The tables have turned!

I'll admit it, I have been addicted to reading the WoW pally forums of late. The ongoing Wotlk discussion has been a hotbed of Ret is OP posts and Lol Holy remarks. It seems that the shoe is on the other foot for the moment, and retadins are enjoying the irony of holy paladins being told that they won't be brought to raids because of their low heals (sound familiar?). I've even starting seeing the term 'Loly paladin' spring up! It justs makes for some fun reading watching the paladin community tear itself apart.

I remember reading a post from Coriel at Blessing of Kings that summed up the in-fighting of paladins nicely. While I haven't been the biggest fans of holy paladins, I'm not blind and I know how important healers are. Healing is a thankless job, without the kudos that tanks get or the fun of being dps. So why would you try and make it any more painful than it has to be and simply give a holy paladin a HOT or an AoE heal? There is a very fine balance though. On one hand, I want holy paladins to be viable, but on the other, I don't want holy paladins to be too good so that holy is the default paladin spec.

On a different note, I've already grown tired of prot tanking as well. I dunno, I'm just not getting the feedback that I need to want to try and play the game properly as a tank. I pretty much faceroll my keyboard on trash pulls once I figure out where to line of sight the mobs. While your dps loves it as they don't have to worry about cc, its not very engaging and I end up just playing a mini game of how many mobs I can pull before my gear gives out and the raid wipes.

Anyway, its back to browsing the paladin forums with some beer and popcorn.

Cheers!

Rex

Shamans

Well, while I'm waiting for the guild to progress through the content I'm enjoying tanking for the moment. There's not much upgrades for me as ret anyway so I'm happy to help out. I gotta be careful though, there's two things bugging me, the first is that I am trying to gear for three specs now (yes including holy), which put a serious drain on my dkp. The second is that the more gear I get for a particular spec the more I will be pushed towards that role. So its like 'hey you got all that tanking gear, you must tank!'

Fortunately the raid leader has been impressed with the fact that I can play all the specs. Many pallies I know can either tank, heal or dps. Few can play two specs well and I know of only 3 or 4 pallies that can play all three. Admittedly, its been awhile since I've had to heal on a regular basis, but at this late stage of the game I don't mind what role I play, I'm just wanting to help the guild as much as I can so I can see some T6 content before Wotlk comes out. The plan being that once Wrath hits, I can respec back to ret to level and hopefully stay ret in the expansion.

I've noticed a bit of a hole in the melee group, we have no enhance shaman! I have been furiously levelling Rexana, and am 61. But I've hit a wall now, you see she's enhance but I haven't been able to get any good one handed axes or maces to level with (the ones she has now are the level 42 Flurry Axe and a mid 50s mace). So its taking longer and longer to kill stuff and the grind has been mind numbingly dull. I'm contemplating respeccing to elemental, but I'm just not sure. Anyone got any advice if I can get any 1h weapons in the outlands for a shaman? I'd prefer to stay away from daggers.

Close the dps gap in Wotlk?

Ok so you're gonna get a double post cause I'm having withdrawal symptoms.

I've been trying to keep up to speed with the WoW forums with paladins so close to getting their 'second pass'. The major thing that has been irking people is the change in the beta to Judgement of the Wise. I'm sure you've heard it by now, the mana has been reduced to providing 10 members mana regen equal to 0.5% of their maximum mana per second. From what I understand, its been crippling ret in the beta, and they're going oom in about 1 minute.

I'm not worried though, I'm confident that Blizzard will fix it as it would be ridiculous that a class would be screwed this badly (yes I know that pallies have often gotten the raw end of the stick). I hope that in the final version they give the old JotW just to the paladin itself and have the current 'replenish' effect.

No my real concern is the removal of much of the utility as buffs won't stack with other classes and that only one will take effect, warrior shouts and improved blessing of might for example. So if we can't stack buffs in the expansion, well there will be little need to take a ret paladin for utility. So without utility, our dps would have to be very damn near that of pure dps classes. Its a fair trade off, less utility for more dps.


Offtopic, I'm thinking about my professions. I've still got mining as a profession, and I know I should drop mining and pick up enchanting to min-max. Then again, wotlk is so close on the horizon that it seems that it'll be too hard to try and level blacksmithing without it. So I'll probably stick with mining until I hit 80 and then switch to enchanting after that (or maybe the new inscription profession if it offers some neat 'inscription only' attributes.

I had limited success with blacksmithing in TBC, but in Wotlk Blacksmithing is getting buffed so you can add a gem socket to some gear! Hold the phone, that would be like getting free stats like enchanters do. So maybe to min/max you might have to be a blacksmith! Plus hopefully you'll still be able to make your kickass weapon as well. Two incentives to level blacksmithing in the expansion? I'm sold.

Back from the Brink

Hi all!

I wasn’t happy with the way my last post ended, and reading back, it was pretty bleak.

But for every ending there is a new beginning. I have taken this opportunity to expand my tanking experiences, and I have built up a really good foundation for being a pally tank. Still, there is much more I need to learn, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

I’m actually enjoying tanking to be honest, and it has breathed fresh life into old content as it’s the same fight but a whole different point of view. My biggest challenges have been to figure out how many adds I can take on before deciding ‘oh crap, that’s too many’, and how to take enough damage so I don’t become mana starved (I’ve even started using Don Carlos' Famous Hat as part of my tanking gear).

I can see why tanks are ‘precious’ though. You get the highs when you know you’ve done a good job and the crushing lows when you fail. Its much more visible as a tank as well. If you screw up and die as dps, the raid will continue to function, but if you screw up and die as a tank everyone dies. The feedback is instant and can be catastrophic. Its strange though, being a tank sets you apart from most of the guild and you can start getting a bit of an ego!

On the ret side of things, I have been given a chance to shown what I can do and have regularly cemented a top 5 dps finish, which means I can easily get a spot as ret if they have enough tanks (woot!). But from my WWS reports, it just hasn’t been as good as what I'm used to. I was by far from being happy with it and I don’t know what has been going wrong. I’ve since done an audit on my gear, and resocketed and re-enchanted my gear to balance it back up and I even got my gear to hit exactly 95 hit rating! Hopefully my next ret outing will be much better.

I do have an interesting problem though, I’ve started to see armor penetration and haste start to sneak onto my gear and am torn into what I should stack? I know that haste isn’t the best for alliance rets as the haste won’t increase the amount of Seal of Command procs, but on the other hand, armor pen isn't as efficient as well since Seal of Command is holy damage. So that leaves my physical attacks, what would benefit my auto attacks and crusader strikes more then? Haste or Armor Pen? Hmmm……

I guess I’m leaning towards armor pen more, and I just want to make sure it’s the way to go.

Cheers!

Rex