We’ve been spared…

…sort of. The forbearance nerf mentioned in my previous entry has been (somewhat) cleared up by Mr. Blue, Eyonix on the Warcraft forums. I’m not sure what to fully make of this since I’ve really not been able to PvP much aside from being Annihilate’s healb*tch but I can tell you that I knew all along that we were doing too much damage than we’d be “allowed” to do.

“After further testing, we’ve decided to undo the following changes to the Paladin for the next patch as we felt the adjustments were too imposing on the class’ ability to tank in dungeons.

-Increased the duration of “Avenging Wrath” by 50% (now lasts 30 sec.) This ability no longer invokes “Forbearance”, but shares a cooldown with “Divine Shield”.

-Forbearance now reduces damage dealt by the affected player by 15%.

With that being said, we do feel that the Paladin is currently capable of producing too much burst damage and are investigating reasonable ways to make minor reductions for the future.”

Maybe Blizz is worried Pallys will pull a Priest Riot! Hmmmm, I forgot. We’re not self righteous whiney little girls like most Priest players are Dig Dig!

Forbearance Nerf?

Reports on the test realm are stating that we may be in for a visit from the old nerf bat in an upcoming patch. Forbearance is being reported to give a -15% physical damage debuff upon being applied to the Paladin. The ever wise (LOL) Tseric is claiming he’s unsure if this is a bug or an actual change and that he will “…have to get back to [us] on a weekday”. Some are even claiming this debuff relates to ALL damage done. Hopefully this is just a bug as I feel it’d greatly shaft us in terms of burst DMG.

2v2 Arena Team

Finally got around to making my 2v2 Arena team with my wrecking ball of a Warrior teammate, Annihilate. (Check out his PvP video). After dishing out some of our Epic Flying mount fund for the team charter we decided to name the team “Eighty Gold WTF?”. We thought it was fitting. I’ll see if I can get some footage when we start our matches tonight. Since my raiding has been cut short. I’m also looking to get into (or start) a 3v3 and a 5v5 team.

Kerni Illustration by Luniara

Felt like sharing with my faithful readers a preview of an illustration that my little sister (who also plays a Pally by the name of Luniara) is doing for me. She actually began this a while back and has been SLACKING on it ever since. She’s done some really amazing illustration work and although I’m sure she’ll chew me out for posting such a rough, unfinished preview of her rendition of “Kerni” I just can’t wait to see it completed! A definite replacement for the current blog header I’ve got going now. To get it finished I guess that I just need to bribe her with SM twink runs and some gold on the side.

First Post 70 BG

Finally got around to doing a battleground. Waited a nice 15 minutes for AB to pop, got into a match that was about 500 points in with the Horde winning (as usual). PUG vs PUG. Keep in mind, I am basing my impression upon one battleground. I’ve yet to find the time to really experiment with PvP during the grind to 70 so bear with me here.

I found my damage to be pretty decent, especially against cloth getting nice 1400+ normal hit crits and a few good 1500+ Crusader Strikes here and there. I only got to use Avenging Wrath twice, the first time it was stolen by a Mage and the second time I watch numbers fly. With BOM and Avenging Wrath up Critline recorded a new record 1982 Crusader Strike crit against a Rogue.

I found Mages to be (as expected) incredibly powerful. On one occasion I was having a nice 1v1 against a Blood Elf Paladin, was on the winning side of the fight when out of nowhere I’m Frostbolted for 3k. Lovely right? Let’s just say I was toast. I’ll have to hop into some more BGs later but for now I’m off to a Botanica run.

Oh, did I mention I spec’d back to Ret?

Karazhan: The Crone

So I finally got around to making time for raiding last night. Karazhan is by far one of the best designed dungeons in the game to date. So we went in, cleared some trash and got to the Theatre event. The dungeon itself is huge and visually stunning. Seeing as it’s a 10 man raid I was able to run the game cranked to the max on my trusty G5 Powermac with decent performance (35+ FPS). Anyway, I have to admit that I was impressed by the nice dialogue as the stage manager presents tonight’s act. We got dealt the Wizard of Oz act. Not bad at all. There was “Roar” (the Cowardly Lion), Tito (duh!), Strawman (need I say more?), Tinhead, Dorothy and last but not least “The Crone”. Overall the fight was pretty simple. We had a Warrior tanking Strawman, a Protadin tanking Tinhead and Roar being feared. The fight seems to be the same old tank and spank, CC thing but the whole boss fight didn’t seem like the usual stale boss fights we’ve been forced to endure in AQ40 and Naxx.

I actually recorded a video of the fight with Snapz so once I get it into iMovie and although I totally misclicked my Bubble for absolutely no reason at the start of the fight I’ll have to post it up when I get around to it.

Drops: Wicked Witches Hat, Beastmaw Pauldrons. Grats to Milde on the shoulders and Lyto on the hat.

Sup QQadin?

Seriously, if I have to endure one more thread on the Paladin forums in which a Paladin, new or old feels the need to cry about how our class is weak, broken, inferior or any other negative term I’m going to puke.

I’ve said it once and I’ll gladly say it 1000 times more. “Paladins are fine! Learn to adapt to changes!” I’m not going to outright call anyone a noob but I honestly feel that it is starting to become the case in most of these situations. So to those of you reading this, if you happen to feel the desire to QQ about your class, the noble Paladin, please take into consideration that you’re playing one of the most gear dependant classes in the game who’s role is not that of a pure DPS, a pure tank nor even a pure healer but a hybrid. You’ll never be the best at either of those roles. You can of course excel at them and be very good but you’ll never be on top.

IF YOU CANT GRASP THIS SIMPLE CONCEPT, PLEASE GET OVER IT OR REROLL A FREAKING WARLOCK!

Update: In my rage I totally forgot to mention what a great class we indeed are. Our Healing makes Priests insecure, our tanking makes Warriors shake in their boots and our DPS well, it seems people still don’t believe in us yet with that one