News: Shiny Wings of Light have no substance
… And therefore don’t let you fly!
*runs around through a bell shop flailing like a frantic and hopped up tree, ringringringringringringring*
So, uhm, I’ve kind of neglected this blog lately.
But I have my reasons! I promise!
Ding! 70!
Things I’ve learned about Paladins lately:
-I usually forget I even have a ret offspec; though it’s good to remember when targets are sparse enough that getting 4+ on me at once is difficult.
-Prot is viable for levelling and actually kinda fun when the mobs are melee or melee + 1 caster and can be rounded up. GROUPHUG OF THE RIGHTEOUS! Smitings for XP and JUSTICE! Mu wa ha ha!
-I’m either demented or the game gets radically different over the next ten levels, but TANKING IS FUN 
-Prot!Galgamesh is as cacklingly gung-ho and insane about leaping headfirst into danger as Math is about leaping… well … pet-first… into danger. IF ONLY THERE WERE A SKILL CALLED “PULL MOAR.” Or as I call it, “Holy Plurb” – basically a 30′ (OR MORE) cone (or sphere!) attack that only deals a small amount of holy damage and goes “Nyah nyah I poke you come thwack me!!”.
-It does make a considerable difference, having a healer with you upon whom you can thoroughly rely.
(a plurb is the sensation of a three-dimensional ripple in reality crossing through your space)
Stuff I’m Not Looking Forward To:
-Already lost 1k so Gal can even just fly in Outland; going to lose 5k more soon for Epic Flight.
-Tanking wHoRe … I’m sorry, Halls of Reflection.
-THE GUILD MESSAGE OF TODAY. AAAGH. Thank god I can’t draw, I’d be compelled to draw it.
Stuff I am excited for:
-Most Northrend heroics from a tank perspective!
-Instant Queues! MU WA HA HA.
-Becoming excellent at something else other than just dps.
-I really want to try Raid tanking. Especially, for inexplicable reasons, Council of Iron.
A final thought:
This hit me the other night – Protection Paladins are, basically, masochists. Especially before they get Divine Plea at Level 71. They work best and are on top of their game when they’ve got a lot of people all beating on them. One v. one, not taking much damage because HAY YOU’RE PROT HAVE SOME MIT AND MOAR AVOIDANCE, we are running OOM and sad. But give us a mob of things battering our defenses and smacking us around and we’re all BWEE I TANK YOU ALL.
Either that or, like I said, I am demented.
Tankspam
Tanking is fun!
I realized part of why. At heart, I am a hunter. Hunters are inherently … oh, how shall we say? … high-threat creatures. But but but in Panzerdin mode I AM REWARDED FOR THREAT. SPAM EVERYTHING FULL BORE AHEAD CAP’N.
I enjoy this.
My tanking is getting better, but of course it helps to have a talented and guilded healer at your back. I may launch myself into some pure randoms though just to see how I can do with Random Heals. That seems to be the real test. I love instant queues almost as much as I haet the dumb and impatient I sometimes get – except I totally had a DK today who, when asked nicely, deathgripped stray healers into the middle of the beatdown. I mean, the fun. Feeling lonely, mr. Fel Orc Caster? That’s okay! HAMMER OF THE RIGHTEOUS is here to GIVE YOU A HUG.
Been tanking Ramps a few times and handling the extra stray packs that sometimes jump in randomly because they feel sad and left out, and would rather feel glowy and hole-y.
I like this. After trying and faceplanting against Marrowgar 25 all raidnight, tanking is oddly relaxing. Everyone tells me it gets worse when I get to 80, but I guess I’ll see. I have good people I can ask for advice.
Adjustment? Adjustment!
On the up side: I mostly no longer walk into Sunreaver’s Sanctuary, and I’ve actually avoided entirely going to Horde camps or trying to click on Horde flight points and thus getting horribly mauled by some wind riders. By the way, Paladin hit 60 last night and got her a griffin, and they’re much cooler than wind riders!
—-
On the down side: So far the hardest thing to adjust to is learning what goes where in the world. It seems to me like the world, in terms of quest hubs, cities, and city/town connections, is a lot less optimal than for the Alliance when compared to Horde, especially in eastern kingdoms. A Theramore / Auberdine boat would solve a lot of it, though.
The worst of it, though, speaking of Theramore. I was in Menethil, waiting for the boat to Theramore, when someone else on the dock whispers me that they forgot how to get into Darkshore. So I think for a moment and reply that the quickest way to get to Dustwallow is you go from Menethil to Stormwind, then down to Booty Bay and hop the boat to Ratchet, and run down The Barrens. As I finish saying it hits me – we’re WAITING for the BOAT TO THERAMORE, which, derp, is in DUSTWALLOW. I quickly fix – AS THE BOAT ARRIVES and apologize.
Of the things I miss from Winterhoof, among them is Quin’loki, my friend and the best damn priest (sorry, Amber!) I’ve ever had the bwee of running with, who also had the uncanny ability to generally find the quickest travel route between two nodes, thus earning her the nickname (from me) of Map’loki. WTB Alliance version?
—
On the “…” side, it’s still a trip seeing myself as a Drenny … Drenai … Drain-I. Chupathingie. Spacegoat. And a female! In fact all three toons I’m leveling right now are women; two spacegoats and a human. I’m sorry, I don’t like being INFINITE COMIC BARREL CHEST, itty bitty walking legs, or STEROID FOREARMS OF DEWM. I do roll Dwarf, Gnome, and Worgen male. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just weird to see. Farimu more than Math, actually (I miss the tusks), because once I found out the Pygmy Oil // Orb of the Sin’dorei / Orb of Deception / Savory Deviate Delight trick, I would play around with it (ah, hah @ trap!Math ).
But now that the Paladin is in Outland, we shall see, if she runs into Thrallmar. Or Falcon Watch. Or any of the other Horde-only towns. Garandar is calling to come sit at the bonfire…
–
On the “hey this is fun” side: I’ve now ret-tanked ST, prot-tanked Dire Maul East with a fairly good group after the Doucheknight left, and had a pretty abortive LBRS group. Seriously, WoW? LBRS? For a random group, when a bunch of us haven’t even ever been there? Well – I was there three times. When achievements first came out, so like a year and a half ago – achievement run. Then I found out about the pets. Then I found out about the UBRS key. I barely found my way through the maze then! I did alright, I think, even when someone pulled two additional groups – we killed the first boss, despite someone pressing me to “GO” if I took even ten seconds to type something in guild chat or sit to drink water – needs more Avoidance, for more Mana! Oooor, wtb Divine Plea, please? … and then the same impatient “oh I’m so leet” Paladin falls down a pit and pulls about 20 trolls. Yeah, we put up a valiant fight but even my kickass Pally healer (Temnyi of Conjured Food For Thought) can’t keep me alive through the whole thing, partially because I can’t pick them up fast enough, and we all die.
Which means we now need to find our way through Searing Gorge and back to Blackrock Spire, and then into UBRS. Someone leaves without a word. Paladin disconnects, and despite having jumped ship, I tell ya, it felt satisfying to kick him and ignore him. The last DPS leaves, and we decide – hey, I came here at 58, Tem hit 58 mid-instance, and it’d be much better to go to Outland.
—
A final thought: Ret Paladins are kind of like Enhancement Paladins – they’re boring as hell for ~40-50 levels, then they start getting a lot of fun. For Shamans, it’s Dual Wield and Stormstrike. For Paladins, its Crusader Strike (or Divine Storm), so you’re not spending half the time just auto-attacking. Paladin’s now become pretty fun, especially when I can pull mobs of undead or demons (VITALLY IMPORTANT: when they don’t have gobs of CC like knockdown and freeze. I’ve learned this the hard way – after a couple times x.x) – like in Plaguelands and Hellfire.
Well, that was … an experience.
I am no longer pure DPS*. It figures, just yesterday, I was talking about talking about tanks vs. DPS, from a pure-DPS perspective, and now here I am a day later, having tanked**. Yes, if you go “wtf Math” you’re not the only one.
…It was also dealing with Looking For Dungeon people. Yes, if you go “oh, joy“, you’re not the only one.
So, it starts innocuously enough. My buddy Temnyi (no. I don’t know how to pronounce it, either) started playing WoW again; and I got him to roll on Azgalor. Wham, a two weeks later, he’s 49. Been levelling my Paladin, and she’s 53, so we decide to run the last chunk of Maraudon. Almost immediately I’m all but ripping off the bear, but he says my damage is easy to heal through. While this is going on, we’re talking in whispers, and I joke that I should ret tank the place. I ALMOST tossed on Righteous Wrath and was gonna rip everything to see how it went (Which happened anyway when we went balls out on the last boss) – but it felt like it’d've been rude to the bear, so I tried to watch my threat.
You know what my #1 thought on Ret Paladins in instances is? I. REALLY. Miss. Feign. Death.
Afterwards, I asked if he thought he could keep me alive ret tanking. Getting an affirmative, we queued for Sunken Temple, and I slapped on the higher-def, higher-stam helm that I got off a Mara boss. This … would be fun.
And you know? It was, and it wasn’t. I got a lot of what you’d expect from the LFD queue.
Plus, it was Sunken Temple. I’ve been here before ONCE. Eighteen months ago. Fuck, I could have sired two children and taught them to yell “ATTAAAAAACK” over vent in the time that’s past since I last set FOOT in The Temple Of Atal’Hakar. And it’s kind of a maze with some thing that needs to be done in VERY SPECIFIC ORDER.
We had one dps who knew the place, and Temnynol knew the place. They argued sometimes on which way to go like quibbling cats, but we got everything done.
That was the mage, and he was constantly riding me, the newbie tank, to go go go go go.
We had the warrior who would charge mobs, and me imagining him calling RAAAGH I ARE ARMS TANK.
We also had a dps randomly leave early on without a word, and then a replacement shaman. We spent about five, ten minutes trying to meet up because VANILLA DEVS LOEV MAZE, and then get back on the road.
Temnynol is fun, though, and a fine healer. 
In fact, the warrior was pulling the minibosses. Or even packs of mobs. By charge. After running ahead of me (yes, I have Pursuit of Justice, but I was also being tentative). I wanted to let him die, I poked Tem that we should have let him die, but he said it would reflect badly on him and his professionalism, and y’know? I can understand and get behind that. I would have let him die, though. I’ll have to set some rules when I keep tanking.
After the lower half, Temn DCs, and we argue. Being my friend and guildie, I want to wait to see if he comes back, the rest of the group wants to gogogogo, eventually he gets kicked and we get a new healer. The three “dps” keep pushing ahead with no healer, I’m waiting on a healer. I have some cross words with the mage for rushing me, but I over-reacted – newbishness at work! – we hash it out, I apologize, we smooth things over.
We get a healer, we go through the MAZE AND DANCE of meeting up, and it turns out this healer … charges in faster than the warrior to attack mobs. Because they’re enhance. Queued as heals. Erhm. Yeah. Well, that was an experience! At least I didn’t die, and it was pretty quick – we were, after all, ALL FIVE OF US DPS SPEC.
After a lot of AoE pulls and mayhem we clear the upper level, I almost ding to 54, fun times are had, and I have tanked for the first time. It was certainly an experience. I think I need to look into some Tank UI mods, though; things like to know when someone else has agro, etc etc. Anyone who has newb tank UI and play advice, I would welcome it OH so very much.
Here’s to the adventure of tanking! Let’s hope I don’t get too many splats, and can even be half the tank I am a dps; I’d be happier with 95%, but even 50% would be good.
*Well … There’s Beardy. My first character ever was a warrior, in vanilla WoW. When they really were only tanks. He got to 22. I did not care for it. Though I love Beardy <3. I dunno if that counts or not, though.
**…Well, does ret tanking really count as tanking?
