WWI: Paris

OMG DIABLO 3 !

No, we're not going to talk about that game although i'm very excited about that announcement and looking forward to play it.
But Diablo 3 wasn't the only topic that was dealt with in Paris, they also shared quite a bit of WotLK info, some of it was very cool and exciting other stuff was....erhm...wel, crap.
The next few weeks will be very busy, i'll be talking about all the stuff that has been mentioned on the WWI and the stuff that's floating around the internet regarding the wotlk alpha and give you my opinion about the matter.

First things first, right after the announcement and the openingceremoy they held the Class Panel where people could ask questions about all the classes in the next expansion, including the much anticipated Deathknight.

Druid

• Entangling roots will be useable indoor.
• Nourish will be a new healing spell, healing for more hit points for each HoT effect on the target.
• There isn't any plan to change cyclone

Druids are finally getting what npc druids had all this time: Entangling roots that will work indoor. This means we have another form of CC for melee-oriented classes (it won't have much effect on casters) in instances and solocontent. A great (and long awaited) PVE change which will have a minor effect on pvp being entangling someone inside WSG flagbuildings....but who cares about battlegrounds anyway.
Yay ! A new healing spell that looks very, very interesting and promising. I wonder if the HoT effects only means druidHoT's or other HoTs aswel (renew). If it would be all HoT effects then it will be awesome for MT healing where the priests and druids usually put their HoT's on and let the singletarget healers do the rest.
Cyclone won't be changed. Wel, cool because as a paladin i hate cyclone with every fibre of my body and therefor should be removed from the game entirely :P . No serious, cyclone works fine as it is and i wouldn't know what they should change about it. It's rather imba in arena but what isn't these days *cough*

Pre-expansion burnout

Lately a lot of people quit the game or switched to another game until the new expansion is released and when you ask them why they mostly answer the same thing: "i was bored". Now this is not the first time this happened, just before TBC came out we saw the same thing.
Dailies don't seem to keep the people ingame (duh) and this burnout especially caters to 2 groups of people: On one side you have the casual player who doesn't raid, quest a bit and pvp when they are up for it. They jump ship because the lack of solo content that isn't repeatable, because -let's face it- when you done the dailies a couple times they might get boring quite fast for a lot of people. The other group are the hardcore raiders who are on the bleeding edge and killed everything that needs to be killed. They finished the game so there is nothing they haven't seen yet, so they either roll an alt and enjoy the game that way or pick up other games (especially the recently released Age of Conan is popular with the crowd)

What can be done to cater to this problem ? A very tough question if you ask me as i still enjoy the game and really think there is loads of content to enjoy. My biggest remedy against boredom is just rolling an alt and do some content i haven't done before (be it a new class, new race, new faction or just a new area to quest in), but i do realise not everyone likes to level.
But the biggest remedy is dimming down on your playtime and only do the things you enjoy the most. It's no use to sit idle in Shattrath or any other major city just to log out after 30 minutes realising you haven't done anything besides parading around on your mount and your bag full of epics. If you want to use WoW as an Instant Messenger, be my guest but it's not worth to pay for that as there are enough free alternative to talk to your friends (messenger, googletank, skype,...)
Something you could do is convince a couple of your friends to reroll with you (be it on a different server or just a fresh alt on your main realm) and level on a casual speed while having a blast with your friends.

And if all else fails and you still can't find any fun in the game, just put it down for a while and wait for the next expansion. There are tons of good games to play aside WoW, enjoy them aswel and don't tunnelvision yourself on one game.

-Dave out

The light: abandoned faith or still needed?

Hello and welcome on Dave likes cookies.

For the first post of this brand-spanking-new blog i'm going to tackle the problems of endgame paladins. (the fact my main is a paladin has nothing to do with it, i swear ! )
Are paladins needed in endgame raids apart for their ability to buff, cleanse and rez ? Recently i've seen examples where other healers are being selected for raids whereas paladins are not because of the nature of the instance. I'm talking about Sunwel Plateau in particular where there happens so much at the same time, where everyone takes a crapload of damage at the same time and where classes with raidheal abilities really shine. (priests, shaman and druids)
This has also been stated by numerous highend raidingguilds who are in the competition for world first. Recently Neg (a restoshaman from SKgaming) said the following:

"Paladins are the healers who really get left behind. They were the kings of healing in early Burning Crusade, but the most efficient way to use them in Sunwell is quite sadly having them outside of the raid buffing people."

Honestly i can only agree with said statement, sad as it is. The paladin's healingefficiency is just too low to be competitive with other healers in SWP. This isn't only the case in highend raiding but also in the newly implemented Magister's Terrace where groupdamage is also quite high and have to be healed rather quick, something paladins aren't able to do that well.
So my question is: "Will the paladins go back to what they were initially when we started raiding MC? Buff - and cleansebots with the additional heal here an there ? Or will Blizzard take a look at our healingcapabilities and improve it so we're a competitive healingclass in endgame raiding again?"
This won't be a question that will have an answer in the first few months, we'll just have to wait and see until WotLK is released and check out what new talents and spells paladins get. But for now we're pretty redundant and outclassed by other healers, which is a tad sad tbh. While paladins are great healers for lower bracket raidinstances where we excel at MThealing and throwing heals around because people aren't receiving that much raiddamage, we are being ditched when they hit SWP for restoshamans.
To conclude the first -fairly brief- topic of this new blog, i'd like to give a token of support to my fellow paladins and hope for the best in Wrath.

-Dave out