f13.net

So I played my 60 paladin again for the first time in about 8 months. I put 41 points into Ret and I have to say that Crusader Strike is pretty damn nice. The DPS still isn't as high as a warrior would be, but it's soooo much better than it was last time I played with him. Anyone else with a paladin go the other two routes?

I'm going prot/holy, but haven't had a chance to test it out.  I never had the stomach for the warrior class but would like to fill the role of a tank in many groups I've been in.  I'm hoping I can fill that role at least somewhat with this new build.  I've heard good things, but need time to prove it out myself.

I get frustrated with cleanbot role in raids and inability to kill anything in PvP. Any of that changed?

You can get better gear from PvP then from the Cleansebot instance, and Pallies are dangerous. They're still hard to take down, but they can sure kill people.

Watch out Pallies. The current live build is just another example of fantastic Blizzard management, and is, in actuality, a rather old beta build.

Crusader Strike has long since been nerfed BADLY (6 second cooldown > 10 second cooldown) in beta. And it's been stated by CMs that it will indeed be changing to 10 seconds with the next patch. Added to that, Vengeance is being nerfed by 33.3%.

On the plus side, several beta buffs to Prot weren't included that will be in the next patch (which will coincide with the release of TBC), including some fairly good mitigation stuff. Paladins will become good small instance tanks once they gear themselves up correctly, but the boss tanking will still go to the Warriors (who will all be specced full Protection now).

But yeah... Pallies did get some buffs. I've got a few other characters at 60 to compare them to, and I can sorta see where they're headed - which, quite frankly, isn't anywhere THAT fantastic. Just a lot better than before.

Trust me, if you wanna cry about a Pally striking your face on the messageboards, I can very easily flip out my raid-geared 'lock with a Black Book that now works with his Felguard and demonstrate the definition of overpowered.

I had a chance to test out my prot spec Pally this weekend.  We just did a quick run in ST to kill Hakkar's Avatar for a few folks that wanted to get the quest off their book.  I thought it was a great chance to test him out since screwing up wouldn't be a huge ordeal.

For the range of lvl's we fought (53-58 elite,) I was able to grab and hold agro quite well.  The taunt ability we have now still stinks, but using everything else I have now along with it, I could keep huge numbers of MOBs on me and not the mages.

I can tell they just gave our taunt a mediocre amount of agro as I cannot pull a MOB off of a companion if they fight it for more than a few seconds.  If they do not attack that MOB at all and concentrate on the others, I can pull it off of them pretty well though.  I just think it takes some extra communication to let people know that.  MA use is really important if you want to rely on a Pally for tanking in small instances.

I wonder how they're going to nerf Felguard locks, exactly. It's not JUST the felguard, of course, but the upped damage on DoTs that make the combo so completely and totally unbalanced. If you nerf pet scaling, you nerf all pet classes. If you nerf DoTs, you nerf all DoTs. I think they have a numbers conundrum under the hood.

They should probably investigate The Black Book then.

This is coming from someone who just got a Spellblade and took it on and off to see how much AP my felguard would gain with Blessing of the black book and a full stack of frenzy. 

I really just love the felguard because he dosen't die and kinda acts like a melee dot.  "Attack that", focus on something else, pull 'em back when he's getting beat up.

My 60 Warlock didn't seem to have any advantages that he had before from a PvE perspective.  I didn't go Felgaurd and kept my standard build with DPS from spells in mind.

I ran a small instance over the weekend and didn't really notice a big upturn in my damage potential, but I'm probably missing something.

For PvP and certainly one-on-one PvP, I can see the issue.

What's a Black Book?

Purple Warlock Item that basically gives Bestial Wrath to Lock Pets.

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=40734 (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=40734), except it also states it works with the Felguard on live.

On the DoT thing, I notice I do a good deal of damage with SW: Pain, Devo Plauge, and Vampiric Touch, but in BGs I die, fast. UA warlocks are the only ones I really have to worry about because I have to sit there and eat their DoTs. Felguard ones I can usually take care of if I'm able to Fear the Felguard off the bat. If their Felguard is on someone else though, they're easy to take care of.

Like I've said in another thread though, if I get Intercepted by a Felguard and don't resist the stun, I'm dead 90% of the time.

Felguards can be banished tho.

Ahh, another item I will never be able to enjoy.  No wonder I didnt know about it.

Schild did an amazing job with his Paladin in WoW.  Top healer on most raids - and even tanked Ony.  Amazing.

So can druids in Treeform.

/snicker.

Really ?  That's, er, gamebreakingly awesome.

I was in an AB game with 2 treeform druids a few days ago.
It was banish heaven. <3

(I like priests too. Yesss, dispel my Unstable Affliction, preciouss....)


-- Z.

Yes, they're treated like Elementals. So, they just trade Scare Beast/Hibernate for Banish... which isn't too bad of a trade-off really.

They really should be vulnerable to axes for double damage.

That's it, add Lumberjacking.

Someone can copy UO for once.





Oh.. no?

Oh okay.

Banish is better (for the lock,) since any aoe or other accidental damage would not "awaken" the druid before the spell ran out.  I'd view that little feature a large disadvantage to treeform in PvP.  In PvE, we had a treeform druid with us on a 5'er over the weekend.  Basically non-stop healing with very little downtime.  Very useful.

Yeah, druids of nearly all specs are now very viable.

I was in an AB game on my shaman, gaurding the farm by myself, and a feral druid litterally ripped my face off.  2.1k Ravage crit, hit, hit, 1.2k mangle crit, hit, hit, 2.2k Ferocious bite crit.  Took roughly 5 seconds and i was looking at the release / ahnk option.

Then he did practically the EXACT same thing to the BWL / Naxx geared warlock who was running up to help me. It was hilarious.

Over vent, you get
me: Holy fuck, what was that!?!  Need help, Druid at Farm.
others: lol, Druid.
Warlock: hang on I got hi....holy hell.  Guess not.

And Balance druids are also fucking people up.  Moonkin starfire crits for over 2.5k from some of them, and when you get in their face you get the 3 tree smackdown.

This is the reason I'm working on having a lvl 60 in all of the classes.  I'll be gauranteed to always have one of the "loved" classes of the month.

Well, the thing with Druid is that it didn't have great damage output. It was more about surviving and escaping, which made it a difficult class to play for a lot of people. Now, you can't help but go Glass Cannon spec, and thankfully, as a Feral Druid, you can.

With the amount of damage all the classes are putting out, survivability kinda got thrown out the window. It's kinda like playing WoW Insta Gib... which is the reason why Crusader Strike + Divine Protection is so very, very annoying.

I;m really a bit disappointed that not only did they throw in the TBC talents without adding the higher stamina itemisation to offset the 'pewpewdie' tendencies, they also neglected to even put the most recent beta talents in, so rogues are stuck without shadowstep or having improved backstab where it's less of a pain.

Uh, beta talents ?

Is this why Rogues are currently sucking so very much ass ?

I want to know, if they are still tweaking final talent trees for the Expantion release, does that mean we are going to get yet ANOTHER free respec when TBC launches?

I'd imagine so.. will be a nice opportunity for everyone to spec out of their raiding builds to get ready for levelling again. (though I know a few holy priests and treeform druids who don't plan to respec ever, crazy stuff!)


-- Z.

Indeed.  I've been hearing a lot of people saying 'x build is crap' and 'x talent is rubbish' when it's quite clear that they've misunderstood that such a talent is for levelling and PvE and they're at 60 and not doing that.

:)

That would explain why the Talent changes in the patch notes do not match what we got.

Another respec would be nice as well.  I didn't want to redo everything because of a single point I placed that turned out to be a useless choice.

It would be really nice to have a limited undo tool when making your choices.  I've screwed up several times over the years of respec'ing like that.  If the interface were to lock you into a session that allowed you to put in your choices, but not make it final until you clicked a "Yes, I'm sure this is right" button, that would help.

I'm living with a bad point placement I did on my priest because I figure a forced respec will be coming in a month anyway.

An undo tool would be great.  Or a confirm box after all your selections are made.

I agree. I often make mistakes when respeccing, mostly because I get the icons in Assassination confused. Silly me.

Yes, this would be a terrific improvement.  I've screwed up every toon I have at least once while applying points to talents.

While it is not the most obvious solutiuon (blizzard should PROVIDE THE OPTION as part of the Talent UI), there are a few UI mods floating around that cover the range from basic "do you really want to put a talent point there" confirmation boxes, to a full out talent calculator overlay / planning sheet placed ontop of the normal Talent Interface.

I learned the hard way by having to respec. Twice. In a row. Don't mix respecs and alcohol kiddies. Bad things happen.

While we're moaning, I think that the talent respec costs too damn much and gets too much too quickly and takes forever to go down, if at all.

My lvl 50 lock who I've only respecced once went to do it last night to get the felbuddy, only to find it was 10 gold already.  That I don't understand...

There's a bug that's not widely known and mostly ignored.

When they refund everyone's talent points it counts as a respec as far as future respec costs :(

On the bright side gold scales such in TBC that it'll be easy to raise 50g.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to the inflation. Fucking respecs. It would cost me in the realm of 300+ gold to try out the builds I have in mind to test. I cannot afford that and it pisses me off.

I'm anal enough to have the prepared tree in front of me on whatever website and either tab out or look over on another screen to put the points exactly.

I want the overlay idea.  That's what I meant.

Yeah, as Bhodi points out, you can do it like he does.  Laziness gets me everytime though. 

I do have to look at the full spread of talents before I recognize where I've gone wrong, thus the issue.  Just confirming each choice would still get me everytime.

Thats what the PTR is for. Transfer your character over. Fuck with specs until you run out of gold.  Then repeat if you still need to.

Me too.

But it still fucks me over when I play with the new spec for five minutes and find out it sucks balls.

See :  Felguard.

All these damn respecs are going to break me because you don't get the gold you spent on rank 2, 3, 4 and 5 of mind flay, et al, back.

To me, that is a bug on the same order as the fact that you get bumped to the next respec cost tier by them.

I can live through stunlocks with a felguard out.  I can't without soul link.  I think its got its ups.

Then again the last time I went one on one with a rogue right as he died I ate a PoM AP Pyro  :roll:

dont have the hd space for the ptr. or the effort. also, harder to test specs when i dont do my usual raids and pvp.

Respecs wouldn't be so bad if they would actually put in a "confirm" button on your total respec before your talents took effect. I know many people have simply put in the wrong ones before.

I think my top rank of Mind Flay or Vamp Touch was like... 20s? I agree it'd be nice to keep a record of your highest trained talent ability, but they're already pretty steeply discounted. Also, not having to get the book for Prayer of Spirit at all is very convenient.