I heard general grumblings about the clarity of my previous loot policy so I changed it up a little bit though kept the same general idea.
Rank 1
Tanking Gear
Healing Gear
Rank 2
DPS Gear
Rank 3
Off Set Gear
Tanking gear is defined as anything with a defensive stat (Defense, Dodge, Parry or Block)
Healing gear is defined as anything with spell power and no hit
If the piece is not an improvement you are automatically dropped to Rank 3
Point System
The basis of the point system is that for progression we need to gear our tanks and healers first but not ignore others. Also, you will notice that there is no mention of how much of an improvement a piece is. This is to not penalize people who spend the time an effort to gear their characters outside of raids. The raid we are trying to progress in is not the place to gear up for the raid we are trying to progress in. It is not a DKP system. Your main spec is defined as out of the last 10 raid bosses you have downed you have been on this character in this spec more than half the time. In order to not penalize those who help the group by healing or tanking your main DPS spec ignores bosses you have tanked or healed.
Tank Gear Points
You are capable of tanking (+1)
You are spec’d to tank (+1)
You are currently tanking (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)
Healing Gear Points
You are capable of healing (+1)
You are spec’d to heal (+1)
You are currently healing (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)
DPS Gear Points
You are spec’d to use this piece (+1)
This is your main spec (+1)
You have not received a piece this raid ID (+1)
You have received a piece of gear this raid ID (-1 each)
Basics
First determine which Rank the gear is: Tanking, Healing or DPS.
Second determine who gets to roll on a piece using the appropriate point system: TGP, HGP or DGP. The people with the most points get to roll on the piece. If one person has more points than anyone else they get the piece.
Off-set or off-spec
If you decide to gear up for an off-set or off-spec the first piece you decide on rolling for follows the above rules but every off-set or off-spec piece you win after that costs you one shard or half the going price on the AH for a shard. This situation is defined as a piece that falls into rank 3 or is not your main spec or is not your current spec. If the piece is an improvement to your current or main spec this rule does not apply.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Raid Night
Naxx-
I logged online last night at around 5 minutes before the scheduled raid start time only to find that it got pushed back a half hour again. See, I am not the only one that is late. So I figured I would fly down to dragonblight and fish for a bit for some strength fish. I got a bunch of them and I asked one of my guildies if he had any flasks or elixirs. He made me a couple and I met him in agmar’s hammer to get them. After trading a bunch of things with him I started flying towards naxx to get ready for the run. My computer decided this was a good time to reboot. After manually rebooting (the button) and then ctrl-alt-del rebooting I finally got back in game and we started the military wing. We wiped once on instructor and then downed him with no drops for me. During this fight our freshly minted holy paladin (he healed our guild all through BC but decided to take a break from the paladin for awhile) told me he put beacon of light on me and left it there during most of the way to the boss. I guess seal and judgment of blood do a bunch of damage. It probably doesn’t help that I pulled aggro a couple times. Anyway, we make our way to harvester which is one we haven’t beat yet. After some discussion I go over to the undead side ( I had to remind the RL I do a crap ton more damage to undead) and we one shot the fight. It was pretty nice but, alas no drops for the retribution paladin. The new holy paladin did get a piece as did the shaman healer. We then went towards the four horsemen and made it there with a couple of scares from accidental pulls but no wipes. We tried to do the horsemen but, after two attempts neither one of which lasting more than a minute, we decided to try with another healer later.
Arch-
We decided to try the vault as a guild but it was close to time for wintergrasp fighting to start. While inside the vault the fight started and we ended up doing that as a guild.
Wintergrasp-
We had a pretty good time doing the wintergrasp fighting. We invited some others that were there into our raid. We ended up successfully defending the keep from the allies. I got some of the quests done and went to fight some more allies to finish the kill x allies quest. I think there were multiple raids going on but, we still won so it was all good. I ended up getting like 5k honor which is cool.
I logged online last night at around 5 minutes before the scheduled raid start time only to find that it got pushed back a half hour again. See, I am not the only one that is late. So I figured I would fly down to dragonblight and fish for a bit for some strength fish. I got a bunch of them and I asked one of my guildies if he had any flasks or elixirs. He made me a couple and I met him in agmar’s hammer to get them. After trading a bunch of things with him I started flying towards naxx to get ready for the run. My computer decided this was a good time to reboot. After manually rebooting (the button) and then ctrl-alt-del rebooting I finally got back in game and we started the military wing. We wiped once on instructor and then downed him with no drops for me. During this fight our freshly minted holy paladin (he healed our guild all through BC but decided to take a break from the paladin for awhile) told me he put beacon of light on me and left it there during most of the way to the boss. I guess seal and judgment of blood do a bunch of damage. It probably doesn’t help that I pulled aggro a couple times. Anyway, we make our way to harvester which is one we haven’t beat yet. After some discussion I go over to the undead side ( I had to remind the RL I do a crap ton more damage to undead) and we one shot the fight. It was pretty nice but, alas no drops for the retribution paladin. The new holy paladin did get a piece as did the shaman healer. We then went towards the four horsemen and made it there with a couple of scares from accidental pulls but no wipes. We tried to do the horsemen but, after two attempts neither one of which lasting more than a minute, we decided to try with another healer later.
Arch-
We decided to try the vault as a guild but it was close to time for wintergrasp fighting to start. While inside the vault the fight started and we ended up doing that as a guild.
Wintergrasp-
We had a pretty good time doing the wintergrasp fighting. We invited some others that were there into our raid. We ended up successfully defending the keep from the allies. I got some of the quests done and went to fight some more allies to finish the kill x allies quest. I think there were multiple raids going on but, we still won so it was all good. I ended up getting like 5k honor which is cool.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Weekend Report
Another weekend gone and what have I gotten done?
Quests-
I am still working on the Icecrown quest achievement. I am at 133/140 now and all the quests I have left are group quests. I got some guildies to help me with a few of them but, several of the ones left now are in phased areas of the map. And one of them requires more than one person in the group to be on the quest.
Reputation-
I got exalted on Knights of the Ebon Blade by running a bunch of heroics and also the quests in Icecrown. I also made it to honored on Sons of Hodir doing the dailies. I am not sure which tabard to wear in instances now since I didn’t see much in the way of reputation gear for the other two factions. I am just wearing the Kirin Tor tabard until I decide since more rep with them lowers repair costs in Dalaran.
Gear-
I got my new bracers enchanted and put some gems in them so I wear them now. Those replace my vengeance bindings bringing my epic count up to eight. Because of my new reputation with the Knights I was able to get some new boots which replace my crafted ones. More than likely I won’t replace my helmet since it is in the top three in the game right now. I finally made a list of heroics to do to replace my blue armor to best pre-naxx in slot. I also helped one of our enchanters to make his runed titanium rod so he could put massacre on my polearm and greater assault on my boots.
PvP-
While doing the daily for the Viking women a rogue and DK tried to kill me. Both of them were level 80 so, I figured I was dead. Well, it turns out that they should have left me to do my daily since they both got to do the flight of shame about 60 seconds after they attacked. Then after they resurrected they ran away. Sometimes people are just amusing. The next day a mage tried the same thing, attack me while I am doing the pit fighting. He ended up fully following their example by making his flight of shame in around 45 seconds. Also last night I did a Wintergrasp defense, unsuccessfully I might add, and got like 3000 honor. That puts me around 19k honor. Maybe I will buy something soon.
Heroics-
We ran a few heroics (HoL, UP and UK) and I have to say I have not successfully killed Loken on heroic yet. It is really annoying that we can’t get that one done. We tried the stand and fight method and the healer died every time. We tried the up and down path and we could only do like 4 times up and down before we screwed it up. We tried the right left method and didn’t even make it to the right before we died. I don’t know what to do. I need to finish that one but, I hate dropping 75-100 gold on attempts. That’s more then I usually spend on repairs for a raid night.
Alts-
I ran my lock a little bit to try and get him up in level and work a little on his tailoring. I really want to get his tailoring up so I can make bigger bags for my main. I just can’t get enough interest in him to level him up.
Quests-
I am still working on the Icecrown quest achievement. I am at 133/140 now and all the quests I have left are group quests. I got some guildies to help me with a few of them but, several of the ones left now are in phased areas of the map. And one of them requires more than one person in the group to be on the quest.
Reputation-
I got exalted on Knights of the Ebon Blade by running a bunch of heroics and also the quests in Icecrown. I also made it to honored on Sons of Hodir doing the dailies. I am not sure which tabard to wear in instances now since I didn’t see much in the way of reputation gear for the other two factions. I am just wearing the Kirin Tor tabard until I decide since more rep with them lowers repair costs in Dalaran.
Gear-
I got my new bracers enchanted and put some gems in them so I wear them now. Those replace my vengeance bindings bringing my epic count up to eight. Because of my new reputation with the Knights I was able to get some new boots which replace my crafted ones. More than likely I won’t replace my helmet since it is in the top three in the game right now. I finally made a list of heroics to do to replace my blue armor to best pre-naxx in slot. I also helped one of our enchanters to make his runed titanium rod so he could put massacre on my polearm and greater assault on my boots.
PvP-
While doing the daily for the Viking women a rogue and DK tried to kill me. Both of them were level 80 so, I figured I was dead. Well, it turns out that they should have left me to do my daily since they both got to do the flight of shame about 60 seconds after they attacked. Then after they resurrected they ran away. Sometimes people are just amusing. The next day a mage tried the same thing, attack me while I am doing the pit fighting. He ended up fully following their example by making his flight of shame in around 45 seconds. Also last night I did a Wintergrasp defense, unsuccessfully I might add, and got like 3000 honor. That puts me around 19k honor. Maybe I will buy something soon.
Heroics-
We ran a few heroics (HoL, UP and UK) and I have to say I have not successfully killed Loken on heroic yet. It is really annoying that we can’t get that one done. We tried the stand and fight method and the healer died every time. We tried the up and down path and we could only do like 4 times up and down before we screwed it up. We tried the right left method and didn’t even make it to the right before we died. I don’t know what to do. I need to finish that one but, I hate dropping 75-100 gold on attempts. That’s more then I usually spend on repairs for a raid night.
Alts-
I ran my lock a little bit to try and get him up in level and work a little on his tailoring. I really want to get his tailoring up so I can make bigger bags for my main. I just can’t get enough interest in him to level him up.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Spell Rotations
Since paladins are a first come first served rotation DPS class, I have a priority of casting as I am sure most of us do. With global cooldowns at 1.5 seconds it is very important to cast the best spell you can cast as soon as you can cast it. Basically I start at the top and cast the first spell that is off c/d and meets the special requirement in parentheses. to arrive at these rotations i did a lot of reading and practicing. There are different circumstances which vary what I do but here are the basics.
Elite pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Avenging Wrath (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Trinket (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Judgment of Wisdom
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Non-elite AoE pulls (instance)-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Solo small group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Judgment of Wisdom
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Consecrate
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Solo large group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Consecrate
Divine Storm
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Single non-elite (not prefered)-
Judgment of Wisdom
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
they should be dead
Elite pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Avenging Wrath (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Trinket (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Judgment of Wisdom
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Non-elite AoE pulls (instance)-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Solo small group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Judgment of Wisdom
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Consecrate
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Solo large group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Consecrate
Divine Storm
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Single non-elite (not prefered)-
Judgment of Wisdom
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
they should be dead
Naxx-10 and Sarth-10
Naxx-10
Last night we farmed the four bosses we have on farm in Naxx. We closed the arachnid wing which gave me some new bracers which are a slight improvement on my vengeance bindings. For some reason we had a little trouble with Grand Widow last night. We actually wiped two or three times before finishing her. One thing I learned was I am not the worst one for starting early on a mob or boss. When we downed patchwerk I got the healing plate to use for my holy set. Even with the changed glyphs from last week I am still running into mana issues with patchwerk. When he got down to around 40% or so I had to pop a mana pot. Not sure if I am doing something wrong here or not. One of the contributing factors in this is that I am not being healed so no mana from SA. I do the same rotation as I have read in most places: JoW, Exorcism, CS, DS, Consecrate, DP and pop wings and trinket. I repeat these as often as their cooldowns allow using pretty much that as the priority.
Sarth-10
Since we got a late start last night due to one of the tanks showing up late, we left Naxx and went to Sarth for some badges and loot. I actually made it on time last night in fact I was 30 minutes early. The 22-slot bag dropped along with the bag of loot. Some other stuff dropped but, not for me. I lost the roll on both of the bags. I just took my badges and signed off.
Net result-
I ended up with some healing gear and eight badges for the night. Not bad for 25 or so gold in repairs. Hopefully I can get a couple heroics in so I can move closer to some more badge gear.
Things I have observed-
One bad thing about being a retribution paladin in a raid is that I don’t get to see very much. I pretty much have to watch my cooldowns fairly close so I don’t miss one. Death Knights can put out some serious DPS. The more the tank moves around with the mob I am trying kill the lower my DPS goes. I can really pump out some serious DPS when I am standing still. Trying to maintain a full set for all four of the roles I want to takes up a ton of bag space. No one, including me, likes to be told to change the way they play their characters.
Last night we farmed the four bosses we have on farm in Naxx. We closed the arachnid wing which gave me some new bracers which are a slight improvement on my vengeance bindings. For some reason we had a little trouble with Grand Widow last night. We actually wiped two or three times before finishing her. One thing I learned was I am not the worst one for starting early on a mob or boss. When we downed patchwerk I got the healing plate to use for my holy set. Even with the changed glyphs from last week I am still running into mana issues with patchwerk. When he got down to around 40% or so I had to pop a mana pot. Not sure if I am doing something wrong here or not. One of the contributing factors in this is that I am not being healed so no mana from SA. I do the same rotation as I have read in most places: JoW, Exorcism, CS, DS, Consecrate, DP and pop wings and trinket. I repeat these as often as their cooldowns allow using pretty much that as the priority.
Sarth-10
Since we got a late start last night due to one of the tanks showing up late, we left Naxx and went to Sarth for some badges and loot. I actually made it on time last night in fact I was 30 minutes early. The 22-slot bag dropped along with the bag of loot. Some other stuff dropped but, not for me. I lost the roll on both of the bags. I just took my badges and signed off.
Net result-
I ended up with some healing gear and eight badges for the night. Not bad for 25 or so gold in repairs. Hopefully I can get a couple heroics in so I can move closer to some more badge gear.
Things I have observed-
One bad thing about being a retribution paladin in a raid is that I don’t get to see very much. I pretty much have to watch my cooldowns fairly close so I don’t miss one. Death Knights can put out some serious DPS. The more the tank moves around with the mob I am trying kill the lower my DPS goes. I can really pump out some serious DPS when I am standing still. Trying to maintain a full set for all four of the roles I want to takes up a ton of bag space. No one, including me, likes to be told to change the way they play their characters.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
First visit to VoA
I finished changing out my gems for all blue level gems on Tuesday just in time for one of my guildies to ask in guild chat if anyone wanted to tank or DPS heroic VoA. I volunteered to DPS and about 15 seconds later I got an invite. Now let me say this, I have never done a VoA (10 or 25) nor successfully done any 25-man raid. So, I accept a summons because for some reason I haven’t seen the portal from Dalaran appear when we have Wintergrasp in a long time. I ran into the instance and waited with the group for the rest of the people to show up. While waiting I figured it would be a good idea to read the strategy for the fight. It seemed fairly simple: stay out of the spikes, stay out of the cloud things, once in awhile the boss will grab the MT and the OT needs to pick him up and he will random charge someone occasionally. We wiped several times which surprised most of the people in there because apparently it is the easiest raid boss in the game. I was worried I wasn’t doing my part but, with full raid buffs I ended up hitting around 2.3 kDPS. This ranked me around #7 on the charts. So, I was doing my part of the DPS. So, I looked at damage and healing taken and mine was a little higher that other DPS types but, with SoB that is to be expected. We tried three times and failed then the RL said he was dumping people who were not performing and I figured I would be gone but, nope we got some more people in and wiped once and then got it done. I got some gold and a couple emblems. One thing I didn’t like was a ton of lag as soon as spells started flying. Not sure if I should or even can do anything about that.
After returning to Dalaran I bought my badge belt. I put a buckle on it and added a gem to that. I am considering changing out my gloves but I have replaced a lot of my hit with crit rating and am fairly close to the hit cap so I am not sure.
One of our main healers was on so, I was hoping to get a heroic in but, he wanted to work on his holy paladin to better heal raids. We ended up going to HoS and walking through that easy. After that I signed off for the night.
After returning to Dalaran I bought my badge belt. I put a buckle on it and added a gem to that. I am considering changing out my gloves but I have replaced a lot of my hit with crit rating and am fairly close to the hit cap so I am not sure.
One of our main healers was on so, I was hoping to get a heroic in but, he wanted to work on his holy paladin to better heal raids. We ended up going to HoS and walking through that easy. After that I signed off for the night.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Weekend questing and Naxx-10 raid
Weekend Questing-
I decided to try to finish off the quest achievements in Northrend this past weekend. I got Stormpeaks done and the other zones were already done and got a good chunk of Icecrown done. I only have around 20 or so left to get that achievement done. Unfortunately I may run into issues without a group as it appears that a lot of the quest chains require a group. During the process of doing these quests I made around 2000 gold so I am doing ok on money again.
Monday Raid-
We went back to Naxx-10 again and gave Instructor another shot. This time we did it no problem. Our GL/RL thinks that when we tried it last Thursday it was bugged since he didn’t have any problem using the controlling crystals this time. We got him down in one shot this time. Nothing dropped for me this time. Next we tried Gothik the Harvester. After about 5 failed attempts we called it and went and gave Sartharion a try. Cleared the adds and engaged the boss. We died the first time but, on the second try we succeeded. The drops were a 22 slot bag, a bag of emblems, tier 7 shaman chest, and a spirit trinket. I rolled on the bags but, lost both. After that we called it a night.
Observations
One thing of note was that before the raid I went ahead and changed my glyphs to the ones recommended in most places I have looked. I also changed out a couple gems to blue level ones. During some of the trash pulls around sarth I noticed my DPS meter going up to 3500. I have not seen anything that high except in those gimmick fights where some mob or another gives you crazy buffs. I definitely like that number. I think I will go give some GC some gold and finish out putting the blue gems in my slots. I think I will also get the T-7 gloves for emblems and enchant and gem that up. Hopefully I can pull off some more numbers like that.
I decided to try to finish off the quest achievements in Northrend this past weekend. I got Stormpeaks done and the other zones were already done and got a good chunk of Icecrown done. I only have around 20 or so left to get that achievement done. Unfortunately I may run into issues without a group as it appears that a lot of the quest chains require a group. During the process of doing these quests I made around 2000 gold so I am doing ok on money again.
Monday Raid-
We went back to Naxx-10 again and gave Instructor another shot. This time we did it no problem. Our GL/RL thinks that when we tried it last Thursday it was bugged since he didn’t have any problem using the controlling crystals this time. We got him down in one shot this time. Nothing dropped for me this time. Next we tried Gothik the Harvester. After about 5 failed attempts we called it and went and gave Sartharion a try. Cleared the adds and engaged the boss. We died the first time but, on the second try we succeeded. The drops were a 22 slot bag, a bag of emblems, tier 7 shaman chest, and a spirit trinket. I rolled on the bags but, lost both. After that we called it a night.
Observations
One thing of note was that before the raid I went ahead and changed my glyphs to the ones recommended in most places I have looked. I also changed out a couple gems to blue level ones. During some of the trash pulls around sarth I noticed my DPS meter going up to 3500. I have not seen anything that high except in those gimmick fights where some mob or another gives you crazy buffs. I definitely like that number. I think I will go give some GC some gold and finish out putting the blue gems in my slots. I think I will also get the T-7 gloves for emblems and enchant and gem that up. Hopefully I can pull off some more numbers like that.
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