So far, many guilds haven’t even been able to see the Lich King on heroic, which is something that actually brings a tear to my eye. Even though most of the content just has bigger numbers when switched to heroic, there’s something about having these encounters take a tiny amount of skill that makes me feel warm inside. It’s been weeks since the top raiders have reached Arthas – and all they have to show for it is five 10 man kills worldwide with a 5% bonus buff.
I see that as a great success, and Blizzard should be proud for their single encounter of the single expansion that is taking more than 8 hours of in-game playtime to down (insert harsher tone here). I’m quite eager to see who beats him first, because it’s not like there’s going to be much else to do in this expansion except wait for cataclysm!
Paladin News : Everywhere.
As I’m sure everybody has noticed, news has been slow for all Paladin sites, and we’re no exception here. So many times I’ve blew off it off as something big coming, but it’s quite apparent now that Blizzard still has absolutely no idea what they’re doing with the class, they won’t even go as far as telling us what their current goal with the Paladin class is!
A barren desert is where I am!
So far, every class has gotten quite a bit of attention. Apparently Blizzard has gotten the idea that if they ignore us – the one class in the game that has been the most bastardized of them all – that our characteristic madness would stay quelled. It’s really hard to sit back and truly wonder what Blizzard is trying to accomplish nowadays, especially since they’ve just been catering more and more to the public forums and not giving any insight into anything serious that’s going on.
Where is this headed? Is this seriously what we’re going to have to start expecting from Blizzard now that they’ve completely gripped the MMO market in their hands for some time? Give me something else to write about besides “where’s my news”!
- Megaphone
March 20th, 2010 - 1:42 pm
“Is this seriously what we’re going to have to start expecting from Blizzard now that they’ve completely gripped the MMO market in their hands for some time?”
Nope, you can make the same choice I did: When the bag of garbage starts to smell like shit, you toss it outside.
WoW is no longer the game it was, and frankly, it no longer deserves my time or $. There are many games out there to play, and although few MMOs out there have the same feel as WoW, there is no rule that says you need to play an MMO.
WoW population hasn’t increased in 2 years, which basically says that for every new subscription they get, someone quits the game. And depending on whose hyberbole you want to read, for every Hardcore/Skilled player that quits, another mouthbreathing carebear casual takes their place.
Deep inside I do harbour a great deal of resentment towards Blizzard. They took something very special away from me, and while atm I wish nothing but to see WoW continue on it’s downward spiral, part of me wishes that it could have continued to be the game it once was.
Btw, my decision to leave wasn’t solely because of their inability to handle Paladins or Retribution. On the contrary, with no news or changes for about 8 months, there wasn’t much to be angry about. In it’s place though, I was able to observe how they mismanaged every other class, from waiting 15 months to finally buffing Shadow Priests (only to bump them to OP status) to leaving DKs languishing in Arena for 2 full seasons.
Bad developers are bad. The good ones either quit Blizzard, or are working on SC2, D3 or whatever else.
WoW isn’t really worth it anymore.
March 20th, 2010 - 2:11 pm
There was once a time I could be that angry – but then people started getting mad and flame wars started!
March 20th, 2010 - 2:48 pm
Turkeyspit summarized:
“I don’t like this game anymore and I want it to be terrible and rosecolored glasses bawwwwwww but oh wait I still read websites about it.”
I’m just as frustrated by class balance as anyone else, but when I’m feeling sick of it all, I let my subscription burn out and take a break until I have the urge to play again. What I don’t do is “harbour resentment towards Blizzard” because they’re just evolving THEIR game. I remember hearing about WoW from a friend back when it came out. I tried it for a couple months and got fed up with the horrible imbalance and ridiculousness of so many aspects of it. What you’re experiencing is burnout and nostalgia has colored everything from previous iterations of the game in this amazing awesome way.
Instead of deciding that everybody that plays the game is a “mouthbreathing carebear” and raging about it on the internet, just don’t pay for the game and forget about it? If you decide at some point in the future that you want to play again, guess what? You can! The huffing and puffing and internetrage is entirely unnecessary. People that don’t like WoW are unique in that they go out of their way to tell the people that do like the game (or claim they don’t but still associate themselves with it) how much they dislike it.
March 20th, 2010 - 4:06 pm
Good analysis, turkeyspit. I feel the same way. For what I played WoW for, it just isn’t that good anymore. And I also moved to another non-MMO game (Supreme Commander 2).
Megaphone, the reason why Blizzard has stopped posting about paladins, specifically ret, is probably because the community gets pissed at them when they do. But the community should because Blizzard makes poor decisions with regard to paladins more often than not. It’s a vicious cycle. Don’t listen to the community because they yell at you, screw up, and the community yells at you.
Ghostcrawler at least does a good job of pointing out problems that they want to fix. He’s just not good at implementing fixes.
March 20th, 2010 - 4:15 pm
@Meracalis
It matters when other players are bad in an MMO. In an MMO, you have to play and interact with a lot of players. You may like the game, but if you’re constantly held back by that one bad person because you needed their class/spec, then it does get frustrating. You may like the game, but hate the players in it.
March 20th, 2010 - 7:58 pm
@Mercalis.
Good speech. Did that make you feel good? Did that help your self-esteem some?
Whoever you ‘think’ you are that I should care about your deep and probing analysis of my post, let me just be clear, you are not that person.
I still read WoW forums/sites from time to time, for several reasons.
Firstly, it serves as a positive reinforcement of my decision to quit. Reading the news as such I see “yep, WoW is still shit, GC and his crew of interns are still incompetent, good choice!”. Everyone likes to be reminded that they were right, y’know.
Secondly, I derive great amusement from the WoW masses, especially the official forums. I mean there are people there who really earnestly think they know what they are talking about! There are people who (for example) think the upcoming nerf to Brostorm being countered by Disarm was a well thoughtout measure for balance; while the rest of the informed WoW populace understand that it was yet another shoot-from-hip-scattershot solution from the team of WoW devs that are driving this game into the ground.
I mean, there are still Ret Paladins out there asking for buffs, expecting they will actually get them. There are an even greater number of retards out there who think Ret is still OP and needs to be nerfed.
Dude, I can’t BUY that kind of comedy over the interweb.
And Lastly, I love how you went for the ‘internetrage’ meme. Makes me wonder if you actually attempt original thought before each post, or do you just fallback on some ‘tried and true’ adages to fill your attempts at bumpage.
Are you saying I don’t have the right to resent how WoW was killed for me? I’m not allowed to be upset?
It pissed me off when Highlander 2 (et al) were made, as it killed the Highlander storyline! When I watched Alien 3, I was outraged at what they had done to the franchise…and it only got worse once I saw Alien Resurrection.
So while I think it’s cute that you attempt to sound all high and mighty by disparaging my emotional reaction to something that I once held dear, but I recommend leaving that shit for Dr. Phil and other tools of similar ilk.
Incidentally, I’m sure somewhere in the vaults of your mind you will interpret this post as me actually ‘caring’ about your response. Feel free to do so if you want. In reality, I just feel it was warranted as a ‘thank you’ for the laugh. I don’t usually expect to be amused by posts on this site, so I appreciated your special little contribution.
March 20th, 2010 - 10:46 pm
The majority of incoming spell news will be for Holy Paladins, and the majority of mechanic info will be for Prot Paladins. It’s a strange paradox, but Ret is just in too good of a place currently for anything exciting to take place right now outside of the Cataclysm stat overhaul.
To quote the old adage: “No news is good news.”
March 21st, 2010 - 12:54 am
I’m more inclined to favor what Mercalis said than with turkyspit’s frothing at the mouth. You’re entitled to say what you want, but handle the criticism that comes with it–that’s the exchange.
March 21st, 2010 - 3:15 am
I’m not expecting changes really – I just wanted to see what some people thought of the lack of Blizzard’s presence. It is an entirely good point that ignoring us will keep most of the community quite and doing nothing but internal raging, but I honestly think that’s the worst “battleplan” ever. Blizzard shouldn’t have even gotten themselves in this mess.
Holy might be getting a new spell, dandy. The tanking aspect isn’t something that needs a fix, they’re just wanting to balance HoR and SoC, I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be changed with Prot at the moment. There has been a lot of tanking talk in the blue posts as of recent, but I haven’t been paying any attention to it (it’s as if I could not even know about the tanking discussion and still see no real changes being implemented from them).
Maybe I’m just looking for some bone instead of a steady stream of silence for months on end..
March 21st, 2010 - 10:16 am
Some people like to cry too much, that said, if there were more people like turkey who actually stood up to blizzard, we wouldn’t be in this shitty situation where they never buff us (remember bc? and all the discontent? What happened at the end of those two years? For you non noob paladins who have actually played pre 2.3?)
the last two years of *meager* “fix me”, “i need buffs” and retards saying Paladins are op when I cant even get within 15 yards of a hunter without being shot the fuck up. 880 and up resilience, BoP DS and HoF? Useless.
nothing is going to change, because paladins are mostly pussies. anyone who had something to say, left with the last expansion, and turkey is just another one who will lose to all the wusses who are too weak to even say anything in the forums. it is all of you which stop our class from being buffed, so stop being pussies and speak out, or just let our class get burnt into the ground.
What happened to SP and Shamans and Hunters with QQ? Even a “ra-tard” huntard can blow you apart without really trying. HIGH BURST AT 30 YARDS WITH (MOSTLY) NO CAST TIME was a good fucking idea.
Besides the fact that blizzard’s dev team clearly has not known how to handle paladins since the end of BC (level 70 nerfs for the win! Who remembers that here? Probably about 3% of the population of readers).
While nearly every other class gets buffed, (and last patch, literally EVERYONE BUT PALADINS) we are quiet. And why is that? because anyone with some balls left the game already. Grow some balls guys. No more of this internet fight shit, either stand up for the class and get something done (tremendous hunter QQ made a playable arena class FUCKING OP) or fall down with them. (paladins will only be played by retards who are so fucking horrible at playing them, or their own classes in pvp, that they rolled it because it is perceived as “easy” to play, and at the same time making palanoobs that suck, and eventually their collective QQ will make the class better, in 2-3 years time by the next next expansion. Your call guys, dont make it suck.)
March 21st, 2010 - 2:54 pm
I’d like a complete revamp of ret.
It’s in a great spot, yes…but it’s stupidly easy. No setup required for PvE or PvP, you hit 5-6 buttons with little to no insight as to why. I like a priority system because following a set rotation is boring…but the fact there there is no setup is just stupid.
Another issue is the seal system. Without one up, we’re useless. Our entire damage is based on having a seal up. I don’t like that. Another issue is its purpose: use and forget. I’m not a fan of that. I think they should be some sort of cooldown(say, a 30 second boost based on the type of seal), so we’re juggling small cooldowns(seals), Longer ones(Avenging Wrath), and a system that requires setup in both PvE and PvP for success.
March 21st, 2010 - 3:31 pm
Carebears? WTF?
All new players are selfish arrogant little pissants with staggering levels of self importance.
March 21st, 2010 - 4:22 pm
You need to tone it down, Alec. I don’t see anything positive from you, either than you crying about hunters. There is a reason why it’s better to be quiet than spout off random things and seem like a complete douchebag – take a look at Badpaladin for example.
He’s calm, he’s saying that even though we’re in a decent spot, it’s because of many gimmicks that needs to be changed. Something that Blizzard can actually use, what you gave us was nothing but a few paragraph long WoW public forum rage. You gave us nothing to work with other than “oh god come rage with me to take down the man!”. Think about it!
Also, I like your input Badpaladin. It’s true, our seal and combat system is so horrible, only the fact that we can smash so hard with a few buttons is keeping us in the loop. Without a seal, it goes down the drain, I don’t see many other classes who put up a buff that increases their dps by 80% and forgets about it.
March 21st, 2010 - 5:55 pm
Let’s be realistic, Mega. If Blizzard actually used anything veteran players were telling them to do we wouldn’t even be playing the game. What will happen if everyone was happy with their class and everything was perfectly balanced? People will get bored eventually. Keep the community in the current state, while always promising improvements, giving them small things to enjoy from time to time and it’ll keep the hamster wheel rolling. They want to put the people in a state where they’re always about to quit as long as something is preventing them from doing so. Take Ret paladins for example. How many would you think will still be playing the class if they kept the TBC ret as it was.
March 21st, 2010 - 6:37 pm
“You need to tone it down Alec”
Really? I dont see you guys posting on the forums to try and benefit our class.
If all ret paladin has turned into this past year is a QQ forum for us to yearn for what we could have been, then we aren’t really gamers at all. Next game the DKS will be buffed because of all the QQ, tanking will be so easy that complete retards will be fucking up all of our heroics, and even more retards irl will be carried by your raids. If you guys dont like it, then do something about it. No more righteous indignation because someone calls you all out on the pussy bullshit that has been going on the last year or so with our class.
March 21st, 2010 - 8:06 pm
I’m glad I quit I think overall. I liked burning crusade actually about midway through I was able to join a great raiding guild which is now #1 on my server before and after I have left. I loved fights like Illidari council and illidan not to mention actually beating some of the bosses like bloodboil and ros before them was actually somewhat difficult.
To sum it up, I miss Seal of Blood and I miss when armor penetration was actually a useful stat for us as well. <3 my Cataclysm’s Edge and my Shivering Felspine. Sunwell was fun too.
What I hate about the class is eventually became that first come first serve kinda rotation which no matter what the hell I did with became the Ret’s downfall because it felt like no matter what the rotation in Wrath with each patch Ret became severely hindered by the clutterness of the rotation.
I miss the old Ret when I was one of the few Rets on the server in raiding guilds and pulling my own weight if not better than most near end of Burning Crusade. Felt good to be Ret back then where as in Wrath I became that person who complained about every patch to “fix” Ret because in my opinion most fixes were making the class less fun to play all in all and the clutterness of the rotation basically put me at “I can’t do anything to make this more fun or make myself better…” Which is prolly why I ended up quitting. Ret wasn’t fun anymore for me.
March 21st, 2010 - 8:30 pm
Megaphone, you’re basically acting the role that Alec was talking about. Complacency never gets your class anywhere. It’s like the kid in the shopping mall that throws a temper tantrum. If you kick and scream loud enough then eventually the behavior is rewarded. As much as I hate that approach, that’s the only viable recourse.
If the EU paladins forums didn’t erupt with hate posts the night of the 2.3 PTR notes, Ret probably wouldn’t have had threat reduction in TBC, making it completely non-viable as a DPS spec for the entire expansion (as opposed to half). In fact, pre-2.3 TBC PvE Ret was hindered by threat more than anything else (both horde and alliance). And it was pointed out well before 2.2 went live. Yes numerous EU rets were banned from the forums for spamming the boards in order to bring that glaring flaw to Blizzard’s attention. It worked fairly well for the class in the end.
Like I said, I hate that that approach works. But any constructive feedback or suggestions that we try to give in a civil manner seemingly gets ignored by Blizzard who realizes the problem a few months down the road. And the threads themselves are filled with flames from ret trolls or terrible rets that want all the PvP abilities of warriors.
March 21st, 2010 - 8:43 pm
This is getting
THUPER
THERIOU
…
EXTHELTHIORRR!
But seriously, most of us don’t bring it up on the forums in a calm, collective manner because we always get shot down by “lol look at the ret who wants a pony”, and blizzard seems to think the same. Hoff nad Exedore put up a few posts but they all eventually turned into a bunch of kids whining at each other. Using the forums to get a message out to blizzard does not work. Personally, I’m remaining hopeful that they’ve absorbed our thoughts and plan for something different in Cataclysm.
Your hostility, however, is unwarranted and only serves to put us in a worse place than the rest of the WoW community views us already.
March 21st, 2010 - 11:04 pm
I think you guys misread my post. I was telling him to stop crying and to use some logic instead of throwing a temper tantrum. There’s nothing wrong with going onto the forums or actually doing something about an issue – but all I see is Alec deserving to be drop kicked and aborted for what he “contributed”.
——-
@ Alec
There’s a difference between posting a comment here and spamming page after page to get something done on the WoW public forums. I’m sure a group of people 100+ strong calmly talking about something over the public forums won’t get a thing done, as won’t 100+ people crying about hunters and calling everybody retarded.
You want me to start getting mad and be under a constant rain of flak all the time? Sure, let me hop on that! You better be glad I still let your worthless posts stick to this article.
——
And you should know that I’m not one to sit down and take it Exedore, just look at how much crap I’ve gotten over the past just by voicing out an opinion with an aggressive tone! Damn straight we need people kicking and screaming – but I’m not going to tolerate crying here. What’s is crying and not making sense going to accomplish in our community? I sure as hell don’t want that guy representing me.
There needs to be a decent balance of knowledge and “get it done on the forums”, or else you just have people who roll ret after getting smashed on their 30 resilience Warlocks wondering why they aren’t killing all the hunters and feel the need to voice their opinion on this site!
March 22nd, 2010 - 3:26 am
I don’t know what the fuzz is all about, we aren’t doing bad in PVE ( we are doing great in pve, yes we are, my single target dps is beter the most melee and most casters aswell I am currently in the top 3 of damage done in a complet raid I top several fights and I don’t mean trash ), and I still need all my tier upgrades from level 251 to 264 ( due to crap droprate of our tokens).
and we aren’t doing bad in pvp( we could have more offensive tools yes , but we aren’t crap).
This is my few, you can do with it what you want.
March 22nd, 2010 - 8:51 pm
I use to play lock back in vanilla. Oh the good old days of overpowered soul link… hehe… I wanted to play paladin ever since vanilla WoW and I had a blast doin so in TBC and it still remains my favorite even tho from start to midway thru expansion we weren’t that great in damage output but seal of blood and the era of oldschool windfury + armor penetration made us the kings of white damage even with the seal judge reseal oldschool system.
I loved TBCthrough and through. I began to hate months into Wrath with each and every patch from there forth. I just feel like the class went into a spammy, cooldown clashing, and wrong direction for mewhich made it not fun anymore…
March 24th, 2010 - 1:34 am
@ Badpaladin
“Another issue is the seal system. Without one up, we’re useless. Our entire damage is based on having a seal up. I don’t like that. Another issue is its purpose: use and forget. I’m not a fan of that. I think they should be some sort of cooldown(say, a 30 second boost based on the type of seal), so we’re juggling small cooldowns(seals), Longer ones(Avenging Wrath), and a system that requires setup in both PvE and PvP for success.”
That’s exactly the problem with Retribution paladins. The Seal system is so messed up that if you look at DPS logs – hell – just open Recount after a static fight like Saurfang 25 or Rotface 25/Festergut 25… 50%(!) of your total dps will be made from auto-attack swings and seal procs combined. The point being that you’re doing HALF of your dps as a retribution paladin without ACTUALLY using an ability to do that much damage. Sure you can say that “CS and DS proc seals!” Just look what they did to Divine Storm, was supposed to be Holy damage in the first place but yeah that got changed faster than you realized :p….admittedly the damage was TOO high..but hell..just tone it down if it’s THAT overpowered.
March 24th, 2010 - 1:35 am
Ugh..I wrote a huge post but that sort of got cut in half after “CS and DS proc seals!”…if someone could delete this post ^ that’d be great.
March 24th, 2010 - 1:36 am
@ Badpaladin
That’s exactly the problem with Retribution paladins. The Seal system is so messed up that if you look at DPS logs – hell – just open Recount after a static fight like Saurfang 25 or Rotface 25/Festergut 25… 50%(!) of your total dps will be made from auto-attack swings and seal procs combined. The point being that you’re doing HALF of your dps as a retribution paladin without ACTUALLY using an ability to do that much damage. Sure you can say that “CS and DS proc seals!” <– but that doesn’t really count, simply because the seals are simply ATTACHED to the strike ability and not something you have to actively keep doing.
Is there any other class in the game that works this way? 50% of the total dps done is by auto attacks?
If so then Ghostlobster’s statement that the Seal and Judgement system is unique is certainly true, if we’re the only ones in that situation.
March 27th, 2010 - 1:08 pm
This article captures why I quit WoW a few months ago. I’m sick of playing the red headed step child class, and I have no interest in playing any of the other classes. The devs’ mistreatment of paladins finally allowed my to rid myself of this time sink game.