Tankadin funness!

        So as those of you who play WoW know patch 3.0.2 recently hit, and with it much goodness. We don't have to worry about uncrushability with raid bosses anymore, stuff has less hitpoints, there is yet another craft skill to painfully consider leveling, and of course huge class changes.

        I could spend time and effort researching all the class changes and detailing them...but most everyone who reads my blog knows FAR more about the various classes than I do. So I'm going to settle myself with just pointing out some of the awesome goodness that has recently cropped up in paladin land.

        First point I wish to make is that all of our offensive spells are now instant casts. No not being able to throw my shield like unto Captain America while being beat on by a mob. No more not being able to use Holy Wrath because of the horde of undead beating on me...even though it's only useful when there IS a horde of undead beating on me. There is so much happiness here it's hard to explain.

        Secondly our stamina increases our spell damage, which increases our threat, which makes it that much easier to keep people from dying after certain druidic hunter priests pull an extra room. And in case you were wondering 3B, I don't ever plan on letting that one go. It also makes it easier for when my brain wanders off and I try to tank without putting Righteous Fury up first...

        The third point I have is that they changed Blessing of Sanctuary. Now first I was peeved about this, they changed the flat dmg reduction into a percentage and removed the damage you did when you blocked... Half the reason I used that blessing was because it provided easy extra threat for blocking things. But then I actually tried the new one out... Instead of doing damage for threat every time I blocked I got back mana, 2% of my maximum mana to be exact. And I don't just get it back when I blocked, I get it back when I block, dodge, or parry. What does this mean? It means if I have 5-6 mobs on my I. Cannot. Tap. This makes me very, very happy.

        Fourth big thing they did is give us Hammer of the Righteous(HotR). This is a wonderful skill that puts out a massive amount of threat on three targets, AND doesn't break CC like consecration does. Do you know what this means? I can have a mob sheeped/shackled/trapped right next to me and still control up to three mobs! No more having to QQ about people wanting to use CC (previously it made tanking rather annoying).

        The last thing I'm gonna talk about is actually kind of a gripe. When they removed uncrushability they had to find a new way to make us suffer...so they removed 20 defense skill from our talent tree. While this isn't the end of the world it did leave me scrambling about to find 48 defense rating so I'd be back to uncrittable and able to tank again. I'm not really complaining though, it's still much easier to remembering to keep holy shield up so Moroes doesn't crush my bum.

        Welp, that's it for now. Back to homework and waiting for my 16GB flash drive to get here.

~joe(ishvi)

So it may have been awhile

I realize I haven't posted in a bit, but hey! I've been busy! Just don't ask me what yet. Haven't come up with a good exc... err, that is, it's hard to explain. Let it be enough that I am posting now, and will try to post more in the future, maybe.

Also, here is proof I have hair, and a beard. Well, proof of a beard at least, I can promise you there is hair under the cap, and after I get back from the soon to be mentioned wedding, I'll prolly have pics to prove it.

Hmm, where to start, so much to talk about (not really). We'll start this party off with with an explanation of why I won't be doing anything involving Waco or WoW from next Mon to the following Sun. I'll be in S. Carolina! A friend from work is getting married (woo! woo!) and her aunt offered to let them use her beach house for free.

Now as the wedding is actually on the 16th, I'm sure some of you are curious as to why I'm going up there five days early, even though I'm not part of the wedding party. Well, I have a good explanation for that at least! I had the choice of either paying for a plane ticket up there, driving my car-which-is-primarily-composed-of-duck-tape-and up there, or I could just catch a ride up on Monday with the maid of honor and skip the whole driving/flying bit. And seeing as the maid of honor is my cousin, the choice was quite simple, and cheap.

Now I'm not entirely sure what I'll be actually doing for a week, but I'm sure one of the multitudes of women-getting-ready-for-the-wedding will find some sort of annoying labor for me to do. Women tend to do that. ^_~

After that I'll be back in Waco with a week to get ready for school. Woo! Eighteen hours of educational and time consuming bliss!

Now I realize that eighteen hours of school might not be the most exciting thing to many of you people, but I'm something of a glutton for punishment. I've also been working entry level non-educated jobs for the last four years and am beginning to get tired of the continual state of being broke. Plus it'll be fun to play with computers and call it education again.

I think that's pretty much it schedule wise, so now to get down to the WoW business!

Okay, so apparently there was a little confusion between some people and they (Wulfa and Dammerung included) thought I was kinda looking for a raiding guild, or at least something more active in the heroic department. Just wanna clarify to any who read my blogpost (which is apparently where this idea came from, silly bloggers) about it, that is not the case at all. While I do enjoy running heroics with friends from OOB and Untamed Dragons from time to time, my WoW family is Sidhe Devils (with a few relations over on the Silvermoon server). So don't get excited, you're not rid of me yet!

But in talking with people about this another subject came up, and that was my pretty much complete incompetency involving the holy side of paladin. Which I had to agree with them, I had no clue what was going on. From what I'd read from paladin blogs and forums, if you're specced prot, and you're not the MT, something has gone wrong.

From experience actually playing a paladin in raids, I've discovered that the previous statement is completely wrong, at least in Kara, if you have someone else who can tank a particular mob better (like warriors stance dancing through fear). So since then I've started to put together my spare sets and read up/practice doing stuff besides just protection, namely spec holy and let Dammerung get beat up so I can laugh.

More on the Dammerung, Ishvi, Wulfa, and Mooncadence party later. Within the next month. Most likely. Maybe. Depending on the alignment of the moon and stars.

~joe/ishvi