Who's Healing?

Losing my sanity

2011-02-15T23:06:00.002+11:00

Oooh Dark Phoenix Hatchling.

Hmm...raise 55 reputations to exalted. Seems easy enough as a guild achievement. Ahahaha no...

This is how I imagined this achievement would be done.

'Oh hai guys, as part of this guild I think it would be uber awesome if we all chipped in and raise a faction to exalted each. So you super friendly guildie megachum, you get Aldor. And you bff, you get Scryer!'

Yay, and then I imagined the guildies would go and exalt their assigned factions and we would live in a land of rainbows and unicorns and dark phoenix hatchlings would spew out of our overflowing guild bank.

In reality however, this achievement is seriously aids, and I'm not talking the helper kind either.

No, instead this achievement is assigned to the poor assface with the highest number of exalted factions upon hitting Revered with the guild. Unfortunately in this guild, that assface is me. So needless to say, that when I hit Revered, much rage was had when I discovered that with my 47 exalted reps the guild was eight short.

Seriously how can an a GUILD achivement depend on one person???!

Still, at least this achievement relies on rep grinding (which to be honest I was always going to do anyway), and it does reward a nifty pet.

So what's the equation like? Well since dinging Revered with the guild, the Darkmoon Faire and the Booty Bay grinds are done and dusted which brings us to 49. Now I'm six short. So lets break it down...

Bilgewater Cartel: 18579/21000 - I've recently finished the other Cata grinds so I'm back to wearing this tabard for dungeons. Huzzah!
Everlook: 15047/21000
Gadgetzan: 18989/21000
Ratchet: 20443/21000 - All the possible quests with the goblin towns have been down and now I'm stuck. Relying on grinding a gajillion pirates is super fun! (Note: The universal conversion for 1 gajillion is 2,382 pirates).
Hydraxian Waterlords: 16293/21000 - Yes, grinding to exalted with Hydraxian. I must be crazy. This grind is still another five weeks away.
Guild: 8435/21000 - If I finish on average six dailies a day with each daily yielding 40 guild rep this is 53 days away from completion. I say six dailies a day because more than that and I want to neck myself.

So there you have it. I was considering grinding Raveholdt by handing in lockboxes but seeing as you need Exalted guild rep anyway to purchase the dark phoenix I decided to save myself from the irony that would have occured if I had finished the Raveholdt grind and then realised I didn't have the guild reputation to purchase the bird!

Wrath's most irritating list

2010-01-29T08:05:00.002+11:00

I like to think of myself as a pretty patient player, however I just feel that sometimes Blizz just likes being a jerk. So I had a look back and here are the most irritating things and events to happen this expansion...

*Most irritating daily quest*

Without a doubt in my mind I cringe every time I do the argent tournament citadel daily. Its because even after I finish knocking off the three commanders and about a dozen gargoyles that are blocking my kite path, they will be there again tomorrow, waiting to suck.

*Most irritating raid achievement*

I would have to put down the Immortal/Undying achievement. Not only can no-one not die for a solid 4 hours straight, you need to ensure that things totally out of player control don't happen during that time that might cause a DC; blackouts, partner/parental rage and dodgy ISP's are the main culprits here.

*Most irritating heroic instance achievement*

Less Rabi. *shudders*

*Most irritating holiday achievement*

I'm going to go with the 'Be Mine!'. Whether you obtain your What a Strange Long Trip its Been holiday mount or not can hinge on this dreadful bout of RNG. Why this achievement in particular? Simply because it takes two levels of RNG to complete it. Firstly you need to hope you actually get a bag of candies to drop. Secondly you got to hope that out of the bag of candies, the right combination of candies comes up. These pesky candies almost derailed my year long effort and I feel for those that missed out on their drake this year because of this.

*Most irritating heroic instance*

If you tried to put together a group to do Oculus pre nerf, you would know the pain. Even now that the instance is actually fun to do, there are a lot of mental scars. The fact that Blizz put in lures for groups to not bail on the instance such as gems, badges and even a mount, proves how much of a failure this instance was.

*Most irritating raid*

Similar to Oculus, a lot of guilds and players avoided Malygos like the plague. When the new weekly raid quest came out and Malygos was the boss, I still can't believe how many times I saw 'The Spellweavers Downfall' achievement appear in guild chat and in PUG raids!

*Most irritating thing about phasing*

Phasing in a starting zone like the DK starting area is brilliant, you see a changing landscape and feel the impact of your DK making a difference. That's pretty awesome.

Phasing in an end zone like oh I don't know, Icecrown is not! So many quests in Icecrown require groups to finish and when they're phased you have no chance of putting a group together, especially later in the expansion when you're leveling your 2nd or 3rd toon.

The new ICC raid has also shown how bad phasing can be. For example, when you're hanging around outside the zone in waiting for someone to do that last minute gem or enchant and realise that they're in a different part of the phase!

and finally....

*Most irritating toy*

Ah the good old Toy train set. Gee I really love that moment in raids when a shrill gnome voice pierces my ears with 'choo choo choo choo whooooOOOH'. Its no wonder that through the flood of complaints Blizz would've received that they brought out the smasher. I've seen people kicked from raids for popping one, and I have to admit, it feels strangely satisfying when they do.

Who do you save?

2010-01-21T08:04:00.002+11:00

You're sitting down eating your steamed fish with oranges and see a single arrow flying from a hunter's bow, hurtling far into the distance toward the boss. The pull has just gone horribly horribly wrong. You hear a oh sh*tf*ck on Vent (coming from yours truly). Raiders start dropping off like flies and you start 'DI me' getting spammed in raid chat.

Do you DI...

a) Tank
b) Healer
c) DPS

You know the answer before I even ask it, and the answer is of course b) you DI a healer. Well that's not rocket surgery and yet I see pallies get it wrong all the time! I've seen pallies DI whoever they can just to skip out on repair costs. The healers are the guys that are keeping you up and don't think they won't remember your clutch. Its your way of saying thank you, that the person you DI'd was at the top of your mind and your favourite person in the raid... left alive.

Congratulations, next fight you will notice more heals coming your way and its no mistake that you can find yourself still kicking when your fellow melee have long been faceplanted in the dirt.

Okay new scenario.

All the healers are dead, so your next choice is to DI one of the following:

a) Fellow ret pally
b) Warrior main tank
c) Elemental shaman
d) Boomkin
e) Shadow Priest
f) Hunter with Goblin XL Jumper Cables

If you chose a) you selected the second best answer. By DIing a fellow ret naturally you have chosen to DI a resser and what goes around comes around the next time something goes wrong. Secondly, by DIing him you have taken him out of the fight and have pretty much said...

'I know I am going to die when I DI and there is no way I'm going to let another ret paladin outdps me on meters while I'm dead (yes even on wipes)!'

The correct answer is d) the boomkin. They are big, fluffy and easy to see. These oversized soft toys have the power to let you perform your own Jesus impersonation next time you step on that mine or take too long on that void zone. You've got a second chance to dps and you'd better do it right this time.

Oh and finally, never ever pick f) because that was the reject that caused the wipe in the first place!

Death's Verdict: The holy grail

2010-01-12T22:49:00.000+11:00

How hard is it to obtain this trinket? At this point in the game, the answer is 'extremely'. Those that have it are the envy of melee, and it probably ranks up there with the coveted Dragonspine Trophy of BC (not so much for rets but I remember a lot of unhappy rogues, hunters and enhance shammy's).

With the guilds raiding nights being spent in ICC, the opportunity to bag one is scarce and the prospect of scoring the heroic version all but gone. That leaves the bleak prospect of trying your luck in a pug *shudder* or acquiring one through a gdkp run.

I had been wanting an upgrade from my well worn Pyrite Infuser for some time, so last Sunday, I was in a gdkp TOC run and judging by the makeup of the raid there was all sorts of melee biting at the chance to bid on Death's Verdict. In the raid were five DKs, a rogue, two ret paladins, a warrior and a hunter. Judging by how fast things were dying, the group was well geared and really only there for the trinket.

The twins fight eventually came and I started shaking at my keyboard as my character bent over to bring up the 'Death's Verdict' loot item from the boss. Cheers rang out on vent, from everyone including those not bidding on the trinket as they knew that they had just landed a whale of an item that would sell for a hefty sum. This run was going to be profitable. But making gold is not what this particular post is about.

Before going on with this story, you should understand that how much an item is worth by how much dps it adds is not something that can be easily measured in gold value. A small increase in dps in an item may be exhorbitant (just think of the increase in price from low grade to epic gems for what is really a minor increase in stats). Why is this? Well I think the answer is pride (or epeen), with meters constantly being spammed for one reason or another if you are in that 'top 5', the guild is constantly consciously or subconciously reminded of who the top 5 best dps are.

Getting back to the auction, DV began with bids starting at 500g with a 100g increase. Furiously, the bidding price quickly rose to 5,000g, and then bidding started to slow at about 6,500g mark. There were some softly spoken voices and awkward silences on vent as several people had noticed that I had refrained from bidding. As the countdown for the auction began to close I showed my hand. '7,000g' I typed into the raid screen.

A new wave of bidding erupted and more cheers went up on vent. Vent began to heat up as the price quickly soared upward past 10,000g and those with not enough gold to bid started dropping out. The number rose to 15,000g and at this point only two bidders were left, myself and a DK from a top guild sporting Bryntoll and Whispering Fang Skull. Mono et mono, the game was on.

The number kept rising and soon we smashed through the previous record set for an item on Dreadmaul, 19,000g for the Reign of the Unliving and a new record was set at 20,000g. Not seeing any signs of weakness in his bidding I tried to go for knockout blows raising the bids each time by 2k to which the DK would quickly respond to with a counter-offer. The raid leader started commentating on the auction like it was a boxing match; 'who out of these two players will take home the prize!' he announced. I then saw raid chat come up with the words 'what are the odds on two gold capped players bidding on the same item?'. My heart sank, this was getting expensive.

'30,000g' I found myself typing. This was my psychological limit and in my mind was as much as I expected to pay, but even that amount was not enough. The adrenaline was pumping through my veins and I'm not sure whether I really wanted the item at this point or whether I just wanted to crush this guy with my wallet. The DK responded and the auction rose to giddying heights with the DK putting in a bid of 40,000g. I tried one final bid of 42,000g, 12,000g more than my limit. Alas the DK responded with 42,500g. It was over.

In the space of 3 minutes the DK had lost 42,500g and each member of the raid had pocketed an extra 1,700g from a single item. I received a couple of consoling whispers and thanks for the extra gold, but I was too broken to respond. I was in shock, and even now, I still can't believe that I lost with a bid of 42,000g, especially when previous gdkp auctions of DV went for amounts of 13,000g and 5,000g.

Ripped in just four weeks!

2009-12-08T20:08:00.003+11:00

Well not really.

I'm back for 3.3, and looks like just in the nick of time. In that time, I've been trying to shape up for summer and have gotten tanned up and shed over 11 kgs. But now all that hard work will go to waste as I risk DVT from sitting hours on end as we head into the most addictive chapter, the finale of Wrath.

I'm expecting to see little sun from here on and I'll probably look pasty as soon, like a light jaundice skin colour. Actually the whole 'yay i <3 vampire craze' might be in a blessing in disguise.

Why did I stop? Well hmm... would I rather enjoy the horse racing, beers, bbq's and warm drinking nights or sit and play the dogs balls of content that is TOC 10 and 25. No brainer. On the flip side my absence has pulled me back in the pecking order in the cut throat world of quadruple raiding rets. I have managed to scrape enough gear together to get my four piece together and a few other bits and pieces (thank you gdkp runs!) This has kept me within striking range of the other rets, and my key mashing is making up for the gear difference.

So heading into 3.3 I'm ready for Icecrown, get ready yo, Rexkicker is coming to town... Ho ho ho...

Capped

2009-10-04T09:59:00.004+11:00

Mmm the sweetest words that an AH baron can hear hear, and in my case thats 214,748g 36s 46c. For some reason, this is 2 copper shy of the supposed gold cap of 2^31 (although its really really close). Why its 2c short I just don't know, maybe its some kind of weird wow developer in joke.

If you're wondering how to get there, well there is a lot of truth to the saying, it takes money to make money. Think back to when you were a level 10 running around Elwynn forest with your mining pick and collecting copper ore. At the time I was stoked to sell a stack for 1g 50s. A fortune for that level, and it was enough to buy up a whole suit of white vendor mail armor from the blacksmith in Goldshire. Well naturally as you open up access to larger amounts of potential gold (such as earning 13g for a quest), 1g 50s seems pretty trivial.

A similar kind of thing happens when you have access to a large bankroll. You gain scale that can be used to purchase items in bulk or purchase expensive items. For example, I have no qualms buying up several thousands of gold worth of uncut and cut gems to resell later at a premium. I don't blink an eye purchasing cheap nobles decks at 4k to flip at 6.5k (sounds weird I know). I love trading in bulk with farmers for their entire stock of herbs, eternals and ore, I get a bit of a rush, as I wonder how much stock he has.

Unfortunately its a mixed blessing as that brings me to my next phase, what now? Since the 3.2 patch, accumulating gold has been the only real driver for me to play wow and the Crusaders Colosseum is hardly worthwhile content to keep me interested long term. I'll have a think about it, I might start pushing for the 500k gold mark. I might take a break from WoW or then again, I might stay to simply kick Arthas' arse.

WTB axe racial

2009-09-08T21:32:00.002+10:00

Is it just me or is anyone else sick of axes? What is with the dev's love of trying to turn my toon into some sort of glorified lumberjack? Don't get me wrong I love wielding big two handers as much as the next guy, but I like to picture my pally whacking the boss in the knee Tonya Harding style. Its not like I'm asking for some extremely rare unheard of weapon either, I mean being human, there's a nice 3 expertise from Swords OR Maces. That's half of the available 2h weapons and yet the last mace I wielded was the titansteel destroyer and my last sword was the Jin'rohk!

My weapon progression this expansion has been....

Jin'rohk > Whale Stick Harpoon > Titansteel Destroyer > Death's Bite > Betrayer of Humanity > Worldcarver

So needless to say, when 3.2 hit, I eagerly hit up MMO Champion loot tables and found a sweet weapon called Justicebringer. Obviously a name that belongs to a pally mace, but nope, its another freaking Axe.

Then when I heard that Shadowmourne was announced as a legendary weapon my heart skipped a beat, imagining a twin to the Frostmourne like on my Wrath load screen, I would finally have the chance to weild a legendary weapon, kinda like the big ass Cloud sword in FFVII. But an axe...again? Seriously, wtf?!!

Surely Blizz could make a legendary 2h sword that I could earn. It could have been a ridiculously long quest chain like oh I dunno something akin to the 'Insane' achievement and I would have been happy to do it. For a measly axe however, it had better just be a drop off Arthas, because that's all I can really stand.

Can't do it

2009-08-28T23:24:00.001+10:00

There are some achievements you think how the heck are we going to get that? Scrolling through the list its not Firefighter that worries me, or Yogg with 3 keepers, its Kologarn's With Open Arms.

Asking a ret to not dps the arms is like asking you to stop jerking off. You can't stop it, its in your blood. Its one of the few fights that a ret is built for! A fight with three targets up is like a red rag to a bull, and my epeen is too big to take a dive like that.

The only way I'm going to get the achievement is if I die in glorious combat. I need to either get crushed by the right hand or fried by eye beams. My preferred way to go would be to get crushed by the hand because if I get scooped up by the hand my deeps is screwed anyway.

With Open Arms? Not on my watch!

Club Ret

2009-08-25T23:26:00.005+10:00

So I notched up my 30th birthday yesterday, which definitely puts me into the older gamer category. How do I feel about it? Well I guess that's just a number, but I'm definitely not as high tech as the next generation coming through. Shit, I own a relatively up to date mobile phone but I still only use it to make phone calls and text. I'll be pretty much screwed when I update it to a touch phone and the lack of buttons will throw me off.

It explains the low tech spartan nature of my blog. I.e. I'm too dumb to work out how to make it look nicer, and too zoned after coming from home and then trying to raid. Doesn't leave too much time to actually post as much as I would like.

What does being 30 have to do with anything? Well not much but with age comes experience and wisdom. In turn that leads to MOAR DPS! Lemme explain. Currently, due to a lack of dks (sigh), we can end up in a situation where there are four ret pally's in raid. This can get up to FIVE in fights like Hodir and General V where our prot pally switches specs. That's right, we have a Club Ret.

With five raiding rets there's not much separating me and them at all. Three of us are near identical with Worldcarver, 4 piece T8.5, DMC: Greatness and the OMGWTFBSHAX Libram of Valiance. The other two are not far behind in gear either, so there is plenty of pride on the line. The only real difference between me and them is that I'm pure ret whereas the others enjoy their second spec of tanking or healing. When I lose a boss fight, I get Recount spammed to thy kingdom come but more often then not I tend to come out on top.

So whats the difference? After comparing five rets in raid there is a slight difference in technique, and I believe that it boils down to the timing of Avenging Wrath.

1) Don't be too eager to pop your wings!
This is the main thing that I notice. A few of the rets will charge in and just blow wings straight away. Not in 3.2 buddy! Now you need to build that five stack from Seal of Vengeance up first before popping your wings. Since the stack is only applied from autoswings it takes roughly 12 seconds to put the stack on.

If you pop AW straight away at the start of the fight, with the 20 second buff, you are really only maximising your dps from the final 8 seconds of AW since it takes the first 12 stacks to build up the stack.

2) For your second wings, watch the bosses health
As a general rule of thumb I check the bosses health for the timing of my second wings (e.g. Ignis, XT, Hodir, General etc). If my AW cd comes up for a second time and we're roughly 55-60% of the way through the bosses health or less, I'll use my wings again straight away and it should be available for use for a third time later. If however, the bosses health is below 55%, I hold off on using wings until the final 20% so I can start spamming Hammer of Wrath!

3) Popping a haste potion to build the 5 stack faster?
I dunno, I've read this idea in two separate places twice now and it just seems well, totally f*cked. Apparently if you pop the potion before you enter into combat you can get your stack up really fast (and I'm assuming this would free your haste potion for later use).

Well there you go, hope it was useful and my your deeps be epeen filled. I gotta admit though, rereading it I am intrigued by the haste potion idea. I will have to test it out on something like Ignis and see.

DIAF Rabi

2009-08-25T22:55:00.000+10:00

Since the 3.2 patch hit, for some reason I've been inspired to finish my 'Glory to the Hero' achievement. I owe this to the change in vehicles in Oculus where your dragon scales with gear which gave me the heart to venture into Oculus once again (I think I'm still mentally scarred from that freaking place). So I've been knocking out the achievements left and right.

One of the achievements *cough* Less-Rabi is completely ridiculous. I must've spent about a dozen nights trying to knock it over that by the end of it, I just wanted to punch him in the head. I was getting so desperate for the achievement that I paid a shammy guildie 1k to spec into Reverberation to help get it done even though he had already done the achievement twice before and I could feel his relunctance in doing it again.

So when I finished the achievement, I just spammed gchat with PROGRESSION!!!

Damn, the drake is pretty cool though. Oh wait, no 310% flight speed? F*ck!

Rex out...

No need to res

2009-08-18T08:03:00.001+10:00

Recently, our team finally... YES FINALLY pulled off our Undying run. Our weekly lazy Saturday afternoon soul crushing/abyss crystal farming event paid off. Interestingly though, you don't actually need the same team from start to finish to grab the title. Our holy pally subbed in for the resto druid half way through the run and was rewarded with the title, the resto druid unfortunately was not.

I've been doing this run for so long now, I'm actually pretty relaxed about the whole thing... right up until Sapphiron/KT fights. How do I feel about it now? Well I'm actually relieved as all heck, your brain just becomes focused on willing yourself to not be the that fails. Its never fun being the one that slips up that fails the whole run. The pressure of the Undying run gets to people and they end up doing all sorts of weird things that you know that they just normally don't do.

You know what though, getting Undying is kind of like a perfect holiday, nice but not really memorable. Come to think of it though, our DK tank was so stressed out with the thought of doing Heigan that he refused to do it so we simply left him outside while we nine manned it. I lol'd when he scored the 'Safety Dance' achievement!

Amyway, the best memories from holidays come about when things don't go according to plan like you lost your luggage, the food was crappy at the hotel or when you got ripped off by some dodgy souvenier merchant. In some sort of sick way I enjoyed the failures more than the clear as it's just plain light hearted fun to get stuck into the one that messed up.

Memorable failures

Even yours truly hasn't avoided the blame of a failed Undying run, I failed to make the jump on Thaddius (first time ever since doing Naxx) and then ran in before a charge was assigned. >.<

Here's a list of other random things that happened during various Undying runs. To try and capture the level of frustration, I have tried to rank the level of fail, with an acceptable rng type mistake being a low level of fail to the very high, WTF ARE U SERIOUS erage type fail.

Boss: Instructor
Cause: After clearing the trash up to Instructor, the tank takes a break and eats up on the ramp. Needless to say Instructor wasn't too impressed when he walked by and saw him just sitting there having a picnic.
Level of fail: Medium

Boss: Four Horseman
Cause: After clearing three wings, the Holy priest decides to go afk mid fight and parks himself on top of the platform after the pull. Dies due to no debuffs being up on him and losing LOS to the other healers. Comes back on later and asks 'how'd it go?'.
Level of fail: Very high

Boss: Sapphiron
Cause: Hero lock tries to squeeze off a couple more dots at the wyrm in the air instead of playing it safe behind the iceblock. After yelling on vent, realises too late that he's in trouble making it but gets there. Then decides to stand next to the iceblock instead of behind it...
Level of fail: High

Boss: Kel Thuzad
Cause: Off tank fails to see void zone while tanking only one of the scarabs. Causes wipe at 2% of KT's health (this one was soul crushing!).
Level of fail: High

I now pronounce you man and toon

2009-08-07T22:52:00.001+10:00

The more I rack up achievement points, the more I realise I am wedded to Rexkicker the ret paladin til the end of my wow time. Gone are the days where I would switch off and muck about on an alt for the fear that the one time I do, I'm gonna knock over some achievement I won't have on my main.

So I am stuck. Is it just me? Well not really. This is apparent in the guild, where we actually have a shortage on full time dk's. Sometimes we have one, usually though we have none. This is despite almost everyone (including yours truly) having a dk alt. People simply don't want to make the switch and start their achievements all over again!

My brother though doesn't have this problem. He doesn't care about doing achievements and is free to split his time between his warrior tank/rogue dps/priest healer. So he's happy to swap from one character to another.

There is a definite split in game styles right there. Those that pursue achievements don't care for alts (they simply don't have the time to), and those that are altoholics don't give a damn about achievements. Unfortunately, I seem to have landed on the achievement whore half. It could be worse, I could have rolled a pure class and would be stuck doing dps all the time. At least this way if I ever get bored of ret I can switch it up (or at least temporarily).

Each to their own I guess. Now where is that dk?

All hail the Nightmare Tear

2009-07-19T15:00:00.002+10:00

One item on the PTR has peaked my interest, the Nightmare Tear! What is it? Well its the big brother version of the Enchanted Tear. The enchanted tear provides +6 all stats and is a prismatic gem (i.e. counted as a blue, red and yellow gem). The Nightmare Tear packs a bigger punch, and weighs in at a hefty +10 all stats. This beauty has sparked my interest from both a ret dps perspective and an opportunity to make some extra gold.

How do you get one?
Made by a JC using a dragon's eye and five infinite dust.

How many can you have?
These are unique equipped so its 1 per gear set.

Ret view
Currently on live, non-JC pve rets snap an enchanted tear into the blue socket to meet the normal Relentless Earthsiege Diamond's meta requirement (i.e. requires one blue, yellow and red gem). Next patch however, all rets will need one of these to meet their meta requirements especially since JC rets no longer benefit from bold dragon's eyes being prismatic in 3.2.

Still, lets break it down against the other blue socket choice for rets, the sovereign dreadstone.

Sovereign Dreadstone
Gem Colour: Purple
+10 Strength
+15 Stamina

Nightmare Vine
Gem Colour: Prismatic
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
+10 Intellect
+10 Stamina
+10 Spirit (lol)

Its pretty clear, come patch day I'm jamming one of these bad boys into a blue socket.

And on making gold?
My tip is that while everyone has their eyes firmly fixed on the titanium ore market the price of dragon's eyes is going unchecked. It seems a bit out of whack considering that people that buy up titanium ore are doing so in the hope that it procs an epic gem, whereas you can obtain a guaranteed raw epic gem (subject to ptr changes blah blah blah) in the form of a Dragon's Eye. So I reckon that I will snap up as many dragon's eyes as I can get and then drop them on the AH on patch day (some as repriced Dragon's Eyes, some as Nightmare tears).

I'm backing that every JC and his dog will be hoarding their JC tokens for new recipes and the supply of Dragon's Eyes will dry up sooner rather than later.

Yogg downed!

2009-07-15T00:28:00.001+10:00

I could sense that Vandelay Industries was close to downing 25 man Yogg from our previous attempts, and we managed to get to phase 3 on Sunday so our hopes were high that this would finally be our night. On Monday though, things didn't begin so great. We were having disconnects, my brother was sick as a dog and so opted not to raid while one of our DK's net got capped (once you reach your broadband download limit, the bandwidth gets reduced to dial up speed). So we were forced to sub out the DK and I pleaded with my bro to log onto his rogue to give us a hand. To which he eventually agreed.

Our luck started to change then and after a couple of attempts, we had Yogg down to 25%. After a slight change in strategy we then took Yogg to 2% before a slight error in judgement cost us the kill and the raid was quickly overwhelmed with adds. At that stage I slumped in my chair and pressed my forehead onto the keyboard. I looked up at my clock, it was 11pm; we had been wiping on Yogg for a solid 3 and a half hours.

Normally we have a tight raiding policy, we call raids at 11pm and start afresh the next night. However, being Monday we needed to get Yogg down and no one wanted to wait another week. We had some of our best dps on and we needed to make sure we took advantage of that opportunity.

'C'mon, one perfect run guys!' was the raid leaders call over Vent. And then it happened, we delivered that run!

So last night we finally cleared Yogg, and its been a freaking long time coming. Our last progression kill was General Vezax on the 8 June, and after five weeks of wiping on Yogg I'm glad to have done it, otherwise I probably would've lost my RL sanity.

Babam!

Changes to Alchemy on the PTR

2009-06-30T19:28:00.002+10:00

Yesterday Alchemy was looking pretty sweet, but mmo champion has noted some changes to Alchemy on the PTR.

First of all it looks like the epic gem transmute is on a 20 hour shared cooldown. This seriously ruins the whole thing for Alchs. I mean if you were an alchemist you would focus on the most valuable gem a cardinal ruby transmute (which now requires 1 eternal fire and 1 scarlet ruby).

I liked the former system better it gave a use for the rare gems and would keep epic gem prices pretty sane. Lets hope the devs see it this way and switch it back.

Prospecting 100 stacks of Titanium Ore in 3.2 PTR

2009-06-29T21:07:00.010+10:00

Okay so I logged onto the PTR today and decided that I would prospect 100 stacks of Titanium Ore to see what the result would be. 100 stacks is a pretty fair idea as it gives 400 prospects so here are the results:

Cardinal Ruby 19 (4.75%)

Kings Amber 17 (4.25%)

Eye of Zul 10 (2.5%)
Majestic Zircon 20 (5.00%)

Ametrine 21 (5.25%)

Dreadstone 20 (5.00%)

Titanium Dust 266 (66.50%)

Scarlet Ruby 23 (5.75%), Bloodstone 94 (23.50%)

Autumn's Glow 24 (6.00%), Sun Crystal 109 (27.25%)

Forest Emerald 15 (3.75%), Dark Jade 104 (26.00%)

Sky Sapphire 14 (3.50%), Chalcedony 105 (26.25%)

Twilight Opal 16 (4.00%), Shadow Crystal 104 (26.00%)

Monarch Topaz 10 (2.50%), Huge Citrine 83 (20.75%)

Note that the sum of the percentages is greater than 100% as there are multiple procs from one prospect. So it definitely appears that proccing epic gems is in the same ballpark as proccing rare gems in Saronite Ore. Our sample shows that there is a 26.75% chance to proc an epic gem. As a rule of thumb, this is like proccing an epic gem every stack of Titanium Ore.

The dust is also pretty nice, 10 dust is needed for a repeatable hand in quest for a JC token. So 266 dust would yield 26 JC tokens. The epic JC patterns need 5 JC tokens so our sample was enough to earn 5 patterns.

Now lets look at Alchemy which has flown under the radar a bit as alchemists can also make epic gems via transmutes.

**This has changed since the last build on 30/6/09**

3 Sky Sapphire = 1 Majestic Zircon

3 Forest Emerald = 1 Eye of Zul

3 Twilight Opal = 1 Dreadstone

1 Majestic Zircon + 2 Eternal Life = 1 King's Amber

1 Majestic Zircon + 2 Eternal Shadow = 1 Ametrine

3 Eye of Zul = 1 Cardinal Ruby (available through a quest to do five transmutes.)

I tried out the transmutes mainly the Sky Sapphire, Forest Emerald and the Twilight Opal ones (I didn't bring any Eternal Shadows or Lifes with me to the PTR ao I couldn't do those). The result was amazing though, my Alchemist is Level 70 450 transmute spec, and she procced multiple gems (had a two-proc with Eye of Zul twice out of the five transmutes).

Since she has 450 skill, I think that lets her do the Cardinal Ruby transmute as well, so with 17 Eye of Zuls I was able to do five transmutes. Again she procced double Cardinal Rubies twice! Quick tip though, if you are at 450 alchemy, make sure you pick up the quest before you do the transmutes.

Note that there is currently no CD on the gem transmutes on the PTR. To be honest I don't expect there to be otherwise rare gems will be totally worthless again just like in tbc. Looks like Alchs are gonna have a pretty sweet ride this patch.

So after my initial stack of 100 titanium ore, and with some help from my transmute spec alc my total epic gem return was:

Cardinal Ruby 26

Kings Amber 17

Eye of Zul 2
Majestic Zircon 25
Ametrine 21
Dreadstone 25

Bring on the patch!

General Vezzzzzzzzzzzzzz snore

2009-06-16T23:24:00.005+10:00

General Vezax is by far the most boring fight I have encountered!

To clarify, my guild uses a simple strategy that involves having a DK tank that blows his cooldown whenever General enrages. This removes the need to kite the General in this phase so it becomes a really long tank and spank. I don't even move so I just sit on the boss and play one handed while the other props up my head trying to prevent myself from falling asleep.

The worst thing is this torture goes on for a whole 10 minutes! The fight would be pretty cool if I had something to focus on like being on interrupt duty like the rest of the melee but with Hammer of Justice on a 60 second cooldown, it's really only handy for clutch interrupts. I almost want to slit my wrists if there's a wipe because I cbf sitting through another 10 minutes of that.

In comparison I love the rest of Ulduar (apart from Flame Leviathan). The keepers are all well thought out cool fights, and Mimiron is my personal favourite. Dodging mines, explosions, void zones its all guns blazing non stop action. The General Vezax fight just feels out of place, and it would have been much better to just go straight to Yogg Saron after the keepers. It would just keep the pace of the raid up.

I reckon they should have swapped General with Ignis, it would have been better if General was optional!

Ruby Shades con artist

2009-06-09T19:01:00.008+10:00

I was hanging around in IF the other day on my bank alt and I had this guy that wanted to con me out of my Haris Pilton Ruby Shades. It was a bit of a laugh so I just took some screenies of the conversation... Enjoy!

That's just weird...

2009-06-01T23:45:00.003+10:00

I originally had something else planned to write about, but that will have to wait for another day. At the moment, all the action is about Ferraro, Paladin Schmaladin and Retpaladin.com.

It turns out that Ferraro was actually seven Ferraros (or is the collective term Ferrari?) where when one writer decided that when they had enough of the stalker/fan mail, a new blogger would takeover the blog and continue to be Ferraro (kind of like the Phantom and how the legend passes from father to son). It seems a pretty strange explanation because I didn't notice any change in the style of the blog. I mean, its pretty hard to write in the same style as someone before no matter how hard you try.

I thought about removing Paladin Schmaladin from my blogroll but its actually more interesting if it stays. So the Ferrari... err yeah that's it, have been great writers and have provided the community with good solid information. I'm talking about the paladin stuff here not the personal or gadget content.

Still it doesn't excuse the identity theft of some girl that had no idea PS ever existed. As if the internet wasn't weird enough! It kinda brings back all that cliches from the late 90's of how anyone you meet on the infoweb is an axe murderer.

What's most disappointing is that Ferraro represented every teenage boy's wet dream. An attractive, intelligent and funny girl that was awesome at video games that turned out to be a... well... guy (well at least two of the Ferrari were guys according to Ferraro No.7's post). Be who you are, for those that mind don't matter and those that matter don't mind. I think that was how Ferrari's sig went, pity they couldn't live up to the first part.

How do I feel? Well it reminds me of when I found out the truth of Santa Claus, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Powerlevelling Inscription

2009-05-30T15:54:00.000+10:00

I feel that the time is right for my shaman alt to take on Inscription as a profession. Yes I've missed the boat on the glyph market and darkmoon cards and it would've been much better to do it before 3.1 came out. This isn't the goal though, its the ability to produce cheap vellums thats the attraction.

I have never been interested in making an opportunistic quick buck. Sustainability is my game, preferring to list auctions and then go off and spend the time productively e.g. raiding, rather than sit in trade and watching the AH.

Whats the current trend? I like to delve into cheap but in demand enchants like Icewalker, +8 stats to chest and enchant bracer greater spellpower. Previously I've been purchasing vellums from the AH to test the market. Now, by cutting out the middle man and producing vellums in-house production costs should fall increasing profitability. So the shammy has dropped her rarely used herbalism profession for something a little more productive. At a price of 2k gold to powerlevel, Inscription is relatively cheap compared to the gold vacuum of blacksmithing.

Inscription prediction

When Inscription originally came out, as a concept where the bread and butter income was glyphs I hated the idea. What good is a profession (or any business for that matter) where you do not have return customers. You have a business where what you make is of such high quality that it never breaks, never becomes outdated and therefore never gets to be replaced.

Compare that with enchanting and jewelcrafting, gear gets replaced and at that time, you return to your friendly JC or Enchanter for a recustomisation of your gear. Better still, a new piece of gear might throw out the balance of your other pieces so you regem or re-enchant your other pieces to suit!

What I would like to see is either some kind of fuel made by inscribers to power your glyphs or a time decay that degrades the glyphs over time (say a month). That way it encourages repeat business and keeps inscribers in a job. Strangely enough the impact of dual specs has made inscription worse. Sure there was obscene profits when 3.1 hit but once everyone had their new set of glyphs then what?

For example pre 3.1, if you were a a pure dps class say a PvE rogue and you wanted to do arena for awhile with a PvP spec, you could respec and reglyph. In 3.1 you just switch specs whenever you please. No need for new glyphs, great for the average wow player, really poor outcome for inscribers!

Its not all doom and gloom for insribers though. Hybrids potentially need three or more specs e.g. pvp/arena spec, pve spec and an off spec. My guess is that long term, the ongoing demand for glyphs will be driven by hybrids so when making glyphs keep this in mind. If the devs bring out tri-specs Inscription will be largely killed off.

DPS Rage

2009-05-25T19:56:00.002+10:00

I was just flicking through Jong's blog on how he does dps, and yep he likes to rage up to get psyched.

I 100% agree with that method. When the dps is on there's a huge amount of personal rage flowing through me. It gives the edge I need and like a sith lord, you just give into the hate and just let it take over. Its common knowledge on guild vent that I hardly talk during a new boss fight because I shut out well... everything. When someone asks a question at times like this, my tagline is 'Can't talk dpsing!', which basically sums up how I feel at the time.

Unfortunately this kind of gameplay is also expensive (talking about RL money here not gold!) when either a) I die stupidly in a boss fight or b) when there is a wipe on a boss when it has a smidgen of health. What usually follows in the event of a) or b) occurring is this...

1) Slam mouse on the table.
2) Remove headset from head.
3) Throw headset.
4) Swear.
5) Inspect headset and mouse.
6) Realise headset/mouse is now broken (or makes a funny rattling sound that wasn't there before).
7) Get p*ssed off that it is now broken and swear some more.
8) Open packaging for new mouse/headset.
9) Channel rage inward and focus dps more.

Its a perfect feedback mechanism! The more I rage the more dps is put out. I kind of feel like a fury warrior in RL in a way.

No kidding, my headset is replaced about once every three months and yep it's due to be replaced again. Come to think of it, my right earpiece sounds a bit dodgy if I tilt my head to one side. Time to shell out another $30 for a new Logitech headset from Officeworks.

This also probably explains why I fail at arena. I tend to get blindsided by my rage and focus on just hitting stuff. When I nerd rage I become more riled up and well playing worked up in Arenas just makes you lose more.

Is it healthy to play like this? Well it gives me an outlet to release the pent up rage stored up from say work or rl. Way better than that 'Woozah' method Martin Lawrence tries to do on Bad Boyz II.

My doctor however, would disagree. Earlier this year I had a blood pressure monitor strapped to me as I have unusually high blood pressure for my age. I had to leave it on for 24 hours while doing my normal routine. When the results came back, I had a hard time explaining why my blood pressure peaked during the period of 7pm until midnight (i.e. raid time) when in fact your blood pressure is actually supposed to come down!

RL Dilemma...

2009-05-12T23:03:00.003+10:00

Sometimes I write posts that never see the light of day. When I write these posts, I email them to myself and think it over, usually after re-reading it I just trash it and start all over again. This is likely to be one of those articles, oh wait since this one's appeared on the blog I must've posted it...

Well I've been battling with something during my WoW career, and that is dealing with RL. I found that as I was getting better with my paladin my life getting worse. I was overweight and becoming socially isolated (apart from chatting on Vent with some close guildies).

Recently, I read this book called The Game by Neil Strauss, an autobiography of a writer who delves into the world of Pick Up Artists (PUA's), and in the course of doing so becomes a master PUA. Once I finished the book, I thought 'Hey I could do this!' and set about seeing if I really could.

I started reading the sequel 'Rules of the Game', which is a quasi self help book. The focus is on living the book and not just reading it. I tried to treat it like a game, what the book told me to do, I would do it 'because it said so'. As I got better at the Game, I levelled up! I signed up to personal training, bought some new clothes, had a haircut and started to see if I could change (and of course try the art of pick up). It all sounds a bit new-age, but honestly, what could be so wrong about trying to improve your odds in meeting a potential partner? One thing that The Game did teach me is that while physical attraction is a key driver for men, for women its more of a mental attraction. Luckily, I do have a gift with the gab, so I guess for me its more about putting struture around my game and being more concious of how I set up my approach.

That was a few weeks ago. Fast forward to last Saturday; I saw this attractive brunette in her late 20's at a Jazz club, and started to chat her up using some material that I learnt from The Game mixed in with my own stuff. Since she was holding a present at the time, I decided to open with the line 'Hi there, what did you buy me?', which was met with a laugh and the conversation opened from there. Things went really well and after about 20 minutes, I pulled out some cool dance moves, kissed her and got her phone number... but I'm also pretty sure that she has a kid.

Now sorry if I sound like a kent, but that changes things. I've been really wrestling with the thought of calling her. On one hand we got on really well, on the other, I'm not sure if I could handle it. Should I walk away or see where the path ends? Since I met her on Saturday and its now Tuesday, is it still acceptable to call her? Hmm... so many thoughts running through my head right now.

Ulduar nerfs and XT

2009-05-07T23:18:00.002+10:00

So Ulduar got nerfed, and to be honest I'm happy it did.

In 25 man Ulduar, my guild (now called Vanderlay Industries) was coming up against a brick wall in terms of dps. We were hitting enrage timers on both Razorscale and XT Deconstructor and simply weren't progressing past Laviathan. XT in particular was the problem, if you couldn't down him (or is it a her with that voice?), you couldn't progress. I was stumped, I couldn't figure out how on one hand, Vanderlay could easily smash the Patchwerk 3 min achievement week in week out, and yet not have enough dps and hit enrage timers on XT! Don't get me wrong, I love a good challenge and facerolling Naxx hardly provides that. The step from Naxx to Ulduar was simply too far!

Post nerfs, I like how those bosses play out now. In Naxx gear, its doable but with flasks. That's how raiding should be, and will help separate serious and casual guilds.

We're up to 7/14 in Ulduar, clearing Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Assembly of Iron (I really should just cave in and call them Iron Council) and Hodir. We're working on Auriaya and once I figure out a clean kite path and pull, I'll write it up. Anyway...

XT Deconstructor Strat
Our strat for XT is different to other guilds. Strats I've read say for raiders to spread out so that the bomb doesn't get in anyone's way. What we found that if melee gets the bomb they have to run through a spread out raid, doing damage along the way.

Instead we've gone for the stacked raid approach, where the raid stacks up and if you get the bomb you just move away from the group. Much easier for the melee to find an open space if they get the bomb (yay melee!).

From there on its just a dps race, focusing on going all out when the heart pops out.

Cheers!

Rex

Argent Squire pet

2009-05-06T23:50:00.002+10:00

Its amazing the dodgy comments coming up every time someone gets their squire pet out. My personal favourite is: ‘hey kid, wanna raise my flagpole?’

The funniest moment is when you see a male priest running past with their squire boy. The comedy just writes itself!

Ah well, its almost midnight and I'm pretty buggered, I'll write a better update soon.

Cheers,

Rex

Benched

2009-04-15T21:35:00.002+10:00

F*cken hell. On the bench for 25 Ulduar.

So while I was fuming from the sidelines, I decided to check out the Argent Tournament. I have to admit its pretty damn cool, and while still an 'Aspirant' rank, a.k.a trainee, its shaping up to be a heck of a lot of fun. Especially for the paladin class which looks hella sweet in the shiny plate armor and a FREAKIN LANCE!

Definitely awesome.

Gotta wait...

2009-04-15T07:55:00.003+10:00

Damn servers are still down... and I think it'll be down for quite awhile yet.

Oh well I finished the patch and at least its downloaded. I still don't understand why Blizz needs to throw up their terms of reference each patch. Its not like you would ever sit down on patch day and say... you know what, I can't accept these terms and stop right there. So please just remove it, just ask us once when we first install the game and let it be.

Hmm looks like I'm going to have to wait until I finish work to have a go...

The time has come

2009-04-14T22:41:00.003+10:00

The 3.1 patch is upon us and yet I find myself out of time, scrambling around preparing for the first raid tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to Ulduar. For the first time since I started playing WoW, I feel like Rexkicker is at his peak and I am stoked that he is ready to hit the ground running. The fights look really cool from what I've seen on youtube and it seems pretty refreshing. I'm a big fan of the dwarves (heck I spend a crapton of time in Ironforge!).

There is so much to do, so what follows is a bit of a checklist that I'll probably come back and check for myself!

With the changes to the ret tree and how ret functions, hit now becomes a priority, and Rawr tells me I need to regem accordingly, so I need to overhaul my gems and my enchants. Apart from that though, my priority will be to hit the JC store and lay 1k on an upgrade to my Kirin Tor Ring.

I will need to redo my build. I've had a play with the ret talents and while I am not a fan of the new cookie cutter 0/17/54 ret build I've been seeing, I will probably use it to start with. I dunno, the build just seems so.... wasteful.

I need to change my glyphs as well! In comes the Exorcism glyph and out goes the Glyph of Hammer of Wrath. I bet that's the one I do forget, I mean how often do you really change glyphs?

While I'm on it... mental note to start keeping sacred shield up now that it last for 1 minute. While it won't stop the blowback damage from SoB, it should help minimise damage from other sources so that its mainly the blowback damage I'm suffering from and hopefully not to much else.

Dual specs? Well tomorrow to be honest it will be last on my list of priorities and I'll probably pick it up a day later. Not that I can't pick it up, I just have more important things I need to take care of first.

Ah well, that's it from me, I need to play with Rawr some more. If you're hitting Ulduar tomorrow, good luck and have fun!

Cheers,

Rex

Armorsmithing - Legplates of Conquest nerfed!

2009-04-11T13:35:00.003+10:00

On an alt, I have an armorsmith/enchanter.

One of the advantages of this setup was the Legplates of Conquest.
For the price of three saronite bars and two crystallised earth, it vendored for 9g 61s 57c and could be DE'd into a Dream Shard.

Zarhym writes:

"We recently made a change to the sell value and disenchant materials obtained from Legplates of Conquest. The material costs used to create this item were unintentionally low, and we were prompted to make changes to minimize the impact on the game's economy."

So now the legplates vendor for for 1g 20s and now DE's into a small dream shard.

If you were an enchanter, you could DE the legplates into dream shards. This too has been nerfed as it now only produces a small dream shard.

Impact the economy? Blizz have supported the price of dream shards but have reduced demand for Saronite, which will crash the price of ore.

Worse still this was hotfixed, couldn't they have waited for the 3.1 patch? I mean there were no patch notes for this, so I made the mistake of making 20 legplates of conquest only to found out I couldn't DE or vendor them. So yeah, I made a loss on this one.

Old school enchants for the AH

2009-04-06T23:31:00.002+10:00

While waiting for 3.1 to hit, I'm stockpiling all my gems and wotlk enchanting mats. However, I still need an income in the meantime so I'm carving out a profitable niche through selling old school enchants on scrolls. I have deliberately stayed away from Wrath enchants for a few reasons.

Primarily, the exorbitant price of Wrath enchanting materials makes it hard to justify the cost. After you take into consideration AH fees, undercutting and the cost of the vellum, the margin is pretty slim. So, I am happy to sell the raw materials. Secondly every high level enchanter is going to have the same Wrath enchants that you have, so your chances of being undercut are very high (yay trainer recipes). Thirdly, people are still accustomed to sourcing an enchanter from trade, many are doing skillups for free and even some enchanters pay players gold if they skillup.

So what does that leave then? For me its those enchants that are still useful, that are hard to find. Its those rare enchants that players are willing to pay top dollar for from the AH. The following is a list of enchants that I believe sell well:

Enchant Weapon Mongoose
Where from: Karazhan - Moroes, Shade of Aran
Who will buy it: melee dps, tanks and hunters.
Selling Price: 400-500g
Why: Still a popular enchant in Wrath, it provides a great proc which provides extra attack power, crit or dodge (depending on the class).

Enchant Weapon Crusader
Where from: AH, this also dropped in Stratholme.
Who will buy it: twink melee dps, BoA melee weapons.
Selling Price: 75-95g
Why: A good value for money enchant particularly when used on BoA weapons during levelling.

Enchant Weapon Spell Power
Where from: Molten Core Bosses
Who will buy it: twink casters and healers, BoA caster and healer weapons.
Selling Price: 850-1,200g
Why: One of a few solid choices for casters, the Spell Power enchant although expensive to craft (roughly 250g in mats) can sell for a lot due to the difficulty in acquiring the enchant from MC bosses.

Enchant Bracer Major Defense
Where from: Netherstorm - Ethereum Nullifier
Who will buy it: Tanks (particularly DK's).
Selling Price: 80g-110g
Why: In particular, death knights have difficulty staying defence capped as they cannot carry shields making this enchant is popular with DK's for that reason. Additionally, this enchant and is very cheap to make with 2 small prismatics and 10 arcane dust!

Enchant Weapon Mighty Intellect
Where from: Thorium Brotherhood (Revered)
Who will buy it: twink casters and healers, BoA caster and healer weapons.
Selling Price: Haven't sold any (currently listed for 600g).
Why: A relatively cheaper alternative to the Spell Power enchant, this may be sought after by players wanting to enchant the BoA weapon, but may not have the budget for the Spell Power option.

Enchant Weapon Mighty Spirit
Where from: Thorium Brotherhood (Honored)
Who will buy it: twink resto druids, priests and warlocks. BoA resto druid and priest healer and warlock caster weapons. Selling Price: Haven't listed any for sale yet.
Why: Certain classes benefit more from spirit than others and can benefit from increased spell power from spirit. Additionally, these classes may want to have spirit to have less downtime while levelling.

There are a couple more that I want to collect, which include:

Enchant 2H Weapon Major Agility
Where from: Arcatraz - Eredar Deathbringer
Who will buy it: feral druidsWhy: This enchant is sought after by feral druid tanks as it is constant and does not rely on a proc (unlike Mongoose).

Enchant Weapon Healing Power
Where from: Molten Core bosses
Who will buy it: twink casters and healers, BoA caster and healer weapons.
Why: An alternative to Enchant Weapon Spell Power, I think the mats are cheaper than the Spell Power enchant and you could sell it for just as much.

Enchant Gloves Shadow Power
Where from: AQ40 and AQ20 bosses
Who will buy it: twink warlocks and shadow priests.
Why: The enchant is pretty rare because of the lack of AQ raids so the price will be high. However, since demand is limited to twink warlocks and shadow priests, demand is limited.

Babam!

2009-04-02T21:54:00.002+11:00

Awesome, the Betrayer of Humanity finally dropped, and is a huge upgrade over my Death's Bite!
I wonder what kind of dps I can push with it? I'm thinking that breaking 10k on Thaddius is within reach now.

I hope I don't have to replace it too soon once Ulduar comes out, I mean, I just got the thing.

Finally!

2009-03-28T00:30:00.001+11:00

Yes! Twilight Vanquisher Rexkicker!

Alright, after nights of continous wiping, last night was our night! Where one perfect attempt brought about the results we were looking for. In fact its more of a relief than anything else. I mean, with patch 3.1 rolling soon, I would've been pretty p*ssed working on it for weeks, coming close and not getting it. So once I get tired of hanging around Dalaran with Twilight Vanquisher, I think its back to the good old 'Chef' title.

So whats my take on the whole fight from my PoV?

Well when you engage Sarth, the raid and the boss switch places. The tank pulls the boss to the front and the raid moves to the back where the boss was standing. Being melee I go about halfway, wait until the tank picks up the boss and start my dps slowly at the side of his back right leg and . If you're directly behind the boss, you get stunned so you're just a bit to the side of him. I also pop Hand of Salvation at the start so I don't snap aggro accidentally (I've been guilty of this before and I'm never going to do it again!).

After about 30 seconds Tenebron joins the fight (the drake that spawns adds). At the start of the first flame wave, I switch dps to Tenebron which is tanked at the back of the raid. Adds will spawn from Tenebron, so we try and stack the adds on top of Tenebron for more AoE. Oh, and before I forget, turn all non-essential addons off (especially Quest Helper!) and turn your spell detail right down. It gets hella laggy from here on out. These simple changes helped me and other guildies to stop lagging out on void zones and lava waves.

By the time Shadron comes down (at about 1m 15s), our raid usually has Tenebron down to about 25%. At this stage, we pop Heroism, that way both Shadron and Tenebron (tanked by the single tank) and the adds are all together and are within AoE. I can also open up on Tenebron by spamming Hammer of Wrath to finish him off.

After Tenebron goes down, we clean up the rest of the adds and start to work Shadron. After 2 mins, Vesperon joins the fight. This is where it gets nuts. When you attack during the Vesperon 'phase', each attack deals damage to yourself. Not too bad, but when you consider that you're also taking damage from SotM, its too hard for the healers to keep you and the tanks up. Soo for Vesperon...I switch out SotM and use Seal of Command (remember that thing?). Also I judge light here, this is to help the raid out so that the heal procs help lessen the effects of the raid damage.

Once Shadron is down, congratulations the hard work is done! From here, most of the raid moves into the portals to take out both acolytes. Those raid members outside of the portals watch the countdown to the next flame wave. If the raid burns both acolytes too fast, the raid my warp back out of the portal right into a flame wave. So don't risk all your hard work and make sure you finish off the second acolyte only when its safe to shift back into the 'real world'.
After that you switch back to SotM, and dps down Vesperon and then Sarth like normal.

There you go, that strategy is what Covenant (my guild) have been trying to pull off for the past three weeks. Soooo what next? Well 'of the Nightfall' title looks interesting...

Achievementism

2009-03-23T22:46:00.003+11:00

Well I dunno, we failed at 3D again so after three solid hours of wiping and another three hours last night we then stepped it down to 2D and just rolled through it easy with less than 25. I dunno, it just seems like a huge step from two to three drakes. Ah well, maybe next week, onto the real post...

Is achievementism on the rise?

Okay, its not a real word, but more and more I'm seeing achievements being used as a tool for discrimination.

The first place where I'm seeing achievementism is in trade chat. Since most of the content is 'easy', there are pug raids everywhere. So as a screen to sort out the bads, raid leaders are requiring that pugs link their achievement.

For example, if there is a pug Naxx raid, linking 'The Fall of Naxxaramus' achievement will go a long way to getting an invite. Also the better your achievement, the better your chances of getting an invite such as having 'The dedicated few' achievement. I have also been in Naxx raids where players swap out their main for an alt for certain bosses for achievements just so to make it easier to get pug raid invites in the future.

This is also going further to recruiting, where achievements are scrutinised heavily as part of the screening process. Since my guild is working on 3 drakes, new applicants would need to have cleared OS with at least 1 drake or they aren't really given a look in. Its akin to a job application, where you might take an applicant with a higher qualification, say a degree over someone with a diploma. Sure they could lie on the application, but the achievements tell the truth.

So I am a firm believer that achievements aren't 'useless', even though the points value attached to them is. At the very least, your achievements are like your resume. Whether or not you get the position - whether in a raid or an invite to a guild may depend on the quality of your achievements.

Here we go again...

2009-03-23T19:32:00.002+11:00

Having another crack at OS+3D... again.

The guilds getting better and I think I'm failing much less on void zones and lava waves. I've turned my spell detail to minimum which helps to keep lag down and makes void zones much easier to see. I can't see my consecrate though, so I just hope my targets are in range when i drop it.

About to pull. I'll check in later with how I went...

Say no to dual specs

2009-03-14T11:46:00.003+11:00

The more I think about dual specs, the more I hate it! Other guildies have asked me what my second spec will be, and when I said it would be PvP, I get lol'd at. Their view is that since I can spec holy or tank, I should to benefit the guild.

The guild however already benefit from me being ret, and I have been geared specifically for that role. If I was a pure dps class no one would care if my alternate spec was for pvp/arena, so why should it be any different simply because I'm a hybrid?

A second spec is a bad idea. If Blizzard is serious about arena and wanting to help alleviate the tank/healer shortage, then they need to implement tri specs or even quad specs (in the case of druids and paladins). I would be more than happy to pay extra for my third or fourth spec so that hybrids can choose if they want those extra specs or not, whereas those pure classes that have no need for those extra specs can simply choose not to pay for it.

I have a nagging feeling that Blizzard will be tempted to make an encounter that requires signicantly more tanks or healers than usual, forcing some dps hybrids to switch specs mid-raid because they can. While it would secure a dps hybrid a raid slot, it would mean that they would need to perform a role that they either do not have the gear or skill for. I know that I haven't been holy for a long time now (and well before the 3.0 patch), so I know I couldn't switch to holy mid-raid and heal. It just wouldn't work.

Conflicts of doing achievements and ret school

2009-03-02T23:52:00.007+11:00

I admit that I've become pretty competitive with achievements, I'm sitting on 5180 achievement points, and am staring down the barrel of finding old quests to finish for the Loremaster title.

What I am noticing more and more is that I am conflicted between trying to do achievements and raiding. I only have a certain amount of time to play and when my personal goals conflict with that of the guild I'm having to knock back people with the line... 'Can't raid, doing achievements'.

This actually happened with the recent Love Fool event. I shelved all raiding as I knew I wouldn't have time to do the achievements if I raided! I found that I was already checking into Ironforge every hour hoping that a candy bag would drop. So that left me with playing around on alts while waiting for the 1 hour debuff to wear off. This same situation is sure to come up again with Hallow's End and Brewfest. I know I'll be farming like crazy during these events.

The other achievements that leave me baffled are ones like 'The Dedicated Few' where you bring 20 players or less to Naxx. Imagine being told, 'sorry you can't come, we're going for the achievment', even though there are five spots still left in the raid! Having to dump players from your line-up is a bit harsh.

Ret school

We have two other ret paladins in the guild, both of them are part-time as in one's ret/holy and the other is ret/prot. So I still have my usual ret spot locked up. I like the competition though as it makes me focus. What I am finding fascinating is the different schools of thought on gearing for ret. One side being the 'strength at all costs' versus the 'stay hit capped' side.

I'm in the 'strength at all costs' camp, and have sacrificed other stats. I mean, I only have 186 hit. My nerve will get tested even more once I replace Death's Bite with the Jawbone or Betrayer of Humanity which will drop my hit to about 124... well if I can ever get my hands on them that is.

One of the part time rets has converted to the strength at all costs camp but the other is firmly stuck in the other camp and won't budge. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to sway him with higher numbers to make him change his mind, but considering I outgear him by a fair margin as well its not exactly a fair contest. *shrug*

On having baseline Kings in 3.1.0

2009-02-10T23:06:00.004+11:00

Okay, so in amongst the changes to ret in 3.1.0 this is the one that stood out the most to me:

Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

I'm feeling neither here nor there about it to be honest. I mean, I liked bringing Kings to raids, it sure helped in securing a raid spot by default. I even liked seeing in trade chat 'LF1M for Naxx prefer ret pally'.

So with an extra five points it opens up some possibilities! Well, lets call it seven considering that the standard ret pve build already has two talent points leftover 'to do what you please'. Hmm.... but the question is, where are the points going to go?

If you put those points back into ret the build will definitely have more PvP tools with talents like Vindication, Eye for an Eye and Divine Purpose to choose from. Although, none of these will directly increase your damage output. I guess to help out the tanks you could go with Improved Retribution Aura, but I dunno, an extra 56 reflective damage from two talent points is pretty meh.

What about the holy tree? Sigh, nothing good there either.

So that leaves prot. Blizz are making big changes to the Prot tree to streamline it, which makes you wonder how that's going to look. Also, something has to replace the gaping Tier 1 talent hole that Kings (and Improved Kings) leaves behind in the tree. It would be cool if they moved Divine Guardian within reach of Ret, I wouldn't mind dumping two spare talent points in that talent for raiding!

Respect your Elders!

2009-01-28T22:11:00.002+11:00

Okay Elders, enough is enough. Please be less irritating and stop spamming me! I'm sick of having to keep clearing out those pesky red envelopes out of my mailbox. I should slap a 'no junk mail' sticker. Thanks but no thanks, you can keep your crappy fireworks and yellow orbs.

Seriously though, I visited all 75 elders and scored my Elder title! Along the way, I also picked up another three titles which I had deliberately held off on completing so I could consolidate the achievements with the Lunar Festival.

The titles I picked up were:

Argent Champion
Explorer
Ambassador

That's four titles in three days. Not too shabby at all.

Explorer
Well this was easy enough. While I was scouring the continents for the Elders, I decided to visit all those brown areas on my map. Made the whole journey much longer, but seriously, who really wants to go back to Azshara more than once?!

Argent Champion
I saw that I had to go in Stratholme to see Elder Farwhisper, so I packed my trusty Argent Dawn Commission trinket and headed off to wade through the scourge and have a crack at the Rivendare mount (no luck!). It was nice timing on Blizzards part to let players have the full rep bonus before the Lunar Festival began. Amid the max rep gain, scourgestones dropping and finishing a couple of grey quests, I hit exalted with the Argent Dawn and babam, Argent Champion Title.

Ambassador
I had picked up quite a few stacks of Runecloth from the Strat run, and decided to hand them into the Draenei cloth quartermaster for rep which brought me within a couple of bars of exalted. I picked up the rest of the rep from the handy quest turn ins from each of the elders, 82.5 rep each across the alliance factions (since Rexkicker is a human).

Get your rep up!
I highly recommend that you take the time to visit your Elders. If you're a non-Human, consider this:

75 Elders x 75 rep each = 5,625 rep

Now the kicker is that the rep is for all the alliance factions:
Ironforge, Stormwind, Exodar, Darnassus and Gnomeragen Exiles

You get five times as much rep! If you aren't already exalted with any of the factions, this is worth 28,125 rep in total (30,937.5 rep for Humans) or 375 Runecloth turn-ins.

So go on, mount up and take your tour of Azeroth.

Cheers,

Rex

New JC recipes and Frogger guide

2009-01-27T22:51:00.006+11:00

New JC Recipes!

Woo... these two recipes came up for sale on Dreadmaul! Since they're BoE, they are being listed for sale for a hefty sum. As such, the recipes provide a high barrier to entry, keeping the average run of the mill undercutter out of the market. I think there are only two others that have the Sovereign recipe (paid 1k gold) and I'm pretty sure that I'm the sole owner for the Purified one. I bought two advertised Purified Recipes for 85g and 220g respectively to prevent myself from being undercut. These two cuts have been very profitable, and I have been selling the cut gems for about 100g each!

Since twilight opals are generally a bit unloved, I have bought up a heap at about 20-30g each and I'm looking at a markup of about 60-70g. I have already recouped my costs for the recipes and hopefully can hold onto the monopoly for awhile yet. Like I said previously in my goldmaking guide, don't use your main to list or advertise in trade or people will ask you to cut the gem for them. If you told them that the fee for the cut is 60-70g, they'll tell you to 'die in a fire'. Its much easier to say that you just got your gems cut from a JC that was advertising in trade... but you can't remember who.

I had another JC pst me asking to have the gem cut, but I just gave him my cover story. It felt a bit cruel to watch him then spam trade for the next three days looking for the unknown JC, but in the end he gave up and bought it. Why did I not cut the gem for him? Well, its not because I'm being a downright bastard. Its to prevent a conflict of interest where the very person that you just cut your gem for may be the person that undercuts you for far more than a 5g cutting fee!

How not to fail at Frogger

I don't understand why people keep dying on Frogger. I have a habit of hanging out at the back of raids and watching people try and traverse the slimes. If they die, I res them at the start of the slimes and watch as they have to run the gauntlet again! It is pretty funny when they die multiple times. Anyway, it is with great pleasure to present my 'How not to fail at Frogger', raid strat!

In the top half of the picture below, you can see a common mistake, players think that the safest path is to move in the middle of the slimes (or to try and squeeze in front). What they don't take into consideration is the lag on servers so even though you look like you are in the clear when you move between slimes, you are in fact heading straight into it!

The bottom half of the picture is the correct way to do Frogger. You should aim to be as close to, but behind the slime as possible. After lag is taken into account, you are more towards the middle when crossing.

Hope this help prevent some wipes in your raids!

Cheers,

Rex

Tier gear qq - 7.10 vs 7.25

2009-01-20T22:59:00.003+11:00

Hey all, I'm just going to get something off my chest about looting distribution with tier gear.

Now in my guild, we have a loot priority system for gear in that loot priority goes: Tanks > Healers > Dps
At first glance this seems fair enough, firstly without adequately geared tanks and healers you cannot clear the content (or at least comfortably). For tier gear, paladins share their token with priests and locks. As a result of this system, I've waited patiently at the back of the line as our two-three paladin tanks get geared, followed by our holy paladins and priests.

So in Naxx 25, my shoulder token dropped and as everyone else had their T7 shoulders, I expected to be next in line. A holy paladin however, that already had the T7.10 shoulders was given the loot under the healer priority system. I was absolutely stunned and was a hairs breadth close to rage quitting. Now I don't normally qq over gear, but this dual tier system in wotlk is screwing with loot distribution!

Yes T7.25 is slightly better than T7.10, but in my view, for loot distribution purposes it needs to be viewed as T7. For example, if you already had T7.10 and a T7.25 piece drops, as a general rule that loot should go to the person without the T7 piece. To treat it separately would simply take too long to gear the raid, and the upgrade from T7.10 is marginal.

This system is made more difficult since some tier gear can also be bought with badges. So, if I farm heaps of heroics and buy my T7.10 hands and chest, using the above loot system, I would automatically be bypassed if my T7.25 hands or chest drop. I'm actually gimping myself in the long run for getting T7.10, and may end up passing the T7.25 to someone in blues. So its actually a disincentive, and sends out the wrong message to the guild.

You could remove tier gear from being bought with badges to resolve this issue, however badges provide a means for casual raiders, players with low loot priority or dkp, and alts to obtain their tier gear. Additionally, you also cannot make the T7.10 reward the same as T7.25 either as there would be no incentive to raid the harder 25 man content.

So what is the answer? Well as irritating as it sounds, maybe Blizzard should significantly inflate the stats on the T7.25 gear to become T8. At least that way it is crystal clear that there is a major benefit to prioritising the gear to tanks and healers. Anyway, that's my rant. Oh wait, I just realised that this would still leave me without my shoulders... damn it!

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 5 - Jewelcrafting

2009-01-20T22:28:00.002+11:00

Before I start writing this chapter for Jewelcrafting, I just want to talk briefly about risk. JC is expensive to level but I find it very rewarding. I see JC being divided into three levels of risk, conservative, moderate and high. Just like in the sharemarket, the more risk you take on, the greater your potential reward as well as the greater the chance you'll make a loss.

When I started out with JC, I only had a small amount of gold. As I got used to what sells and what doesn't and had more gold to play with, my appetite for risk grew over time. I highly recommend that if you pursue JC you do the same, start out small and work your way up.

Conservative
The conservative method I would apply if you would like to sleep easy at night, and you are happy with about 200+ gold a day from your profession. In that case you should simply do the JC daily quest in Dalaran, pocket the gold and use your Dalaran Jewelcrafting Token to buy a Dragon's Eye (worth about 250g on Dreadmaul).

Moderate
Now, the second method is to obtain Saronite Ore (mining or AH), prospect it and sell the gems. This is what you generally hear from JCs moneymaking guides and can be combined with the conservative strategy to increase your income.

What they don't usually mention is that you don't know what you're gonna get. I'm not sure what the proc rate for rare gems is in Wrath, but my gut feel is that it is higher than in TBC. This is because in Wrath you can actually proc more than one blue gem per prospect.

Using a TBC rare gem proc rate of 3% for each kind of rare gem, you have an 18% (i.e. 3% x 6) chance. So you should expect a rare gem every one and a bit stacks you go through. Now since the chance of proccing gems is random, don't be disheartened if you get a string of no procs (or even worse about 6 forest emeralds in a row!). You are playing the law of averages here, so I recommend prospecting a minimum of 12 stacks at a time to avoid disappointment.

Now with the gems, you can sell them uncut on the AH at a reasonable profit. Your target market are other JCs that buy the gems and relist them cut, players that can't find the right cut on the AH, or players that simply prefer to find a JC to do the cut for them.

High Risk
What follows is my method. My apologies up front if it's a bit convoluted, but it's a modified strategy to the one I used throughout TBC and seems to be doing just fine in Wrath. This also draws upon the Alchemy and Enchanting strategies I outlined in the earlier parts and combines them into one big gold making machine. Feel free to use some or all of the strategy depending on what you have access to.

Firstly, you do the purchase Saronite Ore and prospect thing. Then you take any rare gems you prospect and get them cut (even pay another JC if you have to!).

I use the following main cuts:

Sky Sapphire: Solid
Autumn's Glow: Smooth, Rigid, Quick, Mystic, Thick
Scarlet Ruby: Delicate, Bold, Runed
Twilight Opal: Glowing, Royal, Balanced, Regal
Monarch Topaz: Luminous, Potent, Veiled, Glinting, Reckless
Forest Emerald: Enduring, Seer's, Dazzling

After you've gone through your ore, you will also be left with bloodstones, sun crystals, chalcedonys, dark jades, huge citrines and shadow crystals. The question is what to do with them?!

Firstly you can make green rings and necklaces to DE. Bloodstones (Bloodstone Band), Chalcedonys (Crystal Chalcedony Amulet), Sun Crystals (Sun Rock Ring) and Huge Citrines (Crystal Citrine Necklace) can be combined with two crystallised earths. Eternal earths are already dirt cheap and the fact that you can get five greens out of a single eternal earth really is a no brainer.

If prices on the AH for runed bloodstones are good, you can just cut them and sell them. These low end gems are an economical choice for poor casters and healers given the scarlet ruby version goes for over 100g.

Metagems are another way if you have surplus so get friendly with a transmute spec alchemist (that will let you keep the procs!) if you can. An eternal fire, dark jade and a huge citrine combine to make an earthsiege diamond. For skyflare diamonds, transmute an eternal air, chalcedony and bloodstone.

With these gems, I usually cut the following:

Earthsiege Diamond: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
Skyflare Diamond: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond or Ember Skyflare Diamond.

Unfortunately there isn't anything really useful with the shadow crystals, so you might as well just vendor them or list on the AH uncut. Other JC's might buy them in case they need more shadow crystals to finish their jewelcrafting dailies. I tried cutting them and listing them for sale, but its not really worth the time spent.

There you have it! Well that brings me to the end of my goldmaking series of posts. I hope you found it valuable in some way.

Cheers!

Rex

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 4 - Enchanting

2009-01-19T22:09:00.003+11:00

On enchanting...

My apologies up front as I'm a bit of a novice at the enchanting game. I only recently took up enchanting in Wrath as I wanted to know more about the profession. It seemed like everyone I came across said that enchanting was a massive gold sink, and it would be a waste to level the profession just for the ring enchants. I pressed on, reasoning that at least this way, any raids or heroics I run, I can just shard the blues or epics.

My thoughts turned to making money from the profession when I met a certain Boomkin enchanter, one of the richest players on Dreadmaul, and he told me that it was easy to make money as an enchanter, you just need to work the AH.

This could mean many things, firstly what it told me was that everything I needed to make money as an enchanter was already there I just had to figure out how to make the most of it. Secondly, the gold from enchanting was not in trying to selling enchants for tips, but for the disenchanted materials. I'll say this again, do not work for tips!

Naturally, I tried to find some guides for tips from making money by disenchanting. Most of it is crap however! The guides recommended that I scan the auction house for greens, however most of these were overpriced and there was no way this method could provide a large enough income to 'get rich quick'. The next step was to research what goods I can craft cheaply specifically for disenchanting (see Part 3 for blacksmithing greens that can be crafted and DE for a profit). This is the key, and I have done very well since then. With patch 3.0.8 looming on the horzion however, the profession will be undergoing a major change.

BC Enchants still of value?

There are a couple of enchants from BC that I see people spamming trade for, many of them wanting either the Mongoose weapon enchant or the Major Defence (+12 def) to bracers. I farmed Netherstorm for the bracer enchant for three hours but it was worth it in the end.

I've started to use the Vellums to enchant these onto so I can sell the scrolls through my level 12 bank alt at high prices without copping abuse on my main. Players might scoff at the price you ask but with the enchants having such a high barrier to entry (i.e hard to get), people have little choice to pay more for it. I've sold the bracer enchants for 80g each, but I might jack it up for more.

I've even received whispers asking me to log onto my main to do the enchant, but I just pass them off and tell them someone else enchanted the scroll. This in a way forces them to buy the enchant without them getting p*ssed at you if they really want it. ;)

Enchanting in 3.0.8

The boffins at Blizzard are shaking up enchanting in the next patch, which to be honest had to happen. Current Wrath enchants are asking for huge amounts of infinite dusts and greater cosmic essences, and few recipes need dream shards. This has led to high prices for greater cosmic essences (35g) however on the reverse side, dream shards are almost worthless (6-8g). To put it into perspective, several guildies prefer to just vendor blues from boss drops for more gold instead of getting a dream shard.

MMO Champion has a neat list of the changes which includes the introduction of two new recipes. So where to from here? Well with the recipes in 3.0.8 requiring far less greater cosmics and dusts and being replaced by dream shards, this should reverse the trend. I'm thinking that the price of greater cosmics will collapse simply because of the huge number of supply that will accumulate on the AH. To offset this, dream shards will now be in high demand especially since the new Titanguard Guard weapon enchant will require 12 dream shards! I'm thinking that dream shards will spike quite high initially while tanks buy up dream shards to enchant their new weapons (since there really is a lack of a decent weapon enchant on offer at the moment). After that, shards might settle in at about 30g.

Coming up, my personal favourite... jewelcrafting!

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 3 - Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy

2009-01-16T00:39:00.005+11:00

Ah professions, the meat and potatoes part of making gold. Using the trends we pointed out in the Part 2, we'll have a look at three of the professions Blacksmithing, Tailoring and Alchemy in this part of the guide. What we won't cover are the gathering professions such as Skinning, Mining and Herbalism as these require farming.

I don't have any experience on Inscription so I can't really comment. My gut feeling though is that as a profession, there's little ongoing demand or repeat business. Once players get their set of glyphs, they are done and there are no real incentives to change glyphs.

The making of Darkmoon cards is interesting although random. The Nobles Deck seems like the deck of choice and people are willing to pay big bucks for it, I've seen prices advertised for about 14k gold for a deck and the Ace for about 5k. Until competition drives the prices down, in the short term at least, Inscribers lucky enough to proc a Nobles Card will hit the jackpot.

I don't know about Vellums, perhaps they can provide a nice income stream as enchanters use these more and more to list enchants on the AH.

Tailoring

Its all about bags! However its not about the Frostweave Bag... yet. Currently, it costs 90 pieces of frostweave cloth (about 22g a stack) and 12 infinite dusts (~36g) and 2 eternium threads. On Dreadmaul, bags are selling for about 100g each, so you're making a loss if you're buying mats to sell. In the short term, it will continue to be expensive, however once the 3.0.8 patch comes in, Frostweave Bags should become cheaper to make as the bag will need less frostweave cloth.

In the meantime though, the 16 slot Netherweave Bag is still popular due to the hideously expensive price of frostweave bags and the mats for the 18 slot version being tricky to get. In fact, the demand for the Netherweave Bags has more than tripled the price, and I have made a nice amount selling bags in the 15-25g range (up from the BC price of about 4g). Not bad when you consider that the bag is made from a single stack of netherweave cloth (and a rune thread).

Whats driving demand for Netherweave Bags? Well the bags are still an upgrade from the 12 slot versions DK's start out with as well as an economical choice for fitting out any alts or bank alts that players have.

Making bags still has falling demands over time though since you don't replace bags very often at all. Typically you get you invest in a good set of bags at the start that will last.

Alchemy

I've often heard that Alchemy isn't profitable, and that the real money made is actually in Herbalism. Through BC, I took up alchemy and herbalism on my shaman to make buffs for raiding. I hardly made money out of alchemy alone. As pot spec, I could only sell extra pots I procced which is really nickle and dime stuff really, a couple gold here and there. I came across a few transmute spec Alchemists, and they all complained saying it was the worst decision they made. The long cooldown to make metagems meant it was hardly worth it.

In Wrath however, its a different story. Transmute spec alchemists aren't restricted to a daily cooldown anymore! This alone made me dump pot spec and take up transmute spec. I then bought up a stack of Eternal Airs and Eternal Fires, took some scrub gems from my jewelcrafter and proceeded to produce a stack of skyflare and earthsiege diamonds.

Now the procs here are awesome! From a stack of about 20 transmutes, I usually pick up about 3-5 extra diamonds. if you want you can sell them uncut for about 40-50g each (already in profit) plus the bonus profit on the extra procced gems. Alternatively, you can take them along to your local JC and with the right cut, turn it into a gem worth about 70-100g!

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is in a really nice place now with all of its gear being BoE and the introduction of the Eternal Belt Buckle. For long term profit, I love the belt buckle! Everyone level 70 and up needs (not wants) one. I make heaps of these (about 20 at a time), and they sell like hot cakes on the AH.

I've stayed away from making epic BoE gear. I'm just not comfortable putting a lot of gold into a single item hoping it will sell. This is especially the case when the BS epic designs are all trainer taught and as such don't have any barrier to entry. This I believe leaves you wide open to undercutting and a high risk of having to sell the crafted items at a loss. I'm a bit more conservative in that way but that's just personal preference.

In terms of making items to DE, I stumbled across the plans for Reinforced Cobalt Shoulders which dropped off the Onslaught Mason in Dragonblight while I was levelling. With the mats to make it being four cobalt bars, this is an awesome, as you can make five level 73 greens from one stack of cobalt! Whats weird is that the DE table is a bit off. Install of DEing into lesser cosmic essences or 1-2 infinite dust, it DEs into greater cosmics and a number of infinite dusts. There are other world drop recipes for the other pieces of the 'Reinforced Cobalt' set, but you only need one pattern as they all use only four cobalt bars.

For dream shards, if you have both enchanting and blacksmithing skilled up. Armoursmiths can make Legplates of Conquest for the cost of 3 saronite bars and a fifth of an Eternal Earth. Hopefully these should be worth a bit after the 3.0.8 patch. The legplates are bop though so you can't make these on your blacksmith and send them to another toon to DE.

So that's Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy coming, in part four, I'll have a look at Enchanting and the demands at present and in 3.0.8, and then finally the big daddy of moneymakers... jewelcrafting. :D

Cheers!

Rex

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 2 - Trends in Wrath

2009-01-13T21:57:00.003+11:00

In my last post, we had a look at the general process I apply when making gold, but these rules aren’t much help unless you can make solid predictions on where the market is likely to head. So where are the trends in Wrath?

Death Knights

No surprises here. The introduction of DK’s to the game has brought about increasing demands to several areas of the market where demand was pretty low in TBC (e.g. strength gems). At the start of Wotlk, players levelled their mains and now that most players are 80, in their spare time, some would be levelling their alts which I would assume may include a DK.

So I believe that there is likely to be a ‘second wave’ of DKs coming through. There is a limit though. Many guilds are at saturation point with DKs given that every man and his dog has one, so players may be discouraged from rolling a DK main.

The rise of dps hybrids

Blizzard’s changing stance on hybrid dps has opened the door to a much more diverse range of damage dealers. There are rising numbers of Balance Druids, Retribution Paladins, TG Warriors and of course Death Knights. This has led to an increased demand for dps items and gear.

Changing face of tanking

I don’t think Blizzard was happy with the way that tanks generally geared themselves, with the defence cap being too easy to reach. After reaching 490, tanks just slammed pure stamina gems and enchants and that was it. Now, with the defence cap at 540, there is an interesting change to demand for defence stats as the defence cap is harder to reach. Adding to the demand was the removal of defence from talents such as Anticipation for prot paladins.

Tanks now need to consider whether to socket or enchant for defence on their gear. As a result, an increasing demand for defence stats will reduce demand for stamina.

Stat consolidation

Stat consolidation, e.g. spellpower, hit, haste has meant that there is a greater demand for a smaller set of products. This is good as suppliers can shorten the list of goods that need to be supplied to the market. For example, casters and healers will pursue similar stats (apart from hit which is a caster only stat).

Achievements

Achievements are a big thing in Wrath, as people chase titles and drakes. Trying to make gold out of it is difficult though, as the aim is to have items for sale for an achievement. Seasonal achievements, where players are trying to finish the achievement in a short period of time spring to mind. A good example of this is the 'Tis the Season achivement when winter clothes were in high demand.

Looking forward, Children's Week looks promising to make some nice gold as Tasty Cupcake and Delicious Chocolate Cake are needed for the Bad Example achievement.

So there we have it. In the next part, we will look at the real gold, and what is profitable and what isn't.

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 1 - General Rules

2009-01-06T23:37:00.011+11:00

Having to constantly respec to fill tanking, healing and dps roles and keeping different sets of gear enchanted and gemmed has forced me to take a keen interest in making gold and the general WoW economy. I have become wealthy in WoW and by doing so, has freed me into pursuing anything I want to and not have to grind for gold when you can be doing better things.

So what follows is my goldmaking guide series. Firstly, in Part 1, we'll have a look at what separates the rich from the poor and general money making principles.

1 - Salary mentality
There are generally two types of people that earn an income in WoW, the first type are those that get gold when they need it and go out and farm or quest. The problem with this mentality is that you receive a linear income. I.e. Your income is directly related to how much time you put in. When you stop farming, you only have a very limited supply of goods to sell, and once these are sold you need to go back out and farm some more. Similarly with questing, these players only make money by finishing quests and need to do more quests to get more gold. It is hard to become 'rich' in this way as you do not generate money passively. For a long time, this is how I made my money, and how I saved up for my epic mount. After purchasing my mount I quickly became poor again and was caught up in a cycle of working to pay the bills.

2 - Business mentality
The richest players I've met view making gold as a business. They often buy goods in bulk (which leads to a discount) and then use it to craft them into something more expensive. The trick is to do it in such a way as to make a profit, which is difficult to do as many crafted professions usually do so at a loss. This approach then becomes a business mentality, as you have moved from being a farmer, to a manufacturer. You buy basic goods from other players (herbs, ore, eternals) and turn them into something much more valuable in a short period of time. Then its simply a matter of listing it on the AH and you are free to pursue instances, raids etc.

I'll include 'flippers' in this category. Flippers are those players that scour the auction house (often with the help of Auctioneer) for a bargain and relist it for sale. While I don't have a problem with flipping, it seems like a conservative way to make money with a lot of risk. If I flip say eternal airs, and it sells for a profit, you should ask, why did it sell? You may have missed out on a further profit if you could have transformed that good into something better rather than just flipping it.

For this reason, I stay away from flipping, and prefer to maximise my profit by trying to buy some basic goods cheap and then transforming it into something much more valuable.

3 - No farming
Personally, I hate farming, and is a complete waste of time! The exception to this is when it isn't actually listed on the Auction House and you have no other choice. I prefer to buy something that is overpriced than to farm for it. Not because I'm lazy, but because of the opportunity cost involved. If you're desparate for cash to buy goods from the AH such as eternals or ore, it is usually faster to do some dailies, and use the gold made from those quests to buy it. Not to mention other benefits from questing such as rep gains or achievements.

4 - When is the best time to trade?
All the time! I've often heard people say that they prefer to trade on the weekend, when the server is at its busiest and the price is at its highest. This usually comes from farmers since they have to work to get their goods and want the best price for their goods.

As a manufacturer, you want to sell as much of your goods as possible for a profit. Im going to borrow an investment cliche here: Time in the market is more important than trying to time the market. It is important that you keep trying to sell your goods all the time, rather than trying to pick specific days to trade. You may make less of a profit on different days, however that is the important thing. You are still making profit you would otherwise have missed out!

5 - Flooding the Auciton House
The market can only absorb so much at one time, so I prefer to list my goods in quantities of at least three stacks and at maximum six. I find that listing in quantities more than six results in severe undercutting and often a lot of unsold items, but anything less than three means you potentially miss out on more further sales if the first two are sold quickly.

6 - Auction House listings
The Auction House gives you three choices, 12, 24 and 48 hours. My preference is for a 24 hour listing over 48 hours. I find that with 48 hours it is far too long unless you're trying to sell something like an epic item. To me, that means you dont expect to sell the item for two days, and you will probably be undercut before then.

It also costs more which may impact on the number of listings you can afford.

So unless you don't intend on logging on for more than a day, stick to 24 hour listings.

7 - Mods
For trading, I use two mods. The first one is Auctioneer, an Auction House mod. There are plenty of guides on how to use Auctioneer, so I'm not really going to cover it here. I don't do scans of prices for the AH for the median price because by doing so, it encourages you to wait for a higher price rather than trying to sell it now. I prefer to be at the front of auctions so I can turnover the goods quickly, knowing that I can keep supplying more. What I do like about Auctioneer is the ability to do multiple listings of the one item with a single click. It will also automatically list your auctions in the preferred stack size once its set.

The second mod I use is a mailbox mod called Postal. This mod allows you to open all your mail with a single click and will tell you all the sales you've made as well as your expired auctions. Additionally, Postal provides a summary of all the gold collected at the end. I usually have anywhere from 50 to 400+ auctions running at any one time so Postal is a Godsend for preventing RSI!

In Part 2
In the next part of this guide, I will examine current trends and opportunities in Wotlk.

Cheers,

Rex

Relevelling to 80: Easier or Harder?

2009-01-06T22:14:00.003+11:00

Hey all.

Yesterday, Who's Healing turned 1. Woohoo! I never thought I would still be writing about this a year on, but here we are.

I'm pretty happy with the way Rexkicker is for now, I'll keep chipping away at the Sons of Hodir Rep so I can get a better set of blue shoulders, but its so painfully slow.

Raiding has started to pick up again, and I scored the Libram of Radiance from Naxx. I'm not sure how this stacks up against the Venture Co Libram but meh I'll see how it goes.

Grinding to 80... again

I've levelled my druid to 74! Its so different trying to relevel the second time around though.

Firstly, its a heck of a lot faster, all that stumbling through, figuring stuff out, and well... just enjoying the scenery is gone. Its down to hardcore speed levelling, and organising stuff like getting an Overcharged Capacitor made BEFORE you hit up Borean Tundra.

Sure its easier now that there's a heck of a lot less ganking going on and less competition for mobs. Also the bonus XP and the BoA shoulders are a massive boost!

On the downside, there are chronically more r-tards floating about that are making pugs hellish. For example, I got invited to a group as the healer with four other dks that had no clue! Why are these groups so bad? My thoughts are that its coming down to badly played alts or are mains that are so bad that they still can't get to 80!
I'm starting to really think twice about joining pugs but there's not really any other option when you're trying to level an alt and your guildies are off running heroics. Actually, I don't like asking guildies to 'help out' on a lowbie run, cause I know I don't like getting pestered to do lowbie runs on my main.

So yeah, pug groups have been bad but surely a pug raid wouldn't be so bad?!

LFM MC Achievement

Seeing these words in trade, the thoughts in my head were, awesome do an old school raid and get the achievement. Several hours later, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Not much to say but lets put it this way.... when putting together a pug raid, a single level 65 priest doesn't cut it for heals! Oh and getting a tank would be helpful as well.

Sssh!

2008-12-30T10:17:00.005+11:00

Well I'm posting from my laptop since I got a BSoD after trying to patch my pc to Windows Service Pack 3. Spent all day yesterday trying to fix it, but it now looks like a reinstall job. Don't know why Microsoft would allow their own patch to destroy their own system but hey, it gives me a chance for a new post while I find my copy of Windows.

So anyway, I tried the shoulder enchant on my BoA item with some Arcane Tomes and it doesn't work! Well... because it doesn't meet the level requirement. Oh well, at least I know now. My advice: Only enchant your gear with those enchants that don't need a level requirement to use.

Weapon Buffs

Blizz has stated that they wouldn't allow weapon buffs on weapons for high level weapons to reduce the cost of raiding. That seems fair enough, and I know I've been trying to burn up all my Wizard Oils before my Moonkin hits 80 (its tragically slow, I just can't seem to do the grind to 80... again).

I do like to squeeze the most out of my paladin though, and just when I finally get to use weapon buffs for the pally in raids, it gets taken away. Well... not quite.

For some reason, the adamantite weightstone still works with my Titansteel Destroyer! I don't know whether its the weightstone that can be applied to all maces, or whether its just the Titansteel Destroyer thats the only one that the weightstone can be applied to. I have also tried putting on Wizard Oil on the TD, but it doesn't work. Unfortunately, I don't have a different mace to try weightstones on but if anyone out there can try it, please let me know!

I highly doubt anyone at Blizz would read this blog, so until they figure this one out, lets keep this buff on the down low. ;)

Post Christmas.....

2008-12-26T01:29:00.002+11:00

Okay, its 2.54 in the morning on Boxing Day and I can't sleep. As I'm in a hazy insomniac mode this will be pretty much a non-wow related rambling so feel free to stop reading at this point. Boxing Day will be a lazy day, I'm just looking forward to just relaxing and watching the cricket on tv and hope that Australia can level the series against South Africa. Well Maybe I'll multitask and mindlessly quest or something while the cricket is on.

Looking back at my Christmas loot, I find that some of the best presents actually come from your siblings as they usually know you the best. I have three brothers. My youngest bro (78 BM Hunter 'Ghetts') tends to give challenging presents. Last year it was a massive inflatable yellow duck (I can't remember what it actually does, but whatever its doing its doing now). This year, it was a swear jar! I didn't think thought I swore that much, but actually yes, I'm sure I could fill it pretty quick.

My other younger bro (80 Assasination Rogue 'Torps') gave me a much needed wallet to replace my old one (which is pretty tattered now after seven years of wear and tear). The reason I hadn't replaced my wallet prior was that it must have a coin pouch secured by a button. Yes this is an anally specific requirement and come to think of it, kinda neurotic. So I can only imagine how infuriating it must have been for him to try and find it. If I ever lose my wallet, I'm screwed trying to find a replacement.

The oldest bro (plays AoC instead of WoW), gave me a gaming mousepad with a Wotlk motif. I'm still kinda attached to my current mousepad (also given by him as a present), which is an Icemat mousepad. This sucker is actually made out of blackened glass, and has been a gamers dream. I don't think they make these anymore though which is a real shame.

Hmm... oh yeah.

Iron Boot Flask

I stopped by Frosthold in Storm Peaks to pick up my Iron Boot Flask, for a measly 10 relics. The fact that it gives you 10 sweet minutes of an Iron Dwarf skin is well worth it. I’ve always thought Dwarves were cool, and I kinda regret not making Rexkicker a dwarf pally from the start.

Looking it up on Wowhead, it seems that the buff from it also gives you a chance to proc additional damage. It might not be much but still, damage is damage and it would be interesting what the Recount log comes back with. The price of this item is going up to a whopping 250 relics in the 3.0.8 patch! Talk about a price hike, I’m glad I bought it now.

BoA Shoulders

I shelled out 60 badges for some BoA shoulders specifically for the 10% xp monster bonus. I slapped em on my druid for levelling, and I gotta admit at least psychologically, it feels faster. I noticed that after I downed the last boss of Utgarde Keep, I received about 12k xp rested. That’s about a 1k+ xp bonus from a boss kill!

Not sure if I can get them enchanted but if so, I’ll shell out for the BC version. My gut feeling is that the enchant won’t work until the toon meets the minimum level requirement anyway so getting the Wotlk version is useless for levelling.

If you armory my moonkin you may notice that I bought the cloth version. This is deliberate seeing as I still have a Mage and Shaman to level, so by making it cloth, it provides the maximum flexibility to hand it down to future casters.

Ho ho ho!

2008-12-25T17:29:00.003+11:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

So I finished the Winter Veil meta achievement! It all started a few days ago with a little hat that dropped in Heroic Nexus off the first boss. Everyone in my party rolled need and as luck would have it, I won the roll and just walked around Dalaran with it on. Later, someone in guild chat mentioned that they were farming Nexus (non heroic) for the very same hat for the Merrymaker title. It was only then that I realised that I had something worth hanging onto and decided to look up what else I needed for this title (hoping it wouldn’t be as insane as ‘The Hallowed’ requirements).

In fact from what I could see, it seemed quite easy to do the rest of the achievements and I actually had the hard part done! So I ended up smashing through my Merrymaker achievements and today opened my presents to finish off the last one... ‘Crashin & Thrashin’.

Quick note, the ‘Winter Veil Gourmet’ achievement relies on having 325 cooking (to make the Hot Apple Cider). So if you haven’t raised your cooking skill… well unfortunately that’s too bad. For the ‘With a Little Helper from My Friends’ achievement, I waited as long as possible before I picked up the buff and joined a Wintergrasp raid. The key here is survival not damage and so I strapped on my tanking gear, and either hung out in a vehicle, or just camped at the back away from the action. Since you’re still in a raid, you just keep racking up those HK’s! Chicken I may well be, but a chicken with the achievement done!

On Heroic Oculus

On a separate note, I freaking hate Heroic Oculus with a passion! Yesterday it was the heroic daily, and I really didn’t want to go in there but the lure of two more badges proved irresistible. The first time I tried this on Heroic, for the last boss I had a setup of 1 red (tank), 3 bronze (dps) and 1 green dragon (healer). We wiped constantly, and just called it. A few weeks later I tried a combo of 1 red, 2 bronze and 2 green, and although we came close, we again wiped over and over. That wasn’t fun either.

This time around it was a different story. We decided to use a setup of 2 red, 1 bronze and 2 green. One red to tank the adds while the other tanked the boss. This setup made it easy mode! So yes, finally Heroic Oculus is done, and I definitely won’t be going to that stupid instance any time soon.

Rep grinds

2008-12-19T01:20:00.002+11:00

It was a plan of mine that once I hit level 80, I would solo some Outland instances to get any rep I was short of for my achievements. Fortunately the only major faction I’m not exalted with is Lower City. So I decided to run shadow labs last night as I’m only about 3k rep short.

I don’t understand the rationale behind this one, but I was only getting a pathetic 3 rep per kill on trash, down from the usual 15-20 rep or so. I was running with my mates DK and at level 77, he was picking up the full rep. I’m thinking that this is because the mobs were grey to me. Still, it doesn’t explain why the rep should diminish as you level. In fact, you should get more rep! Doesn’t it makes sense that a faction would view you as a greater hero if you can finish something without assistance, than if you needed to take along four others to do the same task?

I’m finding the same thing while I’m working on my Argent Dawn rep, although at least with the Argent Dawn if you have the trinket you can get the scourgestones so it makes up for it.

So what gives Blizz? You’ve got this tracking system in place for reps and achievements and yet if you try and go back to work on your missing rep you get penalised. Just more irritating that anything else really.

Sigh arena

2008-12-17T22:02:00.000+11:00

Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong yesterday. Yes you can do Instructor without priests and use Hunters with distracting shot instead. Sounds a bit extreme, but I’m willing to accept that.

Anyway, lets keep rolling.

With Christmas just round the corner the guild will take a break from 25 man raiding, although I’m sure we’ll pull together the odd 10 man Naxx run. Its pretty convenient that Season 5 starts today, so you can pvp away if you’re bored.

Personally though, I couldn’t give a toss about Arena. I could barely stand it in BC but at least you knew that even if you lost, you were working towards something no matter how badly you were going. In Wotlk, there is none of that, and your pieces start at 1695 rating for the legs. Sigh, no rating… no gear! Yes you can get the Savage gear, but after getting seasons of quality welfare gear it just seems lame to want to grind bg’s for blues. So instead I’ve been hitting up Vault of Archoren hoping my gear drops, and I’ve been fortunate and scored my legs.

Priests and Naxx

2008-12-17T00:06:00.000+11:00

It’s a good time to be a priest, at the moment, you can be terribly geared and still get a spot in Naxx 25’s just because you happen to be the right class. Last night we were raiding Naxx and came up against Instructor. The difference from the 10 men version being that there is no Orbs so you need two priests to do the mind control. Fortunately we had two priests in the raid just by chance.

This is similar to Widow, you need a priest specifically to do the mind control on the adds and trigger their ability as downing them won’t stop her enrage like it does in the 10 men.

I’m a little puzzled as to why a MC mechanic exists in raiding at the moment, and seems to be counter to the Blizzard new raid design of bringing the player and not the class. It should have been that you grab your best three tanks, seven healers and fifteen dps. However needing MC means if you’re short of a priest (or two), you need to take a priest in greens or even grab a pug to do the content! So having to bench a quality dps or healer just to bring in priests for Instructor just doesn’t seem like the way forward.

The easy answer is ‘just recruit more priests’. This I believe is not the answer as it addresses the symptom and not the problem. The solution is not to remove the MC mechanic either, but to make MC available to another class.

2008-11-27T23:53:00.001+11:00

There’s one mount that I really wanted and yes I caved and bought a mammoth! This mount of awesomeness is the most fun I’ve had in awhile, and got me away from some of the more serious parts of raiding. I was giving free Mammoth rides around Dalaran and discovered something interesting when I decided to jump out of the Dalaran sewer outlet pipe into a huge freefall. I was waiting for the traditional splat… but we lived (yes I could have bubbled, but it was more fun this way)!

How did we survive? Well, the mammoth is actually a vehicle with about 5k health, so the mammoth took the fall while the passengers got off clean. Yay! There are two vendors that come with it - one a reagent and repair vendor and the other a food and drink vendor. The prices are more expensive than if you bought goods off a vendor with whom you are exalted with. Still if you’re in a hurry it’s ultra convenient. Also I don’t have to carry vendor trash in my bags anymore, I just mount up and dump it (this was a fair problem while I was levelling). The main advantage would be for raiding though. Those raiders that forget to repair or restock reagents would instead just get me to go outside the instance and summon the mammoth.

Oh yeah and the price? Well you get over that… eventually.

Ding!

2008-11-21T09:12:00.003+11:00

So I dinged 80 last night, and I'm stoked that the grind is over for Rexkicker!

I fully enjoyed the ride, and the game had much more variety, the Murloc suit quest is one of my favorites. Two things are a vast improvement gameplay wise. First it definitely has a progression element in the game. The change of the storyline as you do because of the phase shifting technology means your quests actually change the storyline!

The second is the sheer variety, allowing you to control different mounts and vehicles gives it that GTA feel.

What's annoying me the most though are those quests that keep getting you to take down flying mobs. Flying mobs people! Extremely irritating for paladins without a range pulling mechanism. I was doing some things like mounting up and doing a running jump and using HoJ or a Judgement in mid-air to pull. Come on surely you can give us something Blizz even if it doesn't do any damage (something like the shaman's windshock would be nice)! I was actually annoyed that I didn't get the Monster Slayer's Kit during the Scourge event!

Wrath is here!

2008-11-14T01:14:00.004+11:00

So while parking my car on my way to pick up a copy of Wrath, I walked passed this obvious gamer car. This 4WD was PACKED with enough coke, coke zero and pepsi to burn through your insides! Either that or this guy has a lot of drainpipes to clean...

I've gone for a slightly more saner route, choosing the traditional pizza and beer. A perfect combo!
Yes I joined the queue along with heaps of other bleary eyed players, and I was one of the last ones to pick up my copy. I'm in no hurry though, after all I do have four 70's to level.

Mana issues part 2

2008-11-13T07:57:00.003+11:00

Following on from my post yesterday, I was thinking about how I used to manage my mana pool back in 2.4.3 and earlier. I know Wotlk is almost here and we’ll get access to the new spanking ability Divine Plea at 71! But will that be enough I wonder? Hmmm….

So what are our other options to regenerate mana? Well first lets look at those buffs and consumables you can control (not including shadow priests, other retadins, survival hunters and shaman totems). Note that as these buffs will be outdated, I'll have to look for the Wotlk equivalents in a future post.

Blessing of wisdom: I prioritise might over wisdom, but if there are several pallies in the raid, I'm sure you'll get it.

Mana potion: This is the easiest solution for instant mana, however in the world of 3.0.3, you can only drink one potion per boss fight and I want to save that cooldown for a haste potion+avenging wrath combo.

Mp5 gems: No, simply no. Paladins gem for strength, gemming for Mp5 gimps your dps.

Mp5 food: To be honest, I haven’t explored the benefits of eating Mp5 food, usually eating Roasted Clethoof for the extra strength. Going forward, maybe I'll switch to a hit rating food since we don't have the Precision talent anymore.

Elixir of Major Mageblood: I love this elixir as it gives us 16 Mp5. Since it’s a guardian elixir it nicely complements battle elixirs such as the Fel Strength elixir. Pity I can’t drink it if I already have Flask of Relentless Assault.

Superior Mana Oil: Hmm 14 Mp5. This is an interesting one to consider with the new mechanics to Windfury, as Windfury is no longer a weapon buff. I'll probably experiment with this while levelling with this on my weapon to see if it helps.

These are all pretty straightforward to help your mana issues, however there are more creative ways to try and increase your mana regen, and all these strategies rely on the paladin’s spiritual attunement ‘emo’ class ability.

Seal of Blood: The bread and butter dps seal for paladins, the fact that you hurt yourself every time you deal damage means you receive a steady stream of damage.

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement: This glyph seems pretty interesting and is something I'm considering for my third glyph slot. An extra 2% of mana received through spiritual attunement doesn’t sound like much, but its something that will always be there and doesn’t need a gimmick or a proc to work.

Dark runes: These babies are especially tasty for retadins even though they’re a low level Azeroth drop and you can farm these from the Satyr demons in Felwood. Not only do they give you a decent amount of mana, they also do damage to you. Woohoo!

Hand of Sacrifice: Ah this ability was used by Alliance paladins in lieu of Seal of Blood. When you put this on your Main Tank, you should take some nice damage for using this.

Taking damage: Ok quite obvious and not for the faint of heart. Deliberately taking damage (say through AoE damage) means you can hurt yourself enough to get a nice amount of mana from a healer.

So there you go, some ideas to deal with mana issues. Just one final thought though, I rarely use the Art of War proc on myself unless I'm desperate since you would a) use mana for the heal and b) not get any mana back because spiritual attunement doesn’t work for self heals!

Cheers,

Rex

Mana issues

2008-11-11T23:35:00.001+11:00

Mana is always a touchy issue for paladins (and to a lesser extent Enhance shamans).

So what is the issue in particular for Paladins?

Well with the recent nerf to Judgement of the Wise, mana given has gone down from 33% to 15% of base mana.

Now at 70, I have noticed the difference in the loss of mana, but I have compensated by simply judging wisdom all the time. This is not a fun mechanic though, because in PvE, I feel like I am forced to use JoW all the time and have lost the flexibility of being able to judge light.

So my view is that paladins should be able to sustain a single target rotation (Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm), and should only start to run oom by doing ‘extras’ like popping off a heal, using Hammer of Wrath, and dropping an AoE ability like Consecrate.

At 70 however, with a roughly 7k mana pool I can achieve all of the above a little too well, due to the intellect on my gear. This is what is causing a misconception that paladins will be OP at 80 in that a paladin will be able to use all of these abilities without going oom. What a larger part of the WoW community don’t realise is that at 80, all dps plate will not have intellect on it. Zero!

That means that an 80 would have about 5k mana (from what I’ve heard on the Beta forums) and retadins cannot do all of those things due to the tiny mana pool. Mana management becomes much more tricky as there is less room for extras. As it is, I rarely heal anyone (even myself) because a ret paladin’s mana is so small. Bandages, health pots and health stones are the order of the day.

What I am interested in though is how the new Divine Plea mechanic will come into play at level 71. Will this be our saviour to our oom problems? I’ll have to wait and see.

Just in time!

2008-11-10T20:58:00.002+11:00

Ok, before I start, just bear in mind that I had actually gone to the gym before so I don’t feel so guilty!

I had previously resigned my fate to never seeing higher than T5 content. Well, fate has an interesting way of playing its cards so late.

A little while ago, a group of raiders and I left our old guild to form a new guild ‘Relentless’ with one purpose in mind: To see as much content as possible in Wotlk. What we wanted is to be professional at raiding (not necessarily hardcore), in other words, learn quickly and move on.

So we setup our new guild and had a core of about 12 members. Enough to do ZA but not much else until Wotlk hit.

It just so happened that we joined a pug SSC run, and I caught up with the raid at Leo (having already cleared Tidewalker, Fathom Lord Karathress and Hydross). Well we wiped a few times and decided to call it. That’s when our old raid leader suggested we try and pug Hyjal or BT. We settled on doing Hyjal first and even though we had no experience in the place, put a pug raid together.

Our strategy for each boss was to simply read up the strat and youtube the video and have a go. We absolutely smashed it despite never being there, and ploughed through 4/5 bosses! But we wanted more, knowing that Wotlk is so close, we put a new raid together for BT. So when we stepped into BT, we then took down the first 4 bosses, Najentus, Supremus, Shade and Teron Gorefiend… babam! We one shotted Najentus, Shade, and two shotted Supremus and Teron. We eventually called it quits after downing Teron Gorefiend at 1.30 in the morning.

So after an epic session of some 13.5 hours straight, the new guild progressed through three SSC bosses, four Hyjal bosses and four BT bosses. While this is seriously unhealthy, I have no regrets going into Wotlk now and am happy to move on. I was happy with my own personal performance too, pumping out a sustained 1.7k dps throughout the raid.

So thanks Blizz for nerfing the content and giving us new abilities! I finally got to see end game content.

We’re going back into SSC to have another go at Leo and then to BT to have a crack at Bloodboil, Reliquary of Souls and Mother (I heard that she’s doable without Shadow Resist gear). I am really excited, because I know that there’s a lot at stake. We only get one night to have a crack at this and then the opportunity will be gone when the expac hits next week.

The funny thing was we also filled our raiding roster in one day! Players recognised that we were good despite never being there and decided to join us now that we were a ‘tier 6 guild’. We took in those pugs that ran with us and put them on trial. By the time we hit Teron, the pug raid was now almost a full Relentless raid! I know, post 3.0.2 the nerfed raiding doesn’t mean anything, but it’s a good indication that with the talent that we have, this guild will succeed in the expansion and will attract quality applicants.

This has got to stop!

2008-11-01T23:51:00.002+11:00

Another nerf hotfixed to live? Give us a freakin break!

This time I can't bubble and pop wings simultaneously anymore.

Actually its even WORSE than it was in pre 3.0!

Not only that Forbearance used to be on a 1 min cooldown. Now its 2 minutes!

Once again Avenging Wrath is ABSOLUTELY USELESS in Arena now. Retadins won't be popping wings again because of the freaking debuff.

GFG.

Achievements

2008-10-31T07:43:00.002+11:00

Achievements are such a sadistic thing, its either you love em or you hate em.

On one hand they give you a real sense of finishing something worthwhile in the game. On the other, it shows you how far you still got to go! For some reason, achievements feels like something that belongs in Grand Theft Auto. Its not something that you NEED but its something that you WANT.

I've quickly realised that with achievements, you need to compromise. Its close to insanity trying to get the same achievements done for all your characters, so I try and focus on Rexkicker only for achievements. I find myself making strange choices. I'm now rerunning all the heroics to get the achievements, but am torn between just getting them done for the sake of my epeen on Rexkicker or running them on Rexana so she can get badges and gear!

I've also formed new objectives for Rexkicker in terms of achievements. At the top of my hit list is to get exalted with all the main alliance factions and to finish my Lower City Rep to finish my rep achievements with the Outlands factions. Pro tip is that I need to do the Exodar starting quests because they give 'alliance' rep!

Blizzard should consider making achievements accountwide rather than just character only!

The rollercoaster ride that is Retribution

2008-10-30T18:31:00.002+11:00

To nerf or not to nerf that is the question.

Like a kid addicted to red cordial, I'm addicted to constantly checking the beta forums for signs of more nerfs or unnerfs.

The constant QQ is starting to take its toll, if we win its because we're OP and not because of any skill. I did get to the 1600's with a pve geared holy pally partner, so that was enough to get my S4 chest. Not that I care much about doing Arena at this point in the game anyway, but its nice gear anyway.

BG's have been pretty fun. I was minding the flag at AB and took down 4 horde against myself, two were undergeared as anything and I had to bubble, and I had to use LOH but man that would have been soul destroying!

So what now at the moment...

Well I'm definitely gonna pick up the 4 piece scourge set that you can pick up from the undead event. It looks so freakin awesome, I wish the Naxx tier gear looked as good as this, but sadly no.

Ah well, I'm gonna see if I can get the set for Rexana now at least to give her some decent gear to level with!

Cheers all,

Rex

Dual specs

2008-10-12T23:35:00.003+11:00

I have admittedly stayed away from the PTR because if I know if I touch it, it would be unbearable to try and play a paladin on live! I've been hearing great things about ret, but I think I prefer to wait for the surprise.

One interesting change will be the introduction of dual specs in Wotlk and this is something that I am really looking forward to. It just makes sense that to address a healer and tank shortage, you can't penalise hybrids!

But is two specs enough? Maybe I'm just being greedy, but hybrids really needs at least a third spec. A pure dps class I understand, you have your PvE raiding spec and a PvP/Arena spec. But for hybrids its always that much harder. I would love a PvP spec for Rexkicker and a PvE spec, however that leaves no room to take on alternative roles like tanking or healing. So again this doesn't solve the the tanking or healing shortage!

Oh yeah I got my shaman to 70, my fourth toon. I love this period of changing your gear from green to purples and watching your dps sharply increase as you do so. I gotta admit, you really do feel like a hero when you pop 'Heroism'. pew pew pew.

The tables have turned!

2008-09-23T23:40:00.004+10:00

I'll admit it, I have been addicted to reading the WoW pally forums of late. The ongoing Wotlk discussion has been a hotbed of Ret is OP posts and Lol Holy remarks. It seems that the shoe is on the other foot for the moment, and retadins are enjoying the irony of holy paladins being told that they won't be brought to raids because of their low heals (sound familiar?). I've even starting seeing the term 'Loly paladin' spring up! It justs makes for some fun reading watching the paladin community tear itself apart.

I remember reading a post from Coriel at Blessing of Kings that summed up the in-fighting of paladins nicely. While I haven't been the biggest fans of holy paladins, I'm not blind and I know how important healers are. Healing is a thankless job, without the kudos that tanks get or the fun of being dps. So why would you try and make it any more painful than it has to be and simply give a holy paladin a HOT or an AoE heal? There is a very fine balance though. On one hand, I want holy paladins to be viable, but on the other, I don't want holy paladins to be too good so that holy is the default paladin spec.

On a different note, I've already grown tired of prot tanking as well. I dunno, I'm just not getting the feedback that I need to want to try and play the game properly as a tank. I pretty much faceroll my keyboard on trash pulls once I figure out where to line of sight the mobs. While your dps loves it as they don't have to worry about cc, its not very engaging and I end up just playing a mini game of how many mobs I can pull before my gear gives out and the raid wipes.

Anyway, its back to browsing the paladin forums with some beer and popcorn.

Cheers!

Rex

Shamans

2008-09-09T23:05:00.004+10:00

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?

2008-09-06T01:35:00.004+10:00

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

2008-09-06T01:23:00.004+10:00

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?

2008-08-03T13:51:00.002+10:00

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?

2008-07-31T20:24:00.002+10:00

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...

2008-07-28T15:09:00.004+10:00

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?!

2008-07-16T21:32:00.002+10:00

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!

Moonkin tanking

2008-06-15T22:18:00.002+10:00

So this new guild has started to do 25 mans, and our first crack was Gruul's. It was the first time for a few people and after about 5 or 6 wipes it got called. I had fun though. I got to use the Moonkin tank! Well only for Kiggler the Crazed, but still it was an achievement and was pretty cool to sit there in my PvP gear and nuke the crap out of it.

I've been trying to get that elusive Shard of Contempt for Rexkicker too. So I respecced Prot to try and get it. My tanking leaves a lot to be desired, because it basically went, pull, take a couple down, wipe, pull, take a couple down wipe. I happily paid everyone in my group about 100g all up so they wouldn't rage quit on me.

Unfortunately the Shard didn't drop but I did get a consolation prize. The Commendation of Kael'thas is now mine.

What a ripper!

Well gotta go, about to pull Curator.

Cheers!

Rex

10 things I wish I knew earlier...

2008-06-03T22:56:00.003+10:00

Hey guys

I was just thinking about how much I learnt playing a paladin and most of it through sites like Cromfel's. I'm not a great theorycrafter but I try and get the gist of what the point is. Also yes I'm alliance so this is written from an alliance viewpoint (sorry Belfs). Anyway... here are my top 10 things I wish I knew earlier!

1. Get Hit Capped

It seems counter intuitive at first. 'But if I stack hit, I miss out on other stats like Strength and Crit!'. As a general rule, getting ~95 hit (with the Precision talent) is extremely important as it will stop misses in PvE raids (but not dodges or parries). Missing autoattacks means you also miss the chance to proc Seal of Command. Its one of the biggest contributors to your dps. The Cenarion Expedition head enchant 'Glyph of Ferocity' is a great place to start.

2. Install Omen

Its a threatmeter so you can monitor your threat against the tanks. It boggles the mind that controlling your threat is such a huge part of PvE and yet Blizz didn't think it was necessary to include it as a standard feature in the UI and instead left it to 3rd parties.

3. Install Pally Power

It doesnt matter if you are Ret, Holy or Prot, the Pally Power mod saves a big headache caused by organising buffs. The main advantage of Pally Power is that a raid leader (preferably a pally) can setup and assigning buffs remotely. You can also see who has spent talents improving their buffs (i.e. taking improved might), and allocate the responsibility for that buff accordingly.

4. Stength > Attack Power

With 5/5 in Divine Strength, 1 point of strength = 2.2 Attack Power. So if you're thinking about whether to socket a +8 Strength Gem or +16 Attack Power, the +8 Strength Gem wins hands down.

5. Use Rank 1 Seal of Command (if Alliance)

I'm always watching my measly mana pool, and prefer to use Rank 1 Seal of Command. The only difference between Rank 1 SoC and the Rank 6 SoC is that the judgements do less damage with Rank 1. The SoC melee attack procs are the same.

6. Get a swing timer

A swing timer basically shows you the time between swings. It helps you to time your attacks so that you maximise your autoattacks and SoC procs by not judging at the wrong time. Quartz is a popular mod for this.

7. Pot

Bring your mana pots and use them! We need mana for our attacks like Crusader Strikes, and don't feel guilty about potting to keep putting out the damage. Casters do it, and so should we.

8. Stacking intellect is a waste in PvE

You should be gearing like an Arms warrior. Treat intellect like a bonus stat, a nice to have so long as it doesn't take away from your other stats. That said, I do like a bigger mana pool in PvP as we have to put up with Hunter Viper Stings, mana burns, and the fact that our mana regeneration is downright pathetic.

9. Windfury is godly

When you get the chance to group with a Shaman and they are nice enough to drop windfury, you will see the difference. Because we swing a big two hander, the extra attack a windfury proc makes has a much greater impact on our dps than say a fury warrior or a rogue where it would only proc a one-handed weapon. It took me ages to actually see the difference because I didn't realise....

10. If you get Windfury DO NOT USE WEAPON BUFFS

That includes sharpening stones, wizard oils, weightstones, mana oils etc. This removes the windfury effect. If you do get grouped with a shaman and already have a weapon buff, simply right click on the weapon buff in your top right hand corner to get rid of it.

That's it... if I screwed up something or didn't reference someone... well don't sue me.

Kthxbai

Rex

Been awhile...

2008-05-25T02:44:00.004+10:00

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?

2008-05-06T22:33:00.003+10:00

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!

2008-05-02T20:12:00.003+10:00

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

2008-04-29T21:18:00.002+10:00

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

2008-04-22T23:07:00.004+10:00

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?

2008-04-02T09:25:00.003+11:00

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

2008-04-01T09:38:00.003+11:00

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.

MgT?

2008-03-31T11:11:00.003+11:00

Funny about the new Magister's instance in 2.4, no-one knows what the heck to call it in Looking for Group. I've watched with interest though, and it can't be MT because of Mana Tombs or Mag because of Magtheridon's Lair, so I've started seeing the acronym MgT start to take hold... well at least on Barthilas. So... what do you guys call it?

Anyway, over the weekend I took Rexkicker through the non-heroic version, and only remembered towards the end of instance that my new fear works on demon's as well. Damn, I wish I remembered that earlier, I want to CC that demon add on the third boss that does the fire damage. Wiped a few times on Kaelthas and a few accidental pulls on trash, but all in all not to bad for a geared group. The epic druid cape dropped with res and armor, but it got De'd.

So I then took a break and did the Sunwell Offensive dailies, I got a Badge of Justice from one of the supply packs! Holy cow, these are definitely on my to do list from now on, goodbye Skettis dailies. Being on a PvP server though, its all out warfare, the dailies take ages to do because of the constant ganking going on. I wear my full PvP gear to quest there trinkets and all. Sure it takes a bit longer but its much better than waiting 2 mins to res after you've been ganked for the fifth time.

I then tried MgT on Heroic, the lure of an epic off each boss was too much to ignore and I'm really gunning for the Shard of Contempt seeing as expertise isn't exactly the easiest stat to get. We only got up to the second boss though before our tank and one of our dps had to go to ZA. Doesn't matter though, we weren't getting past the second boss anyway as we wiped about 3 times on him.

The arcane damage was just to great. I was getting hit for about 3k per blast and with the Violet Badge trinket equipped (45 Arcane Resistance), it mitigated up to half that amount. But it wasn't enough, and I'm not going to let some frickin arcane damage stop me from some epic loots. So I went through my stash of gear that I don't use anymore and dusted off the old Horseman's Helm! I bought a cheap '+4 resist all' gem from the AH and a not so cheap Glyph of Arcane Warding head enchant from the Sha'tar Rep Vendor. So now I'm packing 69 Arcane Resistance and am keen to give it another shot. I'll wear this helm against Kaelthas as well, so its not as if I've gone crazy and done this just for one measly boss. The Horseman's laugh will be heard again!

2.4 PvP and Project X - Kara test

2008-03-29T17:15:00.005+11:00

Well I'm in Kara atm on Rexamus and waiting for the group to get together for the Prince pull so I thought I'd update my blog.

Since 2.4 I've been busy buying the entry level scrub pvp gear for the moonkin and pally. Its helped heaps and filled in the holes in my arena sets. In fact for the boomkin I have enough resilience now to reach the 224 cap (sitting at 228).

So I've decided to do a small road test with the panzerkin and its been pretty fun tanking trash and stuff and still standing. I'm having mana issues but hopefully once I get more vengeful pieces and a good headpiece, it should help.

The ret pally saw some SSC/TK action last night and we did Lurker and Leo. I finally managed to down the bugger, he's been annoying me since on the previous 3 attempts we haven't been able to do it. The Tsunami Talisman dropped and bidding got out of control, going for 900 dkp, 3 times more than I have in total!

On lurker I was the top dps a first for me, and a sign that I've caught up gearwise. I was flying blind in there, no threatmeter, damage meters or swing timers, so when they posted the results I was shocked with my 960 dps. I'm sure I was spamming CS at the wrong times without my trusty swing timer so I'm confident that next time, I can get more.

Someone asked me how high my attack power can go, and I said it can get over 4k. Which is a bit nuts and hard to believe sometimes but it does happen, have a look below. I was seeing about 4.1-4.5k crits at this level, so its pretty cool when it does happen.

Oh wait the fights starting...

Ah crap, no T4 helm. But at least I have enough badges to get the Cloak of Subjugated power.

That little baby has pushed my armor to 21.7k armor and my stam is just under 10k. A nice upgrade and that next step closer to the dream. :)

Karathress, Morogrim and Vashj

2008-03-17T23:08:00.003+11:00

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!

2008-03-13T09:20:00.004+11:00

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

2008-03-05T23:56:00.003+11:00

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

2008-03-03T09:04:00.004+11:00

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

2008-02-24T09:05:00.006+11:00

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

2008-02-17T19:22:00.002+11:00

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...

2008-02-04T23:24:00.000+11:00

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....

Back to it

2008-01-17T00:47:00.000+11:00

Well, things have calmed down now, the guild split into two out of which I joined one half of it, so its back to raiding again. We're desparately short on healers for the time being, so I switched to my healing gear (which isn't exactly shabby at 1600+ healing unbuffed) and helped out for Kara. It also meant that we could bring in a new healer to gear him up quick. Its a costly exercise though because that's 100g in respeccing costs (50g to spec holy and it'll cost me another 50g to spec back).

We had a full clear of Kara that went smooth as. We one shot everything except for Netherspite where we wiped a few times as we lost our OT by then. Although, it was worth it, as I picked up the Mithril Band of the Unscarred! Holy hell that's a nice ret pally ring. As far as I'm concerned it made healing worthwhile. I also got other great tanking gear too since our main tank is already fully geared and we had a druid off tank, I picked up new tanking boots, ring and helm.

I'm glad to see the guild getting back to business. Sure we're short on tanks and healers now, but at least we've retained enough of the old guild and brought in new 70's to field two Kara teams. Hopefully this should put us back on track for 25 man raids again.

What the F?

2008-01-13T09:30:00.000+11:00

I originally wanted to post about the usefulness of Pally power while raiding (and even in 5 mans with another pally), but the weekend proved to be quite an eventful one for my toons, and I'll have to post about that some other time.

So gearwise, Rexkicker got a few new things, the pants and the trinket from Heroic Mech dropped, so I was stoked, and plus I had finally saved up enough honor for the pvp necklace. This pushed the pally to the following base stats:

AP Unbuffed: 1868 (with Mongoose enchant)
Hit Rating: 93
Crit Chance: 27.36%

So I now feel that I've completed my gearing for Rexkicker now, and I've pushed him as far as I can on my own prior to getting any SSC and TK content.

I also gave the Boomkin some much needed love, and gave him a Kara run. But it was ace, Curator was nice enough to give up the Staff of Infinite Mysteries, and as I was the only caster that needed it (we had a strangely high number of melee), I got it by default! Hoot!

Then it all went to hell....

The GM went nuts after some guild world pvp didn't go according to plan. What I thought was supposed to be a casual fun event turned out to be the catalyst to destroy the guild. We had intended to raid a Horde city but while we managed to succeed in hijacking the zeppelin ferry, the guards kept knocking people (me included) off the airship with their knockback shots. So it kinda fell apart from there, but the GM rq'd the guild. What the heck for? Over some fun for a change?

Then it got worse, after convincing the interim GM that he was over it, he then just screwed everyone over. After being reappointed the GM (which I didn't agree with as you can't have a GM that rq's after petty incidents like this), he ninjas the guild bank of about 570g and about two tabs worth of valuable items (some worth about 2k gold!). He also appointed his level 1 alt as the GM, removed his main and stripped the officers of their rights so they couldn't do anything to stop the looting of the guild bank. He went further by taking down the forums and locking vent. He pretty much killed the guild because he didn't want it to live on after he was gone.

So Sepuku you tard, I hope you had your fun, and have to reroll horde because you are just a disgrace. Go emo yourself and /wrists.

Rant over.

My Precious

2008-01-10T07:52:00.000+11:00

Awesome! After spamming trade chat all day again yesterday for someone to make my Red Belt of Battle I gave up and started doing my mining run and thought I'd spam in the general world chat instead. And bingo! Found someone to make it, and they did it for cheaper than what I was offering in trade at 1200g... nice! I'm not totally broke now.ef

Got Gruul's tonight so the upgrade is very nice, but I just couldn't grind enough pvp in time to be able to pick up my necklace. Sitting on 12,200 and still need another 3k to pick it up. :P I'm starting to wondering why I ground all this rep to get the exalted rewards when the pvp gear available is far superior for pve than the pve gear.

Oh, and I'm digging this 2.3.2 patch. For me its a buff, since I run with low spell damage and hopefully it'll get leaner once I pick up my legs from heroic mech.

Needs more power... Rawr!

2008-01-08T22:08:00.001+11:00

Man, started the long expensive road to squeeze more damage out of Rexkicker.

Since its server maintenance night, no raiding was on the cards and so I decided to do a heroic mech run to try and get a better trinket and the legs to replace my S1 Arena legs.

The legs are ultra cool, the Greaves of the Bloodwarder and I want them! Been there a few times now and still no luck on either of them.

I've started spamming the Barthilas trade chat as well looking for someone to make me the Red Belt of Battle, the best dps plate belt in the game. Offering about 1.4k gold for it, but no takers so far.

You're probably thinking, dude, make it easy for yourself, you could pimp a dps class for more dps at a lot less effort. Well yeah I could, but the same could be said for doing up a beat up car. You take an old car, and do it up, trying to get the most you can out of it, and forget about the cost. When you're finished, you stand back and enjoy it, and get immense sense of satisfaction that at the end of the day you have something unique that is not the cookie cut dps class you always see.

So that's what I want out of my retribution paladin. Something that at first people may scof at it, and just ask... Why?! But when they take a look under the hood, I hope they'll be pleasantly surprised.

Grinding the BGs

2008-01-06T17:56:00.000+11:00

Okay, so I'm grinding the Battlegrounds trying to get enough honor for the Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph.

I definitely think premades are the way to go though, ever since the 2.3 patch changes to AV have resulted in 0 bonus honor games, I think this is the only way.

Are these games lopsided? Sure are, and while I don't like the idea of premade groups (I'd rather a pug vs pug, myself), its ridiculous to keep coming up against them when I'm pugging. Nope premades are definitely the only way to go. It kinda reminds me of where in a fps game you stack one side with all your pro-gamer mates and just pwn pubs. Useless and doesn't mean much, but in wow where you get honor to buy gear, well it only encourages the ridiculous games we're seeing now.

Getting into a premade in the first place is a bit of an uphill struggle though. Our S1 and S2 arena gears have no resilience, so I kinda feel left out when I see the words...

LFM Org Eots/AB 250 resilience pst...

There's no way I got that much. So in the meantime i just ask em anyway, if they're just wanting to get the game going, more often than not, i'll just get an invite cause i'm a pally and they think i'll heal. Meh its their fault for not asking imo.

I've ground out 8k honor today, so hopefully I'll get that neck piece tonight, and when I meet the next ganker i'll be slightly that much harder to kill. Since its also good for pve, i'm hoping to meet Gruul's on better terms next time!

Now back to grinding....

Inaugural Post

2008-01-05T18:35:00.000+11:00

Well this is my very first post as a raiding Retribution paladin in WoW.

I've been inspired by other retribution paladins and feel like this blog should try and encourage those paladins that feel constantly pushed into the Holy brigade that there is hope out there. But first a little about myself.

I started playing WoW only after The Burning Crusade came out after playing fps' to death, I think I needed a change.

My main is Rexkicker a paladin on the Barthilas PVP 'Oceanic' realm, I also have a 70 Balance Druid Rexamus.

When I first was trying to select a character for WoW I was reading the general attributes of the different classes as you do. It looked impressive on paper, a class that could heal and be in the thick of the action at the same time. I was immediately drawn to the class, as the idea of a 'combat medic' type class was what I decided I wanted to be.

It was not until I was about level 67 that I realised the end game that awaited me, and that retribution paladins were not welcome in WoW. I immediately halted my progress, and told my guild then that being a pure healbot was not how I envisioned my game and refused to level. At that point I was really jaded and rolled a druid instead as I knew that the versatility of the druid class would at least let me figure out how I wanted to play.

But I eventually caved and finished levelling my paladin, and took up the job of holy spam healing. I at least got to see the end game content, but how many times was I sitting at the back of the raid healing, and thinking I was missing out.

Then it all changed....

I came across another ret paladin named Pau, and was fortunate enough to see him raid in Gruul's. I was blown away! He proved to me that it can be done, proved that a ret paladin can be viable and from that point on I knew that I had something to aspire to.

So this is where I am today, I've started trying to play my beloved pally once again, and am determined to do a good job it!

Hope you enjoy these blogs, they tend to be long (probably because I got alot to get off my chest, but it'll be fun)!

Cheers,

Rex