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Filed under: Paladin, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Guides, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It

Alright. Let’s call a spade a spade. I nubbed last week’s installment by putting down Agility as a stat. Agility is good — still not a Retadin’s primary strength (pun intended), but definitely part of the equation. An informative article can be found on WoWWiki comparing Strength to Agility and determining the point where investing points in Agility gives better DPS returns than investing in Strength. Unlike Rogues or Hunters, who will never reach a point where Strength gives better returns, there is a certain point for Paladins (or Shamans and Warriors, for that matter) where it becomes better to invest in Agility. It’s quite a bit of math, but suffice it to say that the equilibrium point is pretty high and not achievable by a fresh 70 gearing up for Karazhan.

I also dismissed Expertise (pfft, why make one mistake when you can make two!), a new stat introduced in Patch 2.3, which reduces the chance a mob will Dodge or Parry your attacks. If you can manage it, you should always attack from behind, negating Parry to begin with, but barring that, Expertise is a good stat to pursue after you’re Hit capped. In fact, as some readers pointed out, the Shard of Contempt is the best melee DPS trinket in the game right now as it prevents even yellow, or special, attacks from being Dodged or Parried. With all the technical stuff out of the way, let’s move on to the last part of this series, where we’ll take a look at all the permanent enchants, gems, and even consumables that you’ll need to do a good job in Karazhan.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing up your Retadin for Karazhan part IV

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cheats, Blizzard, PvP, Arena

Bornakk has laid down a “clarification” on what’s fair in the Arenas over on the forums — he says that there’s been a lot of questions lately over what constitutes fair play in Arena PvP, especially in terms of win trading.

Unfortunately, his clarification isn’t all that clear — he reiterates that win trading (the act of exploiting the queue in some way to face a chosen opponent, or face the same team multiple times) is against the spirit of the game and against Blizzard’s wishes (though his wording gets a little strange when he brings the Terms of Service into it — we think that by “these actions all fall in line with our fair use clause,” he actually means that they violate the clause). He does, however, go on to say that there are certain places in the system where facing an opponent multiple times will happen, and that that’s obviously not the fault of players. So that, it seems, is the confusion: players were worried that because of the lack of population in the queue or other factors, that they would be accused of win trading, and Bornakk is saying that’s not the case.

Not that Blizzard hasn’t been cracking down on win trading as much as possible lately, but the fact is that if there’s a way to exploit the system, players will find it and do it. Blizzard says they’re working on squashing “agreements” between players, but even then, Arenas may never end up being completely fair.

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Bosses, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors

Matthew Rossi would like to apologize for any confusion caused by this post being on a Thursday instead of Totem Talk. He…well, he forgot it was Friday. That’s all there is to it, he just plain forgot what day it was. He apologizes (okay, I apologize, I’m him, I’m sorry, I seriously thought it was Friday) and will have Totem Talk up for you tomorrow.

Like I said yesterday, kills happen when the whole raid pulls together. Yes, this is blatantly obvious, but it still bears examination. One of the debates that’s raged now and again in the comments to this column has been over the usefulness/utility of DPS warriors. As a tanking warrior myself, you may have expectations that I don’t like DPS warrior, that I look down on them or think myself superior to them because I’m a main tank. Nothing could be further from the truth. My guild’s two DPS warriors are a tremendous asset to the raid, they have solid knowledge of the class and its mechanics both DPS and tank, they’re valuable sounding boards for every fight and they help make tanking easier in a variety of ways.

So today I’m going to talk about DPS warrior/Tanking warrior synergy. How come I’m so pro-DPS warrior when I hate DPSing in raids and love tanking? Because while yes, a bad DPS warrior is a liability (just like a bad player in general is a liability) a good solid DPS warrior is not only a great source of, well, damage per second, he or she is also an asset to a tank.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: When warriors work together

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