Just a quickie.....

Ok, I had some sparetime at work, and I am tired of reading about Statistics. I just wanted to drop a quick update on some things.

First off, I actually went into a Heroic UB on my Pally today. It was fun, I topped the DPS meter, and my mana didn't go to much below 65% from what I noticed. I was dropping the occaisional Consecrate and doing the standard rotation. I had SoB up for most of the run, and Jendreka the Healy Shaman did notice, but he said it wasn't a big deal. The SoB buff is still coming though so we will see if SoB remains noticable but not a big deal, or if it becomes a liabilty because it starts hurting me too much. I also used my DPS macro button for the first half of the instance. I did not notice any difference between macro DPS and freestyle, however I had more control on freestyle and it was less boring. So the macro is gone since it is less then fun. I got the Cassock of the Loyal out the run, which kinda makes me want to get the rest of the set just for the aesthetics of it.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth with all the Paladin stuff. I can't get into Dradis at this point, even though things seem to be ok. I guess knowing that hotfixes like the Wings nerf and the stealth JoJ nerf just don't make me feel really settled with the class. There is also a bug fix coming down for JoW, which could mean nothing, or it could mean that I will have mana issues after all. Its hard to tell.

I am now getting super owned in PvP too since I have no way to kill someone from the start. Generally, once you are all up in someones grill, they aren't to keen on letting you stay there unless they happen to be melee DPS. In that case, they make sure that you are controlled so you can't finish doing sustained DPS on them. So basically, I am back to being useless in PvP. Not a big deal since I don't PvP much. But it does continue to contribute to the feeling of "WTF Blizz" since a lot these changes are due to PvP issues, and it would seem that the only way to balance PvP is to make Paladins a non-threat. Or at least less of a threat then the Mage or Boomkin on the ridge hell bent on giving you a 10k damage enema.

All is well on the Warlock front, however. Draedus is happily flinging ghost at people and watching them scream in terror while she works on perfecting her Macerena. I worked on my grinding skills at the Firewing area as well, and chain killing Blood Elves for 45 minutes does fantastic things to your XP bar. Not to mention it was fun. I also did a Blood Furnace run earlier in the day and I topped the damage meter.

Comparing Ret DPS to Warlock DPS: Ret DPS is very structered and there is not much room to deviate. Mostly, Ret is about targeting, which I basically have down now, and positioning. I am still working on the last part. Afflock DPS is more about watching about 16 timers at the same time, managing your health, your mana, and your pets mana, and switching targets at the right time to get the right DoT up. I also have to watch for Nightfall procs for those instant Shadowbolts. Glyph of Corruption + Nightfall = A Lot of Instant Cast Shadowbolts. Afflock is a lot more involved I think, and that makes it a lot fun, but it can be hectic. I still haven't hit 70 yet so no Seed of Corruption. I imagine SoC will just add to the madness, but it should be fun.

After playing this Warlock for a while, I have realized that the Paladin Bubble is possibly the worst mechanic in the game. It is the ultimate "Oh Shit" button, but why have that when you can have more useful tools? In the case of the Warlock that tool is having three types of fears that do not cause some inane debuff on me that prevents me from casting another fear. Yeah there is DR, but who cares, that doesnt affect new targets and it certainly doesn't limit your options like a 12 second invicibility on a 5 minute cooldown does. That is a 4% uptime by the way, which is a horrible thing to balanced around.

Most classes have more innovative things that have much more uptime and allow for much greater flexibilty in a lot of situations. I won't make a list because I want this to be a quick post and its getting very long as it is. The point is, the Bubble is not something that should even be available because no one needs to be invincible to be viable and Paladins get to use it so little that losing it would not be that big of a deal if it was replaced with proper abilites.

To sum up, Paladin is too unstable to risk getting excited about again. Warlock is serving hot death in a variety of flavors.