Tankin and Spankin

For the last couple of weeks, my gf has been leveling a priest.  I got her started with the basics (look for cloth gear with int, spell power, spi, stam, ignore the rest for now) and saw her heal more and more.  now she's more pro than before.  now she's healing bad tanks and just complains about them behind the screen (but will keep them alive anyway just to get the instance over with) like its normal.  We talked about holy and disc and how they're different and all that.  she chose Disc because i chose disc... on three of my priests.  Yes, there're three disc priests.  dont ask. i just like them.

anyway, she got her priest leveled up to about 60 when i decided its finally time to break out my old tank and practice a little.  He's a burly orc warrior, with massive teeth and a dogface stare, ready to kick some butt.  i started off looking at my reset talents.  as i stared at the new tree, i realized that it was pretty much a no-brainer what i should get: more survival, more threat, more rage, better mobility.  i wasnt able to get shockwave tho, as it was one of my favorite spells.  i'll get it at level 67. 

i then got all my new spells at the warrior trainer and then started on part two of my night:  macros. 
it didnt take long before i realized several things about the macros.  its not different from before. just about every spell i used before was still there.  nothing has really changed except for my macro to shockwave.  that just gives me a red question mark.  i'll get that spell soon enough so i didnt bother changing it.

i went into ragefire chasm and started running around to practice.  there were two people hoping for a run, so i took them with me.  they dinged in the two runs i was there.  grats to them. after two runs i got used to the buttons, made some changes in my macros and decided it was time to take on some more solid content. 

seeing that my gf was 60, we started the night in ramps.  i grabbed, and grabbed and grabbed.  it was fun.  almost chain pulling, but making sure that the current group was just about dead before i moved on to the next group.  most of the night, i was at near full health.  of course, i was 65 doing a 60 dungeon. 

several tries at ramps and then blood furnance, i ended the night at 66, almost 67 (and ready to do some durnhold, save my hero thrall, keep runs).  he's not really my hero.  he's my orc's hero.  he'll be a warrior just like... wait... thralls a shaman.  nevermind.

my gf got from 60 to.... 61!  yep.  rocked.  but i knew that once i hit 69 or 70, i wont be able to do randoms with her anymore.  i can, however, queue up for specific dungeons with her.  that sucks. the extra bonus exp will not count since im too high level?  really?  that's really sad.  anyway..... i got on my rogue (who's level 61 as well, who i havent played since forever.  to put this into perspective. she has slow riding, which was about 90gold at level 40, back in the days.  and at level 60, we would get journeyman, fast land riding for about 600g.  that, i would not pay for since i wanted to stop playing my rogue.  yea, thats how old this rogue was.  wasnt played with for a long while).  i got on and repsec'd subably, made some macros for stealth, openers, finishers, and combo point makers.  then i configured my buttons to just the way i liked it.... and queued up with my gf.  at the start of the day, at level 61, i was doing about 500 dps. 

okay i lie.  i started off doing about 350dps.  then, as i got the hang of it, ended the instance with about 500dps.  several quests and several instances later, i was doing slightly more damage. it wasnt until late last night, about level 65, with several dungeon pieces (mostly gemmed with delicate bloodstones (yes, just bloodstones)) that i finally broke 1k dps.  1k dps!! wtf??? yes.  its awesome. then by the end if the instance, it leveled out to about 800-900 dps.  not bad for a 65.  what happened is this. i found out that my biggest damage came at the beginning of a fight, and only coming out of stealth.  so i wait for the perfect time to shadowstep, then ambush (3cp), someone will crit (4cp) and i will simply do a backstab (5cp).... then finish with Evis.  they die.  in about 6 seconds i just did 10k-12k damage. the rest of the fight has me applying backstab+evis, or hem+rupture.

there really isnt much else to do because after the first mob dies, everyone else is at about 1/2 health anyway.  there is absolutely not enough health or time left to get a full stack of combo points to really do anything useful.  and then there's the bosses.  =]  love those fights. 

anyway, hopefully spending some time as a rogue will help me with my paladin dps. lol fat chance.  but will hope.

as for my warrior, this was how it was played for the several instances that i actually tanked. 
for trash, i would charge in and rend immediately.  then thunderclap to apply rend to everyone (and slows them), then cleave.  thats it.  all done. actually i'd demo shout at times, shieldslam as often as possible, revenge when proc'd, shield slam when proc'd, thunderclap on cooldown (unless i see more mobs coming into the picture, i can save it for them) and cleave to dump my rage. 
on bosses, i charge, shield slam, devastate, rend, devastate, devastate, revend on proc, shield slam on proc, keep sunders up (and increase my threat lead) with devastate.

i find that devastate is pretty useless with trash unless its one of those "theres nothing left to press" situations.  trash dies quickly enough.  healer has no problems healing me, and i rather save my global cooldown for some more aoe moves than a single target move.  that said, devastate the boss, cleave the trash.

one other thing, my gear is made for questing.  my spec is for questing. i leveled up as prot for a while and it was awesome.  even in outland, lack of defense gear is not doing any harm to me. i'll save the dodge gear for later, when i hit 70 and have to get the cobalt set.    my design before was this, to allow myself to be hit more, thus gaining more rage, but also being able to heal myself as i fight.  this worked well, but those days are gone.  now that i am doing dungeons regularly, i dont want to be hit more to gain rage.  i'll be hit plenty, so i'll have to slowly switch over to more mitigation, avoidance, and stamina gear.  my talent tree is not as customizable any more, so im stuck with a cookie cutter spec.  thanks bliz.  now we're all the same.

anyway, thats just my update.  it feels like the weekend but its not... yet.  have a great weekend everyone!

RET vs. PRT: Mana

As far as differences go regarding Retribution and Protection, I find that my have more trouble with mana as prot while questing and ret while in instances. really? yes, even with blessing of the sanctuary up. this is because a lot of quest mobs are scattered, and many are casters. to keep a prot paladin's mana bar full, I will need to run up to about 3 or 4 melee mobs (or hope a caster or two will stand in melee range and take a swing at me, or pull the two melees towards the caster and tank them at the caster's position) and take them down together, as a group. I'd be halfway down in health, but my mana bar will be full. I just need to cast heal on myself and move to the next set of mobs. although this works well with cats and raptors, this doesn’t work well with humanoid or undead mobs who cast spells. so instances are the best places for prot paladins to work. but overall, questing isnt so bad if you plan out the pulls.

as far as ret leveling goes, questing is slow enough that I do not need to sit and drink often. switching to seal of light basically negates all need to heal after combat, even when judging wisdom, leaving my mana for better things like exo or judgments or lolturnevil. I don’t even use turn evil. I may have to one day tho. so after several mobs, I sit to drink, then continue with my kills. for one-target pulls, I pull with exo, then judge and walk to my fridge to look for a bite to eat. come back--mob's dead. its that simple, and im so glad that in cata expansion, pallys will have one more attack to work with.

now, as ret in instances, things get a little tricky. since it is a group effort fighting other groups, starting off with an exo might be a dps loss, unless it’s an undead I am trying to kill. so I run in with judgment, then consecrate. I keep consecrate up as long as there's three or more mobs. im using seal of command instead of seal of light, and the tanks do not seem to have problems ever, so im keeping ret aura up instead of devotion or whatever else. sometimes I am surprised with my mana regen and im at 75% mana after a big pull. and sometimes I find myself completely out of mana.

for example, in SMGY, after the first hallway there is a torture room with 10-12 mobs. some tanks pull the whole room. some pull half but end up getting the whole room pulled due to fleeing mobs. sorry, judgment of justice has an 8 second cooldown. if mobs die one at a time, we usually finish them off before they aggro a new group, but when two or three decide to flee at once, in different directions, we end up with more groups being pulled. this isnt too much a problem. but I find myself running back and forth a lot, which is always fun. in this room, I usually deplete my mana supply. then I drink and move up to the actual graveyard. I deplete my mana supply there as well, right before we enter the mausoleum. now if the group decides to kill all the mobs in the graveyard (instead of killing only the ones on the path), then I drink midway through the graveyard and once again before we enter the mausoleum. im at about 25% mana before we hit the boss, but I find that that is just enough mana to finish off the boss.

so there, some minor nuances in mana management between prot and ret. please note that I leveled prot almost two years ago, and that was before the changes made to the paladin class in patch 3.0. and even then, i only leveled prot to 60 before picking it back up again several months ago, during patch 3.3.2. so many prot leveling is a little different now. or maybe the same. some input may be required. =]