A Hallowed time

I'm not a huge Achievement person. Sure if they come my way I'm ok with it but very rarely do I go looking for one. Recently I've been so bored I've been doing the holiday events. I opted out of brewfest but did get Flamekeeper at the end of this summer.

For some reason thou, my favorite event is Halloween. Maybe because my pally came into her own at the end of TBC and that was the event or maybe because the boss has such an awesome voice track. The first year I let everyone else in my small guild get the mount when we did it. I wasn't always interested in mounts. I really like the mount and this year I've been doing it every day for the mount. I did get one on my hunter who I never play any longer.

Since I have been doing the boss every day I figured for the extra gold I'd go out and do the meta... well I've been doing this for three years now. THREE YEARS! and this morning I got-

Here was the hold up [Hallowed Helm], yes this cardboard helm that everyone of my toons had, one of my alts had four of them. I was so frustrated by the RNG bug. I've had run ins with RNG before but this is a once a year thing. Beside for THREE years I've been running this boss and oh my I didn't have this drop on the only toon I cared about it for. This morning I logged on and bingo:

Happenings~

With the holiday thing going on and my uncertainty with my current guild (more on that later) I haven't been playing much as a tank or anything other than trick o treating. I did run a ton w/an alt to get BOA gear at its inflated price and in my last post you can see some of the things I went thru so I kinda backed off on doing randoms and just did my HH daily. In other words my main was my main for a bit. I played her alot lately.

I bought a few mounts [Red Drake] and [Cenarion War Hippogryph] from the vendors. Yes not the smartest thing before the release of Cata but I have 310% speed so all the mounts fly the same and I can ride some mounts I've always wanted to at nice speeds.

Tanking~

I raided! Yep, sure did. I made the time to get in there with my guild. I had been on late and had lots of little tells to come raid again. I haven't been for RL bit me in the behind. School was killing me and family stuff had me busy. We spent a night wiping on Heroic Prof Puteface. Not a fight I've ever really enjoyed on normal. We made great progress and wanted to hold over, but I'm sure like most guilds in the world, we have issues with people showing up.

Today we went in and ripped the first few bosses apart, I got to kite on Rotface and do the orb duty on the princes. I was almost a tank again. But I do want to say being away from the raids for as long as I have I felt rust! big time rust. Aggro wasn't bad but other tanks were pulling from me just due to muscle memory. I also had a real fun experience on Heroic Marrowgar, I was out front in aggro and we did our lil L-L-R movement and my bar wasn't locked....LOL I was missing AS, judgement and CS was now in a different spot. Bone storm was a scramble for me to get the bar set up and locked before I had to move to much. That was fun!!!

A quick note, I figured out how to do the mouse over linds from wowhead.....but it takes me forever to create them. Look for these very special hoverover links in the future.

Tanking Adventureless?

I took the night off...

Yes, I didn't even log on to bank, check mail, nothing. Is that odd? Maybe, kinda, not really. It is however something I had to do and with the release of 4.0.1 I was working hard at getting the rotating and its proc'y nature down. Threat wasn't really a factor any longer.

I noticed the other day they "stealth" buffed prots threat, without buffing prot. They gave us a little buff by adding [Holy Wrath] which increases its damage by 30% and [Crusader Strike] which buffed us 30% base weapon damage. The other two trees got a buff and help the prot tree big time.

Back to the night off.
I wanted to just get away from the game for a bit. I don't need a break, heck I could have used one of those months ago. I'm not raiding right now. Dealing with school and some RL things have put a stop to that for the moment and beside I LOATH ICC. To me it is OLD and not fun in the least. To tank it is boring at best. Yes there is a few fun fights but all in all I'm pretty much done in there.

By choice thou, I'm grinding. Yep, grinding for a piece of over inflated JP BOA gear [Stained Shadowcraft Tunic] . Am I saving time grinding for BOA...not really. I am, however learning the rotation for prot. I guess I'm killing two birds with one stone. I really want to level a druid, I don't know if its going to be troll or tauren but I'm going to level one as a tank.

Tanking Adventures?

None really, I mean I'm trying to gather info and get the hang of and muscle coordination for the pally rotation. Others are seeing what their toon can do. For the most part every run is an adventure. I will say this, unlike the 969 etc....when you don't have a cool down ready and don't get a proc if someone happens to pull or a mob gets aggro'd, taunt is all you have and well, with the smart dps out there they usually keep DPS'n after a taunt.

Taiten~ This is the toon I'm grinding the with for the BoA. Not bad geared, very heroic capable but this toon offers a bit of a challenge due to the Battlegroup she is on. We have a few very very good realms and a few not so good. Oh, there is the other class in this too, Mal'Ganis, they are on their own level of Pugdom hate. I picked this to get a feel of threat. See they have some of the worlds best players, you see those players and know almost instantly. There is also the other side of Mal'Ganis...This is where the hate comes from. All the hate you see. The undguilded/alt guilded/or "were on Mal'Ganis you must kiss our behind" player.

I had two runs recently, one in DTK and one in Gun'drak. Both with Mages from, you guessed it... Mal'Ganis. Here is the odd thing, I entered the group midfight. This is always telling of th run, two things happen here, you get "oh great a tank" which means the other was really bad or had to bolt or "crickets" and this usually means....the tank is in trouble.

DTK- entered 1st hallway before 1st boss where all the undead are. I pulled an abom and the ghouls. I guess it wasn't enough cause..Mr.Mal'ganis mage, pulls the rest and iceblocks. I had holy wrath up and didn't drop conc so I'm praying that I could keep aggro on these two sets coming from behind me. I had to pop both cool downs and I see in party..."now this tank knows what he is doing" from the healer. Good sign? Heal me instead of worrying about my skill and I won't have to pop CD's, I think to my self. Healer is getting mana, that doesn't stop Mr. Mal'ganis mage, he grabs the boss. Taunt tattle tells me, Mr DK from another realm is going to be the hero and DG's the boss to him.

OMG, now wonder the other tank left.

I did get aggro and we put Trollgore down really fast. Mr Mage's dps...a solid 2.3k on a single target.

Now the room after is the spider that flee to the caves at low health. I like to grab them all and pull them to the hall way so you have more dps time. No....the boomkin decieds he is going to pull different raid ID's and hurricane, pulling the caster trolls that are webbed and mr. DK is DG ever chance he gets.

This is going to be fun. Not, really.

On to next boss and down w/o issue, but Mal'ganis mage blinks past, grabs the next room and ice blocks again.

OMG why is it the last tank left?

On to King Dread, Mage starts pulling adds and DK grabs dread. I got aggro, and adds. Then down goes the boss. I type in party after Dread dies.

"you pull it, you tank it"

The healer gets me! Up the stairs and the knock back boom, dk and mal'ganis mage decied this is their time to shine.

Four pack pulled, pat, pulled. Healer and me...we are mounted!

Down goes the mage but they managed to kill the rest. Mal'ganis mage "tank do you think you could do your job"?

I state, guys lets not make this hard...

Did they listen? No AT ALL. They decide to pull the last hallway, my only worry was keeping the healer alive. We managed. Get to last boss and bamb...Army of the dead...AWESOME, I don't even need to tank.

Boss dies and I get, stop sucking at tanking, l2hold theat.

"thank you Mr. Mage, can you do more that 2.3k DPS even w/the new patch" I say.

I woner why the last tank left?

Gun'drak-
Shammy healer, Mage (Mal'ganis), Lock, Warrior.
Zone after 1st boss is dead. Say hell, grab a 3 pack and the pat on the bones, turn mobs and burn them down. Things are going ok, get to second boss and he goes down.

I wonder, why did the other tank leave.

Jump down in water, the mage goes 1st, almost dies from fish. This is where the fun starts. "Why the "&(*@" did you let me almost die, tank"?

I ignore.

He goes in pulls the next set of mobs and the set fighting on the floor. I got both under control..and think.

OMG I bet this is why the other tank left.

The healer and Mage are in the same guild from Mal'Ganis. The mage is in AoE heaven and says, "look at that DPS", pulls Morabi and off we go.

Right before he jumps down, he says, "try not to let me die in the water this time Baddie" As we get to the platform he is pulling. I'm pretty much past the point of trying. I won't win.

Keep the healer alive is my only worry.

He pulls the rest of the instance when he wants. We get to the top right before the boss and I take a second to catch my breath. I'm fuming mad at this guy. Very rude, arrogant and well, not good. He starts in w/the "gogogo".

I reply, you have pulled everything else, why stop now?

Off he goes, but as he pulled I pulled and we both pulled the different groups. He dies...fast. Even his pocket healer couldn't keep him alive.

We managed to kill the rest w/out the best mage in the worlds dps, which BTW was about 3.5k, not bad but not world beating.

I try to be cordial in runs. I understand people make mistakes in pulls and threat. Its ok, really. I also know, Heroics are a joke, but we are there together right? Then why be an ass hat?

So I was...

Before the mage can get a rez, I pulled the boss. Yep, I know I was going to hear it but I didn't care at this point. I wanted to be finished. Incomes the whispers...

"you are the worst tank ever" "I'm the best dps you got" "L2play" etc...
I lived, boss went down and I got my JP's.

I have very little tolerance for players like this from Mal'Ganis. I've seen it too much. I've been ninja'd and booted from runs from this server. I've seen them berate others for low gear score and in general they are a horrible lot of people. Not all but in general.

Chasey~
I jumped on my main for a bit, to say hi and do a few things. They were looking to run a random, I had them invite me. This was mains w/very heavy DPS.

I know I would have to work to keep aggro. We got FoS and DPS was on average 5k per pack...with 7k on the bosses. They didn't go easy on me and I didn't lose aggro. The work I've been doing on my rotation is going smoothly. It was a fun run.

Initial impressions 4.0.1

My old friend, threat management.

I spent way to much time the last few days getting my UI, add-ons and toons set up. I still need to work on my hunter and priest. I did totally redo the WTF, Cache, and Interface folders. That took some extra time fixing everything.

I jumped on my main, Chasey. I had very little clue as to what was going on. It was kinda silly, but from the looks of trade chat, I wasn't the only one. I set up my spec fixed some UI keybinds and headed to the trainer. I was amazed by the gem changes and some of my enchants were missing but I really wanted to get into a 5 man and try out the rotation and see how I stacked up to the new threat mechanism.

I've never been a Concencrate spammer but that much mana scared me to  death. So I barely touched it. I took a look at my stats, and que'd up. I pulled H-HoL. Not my fav but a good test of both AoE and single pulls. A good way to jump right in.

I noticed right away I wasn't generating aggro like I normally do.It wasn't bad but mobs used to STICK to me, now I had to work for it a bit. Even on my 277 geared toon. All in all, I picked up on the rotation pretty quick, I still have a bad habit of hitting HoR as my go to thing and well, its not set up like that. I don't like SoR sitting right there and not really touchable until you ramp up the combo points.

I died once but I was able to manage my threat decently. By the end of the run I felt comfortable. I was shocked that mana is not an issue at all now. And really incoming damage isn't bad.

I will add that my damage is WAY DOWN, way way down. I'm used to doing about 4k easy maybe more on this goon in my DPS heroic set up, I did 2500 in this run. I was shocked.

A change of heart?

Maybe ...

I jumped on my other pallys (don't judge me I like the class lol), my otherdin, the Belf on Steamwheedle. She is decently geared, mosty 232 and I guess a GS of 5kish. I spec'd her different than my main, and did my runeforging on this toon. I added my gems til my libram even figured out how to put my glyphs in. Yes, I ran w/my main without a rock in the libram, runeforged gear or glyphs set up.

I qued up and landed H-VH. The group was a priest heals, a rogue, a ele shammy and a mage. I will say, with all pun aside the priest was a saint. I don't think on any pull in this place I fully tanked the entire time. Either the mage or the shammy had a mob on them. I even started marking in the 4 pulls and guess what...they tanked. Neither died in the run which was good, the healer kept them alive. I really tried in this run too. It got bad towards the end. Before the final boss, I typed...."you two have been really tough on me,  can see come Cata, you will lead to alot of wipes. Aggro is different now, you have to stay on the tanks marked mob." the response...? You guessed it, well we will if the tank is as bad as you. L2Play newb. The healer stuck up for me saying, its not the tanks fault you two have been brutal. I sent the rouge a tell, "did you put tricks on me"? Every pull, was the response I got...OH WOW! The mage and shammy did about 5k, not mind blowing but I think more than anything was the time, they were right on the mobs. I had no time at all.

I ran again just to see, and well, I struggled w/aggro but not that bad. I asked in party, how is threat? I got a, not bad at all.

I shrugged this off as, these guys just don't get it yet. I really have a hard time believing that aggro was that different from my, unglyphed, runforged unenchanted main. But I later found it, it really is a bit of a gear issue.

On my Alliance pally, I did struggle with a mage, but she was very cool and said I'm trying to hold back. When I started marking, things went smoother. Grand Crusader is pretty amazing. I love the AS proc alot and makes a silly lil mob who decides to wander off to a foolish DPS much easier to contain.

This can't be said enough....BLIZZ PLEASE FIX THE GOSH DARN DAZED BUG. Its really hard to move mobs around with this. If you must allow the mobs to daze us, then fix mob pathing. Its really hard to position mobs while getting dazed and if you need to stop thru a group....you get dazed making you take more damage.

Overall I'm pretty ok with the changes, even to Holy. So far so good. I would like to worry about threat less or...if they must make us ramp up holy power for our big nuke, allow us the same kind of damage on AoE too. I don't really have a suggestion with this other than maybe WoG being that AoE heal and snap aggro when you have 3 holy power on your bar.

DPS has been a bit more patient during this phase, lets hope the bad ones figure out to assist and hit the marked target and AoE later in the pull. I don't mind working for aggro, I just hope us humans that play the game make the adjustment and keep them up.

The adjustment.

Wrath, YOU won't, be, missed.

Welcome to Wrath 2.0 or better know as 4.0.1. When we all log back on we will find, totally different rotations, skills, feel for the game and overly inflated prices. This is all going to lead to a total adjustment in about everything we do. Not to mention, time to reset up your UI and download all your mods again.

I know most of you don't come to my site to figure out pally mechanics, the ins and outs of the class, rotation info or just about anything that is theory crafting related. This doesn't hurt my feelings in the least, nor does it make me bad. There are far more knowledgeable people out there in WoW that devote time and set up programs to allow us all to understand this info that is coming to us really soon.

Up and coming...

So with the glut of newness and our new holy combo point stacking ability, I'm going to link you a few sites of worthwhile info. Please check these out and read up on the new mechanics of game play for prot pally's. After all this is what my blog is about, trials and tribulations of a prot pally.

Here are a few things we are going to have get a grip on: Mastery ~ avoidance ~ stats ~ glyphs ~ talents ~ rotation ~ cool down management.

In other words folks, if we were a foot ball team we'd have new offensive and defensive coordinators, hell from the looks of it a new coaching staff.

But we will make the adjustment!

How do I know? Well, yes we were at times OP in Wrath, but the BC tanks, adjusted and became the great tanks, the tanks the most of us strove to be. The Naxx and 3.0.1 tanks made the adjustment. The F.O.T.M tanks made it work to. So I have no doubt that the tanks or Paladins for that matter that take time to read a blog will make this work.

Sources-

Here is what we have had removed:

Removed Talents

•Redoubt has been removed from the tree.
•Combat Expertise has been removed from the tree.
•Spiritual Attunement has been removed from the tree.
•One-Handed Weapon Specialization has been removed from the tree.
•Improved Devotion Aura is gone.
•Divine Sacrifice has been removed from the tree.
•Improved Righteous Fury has been removed from the tree.
•Stoicism has been removed from the tree.
•Guardian's Favor has been removed from the tree.
•Anticipation has been removed from the tree.
•Divine Strength has been removed from the tree.

MMO's Paladin section Before I get into the list of the places I find my info I just wanted to say, the enitre time I was typing this my downloader was running, so...wow...ya...this is a big patch.

4.0.1 Guides:

Knaughty basics to 4.0 pally tanking

Rightous Defense guilde to 4.0.1 need to know

Glyphs - make sure you click on the pally hammer to see all the spec's glyphs.

Mastery and Runeforging - great discussion, I'd say probably a work in progress (WIP)and more to come.

Gear and gem/enchants - still WIP

Here is something every tank should read!!! Its Barathon's "Entry lvl to ICC tank" in the age of GS and what he went thru to pull this off.

Tanking Adventures

Onward to ICC-

I haven't been on alot since my last post. So, allow me a second to update what has been going on.

In the last post I talked about the guild I joined, i am just not in the position to raid in that style right now, so I thanked the guild I was in and bowed out. Not as a quitter but I didn't want to hold their raids up or sit on a lock out and not get an invite. It just wasn't a sound choice for either of us.

A spam came over trade "LFM, new guild looking to raid twice a week, in need of everything". I talked to the person about his guild, he told me they needed tank. I then informed him my gear was barely 5k and but I had 10/12 ICC HM experience just not on this toon. He said that would be great and sent me the invite. As soon as I arrived in guild I was told to sign up for the next nights raid if I could make it. I was the 3rd person signed up and had a free night. I was excited to make a raid and made sure nothing got in my way to give ICC a try w/a 39K hp tank and not the greatest avoidance.

I logged on half hour before the raid time, said high and did my daily heroic. While in the heroic, I looked at the raid make up, I seen we had 4 pally's, 3 warriors, a DK and a mage. Not the best group make up, I sent a tell to the RL and he said, we should be fine but probably wouldn't be taking everyone due to make up. As I finished up the daily, a new member got invited to the guild. I looked he was already in ICC and there were a few others as well. I asked in guild chat if invites were going out. No response. I sent a tell to the RL and he informed me that the new invite had experience and was going to be tanking with him tonite. I was taken aback.

At the same time, in Dal a Warrior from our guild was looking for ICC 10/25 w/a 5900 GS and 9/12HM experience. I looked the tanks up from that gulid i was in and seen the gear they had. I'm not the best geared on this toon either but both of these tanks were Pally's, poorly spec'd and didn't have the best gem/enchant set up. I sent a tell to the RL and thanked him for the invite but I excused myself from the guild.

Weekly-
The weekly was FL so I jumped in and got that accomplished. That went easy but of course someone talked to the wrong NPC and we needed to kill the towers. No big deal and that was an easy set of badges and quick gold. Back to dal to see about ICC...

So did I get in?
In trade a shammy pops up saying, LFM for ICC 10, probably only going 4/12 so bring alts but know fights. What?....Really?...NO GS requirement, surely this is fail, it has to be. Again, in trade....LFM ICC 10 need 1 tank, 1 heal. Only going 4/12 bring alts but know fights.

Why not, so I send my info and get the invite.

I zone in and I was actually excited.  I hadn't raided in a few weeks and hadn't been there for a while. I know I could tank it but would I get the OMG ur GS is suxors, plz leave. But to the groups credit I had none of that. My tanking partner....was decently set up but for the life of my I don't understand why pallys, don't have Crusade. Why in ICC would you not want 6% extra damge in a place full of undead? It baffles me.

Trash-
Not to brag but I seen after the 2nd pull who the MT was going to be. We were equally geared or close to it but I took lead right wasy, set the pace. OH WOW, did I take some damage! I mean horrible damge I was pinging off my low heath meter, over and over. My gear was going to be a problem.

Marrwogar-
I send a lil tell to the co-tank as I'll call hm and we agree on LRL for movement and the boss goes down w/o a problem. WoW this really is a face roll now. I mean walking in there with Chasey my 1st time, it was murder in there. Undergeared...alts and standing in icey fire, we didn't lose anyone AT...ALL. No loot :(

LDW-
Adds died very fast, bosses mana went down fast and w/three hunters in group and I still had to BoP one of them when she put touch on me. The Co-tank couldn't catch up fast enough on threat and the hunter grabbed aggro. Down she went, no loot.

Heroic loot ship-
We tried and wiped!
Round two- Normal loot ship-I jumped, we killed it fast and it felt really strange on the Alliance ship. Very fun, very fast and NO loot.

My goal is accomplished-
Sauerfang, Holy Jumping, the RP is soooo much less with the Alliance side. Its about a quarter of the RP. I had to use every ability n my tool box, I was not about to wipe here and have the group break up. The other tank, I just found out had never tanked ICC before, this was his 1st time tanking and his alt. OH WOW. I let him take boss 1st and had to yell in vent for him to taunt. I had to BoP myself to drop threat, Salv myself for threat and stun adds. I even had to taunt adds so they didn't get at our slow DPS. Did I mention we had 3 hunter? Guess how many traps were down? O N E! yep, only 1 hunter dropped a trap. We only had 1 mark pop thou.

On we went-
Yes with only 1 wipe, we moved to Rotface and festergut.
We did fester 1st, quickly explained the fight. My Co-Tank had never been this far in ICC, ever! We did one shot him, its really a face roll now w/the 30% buff, but I did have to LoH the priest healer who was about to die, and at about 5 stack after the switch the other tank died!. I Bubbled, and cancelled it and had good aggro. He was at about 10% and down he went. Again, no loot but I did now have the rep for my Ring. WOOT for me.

On to Rot, I did the kiting and just told the other tank move when he gets I get 5 big bubble. Well our DPS didn't understand getting to the kite tank. We wiped once. The second time, I died at about 25%, a hunter picked up kiting and we got him to 2%, there wen the raid, like a house of cards. The "I have to go" started and we called raid. I do have to say, for a "alt" group, it was pretty good. I got a guild invite, a ring and a bit of confidence.

My view-
Blizz accomplished what they wanted by allowing everyone to see the content. But I think they went overboard with this. Undergeared tanks, poor and low dps and healers that have no gems or enchants and we walked the 1st four. I can't wait for Cata to come out.

What's in a name....

Thank you wow GM.

When I transferred to Icecrown, someone had the name Chasey! It was a level 11 human paladin and the account was "not found". I put in a ticket and the GM came back and said that they couldn't do the change.

Three months later I check the name again and the name Chasey on Icecrown was not found. I tryed to make a toon with the name and it said "name already in use".

I put in another ticket and the GM told me, due to the integrity of accounts they wouldn't ask the player to change the name, yada yada yada. I responded back with you can't even find the name on armory.
So as I logged on today, the message I got was, Change the name as soon as you can.

Tanking adventures

Whats new-

I'm kind of in the spot where nothing really exciting can happen unless I get to raid. I finally got my GS up to 5k by getting the trinket Glyph of Indomitablity which isn't a great heroic trinket but decent for raids. Currently with the brewfest going on, I have dual stam trinkets if I want which gives me options.

Joined a guild-

Wait what? Yes I was already in a guild but I joined a guild which I can raid with. The recruitment post was really cool, they were recent server transfers and all "light of dawn". They post said they were planning on raiding two times a week and wanted competent but laid back back raiders who knew their class still wanted advancement for Cata.

I applied, did the interview and got the invite. They told me I was going to be an off-tank as long as my gear could move along which it should because most tanks in raiding guilds are 264/251 geared easy with only tiny pieces to replace. They had a few small questions for me about prot and spec....etc.
They seem very cool for the most part 'leet but past the hard core raids in Wrath at least.

Then the guy who invited me asked on vent, you going to be on for a few? I said sure, just doing another heroic to get my trinket. He then said, "good, let me get my shammy and I can run one with you". I was joking and said, watch we get Occulus and you will have no clue on how I tank in there. Guess what?

We got occ.

I jokingly said, lets do another so you can see how I tank in a place that give you a better idea. We qued again and got HoS which sucks because of the gauntlet which is less of a tank check and more of a "IR DPS let me hit the mobs when they show up" at this point in the game.

All I can say about this guy and his Shammy was, WOW. He did ridiculous dps, I mean out of this world. In heroics w/o BL he did 9k dps on bosses and almost 10k on trash. I did ok at holding threat but for the most part he killed the mob before he could get aggro. I salved him on ever boss fight. He was testing me no doubt. I'm competent enough tank to know threat a shammy draws w/o holding back isn't my fault. I couldn't help feeling I slightly failed his test.

In HoS the hunter grabbed a Golum before I could get him back a 3 pack ran past me, so I wasn't perfect on that pull, which no I didn't need to be but felt bad I let a few get past me.

I looked at his gear after the run as we were chatting and he was 277 in most slots. If he did have 264 it was best in slot or side grade. I said to him, "I'm kinda proud of myself for hold aggro after looking at your gear" his response makes me rethink me being in the "laid back" guild. He told me "you did ok, need to work on a few thing and a bit more threat".