Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Grab a cushion, flop down and give your weary dogs (puppies?) a rest. The photo above notwithstanding, rest assured that the rest of [1.Local] this week is an Ensidia-free zone. (So is the world-first 25-man Lich King kill, for that matter.) Can you imagine having to hash that out yet again? What a relief that [1.Local] isn't merely a tally sheet for comments from stories with the most views -- or even the stories with the most comments, or the most positive comments, or (as comment trolls hold fast to believing) the most negative comments ... We can follow our own little quirky path through the conversation of the past week.

Let's bite into the rest of this week's goodies just like we all like it: nice and meaty, with a little bit of hot, runny juices from the odd little beasts we discovered just down yonder, off the beaten track...

Incentives for appropriate gear types coming in Cataclysm Plate classes in plate, cloth classes in cloth, mail and leather classes in mail and leather ... Cataclysm will make us all toe the line with the "correct" armor type. K: I find it perplexing that there should be incentives to wear your own armor ... Any kind of stat boosts, etc., would just inflate the already inflated stats further. It would be far more reasonable (and easier) to just add some negative effect to all armor classes below your own (like an automatic downscaling of stats or something). No need to over-complicate things. Draelan: Actually, it's kind of amazing how well people will agree to something if it is worded positively, even if it provides no additional benefits. Take, for example, the rest bonus system. In beta, there were additional levels of "rest," which included one where you would only gain 50% XP from monsters. This was very unpopular, because it felt like a penalty for playing. So, Blizzard got rid of it and adjusted the rest bonus system to what we have today. However, when doing this, they had to slow down the speed at which a character levels to match the intended speed ... So they doubled the amount of XP needed to reach the next level. The overall effect was that characters leveled at the same rate as previously, but the system was popular now that it no longer SEEMED to penalize players. It's a rather common phenomenon, actually. It's simply the way people are wired. If Blizzard were to, say, give you a bonus to stats based on what armor level you were wearing but simultaneously nerfed the benefit you get from stats in general, the effect would be that the "proper" armor would give no additional benefits than normal (and lower armor would provide a decrease in stats, essentially, a punishment for wearing them). However, the change would still SEEM positive because of an emphasis on the "bonus" and the use of positive language. snowleopard233: Hey, leather chaps don't necessarily need to have anything to do with stats. Some paladins just want a look that says "Daddy likes leather." Maiku: If only my priest could wear leather, then he'd be a true discipline daddy. Hal: There's a reason they call him "Edward the Odd."

Paying the hybrid tax The semi-accepted, unofficial value of the hybrid tax is supposed to be 5%, and shadow priests seem to be just fine -- but what about those poor, poor paladins? luuuunatic: My question to you is, what about paladins? They can tank, DPS and heal. Yet what tax do they pay? They can even wear plate! Tom: BC is calling -- they want their "Paladins can't tank bosses" back. Get with the times. clundgren: Oh good ... The paladins are OPed meme comes up again. I find it fascinating that the original poster raises this point after reading an article that cites specific DPS numbers but apparently didn't even bother to read that data before the whining about paladins begins. So let's look at that data: the only pure melee DPS in ICC, rogues, average 11.53k DPS. Ret paladins Average 10.09 DPS. That's a difference of 8.8%. What, you say, a higher tax than spriests pay? Yes, yes it is. It's also a higher tax than warriors and DKs pay. In fact, paladins are doing better DPS than exactly one class (I feel for ya, shamans). But don't take my word for it: look it up. So there's that claim debunked. I'm in a progression guild. The assertion that prot paladins are the "preferred" tank is ludicrous. They are, for most fights, the preferred OFF-tank. We almost always have a druid/or warrior eating the big shots to the face. Look at the top guilds in the world, and you'll find a similar pattern. So there's that. Paladin healers are AWESOME ... for single targets, and if the paladin doesn't have to move a lot. We always bring exactly one, and no more. We typically have a minimum of two priests. [View Remaining 33 Paragraphs] Instant Vote: [+] [-] (No votes yet) 2012 WowFix.com  |  RSS Information  |  About Us  |  Suggestion Box  |  Contact Us World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.