Haste Hotfix and Mountain Climbing
Big news on the hotfix front for Protection Paladins. You can read the announcement on WoWhead.
First off, hello haste. Second, ouch on the Alabaster Shield nerf. I'm still pretending I'm a maintankadin for the moment. I'm not sure if I will continue to Glyph Alabaster Shield though I'm not sure exactly what I'd swap it for. Normally, I run Alabaster, Consecrator, and Divine Protection. Maybe I'll replace Alabaster with Focused Shield.
Theck, master of numbers and all things theorycraft, has a new blogpost out on the Haste change.
You should read the whole thing because Theck is a good writer and there is a ton of information that is helpful to understand the entirety of the change.
Here were my takeaways.
I currently have about 1147 haste on my Character sheet (logged off as Ret). Of course, I just made a Greater Mastery Taladrite to put into the belt I got. They sell for about 2k gold on my server. Ugh.
I was also interested to learn that Holy Shield and Divine Purpose is the most popular talent choices. Seraphim and Holy Avenger are the most common for Mythic progression. I've been running Holy Shield plus Holy Avenger because I liked the control Holy Avenger gives but I may go back to Divine Purpose.
Nothing like a little news to shake up your Wednesday.
Garrison
On the Garrison front, I really enjoy having a Level 3 Alchemy Lab in my Garrison. I’m able to make all my own Flasks and potions for raiding and not have to buy them on the AH. I've got a stack of Armor potions as well as a stack of Strength potions, plus flasks for both DPS and Tanking. Alchemy Lab, Gem Boutiqe and Salvage Yard are working great as my three small buildings.
Raiding
On the raiding front, the guild I ran with reconvened a couple of days later and once again we were short on healers. I had already given serious thought to putting together a Holy set and all the problems getting healers only reinforced that idea to me. Eventually we were able to pick up some healers from Group Finder and we made our way up to Tectus.
This was my first time this deep into Highmaul. I had read the strategies on Icy-viens.com and watched the videos. I felt like I was ready. They put me on Tectus first. We made the first pull and I died almost immediately. It seems that there was a minor detail I had missed in my preparation. I needed to tank Tectus at a 90 degree angle to the raid. That was easy enough to correct but one of the PUG healers had apparently seen enough and dropped. Again we ventured into Group Finder and found another priest.
The next pull went better. I survived a bit longer and we got through the first phase okay. Both my co-Tank (monk) and I picked up our Shards and we killed his first while keeping a Warlock pet on mine to try to keep him from getting too many stacks of the Accretion damage buff. When the monk’s Shard died, things went ape bleep bananas. Yes, I self censor. You're welcome.
I had read and watched and prepared, but nothing really prepared me for the level of chaos as the 4 little motes cast their abilities. Walls of rocks formed all around us and people started dying left and right. It was insane.
We continued to work on Tectus, each time getting a little better but buckling as the 4 motes got busy. The next pull, I saved all my cooldowns (DP, AD, and GoAK) and chained them all as the first Shard died. This time we were able to power through and the rest of the fight was clean up.
We moved on to the Twins. I tanked Pol while the Monk took Phemos. After the insanity of Tectus, this fight felt almost serene. The only problem I had was with Quake where the ground gets covered with fire. It brought back bad memories of many a night of wipes doing Firefighter in Ulduar and too many wipes on Archimonde. Toward the end of the fight, I got turned around, soaked too many debuffs from the fire and died. Luckily, the Monk was able to pick up both bosses and tank them both through the last 10% or so of their health. We one-shot the Twins. /flex.
Fresh off that success we pulled toward Ko’ragh. This fight was interesting. We assigned everyone their roles. Either because it was getting late or we were hitting the limits of our gear, we just couldn’t break through the shield fast enough. I had problems with the adds that spawn. I was able to pull them into the void zones, but then I get silenced. I unglyphed Divine Proection to give me some additional magical resistance, but it wasn’t enough. After a couple of wipes people started leaving and we called the raid.
I’m now 5/7 in Highmaul Normal.
I really liked the group and the guys from the host guild seemed like good guys. I would give serious consideration to joining them full time expect for two issues. First, they live on a PVP server which means I won’t transfer there. If they ever get to the point where they want to try Mythic, I’ll either have to leave their group or transfer to a PVP realm. Sure, its one sided, but there will still be times I’ll be alone out in the world. I can’t see myself doing that. The other issue is they've shown a willingness to push beyond their stated end times (midnight CST). I’m sure most guilds do that, but these guys are already pushing the envelope of how late I can stay online with just their normal times.
If you are looking for a group to run with, especially if you are a healer, I would recommend you check out their runs. You can find them here: https://openraid.us/events/view/258496.
Secondary Stats
The Haste stat is now 11.1% more effective. For example, characters at level 100 now receive a 1% increase per 90 Haste (up from 1% per 100 Haste).
Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Protection
Sacred Duty now causes the Paladin to gain 30% (up from 5%) more of the Haste stat from all sources.
Glyph of Alabaster Shield now increases Shield of the Righteous’ damage by 3% (down from 10%) per stack.
First off, hello haste. Second, ouch on the Alabaster Shield nerf. I'm still pretending I'm a maintankadin for the moment. I'm not sure if I will continue to Glyph Alabaster Shield though I'm not sure exactly what I'd swap it for. Normally, I run Alabaster, Consecrator, and Divine Protection. Maybe I'll replace Alabaster with Focused Shield.
Theck, master of numbers and all things theorycraft, has a new blogpost out on the Haste change.
You should read the whole thing because Theck is a good writer and there is a ton of information that is helpful to understand the entirety of the change.
Here were my takeaways.
- "For pretty much every talent selection, you’ll want to prioritize haste."
- "Haste/mastery focus won’t serve you poorly for any talent combination, so if you want to be able to swap back and forth between talents freely that may be the most versatile strategy"
- "my (Theck) summary of stat valuation:
- Bonus Armor > Haste (to 50%) > Crit (Seraphim) >= Mastery > Crit = Vers > Multistrike > Haste (above 50%)"
- "we should stop stacking haste when we hit 3858 character-sheet haste rating, or about 42.87%. That’s a pretty steep target, so it’s not clear we’ll be able to reach it even in Tier 18. "
I currently have about 1147 haste on my Character sheet (logged off as Ret). Of course, I just made a Greater Mastery Taladrite to put into the belt I got. They sell for about 2k gold on my server. Ugh.
I was also interested to learn that Holy Shield and Divine Purpose is the most popular talent choices. Seraphim and Holy Avenger are the most common for Mythic progression. I've been running Holy Shield plus Holy Avenger because I liked the control Holy Avenger gives but I may go back to Divine Purpose.
Nothing like a little news to shake up your Wednesday.
Garrison
On the Garrison front, I really enjoy having a Level 3 Alchemy Lab in my Garrison. I’m able to make all my own Flasks and potions for raiding and not have to buy them on the AH. I've got a stack of Armor potions as well as a stack of Strength potions, plus flasks for both DPS and Tanking. Alchemy Lab, Gem Boutiqe and Salvage Yard are working great as my three small buildings.
Raiding
On the raiding front, the guild I ran with reconvened a couple of days later and once again we were short on healers. I had already given serious thought to putting together a Holy set and all the problems getting healers only reinforced that idea to me. Eventually we were able to pick up some healers from Group Finder and we made our way up to Tectus.
This was my first time this deep into Highmaul. I had read the strategies on Icy-viens.com and watched the videos. I felt like I was ready. They put me on Tectus first. We made the first pull and I died almost immediately. It seems that there was a minor detail I had missed in my preparation. I needed to tank Tectus at a 90 degree angle to the raid. That was easy enough to correct but one of the PUG healers had apparently seen enough and dropped. Again we ventured into Group Finder and found another priest.
The next pull went better. I survived a bit longer and we got through the first phase okay. Both my co-Tank (monk) and I picked up our Shards and we killed his first while keeping a Warlock pet on mine to try to keep him from getting too many stacks of the Accretion damage buff. When the monk’s Shard died, things went ape bleep bananas. Yes, I self censor. You're welcome.
I had read and watched and prepared, but nothing really prepared me for the level of chaos as the 4 little motes cast their abilities. Walls of rocks formed all around us and people started dying left and right. It was insane.
We continued to work on Tectus, each time getting a little better but buckling as the 4 motes got busy. The next pull, I saved all my cooldowns (DP, AD, and GoAK) and chained them all as the first Shard died. This time we were able to power through and the rest of the fight was clean up.
We moved on to the Twins. I tanked Pol while the Monk took Phemos. After the insanity of Tectus, this fight felt almost serene. The only problem I had was with Quake where the ground gets covered with fire. It brought back bad memories of many a night of wipes doing Firefighter in Ulduar and too many wipes on Archimonde. Toward the end of the fight, I got turned around, soaked too many debuffs from the fire and died. Luckily, the Monk was able to pick up both bosses and tank them both through the last 10% or so of their health. We one-shot the Twins. /flex.
Fresh off that success we pulled toward Ko’ragh. This fight was interesting. We assigned everyone their roles. Either because it was getting late or we were hitting the limits of our gear, we just couldn’t break through the shield fast enough. I had problems with the adds that spawn. I was able to pull them into the void zones, but then I get silenced. I unglyphed Divine Proection to give me some additional magical resistance, but it wasn’t enough. After a couple of wipes people started leaving and we called the raid.
I’m now 5/7 in Highmaul Normal.
I really liked the group and the guys from the host guild seemed like good guys. I would give serious consideration to joining them full time expect for two issues. First, they live on a PVP server which means I won’t transfer there. If they ever get to the point where they want to try Mythic, I’ll either have to leave their group or transfer to a PVP realm. Sure, its one sided, but there will still be times I’ll be alone out in the world. I can’t see myself doing that. The other issue is they've shown a willingness to push beyond their stated end times (midnight CST). I’m sure most guilds do that, but these guys are already pushing the envelope of how late I can stay online with just their normal times.
If you are looking for a group to run with, especially if you are a healer, I would recommend you check out their runs. You can find them here: https://openraid.us/events/view/258496.
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