Paladin Macro's

Divine Intervention
/target Tem
/raid <<DI casted on Tem>>
/cast divine intervention

SoC Macro
/cast judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Command

Crusader Strike & Avenging Wrath

/cast Crusader Strike

/stopcasting

/cast Avenging Wrath

PVE Vs PVP Gear

Other than the Gladiator's Great sword…
I had a look through all the available gear that MaxDPS.coom suggested as available gear pre-Gruul's and Co. And after having a beer and a chat with (Vitharr) http://renvik.blogspot.com, with tips on hit rating and recommended gear. It looks to me that the PVP gear very much lacks what is needed in PVE, that important Hit Rating cap. Thanks :)

Im still a little green behind the ears with it all but I think im getting there. I will be respeccing to get rid of the Kings, and getting improved Might, and will have a search through a few ret paladin profiles on armoury, for the most common talent build. Preferably PVE geared, and progressed.

I swapped out the Glad Scaled leg guards, and put up Vanquisher's Legplates as the PVE equivalent from Mech & Nightbane for the boots, pretty much covers the bottom half of Nad. Then there's the red belt that Blacksmiths can make, and I have a feeling HebrewHammer is looking to buy the recipe for, as he was asking for 600g from the guild bank. Not sure if I can justify 600g for a limited amount of classes, however Hebrew would make quite a few no doubt which leni could sell on the AH to return the 600g. But i dont think it is that pattern at all...i will have to wait and find out.

Meanwhile I managed to get 32 badges of EOTS. It was good fun, EOTS is much better than AB and WSG. I have enough badges of AV to buy the current Great Sword, and Sin from Thunderhorn recommends that I wait for PVP gear in a months time which will be the current seasons gear, ready and available for BG honor. So meantime, I will just bank up some badges and had them in for concerted efforts, for the 350 honor reward each turn in to pump my existing honor up for the current seasons great sword.

Nightbane

This was just plain and simple fun. Although there were some specific tactics, it was pretty much watch where you are, when to hit, and when not to. After we figured out what was happening around us, it was fairly easy to do.

Shame no plate boots dropped, but i didnt care about items tonight, i was just glad we got Nightbane down.

Oh, and as you can see, the UI is coming along nicely... I have added, ReadyCheck Announcer, Decursive and CastYeller. Also to come is a /roll addon for Loot, and a Mini map addon tidyup addon.

One off the list

Choker of Vile Intent
We had a sweet run through Kara last night, and got the 4 bosses down leading to Curator. Felt good to get one of the To Get Items off the list quickly, and felt like some progress was being made.
I was planning on doing some EOTS tonight, but Nightbane and Curator are on the cards tonight, and TDD is lacking a Raid Leader for the night. Although Clam will be there to assist.
I'll be needing the badges anyway, for buying a Primal Nether for the Furious Gizmatic Goggles which are the more likey item i will get before anything else.
Im debating currently whether to roll on the boots Nightbane drops, as it is on the top of the Ret DPS table for my available gear Ironstriders of Urgency
i would be a fool not to

Warsong..

Probably the worst BG in my memory since before TBC. I was daunting the idea of going here, after accepting the BG daily, but i was suprised to see the BG map show where both flags where at any time, even when the horde had the alliance one (Shift + M). I remember timeless fights of waiting ages to find the end of the stale mate of both sides having the flags. And tbh, i got my butt handed back to me very quickly on my first 10 minutes of play, until i figured out my key bindings and got a rythmn of what i was doing in a fight.
I had trouble logging on last night. It might have been my internet connection, but i couldnt log in on my main charcter at all. Eventually around 10PM UK time, i was able to, so 2 rounds of WSG for the daily win and i was happy.
Tonight i have a Karazhan run, so hopefully everything will run smoothly and we'll get some badges !!

To Get

I have re-done my To Get List, as as you can see its pretty much PVP focused, with some craftables and Badge of Justice rewards. Im not overly impressed with the time it will take to get the gear, or the alternative of rolling for gear in Kara or other places, but there are Badge rewards that i DO want to take advantage of. But i think it will be more rewarding in the end, splitting up the gear from PVP, Craftable, and Badge rewards.

I needed some direction to head for, as this is something new to me. Having to find alternative sources of gear outside of PVE to fit into a raid group. And so far its easier to jump into a BG for 20 mins rather than 1 hour in an instance getting to the end for the hope that something of use might drop at the end... The BG dailies..OMG thank you blizz, a quick and easy way to get some cash at the same time and not having to move anywhere, or fight for mobs to kill in the new patch island. And this is probably prehaphs where folk have been talking about wellfare epics, and i can see from a certain point of view how that works out. So i agree with those opinions, and dis-agree with a certain amount of immediate bias to my gear chasing...if you get my point?

Where to start

I managed to re-gem, and re-enchant my existing tanking gear to DPS...as well as i could have done. But that compromised between the starter gear i got in the begining, and the overall balance of dps and crit, i didnt suffer too much though..
Edit

Time Out

Currently on holiday, but i have been working on my UI. Creating my own compliation..
There's still some work to do, and as you can see im getting into BG as much as i can to climb the honor tree.

I managed to get my scaled gloves and enchanted them asap. It has been really good to just sit back, login for 15 mins do a BG and log out again without any fuss. Then relogging maybe an hour or so later and do the same over. Ofc, soicalising with the guild, and enchanting the odd gear in SW Keep for guildies is fine.

The UI so far has, Pitpull, Bartender3, Autobar, PerfectRaid, Prat (chat), Cellular and Buffwatch.

I will need to choose between DeadlyBossMods or BigWigs.. and some sort of Decurse Addon...

and a DPS meter somewhere

Chasing the Table - Part II

Karazhan Curator, Shade and Chess

Included is my screenshot of the Burnt Cherry Lite UI i am currently reviewing, the crit of 1240 white damage, as you can see is hardly something that stands out.

For the first half of Karazhan i was fighting for the 2nd & 3rd place upto this point where the worms started after Curator and i started falling behind.. To get this far on the starter pvp blue crusader gear isnt bad at all, however i think beyond Shade the gear will show in dps. And feel i might be holding up the raid's progress until i get better gear. However, BeIMBA shows that the gear is good enough to see Kara through, and if i notice my DPS falling rapidly, i will have to consider stepping out quickly, to get someone else in there to get TDD back on track.

You can see Leni's (FireMage) 900+ spell damage (The Blue bar on the DPS table on the bottom right) and Xadel (Rogue) at the top of the table. Momochi (Rogue) and Demmonia (Warlock) are relatively level geared as my character, so you can see roughly where i stand in all of them.

Buffed with Kings and Might my AP was 1940, with Flask of Relentless Assault & Hit Rating food buff.

The plan for tonight will be to put my ex-tanking enchanted belt and bracers on, and my upgraded leg armour from SL

Chasing the Table

Going from racing up the threat meter, with an almost unlimited supply of mana from spritual atonement from being healed. The Ret paladin feels like it depends on a few factors of talent points in the right place, and a mana pot or two with Seal of Wisdom on a target (for long fights)
For the first time i installed a DPS meter, mainly to gauge where i come in the raid group when it comes to dishing out the white and yellow. And where i fit in with this new role within a raid. Turns out im not too bad fighting for 3rd and 4th place over-all. And in blues (Body Armour) thats not bad at all, however my RL partner has a firemage decked in Purples and tailored spell strike gear, and this will be the true gauge of where i am. This will be tonight, along with the rest of the guilds main DPS'ers. The core of TDD's Purple parade.
For the meantime i am getting used to the Ret style of play. My problem is getting into the fight quick enough with the rogue who seems to be getting a head start on DPS when the fight starts, handy to have stealth, but i seem to be keeping up with Xadel and Momochi being under 10k over-all of their damage. We've had a problem with KTM, and my biggest fear is pulling aggro from hitting too hard, too soon, and most of this week we have had to play things by feel where we are in relation to threat.
We have Curator, Shade and Chess tonight, so let's see where this Ex Protection paladin fits in to a 10 man.

Addons - UI for a Ret Paladin

Im very picky when it comes to UI's, and especially compliations. I can never leave someone's compliation alone, because i always find something missing, or not quite right for me and end up removing or adding along the way. ..... So im fussy.
I have had UI's which fill up my screen before, that has you actually moving your head to try and look around behind them to see whats going on, these days, i am looking for nothing...as little, and as neat as you can make it, please. And also, as little memory usuage as you can please Sir?! :D
Im not good at making my own UI, but if there is a good base to work from a complated UI, i can add and tweak, then thats the one for me....
I have 1GB RAM, 2.3Ghz CPU and 1024 x768 screen


The Top 3

i selected are the following from my searches
Raynes Burnt Black Cherry UI 12.33 MB there is a lite version Here 13.38 MB
Delsim's Minimal heavy-keybinder UI 5.90 MB
Sero UI v2.2 42.22 MB!!
Worth mentioning i use, Clique, KTM, Onebag, Cellular, Prat and Decursive

First I tested Raynes Lite Burnt Black Cherry UI version first, and the test ground was (Karazhan) Moroes and Opera. Size: 13.38 MB
**Review** - there's nothing light about it...

Raiding Features Omen2 wasnt working so i had to add KTM, and i had no record or display of players buffs so i was asking folk to remind me when they expired.
The colouring can be difficult for the buff bars, im not sure what i can do about that, maybe tweaking it and adding buff symbols so i can identify them better. (I buff and Debuff myself alot in fight) The damage meter was easy to move and read also. Im used to using Buffwatch, and may have to add this in to cover for the re-buffs i need to do in a raid. 6/10 i dont think the lite version comes with Raid options and features

Combat The scrolling combat text was a little small for me, and i didnt notice what damage i was doing at all really. I may just switch that addon off and go back to standard. The cooldown timers where small, and looked like the default grey coulnt down, but the scrolling combat text flashed a red notifcation when an ability was ready. 8/10 needs a tweak to read, but very nice features

Overall look and feel of the UI was very tidy, and easy to look at. This addon was designed for resolutions probably higher than mine, but a small tweak was all that was needed using the /rock menu. to resize the fonts for my 1024 x768 screen, 8/10 because of the buff colouring.

Performance It did suck alot of memory, and took my FPS down to an average of 10-15 fps, but credit to it i didnt lag on the steps of Moroes for the AE fights. 8/10

Overall Score: 8/10 purely for the lack of raiding features for buffing, but these could be added, but at 13MB..would i want to?

Potential Score: 8/10 Could i mod it to suit a ret pala?

Following reviews to come..

Raynes Burnt Black Cherry UI 12.33MB

Update 23/04/08

I decided to make my own compliation, and will probably at some time in the future upload it for general download from sites like wowinterface.com or the others.. The main addons are Pitbull Bartender3 Autobar KTM PerfectRaid Prat2 (Chat) Cellular Buffwatch

I was playing around with alot of UI compliations, then decided that alot of them had additional crap that i did not need, or they where the wrong colour etc etc and the list goes on.. So i decided to pick out the best addons from the compliations and modified the look of them to suit me. Its still a work in progress, but here is a screenie

24/04/08

With the addition of Buffwatch and BigWigs, which i tried out last night, the UI seems to be filling in quite well. Without cluttering the display, everything still..is pretty much as you see above, i will try and get an action pic sometime soon

Update 28/05/08

With the addition of Omen2, Autobar, and ORA2 for raiding, the rest of the addons are pretty much the same. I am undecided in what cooldown counter to use though, whether it is a number count down on the buttons, or something else that graphically shows skills being ready..

Perfect raid takes over when the party is changed to raid

Also checking SimpleRaidTargetIcons

20/06/08

The Ui is coming along ok, i need to tweak the order of decursive a bit into maybe 2 rows of 12 and 13, or 3 rows of 10, 10 and 5. Buffwatch is ok, but pally power has been recommended to me by a new member of the guild which i might try out. Hopefully it wont suck up too much memory.
Other than that, i cant really complain about the UI, other than adding Clique back into the addons folder.

The changes

The switch to Ret wasnt as painfull as i thought it could have been.
With patch 2.4 the blue Crusader's Scaled Battlegear start pvp set for the dps paladin was cheap enough to buy the full kit, and gem up.
Took a moment to get my head arround what gems to put into the slots, and what attributes i should be looking for. Turns out its Strength (1 Str = 2 AP)
For my birthday i was lucky to get Despair for helping out in DPS for the guild Karazhan run. Which was a nice gift from the game. Before the raid i raised a ticket to see if i could switch my Lamaller PVP gear to Scaled, Gm was helpfull enough but i couldnt get it swapped due to the time period between me getting the gear and the timing of the request, shame, but the question "is their anything else i can help?" well...i had to say, its my birthday so a shout out would be nice. The response wasnt a bot :D and i was stood in Karazhan, so maybe... who can tell, and who will ever know...
Looking at getting Bloodlust Brooch and Hourglass of the Unraveller as trinkets next, this should'nt take too long to do,.
Meantime, crafting wise i will be looking to engineer some Furious Gizmatic Goggles so i'll have to start saving doing dailies etc.

Top of the list
Badges and BM
Dailies & PVP (Slow build up of honor)
Drop Kings Buff for Improved Might

Raiding and BG
Oddly i thought i would be seriously below par with the DPS table, i was so unprepared in fact..i didnt even install a dps meter, and got reports from my guild on how well i was doing or not. It worked out i was ok. Coming third after Opera and Maiden in Karazhan.
In AV, it wasnt that bad either, overall averge per game i was within the top 7, not bad for blues & a few epics.

Protection to Retribution

I decided to re-instate my blog on blogspot.

My Current Protection Spec

Converting to Retribution 5/11/45

When i began this game i had no idea what a tank was, or what one was used for. I mainly multi tasked between healing a raid on Crossroads and being hard to kill at Astranaar.
As time went on i lost focus in the game as i didnt know what my class was supposed to do, and at level 40-45 i had a crisis of class and character. This was before TBC came out, and Phantas Magoria where working on AQ40 etc etc. There have been many many time i have sat and thought "I should have rolled a warrior!" After TBC came out, i had a bit more uber behind the paladin tank, and a niche of its own. There are things i can do as a paladin a warrior cannot, and some thing a warrior can do, and i cannot... And there lies the compromise. And whether i am happy with that compromise or not, is always a 50/50 sway eitherside, when ever i doubt the paladins available tanking abilities.
The doubt is not about the paladin over all, but more to do with my own thoughts about what i would like to play as a tank, and what tools i would prefer to have as a tank to be able to do what *i* would prefer to do when tanking. The only way i will know the difference to is bring up a warrior and tank with it, to make a comparison between the warrior and paladin, side by side. Its Rage Vs Mana.
My heart ache lies with the availabel gear for the paladin. Its main flaw is theire weapon (Swords) no availablity for a gun with huge stamina, this is replaced by a libram, which adds block and thats it. Where as with a warrior only needs to be concerned with a fast weapon with stamina and aviodance stats like dodge parry and block added to their weapon, paladins have a lean towards spell damage on theirs, and thats a huge sacrifice to have considering other tanking weapons out their without spell damage, there is nothing really specific for a Tank paladin to choose from, other than stealing a Mage/Warlock sword from the drop table. I will try to see if using a warrior tanking weapon seriously reduces my threat or not, but for the meantime, im left hoping Blizzard adds a specific tanking weapon upgrade for the paladin.

Patch 2.4 added some good things with the new faction for paladin tanks. But it wasnt something i was going to scream in excitement about, i was more excited about the 2 handed weapons available. One over riding thought jumps at me when ever i see gear like this is, when is this new expansion coming out? And all the while all this work for tanking gear is squashed on the first day of release as a tank questing is a joke. Wrath is drawing closer and closer, and yes, it would be good to see some more of Karazhan etc, but to be honest about it all, i am not really interested in the progress of the game in instances, but more on the enjoyment of my own character that i have played for 2+ years, and as a tank, im sorry, i starting to lose interest in the tanking role over-all. I had thought about re-rolling another character, but the thought of grinding through all that rep and gear over agian pains me. It really does just put me off. HOwever the paladin can swap between Healer, Tank and DPS.

I always thought and got the impression that Ret paladins where a joke "So to speak". Due to alot of people complaining about the spec being broken and half finished. I have never really tried it out at max levelmyself, and whether i have had the opportunity to or not has never really come about. So im going to try it out, and see for myself and experience it with my own character, geared as recommended by the clever folk on several websites...

I'm still protection atm, and plan to get enough ahead in gear to rival my protection spec, and then make the swap and see how much the game changes, to keep my interest, or not.