Paladin Class Preview effect on Retribution

The Paladin Class Preview dropped today. On the whole, I'm unimpressed; for having to wait a week after the other class previews, and to be the last class previewed, it's disappointing that the details therein were somewhat vague and are more of the same - no radical gameplay changes, no groundbreaking additions, even the buffs and nerfs feel like minor adjustments at best/worst.

Because my heart belongs to Retribution, I'll only comment on the changes that affect Ret.

New Paladin Spells

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

If this is an instant cast ability, Ret might utilize this to provide more solo survivability or extra party or raid healing. That's probably not the intent behind it, but it reads like an extra panic button.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

This is a neat ability, if a little ill-defined. Ideally I hope for a talent in Ret that makes the guardian permanent; having a vengeful guardian angel at your side would be tops, but since it's billed as a Gargoyle-like cooldown I won't hold my breath.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

Finally. Low-level paladins have an extra button to press until their spec of choice kicks in; Ret now kicks in at level 1. The new talent in its place is icing on the cake.

• Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

Ret nerf, as outlined in the Dispel preview posted a few weeks back (defensive magic debuff is Holy only). Sucks for solo and PvP, but not too big a deal in PvE group content.

• Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

Love it. Buffing Wisdom as Ret is annoying; Holy does it better, Shaman's Manaspring Totem overwrites it (leading to people complaining that I'm not buffing it at all), and it gets confusing when buffing hybrid groups. Hoping Greater Blessing spells are changed to buff all raid members in range and not on a class-by-class basis.

• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

Did not expect this. In addition to another heal, this might give Ret another button to push as part of our rotation, depending on damage and mana efficiency issues. Could the Shockadin return under the banner of Retribution?

New Talents and Talent Changes
• We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

Now we get into speculation territory. In Vanilla and most of BC, the common bargaining posture for Ret buffs was giving up some or all of our shields. It seems Blizzard got the memo on that one. Still, they admit this might be a non-change, depending on Paladins' performance in Battlegrounds.

• We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

Giving Ret a deeper DPS mechanic and PvP utility are talking points that have been repeated since release, and are repeated here as something to look forward to with no indication what these changes may be. It's disappointing they had to be repeated in this preview.

• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

The 30 minute Sacred Shield duration buff will probably be confined to the Holy tree, otherwise Ret will have no reason not to buff themselves with SS.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Retribution
• Melee Damage
• Melee Critical Damage
• Holy Damage

Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

Concise, to the point, and a little boring. I was hoping for a new and interesting Mastery mechanic similar to that of Shadow Priests' and Balance Druids', but no such luck.

Ret burst at the beginning of WotLK was insane and Blizzard has since tried to nerf our burst while increasing our sustained DPS. The Paladin community rebelled, as they saw Ret as finally being viable after spending almost four years as a joke. I felt that our burst was way too crazy - it was incredibly easy to kill yourself from Seal of Blood's backlash damage just DPSing normally - but my solution was probably a little too simple. Virtually every talent in our tree added crit strike or critical damage to our abilities; Judgement alone had something like a 50% increased critical strike chance. Why couldn't some of the crit be throttled down or eliminated?

Currently Ret is in a good position in PvE, but a variable PvP position; it performs well in Battlegrounds and lower-ranking Arena matches, but underperforms at high end PvP. The Paladin community has been asking for years now for an interrupt and/or a gap closer, and have been summarily ignored mostly due to our variable perception of being too strong or too hard to kill. Ret's domination of 3.0 until Arena Season 4 reinforced the perception that Paladin was overtuned. Resilience didn’t exactly fix it, as had been promised, but the constant tuning down led to our current situation where Ret is fairly ineffective against most healers and targets with more than a few hundred Resilience.

In a vacuum, this preview is lackluster due to its lack of detail on important Paladin issues. However, I believe that work on Paladin can begin in earnest once it's taken out of this vacuum and placed in actual play with the myriad of other changes coming with Cataclysm.

A very late Thank You to Dan

Some time ago (about a month at the time of this writing, give or take), Dan sent me a gift. This isn't particularly uncommon - Dan is a very giving person. Me, I'm a very taking person, so whenever I'm offered a present for conceivably no reason I get flabbergasted, especially when I receive a package of this, well, magnitude.

Dan sent me a set of the World of Warcraft Series 3 action* figures.

* "Action" is kind of a misnomer in this instance. Each figure has one (1) pose with approximately zero (0) points of articulation. There's nothing really wrong with this model - inspired, I believe, by the Todd McFarlane brand - but it gets to be problematic when you try to do things like have the toys stand under their own power.

This was brought about as a "reward" for my Blizzard Global Creative Writing (read: Fanfiction) Contest entry. Sadly, I didn't win, but at the time I was rather hopeful of my chances. So too was Dan, apparently.

As an aside, I can’t post my entry as dictated by the contest rules. Dan may or may not be dismayed to hear this, but even if he is he has a copy so he can read it whenever he wants. However, I'm mulling around the possibility of starting a (web)comic as an indirect sequel. Whether or not I go through with it remains to be seen. As of this writing, I'm still deliberating between two methods of production, preferring one over the other without actually making a decision.

Anyway, the figures:

You may notice that the Brave Highmountain Deluxe Collector Figure isn't pictured, probably because he wasn't included. To give a vague idea as to why, Highmountain is about the size of the other four figures in the series put together. As far as I'm concerned, this is a complete set.

Sadly, this set reminds me that I have no shelf space with which to display said figures, especially considering my roommates Keith and Andrew and their vast, respective collections. Thankfully Andrew was kind enough to place them in front of his anime DVDs so they can bask in displayed glory for the time being.

QUIN'THALAN SUNFIRE, Blood Elf Paladin

Quin'thalan continues the tradition of Blizzard characters wearing equipment that you can't acquire in the game. Seriously, if anyone has any idea where I can get a full body tower shield and double-bladed sword, both in Sin'dorei red and gold, do tell. Further, Quin'thalan continues another Blizzard tradition: ugly males. This is the ugliest blood elf that's been put to plaster. This is partially do to the paint job on his face, which makes him look like Clayface standing in the middle of a thunderstorm, but the sculpt itself is angular and wrinkly, two traits I don't commonly associate with blood elves.

TAMUURA, Draenei Mage

Tamuura is probably the best looking figure in series 3, if not the entire WoW figure line. The sculpt is amazing, the paint is evenly applied, and the color scheme fits very well. I bought this figure for my brother for Christmas to go with the blood elf series 1 rogue I got for him the year before, and I'm glad that I now own one. Tamuura is a progressive, forward-thinking character; you may not be able to see it, but she has a turquoise bellybutton piercing, in addition to fishnet stockings complete with garters.

The biggest disappointment of this figure, of all things, is her feet. Now, I don't have a problem with hot blue chicks with goat legs; it's a workaround, certainly, but not a dealbreaker. No, the problem lies with the bottom of her hooves and the figure's lack of a base. Her feet aren't flat. This makes Tamuura very prone to toppling over unless she's positioned so that she leans against something. During this photo session, Tamuura fell over at least 3 different times, spilling the other figures onto the floor. Thankfully these figures seem pretty resilient. Regardless - and it seems weird to say this - but she could benefit from a set of properly molded horseshoes.

SISTER BENEDRON, Human Priestess

This is one of my favorite armor sets in WoW, and I'm glad they made a figure that properly shows it--

--Wait a sec. What the hell is this?

That's not canon! D:<

I'm amused that an iconic priest figure wields a weapon that priests can't equip in the game. At least they took the fancy way of attaching it to the figure via a gold chain that runs around her waist, and not some gaudy pleather or plastic belt.

SKEEVE SORROWBLADE, Undead Rogue

Skeeve has a problem. It's a problem that's near and dear to my heart, and it's one that I'm sure you'll sympathize with.

Skeeve has no pants.

The part of his armor below the belt is a sort of kilt-like apparatus that isn't attached to the figure for some unknown reason. Maybe it's easier to manufacture that way (in fact, that's probably it), but it's plenty disturbing when Tamuura drunkenly knocks over her brothers and sisters in arms and parts of Skeeve's anatomy that shouldn't see the light of day are exposed for the world to see. Assuming said anatomy is still attached - again, probably not since it's easier to manufacture that way ;o.

That's the cast in a nutshell. Each and every one of them came prepackaged in shells of transparent adamantium, impervious to all but the most powerful of boxcutters which will ruin the packaging beyond all reason, destroying any hope of repackaging these figures for moving or storage. The various weapons and handheld attachments were taped next to them and came with instructions to combine them with the figures that amounted to, "Break this, then reattach as desired." Quin'thalan's shield was especially egregious in this regard, requiring one to twist it around his arm until either it's in position or his arm breaks, whichever comes first.

You may notice an ominous shape to the right of these photographs:

For those possibly in the know, this is the castle setpiece for Matt's capstone film (which I discussed in my previous post). It's been sitting in our home, gathering dust and using up previously unused table space, since the completion of his film. It's made up of Warhammer terrain and modeling clay, and was never intended to be moved from wherever they shot their footage. As a result, it's very fragile and probably won't survive another trip.

Unfortunately, the WoW figures just aren't the right scale for the model, otherwise I would have positioned them at various locations around the castle. That doesn't mean it's uninhabited.

"Could be worse. Could be stuck in Africa with a hot chick with terrible AI."

Perhaps I'm in the wrong line of work

Last night was the culmination of weeks of work on my entry to Blizzard's Creative Writing Contest. I'll quickly point out that it's essentially a fanfiction contest with the prize being a potential job interview with one of the largest and most influential video game companies in the world and leave it at that. I had almost a month to work on my entry - from the start of the contest entry period. I didn't actually start work on it until the last week of March and, despite creating goal posts and milestones to get my fat ass into gear, work on the project didn't kick in until about April 5th or so, and at no time was there a rough draft or proofreader copy.

The final (only) draft of my story didn't begin until April 9th, 4 days before the deadline. The contest entry requirements state the work of fiction should be between 3,000 and 10,000 words. On April 12th at 10:00 AM, I had roughly 1,200 words on paper. That day also happened to be Easter, so I was forced to spend some time with the family - not that I'm complaining, we had a nice dinner and I really enjoyed my time with my parents, but the fact remains that was time I could have spent on my story. I was at about 2,000 when I went home around 2:30. When I returned to my apartment, my roommates were pretty interested in getting caught up watching stuff on TV - Dollhouse was the main offender, but was followed by the first episode of the Fullmetal Alchemist series and episode 2 of Basquatch (thing Gurren Lagann with basketball). Since the living/TV room doubles as my main writing area, you can see the conflict.

Serious effort on my story resumed around 9:30 PM EDT. I had until 2:59 AM (11:59 PM PDT) to finish. In that time frame, my story ballooned to a modest 6,897 words. That's a little under 4,000 words in five and a half hours. Roughly 727 words an hour, 12 words a minute.

I finished the story at 2:52 AM.

Of course by 'finished' I mean it was forged into a form that could be passed for readable. It was somewhat coherent, there was a plot, and it had a beginning, middle, and end. The final product contains about 80% of what I intended to go in there. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what all went in there. From 1 AM to 2:52 it's all a blur.

I still had to submit the thing. At 2:53, I filled out the Blizzard submission form... only to have it reset. So I did it again... and it reset again. I refreshed the page, filled out the form, hit submit to upload my Word file... and it kicked back an error.

The time was 2:56 AM.

I hope I didn't wake up my roommates as I cursed at my laptop, uploaded my file to the network, raced up the stairs to my desktop, then pounded away at the keys in a mad dash to fill out the form again. I hit submit... and it uploaded successfully, even giving me an email confirmation.

The time was 2:58 AM. I had submitted my story at - literally - the last minute.

My thanks go out to my friends who encouraged me to keep going. I popped in to twitter several times to receive gentle proddings to keep myself on task, so thanks there, too - especially Dan, who was like the coach in Punch Out for all intents and purposes, except he didn't steal my bike. Also my apologies for not completing the story sooner as I asked you to proofread but I never delivered on my end. When I get home I'll be gloating by sending out to my friends whatever the hell it is I submitted to Blizzard so you all can point derisively at the shitpiece I cranked out in the span of about eight noncontiguous hours.

A rant on the general writing process is soon to come.