Roxanne Flowers

The ReckCounter add-on is not listed in the Big Sticky in the UI forum. Might want to change that ... Vanilla Addons A-Z

If you aren't willing to put up with the corpse runs needed to get up on top of (and away from) Teldrassil, the only option you've got is to wait about 40 Levels or so. You can get an Ironbeak Owl in Felwood at Level 48+. If you want a white Owl, the lowest level one of those is Olm the Wise ... also in Felwood ... at Level 52.

Thank you. This has been a fun bit of sideline exploration of mechanics and possibilities for me, as you can probably tell. Given the "fact" that Starshards is programmatically incapable of landing critical hits ... that kind of makes me think that going all the way to 31 (or 33) in Discipline is not as useful as I was intending it to be. Why? Force of Will - Rank 5/5 Increases your spell damage by 5% and the critical strike chance of your offensive spells by 5%. If there's no critical strike for EITHER Starshards OR Shadow Word: Pain then the value of Force of Will is dramatically reduced, since it then just becomes +5% Damage ONLY for offensive spells, of which Shadow Word: Pain and Starshards become the primary offensive damage spells. Going 30 talents deep into Discipline for THAT doesn't seem like that wise of an investment anymore due to the lack of help from critical hits. Funny you should mention that, since I've been thinking along the same lines, where if I'm not angling for max Damage explicitly via Discipline ... well ... what would that look like instead? The answer I'm getting back (for my personal preferences) looks decidedly ... non-standard ... to say the least. Have a look at this 21/25/5 spec ... http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bVgGc00oZbEp0c0VZx A lot of "the usual suspects" disappear when you're building for using damaging spells in an efficient Damage Per Mana spec where the spells you're using can't score critical hits. Things like ... Inner Focus ... which appears in almost every build that gets to 13-14 in Discipline (for what should be obvious reasons). Level 60 Priest (21/25/5) Discipline (21 points) Wand Specialization - Rank 5/5 Increases your damage with Wands by 25%. Silent Resolve - Rank 5/5 Reduces the threat generated by your spells by 20%. Improved Power Word: Fortitude - Rank 2/2 Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 30%. Improved Power Word: Shield - Rank 3/3 Increases the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield by 15%. Martyrdom - Rank 2/2 Gives you a 100% chance to gain the Focused Casting effect that lasts for 6 sec after being the victim of a melee or ranged critical strike. The Focused Casting effect prevents you from losing casting time when taking damage and increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%. Meditation - Rank 3/3 Allows 15% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting. Divine Spirit - Rank 1/1 Holy power infuses the target, increasing their Spirit by 17 for 30 min. Holy (25 points) Healing Focus - Rank 2/2 Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any healing spell. Holy Specialization - Rank 5/5 Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells by 5%. Spell Warding - Rank 5/5 Reduces all spell damage taken by 10%. Divine Fury - Rank 4/5 Reduces the casting time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.4 sec. Holy Nova - Rank 1/1 Causes an explosion of holy light around the caster, causing 28 to 33 Holy damage to all enemy targets within 10 yards and healing all party members within 10 yards for 52 to 61. These effects cause no threat. Improved Healing - Rank 3/3 Reduces the Mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells by 15%. Spiritual Guidance - Rank 5/5 Increases spell damage and healing by up to 25% of your total Spirit. Shadow (5 points) Spirit Tap - Rank 5/5 Gives you a 100% chance to gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target that yields experience. For the duration, your Mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec. It saddens me to think that this spec would lose Improved Shadow Word: Pain out of Shadow, as well as Inner Focus out of Discipline ... but by contrast the build gets stronger defensively and makes for a better second string healer. With the planned spell rotations, Inner Focus would realistically only get used for either Holy Fire (as an opening strike) or for a healing spell, but the build isn't really structuring itself to combo off critical heals (note the lack of the Inspiration talent in Holy). Oddly enough, this 21/25/5 build winds up being perhaps the most maximally optimized by buffing Spirit as much as possible so as to not only add +Spell Damage and +Healing but also to maximize "5 second rule" mana regeneration which unlike pretty much almost any other build for a Priest will be very high while using Starshards ... potentially even to "break even" point of being able to cast Starshards almost indefinitely, or even (with sufficient downranking) to rely primarily on +Spell Damage for throughput on target while remaining net mana recovery positive over time while continuously casting(!). This then creates the decidedly ... odd ... circumstance in which it is possible to have a Priest who values +Spirit WAY more highly than +MP/5 modifiers, to the point of stacking Spirit as a primary stat before even Intelligence in order to do damage (oh, and heal, when that's necessary). Now, granted, going in this direction involves breaking a LOT of "rules" for Priests, and I'm sure that our BiS Raiders will look at this idea and (rightfully) scoff at it as being woefully inadequate in multiple directions simultaneously for end game raiding ... and that's fine with me. Right now I'm more interested in exploring the unknown territory that this whole idea/experiment represents than I am in following the well worn path of going where EVERYONE has gone before (Shadow Form). And the best part is, I wouldn't have seriously considered a 21/25/5 spec if I hadn't been willing to go out and test drive the 33/11/7 spec in the first place. Fortunately, my Priest is still only Level 17 so it's not too late for me to change my plans and switch specs without having to pay for a respec, which at 1g for a new account on a new server isn't exactly cheap when trying to hoard resources to advance professions. So thanks, Klaas. Good question.

Either way, I'm still of the opinion that Starshards ought to be in the category of spells which can Crit. At this time, the evidence says that it doesn't. I figure there's a programming reason behind that, which while perhaps not a "bug" per se is probably more like a case of Blizzard Code Lazy™ and is therefore something that ought to be easy enough to do something about ... once the appropriate staffer has the time. That said ... expecting the appropriate staffer to have the time to look into this may be something of a tall order, since it isn't exactly a Priority, and Developer Attention is an absurdly precious commodity.

I'm probably the only one thinking it would be nice for the GMs to have a tool which can automatically check to see if a character has been Ignored by {insert threshold} number of other characters. I'm thinking a threshold limit of like being put on 200+ other characters' Ignore lists ought to be sufficient. So all the tool is doing, as a batch process, is checking to see How Annoying™ some characters have been to have gotten put onto that many Ignore lists concurrently ... which basically means they're guilty of spamming in some form or fashion, essentially. That then triggers a ... review ... of the offending character's communications history (chat, tells, mail, etc.) so that the GMs can access the evidence needed to wield the BANHAMMER™ should it prove warranted, based on evidence. In other words, give the GMs a tool that makes their job of "policing" the in-game communications systems easier to do based on the "density" of IGNOREs a particular character has earned. It would be an easy filtering method to find the most obvious repeat offenders so as to bring character IDs to the attention of game staff for review, rather than triggering an automatic action. One of those "if THIS many people have put you on Ignore, maybe we should look into why" kinds of things. A game is only as good as the tools given to its Players ... and the Staff who work to maintain the game. I'm thinking this would be one of those Nice To Have™ features for internal staff use to bring Repeat Offenders to the attention of GM staff. Just run the batch process periodically and have it generate reports of character names for the GMs to follow up on when/if they have time to review character communication histories. It also means that every time a Player puts a character on Ignore, that's one more "vote" for staff to review the communications history of that character. Once there are enough "votes" for that review, game staff can be automatically notified that enough people have determine that a specific character has been ... pestiferous ... and should be reviewed for ... obnoxiousness.

Save a copy of the mail to your inventory and then delete from your mailbox. Open your Social window and go to the Ignore tab. Manually type in the name of the mail sender, which you can get from the item now in your inventory, into the Ignore Player window. Ignore them. You will never see mail from that sender again.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070222054302/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_cat.shtml CAT Family Type: Offensive HP: Medium (-2%) • Armor: Low (+0%) • DPS: High (+10%) Learns: Bite, Claw, Cower, Dash, Growl, Prowl <------<< Diet: Fish, Meat

https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic/28031-lockpicking-guide-1-300/

Arcane Missiles (rank 8) 655 mana 30 yd range ChanneledInstant Launches Arcane Missiles at the enemy, causing 230 Arcane damage each second for 5 sec. (6) Apply Aura #23: Periodic Trigger Interval: 1 seconds Starshards (rank 7) 350 mana 30 yd range ChanneledInstant Rains starshards down on the enemy target's head, causing 936 Arcane damage over 6 sec. (6) Apply Aura #3: Periodic Damage Value: 156 Interval: 1 seconds Still trying to find the ... *cough* ... EXCUSE ... *ahem!* ... for why Starshards is programmed to occupy a debuff slot AT ALL ... especially since that debuff slot being full doesn't prevent the spell from doing damage (because channeled). From where I'm typing, it looks like Lousy Legacy Programming. The only difference I can find between these two spells, functionally, is that one says "Periodic Trigger" and one says "Periodic Damage" and I suspect it's just a programming semantics thing akin to "six of one, half a dozen of the other" since functionally both spells essentially do exactly the same thing (1 hit per second for channeled duration). Unfortunately, this is a case of "six can crit, but half a dozen cannot" apparently, which makes No Sense™ when viewed objectively. If you thought Shadow Priests had a boring rotation, the one for using Starshards is downright narcoleptic. Shadow: Mind Blast then Shadow Word: Pain then Mind Flay x2 then Wand (if necessary) Starshards: Shadow Word: Pain then Starshards x4 then Wand (if necessary)

Yeah, I figured I wasn't seeing things while playing my Mage. My Mage will crit on Arcane Missiles about as often as use of Wand, so I figured that was the "correct" behavior rather than an outlier. My guess is that the "proper" or, if you prefer, "intended" behavior ought to be to allow channeled spells of ALL kinds to spell crit while being channeled, whether they be healing spells (Tranquility anyone?) or damage spells (Arcane Missiles, Starshards, Siphon Life, Hurricane, Mind Flay, etc.). Damage Over Time AFTER CASTING HAS BEEN COMPLETED however should NOT be allowed to spell crit ... so things spells like Corruption's DoT, or a Mage's Fire DoT that "burns" after the casting is done, or Shadow Word: Pain's DoT that do damage on "ticks" after casting should not spell crit. The dividing line here would be whether the caster can engage in other actions/movement/spellcasting while the DoT ticks away. If it's a "fire and forget" type of DoT that ticks while the caster can do other things, including casting other spells, it shouldn't spell crit on the DoT ticks. If it's a "maintain casting" type of duration based effect for ticks, such as a channeled spell, then that spell should spell crit on the sustained casting ticks ... whether that be healing or damage. Note that this means that the "initial hit" from something like a Fireball or a Moonfire spell would still be able to crit on the direct damage hit on "impact" ... but because the caster is free to do "other things" while the DoT effect ticks away, the respective DoTs for these spells shouldn't spell crit. Or at least, that's the way I'd set things up in case anyone is asking. Hope that clarifies my presumptions on the matter. Um ... what? I'm taking Silent Resolve for 5 talent points. That reduces the Threat generated by ALL SPELLS ... not just the Shadow ones. Considering the fact that I'm looking towards using Shadow Word: Pain as my "only" source of Shadow damage (typically) and Starshards (primarily) for damage combined with mana efficiency, your proposal amounts to an Overkill Of Unnecessary And Unhelpful. If I wanted to be playing a Shadow Form Priest, that calculus would change, but since I'm not ... Well, at least I'm pleased that it has amused you for a short time. ^_~ I'm quite sure I was seeing Arcane Missiles crit on Darrowshire in the past couple of days ... hence the request for corroboration from others, and my confusion at why Starshards doesn't crit on damage ticks while Arcane Missiles does. In this case, I'm presuming that Starshards is the outlier that ought to be fixed so that it can spell crit (for reasons which I hope I don't need to elaborate). Guys ... my Priest is currently Level 17 ... and I'm more concerned with being able to solo self(ish) sufficiently than I am with raid specs for the time being. At my level, the 16 debuff slot cap isn't really an issue for me (yet), so ... Heck, I'm still waiting to reach Tier 3 in Discipline before spending anything in Shadow.

Weird. I could have sworn I've seen Arcane Missile crit mutliple times on my Mage, and that's a channeled spell ... I can certainly believe the point that DoTs won't critically hit, but to my mind that means things like Shadow Word: Pain and the like. So just to verify, this means that Mind Flay won't crit either, right? Mind Blast would, but Mind Flay would not, correct?

Try this instead ... http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0zLV0oZxxxscMdtV ... 11/33/5 for a Dire Bear oriented tanking build. There's 2 talent points left over for you to put where you'd like, and you've got more than one option.

The scaling would be "poor" due to being Instant cast ...

Something to report about Starshards (rank 1, specifically) which I wasn't expecting to find and can only assume it's a bug. I have never seen Starshards (rank 1) EVER Crit. My Wand, now that I've got one, will critically hit relatively frequently ... but Starshards (rank 1) has never done a single critical hit. Since I'm still below Level 20, I've only got access to rank 1, but the spell hits for 14 damage 6 times (total of 84, as advertised) VERY CONSISTENTLY and it NEVER seems to land a critical hit while doing damage. Not even once. I'm thinking this has to be a bug of some kind. @Pottu would you be so kind as to pass a word to the QA Team to request a verification of my findings that Starshards (rank 1) simply never lands a critical hit ... ever? If QA testing reveals this observation to be true, I'm thinking that a follow up of all ranks of Starshards to determine if all ranks are similarly programmed to never critically hit would be wise. Hopefully, this should be something relatively easy for your QA Team to test. If there are any other Night Elf Priests reading these forums, I'd appreciate any testimonials concerning the Crit Rate of Starshards, and what ranks you've been seeing those results for, added to this thread to assist the QA Team should such independent verification be necessary for QA. I'm hoping that this behavior is a result of something as simple as a misplaced pointer which only afflicts rank 1, but verifying that will require testing and observation. For those who are interested, my Night Elf Priest is currently Level 17 and it may be a week or two before I reach Level 20 with her owing to the fact that I'm playing all 8 classes in parallel on the Alliance side on Darrowshire.

Think of it this way. It's like the aggro radius of mobs. The higher your level relative to them, the smaller the aggro radius for the mobs to come and attack you. The lower your level relative to them, the wider the aggro radius for the mobs to come attack (and 1 shot) you. THAT. If none of that notion makes sense to you, you need more help than anyone on this forum can provide you. Stealth works "kinda like that" in that it modifies the aggro radius (in effect) of mobs. It also does so slightly selectively, with there being a different modification of aggro radius in the front arc of the mobs from the back arc. This is why it is "easier" to stay in Stealth (and not be detected) while remaining behind hostile mobs. The principle is the same, since it's all working off the same math that governs the aggro radius for mobs. What Stealth does is let you get "closer" to hostile mobs by (in effect) "adding extra Levels" to your actual Character Level. This can be further enhanced by the Night Elf racial, which effectively adds +1 Character Level to how "close" you can get to hostiles before they can detect you (whether PC or NPC) and each talent point spent in Master of Deception (in effect) "counts" as if it were an extra +1 Character Level for the purposes of this detection formula. There is also gear that you can equip which will add extra +Stealth by (in effect) adding +1 Character Level to your ability to remain hidden. A Level 14 Human Rogue with 0/5/0 talents spent in Combat will have a Stealth effect of Character Level 14. A level 14 Night Elf Rogue with 0/0/5 talents spent in Subtlety (Master of Deception, specifically) will have a Stealth effect of Character Level 20 (14+5+1=20). This is, broadly speaking, the same as any other talent that adds "skill levels" to a particular Skill ... such as +Defense talents. The difference here is that the skill is being used to prevent detection (and thus, aggro) and the talents (in effect) make your character play as if they were a "much higher Level Rogue" than you actually are. The RANKS of the Stealth skill (1, 2, 3) have absolutely no bearing on how CLOSE you can get to a hostile PC or NPC before they can detect you. The RANKS of the Stealth skill purely determine how FAST you can move while under Stealth. Detection RANGE for Stealth is purely a function of +/- Character Levels, and Master of Deception gives you "extra Levels" for that particular detection range formula (and if hostile NPCs detect you, they will automatically aggro onto you if they were idle). Makee sensee yetee?

http://web.archive.org/web/20070221051250/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/skills_list.shtml Research your targets prospective Pets.

My Night Elf Hunter just reached Level 17 and so it's time to go Tame some other Beasts to get some more Skills. I have been using an Owl since Level 10 however, and it was kinda "ho hum" from 10-15 with nothing really special about it, other than the fact that its diet is exclusively Meat (which is surprisingly hard to come by for a new Hunter on Teldrassil since it's basically Kaldorei Surprise or nothing up there). However, once I reached Level 16 and could go out to Westfall and pick up Screech from a Greater Fleshripper (by having it Screech at Rabbits and Deer and Sheep in Elwynn Forest) ... well, let's just say that my Owl has just turned up the Awesome. I never played with an Owl or Screech a decade ago, since I was using Ghost Kitty from Mathystra back then (they go "invisible" when Prowling), so the whole "screaming bird" routine is new for me this time around. But the debuff of Attack Power this skill offers makes an Owl not only a PBAoE aggro magnet, but it also helps both you AND your Owl tank mobs and adds. Screech is pretty much the only Pet attack debuff available, and it costs 20 Focus and has a 4 second debuff duration. Although the skill doesn't list a cooldown before it can be reused, in practice I'm discovering that when on autocast my Owl won't use Screech again until the duration of the previous debuff has expired. This has an important implication in that if Screech is the only Focus using skill your Pet has, their Focus will never drop below 80, simply because without talent points they'll recover that 20 Focus in 4 seconds ... which exactly matches how fast a Pet will reuse Screech. This means that there's no "overstacking" of Screech getting cast more often than the debuff will expire. All that said, Owls are really only "easy" get for Night Elves. Dwarves will have to make the "long hike" to Menethil and then take the boat to Auberdine, assuming that hopping through a Portal to Darnassus isn't in the offing. For the Horde it's even worse, since you have to get through Darnassus in order to get out into the "wilds" of Teldrassil where the Owls can be found. Short of that, it's waiting for Winterspring (basically) before Owls show up again after Teldrassil. At any rate, I am highly impressed by Screech, which can be used by Owls, Carrion Birds and Bats. Being able to do "Claw" comparable damage every 4 seconds AND having a PBAoE Attack Power debuff thrown into the bargain? WANT!

The original Petopia site doesn't exist anymore. That's why we have to use web.archive to go back to early 2007 in order to see any Petopia pages at all. I don't use the calculator I linked to tell me what skills pets can and can't have. I use the big master skills list (the second link) to do that. I'm the type of person who prefers to decide what role/function I want my Pet to serve, first, then work backwards from that to determine which pet optimally supports that particular role. After that, it's just a matter of searching the Pet Type to determine what sort of appearance I want on it (Petopia is/was excellent for this aspect) and then it's just deciding where to go in order to Tame that particular Beast. The caluclator I linked "works" just fine, so long as you reset it for Level 60 instead of 70 and avoid including the skills that didn't come out until TBC. Since it's a free form calculator, I can speculatively build in as many ways as I want without the programming getting in the way with "you can't do that" stuff.

Here's the rest of what you're missing ... http://web.archive.org/web/20070226134300/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/resources/petcalc.html http://web.archive.org/web/20070221051250/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/articles/skills_list.shtml Fire Breath and Gore don't exist until TBC.

Even if an item is Soulbound, you can still have an Enchanter put an Enchantment onto it through the Trade Window. You put it in the Trade Window, they Enchant it in the Trade Window and then you decline to complete the Trade.

http://vanillagaming.org/forum/index.php?topic=15951.0

I'm looking for some information, preferably from Theldoras and Killerduki, concerning the relative merits of SoR/JoR versus SoC/JoC in the context of maximizing/optimizing Holy damage throughput (as opposed to just merely "output") in a Protection build that goes all the way to Holy Shield. As you can probably imagine, I'm "torn" between wanting to go either Prot/Holy or Prot/Ret, and the question isn't over Consecration or Improved Seals, but rather over the choice of Righteousness over Command. For an apples to apples comparison, I'm essentially looking at either a 11/40/0 or a 0/40/11 build that looks like this: 11/40/0: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sxxzZVhtIezEo 0/40/11: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sZVhtIezEoV0xz The intent here is to try and maximize/optimize Holy damage flowing from Retribution Aura, Holy Shield, Blessing of Sanctuary, Judgement of the Crusader ... and then either Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command (r 1) ... all to generate maximum Threat via Improved Righteous Fury. Retribution offers 5/5 Deflection for improved damage mitigation above and beyond Redoubt/Shield Specialization and Holy Shield, and Seal of Command offers a cheap mana method for increasing Holy damage on every hit coupled with 5/5 Reckoning. This essentially yields single target only tanking build due to being able to generate Threat on essentially only one target at a time. Holy offers +10% Strength or Intelligence as well as pushback protection while Healing, and the intensely mana hungry Consecration which then makes it possible to generate Threat in parallel and not just sequentially. In this case, Spiritual Focus rather than Deflection is the defensive option, so as to be able to Heal while taking a beating. So I'm wanting to examine the merits/flaws of SoR (Holy build) versus SoC (Retribution build), mainly, and in order to do that I need a fresh enumeration of the things that will proc Seal of Rightousness (and Command) when using Judgement of the Crusader to keep them "supercharged" with Holy damage throughput while intermittently using Holy Shield for even more Holy Damage when tanking. In the choice between Divine Strength and Divine Intellect, if going Holy, how much advantage does either option offer in terms of improving Holy damage throughput? I'm assuming that Divine Strength offers melee Attack Power and Armor, but am unsure if there is any interaction between Attack Power and Seal of Righteousness (I'm presuming there isn't any). Conversely, Divine Intellect offers an increased mana pool and a gain in Spell Criticals, but am unsure of the critical hit interaction with all of the sources of Holy damage I'd be bringing to the table (Retribution Aura, Judgement of the Crusader, Seal of Righteousness, Holy Shield) to be pumped into Threat via Righteous Fury. With respect to SoR/SoC ... would either or both proc on Holy Shield? Is Retribution Aura "required" for them to do so? With respect to SoR/SoC ... would either or both proc on damage from a Shield Spike? Is Retribution Aura "required" for them to do so? I presume that SoR and SoC ought to be improved by One-handed Weapon Specialization, even if there's a bug currently preventing that for SoR(?) while SoC computes off the damage dealt by the weapon(?) and therefore is working correctly(?). Is there any interaction between One-handed Weapon Specialization and either Holy Shield and/or a Shield Spike? So as you can see, my dilemma essentially boils down to the differences between SoR and SoC, and thanks to the guides in this forum I find myself conflicted as to which way to go when it comes to producing Holy damage to fuel Righteous Fury for Threat generation. I'm presuming the differences between the two choices are relatively minor, but I'd appreciate some confirmation of that. Also bear in mind that my Paladin is currently Level 15-16 but I'm wanting to "grow" into use of these skills "naturally" rather than using a respec to get to them, because I'm a firm believer that how you play from 1-21 sets the pattern for how you play at the Level Cap. So in that respect, I'm looking more for an overview and explainer on the inter(re)actions of these combinations, rather than a "just do this" sort of answer so as to be able to understand and play with the underlying game mechanics to better understand how they synergize with each other in actual game play and then use THAT knowledge to make my decision with.

D'oh! See, this is why we ask these things, just in case something gets overlooked. For some reason, I was thinking that SoC did 70% of weapon damage on every hit, sort of like what SoR does. I don't know how I forgot the "chance on hit" verbiage ... although knowing that it's normalized to 7 PPM will help drive that home. So yeah, with that, the decision becomes more than abundantly clear. 11/40/0 is the way to go for the build I want to play.

What, this thing? It's an old dance gif! Had it for years decades now.

Curious that you'd say SoR is more "reliable" than SoC. I was under the impression that both procced off weapons/melee attacks. I suppose that the difference there is that damage from the weapon is variable (crits, nominal ranging damage spread) for SoC but that SoR really only cares about Attack Speed so as to normalize Holy damage output per minute via SoR. My rationale for wanting to take Spiritual Focus is for reasons of Selfish Sufficiency while enduring the solo grind. In solo leveling, you won't have a healer in your back pocket all the time, and I'd rather not have to resort to the self bubble as my first (and only?) option for being able to heal myself (quickly, without pushback) while under attack. Granted, the calculus will change by the 50+ part of the game, when +15% to SoR at higher ranks can be significant, but down at rank 1-3 it just isn't that much of a buff for 5 talent points. Improved Seal of Righteousness just doesn't have enough to "work with" at low levels (where I am and will be for a while) to be worthwhile. Oh and I made a mistake on the Divine Strength boost. Strength adds to Block damage reduction, not to Armor ... which is similar but not the same. So considering that I'm planning on going 1h+Shield, I guess that means that the 2h side of things becomes moot.