Just cuz you can, doesn't mean you HAVE TO.

This might seem obvious to some (maybe most) people, but I figured I would put this little information out there anyway.

I'm a paladin. I can wear plate. However, that doesn't mean I HAVE TO wear plate!

Currently, I am wearing 2 pieces of mail gear (because every boss we kill in Naxx flat out refuses to drop plate healing gear). The boots and legs are great for healers, whether they normally wear mail or not. My group having no shamans in it, I immediately snatched these up.

This can be true for hunters too. While Blizzard has done much better at putting intellect on the mail hunter/shaman gear, sometimes a piece of leather is much better than the piece of mail that you are wearing. This may not be true in the end game, but especially while leveling it can be.

Now, Paladins are capable to wearing leather and cloth too, but I personally don't like to. With the spellpower changes, a piece of cloth is going to be worthwhile for any caster, and I'll leave those to my mages or priests who need upgrades first.

Bottom line: wear the gear that makes you a better player and upgrades your gear. Don't get hung up on the "plate, leather, mail, cloth" classification (to an extent) and focus on the stats you need.

Lunar Festival

Well, it's been a busy first weekend back here at school. I had some friends come visit, so my play time was way down. Nothing today, so I'll hop back into Azeroth and maybe try to get some of the Elder achievements done. After I really got into the Hallows End achievements (and got the "the Hallowed" title), I really haven't been able to push myself into the others. Winter's Veil required some Ogri'la stuff, which I wasn't going to go back and start since I hadn't done it at 70 at all. The Lunar Festival seems fairly easy as far as achievements go, and I love getting 83 alliance rep every time I find one, so I may push for finding all 75 of them. Could be close enough to get me a tiger mount from Darnassus. Who knows.

I finished off the Argent Champion title late Thursday night, after Naxx. I did get the Chivalric Chestguard, which I am probably actually going to wear instead of my T7 piece! Its disappointing that they failed completely to put spell crit on the holy paladin T7, but I'd rather that than Mp5 any day, and will probably gem up the non set piece and wear it instead. The only thing that may keep me from switching is the 10% crit chance to Holy Shock from the set bonus. More Holy Shock crits means more instant Flashes and more 1 second Holy lights, which is never a bad thing. I'll be testing both out in some heroics today and tomorrow and see what the differences are and if one really is better than the other.

Happy Elder hunting to you all!

I have no idea what to call this post. Oh well.

A real life friend of mine who was in our guild (and topping our DPS meters in our 10 mans) has left our guild and joined one of the top 3 raiding guilds on my server (which isn't much on the Underbog, but they are certainly ahead of my guild in numbers and progression). He wants to see more 25 man content and plays regularly with people from the guild anyway. It's his decision, and if that is what he wants then he should do it. I wish him luck. It's not like we wont group up or do fun stuff together.

I have been thinking of switching guilds, much like him, but have come to the conclusion that it won't make my play time any more enjoyable. My guild is progressing through Naxx 10. It's not top end raiding in the slightest, but we are doing it together and everyone is downing bosses for the first time in our raids. The guild my friend is joining has been there and done that. I would rather be with a group of friends and progress as a guild and be an integral part of the progression than join a top end guild and tag along with people that have done it all before. That's just me.

I also started a small guild on my server, as I have started a new mage alt. After making her and questing the starting zone, I realized how many brand new players there were around. I decided I would start up a guild to help these people out and get them some friends/connections on the server. I am going to level the mage ( probably slowly), and help the guildies out, setting up "run nights" where I'll hop on my paladin and run some people through instances. I'm trying to provide a place for newbies to be able to ask questions, maybe get some help, and level together. I hope it works out.

Back to School

Well, I am back at my college today, getting ready to start the new semester and everything. Such a blast.

Game wise, my guild did go into Naxx a few days ago, and we cleared the Arachnid Quarter. Some quick reflexes by our two tanks trading taunts helped us get by Maexxna. No good pally loot from any of the three bosses, but our resident priest healer picked up a couple of good cloth pieces.

We did attempt Patchwerk a few times. First time, not nearly enough DPS. Second time, a littler closer. Third time, somehow our MT didn't know about the enrage at 5%, and proceeded to flip out about the "bugged encounter" and how he enraged earlier the DBM was saying he was going to. Needless to say, that was the closest we got.

It seems the last 5% shouldn't be too bad if the tank uses Shield Wall/Last Stand, but we couldn't get it to work. Who knows what was going on.

That fight seems to be made for holy paladins to heal. The OT was taking more damage (lesser gear and lesser HP, and the hateful strikes come quick), so I healed him with Beacon on the MT, and the other paladin did the opposite. It worked out pretty well, as the tanks stayed alive. I had no mana issues, using Divine Plea on every cooldown (which you really should do in every boss fight) and having mana pots to back me once per fight. A ret pally with Replenishment never hurts either.

Is it really that easy?

A couple of bloggers (Coriel over at Blessing of Kings and Tobold on his blog) have recently been commenting on the difficulty of the end game and the overall accessibility of it.

Personally, Naxx isn't really easy for my guild or myself. The strategies are complex to some people. Anub'Rehkan is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and it only took my guild 3 or 4 tries to down him. Faerlina wasn't too bad, and we got her on the second try. But Maexxna was trouble, because of her enrage and web ability. We simple couldn't get past that 30% enrage. We didn't go any further last time we were there, but it certainly wasn't EASY. It was a challenge, especially because we had 4 or 5 people that had never raided on any level before.

Obviously for those that raided in SSC/BT/SWP, Naxx is going to be easier. Naxx is the ENTRY LEVEL raid. This really isn't the "end-game" per se. Its the beginning of the raiding in Wrath, not the end. Nobody is downing Arthas or the major bosses of the game yet. How many people cleared Karazhan during BC? A lot. Sure, it wasn't until after the place was nerfed a little and people starting gearing up more through badges and such, but a lot of people got through Karazhan. Why shouldn't a lot of people get through Naxx too? Yes, it is early in the game. Do you think people are going to be clearing Icecrown Citadel left and right? Just because a guild clears Naxxramas this month doesn't mean they will be able to waltz through Icecrown. The top notch guilds, like Ensidia, are going to clear stuff quickly. It's inevitable, and quite frankly measuring progress based on these people would be ridiculous.

My guild heads back into Naxx tonight, trying to get down that damn spider. I'm not expecting us to get it the first time through, but I would like to clear another new boss too. We'll see.

Bottom line: for some people, Naxx is easy as pie, and congratulations to you for clearing the place already and farming it. But for others (and probably the majority) it really isn't as super easy as it is being made out to be. I agree the end game shouldn't be for everyone, and I think Ulduar and further raids will jump up a notch in difficulty, which is probably a good thing.

Stepping Down

I have decided to remove myself from the Raid Leader position of my guild, after an incident that occurred the other night. I had scheduled a Vault run, which would get badges for people while also getting a couple of our 80s some T7 stuff that would help them gear up a little. But, my GM (our MT) pulled himself and 2 of our DPS into a Naxx pug that not everyone could go to. So my scheduled Vault run was effectively ignored. Why am I raid leader? I'm not going to be if my scheduled events are going to be ignored like that. The officers of my guild subsequently decided (without my input) that there was a need for 2 raid leaders to discuss and schedule things. The new RL actually has more experience with the current content than I do, which is great.

Needless to say, after this little situation, I stepped down. I still like the guild, and want to give it a chance as a simple raider and regular member. I will leave the inner workings to someone else who feels like dealing with all of the crap that comes with it.

No new gear updates or anything like that, with the exception of the fact that I am now saving Emblems for a trinket, because the green quest reward I have had since 74 needs to be replaced. Quickly. Anyone have any ideas for trinkets that are out there? I have a blue one from the early icecrown quests, but that is all I have been able to find.

Guild First

Well, my guild was planning on doing Archavon last night, but of course by the time everyone was online we had lost Wintergrasp. So we decided to try Sartharion 10 man. We had 8 guildies in the group, and pug'd a Death Knight and a mage for DPS. We one shotted the dragons surrounding Sartharion (which was excellent since it was the first time for atleast half of us). After a few wipes on Sartharion himself (one when he reached 180k), we finally downed him with no deaths. It was a great feeling to have the guild succeed at something as a team.

The mage in our guild picked up his T7 gloves, one of our preists picked up a nice neck, and I got the Satchel of Spoils, which had 5 Emblems in it. That put me at exactly 80 Emblems, which I used to FINALLY buy my T7 chestpiece. The 2 piece set bonus there is incredible. Look at it! 10% increased Holy Shock crit chance. That means more healing, more procs of Infusion of Light, which means quicker Flashes and Holy Lights. I'm excited to see how it plays out in a heroic tonight.

Yesterday, since I had the day off, I also got a couple of other things accomplished. I finished the Exploring achievements (damn you Kalimdor), and also hit exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord and bought myself the beautiful Red Drake mount. I think I'll work on the Kirin Tor rep next, if for nothing but the head enchant. The Ebon Blade really has nothing for me at this point.

Gear/Namecalling

This isn't about elementary school spit-spats, it's about the roles of people in my guild (and maybe many guilds, who knows.)

As the raid leader for my guild (although I hate the title, because I work closely with my GM to plan things and get things going), I have had the somewhat un-enviable job of telling people they need to gear up a little before they join a Naxx group or something like it. You can't just ding 80 and start healing (especially) Naxx 10.

A priest in my group yesterday, who is now 79 and only 2 bars from 80, was told by our GM that she needs to have 1300-1400 plus healing to start healing in Naxx. She said she had about 1100 right now, but she started going on about how "if you won't let me go, how can I gear up?"

I don't know if this is a result of the fact that Karazhan was easy late in BC. I was one of those people that went from dinging 70 and never having run a heroic to healing a Kara group that was outgearing the place, which helped me gear up quickly. Maybe this priest had the same experience.

But you can't just expect to hit 80 and raid. As much as it may suck, you need to run regular 80 dungeons, especially as a healer. You can't just jump into heroics right away (unless maybe you are DPS, but you know my feelings on that). You need to gain reputation by doing dailies and taking what little rep the regular dungeons give. Once you get a few pieces from Oculus/Strat/HoL, and maybe a few crafted/rep gear pieces, you can start doing the easy heroics like Nexus.

She also said to me "well you are raid leader, so you are going to be 'top heals'." What does that mean? I have 1630 bonus healing right now, by far the most in my guild at the moment. But what does "top heals" mean? And it's because I am the raid leader? I hate these labels...I'm not going to take the healing loot just because I am raid leader and have the most bonus heals. We don't have a "main healer" or "off-healer." Why label people and make someone feel superior or inferior to others? Everyone contributes to the raid, and if they don't then we look for a replacement the next time. If I pull 2000 HPS and this priest only does 1700, what am I going to do? Deny her loot or kick her out of the raid? That's just ridiculous im my opinion, and that is why I hate assigning titles to people. It causes resentment and animosity that we just don't need.

I'm not saying labels are all bad. Having a designated main and off tank are essential, and I may assign myself to the main tank and have others raid heal. Being the raid leader has nothing to do with my skill as a healer, but more to my commitment and planning skills.

It sucks having to be the bad guy sometimes, but people need to do the work that I had to do to get geared up, especially as a tank or healer. It's not like the end of BC. You have to do all the dungeons, maybe (GASP!) multiple times to get the gear you need to start heroics/raids. The expansion certainly is more accessible (and easier to an extent), but it still requires a commitment to access that easier content.

It's Been A While....

Well, sorry about the lack of posts recently. Lots of family stuff to do, family visiting, and working lately. So is life.

Lately, I have been pretty relaxed as far as playing goes. I have started exploring on my Paladin (got all of Eastern Kingdoms done, but that was easy as I quested there when I leveled. Kalimdor is going to suck.), while simultaneously mining everything I see so I can send it to my new warlock twink so she can level mining by smelting in the cities. Hard to argue with the mining health buff.

Hopefully tonight my guild can get back into Naxx, and hopefully clear the two bosses we cleared before and maybe a couple others. I have geared up a little, and my brother (our off tank) is finally at 540 defense. We'll see how it goes!

Happy playing to all of you.