My Screenshot Meme!

Ok so Tim over at Suicidal Zebra has tagged me! Damn!

Manged to dig out an old hard drive and scraped out my Pre-TBC Screenies from Firelights old MC Raiding as holy!!

First we take a trip to Molten Core, waiting for people to arrive so we can start. (Yes I really did run around dressed like a parrot!!!)

Then we take a trip to Zul'Gurrub - waiting to go into the Panther bosses room.

Then last, but not least, a very rare shot of me in TBC Protection spec before I joined Rage and became the ret-monster I am today!

I'm going to tag Rohan @ Blessing of Kings, Galoheart @ Ardent Defender and Holy Warrior @ The Good, the Bad and the Downright Evil!

Good Luck!

Woot! I love Bre and Fim!! Twisted Nether Blogcast FTW!!

Thanks to Bre and Fim for reading out my Email on their latest pod-cast!!

http://www.twistednether.net/2009/02/20/episode-35-the-myze-has-melted/

Darkmoon Card: Greatness - 3.1 Incoming

OK so finally I've managed to pluck up the courage and try to get this card.

Its awesome.

I've wanted it since the day I first laid eyes on it!

So I dumped herbalism on my mage and took up Inscription as there was/is no way I was going to spend 15,000 gold on a trinket.

So I got Edam to 400 inscription skill and started creating the cards. Obviously there is a lot of hit and miss with crafting them. But you can almost guarantee without a doubt you can sell all of the cards that you craft that you don't want. And you do pray for Duplicates of Nobles cards as they go for 1-3k on my server each.

In crafting the whole set I spent about 7,000 gold on herbalism mats. Its kinda sucky how expensive stuff still is on this server with regards to herbs.

But I managed it - in a few hours - but as I said it cost me about half of the cost of buying the deck out-right from the AH.

Of course the only problem is I cant get my grubby little hands on the trinket for a week and a half when the Darkmoon Faire comes to Elwynn. Bah!

But I've finally managed to get it, so I can start saving up for other things now.

What am I saving for? Well firstly I've got more than enough gold to buy the dual spec when it comes in 3.1 so I guess its going to be mounts and pets!

Having seen the list on MMO-Champion of the new pets and mounts available in 3.1 I'm going to be having a nose around the PTR later this week to see how much these cost and to make a list of locations of where to buy em. I will be posting on that when I do find out if its obvious.

Speaking of 3.1 I've been looking around and reading everyone's take on the upcoming paladin changes. Somethings are good, some are meh, some are bad.

I guess the 0/10/61 build is out of the window now. So I want to see a working talent calculator to play with to see if its maybe worth picking up some holy or prot talents.

I'm not going to start second guessing myself till I see whats what in the PTR. Obviously all the changes made are standard and can be changed/removed at any time if blizzard see's fit.

One thing I expect to see nerfed is:

Glyph of Exorcism - Increases damage done by Exorcism by 20%. (Old: Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.)

Exorcism as it stands crits for 2.5-3.5k at the moment. adding 20% to 3.5k = 4.2k crits with this.

Add that to a nice bunch of CS, DS, and Judgment crits? You're looking at 6 second rotation that could possibly do like easily 20-25k's damage or more (given 100% lucky crits)

Pop Avenging Wrath
- Judgement: 10k
- Consecrate: ticks for 600-700.
- Crusader Strike: 7k
- Divine Storm: 8k
- Exorcism: 4k

Obviously in PvP thats pretty much never going to happen? So I suppose we could be safe. But on boss fights that's just awesome. Just gotta work out how much mana we'd be burning all the time with that in the rotation. Add into that Hammer of Wrath? Wow...

At the moment I'm loving when bosses get to 20% with my AW glyph giving me HoW every 3 seconds - pew pew pew!! But damn do I run out of mana quick! (usually the time I pop a potion if required - depending on raid setup of course)

I also found these interesting - Guess they're PvP Glyphs?

Glyph of Divine Storm - Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.

Glyph of Divine Plea - While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.

Glyph of Hand of Salvation - When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

Its nice of Blizzard to clean up the Retri tree quite a bit - by allowing for a lot of things to be removed and merged into other talents. Am I happy I'm losing 2/3% crit? Not really but I'm sure I'll cope! Running with nearly 50% crit at times in raids can be a bit silly! NO NO! I LOVE IT!!!

What things are you guys looking forward to in 3.1?

2 Words: Aquatic Mounts!

Ask Firelight: Retribution Advice - Metin

Well 2 emails in a row! So here goes!

I received an email from Metin from Elune US asking the following:

I need some suggestions on how I may improve my dps with what I have so far.
My current gears can be viewed from wowarmory. Metin, Elune realm.
Last time in 25Naxx I did 3.8k dps. At that time I had Titansteel Destroyer
and Sabatons of Sudden Reprisal. Then I got an up with:

The Jawbone
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Mace
586 - 880 Damage Speed 3.60
(203.6 damage per second)
(2083 feral attack power)
+101 Strength
+108 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 80
Equip: Improves haste rating by 99 (3.02% @ L80).
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 59 (7.2 @ L80).

Of course my hit rating went down by 54 from swapping out Titansteel Destroyer.
So now I'm forced to dig out a pair of old boots:
Iron-Spring Jumpers
Binds when equipped Feet Plate
1580 Armor
+76 Strength
+85 Stamina
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 80
Equip: Improves hit rating by 73 (2.23% @ L80).
Equip: Increases armor penetration rating by 37 (2.4% @ L80).

But I like Sabatons of Sudden Reprisal because it will give me more damage.
So I was thinking of using Sabatons of Sudden Reprisal when engaging
trash mobs in Naxx since they don't require that much hit. And then
switch back to Iron-Spring Jumpers for bosses.

My dps rotation is judge, CS, consec, DS, exceroism.
With multiple mob pulls, I use judge, consec, DS, CS.
I use seal of martyr.

Question: I noticed some pallies go for that valor armor set.
But that set will drop hit rating. So a lot of hit gems will be
used instead of strength gems. Will that bonus stat 1s judge cooldown
reduction make more dps than having the best of each individual gear
category with hit capped?

The key to getting your hit rating up is the non-set items - Boots/bracers/belts.

In the mean time - change the enchant on your boots to the Icewalker enchant, and start using Hit-Rating food so you're as close to the Hit-Cap as possible during boss fights. Those 2 things will give you 52 hit rating and get you up to 263 Hit Rating - only 2 points off the cap.

In the mean time you have to pray to the WoW gods that you get some/all of the following upgrades!!

Bracers of Unrelenting Attack - +46 Hit Rating.
Crude Discolored Battlegrips - +74 Hit Rating.
Girdle of the Ascended Phamtom - +51 Hit Rating.

These upgrades will allow you to drop your current legs for the Valorous legs and get the rest of the set so you can get your 4-piece bonus.

So keep your new Sudden Reprisal boots on and change the enchant on them, and use hit rating food.

Upgrades are the key here!

Good Luck!

PS - I'm very jealous of your trinket!! Grrrr!! Gief Greatness Trinket!!

Ask Firelight: Retribution Advice

I've had an email from Darrtanus from Argent Dawn - US asking the following:

I've been reading you "Retribution" blog for some time now and find it quite useful.I was looking at your armory profile to compare to mine. I saw you have little expertise rating. People have been telling me that I need to get some expertise to help my dps. Is expertise needed? I'm topping out at around 1800 dps.

The only thing not accurate is on my armory is my weapon. For raiding I use the Titansteel Destroyer.

I guess the first question to ask is what Seal are you using? Most ret-paladins I see around on my server are scared to use Seal of Blood/Martyr due to the damage component. After telling them to switch to Martyr they immediately notice a big jump in their DPS.

Secondly Gems I see your over the hit cap of 265 by exactly 16 points - loose that Hit rating gem in your boots. Also your stacking a lot of crit. I would swap out all your crit gems for +16 Strength gems asap. You'll build your crit up with gear upgrades as you progress into 10-man Naxx.

As for expertise It is a nice buff, but given the choice I'd go for the following suggestion from Josh @ E4AE (follow that link for way more quality Ret-Tips)

1. Strength
2. Hit (to 8%, or ~262 rating)
3. Expertise (to 6.5%, or ~214 rating before racials - get to 26 expertise skill)
4. Crit (or equal amounts of Agility)
5. Haste
6. Armor Penetration

Some tips at this point for you are as following;

1 - Hit the Heroics. Get as much gear as you can from heroics. (I've put together a small list of nice upgrades for you lower down)

2 - Get your Sons of Hodir rep up to exalted for the Epic shoulder enchants.

3 - Change your wrist/glove enchants for the good attack power buffs when you get upgrades rather than +Strength and + Hit rating ones you have on there at the moment.

4 - Finish enchanting your gear - your cloak is missing one at the moment.

5 - If you can afford it - drop your mining skill for Blacksmithing for the cool extra sockets in gloves/braces/belt (although the belt one is available to non-blacksmiths)

I think at the moment your main issue is getting more gear. See if you can get yourself into Naxx-10 and get saving Badges of Heroism for the teir 7 chest/gloves.

List of Upgrades:-

Chest - Bonegrinder Breastplate - Heroic: Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom

Gloves - Gauntlets of Capture - Heroic: Violet Hold.

Belt - Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle - Heroic: The Nexus.

Legs - Staggering Legplates - Heroic: Utgarde Keep.

Well I hope that helps out - If anyone of my reader has any more suggestions or dissagree's with anything I've said don't hesitate to shout out!

Firelight, The Love Fool!

Finally! After 30 or 40 tries I managed to get 2 bags of candy from the guards in Ironforge.

I didn't realise that the guards also gave Adoration gifts and had only been talking to citizens for them. Silly Me!

Once I realised this I was able to get my 18th title!

Candy Rant....

Where's my candy bags huh?

2 days of trying so far an no Candy!!!!

This is getting ridiculous.....

All other achievements done, just need the candy bags!! DOH!

Love Is In The Air.

Yep! Its that time of year again. Everything is pink and fluffy and for some reason there are hundreds of people trying to get in the pants of an innocent gnome in Ironforge.

There's something unusual about running around Ironforge, Stormwind and Darnassus professing my love to burly men all over the place. I mean I suppose I could be picky and only give my tokens of love to only members of the opposite sex. But then It'd take me all week to get my achievments done.

So after a night of running around the 3 cities and managed to get the majority of the achievements done for the title.

I just need the following;

Candy achievement - This is proving to be quite hard as I've not gotten any of the candy yet so far.

I also need to run around and /pity the love fools - Only managed to get my love fools this morning so I'll do that tonight.

I need to also get the roses from the dungeon bosses - I did do an Utgarde Keep heroic last night and they dropped, but I didn't win the roll. But I can probably go into UK Normal and get the item with my mage friend quite easily.

I think I need 1 more achievement for the title, but cant remember, which one.

Have any of you been getting into the swing of things and enjoying the holiday? There's not really anything new to it this year, but last year I was so un-interested in it I didn't quite understand what you had to do! Its really over-complicated with getting loads of items that fill up your bags very quickly!

The Sunwell - Retro Raiding

Hey people! Hows everyone one on this wonderful Wednesday! Can't wait to go home and see how exciting it is not not bring my seals up every 2 minutes. Its going to take a little while to get used to that!! Took me long enough to get used to not having to do it every 30 seconds!

Anyway I'm not going to spend any time repeating what about 30 other blogs have talked about the 3.0.9 patch that's live today/yesterday.

All 25-man content had been cleared this week to date last night when the raid formed and we had penciled in a run to the Sunwell.

20 of our finest and a couple of trialists descended to Shattrath and then onto the Isle of Quel'danas and rode into the instance. Having not been here for about 4 or 5 months it was with great anticipation and excitement that we re-entered with the plan to blow through the content and get that all important achievement "Outland Raider"

At around 20:00 we started gathering inside, and were chatting on Ventrillo about how we were going to blow through here like a hot knife through butter.

The first patrol mob was one of those sentinel things. I jokingly said "he's only got 350k health!" and was promptly told to go try solo'ing him! Off i went - Seal of Light in hand.
10 seconds later (and I was surprised I lasted that long) SPLAT! Oops!
"I think we may have underestimated this place a little" to which one of our pally tanks stepped up and showed how it was done! Well done Lefty!!

Anyway about 10/15 mins later we started clearing the trash which was fast - I mean really fast. We got to the first boss in a few minutes.

Now this was the blue dragon Kalecgos. It seems that most people had forgotten the tactics and started nuking the dragon down before I remembered we had to kill the demon in the other realm!! in we piled and managed to kill the demon when Kalecgos had only 20k health left! phew! That was close!

Next onto Brutallus - he went down pretty fast on the first go as well. Felmyst was next - she wiped us once or twice due to getting double width breaths that were MC'ing most if not all of the raid.

Back pre-wrath we had never managed to get Felmyst down in Rage so from here on it was all new territory.

We cleared the trash to the Eredar Twins. All I'm going to say is - these 2 should have been the last boss in the place...

OH! MY! GOD!

Thankfully after about the 6th or 7th wipe we had one of our new members get onto vent and explain the fight and after a couple more tries we got them down.

That fight is SO unforgiving. If anyone gets the Conflagrate they really need to move FAST.

So then it was onto Mu'ru where after 1 wipe we got him down - the first attempt was pretty funny, we just attempted to Nuke him, not 100% sure what would happen - our guide who was explaining the fights had forgotten the part where Mu'ru becomes that demon, but we got him in the end.

Then onto the man himself....Kil'Jaeden.

This guy was a joke. With 20 people in the raid we managed to Nuke this guys down so fast he never made it into his scary phase. (apparently!)

The RP event that happened after was pretty cool, and Nice to finally see the end of TBC Raiding.

So it was a rather frustrating night - to the point that a few people gave up during our wipes with the Eredar twins, but was really nice to see the rest of the content.

Here are a few pics!

Fishing For The First Time...

Hey guys! Wanted to talk about fishing today. It occurred to me over the weekend that paying gold for food buffs was finally getting silly.

The +40 Strength and Stamina food buff (of which I cant remember the name) was costing me around 50-70g per stack of 20 for just the fish. Even more if I wanted to buy the ready made stuff. So after almost 3 years I decided to start leveling my fishing skill.

Not only to be able to fish for my own food, but also to get some more achievements done!
Over the years when I'd been REALLY bored I'd managed to get myself to 225 Fishing Skill. So having found some good guides on the web I set about fishing.

I started in Ironforge as I wanted to get hold of the rare fish there for the achievement. When i finally fished up this beauty I was about 275 Fishing. I then moved to Theramore and started again. I stayed there till 350 fishing then moved to Northrend to get my 350-450 skill training.

I started in some of the sea's/lakes there until I got to 360 or so then was able to fish in Dragonblight to fish up the Dragonfin Angelfish from the pool surrounded by dead kalu'ak dudes.
So now I'm 390 or so and actually enjoying myself! I've started doing the outland-daily quests and I'm fishing up the coins in Dalaran.

I'm slowly moving through the achievements one-by-one.

I'm a bit obsessed by these achievements really - All of them are in my grasp, so I'm spending more time doing them than actually leveling my alts! HaHa!

Anyway here's me fishing in Dalaran



Also need some quick advise - which of these 2 pairs of boots is better. The gem in the boots with the socket was there to keep my meta-gem working.

(PS - If anyone is interested in the Mini-Map addon I'm using its called "sexymap")