Back to it

Well, things have calmed down now, the guild split into two out of which I joined one half of it, so its back to raiding again. We're desparately short on healers for the time being, so I switched to my healing gear (which isn't exactly shabby at 1600+ healing unbuffed) and helped out for Kara. It also meant that we could bring in a new healer to gear him up quick. Its a costly exercise though because that's 100g in respeccing costs (50g to spec holy and it'll cost me another 50g to spec back).

We had a full clear of Kara that went smooth as. We one shot everything except for Netherspite where we wiped a few times as we lost our OT by then. Although, it was worth it, as I picked up the Mithril Band of the Unscarred! Holy hell that's a nice ret pally ring. As far as I'm concerned it made healing worthwhile. I also got other great tanking gear too since our main tank is already fully geared and we had a druid off tank, I picked up new tanking boots, ring and helm.

I'm glad to see the guild getting back to business. Sure we're short on tanks and healers now, but at least we've retained enough of the old guild and brought in new 70's to field two Kara teams. Hopefully this should put us back on track for 25 man raids again.

What the F?

I originally wanted to post about the usefulness of Pally power while raiding (and even in 5 mans with another pally), but the weekend proved to be quite an eventful one for my toons, and I'll have to post about that some other time.

So gearwise, Rexkicker got a few new things, the pants and the trinket from Heroic Mech dropped, so I was stoked, and plus I had finally saved up enough honor for the pvp necklace. This pushed the pally to the following base stats:

AP Unbuffed: 1868 (with Mongoose enchant)
Hit Rating: 93
Crit Chance: 27.36%

So I now feel that I've completed my gearing for Rexkicker now, and I've pushed him as far as I can on my own prior to getting any SSC and TK content.

I also gave the Boomkin some much needed love, and gave him a Kara run. But it was ace, Curator was nice enough to give up the Staff of Infinite Mysteries, and as I was the only caster that needed it (we had a strangely high number of melee), I got it by default! Hoot!

Then it all went to hell....

The GM went nuts after some guild world pvp didn't go according to plan. What I thought was supposed to be a casual fun event turned out to be the catalyst to destroy the guild. We had intended to raid a Horde city but while we managed to succeed in hijacking the zeppelin ferry, the guards kept knocking people (me included) off the airship with their knockback shots. So it kinda fell apart from there, but the GM rq'd the guild. What the heck for? Over some fun for a change?

Then it got worse, after convincing the interim GM that he was over it, he then just screwed everyone over. After being reappointed the GM (which I didn't agree with as you can't have a GM that rq's after petty incidents like this), he ninjas the guild bank of about 570g and about two tabs worth of valuable items (some worth about 2k gold!). He also appointed his level 1 alt as the GM, removed his main and stripped the officers of their rights so they couldn't do anything to stop the looting of the guild bank. He went further by taking down the forums and locking vent. He pretty much killed the guild because he didn't want it to live on after he was gone.

So Sepuku you tard, I hope you had your fun, and have to reroll horde because you are just a disgrace. Go emo yourself and /wrists.

Rant over.

My Precious

Awesome! After spamming trade chat all day again yesterday for someone to make my Red Belt of Battle I gave up and started doing my mining run and thought I'd spam in the general world chat instead. And bingo! Found someone to make it, and they did it for cheaper than what I was offering in trade at 1200g... nice! I'm not totally broke now.ef

Got Gruul's tonight so the upgrade is very nice, but I just couldn't grind enough pvp in time to be able to pick up my necklace. Sitting on 12,200 and still need another 3k to pick it up. :P I'm starting to wondering why I ground all this rep to get the exalted rewards when the pvp gear available is far superior for pve than the pve gear.

Oh, and I'm digging this 2.3.2 patch. For me its a buff, since I run with low spell damage and hopefully it'll get leaner once I pick up my legs from heroic mech.

Needs more power... Rawr!

Man, started the long expensive road to squeeze more damage out of Rexkicker.

Since its server maintenance night, no raiding was on the cards and so I decided to do a heroic mech run to try and get a better trinket and the legs to replace my S1 Arena legs.

The legs are ultra cool, the Greaves of the Bloodwarder and I want them! Been there a few times now and still no luck on either of them.

I've started spamming the Barthilas trade chat as well looking for someone to make me the Red Belt of Battle, the best dps plate belt in the game. Offering about 1.4k gold for it, but no takers so far.

You're probably thinking, dude, make it easy for yourself, you could pimp a dps class for more dps at a lot less effort. Well yeah I could, but the same could be said for doing up a beat up car. You take an old car, and do it up, trying to get the most you can out of it, and forget about the cost. When you're finished, you stand back and enjoy it, and get immense sense of satisfaction that at the end of the day you have something unique that is not the cookie cut dps class you always see.

So that's what I want out of my retribution paladin. Something that at first people may scof at it, and just ask... Why?! But when they take a look under the hood, I hope they'll be pleasantly surprised.

Grinding the BGs

Okay, so I'm grinding the Battlegrounds trying to get enough honor for the Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph.

I definitely think premades are the way to go though, ever since the 2.3 patch changes to AV have resulted in 0 bonus honor games, I think this is the only way.

Are these games lopsided? Sure are, and while I don't like the idea of premade groups (I'd rather a pug vs pug, myself), its ridiculous to keep coming up against them when I'm pugging. Nope premades are definitely the only way to go. It kinda reminds me of where in a fps game you stack one side with all your pro-gamer mates and just pwn pubs. Useless and doesn't mean much, but in wow where you get honor to buy gear, well it only encourages the ridiculous games we're seeing now.

Getting into a premade in the first place is a bit of an uphill struggle though. Our S1 and S2 arena gears have no resilience, so I kinda feel left out when I see the words...

LFM Org Eots/AB 250 resilience pst...

There's no way I got that much. So in the meantime i just ask em anyway, if they're just wanting to get the game going, more often than not, i'll just get an invite cause i'm a pally and they think i'll heal. Meh its their fault for not asking imo.

I've ground out 8k honor today, so hopefully I'll get that neck piece tonight, and when I meet the next ganker i'll be slightly that much harder to kill. Since its also good for pve, i'm hoping to meet Gruul's on better terms next time!

Now back to grinding....

Inaugural Post

Well this is my very first post as a raiding Retribution paladin in WoW.

I've been inspired by other retribution paladins and feel like this blog should try and encourage those paladins that feel constantly pushed into the Holy brigade that there is hope out there. But first a little about myself.

I started playing WoW only after The Burning Crusade came out after playing fps' to death, I think I needed a change.

My main is Rexkicker a paladin on the Barthilas PVP 'Oceanic' realm, I also have a 70 Balance Druid Rexamus.

When I first was trying to select a character for WoW I was reading the general attributes of the different classes as you do. It looked impressive on paper, a class that could heal and be in the thick of the action at the same time. I was immediately drawn to the class, as the idea of a 'combat medic' type class was what I decided I wanted to be.

It was not until I was about level 67 that I realised the end game that awaited me, and that retribution paladins were not welcome in WoW. I immediately halted my progress, and told my guild then that being a pure healbot was not how I envisioned my game and refused to level. At that point I was really jaded and rolled a druid instead as I knew that the versatility of the druid class would at least let me figure out how I wanted to play.

But I eventually caved and finished levelling my paladin, and took up the job of holy spam healing. I at least got to see the end game content, but how many times was I sitting at the back of the raid healing, and thinking I was missing out.

Then it all changed....

I came across another ret paladin named Pau, and was fortunate enough to see him raid in Gruul's. I was blown away! He proved to me that it can be done, proved that a ret paladin can be viable and from that point on I knew that I had something to aspire to.

So this is where I am today, I've started trying to play my beloved pally once again, and am determined to do a good job it!

Hope you enjoy these blogs, they tend to be long (probably because I got alot to get off my chest, but it'll be fun)!

Cheers,

Rex