Ulduar Gear?

As most of you might know, the new offset gear, even some set gear is really all about MP5. Now as a Paladin, I never really bothered with MP5. I did a bit back in TBC, but now I’m INT + Crit + haste all the way. Our new set seriously nerf our + crit with only stacking up haste and mana per 5 seconds. But this has to be done for a reason, I don’t think blizzard really wants us to soak up all the Elemental shaman gear. All the Paladins would run around in a mail suit, with only one or two pieces of Aegis.

On the EJ forum, I saw a topic a while ago about the spell crit coefficient. What it basically stated was that once you hit over 50% crit rating (and this is raid buffed). You can stop stacking it. Because 50% is “Either You crit or you don’t.” Stacking it up even more doesn’t make you crit more; hell it might even make you crit less.
So having MP5 to back you up while you are casting, since casting is all we do.

My last recount showed that I have 51% crit chance with Holy Light. And during the raid period, It actually did crit 51 times out of a hundred. That gave me an X amount of mana back, but recount also showed me that most of my mana returns are either by other people’s buffs (Retloladins, Huntards) or when I used Divine Illumination. Third on the list was my Meta socket. (Change on spell cast to return mana). Now they are nerfing the mana regen for us, so having a steady MP5 really helps. Without the shamans totems stacking with out buffs, we will lose a serious amount mana. (I think about 110 mp5) and I am quite sure we will notice this downfall. With the new Ulduar gear, for example the BoE craftings, I’m sure we can get around 3-400 MP5 (while casting). Can you imagine what would happen with a let’s say: 45% chance to crit – solid 400MP5 (unbuffed) – 500 haste (without our own buff).

That way, we will never get oom. Or at least we shouldn’t.

Lol, as if we do now. Hahaha.

Why are you on my friends list?

The Venture Co has a lot of Paladins, mainly because currently the class might be a bit superior to other classes. Personally I hate this, because I like playing something people don’t often play. Which can be troublesome, because our usually raid is packed with loads of paladins. Our last raid night we have 11 Paladins online and ready to raid!
Further more, all the paladins in our guild, all the raiding ones are Female Humans, all apart from me and one other ret paladin. So, I’ve decided to join my fellow followers of the light and bought myself a sex change. Yes, I am a shemale now, a transvestite, you name it. Pauleh no longer exists, but has changed into “ Dahlia “ . This cause for a lot of fun conversations with people on my friends list;

Warrior: “ Hi there, who are you, and how did you hax yourself into my friends list.”
Me: “ Sorry, but..”
Warrior: “Did you hax mai account?!”
Me: “ Yes I did. I think.. I..”
Warrior: “ What?! What did you do!?”
Me: “ Nothing, but.. I ..”Warrior: “ I’m reporting you!”
Me: “ But, warrior, I.. luvs you.”
Warrior: “ Pauleh?”
So, Dahlia, where did I get that name? Basically, I’ve been through a lot of names, since I always need to find a cool name otherwise I wouldn’t take it. Firstly I thought of “ Skrewdriver.” Which was one of my old Paladin friends, after googling some I came across a “ Extreme rightwing “ punk band who sang songs with lyrics such as: “ White power.” Now I care to disagree on that so I decided not to stick with Skrewdriver. I asked Ard (the paladin) and Kashmira if they had any cool names, some said “ Paula” or “ Pauleha” Or really cool name as “ Reverance”.
After I completed the payment, I logged out for half an hour and searched for some names, and found one I really liked. “ Tehnurse.” Firstly it looks cool and secondly it’s pretty funny. Since it basically says: “ The nurse”. And being a fulltime holy paladin, it was very applicable.
When I logged into Warcraft, all of a sudden a song form my favorite band popped up.
The Black Dahlia Murder.
So I though. “ What the heck, lets try that.” I typed in Dahlia, hit the enter button, and logged in.



(Apparently Dahlia looks like someone both Ard, Kash and me know in real. O_o)

New Mac, New Raid, New Belt

What a weekend! Weekends are such an indulgence at our place, My wife and I both play Warcraft so weekends usually turn in a 2-day gaming fest. Here's some of the highlights of last weekend. I got a new iMac on Thursday, so everything is a bit smoother/shinier and my screen is now widescreen which gives me more space to put my interface (see screenie above, click for full size.) I levelled my Rogue to 75, so he can open Froststeel lockboxes. He also got the Gruul's Lair Achievement and the Tier 4 legs, still surprisingly good at lv 75 though mostly thanks to the set bonus.

Of course I played my Paladin as well! My guild has been slowly progressing in Naxx. Just over a month ago we had a few goes at getting a raid together but we were hopelessly undergeared and the majority of the group had never been to Naxx at all. Even with explanation we had no chance of downing anything. As main tank I needed to build up some experience (though my gear was up to Naxx.) I Joined pick up groups to get a few runs under my belt and learn the encounters and two weeks ago we started again with the guild. We can now clear the Spider and Construct wings, kill Noth in Plague Quarter and just last night we had out first kill of Razuvious the instructor (understudies died in the fight) but bubble then taunt, trinket usage and an indestructible potion on my part saved the day. We edged him out with only 4 people left standing. Gothik proved a bit too difficult to control, so we headed for Heigan instead.

Heigan is a tricky one. Once you understand what happens it just flows and it never goes wrong again (or very rarely anyway). There's a few in our group for whom the dancing part hasn't clicked yet so each attempt we had too little survivors, we just don't make it. More attempts this week.
I also got a new belt, Waistguard of the Tutor, from Razuvious which put me another half percent closer to that elusive unhittable cap. 100.28% now, 2.12% to go!

Numbers...

Two numbers occupy my mind because I'm a tank: 540 and 102.4%.

540 is the Defense Skill cap, emphasis on Skill because there's also something called Defense Rating (which is the number you tend to see on Equipment, I need 690 Defense Rating to get 540 Defense Skill.) I need that much Defense because if I'm doing it right, the mob will constantly be hitting me. Mobs have a standard chance to score a critical hit on me. Having 540 Defense stops that from happening.
Having the Defense cap ensures that mobs can't score critical hits on me at all, means that my damage intake is steady, means that a healer can easily heal me.
Gearing up in Northrend from quests and the nonheroic dungeons, get a blacksmith to make you some items, maybe get one or two items because you have the right level of reputation with certain factions (Kalu'ak, Oracles or Frenzyheart) you tend to end up with somewhere around the 540 cap. You may be just below (happens with DKs a lot because they can't use shields) or just above (Excellent!) I found it was pretty easy to get the cap, but hard to keep it. Heroic/raid gear tends to have more Stamina and other usefull stats but not quite as much Defense. By gemming and enchanting correctly, I kept the cap while upgrading my gear.

The other number... That's the clincher!
102.4% is the unhittable cap. How does a mob hit me? In short, when a mob take a swing at me there are 6 things that can happen: Crit, Hit, Block, Dodge, Parry or Miss. Miss is a set rate that can't be changed (sometimes, mobs have a bad day and just miss me.) I've removed Crit already with my Defense so when a mobs swings at me it's down to 5 possibilities. Due to the way hitting works in WoW if I were to have have a lot of Parry, Dodge and Block that'll remove Hit completely as well. When Hit is removed, there's only 4 possibilities: mob misses me, I parry the mob's attack, I dodge the mob's attack or I block the mob's attack. So at worst, I'll block the attack! A blocked attack does 1k less damage than a straight hit - this is what tanking is all about.

I'll talk about this some more in a future blog as the consequences of these two numbers reach out to almost everything I do.

Flash of what?

I’ve found this interesting post on the EJ forms. And I especially liked this quote & reply.

Tzeni said:

I wasn't saying that FoL is useless to the paladin. I said it was useless as a
spell, period.
It's not enough to keep a tank up, it's not enough to do any
meaningful raid healing.
Paladins use it out of necessity (low mana or too many
healers, needing to sneak in FoL heals to beat other healers), but never with
purpose.

Tifordin replied:

I disagree. I'll often do little group heals topping off raid members with FoL
after some AoE damage (e.g. on Maly P1). It's quite effective when combined with
HS.
You can heal up a bunch of small damage on multiple people relatively
quickly, and certainly quicker than casting a HL on each one. With a beacon, you
also maintain a fairly high HPS on the tank (although not as high as HL spam
obviously).
In a typical raid my healing done breakdown will usually be highest
for HL, but in terms of the number of times a particular spell hits, my numbers
for FoL are often higher.
I think it's a case of understanding your available
arsenal and intelligently selecting the appropriate spell.
It also means I very
very rarely have to use DP, often finding myself on 60% mana in the last 20% of
the fight, at which point I'll spam HL just for the sake of dumping my mana
pool.

I couldn’t agree more with Tifordin, Which is exactly the way I heal. If small heals suffice, then why waste 700more mana and over heal anyway?
I mean, I tried healing the tank with Sacred Shield + Heroism – Which gave me a 0.8 FoL. I just started spamming my button healing him for 3-5k every hit. Having almost 80% change to crit when Sacred procs. That’s a roughly 10k heal in 2 seconds for less mana then Holy Light. And it is quick. And that is what we are, quick healers. And never forget that.

The Dedicated Undying Few.

Oh yeah! We did it! Our guild managed to get the Undying title And “The Dedicated Few” at the same time. Although we didn’t start so well, we started at Instructor Razuvious and we wiped. But without killing the boss, so we disbanded the raid.

And someone else started to invite us back. It’s a bit like cheating, but fair enough. We gave it another go. Again we started at the Instructor and this time managed to get him down swiftly. That is when our Raid leader said. “Alright guys, Undying started Game-face on.” We had a pretty good set up if you ask me.

We have two Shamans, one was Elemental and one was Restoration. There was one Rogue, specced in assassination. Two tanks, one was a warrior and the other one was a druid. One mage (My guess is Frostfire), one hunter which was survival and one Paladin. (I was 51/5/15 for this raid.).
Even though it’s not stated in “The Dedicated Few” achievement, we did kill the 4 horsemen with 8 people. It was a hard battle; I was healing the “back.” And I kept moving the wrong way. So I was getting the debuffs. Which almost killed me, I got 15k damage at one point and that just shocked the raid entirely.
I’ve taped that encounter, and you will see me making mistakes, but we made it. You will see that the hunter keeps getting further and further away form me and getting Out of sight for my heals. It was really annoying. But a talk with him (afterwards.) He now knows what NOT to do. J I did have a movie of KT killshot with only 8 people. Who are trying NOT to die. But while I was finalizing the movie ( which is done in WoW itself) For the first time in history my iMac crashed and I lost it. I still have the files and now I’m trying to get it back through another program, I’ll keep you posted.

So here is a screenshot of my Character screen with my new title.

And here is the 4 Horseman movie (unedited).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZgIPUo-hM

Blog Awards

So, HP posted a comment on one of my entries that she was awarded for her blog, and I had to check it out. So I did and I was surprised with what she wrote. J I think it’s a cool idea for –us- bloggers to give each other a nice little advertisement. :) So here is mine!

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post
bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you
deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows
she/he
is real.

Choose a minimum of seven
(7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by
including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven
friends.
Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a
harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
List at least ten (10) honest things about
yourself. Then pass it on!

1. I play[ed] to much World of Warcraft. (Don’t we all?) But I mean, I’m sure of that I skipped a few classes back in high school. Or canceled a few appointments just because I was raiding and such.

2. I’m a big DEATH METAL \m/. fan. But I also listen to songs form artists like KAYLEIGH

3. I have a short temper (I share this with HP) + with that short temper, I sometimes get really frustrated at people.

4. I am a procrastinator (once more I share this with HP.)

5. Personally I like really bad movies. Like B-Movies and even movies which are much worse. Mainly because of the cast either takes it to serious or not at all.

6. I absolutely love not sleeping much; although eventually it always catches up with me, I try to have my nights as short as possible (4-6hours would do). But then again, sometimes I hit the sack around 19.00 and sleep for 12hours.

7. I am in love with Anime. I like way they express emotions. How you get caught in a moment. I’ve seen loads and loads on Anime and I always will keep track of the latest anime.

8. For some reason, I love to write. Poetry, lyrics, or just stories, hence the blog. I didn’t read much books in my life, and probably never will, but the writing part I adore it.

9. I took opera singing lessons to improve my death metal growl. It’s not that I am a perfect candidate for a opera show now, but I use the breathing techniques to improve my vocals.

10. Back on Kazzak, my old server, I still owe my friend for about 2200 gold. And I told him if he rerolled to my current server that he would get it. Does that make me a bad person?

These are the blogs which I’ve read. And inspired me to start one of my own.

- I am a Paladin – This young lady just started blogging herself, I love the way she writes because it’s always long rants about things she doesn’t agree about. Usually I feel the same way as she does, but didn’t put it on paper yet. And I even like the way she writes her posts.
- Blessing of Kings – Rohan is awesome, he knows the paladin class very well. Although it’s more of a ret based blog, he talks about paladins in general and has a great opinion about everything.
- Red – This blog is not about a paladin, but about a Shaman. As I said in my prevous post, both me, Divya and Ard have 2 Shaman friends. When I was searching for additional shaman information. Red showed me the ways of the spirits. :)
- Eye for an Eye – Another Ret paladin blog; This guy has the best gear lists available on the blogs. And personally I like his writing.
- The Suicidal Zebra – I like this one because he’s straight to the point and use a lot of Theory craft to sum things up. (and I <3 Theorycraft)
- The Greedy Goblin – His money making skills are through the roof, I stole some of his “ideas” and use them for my own. (Epic mount. :) )
- Big Red Kitty – I love how we describes his feelings for his hunter, this man, is my eyes is a hunter god. I loved the discussions about Survival VS. BM when they “upgraded/updated/buffed” survival in WTLK. He didn’t give up and he managed to get back into the top with a BM spec. And <3 Brain.
- A bit of Lance – Really good in-depth posts about WoW. I love his writing.
- A couple in Azeroth – It’s awesome to read about a couple playing world of warcraft, they have their own guild and it’s fun to read their stories. Since Ard (The Paladin) and Kashmira both are married as well. It’s funny to see the same stuff happening to each other. :)

Baron Riverdare

So. Everyone likes that mount. Everyone is farming it. And across the internet you’ll find different people doing it in amazing speed runs. Like Ciderhelm from [Tankspot]. He did it in 8minuts as a prot warrior. (Although having the best gear helps the Prot dps). I decided to make a movie myself. I managed to do the first 3bosses in 3minuts and then pull all the abominations at the same time, “nuke them down” with Retribution aura and Consecration. Then cheat with Rammstein, pulling him inside of the building, kill him and the 4 guards at the same time and then quickly venture into Baron’s room.

I tried it twice and I became faster and faster. I even managed to cheat through the little ally way, the one who closes both sides and then you have to kill small bugs to continue. I just ran past it and the gates closed behind me and I was free to move on.

So when I decided to tape my quick run, everything went smooth until I argo-ed one small pack of Ghouls which evolved into a huge fight. I think I got about 5000 rep when I was done with the killing. Jesus, it’s like the entire instance is linked to eachother. If you agro the wrong mobs, the ghost start to attack you, and then the Gargoyles will. Then will pull the spiders and the Shadowcast.

It was a fierce combat, and half way though I canceled the movie. Since I was nearing the 6minutes before I was fighting Rammstein.


I promise you Ill make a movie which show you it can be done, in 8 minutes or less. As a holy paladin. I’ll keep you posted.

Rules of Raiding

Rule #1 – Make sure you know what your healing targets are. We paladins can’t AoE heal like the rest of the classes can. But we sure are able to keep two people up at the same time. And with the HL Glyph we help a little bit with healing melee dps. (Although it’s roughly 80% overhealing). Personally, I tend to make the Tank my number one priority. Myself as the second priority. Why? Because if I die, he dies. And then the rest will follow. I also keep in mind who the top 3-5 dpsers are. And I keep an eye out for them, using OMEN and RECOUNT I can see who’s punching the boss and where they stand threat wise. As I quote another Paladin. I vouch by this standing. “Sometimes letting someone die to heal someone else is the correct move.”

Rule #2 – Know your Paladin. You should know that Holy Light is your BIG HEAL, but expensive. While Flash of Light is the small heal, but then again, the mana usage is that low that you barely notice it. Know that Divine Favor is something you should use everyone minute (free mana back) and know that Divine Favor can burst heal someone in dire need. DIVINE FAVOR -> HOLY SHOCK -> (making FoL instand) -> FoL. This will not top your tank, or you dps, but it will give you enough time to heal him back to full. Until the new patch launches you could use HL instead of FoL in the abovementioned rotation, but since we can’t use it after 3.0.1 I suggest not getting used to it. We have one more healing spell, which is Lay on Hands a (if not talented) 20minut cooldown instant heal for the amount of your HP. (which is similar to HL nowadays.) Although it can crit up to a 32k heal. You can only use it every 20min. But that makes it your fail safe.

Rule #3 – Mana efficiency. If you know(or are completely oblivious) about an encounter, you should start saving mana form the first moment into the fight. I personally, burn mana the first few seconds into a fight and immediately pop Divine Illumination. Then I start spamming my heals again, even FoL just for the small damage that has been taken. I do it just for the regen, if I check recount after a boss fight I see that 40% (if not more) of my mana regen is done by Divine Illumination. I also like the Divine Favor + Divine Illumination + Holylight combo. With a 4T7 + EoH Libram + Glyph of Wisdom the amount of mana you get back from critting with HL is amazing. And if HL only costs half his price the MPS (Mana per spell) is simply crazy. And last but not least is Divine Plea, the spell that is not made for Holy, but we all keep using it. What I did, I made a macro that when I use DP I whisper in our [Paladin channel.] “DP used. Healing decreased 50% for 15seconds.” - This way they know that I am regening so I can’t heal as burst. But if I don’t have Forbearance on, I’ll pop my wings as well. Just to cover my HPS (Health per second)loss.

Rule #4 – Hands of a Paladin. Use your hands. We have different types of hands, which can benefit the raid in any way. Freedom when your tank is stuck, or some dps are stuck. Protection to save a poor AoE-ing mage from death, or just Sacrifice to make sure the tank won’t die. I’d like to give you a good tip, as a holy paladin, you can Hand of Sacrifice your tank and BoP yourself, so you won’t get any damage while your reduce the damage on the tank by 30%. And Hand of Salvation on your highest threat-gainer. Keep a close mind to your dps meter / threat meter. Very powerful in fights where the boss resets the agro. I even use it on myself sometimes. When doing 5man heroics, just to make sure that the mob won’t attack me. J

Rule #5 – Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield; are two very powerful spells, SS is even to powerful so they nerf it in the next patch, it will be only castable on one target. I assume that will be the tank, but I’d vouch that only the paladin with the most + healing would cast it on the tank. It doesn’t stack anyways. Plus there is a shared cooldown, so even if the tank has 5 SS buffs, there will be only one at the time. So, it is pointless. Beacon on the other hands, can be a very effective healing, if used correctly. If you notice that two people are going down at the same time, you can beacon one and heal the other. (pref. the one with the lowest HP gets healed.) This way you spend 2300 mana to heal two targets AT THE SAME TIME. Instead of 2200 mana (if not crit) to heal two targets right after the other. One other thing I like to do is beaconing myself. As a tank healer I can simply not die.

Rule #6 – Blessings. Install Pallypower or ZOMG. It speeds up the process of buffing your raid. It’s an easy tool, you can assign single buffs for hybrid classes. (Elemental Shaman with BoW and the Enhancement Shamans with BoM). What I like to do if people summon pets, like DK’s and such give them a quick single buff. Just for the extra little AP or stat increase, it will result in more dps, easier boss fight.

And last but not least, a tip. DIVINE INTERVENTION. It’s like a Paladin’s version of a Soulstone. You can save someone or something by using this skill. You can even use it in combat If you are running low on mana (nearing oom, all cooldown used) and you have a soulstone. Use DI and res, and get about 40-50% mana back. It works, because Shamans do the same with Reincarnate.

Ard the Paladin

My first blog here so let me tell you a little about myself. I've been playing for about 4 years. My first 60 was a Tauren Hunter, I raided with him up to Blackwing Lair. Then I re-rolled on a different server to join my wife and her brother (as Alliance.) Started a mage which is still at level 40 and a Paladin to give it a spin (this was before Bloodelves so I'd not played one before) and just loved it.

I raided as Holy (just Molten Core/ZG/AQ20 and Onyxia really) then levelled as Holy in Burning Crusade, but I lost my interest a bit in PvE so spent a lot of time in Burning Crusade in Battlegrounds and Arena. By this time I did level a Rogue (Dwarf *grin*) to 70.

Took a three month break after last summer and started playing again when Lich King came out. Levelled my Paladin as Retribution and liked it, so stuck with it for quite a while. Someone suggested I give Protection a try as it's easier for getting groups and it's something that I'd wanted to try for a long time. So, now I'm a tank and WoW has it hooks in me once again. More soon, Ard

New UI.

As I got tired of that my UI; I decided to change it. I've had this looks before only not with all the macro's and bindings I use now. For example, i've switched Beacon of Light form 5 to Y. I noticed then sometimes I'd cast Consecration instead of Beacon, and that could seriously fuck up something. So making it a different binding should solve the problem.


So here is my new UI. I'll you with my new macro later on. It's time for bed now. :)

Healing Sapphiron.

I was just browsing in my video's and I came across a movie of me healing Sapphiron. So I've uploaded it on YouTube for everyone to display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNk5HdGNEWU

Reins of the Black War Mammoth

Hello all,

I finally managed to get 300 stonekeeper shards. So here is my price :)

Reactions and Keybindings

So, I was talking about raiding earlier, and with raiding come reactions. Reactions on situations which if you fail to comply might end up in disasters. Although with the current raid content, you don’t really have to react, it’s more predicting. You can predict what is coming next. Things like Patchwork healing, you know he’s going to slap the tank silly so you know you have to focus your healing. And it’s hard to wipe if one paladin can keep up two tanks at the same time, since he (or she) knows how patchwork “works”.

This will all change when Ulduar launches, since then we can’t predict what the boss will do, or what the trash mobs will do, we have to learn by reaction to situations. If you encounter a boss fight, and you have no clue what he is going to, you will just have to wait and see. Watch your surroundings; watch every movement the boss makes. He can for example, do a “Crushing Blow” ability. So then you have to react by topping the tank or tanks back to 100%. He can spawn adds at a certain health percentage, or he can shift into another phase mode which makes the raid take damage. Take into account that you will have to be quick when things like this happen, I’ve seen players just run around as a headless chicken not knowing what to do.

What you should do instead, is stop moving at all. (Unless you’re on some sort of magic ground.) Just look around and see what the rest is doing. First of all, if you start running like a mad bull, the healers won’t be able to reach you if you take damage and are 20yards away from the raid, secondly, if the encounter is new and you start running you might up dying out of the blue.
But what if you are standing on some firetrap, molten lava or freezing trap. You are getting damage, so you should get the hell away from there. Usually, healers stand at a safe spot, since they most likely need to stand still in order to heal. If you don’t know where to go to, you can always click on a healer and head his direction. In the mean time you can freely browse your area and find out where you can go in order to do complete your task.

One thing which I find really handy is KEYBOARD BINDINGS. These things make life so much easier! In situations as stated above, key bindings are perfect. If I e.g. have to run form incoming mobs, AOE, damage. I am still able to heal. How? I rotate my camera using my mouse, and move it quickly to the target I want to heal. I smash the “F” key on my keyboard and I HOLYSHOCK my target. Nine out of ten it’s a crit and if he still lacks HP I will press the “E” key and throw him an instant Flash of Light. Target saved, although he didn’t move out of the flame strike. I’ll give you a basic set up of my keyboard bindings; I’ll toss in a screenshot so you can see how I’ve set things up.

(s1 means Shift+1 a1 is Alt+1 c1 is Ctrl +1)

~ - Cleanse
1 – Judgment of Light
S1 – Judgment of Wisdom
2 – Hammer of Wrath
3 – Shield of righteous
Q – Divine Favor
5 – Beacon of Light
6 – Consecration
E – Flash of Light
sE – Holy Light
cE – Lay of HandsF – Holy shock
sF – Divine illumination
R – Sacred Shield
sR – Resurrection
T – Hammer of Justice
G – Hand of Protection
sG – Hand of Salvation
aG – Hand of Freedom
cG – Hand of Sacrifice
V – Bubble
sV – Devine Intervention ( /w warning macro.)
F1- F6 – are my Aura’s.
Z – Mount (/w Macro /cast crusader aua)
sZ – Flying Mount

As you can see, I use loads of keybindings. You will also notice that I don’t have my BoM and BoW binded. That is because I use Pallypower.
My Mods list:

-Bartender4
-AG Unit Frames
-Grid
-Pallypower
-Recount

I’m still looking for a decent “Square Mini Map” mod and maybe a lightweight titanbar-ish thingy, But currently I have enough to come around with.



I hope you like it, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.

Welcome to Raiding 101 [III]

MOAR BUFFS
Buffs, in WoW you are able to get a few buffs by yourself, even without being in a raid. Being an alchemist or a cook helps a lot, but there is always something called the Auction house. There are 5 kinds of buffs you can use, let me explain them briefly.

Food buffs
These buffs benefit one or two things your character needs. For example, “Great Feast” will boost your stamina, attack power and healing power. There are tons of different food buffs, One gives your crit, the other one gives you more haste or expertise. (if you lack the expertise or the hit cap, you can use a food buff to temporarily increase it.) The best part of food buffs is that they stack with everything else.

Battle Elixirs
Since there are two types of elixirs you have to be careful not to buy two of the same kind. Back in vanilla WoW you were able to use as much elixirs as possible, but thank god they changed that back in TBC. You can only use two, but two different ones.

Guardian Elixirs
Pretty much the same elixirs as the battle ones, only increasing other stats. These elixirs can also temporarily increase your power, like 3minute armor buffs.

Flasks
The most expensive of all buffs, usually because of all the mats that are needed to create one, but they benefit starts greatly It’s a shame you cant use Elixirs and a flask at the same time, but it also cuts the costs of raiding. J Flasks for example give you 120more attack or healing power for 2whole hours. And if you die, the buff will remain, instead of vanishing just like the Elixirs and food buffs do.

Scrolls
Yes, they do work. Although not all scrolls are as useful as you, for example the intellect scrolls are only useful when there isn’t a mage present. But armor or agi scrolls might be very handy when you want to increase you dps.

Welcome to Raiding 101 [II]

GEAR
Gear, yes, GEAR. With the current set up in WTLK. Heroic loot is the same item level as Nax10. So in theory, you can get a “ full epic” set outside of Naxx and you would be able to just barge into Naxx25. This however is not recommended. But you are able to get a couple of nice items and they venture into N10 to either upgrade or extend your capabilities.

At level 80, all the dps gear, crit gear etc is replaceable. So you shouldn’t have ANY level 70 items. Blizzard made items levels scale with player levels, so if you for example have a +26 critical strike rating rings on 70. Which was 1.5% back then, it is now only a merely 0.5% or even less if the item level is lower. At level 75 all the tier 6 gear COULD have been replaced with other gear, even Quest Reward gear. Some guilds didn’t do this because of some of the set bonuses but they got hot fixed in a flash. For example, the 2 set bonus of the tier 6 for Paladins; 5% extra crit on Holy Light became a merge 1% which made it pretty unless. The rogue set bonus that gave the additional haste by 5% got nerfed to 1% at level 80. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing, since we’re 10levels higher now, it’s time for a change.

It is really easy to get your gear, although you have to be a bit lucky sometimes, but instancing in WTLK is easy, but I find it easy to get a group on ‘ the venture co” . My friends list contains loads of people, mainly tanks (since I’m a healer) and some dps guys. If I logon nine out of ten times I get a whisper if I want to heal something. I know this doesn’t work for everyone, since most of you are dps; but making friends in 5man makes you benefit a lot. Another example, I’ve been helping a guy named Balador, just a random person, I met somewhere randomly to get his trinket form AN HC. We’ve been farming AN HC devoted for two weeks straight. It’s an easy instance, takes around 30minutes and gives 3badges (or 5 with it is the Dailey.)

With the Emblems it is easier to get decent gear; I know that DPS usually goes for a weapon to start with. But look at your options, the Emblems gear has only off hands, such as the “Glasscutter” and “Pride“. And the main hand weapon usually is something which you can create by a profession. (Titan- destroyer, bone crusher).

After that you might want to dig into the tier set, with 80 and 60 badges your gloves and chest piece are easy to get. If everyone would get this, you have a full 10man in 2/5 tiers. This will boost your dps/healing/tank-age really fast. Also you can see what stats you need; usually the chest piece and the gloves have for example, crit, haste and intellect on them. The only thing you have to do is prioritize what you need most.

Apart from HIT and EXPERTISE for dps.

*Please note that for DPS your MAIN STAT (!!!) above all other stats is getting your HIT cap. You van find that hit cap here for all classes. After that, for melee DPS make sure you also go for your Expertise cap (for more white damage!). When both capped / really close then you can start focusing into other stats. * I would like to suggest that you try to get a much hit and expertise as a default stat or on your RINGS/NECKLESS so you don’t have to waste important socket holes to fill them completely with +hit. (Although it is good to start with)

After you got both tiers, it’s time you check your gear and see what needs to biggest update, you can get trinkets (41Emblems) or a necklace (25!) easily afterwards. If you have any empty wholes, there are two more options to complete your “epic “set.

Reputation and more crafting: I know that both LEATHERWORKING and TAILORING make BIND ON EQUIP items; this is big big big upgrade then the gear you could get in TBC because everything was BINDS ON PICKUP / REQUIERED X-TAILORING 375. Farming mats is do able for every class, with the boost of spell power all healing classes are able to farm.

"YES YOU CAN DO YOUR DAILEYS EVEN – DO THEM SLOWLY."

To quote a good friend.

Even though, you can respec for 50gold, do all your dailies, respec back and you still made bank. (Around 250/300g). So no bitching about having no cash.

The reputation items are really good, for example the argent crusade have some nice gloves, boots for dps (leather and mail). Don’t forget the HELM enchant you can get from being revered (which is too easy to get). Personally I did make it Exhalted with two different factions within one week. It's too easy really!

Welcome to Raiding 101 [I]

Hi all,

I wrote this piece of text not to long ago to help out a guild of potentially good raiders, I just tried to help them out by shouting a few comments in their direction.

Talents.
Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about raiding, I see and hear a lot of things and as I like to check armories, profiles and such so I noticed a few things, Things I’d rather see changing, and I know you would like it afterwards. To start off, please don’t get this/me wrong. I’m only trying to help, although it may sound a bit harsh and rude, please do NOT take it personal; just give it a second thought.

Firstly, what I noticed is that people “Just do things.”
A very good example is are Ret Paladins, but their Retribution spec makes no sense what so ever. If you look at their talents closely they are 0/5/66. I do wonder, 66 points in ret? Why? If I go down the tree I think there are around 51-56 points to spend in it to have ALL the mandatory PvE talents. Then you would have around 15 to 20 talent points left to increase your dps / survivability / crow control in other trees. Now I know that Holy has nothing to offer you, but protection actually does.

For example, kings (this benefits the entire raid, AND most holy or prot paladins DON’T have it. It’s a ++) Secondly the increase of strength talents, (which you probably have. /thumbs up) but there is more, you can even go for improve hammer of justice so you can stun more mobs, although this wont work on boss, you’ll fight thrash more often then an actual boss. And stunning targets causes more damage and causing more damage is more dps, plus a mob is stunned which makes tanking and healing easier. So actually it’s a REALLY good talent!

Now, I don’t want to blame Ret Paladins for everything, but they are just one of the examples. There are millions of players who actually play world of warcraft, half of those have no clue what they are doing, and I’m hoping I’m not talking to those people. Some people might say. “Yeah, but I know what is best for my class.” Well... Actually... I don’t think you do, since no one really does. But you can find out, I bet you 1000g that most of you never visited Elitist Jerks, the USA WOW forums, or any class-related WOW forum at all. You will see that if you did, you won’t have chosen the spec or spell rotation you would be doing now.

And personally I’m a big fan of PvP movies, not that I am into PvP but those people will always use the abilities just a bit different, which might give you idea’s for PvE. I think we need a simple example. Since I’m a paladin, I’ll give you a paladin example, Hand of Sacrifice; a spell which a paladin can cast on any target, if that target takes names, 30% of the damage taken is transferred to the paladin instead. So A 100hit would only do 70. Isn’t that great? It’s a life saver (plus, this one gets buffed next NerfPatch. ^^;).
In pvp it was used like this, a paladin and a warrior in a 2v2 arena had a match vs 2 paladins. Who both have “Repentance” a 8 second (1minute in PvE) stun.
But it will release when the target takes any damage. The paladin in warrior team buffed his warrior with Hand of Sacrifice and everything went as planned. The first paladin used repentance and they attacked the warrior, dune to the buff the paladin gave the warrior, he got damage. So the repentance disappeared, again quickly the other paladin did repentance but because of HoS it again disappeared.

I think most of you remember the “ Maiden of Virtue” fight in Karazhan, back in TBC? She did the exact same thing, and if you didn’t have HoT healer with you, your tank could have been one shotted if not for HoS. And now we have the same type of fight in Halls of Stone.

I hope you are getting a clue of what I am heading at, if you want to be successfully in PvE you can’t allow any spec to join the raid, (then again, any spec can own if played correctly. On a side note 0/0/71 in frost is not a spec, it’s stupid. ) I’ll make a list of what the “best dps spec “for PvE is. I’m not telling you that you have to follow it, but I sure think it would increase your damage. I’ll also put down what rotation you have to use. I know, I know it cant get any easier.

(list is yet to come)

Please check the spec you think is right for you, and then check your current spec and see if there are any differences. I think there are, for example having talents which give you X if you kill a target that gives experience or honor. You no longer need those, maybe for a bit of Pvp but this “guide” is not focused on that.

Welcome to HOLYSH---OCK!

Hello all! And welcome to HOLYSH---OCK!
I'll give you a brief introduction about who I am and why I am writing this blog. :)


Nice to meet you, my name is Pauleh, and I currently play a level 80 Human Paladin on " The Venture Co." server on WoW-EU. I've been playing the paladin class for about two years now and I still regret not starting one sooner. Since on the moment I created my first Paladin, I fell in love with the class.

About two years back, I played a BE Paladin on the sever " Kazzak." I raided every instance with him back in The Burning Crusade. Just before the release of the Lich King, I decided to quit playing and get back it in real life issues.

I did stop playing for about 1 or 2 months, but after my friends called up my all exited about the new content, I defrosted my account. I leveled a Death Knight and loved every inch of it. To bad a million other people on " Kazzak" thought the same and we experienced a Death Knight over kill.

This is when I met Kashmira and Ard, two names you probably see a lot in my blogs. Both Kash and Ard are two in real colleagues of me and they both play World of Warcraft. They invited me over to their server and I've been holyshocking there every since.

Not long after starting a new charater on the RPPVP server, we met another player who didn't mind rerolling to our server, this is where Divya comes in. Divya; a Vanilla WoW player with a great goal for Achievements and mainly solo play. (Although he likes instancing with us)

Last but not least I like you to meet Henrï. This is my brother and life time WoW Friend. Around four years back we both started this game, he started a Human Warrior and I started a Night Elf Druid. And now we both rerolled to The Venture Co. He's a famous Squidman Shaman.


My blog will mainly be about Paladins, I might toss a few Shaman hints and tips in it but I will focus on Paladins, both Holy, Prot and Retri. I will also talk about raiding, since I'm in one of the top guilds on " The Venture Co." I'll give you a daily update of Ulduar when it is finally here. I hope you enjoy my blog, any tips or comments can be left behind. :)

Pauleh