning a gun turret, exploding anyone who dares come near your precious flag.

And at all times, remember - the key is the relic, not the other players. You can rack up 100 kills, but if they manage to slip a siege tank past the yellow gate in under 4 minutes and bring down the keep wall, you're screwby-doobied. Stay on target!

All in all, I like SotA. I queue up anytime I need my frenzied siege fix and Wintergrasp won't be happening for a while. Plus, it isn't a total lag-fest like the zerg at the end of a Wintergrasp is!

Good luck, and Light be with you.

At Least I'm Not Alone Pt. 2

Since I simply forgot to include the story I wanted to post after highlighting Ferraro's misfortune, here it is now in its full, unabashed glory.

Time: 6:45 PM eastern
Place: Heroic Gun'drak
Group: Prot warrior, holy priest, 2 frostfire mages, and myself (ret paladin).

I was hoping to go to heroic Gun'drak, in search of an expertise-laden ring that BRK recently acquired (much to the chagrin of melee-DPS'ers everywhere). I head to the instance summoning stone, awaiting the completion of the group (which when I joined was a dwarven holy priest and a gnome mage). After picking up another mage to fill out the DPS roster, everyone in the group starts scanning their friends lists for tanks. I don't feel like hauling out my protection gear and respeccing, so I sit quietly, since all the tanks I know are busy or offline.

The gnome mage, who I will from now on refer to as M1 (and the other mage as M2), invites a protection warrior to the group. Great, full group! Let's get crackin'. M1 arrives at the summoning stone and we begin pulling people through the nether.

Sign #1 that the group is going to fail - M2 asks me to buff him with Wisdom instead of Kings, while the priest asks for Wisdom after he's all ready been buffed with it. People that can't recognize the best buff for them, or can't recognize that they're all ready buffed - bad times.

Sign #2 that the group is going to fail - the tank starts the first pull, consisting of 3 snakes, with a gunshot instead of a Heroic Throw, and then despite a Thunderclap and a Shockwave, the healer gets threat and nearly dies (saved by Hand of Protection). When the next pull proceeds much the same way as the first, except this time I get threat from a Divine Storm and a Consecrate, I start wondering what the deal is with this tank.

Sign #3 that the group is going to fail - we wipe on the snake boss due to the tank not controlling any of the adds and the healer getting eaten.

At this point I say to myself "what the f!@# is the problem here?" and inspect the tank. She's in mostly quest blues, but nothing terribly out of place. Then I switch to her talent page - at which point I stare blankly. This protection warrior skipped Concussive Blow and Vigilance, two abilities that just about every warrior who tanks has. I question the tank on her rotation for keeping AoE threat and she says all the right things... whatever, I want that ring. I truck on.

After another near-wipe on the snake boss in which I end up healing toward the end (because the priest died. Again.), I start taking my frustrations out in guild chat. "Why can't this tank pick up adds? What the heck?" We move painfully slowly through the trash leading up to the second boss, every pack an adventure. The mages get aggro; I get aggro; the priest gets aggro; it seems like anyone except the tank is getting hit by 75% of each pull.

As we approach the second boss, I get worried as the tank starts marking up the elementals surrounding the Drakkari construct golem thingy. Has the tank done this boss before? Does she know that the elementals disappear once you engage them? Why is she marking them up? She proceeds to shoot an elemental and the boss comes charging at her. I give her 3 seconds to build up some threat and then open up on the boss - and get aggro. I turn off auto-attack and stand there, waiting for the boss to get taunted... it takes the tank a few seconds to get the boss back. I nearly die. After giving him a few more seconds of aggro production, I try again - I get aggro again. Seriously folks, it's not like I was critting up a (Divine) Storm here or DPS'ing with Righteous Fury up, I was simply Crusader Striking and Judging. Thankfully the boss got to 50% and the elemental spawned instead of me tanking the boss. However... the elemental did not get picked up by the tank. The priest got aggro from the elemental and got smacked down.

We wiped.

Several times.

The tank could not handle picking up the elemental, or the construct once we beat the elemental up. I had to use all my tricks (Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation, taunt-bubble, Lay on Hands, Sacred Shield-Flash of Light, outright standing still and healing) to try to buy the tank and healer some time to get things under control, but every time the healer would die with me trying to heal with ret paladin levels of mana/spellpower, and then I'd end up tanking and healing myself (in ret gear against a level 82 heroic boss) while the mages are running around like chickens without heads. Needless to say, it never ended pretty.

Somehow, some way, the priest managed to keep himself alive long enough and the tank managed to figure out how to pick up the spawns quickly enough that we didn't die a painful, horrible death the 4th time around. I was ready to slam my head against my desk.

Fast forward to the last boss: I had given up hope of making it to Wintergrasp, it had started 30 minutes ago, and I had all ready been in this instance an hour longer than I expected to be. We were at the last boss, I figured I'd kill him, hopefully get a shot at the ring I wanted (since there were no physical DPS in the party besides myself, I had no worries of competition), and then get out of this FPUG from hell. We buff up, charge in... and when the boss turns into a rhino, the tank gets seemingly insta-gibbed as soon as M2 gets impaled. The healer apparently couldn't handle the healing necessary to keep the tank and the impaled victim alive at the same time. "Fine," I say to myself, "I'll help with the healing. I'll Sacred Shield both the tank and Impale victim, and use my Art of War-Flash of Lights to keep them healthy."

It wasn't enough. Another 3 wipes until the priest pulls his head out of his a$$ long enough to kill him.

The only silver lining? I got my ring.

Never going back to that instance, and never grouping with anyone involved in that train wreck again. Gorram FPUG's.

At Least I'm Not Alone

Seems I'm not the only one troubled by terribad FPUG's. Ferraro got caught by the same horrible play, except in a worse situation than even I encountered. Level 77+ players not knowing about their own class abilities and not being able to handle a level 68 dungeon? I wouldn't wish that group upon my enemies, let alone my friends.

The Hit Cap - Is It Worth It?

Prevailing theory before the advent of Northrend for DPS'ers has always been "stack hit until the cap, and then go for raw damage." For a ret paladin, that would mean stacking hit to ensure every attack lands, and then go for strength and crit. Later on, in The Burning Crusade, it meant strength, crit, and expertise (to cap).

Nowadays, however, there are doubts. Previously, 50% of a ret paladin's damage came from pure auto-attacks, and another 25-40% came from Crusader Strike, Seal and Judgement damage. The increase of Divine Strength from 10% to 15% strength scaling, coupled with the new-found AP-scaling of Judgement damage, have thrown things way out of whack. According to several sources, strength scales better than hit or expertise, even at 0% hit/expertise.

Add in some testing by rogues finding that the melee hit cap is 8%, not 9%, and the "ghost hit" bug that lowers some paladins' hit cap by 3%, and we're talking about a base 5% miss for some paladins that may not even matter. Call me crazy, but I'm seriously considering flat-out dropping some of my hit pieces for pure strength/AP gear. I re-gemmed and re-enchanted my PvE gear for pure strength this week, and dropped my glove-hit enchant for expertise - and I'm considering going for AP instead. I've also been eyeing my [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood] as a "replace next" item, which is weird since I love AP-click effects. If I find a trinket with a good amount of AP/strength on it to replace the Sphere, though, I might just drop the hit and not think twice about replacing it elsewhere. This goes against every gearing fiber I have, but it just seems like the way to go.

What's been your experience? Are you finding hitting the hit cap favorable or not?