More ICC10, and Cleavage.

Since my initial ICC10 run with my previous guild, Assurance, I've now found myself in a position within the realms best raiding guild (Not mega awesome on a world scale or anything but it's just an RP realm, what do you expect?) . Only as a social, mind you, but I figured I'd get more raiding action there, than in a social raiding guild. I AM still raiding with Assurance, however, in their 10 man ICC, and since last time, we've cleared Dreamwalker (awesome fun fight), Blood Prince Council, and Blood Queen Lana'thel. No notable drops since Solace, though I did get some cleavage-mail, as shown below!

 Boobies!

Chestguard of Siphoned Spirits is the item in question, gemmed with the usual (*3 +20 Intellect Gems) and enchanted with Powerful Stats. I THINK it's a moderate upgrade over my previous item, Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate, though the mp5 hit worries me and I'm not sure if the additional haste is worth it. (Arannia is currently sitting at 649 haste rating with her new chest.) If anyone could maybe gimme the thumbs up or some insight into why it's better/worse, I'd appriciate it, stat balancing was never my strong point, all I know is "STACK INTELLECT", and since the intellect upgrade is so minor... mmm.

That about wraps it up. Still trying to replace my goddamned Protective Barricade of the Light with Protector of Frigid Souls, and I'm begining to feel dirty running normal Pit of Saron over and over again despite the rest of my gear. Ergh.

Comments, suggestions, thoughts, troll-attempts and cash may be sent to

blonde and dangerous at live dot ie

Or, of course, posted in the comments section under this post.

Thanks for reading!

New gear, ICC10 Raid, and Solace!

Hello!

So, a few days have passed, and Arannia has progressed a little. Other than the legplates she recieved in my PuG, since, she has also obtained these Sister's Handshrouds, and her first piece of tier 10.1 in her guilds ICC10!

The gloves I'm not completely thrilled about. They were an upgrade over Tier 9 but they're still itemized terribly. Whilst Holy Paladins arguably gain the most usage from Hit rating, it's still not a very powerful stat for us at ALL. Thankfully it comes complete with Haste, which is delicious, but I can see it being replaced very quickly by even Crit+mp5 gloves of an equal ilevel, potentially, depending on the balance of Mp5 VS Crit.

Tier 10 Shoulders however I am extremely pleased by. They're not itemized great but they're 1 of 2 pieces I aim to get to obtain my 2 set bonus (which is ridiculously overpowered, by the way). I've already got the setbonus on Sariella so I'm skilled in the usage of it.

The raid itself did quite nicely and I felt I did extremely well in comparison to the rest of the group, easily fitting in nicely and fufilling my role as best I could. We progressed nicely and got as far as Professor Putricide with no wipes, and wiped only twice on PP before downing him, something I am both pleased and disappointed by, as I would have liked to learn that fight a bit better, but no doubt I'll recieve another opportunity next week!

The next part of ICC10 is schedueled for tomorrow - I do not intend to attend. I try to avoid raiding on weekends where possible, as I like to kick my feet up and relax, or even occasionally do some casual, easymode PuGs.

...speaking of which...

Solace of the Defeated. Oh yeah, it's mine. I did not make the same mistake as I did on Sariella this time! I DID lose the roll to a holy priest, but luckily for me the fool already had one stored in his bank! And as it was unique... went to me as the second highest roll. :-D

It's a sick trinket. Fully stacked it provides 128 Mp5 (and it's easy to stack. I combat-buff Greater Blessings on the most represented class if it drops off to get it back up ASAP) AND 150 spell power. These two buffs put together outweigh the intellect + equip bonus I would obtain from ALMOST any other trinket, but it'll likely be my best-in-slot in terms of what I'll likely be able to do by the end of Wrath, and it'll never, ever be replaced. I am using it alongside Talisman of Resurgance at the moment, another trinket I never intend to replace with anything else I'll be able to obtain.

That about wraps it up for now! Comments, suggestions, thoughts, troll-attempts and cash may be sent to

blonde and dangerous at live dot ie

Thanks for reading!

Bonus screenshot, by the way, since this post lacks in the visual department:

Gosh, I love my overpowered PC.

Arannia - Currently

So, yes! Arannia, my current "most played" Paladin, as of a week ago. She started off in mostly blues and greens but already I've obtained some nice items, the best of which were Bind on Equip and rather expensive considering I didn't have any decent money grinding outlets, like dailies as Retribution, or Mining and such.

The Bind on Equip items she has are what I consider to be the Best in Slot pieces pre-raiding. (I haven't done ANY raiding as of yet. Well, one fail TotC25 PuG that I called off at Anub'arak, and I didn't obtain any gear from it.)

Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate enchanted with Powerful Stats and gemmed with three Brilliant King's Amber. (I have considered changing that enchant to Exceptional Mana or Greater Mana Restoration as these are what I deem to be the best enchants for geared Paladins, however, I am neither geared, and the extra 11 stamina (buffed) and minimal amount of armor just about tip Powerful Stats over.)

It's also mail. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? Yeah. For all you non-Paladins out there who don't share my pain, most of the plate gear for holydins, especially in Ulduar and ICC, is complete junk. Complete. And utter. Junk. Haste and Mp5 items are king, and there are very few pieces of plate with these stats in the correct allocation. So Arannia is going to be sporting a lot of mail in the weeks to come. Drops permitting and fingers crossed, at least.

The other two pieces of Bind on Equip gear I've found for her, thankfully ARE plate, and very nice pieces at that.

Sunforged Bracers, Enchanted with Exceptional Intellect and gemmed with a Brilliant Dragon's Eye (Arannia here very recently just hit the level of jewelcrafting required to make these!)

Plate Girdle of Righteousness, with a Belt Buckle, gemmed with three Brilliant King's Ambers.

The rest of her BoP gear was mostly obtained from the new 5 man instances, or purchased with Emblem of Triumphs.

Her spec is currently indistinguishable from Sariella's PvE spec, Shock, Horror, and will probably stay like that depending on the requirements of my guild.

I am currently also building a Protection Off-spec, if only to make late night instance queues less long, and potentially to help out the guild in certain situations, though I doubt they'll ever require their soon-to-be-best-healer (Hurr) to respec to a tank spec they'll never be that comfortable with (I've tanked before. I was good at it, but... I just hated it. Didn't feel comfortable at all.).

Pieces of gear I intend to obtain within the next few weeks, gold permitting, are Earthsoul Boots, and Leggings of Woven Death. Puresteel Legplates are also an option as I am a miner and can farm the majority of the materials, however, the stat allocation (leaning more toward critical strike rating than haste) is not as good.

Thanks for reading! First ICC raid coming up tomorrow, more news about that then.

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

blonde and dangerous at live dot ie

For the Light!

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.