I Toured the Fjord

Yesterday I made two major accomplishments. I toured the Fjord and dinged 72. There seems to be some debate as to whether there are more than the 105 quests in the Fjord that are required for the achievement. I can't tell you for sure but I know that I finished the last HF quest in my log when I got the achievement and I didn't stick around looking for more.

So I'm in Dragonblight helping the undead with the blight. This bothers me somewhat from an RP perspective. Sure the Blood Knights have a somewhat darker view of the light and Blood Elves in general have a good relationship with the Forsaken but I don't really trust them. It was also interesting to be questing below Naxxramas.

I also finished grinding my Argent Dawn rep up to Honored. I've heard from several places that the Argent Crusade will not give you quests unless you are Honored with the Argent Dawn. This isn't that big of a deal except that I didn't level through the Plaguelands and started at Neutral with them. I grapped a few Stratholme quests and headed that way. As a 71 paladin there are a few places where the trash can be a little overwhelming, mainly because there a few mobs that silence, but Stratholme is soloable for me. It took three trips in (although none of them were full clears) to get to honored. This may be annoying for classes that can't go in by themselves this way.

The Nexus

Whatever the Blizzard art team is being paid, double it. This place is beautiful. I've been through once so far and almost paid more attention to the scenery than the mobs!

The group I was in was 4 AIE-ers and a pugged healer. We did very well wiping once on the Tree-Shaper and twice on Keristrasza. Not bad for learning the bosses. I'm not sure if there is some way to avoid being thrown in the air on the Tree-Shaper. We just powered through him the second time.

The key to the Keristrasza fight appears to be making sure you move (or at least jump!) to clear the Intense Cold debuff and dispelling Crystal Chains quickly so that you can move. It's a magic debuff so that mean you need a paladin, a mage, or a warlock with his felhunter out. It's probably possible to go without one of these but it may require a second person who can heal.

I also picked up Greaves of the Blue Flight so definately not a waste of time.

In Which I Clear Utgarde Keep

I managed to get into a PUG for Utgarde Keep last night and had a blast. This was my first instance since I respecced to protection and I was really looking forward to tanking. The trash in Utgarde are not bad at all. They tend to be 3 pulls with one or two 4 pulls which have 2 casters.

Prince Keleseth is the first boss. This is a pretty fun fight with a few simple gadgets. He raises (and reraises and reraises) 5 skeletons during the fight to give your dps something extra to do. They reraise from where they are felled, so in theory a paladin should be able to tank them as well as the boss but we weren't successful in getting them kited into the consecration so I can't verify that. The other thing he does is toss out ice blocks that can indeed hit everyone, including the tank. This have about 7,000 hp so can be taken out fairly easily but he will go for someone else when the tank gets trapped.

Skarvald and Dalronn are the second boss(es). For those of you who loved Romeo and Juliette in Kara, you'll love the reprise. Unlike the Kara fight, they don't actually raise each other. Instead, the first to go down comes back as an untargetable ghost and keeps attacking until you kill the other. We burned Skarvald down to about 10% and then went to Dalronn. Skarvald still went down first due to Hammer of the Righteous but Dalronn went down quickly afterwords.

Ingvar the Plunderer is the final boss. He has two phases. The first phase is fairly simple with the big threats being his Staggering Roar, which locks out a spell being cast for 6 seconds and Smash which is a high damage 10 yard cone. I was able the first time to eat the Smashs in the first phase but not the second. You're going to have to run from them in the second phase so you may as well start in the first phase. Phase 1 ends when you take him down. At that point Annhylde the Caller resurects him as a ghoul and Phase 2 starts.

Dreadful Roar now replaces Staggering Roar, locking out spells for 8 seconds and Dark Smash replaces Smash. The smashes only have a range of 10 yards and take 3 seconds to cast making it very easy for the tank to run out of range. What ended up working for me was running from him in a clockwise fashion around the platform he's on. This let the dps and healer set up comfortable behind him without line of sight issues for the healer by the pillars in the middle of the platform.

I didn't get any drops this time through, but there are three quests which all had good rewards and/or xp.

Welcome to Northrend

I picked up my copy of Wrath last night at Wal-Mart at 12:06 and quickly made my way home to install. I was pleased to see that I did still have the two patches downloaded and quickly made my way to Howling Fjord.

Wow. The two thoughts I had on arriving was this place is huge and it looks great. I quickly trained up my herbalism and skinning and . . . logged for the night. What can I say, wife aggro has to be managed.

So far today I've been able to spend about an hour and a half and I am loving it. The quest have been fun and the zone has not been crowed at all. I'm trying to take it slow and really enjoy the quests. I hope to get to stick my toe into Utgarde Keep tonight.

Thoughts on Respecing to Protection

Last night I dinged the big 70 on Tasehires. As I have been planning since I started Tase, I quickly respecced to protection and headed off to Sunwell Isle to crank out some dailies.

It quickly became obvious to me that protection paladins really do have some serious solo play issues. It took me at least twice as long to kill mobs, which was not entirely unexpected. After all I was on a dps-spec (and one that has been a touch on the overpowered side at that). What really concerned me was how quickly I was tearing through my mana pool.

And the problem was more that there just aren't the same tools for regenerating mana in prot as there is for retribution. I was running with Judgement of Wisdom and Seal of Wisdom and I was still running out of mana far faster than it was coming back. This just contributed even more to the slowness of killing that I was experiencing as I had to back off on using abilities.

But that's just soloing, I thought. Surely while tanking that won't be as big problem. Wrong. I got in a PUG for Shadow Labs which was fun as this is one of my favorite instances and was my first time tanking it. We ran it on regular with a 65 priest and demolished it even with a screwed up pull on one of the bosses. So it has definately become easier in 3.0. However, I was still having serious mana issues, particularly with trash.

So how bad is the mana issue with prot paladin's? It's too early for me to say, since I've now tanked just one instance with Tase, but it's something I'm going to be keeping my eye on.

Un-Holy Invasion Batman!

And the world event continues! The Liche King has sent his minions to attack Orgrimmar and the leaders of the Horde are duelling (and Thrall is getting beat like an old rug). Quite an exciting event!

Waiting for Wrath

The time for Wrath is quickly approaching. Like all of us, I spent some time trying to decide what my approach to the new expansion was going to be. In Burning Crusade, I played a hunter that was part of a successful Kara guild. The guild eventually grew to two full Kara teams both of which could clear Kara in two nights. We dipped our toes into ZA, clearing all but the last boss and tried to break through to the 25 man raiding scene.

We never made it. We struggled reaching a solid 25 man roster and never quite got a successful raid going. We never got Mags or Gruul. The transition to 25 man raiding along with the summer before the expansion killed the guild.

So, finding myself basically guildless right before the expansion I thought about what I really wanted out of WoW. I really enjoyed running Kara, except that the 3 nights a week schedule had just taken too much time out of my family life. What I really wanted to do was raid just one night a week.

So how do I find a one night a week raiding guild? The answer I picked was to make one, sort of. I created a new toon on Earthen Ring and applied to Alea Icta Est. The goal being to level to 80 and form a 10 man raiding group in AIE. And that's pretty much where it is now. Tasehires is now 69 and change and we are 2 days from Wrath dropping.

I can't wait.