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The Light and How to Swing It: How many abilities is too many?
by
Matt Walsh
on Jun 7th 2013 (12 days ago)
Remember Divine Intervention?
I was talking about bygone abilities with some guildmates the other day (we need a ret/holy hybrid, by the way!) and it evolved into an interesting conversation about ability bloat in WoW. Some of them thought that they had way too many abilities on their bars with far too many keybinds to manage, and were dreading finding room for anything new that could be added in the next expansion.
Personally, I don't feel like I'm in the saturation point just yet (maybe because I'm not a prolific macro-er) but I can definitely sympathize with the sentiment. Ever since TBC, Blizzard has been heaping more and more abilities into our toolbox, and if we're not yet at a saturation point, we will soon be at one in the future. Regardless, it's interesting to look not only at what our toolbox is like now, but also what it used to be like, and then if something had to be cut down the line, where the knife may well be pointed.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: The problem with tanks
by
Matt Walsh
on May 26th 2013 (24 days ago)
Last Thursday, Ghostcrawler tweeted something which caused a bit of a stir within the tanking community. In it he revealed that the devs were looking at some strict caps for Vengeance levels (30% of health for 10s, 50% for 25s) that would prevent tanks from using Vengeance to pursue unintended things like solo tanking a two-tank raid boss or standing in fire to stack really obscene amounts of attack power.
Now, this isn't another column about the virtues or not of Vengeance. That's a pretty mutilated horse at this point, and from the looks of it, the mechanic is not going anywhere any time soon. However, the brief rekindling of the Vengeance debate did once again shine some light on what is a continuing problem in WoW: what should tanks be allowed to do (in terms of damage output) and what can be done to keep players from parlaying excessive survivability into unintended advantages?
What do you do when one third (arguably two-thirds, a lot of this can apply to healers as well) of your players' roles revolves around the mitigation and prevention of damage, and the primary means you have of creating barriers or challenges for players is the threat of character death?
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Throne of Thunder With Protection Paladins: Being awesome
by
Matt Walsh
on May 10th 2013 (1 month ago)
It's not a new phenomenon for protection paladins to be able to use their extensive utility toolbox to mitigate or outright circumvent fight mechanics; it's something that we've been doing since Uther first picked up a blunt object. Throne of Thunder continues that lofty tradition with all sorts of mechanics that can be ducked or dodged by crafty paladins with an excellent sense of timing and the proper addons or macros. We'll also touch on whether it's a good thing that one corner of WoW's tanks can break aspects of an encounter, and the ramifications of such possibilities.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: In defense of stamina
by
Matt Walsh
on Apr 13th 2013 (2 months ago)
If you have spent much time on the official forums at any point since the beginning of -- oh, say, Cataclysm -- you'd notice that there is a particularly prevalent slur that is oft flung around in tanking discussions. This slur cuts to the very core of what it means to be a tank, it is an accusation of seeking vainglory over properly gearing ourselves for survivability. Worse, it is an accusation of being behind the times on tank theorycrafting due to either apathy or incompetence. It is the Scarlet S.
Stam stacker.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Mastering the Troves of the Thunder King as a paladin
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 30th 2013 (2 months ago)
Fortune and glory, kid. Nothing animates like the prospect of a massive pile of treasure, especially when you're racing against the clock and greedily snatching up as much as you can. The trick, in the end, is to be prepared for any obstacles thrown at you -- that is what separates the Indiana Joneses of this world from the Satipos. And if you prefer to be the former and exit the scenario with more gold than you can carry, you'll need to do your homework before you plunge into this exciting new feature from patch 5.2.
Thankfully, paladins tend to have a lot of tricks up their sleeves and with the new talent system that is doubly true. With the right preparation, we can make the most of our toolset and claw our way to the end of the loot run with a minimum of muss or fuss.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the first three bosses of Throne of Thunder
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 16th 2013 (3 months ago)
Like jumping into a cold pool after spending too much time in the hot tub, tanking Throne of Thunder after weeks of tier 14 may be a bit of a shocking experience. (Sorry, had to.) This place is no joke -- the health and damage requirements are ratcheted up severely from the previous tier of raiding. The bosses will hit harder and the mechanics will be tighter, but on the other hand, the loot will be even shinier. Honor and glory awaits in the halls of the Thunder King.
The first quarter of the dungeon is designated as the Last Stand of the Zandalari, and you'll be seeing some old, tusked faces. Let's talk about what you'll need to do to withstand everything that the finest warriors of that dying land can throw at you.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: A look at 5.2 tanking loot
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 2nd 2013 (3 months ago)
Another patch, another tumbling pile of loot that we will spend the next half year greedily chasing like a kid in a candy store. Y'know, if the kid was only allowed to visit the candy store once a week, and the store owner handed him a random piece every time he visited. Still, it's pretty exciting, the possibilities of a new patch. Aside from all the interesting new stuff to do, a new patch always presents the opportunity to grow your character in power and effectiveness through ever-increasing item levels.
5.2 is unique in that, for the first time, most raid drops will have five different versions of item level value. With the introduction of Thunderforged items, we now can collect Raid Finder, Normal, Normal Thunderforged, Heroic, and Heroic Thunderforged flavors of each and every raid drop. Despite this cacophony of loot, for the purposes of my sanity and yours, I'll only be listing the normal-mode version of each item in the list ahead.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: A review of tier 14 from a tanking perspective
by
Matt Walsh
on Feb 16th 2013 (4 months ago)
With the Throne of Thunder echoing in the distance, it will not be much longer before tier 14 is a fading and pleasant memory for many raiders. I think it's a fair assessment to say that this tier has been one of the most successful in WoW's history, at least from an encounter design perspective. An unexpected follow-up from the doldrums of Dragon Soul, the raids of Mogu'shan Vaults, Heart of Fear, and Terrace of Endless Spring have been interesting and (most importantly!) engaging -- especially for tanks.
Remember that in the closing days of Dragon Soul and Cataclysm, there was a general feeling of ennui in the raid tanking community. Between the nullification of threat, the introduction of Vengeance, and the seeming dumbing-down of raid mechanics throughout Cataclysm, the sentiment was that Blizzard had given up on making tanking interesting at anything but the heroic raid level. And even then, by "interesting" it meant you would have to cope with much, much more damage. Obviously, it's human nature to assume that past is prologue and as such many tanks assumed the worst was yet to come.
So imagine the surprise when the mists dispersed and the land of Pandaria revealed an unexpected renaissance for raid tanks.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: A not-so-hasty retreat
by
Matt Walsh
on Feb 2nd 2013 (4 months ago)
Ghostcrawler created panicked ripples in the tankadin community when he unexpectedly declared on the forums that he had "plans to try and lower the value of haste relative to dodge and parry." I'm sure you, as I, have read over these quotes multiple times, so I won't repeat them all in full for the sake of not wasting the humble electrons shooting through your computer.
Nonetheless, the key takeaway is that he feels the main problem is paladin tanks are prioritizing haste, which wasn't supposed to be a major tanking stat, over dodge and parry. (More on that in a bit.) He foresees that a fix might have to involve a nerf to Shield of the Righteous, the primary beneficiary of our haste; though this would be accompanied by some kind of buff to keep our survivability level.
Likewise, GC is concerned with protection paladins taking haste plate out of the mouths of those specs it was designed for -- DPS death knights and paladins among them -- and thus causing unnecessary friction in a group. And, of course, he's worried that protection paladins might turn their nose at good tanking gear with dodge and parry stats, considering them garbage. (Again, we'll revisit this.)
Thankfully, the crab recognizes that above all, having haste as a tank is fun, and he claims he wants to preserve that. Which is great. So, let's look at this whole crazy mess, and figure out where we are and where this might leave us.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
5.2 round-up for protection paladins
by
Matt Walsh
on Jan 19th 2013 (5 months ago)
I must admit, while following all the changes of path 5.2 as they trickled out, the one change that got me really, really pumped was the further loosening of transmog rules. In 5.2, a one-handed sword (as just about all our epic weapons are this expansion) can be transmogrified to an axe or a mace. In addition, many weapons from earlier expansions that were designated as mainhand weapons, have been changed one-hand weapons.
Combined, this means that in 5.2, no matter what actual weapon I have, it can look like the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets -- an iconic paladin weapon if I ever saw one. Sure, swords are great (the Crusader's Glory is particularly nice), but when I think of paladins smiting the undead and enforcing the will of the Light, I see them holding a massive hammer in their hands. So I'm excited to return to that motif.
But obviously there's a lot more going on in patch 5.2 than transmogrifying! There is a new tier set with new set bonuses worth digging into, as well as a slew of class changes that are coming down the pike.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
