Update...

Hey guys!

So the hot fix came and to be honest aside from a small change to our mana regen, (although i find if you judge wisdom its not really a problem I think this may be to do with the level of my gear perhaps?) my DPS is only down a little but, but something odd has happened - the other people in the raid seem to have gotten used to their new abilities and started doing more damage.

I've yet to try out things in Battlegrounds or Solo'ing. Although I have been doing a lot of the scourge attack things - killing the ghosts and skellies out and about where I can, and honestly? As long as I open up with judgement of Wisdom I don't need to stop to drink - in fact the only time I ever have water on me is in raids when mages put up food tables.

I guess when 3.0.3 hits we'll really feel it. Just I'm not sure if I should drop Seal of Command all together and stick with Seal of the Martyr.

I got my T6 belt last night from Brutalus (Thanks!) - Illidan didnt drop a t6 chest token, and the bracers went to another paladin.

So Monday/Tuesday will be working on Felmyst i guess and then Wednesday will be our last run into Black Temple before the expansion.

I just want the expansion to be here NOW!

Hot Fix....Live?

Hey guys, just a quick post to make a quick post on what was going on last night.

The guild went into Sunwell again and cleared the first 2 bosses and due to lack of healers stopped.

One thing I noticed was that I was running out of mana, but I seem to have worked out a few things so I can keep it topped up when i need to.

So on Brutalus, who we took down on our 3rd/4th try i was tinkering around with stuff as i'd seen i was having to drink again between trash pulls.

So what i'm doing is this: going full out - CS, DS, SoComm, Wings, Judgement of Light, even Consecrating when it was up. Till i got to aout 50% mana the i just stopped consecrating and instead of judging light i judged wisdom.

This returned my mana to about 90/100% so then I popped judgement of light instead and started consecrating again.

Now I'm not 100% sure that the nerfs were live, but I definatly was noticing I was running out of mana, and I wasnt getting as much mana back from judgements as I had been.

After the raid I ran over to the Test Dummies in Ironforge and started plugging away.

Solo i was getting 1450 DPS or there abouts without wings then up to 1650/1700 or so with wings up.

I'm gonna try tonight again and see what the crack is!

Watch this space...

Firelight, Hand of A'dal

Hey peeps.

Feeling pretty glum today, know that in less than 36 hours 3.0.3 will go live on the European servers and Retribution Paladins will be stood in a bucket, while the mafia consisting of Rogues, Warlocks, Warrior, and those damned resto druids fill the bucket with quick drying cement and then dumped off the nearest bridge into the canals in Stormwind.

Its been a fun few weeks with all the changes to Achievements and such..and all that lovely dps...

Here's a quick snapshot from Sunday Nights SSC Run to go take down Vashj and Kael'thas to get the achievement and as I'd taken Vashj down prior to the patch I was still running with the old version of the quest, so a few lucky peeps still managed to get the "Hand of A'dal" title.

So if you have the quest items from either Vashj or Kael prior to 3.0.2 then get your toucas into SSC or TK and snag that title before then hot-fix it in 3.0.3 (probably)

Almost 1.6k DPS - and its been higher, that's just the Highest I managed to remember to grab a screenshot of it. (oh and by the way? 3.5k DPS from hunters? Nerf that please blizzard....i mean COME ON!)

I've really been enjoying the pre-wrath event up until I read all the crap Blizzard are doing to the class.

So anyway I've taken some snaps of the carnage for prosperity! Enjoy..

Oh and er....Nerf Tauren Paladins!! ;)

Cya Next Time!

Now where can I get a /hug....
PS - Does anyone know if there's an application I can use to write my blog? This tiny little window they give you to post on is really too small - importing pictures is a nightmare...

Enjoy It While It Lasts...

So the nerf is coming and there's nothing we can do about it.

So what am I planning on doing about it? I'm going to PvP as much as I can before I loose 45% of my damage. Cos lets face it, thats what we're loosing more or less.

45% of our crit damage...

You know I seem to remember blizzard saying somewhere not long ago that "the whole point of Paladin dps is Big Crits." well not any more! Now we're about sustained damage.

But whats done is done, there's nothing any amount of QQ'ing is going to do about it.

I will be very VERY upset if this affects our perfomance in Raids. Lets see if this bleed effect actually does enough damage (cant see it doing 45% of our crit damage....>_>)

I'm tempted to start stacking agility/crit bonus gear/gems - if I'm not allowed to have 45% of my crit damage - I'll just have to get up to 85% (Joking! But it'd be nice eh?)

Anyway I'll not be crying about it any more - unless its to say "I'm re-rolling to a Death Knight"

******************************************************************

Anyway....Wrath is with is in 3 weeks and the Lich King has starting making his presence know in Azeroth and Outland...(especially in Shattrath actually it seems - the amount of corpses around!)

I was the first in the guild to notice the Argent Healers popping up all over the place.

So its totally cool to become a mindless zombie...brrraaiiinss....especially when you blow yourself up in a bank or Auction House! Ha!

I've not seen any boxes of grain in the major cities as yet but I hear there a a lot in Booty Bay. I wonder if there is going to be any sort of quests like the pre-tbc event.
I imagine the zombie event is just the start!

Gonna keep my ears and eyes open for more though!

One of the cool features is you can talk to people in the other faction while your a zombie! Had a nice conversation with a hordie while we were poisoning people in shatt! (Players cant attack you in shatt so you take it upon yourself to attack them and the NPC's. More Zombies for our army of the undead!)

So enjoy this event and more importantly - Enjoy being A true bringer of Justice and Light. For our time to shine is nearly at an end....

The Sunwell...and Hallows End

Hey peeps! So the last 2 nights raids have been in Sunwell and didn't we do well in here!

Monday night we cleared Kalecgos and then Brutallus, then had some tries on Felmyst.

We're in the middle of doing Felmyst wipes at the mo - she's tough! just getting the tactics right is difficult. We'll get her eventually.

I got REALLY lucky yesterday with a trash drop and picked up these bad boys!!

I was actually shocked these drop - usually I'm not lucky with drops like this!

In other news - I've managed to complete all of the achievements for Hallows End apart from 1 - I need to get the Squashling pet - but I've never seen it drop.

Kinda sucky - I've read some blue posts about it:

I understand completely that people want to get the achievement, the title, and the mount, and therefore the concept of an achievement that may be intended to be uncommon is not a popular one. I wish everyone the best of luck; while I realize I may have frustrated you today with my answers, but I simply wanted it known that everything brought forth as a concern regarding the Sinister Calling achievement was discussed and the achievement was judged reasonable. We'd read the feedback and we understand where you're coming from but the achievement is still right about where we want it to be in terms of being able to complete it.

That isn't to say we won't make tweaks to the availability of the items in question, but chance will still play a part if we do. We have no intent of making the items use a quest, token, or other guaranteed system to achieve.

Also I've read this and it doesnt look too good...

We don't nerf anyone due to public outcry. If we did, there would probably be 1-2 classes left that were even PvP viable. At most seeing a lot of QQ about one class might get us to look at the numbers to see if there is any truth to the matter. However I will say that in this case there were so many people telling us the same thing that it's hard to come up with an explanation for how they can all be wrong and some of the Ret paladins be right. (I say "some" because several Ret paladins admit they were killing stuff to fast.)

We collect a lot of data from both Beta and the live servers, and Ret paladins were killing people very quickly and often, especially at level 70. Even after the nerfs, they are still very good at 70.

It's never fun to nerf anyone and we know the boards are going to be on fire for several days when we do it. It's our fault that the imbalance existed in the first place and we needed to take steps to correct it. Players are understandably nervous about the new world order with all of the changes we've made to classes and combat. Most of them, I am confident, want to see balance problems fixed quickly.

But we'll just have to wait and see...

1 Year of Blogging!!!

So its been a year to the day since I wrote my first blog post on here!

My First Blog Entry

I just wanted to say thanks to the 43,000 odd visitors since I started and thanks to all the contributors who have made comments!

Retribution Builds for Level 70 and beyond.

Hey peeps! So I promised Iandrix that I'd put up what I thought were good builds for level 70 and I thought I'd try to make up something for level 80 as well.

Level 70 Ret Raiding Build
This is the build I'm using Live at the moment for Raiding. As you can see I've only put 2 points in Fanaticism. And so far I've not had a huge issue with threat so far. Hand of Salvation has saved my butt very well so far! But the threat generation warriors have at the moment is awesome.

Here are some more more builds i threw together..I had a real hard time going for anything nice for the 70 pvp build - I really cant decide if its really necessary...but some survivability would be nice...but then I have full pvp gear but rarely use it!!

Level 70 Ret PvP Build

Level 80 Ret Raiding Build

Level 80 Ret PvP Build

If anyone has any suggestions then by all means link different builds!

Edit: I fixed the 80 Ret PvE build!

All together now....NERF!!!

No...Not Ret....well not yet....but Black Temple has been....HARD!!

Rage went into BT tonight...start to finish 3.5 hours - all cleared!

Illidan Down - Guild First! Hardly surprising though!

But Grats to us!!

We one shot all the bosses in there!

Illidan was down in 9 minutes, Akama was down in 1m 2s.

What an evening!!

Hey peeps!! Hows everyone today?

I'm fantastic!

Last night after I got in from work, I finished patching my wow client, updated my addons and booted into the game, then I logged off and switched off my addons!

So after a bit of fiddling - relearning some things from my trainer and odds and end here and there the main 25 man raid was cancelled so we decided to head into ZA.

Well that was the plan - it took a little bit of time to implement due to the Eastern Kingdoms mystically disappearing on and off last night from time to time.. I only got caught in one of the crashes thankfully.

Anyway I finally made it up there and while we were waiting a few of the guildies were eager to see what Ret could do...

Well our Rogue Class Leader who has always been a difficult person to duel was ripped to shreds by my new abilities - This he tried 3/4 times and the result was the same each time!

Our Prot warrior on the other hand - well he hurts!! Whatever it is that they can do that returns the damage to the attacker is pretty nasty!!

Anyway we went into Zul'Aman and wow...did we clear the place fast!!!

Start to finish - 57 minutes! What a shame the bear mount is gone!

So at about 12:30am this morning after I'd been running around doing some small achievement things, I logged off...with a big grin on my face...

...Until that is I woke up this morning and came to work and read this post from Blessing of Kings.

Well it seems that Ret-Paladins are just not allowed to have fun ever.

I'll reserve judgement on this till I can try it out. But this is seriously not good....lets hope this is where the nerfing stops.

As almost every other blog site and forum post has stated - Ret will not be OP in Wrath. We will be a viable PVE DPS, and a good PvP class. Which makes a change from not being able to do anything well in TBC.

I mean i did a lot of dueling last night and Ret still suffer the same things as before against classes with Crowd Control - Mages, Warlocks, Resto Druids. Unless we can get within melee range of them. (Basically meaning when Divine Shield isnt on Cool Down) even then they have in game mechanics that can get them away from us...

Why must people just go QQ on forums and moan about Ret when all they need to do is Learn to Play! Work out how to deal with us - the way they had to do in TBC.

I read somewhere a post or thread where someone had said....(not a direct quote)

"Ret Paladins have had to learn how to play very well - to get as much DPS out of a seriously underpowered class in order to be raid viable from a dps point of view, not just from a utility point of view...so now that we finally have been given a nice buff that ability to play well is starting to shine."

Lets hope I don't have to post again about nerfs....hey I can dream can't I?

Quick Update..

Just updated my pic - to now include all my latest gear and sporting my new doo!!

Will post a bigger post tomorrow!!!

Ready for tomorrow...

Righto - I'm ready for my mount!!

BRING IT ON!!! I cannot wait for tomorrow!!

Fun In Naxxramas and the PTR!!

Hey guys'n'gals! its another Wednesday morning and the servers are down, so I thought I'd post something up to keep me busy before work!

Oh and by the way, the blizzard downloader is currently downloading more stuff for the new patch - its up to 1.5gb now. (I had already downloaded the 900 or so mb)

Anyways last nights raid was cancelled so no updates on Illidan but one of our guildies Senias, is a bit of a completest and decided that he wanted to go into Naxx to pick up some patterns he didn't have on his tailor warlock.

Knowing full well that there is going to be a new set of frost-res gear available from someone in Wrath of the Lich King!!

Basically in the Death Knight wing there is a vendor with the patterns who is locked up in a cage at the back of the first main room. Its quite a big room so we had to be fast and safe. Our plan? To run in, bubble then when Sathy was in position cast Divine Intervention onto her so she could safely talk to the NPC and get the patterns.

So it took us a few tries but we got there in the end!

Here's a vid of the event I made! (Right Click, Save Target As... 55mb)

Also I managed to get 50 mounts in the PTR and now have the Albino Drake:

Click images for larger versions!

A Divine Storm is Coming....

Hey peeps! Hows everyone doing out there in WoW land? Here's to hoping you're all well and raring to go...

So in little over a week the Patch 3.0.2 will be coming and boy is it a long time coming. Having been playing on the PTR for a few weeks now I cannot wait to get my new abilities into live and get some action going!

Ok so Ret is hugely buffed compared to live at the moment and everyone knows it Boy do they know it! There are people all over the shop shouting "NERF RET PALAS" and griping and whining about how they're not able to kill us seemingly. Well having been there a few weeks it seems a lot of classes have worked out how best to deal with us. Well provided of course that Divine Shield is on Cooldown!! ;-)

Mages still own us from what I've seen - I was stood outside IronForge just watching all the rets dueling and it seems that classes with good CC and skill are still able to make short work of Retridins. Frost Mages in particular.

And what a lot of people on there have realised is that all this power we have at level 70 will not stand up at 80 - well i hope that we don't get too much of a loss of power at 80 - It'll be interesting to see. November 13th just cant get here quick enough.

In the mean time Rage is getting closer and closer to getting Illidan down - our best try saw him at 45% and if we don't get him down this week, then I imagine with the nerf they've given bosses/elites in TBC from next week (minus 30% health) then we will eventually.

Either way - he's going down, then maybe we can turn our attention to Kael'thas....there's a lot of completest's in the guild that were never 100% happy about moving from TK/SSC to Black Temple and Mount Hyjall when they removed the attunement. I mean dont get me wrong, who's ever not going to be happy about going somewhere new, but SSC and TK should be more than easy for the guild at the current level we're at. There was a lengthy chat about this in the guild channel over there weekend and I think the GM, Kuta, was a little dejected at having so many people apparently not happy with what we're doing at the moment, and wanting to go back and do obsolete content.

Anyway I'm just counting the days till the patch is released and people can start doing some interesting stuff. I love the idea of the Achievement system, and will spending a lot of my time before the expansion doing stuff in there!

Are any of you having similar issues at the moment regarding raids? Or have you stopped altogether?