Karathress, Morogrim and Vashj

Well a few new fights for me to get used to in SSC.

From my view, Karathress was pretty much take down the Shaman add, take down the hunter add and then pew pew the boss. Simple game plan but hard to execute cause of the damage the tanks were taking. Also the freaking totems! Man those things suck. So yeah totems FIRST!

Morogrim, well this fight I had to strap on my prot gear and tank the murlocs as our normal prot pally had net issues. So in this fight, we had the warrior tanks round em up from the north and south and drop em off to me where I dumped consecrates to get aggro. It was a little different and I enjoy doing it once in awhile. Different pace and variety is always good. I've scraped together 492 defence so at least i'm crit immune.

Tried Vashj tonight, but after about 8 wipes it was enough. This looks like a very technical fight, looks doable but tricky.

Still, got some nice loots namely the Razor Scale Battlecloak and the Worldbreaker! So now I'm gonna retire my Gorehowl and temporarily retire my Cloak of Darkness (until I get some phat BT gem to slot in there to out do the RSB).

The upgrades are doing their bit, I've started to consistently produce 1k+ sustained dps and thats a big psychological barrier thats been broken. Now agonisingly close to breaking 2k ap unbuffed (sitting at 1980!). Lost about 2% crit by using the World Breaker over the Gorehowl. But the +5 expertise rating from being
human, weapon proc, slower weapon speed and higher top end damage should more than compensate.

Ah well I guess I'll get Vashj next time :)

I got a fever!

And the cure, is more dps!!!

Its been a big step progression wise for me with this new guild. I've now cleared 3/4 TK and 2/6 SSC. I keep getting stuck on Leo, and haven't quite gotten used to the timing of his whirlwind (even when using Deadly Boss Mods). Luckily I can bubble my way out of them, but it means I've also had to hold off on using Avenging Wrath (stupid forbearance)... So hopefully soon when I'm good enough at the fight, I can start using my AW without hesitation.

I also came off trial and got my first piece of SSC/TK gear during the week. The Greaves of the Bloodwarder dropped off the Void Reaver, and I was ecstatic to pick that little gem up for minimum dkp. No other bids, woot.

Did a Gruul's raid with a pug last night, trying to get my Dragonspine Trophy. I like doing pugs, because it allows me to demo to other players from lots of different guilds what a decently geared ret paladin can do. Besides, I was eager to test out the new legs! I was happy with the result, was around 930 dps for ages, but it fell to about 880 at the end when the Shammy got snapped. I'm yet to break 1k dps in a sustained fight though, so that and trying to break 2k ap unbuffed (without the Savagery enchant) is my other target. Some of the holy pallies whispered me after the raid, asking for advice about going ret and without making it too complicated I basically told them to get hit capped and gear like an arms warrior. That's what I enjoy most about being a ret paladin though, is helping those paladins that want to do something other than being a healbot. I've been invited back next week to pug for them again, and with that trinket as a lure, I might just be back!

On a side note, Rexamus also got his S3 gloves and Vindicator's belt. I'm inching closer to my panzerkin goal, but more importantly the gloves replaced his last piece of cloth gear, and is in pure leather caster gear. Now sitting at 9.2k health unbuffed and 19k armor, hopefully it shouldn't be too much longer before I can give it a good road test. Lithanial recommended a minimum of 20k armor and 10k health for a heroic so I'm closer to the mark now at least.

Project X update

Just thought I'd give a quick update on Project X.

The Badge of Tenacity has been acquired so I can scratch that off my list. Also got the Moonwalkers. While they moonwalkers aren't tanking specific, they're at least gonna get more armor than the cloth shoes he had while I find something alot more suitable.

The next stage of the gearing process will include 3 separate pieces to be acquired through separate means (pretty much pvp gear) but at the same time. The pvp items have great stam and resilience and will help gear Rexamus efficiently.

1) S3 gloves (one week - currently 1007 arena points): Obtaining this piece is a priority as this will ensure a complete set of leather caster gear.
2) Vindicators Wyrmhide Belt (one week - currently ~ 11k honor): Needing another 7k, the belt will give me a good stam boost.
3) Cloak of Subjugated Power (two weeks - currently 22 badges). Another nice cloak with resilience and also has more stam than my current blue caster cloak. I'll need to do another two Kara runs to get these badges.

These three items will add another 71 res, with my current gear takes Rexamus to a total of 160 res.

All in good time!

Being the newb

Well its been awhile and things have changed. I finally got accepted into a new guild 'Vague' that is in SSC and TK, and you get the feeling that you're being closely watched whenever you step into the 25 man raid environment.

Being the new guy, its a hard road being a ret paladin. I need to prove I'm good enough to earn a slot in the raid as a dps, and then later start squeezing into the shaman's windfury group. For ret paladins, having access to windfury makes or breaks our dps. It can be the difference between getting an invite or not. Why windfury? Well you get a free swing, and when your swing can crit for roughly 2.5k, you don't need to be a genius to work out that this will quickly add up.

This is the part where I think Blizzard really needs to step up to improve the retribution tree. Some paladins want an increase in dps, the majority want more utility, for me I think we need a combination of both. What I would like is a good group buff. 2% increase damage with improved Sanctity Aura is a joke. You can bet that if you have an enhance shammy, he's going to be in the prime melee group. A shammy brings strength of earth totem, heroism/bloodlust, heroic presence for that extra 1% hit and of course Windfury. While my pally brings extra raid buffs that are well received, the poor group buff means I'm left sitting on the sidelines.

So while I am sitting on the non-melee group, this is where I would like ret paladins to have an increase in personal dps. I would like a watered version of windfury (maybe a lower chance to proc?), so that when I do get placed in the real melee group I can use the proper windfury, and not be OP.

Project X

So in between trying to gain acceptance of being a ret paladin, I have been working on another side project, making a Moonkin Tank (from hereon known as Project X). I intend to make this a high armored, high threat caster dps tank, and I'm taking it pretty seriously.

I finally ground enough rep last night to acquire the awesome Earthwarden, and slapped spell damage so I would still be able to put out more threat, kinda like how prot pallies do it I guess. The real kicker is the 500 armor on the weapon. Not many players are aware that Moonkins get a 400% bonus from armor items, the same as our feral druid cousins. But I'll put this down to the lack of moonkins overall so not many are aware of this. This is even less apparent when you consider that many of these boomkins wear a lot of cloth to keep up with the dps of mages. Still Rexamus isn't any exception. For the time being, he's got cloth shoes and gloves, but I'm hoping to replace the shoes with the Moon-walker badge rewards and the gloves from Kara.

A side benefit of grinding Cenarion Expedition rep is getting the Ashyen's Gift an excellent caster ring with a great amount of spell hit. Awesome as a moonkin. Getting this ring means that when I ding exalted with The Violet Eye, I can then trade in my caster version for the tanking version, which has got 392 armor on it... pure bliss for druids.

I'm also currently on the AH bidding for a Badge of Tenacity, comes with armor... oh yeah.

I can already see that making a tank is going to take a long time and insane amounts of pvp to get enough resilience to be crit immune (need 224 resilience from what I read). But much like my ret paladin, I think I'll be ecstatic with the result.

GG

Well the guild is basically on life support. We lost our GM and Guild MT due to lack of progression which is pretty much the death knell for the guild. Now I have to go through the whole re-application process again. I can't go back to applying for another Kara/Gruul's guild since I need to progress further in the game.

Ah well, I've started applying and I'll see what comes out of it. For a ret paladin it's nigh on impossible. I can't simply spam trade saying 'Ret paladin lf SSC/TK guild', it'll just erupt a huge amount of 'Retlol' 'respec' calls. I just cbf with rejects like that. Some people are suggesting I apply as holy first and then switch ret later on, but that's not fair to myself or for the guild.

Sooo what else is there to do but run heroics in the meantime hey? I thought yeah a couple of smooth heroic runs would do the trick on my boomkin. But noooo...

I mean seriously WTF?!!! Ever since Blizz lowered the requirement from Revered to Honored to get into heroics its ruined the skill level. I'm sick to death of pug scrub tanks walking into heroics with greens that don't have any defense and expect to tank. Slack dps you can put up with, but a sloppy tank (especially in a heroic) is an absolute no-no. Its started happening in pug Karas too, getting tanks decked in greens is just doing my head in.

So now I'm grinding the BG's instead and letting off some pent up rage at some horde.

GFG.

As long as its not healing...

Its been an interesting couple of weeks since I last logged on. The guild has been downing Gruul on a regular basis, and most of our guys are so ready for SSC yet can't progress simply because of numbers. Its been incredibly frustrating. So a small number of our guild have started doing ZA, and I did manage to squeeze in there to have a bit of a tour around.

Been experimenting during this time, and last night was asked to be the MT tank in Kara for our second group, I was a little shocked to say the least. My previous tanking experience involved OT the week before and prior to that, was running lowbies through VC! I haven't tanked a 70 instance normal or heroic! I had seen pally tanking done a few times and know some awesome Prot Paladins like Colossis and Dumarthon (props guys). And much like Ret Paladins, aren't usually given their due.

Anyway, it went surprisingly well and was a lot of fun, and we cleared Kara (except for Nightbane and Netherspite) in about 5 and a half hours. Pretty good for my first try as mt. Rexkicker doesn't exactly have incredible gear either, about half Kara epics that the warriors didn't want and half blues. Big ups to the healers on that run, gg! :)
Oh managed to score Gorehowl from Prince! Not too shabby.

While prot tanking isn't really my forte, it sure beats the hell out of healing for me, and would have to come a close second. So I'm happy that I've had the experience doing all three raid aspects with my humble paladin, healing, dps and now main tanking. Its not something that every paladin has a chance to do, so I feel like I'm lucky in that regard.

I'm trying to decide on the Gorehowl vs my S1 Arena Mace. It basically comes down to whether the PVE dps is greater from the Gorehowl with more AP or the expertise racial bonus from the mace. Its a tough decision to spend the money on the mongoose enchant especially when I know the sword from ZA is within my grasp.

I'm also really close to getting my S3 Helm and upgrading my chest piece to the Bulwark of Kings. After tonight I'll be about 180 arena points short so should get that in a weeks time. I've also got 5 nethers for my chest now, and have another 30 badges (so potentially 8 nethers then), but my tanking was a bit too good, and now need to consider spending some of those badges on improving my tanking gear! Crap....