Protection Paladins in Cataclysm.

Ok, so I did the other 2 paladin specs so I'll give a stab at protection Paladins aswell.

Firstly I have relatively little experience with Wrath Tanking as a Paladin, I've done heroic tanking on my paladin which basically involved facerolling on 5 sets of keys and face rolling, yes paladin tanking is very hard ... :/.

However I haven't really raid tanked at all in wrath on a paladin, I've tanked some 10 man stuff on my warrior (Naxx and Ulduar) but nothing that major.

Lets get a few provisos I have about tanking out of the way. There are 2 ways I see a difficulty of class scaling, there are "Difficulty for the new player" and "Difficulty for the knowledgable player".

I generally consider the healer to be the hardest class to play, under the lk scope, especially Holy Paladins and to a lesser extent Resto Shamans because you don't blanket so much and you actually make individual choices on who to heal, you don't just shove out a rotation like the druid/priest or dpsers/tanks.

Then if you are a new player i consider tank to be the next hardest, since you are asked to lead a dungeon, often the tank dictates the pace of the run and is looked to for knowing tactics and stuff, especially at 5 man content this is the next difficult job.

At a raiding level however I consider the tank to be the easiest Job, and there are a few reasons why:

1) Gearing is pretty easy, you just go for the stuff with more stamina/armor on it in LK, thats pretty much all you gear for, you probably want to hit the hit cap and expertise soft cap for threat, but otherwise you are pretty much purely itemising for stamina

2) *Most* hard parts about a fight are avoided or mitigated by being a tank, ghosts on deathwhisper, Slimes on Putricide, Pact on Lanathel etc. Even if you fuck up on basic mechanics usually you have enough hp to survive.

3) Nobody Looks at a tanks rotation or threat, noone cares if it isn't 100% optimal, as long as people don't have issues with it, it's no problem: that means there is much more slack in a rotation of a tank than a dps.

Now Paladin specific in Lich King we have the fact that Ardent Defender exists, the only active dr cooldowns you have in LK is when to use Divine Protection and Divine Guardian, Discounting Glyph of Salvation, so mostly you can fully concentrate on moving, unlike say a dpser who has to pop his cooldowns on time you just have to do it at a specific point in the fight, say when you just taunt or are taking soul reaper.

These points all lead to me believing that tanking is the easiest part of a raid team in lich king, and that your tank can be significantly worse than the rest of your raid and you probably wouldn't notice or care as long as they geared right.

Like Blizzard has quoted many times Tanks are really only judged on success rate, you are judged on whether you were able to get through the fight or not.

Now, moving on to the actual topic of this post we have a few things that I like about the Protection Spec Iterations.

1) A real choice between threat and Damage Reduction. This change alone shows me that Tanking is moving to a more difficult level, I know Blizzard has said they don't want dps to have to worry about a threat ceiling and for Tanks to not worry about people pulling aggro, However to be Honest what I would hope that means is that a perfect tank with perfect dps would mean that the Dps were at a constant 85% of the threat level of a tank.

Since Perfection does not exist, this should mean that a Tank that can perform within 80% of perfection would be able to hold back 99% of dpsers without them really having to worry about taking aggro.

What I like about this system of choosing between threat and damage reduction is that it rewards those good tanks more, the best tanks that will pull out optimum threat and move bosses well and taunt at the right times meaning they can dump their Holy Power on Holy Shield instead of Inquisition. A system that rewards good players is something I definitly like.

2) The diversity away from warriors: the removal of shield of the righteous is great, I personally hated how samey warriors and Paladins felt. The Diversion of cooldowns between the 2 aswell is nice.

3) Cooldowns: Just gonna talk about cooldowns, I personally LOVE how ardent defender is changing, god that cooldown was such a total mistake in Lich King in my opinion, taking choice away from tanks just made them so easy and not taxing, it was horrible to see raid groups having to switch to Paladin tanks on Lich King for that insurance factor of Ardent Defender.

I remember chatting with some guy from Irae Aod who were one of the first groups to do 10 man Lich king (at the time of the conversation nobody had done 25 man heroic lich king) and they were like "yeh we wiped so much with a warrior and dk tank, but then we switched out our fully decked 264/277 tank with a t9 245/251 geared Paladin tank and 3 shot the boss." Comments like that really hurt me inside, the fact that one cooldown can give so much leeway on mechanics and make a difference between suceeding and defeat on an encounter, simply because the choice is removed from the player is really sad.

I like the new version of Ardent Defender aswell, a mini dr cooldown with basically 15% extra health, obviously it isn't clear whether it works on multiple blows that would have killed you or not but I don't think it would be that overpowered even if it did, considering it is only 15% healed. Regardless this is a really new and innovative cooldown and I like it alot.

I also like how Divine Guardian is being made into a strictly raid cooldown and not a personal cooldown, it seemed like a waste to have to save D.G. for a single person cooldown. It also means that having a Prot Paladin on your team gives your other tank 2 extra cooldowns (Hand/Divine Guardian) which is nice synergy as a tank partner, although perhaps a bit too powerful.

4) I like how Consecration is changing to make Paladin tanks more like well TANKS, you stand your ground, you want to tank in that spot and be like juggernauts.. that's awesome and compelling, obviously the rotation can support moving and using consecrate more but its nice to sort of only use it once every 45 seconds ideally and not have all this incidental damage.

I don't like how hammer is still the main nuke of Protection per-say: I am hopeful this will get iterated out or made a choice, considering also that they want to make Holy Wrath part of the rotation aswell means that Paladins are going to be just as good at aoe tanking in cata as they are today, since all their abilities to tank have incidental aoe. I would prefer a system where you have to choose between hammer doing single or aoe. Perhaps you could say make it so that doing C.S-> Hammer made it do single Target and Holy Wrath-> Hammer made it do aoe damage, it would be quite innovative to make certain spells affect the functionality of 1 spell but I feel like it would diversify the protection paladin class more: and make Paladins less good at aoe tanking (provided of course numbers were tweaked).

Obviously these are just ideas I'm throwing out but ye i just like the idea of using different spells to affect the functionality of this 1 spell. Exorcism could make it a ranged casted attack (like the trial of the champion boss) all this stuff, would just make it awesome and very unique.

I haven't really got much else to say other than that, it's hard to judge because I don't really play protection paladin's especially in the beta and am mostly just going off the talent trees and spells you use.

Anyway hope this wasn't too noobish of a random post

Holy Paladins in Cataclysm

Ok, so onto my beloved Holy spec: Lets get a few facts down, the only real main I would play is my Holy Paladin: I love this spec, it is the only healing spec I have fell in love with and for the next few paragraphs I am going to detail why I love it, especially in Wrath. The second fact is I do not love it because it is "overpowered", but that will be explained in the next few paragraphs.

Firstly, Wrath healing is not really mana limited, I do run out of mana as a holy paladin: But that is usually me being over-zealous on using Holy Light or not using plea enough: this sort of thing. Basically though this means my healing is basically a combination of 5 spells: Keep Beacon and Sacred Shield and Judgements of the Pure up, Holy Shock when moving and Holy light 80% of the time. Whilst Using Plea with cooldowns to compensate that loss.

Now whilst that is pretty simplistic meaning you are only really using 1 spell the majority of the time, the fact that it is a direct heal means that it is totally different from say Rejuvenation and Shields and Renew. Whilst those 3 healers (Druid/Disc/Holy) are the majority of their time blanketting a raid, relatively they are just using 1 spell and keeping up hots/shields on around 10 people whilst using other spells to either heal directly (Prayer of Healing/Penance/Swiftmend) or more blanketing (Coh/Wild Growth) meaning their healing has relatively little choice, you are sort of pidgeonholed into healing specific people at specific times with only really 3 or so heals over 15 seconds.

In contrast Paladins have free reign on who they heal, because their "job" is usually to heal the beacon target only on 1 tank fights, this means that on fights with lots of aoe damage you are basically choosing who to heal, whilst the 3 aforemented heals blanket people the holy paladin and, to a lesser extent, the resto shaman pick them back up to full hp. Basically although you don't have much choice in your spellbook you have full choice on who to heal, perhaps you might be assigned to a specific group or pact of the darkfallen target or whatever but regardless you are choosing who to heal and aren't cycling montonously.

This is precisely what I love about Holy Paladins, you choose who to heal, it doesn't matter to me that I am only using 1 spell I get to have alot of choice and freedom in my healing, even if it is in a niche role.

Now I won't make any bones about it, I have my severe doubts over Cataclysm Healing Style, not the intention of it: I think that is good, but I feel it is going to take away what I love about Paladin healing, one of the main reasons why I am quitting hardcore raiding is because I don't think paladin healing will be attractive enough in Cataclysm, along with real life issues and all this jazz.

Now I am going to make alot of points about "healing style" and will attempt to not view paladin healing in cataclysm under a "lk eye" like many people do when reviewing the current status on the beta. What I mean by this is I will make a few key assumptions and ignore numbers on the beta.

1) You can Spam Holy light constantly for a good 5-6 minutes using standard mana regen techniques and have a good 20-30% mana left. I make this assumption based on blue posts that have been made about cataclysm healing.

2) Any necessary "healing buffs" are kept active/used on cd satisfying condition 1, ie if i keep up my healing buffs and spam holy light I have 20-30% mana left after 5-6 minutes.

3) Flash of Light and Divine Light cost the same mana, and are worse hpm than Holy light.Flash of Light Heals for the same as Holy Light. Holy Light and Divine Light take the same amount of time to cast.

4) Light of the Dawn is a choice and Healing Hands is Spammable.

5) Holy Shock is something you want to use on cooldown.

6) At 3 Holy Power you want to use Word of Glory without question.

7) 80% of your Holy Power Generation will be through Holy Shock and not through Tower of Radiance.

8) I assume that tank healing is purely tank healing

9) I assume Raid healing will be group based

Now these assumptions are based on the current talent design of the Trees and what I would envisage healing choices to pan out between the 3 direct heals.

Under these assumptions I assume that whatever the Paladin is healing they will be doing a few things: Keeping Beacon up, Keeping Sacred Shield up, Keeping Jotp up, Using Holy Shock on Cooldown, Using Healing Hands on Cooldown, using Word of Glory at 3 holy power and using Holy Light with Infusion of Light.

Now if they are Tank healing they will be healing in melee for healing hands splash on the tanks and basically using Holy light Primarily, using Flash of Light if say they need to top the tank fast before some high damage point and using Divine light after a high damage point with small threat of them dying.

If they are Raid Healing they will stand with their specific group, using holy light primarily and light of the dawn when all members of the group are taking damage, mostly using flash of light in emergencies rather than divine light.

Now what I have a problem with is the first paragraph of the 3.. the fact is that you have a good 7 things you have to do, you don't really have a choice not to, I might have some of these assumptions wrong like using holy shock in cooldown mostly is what I am a little unsure about, but that would still leave 6 things you are forced to do, obviously 2 things would be far less stringent without the holy shock assumption.

Now in the same way that druid/priest healing is very montonous with lack of choice I feel like because you are having to do 6-7 things without thought you are losing alot of elements of choice. I mean alot of this ties into cataclysm healing style where you will have a max of 5 people you are healing, because overhealing matters I presume that raid healing will go back to 1 healer per group and 2 healers on tanks.

I know Blizzard's position on making healing fun is to make you choose between spells and manage your own mana and really have an obvious idea of who you are healing. Now whilst I actually don't have a problem with that at all, I feel that is a very good mantra and actually makes healing far less stressful, which it currently is today. However I don't feel its been implemented in the best possible way for a paladin. Paladin healing has lost its simplicity and has become a very complex healer.

Firstly, lets take the positives: 1) Far more viable raid healing, personally I feel they should give an aoe heal talented for a holy power dump so you have a nice choice between word of glory and this aoe heal as a power dump, that way its far less monotonous.

2) I LOVE how the position of the paladin matters, it has given paladin alot more mobility they don't currently have, its a very unique way of aoe healing and even single target healing this part of the paladin healing is my favorite.

Personally I feel that Paladin healing is going to be in a good place, I actually like the style, I would definitly find a way to generate Holy power besides Holy Shock, like I said if you don't have to use holy shock on cooldown then you have 4 main things you have no choice over and 2 you have to do based on a proc (again giving an aoe heal as a power dump along with Word of Glory would be 1 less of that) then I think the healing style is actually going to be great.

Things I don't like about Paladin Healing and the talent tree at the moment.

1) The Bloat of the tree, I know there was a post saying they like "bloat" but when I need to take 32 points in my specialised tree with 0 choice for utility and all for performance, and then the only point I can "choose" is to get pursuit of Justice for more manoeuverability.

What I envisage for a "good tree" is that you take a good 25 points all for performance with not much room for manoeuvere in your specialised tree and then 5 points in another tree you have to take again for performance. You are then with at least 6 points to choose between utility points in your tree and then 5 points to choose in the other 2 trees or further in your own tree.

At the moment you need don't really have any utility choices in the Paladin tree. (Note: I do not consider Enlightened Judgements as utility, you can argue that it is, but considering that having the hit cap and being able to Judge anywhere is vital to keep up judgements of the pure which is essential to performance)

2) The bottom of the tree: It's hideous, Improved Concentration Aura needs to be cut, improving auras is just generally a bad decision, I don't want to have to say Yes I need a holy paladin for improved conc aura, and a prot for devotion aura. I presume this talent will be cut but yes, it needs to go, or be tier 1.

Blessed Life, I like this talent and again with say some of the NEEDED BLOAT cut it will be an interesting choice, it has no real place in the current tree of course.

Denounce should really be higher in the tree (tier 3) just so that a person levelling as holy can have access to it earlier, again it suffers from the rest of the tree, and would be a nice choice, would also be nice if it could proc seals but i doubt that would happen :D.

Those are my big 2 quarrels besides what I already stated above. I believe Paladin Healing can be great, and is poised to be in a great spot, it just needs a few iterations and it would be awesome :D.

Although to be clear I won't be healing "hardcore" in Cataclysm, I still want to see paladin healing get into a great place as it is something I hold dear to my heart :).

Retribution Paladins In Cataclysm

Ok, so this is gonna be another bit of a long drawn out post on Retribution with another on Holy later, I won't comment much on prot because a) I have never really seriously played prot and b) It isn't really that finalised on the beta at the moment.

First I am going to talk about Ret, why? because I was doing Deepholm as Ret so probably am the most experienced with the new mechanics.

At first I was like, yes this feels like a good change, I mean what you essentially have is a static DO THIS ON CD ABILITY (C.S) which you will always do on cooldown and then everything else having a priority in the free globals with this being Inquisition -> Templar's Verdict -> Judgement -> Exorcism -> Holy Wrath for single target and Inquisition -> Divine Storm -> Holy Wrath -> Judgement -> Exorcism for Multi-Target.

To comment on a few things, that sort of lead me turning on this system: a) I have played feral druid (mostly this) and rogue (a little) extensively enough to know their dps systems inside out b) I really hate the standard UI, maybe I will do a post on what I hate about it. c) I always thought Paladins were about some sort of burst.

Now, I'll deal with each of these points separately. Firstly we have the fact that Inquisition is basically a Savage Roar/Slice and Dice Clone, it is basically the only ability you would use with less than full holy power and if you miss keeping it up you lose a fuck tonne of damage. Now, whilst I don't mind these mechanics I think it's laboured: Do we really need 3/6 melee dps classes feeling very samey when it comes to the dps rotation. Holy Power also seems to basically be combo points in disguise, theres nothing interesting and new about Holy Power C.S is just a new sinister strike or shred and Templar's Verdict is the new Eviscerate/Ferocious Bite and Inquisition is the new Savage Roar/Slice and Dice. It is kinda like you split the rogue aspects and thought " We will give energy to hunters but make it more like runic power, and we will give combo points to paladins but limit them to 3". I just think its a laboured mechanic, I would much rather see a clone of say the DK rune system that a clone of combo points which is already used on 2/6 of the melee classes.

Secondly, the standard UI is attrocious for Holy Power, maybe you can argue that "eventually it will be on the main frame" but that makes me cringe really, the problem with both of these is you need to know how much Holy power you have at any one time. However, this is actually a minor problem, at the moment on the beta this is very annoying, but if Crusader Strike got reduced to 3 seconds this problem would be far less intrusive.

Finally, the point about Wrath and why Holy Paladins were "overpowered" in pvp early on in the expansion was because they could blow all their cooldowns and knock somebody over without fear of dying. Paladin burst was pegged back with emphasis placed on talents like righteous vengeance and Spells like Seal of Vengeance becoming prominent. Whilst the core of the Paladin fcfs rotation remained intact. Come Cataclysm I just feel that Paladins have lost pretty much all burst. Note: I am not a PvP and never will be a PvP fanatic, I am talking mostly about PvE burst.

From my Experience as a dpser you have 2 types of Dps: Controlled Burst Dps and Sustained Dps, the definition of the difference between the 2 is obvious and best described by say choosing between an "on use trinket" and an "on proc trinket". In wrath useful "On use" trinkets went away (something I am very annoyed about personally) so basically you only had proc trinkets as a dpser, so there was no choice between increasing your damage in a 30 second period or over a 5 minute period, it was always the latter.

As a Ret Paladin in Wrath you have ways to choose between Controlled Burst and Sustained Dps, mostly these revolve around your use of Avenging Wrath, but also in a minor way seal usage. You can use your Avenging wrath on cooldown to increase your sustained dps or you can use it at specific points in a fight to increase the dps where it matters, with seals it is mostly switching to command on Valkyr's so that they die, even if that means you might lose your vengeance stack on the boss, since we want to increase our dps in that timeframe rather than the long run.

Personally I was always a fan of increasing dps in the short term, I hate people who blindly look at spreadsheets and go HUH A>B must be an upgrade when actually, especially early on in wrath, keeping a trinket like wrathstone (NEVER DROPPED (Seriously :<)) which was a reasonable on use trinket was something I would always do so that if the encounter required burst, say Valkyr Shield Popping on Twin Valkyr's that I would have guarenteed dps increases in that small time period. For the Same reason I don't tend to favour crit beyond 50% since crit works like a normal distribution curve, it becomes less and less bang for buck in a short term window past the critical 50% number, obviously in Cataclysm Crit will be much more valuable with the lower combat ratings, but I digress...

The point is that the new system is very "RAMP-UP-ESQUE", similar to how feral druids/Rogues work you have to spend a good 10-15 seconds of ramping up, on the beta this is obviously amplified by the fact C.S has a 4 second cooldown, but the problem is still there with a 3 second cooldown, it takes a long time to ramp up damage, I feel like Paladins don't need 2 mechanics to ramp up: Seal of Truth and Inquisition (Holy Power), it means your damage is very poor at the beginning of a fight for a good 10-15 seconds, this can be horribly taxing on a player who is looking out for his survival as is being advocated alot recently and I feel the Paladin should only be having to worry about 1 ramp up ability.

Ok, so bringing all this together.. Basically on its current state on Beta, the dps rotation is hideous. C.S going down to 3 seconds will do wonders for this though, it's already been posted that this change is in a build and let me be blunt: It needs to be 3 seconds if you intend to stick with Holy Power being a Combo Points system, if it is 3 seconds it makes the rotation feel totally different from a rogue and a feral druid, if it is 4 seconds it feels like a bad clone.

Let me Elaborate on that a little.. At 3 seconds you will never run out of something to do: It is always C.S move C.S move C.S move... etc with the move based on a priority system of 5 abilities (lets ignore the fact that this keeps us gcd locked because I feel like a gcd locked class is better than a non gcd locked class that only has specific windows where they can use something, also move could be used for dispelling and every 3 seconds is easily often enough to dispel or use freedom/protection... this sort of thing).

This is cool because you don't have downtime and it is both monotonous and non-monotonous in terms of C.S and the move part of the rotation respectively.

At 4 seconds you have C.S move move C.S move move C.S move move, this means that the cooldown of C.S actually becomes 4.5 seconds, you also run out of moves real fast so you end up doing nothing for the vast majority of the time, this is dull and boring and although gives you freedom to move around also means you are punished severely when having to move and you need to use an ability. Also it means you are going to be forced into 2 stacking inquisition I feel instead of 3 stacking because of timings.

At a 3 second interval your rotation looks like this:

C.S -> Inquisition -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Exorcism -> C.S -> Inquisition -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Holy Wrath -> C.S -> Templar's Verdict -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Exorcism -> C.S -> Templar's Verdict -> C.S -> Judgement -> C.S -> Holy Wrath -> C.S -> Inquisition... etc

I am not sure of the current Holy Wrath cooldown on Beta, but obviously with a 3 second C.S it needs to be around the same cooldown of Exorcism: I.E 15 seconds, so you just alternate between the 2 in the rotation, meaning that an aoe rotation swaps exorcism/holy wrath and swaps Templar's Verdict with Divine Storm.

Now obviously this does not take into account the extra holy power procs from the talent Divine purpose, which is basically a clone of a rogue talent I forget the name of, regardless the fact that it is so lovely without them only means that with them it is more lovely since you get to hit T.V more often which is always fun. With a 4 second c.d C.S you just had so much downtime it was really boring.

I am obviously not even talking about Zealotry or Avenging Wrath at the moment, Zealotry is actually a really lovely spell, however it seems pointless: Why? because you would always use it with avenging wrath, there is no time where you would use Zealotry without Avenging Wrath, so you might aswell just bake them into the same ability in my mind. The only time I can think of where you would separate them is if you have events that are say a minute apart in a boss fight and you need high dps for both, so it's better to use a cooldown on each rather than both on one and then fail at the other. Like say Lich King Valkyr's, spread cooldowns over waves rather than blow them all on one and then struggle on the next few.

So ye I feel like if C.S goes to 3 seconds and Zealotry is baked into Avenging Wrath, i.e the talent adds the functionality to Avenging Wrath, then I feel like Ret Paladins are going to be in a great place.

If we talk about my experience on beta with ret I would say that there are a few other concerns 1) Choice between Seal of Truth and Righteous is very Urgh, I couldn't really choose between them when levelling, I would think Righteous should be my seal of choice but it just feels weak at the moment. 2) I don't like that Divine Storm is usable without Holy power, it means if you accidentally press it twice you ruin your rotation, I feel that Consecration is a "Constant aoe" that you don't need a spammable Divine Storm, Divine Storm should obviously be ideally used at 3 stacks of holy power and not before.

3) I also didn't know whether to use Inquisition on mobs or just use T.V, although i have the same problems when levelling ferals/rogues so I feel thats less of an issue.

As a minor point: I don't like how the ICC gear doesn't have the extra stamina baked into it, I know you obviously want people to take the new gear in the new zones, but I feel that if I have 264/277 gear I should only be taking the blue quest rewards in the first 2-3 zones and whilst that is true for dps, I am losing around 10k-20k hp I feel of where I should be because I am not taking the quest rewards, which means some of the damage of mobs is overly high.

I'll do another post on Holy Paladins O:.

Deepholm Feedback

Ok, so I decided to do deepholm instead of like Northern Barrens cos I wanted to see how they changed the paladin class, I won't go into details of that in this post and yes this is just going to be a massive wall of text.

Ok, lets be blunt: My feedback of this zone is almost entirely negative, Why is this? Well first of all I would like to state killing mobs with 60-70k hp is not exactly that fun when your character can only really put out 4 or 5k dps when it should be dishing out at least double that, but regardless of that. I found the whole zone really un-immersive, Vashj'ir and Hyjal you really felt part of the story you were risking your life to actually help the kingdoms you did cool stuff, here you are just seemingly an errand boy running around and doing tasks, there is no immersion factor in my mind.

The zone itself is very made and the concept of the quests themselves are also good, but the quests are just hideously un-immersive, before you can ever get into an area you are forced to move on to an area completely different. I can see how that is attractive for the speed leveller, but personally I want to feel immersed in my quests and the story without reading all the quest text and therefore taking 20x the time to level up. This zone horrendously fails at that. It seems to be a zone completely aimed at speed levelling and 0 quest immersion factor, I'm abbreviating that to qif from now on.

What I mean by qif is that, without reading the quest text, I feel embeded in a story and get a good idea of most of the lore and story. Example of good qif's include the battlemaiden storyline in vash'jir bad forms are stuff like generic kill quests where no information is given besides in the quest text. You are told to kill this like priestess at the end who is seemingly a total badass yet you only just meet her. I love quest chains that say end in u killing a bad guy to introduce that person fairly early on and for it to be known they are your enemy.

This zone is full of horrible kill boss type bosses, they might be slightly challenging or something like that and yes that is actually quite cool, but when they are given no backstory through quests they seem horribly random, I mean I want "boss fight type quests" to be against guys I either know through lore or have been introduced through a big chain of quests and climax them, not after like 2 quests in a chain or just a random quest parked in the middle of nowhere. They are really bad qifs these type of quests really spoilt the zone for me, it felt fragmented and not really flowing at all, the only place i felt flowing was the earthern place, but it also seemed so random, there was no back story u were just flung in to fighting with the earthen just so u could greedily take their fragment.

This was the only part of the zone that was actually good quest flow. Wherever you have to fly manually with your flying mount just breaks quest flow so much, when you have to fly halfway across the map and end up only having to do like 2 quests in that area, it is just so demoralising I want quest hubs to be meaningful, and to immerse me in the story of that area and then climax.

Like I have said I like the story of this zone, there are 3 fragments and you have to collect them. 1 is owned by the therazane clan, the other by the earthen and the last was being delivered by the horde gunship. With the Twilight Cult as the common enemy of all 3. That is a perfectly cool and awesome story line but the implementation was just so un-immersive, I was fighting the last battle having no real idea who this girl is im trying to beat up, I mean thats wrong you are fighting a mega kick ass battle and you don't really know who you are fighting, urgh so unimmersive.

I have looked on the forums and have seen mostly positive feedback, almost in its entirety for this zone. Idk if I was doing a different zone or something but this zone was leagues worse than Hyjal/Vash'jir in terms of immersion and fun. I grant you this zone was perhaps more efficient for questing (although the fact you don't even get a full level from doing the quests in the zone without dailies is horrific) since it took me a full hour, hour and a half less to clear this zone than the other 2, but yeh. The quests need some serious revamp in my opinion, extra quests need to be added in most of the hubs besides perhaps the earthen questline.

There need to be far better tranisitions between zones (this is something that hyjal needs to imo) like how in vashjir you would transition between quest hubs slowly because it was a pretty linear zone, and that was very good. However you don't need all your quest hubs right next to each other to be awesome, you just need awesome travelling things, stuff like the lost isles area uses (cannons/tigers etc) they make moving from hub to hub more seemless and far more immersive than having to mount your flying mount and fly for a good 5 minutes alt tabbed, yeh thats not fun in anyway. Like how you are fighting one of those guys begins with a Z in deepholm where you fly around on a dragon chasing him, thats a cool way to transition between hubs.

Look, I'm no expert in testing and giving feedback to be quite honest, but I feel like this zone needs a hell of a lot of work on quest immersion, Vash'jir was my favorite zone of the 3 so far with hyjal not that far behind actually, but deepholm is utterly attrocious in my books and if this sort of quest immersion made it to live I would certainly be skipping this zone every time unless the thalazane faction was important for something.

I also hate how I start this zone at 82 with full rested and end up at 85% or so and only having dailies to get that level, I'm sorry but I really despise dailies and feel this zone needs hefty tuning to make it a viable zone.

As a side note to this rather negative wall of text, I do like what is being done with the Paladin class, although I have my reservations over Inquisition it basically just seems like a new version of savage roar/slice and dice, Personally I don't want another melee class that has to hold up this buff based on "COMBO POINTS TIMINGS". I'll save that for another post though.

I don't know if Blizzard will read this post, but I hope so.

Sen'jin Village

Ok, so the first of 4 parts of the rest of Durotar, Sen'jin Village.

This is obviously the Troll Village which was a major quest hub in Vanilla WoW, you were sent out to deal with Zalazane on the echo Isles and the Centaur in the south, and various wildlife around the area to protect the trolls only village in the area.

Now of course the Troll's have relocated their major home to the Echo Isles and now the Village is more of a Remnant. There is an Orc overseer type presence here, to do with the fact Vol'jin and the darkspear tribe were banished from Orgrimmar and there is bad blood between the trolls and orcs at the moment.

Generally, the area here is pretty similar, you get a breadcrumb from Vol'jin shown in my previous post on the Echo Isles to come here and speak to the lead troll here. I presume there is a similar breadcrumb from the Valley of Trials.

Basically when you arrive you first of all see that a flight path is added to Sen'jin, I'm a little disappointed this isn't pointed out by a quest of some sort but hey, having a flight path here is just useful for the new player.

First you are given a voodoo type quest, basically a generic kill quest to kill crabs. Kinda dull, but necessary really. After this sort of generic quest you get sent out to collect venom from some scorpids.

Quite a nice quest really, big emote when you have to use your totem, its kinda weird how they are hit by the sundering cleave of the scorpids, they take 90% less damage as if they are a pet rather than a totem, maybe this is intended or not. Nice variation of a kill quest though.

Whilst out here you are told to kill some crates and lugs. This quest is very annoying on the beta for a few things. 1) Because there are too many scrubs rolling low level trolls because of videos from totalbiscuit and such with no intention of leaving feedback really, and 2) because this quest has some annoying features.

The issue of 1) is obvious, Blizzard wants to invite alot of people to the beta, probably as much as 75% of which have 0 intention of helping Blizzard develop the game and just want to experience the content, or perhaps wont even use the beta key. There are obvious limitations with private alphas, and there are great people who will provide good feedback in the mass public, but it saddens me there are so many scrubs on the beta now that won't provide feedback at all.

The second, obviously specific to the quest and feedback, is very annoying. Firstly there are only 3 crate/ lugs spawning at once, meaning that 2 people really camp this area out. The ratio for the quest is totally off for this matter considering it is 2 lugs per 1 crate, and on 1 crate it is just 1 lug per crate, the ratio should be 1:2 at worst, so something like 3 crates to 5 lugs or 6 lugs. However the quest is 3 crates per 10 lugs, meaning you have to kill far too many pairs of lugs for the spawns available, and even wasting kills of the crates.

Secondly, if you kill the crates first the lugs despawn, this is obviously irritating if you kill the crates first either accidentally or because hey its a quest objective and you have to waste even more time. It's also irritating that these spawns patrol into the valley where the next quest is located, meaning people on that quest kill these guys aswell. 1 other person made this area too camped, this quest definitly needs to be improved.

I do like the crates/lug animations though, with the appropriate amount of kills and that bug fixed, this will definitly be a good quest.

When handing in both these quests I dinged level 6, again seems kinda early and would perhaps like to ding exactly when I leave this area to make sense, but thats a little thing. Nice that I don't learn an ability at level 6 though so I don't have to trudge to find a class trainer to learn stuff.

The quest with the Juju's seems to end rather abruptly, talking with the quest giver turns you into a chicken as a hex, which is a kinda cool touch, would have been nice if you got turned into it on hand in without further interaction.

Moving onto the last 2 quests of the area...

These Basically just mirror the Centaur quests that used to be here, go into the valley kill cent.. i mean northwatch humans and burn attack plans. Basically it exactly mirrors the quest that used to be here with the centaurs replaced by humans who have invaded. Tbh these are better enemies to fight in terms of law and ramping up the horde/alliance conflict which is a prime theme of the cataclysm. I would perhaps prefer something a little different than the quests that were here, but they server their purpose.

Coming back to the Camp you then get told to go to Razor hill to get help from the guy there.

This quest is *really* nice, here's a video showing the ride to razor hill, the comments by the orc you are riding with are amusing :DD.

(Video will be posted after upload :))))

The guy you are riding with has some weird pathing issues tbh, idk if its intended that he is so irratic and riding in you most of the time, but regardless the quest is nice to show u the area of durotar whilst taking you to the next quest hub.

SC2 Trailer

Ok, so whilst I was on Holiday a few things happened on the sc2 scene: 1) The Beta ended :(, ironically on my birthday: not that I could actually be there at its conclusion. and 2) Blizzard released this awesome new trailer for the game, Ghosts of the Pasts.

Basically, I am as excited as hell for this game, here is a link to the trailer if you didn't see it yets

I mean god this trailer is awesome, and the fact is it is all in-game footage: You will get to experience all of this in the campaign cut-scenes, obviously some of these will be optional quests, however I presume mostly these are quests that you have to complete to get these cut-scenes.

I am so excited to get SC2, my collector's edition is on order and got posted on Friday, hopefully it will come on Monday so I can play immedietly after midnight and spend hours and hours engrossed in the single player campaign.

Talking a little about the content of the trailer, it features all the main characters other than Duran, but that is not surprising (didn't notice it missing anyone huge). Nothing Major revealed plot wise that wasn't already revealed (other than the last bit about Raynor going back to Char to finish the zerg but ye).

Firstly it shows Kerrigan in New Gettysburg where she was captured by the Zerg. It then goes onto show some awesome cut scenes from some of the various scenes in the campaign. I especially love the shot of Kerrigan petting the Hydralisk: So sexy O:.

Personally, I am so excited for this game, some of my friends have concerns about the game like lack of lan/offline play. Afaik the game only requires online activation once and not to be online when actually playing the game, if you don't care about achievements and all that shit. Personally I believe there won't be anything wrong with the campaign at all, my only concern would be that maybe the story was weak or something but Blizzard games usually have some of the best story around so I hardly think thats a concern, from the blizzcon videos of the mechanics I feel like they are pretty damm solid.

This will probably take up my time for a good week or 2 before getting back into Beta testing Cataclysm. Hopefully I will have finished Stonetalon by then, doing Northern Barrens today then Ashenvale then Stonetalon. Hoping to finish on Stonetalon for the simple reason that its a nice concluding end to alot of subplots in the previous 2 zones, and is a good finishing point imo before Sc2 comes out.

Anyway, onto the Barrens Write-up :D.

Back From Holidays

Ok, So Just come back from Holiday in Cyprus in the early hours of Friday Morning, Hot holiday... omfg just so hottt. Was kinda fun, but ye I was just relaxing mostly getting away from the hustle and bustle of my life online. Was kinda cool, gonna upload a gallery or w/e it's called to facebook, don't really want to litter this blog with my Holiday, just wanted to post what is going to happen over the next few days.

Firstly, didn't get to do durotar before I left because, lol, the beta servers were wholly unstable the majority of the day and didn't get enough time to analyse it. I did however do it yesterday and am going to write up the zone sometime later today, along with maybe the start of the Barrens. I am not really sure how to split up the zones, because really they are quite long and tbh I don't think one massive wall of text on the whole zone is going to cut it. I'll Probably split it into 4 parts. Sen'jin Village -> Razor Hill -> Patrol Quest -> Orgrimmar Rampart (forget the name off the top of my head). So the posts aren't that long and can do better quest Analysis.

I also hit level 10 and so obviously am gonna do a little comment on the druid specialisations and talent trees at the moment, of course they are very wip but I'll try and discuss ideas rather than numbers and where I think each tree is heading. Feedback etc, Druid's aren't a class i have amazing experience with, but I know the basics, I have played a feral tank/dps and Resto Druid at 80 so I know those specs well enough to do analysis, I only played Balance at 70 though so my analysis of that will be a little wishy-washy.

As I will level I will try and do an analysis on each of the specs at 10 level intervals, perhaps with special mentions at specific "GAME CHANGING" levels where you learn a new spell or what have you. I'll do far more detailed analysis on feral, as that is what I am going to level as.

So with those 7 posts I am going to write, I am also going to make a post on some of the stuff I missed, mostly a few beta builds which have made changes to my beloved Paladin Class O:, the awesomeness that is the new SC2 trailer (OMFG HOW AWESOME IS IT?!?!?!?!) and what have you.

So yeh :) Good to be back, catching up on stuff you miss is so much of a time sink D:.

SC2 Patch 17

Maybe this breaks the flow of my Blog, but I wanted to comment a little on SC2, a game I will be playing quite avidly on release and will probably slow down my testing of the cata beta for at least a week, doing the single player campaign and all that jazz.

I am a pretty bad player at the moment, mostly I just struggle with multi-tasking O:, but I'm getting better, slowly figuring out what setup suits me. At the moment my main race is going to be Terran, I love playing Zerg occasionally as well, and absolutely despise protoss.

I won't go into too much detail as to why but Terran voices are so awesome ("THOR IS HERREEEEE") Zerg are just awesome, a very aesthetic and cool race imo. Protoss are just "urgh" they are too clean for me, I also dislike how newbie friendly Protoss is as a race compared to the other 2.

But ye, Patch 17: The patch that basically reverted half of the unintended patch changes of Patch 16 which were just for Internal Testing.

Many of the following bug fixes were intended for internal testing only, and are now being reverted.

• 250mm Strike Cannons can no longer deal damage to hidden targets.
  
• Barracks build time decreased from 65 to 60 seconds.
  
• Bunker build time decreased from 40 to 30 seconds.
  
• Canceling morphing Banelings now returns 75% of the cost like other morphing Zerg units.
  
• Hellion range reverted from 6 to 5.
  
• Reaper build time decreased from 45 to 40 seconds.
  
• Zealot build time decreased from 38 to 33 seconds.

These are the official Patch Notes. 1 other change that was reverted and unlisted was that Roaches/Infestors can now burrow under forcefields. A few comments on these changes. My guess is they thought rushes were too powerful, and wanted to test out increasing the time when rushes occur, but realised it really didn't make much difference. The Zealot change was specifically for PvZ as far as I know, where 2 gating is very powerful, I think it was fine as it punished Zerg's for fast expanding blindly instead of it being automatic, and am glad this change was reverted.

Barracks time being reduced back to 60 is also nice, since it makes Orbital Command Timings much nicer again. You might think that the Reaper and Barracks Build time nerf is a buff to Reaper Rushes, but at most it is 10 seconds quicker, that means around 3 minutes 5 seconds for a 7 rax reaper, and by that time I can have a bunker out. Especially with that lovely change to bunker timing down from 40 to 30. Maybe it makes reaper rushing even more powerful, but i dont think so personally. I think it makes defending against it easier, along with defending proxy gateways aswell, the change to 30 seconds also makes it very viable as wall-in material instead of the usual supply depots, to help further prevent baneling busts.

Hellion Range being reduced is fine, I think they increased the range to see if the hellion would respond better to chasing units so they wouldn't run away when stopping to shoot, like for example warriors charging in "wow pvp". But the effect was minor and actually made hellions a bit too strong behind a wall-in and on high ground against say Hydra pushes and ling run-bys.

The last change, albeit unlisted, that roaches/infestors can again move under forcefields imo is good. If the change to forcefield behaviour in phase 2 is permanent, they seemingly have a bigger radius than their animation shows and can make units stuck inside of them, then being able to burrow out of them is huge for zerg. Forcefields could totally shut down any roach play for Zerg vs. Protoss because of forcefields and them not being able to burrow under them. So yeh... good reverting really.

The other 2 changes are obviously just bugs and I doubt they were used for testing anything, since really terran doesnt need more detection (Turrets, scans, emp, raven) and obviously Banelings being cancelled whilst morphing in should be equal to other cancels.

Overall though, nice changes I would personally like to see some buff to lings at hive instead of adrenal glands, putting adrenal on lair tech, so that zerglings have a role in the zerg army when you get to hive, cos atm they just get in the way of broodlings/ultralisks. I just feel that lings need some role at late-game zerg which they really don't have at the moment. I would also like to see some late game role for marines aswell, since at the moment they are exceptionally weak against storm/colosii against protoss and ultras/broodlords against Zerg, and weak against tanks, B.C's vs. Terran. Meaning that Terran don't have a great mineral dump moving into the late game. Hellions are fine late game imo because they are awesome for harassment, I suppose lings are too but hellions with pre-ignighter are just so much better than ling-run bys especially combined with a dropship. But Marines just feel really weak in the bio army, personally I feel like if the enemy is allowed to tech the marine becomes useless and your barracks are mostly for ghosts/marauders late game combined with tanks/hellions or Vikings/Medivacs.

However, personally I feel like the game is balanced, not sure why some people seem to think terran mech is so OP. It is very immobile, and in the same way terrans can pop pylons throughout the map, the zerg can "easily" nydus worm around the map (yes they really really really need to remove the sound of nydus, it is totally bullshit that you can hear somebody nydusing) It's more expensive than perhaps proxy-pyloning the map but along with creep tumors they give you excellent vision of the map and allow you to get flanks off on the enemy, especially a slow moving mech army. Obviously on some maps mech is really strong (Steppes of War D:::::) but I think its mostly because all the maps are really tight with natural expanding patterns sending you towards the opponent. Once there are more diverse maps, I feel that terran mech will be far less powerful, especially TvZ.

Anyway enough of me going on about SC2 :)

31 point Talents

Kay, so the sort of "TOPIC OF THE WEEK" type thing to do with beta changes is Blizzard's decision to move from 51 point talent trees to 31 point talent trees, luckily for me actually they implemented this before my druid reached level 10 so I can test the level 10 time to learn the specialisation.

However, I thought it would be best to get my thoughts on the change out in a separate post. Personally I really like this change, the sense of specialising low level seems really awesome: there is now a massive incentive to get to level 10. It also gives direction for newer players. I remember levelling my first character, a mage, and being like: "Well I use frostbolt alot for slow, so want cast time reduction on that and fireball so i want cast time reduction on that.." and I basically ended up with some weird ass 2/7/5 build or something similar before somebody in the deadmines dungeon said I should really put all my points in 1 tree for easier levelling.

I mean, it's something that is overlooked by alot of the community, but personally this specialisation change is SOOOOOO good for the new player, clearly explains the role of each tree, locks you into that tree for 50 levels, 31 points, w/e it is.

Now, I'm not going to look at the trees individually with an analytical eye here tbh. 1) because all the trees seem pretty rough and 2) I haven't played some classes enough to be able to comment on them.

However, with this 1st pass of trees I do have some issues. My first Issue is that really "important" talents take up 2 or 3 pt talents in a 2nd tier of an opposing tree. I really don't like this because it feels like you are forced to put 8-10 points in this tree and you don't really have much freedom, something they want to advocate. Personally I would like to see popular subspec points (Improved Inner Fire, Deep Wounds) all moved to the first tier so you could get alot of freedom with those "extra 10 points".

My second Issue with these trees, aren't really to do with the trees themselves, it's to do with the feedback people give about them. Alot of the feedback is like "OMFG I JUST GOT NERFED QQQQQQQQQQQQQQ" and I'm like... what... When it comes to feedback about a class, I will never comment on the specific numbers of a damage/healing spell, unless there are certain thresholds that could improve the spell. Why don't I do this? Because commenting on a number game is foolhardy and pointless, especially in a beta. Wow you lost a talent that increases your strength by 20% O:, maybe you will be balanced without that 20% increase. Numbers are almost certainly the last iteration of any beta testing process. It is easy to go into whatever program they use for spell costs/damages they use and change a number. The importance is about design intention.

Like for example if we take the qq about Unbridled Wrath which was on the forums today, If we look at the talent itself it is like "Gives you a chance to generate an extra rage point when you deal damage with a melee weapon".

Now there are 2 ways to look at this: 1) The community way: Test it in game, find some numbers about it, and qq that the talent is useless because the numbers aren't right. Generally this leads to droned out boring debate.

2) The Testing Way: First look at the design intention of the talent, see what the talent is trying to give you, is there any synergy with other talents? etc. Then look at other talents and see if it is filling a satisfactory role, are there 2 talents basically giving you the same thing? Finally look in-game and find some numbers out for the talent, but only to see if the current talent is performing it's function or whether it needs tweaks.

In the example above: the first way leads to random posts on the forum like "I CANT BELIEVE UNBRIDLED WRATH MADE THE CUT, IT IS AN UTTERLY AWFUL TALENT" etc etc because at the moment it is 1 rage with a less than 100% chance to proc.

The second way, the way I would analyse it, says first: Ok, the general idea is to get more rage when hitting things, theres no real other talent providing this exact thing for fury, there are talents like booming voice and Intensify Rage that help Fury Rage generation through the applications of certain spells, however Unbridled wrath is unique in granting extra rage on hitting things. Secondly, this obviously has synergy with talents like Flurry and Single-minded Fury, these talents making you hit faster are of course going to increase the usefulness of Unbridled Wrath. Then I would go, look at numbers and probably be like. Well the way I would make this talent provide its functionality would be to either a) Have it 100% chance at 3/3 and grant 1/2 rage every time, or b) Continue for it to be rng and say 20% of the time but make it grant alot of rage like 10-20 or something like that. These 2 ways are wildly different but they are ways for the talent to have a purpose.

Ok, Sidetracked T_T. However, personally I love the direction these 31pt talent trees are taking. The 51 pt trees were far too big and overwhelming, especially for a newer player, most new players will only look for short term benefits, the worst cases being stuff like a priest going for improved smite early on in levelling because you use it over shadow spells. Now if you want to dps and level as a priest you get mindflay and pushback resistance immedietly as Shadow, that's so awesome.

Even me, a relatively experienced wow gamer, will almost always double check talents with some online cookie-cutter build from elitist jerks or somewhere, to make sure I am getting the right talents, because often-times they are confusing. The fact that GC has stated that the overall intention is that you can get every damage dealing ability in your specialisation then have 5-6 points to just decide what your utility will be and then 3-5 points in your sub trees is awesome. At the moment some trees are closer than others to achieving this goal, however I have faith that this will happen :).

Of course I am not sure Blizzard's definition of Utility co-incides with my own though, they might consider something like "Skirmisher" or "Heroic Fury", both basically increasing mobility rather than direct damage, as Utility talents, whereas I would consider them mandatory pve talents since less time moving->more time doing damage. I would much rather they have utility talents such as Furious Attacks (MS) and Piercing Howl (Slows) for me to choose between than Mobility talents vs. other talents, because the Mobility will always win.

Anyway, plans for today are probably to finish Durotar later, maybe I won't have time to put in the blog entry. Hopefully I will have all the screenshots and the Durotar area will be slightly less awesome than Echo Isles were and will require less video footage so I can get it done, regardless however the Troll starting area was awesome, great for new players and packed full of immersion and lore.

Echo Isles.

Ok, so Logging into the Troll starting area for the first time, I am greeted to a non-narrated cut-scene. It basically is a tour around the Island, showing the unique architecture of the Trolls and an on-going battle between the Trolls and the Naga invading the Island.

Is your view when you first enter the troll area, you are sitting down, there are some drum beats in the background and you have your first quest Right In-front of you.

A few comments; The cinematic has no narration at the moment, obviously this will be added in a later build (presumably). I know this is already on live, but having no attack on the bar in the 1 slot is so awesome for newer players.

Anyway, the format for these entries will be All quests and a map all on the same shot, an example is in the following picture

I will Post video's aswell of "interesting lore/content", this is entirely of my opinion of what is interesting/worthy of a video. Regardless anything not caught on a video clip will be screenshotted and posted in a collage.

Here is a somewhat nice touch I think in video form, the guy by the fire stands up when you accept this quest and leads you towards your class trainer.

Basically this quest is like Hi, us trolls are going to make sure we keep our home here in the Echo Isles but the future of the trolls is going to be somewhat uncertain due to Garrosh Hellscream being a war-hungry leader. The quest is probably just follow up from the narrated cinematic one would have heard before and so it works.

Anyway, he tells you to start your training, and you set off after Zuni, who is a fellow initiate seemingly.

We get to our class leader, I like this part about this new starting area, your very first quest tells you to go to your class leader. It's very tutorial-driven and newbie-friendly. You even get this guy zuni to show you where to go, which is a lovely touch imo.

The next quest is a simple kill quest, your class leader instructs you to kill some practice targets all around the central part of the island to practice killing stuff, i like the name of this quest amusingly. I find this quest quite good though because I remember starting back in vanilla and being like AAAA melee as a mage, my first character, and this teaches you against that and to mostly cast spells, a nice touch: especially against pretty non-scary monsters. You also get to appreciate the lovely troll art used in this area, which I personally think is amazing.

I also like the comments the class trainer makes when you complete the quest, somewhat impressed and trying to spur you on, it's a generic kill quest, but hey it's wow and having cool reasons to do kill quests make them less of a chore.

Again, you move into another kill quest, this time against some cats. Obviously the trolls be wantin' there food for tonight so you better go kill these pesky cats, the in-game quest helping map is actually really unclear where these guys are imo. But regardless...

This quest was actually really nice though, and well timed tbh. The cats have the cool "Feral Charge: Cat" animation and so leap up to you, they kinda have an annoying habit of going behind you after doing this, probably reminensce of the actual move on cats, however I feel this is a good thing because it encourages mouse turning, which can only be a good thing. I also Dinged whilst killing these mobs, which is nice progression imo: GO KILL YOUR FIRST REAL THINGS --> LEVEL, it makes sense.

On the subject of levelling: you now get an awesome animation when levelling saying what rewards you get for levelling up. For level 2, there is nothing at all just GZ YOU REACHED LEVEL 2, but later you get moves you can learn at the class trainer, talent points, unlocking dungeon finder.. all that jazz.

After handing that in the follow up is like..

I personally find the Jailor's comments amusing, especially considering the hand-in, he is like "Nah, he's a pushover m8" and the druid trainer is all like "OMG UR A HERO" afterwards, which i find pretty entertaining anyway. The quest is kinda cool, so i made a video showing me spamming wrath O:.

Afterwards you get introduced to Vol'jin, and OMFG that quest is sick. The rp is, I guess, going to be a part of the pre-cata event, but being able to see it in the troll starting area at level 2 is pretty immersing, I am kinda at odds whether you should be able to accept the next quest after handing this quest in and seeing the rp immedietly or be forced to watch it, but I guess people rolling alts would complain if they *HAD* to see the awesome rp. Anyway, the rp is in the video below, I guess the sound could be added in a later build, considering it has some parallels to the nagrand questline which does have sound, I would kinda expect it to.

Regardless, that quest is awesome :D.

Now for the first time we get 2 different quests, the crab one seems a little *urgh* imo, since it takes you away from the main story of the area. Regardless, the crab "bubble" animation is awesome, it's kinda a pity that they pretty much die before they can do it. I actually dinged during this quest but forgot to take a screenshot of the new stuff before going onto the next area. I think this quest could work if it made u go back to your class trainer to learn your "level 3 ability", since I only did this quest at the end of the zone since there is no logical quest that takes you back to the class trainer area. I put in a picture of the kewt raptor cos its like MMFMGOMFOGMG kewt :(((.

After doing the somewhat sidetracking quest with the crabs you head off towards the bridge where...

... Zuni Reappears O:, he follows you over the bridge and again, I love his dialogue mocking how the class trainers tried to make him feel special but obviously he wasn't cos you progressed just as quickly.. Lovely touch really. My screenshot unfortunately cut off his second dialogue part he basically says "dis is prolly going to be easy but I" in the hidden bit.

Anyway for the first time you get a bunch of quests all in the same area, 3, a "quest item" type quest and you get to see the cool little level 3 animation i failed to include in the last part.

The quests tell you to go to the Island, basically to stop whatever is corrupting the raptors and stealing the hatchlings, kinda cool lore really considering raptors are the troll mounts and obviously they have to raise them from when they are young to be able to ride them later.

You get onto this Island and you kill some corrupted raptors and use your quest item to round up the raptors... cool. You then get to the centre of the island and bam.. You find a naga corrupting the little baby raptors, so of course you rush to their rescue and, in my case wrath him to death getting the un-implemented eclipse proc that does nothing. This killing is so awesome though, because all those raptors you rescued all jump on him and start biting his face, I don't think they do any damage but the animation is awesome. You go back across and hand in, and get your first new bit of kit. Personally I like this new kit looks, its sleak and much better than rag-tagged robes you were getting in the vanilla starting areas.

After handing in apparently there is a crazy-ass raptor running around called swiftclaw who you need to hop on and ride back to the pen. This is another cool quest really, catching up to the raptor is a little "urgh" though since he moves really fast. But it's not that bad, once you use the quest item you get launched onto the raptors back and OMG HE WONT STOP so you have to control him across the bridge and into the pens on the other side, not that hard really but a cool way to introduce you into vehicle/mount mechanics imo.

Regardless you go hand in, get a neat new belt and bump into Zuni again, right before being told to ride a raptor. Since this ride gives you a nice cinematicy look at the area again I included a video of it, along with another collage O:.

Oh Yeah I also dinged and got told I can learn Moonfire, although again no breadcrumb to go visit your trainer at this stage is rather disappointing, but it's a kinda minor point.

Anyway, after the awesome ride through the ongoing slaughter of naga vs. Troll, behind their lines you meet up with the captain who is like: Go into the cave and kill some naga. These 2 quests are really neat design though. Since there is great synergy between the 2. You put up these fetishes on these flag-sticks and this creates an aura around it which weakens the naga. Since almost all the naga in this cave come in pairs, its neat that you can reduce their hp and damage with this aura. They definitly should make more of these quests to make "kill quests" more interesting :D.

Onto the next quest, which is another AWESOME quest, it's amazingly awesome really. Basically, The leader of the Naga forces shows herself on the battlefied, Zar'jira. Basically she is a Sea witch that killed Vol'jin's father: Sen'jin on the lost isles where Thrall crashed when the horde evacuated Eastern Kingdoms before the BL invasion in WC3.

The lore is pretty awesome here, and the battle against her is pretty nice really. A lovely way to end the Echo Isles. The Battle is in the Video Below..

Basically The Sea Witch summons adds, which you kill and weaken her, as vol'jin puts the hurt into her. Around 50% she Ice blocks Zuni and the other troll female O: and you get an emote BASH THE BRAZIERS, when you interact with them and kill them she loses more health and vol'jin is set free, she does this again around 20% or so, but this time your good old buddy Zuni Tries to bash the braziers. The Sea witch decides to wtf kill him and then goes on to die herself.

It's a little mixture of a raid encounter into a simple kill this big boss guy quest and you get to fight with Vol'jin, which is just seriously awesome. Anyway, after you kill her you talk to the shaman girl who sends you back to vol'jin with some very "Jaina-esque" Teleporting. After, which you complete the quest, ding, and get to see some awesome new lore with Thrall and Vol'jin. Again showcased in the video below :D.

I mean, seriously this Starting zone is so good. I won't comment too much on that last video. But it is awesome lore, Thrall is like ye i left Garrosh behind because the horde needs a hero, somebody to put their faith behind. He admits it may not be the best "RIGHT NOW" decision, but in the future it will work out for the better. He is also like, hell I've got loads of work saving the world from deathwing yo, can't really talk much. Obviously Thrall going off to save the world is going to be dealt with in the pre-cata event far more, but it's cool to see his reasons behind giving Garrosh the reins of the horde, and they actually make sense. I would have thought however that Thrall was enough a hero himself for people to rally behind him, however I guess he means that if he put Vol'jin in charge of the horde that he wouldn't be the hero figure to the horde mass that Garrosh represents.

I don't know really, but this zone is amazing, props to this zone tbqh. You get a breadcrumb leading to Sen'jin Village, which I would kinda like a boat there or something rather than just walking and then swimming there, as it is quite a distance from Vol'jin's hut tbh. I finally learnt my level 3,4 and 5 Skills aswell and got the cool generic "LEARN YOUR LEVEL 3 SKILL FROM ME QUEST" from the class trainer. Again, I'm kinda saddened that there was no breadcrumb to this earlier, as it seems silly that the only logical place to learn the level 3 skill is at level 5 once you have finished the zone.

I was going to do the rest of Durotar today, but the beta went down for maintenence for a new patch, so was like "huh" oh well, ill do the rest of durotar after the patch.

The Character Creation Screen

Okay, Before getting onto my Troll Druid I wanted to talk about the changes to the character creation screen.

Besides from the addition of the 2 new races and added class combos we have the addition of a new animation when choosing your race. This is different for each race you scroll through, but the same for all races, albeit with their own unique animation for the said event.

For the Druid, it is the simple end cast animation of casting Wrath. This is actually one of the things I disagree with personally, and I will explain why.

Firstly, I believe it gives a wrong interpretation of classes. Most of these "low-level" changes are wholly designed around increasing the starting experience for newer players, to both the mmo, the rpg and wow genres. The animations given seem to show a pretty "static" role for each class. Running through the classes we have:

Deathknight: Blood Presence? (not sure what it is, it might be another animation but essentially that's what it is)

Druid: Wrath (Spellcaster)

Hunter: Auto Shot + Pet (Ranged Archer + Pet)

Mage: Fireball (Spellcaster)

Paladin: Auto Attack (Melee dps)

Priest: Heal (Healer)

Rogue: Mutilate/Auto Attack (Melee Dps)

Shaman: Thunderstorm (Spellcaster)

Warlock: Shadowbolt + Pet (Spellcaster + Pet)

Warrior: Heroic Strike 2 hander (Melee Dps)

I don't have a problem with the deathknight one or the pure classes, they do a great job for showing their specific classes role (I say deathknight because it is impossible for a new player to role one immedietly so you need some understanding of the game to role one) However the hybrid class animations give confusion imo. They all show one specific "specialisation" of that class, something that will eventually be talked more about at level 10 when you choose it (Note: Not active in the current build). However, I think some people may well be put off by certain classes, (mostly druid/shaman) if they think they "have" to be a dps caster when they want to role a melee character purely based on the animations.

I would say however the summary on the right is very good and gives good points for all classes, this is already implemented on live of course, however the animations are not. I do feel that the "Damage" should say they can be melee and caster for shaman/Druids.

Here's an example of the Druid Animation:

Cataclysm Beta Testing

Okay, so onto the "main" topic of this blog. Cataclysm Beta Testing. I will be embarking on an endeavour to cover every single zone/class/race through the new levelling experience of Cataclysm. This will take a long time, and will perhaps not even be completed by release: Hoping for a period of around 10 weeks with 1 Race/class combo done per week. This however may change with Blizzard releasing beta patches and changing the experiences dramatically.

Basically I am going to level 1 class from each of 10 races. I am not going to level a character that is Draenei or Blood elf. This is not because I do not like the aesthetics of these 2 races (Draenei and Blood elf are my 2 favorite races in WoW currently. I made this decision because a) Nothing has changed in their current starting areas, they were good before and are actually part of the "BC server cluster" or w/e it's called so I highly doubt they will get anything but aesthetic touches. B) There are only 10 classes, one of which is a death knight which sees no new content in their starting area, so having to repeat 2-3 classes twice is not something I really want to do.

First off a few "provisos".

1) My "main" so to speak is a Holy Paladin, I have dabbled with raiding as a fury warrior and a shadow priest however I consider my main to be my Holy paladin, I love the class and because I only had 9 classes to fit into 10 races I decided I will level a Paladin twice. This is not to say I won't regret that decision, however I will certainly be a little scared over embarking on it.

2) I have mostly been Alliance throughout my playing of WoW. I have levelled maybe 2 horde characters but mostly only have dabbling memories of some of "vanilla" questlines. Mostly I went to zones that I found efficient as Horde, so my knowledge of some areas pre-cataclysm as horde is somewhat limited, along with some aspects of Lore.

3) Posts on areas will be split up into separate quest hubs as to not overload a single post with billions of info.

4) This blog will include lots of screenshots of quest text, key characters, perhaps some short videos of awesome dialogue (maybe with personal commentary although my voice is eurgh D:). Annotated Maps with Questflows on them etc.

5) Opinions stated in this blog are entirely my own and should not be taken as fact or in anyway representative of others.

6) My plan is to write up on 1 particular zone a day. There will be some repeat of course when I level repeated factions, or perhaps even in similar zones. Mostly I will gloss over detail that has been explained in a previous blog and focus mostly on changes that have happened perhaps with a beta build and with the current class I am levelling.

Ok, with that out of the way we come to the order of my great endeavour. Using a random number generator function on a calculator I have come up with the following order for my endeavour.

1) Troll Druid

2) Night Elf Priest

3) Dwarf Shaman

4) Goblin Rogue

5) Orc Warrior

6) Human Paladin

7) Undead Warlock

8) Worgen Hunter

9) Tauren Paladin

10) Gnome Mage

Fortunately the Troll area is mostly complete afaik and the questing will take me through Kalimdor, which is also mostly complete according to Blizzard. I tried to choose classes for the races that were "new" or generally I hadn't played before. Personally I am a "Draenei/Belf/Human female or gtfo" type of leveller so yeh this a bit new. Anyway: Onto the Echo Isles.