Arannia and Sariella- A Brief History

I've decided to skip the intended RP posts as I believe RP is beyond the ultimate scope and intention of this blog. For anyone thoroughly interested in at least Sariella's RP, I'll redirect you here (but y'all come back now!).

I will be referencing a lot of RP IN this post but I won't be going into great detail about any of it, more just about how it influenced me today, and why it lead to the creation of Sariella, blah blah blah.

Instead, we're jumping ahead to cover my other other paladin. Arannia!

Arannia was the original Paladin, the brood mother if you will of my state of addiction and relative masochism for holy paladins. Originally I had absolutely no intention for her other than "play the fucking game and don't be like all these raiding losers".

First, I spent a great, great deal of my time in Goldshire. I actually miss these days. They were sheer bliss. Ignorance and such. Back when I could roleplay absolutely anything and no one (I also role played with) had a bad word to say about it. Of course, these people were the multiple bastard son's and daughters of Jaina/Sylvanas/Kael'thas's more sluttier, demon-fiddling days (You know. Those days.). And yes, I totally did just call Kael'thas a slut.

I eventually moved on from Goldshire and found a home with a guild called Sanctus Justicia. This lasted a fair long time, and I had room to develop from a demon-impregnated, half-angel (Yes, seriously) to a more realistic, more capable roleplayer. If still rubbish.

It was during my stay in Sanctus Justicia that I met my old friends Alashka and Karthan, who I've had about the best out-of-guild roleplaying (and OOC) fun with to this day. We all levelled together from the tender levels of 30 something to late 60 something. Karthan then mysteriously vanished, but Alashka and Arannia were to remain good friends for quite some time.

I also joined an AWESOME guild called The Scarlet Flame. These guys simply rocked the house. They had to be the best bunch of RPers this side of the Red/Blue divide on The Sha'tar, and will never be trumped for the things they did for it's members. I devote a lot of love to these guys, but sadly, Age of Conan killed us upon it's release, so we disbanded, more or less. :-(

Then, upon dinging level 70, I discovered the Shockadin. It was now I was starting to discover PvE and PvP, and whilst RP still took a primary amount of time of my WoW time, I adored my spec, and the play style. I took it for granted too, something I am extremely sorry for, today.

When Wrath hit, I was still very much in love with RP. So much so that I started considering branching out, looking at things across the border, at Horde. When the opportunity to roleplay a young trainee Blood Knight under her Master Soraya Dwin'urdrenn arose, I jumped at the opportunity. Sariella was born.

I'd intended to keep RPing on Arannia. I didn't. She was more or less abandoned as soon was I got her to 80 and decided to respec Retribution. (Ugh.)

Instead, I'd levelled Sariella. By the time she'd gotten to 80, she already had better gear than Arannia, so I'd decided Sariella was my new main. I started raiding almost as soon as possible, briefly before patch 3.1 hit, so I was somewhat into Naxxramas at that point when Ulduar landed. Then I got hardcore and stopped RPing for a bit. D'oh!

These days, Sariella is now in an RP guild, Dagger and Totem, and Arannia is now in a raiding guild! As of uh... yesterday. She'll probably be the character I primarily reference from now on in terms of PvE discussion,

As you can probably tell in the provided pic, her gear is pretty baseline, which I actually quite like for now. It gives me something to shoot for. First ICC on her coming on Wednesday, I'll be sure to post how it went here!

Thoughts, comments, suggestions can be posted here, or emailed to me if you prefer at

blonde and dangerous at live dot ie

...

What? Don't look at me like that.

EDIT: Oh. Congratulate me for [The Argent Champion] by the way. \o/

Sariella PvE

Sariella's PvE gear is rather meh. Throughout the expansion, she has been raiding, and has seen every scene of conflict since Naxxramas. She was never anywhere near the pinnacle of progression on The Sha'tar though - Perhaps one of my many goals I wish to accomplish in WoW. Regardless of her success, she's always been a mainspecced Holy Paladin, with the occasional dip into Retribution and Protection Offspecs.

Her most recent PvE guild was Beyond Redemption, a guild I helped set up, create, and nourish. Today it is a semi-successful PvE guild (For the Sha'tar Horde standards), but it no longer contains me due to some rather messy drama regarding the failure of my PC and the distrust shown by my ex-guildmates. I have since quit raiding in it's entirety on Sariella, instead, I will wait till Cataclysm and begin raiding on my alternate Paladin, Arannia (because she's got some badass oldschool stuff I feel like showing off :-P).

Arannia we'll be covering soon, but for now, let's discuss Sariella's PvE gear, spec, tactics, etcetera.


PvE

Her gear is a mixture of some T10 equivelant gear mixed with some T9 equivelant gear. Her stuff is more Crit/Haste and Crit/Mp5 focused than I'd like, as Mp5/Haste gear is far superior, but alas, so messed up is the itemization for Holydins.

She uses a PvP cloak, as I've never been lucky enough to obtain a PvE upgrade for my previous cloak, the Shroud of Alteration. Even so, the PvP cloak is good enough, offering a truck-ton of Haste and Spellpower, and even Stamina, which I'm not terribly disgusted by, so long as I don't lose too much mana due to it.

Other notable items in her PvE gear include her trin-kets and Lib-rams. Her trinkets I am not all too happy about. I thought they were the shit whilst I was raiding, purely out of a sense of ignorance and stupidity. I've had many the opportunity to roll on a much greater trinket than my Greatness, but I've always totally underestimated how OP Solace is.

Even still, Greatness gives me a little something extra to do, a little fun tactic of mine. It revolves around waiting for Greatness to Proc for 300 additional Intellect, and then I hit Divine Plea. This increases the mana return through Divine Plea by quite a bit and is fun to time correctly, although due to Greatness' 45 second internal cooldown, and Divine Plea's 1 minute cooldown, generally I only get to use this once per fight, if at all. It also depends on Greatness Proccing at a fortunate time, and not say during a burn phase where I ABSOLUTELY MUST SPAM HOLY LIGHT FOR 100% OF ITS EFFECT ON THE TANK OR IT DIES. Gosh I can't wait for this kind of stupid encounter design to vanish in Cataclysm.

Her librams I am actually quite happy with however. The first Libram is probably the one I use most often, both in PvP and PvE. The extra Spellpower is priceless when I can afford to use Flash of Light (Non-Hardmodes, Old Content, and Heroics), and increases it's effect by quite a bit considering Spell Power isn't something I stack.

The second Libram is probably the Libram most favoured by Paladins that don't lack a brain and use the higher ilevel alternatives so they can fap over their inflated gearscores.

Tactics in PvE generally revolve around slapping up my cheese on the Main tank whilst spamming the raid. Raid healing as a Holy Paladin is akin to a mix of Whack a mole and Plate Spinning, as shown above. In other words, incredibly frustrating, dull and boring. Thank the Light it isn't my actual role though - so long as the tank is getting heals through Beacon of Light, I'm doing my job right. Not looking forward to the healing homoginization that seems to be taking place in Cataclysm, though. I like being a Tank Healer, and I like that it's the ONLY thing I can do.

Other tactics include the obvious stuff like staying out of the fire and... well that's basically it as far as raiding is concerned. Remember when this used to be hard? I don't, because I wasn't good enough to try it back then. But nevermind!

That's it for my PvE post. Coming up soon is my RP post. Thanks for reading. :D

EDIT: And because I forgot, Sari's PvE spec!

Sariella PvP

(EDIT: Big shout out to my friend Daysee for his work on the awesome banner. Thanks Daysee!)
First up, my main of mains, Sariella. I've raided on her, I've tried arena, I've roleplayed on her, I've tried both Prot and Ret on her... she's got a wide mix of gear as a result. As shown here is her current PvP gear! And she's flexing. Because it's always funny to see slender, unmuscular elves flaunt something they don't have! Bless her little (un)Holy heart, she hasn't got an ounce of strength. :-(

PvP

Her gear as shown is almost entirely PvP obtained from Battlegrounds, save for Talisman of Resurgance, Quel'Delar, Lens of the Mind, and Bastion of Resolve. It's all gemmed and geared pretty much how any ordinary PvE Holy Paladin would do so, full intellect gemming, intellect enchants, intellect everything!

The only thing I haven't done was give her the best-in-slot PvE Head and Shoulder enchants, as these offer Mana Per 5 Seconds, which I don't really view as an important stat in Battlegrounds. Oh, for mana regeneration it's wonderful as Battlegrounds last quite a long time but it doesn't offer me anything in terms of survivabilty like Resilience or Critical Strike Rating does. Instead, I use this for my helmet, and this for my shoulders.

Currently, unbuffed (no self buffs), I sit at almost 1100 resilience, 24.5k HP, 23k MP, 2.6k SP, 8.11% Haste, and 24.76% Holy Crit.

Her talent spec is here.

My tactics in PvP generally revolve around staying at max range, running into melee only to regen mana, to help lock down/kill an opposing healer, or to go toe to toe with some (fellow) scrubs if I'm by myself! This generally works quite nicely but it's sad that I stand at range to evade melee'ers, the majority of have extreme difficulty getting past my Sacred Shield, Shield and Plate, but against casters I am rather hopeless. There's very little to LoS around in BGs if you're positioned wrong, and it's oh-so-easy to be on the recieving end of massive Mana Drains or Chaos Bolts. Bring friends to help you against these assholes. I have a pocket rogue. :-) Hiya, Trazzhin!

PvE post coming up next.

Welcome!

Heya! So yeah, this is the start of my blog. Everything after this post will contain something interesting, something funny, or something insightful from my experiences as a Paladin! This one though, not so much...

This blog was inspired by the complete failure of my last blog, which... kind of died as I lost interest in playing that particular Paladin on that particular realm. So, this blog will cover all of my Paladins. All of 'em. And yes, I have more than 1. I have more than 5. :-)

I am a varied player. I roleplay, I raid, I PvP (BUT no arena. Ugh. Do not want.). So this blog will lack focus, true! But it will be easier for me to stay devoted to it. Unlike all my Paladins, I am an undevoted, blasphemous little heathan. So the easier it is for me to be anything but is a plus!

Stay tuned for some introductions to the Paladins who I consider to be my "mains". Sariella and Arannia of The Sha'tar-EU! I'll cover some roleplaying sides of them, discuss their specs, their gear, what they're designed for, their professions... gosh, everything. It'll be fun.

And welcome to the Paladin trainer.