Been awhile...

Sarp!

I promised that I'd get round to updating my blog this weekend, and while its been awhile since my last post I haven't not been busy. Its amazing what else you do in the game (and RL) when raiding is taken out of your schedule (I've accepted that I'll probably never see MH or BT at this stage of the game on the pally).

Firstly, I got my epic flight form for Rexamus and haven't stopped zipping around Outlands. So finally I think he's a complete druid.


But of course the paladin has got some love, and I've been gaming full on trying to bring his PVP gear up to scratch. So I've picked up the Medallion of the Alliance, Vindicators Bracers and Boots, got my S3 legs and crafted the Stormherald! Pew pew pew. I've gotten him to about 330 resilience now and am using the 0/20/41 build which is working really well in the bg's. What I haven't done is upgrade Rexkicker's shoulders! He's still wearing that entry level rep blue gear. What has been funny though is how your shoulders are so noticeable. I'm sure I've been targeted by horde thinking that my gear would be scrub, but underneath the surface there's a 4/5 S3 ret pally. Still, I am looking forward to getting the S2 shoulders once S4 hits.

I'll have to give you an updated screenshot of the way Rexkicker looks now, to show what I mean.

Anyway, back to PvP. I'm having a problem of getting stable arena teams for the moonkin and pally. I still have alot to learn in the arena, so I don't believe I'll be getting too high of a rating just yet. But then again, 10 games each week just isn't going to cut it anymore, I'm getting sick of my sub-1500 rating, I want to start winning!

So what combos are good for a ret pally 2v2 and 3v3 wise (I hear alot about 3v3 resto shaman/ms warrior/ret pally setup)?

I'm trying to plan for Season 4 as well. I decided to pick up the Veteran's ring especially because I bet it'll be removed from vendors to make way for the new stuff. The Vindicators ring would then drop down to replace it. Seeing as I'd have to get a 1650 rating to pick up the new ring, So I reckon its best to get the Veteran's ring now.

Why?

I'm currently having the why bother moment? Why do I bother being a ret paladin, considering the amount of abuse I cop sometimes, is it really worth the trouble? At least on Barthilas I kinda earnt a decent reputation of being a good ret paladin. But on the new server I really am starting all over again. More importantly, why do I even care and why does it irk me when I lose, given it is just a game after all...

I don't know and I can't explain it. I wonder if people actually read this blog and whether writing is a complete waste of time. I've thought about trying to grind the rep on the mage and gearing it up, but the passion that I feel when doing it compared to the pally or druid is just not there. I've learnt that deep down I do enjoy those outcast specs and no joy comes from playing the mage.

So what is it that drives me? When I pvp, I get blinded by the bloodlust. I feel the thrill of trying to chase someone down, and unleashing havoc with my 2 hander at point blank. I like annoying that enemy that tries to nuke down my teammate by putting a BoP or BoF on them or throwing them a heal or cleansing a debuff. On my druid I get the feeling of invincibility with my uber armor and impressive nukes, hots and treants. It is this passion that I get from hybrids that I just haven't got with other classes. Maybe its the variety of gameplay, the adrenalin rush of having to be aware of so many things that I find drives me to play a hybrid rather than a one-dimensional class.
Or maybe I've had one pint too many from a night out and should just sleep it off instead of writing this....

I can taste it!

Just gonna do a quick one today.

I did the epic flight form chain and just need to do the heroic run! Man that is frustrating.

Picked up the Vindicators Neckpiece from the boomkin, and he's up to almost 350 res. :)

Doing some PvP on the Pally, and have gone a 10/0/51 spec. I tried going a prot/ret spec but it just wasn't my style. Maybe when they bring WotLK and I get to level 80, I'd put points into Prot to pick up Reckoning. Man that would be sweet.

Also checked the 2.4.2 patch notes at first the pally change looks great on paper, but then you realise its just a bug fix :(

Oh well back to waiting for the expansion...

A new hope

So I made the massive decision to switch to a new realm. I've been fed up with the 400+ queues on Barthilas and have made the switch to the new PvP realm Dreadmaul and have brought over all my characters to start over.

The first week has been interesting, I've seen the population explode to about 8500. I've been watching the census carefully on the server, it was originally 60% alliance 40% horde, a pleasant change compared to the 60% horde 40% alliance. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of playing on a PvP realm, you always feel like a 70 is gonna drop out of the sky and go for the gank, and when it is heavily in favour of the other faction its much more annoying. But the ratio has slid in favour of the horde now, and is now 47% alliance 53% horde. I hope it doesn't slide too much further.

With raiding pretty much out of the question until the new guilds settle in, its also had an impact on my gold income. With no raids going on, there's no new gear being obtained, and therefore no need for JC gems. Still, there's always PvP and on this server in lieu of raiding, the prices of PvP gems have spiked so I'm still making the odd bit of dough here and there.

I have used this time to save up and do more dailies than I normally do, and have put together another 5k gold to save up for my epic flight form for Rexamus! Pew pew. I was however stunned to learn I also have a 17 step quest chain to go through to get it. Thank you Blizz, gfg! FFS! Still, at least the end boss I have to kill in Sethekk Halls has a chance to drop an epic mount. That might make it worthwhile, so fingers crossed!

I'm not sure where to from here though. I want to help out my mates gear up, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about the countless stories I'm going to have to tell about running Kara again, I think we've all been through that. I'm grinding heaps and heaps of PvP at the moment as well so I'm hoping to get some more resilience up. The druid is sitting on 328 so far, and I want to see if I can crack the 400 mark sometime soon.

I love the Balance druid on the battlefield, its a walking tank, and is so far packing about 900 spell damage AND healing. And with those HOTs, this thing is a behemoth.

Sup

Ah server restart, a perfect time to put down some thoughts.

Ya I know I haven't updated this in awhile, but I've had nothing much to report. I quit the raiding guild I was in, basically because I wanted to focus on other things, helping some RL mates gear up and focus on earning some cash. I've joined a guild called Brace Yourself, which have just started doing SSC, so I hope I can contribute to helping these guys move forward.

I've always been reasonably good at making gold, as a hybrid though you gotta be. The constant respecs (especially when I'm in a non-dps spec) means it can put a real drain on your resources. So in the meantime I levelled a mage to 70. I started from the get go specifically to level a jc and being a mage, can supply my mains with a constant supply of food tables. I figured he could basically live in Ironforge and port from place to place servicing players with their jc cuts. Its turned out really well, its now a side thing I do. My main focus now is to do the usual prospect and cut and put on the AH. So now I just do some cuts and make some cash, all within the comfort of IF.

On another note, I've got enough Arena points to get my S3 helm now for Rexamus. It'll be some pew pew pew!

New build?

I've been wracking my brains of late trying to figure out a way to pick up Vindication without giving up Kings or my Pursuit of Justice (I believe that more speed is less time spent running back to the boss for more dps. I think I've finally cracked the nut.

I thought about going only 1 point of PoJ but at that level you only get 5% increase in speed, and if you're gonna do that, you might as well get Cat's swiftness or Boar's speed enchants which give you an 8% speed increase. Problem for me is that I use the Surefooted enchant (for the +10 hit rating) and am finely balanced at 95 hit rating.

So what to give up? Well I reckon I'm going to only take 2/3 out of Sanctified Judgement. I'm hoping that the mana I can pick up from proccing JoW off Vindication will be enough to offset the lesser mana efficiency.

I'm not a big fan of respeccing 3 times a week, so I hope this all rounder build will give me enough flexibility in both the 10 man and 25 man raid environment and save me some gold.

Resistance gears

Well my last post about MgT got me thinking about resistance gears especially for high end content and this darn heroic MgT. I hear there is a fight in BT that you may need to stack resistance (shadow?). Well my refitting of my old Horseman's Helm to include a resistance gem could be taken further and add 2 more resist all gems to the remaining slots. I also have some other old epix I could refit, my legs from Heroic mech have 3 gem slots, and I should be able to upgrade my chestpiece to the Bulwark of Ancient Kings with some bought Nether Vortexes (thanks 2.4) and put 3 gems in there (I'm going to go with the Vindicators S3 chestpiece over the BoAK for general PVE). In MgT normal, I can get an upgrade to my boots, which means I can refit my existing boots with a further 2 resistance gems as well.

So the end result? Well that would give me a total of 11 gem slots (i.e. 44 resistance to all schools of magic) that would be a good all round resistance set, I just hope that it doesn't cripple my dps stats.