Naxxramas 10 Cleared: Tales of an Excited Retadin

Once upon a nearly-forgotten time I was a Gnome Mage amidst a guild of overachievers.  We were a top 100 world guild – I had the dark circles beneath my eyes to prove it.  We marched with only twenty six undergeared, ragtag members to our first raid into the depths of the Molten Core and put ourselves on the digital map by laying Lucifron to waste while our competition slaved over attempts with forty.  Although we would soon fall short on Magmadar and the remainder of the MC “crazy eight”, we had already appropriately introduced ourselves to the server and reclaimed our spot in front by defeating both Majordomo Executus and Ragnaros before any other guild had even made an attempt.

That was merely a beginning to what would lead us through guild sponsorship, a free ventrilo server and world recognition as of one of WoW the raiding “elite”.  We trudged onward and slowed for no encounter even beyond C’thun upon his dungeon’s grand opening to the deserts of Silithus.  As time passed and the epics became anything but “epic” Naxxramas was released to the public.  Feeling the rejuvination of fresh content laid before us, we mustered up one final push for what would prove to be our guild’s last collective effort.

A few weeks passed and we found ourselves staring at Gothik the Harvester high upon his ledge.  We had bested every other encounter available to us and now were left with this option alone.  Were we to progress, it would have to be through him and onward to the Four Horsemen, Sapphiron and ultimately Kel’thuzad.  A few half-hearted attempts later backed by the realization of upcoming farming for endless frost resistance gear and we finally broke at the seams.

With The Burning Crusade looming on the horizon, we went our seperate ways and brought closure upon an incredible bit of personal history.  Some stayed on the server and leveled alts.  Others transfered off of Dark Iron or even created a fresh character elsewhere.  Still others took a hiatus from WoW altogether.

I did none of the above.

For weeks I farmed gold from the Twilight mobs scattered broadly across Silithus.  For days upon end I worked to perfect my AoE grinding techniques.  For what seemed an eternity, I experimented with one new talent spec after another.  In the back of my proud yet seemingly defeated mind, I couldn’t help but consider I might never actually see Kel’thuzad in person.  I might never get to watch the icy vortex of bones that materializes into Sappiron up close.  I may never experience the sense of accomplishment of besting that which was considered to be one of the most challenging encounters in the history of MMORPGs in the Four Horsemen.

It was time for a new chapter within my World of Warcraft story and how better to do so than to create a character of a brand new race, as part of a faction I had never played, on a server I had never visited, as a class I knew little about.

Last night, myself and nine comrades entered Naxxramas to put an end to Thaddius thus completing three of the four wings.  Last night, myself and nine comrades left Naxxramas with Kel’thuzad’s frozen blood caked against our blades.  Although not as originally intended, I had arrived nonetheless to a seemingly forgotten destination upon level ground.  The sheer challenge of Naxxramas’s 10-man version surely pails in comparison to that which we faced at level 60, but I am grateful for the opportunity to experience it in entirety nonetheless.  The environment was just as gloomy.  The encounters were just as entertaining.  The stone was just as cold.

So what now?  Certainly the 25-man version of the dungeon awaits as does Malygos and the 25-man version of Sartharion.  Granted these tests are sure to follow in upcoming days I’d like to take a moment to reflect upon a bit of the specifics regarding my involvement in what has already passed and my “personal” achievements along the cobbled way.

First and foremost, I’d bring to everyone’s attention a bug (yes bug) that has long since been reported on the official Paladin forums.  I assumed this particular situation would prove as obvious yet in a recent post of mine I was persuaded otherwise by an individual who attempted to blame my complaint upon a lack of hit rating (I’m hit-capped in raid gear).  The bug is simply that Judgment often fails to work.  Allow me to repeat that:  Judgement often fails to work.  To be clear, I am not referring to a “miss” or “dodge” or “parry” or any other form of mitigation possible.  I simply mean “fails”.  Not only does Judgment often fail but it seems to still consume the mana and perform the animation yet provide no Judgments of the Wise proc, no Replenishment buff and does no damage.  This is a serious issue for raiding Retadins.  I have brought this bug to Blizzard’s attention (and I am by no means the first or the last) repeatedly via the forums and in-game petitions.  I will continue to do so until it is fixed.  There is no excuse for a core class mechanic to be so badly broken for so long.  Could you imagine the flood of posts and tickets were an Arms Warrior’s Mortal Strike to consume the rage and perform the animation yet fail to do any damage or apply its debuff without any visible sign of mitigation?  Not a chance.  Can you fathom the rampant crying were a Holy Paladin’s Holy Shock to cast and consume the mana to do so but then provide no healing or damage on random occasions?  Certainly not.  Yet here I sit drafting this post…

QQ aside, here is a link to the official post on the bug report forums.  If you have a spare moment, and have not done so already, please stop on by and show your support for this bug fix cause!

https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12357686852&sid=1

Moving along a differing course of discussion, I can’t adequately put into words just how excited I am about my progression as a character.  Granted the progression of my guild comes before my own, part of that progression is the continuous improvement of my contribution to our raids.  Whether it’s 10 more DPS or the ability to throw a more powerful heal on the tank thanks to Art of War, every little bit counts.

Now I would note ahead of time that I am, at the time of this writing, specced Holy.  This is a result of one of our healers having to duck out late last night and my willingness to strap on the spell power and step into my former role as a Healadin so we could drop the Four Horsemen.  However, I have logged out in my raiding Retribution gear in the interest of demonstration:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Synovia

Among the most recent additions to my gearset are the following two pieces:

 

The cloak dropped for us last night from Instructor Razuvious.  Needless to say, I was ecstatic to finally be rid of my Shadowmoon Destroyer’s Drape.  Although I lose the 17 hit rating that item provides, I certainly inherit a nice chunk of additional DPS potential by means of haste, armor penetration and additional attack power.

UPDATE:  As I am taking an unusually long time to draft this post, I have since inherited a new weapon compliments of Kel’thuzad this evening (thanks KT):

Per Murphy’s unavoildable law, the moment I spent a ridiculous amount of gold on enchanting my Titansteel Destroyer this solid improvement found its way into my bags.  Bitterness aside, I’m one happy Retadin.  I’ll see a 20 DPS upgrade (on the low side) from use of this weapon and the fact that it provides even more hit rating than my previous is a little something wonderful to me.  Having seen the hit cap against raid bosses more than double as a result of hitting level 80, every point of hit I’m able to muster is a small victory.

Speaking of hit rating, however, I’d like to bring to your attention some interesting finding from over at the Elitist Jerks forums.  Apparantly there is very compelling evidence that suggests the hit cap against raid bossese at 80 is not actually 9% but rather 8%.  You can find the thread here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t37856-melee_hit_cap_really_9_a/

As it stands I’ll be aiming for 8% hit until someone can show me a screenshot of a “miss” at a minimum of this percentage.

Retribution Mana Efficiency at 80 in Raids

It seems as all but a distant memory of healing 39 other people inside the loomish walls of Naxxramas.  Last night was not my first return to the floating citadel but perhaps the most anticipated.  As I took the portal up to the central chamber, my eyes scanned the environment for any signs of Mr. Bigglesworth.  “This place is a tomb…” (Thanks Lawrence Fishburne in Event Horizon).  There were only 10 of us this time but the excitment was larger than the raid.  We had been on hiatus from raiding ever since engaging Felmyst some countless months ago.  This engagement was long overdo.

As per standard procedure when entering Naxxramas for the first time, we opted for the Spider wing as our primary endeavor.  Clearing through the skimpy allotments of trash en route to Anub’rekhan, I related the upcoming encounter to my comrades in the instance that some of them hadn’t set foot inside these walls before.  Strangely enough, I was tasked with the tanking of the adds he spawns given that we only had one tank (yes, I am Retribution for your doubters out there).  Surprisingly, it went fairly well.  Our first couple attempts served as a painful yet necessary reminder that the tank has to leave early enough as not to be hit with Locust Swarm.  Our third and fourth attempts provided ample incentive for the healers of our raid to spread out so they weren’t sent airborne simultaneously thus allowing our tank to take a dirt nap (or cobbled stone as it may be).  Our fifth attempt was flawless and resulted in my acquisition of some very nice Plate DPS boots (pictured).

Now Anub’rekhan isn’t a very good gauge for anything related to efficiency as the majority of the fight lies outside of the standard DPS race.  However, in our first night back to raiding and with three members of our raid (including the MT) that have never set foot in Naxxramas before, we were able to tear through Anub’rekhan, Noth the Plaguebringer, Heigan the Unclean (dancing shoes GO), Loatheb and even made time to head over to Wyrmcrest and strip the loot from Sartharion’s corpse.  Given the assortment of encounters we faced tonight, I am inclined to use Loatheb as my example for this post.  My logic is simple in that, aside from a quick break to grab a popped fungal spore once every two minutes, the fight was entirely a straight DPS burn race for me in which I popped everything I possibly could and attempted to squeeze every last point of damage from my weapon.  This meant the use of any and all abilities available for my damage-doing use so long as I could fit them into a suitable DPS rotation.  The resultant set of abilities, in order of priority (higher priority abilities were always used prior to lower priority ones should they come off CD) was as follows:

1. Judgement of Wisdom
2. Crusader Strike
3. Divine Storm
4. Consecration
5. Exorcism

At 20% and down I simply threw a Hammer of Wrath in whenever I could.  The result of our efforts, upon our third or so attempt, yielded the following from me:

• DPS:  2633 (3rd overall – bested by a Frostfire build Mage (1) and a BM Hunter (2) )
• Highest crit:  7892 Judgement of Commmand
• Time to OOM: N/A

The third line above begs further explanation.  First however, allow me to explain a bit about this fight for those that may not have experienced it before.  Loatheb himself hits extremely weak – purposely.  The reason for this is because he puts a recurring debuff on the entire raid that is unavoidable which reduces all healing received by 100%.  The debuff lasts for 17 seconds and he reapplies it every 20 seconds.  This means that every 20 seconds you will have exactly 3 seconds with which to heal.  He has an outrageous amount of HP for a 10-man boss (6.9 million) but there is a catch – every 30 seconds he spawns a little spore that floats through the room.  This spore has only 2K health and when it dies (pops), it provides a handy little buff to the closest 5 players within 10 yards.  This buff increases critical strike chance of all abilities by 50% and reduces all threat you cause by 100% (no threat in other words).

Due to the mechanics of the fight, it was necessary for me to use Seal of Command instead of Blood given the fact that damaging myself during this encounter would result in my rapid demise.  Suffice it to say, however, that were I to be using Seal of Blood my mana efficiency would be even better given the availability of mana regeneration through Spritual Attunement.  Regardless, what I discovered is that I was able to maintain the aforementioned DPS cycle consistently for the duration of the fight with one, lone caveat:  I would occasionally have to forgo the use of Consecration for one cycle to allow my mana an opportunity to replenish enough to warrant its use.  In other words it did occur at times that, were I to cast Consecration, my mana would presumably dip too low to allow the use of the next ability in my DPS cycle the moment it was off cooldown.  This scenario occured perhaps once every minute but what I found was that I didn’t need long at all before my mana was once again at a sustainable level for resuming Consecration use.

All in all, the mana efficiency of Retribution at 80 seems adequate.  I often times even find myself using my Art of War for a quick heal on the MT just to help out.  During Loatheb, I was even able to put Sacred Shield upon the MT to practically ensure that my next Flash of Light on him would critically strike thus proccing Sheath of Light.  All in all, my friends, it seems good to be a raiding Retribution Paladin.

Synovia Hits 80 – And Other Related News

Prior to the release of this expansion, I promised myself that I wouldn’t overdo it.  That is, I wasn’t going to rush into the content of the expansion and blaze through the quests like a hobo at a shopping spree much like I had done with Burning Crusade’s arrival.  This time I was going enjoy myself.

And enjoy myself I have!

I’m not entirely confident on a starting point but I suppose there’s no place better than to mention the music of the expansion.  The musical scores of video games, for me, are the singlemost influential piece of the RPG puzzle.  You can take a game of incredible content, surreal environments and breathtaking cinematics but if the music you are presented with makes you want to hear John Tesh scrape his teeth against a chalk board then I’ve not much use for it.  The music of this expansion has been incredible.  From the lush, scottish overtones of the Grizzly Hills to the “Chrono Cross”-esque island sounds of the Sholazar Basin I have been thoroughly engrossed in my environments.  The epic yet simple musical ensemble of Icecrown provides an adequately gloomy atmosphere while the fortress of Zul’drak insists upon a tribal yet dark presentation aside a hint of evil.  It is clear to me, with this expansion, that whomever created the music for The Burning Crusade either was releived of their duties or drastically stepped up their game for this current installment.  For the first time in the history of the Warcraft series of games, I am intent on purchasing a copy of the OST.

With mention of the music for WotLK, it stands to also point out the incredible detail of the environments therein.  The massive fortress that Arthas calls home is rather imposing as it casts a deathly shadow across all of Icecrown.  You can take an epic flying mount from the base of this monstrosity, ascend directly upward and 20 seconds later you still will not have reached the top.  Quite simply, Arthas’s fortress makes The Black Temple look like Verne Troyer standing next to Brock Lesnar (a quick plug for the new UFC Heavyweight champion ;P ).  How about the look and feel of Dragonblight with its isolated Dragon Shrines and mysterious “tundra” environment.  Granted this area was incredible to quest in, I was astounded by the sheer detail of the Wrathgate story with all the events leading up to it.

Anyway, I could go on and on and on about some of cooler elements about the expansion but to do so would be to seemingly reinforce that which most everyone already knows.  As such, I’ll now get to work on my next post which should be a bit more “informative” as opposed to “colorful”.

Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra?

In all honesty, up until a few days ago, I had an assumption that the Alliance were to land in the Borean Tundra while  the Horde would dock at the Howling Fjord.  I didn’t realize there was a choice until a passing glance at www.wowhead.com informed me of the following:

• Orgrimmar Zepplin ===> Borean Tundra
• Undercity Zepplin ===> Howling Fjord
• Stormwind Boat ===> Borean Tundra
• Menethil Harbor Boat ===> Howling Fjord
• Howling Fjord has 109 Horde quests (not including dailies)
• Borean Tundra has 118 Horde quests (not including dailies)

That said, let’s consider some facts:

1. Orgrimmar has a far higher population than Undercity
2. Stormwind has a far higher population than Menethil Harbor

These facts allude to the conclusion that Borean Tundra will most likely be the most populated of the two Northrend starting areas.  So what’s your flavor?  Opting to begin your Northrend leveling in the Howling Fjord may be more peaceful but has the possibility for being devoid of any breaks from the questing monotony by way of PvP.  Alternatively, a decision for the Borean Tundra will no doubt offer countless opportunities for world PvP which, in turn,  will slow your leveling and ultimately could result in a fist-sized hole within the wall nearest your PC.

I, for one, am a fan of world PvP and not so much a fan of anything semblant of monotony – such as questing without interlude, reputation grinding without a break or running the same battleground without the occasional deviation.  Additionally, and even post-nerf, I feel far more confident in my ability as a Retribution Paladin to hold my own against anyone, anywhere under any odds at any time.  Nothing is quite as entertaining as realizing that the player corpse you are standing over isn’t releasing because they are checking their combat log to see what the hell happened to them.

As it stands today, I will be heading to the Borean Tundra and aside from the myriad quests I’ll take on behalf of The Hand of Vengeance, I will adorn a quest of my own – to stain the Borean Tundra red with the blood of my enemies.

May whatever God you might believe in have mercy on your soul come tomorrow evening should you be unfortunate enough to be both a member of the Alliance and a member of Stormreaver-US while questing in the Borean Tundra.

Statistical Analysis of Retribution Mana Consumption: An End to the Doomsayers…

With my last post, I assured you that I would return with a statistical analysis pinpointing the location of Retribution Paladins on the mana consumption map.  Here, I intend to make good on my word and more.  Before I begin, however, I believe a brief preface is due.

When Ghostcrawler announced Blizzard’s latest swings of the nerf bat in our general direction, I was among the first to claim my bandwagon seat on the highway to uselessness.  I requested no assistance with my seat belt and even inquired as to the time at which we would be served our cold and unfulfilling traveltime supper.  I can’t pretend to hide from the fact I was one among the vast majority of doomsayers plaguing the official Paladin forums nor can I shy away from the realization that I may have even contributed to Chicken Little’s exodus from sanity.  Even so, there comes a time when one of a similar mindset to my own must accept fate regardless of the sky’s trajectory and definitively show one way or another what the coming days hold.  We were either to be buried in clouds or left standing as fools but either way I was determined to bring closure to the issue.

This post is that closure.

As an introduction, I would direct to my armory:  http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Synovia.  In the instance that I am not logged out in my PvE gear, please accept the following as the full listing of that which I had equipped during my testing:

• Lightbringer War-Helm
• Shattered Sun Pendant of Might (Scryer Exalted)
• Lightbringer Shoulderbraces
• Shadowmoon Destroyer’s Drape
• Lightbringer Breastplate
• Furious Shackles
• Shivering Felspine
• Libram of Avengement
• Brutal Gladiator’s Scaled Gauntlets
• Red Belt of Battle
• Lightbringer Greaves
• Dreadboots of the Legion
• Unstoppable Aggressor’s Ring
• Band of the Eternal Champion (Scale of the Sands Exalted)
• Bloodlust Brooch
• Shard of Contempt

Should Armory not be available or should I have changed my talent spec by your reading of this post, you can find the spec I used at the following location:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZ0xZxfrtbIufMsMuIo

As for buffs, I had only Blessing of Might, Seal of Command and Retribution Aura to my benefit.  My target was the Orgrimmar Master Target Dummy (Level 70).

To be clear, I would like to state a few facts that I have tested and proven.  Some of these may be obvious to you while others, as they were to me, may come as a surprise: 

1. The nerf to Judgements of the Wise is live (now and at the time of this testing) even though the talent tree tooltip still claims it as 33%.  This was verified by stripping my character down completely naked to notice a mana pool fo 3978.  I then cast Seal of Command and Judged it for a return of approximately 600 mana (within no more of a 5 to 10 mana error range)
2. Crusader Strike does proc seals – and does so at the same chance as auto-attacks
3. Divine Storm does proc seals – and does so at the same chance as auto-attacks
4. The nerf to Judgement damage is live (now and at the time of this testing) even though the Judgement tooltips themselves still claim their original values.  This particular fact is relatively inconsequential as far as mana is concerned but I thought I would share it just for completeness.
5. There is no internal cooldown on the Judgement of Wisdom debuff.  I verified this by watching my combat log closely as on many occassions I was able to give two Judgement of Wisdom procs from a single auto-attack, Crusade Strike or Divine Storm that also proc’d Seal of Command.

Lastly, I would like to define a few ground rules.  Each of my test cases to come were based around a given DPS rotation.  The syntax I am using to represent such a rotation is in a left-to-right fashion seperated by ‘>’ symbols.  For example, the DPS rotation of “Crusader Strike > Judgement of Justice” would mean that the only two abilities I used were Crusader Strike and Judgement of Justice and that in the instance of both being off of cooldown with 1.5 seconds of one another, I would always use Crusader Strike first.

All that said, I’d like to share with you my findings as follows:

• DPS Rotation:  Divine Storm > Crusader Strike > Judgement of Justice
  • Time until OOM:  6 minutes and 15 seconds
• DPS Rotation:  Judgement of Justice  >  Crusader Strike  >  Divine Storm
  • Time until OOM:  More than 20 minutes (extremely slow decline)
  • I continued to run this rotation for 20 consecutive minutes at which point I conceded that going OOM was only going to occur due to resealing Command every two minutes which was the only ability that was giving me a net loss of mana upon use
• DPS Rotation:  Judgement of Justice  >  Crusader Strike  >  Divine Storm > Consecration
  • Time until OOM:  1 minute and 49 seconds
  • Please note that due to the change of downranking with 3.0.x, downranked spells now are no longer cheaper in mana cost than the max rank abilitiy thus the only Consecration it made sense to use for this rotation was max rank.
• DPS Rotation:  Judgement of Wisdom  >  Crusader Strike  >  Divine Storm  >  Consecration
  • Time until OOM:  More than 20 minutes (seemingly infinite)
  • I continued to run this rotation for 20 consecutive minutes at which point I conceded that going OOM was highly improbable.  The difference between this DPS rotation and the second DPS rotation above is that I was achieving a net gain of mana even with the inclusion of so many reseals of Command.

During the testing above, when Judgement of Wisdom was used, each proc returned 125 mana.  My mana pool was 6243 for the testing.  The incoming nerf to Judgement of Wisdom states that procs will only restore 1% of maximum mana.  1% of 6243 is 62.4 mana which, if you double, comes out almost exactly to the 125 mana I saw in my procs during this testing.  Additionally, the proc frequency of Judgement of Wisdom is being cut in half (exactly 50%).  Neither of these two nerfs to the ability are live as of yet but based upon my testing, I am confident that the fourth and final of the DPS rotations above can still be used effectively when taking into account Spiritual Attunement, Divine Plea and other forms of mana regeneration that might fall the Retribution Paladin’s way.

We Giveth… You Rejoice… We Taketh Away…

Astounding.  I’ve reached a point in my World of Warcraft tenure where no price would seem unreasonable to have a seat behind the closed doors of a Blizzard conference room during the discussion of Paladins.  Upon launch, the Retribution tree was a random assortment of unorganized brain flatulations etched into a talent calculator and passed off as reasonable.  Before long, these flatulations took a more “solid” form as to say that although the Retribution tree was still complete and utter “fecal excrement”, at the very least it had fixed dimensions and was confined to a particular paradigm.  When patch 1.9 made its way onto our hard drives, it was almost as if Blizzard employees were taking the excrement and slinging it up against their white boards to witness what would stick.  The soiled remnants, after some modest deliberation, represented what we were left with as of the moment.

The Burning Crusade came as breath of “fresh” air in that Retribution Paladins seemed to, at the very least, have a place in this world.  For the first time it appeared as though some actual thought had gone into our construction, paving the way for a bright new chapter of the Paladin history.

The euphoria was short-lived…

No later than one month past the initial rework of the BC Retribution Paladin did the developers once again seem to meet within conference rooms and chuck “brown” matter at the walls.  The result was a mildly-effective, laughable archetype with a complete lack of any damage that could be considered as sustained. 

What we have today, ladies and gentlemen, is a repeat of the Burning Crusade travesty – only this time it is working from a talent tree that was largely accepted and appreciated by the Paladin community.

Blizzard giveth…  We rejoice…  Blizzard taketh away…

In the latest batch of Paladin “adjustments”, we are to see the following:

• Judgements of the Wise now only restores 15% of base mana (down from 33%)
• Judgement of Wisdom now only restores 1% of base mana (down from approximately 2%)
• All Judgements and Seals now do 20% less damage
• Hammer of Wrath can now only be used against targets at 20% health or less (down from 35% or less)
• Art of War now does a flat damage increase to Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm instead of a critical strike damage bonus increase.  The flat damage increase is at least 5 to 10% less than the critical strike damage bonus was.

If I may, please allow me to summarize the above in an eloquently-written and factually reasonable statement:

U GUYZ WUR DOIN 2 MUHC DAMUJ AND PEEPLE COMPLIANED SO NERF LOL

In all honesty, it isn’t the damage nerfs that frustrate me.  Putting aside the fact that Mages, Disc Priests, Warlocks, good Rogues and Feral Druids laughably destroy my Tier 6/Season 4 Retribution Paladin as we currently stand, I was understanding about a reduction in our burst capability.  What I am NOT understanding of, however, is an outright assault on our mana regeneration.  The math has been posted countless times for the developers to view but it seems to have fallen upon blind eyes.

Regardless, enough with the “woe is me”.  It’s time for me to officially investigate this nerf and present the facts in statistical format as I have done many times in the past for various other posts.  You can expect my next post, which should arrive shortly, to be one of statistical analysis with respect to the indentation left by Retribution’s hand-carved (unlike other classes ours seem to made of solid wood) nerf bat.

World of Vanillacraft: Blizzard’s Assault on Uniqueness

As I look back on the past year, I inevitably gaze upon the vast potential for the individual.  It would be misleading to state that everything was fair and balanced but to say that uniqueness didn’t exist among the various classes and talent specs would be even farther from the truth.  From a PvE perspective, if you were interested in increasing your raid’s DPS, you might consider a Retribution Paladin for 3% raid-wide crit, 2% extra damage to his or her group and 100% Judgement of Wisdom uptime.  Comparatively, you might send an invitation out to an Enhancement Shaman for 10% extra attack power, Windfury and Bloodlust for his or her group.  Still yet you might mull over the presence of a Beast Mastery Hunter who, although not bringing quite as much utility as the previously mentioned classes, had far higher DPS potential while still providing a very useful buff for his or her party.  I could carry on with this list ad nauseum, but I trust you understand what I mean:  things weren’t perfect by any stretch but at least there was a sense of uniqueness amongst the classes and specs that warranted a conscious decision on raid make-up.

This very sense of individuality within World of Warcraft is under attack with Wrath of the Lich King looming on the horizon and the onslaught is being lead by none other than the game’s creator:

Posted by Jimmythenumbers

As Ghostcrawler has been posting recently, we’ve decided to make a change in the way we allow buffs and debuffs to stack exclusively in a raid. For the most part, what this change means is that many buffs and debuffs which were previously allowed to stack together no longer can, and that many buffs and debuffs which only a single talent specialization could bring can now be brought by multiple different specializations. The philosophy behind this change shows up in many of the changes we have made in Wrath of The Lich King, such as when we made almost all buffs raid-wide. We want players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance.

The implications of this are already to be witnessed on the Beta realm.  Rogues, for example, have received a new ability called Tricks of the Trade which is more or less a Misdirection.  Additionally, Wound Poison no longer stacks and is a 50% healing debuff on the first application (aka Mortal Strike and Aimed Shot).  As we already know, Hunters now have the capability to dispel with Arcane Shot but did you know that Unleashed Rage from Enhancement Shamans no longer stacks with Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship Hunters)?  We already are aware that Tranquil Air Totem (Shaman) doesn’t stack with Salvation (Paladin) but the proverbial slap in the face on this one strikes even harder given that totems are now raid-wide.  Were you aware that Bloodlust now works on the entire raid but once someone is affected by it they cannot receive the buff again for 5 minutes due to a wonderful little debuff known as “Sated”?  This also applies to Heroism.  Have you heard about the change to Windfury Totem?  It no longer provides extra attacks but rather increases Haste.  So does a properly-talented Retribution Aura but the two certainly don’t stack.  Speaking of Retribution Aura, if you have Sanctified Retribution talented, you can provide your 2% flat damage increase to the entire raid – but don’t expect it to stack with a Beast Mastery Hunter’s Ferocious Inspiration because it doesn’t.  Surely you’ve seen the wonderful change made to “Improved Devotion Aura” where it now increases healing received by affected targets?  Given that auras are raid-wide now this seems to be an excellent piece of utility for having a Protection Paladin in your raid.  Just so you know, however, it won’t stack with the aura from Tree of Life.  Certainly though we can take some pride in our recently-buffed Blessing of Might can’t we?  If you’re casting it on yourself, then feel free to do so but if you are using it in a raid, know that it won’t stack with Battle Shout any more.

I could go on and on with an even more exhaustive list revealing specific removals of class/spec uniqueness.  No longer are the days when we were afforded the opportunity to build a raid based on our preference for its performance.  No longer will we be able to sway our raid composition in the interest of increased DPS simply by swapping out one pure DPS class for a Retribution Paladin or Enhancement Shaman.  Is this truly where the game needs to go?  I can already here the groans from disgruntled WotLK players as they are denied a raid spot based on the presence of a class that already provides the buff they would otherwise bring.

[Ret Paladin]:  invite to raid please

[Raid Leader]:  sorry, we already have an Enhancement Shaman

[Ret Paladin]:  okay so he can provide my haste rating but what about my 2% damage increase?

[Raid Leader]:  sorry, we already have a Beast Mastery Hunter

[Ret Paladin]:  well, then what about keeping Wisdom up?

[Raid Leader]:  Our one Holy Paladin has that into his rotation for proccing Judgements of the Pure

[Ret Paladin]:  Isn’t there anything at all I can be useful for in your raid?

[Raid Leader]:  Yeah – you can stand outside the instance and throw us all your Improved Blessing of Might when we zone out just before a boss encounter.  Oh wait.  Nevermind.  I forgot we brought a Fury Warrior.  Good luck in Arathi Basin tonight.

Shock and Awe: The Art of Dual Shockadins in Arena

Given the interest shown for my previous two posts regarding Shockadins, I have decided to keep the proverbial wheels turning and offer up yet another perspective on the potential of this spec come WotLK.  As always, please feel free to post comments and ask questions.

If you’ll recall, J referred us to a rather entertaining video of dual Shockadins breaking into the 2000s during Season 3.  It would be inaccurate to claim this video as the first instance of entertainment regarding the spec but I certainly would go as far as to say it acted as forum-wide eye-opener for those having never experienced or even seen this particular build.  I can say, with the utmost of certainty, that I’ll never be able to part with the lingering vision of watching an MS Warrior, in perfect line of sight of his Druid partner, fall to the ground within 3 seconds of witnessing the wings of Avenging Wrath suddenly extending from the backs of his Shockadin enemies.  The Druid, with Nature’s Swiftness still sitting idly on his buff bar, stood in disbelief 20 yards away.

Shock and awe indeed…

Today, let’s evaluate the future of this combination and gauge whether or not its potential will remain in tact upon the arrival of November 13, 2008.

Upon achieving level 80, the Shockadin will essentially have four sources of instant damage at their disposal:

• Judgement
• Holy Shock
• Hammer of Wrath
• Shield of the Righteous

Although the first three are certainly applicable, we can rule out Shield of the Righteous as its damage is directly tied to the Paladin’s block value – a statistic which will be largely if not entirely absent from a Shockadin.  The remainder of this post will then evaluate both Judgement and Holy Shock from both Shockadins and gauge the potential for a swift kill on an opponent.  I am purposely omitting Hammer of Wrath as it can be used only as a “finisher” and, although it can inflict significant damage, will not be part of initial burst of a Shockadin (I have always defined burst as the amount of damage one can cause within the span of no more than 3 seconds).

First, let’s take the build from my previous post:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sVAzxbzhVzZZVfMtbIzfMox

Evaluating Holy Shock first, we have the following modifiers for the spell:

1. Healing Light (12%)
2. Crusade (6%)
3. Sanctified Retribution (2%)
4. Vengeance (9%)

In total then, we will see a 29% increase in damage for Holy Shock after spell power has attributed its own effect to the spell.  To demonstrate this, I’ve done some research and come across the level 80 Arena set for Paladins:  http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?itemset=767.  To begin, let’s take a look at this full gearset including the honor pieces (note:  at the time of this post, I am unable to get the wowhead tooltips working properly so you’ll just have to follow the links):

• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40931
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=42026
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40961
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=42058
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40904
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40972
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40925
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40966
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40937
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=40973
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=42110

For the two trinket slots, let’s assume 200 spell power in total and for a weapon and shield let’s assume 500 spell power in total.  Both of these assumptions are based off of items I found in the WotLK database at WoWhead situated around an item level of 200 (the item level which seems to be the base for epics at level 80).  In addition to these two assumptions, I am going to neglect enchants, inscriptions, glyphs and any other sort of enhancements to spell power either directly or indirectly with the lone exception of gems.  As far as gems are concerned, I will omit the meta socket of the helm but will gem entirely for spell damage otherwise.  Allowing for these statements, we then arrive at the following spell power total based upon the gear above:

• 1528 spell power – from gear alone
• 207 spell power– from 9 gem slots at 23 spell power each (Runed Cardinal Ruby)

So in total, we will have 1735 spell power.  Knowing this, let’s take a look at what this means for Holy Shock and Judgement when combined with the aforementioned modifications:

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Holy Shock has a maximum base of 1047 damage at level 80.  Since it is instant cast, it utilizes the 42.86% coefficient for spell power.  Running those numbers, we arrive at the following:

• 1047 + (1745 * .4286) = 1795 maximum base damage after spell power

Now let’s add in the modifications:

• 1795 * 1.12 (Healing Light) ==> 2010
• 2010 * 1.06 (Crusade) ==> 2131
• 2131 * 1.02 (Sanctified Retribution) ==> 2174
• 2174 * 1.09 (Vengeance) ==> 2370

With that done let’s factor in Avenging Wrath:

• 2370 * 1.20 ==> 2844

Lastly, let’s take into account the user of Divine Favor to force a critical strike:

• 2844 * 1.50 ==> 4266

What this shows us is that, omitting any mitigation by resilience, we have a maximum potential for 4266 on a Holy Shock critical strike.  With this proven, let’s move on to Judgement.

Although the Judgement system has undergone extensive change when contrasted with its existence currently, we still need only consider the damage caused as a result of having Seal of Righteousness active when one of the three Judgements is cast.  For this type of Judgement, we have the following modifications to make:

1. Seals of the Pure (15%)
2. Crusade (6%)
3. Sanctified Retribution (2%)
4. Vengeance (9%)
5. The Art of War (20% critical strike bonus)

Take straight from the description of Seal of Righteousness on wowhead, the formula used for its Judgement effect is as follows:

• 1 + 0.25 * AP + 0.4 * SPH

where AP = Attack Power and SPH = Holy Spell Power.  Granted a Shockadin’s attack power will be very low, let’s at least assume 400.  For spell power, we can use the calculated value from above of 1745.  Now that we’ve got our initial values, let’s crunch the numbers:

• 1 + 0.25 * 400 + 0.4 * 1745 = 799 maximum base damage after attack and spell power

With a base of 799 to work with, let’s now consider our first four modifications:

799 * 1.15 (Seals of the Pure) ==> 919

919 * 1.06 (Crusade) ==> 974

974 * 1.02 (Sanctified Retribution) ==> 993

993 * 1.09 (Vengeance) ==> 1084Throwing Avenging Wrath into the mix we have:

• 1084 * 1.20 = 1301

Lastly, let’s consider a critical strike.  For this consideration, however, there are two points of interest.  The first is that Judgement of Righteousness is considered a spell thus it is does 150% damage upon achieving a critical hit.  The second is that we are receiving a 20% bonus to this 150% to bring it to 170%.  This leaves us with the following upon critically striking:

• 1301 * 1.7 = 2212

Now that we are finished with the calculations for Judgement of Righteousness, let’s put it and Holy Shock together for a traditional Shockadin burst combo:

• [0.0] Pop Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor and cast Holy Shock (4266 damage)
• [0.5] GCD from Holy Shock
• [1.0] GCD from Holy Shock
• [1.5]Judge Righteousness (2212 damage)

Now, we must consider mitigation.  Since both Judgement of Righteousness and Holy Shock are consider as Holy spell damage, neither can be mitigated by armor or resistances.  As a result, the only form of mitigation possible, other than through class-specific talents or possibly certain glyphs, is through resilience.  Obviously, this form of mitigation only applies to critical strikes in our case thus we can run the math from that point.  Although the amount of rating required to reach the resilience cap will be a great deal higher at level 80 due to statistic scaling, it is currently assumed that resilience will still max out at 25% critical strike damage reduction as it is on live servers today.  Running with this assumption, we can simply subtract out 25% worth of the critical strike calculations for both Holy Shock and Judgement of Righteousness as follows:

• 2844 * 1.25 (instead of 1.5) ==> 3555 damage from Holy Shock
• 1301 * 1.45 (instead of 1.7) ==> 1886 damage from Judgement of Righteousness

What we have now shown is that, against a target of capped resilience at level 80, one Shockadin will be able to unload a maximum of 5441(3555 + 1886) damage within 1.5 seconds.  It then follows that two, equally-geared Shockadins will be able to unload 10882 (5441 * 2) damage within that same 1.5 second interval.  As a reminder, this value does not include any enchants, inscriptions, glyphs, buffs, popped trinkets or even a meta gem.  Additionally, it does nottake into account any debuffs that may be associated with the target such as a Warrior sitting in Berserker stance (10% more damage taken).  As a result, one can easily expect damage output superior to that which we have calculated.

To close out this post, I leave you with the following story:

Two Paladins walk into the Ruins of Lordaeron, both bearing a mace and a shield.  Across the way, a Warrior appears but stops shy of the central tomb.  Hesitantly, he reaches back and wiggles his nails against the far side of his scalp in utter confusion.  Now standing aside the tomb themselves, the Paladins stand shoulder to shoulder and, in complete unison, motion for the Warrior to approach them.  Licking his lips, the Warrior unsheathes the most devastating weapon of war seen to date and charges abruptly over top of the tomb.  In an instant, wings emerge from the back of each Paladin and runic symbols flutter defiantly above their heads.  The Warrior falls to his knees in debilitating pain as a Druid appears from the shadows.  Just as the Druid’s hands begin to emit a translucent green hue, two crystalline hammers materialize out of nothingness and strike downward in a resonating symphony upon the Warrior’s kneeling form.  He falls lifeless to the cobbled floor only a a second and half following his initial engagement. 

The Druid, out of sheer awe and wonderment at what has been displayed, implodes within himself and emerges a wisp defiantly exhibiting a clouded and transparent middle finger aimed in the Paladins’ direction.