The bat comes a-swinging again.

You know it, folks. Another overnight "hotfix". This time to Vindication which has been fine all the way through TBC and all the PTRs in WotLK up until 6 months in when BAM! The nerf-bat smacked it around with a vengeance.

Honestly, this is just stupid now. Why are Paladins the only class getting "overnight hotfixes" without even a word prior to it? This stinks of WotLK early days where JotW got nerfed from 33 to 15%.

Everything is starting to feel more and more like it's the badly thought out idea of Kalgan who is notorious for his hate towards Paladins back in the EverQuest days. And by the looks of it, Ghostcrawler jumped on that bandwagon.

A quote from Bornakk:
"Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left. This change was something we could confidently hotfix and would have a minimal to no impact on the PvE side of things."

Protip: Hammer of Wrath does NOT kill a high-resilience target.

A quote from Ghostcrawler:
" The point was that Retribution's representation is at a pretty good place for the highest rated players. Maybe it's even balanced. But as you drop down 100 points, its percentage grows. The deeper you drop, the more it grows. We feel like we owe the lower rated players, who still might be good at PvP and just not world-class, as balanced a game as we can."

So you balance around sub-par playing in hopes that it will level out the playing field? Nice going, idiots. But I suppose it's all good as long as the Rogue/Mage/Priest teams continue to dominate the seasons and 3vs3 brackets. Don't see much "overnight hotfixes" to those.

But, do go on and destroy the paladin class. Bit by bit.

Scrub company catering scrub players. That's what Blizzard has become.

It's no wonder the original WoW dev-team left...

Paladin Schmaladin no more?

The blogger Ferarro who has been writing the blog Paladin Schmaladin is apparently not who she or he appears to be.

To begin with, the blog itself is a fairly decent source on "How-To" for Paladins and whatnot. Lately, however, an unholy shitstorm has brewed up when it turns out that the writer of said blog has been lying through his/her teeth, claiming to be someone she/he isn't.

For starters, Ferarro claimed to be TechDarling. This claim was shot out of the sky when a warlock posted a link on the WoW forums to the site TechDarling and outed Ferarro as a fraud.

Recently, Ferarro closed down her blog, or rather, made it Private due to her having a stalker (stalking is bad, people, mmkay? Consult your doctor before practicing). I call BS on that, though. I think it's more along the fact that she's trying to save face as all the pictures you've come to associate with Ferarro are taken straight from TechDarling.

Reminds me of when a guy on a forum linked a picture to a girl claiming her to be his girlfriend only to be made into a fool when the girl on the picture actually posted and refuted his claims. But I digress...

WoW.com recently interviewed Ferarro, wanting to know more about her life as a blogger, paladin and game tester for Blizzard. After that article was posted, a few things happened.

1. Ferarro switched her blog over to Private Mode. Only accessible to those who got an invitation from her. However, you can still view a Google Cache of her page. Clicky!

2. Her Twitter page has been deleted.

3. Her character is no longer accessible on the Armory. I assume server transfer or name-change?

4. Her posts on Retpaladin.com are deleted and she's no longer writing for them. However, Slayton and the rest of the guys over at RetPaladin didn't delete her stuff. Apparently she's done that herself before dodging into shadows.

Ferarro also claimed that there have been 7 Ferarro's writing on Paladin Schmaladin. Check the cached site. There's a full-on explanation there.

Now, Wow.com did a little digging and unless these 7 Ferarro's live within a few miles of each other, they are the one and the same person. IP-addresses rarely lie.

Also, do note that all the comments on Ferarro's blog are moderated. All the "good" comments remain while the "bad" comments are deleted.

I think most paladins are rather upset with this as a person who claims to have a stalker have been doing a lot of stalking herself, as well as lying through her teeth claiming to be someone she isn't.

So, what now?

I don't know, really. Guess it's a matter of "wait and see what happens." WoW.com have given Ferarro a chance to come clean and explain things as they really are and not post some bullshit about there being multiple Ferarro's.


EDIT: Sarah Townsend (TechDarling) has posted a video response to this whole thing. Hop on over to her Blog to watch it. Also, Ferraro seems to have removed the whole explanation about there being 7 of her writing on Paladin Schmaladin.

"This isn't helpful. If you feel like your feedback isn't contributing anything, we would suggest that you just stop posting rather than posting about how you feel ignored. Smart players realize that we take community feedback into consideration when we make decisions."

Like you did pre-Wrath launch on the beta servers? Like you did on the PTR's where most of the general issues about the classes were completely ignored? Like you did the past few seasons where certain classes tore up the rankings and others were left in the gutter due to inadequate skills for the horrible piece of shit that is Arenas where you told everyone "the classes are fine"? Like you do now with all your knee-jerk nerfs and fixes?

Yes, I'm sure you do listen to the community GC. I'm sure you do...

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/16903630963-only-a-handful-of-classes--comps-are-viable.html

Spritual Attunement removed

In the latest PTR build they've removed Spiritual Attunement and made it a deep prot talent. Way to go fucking ret paladins over. I sincerely hope JotW is getting buffed up to 30% or similar which would enable us to sustain a DPS rotation without going dry in the first 30 seconds of the fight.

Blessing of Wisdom / Mana Spring Totem change

Just when you think you've seen all the stupidity Blizzard could pull out of their respective asses, here comes another one.

Come patch 3.1 Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring Totem is going to be mutually exclusive. Meaning you can either get one or the other as they won't stack anymore.

This is yet another backhanded "fix" that wasn't necessary. Especially not when they said that "Shaman regen is exactly where we want it." 'Exactly where you want it for the moment; wait for us to nerf every other class first. We'll get back to you.'

They made a mistake with Replenishment, making it a bit more powerful than they hoped for and instead of tuning it they proceed to make this retarded fix that no one asked for.

I don't know who the Dev's are raiding with or how their internal testing is being done but one thing is for sure, it's not in the same environment as the rest of us else they wouldn't make these kind of idiotic changes.

A quote from GC: "Additionally, we have been trying to tone down mana regeneration in large groups, and were concerned raids would feel the need to stack paladins or especially shaman to have enough Mana Spring totems."

That has NEVER been the issue for as long as I've raided and I have NEVER heard of any proper raid guild who are stacking shamans for mana spring totems. Way to go making shit up.

"We have also been trying to get more benefits out of the party and into the raid, and Mana Spring previously was still a party only buff. With this change, if there is only one paladin, he or she can bring Blessing of Kings while the shaman offers Mana Spring. If there are two paladins and the second offers Blessing of Wisdom, then the shaman can offer healing or cleansing with their water totem instead."

So basically, GC and his gang of retards wants to pigeon-hole shamans into a heal/cleanse-bot... now where have I seen that before? Hmm... Oh yeah! Paladins in vanilla WoW! It works the other way, too. If, as GC says, you stack shamans in a raid (god knows why you would), the Paladin player becomes a heal/cleanse bot as the Shamans already bring whatever buffs the paladin has - bar Kings - returning us to square 1. In the back of the raids doing absolutely fuck all, which is where we didn't want to be for the past 3 years and now they seem intent on moving us back there again.

Good job, Blizzard Dev Team. Once again you show your complete and utter incompetence. Fixing things that weren't broken to begin with, backhanded fixes because of your precious Arena E-Sport (ENOUGH ALREADY! Quit fucking up PvE with your god damn awful PvP!) and nerfs that make no sense whatsoever.

By the way, anyone else find it ironic that Eyonix is the harbinger of bad news? I'm sure the Warlock community can relate.

Arena and the LOLFAIL it is.

So Season 5 has been around for a while now and the utter failure that is Arena is blazing like a supernova in the heavens. Season 1 was a nice mix of every class and spec and was considered one of the more balanced seasons of Arena.

Then came the druid domination of the next four following seasons.

Now at Season 5 and Wrath of the Lich King, where everyone and his mother has HP and damage output to take down a God, has made the Arenas the butt-end of a joke that was bad before and is just horrible now.

You have Arena maps that are bugged to the point where people are either stuck in one place or simply fall through the floor, dying instantly.

You have certain classes and specs that - once again - dominate the Arenas, making anyone not playing that class and/or spec being left in the gutter. Again.

Déja Vú, anyone?

To begin with, you had only Team Rating. Then came Personal Rating which was supposed to balance the Arenas out a bit. Didn't help a lot... like nothing at all.

Now we have Hidden Rating. Oh this is the best thing yet. In an attempt to stop 2k+ rated teams to disband and re-form a new team to steamroll freshly started 1500-rated teams for easy points, this new rating supposedly makes matchmaking better... or not at all. Take your pick.

Now, this rating, I don't know what they (Dev team) were smoking when they thought of this, is seriously flawed. You are gaining much less for, say, defeating a higher rated team and lose much more should aforementioned team defeat you.

This screenshot says it all: (click to enlarge)


Wait... back up a bit. You lose rating ... even if you win the match?

How retarded do you have to be to not see how badly implemented this is? I guess the people at internal testing, QA and whatnot are too busy smoking something to actually test stuff.. whoah. Déja Vú, anyone?

But, it's okay. According to Ghostcrawler, it'll be better once you get some Resilience.

Tier 7 set. A closer look & comparison

So WotLK is upon us with all its splendor and all that. I've leveled to 80 and with no small amount of mana issues, but that's neither here nor there. I figured we'd take a closer look on the next tier set. Tier 7, Heroes/Valorous Redemption Battlegear.

At first glance it looks fairly decent. One thing that you quickly notice is that there's no intellect on our gear. Blizzard decided to shape paladins to become more like warriors, and to share gear with warriors and death knights.

Right.

So let's take a look at the gear.

There are two types. Heroes Redemption Battlegear - which you can get from Normal Naxx / Heroic badges (Emblems of Heroism) and Valorous Redemption which you get from Heroic Naxx / Sartharion, et al (Emblems of Valor).

Starting off with the Heroes Redemption.

Heroes Redemption Chestpiece
2241 Armor
73 strength
103 Stamina
1x Red Socket
1x Yellow Socket
+6 Haste as Socket bonus
Adds 74 crit rating
Adds 45 haste rating.

The first thought that crosses my mind is: Why is there no hit? And why do we have a Haste rating socket bonus when it would've been far more beneficial with strength or crit?

Take a look at the warrior equivalent, the Heroes Dreadnaught Battlegear.

Heroes Dreadnaught Breastplate
2241 Armor
73 Strength
90 Stamina
1x Red Socket
1x Blue Socket
Socket bonus adds +6 hit rating
Adds 52 hit rating
Adds 81 Crit rating.

Why is it that the warrior piece is ten leagues better than the paladin piece? The small amount of difference in stamina is negligible for the awesome stats you get. 52 hit. 81 crit. Socket bonus that adds 6 extra hit. I want that!

Let's take a look at the Valorous Redemption pieces.

Paladins have:

Valorous Chestplate
2241 Armor
+73 Strength
+103 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Haste Rating
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 84 (1.83% @ L80).
Equip: Improves haste rating by 50 (1.52% @ L80).

Warriors have:

2298 Armor
+73 Strength
+100 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Hit Rating
Equip: Improves hit rating by 66 (2.01% @ L80).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 92 (2% @ L80).


And once more, the warrior piece outshines the paladin piece. Warriors have everything a paladin wants on their set. Haste is moderately decent but we (paladins) benefit more from having a large crit base to act upon. Why is this taken away in favour of haste?

A full comparison between the paladin and warrior tier sets shows that paladins - once again - drew the short end of the stick. Check this out.


Paladins - Heroes Redemption set:
Summary:

Strength: +351
Stamina: +452
Armour: +9105
Crit rating: +222
Haste rating: +232
Hit rating: +68
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x Red, 3x Yellow, 1x Blue

Warriors - Heroes Dreadnaught set:
Summary:

Strength: +345
Stamina: +439
Armor: +9105
Armor penetration rating: +68
Critical strike rating: +284
Expertise rating: +105
Hit rating: +85
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x red, 2x Yellow, 2x Blue


Wow...

Warriors get more crit, more hit, Armor Penetration, Expertise which is absoutely awesome and far more balanced stats overall.

The devs wanted Paladins to be more like warriors and to share the same gear and yet the utter failure that is the Paladin tier 7 set shows that we'll never get the same good stuff warriors have.

Paladins aren't Warriors, I'm quite well aware of that, but why can't we get some decent god damn set bonuses?

"We would want every class to be within 5% of each other in terms of DPS." Everyone but paladins, yes? Give us some proper set bonuses. We couldn't care less about haste. Give us crit, or Expertise as they benefit us far more than haste does. Hell, give us socket bonuses for Strength if need be as it pushes our AP upwards.

The utter failure that is our tier set becomes even more apparent when you look at the Valorous Redemption items from the heroic raid dungeons.

Paladins Summary:

Strength: +397
Stamina: +472
Armor: +9335
Critical strike: +259
Haste rating: +270
Hit rating: +83
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x Red, 3x Yellow, 1x Blue


Warriors Summary:

Strength: +385
Stamina: +495
Armor: +9335
Armor penetration: +86
Critical strike: +326
Expertise rating: +116
Hit rating: +108
Sockets: 1x Meta, 3x red, 2x Yellow, 2x Blue

All the good stuff ended up on the warrior tier, again, and we get stuck with the half-assed tier set once more.

Blizzard fails once again in creating something even remotely decent for us. Hell, even some of the Heroic blue items are better than this crap.

"We want Paladins to be more like warriors." Then give us a proper set with proper bonuses, then.