Wrath Midnight Release

I finally reserved my copy of Wrath. I don't exactly know why I waited so long.

If you are in the Brooklyn, NY area and will be waiting in line at the Gamestop in Park Slope for the midnight release, drop me a line. I will most likely be there, bouncing up and down like a giddy schoolgirl.

Comment on this post or toss me an e-mail. It'll be fun! Or something.

My Warcraft Resume

In my daily forum hopping, I was inspired by a post that put Warcraft accomplishments into the language of business to write what follows. I've always been searching for a way to convey my accomplishments in Azeroth in a way that I wouldn't sound like a complete nutcase to a potential employer. However, I think this may be a start -

I'm a paladin class subject matter expert specializing in PvE, specifically
talent specialization and PvE raiding. I have served in several organizations as
a paladin "team lead," delegating responsibilities for maximum efficiency and
effectiveness and making on-the-fly strategy changes to ensure maximum benefit
to the overall project.

Other skills & accomplishments:

• Coached and trained others in paladin strategy and skill usage, elevating
  some to SME knowledge levels.
• Participated in cutting edge projects in the local server community which
  lead to breakthroughs in gear acquisition and bolstered recruiting efforts.
• Served as a guild officer and leader, organizing and leading raid projects
  from soup to nuts: managed attendance, delegated compensation "DKP" accrual
  tracking, and headed up recruitment efforts across all candidate pipelines
  (cross-server, local, and cross-class).
• Founding member and ongoing contributor as a part of a paladin subject
  matter online community, specifically for specialized paladin advanced tactics
  and strategy as well as basic skills training.
• Currently publishing a periodical online column devoted to paladin
  training and development.

What do you think? Might this catch an employer's eye? Or would this get my resume flushed/filed in the circular bin?

Talents at 80 - Suiting Your Needs

The talent trees seem to be shaping up and filling out. Now that beta has closed, I feel like I can safely theorycraft up some talent specs at 80. I didn't want to make this post when there was a possibility that a crucial talent could go *poof* after I made a big deal about putting it into a build. Well, I'm not going to bore you with build-up, let's get straight to it!

PvE Builds

0/10/61 - Maximum damage, raid synergy

This build grabs Blessing of Kings and Divine Strength from the protection tree, and then proceeds to grab every damage-enhancing talent from the retribution tree. An all-around good build, since everyone loves BoKings, and (aside from Improved BoMight, since you'll be buffing BoKings!) there isn't a damage-buffing talent left untouched. Vindication is optional, that can be shifted into another talent if you prefer.

0/6/65 - Maximum damage, non-Kings

A bit more selfish, this is for the retribution paladin who says "screw Kings, I want some of the other goodies!" Divine Purpose gives you the ability to get out of stuns free, which is handy for a lot of situations. Improved BoMight provides more raw damage than BoKings. There's a free floater-point as well for your discretion. A point in Guardian's Favor (making the build 0/6/65), or a point in Eye for an Eye, or even throwing the point into Deflection wouldn't be out of the question.

5/5/61 - Maximum damage, Spiritual Focus

Want to be able to heal without pesky interruptions? Spiritual Focus on the first tier of the holy tree now makes that possible without sacrificing any damage options. You lose out on all the utilitarian options in retribution (Vindication, Divine Purpose, etc.), but by the same token, some people love to retain the ability to heal effectively.

PvP Builds

0/20/51 - Simply Stunning

Stoicism. Divine Purpose. Improved Hammer of Justice. These are the voyagers of the Simply Stunning spec. They are continuing mission, to explore strange, new arenas. To seek out new kills and new ways to piss off rogues. To boldly ret where no ret has ret'ed before! Okay, I'm not a Trekkie, so if that was horrifying to you and you consider it a butchering of a classic, my apologies. But, this build, as the title I gave it states, is focused on stunning and negating stuns. Divine Purpose and Stoicism, combined with the new human racial (or a PvP trinket... haha, non-human suckers!) make a paladin such as this extremely hard to keep stunned. It sacrifices a bit of damage to make it happen, but it still has the punch where it counts. Plus, it grabs the shiny new Improved Hammer of Justice talent. Doesn't look different? Read the fine print: decreases cooldown by 10/20/30 seconds. You can haz 30 second HoJ cooldowns? Yes, we can!

0/20/51 - The Guardian

It's not terribly different from the stun-centered spec above, but it has one key addition - Divine Guardian. Now when you bubble, you give your entire party a mini-shield wall! Decent for group PvP situations. It's not something I would spec, but I can see the appeal.

0/10/61 or 0/6/65 - KILL DEATH MAIM

You may recognize this talent spread from the PvE section. Well, yea, it is. Going for maximum damage is an acceptable method of PvP'ing. You lose a lot of the goodies that prove very useful in PvP (shorter stun cooldowns, damage reduction, utlity talents), but you also can kill a bit quicker, making some of those abilities a moot point anyway.

11/5/55 - Combat Healer

This one is a bit unorthodox. With Sheath of Light, retribution has the ability to pump out some decently sized heals. On some arena teams, there might be the need to call on that ability more than usual. Healing Light pumps up healing appreciably. This spec does not have access to absolute damage or most of the prot goodies. However, it gets some pretty powerful healing ability. Again, this is not something I recommend, since I usually try to bring the pain as swiftly as possible to preclude any need to heal lots, but some people might see the value in a build like this.

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My parting words to you on the topic: if you take a look at these builds, there are certain talents that are always included. If you decide to strike out on your own and craft up a wacky, unique spec, make sure to include the backbone of retribution - Divine Strength, Conviction, Vengeance, Judgements of the Wise, Repentance, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. It is that solid foundation upon which true retribution specs are built. If any of those are omitted, I'd venture to say that you might be better off investing heavily in another tree.

EDIT 12/2 - altered Simply Stunning spec from 0/18/53 to 0/20/51.

A Ray of Hope

From Ghostcrawler, around midnight last night:

Our eventual plan is to put Divine Shield on a shared 30 sec cooldown with
Avenging Wrath. We also plan on changing Divine Shield's attack speed penalty
(which isn't really much of a penalty) and have it apply to all damage done
while the bubble is up.

Divine Protection would no longer have the attack penalty, but since Prot
paladins typically talent out of that penalty, it won't have a big effect on
tanking (though obviously that talent would need to do something slightly
different).

All of this assumes that preventing AW from being used with DS actually
makes the Ret tree a little more balanced. We'll need to monitor that a little
bit longer first.

We are going to go ahead and change the mana drains to a percentage of mana
so that Ret paladins don't lose so much larger a percentage of their mana than
casters with 15K mana.

If you didn't hear that, it was me exhaling a huge sigh of relief. I don't know what he means by "eventual plan" (next week? 3 patches from now? next expansion?), but this is at least a signal that the dev team understands that Forbearance on wings is not the answer to limiting the shining immune god-paladin.

As Siha mentioned in her post yesterday about the current state of paladins (which was a lot more elegant that my topsy-turvey rant on Forbearance, I might add), this habit of double-talking the paladin community is very distressing. I know my view is skewed since I'm a paladin-for-life and haven't seen the situation through any other lens, but when the community at large cries out in unison about paladins being overpowered, untested hotfixes are applied to live realms. When the paladins complain as one about an issue, the devs and community managers respond with statements like "we're looking into it" and "it's an issue that's currently being tested," with no action taken. I'm overdramatizing it, but gosh do I feel like a second-class citizen right about now.

Why can't the 30 second lockout be hotfixed in? Why was Forbearance on Avenging Wrath so important to get hotfixed in? When exactly will the lockout replace Forbearance? I want some answers, dagnabit.