It is 4:28am. I have work in… not too many hours. But I came across a video on YouTube while I couldn’t sleep and they were talking about how holy paladins should use the burning meta gem in Cata Classic.
And I was like… that’s not right, is it?
So what did I do?
First, I scoured THIS VERY BLOG to see what I have to say about Cataclysm meta gems. Know what I found? One post. One. That’s it. And it doesn’t even mention the Burning Shadowspirit meta?
So I got out of bed and went to check what gems were in Madrana’s old helms — both original Madrana and baby paladin Madrana. Ember Shadowspirit Diamonds were in basically all of my old holy helms (different ones for tanking and the odd ret helm).
And I’m like how did I not mention a whole other meta gem? I was very, very confused.
Until I saw a comment at Wowhead. The Burning meta used to say 3% Increased Critical Damage until 4.3, whereupon it changed to 3% Increased Critical Effect.
Judging from Wowhead, Cata is going with 3% Increased Critical Effect for Classic. (And, it seems, the second iteration of Holy Radiance, but that’s for another post.)
So, questions:
1) Was I really unaware of this change at 4.3???
2) If I wasn’t unaware, why did I keep using the Ember?
3) Why have I been researching this and writing this for 20m in the middle of the night when I have work the next day?
I think I’ll do a bit more research this week and come up with a good video/post about Cata and holy pallies. In the meantime, yes, use the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond as your meta. And here’s what I still believe is a pretty decent max-level spec for a PVE holy paladin.
Okay, back to bed. The birds are chirping and the sun is coming up. I am not going to be a happy camper at work…
3) Why have I been researching this and writing this for 20m in the middle of the night when I have work the next day?
Because if you’re like me, you find something and you end up going down the rabbit hole for a while. Even if I say, “I can’t do this, I have to sleep,” I end up lying awake in bed pondering the problem anyway.
So yeah, my sympathies.
As for the meta, my thinking is that what the meta is has changed over time, and issues about that have been compounded by the lack of private servers to draw from. (At least that’s Questie’s excuse, and my short review of what private servers are out there back in November indicated that there weren’t a lot of Cataclysm private servers out there. (More than Mists and Warlords, but that’s to be expected.)
Yep, that’s exactly it. I had to find out.
As to the gem, well, it wasn’t in the patch notes:
https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/3964563/43-hour-of-twilight-patch-notes
But the Wowhead comment says that yeah, it wasn’t in the patch notes and so it was an undocumented change. So I guess that’s how I missed it. I read all the patch notes that came out.
I find it fascinating how it’s sort of like rewriting history as these new classic versions come out. Kind of wild!