paladin Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Faffing Overload

December 16, 2013 by Belghast

Holy Faffing

I had every intent Sunday to work on the various characters that I needed to run through LFR, however when other opportunities were presented I seized hold with both hands. A few members of the guild were running instances for transmog outfits, so I joined in the fun. The likelihood that I will play my little disc priest was just massively improved. Of all the priest sets, my favorite is absolution the Tier 6 outfit from Black Temple/Hyjal. Since I was the only cloth wearer along and the only other person on my class set did not need it… I managed to soak up an entire set of Absolution gear in the run. I also managed to get a pretty spiffy staff, that I remember all the priests desperately wanted back in the day.

I of course had to transmog to the gear immediately, even though I am only 80 and wearing a mishmash of quested greens. My hope is I can maintain the outfit as I level through all of the cataclysm content. I am sure there is a crafted set that will likely hold me much like the crafted gear has on my rogue. Belglorian my priest is also my tailor so hopefully he can take care of that as I level. I hope to get this character up to Pandaria level since I am stalled out 5 points away from maximum.

Twilight Faffing

While we were out and about our monk healer mentioned that he had a severe absence of flying mounts. Immediately we all thought about the three drakes achievement for Sartharion with its guaranteed mount drop. So very shortly we wandered our way over to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight and formed up a quick group to do 10 man three drakes. It was insane just how fast we were able to kill it at level 90. It was pretty easy to do at 85, but Sarth just absolutely exploded with our current epic gear. We all passed on the mount drop, and let the healer pick it up unattested.

However since we all had an army of alts, we figured we would swap around a bit and go ahead and knock out the 25 man version as well. Several of us were missing that mount, so the monk healer said for us to roll on it as well. While not as much of a cakewalk as the first one, especially since we were all on alts… it was still rather easy. As you can tell by the image I am now the proud owner of a new twilight drake mount. For whatever reason I never managed to get this one in all the times we did three drakes after Icecrown raids during Wrath, so I was happy to knock out yet another mount.

Utgarde Faffing

We did a quick heroic Ruby Sanctum since one of the folks had a quest still active from the Wrath era, and with that most of us had hit our instance lock. I however still had one more to go before I hit it, so I logged back over to my Paladin who I had logged out at Wyrmrest. Since I was so close, I decided to fly over to Utgarde Pinnacle on a whim. I have run this place on heroic so many times chasing the mount, but each and every time I have walked away empty handed. Yesterday however, I was completely shocked to see a brand new Blue Protodrake mount in my loot window. I have always liked running the zone, and to some extent I am a bit sad I have no real reason to ever return.

While I cannot get the black or plagued protodrakes, this completes the set other than the Time-lost protodrake. I simply do not think I have the patience for that camp. Each time I am in Northrend I buzz through Storm Peaks just in case it is up, but so far all I have seen is the place holder and the time-lost corpse a few times. Similarly I make a trip to Deepholme every now and then and fly the circuit, but again I don’t really expect to ever find that stone drake up either. Both camps are extremely tedious things and I simply do not want the mount bad enough to go through it. I figure I will get my share of camping done when I start collecting spirit beasts on my hunter.

Faffing Overload

One of my really good friends Ashgar came back to the game this weekend, and similar to what I do he spent a lot of time running old raid content for fun. We had talked about going and doing Blackwing Lair earlier in the day, but it never really materialized until shortly after I had gotten the blue protodrake above. He was struggling to solo Razorgore, and I knew I very much could not do it on my paladin… but there were two items I really wanted desperately from there. The first is the Untamed Blade, that I am now modeling in the above screenshot. The second is a proper set of Judgment. While I love the blue/brown set from the opening of Northrend event, simply because it is super rare… I have always wanted a set of the red/gold judgment, that matches the untamed blade. To me that is the archetypal paladin look, and I will not be completely happy until I at least have that as an option.

Needless to say I managed to get the Untamed Blade, but over the course of the dungeon only a single piece of judgment gear dropped. We did however see every single pet, so at this point I am only missing Broodlord Lashlayer, as I managed to pick up mini Razorgore and mini Chromaggus. After we made quick work of Blackwing Lair we decided to wander over to AQ40, since thanks to Twin Emperors it is annoying to solo. There we did not have quite as much luck, but I did manage to pick up the mini Skeram pet, and Ashgar managed to get one of the other ones along the way. The highlight of the run for me however is that moments from joining up the Red Qiraji Resonating Crystal dropped.

The various colors of Resonating Crystals were a source of so much drama for our raid back in the day. We formed “teams” based on the color of mount we managed to get to drop. This was egged on by the fact that one of the raid leaders was strongly opposed to any color that was not “gold”, and as such tried to get as many people on his team as possible. My hunter was a member of this strike team… and we vehemently argued when someone called us “yellow”. The above screenshot was from the first time we saw a Red mount. Prior to that moment the mount war had reached a fever pitch, with various people not willing to accept the “wrong” color of mount. After a point the raid leader just started force-looting people various colors just so they would stop slowing down the raid.

However the moment we all saw the “red one” the mount war dissolved just as fast as it had begun. No one cared about the green, blue or “gold” teams… we were all somehow lacking because we were not riding around on a red mount. During our entire time raiding Ahn’qiraj I think we only actually saw two red mounts drop. The screenshot above was from the night we first saw it… we all lined up to pay homage to the new “red leader”. Lleandryn will always have the distinction of being the man who brought an end to the “mount wars”. I joke about it these days, but very seriously… the animosity over the color of mount we were using had really reached a point of ridiculousness. Lots of hurt feelings were happening over having the wrong color, so the fact that the Red mount “saved” us made looting one yesterday all the sweeter. Now if only blizzard would stop being a pain in the ass and let us ride them everywhere.

Without Burdens

December 15, 2013 by Belghast

Of Holiday Parties

This morning I am slowly eating my oatmeal and trying to make my head stop throbbing. I feel like I have a “hangover” but I didn’t even drink last night. I think this means I am now officially “old”. Last night was the Christmas party for my group at work. I think I said it yesterday, but we are the only group that actually likes each other enough to hold a party. It has been years since I have felt the way about a group of people that I do about these people. Quite honestly I probably never have felt exactly the same, but my very first work environment was a similar “family” feel.

The highlight of the evening was dirty santa, which for folks who do not know what that means. Gift exchange with the ability to steal from others. The best gift was… a large thing of crown royal, a pair of captain america underoos, and a package of fake moustaches. I cannot and nor do I really want to picture the scenario that was planned with that combination of items… but it was needless to say hillarious. Even better… someone had inadvertedly brought a Captain America mask and shield… the underoos were donated to the winner for the full effect. I brought some legos, and they were hotly contested… as were the call of duty mega blocks that were brought.

Probably the coolest item of the night was one I ended up winning initially but then was quickly stolen from me. The “Boozequet” was a floral bouquet made up of individual shots. The creator had hot glued the individually sealed shot drinks onto floral wire and then arranged all of them in a bouquet. Extremely clever, I told the creator that she should market it and I am sure during this time of the year she would get a lot of business. She even made a cute little “drunk santa” tub for the base of the arrangement. The whole night was pretty amazing. I go through this “I don’t want to go” phase right before any party, because my body rejects being around lots of people. However when I actually do go I have a blast.’

Without Burdens

I really do not have a lot of gaming news today. When you have a big event going on in the evening the entirety of the day tends to be dominated by planning and preparing for it. My day yesterday was either planning or waiting to play for the holiday party. As a result I didn’t get into anything that I could not rapidly exit if needed. That meant my only real options were LFR. After some moving stuff around I managed to get my ilevel high enough to queue for Vale of the Eternal Spring, the first section of Siege of Orgrimmar. In fact currently I am sitting at 502 with a 450 ring still equipped that I have not been able to replace. I am proud of myself because I got there on this alt without “actual raiding” and without leaning on Burden of Eternity gear at all.

Why does this matter? Well a Burden of Eternity is one of those things from the timeless isle that is either a super rare drop, or super costly (50,000 timeless coins). When you apply it to the gear tokens that drop from the island it transforms what would have been a 496 ilevel item to a 535 ilevel item. The problem is, just like the normal tokens there is no control whatsoever on what stat package you will get. This creates a lot of odd situations like tanking items with no avoidance stats on them. I personally find the burden gear to be a bit of a crutch, and what I mean by that is… I cannot seem to make my brain ignore the fact that it is higher ilevel and instead evaluate the stats of an item. Many 502 items will be better for your character than these 535 items just because of the particular stat distribution and the inclusion of gem slots.

Having these extremely high ilevel but not very optimized items just confuses the mix for me. I have or have had quite a few of these on Belgrave my main, and in each case I find it really hard to make myself abandon them for a better itemized but lower ilevel item. This is the double edged sword of ilevel after all… the number does not adequately represent how well a player is geared. I could have a bunch of extremely high ilevel items equipped that are functionally useless for my class. On my shaman I admit that I equipped a healing trinket that I got from a random loot bag… just to get my ilevel up high enough to be able to run Vale of the Eternal spring. I am sure there are lots of other people out there doing the same. I like the feeling of seeing my gear score going up incrementally, but I feel like as a gauge of quality it has never really been valid.

A Quiet Day

This has to be the slowest I have taken to eat my oatmeal in the morning. I blame the multiple directions my head seems to be spinning right now. As a result of my present state… I am hoping for an extremely quiet day. Far as I know we don’t really have much of anything to do today, so my hope is that other than doing laundry I can pretty much sit on my comfy couch and relax. Said relaxation is probably going to involve a lot of LFR for a shot at shiny shiny loot drops. Now that my paladin can queue for Siege I want to get him all the way through to Downfall. I also should run my shaman, dk and druid through as well. Who knows how much I will actually get accomplished but needless to say I will be enjoying my day today.

Viva La Artisan

December 13, 2013 by Belghast

Rebuilding the Core

Last night I tackled one of the harder aspects of getting a guild back on its feet, at least as far as infrastructure is concerned. Stalwart of course had been trucking along without much of a formal structure, but there were signs of stress as many fractures had formed over the years I had been gone. One of my first steps in trying to right the ship was trying to build a coalition of officers representing different parts of the guild and pulling them together into one team. Essentially I was looking for the players that were already reaching out and engaging other guild members. At the same time I was looking for individuals with keen insight and a level head.

After much consternation about my choices, I finally developed a strategy. Essentially in House Stalwart there are two major raid groups that represent the thrust of where the guild is going. Unfortunately many times these two teams are going in completely opposite directions. My hope was to find a way to represent both forces equally on this officers council of sort that I was building. From Team “Nothing Can Go Wrong” I have tagged Athelia and Arria, both of which are extremely positive forces in the guild. Additionally both have shown a level head and extremely excellent judgment skills. They are constantly engaging other players and the wealth of their game experience is something we can always use.

Then from Team “Leftovers” I brought in Gamad and Shorty. Shorty and I have a long history together, and he has always been one of those players that is willing to give the shirt off his own back to help someone out. Additionally he is a whizkid with the auction house and will be helping liquidate some of our overstuffed guild bank to help buffer our repair money. Gamad is relatively new to the guild, in the grand scheme of things, but in that time I have seen her continued to grow and reach out to new players. She has always been willing to step in and help when help is needed. Additionally I have seen that she is a peacemaker and mediator, and will help out greatly in smoothing over the rough spots.

Finally you have myself and Rylacus the person who so valiantly “kept the lights on” over the last year or so. Together we represent the legacy player, the folks who have been around since vanilla and most of them in House Stalwart since that time or at least Burning Crusade. We are the ones who remember the way things used to be, and have the roadmap to return us to glory. This mix of newer voices and older voices should mesh together to create something greater than the individual parts. There is still a lot more work to be done, but I feel more confident in moving forward now that I have the key pieces in place. There is another one of these “legacy” officers that I still need to talk to, to gauge if they still want to fill that role or not. But last night made me quite a bit more confident about the total outcome of these changes.

Viva La Artisan

Another big change that I am wanting to implement in the next few days is the Artisan rank. At one point I had one of these, but it never really worked out quite like I had wanted it to. Essentially back then I would choose a single crafter for each profession, but that process ended up ignoring a lot of people who want to contribute to the guild. My plan is to make the entire process much more transparent and open this time around. My goal is to create an application process through our forums that allows individuals to sign up to fill the duty of “crafting for the guild”. What I mean by this is that they would have expanded access to the guild crafting coffers, but have the responsibility of filling in the gaps when someone needs gear. The artisan rank would make it clear to identify just who could craft gear for players.

The other major responsibility that comes with the rank is to create a “shop” of sorts on the forums. It will be the responsibility of guild crafters to create a post outlining the major things they can create with their professions. Additionally I expect these Artisans to watch the forums for any item requests and then respond back in a timely fashion as to whether or not they can provide the service. I am going to have to figure out the logistics of this whole program, but over the years I have had more guild members wanting to know how they can help out. Buffering the leveling process by providing new gear, especially as someone reaches the level cap is a massively valuable service. I know Shorty for example already provides new players “care packages” of things like bags… and this has been entirely of his own initiative. I can only imagine what could come of a more organized system.

Bring on the Warband

Finally I am wanting to work out the details of organizing the raid groups within the guild. I am staunchly against a “raider” rank, because singling someone out just because they raid as somehow better just feels morally wrong. What I do want to create however is transparency in who is actually organizing and leading the raids. As a result one of the various guild ranks will be turned into a “Raid Leader” designation. This serves two very simple purposes. Firstly it will control access to the raid materials tab in the guild bank. However more importantly this will clearly identify who a guild member can approach about joining in the raid. Additionally I would like to get someone from each raid to maintain a thread on the forums outlining what the raid does, when they raid, who exactly someone can talk to about joining.

Additionally I want there to be a clear “you must be this tall” line drawn for each group. Item level is a double edged razor, but with it you can size up some basic requirements as to how well geared someone needs to be to be able to compete in the content. I am by no means saying that there needs to be an automatic system of entry. I do not want to get into the business of determining who can raid and who can not. I do however want the raid groups within House Stalwart to be much more transparent on how one gains entry. Additionally I feel as though if you enter one of the raid groups in good faith that you should remain loyal to that team.

There has been some bad blood in the past as various individuals have transitioned between the teams without adequately informing the leadership of their previous team. I want this to stop, we are one guild with a shared mission of trying to make the game a better place for all of us. My hope is that by exposing the raid groups and the processes for entry, that it will be extremely clear how transitions should work. Additionally I would like to see rosters posted of the current members of each raid, that way there can be no doubt in when someone is encroaching on the domain of the other raid. I am not saying there can be no transfers of lineup… I just want the entire process to work more transparently.

And Then I Actually Played…

I won’t lie… most of my night last night was spent dealing with various guild business in trying to create this new vision. Additionally I spent more than a bit of my time counseling players and trying to smooth over rough spots. Shortly after I had talked to Arria and brought him into he council he designed to run a heroic scenario. I took a break from leveling Gloam to do so, as my Paladin still had not finished the quest that guarantees a 500+ epic of some sort. The biggest struggle in gearing my alts has been on trying to get a weapon. I had heard from many friends that weapons DO actually drop from the loot bag you get from your daily heroic scenario. Problem is so far in all of the scenarios I had run I had not actually seen this happen.

So I went into the run expecting to get a few valor points, but not really expecting much from it. I am so thankful I took the break from my rogue because I walked out with a shiny Immaculate Pandaren Hammer of the Earthshaker. This actually is about the ideal weapon for a retribution Paladin, so I can finally stop sucking it up with my 450 weapon in LFR. It was a fun little run but I failed miserably at tanking the pirate boss with the saber. I had never actually used it, and I was trying to move out of the fire while hitting the cooldown and just got oneshot. On my deathknight I never use the saber and simply move out of range. So we missed the bonus by a few seconds, and I feel bad about it… but everyone that was with me was fine with it. They were happy to see I managed to pull a weapon. Now I just need to get the same success with my shaman… twice.

Transmutation

December 7, 2013 by Belghast

Trolls of Thunder

Yesterday went pretty much as I had intended it. I hung out around the house and ran first my Paladin and then my Shaman through a bunch of LFR. Things went a bit slower than intended since I kept getting in on the end of a run and having to queue again to catch the first boss or two. I managed to get both characters up into the 480ish range. Still no real luck with the weapon drops, which seem to be the issue with catching characters up enough to be able to do Siege of Orgrimmar. As a result my warrior, paladin and shaman are all using 450 level weapons still, and I have not really had much luck with getting spirits of harmony on the smith to be able to bump those up to 463.

Of the options I have at my disposal for weapons, none of them really seem palatable. I could queue for heroic dungeons and have a random chance of getting the dungeon that drops a weapon… and a random chance on top of that of getting the weapon to drop. This would only take me to 463, so not really great in the grand scheme of things. I could farm timeless isle coins, but it takes 10,000-20,000 to be able to purchase a weapon… and in those cases the weapon is only 476 which really doesn’t help that much. So the best option still seems to be to queue for Throne of Thunder each week and hope, all the while trying to accumulate Spirits of Harmony for the smith.

Transmutation

With all of my crafters going, I have really felt the lack of my alchemist. There are some pretty sweet items you can make as a blacksmith that are 502 ilvl but they require lots and lots of Living Steel. Once again the only way to get living steel is to get it transmuted by an alchemist. As a result I have been directing my extra effort towards leveling Gloam my rogue high enough to be able to raise his way through the Pandaria alchemy. Currently he is capped out at 450 and cannot progress again until I level 75. As a result I have been working on quests out in Borean Tundra and I almost have him up to 72. Thinking about just making a serious push to try and get him to 90.

Rogues are way squishier than I remember, and while they have recuperate it doesn’t seem to offer the level of survival I am used to with my other characters. As a result leveling the rogue has been less than enjoyable. I am not really a stealthy person, and I have always played my rogues more like a swashbuckler than an assassin. However the only time combat goes really smoothly is if I make sure I stealth up and get my opening attack. Hopefully with time I will get back into the swing of playing one, as in the past… burning crusade especially my rogue was my favorite alt.

The thing I find most humorous is that Paladins now kinda play like rogues. I have been doing a lot of Retribution paladin, and the mechanics are almost exactly like a rogue. Thing is in many ways it works better. Instead of everything being based on 5 combo points, all of the attacks seem to be based on 3 even though your bar can fill to 5. I keep thinking that rogues as a whole would benefit if most of the combo point dumpers capped at 3 as well. I think this is why I enjoyed my warrior in rift so much as opposed to my rogue. The three mechanic just seemed to work better, it made the game play feel more “in the moment”.

Too Many Choices

Right now I feel absolutely deluged with choices anytime I play the game. At this point i have yet to run Siege of Orgrimmar LFR on Belgrave or Belgarou my two best geared characters. I am 4 coins away from getting all of my sigils of power and wisdom, so I would not mind finishing that off so I can continue down the legendary cloak line. I have not even begun to work on Belghast, so in theory I could get his gear in order and start doing heart of fear or something like that to get him high enough to queue for Throne of Thunder. Additionally I really do want to get my rogue up so I can have a transmute spec person again. I spent a good amount of last night prior to our 10 man catching his herbalism up so he can now at least harvest whatever I come across in northrend.

In the past when I have quit the game I feel like it has been because I lost sight of the things I wanted to complete. I feel like I almost need to create a World of Warcraft Bucket List. There are so many little things that I forget about that I do want to complete. There are so many pets and mounts that I could be spending my time farming. The entirety of all of this is really almost overwhelming. I have never completely loremaster for example, and that’s a thing I have always wanted to do. I doubt I will ever work on the Insane title like Rylacus, but I am sure there are hundred of other little bullet points that I would actually enjoy. I feel as though if I had a list of these all, it would be much harder for me to lose sight of the progress I am making towards the total.

As a result I think I am going to add a new section to my site, similar to my beta list for my WoW Bucket list. As I think of more items I will add them to the list and then as I complete them… I will check them off the list. Probably will keep it as a google spreadsheet for ease of use. I’ve seen a few other players with these and I thought they were pretty cool. All I know for certain is that I am having a blast with all the players that seem to be back from their own hiatus. It is wierd to see my battletag/realid lighting up with players I have not seen in years. At the end of the day, this game really is about the people you play it with.