WoW

[RaceBannon42]

Fuck Blizzard for what they did to me.

But your tiny shoulders look so cute!

Welcome Kal!

[Kalbear]

It would've been a mage and a lock. No healing among either of them, not a lot of tankability. And we'd both be going for the same drops and stuff. It just seemed like the wrong move. I don't really want to be a priest, either.

And I'd like to figure out at least the first few levels and what I want to do.

[PhelanArcetus]

Well, I was out of the office for a week, yay vacation, and too lazy to pop over here and post. So I guess a lot has happened for me.

First off, the week before, we got our first Aran kill in Kara. Felt very good, even though we didn't have enough time to do anything else. Also, if I hadn't gotten them and mentioned them earlier, I finally got my bracers from Attumen. By far better than either the Sha'tari ones I used for most tanking, or the Vambraces of Daring I used for block value gear.

Over the weekend we decided to do chess with our stealthers (including my rogue) and alts. Well, we did discover that standing in Aran's room qualifies you for chess loot, which is nice for any week we drop Aran but don't do chess. Picked up Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless for the rogue, and later got Midnight Legguards out of heroic Slave Pens. As well as a couple of days later picking up the badge neck. The rogue not only dishes out a ton more damage (though I miss the 25 energy eviscerates), but also looks better, with the big, smoking shoulders. Gemmed them up, blew a bunch of time farming adamantite to buy assorted primals. 10 eternium ore, 13 primal mana, and 3 primal nether and I'll be upgrading Fireguard / Latro's Shfting Sword to Blazeguard / Fireguard. And putting 15 agility on both. Oh, and I finally got him his hourglass. Though I'm keeping the Mark of Conquest around; chance to heal 100 or so health on hit is very nice for soloing.

Considered getting some arena gear for him; a few people would love to try the arenas out and I'd be willing to give it a go. But I can't say the gear appeals to me; I really don't want to sacrifice the amount of hit I'd lose off of the blues I still have. But arena gear seems to not have any hit at all.

This last week we got our first Maiden kill in Kara (though the only survivors were two druids, one of whom died just after maiden herself). And damn, I forgot to take advantage of that to make free gold on the rogue's quest. Meh, whatever. We also tried Netherspite twice; leadership isn't currently willing to try Aran without a warlock, and we don't have one consistently. I'm a bit worried about our ability to progress smoothly past Opera; we get Big Bad Wolf so often that we don't know much about the other encounters. Hell, we've only had Romulo and Julianne once, and Oz once.

One of the other guilds in our alliance has Kara down to a one-night clear, and they started recruiting us for their Gruul attempts, which should start tonight. Hopefully we'll make some progress there.

Also started tooling around on a shaman; currently only level 7, but I tossed her two deadmines runs worth of random greens, a bare handful of which may be worth using, and the rest... well, I figure I'll make her an enchanter and some sort of gatherer. I really don't want to fight through the professions I've fought through again. Especially blacksmithing for just a weapon, or the utter hell that leatherworking was. And engineering just doesn't interest me much. I'm sure I'll need some sort of mod to operate totems, of course. Totemus seems to have the best rating on curse, so I grabbed that and will see how it is. She'll be enhancement, as I don't really want to level a heal-spec, and based on my mage, I prefer melee guys anyway.

Definitely a few things I liked in the new patch notes. No-reagent Blind especially. I never used it pre-BC because I wasn't willing to farm fadeleaf so that I could. And in BC, while I get blinding powder at a pretty good rate if I take the rogue around solo... it's such a hassle. Also happy with the increased blessing and greater blessing durations for paladins. Possibly happy about the Seal of Vengeance change. I also like that pets won't chase after Vanish, and that the old but unreplaced enchants will become drastically more accessible.

(Interestingly, I note that a few of the things I saw when I first read the notes on Thursday are no longer present, like the changes to Blind. I wonder if those were rolled back. I'd be unhappy if they were.)

I haven't gotten back to test this, but I believe it is categorically impossible for a rogue to solo all of Scholomance. Gandling does not spawn if you kill the six mini-bosses but do not kill their trash. And since there are mobs who go physical-immune, I suspect a rogue cannot kill those. (I want to test by poisoning a weapon and using Shiv, but I suspect it will fail.) I was able to kill all minibosses, Ras and Rattlegore. I didn't try Jandice, and the blood steward didn't give me any blood so I couldn't try Kirtonos. All this was in an effort to collect greens for a priest who hadn't quite gotten enchanting to 300. Lifestealing finally dropped, though. Yeah, it does exist.

[Arakasi]

Phelan I'd say work on getting the MH our of arena for your rogue. It would be a big DPS upgrade for you, especially since I think the swordsmith line of weapons is a bit too fast to MH. You lose a lot of dmg on your specials that way. That's the main thing I'm going for on my warrior from arena. That being the 2h weapons. The dps is just so much better than anything else you'll get for a while.

[Minaku]

Kal, mage/paladin is a great combo and pretty deadly in most situations. A mage covers what a paladin doesn't have and the paladin covers what the mage doesn't have. The only other thing I can think of that's better is warrior/paladin, and that warrior has to spec for MS-dps hurtitude.

I love the mage class but what Blizz is doing to it has put me off the game. Mages are an excellent solo class and if Carrie can pick up on all the nuances of playing a mage, you should be able to healbot her to 2-man heaven. If a paladin at level 70 goes holy/protection and a mage either goes arcane/fire or full frost, there is pretty much nothing that can withstand you, PvP and PvE-wise. I love me some paladins, I do.

Pro tip: Do not attempt to 2-man Naxxramas with a mage and paladin at level 70. Me, raid dps specced mage. Him, raid healing specced pally. Level 61 elite trash mobs hit me for 3.5k, and they hit a plate wearer for up to 2k. Bring friends. Lots of them. Preferably around 28 of them.

[Kalbear]

To be clear, Min, Carrie's a lock - not a mage. Which is very different, I suspect. Still, I'll be going for tank/max damage mode first and foremost.

I dinged 12 after staying up way too late playing and fighting with a cable modem that keeps dying after about 30 minutes of activity. For NO REASON. It's annoying, to say the least. I'm having fun doing the seal/judgment/beat things up mess and keeping up with buffs. I also find that lots of people want to party with me.

I'm going to go with mining, I think, and either blacksmith or engineering for the other profession. Any advice as to which? I'm leaning towards engineering because there are a lot of fun stupid things you can do and it's one of the few ways that the pally has to do a ranged attack or stop mobs from fleeing.

[Liryn]

Pro tip: Do not attempt to 2-man Naxxramas with a mage and paladin at level 70. Me, raid dps specced mage. Him, raid healing specced pally. Level 61 elite trash mobs hit me for 3.5k, and they hit a plate wearer for up to 2k. Bring friends. Lots of them. Preferably around 28 of them.

Rofl

I had an awesome weekend. We finally got exalted with Lower City so we both have shiny new damage maces now. Then we did Shattered Halls twice the (almost) no crowd control way! Prot pally, feral druid, hunter, elemental shaman, holy priest. Pally tanks a few (gogo slurk aoe tanking!), druid tanks a couple, hunter traps one, shaman ganks everything with chain lightning, I heal. Was super fun and made the whole place look easy One more run and I will be revered - finally my hat enchant and keyed for all heroics.

Speaking of heroics, we had a druid friend who was dying to get his epic flight form yesterday so off we went to heroic Sethekk. It was rather rough at times but we had a very good group for it and really I think we did pretty well once we figured out how to deal with the damn ravenguards I learned that I really do need to wear some stamina gear at times in heroics - I was literally one-shotted a couple times since I'm so very squishy in my pure healing gear. The final boss was very hard but we got him after a few tries and I got to squeal with glee over my new loots:

Bands of the Benevolent

and

Blessed Tanzanite

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The druid quest boss was not as bad as we expected, though he was still tough. A fun fight though.

Also pvp'd a bit and was expecting to get the epic pvp healing bracers yesterday, but somehow I had 700 less honor than I thought I was going to Worked out fine though, since I didn't waste a pve-ish gem in them as I was planning to before I knew what lovely pve bracers I was going to have shortly. I think I'll wait on the bracers and get the belt as my next pvp piece though, since I'm still using a crappy level 66 green belt for pvp.

[Tobin]

Pallies get a ranged stun, but I think it's only in Ret (been a long time since I logged mine in).

There is some pretty serious armor you can make as an armorsmith, but if you're going to be Holy, I don't think it will really matter.

I have engineering on my Enh sham, and honestly - the only things I used it for were making bullets (for our hunter friend) and repair bots.

The rest of the stuff you see on the lists is cute, but that's about it -- Engineers have been screaming for more useful patterns, but not much luck. Mobile mailboxes and a craftable mount were two of the more interesting ideas I saw.

Hubby's pally was mining/jcrafter - some of the JC trinkets he made were the difference between life and death.

Phel -

Enhance for leveling is good - dash a little resto in there when you can spare the points and it will help your healing efficiency.

I was a Call of Elements girl for a long time, but Totemus offers more utility with the right/left/center clicks. It's a little buggy now and then - some of the totems stick, but it's really rare.

It auto-fills new totems when you get them.

My setup:

Custom button 1 - left = poison, right = disease.

Custom button 2 - left = water walking, right = water breathing

Center - left = Lightning shield, right = totemic recall (you'll get that later)

[PhelanArcetus]

Yeah, the smithing swords really are too fast for mainhand. Hell, at the same time they're not as fast as I want for offhand (1.6 when I can get a 1.4, with Combat Potency?). I think they were designed with tanking in mind rather than rogues. Still, while the slow mainhands really do add a chunk to Sinister Strike, it's not as bad as I had feared. At least as a rogue I only have one instant I regularly use based on the weapon damage, and it's at most a quarter of my output, even with a big slow weapon. I compensate some with more poison procs, and overall the vast bulk of my damage is the white damage. I decided a while ago I was content with the fast swords over the inferior quality mainhands available (Vindicator's Brand or a lot of PvP). I would be interested in the gloves, though. Making Deadly Throw a spell interrupt would be nice and fun.

I did consider JC on the shaman just... too much. We've got a pimped JC in the guild (and I have her login), and everyone who has made a new character, *especially* a draenei shaman, has gone JC. The trinkets would be nice, but the rest is nothing special. Engineering I turned down because it's too much of a "stuff you actively use" profession; I don't want the extra stuff to carry and consider. Part of the interest in enchanting is actually having a character around to melt the junk we get that nobody wants (the vast majority of drops I see). Probably spec-wise she'll end up with all non-enhancement points in resto. In fact, I'm tempted to start with Resto points, so I can heal myself during combat. My pally I absolutely had to go 10 holy for the 70% pushback avoidance before I started anything else. Throwing Holy Light was impossible otherwise, and for Flash of Light doesn't have the burst you want to heal and then go back to hitting. But then the shaman should have better damage output and thus need to heal herself less often... I hope.

<3 prot pallies tanking shattered halls. It's such a pain to tank the big pulls as a warrior. Granted, handling so many guys is what makes it a challenge for me to tank, but it gets frustrating after a bit. Old, as well. But then, the "hey, didn't I just do this pull?" question is common to most instances.

We also want to use a prot pally to try heroic Black Morass. Apparently the way to go is to keep everything, including adds, on the tank, burn the lord, and then clean up adds and move to the next portal. I can't grab all the adds as a warrior. Tried, absolutely no luck. Thunderclap is fine... until there's 5 or more things, and whelps fill that up fast.

[Arakasi]

You could switch to the mace weapon, which I think is a very nice MH for a rogue. At 2.7 speed its the right speed, and the haste proc is sexy. Of course you then lose sword spec for mace spec, but if you plan to pvp that imo is a good decision. Mace stuns help more for a rogue than the extra attacks of swords, since as a rogue you mainly want to shut people down. Of course then you have a useless sword sitting in the bank and you still need to deal with finding an offhand now (maybe the badge dagger, or I guess you could go blackout truncheon from SL for even more hastey goodness) Or you can also go with the arena offhand mace, which as an offhand only weapon is very cheap on the prices. As much damage as you could do with Blazeguard/Fireguard I think you'd do far more damage with Bonecracker and Dragonmaw.

Then again if you keep doing Kara on your rogue, maybe you could pick up a spiteblade.

Edit: I am planning to go engineering with my shaman. Mainly because the epic purple hat is so very good.

[RaceBannon42]

To be clear, Min, Carrie's a lock - not a mage. Which is very different, I suspect. Still, I'll be going for tank/max damage mode first and foremost.

I dinged 12 after staying up way too late playing and fighting with a cable modem that keeps dying after about 30 minutes of activity. For NO REASON. It's annoying, to say the least. I'm having fun doing the seal/judgment/beat things up mess and keeping up with buffs. I also find that lots of people want to party with me.

I'm going to go with mining, I think, and either blacksmith or engineering for the other profession. Any advice as to which? I'm leaning towards engineering because there are a lot of fun stupid things you can do and it's one of the few ways that the pally has to do a ranged attack or stop mobs from fleeing.

Did you get Vanessa to give you a /ginvite yet?

Give me a poke if you need a hand with anything.. im pretty bored with farming, so I'd be happy to boost you though an instance or two.

[Minaku]

To be clear, Min, Carrie's a lock - not a mage. Which is very different, I suspect. Still, I'll be going for tank/max damage mode first and foremost.

I dinged 12 after staying up way too late playing and fighting with a cable modem that keeps dying after about 30 minutes of activity. For NO REASON. It's annoying, to say the least. I'm having fun doing the seal/judgment/beat things up mess and keeping up with buffs. I also find that lots of people want to party with me.

I'm going to go with mining, I think, and either blacksmith or engineering for the other profession. Any advice as to which? I'm leaning towards engineering because there are a lot of fun stupid things you can do and it's one of the few ways that the pally has to do a ranged attack or stop mobs from fleeing.

A lock with the right talent points can put Curse of Exhaustion on a running target. Otherwise, between the paladin and a lock there aren't any snares other than Hammer of Justice. This is why the synergy between a mage and a paladin is better than a lock and a paladin - the mage has an array of snares, stuns, roots, and crowd control to offer, not to mention decursing. A druid and a warlock, or a priest and a warlock work together pretty well. A priest/lock combo has three fears, heals, dispels, and a disposable mini-tank. Pretty good setup.

The ranged stun that's been mentioned is a spell called Repentance, which puts the target to sleep. Only accessible through Retribution talents.

[Tobin]

We had Hubby's prot pally for BM - it worked pretty well.

We let the adds stream past him and had a rogue play goalie - I don't remember if we tried to let hubby keep everything or not, but I don't think so.

We just burned the portalkeeper down (me & warlock) while he kept their attention.

A Prot pally is a thing of wonder in SHalls:

Gauntlet - have him consc-pull everything up to the top and obliterate them all at once. Captain America shield the gladiators when they're low.

[Kalbear]

Haven't seen Vanessa on yet - might send her a mail to get invited. I've been on late on the US West coast ,so I don't think any of our group has been around for more than a bit.

We might hit you up on the instance thing here soon, though I suspect I need to get out of silvermoon/ghostlands and go somewhere else to be really useful. Only 8 more levels though, right?

[Arakasi]

Minaku all pallies do have hammer of justice, which is a 6 second stun on a 1 minute cooldown. I believe that drops to 45 seconds with a talent from one of their trees.

I love doing BM on my shaman. I just blow up the adds with lightning bolt or chain lightning for the 3 packs. Very easy and what my spells don't get my searing totem and lightning shield finish off.

[PhelanArcetus]

Hammer of Justice is for all pallies, Protection tree drops cooldown. Slightly over melee range. Repetence is 31 points in Retribution, moderate range, 6 second sleep on humanoids only. I'll be picking it up at 50. If you're a blood elf, you can also use the racial to interrupt spells.

And all paladins can also use the incredibly unpopular Judgement of Justice, to prevent runners in PvE. Seal of Justice is silly; chance to stun for 2 seconds on hit (and when I tried it, proc happens enough that a target quickly becomes immune to the stun), but the judgement prevents the target from fleeing. Granted that's only good for one specific situation, but it's something to remember.

I did consider going mace spec, and offhanding the blackout, but I decided I wanted to stay with swords, for style, if nothing else. Also while the haste proc is very very sweet, in general I prefer stats and ratings to procs. The rogue probably won't be back to Kara, also; I certainly won't be switching out as I'm the main tank (and decidedly better geared than our second tank), but any week we don't get to chess I may go in for the free epix there. But the only thing left of any interest is the belt, and I'm not sure about that. I'd only take it if I was going to replace some more of Primalstrike, and I haven't researched that in any depth. Something to do sometime while at work, I guess. Though I doubt we'll be missing chess unless we find the rarer opera events hurt us too much. And we're supposed to be adding a second day... but haven't yet.

[Arakasi]

The JoJ is nice in pvp for druids and rogues because while they can still run from you, they can't run any faster than you anymore. It really screws up their escapability options.

[Kalbear]

MM, that's not that great of a strategy when I'm playing with other players. They don't need me to skin, I suspect, and having a 'making' profession is just fun! I'd also like to have something that I can level up when I'm tired of doing things like grinding. I think I'll ask my guild and see what they might need or want. Engineering does look damn fun though. <br /><br />It is looking more like I should do something like this for the earlier levels. Tank/Heal pallys are hard to level, and having a lot of points in retribution will make levels go a bit faster. Later I can respect to something more tanky/healing.

[Slurktan]

MM, that's not that great of a strategy when I'm playing with other players. They don't need me to skin, I suspect, and having a 'making' profession is just fun! I'd also like to have something that I can level up when I'm tired of doing things like grinding. I think I'll ask my guild and see what they might need or want. Engineering does look damn fun though. <br /><br />It is looking more like I should do something like this for the earlier levels. Tank/Heal pallys are hard to level, and having a lot of points in retribution will make levels go a bit faster. Later I can respect to something more tanky/healing.

I'd go with a Ret build until level 35. At that point switch to Prot. It is ridiculously easy to level as a Prot pally as you can AoE grind any non spellcaster. Go engineering if you plan on tanking later, the hat at 350 is spiffy.

Plus it's just fun where you kill 6 mobs at once and end up with full health and mana and see some people watching and clapping.

[PhelanArcetus]

As a paladin, I suggest putting your first ten points in holy. Get Divine Strength or Intellect (for low level I prefer Strength), and then Spiritual Focus. That talent makes a huge difference when you need to heal yourself and things are hitting you. After that, you can work on Retribution.

Protection is powerful, but not so much until you start to get serious gear and Holy Shield, at which point you grind out many foes at once. Retribution can kill very fast, but it has a weakness; the damage is for the most part uncontrolled bursts. As an example, I can go fight a guy and take a minute to kill him and need to heal myself during the fight. Then I can move on to his identical twin brother, and my first swing is a crit, with a seal of command proc that also crits. Boom, over half his life is now gone. It's when 2-3 attacks in a row don't hit with my slow weapon I start to go nuts. Holy is something of a middle ground with huge healing potential. Not much damage, but it's steady, and you can pretty much go forever. If you go retribution, keep an eye out for big, slow two-handed weapons. Alliance-side I like to get help with the level 20 quest for Verigan's Fist, which lasts me until I can get the Scarlet Monastery quests at 32 and get help lining up Bonebiter. I'm still using Bonebiter at 43, though I'm starting to look for a replacement.

A word of warning about most of the crafting professions: hitting 350 or so is not too hard. Going from 350 to 375 is going to cost an arm, a leg, your sanity, and your first born. Though it can pay off nicely with gear.