As promised, here’s a look at the new Light of Dawn animation from build 12803.
Personally, I’m not really a fan. What do you think?
New Light of Dawn Animation (Build 12803)
//Month: August 2010
//Build 12803 Notes and Bugs
//Well, Word of Glory doesn’t work properly for Holy paladins, but works fine for Retribution and Protection pallies. Eternal Glory has not been nerfed to 20% as far as I can tell, because I got four Word of Glory heals in a row before losing my three-stack of Holy Power as ret.
There’s a new animation for Light of Dawn, which I’ll take a proper movie of tomorrow. The sound is the same, the healing is the same (lacklustre). Holy Radiance is exactly the same as Healing Hands in terms of sound, animation and healing done.
But the most hilarious thing about this build is that Crusader Aura is totally bugged out.
I’m still chuckling.
Cataclysm Beta Build 12803
//MMO-Champion is reporting some class changes in this new build. I’m sure I’ll have more stuff to say later on, but the basics:
1) Healing Hands renamed to Holy Radiance. I approve. This is very descriptive of the spell. Also, the less confusion with all the Hand spells the better. I still don’t understand why our single-target taunt is called Hand of Reckoning…
2) Illumination has moved in our tree. It’s now Tier 5, instead of 3, and only requires two points to get 30% of our mana back on a critical spell. I’m okay with this; this is less bloaty. It was one thing to pay 5 talent points for 100% mana return or even 60% mana return, but 5 points for 30% mana return was lame. I believe it’s switching places with Denounce, which grants you an instant, free Exorcism whenever you get a crit on a Holy spell. (To which I say, “feh.”)
3) One of the fun reasons for speccing into ret has been nerfed. Eternal Glory previously gave you a 20/40% chance to not lose Holy Power when using Word of Glory. It’s now a 10/20% (assuming it’s still two talent points – MMO-Champion just says 20%) chance. I think that dropping this from nearly half the time to a fifth of the time is sort of making this a blah talent. Of course, we’ll still want it, because saving Holy Power means another free heal through WoG or another boost to Light of Dawn, but it will happen even more unpredictably, which will mean one of two things.
a) We’ll ignore it almost entirely and actually make use of the proc only occasionally. Sort of like today’s Infusion of Light procs. I sometimes force a crit Holy Shock to get me that instant Flash of Light, but most of the time, when Infusion of Light goes off, I don’t even notice and just continue to heal. I’m not sure I like this, because while it’s nice on occasion, I like to talent for things that I can sort of use and rely on.
b) If mana conservation is as huge a deal as the devs are making it out to be, we’re going to be glued to our buff bar/Power Auras/in-game Power Auras to watch for those procs and do our very best to use them smartly. I’m not sure I like this idea. Prioritizing Word of Glory may not always be the best case, even if we have the proc go off, giving us another WoG heal. Perhaps we’ll then choose that time to cast Light of Dawn, but… I don’t know. I’ll have to play with it.
That’s about it with regards to holy changes thus far. I’ll try to get a couple videos up this weekend. Assuming things on the beta aren’t broken. ;)
Hunter Stuff
//When I first started playing this game, I started off with a male night elf hunter named Kurnmogh. Kurn was my raiding toon throughout Vanilla. Kurn is the toon who did the Tier .5 questline. Kurn is the toon who got attuned to places and cared about rep. Kurn was the toon I was on when learning to raid lead. Kurn was basically awesome, considering the utter lack of content my old guild cleared. To this day, my Rhok’delar quest is one of my cherished memories.
Throughout the years, I have done more and more stuff on my paladin. Three months into Burning Crusade, I was raiding on the paladin, never to look back at the hunter. Sure, I got to get in on our Tidewalker kill on Kurn, sure, I got to get in on our Gorefiend kill on Kurn, but Madrana has been my raiding toon since April of 2007.
And even then, I insisted all those who knew me previously as Kurn continue to call me Kurn.
This blog is called Kurn’s Corner because, well, I like the alliteration, but also because when I play WoW, I really still feel like Kurn is my main. I do all the stupid shit on Kurn. I did all the holiday stuff on Kurn, I’m still working on a screenshot project on Kurn, I did a Sarth 10 3d zerg on Kurn just last week.
Sometimes, it really saddens me to see just how much I ignore poor ol’ Kurn. Haven’t done much more than the weekly and maybe a daily random or two on the hunter for a month, and not even the weekly all that often. I just don’t have the time to raid 12 hours a week on the pally, go through parses, write blogs, do RL stuff AND do anything significant with my hunter.
But I managed to get my four-piece T10 on Kurn today. I have the 251 helm, chest and shoulders and the 264 gloves, plus the Leggings of Northern Lights and, of course, Zod’s Repeating Longbow.
I’m not quite “done” for the expansion on Kurn, exactly — I still have a couple of projects in mind — but I felt such a sense of completion when I picked up my helm today after my daily! Sure, my shaman, priest, druid and mage are all thoroughly neglected, sitting in various pieces of T9, if they’re lucky, but it was important for me to get Kurn a nice gearset of T10. It’s not a matter of ego, it’s not even really a matter of pride. It’s a matter of my remembering my roots, remembering that there was a time when I topped damage in Molten Core, remembering that there was a time when I was the go-to kiter for Hakkar adds, remembering that there was a time when people wouldn’t run with a hunter in my old guild, unless it was me.
Kurn may not be my main raiding character in Wrath. Kurn may not have been my main raiding character in Burning Crusade. Kurn may not even be my main raiding character in Cataclysm. But Kurn is still an important part of my in-game identity and that old hunter deserved the effort I went through to get some semblance of decent gear.
I feel satisfied by the effort I’ve put into the hunter this expansion. I might be a little disappointed that I may never kill the Lich King as a hunter, although I admit that the responsibility of tranq shotting the horrors is more than a little overwhelming. I haven’t been responsible for tranq shotting anything significant since Magmadar.
But as we come to the end of Wrath of the Lich King, I feel like Kurn’s done a lot. I’ve done parts of all the major instances on the hunter — cleared Naxx, done chunks of Ulduar, done the Lower Spire a ton of times, done Ony, VOA over and over again and played in Ruby Sanctum one night.
It’s been a good expansion for Kurn and I like that I have 4pc T10 to show for it.
Paladin Utility Spells Continued
//First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for chiming in on my post yesterday about the various utility spells that paladins can use. It’s always fun to see what other people are thinking!
The reason why I asked people about utility spell use by paladins is because I got into a heated discussion about a retribution paladin who basically didn’t use any of the utility spells barring Hand of Salvation on himself (and only himself) and a very rare Cleanse. To the ret’s credit, he did use Lay on Hands on Dreamwalker more often than not… But really, no BOPping, no HoSac, very little Cleansing (not even on himself with Glittering Sparks), etc. It was bothering me a lot to see a paladin just not using these spells and worse, to have someone else (a non-paladin) defending the lack of spell usage.
Paladins have always, in my mind, been The Utility Class. Who else has all these tricks and tools? No one. No one else has BOP or HoSac or HoSalv. No one else has Lay on Hands. In this day and age of class homogenization, paladins alone have our utility spells.
As such, I find it’s important to use these spells.
It’s expected that a paladin should perform their role, be it healing, tanking or DPSing, but it’s the GREAT paladins that actually use our utility spells regularly and appropriately.
Of course, it’s the utility spells that can fall by the wayside when things get hectic and when people panic. That’s part of why it’s a mark of a good paladin, in my opinion, when one actually uses those spells properly.
Here’s an example.
On Blood Prince Council, prior to the Empowered Shock Vortex, Glittering Sparks gets cast on a bunch of people. Who should be responsible for the retribution paladin’s Glittering Sparks?
In my opinion, a good ret pally will not wait for a mass dispel (or anyone else’s dispel) but will Cleanse him or herself and start Cleansing other melee so they can spread out appropriately.
Another example:
On Festergut, a protection paladin who is not tanking (in fact, has just finished tanking) BOPs him or herself, waits 10 seconds, then casts Hand of Salvation on him or herself to ensure they don’t catch up on threat AND casts Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank when there are three inhales. THAT prot pally is my freaking hero.
Of course, I have been known to have somewhat high standards. I wondered if I was alone in thinking that paladins should be using these spells. So I asked you folks.
My sociology background is beating me over the head for not doing a proper survey to properly analyze the results, but at least I can give you guys a summary. But first, my own observations:
The first thing I noticed is that most people didn’t know how to use Hand of Sacrifice, if they knew what it was, and quite a few seemed to confuse it with Divine Sacrifice. This was actually intended — I did not link Hand of Sacrifice for the tooltip, just to see if people knew what I was talking about. ;)
The second thing I noticed is that everyone basically thinks everyone should know HOW to use the spells even if they shouldn’t prioritize their use. Fair enough.
The third thing I noticed is that everyone pretty much believes Cleanse is a no-brainer and that every spec should use it as appropriate.
As to a real summary of what people thought…
Everyone thought people should use Lay on Hands appropriately. Whether that’s just for Dreamwalker or if it’s any spec popping it up on someone who could use it (preferably a tank or a healer) or just using it on themselves, everyone felt that every spec had at least one situational usage for it. I approve.
Everyone thought people should use Cleanse whenever the situation called for it. Basically, if you have a poison, disease or a magic debuff on yourself and you are a paladin and you don’t Cleanse yourself, it better only be because someone beat you to it.
We enter the realm of controversy and disagreement when it comes to the Hand spells.
Reaction was mixed with regards to Hand of Salvation. Should Holy paladins even bother to have Omen up? Some people thought so, some people didn’t. Those that did felt that Holy pallies were the best people to use HoSalv on people. Those that didn’t felt that prots were the best kinds of pallies to use HoSalv, with most people agreeing that ret should use it on themselves at the very least.
Hand of Protection (BOP) was always mentioned as being a very situational spell, particularly with the Saurfang encounter mentioned. Very few people felt rets should ever really need to use it as compared to holy pallies and prot pallies. People felt that if a retribution pally was using it, it should be on something very situational like Saurfang.
Hand of Sacrifice, as mentioned before, was a little confusing. Some people admitted they never used it at all, some said they didn’t understand the spell and some confused it with Divine Sacrifice. Among those who did seem to know about the spell, most said it was best used situationally, mostly as a save-the-tank type cooldown.
What do I think?
– I think all paladins can find a time to use Lay on Hands in a four-hour block of raiding, unless they super outgear the content.
– I think all paladins should at least Cleanse themselves of debuffs, GCDs permitting, helping out where possible.
– I think all paladins should use Hand of Salvation now and again. Even if you don’t have Omen up, chances are you can see if someone has aggro. A quick Hand of Salvation on that person will help out your tank in re-establishing aggro. (Think of the adds on Lady Deathwhisper.)
– I don’t think rets should use Hand of Sacrifice unless they’re planning to bubble and I think prots and holies should use it sparingly. That said, on certain encounters, it’s really useful. I’ve taken to bubbling and using HoSac on the corporeal realm tank on Halion. My fellow holy pally started using HoSac on the Sindragosa pull, which I think is a great idea, since that’s generally when most parries happen.
– I think BOP should be used constantly by people, if only on trash and DEFINITELY used by all specs on Saurfang to push back the first Mark or to BOP someone during the Frenzy.
I don’t expect perfect use of all these utilities by every paladin, but I do expect to see an effort from paladins to use all of these abilities appropriately. If someone beat you to a BOP, no big, but if you sat there with Glittering Sparks for 10 seconds and blew up the tank because you couldn’t get away from him, that’s pretty poor play.
Anyways, thanks again to all those who responded! It’s nice to see some new names around, too, so I hope you all stick around. :)
Your Thoughts: Paladins and Utility Spells
//Due to a discussion I am having elsewhere, I would like to know what you all think is appropriate use of a paladin’s utility spells, regardless of spec, over the course of a 4 hour raid night which is in Ruby Sanctum (25m regular) and ICC 25 (mostly heroic, some regular modes).
Please answer the following questions.
1) Should all paladins use Lay on Hands at some point in that 4-hour block?
2) Should all paladins know how to Cleanse? Should every paladin be expected to Cleanse? What encounters should they/shouldn’t they be expected to Cleanse on? What spec do you expect paladins who Cleanse to be?
3) Should all paladins use Hand of Salvation at some point in that 4-hour block? On whom? What spec should these casting paladins be? In what situations should it be cast?
4) Should all paladins use Hand of Sacrifice at some point in that 4-hour raid? On whom? What spec should they be? What situations?
5) Should all paladins use BOP (Hand of Protection) at some point in that raid? On whom? What spec should they be? In what situations would it be useful?
I await your answers and then will tell you on Tuesday why I’m asking. :)
Holy How-To #8, Awesome on DBS and VDW
//
Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the eighth of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.
Holy paladins have, thus far in the expansion, changed considerably. Arguably, the biggest change that we have encountered is the change to Beacon of Light, which now takes overhealing into account when mirroring heals.
This one change has completely modified the way in which holy paladins heal. We’ve had to adapt to this change and it’s been for the better, in my opinion.
What this one change has allowed us to do is to be absolute superstars on two encounters in particular: Deathbringer Saurfang and Valithria Dreamwalker. There are other fights where we can shine, but these two encounters are basically designed for us to be awesome. So, this Holy How-to will focus on exactly how to be awesome on Saurfang and Dreamwalker.
Continue reading “Holy How-To #8, Awesome on DBS and VDW”
Cataclysm Beta Build 12759, Holy Pally Style!
//Hoo boy, this build, which changes up ret a bunch, throws a kink into my pretty little holy spec! Who would have thought it?
Talents/Spells:
– Conviction is gone, so no more bonus 3/6/9% damage/healing when you get a crit
– Improved Judgements is now in Tier 1 of ret and THAT is the one that gives you 15/30 extra yards on your judgement range
– Eternal Glory gives you a 20%/40% chance to not consume Holy Power when you use Word of Glory
– Enlightened Judgements heals YOU for some miniscule amount (1k/2k) whenever you judge
– Clarity of Purpose is now .5 seconds of Holy Light and Divine Light cast times (well, .2, .4 and then .5 instead of .1/.2/.3)
– Light of Dawn now gains extra healing by consuming Holy Power, although it’s still usable without any HP stacks
– Blessed Life might now be worth something since it gives you a 50%/100% chance to generate holy power when you’re attacked (2s internal cooldown)
– Divine Favor, as I mentioned, gives you 20% extra spell haste/spell crit for 20 seconds on a 3m cooldown. I’m okay with this.
– Divine Light is a 3 second cast instead of 2.5 seconds. Holy Light remains at 3 seconds.
– Healing Hands got a bump. Instead of about 750 or so on someone, my Healing Hands is healing others for 1054 a tick and healing me for 1117 a tick.
What this means is that we don’t want Enlightened Judgements anymore, we MIGHT want Blessed Life and forget about speccing into prot for support, basically ever, because ret is just way, way, way too good right now for us.
There’s no updated talent calculator right now, but basically, my current spec on beta is exactly as it was last build, with a couple of exceptions:
1) I dropped Enlightened Judgements.
2) I dropped in one point in Last Word in order to get 30 points in Holy, so I could get Light of Dawn. (Last Word: Gives your Word of Glory a 30% increased critical chance when used on targets with 35% or less health.)
3) I picked up 2/2 Improved Judgements in ret (for my 30y range on judgements)
4) I kept Crusade (3/3) to get to ret’s second tier and to give my Holy Shock 30% extra healing
5) I picked up 2/2 Eternal Glory so that I would have that 40% chance to not consume my Holy Power when using Word of Glory
6) I grabbed 1/3 Rule of Law to up my crit chance of Holy Shock and Word of Glory by 5%. I should be able to fill this out at the level cap.
In retrospect, I probably should have grabbed Blessed Life 1/2 at least. Not that it’s terribly difficult to generate Holy Power, but now that Light of Dawn consumes it, that’s a bit of a difference. Also, I want to see if it’s AOE as well or if it’s actually someone coming up to you and smacking you that will proc Blessed Life.
Plate Specialization
So I trained Plate Spec. I am now wearing Silver Spur Boots (1791 armor, 196 stamina, 131 intellect, 94 spirit, 77 haste) instead of Earthsoul Boots and my 264 Emblem of Frost gloves instead of my heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves. Instead of 43.5k mana (with kings) I now have 44.9k or something close to that due to the plate specialization. Strangely, I don’t lose too much in terms of anything else (haste percentage, etc), so hey, why not.
Mastery
I wish the shield would last a little longer, but most of them are small enough that they’ll be gone in a hit anyways. But it’s neat, because you can see EXACTLY how big your shield is by hovering over the buff. Also, with only 41 extra mastery (from my cloak), my shields are 11.9% of the heal cast instead of 8%. (I expect this to drop as I gain levels from 83 to 85, when they open up the level cap again.) The shields are overwritten each time you cast a new one, by the way, even if the new one is less powerful, I think. They do not stack.
Instances
You now need to find the instance entrances in order to do them. Blackrock Caverns is easy and, for me, The Stonecore was easy since it’s right there in Deepholm, which I’ve already been to, but Madrana hasn’t touched Vashj’ir, so I think I’ll leave Throne of the Tides alone for the time being until they let me level beyond 83.
Guild Stuff
Internal Guild Errors if I try screwing with the ranks. Strange GMOTD spam continues. My guild should definitely be Level 2 by now, but we’re stuck at Level 1, and that’s if it even recognizes that we’re Level 1.
Bug Report is Bugged
The Bug Report tool now pops up when you hit the newly-returned button on the minimap, but you can’t really do anything with it.
Training
I was able to train from my class trainer on my shaman (shammy trainers now in the Dwarven District in Stormwind!) without dropping a profession, YAY!
Other notes
Nourish still isn’t refreshing Lifebloom as per Empowered Touch, Shammies now have a water totem that acts like Concentration Aura. And taking the Stormwind portal from Deepholm will cause you to fall through the world beneath Stormwind Lake. FYI.
Update from the North 1
//Of course I go out of town and they drop a new beta build. Awesome. I’m on 24Kbps dialup, so I simply cannot share breaking news with you right now. This makes me sad.
However, MMO-Champion has a great round-up AND has this awesome image of the new Holy Power interface for paladins which is, in my opinion, FREAKING BADASS. :)
Also, Kody from World of Raids/the Curse network says on Twitter that Divine Favor has been redesigned to provide 20% haste AND 20% crit for 20 seconds, with a three-minute cooldown.
I’m not sure I like that our forced crit button is gone, but I can’t really complain about the talent that they’ve come up with. Then again, I’m a haste fanatic, soooo…
Also, MMO is saying that Armor and Mastery specialties are in. Basically, our days of wanting to wear mail, leather or cloth are essentially over:
Increases your Intellect by 5% while wearing only Plate armor.
And our mastery:
Technically, these were both in the game in previous builds, but these are apparently going to work, this time. ;)
Anyways, that’s all from the cottage for now. I’ll check in again later.
(Dammit, I really want to play with Holy Power now!)
Oh What a Weekend!
//(To anyone who can tell me where that blog title is from, I will give you 100g if we’re ever on the same server.)
All right, folks. I am taking the weekend off, basically. I’m heading up to my parents’ country house with my parents, my brother and my grandmother and will endeavour to go canoeing, do some walking, do some reading in the sun (!) and do things like play silly card games or board games with my family.
I will be bringing my laptop up with me, but I will only have dialup access, which means:
– I will not be able to go through parses because the load time is insane.
– Email replies will not be as instantaneous as normal. ;)
– I will probably not blog.
– I will not be on twitter much, if at all.
– I will not be in-game pretty much at all, not on live or on beta.
I know. You’ll all miss me terribly between now and Sunday evening. I encourage you to go out and get some sun before summer’s over! Or, you know, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, feel free to keep surfing the Internet. I know that 3 degrees Celsius is chilly for you people. ;)
Have a great weekend, folks. Kurn’s Corner will resume content posting on Mondayish. :)