To the QQers.....

Sucks being on the recieving end of the shit stick huh? Now imagine that you have been on that end for, well since the game started all those years ago. Such is the life of Ret Paladins up til yesterday. And it won't last. Let us have our moment. In the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, "STOP WHINING!"

Nerfs are incoming, or at least that is what GC indicates. As long as we are balanced with other melee DPS, its all good. I have posted this on a few other blogs, but it bears repeating. We NEED to be OP for a little while. Ret Paladins have zero credability among most of the WoW community as solid, sustained, DPS. A reputation has to be built from the ground up in order for us to be accepted among the masses, regardless of our actual output. I can guarantee that there are people who are still saying 'LOLRET' and 'We don't need Ret DPS' right now, in game. Our rep is that crappy.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most of us, myself included, have no idea what a Naxx geared level 80 Paladin is doing for DPS. Is it too high, too low, on par? That is really the only thing that is important in the long run. These 'problems' with Paladins that people currently have are really only applicable for the next month. After that, its literally a new game. And asking for Ret nerfs now is a little short sighted, because these are the people you are going to be bringing with you to Naxx. If they are under performing in Naxx, you have only yourself to blame.

And I know that you might say, "What do I care? I play a (insert class)." Well you should care, if for nothing else then you start riding that slippery slope. Paladins get nerfed to the ground. Who is next? Druids? They are more of a hybrid then Paladins, and even now they can DPS and Tank within the same spec. Nerf them. Then what? Nerf Shaman. They are hybrids too, and they should not be able to dps like a Mage or a Rogue. Nerf Warriors too. They can tank, so they shouldn't be able to DPS like a Rogue. Good job, now you just defeated the whole point of what Blizz was trying to accomplish by making the game less class based, and more people based. It shouldn't be "Is there a Rogue on?", it should be "Is Gimbel on?". The difference being a good player should always be picked over a good class for any role, which is what Blizz is shooting for. Be it healing, DPS, or tanking, you should want to bring good players, not have them warm the bench because they rolled the 'wrong' class. So yes, this rampant QQing can affect you. Be careful what you wish for, or we might be playing TBC all over again.

Will The Real X-Perl Please Stand Up.....

For those of you using Curse.com to get your updates, know that as of right now, they have the wrong X-Perl linked on the main X-Perl page. Here is the one you want. Enjoy!

New Plan now that the Patch is out....

Ok so the patch is here and things seem to be working. I only got to play for like 30 minutes before I had to head off to work, but oh well. Early Tuesday morning I started downloading updated addons. I thought I was terrible clever. I was wrong.

It would seem that Outfitter, Bagnon, X-Perl, Healbot, WIM, Auctioneer, Dominos, Deadly Boss Mods, and Postal were all supposed to be updated for 3.0.2. I downloaded them all. Only Bagnon and Outfitter are working at the moment. Sigh.

So when I get home I am going to go through all my addons again and see if I can at least get the majority of them to work. I really just need Auctioneer, Dominos (or equivalent), and X-Perl (or equivalent) to work. And even at that, I really could just do with Auctioneer. I have over 100 auctions to manage, sometimes 200, and I don't really enjoy scouring the AH for deals on gear to DE. Auctioneer handles all that for me, and I don't think I could do without for to long and still make money. Now should also be a primetime to get my mats sold. I think that with Inscription coming online, there is going to be an increased demand for enchanting mats since enchants can be sold on the AH now.

Once I get my addon situation squared away, I am going to start knocking out those dailies with blazing speed! I need to finish paying Jendreka back after all. I also need to check and see if I can still get the "of the Shattered Sun" title. I really doubt it, but it will take all of two seconds to check. After that, I am going to see if I can't get into Kara somehow. I really want to see it.

Then I am also going to work on getting as many low level quests knocked out as possible. This is just for rep and for the quest achievement. Yes, I am going to be an achievement whore. I have been waiting for something like this for a while, and I fully plan to have some fun with it.

Then there is the alt. Thanks to Euripedes and Jendreka, I have rolled a Mage alt. Draenei female named Dradias. What can I say, I think Draenei females look good and they don't run like they have a pant load. At this point she is sitting at level 11. Anytime I am bored, I will be logging on to her to level.

This is my third Mage by the way. The last two were deleted in fits of frustration. Highest I have reached was level 16. This time around is going way smoother for some reason. I don't know why, but it is. I think I may have learned how to play the game better in the last few months since I rolled my last Mage. We will see though. If things start to go crappy this time though, I will just shelf her and come back when I am less cranky instead of getting all delete happy.

Mage is a challenging class. Mana conservation, spell rotation, and spell cooldowns are all things that need to be managed to be successful. As a clothie, you are dead if a mob can get few good hits on you. There are also no emergency buttons like Hunters, Rogues, and Paladins have at the same level. Basically, you get Frost Nova. If that is resisted, it's on cooldown, or you get another add after using it, you are screwed. Now, do realize that I will be immenesly harder to kill as I get more levels and new abilities. Especially once I get Ice Block and I can just wait for my Frost Nova to come back up. That will be handy. Blink will also be handy for escapes as well. But that doesn't help me now. Right now, I have to be crafty and rely on controlling the situation while having an escape plan ready. Of course in most cases an escape plan is just as simple as keeping in mind a safe path of escape and having a health pot on a hot key.

Dakkar may also get a little love as I hear that Steady Shot is trainable at level 50 or so. She is 61 at the moment, so really close anyway, but I was getting a little bored with the lackluster damage, the high mana usage, and same old button presses. Adding Steady Shot should help to alleviate those problems, except the mana part. I am also curious about how the new talents will work out. After all, she got a full refund too. I don't really see myself getting to into Dakkar though. She is way off on the back burner. I will have her to level 80 for WotLK at some point though, I just am not really making her a priority.

Then there are my boatload of alts on Azjol-Nerub. Well, honestly, I have no interest in them. Aside from my bro, I don't really know anyone else on Azjol. I don't like the economy there, and I don't like that it is in Mountain Time and I am on Eastern Time. 2 hour time difference is a pain in the rear. Runetotem is at least only on Central Time. 1 hour makes a huge difference, for serious. My brother has also been rarely home lately. This is not a bad thing at all, but it means that I don't really have any incentive to be on his server. I also relinquished Crushwolf back to him at his request. I had no room to argue since I had very little time invested into her and only $25 for the character transfer. No harm, no foul. Now my highest level toon is Ryukyu at level 48. I am curious to see how leveling is with a Paladin now that the patch is in full swing, but I am more tempted to start a Draenei male Pally named Ryukyu rather then continue leveling on a server that I could care less about.

I ramble a lot. For that I apologize. I also realize that my posts have very little in the way of gaming content. Well once I figure out something to write about that is more then me just thinking out loud, I will post it. Until then, this is all you get. If anyone has any ideas, drop me a line. I may do something about how I make money and perhaps do some analysis, similar to the Greedy Goblin but with a different slant. Soemthing that is more enchanting oriented and more on how to make things like Auctioneer work for you.

I might also do a few pieces on how to solo instances as a Ret Pally. With our improved AOE, mana regen, health regen, and instant FoL, we should be able to do at least as well if not better then a Prot Pally. I think I will start with the lowest level instances and work toward the highest. I can do this while I finish out a bunch of those achievements. I guess I will need to work out a format for that as well so it is easier to read. Thoughts and comments on that idea would be welcome.

Oh yeah, in case any of you didn't know, Ret pallies are weak sauce now. Please feel free to come up and take me out in BGs. No really, we can only equip cloth armor and our max DPS is like 200 in full S4. So really you Warlocks can just walk right up and melee me down, I promise I won't hurt you. Would I lie to you?

Epic Fail......

Well maybe that is a little harsh, but I was looking forward to playing quite a bit before I have to go to work at 9:40PM . I finished off my Logistics and Globalization homework before I went to bed at 8am. I have studied a bit for my Statistics midterm as well. Now I have made dinner, cleaned the house, made some phone calls, and posted a blog earlier in the day. And guess what? I still can't log into WoW!!!! I should work on this blog a bit since it looks like I will have downtime until at least 9:00PM EST, but I just cannot focus right now.

Do you remember what it was like on Christmas morning when you ran out to go see all of your presents under the tree? Well I am kinda feeling like that. Except, instead of presents under the tree, Santa's fat ass is stuck in my chimney and there are no elves around to dislodge him.......

MOVE YOUR ASS BLIZZ!!!

It is 6:12PM EST. The servers were supposed to be up 1 hour ago originally, 12 minutes ago as of the recently updated login screen. I am going to make some soup and drink a beer. This better be up when I am done. Or so help me..... I will QQ on the official forums!!!

The Patch Cometh!

Well, so says Green Armadillo at PVD, sorta kinda anyway. It would seem that the patch is coming sooner, rather then later. And I can't wait! I will finally be able to do some wicked damage with my Ret Paladin, Dradis. I have been wanting more damage out of her since Verigan's Fist started getting a little underwhelming at around level 31. I am also looking for to, gasp!, nearly infinite mana! Yes, it's true. I have been messing around with Dradis on the PTR, and she can keep on Judging, Consecrating, Crusader Striking, and Divine Storming as long as there is something to hit. I would have to add another spell to my cycle in order to really start killing my mana efficiency. One option I have been toying with is leaving Healbot running and throwing out spot heals when Art of War procs. Usually, I have a lot of freetime as far as GCD and spell cooldowns are concerned, so throwing out spot Flash of Light, Cleanse, and even any of the Hands should not be a problem while I am DPSing.

I don't think I am even going to bother with anything other then dailies and working the AH between now and Tuesday afternoon. Once the servers come back up though, I am heading straight for AV. After that, I am going to see if anyone is up for a few heroics. I have never done a heroic, but I suppose now is as good of a time as any to start. I need a few Badges of Justice for that sweet Ret libram anyway. Then I am off to solo a few instances!

The only thing that makes me sad about the patch is that I am fairly certain that my shot getting 'of the Shattered Sun' goes away with it. I am not going to be able to raise an extra 1000g that fast. For that reason alone, I would like it if the patch waits another week, cause then I would be able to get the title, it would only take 4 days of hardcore dailies to get it. As it is though, I only have about 1 days worth of time if it hits Tuesday. I might be able to squeeze a few dailies out before the servers restart. But even that would not be enough. Basically, I would have to see all of my enchanting mats sell between now and Tuesday morning if I want to have enough money. But oh well, I should have planned a little better and this would not be an issue.

I am also going to be working on Rogue, Metalsnake, over the next few days. She is not really a high priority though. I will probably work off the rested xp on all of my toons actually. I will also need to roll a few new toons so I can have one of each. I am going to sit down one day and work out a rotation so I can just keep leveling my alts with only rested XP. I may do that later this week. Of course once Wrath hits, its going to be all Dradis, all the time. Alts will wait, but that is what alts do. Dradis is also going to be my achievement monkey, so I will have to make time for that as well. The other toons will just be there to serve my beck and call, well except maybe Dakkar the Hunter. I am somewhat attached to her, but mostly because she rocks the house.

My prediction on the alts that I will end up playing the most will my Hunter, Warlock, Rogue, Druid, Mage, Warrior, Shaman, and Priest in that order. In fact, now that I think about it, I probably won't get the Priest very far. I have never had just bunches of fun playing a Priest, but who knows, I was probably doing it wrong.

Thats it for now. Back to work. I need to study a little too, I have a test on Tuesday for my Statisics class. Sigh..... I despise maths.

Well that was fun!

I have not posted for a while, or even edited my last post. And I will tell you why. Blogger locked my blog. They suspected I had started a spam blog. Come on guys! I know its a sparse and uninteresting blog, but for serious! Anyway, I am glad they are looking out for that stuff, just don't lock my blog again. K thx.

In other news, it looks like my list below is way off, and I will edit it this weekend. I can't edit it at work because stuff like WoWWiki and WoWhead are inaccessible. Provided I can get all of my homework done for college, I will fix it. I also should have my baby girl tomorrow night through Saturday, so no updates there.

I have been running around on Dradis for the last couple weeks, leaving Ryukyu virtually untouched. I've been having too much fun running around with my boys on Runetotem to be concerned with my Horde guy. I finally got some gear upgrades for my Ret set too! Brewfest got me the Empty Mug of Direbrew. I got Exalted with Ogri'la for the Vortex Walking Boots. Of course, Jendreka, Matt, and myself had to put the beat down on a bunch of demons to get the Apexis Crystals. Matt needed them too for the same boots. I also got Exalted with the Skyguard at the same time and picked up a Blue Nether Ray. And to top it all off I got the Merciless Gladiator's Greatsword! I have been working at getting this for a while now, and it was a great upgrade from the Legionfoe I have been toting around. Found an enchanter to slap Savagery on it too, so now its even better.

All in all, I am making fast progress on Dradis, and it feels great! I am actually having fun with her again! Now I need to grind out a little more honor for the S2 Helm and Chest, grind out some mats for the Black Felsteel Bracers, and see if can weasel my way into a Heroic for a few Badges so I can get my Libram. I also need to max out my Enchanting, Fishing, and Cooking. And there are about a billion other things I want to do.

Of course, once the patch hits and I am doing some better DPS, Battlegrounds will go a lot smoother for me. I might also have a fighting chance at getting into a Heroic as well so I can get a few Badges. As it is, my DPS is ok, but not really impressive, and I might have a hard time keeping up on damage. I will also need to keep doing dailies for a while until I max out my Two-Hand Sword skill, which is sitting at 345 right now.

A special thanks to Jendreka for the loan. He funded over half of my epic flying mount training. Only 3000g to go and we are even! :P