After reading the first few pages of this thread, the raid leader in me came out and got a new perspective on the upcoming Emblem of Conquest changes in patch 3.2 “Call of the Crusade”.

This post in particular has really struck the nail on the head. One of the problems I’ve run into recently (now that Naxx25 has officially been dropped), is roster change and the inevitable issue with gearing up new raiders. With the changes to Emblems, new raiders can effectively “catch up” to (current tier)-1, so in essence they are ready to start the content. The only issue I have with this kind of gearing is that weapons are not available (outside of raid drops) past iLvl 200. This means physical dps classes are going to trail behind a bit with this system, as they are more dependent on their actual weapons than casters, healers, and tanks.

Hopefully this will be a positive change, and hopefully won’t reduce guilds to their “weekly farm of Naxx25″ being the highlight of the week.

We’ve got a few patches headed our way. Tomorrow, we are supposedly getting patch 3.0.9. This brings about a few class changes, some spell changes, and a few other minor things.

Now me being a paladin, I am greatly looking forward to 30-minute seals. I don’t know why this wasn’t changed back when shaman weapon imbues were lengthened.

When this came up, it made me think, why haven’t they made Righteous Fury undispellable? I think the largest reason is the position of Improved Righteous Fury in the protection talent tree. Its way too low for the benefit it gives. Making this undispellable would allow ret to have a permanent 6% damage reduction, since they will already be deep in prot for Imp HoJ.

The next patch to head our way, will likely be 3.1. Dev’s have already started releasing information about this patch. Lots of class changes, some bigger things have been announced. Replenishment has been given to more classes. I agree with Josh about the effects this has on raids. In my opinion, if Blizzard makes a buff “mandatory”, it should just be scrapped and baked in, like Blessing of Salvation was, and hopefully with 3.1 Blessing of Sanctuary. If I’m throwing together a 10 man for Ulduar, and I somehow, don’t have one of the 4 classes that give Replenishment in my optimal set up, I’m going to have to bench one of my good raiders simply to fill a buff slot. This goes against Blizzard’s “bring the player, not the class” mentality of Wrath of the Lich King.

Additionally in 3.1, Blizzard has announced Dual Specializations will be delivered. From what has been said by dev’s this will give you two talent specs that are your “permanent specs” and you can switch between these freely, in town and more than likely in the “prep time” for PvP matches. Now they have said it won’t be free out of town, but not prohibitively expensive, since people could just port/summon out of the instance and back to town.

I busted my ass this week and went from 70-78 playing Monday to Thursday. I took the weekend off, as my eyes were about to explode.

Additionally, I set up a guild on the Sen’jin realm, Fury Untold is the name. We’re gonna stay in 10 man content initially with a 2 night a week raid schedule. This being the 3rd guild I’ve started in my ~3.5 year WoW career, I can definately say, recruiting your initial player base sucks. Once you get enough people to get a group together (with enough room for an unguilded pug or two) it’s not too bad, but damn.

Personally, I’ve been taking my time leveling my paladin. I didn’t pick Wrath up for a few days after launch, and have been working my way across my 3 70’s as well as my upcoming (63 atm) shadow priest, and my Deathknight (currently 61).

I’ve only knocked out a few quest hubs in Howling Fjord so far, but I’m liking the layout and style I’ve seen so far. I worked my way through the Utgarde Keep quest line as fast as possible and ran it. I have been ret since I headed up here and tanked UK just fine. Although my TPS was horrible due to Divine Storm and Crusader Strike being nerfed to physical damage (was holy).

Now that I’ve gotten the feel for the Deathknight class, I can return my focus back to my paladin, and hopefully ding 80 in the near future.

After a week or so to really play with the achievement system, I firgure it’s time I go ahead and give it a run down.

The thing that really sparked my interest to write about this was the comments made by Rohan, about the difference between the WoW achiement system, and the similar concept in Warhammer online.

He does go over them pretty well, the WoW achievement system (shortened to AS in this post) is pretty transparent. All of the achievment point rewarding goals are listed before you. You can see your targets and work towards those goals. However, in the Warhammer equivalent, all achievements are “hidden” in the fact that you can’t see what they are, or what it takes to accomplish them.

Now while I do like the idea of being surprised by a unexpected/random achievemet, if it were not for the visibility of the goals, lots of the developers efforts would have gone in noticed.

Now, like I mentioned all of WoW’s AP awarding achievements are listed, but there is an additional category that has no reward at all, the “Feats of Strength”. These achievements are hidden to the user, in that they cannot see them before they have accomplished them. They are a little different from the normal goals in the AS, and I’ve only gotten about 3-4 of them (most retroactive from past accomplishments).

I like the direction Blizzard has taken with the AS, it’s definately brought a new aspect to the game, as well as given us high level characters something to do until WotLK drops and we get to level our many alts again.

They released a new build on the beta servers. A few updates for every class, but most important to me is the 3% mitigation buff they put into Shield of the Templar.

With the 30% hp nerf that was in 3.0.2 dungeons and raiding have become a joke. The guild is making an attempt at Hyjal tonight. I really wish I could be there. The Heart of Kazrogal would be nice, as well as T6 gloves.

Blizzard will take the realms down for a very extended maintenance (2am-2pm PST) tonight. This is very good news for most classes and specs. I know there are a few out there who feel they got the short end of the buff stick, but I think most things are pretty good.

To divert the happy feeling I’ve got here, there is one thing that has been bothering me about the class changes lately: Taunts.

It seems Blizzard was more than ok to give the other tanks AoE ability like paladins, but in general they have always pulled the “homogenization” card when talking about changes. I understand this point, but so much has been given to warrior, and I’m not going to lie, we have received our share of buffs too, however, one thing paladins need is a RELIABLE taunt.

Righteous Defense is nice in certain situations, but it’s downfalls out weigh the benefits. As many paladins have suggested, I would love to see RD switched to 2 ranks, one that taunts the mob directly, and the other that taunts the mob directly as well as two addition enemies attacking their target.

This change would eliminate many annoyances in 25 man raid scenarios. Several occasions during BT trash, I’ve had to get a mob off another tank, however, I don’t really have an ability that just pulls a single target from another tank. Every other tank has (or will have, regarding DKs) a single target taunt. Blizzard has responded that they don’t feel it’s needed. If it’s not needed then why doesn’t one of the other tanks have a “alternative taunt”?