Back on the team

Anyone who read the last post knows I'm fully healing specced now. No let me rephrase that, Holy specced. Which, in paladin country means dps and healing in the same spec. Ain't we Blessed? Not according to Mister Cromfell , who seems to be agitated about something that is going to hit us pallies in 2.3

Ret pallies anyway. Yeah I sold out and I'll tell you why. I specced retribution because I wanted to solo a lot. I like grinding rep and money and the dps tree is usually the one to go for when playing a hybrid class, right? No not really. My damage output has gone up by an estimated one-third of what I used to do and both my mana and health pools are larger now. So holy is the way, at least until the next nerf.

"The poor Broken never saw it coming. The shock hit him from behind and that was just about it, something stunned him and he felt several other shocks hitting him before the last of his life was drained and he fell to the ground. No blood, no wounds, no sign of anything ever hitting him physically, but dead nonetheless.

Sarge emerged from the nearby bushes. He routinely checked the body for any money, discarded the crude weapon the Broken had been carrying as unsellable and grinned to himself. New planet, new rules eh? He completely understood why so many paladins had forsaken the traditional ways of fighting. This was so much...easier. Shockadins, they were called."

Suck it up, paladin

I suck.

Yes, I suck at the WoW. I kinda figured it before but it really became clear after my last respec. What was I thinking, when I had:

- Imba Karazahn healing gear (+1600 healing)
- Great shockadin blues
- Great tanking blues/purps

See the one thing missing here is our lovely DPS-plate. None of that. So any wise man would have said: "you know what Sarge, just go shockadin for a while until you pvp-ed some nice Retri gear together or go heal some heroics." Not the Sarge. The Sarge saw someone swinging a big hammer at him and decided it was Something Sarge Needed Right Now. How emo.

So now Sarge runs around silithus (still need moar thorium!) in spelldmg/tanking gear pretending to be Retribution and packing all the punch of a bunny with a asthma. Yes it's that bad. I could probably win an award for it.

Things were fine ofcourse, until other people noticed. I made a post on my realm forum asking whether Crystalforged War Axe was a better choice than The Oathkeeper. To my great joy, the hero of all paladins on Dragonblight EU, Wisedragon, responded! I basked in the light of his wisdom, and he spoketh to me civil, like a holy man would, yet his judgement was clear:

Sarge Sucks.

And I totally agree. But now for the good part: it's okay! I know I suck. And I don't mind, since improvement is on the way. I'm only 60 points in Blacksmithing away from thunder, and I'll get that crit and AP up even if it means wearing greens. As soon as that is done I will gather up some pvp blues and maybe even resurrect the Arena team with Slettis.

So are things looking good? Ofcourse they are. It's a game, what could go wrong?

Have a nice EotS weekend all, and think of lil' ole Sarge down in the hives in Silithus, scraping together the last bits of thorium he needs.

Farmin'

Sarge is serious about his Thunder. So serious that he downed the Blacksmithing 1-300 guide, printed it and has had it under his keyboard for weeks now.

Copper and Tin were easy, Iron was a bitch, since somehow all the people questing in Alterac seem to think it's "their" iron. WTF? I'm a paying customer mate, live with it. Mithril I hardly noticed since I mined that together with the iron and now I'm finally almost out of Azeroth, miningwise.

Almost, just 330 bars of thorium left. I've been farming it in Silithus, in the hyves-sorry hives, where the once big bad insects live. one round of hives gets me around 45 ores and, amazingly, 1-2 Azerothian Diamonds and usually an Arcane crystal or some other bonus. Those droprates were never this good pre-TBC. On the other hand, I never farmed this much pre-TBC.

Just when I thought I got it wrong

To be honest, I was kinda doubting my new route through Pvp town towards the mountains of epic ret goodness, until I just stumbled across this.

Thank the world for other bloggers eh?

To do list

- Finish epic mount quest (Dire Maul <3 )
- Get Blacksmithing up to 375, farm those primals and
- Create Thunder

- Go pwn in pvp.

Busy weekend then.

Gimp spec

Sarge believes in Retribution spec. I've played holydin/shockadin for a while and before I took a break from the business that is paladin I was retribution specced, for levelling. Ever since I came back to the game I wanted to respec Sarge to the only true spec for a holy warrior and so last weekend, while scouring the WSG's for honour I specced back from the healslave spec I had been cursed with since I loaned the Sarge to my priestly pal for Kara purposes.

Now I'm the proud owner of 1/0/60 spec (you there, in the back, don't chuckle!) Can't get more ret than that I'd say. And the first BG I went in I rode that damage chart like a pro DPS class. Well I ended up fourth if you want the truth but I'm seriously undergeared.

The problem is ofcourse the eternal warrior stats versus caster stats. Retribution pallies need their AP, STR, and +Crit since their big twohanders are their main offensive capability (yay for crusader strike, making it actually worth it to carry a weapon around)

But paladins have another trick up their ornamented plate sleeve: Judgements. Judgements is magics. Magics is mana. Mana is pool. Pool is INT.

BUT MOM MAI GAER HAF NO INTELLECT!1

True. It doesn't. I won't rant on about itemization since we have the paladin forums for that. I've checked out the pvp and arena gear and it seems like those items are actually pretty good, with lots of crit, strength and intellect. Now just to get it, right?

Yeah kinda... You see, I'm not sure if I want to be retribution that bad. After two years of shouting: "ME DPS!" I'm kinda wondering if it wouldn't be better to go shockadin again and just heal my way through life.

But whenever I get that feeling I just load up some screenshots of Thunder and imagine myself in all that shiny Arena gear....Bliss!