Updates pre-weekend.

I wanted to mention that Devynity has reached level 58 and will be questing in HFP shortly. He made the trip there last night and learned Grand Master Enchanting. He will have to make his way on foot (horse) to Falcon Watch to learn First Aid. Enchanting is doing well. I gained Honored with Timbermaw Hold and picked up both agility enchants. I also stopped by the frozen lake in Winterspring last week and, on my second kill, got Enchant Weapon - Icy Chill. second mob. awesome. Finally, in terms of enchants, I picked up crusader from the Scarelet mages right outside Hearthglen in WPL. I cleared the tower once. no enchant. I returned to the tower about five minutes later and killed all the mages on the bottom floor. the last mage on the bottom floor had the enchanting recipe on him still. yay! so there. now all I need is to buy crusader orbs and I should be able to make a few of these.

1. Fiery is selling slowly. 80g a pop sells but not too fast. so maybe two a day if im lucky. sometimes 1. sometimes 0, especially when I get undercut. but for the most part, I am the only seller (or at least, that's what I see when I check the AH).

2. Icy Chill enchant hasn’t even been made due to the various materials I need to buy (and I don’t quite have all the mats in the AH). I'll have to stock pile them up when I can. I want to sell 10 and see how much I can make. 10 is a decent number to get a basic idea to how well these things may sell.

3. Crusader will most likely be my money maker. It sells for almost 200g in my other realm, so it should sell decently here as well, especially for the alts with heirloom weapons, this would be a nice enchant to have (Fiery is probably the cheapman's version of Crusader).

4. Agility. I posted agility to weapon for 200g. and agility to 2h weapon for 400g. will see how that fare. Auctioneer has seen a few and priced it for 180g/350g, respectively.

update: Fiery sells. Agility sells. Agility sells so well i increased the price by 100g and they still sell. for me. not you. dont try to copy me if you're on another server. just understand your market first.

As I go through Outland, I will be disenchanting a lot of items. Hopefully I can disenchant enough to level my profession towards 375 as soon as possible. The reason being is that echanting post 375 is a lot easier due to many saronite shufflers (although it’s a lot less than before) and the greed/DE feature. Enchanting using Infinite Dust would be a breeze. And with prices of shards so low (about 4g each), I can basically buy all of the higher level trainable recipes from the vendor in Dalaran. all good stuff. hopefully the market there isnt as saturated (relatively speaking, ofc) as the gem market. Otherwise, I guess I may just sell novelty enchants like Crusader, Fiery, Agility, and various other Pre-60 enchants for the levelers and twinks.

Also, cooking's at a standstill since I am totally unable to find anyone selling Greater Mightfish, Darkclaw Lobsters or Whitescale Salmon to level my cooking past 300. I can take a trip to Azhara and try to fish it myself (which leads me to wonder how the Azhara fishing zone will change in Cata). So my cooking is stuck below 300. Fishing is just too much of a pain to level right now. perhaps when I reach 80 I'll have enough time to just relax and fish. fishing should be relaxing right??

Also, what's a fish without eyes?

a fsh.

One last update: Dinged 58 before the weekend started. leveled through HFP and instances only to 64 by Sunday. will be trying to hit 65 by the end of the night. peace.

CSDS Blue(s)

So now that I've recovered from the weekend, lets get straight to business. Crusader Strike. it sucks. no really. it has very little bang for each buck. although I do get some cool spinjump animation, it doesn’t do too much damage. perhaps, I need to get better at landing those spinjump swings. it takes practice to get it right, you know. maybe in a few levels I'll finally find my sweetspot and deal crits galore with it.

Last week I did an experiment at level 46 or so using seal of command. my dps on ogres of tanaris was 150. at 53, just six levels later, and with sheath of light and crusader strike, im up to almost 300. just look at the breakdown. but I think this number is just a little inflated, as I realized that my exo was critting 100%, due to its auto-crit mechanic on undeads. this is great in WPL and EPL. im loving it and holy wrath. but it does increase my dps artificially. I will not complain. there's scholo and strath coming up, and they're full of undeads. hopefully I can get there soon, say, at 55, because at 58 I want to be outta there and into outlands. I think if we're given the choice to do ramps at 58, we should be given the option to do strath/scholo a little earlier. just like at 68, where we can bypass all the cool level 70 instances (there's all the tempest keep instances, plus shattered halls, shadow labs, and steamvault), I think it would be good to lower the level requirement for some of these instances so people wouldn’t always be stuck with Black Rock Depths. yea. I've seen that loading screen way more times than I like to see. and you know how I think about instances these days. super easy. no skill required. leave your brain at the door.

So with me dinging 50, I was able to choose between two very decent talents. one was going to increase my holy damage by using my strength (actually attack power, but AP comes from STR anyway), and putting it into a formula and spitting it out as larger numbers. sure I thought. all my attacks will deal more damage. not +30% as I might haf thought, but more like +30% on the spell power portion of each attack. and for those attacks without spellpower in it, well there's other talents for that. but this one beats them all out. so my conundrum is this, do I pick crusader strike now then add to my spell power damage later on, or add 10% more holy damage, then 20%, then 30% then crusader strike at 53? I figured three levels isnt going to matter much, so I picked the talent that would improve my gameplay. I mean, help me get out of this auto-attack-induced coma.

So I picked crusader strike instead of shealth of light at 50. believe you me, it makes almost no difference at 50, or 51, but maybe at 52 and 53. why? because crusader strike does almost no damage its negligible at 50. sounds like 10% increased holy damage? kinda. but one is a baseline buff, the other is an attack I can do once ever six seconds (and I forget to use it… often). so the real benefit to picking crusader strike at 50 is to bring it into my rotation so I can get familiar with a new attack in my rotation. and it did take three levels to actually get it pounded in as part of my attacks. I still forget it at times. which is better? who knows. I don’t care. they both add some damage, and at this point in time, it doesn’t matter. no really, no one cares about maxing damage at 50. no one. just do well. that's all that matters right now. look at the damage charts if you dont believe me. I hit crusader strike 35 times for 7% of the total damage (also look at the first chart, its worse). its a brand new attack but my god, at least be "cool" about it.

now getting crusader strike is a whole lot different from getting art of war. this is not because I got it in my level 30's, which gives me more time to learn it, but it was because of the active play it produces. I must watch for the procs. and after I see the proc, I must decide which is better to use, exo or FoL, or neither. it also forces me to evaluate my situation and plan out my spells. honestly, I love how I can simply hammer of wrath one mob to death, then tab over to the next mob and exo him to death as well. but I have to decide, should I use my exo to finish off this one mob, or save it for the next guy hitting me but isnt under 20% health yet? it would make sense to use hammer of wrath on the one just about to die, then use insta-exo on the second mob, with the chance to use hammer of wrath almost immediately after that. im giddy. so now im learning to weave in CS into my rotation, mostly after a judgement. and then throughtout the fight, im hitting both cs and judgement. and I am only using CS because there's nothing else for me to do while I auto-attack things to death and wait on my AoW procs. but with all the different attacks and the silly CS CD vs. Judgement CD, it really makes things kinda fun, albiet headache-inducing fun.

my attack rotation at level 50 is now changed to this:

1. enter fight with judgement of wisdom.

2. crusader strike.

3. AoW-Exo, or auto attack

4. crusader strike.

5. judgement of wisdom

6a. crusader strike (if necessary)

6b. hammer of wrath

7. start next fight with AoW-exo if on, otherwise, use Judgement of Wisdom.

Art of War almost always procs. sometimes it doesn’t and I wait around, but it does proc more often than not. also, there have been many times where AoW proc right after I use it up. its kinda flakey at times when I need it to proc, but it's not life-threatening when RNG hates me. so its not so bad. I just think of it as a clearcasting proc, or a killing machine proc.

Now with the rotation above, it's pretty fun and involving to play a paladin now. but its even more fun in groups as I get to toss in a consecrate due to the way all groups play. they grab at least two groups of mobs, then proceed to AoE everything down. so consecrate really helps with that. I've read somewhere that there is no damage cap for consecrate, so the more mobs that gets packed into the area of effect, the better. watch as my damage outdoes everyone in this case. I've only been out-dps'ed by one other mage once, and that was it. for most instances, im usually top dps. this is quite a change from when I first entered BRD, at around level 50. I was the lowest in dps and couldn’t really keep up with even the tank. the screenie explains it all.

but since getting sheath of light maxed and crusader strike (plus adding four levels helps with the glancing/absorb hits), my dps basically doubled. ok, so most of it came from consecration, but that extra 30% attack=spellpower conversion really boosted consecrate's damage, as well as most of my other attacks. except crusader strike. Here's a screenie of my dps at level 52 inside an instance. notice the "high" dps is due to consecrate.

notice also how often I used crusader strike. notice how craptastic its damage is. yea, it sucks. but what else is there to do between attacks? CS. yep, that’s it. that said, I cant wait to add divine storm to my rotation. level 60… hurry up!

One thing I need to figure out with Divine Storm is whether I will need SoCom any more. DS will do what socom has always been doing, but will use the effect of the seal im using instead of just doing damage to nearby mobs. what does this mean? it means if I am using seal of light, I will be healed from all of the mobs DS hits. If I am using seal of wisdom, I will regain mana from all of the mobs (not directly, but you know what I mean) DS hits. it will be pretty juicy, too bad it doesn’t proc off seal of command, I don’t think. that will be 3x hits x the number of mobs per swing… which can be huge. I may have to explain that some more if people don’t understand whats going on. but DS+socom would be way too overpowered. so im pretty sure they do not work together.

How I believe DS works: So normally, when attacking a mob, I would judge a mob. the mob will then have a judgement debuff that will "do what the seal says it does". so if I use seal of light, judging a mob will give me extra health back. so the light seal says give pala health. wisdom seal says, give pala mana. corruption seal says, add stacking debuff to mob so everyone can do more damage. seal of righteousness says give pala an extra hit of holy damage randomly plus add a base amount of spell power damage. you get it? different seals do different things. and when I judge with a seal up, they also do different things. it works with every seal except for seal of command since seal of command works a little differently from most of the other seals. I am not sure if it works for seal of corruption/vengeance either. but lets say I have seal of light up. seal of light will return a certain amount of health back to me. but since DS can hit multiple mobs, and say, I have four mobs on me, I will get healed from all four mobs since I will be hitting all four at once with DS. there. its pretty simple.

So I really cant wait to have DS as part of my rotation especially since CS pretty much suck donkey nuts. maybe it will get better. maybe there will be a better reason for it. I will find out soon enough.

But even with the auto-attack-fest that is ret leveling, I really do enjoy the "slow" style of learning this class. it is totally not a DK style of play at all, with everything instant, with all spells based on runic power or rune stone activation. with DK's we attack first, then wait, then weave things in and out. but with paladins, we start off with the same types of spells. but those spells are only what is seen with the eyes, the physical attacks, but the meat and core of the spells lies within the seals, the judgement types, and the use of all our conditional spells ("hand" spells, mainly bubble, but also freedom and salvation). all of this adds a different style of play to the class that makes the paladin class pretty unique in its own right. there is no other class like it really. there is really no other class as versatile as the paladin. you can argue hunter's aspecs, or warrior's stances, or druid's forms. but auras, seals, and judgements… they all add a different layer to the paladin's play, and each layer does a different thing. ok im done trying to analogize.

I am looking ahead to outland, to divine storm and "wings" and more talent and gear choices. and im going to love trying out le ret on outland mobs. it will be fun. cant wait to get out of the scourge-infested WPL/EPL, and out of BRD.

*and i left my character name on there just to let you know and armory me if you want. Devynity on Ysondre. no sense in keeping it hidden anyway. *

Summing up the weekend.

I started the weekend off late 40's, at around level 48 and ended up at level 53 Sunday night. There was a lot going on throughout the weekend, but i really dont know what to say about it. actually, i dont know anything meaningful to speak about regarding leveling from 48 to 53. These five levels are actually pretty packed with change, but i dont seem to know how to adress the changes. it could be the case of the mondays. but more likely than not, its just burnout.

But any which way, i am going to try to attempt to write something because i really really want to mention the addition of 3 points of Sheath of Light and 1 point of Crusader Strike. That, and i also have this itching to write at work, since, for some odd reason, Websense is actually letting me blog from work. Score!

So here is how my weekend started. after having ran around tanaris in a big circle and doing all of the ZF quests, i mozied off to Swamp of sorrows for some really easy green quests. i basically killed an alliance guy who thought the forsaken was going to betray the horde. i think it was the group that sided with Varimathras instead of Sylvanas. I am still uncertain of some details in that uprising. no spoilers if you havent already done it.

anyway. killed the human, then went off and did some quests to help the orcs there. killed a bunch of murlocs for an orc that seems pretty angry at the ocean, or ocean creatures in general, and then wondered why we dont see too much of the sea on the eastern coast of lordaeron and the eastern kingdoms. The only coastal contact i've had with this part of the sea was at the following: Briefly in eversong, Hinterlands, briefly in EPL and only during the DK starting area, then there's this gigantic void until you reach swamp of sorrows and then STV. Then i thought about the western coast of kalimdor and thought, the coastal contact i have with that side of the world seems remote, yet tranquil and lush. Lets start with Feralas, a lush green area with a coast and a large island. then desolace wasnt too awesome, but it did have some diving quests, and lots of nagas to kill. further up the coast is the shores of the zoram strand with an instance, as there is no meaningful coastal contact along stontalon mtns. Then, further up is the nightelf level 10-20 area. then, going over the waters, there's Teldressil, Azuremyst, and Bloody myst isle.

What i can take from this is this sheer fact that there's a lot more interaction between the player and the coastal environment on the western side of kalimdor than there is on the eastern side of the eastern kingdoms (Lordaeron, for short). Apart from two quests that has me swimming to small islands in Hinterlands (and short short quests as it is), and one to in STV to kill three captains, there isnt a whole lot going on on the eastern seaboard. i dont know why that should be the case. But what i do know is that this has lead me to view the eastern sea as a large mysterious body of water, a large, mysterious and somehow dead body of water. sure, it has fish, turtles, waves, and the occassional sea monster, but i somehow find it very easy to believe that these sea monsters would rather be in the other oceans. so would i.

i went to swamp of sorrows because, like stv, i've never quested there. but i quickly realized that i really wasnt missing much. i had to collect 10 crab legs that basically took the whole of three passes to complete. that's 10 crablegs from 15 monsterious crabs. and so i cleared them all. once, twice, then three times. thats about 40 crabs killed in order to loot 10 legs. and shadow panther hearts? i killed them all twice over. to get five. yes five hearts. lets not talk about the crocodile claws and crocodile flanks. omg. and just to drive a final nail in the coffin of "omg worst zone ever" there's a giant instance in the middle of the zone, complete with a maze... before you get to the instance itself. thank goodness for LFD, at least you can skip the maze, that's until you realize there's a maze inside the instance, and the isntance is as big as the whole zone, and that if you die... good luck finding the entrance (for me, i've done this instance many times before, so corpse runs arent a problem. but do you feel the pain im feeling? anyone?). and finally, adding a vanity nail into the coffin... i decided to help out a human who was captured by some broken draenei halfbreeds. well you would expect the captive to run AWAY from his captors, correct? well being human, he wasnt too bright, so he walked me right through their camp. what a dumbass. he died about five seconds have he aggro'ed 4 of them. then i died. i really dont know whats dumber: this quest, the escortee, or the designers who actually thought it was a good idea to have the captive path back through the village. /rant

finally, upon outleveling the zone, i decided to move to my favorite zone in the map (and this time with two quests from STV, one to kill 20 trolls and put their skulls on a spike, and another to gather some bottles of rum, plus one quest i got from UC to burn some documents that careless high elves will leave lying around). i ran to Raventusk village and picked up all of the quests. i had to drop some quests, including the dumb failed escort quest mentioned earlier. but i was really glad to have dropped it. anyway, i went up the coast, killed the turtles and found lard's lunch, then went back to turn it in. then i went inland and made a big gigantic circle around the map, and completed every single quest there. i dinged 50 somewhere at around the same time i was killing vile priestess hexx, then went to turn in all the quests and got super close to dinging again. flew to UC and turned in my quest there, took the zep to grom gol and turned in the quest there. flew to booty bay and turned in the quest there. ding. 51. really quick and easy. i went to tanaris to do something else and finish wastewater justice quest. then called it a night as i was super tired. it was saturday night by then. =]

i got a bit lost after hinterlands tho. since i figured hinterlands was probably my favorite zone ever, due to the trees, the hills and many little pockets of camps and things all thoughtfully melting together in one gooey place. gooey goodness, of course. not to mention it has mageweave, mithril nodes, sungrass and purple lotuses galore. so my next option is to enter WPL and do the quests there. as far as it seems, level 58 isnt too far away. im 53, so 5 levels of questing and im out of Azeroth. although STV was a pretty refreshing, there isnt really much to say about content in the "old world". its just one of those things everyone has to go through and try to escape as quickly as possible. sometimes people dont make it through and end up with a level 35 alt somewhere.

as far as instances go, i really havent gotten much of a chance to do any of them to any extent, mainly because they have broken the later ones into artificial pieces that many people decide they should skip straight to the end boss for that "instance". really though, orange mara, purple mara, and pristine waters mara. you cant skip much in orange or purple, but with pristine waters, you can basically skip the goblin, the rock boss and head straight for the farting princess. and after the princess, no one wants to jump down and kill the giant gator. no one. then, upon hitting 51 or 52, i kept getting BRD, and we only had to go into the cave to the right and kill that one "fear" happy boss. there are some groups that ventured further. but seriously, at 52 most of us seemed capable of taking out the whole instance. the content is way too easy. seeing how, at my level, i am only given credit for the first boss in BRD, when we went as far as getting the key to the instance (i think its called the shadowforge key, about 7 bosses in). it feels like whoever divided the level requirements up forgot that all the instances underwent several NERFS. halfassed job blizz. srsly. when i first entered brd at around 51, i was blowing things away. and i was still forgetting to use my new attack, crusader strike. we ended the instance with me using that ability maybe five times. i really think, come cata, that the difficulty be put back to "Normal" with some heroic modes for all of us 85's who would really like to go through old content again. and yes, break up the larger instances. but dont break it up but give us the ability to wander into the next parts of the instances. just break it up and attune it for 85. then for heroic 85, or whatever you want hardmode to be called. orange mara should be a separate instance. BRD should be three different instances. with portals at the beginning for us to select. let us work.

yes, let us work. this is why im ranting about the instances and how they're planned out. actually how they've resulted through series of nerfs. what happened is that, level appropriate four years ago is not level appropriate today. this leads to sloppy play by everyone. i dont even care if i pull aggro any more. i just do. even with vigilence, i pull, and i dont care because i can take the 10 hits before the mob dies (consider outlands and northrend, where 5 hits would have been overkill and i'd be dead, but here, nope) and i still have enough health to "tank" another mob. all the warlocks cast rain of fire. all the mages cast blizzard. all the hunters cast volley and do explosive traps. all the paladins cast consecrate. all the warriors are tanks and do amazing damage. there are no DKs but when there are, im sure i'll see a million square feet of death and decays before its all over. tanks would pull three groups at once. healers never run out of mana, even with the three groups and an accidental fourth group. honestly. a boss fight isnt really a boss fight. its just another mob with a little more health and maybe does a little more damage. that's basically it. everything's really just a laughfest right now. its so sad. that's how its been since ragefire chasm. none of the instances i've been to actually challeged us. everything was a quick jog through to level up. i really didnt get to learn my class as much as i figured i would. i actually learn my class a lot more through "easy" solo content. aparently the status quo has changed, and in order to really learn your class, you have to go solo. this wasnt the case three years ago when i started playing. it shouldnt be the case now, especially when playing solo requires the ability to tap two buttons and knowing which mob is a questmob. really. how dumb can we go? but im sure there's a reason for that. i'll have to theorize on this a little later, as it is just about time to wrap up.

and finally, i've ventured into WPL and did the first two quests there at 53. hopefully, the next five levels will pass by quickly. hopefully, come outlands, i wont be steamrolling through instances like i did before.

for my next post, im gonna talk about the transition from my level 1-49 attack sequence to my new level 50 attack sequence, which includes Crusader strike. its a lolstrike actually, doing pretty crap damage, but its still something "new" to the level 50 paladin.

also up in the near future will be my thoughts on how leveling through instances has been trivialized, and how its creating a lot of bad players. etc, things like that. also will update on enchanting, jc and that little bit of inscription, not to mention cooking, first aid and fishing.... on my pala.

all good stuffs compared to today's drivel. drivel you say? yes. just a bunch of garbage spit out at ya. feel free to reply with comparable garbage in the comments. =]

Some not-so-random screenies

The first one: I've finally picked a second profession for the leveling pala. Inscription. Getting peacebloom for 4-5g a stack isnt so bad. but once i got to... briarthorns and bruiseweeds, they basically trippled in price. so... i think my DK will have to switch from mining to herbalsm (since he doesnt mine anymore, he's just a JC bot making pennies. lol). Anyway, level 75 inscription! and i can make my own dam vellums for fiery enchants.








The second one: While checking for "fiery" i found a nice deal. Had to. it was going at 17% of normal price. and i think i'll hold on to it for a while. the less this recipe is available, the more i'll be able to sell without much competition. however, i know it could just be sold to someone who just wants it for their collection. but even there, they can make fiery for their friends, guildies and anyone in trade chat who happens to be asking for it and they see it. so... i picked it up. for 10g. come on. had to.














Finally, here's a funny conversation i had with someone. i was running out of UC to catch the zep to gromgol (to get to swamp of sorrows) when i happen to spy this one comment in trade chat. apparently, this person thought that each city had their own separate trade chat. i had to mention to her that its all shared, otherwise, she'd be harassed by others. yea. saving people every day. lol.

and after the convo... i asked her to join our guild! lol. all good stuff!

anyway... enjoy your weekend. last post until monday or tuesday. i'll have something to talk about then. =]

The itching doesn't stop

*This post was written a day ago**

Last night was pretty interesting. I queued up on my pala to dps at level 46. We went got Orange Mara. I found myself in a group with four friends from the same server, two in the same guild and two in different guilds. I was the fifth, their third dps. So we started off pulling this fighting plants one by one, which kept my dps at around 100. That was fine. Mara is a little more difficult and the beginning was mainly single target pulls. Some two-target pulls (the patrolling Satyr chicks), and packs of slimes and worms. The slimes needed to be kited, and the worms die really quick. The plant mobs have this knockdown attack that stops all attacks for a few seconds. its basically a stun. The pala tank was randomly using Judgement of Wisdom and Light, so I got a bit fed up and just used Justice. There, no overriding judgements. lol

In any case, the instance was super short with the water elemental boss and the big plant boss. I'm not sure if we can venture into the rest of the instance since after the plant boss, we requeued and got Zul Farrak. Now this one's fun, and I can actually justify using judgement of justice. Not only are there no knockdowns, knockbacks, silences, etc (ok well there's some silences and some hexing going on), it is, for the most part, a stress-free instance and I was able to get my dps up past 300 dps at times. overall it was roughly 250dps, which was ahead of the tank at 200 and the warlock at 170. I'm loving my top position as dps, even though its still AoE dps. but im not looking down on AoE. its still awesome to look at. im still killing things and contributing to the group. on boss fights, im second, sometimes third. I don’t mind. I actually have no problems being second, or third on the dps charts so long as we get our job done.

And getting the job done is what I like to do. So oftentimes, I sacrifice dps (lol really? its not bleeding edge progressing my a longshot) for some "fun" and utility. who has fun anymore in instances? but fun I have. and fun I'll continue to get. see the warlock pulling aggro from DoTs+Rain of Fire? I use my Righteous Defense on the lock. same with the healer. since everyone basically defaults to their AoE attacks, when a clothie pulls aggro, they're gonna pull more than one mob. so i wait about two seconds for the tank to react. then I taunt them off the poor dps/heals on to me. better they attack me than the clothie… always.

So there, that's my itch… my itch to bi… er… switch. to switch to prot. or tank. or something. I almost made it a song! it would have been featured on yo gaba gaba! but yea. the itching doesn’t stop, and I find that it makes dps way more fun than just, well, dps. im going to turn my vuhdo oh and add a rightclick to taunt, and a scrollwheel up to purify, and a scrollwheel down to cleanse, and maybe a leftclick to FoL should I get a AoW proc in which I don’t need to Exo or FoL on myself. Usually in groups, I never need to FoL myself and exo is almost always on cooldown.

So there I go again, always wanting to do more than just dps. but I find that fun. can you blame me? and what's more fun thank saving the day by tanking some mobs? im sure the healer didn’t mind that I pulled all the mobs off of him. maybe it wasn’t that necessary to pull the mobs off of the warlock, since death to warlock meant the mobs go back to the tank automatically. but we're not all here for by-the-book playing. we're here for for-the-fun playing. I enjoy all the times where I am able to use purify on someone. im glad for the comments address to the healer, "nice dispells" and I interrupt any question as to who that comment was directed to by saying, "thanks!" its gonna be even more fun once I get my vuhdo working. think of it as a healbot+decursive+clique all in one. in any case, im a tank at heart, and if a healer is getting hit by some mobs and the tank isnt taunting them off, then its up to me, the tank-in-disguise, to peel those mobs off the healer and save the day.

SoR vs. SoCom

Of the two seals I am currently using for damage, Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Command, I assumed that they were both used for different uses. Since SoR adds some holy damage to my attacks, and SoComm does damage to two additional mobs, I guessed that SoR will be my go-to single-target seal for boss fights and for solo play if I was able to pull mobs one at a time. SoComm would come into play mainly on multiple-mob encounters, primarily in instances, but also in open world content where I cannot pull one mob at a time. With this constant switching back and forth, I've developed a sort of mental trigger to constantly look at my seals and choose the right one. I have Smartbuff looking out for SoComm, and when I put on SoR, it will constantly nag me that I need to buff with SoCom.

Well, I decided last night to test out both seals. At level 46, I ran over to Tanaris and found the level 46-47 Ogres standing around in the middle of the desert. Why a bunch of ogres would want to stand around ruins in the middle of the desert is beyond me. but they were there, surrounding a small oasis. Ok, so it was the Oasis that they were guarding. But couldn’t they have found a better place somewhere else to inhabit? In any case, I started my test off with SoR. Ran around and attacked, one-by-one, all the ogres I could find. I was successful in never pulling more than one mob at a time. What was the result?

SoR produced 150dps. it isnt the 200-300 dps I do in instances, but that's because I am not attacking five to ten mobs at once. 150dps didn’t sound so bad, but I was hoping for up to 180 or even 200 dps like I was doing in STV. but I realized quickly that in STV, I was usually attacking two mobs at once, or aggroing a second mob while halfway finished with my first mob. They're pretty close together or their patrol paths always seem to be close to where I decide to pull the mob I want to attack. So with these almost stationary ogres, with some pathers/patrollers, I was able to kill one at a time with ease.

When I was halfway through with the camp, I switched to SoCom. The result? I started off doing much less dps, about 110dps at first. but after about five mobs, I was going at around 150dps. I did this for the remaining half of the camp, which included that one mini-boss inside his cave. But fighting him felt like just fighting a regular mob, but with some unlucky RNG streaks (you know, when you see all the misses and parries and wonder whats wrong with the RNG? yea that). Here's the screenie.

My fighting style was completely identical in both cases. I would usually open up with Exo, then judge, usually with Wisdom, but sometimes with Light. When AoW procs, if it's early on in the fight and I have exo to use, I would use exo, otherwise, I would use FoL. If im full on health, I'll wait on the proc to see if I will need it when it nears the end of its duration. at around 3-5 seconds remaining, if the mob is near dead and I have full health, I'd skip it. If the mob is near dead and I have 80% health or less, I'll use an FoL. If the mob is not close to dead I'll use Exo again, despite my health. I usually try to end the fight with Exo off cooldown so I can pull again. Sometimes I'll heal myself after the fight with a Holy Light. Never once did I have to stop to drink because Judgment of the Wise procs often (still talented at 2/3, so 67% chance of procs per judgement), replenishment procs often, and using Judgement of Wisdom about 75% of the time.

I go through mobs fast enough to only lose, at most (and this doesn’t happen often), about 50% of my health. but usually, I lose about 30% of my health, which is quickly replaced by AoW-FoL in-combat. Also, at times where I do reach 50%, I do a holy light out of combat and im back at full. With my mana bar never dipping below 50% (usually at about 70-90%), the mana cost in casting a Holy Light once every four of five pulls is trivial.

This reaffirms several of my beliefs already:

1. Deflection > Benediction for leveling - you don’t need the mana savings.
2. 2/3 Judgement of the Wise is all you need (2 points in this is better than 5 points in benediction; 2 points work wonderfully whereas 3 points can be overkill).
3. Art of War procs do not use up too much mana when coupled with Judgement of the Wise (since it procs insta Exo or FoL, using those spells cost mana, and since we're using them more, we're using up more mana. great way to balance more mana usage with more mana recovery).
4. Seal of Light is useless (although fun to use as a learning tool before AoW).
5. Seal of Wisdom is useless (although fun to use as a learning tool before Judgements of the Wise).
6. Mana conservation and utilization is the key to playing a Paladin well.

And #6 basically sums up everthing.

In closing, I know that SoCom will out-perform SoR when I fight against more than one mob. So the above is a quasi-controlled experiment to see if SoR is actually better than SoCom when fighting against one mob at a time. It looks like they're pretty identical with SoCom edging ahead should a second or thrid mob path into the fight, or gets summoned like some mobs often do. So in conclusion, at least for the next few levels, I'll have Smartbuff check for SoCom, Blessing of Kings, and Ret Aura, as there is no real benefit to having SoR on at all. My next experiment will be using Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of (unimproved) Might. I guess you can say… stay tuned. =]

A little less threatening

Just hit 46 last night and put a second point into my threat reduction talent, Fanaticism (How does that make one less threatening again? anyone?).

This talent is awesome. not just because it adds crit and gives me just a small boost in dps (I hear when I fill out Sheath of Light, it will increase much more, so that’s something yummy to look forward to) it also helps with those encounters where I am doing 200 dps (lately, I've been doing 200-240 dps) and where the tank is doing about 80. This becomes really annoying when after the first 5 seconds of a fight, I run in to only judge and consecrate and I pull aggro. IMMEDIATELY. and its on the mob the tank is currently attacking. I usually have the tank on /focus and his target frame is placed where I can easily see and click on, so I know for sure who to target.

now im a little glad for the threat reduction, since im melee, and melee's don’t have the built-in threat reduction from standing at 30 yards away. there are some tanks with awesome threat generation at my level, and I usually don’t question what stance they're in. well its only warriors for now. but for paladins, I just check if they have Righteous Fury on. and for Druids, I just see that they're in Bear form. now I was having problems the other night with bears doing 80 dps. yes, at my level, doing crap damage. and doing crap damage means they're generating crap threat. modifiers can only do so much but when I have to stand there and wait for several swipes before I can run in and use my hammer, then it’s a problem. I know mangle comes a bit later, but what about maul? what about feral charge? what about feral faerie fire? those things add up in threat. perhaps it’s just that one particular druid who "suck" but still does ok to survive the instance. actually our first healer dropped due to the tank losing aggro all the time. he wasn’t just losing aggro to me, but also to the rogue and the mage. mage was doing his AoE most of the time. the second healer was a bit more patient and we got through the rest of the instance with no problems. we were in zul farrak and the first healer dropped group before we even got to the first troll boss (the one by the cave).

but perhaps this druid was really a cat druid, who's leveling through the game and just do decided that he can kinda tank an instance since he does have bearform. honestly tho, my gear for my feral tank at 80 is gemmed with all AGI gems. I prioritize avoidance over stam. so you will see maybe two stamina gems on me, but the rest are either all agi, or and agi hybrid in order to get the socket bonus or meta activation. I've healed some stam stackers before, and it was a horrible experience.

in this instance tho, I did not care to check the druid's gear or talent spec because, for some reason at 1am in the morning, I was tired beyond belief, and didn’t want to even think through any of the fights. but I did check if the tank was in bear form, which he was, and I did check if I had righteous fury on me, which I didn’t. so after "tanking" half of the pulls and, on the last boss encounter, "tanked" one of the two bosses, I dropped group after I got a nice pair of something. I forgot what exactly. heck, I think they were boots. no maybe that was the random satchel of useful crap bag reward. I don’t know. I rolled need on something there. beats me. I was 90% asleep by then.

anyway. just wanted to blab about how im glad I have threat reduction now so that I can counter some of the "stupid" I experience in dungeons. maybe this isnt the correct solution (to counter stupid by tolerating stupid). but what can you do? besides, its just level 40something. they'll learn by the time they hit level 80 that maybe they should use more than one button to tank. one good thing about the tank tho, he did pick up targets he would lose aggro on. so at least he's got situation-awareness down.

More JC woes.

Some crazy people are selling Insightful and Relentless Earthsiege diamonds for well over 100g each. but im sure they will make a sale or two, and anger quite a few others who are looking for a good deal and will resort to guild/trade to find their meta gems crafted. But what this gives me is the opportunity to sell at 60, 70 or 80g. on my "populated" realm, they would go for about 30-40 g each, but here, they're scarce. I have to think about why they are. Although Timothy Jones can teach you a few earthsiege cuts, learning Insightful or Relentless costs 5 JC tokens. perhaps many of the JC'ers are mass producing the cheaper learnable recipes to level, thus flooding the market with swift skyflares. but when it comes to the 5-token recipes, they're scarce. I would assume the my competitors will start to watch that market a little more and sell for less. but I am hoping to come home tonight with my auctions sold and the lowest auction to be 100g. hopefully.

as far as making a lot of gold from JC, I must say there isnt much out there to sell or make. I can prospect and sell raw jems, or vendor some cut ones. that will make me some profit. heck, I can even smelt the saronites and get a few good gold back from the vendor price. I cant even prospect adamantite because the price of a stack is almost the price of one Mercurial Adamantite. so there's no profit there. there's also no "vanity" item that JC'ers can really make for people since most of their goods cannot be seen. You cannot show off a necklace, ring, or a gem. I've even tossed a few items into my guild bank, just because its often more work than its worth to try to sell some of these items. they are great gems for the outland leveler as they're better than the outland rare quality gems. come on. and for cheap! but no one bites because the equivalent rare gems from northrend are almost at rock bottom prices… why buy uncommon? in any case, JC has me completely mystified. But I did find a little place to make some gold back. although its slow, its better than nothing.

Post 40

Post 40. Not over the hill yet. Actually, I don’t even have the goodies like Crusader Strike, Avenging Wrath, Crusader Aura, or even Seal of Corruption yet. So this is like midlife crisis. Or actually, mid-20s crisis. this happened right after I graduated college, actually, when working at my first job. I seemed to always wonder if I took the right courses in college, attained the right degree, or even accepted the right job (after about a month of searching, I only received one offer, so maybe the question was, should I have waited another month for a better job?). but well whatever the case, being level 44 now, it feels as though im in that stage where I don’t know what to do.

I seem to have my skills learned, but now, for the next 36 levels, im going to have to hone my skills to become a better ret pala. (I don’t have the goodies yet, but I do have the major seals) I think the area of homogeneousness ended roughly around level 20, where I picked up Seal of Command, Exo, and Consecrate. Although, I do think that, if I were to have gone prot, I would have wanted Seal of Command first, then switch over to fill out my prot tree. Then, at 60, respec to full prot in order to get Hammer of the Righteous, and then slowly begin to fill out the ret tree to get back SoComm and Pursuit of Justice again. I think that would be most optimal, since at levels 20 to 59, I wont have any AoE besides consecrate, and consecrate sucks mana like a "whale" sucks "plankton". So SoComm does wonders with trash, and a switch to SoRright works wonderfully for bosses until I get SoCorruption. Heck, I cant wait to get SoCor+ DS. Divine Storm will destroy trash, as ret. =]

But right now, at 44, since I have pretty much everything really need, im given the opportunity to learn my seals. yep, I figured out why palas get one (yes, just ONE) offensive attack, and that's because blizz wants us to learn how to manage our seals. they don’t want us to simply pick a seal and go with it forever, but rather, they want us to learn how we can utilize our seals in different situations to get the most benefit out of a fight. and not just "know" it like mentally, but "know" it to the point where it becomes second nature. Low on mana? Seal of Wisdom. Low on health? Seal of Light. All full on health/mana and fighting a group? Seal of Command. Full on health/mana and fighting one mob? Righteousness.

It's pretty strange that for 44 levels, I really havent been judging then auto-attacking the whole time, although on the surface, that's what it looks like. but I was really getting trained to use my pally to its fullest potential. every pull, every situation, every layout of mobs/trash/etc becomes a training ground in using my skills to best keep me alive. Also, my "oh crap" spells are being used more often. I find myself having no issues using any of my bubbles. I even jump off high cliffs and the zepplin just to use a bubble. cant wait til hit howling fjord to do some basejumping.

Since I've hit level 40, I was able to talent into Judgement of the Wise and Art of War, which has given me awesome mana replenishment and the option to do two extra things during combat. Judgement of the Wise allow me to regain mana back two ways. one, there is a direct chance I will get 25% of base mana back per judgement. im currently talented 2/3 into it. so I get the proc maybe 2 out of every three judgements, which is plenty for now. Also, I've put 2/2 in Art of War, which gives me the option to use an instant Flash of Light or Exo. This is almost too awesome. I find myself wasting a GCD just healing myself in-battle instead of waiting til the battle's over. Also, if AoW procs late in the battle, I find that im better off using the heal if im low on health, or waiting to use it on Exo for the next pull. I rarely use an AoW-Exo since it still has a long cooldown, and I'd like it to be ready immediately after a battle so I can pull again. but for longer fights, using an AoW-procced Exo is great added dps.

The next tier will be a bit difficult to decide upon. Well, more like, which do I get first? I want both of these talents NAO! Sheath of Light and Crusader Strike. One will increase my spell power handsomely, and the other will give me my second base attack. It will be hard to choose between the two but im leaing towards sheath of light first, since it will increase my total output for all my spells and abilities. Not only that, having Crusader strike now will mean more mana usage, although its very small comparatively. its just as expensive as a judgement. and it will mean a changeup in my rotations. perhaps I should get it early on and get used to it, but then again, at 60 I get DS, so that will change my gameplay a bit also. What does this all mean? I get about 10-13 levels to learn to weave in CS before I get a new spell… that's it? yep. that’s the only difference. I may as well wait.

So upon achieving level 40 and slowly progressing towards my mid 40s, im having a blast playing my paladin. its not all about offensive spell selections, rotations or whatnot, but more about defensive spells, utility spells, and staying alive while doing alright dps. A hand to blizzard for making the paladin class actually fun to learn and play.

As far as gear goes, I still have one piece of plate gear. It's annoying how they planned the drops in SM to be mail gear, only to introduce platemail a level or two after you get the really awesome Scarlet Crusader's set, or the shoulders from Herod. Then from levels 40 to maybe 50, we're in search of plate to replace our mail gear. So here I stand, at 44, about to be 45, with one piece of plate, and that was a random dungeon reward. my god. who thought of this?

Maybe we should be given the option to add "plate" to our mail gear if we, one, have the skill to wear plate, and two, are wearing mail gear from our level 30's and 40s. There's an abundance of plate gear in outlands, so I don’t think adding plate to mail gear after level 58 is necessary. Make it a BS ability. or make it a BS enhancement item they can sell. that would rock.

On second thought, I don’t know if this is even necessary. Since we go through armor so fast, and the only benefit of plate at our levels would be the added armor, as im sure everything else stat-wise will remain the same, we may as well just stick with enchanting or leather armor kits to beef up our gear. I really do not see an added benefit to go through adding plate to mail armor when we can add leather to all armor. all as in all types: cloth, leather, mail, plate. and not all as in all armor slots. I just wanna say that because I know someone might pick at that statement.

and I realized I was spelling Judgement wrong for the past month. apologies.

Paladin at 41

Here's what my guy looks like at level 41. He's enjoying the epic ground mount. Plus, he's got the hammer from the boss in Uldaman, The Rockpounder, some random dungeon plate shoulders, scarlet gloves and belt and some other gear. all enchanted, of course. his enchanting is about 265 at the moment, and now that the DK has ventured into winterspring and BRD, he's got both Icy Chill and Fiery Weapon enchants. He's going to farm Crusader enchants soon. hopefully these will give him enough gold for his epic flying.

No long post here. just wanted to update you on my silly little project. honestly, playing a druid is fun, but i think healing and tanking (in general, with all classes) has lost its luster. maybe cata can help with that. maybe i just need to take a few months off and level a dps, which is what im doing with my pala. -=]

Here's what he looks like!