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Cataclysm Paladin Preview or stuff to activate on every COOL DOWN!

(Apparently clarifications have been posted already, will get to those after the raid!)

The early class previews are almost always wrong, in the sense that what actually gets into the expansion resembles it only slightly.  The early class previews for Wrath had us thinking casters would be constantly worrying about mana.  So, that said, here's my take on the Cataclysm Paladin Preview. 

If healing was the same in Cataclysm as is in Wrath then it would get boring.  The expansion would just be a bunch of new content which will play exactly like the content in Wrath.  A new expansion should change up our play style, force us to learn new ways to be excellent players. 

• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1.
• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins

Holy Paladins can Crusader Strike and Retribution Paladins can Holy Shock.  The world has truly been turned upside down. 

• Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

This sounds a lot like the description of Beacon when it was first "previewed."  Proposed macro text, "Come close Brothers, so I can touch you with my Healing Hands!"  Seriously, based on the lack of any more information then raids will no longer be constantly topped off, ACTIVATE ON EVERY COOL DOWN.  I expect this to be a lot different once they actually start to implement and test it.

• Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. ... For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. ... 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

It's a smart bomb HOT.  Does it only heal one target, or does it constantly switch to whichever target is the lowest?  Too many questions to have any opinion on how this works, so I say, ACTIVATE ON EVERY COOL DOWN.  

• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target.  That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer. 

The intention is for healers to be making smart decisions instead of just making sure they get something off every GCD.  It makes sense to remove the need to refresh the SS every couple of minutes since that is a pretty mindless behavior.  

Making SS last 30 minutes on a tank is reinforcing the tank healing niche.  They want to improve the toolbox, but not really saying how that will happen.

• We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. 

Surprise! Just like all the healer previews (except Druids) the three heal model has been presented.  A fast expensive heal, an efficient heal, and a slow big heal.   I have to admit that I rarely concern myself with overlapping other healers while healing the raid.  The idea that target selection and heal selection will be more critical is going to be a challenge.

• Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.

The Beacon is what enabled raid healing in the first place.  This seems to reinforce the tank healer niche which they are trying to fix.  The question will be, does the tank need a big heal, if not then Flash the raid, if so heal the tank.  That puts them squarely in the Tank Healer raid spot.

• Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Critical heals will heal for more.  So it's basically a critical heal bonus talent.  Sounds pretty underwhelming to me.

I am spending less time playing wow and I blame the Dungeon Finder

Do you remember those days when you logged in and did your 25 dailies while keeping your eyes open for a group of friends that might want to do the daily heroic?  I have a route through Icecrown where I completed all my dailies in one to two hours.  Once I found a group for a heroic, we had to get to the dungeon, wait for everyone to show up, and wait for people to go deal with noisy kids and dogs.  Just assembling and arriving at the dungeon could take 30 minutes easy.   Do you remember those days?

Now I log in, pop into the Dungeon Finder queue, a couple of minutes later I'm rushing through an instance with 5 strangers.  Usually done in about 30 minutes.  I feel no urge to do my Icecrown dailies anymore.  I have realized that a lot of the time I spent online was "busy work" I did while waiting for an opportunity to run an instance.  There is no need to do this busy work anymore.  So, I'm not online as much.

This is great for the casual player that only wants to play a few hours a week.  I confess that besides my main Big Healer, I have two other max level healers, a Druid and a Priest.  I don't play them often, but once or twice a week, I'll log one of them in and run a heroic.  Although geared well enough for heroics (a mix of heroic, crafted, and badge gear), their gear is usually on the low level of the groups I get, but I still manage to get the job done.  It's fun, challenging and only takes 2 or 3 hours a week.

7 minutes!

After downing our first heroic mode 25-man kills (Marrowgar and Gunship), 5 of us assembled to get the heroic daily out of the way.  Paladin Tank, Paladin Healer (me), Fury Warrior, Destro Warlock, and Enhancement Shaman.

Queue up and get Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. We skip the first two bosses, finish the entire instance in a little less then 7 minutes.

Just counting in my head, that's about 25 pulls (including 2 bosses).

Reminded me of those videos of Paladins pulling the entire Scarlet Monastery in one pull.

I am not a game designer... but I know where some live.

I understand the desire to know what changes will be coming in future patches and expansions of WoW.  I read the blue posts, the PR releases, convention coverage, and the info from data mining.  I read the blogs of people who suggest changes to blizzard.  I've even made my own suggestions on fine tuning my own class.  I've spent a short amount of time on the Public Test Realms to see upcoming features.

I am not a game designer.  This job requires experience and skills which are not gained from simply playing a game.  It's not that players, especially those who spend a lot of time dissecting the game, wouldn't be good designers, but the skill to play and understand the mechanics is different then those of the game developers.  If you are going to make a suggestion to the Blizzard designers then make it a simple and focused suggestion.

Create a simple description of your idea.  If this takes more then a sentence or two, then it's probably needs to broken down into multiple smaller suggestions.

• Add a new Guild Bank tab option that works like a guild member only Auction House.

Identify any impact on existing game features.

• Guild Bank access for the tab:  Withdraw only = buyer only, Deposit only = seller only, Full Access = buyer and seller. 
• Limit the number of listing and purchases per member.
• UI interface changes???? I'm not qualified to suggest or understand the implications... Ugh.

Identify any problems which the suggestion would need to consider.

• Tab is just used as a very large regular tab by listing items with very small buy out prices.

Identify possible solutions to the problems.

• Limit the number of listings.  
• Charge a minimum fee for each listing regardless of buyout price.  Minimum or percentage which ever is higher.

Identify edge and test cases:

• Standard AH test cases (I'm sure blizzard testers have a test plan for this already)
• The guild master disbands the guild.
• A lister leaves the guild.
• So many test cases and I'm not being paid to think them all up!

This is a simple example and I don't even feel like it's complete.  I am sure there are more problems which could be identified.  I am sure there are more test cases which should be considered.

Judging light and parse envy...

The Story
Recently another Holy Paladin joined the ranks of my regular 25 man raid team. We have a good team of healers. The parses show load is balanced with everyone doing basically the same effective healing. There's only so much effective healing and if everyone is doing their job a natural balance will occur.

Looking at some parses of  failed  Blood Queen attempts (missed bites!) and the new Big Healer was doing a good 2K more HPS on each attempt. A little analysis shows the difference was Judgement of Light. He managed to keep his Judgement active.

The Mana

Every time Judgement of Light is cast with the Seal of Wisdom active you gain mana. As long as no one needs a heal, then Judgement should be used when it's on CD.

Again, Judgement should be cast when it's on CD when no one needs a heal.

The Timing

A 10 second cool down (not improved) allows 6 judgments a minute.  If you are the only Paladin casting Judgement of Light, it will take 4 casts per minute to maintain the debuff.  The talent Judgement of the Pure provides a 15% haste bonus and requires the Big Healer to judge at least once a minute.

The Wisdom or Life Decision
The Judgement of Light provides health to the Raid, the Judgement of Wisdom provides mana.  Providing more mana to the raid increases the raid's DPS.

The Who
Relatively recent changes to the way the Judgment debuffs work means it doesn't matter which spec of Paladin is doing the Judging.  The Retribution paladin should be Judging as part of their DPS rotation and will have no problem maintaining the debuff.  Assign them the wisdom debuff and the mana deeps will be happy.

The Conclusion
This Big Healer has started to be more aggressive on Judgments and as a result the balance has been restored to the parses.   

/leave 2 or why I don't need to hear your opinions, ever!

The Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) has always been bad on WOW's city connected trade chat channel.  A perfect trade chat channel would only have posts concerning WTS, WTB, LFG, LFW and Guild Advertisements.  Everything else is noise. During the slow time of the day on a server as few as three ignores can significantly increase the SNR on this channel.  Many more ignores are required once the server gets busy. There will always be noise on this channel as long as players are allowed to post free text.

A solution is for blizzard programmers to create an interface for the channel, Trade Finder!  The interface allows the person to select the buy or sell they want to advertise and then it posts to the channel.  The interface would allow a sort of real time auctioning, where players can place bids on sell items or offer a sale price to buyers.  The Looking for Work advertisers could be provided a long distance trade interface with the ability to craft items with materials provided but not traded.   Guild advertisers would simple have their guild info be available to anyone interested automatically.  A little work could make the Trade Finder as awesome as the Dungeon Finder.