So now that I've recovered from the weekend, lets get straight to business. Crusader Strike. it sucks. no really. it has very little bang for each buck. although I do get some cool spinjump animation, it doesn’t do too much damage. perhaps, I need to get better at landing those spinjump swings. it takes practice to get it right, you know. maybe in a few levels I'll finally find my sweetspot and deal crits galore with it.
Last week I did an experiment at level 46 or so using seal of command. my dps on ogres of tanaris was 150. at 53, just six levels later, and with sheath of light and crusader strike, im up to almost 300. just look at the breakdown. but I think this number is just a little inflated, as I realized that my exo was critting 100%, due to its auto-crit mechanic on undeads. this is great in WPL and EPL. im loving it and holy wrath. but it does increase my dps artificially. I will not complain. there's scholo and strath coming up, and they're full of undeads. hopefully I can get there soon, say, at 55, because at 58 I want to be outta there and into outlands. I think if we're given the choice to do ramps at 58, we should be given the option to do strath/scholo a little earlier. just like at 68, where we can bypass all the cool level 70 instances (there's all the tempest keep instances, plus shattered halls, shadow labs, and steamvault), I think it would be good to lower the level requirement for some of these instances so people wouldn’t always be stuck with Black Rock Depths. yea. I've seen that loading screen way more times than I like to see. and you know how I think about instances these days. super easy. no skill required. leave your brain at the door.
So with me dinging 50, I was able to choose between two very decent talents. one was going to increase my holy damage by using my strength (actually attack power, but AP comes from STR anyway), and putting it into a formula and spitting it out as larger numbers. sure I thought. all my attacks will deal more damage. not +30% as I might haf thought, but more like +30% on the spell power portion of each attack. and for those attacks without spellpower in it, well there's other talents for that. but this one beats them all out. so my conundrum is this, do I pick crusader strike now then add to my spell power damage later on, or add 10% more holy damage, then 20%, then 30% then crusader strike at 53? I figured three levels isnt going to matter much, so I picked the talent that would improve my gameplay. I mean, help me get out of this auto-attack-induced coma.
So I picked crusader strike instead of shealth of light at 50. believe you me, it makes almost no difference at 50, or 51, but maybe at 52 and 53. why? because crusader strike does almost no damage its negligible at 50. sounds like 10% increased holy damage? kinda. but one is a baseline buff, the other is an attack I can do once ever six seconds (and I forget to use it… often). so the real benefit to picking crusader strike at 50 is to bring it into my rotation so I can get familiar with a new attack in my rotation. and it did take three levels to actually get it pounded in as part of my attacks. I still forget it at times. which is better? who knows. I don’t care. they both add some damage, and at this point in time, it doesn’t matter. no really, no one cares about maxing damage at 50. no one. just do well. that's all that matters right now. look at the damage charts if you dont believe me. I hit crusader strike 35 times for 7% of the total damage (also look at the first chart, its worse). its a brand new attack but my god, at least be "cool" about it.
now getting crusader strike is a whole lot different from getting art of war. this is not because I got it in my level 30's, which gives me more time to learn it, but it was because of the active play it produces. I must watch for the procs. and after I see the proc, I must decide which is better to use, exo or FoL, or neither. it also forces me to evaluate my situation and plan out my spells. honestly, I love how I can simply hammer of wrath one mob to death, then tab over to the next mob and exo him to death as well. but I have to decide, should I use my exo to finish off this one mob, or save it for the next guy hitting me but isnt under 20% health yet? it would make sense to use hammer of wrath on the one just about to die, then use insta-exo on the second mob, with the chance to use hammer of wrath almost immediately after that. im giddy. so now im learning to weave in CS into my rotation, mostly after a judgement. and then throughtout the fight, im hitting both cs and judgement. and I am only using CS because there's nothing else for me to do while I auto-attack things to death and wait on my AoW procs. but with all the different attacks and the silly CS CD vs. Judgement CD, it really makes things kinda fun, albiet headache-inducing fun.
my attack rotation at level 50 is now changed to this:
1. enter fight with judgement of wisdom.
2. crusader strike.
3. AoW-Exo, or auto attack
4. crusader strike.
5. judgement of wisdom
6a. crusader strike (if necessary)
6b. hammer of wrath
7. start next fight with AoW-exo if on, otherwise, use Judgement of Wisdom.
Art of War almost always procs. sometimes it doesn’t and I wait around, but it does proc more often than not. also, there have been many times where AoW proc right after I use it up. its kinda flakey at times when I need it to proc, but it's not life-threatening when RNG hates me. so its not so bad. I just think of it as a clearcasting proc, or a killing machine proc.
Now with the rotation above, it's pretty fun and involving to play a paladin now. but its even more fun in groups as I get to toss in a consecrate due to the way all groups play. they grab at least two groups of mobs, then proceed to AoE everything down. so consecrate really helps with that. I've read somewhere that there is no damage cap for consecrate, so the more mobs that gets packed into the area of effect, the better. watch as my damage outdoes everyone in this case. I've only been out-dps'ed by one other mage once, and that was it. for most instances, im usually top dps. this is quite a change from when I first entered BRD, at around level 50. I was the lowest in dps and couldn’t really keep up with even the tank. the screenie explains it all.
but since getting sheath of light maxed and crusader strike (plus adding four levels helps with the glancing/absorb hits), my dps basically doubled. ok, so most of it came from consecration, but that extra 30% attack=spellpower conversion really boosted consecrate's damage, as well as most of my other attacks. except crusader strike. Here's a screenie of my dps at level 52 inside an instance. notice the "high" dps is due to consecrate.
notice also how often I used crusader strike. notice how craptastic its damage is. yea, it sucks. but what else is there to do between attacks? CS. yep, that’s it. that said, I cant wait to add divine storm to my rotation. level 60… hurry up!
One thing I need to figure out with Divine Storm is whether I will need SoCom any more. DS will do what socom has always been doing, but will use the effect of the seal im using instead of just doing damage to nearby mobs. what does this mean? it means if I am using seal of light, I will be healed from all of the mobs DS hits. If I am using seal of wisdom, I will regain mana from all of the mobs (not directly, but you know what I mean) DS hits. it will be pretty juicy, too bad it doesn’t proc off seal of command, I don’t think. that will be 3x hits x the number of mobs per swing… which can be huge. I may have to explain that some more if people don’t understand whats going on. but DS+socom would be way too overpowered. so im pretty sure they do not work together.
How I believe DS works: So normally, when attacking a mob, I would judge a mob. the mob will then have a judgement debuff that will "do what the seal says it does". so if I use seal of light, judging a mob will give me extra health back. so the light seal says give pala health. wisdom seal says, give pala mana. corruption seal says, add stacking debuff to mob so everyone can do more damage. seal of righteousness says give pala an extra hit of holy damage randomly plus add a base amount of spell power damage. you get it? different seals do different things. and when I judge with a seal up, they also do different things. it works with every seal except for seal of command since seal of command works a little differently from most of the other seals. I am not sure if it works for seal of corruption/vengeance either. but lets say I have seal of light up. seal of light will return a certain amount of health back to me. but since DS can hit multiple mobs, and say, I have four mobs on me, I will get healed from all four mobs since I will be hitting all four at once with DS. there. its pretty simple.
So I really cant wait to have DS as part of my rotation especially since CS pretty much suck donkey nuts. maybe it will get better. maybe there will be a better reason for it. I will find out soon enough.
But even with the auto-attack-fest that is ret leveling, I really do enjoy the "slow" style of learning this class. it is totally not a DK style of play at all, with everything instant, with all spells based on runic power or rune stone activation. with DK's we attack first, then wait, then weave things in and out. but with paladins, we start off with the same types of spells. but those spells are only what is seen with the eyes, the physical attacks, but the meat and core of the spells lies within the seals, the judgement types, and the use of all our conditional spells ("hand" spells, mainly bubble, but also freedom and salvation). all of this adds a different style of play to the class that makes the paladin class pretty unique in its own right. there is no other class like it really. there is really no other class as versatile as the paladin. you can argue hunter's aspecs, or warrior's stances, or druid's forms. but auras, seals, and judgements… they all add a different layer to the paladin's play, and each layer does a different thing. ok im done trying to analogize.
I am looking ahead to outland, to divine storm and "wings" and more talent and gear choices. and im going to love trying out le ret on outland mobs. it will be fun. cant wait to get out of the scourge-infested WPL/EPL, and out of BRD.
*and i left my character name on there just to let you know and armory me if you want. Devynity on Ysondre. no sense in keeping it hidden anyway. *
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