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Gregg Reece

Antioch, TN - http://www.wow.com

The Light and How to Swing It: Holy Powah!

by Gregg Reece on Jul 21st 2010 (5 hours ago)

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to gregg@wow.com.

Well, Chase decided against using "Holy Powah!" as the title for his paladin article on the subject for healadins, so I am selfishly going to grab it.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with paladins since the Twitter developer chat on Friday, we're getting overhauled yet again and more deeply than ever before. Not only are things being simplified and condensed again like we saw at the beginning of Wrath, but we're getting an additional resource system on top of mana. That's right, additional and on top of mana, which means we're going to be the second (or third?) mana-based class with an extra resource bar to watch.

This new system is called holy power, and no, it isn't referring to a talent in the holy tree that adds crit. It is a mixture of combo points and runic power. This whole conversation is going to take a while (and a couple of blue quotes), so let's continue after the break.

Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Cataclysm

Cataclysm Beta: New sound clips for Thrall, Vol'Jin, Nefarian

by Gregg Reece on Jul 21st 2010 (23 hours ago)

The latest Cataclysm beta build has dropped and there are some massive spoilers with some of the sound files that have been uncovered. I'm keeping the files themselves after the break for those of you who want to avoid any lore leaks.

First is a talk between two leaders of the Horde on the direction things have been going. The second is from an upcoming raid boss taunting the players as well as revealing his greatest triumph. Yeah, that's vague, but I'm trying to leave spoilers out from before break.

Filed under: Cataclysm

The Daily Blues

by Gregg Reece on Jul 20th 2010 (2 days ago)

Each day, WoW.com will take you through all the blue posts and other Blizzard news from around the internet. From Ghostcrawler's latest posts to the lowdown on StarCraft II and Diablo III, we'll keep you informed.

Ghostcrawler talks today about tank effective health and why people don't gem for dodge. Something about dragon breath hurts.

Table of Contents

Filed under: The Daily Blues

Twitter developer chat for July 16, 2010, organized by category

by Gregg Reece on Jul 16th 2010 (5 days ago)

This twitter developer chat was focused on the recent beta talent tree overhaul announced for Cataclysm. Lots of information came out including drastic changes to the paladin class. A lot of the answers had to do with the fact that a couple classes aren't very done in the current beta build that everyone has been poring over.

Some highlights:

paladins will be using a new Holy Power resource system in addition to mana
all death knights will gain Runic Empowerment via trainers for all specs
no planned hard cap for the new Mastery stat
still no guild housing

The full categorized round-up is after the break.

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Blizzard, Interviews, Death Knight, Cataclysm, Worgen, Goblin

Blizzard responds to common Real ID concerns

by Gregg Reece on Jul 16th 2010 (5 days ago)

Nethaera (Blizzard community manager) posted answers to some of the common Real ID questions and concerns on the forums today. With the PR disaster that was Blizzard's original Real ID on the forums concept, a follow-up aimed at easing tensions in the community -- even after the retraction -- was to be expected. While Blizzard offered some good news on things people have been requesting, they also dodged other points for the moment in true Blizzard style.

Some highlights from the announcement:

no current plans for an online handle to be used in game with Real ID instead of your name
feature to disable your name's appearance in Friends of Friends list coming around the time of StarCraft II
plans for some sort of unique ID on the WoW forums

The full announcement is after the break.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Account Security

Breakfast Topic: A day in the life

by Gregg Reece on Jul 16th 2010 (5 days ago)

A poster on the forums queried the developers on what a day at the office for the class balance team entailed. This is one of those topics that I'm sure most of us have wondered about from time to time. Do they spend their days skimming Arena Junkies and Elitist Jerks looking at feedback, or are they nose-deep in spreadsheets running calculations on the effective health of tanking builds (which are sometimes the same thing)? Usually, this is the type of thread that receives a goofy answer from a community manager, if it receives any notice at all.

However, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) decided to chime in with how the standard day goes. As it turns out, there really isn't such a thing as a standard day. His whole description of the day as well as some examples of recent events that players could relate to reminded me of an old Blizzcast from 2008. In it, Blizzard community manager Nethaera interviewed Monte Krol (lead tools programmer) about the behind-the-scenes information. As a code monkey myself, hearing about writing the tools that are used to build World of Warcraft was fascinating.

Hearing the process behind how features are developed and decisions on class mechanics come about is something that players are constantly interested in (as some are insistent that the developers just put ideas on a dartboard in order to figure out what they're doing). What part of Blizzard would you like to see behind the scenes of, and what changes do you think have the best developer stories?

Filed under: Blizzard, Breakfast Topics

Cataclysm Beta: New talent trees for paladins

by Gregg Reece on Jul 14th 2010 (7 days ago)

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge -- and soon, an entire flight of black dragons.

Last night, Blizzard released the new talent tree system onto the beta realms for people to take a gander at and test out. Each class is at various stages of done-ness, with some needing pruning, others needing tuning and still others just need another iteration or two before truly being ready. Paladins fall into that last category, along with three other classes.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the beta patch notes, with bold added for emphasis:

Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - Build 12479

While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.

...

Paladins
* We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches.

source

Things like more healing abilities for holy, Holy Shield moving from a maintained ability to a tanking cooldown, and three new planned but unimplemented attack abilities for retribution are all in the pipeline, as well as a shakeup of the talents we've already been provided. So, without further ado, I present a first draft of the paladin talent trees.

[ Holy ] [ Protection ] [ Retribution ]

The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming Paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. With Cataclysm soon heating things up, will you be ready?

Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Cataclysm