A Mini Guide To Ret DPS.

Hey peeps!

In one of my more recent comments I was asked by Immortal Avenger how I do I dps.

Well i guess its time to pass on what i've learnt to my young Padowa...er...Paladins...

Key Figures:

There are 3 key figures you have to attain to be considered good ret-dps.

Hit rating - Key figures being 95 (with precision from the prot tree) or 142 (without precision)

Once you have attained 95 then you can work on the 2nd key figure:

Crit Rating - Get your crit to at least 25-30% This will ensure that you keep vengeance up at all times.

Attack Power - Get this up as much as possible once you've attained the first 2 figures. Ideally you're looking to get as close to 2000 AP as possible (unbuffed)

Right now i'm sitting on:

98 Hit rating
32.64% Crit
1990 Attack Power (unbuffed - Not even with Blessing of Might)

When I'm raid buffed however I'm pushing the following:

40-45% crit
3000-4000 Attack Power.
(I've seen it go up to 5000 AP once with trinkets/librams all up!!)

Things to do to increase you stats:

If you're lacking in any of the above things, there are plenty of things you can do to help out temporarily.

Food:
Hit Rating: Spicy Hot Talbuk - This 30 minute buff gives you +20 Hit rating.

Attack Power: Roasted Clefthoof - This 30 minute buff gives you 20 Strength = 44 Attack Power.

Crit Rating: Warp Burger - This 30 minute buff gives you 20 Agility.

Potions and Flasks:
Attack Power: Elixir of Strength - This 1h potion gives 35 Strength gives 77 Attack Power.

Crit Chance: Elixir of Major Agility - This increases your crit chance by 3-5% i think (cant remember)

Flask of Relentless Assault: This 2 hour buff gives you 120 Attack Power.

Scrolls:

Scroll of Strength V: +20 Strength
Scroll of Agility V: +20 Agility

What buttons to press:

Ok so you're ready to go...all buffed up....Ready for Action!

Cast Seal of the Crusader (provided you've got the +3% crit chance talent point spent...if not why not!!)

Now I have a small macro that judges whatever seal i have up and casts Seal of Command.

/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of Command

Its not perfect, and it doesnt always work (and i have no idea why) so I always double click it just in case. (Obviously due to global cool down it wont cast SoC twice so dont worry)

Now the mob should have Judgment of the Crusader on him and he's ready for you to start plugging away.

Run in let auto swing do its thing, hit the judgement/command macro BEFORE you swing again.
Then mash Crusader Strike.

So essentially its:

Auto Swing - Judge SoC, Cast SoC - Crusader Strike.

Hopefully you'll have had a Seal of Command hit the mob for some nice combined Burst Damage.

Just remember to only judge command directly after an auto-swing.

Get a swing timer - I suggest Quartz - its ace.

Thats basically it.

Obviously there are other seals you can use depending on the situation. I'm really hoping to see Seal of Blood come over to the Alliance side some day...

Kael'thas Sunstrider

Morning peeps!

Did I have an interesting night.

The guild entered TK: The Eye and formed up outside the hallway leading to Solarian and prepared to clear the trash to Kael'thas.

Wow I've never know such annoying trash mobs. I dread to think what it was like before they nerfed the amount of mobs leading to Kael in the 2.3 patch.

Those centurions are a nightmare. The melee team were wiped out in 1.5 seconds flat before anyone had a chance to turn around and run away. Damn that un-ending Whirlwind hits hard. In plate i was being hit for 4-5k per whirl.

Anyway we got through it in the end and moved onto Kael.

The raid leader, Ironclad, had decided to explain the tactics one phase at a time. So we'd do phase one, phase 2 would start and we'd do a forced wipe to then explain the next phase.

Phase 1 - Kael'thas' Inner Council.

The encounter starts with Kael giving a speech about how great he is and then he sends his advisors to come and kill us.

Advisor 1 - WARRIOR (i dont remember the names! >.<)

This guy walks around in his T5 warrior gear with a big axe and is kited around while ranged DPS take him down. He will "gaze" at a random raid member who then has to run away from the raid members until he decides to "gaze" at someone else. Melee DPS cant do anything here so we stood at the back of the room and /dance(d) and waited for....

Advisor 2 - PALADIN

This guy is pulled and tanked. He will randomly fear people around him and goes down rather fast.

Advisor 3 - MAGE

This chick is tanked by one of the warlocks and taken down by ranged DPS as anyone within 15 feet of her will draw aggro and generally get killed.

Advisor 4 - HUNTARD? Engineer

This guy is a bit random really - he just chucks sticks of dynamite at the person tanking him while DPS take him down. Anyone standing directly infront of him in melee range will get hit by the bombs.

Once that guy is down we start...

Phase 2

Kael then goes on about how he has lots of weapons in his arsenal and some floating weapons spawn and attack the raid.

The weapons are:

2h Axe - Warrior/Paladin/Shaman
Sheild - Tanks
Bow - Hunters
1h Mace - Healers
1h Sword -Rogues/Warriors
Dagger - Rogues
Staff - Mages/Warlocks/Druids/Priests (DPS Staff)

As each of these "die" they drop to the floor and can be picked up and used by the above classes.

Each of them are Legendary and have some insane stats. For instance the healing mace has +600 healing.

We were killing them in this order:

Bow, Mace, Staff.....oh the advisers have been res'd....ah....that'll be phase 3 then.

Somehow you have to have nuked down the weapons and been ready for the advisors to be res'd.

This is as far as we got in 7/8 tries last night and I loved every minute.

I cant wait to get in there again and kick his butt!

Oh and a little story before i go...

Just before the raid one of the guildies whispered me from his 70 shaman alt. His group needed another DPS for a run to COT:Durnholde. I said i'd come and got the invite...

Hmm... 67 Druid tank...guess I'll be 2h Tanking then...

70 Resto Shaman - Nice - Shaman healers rock.

70 Enhancement Shaman - Nice! Imp Windfury FTW

70 Enhancement Shaman - Oooh.....

Hold the phone....3 Shamans...? ZOMG!

Windfury Totem - Check
Strength of Earth Totem - Check
Agility Totem - Check
Spell Damage Totem - Check...

I never ran out of mana. I never died...i was sitting on 2.5-4k Attack Power and when Mongoose proc'd i was at 48-50% crit chance! Wooot!!

We cleared the place no problems! all done! nice and easy! I was 40% clear on the DPS meter sitting pretty right at the top!! (not surprising really as i out geared them a lot!)

Oh while i was dribbling over the Windfury totem my Girlfriend asked....

"Whats Windfury? Sounds like some sort of chronic fart problem..."

Vashj Got Slapped!!

Last night the mighty cleared Serpentshrine Cavern 6 out of 6.

Vashj bit it hard apparently (I wasnt there sadly) So hopefully now we've gotten her down we can get the rest of the guild to finish that part of the attunement quest.

Tonight however I am signed for the guild first try on Kaelthelas Sunstrider.

I've downloaded a really long video on this fight that i'm going to watch tonight when i get in to see how it goes, but i've heard its a really long, incredibly complicated fight.

We shall see...I cant wait!!

With any luck he'll go down on the first night! Thats what I'm hoping for.

Fingers crossed!

We got Vashj Down to 7%......

....Well I say we....I mean they.

Seven Percent! If i'd been there maybe we'd have gotten her down!

And they're going again tonight with out me :(

/cry

Oh well. Means i can carry on leveling the warlock. He's up to 64 so not long to go now!

I'm just eager for 2.4 to come now. The ret-changes that i've seen on the PTR are nice. I've not put it into practise though, just because of the severe lag issues.

What was funny though was i logged onto the PTR and went to Ironforge only to find that a few Horde members had invaded IF and were seeing very little resistance.

Also there's a funny funny bug that is making all the pets become Super-sized!!

I re-spec'd Gwindle to resto yesterday for some reason, and a few of the guild newbies/alts entered Kara. It was painful. Feral druids can NOT tank in PvP gear.

Wish i'd not gone! We were continuing the groups kara run, so Shade, Illhoof, Chess and Prince were left. We managed to clear Shade on the 2nd attempt after someone moved in the flamewreath. and had 3/4 tries on prince, but the tank just wasnt man-enough.

I've done so little with regards to gearing up my paladin....

He's sat at 2250 odd AP (With Might) 32% crit and 115 Hit rating in his PvE gear.

I guess as i get upgrades in the shape of either t5/t6 or some s3 Arena gear these numbers will go up. But when will i hit the ceiling? I wish i had someone to look at as a guidline for a raiding ret thats cleared Hyjal and BT.

What do people think about Haste rating stuff? Or "ignores xxx armor" items.

At least our enhancement shaman is back and packing Windfury.

100th Post!!

Just a quickie.

Its been a really boring day in the office today, and i've been trying my hardest to find stuff to do, and i noticed i was sitting on 99 posts!!

So this is my 100th Blog Post! yay! Grats me!

Last night we cleared 3/4 in TK: Eye as usual, just leaving Vashj and Kael left.

I hope we get Vashj down soon....maybe tonight eh...fingers crossed.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Character Names

Picked up on this from Blog Azeroth and from Zerei's blog!

So lets break it down for the masses then!!

Firelight - Having played the original games and being a big fan of Paladins, i rolled this guy not realising that the blurb on the start page was complete lies!! (well at the time anyway)

So anyway back to the name...i wanted something that symbolised both the Light and my deisre to be strong and kill things!! And So Firelight was born... Not terribly exciting, and i've taken a lot of flack from it in the past, but its derived from lore and i like it. As it turns out Firelight is quite a common name for mages for some reason...Oh and of all my toons Firelight has a first name: Dave!

Poobah - My second toon on Steamwheedle. This guy takes his name not from Princess Poobah on that island in STV, in fact i didnt even know she existed when i created him, he's names after a rank in The Flintstones cartoon! >.< I just thought it was cute, and gnomeish!

Gwindle - Gwindle's name was something that just popped into my head for some reason. It sounds elvish, it sounds mysticalish....and its girly enough to be different.

Starslayer - I really dont know what was going through my mind when I came up with this dudes name - he was my first toon i made in the game and didnt really know what to go with at all. I actually bumped into a level 70 warlock the other day called Steelslayer! I wonder if he created his toon before or after i created mine!

Ok so nothing overly exciting there!! But I like them and thats what matters!

I've written a lore story for Firelight for when Wrath of the Lich King comes out - I've reserved the name for my Death Knight: 'DarkenedFire' which is cool and fits in with Firelight move to the dark side of the forc....I mean light!

New Photo!!

Just another quick update!

Latest Snapshot of Firelight in his awesome gear!!

Stats!

Here's some cool sigs with my latest stats (basics!)

(Wish I'd logged out in Kitty form! :P)

Oh and i'm playing with this entrecard thing!!

Lets see if it works.

Vashj 10 - Rage 0

Hey peeps! Hows everyone today?

Last night we entered SSC and had 10 tries on Vashj.

The fight is fairly straight forward:

Phase 1 - Nuke her down. Tanks have to watch out for being stunned and rooted.

Phase 2 - at 70% she moves to the centre of the platform, and the 4 shield generators around her bubble her up. You then have 10-20 seconds to get ready for the fun.

Water elementals will spawn in the water all around her, making their way to vashj. If any of these mobs make it to her they increase Vashj's damage by 5%. So the ranged dps have to be positioned around the ring, nuking them down.

Naga will also spawn. These guys have to be tanked and nuked down by the melee dps.

Striders will also spawn. These guys have to be kited around the outer ring by a warlock or mage or both, using debuffs that slow them down. If they get within melee range of anyone they will fear them for a few seconds.

Every now and then a Tainted elemental will spawn. These have to be nuked down fast as they despawn pretty quick. Once they're nuked they drop a tainted core. As soon as you pick it up you cant move. You have to use the core to pass it to another player nearby - then then pass it to someone who's close to the sheild generators. Once applied to the generator one of Vashj's sheilds go down. This has to be done 4 times.

Phase 3 - After each of the sheilds are down she'll be at 50% and its just nuke her down. Except these spore bats spawn and start dropping poison all over the place. This is a real pain in the bottom! Melee dps have a real hard time.

Our best tries saw her at 25% and 24%. We're slowly getting over the extra work you have to do, and its just handling the cores that seem to be of some concern.

All in all it was a good evening i think. Maybe this week we'll be able to get her down!! Who knows....

I managed to get my Engineering to 370! So only 5 points to go!

Dropping Mining has been a mixed blessing really. I'm tempted drop herbalism on my warlock in favour of mining.... or maybe drop his alchemy...then he'd be a miner/herbalist.

Looks like the last 5 points are going to be spent making Flying machines! *rolls eyes*

Wipe Night Looms...

Hey peeps!

Bit of a late update from me today. The guild went into SSC last night and had a few failed attempts on Vashj. I wasnt there, so i dont know the details really.

Tonight we enter again and hopefully we'll take her down this time. I think we're ready. We deserve it.

We just need to be lucky with the kiting of the striders...then i think we're set for an easy ride through phase 2, and into phase 3. Fingers crossed for us tonight people!!

Last night i didnt do much other than help a couple of friends who were questing in Zangarmarsh while I farmed Primal Waters. It would seem finding the gas clouds in Zangar are easy than finding them in Nagrand. I wish gatherer picked up the places they spawn.

I might try looking for a list of co-ords somewhere to see if i can find them easier.

Seems to be a good way of making money though - in 1 hour I'd farmed 5 Primal Waters, and 2 Primal Airs. I wish there were Fire clouds! >.<

Weekend Ups and Downs!

Morning peeps - Hope you all had a very enjoyable weekend.

I've had a nasty cold the past 3 days, so suffering a bit. Not done a great deal on WoW, but let me give you the weekend Highlights....

Friday Night - Zul'Aman

The ZA team had cleared all bosses to The Hex-Lord the night before leaving just the Hex-Lord and Zul'jin himself to take care of.

Hex-Lord went down on the 4th try and Zul'Jin the same. Wow are those complicated fights.

Hex-Lord is a fairly straight-forward fight with some really nasty things to watch out for. He has 4 adds with him:

An Undead, an elemental, a snake, and an ogre. We tried various different things to help get these dudes sorted, from shackling, to sheeping, in the end we decided to tank/kill the snake and the ogre and sheep the snake while the undead was shackled.

This was very messy.

The lord himself will do 2 main things:

Shadow bolt things that effect everyone making casting any sort of spell virtually impossible, and then he'll steal one of the raids abilities.

This makes life VERY HARD!

You can never predict who he's going to pick on and if he pics on a paladin you're in trouble!

His Consecrate HURTS. A LOT.

Anyway we got him down and moved on.

Zul'jin is a complicated fight as he has 5 phases:

Phase 1 - Troll Form - Tank and spank, Melee have to watch out as he whirlwinds then throws a sword at a random member of the raid and if you've just been hit by the whirlwind - this = death. (speaking for personal experiance here!

Phase 2 - Bear Form - Tank and spank - healers watch out - Tank takes a lot of damage.

Phase 3 - Eagle Form - Oh my god i hate this bit! Basically if any one casts a spell, no matter what it is you will recieve 1.2k nature damage from a ball of lightning that fly around. Meanwhile there are whirlwinds flying around that chuck you about and hit you for 900 odd each time you touch one. So basically what this means is you HAVE to have some melee dps in the group or you're not going to get him down as mages/locks cant cast spells. I had to wait for my judgements to wear off him before i attacked as well, and i could only Auto attack, and Crusader Strike for damage.

Phase 4 - Lynx Form - as you reach 40% the raid must all surround Zul'jin. He will randomly target a raid member and do massive amounts of damage on him/her so they need healing.

Phase 5 - Firehawk Form - Tank and spank - make sure you have fire res up, and avoid the columns of fire that appear.

So we got him down, some Rogue and healing loot droped.

No sword! damn!

Saturday and Sunday i was just faffing about really - did some Steamvaults with Gwindle tanking again (yes she's feral again) But i got this cold then and i just seemed to wonder around aimlessly.

Sunday we did some Arena matches, and came up against some really awefull teams how is it at 1500 rating we're being put up against people in full Season 3 gear!?! How is that possible!

Bah! At least we managed to stay at around about 1550 rating.

Other than that I spent a couple of hours farming Sunfury bowmen for a rare engineering drop for a Khorium Scope. Which dropped a lot quicker than i was expecting!

I've crafted a few of these now and i'm currently 266 Engineering at the moment.

I Also crafted the Translocater thingies for Area 52, and Winterspring. I wish you could learn the other 2 as well.

Obviously i chose Goblin engineering. Going to try and get the plans for the adamantite arrow maker or something, and the Repair bot. Hopefully i'll get lucky and these wont take too long to drop.

I think i had a momentary lapse in Sanity...

Hey peeps!

I've had a bit of a mad couple of days in WoW the last 2 days.

Let me explain...

Wednesday night.....the guild entered SSC for our usual "lets clear to Vashj" which we did in record time! We downed Morogrim with over 30 minutes left of raid time.

Leotheras dropped the trinket i was after, but i was out bid by 1 dkp by one of the hunters...i was pretty narked about that, but if she wanted to spend 818 dkp on a trinket then fine...

Karathress didnt drop the Mace...Maybe next week i'll get lucky! :)

Anyway after the raid I was talking to a couple of the guys about stuff and the topic of conversation moved onto Engineering.

So if you go look at my amory profile now you'll see I have the engineering epic goggles! >.<

I found an engineering power leveling guide on the web, bought up all the mats i needed to get me to 300 and set to work. (I dropped mining)

2 hours laters i dinged 300 engineering and moved to Outland.

This is where things got really expensive! So far getting to 300 had cost me a relatively painless 300-400g.

Getting to where i am now (359) has cost me somewhere in the region of 1000g!

But it was so worth it! The goggles are amazing! The 350 (60%) mount is fantastic i cant wait to get to 375 so i can craft the epic flyer.

The goggles have only given me a small increase in AP, but they've increased my crit by over 1% which is really nice! :)

Last night I picked up the quest for that doo-hicky that allows you to grab motes of whatever from the gas clouds in Outland. I'm going to start farming those very regularly as a good source of income I hope it will anyway as I'm now stoney broke.

I read some very interesting stuff about 2.4 this morning. Looks like Primal Nether will no longer be BoP, Nor will Nether Vortex'. Plus you'll be able to buy the vortex's from the badge vendor for 15 badges! Brilliant!

2.4 Changes...

Morning peeps!

So everyone's talking about the BIG changes in the upcoming patch...some people are happy about it, and others are a bit dumb founded by it all....

So when 2.4 comes out we can all enter Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. No attunement required.

From a personal stand point I actually think this is a good thing. For a start we can all have the opportunity to enter places we might not get into for months due to Kael and Vashj being really quite hard compared to the rest of the bosses in their relative isntances. Well no, thats wrong. They're not that hard, but we've still not been able to down Vashj, but we're getting there slowly.

I was talking to our Guild Leader last night about it on Vent while I was playing on my lock, and he said the reason Blizzard have done this is probably because the next expansion is closer than most people probably realise.

So i'm expecting it around May time. By then I'm hoping that will have cleared Hyjal, and be well into Black Temple!

What this does probably mean that we'll have to drop SSC/TK alltogether in favour of Hyjal and BT. Which is progression i suppose. This means we can come back to Vashj and Kael and down them when we're over geared...not proper progression, but at least we can say we downed them!

This is what i see people doing. But the Vashj and Kael fights are a lot of work, overly complicated and annoying to boot. So most will just skip them, as we more or less did with Magtheridon. We only down'd him a few times as the t4 loot he dropped as pretty lame compared with SSC/TK epics.

I personally cant wait! I wish the PTR's were up!!! Grrr.

I dont think Blizzard want to make the same mistakes they made last time around with regards to Naxxramas. Only the top top top guilds ever saw that place before TBC came out.

Even to this day i've only had a nose in there once. Once WotLK comes out Naxx is supposed to be the first 25 man instance. Gief Tier3!!! I love that armour set!!

GO GO POWER RANGERS!!!!

Weekend Warlock Wonderment!

Morning peeps!! Hope all of you had a good weekend! I certainly did.

Friday Night:

The raid group all decended onto Netherstorm and awaited the last few people for TK: The Eye.

Sadly a few people were missing and the raid was cancelled. So bringing forward our plans for Saturday night i gathered all the paladins into a raid group (8 of us as a couple were offline) including a rogue and a mage (well we need a water/food vendor and someone who's going to die a lot!)

We entered kara and started the owning!!!

Attumen - Tries: 1
Moroes - Tries: 1
Maiden - Tries: 1 - 3 of us were killed on the pull, as she randomly dropped aggro.
Big Bad Wolf - Tries: 1
Curator - Tries: 1 (hardest part was pulling the elementals in his room, as we had one of the mobs bug as it spawned in a column and couldnt be killed)
Illhoof - Tries: 1
Shade of Aran - Tries: 1
Prince - Tries: 2

We skipped netherspite and wiped at 1% on Nightbane due to some bad luck on the tank getting 2 crushing blows at 2%

We only tried Nightbane once as it was late.

We were planning on going back for him later on in the weekend, but never bothered.

It was so much fun. Next time we're going to find another 2 paladins and try it properly.

Saturday:

I just spent a few hours getting my Warlock to 58 and picking up some imba gear from Outland. My girlfriend and I then went to see Cloverfield. (dont go see this film if you get sea-sick)

Sunday:

The mission was on! Get Starslayer to 60 and start my horsie quest. I had a guildie who still had the mats so i was able to save myself 250g.

I hit 60 with ease, picked up the first quest to go to Winterspring and kill some Boomkins. I also picked up a couple of other quests that required me to kill the same mobs, including that escort quest.

Getting the blood things was easily the hardest part of the quest, apart from all the running too and from Burning Steppes. I wish I'd collected all the items first before going there, thankfully I just ran to Redridge, logged my banker and posted him the items.

Then It was time to grab a couple of guildies and go to Scholomance to down Raj so that my imp in a bottle could get on with whatever he was doing to make me something. While we were in there I completed a couple of quests and we downed Jandice to see if she would drop the Dreadmist shoulders. WOOT!! She dropped them! Yay!! Thats 4/8 parts of the Dreadmist set!

So onto Dire Maul West for the final part of the Quest.

Having never done this before i wasnt sure what to expect, but with 3 70's with me it was a doddle really. I can imagine this being really hard at 70! i mean REALLY hard! those waves and waves of demons. I just spent my time enslaving the big ones and trying not to get killed!.

So we cleared down the dudes and i got my mount spell! Nice work! Awesome stuff.

I need to post up some new pics of my dudes as most of the pics are out of date now.

Lady Vashj...

Morning peeps! I'm SOO looking forward to the weekend. Its been a long week.

Last night entered SSC and took down Morogrim Tidewalker nice and quick, then we had 6 or 7 tries on Vashj.

I got the Healing plate shoulders he drops that look like the paladin T5! Nice for my off spec gear I'll probably never use! Why do people take off spec gear? Bah who knows!

I'm going to be trying to get as many of the t5 look-a-likes as possible - just for fun of course!!

I've got the Hunter t5 look-a-like and the warrior look-a-like, and now the paladin look-a-like! (even though i actually do have the real thing, but ret obviously)

So onto the tries on Vashj.

We seem to have phase 1 down, nice and easy, and the elementals and passing the core around is now easy too, but damn those striders....

They keep picking off people. I'm just lucky that i dont have anything to do with those buggers...

The raid leader announced at the end of the raid that we need more DPS before we can take on those striders, so we'll be leaving her alone for another week.

Tonight we go to Tempest Keep: The Eye to clear the 3 bosses before Kael. I wonder if we'll try Kael himself.. I've seen the fight briefly on a video, and it looks difficult.

I'd love to get there and try it though!! One day!

Is Kael harder than Vashj? Opinions would be nice!

Oh i have quick question to any mages that might read this...

Why can you not train portal: Darnassus till you're level 50, when all the other cities in Azeroth let you train them at level 40?

Getting there!!

Slowly but surely my warlock I getting to Outland!

Last night i hit 56, and within 20 mins or so i was over 50% into it!

A couple of fellow locks (both 70) and i went into scholo again, 2 times in 2 nights now, to try and get me my dungeon armour bits.

The previous night I didnt get one item drop that i could use! Not one!!

Last night how-ever was different. I got upgraded boots, shoulders, and the Magisters Crown from the last boss. No Dreadweave sadly, but at least when I hit 57 i can get some nice upgrades!

I've got a raid tonight, So probably no Scholomance for me tonight, unless the raid finishes early...(doubtful)

Right now I've begun feeling that leveling bug again!! I wanna get to 70!! 50-60 is where things start getting exciting!!

I'm tempted to take a break from raiding again - i think i need it!

Raiding is like having a 2nd job.

You have to be in top form in what you're doing or you let down the team.

You have to be prepared properly or you're going to let down the team.

You cant be late, or decide half way through a raid you have to go, as this again lets down the team!

But as long as your raid leader is a good guy (Like ours) its fun! and thats why i love doing it so much! Especially when really silly things happen!

My Thoughts on 2.4 Upcoming Changes.

Hey peeps! Hope all things are well with you all.

So at some point in the near future(Read "When we're ready") 2.4 will be released and we'll all have to download a 2-300mb patch, waiting eagerly as the Blizzard updater takes what seems like a year to finish and start installing itself. (Dont you just hate that?) I normally like to start the downloader early, usually during the day while i'm at work.

So what is coming then...

"Items meant for Retribution paladins will have their stats altered, and players should see an increase in dps"

This is so vague its almost a joke....

Firstly what items were meant for Retribution Paladins? Because as far as i can tell there isnt that much available in the first place.

And from what level will they adjust the gear? Tier 4 upwards? Does this mean i should take a note of all my ret-gear including my Hammer of the Naaru to see if there's a change?

Will this also include Season 1 and 2 Arena gear?

And what sort of changes are we talking about?

Delete the Spell Damage and replace it with STR/AGI? Thats what i'd like to see.

I wanna see More STR/AGI/CRIT in place so that i can get my mana pool up to 7k unbuffed as apposed to 7k raid buffed.

I'd also like to see the tier 5 set bonus's changed. Returns mana and party Healing?? WTF!?!?!

I dont think that'll happen though....

I'm really not going to hold my breath at all because if I expect too much I wont get it.

Lets just see what happens.

The changes to honor are nice - no more having to wait for honor to update over night.

The only thing i see this doing that is negative is possibly in WSG - Zerging!! KILL KILL KILL Everything, and dont stop ever!! Hang on...isnt that what happens now anyway??

What Do you write when....

....there's not much to write about?

Our guilds progression is slow at the moment. We've hit a wall that is Lady Vashj.

It seems we lack the skill to down her.

Last night the guild had 10 tries on Vashj and couldn't get past the 3rd core without loosing someone kiting the stalkers or vashj getting too many buff's from the elementals.

I was out for a meal with my girlfiend last night so missed the fun, and i'm not scheduled to go on another raid till Thursday night now. Guess I'll level my warlock a bit, or do some ore farming.

I can make a bit of money by selling the belt that my friend can craft. But dont wanna spend too many dkp on the mats required (Nether Vortex) Maybe i'll try getting the mats together to create some of those tanking bracers i can make - god knows i dont need badges for anything else at the moment. (Primal Nether)

Last night I got Starslayer to 54, and tried to kill some mobs in outland. Managed to kill 3 or so on the boundry to Hellfire and Terrokar. Took a long time, but i managed it, but I think i need a couple more levels to try and grind my way to 58, but thats just too boring really...so I'm going to finish questing in Azeroth to 60, not 58 like everyone else. I'm gonna try and get some Runs into scholo and strat to get my Dungeon set completed as much as i can. I do wanna get all of it! Just for the looks really - its an amazing looking set. Plus when was the last time you saw anyone wearing the full Dungeon 1/2 set?

If i skip getting to Outland till I'm 60, the completly skip terrokar quests i'll hit 70 in SMV probably, and still have loads of quests to do to make money.

Crazy? Me? Nah!!! Its how i got gwindle to 70.

So the big news with Paladins is 2.4 we'll see some gear changes.

I'm not going to get really over excited about this news untill i can see the changes for myself.

I'm waiting for the PTR to be made live so i can log over and check it all out and compare the gear with how it is now.

One thing that Blizzard has always said is that they dont want us to become "Gods of PvP" Probably because the warlocks and rogues who currently own the title would QQ about it.

"ZOMG THAT PALADIN KICKED MY TOUSHEY!!!"

/log blizz forums
QQ QQ QQ QQ QQ

2.5 = Paladin Nerf.

We'll see...i hope that doesnt happen, but we'll see.

Fingers crossed fellow Ret-noobs!!

Weekend Update!

Morning Guys'n'Gals! Hope all of you had a good weekend!

As I had feared we were short some good dps for Vashj so she was cancelled. Instead a group of our top raiders went to Zul'Aman.

We cleared all bosses to Hex-Lord.

The team went on last night and got hex-lord down, and Zul'Jin too (sadly i wasnt there as i was watching the new series of Lost that started last night! OH BOY!!!!)

Any way didnt really do much, just some arena matches, our 3v3 team went up another 100 points to sitting at round 1550 or so! So we're really starting to work really well together!

I'm really beginning to enjoy the arena matches we do!

We even managed to down a team rated at 1800 or so! We really gave ourselves a serious pat on the back for that one as the team were members of the top PvP guild on our server.

I spent the rest of my WoW time leveling my Warlock, got him to 53 from 51 He's been doing quests all over the place! I really need to just spend some time in the same place rarther than flitting about doing quests here, there and everywhere.

Think I'm gonna concetrate on Western/Eastern Plaguelands. Its lots of fun, and very dangerous! But nothing my felguard can't handle. He's so OP its crazy! I was at the felstone field, and i noticed a quest giver in the building nearby. As i walked into the building i was jumped by 4 undead. I targeted each that were attacking me and told Flatoom to attack them one by one he drew there aggro off me and onto him. I then Dotted the one he was attacking, and then healed him up till the mob died then proceeded to do the same on each and every mob that he attacked.

It was amazing! Had that been any other toon at that level he'd have been dead! Splatted.

Awesome it was...I cant wait to get this dude into outland.

8 Bosses in 2 Evenings...

Hey peeps!

Hope all is well with you on this fine Friday!

Last night entered Serpentshrine Cavern with the goal of clearing to Vashj.

With the usual awesomeness that we display we downed each boss first time, apart from Karathress and Morogrim, each needing a reset very early on in the fight due to a bit of bad luck on the tanks getting 2 chrushing blows close together.

I picked up a healing Libram that no-one wanted from Lurker, and some shoulders that dropped from morogrim that looked like the hunter t5 shoulders (hehe i'm a hunta-din now!) Just for fun more than anything.

Also Karathress dropped x2 T5 Leg tokens.

Finally a good chance to get my legs!!

Ended up paying 600 dkp for them, but thats no problem really cos i wanted them really badly for the extra hit rating.

I think what I'm going to do if I ever get that talisman is use the t5 legs when i'm on bosses, and the other leggings I got from TK on trash.

Tonight we're going to try Vashj if we can get enough dps - when last i looked we were missing a few signups. It doesnt look like its going to happen. But we'll see later!