Yup, that's right, as most of you saw on Retpaladin.com back a few months ago I signed up for the Air Force and as of tomorrow I will be sent out without my electronic goodies for 8 and a half weeks to pass the basic training for the Air Force. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be standing there, while my Trainer is yelling at me I'll be holding that itch in to play.

But don't loose hope! I'll be back, but before I am, there are some things I just have to mention about WoW that I hope get fixed when I get back.

Dispel Mechanics: Dear god; nothing pains me more on my paladin then having stacks of winters chill and a polymorph on my ally and cleansing everything but the polymorph. Even more so, when a Mass Dispel simply strips the Retribution Paladin of all defenses in a single dispel because the Mass Dispel mechanic is mainly based around Holy having the ability to position themselves a lot better then a Retribution.

 Don't get me wrong, I'm ok with Mass Dispel removing bubble, it helps at to composition diversity and gives another nitch to Priests, but, at the same time, it strikes me odd that, we have a talent for 30% dispel resist so it either completely negates the Priest, or the Priest just ignores the talent. Seems rather, I don't know, "conflict of objective" would be the term I would use.

 What if, they took dispel resist, and completely reworked it. All dispel resist are talent based. Now, dispel resist was an interesting way to help classes that are dependent on their debuffs/buffs, like warlocks, priests, however when you look at the big picture, it's so random of a mechanic, not only is the target buff random (except in Mass Dispel for immunities of course) but with dispel resist mechanics even the success of the random dispel is random. (Say that five times fast) (Ya you can stop now, no one cares that you can.)

Dispel resist, in my opinion, should work more like unstable affliction, but with talents. Let's take Paladin's bubble. Stoicism in my world would say: "33/66/100% chance to take 40% less damage when Divine Protection, Divine Shield is dispelled" Oh no more RNG! So yes, a Priest will mass dispel your bubble every time if you can not CC him or get lucky but, more times then not thats the case, and now you aren't completely defenseless. 

 Let's move on to another class, like Priests, who also have a 30% dispel resist mechanic to their buffs. In my perfect world, I'd have it say; "33/66/100% chance to restore 5% of your base mana when one of your spells get dispelled" This isn't nearly as useful in the end but it's fair. Priests might skip it, so you might up the mana return, obviously making it + rapture not give you enough mana for free PW:Shields but making it a viable option since Priests are the most mana inefficient healers in the game. 

 Now Druids, I'd have theirs say; "33/66/100% chance to reduce damage taken by  the target by 2% when one of your heals are dispelled, stacks up to 10 times"

A person is stripping your HoTs is frustrating, they receive quite a bit less healing, but with this it allows the druid more time to CC one of the dps or while using a reduced GCD from talents and haste to throw hots on faster then they can be dispelled making for a bit of healing, and obviously the amount could be modified (up to 30% reduced damage I think is the max I would aim for) 

Let's move on to some damage dealing classes; Death Knights complain the most about diseases so let's focus on that real quick. I'd say for them; "33/66/100% chance to increase your damage by 3% when one of your diseases is dispelled" so they will still do overall less damage but they will be doing more damage in the end rather if they didn't.

While my ideas aren't perfect, because I came up with them in the last 10 minutes of me writing this (actually it was 20 but I think 10 makes me sound super awesome so go with it) but I think this is the way to go. Every class has a little booster in what they really need instead of it being such an RNG, and it isn't overpowered to the point of totally negating the reason to dispel in the first place. I'll take my Noble Peace Prize in the form of chocolate, thank you.

 Moving on past my egotistic dreams of reforming and controlling Blizzard while taking over Australia because kangaroos and koala bears are awesome, I think it's time for our first FIGHT OF THE WEEK which focus's a bit around what I said above, this clip is short and sweet though; features me back at the start of this season with my friend Synged(also known as Ikz)

 http://www.filefront.com/14989409/Fight-of-the-Week-V3.wmv/

Priest/Mage vs Priest/Paladin, and as you can see, it's pretty one sided, but wouldn't be, in fact they might have had a chance to come back if my dispel ideas where in place; which is really what gave me the idea. 

Well everyone, I'm out for now, but something to think about. Best of luck to Cromfel and the rest of the crew while I'm gone, and I thank them again for bringing me on board for this amazing site.

(h m m m m  s o  c l o s e  t o a  1 0 0 0  w o r d  c o u n t . . .)

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I admit, I'm addicted. So addicted that things frustrate me to the point where I get pissed and it can ruin my day. People are like, "David, why are you not in a good mood?" Of course, I cant respond with; "WELL THIS RESTO DRUID HAD ALL THESE HOTS AND JUST KEPT ROTATING THEM AND MY TEAM COULDN'T MAKE ONE GOOD SWAP AND UGHHHHH!"

 I guess I'll just have to vent my anger here, and question the reasoning for how it being possible. That being said, no I have no problem with Resto Druids, in fact, I like how balanced they are, from my point of view as a priest healer, paladin healer, paladin dps, in arenas. Yes, I play a Priest now as well, and I've shifted my focus to him. Why? Mass Dispel. I wanted to really get inside a Priest and understand just how balanced it is, and how game changing the spell is. So, while I sat there eating my manly breakfast of Iced Tea and Rice and Shrimp I decided to roll an Undead Priest. (I know, Undead, it's kinda a given but Ferarro was always like "DETAILS", at least, I think this is what she meant by that.)

So first up, how bad is Mass Dispel in reality? Well, in lower brackets, its devastating to paladins, because your teammate doesn't swap to the priest to kick the mass dispel. But I'm guessing that's why Blizzard gave paladins a 30% dispel resist on mass dispel with a talent that, well, you all better have, if not, I will punch kitten number one. All in all, I think it's pretty balanced, though I wish that there was some other mechanic other then dispel resist. It also allows paladins to get away with some additional survivability with the understanding that they can't always use the full affect of bubble. Still, pre-casting a mass dispel only to have it be resisted is heart breaking. 

 Round two; Prot Specs being so viable in PvP.  Seriously, have you ever played against a geared prot warrior? "It's cool guys hes prot I'll just danc---WTF 8K SHIELD SLAM!?" Ya... I'd like to direct your attention to http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=129855 In this video the Prot Warrior fights 2 of my guilds teams. Mage/Rogue (who don't stand a chance) and a guild officer "Lolchains" in the DK/Druid comp. This Prot warrior doesn't even know what he is spell reflecting. At one point he makes the comment; "I don't know if that cyclone was intended for me or not..." Ok sweet, but ya know, high damage, spell lock out, high survivability is all good and balanced. Even without a direct MS the burst and control they have matched with the survivability is disgusting. Regardless if this is to keep everyone having fun or not with all specs, this is no bueno (that's Spanish for "mom your cooking sucks" or "no good") Watch that movie,continue to punch two kittens.

 Round three, "spell cleave"

This one is easy; the damage feels so devastating. It's cheesy too, if people aren't really careful about their position, then it's ezmode win's. Ring of Valor is really cool for this, you are behind a pillar LoSing while regaining control and then the pillar says "lol@you" and oh, hey, 10k chaos bolt, 8k conflag, 9k lava burst. But don't worry, another kitten gets punched here.

Last round, bad community I saw a post the other day from a paladin claiming mages are too strong and one of his suggestions was putting counter spell on a 1.5 second cast. Uhhhh... ya... If he were to play a mage, or anyone with an interrupt, he would realize why all of them, are instant. I feel like some of these people have a lot of potential to suggest good things, but people don't stop to think about "Ok, well if I get this, to counter that, then what happens to this other class that was balanced by them?" Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but, you should strive to AT LEAST think 3 steps ahead in terms of class balance, and I think that's what gets me most. People take you seriously when you do that, and can take the suggestion and build from it, or give you reasons on why it wouldn't work constructively. Luckily, most of the stuff on these forum boards has been pretty decent, and I haven't wanted to kill any kittens over it, so, I'm going to let this one go. 

 Moral of the story, next time you have a problem and a kitten, you should probably take the two to separate rooms.

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