1/2/10

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Rolibar of Shadow Council

How long have you played a Retadin?

Within the first week of my server opening.  I have no significant alts.  I’ve done some brief respecs to Prot for tanking but I’ve been almost exclusively Ret for the close to 500 days played I’ve accumulated.  One would have thought I’d have figured it out by now … but not so much it seems at times

Would you ever level another one?

Not from scratch but it’s been fun leveling on new expansions.  I kind of enjoy the story so each expansion I go and do all the quests to find out more of it.

Has Blizzard really started catering to the casual play style?

Throwing away hard-earned TOC hard mode gear for easy-mode ICC bosses is frustrating.  It seems the “epicness” of raiding is somewhat gone.  Raiding is much easier nowadays.  The guild I was in at the time opened the AQ40 gates on our server.  Epic feelings such as that don’t seem to exist anymore.  I used to love just the sheer size and depth of raid instances.  Nowadays everything seems so trivial.  At least ICC has trash, never thought I’d miss trash.

There have been some challenging fights but all in all I would agree that Blizzard seems to be catering to a more casual play style.  Algalon, for example, can be tough at times.  Yogg +1/0 can be rough even in ToC gear.  Tribute to Insanity (25 man GTOC; 50 attempts left) is challenging, but more about can you keep 25 people online then anything else once you’ve got the Anub fight down.

What was the pinnacle of WotLK raiding for you?

Tribute to Insanity although it is RNG-based – Probably because it is so fresh in my mind.  The most epic I think was my first C’thun kill.  I mean we killed a god!  That and it took so long to do.  They brought the teleporter in later, but at first it was – someone stands to close to door, boss aggros and chains raid with 300 million damage green bolt.  Run back, get on bug mount, ride for ½ hour back to boss, rebuff, try again.  Raiding was harder then and took way more time, both to learn encounters as well to farm to be ready for them.  We’d do things like kill Ony, turn in the head to get the buff and then rush off to push something new.  It took more time and organization to get 40 people online and moving all over then to get 25 to show for a few hours to blow up GTOC and what is open in ICC.   Kind of hoping that ICC hard modes are actually hard.  That and I still find my self checking to see if I have a sharpening stone on my weapon …

Let’s talk about a specific raid encounter.  How do you carry yourself against Anub’arak in 25 hard-mode?

I’m constantly cycling Salvation on our highest DPS and freedom on bug tank.  We run with two Retadins for this encounter.  You have a limited number of ices you can drop and he submerges for a limited amount of time.  The idea is to stretch that phase out and use as little ice as possible.  We drop one ice at one end where we tank the boss.  We drag all the adds onto that clump of ice.  Right before the submerge phase, our MT drags Anub’arak off to the side.  He then submerges.  We have ice pre-dropped at far end.  Whoever he chases runs to the far end and stands before the ice.  He gets BoPd and when 3 seconds are left he runs onto the ice so that as much time is burnt as possible.  I have to really watch my cool downs and positioning on this fight.  Paladins are each assigned Hands to place.  I really like this fight because you get to press more buttons than your standard FCFS.  It’s a dance, and once you learn it the encounter becomes farm.  Anub was one of the more fun dances to learn because it was more then just movement and dps.

What other fights do you enjoy?

I absolutely loved 40-man Naxxramas, the look, the music, it all felt right.  Naxx v2 was a horrible disappointment.  Everything that once was “epic” was turned into a complete joke.  When you killed, say, Patchwerk in the 40-man version, it felt like quite an accomplishment but when v2 came out it was laughable.  Blackwing Lair is probably the best overall instance they have done just on “feel” and “vibe”.  C’thun was a HUGE accomplishment back in the day.  When you bang your head on something for months and you finally win you know it was worth the journey.  Pretty rare now to get the shakes as a bosses health gets low, or have vent explode with cheers when something dies.  It happens on first kills sometimes still, just was a more intense feeling when you’d worked harder to get the kill is all I guess.  To me that’s kind of always been the drive, work hard at something and when you get it there is a satisfaction in a job well done.  Bosses that fall over and toss out loot don’t give that.

What do you feel was the most detrimental move done to WoW?

That’s easy: Arenas and organized PvP in general, the whole “lets try to make it an E sport” thing.  Although I have always been fiercely competitive (hours upon hours during the Tarren Mill vs Southshore days) this aspect of the game has been very detrimental to the game’s original intent.  The old AV was fun where it would last 36 hours and was an epic battle that was extremely hard to win.  Then more battlegrounds came out and people started crying about burst and the balancing commenced.  The balancing game where they tried to give out sustained DPS but nerf burst was a juggling act that has broken so much of the game as they are constantly fixing classes, changing them and it becomes a whole event just to stay on top of things.

The whole concept of Arenas, resilience and PvP in general is not something I buy into anymore.  I want to be the best in PvE – that’s what drives me, I’ve picked up like 120K life time HK along the way … but PvE has always been WoWs strong point to me.

Are you happy with where Ret is at in PvE

Heh that’s a loaded question.  I’m not happy unless my name is on the top of the DPS meter J.  Sometimes I do get the top and sometimes I don’t.  There are certain fights that lend themselves to high Ret DPS more than others.  If you count the utility we bring then we are okay.  The big issue is that the build up time for solid DPS is too long.  When you have to switch targets constantly your DPS pays a serious price.  Yogg, as an example, is a horrible Retadin fight.  You’re lucky if you can come out of that fight with 3000 DPS since you are constantly switching to adds and building up new SoV stacks or just using SoR.  The mechanics of the class are definitely not designed for a fight like that.  They are never going to be able to balance burst vs. sustained on a class with long cool downs swinging a big slow hammer.

What fight does your DPS completely shine?

Discounting tons of AoE damage possibilities, twins in ToC is awesome for me because Ret seems to scale quite a bit with the orb buffs.  I regularly break 10-11K DPS on that fight and often am on the top of the meter.  Sadly it seems to be falling off as our orb catchers get better and less make their way into the melee.

So do you enjoy Twins?

Actually not really.  It’s pretty much a tank and spank and is thus a bit of a faceroll.  It’s entertaining seeing big numbers but other than that it’s a bit boring.  The only movement is to switch your color and even that is trivial.  You just kind of stand there and make sure you get your rotation perfect and wait for the right orbs to drift in.

What would you do to improve the Retribution Paladin?  What do you feel is most lacking?

I miss the Seal of Command burst.  While it would completely break PvP, it would shift us back towards heavy burst but long times between.  Whether or not it’s balanced, that is what I enjoyed most as Ret back in the day.  Through Hyjal and Black Temple it was so much fun swinging around my Torch of the Damned and seeing ridiculous numbers but with plenty of downtime between.  “Swing slow but wield a big-ass hammer”, you know.

When do you feel Ret was at its raiding peak?

Sunwell.  Ret at the end of BC was a bit overpowered for PvP but it was in a very nice place in PvE.  If you were comparably geared and played well you could show well on the dps meters.   Also, I should note that I didn’t have the benefit of Seal twisting as Alliance just yet but it was still very fun.

Would you have enjoyed Seal Twisting if you could have had it?

Absolutely.  Also, and I may be one of just a few on this one, I miss resealing after Judgements.  There seemed like there was a type of art form there.  You had to pay more attention and be more diligent in your efforts.  I don’t, however, miss buffing 40 people with single target 5 min blessings.  I do think that making Seals 30 minutes was a mistake.  It’s just one more thing to dumb down the class and contributes to making the class pretty much a faceroll at times.

How did you get into raiding?

I started off in Vanilla WoW running world PvP and battlegrounds.  I ran myself up to Marshall and then realized that there was a time commitment to hit Grand Marshall, did the math on it and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do it with my rl job and obligations.  I could maintain second or third place on the server but I wouldn’t be able to pass the top few.  I then applied to the top raiding guild on the server.  They had killed Ony and were two or three bosses into MC.  They wouldn’t let me DPS though – I had to heal.  I bought a bunch of green “of healing” gear from the AH and then loaded up CT_raid emergency monitoring, clicked the targets and spammed Flash of Light like a champ.  I didn’t even respec to Holy.  I stayed as full Ret so I could have Kings which, at the time, was the 31 point Ret talent.

Do you remember what your first fight was when you were called upon to DPS?

It was Garr in MC.  The only reason they asked me to “DPS” was because I would bubble-pull it and then just stay on Garr with the MT keeping him up with Judgement healing alone since Garr didn’t hit hard at all.  The rest of the raid then dealt with all the adds.  Not until 40-naxx was Retribution any good at actual DPS.  Aggro issues were horrible with the with the Seal of Command double aggro problem however.  I’d be 10^th on the meters and pulling off the tank on Noth.  I raided as DPS a ton the later ½ of MC, BWL, AQ etc. but it was more about utility and JoL/JoW then damage done before crusader strike entered the game.

Do you foresee yourself playing WoW all the way up through the end of Cataclysm and beyond and have you tried any other MMOs?

Yes and yes.  I will play WoW until WoW stops being WoW.  The only real advantage to how easy some of the content is, is that what used to be a six to seven day commitment can now be done in two nights or less.  We clear 25 regular and 25 hard ToC on Tuesday nights and then split into 10 mans if desired.  I’ve spent a lot of time playing other games because you’re constantly waiting on raid times because you’re clearing the content in one or two nights.  I tried LotR online before any expansions.  It was okay but it kind of bothered me because of the anti-climactic nature of the story (I’ve read the books and I know how this ends).  WoW’s lore and story is rich and keeps me interested.  I played Warhammer for a bit as a Warrior Priest.  I absolutely loved the concept of a melee healer that the Warrior Priest was.  I also loved the RvR concept.  Unfortunately the game is horribly broken.  When dealing with a game that is designed to center around massive PvP, you can’t have the entire zone lag out when 200 people show up to fight.  The execution was never right on Warhammer.  Hardware just couldn’t keep up with things and the grand scale they were going for.  I’m also currently playing Eve Online which is fun but is no WoW.  It’s a long, grindy investment.

In closing, is there anything else you’d like to add?

One thing: more than any other class, there seem to be bad Ret Paladins and the stigma hurts all of us.  I don’t know why we attract bad players.  It may be due to the ease of the class or the myth of crushing skulls with a big hammer, or people just want to be the Knight in shining armor that kills the dragon.  It’s really frustrating witnessing these folks.  I really want to see Retadins as a whole improve.  I get a lot of questions in game and love helping folks out with rotations, or strats, or gear choice, or what ever, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do to remove the stigma of the Retribution Paladin.  I’m over the top and spend a ton of time with tools like Rawr or banging on test dummies in game eeking out every last point of damage.  That may not be for everyone but I mean, if you’re going to suck please do us all a favor and roll a hunter!

Basic raiding tips:

Get your shit sorted before you raid!

i.e. have your UI, you food, your flasks etc. ready to go.  Have your connection sorted so you don’t DC (well as best as you can on your end anyways).  Have up to date mods. Be on time and ready to go at raid time.  Know at least the concept of the fight and your role in it.  This kind of stuff is on pretty much every raid guild app out there, yet it still amazes me how many people suck at it.

Just basic stuff but the amount of time you can burn because someone forgot something in the bank, needs to go respec, is late getting on, DCs, has to log to turn off a mod, is in the wrong place and needs a summon, blah blah blah …. I have no patience for that kind of stuff.

UI:

So I’ve put a ton of work into my raiding UI.  It’s not pretty but set up to give me the info I need in an easy way to read it with out getting focused in on one section of the screen and thus dying because you were standing in fire.  I play on a 30″ monitor, zoom out far, and try to see as much of the big picture as possible.

The main Mods I use are:

• ArcHUD – but I have almost every option turned off.
• Big Wigs – DBM is used by some in the raid too, both seem to work fine.  Raid warnings are set big and in the center, boss timer bars just off to the right.
• Bartender
• ClassTimer – but I have everything turned off but the seal bar.
• Cooldowns – one of many that just put a count down on the buttons
• FuBar
• Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text – Damage out is on the right, in on the left, mana on the top.  I spread them out so that they don’t block the center of the screen.  They are nice to glance at, but getting hypnotized by watching numbers scroll by is bad.
• Omen – winning on this meter is bad.
• ORA2 – Past guilds we’d set the bottom tank box as the MA and we’d all just grab our targets off that.  With Exodus we don’t so much so I tend to just grab a tanks target if there is no pre set kill order to follow.
• Recount – winning on this meter is good.  Checking it during a fight or posting it all over when you are at the top is bad.
• Pally Power
• sRaidFrames – old school.  I know everyone is on grid now, but I grew up on CT Raid so this works for me.  I sort by class so I can see buffs easier.  Can be a bit tricky when you have more then 25 in the raid to know who is actually in the instance but I’ve just used this set up for so long I’m used to it.

I work in music for a living so I need sound to play.  I play in 5.1 and actually get a bunch of queues as to what is going on around me from the audio.  I run vent on a Mac (also on speakers) then have a headset mic.  Took a bit of tweaking and a good mic to get it so the game would not bleed into vent driving everyone nuts but works fine now that its all sorted.

• A-      Bones and 47 attempts left while only at champs.  This is what happens when you raid the day a patch comes out.
• B-       While pretty much everything is bound to a key, the main stuff I’ve moved up closer to the center.  I’ve found myself focusing on the bottom of the screen watching cool downs in the past and this lets me move my main focus up from the bottom bit of the screen.  Set up like this, the more important the info, the closer to the center it is and I’m much more able to be aware of my surroundings and see “the whole picture” then getting zoned in on a small section of the screen.  This is how you avoid standing in fire.
• C-       Healing and Utility spells on F keys.  With main spells on 1-9 it’s fast and easy to shift your hand up or down to get at both sets.  The idea is to lay the keyboard out so that you have the least amount of hand movement possible, while still being able to push all the keys you need.  I don’t want to be looking at the keyboard trying to find a spell; I want to be focused on the screen so this set up worked best for me.  I know that 2 is judgement of wisdom, F1 right above it is FoL, thus super fast and easy to shift up and toss a heal on your self and back.
• D-      Hud with health, mana, target health and single bar with seal timer.  All you really need to know.
• E-       Old school raid frame set up, but easy to tell if everyone has my assigned blessing.  They are also color-coded so tossing BoP, BoFs, and helping with a cleanse etc. is easy.
• F-       Bear ass.  Insert your own joke here.

So I’m kind of an uber geek.  I recently caved in to the geekness and commissioned Scott Johnson to to this for me.