Taugrim's MMORPG Blog

This HD video is narrated footage of my 80 “Protribution”-spec’d Paladin in an Arathi Basin battleground (queued solo) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, patch 3.3.5.

Protribution is a Protection/Retribution spec that offers a functional blend of survivability, CC, and burst damage. There is a good Protribution guide written by Stax on the WoW Paladin forum, and tarja wrote an excellent article covering the spec’s playstyle on the LoDBlog.

(Double-click on the video to see it in higher-resolution / larger screen size on YouTube)

You’ll notice that I didn’t include any clips where I bubbled. I definitely use bubbles and longer cooldowns whenever I think they’re needed. E.g. we were getting rocked in the first 5 minutes of that Arathi Basin match and I burned both Lay on Hands and Divine Protection defending nodes. They were on cooldown when I was fighting that well-geared Warlock, but it did give me an opportunity to mention the importance of kiting, even as a melee.

If you have any questions, feedback, or comments, please post ‘em!

I’m definitely still in the learning process and have several areas to improve on as a Protribution Paladin, e.g.:

• managing my mana more carefully. Several times in the video my gas tank got pretty low
• weaving in defensive abilities (Holy Shield, Cleanse, Sacred Shield, etc) in between my attack ability cooldowns

Gear

The majority of the gear I’m using in the video is obtainable through battlegrounds and Wintergrasp:

• From honor points: helm, necklace (renting Relentless as I grind honor), shoulders, cloak, chest, belt, boots, a ring, Medallion trinket
• From Wintergrasp marks: PVP trinket (a placeholder trinket until I get anything better LOL)

The following pieces came from PVE:

• From VoA25: Wrathful hands, T9 PVE legs for the +block value
• From PVE: 1H axe from ToC10, wrists from heroic Pit of Saron (to be replaced with Wrathful)
• From badges: libram, shield

As noted above, I still need to grind Honor points to replace some of my gear.

Once I get a better 1H weapon and shield I will apply Berserking and Titanium Plating respectively.

Spec

Here’s a link to my 58/13 PVP spec, which is commonly known as the “Jagoss” spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZVGzGrzghsIufdVf0hbc:RMLcVz

As you can tell, after the no-brainer Avenger’s Shield glyph, I am using the following glyphs:

• Hammer of Justice: the reason is simple, if your Avenger’s Shield is on cooldown and your opponent is 11-15 yards away, we have no gap closer aside from our run buff. That extra 5 yards is well worth the glyph, esp against kiters and healers
• Shield of Righteousness: this is a debatable choice, but I haven’t gotten skilled yet about managing mana as Protection, so this helps

So far Protribution has been a very functional PVP spec and the honor grind has been worth the investment in time.

P.S. I am relieved to be done with the leveling and basic gearing process for my Paladin, my 1st alt in WoW to reach the level cap. As you know if you read my blog, I have disliked the leveling process in every game except for WAR. I love endgame PVP where I can face opponents of equal or better gear (when I have at least a baseline set as I do now).

P.P.S. I plan to publish more Protribution videos from battlegrounds and hopefully arena. Stay tuned!

P.P.P.S. Hey this video’s in HD! I found out how to create HD videos with Windows Movie Maker on XP. The quality difference between 480p and 720p is huge

I made the decision just over a month ago to level my stale level 40 Paladin alt to 80. This is my first alt ever to reach max level, as I dislike the leveling process.

On top of that, in terms of real life:

1. work’s been quite hectic
2. we were on a vacation in Maui to celebrate our anniversary

The reason for leveling a Paladin to 80 is simple: I want to play a durable melee in PVP. Initially I thought Retribution might be fun to play, but I’ve been doing some research and watching videos, and I am very intrigued by the “Protribution” spec, which is a Protection / Retribution hybrid. The spec has good CC, good burst, and is very durable. It will suck for healing but you can’t have everything.

So I am splitting my time between gearing up my Paladin (3.5k GearScore, only 4 pieces of epic PVP gear at the moment) and still BG’ing with my Moonkin. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to capture any Moonkin PVP footage that I fight illustrative and compelling. But I’m trying

Once I get my Paladin decently geared (i200+ epics in all slots), I’ll try to capture Paladin PVP footage as well.

Stay tuned!

It’s not what you might think. E.g. the lack of survivability, the lack of counters that other caster classes have, etc.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced is simply the unwillingness from the playerbase to try 2v2′ing with a Balance Druid, aka Moonkin. Aside from my real life friend from high school (who plays a Mage) and his co-worker, I’ve only found 1 person (Kashmír, an Enhancement Shaman) willing to give it a legit shot. I’ll get to Kashmír in a bit.

To see what it’s like partnering with other classes, over the 6 weeks I’ve responded to individuals looking for a 2s partner on chat. Most people were not willing to give a 1.1k resilience-geared Moonkin a try, and even the few that did remained skeptical – even when we had a winning record together.

Let me give you an example. One of them was a Warlock with a team with a Team Rating (TR) of 1475. I checked on wowarmory and his team had been hovering in the 1400s for a couple weeks. He was asking for a Mage or Resto Druid on /2, so I sent him a whisper asking if he’d try a Moonkin. He agreed and invited me to his 2v2 team.

We had neither practice partnering with the other class nor with each other. We lost our first 3 matches (and to his credit he was patient), then went 11-6, so 11 wins and 9 losses overall. That showed me that we could hold our own around 1500 even though we were new team mates. At the time, I didn’t have any Wrathful gear with a TR requirement. My PR (Personal Rating) started at 1000 and finished at 1230, so I was not too far from getting the 1st Wrathful upgrade. I logged, and while I was offline the Lock replaced me on the team with a Mage. The Lock sent a very polite email, which I appreciate, saying that he wanted to try a more conventional partner. He found a Mage. I checked the next day and it turns out they had a losing record together, even though the Mage was better geared than me.

In the past the Lock’s highest TR had been around 1600, and IMO if we kept playing together and I got the Wrathful upgrades at 1300, 1400, etc, I’m quite confident we would have broken his highest TR. But, your partner has to believe that too.

Fortunately, about a week ago Kashmír the Enhancement Shaman was looking for a 2s partner on chat. He was very willing to give me a shot, as he had met a Wrathful-geared Enhancement Shaman in a battleground who had gotten to 1950 TR with a Moonkin.

As with the Lock, neither Kash nor I had played with each other’s class/spec. When I joined his 2v2 team (Beasteh), the TR was around 1380. We went 48-37 over our first 85 matches, and that was including 6 DCs on his part. If the DCs hadn’t happened, we would have gone 51-34. And on top of that he didn’t have a working mic so our communication was limited to me talking, him typing. Nevertheless, we got to 1551 TR in three days and Kash got his 1550 TR achievement. Our matches go incredibly fast and I’ve seen firsthand that an Enhancement Shaman packs a lot of burst, good survivability, and strong utility – contrary to the common perception that Enhancement Shaman is a weak 2v2 class.

This week Kash got a working mic and we’re now at 1617 TR. The competition has gotten steadily better in terms composition, gear, and skill, but we haven’t hit our wall quite yet. Neither Kash nor I have Wrathful set gear or a weapon, whereas our competitors often do, partly because it is late in the arena season and getting to 1800 now is harder than it was months ago. Both of us want to try getting to 1800 with our preferred spec instead of facerolling with a Resto spec. With 145 matches played together, we’re still learning and experimenting, especially against healer/DPS comps.

If we can crack 1700 or so TR, I’ll record some footage for a 2v2 narrated video.

This video is narrated footage of my 80 Balance Druid in an Eye of the Storm battleground (queued solo) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion patch 3.3.3.

I made this video to showcase the kiting mechanics for the Balance spec, as they’re key to defeating opponents and staying alive in PVP. For most of the video I am running without heal support and outnumbered:

(Double-click on the video to see it in higher-resolution / larger screen size on YouTube)

Gear

Most of the gear I’m using in the video is easily obtainable, with the exception of my weapon:

• From honor points: necklace, cloak, chest, wrists, hands, belt, boots, both rings, both trinkets
• From Wintergrasp marks: shoulders
• From arena + honor points: helm, legs
• From Emblems of Triumph: idol
• From ICC10 (Festergut): Abracadaver staff

The staff allows me to reach the hit cap and use the 2 points from the Balance of Power talent elsewhere. I will be gradually upgrading my gear over time – I started 2v2 arena’ing with an old friend who plays a Mage and we’re still in the learning process.

Spec

Here’s a link to my 54/17 PVP spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0xGfuicoIzhquRuZf0Izb:ijfV0m

I have tried many different Balance PVP specs and the one I’m using now is what has worked the most effectively for battlegrounds and arena. My spec is similar to that of the highest-rated 2v2 Moonkin I could find: Leathi.

I may provide some commentary on spec / talents in another post.

Edit (2010/07/09): I’ve switched to a different 54/17 spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0xGcuiIoIz0AuRuZf0Izb:ijfV0m

You can read more about this spec in my comment below.

Addons

Here are the list of addons that I highly recommend for Moonkin PVP:

• RangeDisplay: shows range to targets – simple but invaluable
• SquawkAndAwe: shows timers on offensive abilities
• HotCandy: shows timers on HoTs
• Quartz: excellent cast bar addon
• Gladius: must-have for arenas

With these addons, you can see:

• the range to targets just above my head
• my HoTs just to the left of my character
• my DoTs and cooldowns to the right of my character

If you have any comments / feedback / questions please post ‘em.

P.S. I’m back playing WoW (World of Warcraft), after 2.5 years away from the game.

When I quit WoW back in late 2007, I never expected to play it again, because there were several things that I didn’t like, e.g. the grindy nature of the gear treadmill and the way itemization and specs were handled. WoW has changed dramatically for the better for someone like me, so I decided to try it again. Back in The Burning Crusade (TBC), I played a 70 Feral Druid, and I wanted to play Moonkin this time around, in particular because there is so little material on Moonkin PVP.

This isn’t yet another thread to complain about gPotato (the game operator) or Astrum Nival (the game developer). From what I’ve heard – firsthand at the Allods Online Launch Party hosted by gPotato during the Game Developer Conference a few weeks ago – gPotato is trying to sort out some of the future game patches (e.g. v 1.0.07 and on) with AN and for the time being, gPotato has wisely opted not to implement the 1.0.07 patches and on.

The reason I’ve stopped playing AO is simply because I was bored at endgame and the options for playing didn’t look like much fun.

I was hoping to find a lot of PVP action at level 40, but there are no high-level zones where players go to PVP. The level 35+ zones (Coldberg/Avilon/Dragon Ring/Yazes Shard) have a pretty high density of mobs, which affects PVP, and most players flag themselves off in those zones. Most of the fights I’ve had against other level 40 players was in Asee-Teph, the level 23-27 zone, which by definition doesn’t make much sense. What this game needs is a zone designed for PVP at 40.

On top of that, gear makes a big difference in AO, and at this stage of the server’s maturity there are two options for getting geared up:

• run the daily reputation repeatables to get level 36 blue gear, or
• join a guild, re-spec to Full Healer, and run heroic instances to get level 38 blue gear

I don’t want to grind PVE to be competitive gear-wise for PVP, especially when there isn’t that much PVP action in the first place.

I’m not the only person to reach this conclusion. Several people I’ve known since early Open Beta who reached level cap ahead of me have expressed the same feeling of boredom. So I’m done with Allods indefinitely. To those of you I met in-game on Tensess, please keep in touch

I do want to play a game where I can PVP most of the time at level cap and remain reasonably geared without having to spend more time in PVE than PVP.

From what I’ve heard, this is now doable in World of Warcraft (WoW), which I haven’t played since November 2007. So I am considering dusting off my level 70 Feral Druid and trying WoW PVP at 80 with Feral or Balance spec. The reason I quit WoW back in 2007 was the gear grind. PVP epic gear is now is accessible even to casual players. People have complained that WoW has become too easy mode in terms of gearing up, but for a player who is thinking about coming back, that makes the game much more attractive.

If you’ve played WoW at 80 I’d love to hear your thoughts about the PVP.