It's been about a week now since that big old expansion thing. Blizzard calls it Cataclysm, I call it TOR:40K Waitlist. For the uninitiated that's The Old Republic and Dark Millennium Online combined, both games that I am looking forward to, regardless of their overall suck when they finally go live.
Now, I wasn't around when the talents went live prior to Cataclysm and all that jazz, so I've had a little bit less time to get used to all of these changes, but I think I'm catching up pretty quickly. There are some things I want to say first, though, before I get into my big issue with Retribution paladins as they are now. So, here we go.
Son, I am disappoint.
When I heard about Cataclysm and the grind from 80 to 85 I was led to believe that it would take just as long to go those five levels as it did to go 70-80, if not longer. For those of you that have leveled accordingly, you know full well that that just isn't the case. Personally, I cleared out Loremaster of Cataclysm in less than a week. I think it was something like four days total, getting to 85 even quicker than that. Granted, I made a boat ton of money doing it, but it really never felt like much of a grind. I coasted up to 85. God forbid had I done some of those dungeon quests when I was leveling, I'd have to trade the 36 gold I'm getting for the 100k experience, and we all know I'm far too greedy for that.
Secondly, and this is pretty minor, but it's my thing to point out the little stuff, even out the fucking flight ceilings. Listen, I know how hard it was for you to go back and actually render the tops of some of those trees, I know. Thank you for giving us flying in the old world, it makes doing your crappy archaeology profession that much easier, so easy in fact that as soon as I find Jinrohk I'll promptly shoot my face off in front of Tirion in his Hearthglen mansion. Seriously though, flying is awesome, but when I hit imaginary walls every turn I make, it gets really annoying. I know my drake likes to fly high up in the jet stream, that's his thing, he gets better gas mileage up there. I'm doing this for you, Lifebinder. You hear me? I'm trying to go green for you, but your lazy developers won't let me. Maybe I'll just have to go back to my SUV mammoth, I bet you'd like that, huh? Eatin' up all your grass, grazing wherever he damn well feels like it, leaving a steaming pile right in the middle of Orgrimmar's drag for all those guards to slip on. We'll play your way, fine.
Anyway, moving on, goblins aren't goblins. They're Ferengi. This isn't World of Warcraft, this is Dungeons and Dragons Star Trek. Need proof? May I present exhibit A:
This is a goblin. He is a sound businessman. Don't argue with his business portfolio, it will end you.
Now then, onto a more serious nature now that I've gotten the initial bit of venting out of the way. I honestly can't say I like the paladin mechanics. In fact, I downright hate them. Don't get me wrong, I know why the developers did it, but come on, Holy Power? I am not a rogue. If I wanted to play a rogue, I'd go back to my level 70 rogue in Shattrath and dick around with him. Quite frankly, that's the very reason why I stopped playing my rogue. I hate combo points. Oh I know, Holy Power only has three stacks, not five like most combo point generating classes! Clever, Blizzard, but I see through your thinly veiled trap.
That's not to say that I can't live with it, though. Holy Power and I could come to some sort of agreement. Like I said, I know why the change was made. The developers didn't want Retribution paladins to be the AK-47s they were in late-stage ICC. For those of you that might not know what a DPS rotation looked like for a 264 ilevel Retribution with full T10, it was something like this: 222222222222222222222222262222222222222222222222226 AVENGING WRATH 622222222222222222 Trash dead. Boss dead. Raid dead. If you played a Retribution paladin at that time, I don't think I need to explain what the 2 and 6 keybinds I use are. If you didn't, here's a hint: Divine Storm and Hammer of Wrath. It honestly took little to no skill chugging through just about anything like that. This is what trash and most bosses in ICC were for me:
I swear, the "2" on my keyboard rubbed off so long ago from mashing that guy over and over again. I honestly could have played ICC with a Super Nintendo controller as long as it had the Turbo buttons.
So, yeah, I know where they're coming from, the developers that is, but as it stands Holy Power is just too slow. While I could get technical about it, one of my early gripes about the paladin class as a whole was our ramp up time for single target bosses. This expansion has only compounded that problem unless we get amazingly lucky with the RNG and get a mastery proc. Once we get into the groove we can really start hitting things, but it just takes way too long in comparison to the other DPS classes out there. By the time I'm ready to rock the girl has already tugged her skirt back on and is heading out the door.
And there I am, alone, surrounded by a pack of dead trash mobs, with nothing to do but blow my fully Holy Power load on a three-stack Inquisition that'll be spent by the time the next set of trash comes into view.
