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

The end?

Well it had to happen sooner or later. I've tried my best to get into a raiding guild on Dreadmaul that would take a retribution paladin, but all I've had is rejection after rejection. No matter how good my gear is, or how well I do or how much knowledge I acquire about my class, without the support of a guild, I cannot put that gear to use and do what I do best.

The only way forward for me now is to spec prot and stick with it until the expansion comes out. Hopefully, then people will see that retribution paladins are needed. C'mon Blizzard, please don't nerf retribution too hard (the Art of War nerf was far too extreme).

I'm actually bitterly disappointed at the moment, all the hours that I've put in to make Rexkicker 'all he could be'. As of today, I have 75 days played on him, but I guess that wasn't enough.

So I think that this will be my last post for quite some time, this blog was about the view and the life of a retribution paladin, but if I can't be that paladin, then there is no point to keep writing this blog. I might log on and post my thoughts on the beta and the expansion though.

Thanks all for reading.

Cheers,

Rex

What to do?

I'm still looking for a guild, so I've got all this extra time up my sleeve. Soo whats a guy to do in the meantime?

Well I've started closing off the loose ends, working on those things I've let go for ages, like I still have a part of the Onyxia attunement and trying to level my cooking.

Should keep me entertained for a bit.

Oh well...

Updates, Wotlk and mana...

Well its been an interesting time, I finally got my Shard of Contempt to drop, but unfortunately the guild I was in fell apart and so I haven't had a chance to use it. I am once again guildless...

Hmm I guess I'll be looking for a new raiding guild now that's probably doing ssc/tk, its a pretty big longshot to get into a top end raiding guild, especially on a new server, but we'll see.

So in the meantime I've been working on trying to get my Arena up but i'm failing really bad. Part of it, I'd like to think is because I'm on BG9, yup the infamous Bloodlust battle group. Sure you might think it really doesn't matter until you're at the pro-end of rankings, but when you're going up against 'Gladiators' in the first couple of weeks of S4, its kinda depressing seeing them in the 1500 bracket. Its also a major disadvantage to be up against some US players on an Oceania server, seeing as I play with a 350+ ping.

Anyway, that's enough of the whinge session, what I really wanted to talk about was some of the things I'm seeing out of the Wotlk beta patch notes. Such as base mana...

My first response was that of horror when I read that a lot of spells were costing a % of base mana. For example

Repentance: 'Repentance mana cost changed to 9% of base'.

But when you actually think about what is base mana it is much less scary. Base mana is the amount of mana you have before any intellect on any gear, enchants or buffs. So a 70 pally with 2953 base, will only cost 266 mana from casting Repentance.

I'm also really glad that Repentance is getting buffed to a 1 minute CC on a variety of mobs such as humanoids, undead, dragonkin, demons and... Giants (what the?). So now that pallies have CC it's one less excuse not to take a ret paladin along in a 5-man.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out from a swag of changes to ret that will give great utility and an increase in dps.

Cheers!

Rex

Where is my SHARD?!

So I've been making a big effort to try and get the Shard for Rexkicker, but it simply won't drop!

Its been impossible to get groups as a ret pally, so I've gone prot temporarily so I can farm the place quickly in a decent group.

Oh yeah, I got all the cards I needed for both the Blessings Deck and the Furies Deck at the same time! Man I was stoked. Problem was I had to travel to Horde territory to get it, and on PvP server, its not always the most fun thing to do... The furies deck has helped me heaps in tanking H MgT and made the job easier.

I'm itching to try the blessings deck though, but I would love to pair it with the shard!

But apart from that I guess I'm waiting for the expansion and am drooling over any tidbits of information I can find on the new talents for pallies (if it ever gets released).... Will we get something as cool as the warrior's Titan's Grip? Probably not but surely Blizz has to do something to halt a mass exodus of pallies once the deathknights are out.

What do I expect from the expansion?

Well reading what the other hybrids got in terms of proper CC in the alpha, druids have their roots work indoors and shaman's get hex, so hopefully we get something just as good! Having a decent CC can make or break being selected in a 5 man group.

Oooh I got a another group for H MgT... here we go again!