FFXIV: New Jobs Video

I know, I know, Final Fantasy XIV should be all rights be dead and buried.  The game is an utter and complete failure on so many levels.  Yet, Square-Enix is intent to try and make a decent game out of it.  Will it succeed?  I for one seriously doubt it, but only time will tell.

They are doing one thing right however.  By playing towards the nostalgia of its formerly loyal Final Fantasy XI playerbase, they are attempting to entice more and more players to give the game a chance.  This video released a few days ago proves that there is still a bit left in that cave to mine.  Showing the 5 new “jobs” of White Mage, Black Mage, Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Paladin in their new “job specific gear” (hell we all know its just Artifact Gear).  Take a gander at the coolness that could have been something better if Square-Enix had listened to its players and actually took their time in developing their game instead of pushing it out in a disaster of a state.

Rallying Cry: A Mistake or Needed Cooldown?

With the 4.1 PTR now live we are able to see the newest changes to each of the classes.  There are changes to three of the 4 tanking classes.  However, the druid changes are basically buffs to their TPS abilities since they were so obviously overnerfed in a hotfix recently.  The Paladin changes deserve their own post.  So that leaves the Warrior Changes.  One Warrior Change in particular… Rallying Cry.

 

Rallying Cry
3 min cooldown

Temporarily grants you and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 sec.
After the effect expires, the health is lost.
(Shares a cooldown with Last Stand.)

On its face this ability is a boon for all specs of Warrior.  This solves our balance issues with Protection Paladins and their Divine Guardian.  This gives us a raid cooldown that is actually good and useful.  That is until we look at the fine print.  That “Shares a cooldown with Last Stand” part of the description.  Ahhh and there is the rub.  What are the ramifications of this?

1) Why does Rallying Cry share Last Stand’s cooldown?

By making these abilities share a cooldown Blizzard has solved one problem while causing another.  There is a reason why Divine Guardian also has fine print in its description.  Divine Guardian does NOT effect the casting Paladin.  Why?  For one reason and one reason only, because the developers did not want to give Paladins yet another cooldown they could use while tanking.

These abilities were designed to be used as raid cooldowns and not as personal cooldowns.  Thus by linking the cooldowns will force the cooldown to not be used as a personal tanking cooldown.

2) How does the linking effect Last Stand?

Unfortunately, this will cause other complications based on the overall design of this ability.  By linking these two cooldowns creates a paradigm where tanking warriors are now forced to make a decision between using one of their two tanking cooldowns and saving it to benefit the raid at a set point in an encounter.  Thus, for a good chunk of the more difficult encounters where a raid cooldown may be called for Warrior tanks will now be without a cooldown they would normally have.

3) What are the ramifications for Fury and Arms?

What of the other warriors inside your raid?  While Arms Warriors are not a spec that are often brought to raids for their stellar dps, fury warriors are.  Warrior damage is high and raids are bringing the “player” and not the “class”.  After this change will warriors be brought for their class?

We had similar circumstances back in Wrath of the Lich King.  Back then, all Paladins had access to Divine Guardian.  Paladins of all three specs were being brought to raids because of this.  Retribution Paladins in particular were being brought because of this.  Divine Guardian was so powerful that when the trees were redesigned the ability was given only to tanks.  Tanks and healers have a place to protect the raid.  Limiting and healing damage to the raid is their pervue.  The DPS pervue is to do damage and keep themselves alive.

I am not going to say that Rallying Cry will be to Warriors what Heroism/Bloodlust was to Shaman.  I will however say, that the ability will shift raid makeups considerably across the board.  Where there were once 1 DPS warrior in a 25 man raid, there will now be 2-3.  Where there were no warriors in a 10man group, there will be 1.

Raid cooldowns should remain in the hands of the Tanks and the Healers.

4) How do we fix this ability to be what Warrior tanks need?

First off, do we as warrior tanks need a raid cooldown?  Part of me wants to say, “No we do not.”  While the other part of me see’s Divine Guardian and says “They have one, I want one!”  What it really comes down to, will Protection Warriors be chosen more over Paladins if they had a similar raid cooldown?  I can’t help but to agree that they would.  Yet, that being said, is it a necessary addition to the game?

Personally, I am going to go with the “No we do not” sentiment.  However, it seems like we are getting this no matter if we like it or not.  So how do we make this ability workable within the Protection Warrior toolkit?

The easiest solution is perhaps the best solution.  Divine Guardian has fine print, just copy it and paste it into the Last Stand talent.  Create extra wording to the talent changing Rallying Cry from effecting the warrior if cast by him and preventing Last Stand and Rallying Cry from being up at the same time no matter who cast what.

Yes, it would be better if Rallying Cry was flat out attached to Last Stand’s Talent.  One talent to grant both abilities within the Protection tree.  Thus making it a Protection only ability.

5) What are the PvP ramifications?

I do not PvP regularly, but I can see some real issues within organized PvP.  Rallying Cry during an Arena Match could turn the tide.  Rallying Cry during a Tol Barad could do the same.  Giving upwards of 40 people 20% extra health will be as strong or stronger than a well-timed Time Warp/Heroism/Bloodlust.  Is Blizzard thinking everything as through as we’d like?

Popquiz: The Green Me!

This week has been an adventure.  I have taken myself all over Azeroth and found myself fighting so many enemies that I became increasingly angry.  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and the anger within manifested itself and I became a hulking manifestation of death.

Pop Quiz:  Where am I in this screenshot?

Glyphing to Become Viable?

Today marks the advent of the 3.1 major content patch going live on the Public Test Realms for the first time.  With this patch we see massive changes to most classes and specs to improve or nerf their viability as tanks, healers and dps.  While there are bigger changes to many other classes, the big changes for Warriors have thus far only been given to us by new glyphs.

Glyph of Heroic Strike – Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%.
The soul change to our glyph repetoire.  This glyph used to be a bread and butter for the 10 rage it gave when Heroic Strike critically hit.  We now have something that will not only help Fury and Arms warriors, but it represents a signficant increase in threat production.

Glyph of Barbaric Insults  — Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat.
This used to change Mocking Blow into another taunt ability.  Why they are changing a less than stellar glyph from a semi useful glyph into one that makes it so much less useful I do not rightly know.

Glyph of Shockwave — Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
The impact of this new treat is yet to really been number crunched.  Yet, I would not be going out on a short limb if I said this is really just not worth it.  Changing Shockwave from 20 seconds to 17 second cooldown should not signficantly impact a tps rotation that is dominated by two six second cooldowns.

Glyph of Vigilance — Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
This is a complete waste of a glyph.  Well correction, with current threat parameters we really have little use for changing Vigiliance from a 10% to a 15% reduction in a single person’s threat.  This glyph may find a use if the threat ceiling falls signifcantly with Ulduar’s opening.

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration — Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
A purely PvP orientated glyph if I ever saw one.  There is really no real use for this glyph in a tank’s glyph set.  There are much better choices of glyphs out there.

Glyph of Spell Reflection  — Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
This glyph is just plain too much of a drop in the ocean to be worth anything.  Reducing a lot of cooldowns by 1 second may be worth more.  However, reducing this with a glyph slot is far from worth the cost of any other glyph.

Glyph of Shield Wall — Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
The be all end all of the new glyphs.  Combined with Improved Disciplines we now have a signficantly less powerful damage reduction tool on a cooldown equal to that of a Death Knight’s Icebound Fortitude. 

—————

The Impact:

With the addition of Glyph of Shield Wall we now have the option to have an extremely short cooldown ability with strong mitigation benefits.  Why should we be concerned over this?

Simply put, we all got together and whined and complained about Warriors getting the rear end of the stick when it came to Effective Health and overall burst mitigation.  What we got was a forced clone of a Death Knight ability.  It may look really nice, and it may actually prove to be a boon to Protection Warriors, but we need to think about what this really means to us.  This glyph becomes as mandatory to protection warriors as Meditation is to priests of any spec.

This is a glyph that we will be balanced around.  Do we really want to be balanced around having a specific glyph?  Are other classes being balanced around them?  To some extent, but it is still an option for an Elemental Shaman to pick up Lightning Bolt or Flametongue Weapon.

This fundamentally changes our skill toolbox.  While the new version of Shield Wall will be of great use, we are sacrificing our “Oh #$#!” button for something that will be a basic part of our survivalbility.  Ask yourself, how much do you think the average Death Knight tank uses Icebound Fortitude?  That’s right, the answer is pretty much every cooldown.  Can they survive without it? Yes, but they also have multiple other cooldowns to work with.  If we become balanced around using this every cooldown, where will Warriors be?

Resilience and the Defense Cap

With the beginning of the Arena and PvP seasons today, I thought I would discuss a little about Resilience and the Defense Cap.

What We Know:

The defense cap for level 83 raid bosses is 540 Defense Skill or 5.6% critical hit reduction.  This is not so easily obtained these days.  With the removal of warrior and paladin talents for pure defense talents this becomes quite a bit more difficult than it was in The Burning Crusade.  There have been countless articles on TankSpot.com, TankingTips.com and various tank blogs that give you step by step instructions and gear guides on hitting the cap.  But what if you simply can not afford those epic Titansteel pieces?  What if drops just are not going your way?  Well the solution is here.

Resilience:

Arena gear is now upon us.  To be sure, it is no where ideal for PvP.  They have made great strides in making the gear to be less attractive than it was in TBC.  However, resilience can cover up some early wholes in your gear quite adequately.

Lesser Flask of Toughness:
The easiest of all the resilience methods to become crit immune.  At 80 this flask gives you .6% worth of crit immunity.  Roughly equal to 15 Defense Skill.

Enchants:
There are 3 Resilience enchants currently available.  Two of which are from TBC and are for such small amounts that using them over a defense enchant would actually be worse.  The Enchant Chest – Exceptional Resilience is the best you can do currently in Wrath and it is only for 20.  A significant amount over the 15 from the TBC enchant, but both have an extremely steep price.  Giving .24% crit reduction it is more than the .18% reduction the 22 defense rating to chest enchant gives however.  Yet at this point, its a wash and the Defense enchant is much cheaper.

Kharmaa’s Grace:
Another 20 Resilience rating option.  It is not cheap though, and it doesn not cost money.  For 20 Stone Keeper’s Shards, or about the price of a single heroic run’s worth of shards you willg et .24% crit reduction via  a gem.  The +16 defense gems on the other hand will give you much less.  You will lose the avoidance given by the defense however.

Conclusions & Theories:

The Lesser Flask of Toughness gives us a different way to look at early gemming and gearing.  We all need to be uncrittable.  However, it may flat out be better for our early progression to be gemming for stamina and using this flask instead of being forced into gemming for Defense.  If you are a good raid tank, you are more than likely going to be using a Flask of Stoneblood to gain your 650 health.   Early on you want as much Effective Health as you can get.  Now how you get this health is the key.  If you do this with a flask, you are gainign 650 health.  However, if you decide to use 3 +24 stamina gems instead of those 3 +defense gems you are using, you will gain much more while raid buffed.

Sure you are losing a small chunk of avoidance, but while you are getting your feet wet, this is a better option for your raid as a whole.  As you gain more and more defense from gear, you will be better off, and so will the raid.  Yet ensuring you are uncrittable with as much health you can get is the key to early survivability in say the Spider Wing of Naxxramas, than that extra 1% avoidance.

Emblems of Heroism… Which to get first?

With the Paladin reaching level 80 on Sunday I had the opportunity to really sit down and think about what order I was going to be purchasing my badge gear.   Let me first say that I know there are a few lists going around the web.  I now have two tanks at 80.  One of which was geared to the nines with Sunwell level gear, the other starting out in more lackluster gear.  This list is geared towards the latter. 

I offer you my own personal beliefs on what order you should be picking up your “Badge Gear”.

First off, what can a plate tank get from badges?

Off Set Pieces:

• 25 – Chained Military Gorget
• 35 – Crygil’s Discarded Plate Panel
• 40 – Waistguard of Living Iron
• 40 – Valor Medal of the First War

Warrior Tier 7

• 60 – Heroes’ Dreadnaught Handguards
• 80 - Heroes’ Dreadnaught Breastplate

Paladin Tier 7

• 60 – Heroes’ Redemption Handguards
• 80 – Heroes’ Redemption Breastplate

Naxxramas — Complete

After last week’s 10 man clear of Naxxramas, we decided to start up 25 man raiding.  We were a little rusty.  We had some … ummm… how do I put this?  Attention issues versus Thaddius at the end of our raid time.  So we came back tonight and finished off the instance with about 30 minutes to spare. 

 In 7 total raid hours, alot of “I got a phone call”, “brb, bathroom” and “I gotta change a diaper” downtime and we got the instance fully cleared.  Not a land speed record by any means.  Yet, we are happy.  Next stop Sartharion for our second crack at him in his 25 man version.  This time with drakes up.  Then on to Malygos for the real test.

A shell of its former self:

Naxxramas is just plain not what it used to be.  Ok, let me preface this with admitting that I was not playing the game long enough before TBC came out to have experienced 40 man raiding of Naxx.  The farthest I really got to see preTBC was the entry to BWL.  I did however, have the pleasure of taking Mihli into Naxx post TBC for several weeks between the levels of 58-63.  She managed to walk out of there with the best named weapon in the game “Claymore of Unholy Might“

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can honestly say that Naxxramas 10 and 25 are both shells of their former selves.  These are true entry level raids.  So much so that several wings have been cleared by complete PUGs.  I would not be surprised if a PUG has not cleared the entirety of both the 10 and 25 man versions somewhere in the world.  The instances are that easy in the early going.

The most difficult fight in Naxx is now Four Horsemen.  Not because they hit hard, or because you need 8 tanks, or the strategy is difficult to grasp.  It is challenging because of the logistics and communication involved in defeating the encounter.  People talking can be a tricky thing to pull of sometimes.

Spider Wing-

Anub’Rekhan used to be difficult.  Now you can fairly easily keep the tank up through locust swarm without any kiting.  Grand Widow, is actually more of a logistic challenge in the 10 man version than the 25.  A theme that is repeated throughout the instance, including the pinata that Maexxna has become.

Plague Wing-

Noth used to be harder.  At least in the 25 man he blinks around and drops aggro like his old self.  Its too bad this mechanic is subpar in the days of all tanks having 20 yard taunts.  “Oh my god he blinked… taunt.  Problem solved!”   Heigan is only a challenge to the movement impaired.  Hell his pre-gauntlet is no longer a gauntlet and his aggro radius is so small you can almost walk right up to him and poke him with a stick before he aggros.  A far cry from what once was.  Loatheb … have I used the word Pinata already?  (To be fair, Loatheb can be tricky on the 10 man if you do not have a priest.  Between PoH and CoH they can almost solo heal the raid.  The other healers just have more difficulty with the fight mechanics.)

Construct Wing-

Patchwerk is the first boss that is actually difficult in the 25 man.  I would not call him a real challenge in the 10 man if you have 2 geared tanks and healers with an ounce of skill you will win.  The 25 man version hits so hard that after tanking him you walk funny for an hour.  Grobbulus is all about not being dumb with poison.  Gluth is a bit more of a challenge, but not to tank or heal him.  Just to make sure he doesn’t get a feeding.  Thaddius is a stupidity check.

Death Knight Wing-

Razuvious, not much of a challenge, Gothik… someone told me from the Beta that he was actually difficult.  They lied.  As I said before the Horsemen are a logistical challenge.  Yet they are still much easier than before.  No more lingering ghosts marking people…  Just plain makes it that much easier.

Frostwyrm Lair-

Not much has changed from Saph and Kel though.  The only difference I can remember is  that Kel doesn’t Mind Control in the 10 man version.  In the 25 man version he MC’s 2 people at a time with a VERY long cooldown on the ability.

Do not get me wrong here.  The instance itself is a heck of a lot of fun.  Just for us rolling through it in our first 2 raid nights, just makes me think a little.  I wish it was more of a challenge.  Thank god for Malygos.

The Loot:

Four items per boss… four!.  Makes the instance kind of feel like more of a Pinata than it should be.  I do have to question a little as Blizzard had said there were continue to be 3 tokens per tier drop and while Gluth can drop 2 random pieces, those 2 do not make up for the fact that the others only drop 2.

I managed to get lucky and pick up the Last Laugh tonight.  This axe is so far above any other tanking weapon its beyond words.

Only problem is that I was forced to drop Mongoose on it.  It is really sad that Blizzard did not think carefully enough to give us some real end game tanking enchants in the expansion.  Greater Potency’s 50 attack power would be interesting.  The 26 agility enchant may be intriguing as well.  But why not a neo-crusader style enchant.  Or god forbid, a 25+ strength enchant.  Blizzard, we do not want AP, give us our strength enchant!  (While you are at it, give us a new and easier to obtain stamina to bracers enchant.)

Leveling as Protection?!? (Warrior) – Part 2

This is the second part of a multi-part post on Leveling as Protection.  The first post can be found here.

Glyphs and Gear:

We are not tanking for 10 levels.  We are leveling.  All our gear and glyph choices must take this into account.  We want to get to 80 with the least trouble and time as possible and to that effect we will be making some choices we never would make if our goal was to tank.

Glyphing for Efficiency:

We all had a good month of 3.0.2 to play around with Glyphs.  The vast majority of us picked up glyphs such as Glyph of Sunder Armor, Glyph of Heroic Strike or Glyph of Revenge in order to tank whatever Heroics, Karazahn or any of the 25 man raid instances.  Things are different now.  We are leveling, we do not care about things that will help us tank and keep threat more easily.  We all have, as a paladin friend of mine says, “the threat of Jesus”, we do not need to worry about it right now.  We want things that make us more efficient.  We are looking for damage, mobility and an overall increase in our killing speed.

Major Glyphs:

Glyph of Rapid Charge: You are going to be using charge.  It will be the most used button you have next to your Shield Slam and Devastate buttons.  Being mobile allows us to pull large groups and get to our next kill(s) quickly.  Mobility is king in leveling, and this is our mobility as warriors.

Glyph of Revenge: Many people may say that Glyph of Heroic Strike is a keeper here.  It is a good glyph do not get me wrong.  But once again your crit rate is going down.  Even with Incite, you are going to have diminishing returns with this glyph as you level up.  While Glyph of Revenge will be just as good as it was at 70 as it is at 80.  A free Heroic Strike every 6 seconds while leveling is a lot better than 10 rage if you happen to critically hit.

Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Charge: Adding 5 yards to Charge gives us a range of 30 yards.  This is the way you will pull while leveling.  None of the other Minor Glyphs can even compare to the usefulness of increasing our Mobility even more.

Glyph of Thunder Clap: The 2 yard increase may seem minor but that is exactly what it is meant to be.  A small increase in our range.  However, this is a 2 yard increase in the overall radius of Thunder Clap, which is actually quite a huge difference in practice.

Glyph of Bloodrage: The third minor glyph is a bit of a choice.  The first two are just plain the best and nothing can touch them.  Choose Bloodrage for one simple reason.  Bloodrage costing ~350 health is immense.  We can easily make that health up via trinkets, or a quick bandage at times.  Using Bloodrage at its normal ~780 health is prohibitive while leveling.  Halving that cost makes it extremely usable on a regular basis.

Gearing for Damage and Mitigation:

I write this from a point of view of someone who walked into Wrath with a minor about of raid DPS gear.  I managed to collect “off-spec” drops off most bosses.  It does not matter the level of your gear.  It matters what you are focusing on.

We want to concentrate on a few things to make ourselves kill and move on as quickly as possible.  The biggest thing we are doing while leveling now is collecting a good number of mobs (3-10+ depending on gear level) and using our new and improved AoE damage capabilities to kill many at once.  To do this we put our sights on certain statistics on our gear.

1. Shield Block Value:
   • We want to keep our SBV as high as possible.  Remember this is a double stat for us.  Our ability to take damage and give damage is directly connected.  The more SBV you have, the bigger damage you are giving out with Shield Slam and Damage Shield.  Plus, with pushing your value as high as you can, you can push most mob melee damage into hit for block.
2. Strength:
   • While we may want raw AP, strength gives us more SBV as well.
3. Attack Power:
   • Our direct damage abilities such as Heroic Strike, Revenge, Concussion Blow, and Devastate all scale with our Attack Power.
4. Critical Strike Rating/Agility:
   • Some people may consider Agility greater than Critical Strike Rating, but it has a much higher cost in terms of item budget.  We want to crit, we want to crit all the time.  Unfortunately, our crit will plummet to nearly half of what we start out at 70 with.  There are a limited number of quest rewards with crit rating on them.  Make sure you are keeping them as you go along to keep your crit rate up.
5. Armor Penetration Rating:
   • Not as useful for us as protection as it is for our fury and arms brethren, but it does help us.  It scales quite well and the more we sunder the better off we are.  The one problem is that we are not sundering everything and while AoE grinding so the scaling is lower and not all of our damage is helped by APR.
6. Stamina:
   • Stamina only helps us in terms of our survivability.  Do not go out of your way to get more stamina gear.  While upgrading your gear through quest rewards you will often find that there are many rewards with zero stamina and some with HUGE amounts of it.  Try and keep yourself at around 12-13k health unbuffed and you should be golden.

Dealing with quest rewards:

Do we take the tanking gear or the damage gear?  Well luckily most of the options are either or.  Which means we will have amble time and options to facilitate our gear choices.  It is only the random quest that will give us the options between a damage neck and a tanking pants.  Remember that we will be tanking again at 80 and that choices need to benefit us then.

Choosing between tank and damage options can be difficult though.  There are early tank-centric quest rewards that will last you deep into leveling.  For the most part, anything under level 76 is going to be easily replaced at 80.  The biggest thing you need to come to grasp with is that you can and will be able to tank virtually all of the leveling instances with your Burning Crusade tanking gear.  Your Tier 4+ and badge gear will be more than adequate for you and your party to survive.

Take damage gear when its an upgrade.

Conclusion:

Common sense in setting ourselves up for efficiency will be the best thing you can do for yourself.  Area of Effect grinding and questing will serve you well in making best use of your time.  Gearing and Glyphing for this specifically will allow you to move as quickly as possible when leveling solo or in a small group of friends.  Concentrating on mobility, shield block value and strength will be the easiest means of doing this.

I hope the small pseudo-guide will help you level.  I will be posting on the trials and pitfalls of each zone specifically over the next week. So stay tuned.

Leveling As Protection?!? (Warrior) – Part 1

Is everyone leveling as protection?  To be honest, since the expansion went live on Thursday, I have yet to see many dps warriors roaming around the frozen (and not so frozen) wastes of Northrend.  It seems that many warriors have got protection to level.

A lot of tank sites out there are dealing out their ideas on how to level.  How to spec, where to go, what to do when you get there.  I would be remiss if I was to not weigh in on the subject.  Especially since my person choices in speccing differ greatly from some of the other prominent tanking writers out there.

Speccing To Level: 

Some of the things we do not pick up will be counter-intuitive for a seasoned tank however.  My leveling spec is one that I had to really think about. At 70 there are a few things you can do and many people have said many things.  I looked at everything carefully from a stand point of pure efficiency in killing and moving on.  I came up with my level 70 leveling spec.

 

Such a pretty shield….

The big red shield of …

How do you describe this shield?  If you have it, do you actually run around town with it? 

I know the Sword Breaker’s Bulwark is a wonderful buff for anyone who uses it, but its just so damn ugly.  With all the beauty that is (or was) the encounters found in Sunwell Plateau, they gave us this debaucle of a monstrosity that endeavours to be “fancy”.

In making the model, the failed.  Not only did they make it clip through the “tanking weapon” dropped inside the same instance it drops in.  They also failed to make it not clip through the Tier 6 Onslaught shoulders and chest piece.  In the words of my Guild Master, this is “Epic Fail”.

A Question for you…

I have heard every opinion from my own guild members.  Everything from the Nightbane shield, to the lol Turtle shield from badges.  People even seem to absolutely love the SSO shield models.  I for one love my Barndoor.

Which shield do you find to be the best model?