10 New Years Resolutions (WoW Style)

With 2008 behind us and 2009 just starting, I’m starting to look at my long-term WoW goals. Here are the top 10 things I’d like to do this year..

#1 – Clear all current raid content.
As a guild leader, a raid leader and a raider in general, my number one goal is to pull our 10-man team together and clear Naxx-10 and Eye of Eternity. Ulduar and Ice Crown will be out by the end of the year so those are on my list as well. I could sell out and join an already progressed raid team but it’s more satisfying when you down bosses with your friends that have worked hard on their gear.

#2 – Druid Dual Speccing.
Back when I played Alliance, outside of my Warlock my favorite toon was my Night Elf Moonkin. I’m in the midst of leveling a Tauren Druid through the RAF program so I’m not TOO far behind in this goal. I mainly want to DPS as Balance and off-spec as Restoration.. but I really want my Boomkin back T_T.

#3 – Tankadin is GO!
My Pally is sitting at 68 and will most likely be my next toon to 80. I loved tanking on my Pally but I’m currently leveling as Retribution to make the quest-grind go faster. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and I’m sure I’ll be hounding Fuubaar for advice once I make the final respec. Pull everything. Tank everything. That is my mantra.

#4 – I can has haelz pls?
I’ve wanted to try my hand at healing for awhile now but the only class I feel confident in healing with is a Druid. I have a 62 Troll Restoration Shaman and I’m loving the changes to make us better 5-man healers (Riptide & Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave is FTW) so my full intentions are to level her as Elemental and eventually swap out to Restoration at 80.

#5 – WTB Devilsaur.
It took about a year for me to finally settle in to a Hunter after deleting about 10 at the level 16-20 mark. I’ve finally gotten some of the fun abilities and found a pet I really enjoy (Gorilla) but the thing that intrigues me the most is the ability to tame massive, annoying, loud pets (I.E. Devilsaur, Rhino, Core Hound). I was a huge Demonology fan on my Warlock and BM for Hunters reminds me of the glory days. My little Belf Hunter is currently 44 so in 16 levels I’ll let the annoyance commence!

#6 – Shadow Drake.
Step 1 is getting exalted with Wyrmrest Accord. Step 2 is talking myself in to spending 1700g on a Drake. The beauty of being a Shadowpriest is that all of my mounts end up being the same color.. purple. I want a drake to swoop around in and this one seems like the easiest one to get. I could run Heroic Strat everyday and risk not making the timed event and/or losing the roll.. BUT I’m almost exalted with Wyrmrest already >.>. Looks like I’ll be waiting.

#7 – RP.
I’m a nerd at heart. On paper, I love the idea of RP’ing with my characters but I’m not that vocal about it. If I’m bored, I’m usually found leveling an alt rather than RP’ing to develope my stories. Once my alts are maxxed, RP is where it’s heading for me. My goal is to RP as something that is totally NOT me (i.e. sarcastic, witty and somewhat prick-ish) like a noble Paladin or maybe my Druid or Shaman. I want to push myself and hopefully find my creative niche’. I’d say I’m pretty good with RP’ing on Abigore because he’s somewhat like me IRL but I want to broaden my horizens, so to speak.

#8 – Achievement Titles.
I’m not an achievement whore by any means. I tried for The Hallowed and got the title on my Warlock but outside of Jenkins, my Shadowpriest has nothing. I’d like to get the Cenarion title for my Druid and maybe the Argent Champion title for my Paladin strictly for RP purposes.

#9 – Death McNuggets
I still haven’t bought in to the Death Knight fad but I intend to at least TRY one. I’ve made 3, completed the starter zone and then deleted them just to try out each talent tree (and I honestly love their starter zone and quest chain) but I wouldn’t mind actually going a little further with one.

#10 – It burns when I PVP.
The last time I seriously PVP’ed was back on my Horde Warlock during Arena Season 1.. yeah. I’d like to devote at least one of my toons to PVP (I’m thinking my Hunter) and give it a shot.

So what are your resolutions?

Read Full Post »

RetributiOwned!!

Ah Ret. The bastard step-child DPS spec in the Pally word. The once mocked-turned-OP-as-hell spec that has made my Pally leveling life so much easier.

When I started the Pally character a few months back, I was playing constantly with a group of friends so leveling Protection was a no-brainer. Once it turned in to a solo ordeal, I still didn’t mind Prot but you can only pull a million things and kill them in an hour for so long. Also see my special “thank you” Death Knight post which made my decision to sell out and go Ret a lot easier to swallow.

I’ve tried Ret twice so far but never had enough points to actually get everything that makes the spec click. I haven’t really played a spec that actually has talents that meld together so well like Retribution does. Tons of +crit talents on top of talents that give you boosts when you DO crit – sprinkle that on top of talents that make things die faster, give you instant heals & spellpower boosts without gearing for spellpower and you have one solid beastly leveling spec.

I’ve selected a few key talents that make Retribution such an amazing leveling spec and I’d like to point them out. For the record, my current spec at 68 is this.

Truth be told, most boss encounters are immune to this ability but this is pretty sweet for leveling and procs at least once on every mob you kill. Dropping the mobs health means it dies faster. Killing fast = faster leveling.

With so many talents boosting your crit chance (+3% from Heart of the Crusader, +5% from Conviction, +3% from Sanctified Seals, +25% to Judgements from Fanaticism), getting 3 stacks of Vengeance is nothing and if you continue to kill things you’ll never let the buff drop.

The Art of War increases the damage of the 3 spells that you’ll be using the most and, again, thanks to the plethora of +crit talents, you’ll be proccing insta-FoLs until Ret gets nerfed again.

Since you won’t really be gearing a lot for Int at my stage in the game, the Replenishment effect kind of sucks. What DOESN’T suck is that you’ll be getting 15% of your maximum mana back each time you use Judgement. This eliminates a lot of need for drinking between kills since we have the mana pool of a level 12 Mage.

I don’t know how many of you out there have ever played an Arms Warrior with Improved Overpower talented but this talent makes you feel the same warm and fuzzy feeling. Mob hits 35%, Scrolling Combat Text gives the go ahead to launch holy hell and you watch big numbers pop up. With 25% crit + a 50% chance from this talent, you have a very small margin that you won’t be critting with your Pally execute.

Gone are the days when you gear for spellpower as a Ret Pally thanks to this stellar talent. Stacking AP to make your holy damage spells (just about everything) AND heals better? Kinda makes those Art of War procs a little better, ammirite? The extra HoT when you crit is icing on the cake.

Thanks to Fanaticism, you’ll be seeing this debuff the mobs a majority of the time. Any extra damage is good damage and your Judgements don’t exactly hit like wet newspaper anymore. Seal of Command is your staple Seal now and it gives your Judgement a 100% crit chance if the mob is somehow incapacitated (Hammer of Justice, Repentence, Holy Wrath) so use it to your advantage. I start off with Hammer of Justice every chance I get. If they aren’t dead and happen to be a humanoid, I use Repentence just to solidify my next Judgement as a crit. Good times!

The 51 point talent that acts as the Pally’s version of the Warrior’s Whirlwind AND heals you (and 3 other people) for 25% of the damage caused. If getting instant FoLs from Art of War wasn’t enough now you get healed everytime you use Divine Storm. Huzzah!

There are more talents in the Ret tree that are great, of course, but these are the ones that I felt made the most impact while leveling. We all know Seal of Command is the seal of choice but I couldn’t get a good screencap of the definition (WoW website is down and WoWhead has some glitchy number info). Pretend I had some epic Seal of Command information somewhere around here.

Read Full Post »

Northrend Bound!

Hit 68 on the Pally an hour before server shutdown but still had time to pick up 5 upgrades. It seems like all of the DPS plate lacks raw AP and just stacks crit.. but it was still better than my crappy clownish looking Nagrand ensemble.

Jeebus Christmas, I forgot how hard Northrend mobs hit. I was blowing every stun I had!

Expect a pretty lengthy “ZOMGZ I LUZ LEVLIN RETS!” post tomorrow.

Read Full Post »