More Paladin Week

Day 24: Space

I love how the sky looks like space when Rhonin announces an Algalon kill in Dalaran.

     Seish Transmog Post

     Seish got a new transmog in honor of the patch. Well, not entirely a new transmog, it's mostly the same outfit I had him in at the end of Cataclysm with a few tweaks and improvements. It's not particularly creative, but I really like the look so I thought I'd share it here.

 Head: Symbolic Crown (I like plate circlets. Seish's red hair is one of the things that helps me keep track of him in really chaotic fights, so I like being able to see it.)
Shoulders: Relentless Gladiator's Scaled Shoulders
Chest: Relentless Gladiator's Scaled Chestpiece
Waist: Belt of Living Obsidium (This could stand some tweaking. I'm still poking around for a better choice.)
Hands: Relentless Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets
Legs: Relentless Gladiator's Scaled Legguards
Feet: Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Warboots of Alacrity (Supposedly there are actually boots meant for this set that drop from Vault of Archavon. Supposedly. Luckily Rim could make these boots that matched pretty well.)
Back: Twilight Cape (I actually think Duskwoven Cape is a slightly better match but haven't picked one up yet.)
Sword: Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful (This is the most Seish sword I can possibly imagine. Kind of wish the enchant didn't make it quite so sparkly but what can you do?)
Tabard: Tabard of the Explorer (Mostly just because it matches really well, but Seish is the one who earned the achieve so he might as well boast about it.)

Continuing saga of Laen
     Laen's level 13 now. Most of the time spent on him so far has been on farming piles of metal for him on Khaelyss and letting Laen turn it into armor to disenchant. But he's done some questing around in Ghostlands. Wasn't sure how I'd like questing as a holy paladin, but so far it's not too bad at all. The Light answers Laen's call and Holy Shock is really nice for both damaging and self healing. My main problem is that poor Laen lives on Tai's server so the only heirloom he has access to at the moment is the cape, though Tai's farming up some jp to buy him another one. And there is no intellect mail at low levels. None. At least there is none I've found to be had from questing or crafting. What is a baby holy paladin supposed to do?
     And that's another thing. While shopping for heirlooms I'll pick up when Tai has the jp I notice. No int plate heirlooms. Why? Poor holy paladins, seems like they get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways when starting out. Oh well, for now Laen's making do with his cape and a hodgepodge of strength mail and int cloth which makes me cringe and him sadly lament how ugly his clothes are. (It will get better, Laen. Look at all the pretty transmogs I'm designing for you.)
     Overall I'm having a lot of fun with Laen and it seems like starting him out has been really lucky for me. Yesterday when farming more copper for his blacksmithing I decided to let Khaelyss fly around Darkshore for a bit since Durotar was getting a bit crowded. Being lazy, I flight pathed as far as Felwood, and then intended to fly over. I almost didn't bother to check on the Minfernal. It doesn't exist, they are never up. Except that I did go check and there was one! And if it hadn't been for Laen I'd never have happened upon it.

Laen's not sure what to think of the creepy demon pet that's almost as big as he is.
 

Alt Appreciation Week: Paladins

Day 23: From my childhood

Knightly archetypes. I read lots of King Arthur. Also horses because I grew up on a ranch. And Seish on Argent Tournament dailies. I still love those.

     And Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation weeks are still going. This week it's paladins and I'm very excited. Paladins are my class. Though you probably already knew that from the name of this blog. First in my heart in WoW (though monks and hunters run close behind) and out of it. I play paladins in our weekly D&D sessions probably 50% of the time. I had a paladin in Everquest. I played one in Diablo II.  As I write this post I'm drinking tea from a mug that says Paladin on it.
     As you can imagine... I've got a horde of paladin alts. (Pun kind of intended. They're almost all Horde.) My main's a paladin and a bit further down the post I'll introduce you to the rest of them, but I've decided to do something a little different for paladin week. Instead of setting goals for all my alts (that I may not manage anyway because Seish and Tai and Rim and sometimes Tyl have a way of stealing my time.) I've decided to make a new alt for paladin week with the intent to keep leveling him even after it's over.
     I've got two level 90 paladins. On the same server even, because it used to be pretty much the only one I ever played on. Seish is Ret and Rim is Prot. I love playing both of them and this expansion they've both had a lot of attention. Seish has a holy offspec, in Cataclysm and now in Mists it's actually ended up with a fairly decent gear set. but I have never used it. I don't know how to play Holy. I've read lots of guides but they only help me so much. I tend to find that the way I learn to play something best is leveling it. So meet Laen:

     He starts off pally week at level 10 with an heirloom cape, 1k gold, a full set of bags, and a thermal anvil for his blacksmithing. And he'll be my holy paladin, if all goes well. Going to see how far I can get him by the end of paladin week, in both leveling and in his professions. Blacksmithing/Enchanting, he's on Tai's server and their guild has an enchanter gap so Laen's bravely offering to fill it even though it is one of my least favorite professions ever. I'm already getting attached to this one, so we'll see how it goes.

A Crusade of Paladins.*
(Otherwise known as 'Are you seriously rolling another paladin?!')

Seish

Level 90 Retribution Paladin.

Mining/JC

     He's my main so he technically probably doesn't belong in an alt post. And he'll probably get a whole other post to himself sometime this week, but I couldn't leave him out of the list. Seish is my ret pally. He's working his way slowly through the legendary chain and is up to an ilvl of 517 which I am telling myself isn't too bad for somebody that doesn't get to raid even Flex.
     Seish was my first paladin on WoW. I started him the day I got BC because an elf paladin was what I most wanted to play. He was retribution for character reasons before I knew that it was the dps spec, or even really what dps was. It fits him, I still love playing him as ret and I flatter myself that I'm not half bad at it, though I'm certainly not great. But when Seish hits things, they mostly die in a big freaking hurry.

Rim

Level 90 Protection Paladin
Mining/BS
     Rim's not my main, though for part of this expansion he's acted like one. Rim, along with my husband's mage Syri, is the one who did all the Pandaria reps. He'd easily hit an ilvl of 485 before Timeless Isle without ever setting foot into an LFR. (Yeah, I'm afraid to tank LFR, but I've promised myself I'm going to give it a try this patch.) On our guild's failed attempts at raiding in Cataclysm Rim was main tank. He tanked most of Blackwing Descent, and even tanked a pug of Bastion of Twilight back then, which is as close as I've ever come to actually raiding.
     Unlike Seish, who changes suits of plate regularly Rim is always mogged like this (though the weapon has changed a few times). In fact my husband is so used to seeing him like this that a day or so after hitting 90 when I'd been too lazy to transmog him yet, my husband turned to me during dailies and said. "Where's your shiny gold armor? I can't keep track of you like this." Needless to say I went right off to transmog after we'd finished for the day. This is the suit of armor I first saw in WoW and went... wow I want a paladin in that. And the Golden Lotus tabard looks gorgeous with it in my opinion.

Gawaine

Level 68 Protection Paladin
Mining/BS
     My lone Alliance paladin. Remember the mention of King Arthur? Yeah, he's named after that Gawaine. Galahad was taken on his server. Gawaine was made to level with my husband's Alliance mage, so he's hanging out at 68 until his beloved mage gets pulled back out and dusted off. I like Gawaine. The human animations kind of bug me, but I like the character and hope someday he gets a chance to hit level cap.
     Character wise Gawaine is a warm, kind hearted man and he's devoted to the mage he travels with and hopes to marry her someday. My husband and I laughed over the fact that of all the characters we play together Gawaine and Jessa are really the only two we could see being an actual couple.

Maeth

Level 35 Holy/Protection Paladin
     Maeth is played with my friend SprYte's prot pally because I finally talked her into trying one. She's been healing and has maybe taught me the beginning of what Laen will hopefully teach me, but she only gets played when SprYte's available so leveling is a slow process. Maeth's my only female blood elf paladin mostly because I hate how small weapons and shields are in their hands. Especially shields. Some of them look more like oversized bracelets than anything. It also bugs me that when they face enemies they hold their shield extended behind them instead of between them and the bad guy. Yeah, I get fussy over animations.
     But I like Maeth. She may take ages to level, but when she does she not only has a transmog set picked out, but it's already all sitting in her bank waiting for her to use it. Aside from the weapon and shield because she's not high enough level to get those for herself. Character wise she's a tough, no nonsense kind of woman. Still gentle hearted, still loyal to her friends, but tough. Right now she's leveling holy but at heart she's a tank.

Kelantheies

Level 14 Retribution Paladin
     Kelantheies was mad as sort of an experiment. SprYte and I had decided to make a set of twin paladins with really similar names. Well then husband got in on it, so Kel, Kul, and Kal were born and leveled to 14 which is where they sit at the moment. Sometime we were intending on doing some dungeons and I really hope we get around to that some day. It would be fun.

Sylrothan

Level 15 Protection Paladin
     Sylrothan is special to me. He's had more love as an RP character than as a WoW character but I'm hoping someday to fix that. He lives on an RP server, though most of the RPing I've actually done with him has been text based with friends rather than in game. Still due to the nature of his character I'd come up with an interesting leveling challenge for myself and when I continue leveling I still intend to try it that way. You see, Sylrothan in my head is a High Elf rather than a Blood Elf and he's Alliance. There's a long story about why he's horde side at the moment, involving his older brother Seish, but I won't get into that. The challenge I'd made for myself was to see if I could level him without doing any quest that involved killing Alliance NPCs. This might be a problem if he ever gets to Pandaria but...I'm hoping I'll find a way around it. :)
     Leveling wise Syl's largely on hold because he was supposed to level with a friend's druid.

Laaryn

Level 10 Protection Paladin     

     Laaryn was based off a D&D character. He was made to level with Yavi's priest alt, but since there hasn't been much playtime for them, Laaryn has now turned into the bank/pantry alt for Tai. He's waiting for his leveling buddy when they're available but in the meantime he's making himself quite useful.

     Obviously I love paladins and can't get enough of playing them, though a lot of the poor things seem to get stalled out waiting for leveling friends. I've very excited for this week of posting and hopefully seeing a lot of fun paladin posts. :D With any luck the rest of mine won't be this late coming.



*Because what else would you call a group of paladins? It's like a murder of crows or a gaggle of geese only with more smiting and heavy armor and all around righteousness.

Monk Week Recap

Day 22: Made me smile

Perhaps I'm easily entertained, but the new animation for eating the noodles you can get from noodle carts make me smile. So does the view from the Shrine of Fellowship. Had a hard time deciding what to do for this screenshot, there are a lot of little things in WoW that make me smile. In the end I went with a thing that made me smile recently.  And it's Tai, because it's still monk week.

     When it came to my goals for monk week,  I didn't meet all of them so far. Didn't do much with transmogging for the monks I play with others. Haven't got Rothorin into tanking those dungeon runs, but the day isn't over yet, could still happen. Still I spent a lot of time on my monks this week. Vaelanys did get to level 70, got the last piece he needed for his transmog set, and moved to Northrend.
     Tai mastered two more of the Ways of cooking and is well on his way to Master of the Ways(only two left to master!). I've spent a bunch of time on his cooking and fishing the last few days. He also made his way up finally with Os to get the blazing chest on Timeless Isle and ended up with a 535 ring that pushes his ilvl up to 500.
     Tai and Os did another Karazhan run, but the boots for his new transmog set still didn't drop. Maybe next week. So at least a couple of my monks saw a lot of playtime this week.
     And to wind down my recap here is a list of ten things I love about monks(in no particular order). I think I'll end all my Alt Appreciation Week recaps this way from now on:

1. Roll/Chi Torpedo This has to be one of the best abilities ever. Every time I log from one of my monks to another class it seems like I spend a few minutes looking for my roll button.
2. Polearms. When Tai isn't using a one hand off hand combination I love being a healer with a spear.
3. Animations. I love that monks got a few unique animations for their abilities. They look awesome and add a great deal to the flavor of the class. As you can probably tell by my screenshots I have a lot of fun playing with these.
4. Mistweavers. Punching and kicking things in the face to make yourself (and your allies) feel better. This is a pretty awesome way to heal.
5. The spec names.
6. Class Quests. I really wish all of the classes got some flavor of these. Not only are they fun, but they give you a nice xp boost, some good gear to look forward to every ten levels, and they teach you about how to use some of your class abilities.
7. Spinning Crane Kick. Running through old instances to farm something? This makes it nice and fast.
8. Martial Arts. I studied Martial Arts when I was younger and I like that the flavor of the arts are incorporated into the class.
9. Playing around with leather gear for transmog. I like playing dress up and there's some awesome leather gear.
10. Being able to fill any role.

     I'm kind of sad monk week is over actually. Monks are probably easily my second favorite class in WoW. This is the first class I've ever healed on that I felt confident in what I was doing, and I just have so much fun when I'm playing my monks. It's been a lot of fun seeing other people's posts with their monk alts and mains. Apparently I'm not the only one with a monk that wants to steal my main's job. ;)

Screenshot Day 21

Day 21: Rule of Thirds

Looking through my folder of existing screenshots, I think I'm not very good at this rule, since this is one of the best examples I could find. From Tyl's leveling days in Jade Forest.

     This was a lazy playing day for me. Aside from all the cooldowns I haven't done much other than working on Tai's fishing and cooking. I'm slow at it, but he's going for Master of the Ways in addition to eventually making a noodle cart. Spent a bunch of time at Sri-La Village fishing up the Reef Octopus, then a bunch of time moving stuff from various low level alts until I've got one with all the cooking stuff in his bank. Yay for pantries. Tai got Master of the Oven, and now it's time to farm up lots more mats for his cooking.
   

It's still Monk Week!

Day 20: In the Morning

There was a monkless version of this shot, because the view was lovely. Then I thought, hey it's monk week and Tai's my only character who is a serious morning person. So enjoy Tai doing his morning exercises.

     And because it's still monk week I talked myself out of doing LFRs on Seish this morning and went to focus on Vaelanys instead. (It's paladin week next week, Seish. You will get your turn.) Besides healing five mans is easier on my very sleep-deprived brain this morning than LFR would have been anyhow. And then there was the queue. Over half an hour long... then two declined invites before I finally got in.
     Vaelanys had already hit 69 from doing his monk daily and flying over to Netherstorm (exploration) and then doing a quest chain to pick up the last piece of armor I wanted for his transmog set. He is on an RP server, these things are important! So Mechanar got me well over halfway to 70. And partway through Utgarde Keep...

     And though I may have waited in the queues for what felt like aaaages. I got two groups full of nice people who all seemed to be very good players :) That's definitely worth the wait. Vaelanys' hearth is now set in Dalaran and he's ready for the next phase of his journey. And Mistweaving? Yep still fun!
     Hopefully I'll manage to get in some time on Rothorin later, see if I can hammer out what I'm doing as a Brewmaster again. (You better believe he's wearing that title too. :D) That, aside from the morning cooldown parade has been my WoW day so far.

Screenshot Day 19

Day 19: What is this?

Presumably a portal to the Emerald Dream?

     This screenshot comes with a story. Not a very exciting story, but one of my WoW memories. The first time I came across this I was still pretty new to the game. Seish was still leveling and flying around one day I saw this strange circle on the map in Duskwood. I landed to see what it was. I was floored. What was it? A portal to some place? But where?
     I approached very very cautiously, it looked like there should be Night Elf guards around it somewhere just waiting to jump out at an unsuspecting Blood Elf. But there were no guards, no mobs at all, just little harmless critters. I wandered around the whole area, looking at everything and getting more and more curious. Slowly I worked my way up to the portal and stared at it for a long time. I wanted to know where it went.
     But what if Seish stepped through it and couldn't get back. I debated for a long time, but finally mounted up and flew away again without trying. But it bugged me. Later I thought of hearthstones. (Yes, I was still very new to the game XD) I could try to go through the portal, see what was on the other side and if it was something way too scary for a little paladin then I could hearth right back to the safety of Orgrimmar. That decided I flew back out there, and excitedly ran up and through the portal.
     And on the other side... was the trunk of the tree and nothing else. What a letdown. I had been so sure it must go somewhere really interesting and possibly terrifying.  I tried a few times, and then left. There are a few other portals like it. I always try to go through them, even now. It never works, but I still try. And I still try this one every time archaeology or something brings me to the area again. Who knows. Maybe someday it -will- work. They must be there for some reason, right?

Screenshot Day 18

Day 18: Vintage

Can't help wondering if the wine they've got out on the Isle of Thunder is a good vintage or just okay.

     And the Isle of Thunder is where Seish spent some time today. Still grinding up the last little bit of rep for the Black Prince. Yeah... I'm behind. Currently Seish is at 9/20 Secrets of the Empire and 30/40 of the Trillium. If I actually do what I should and hit every wing of Throne of Thunder this week I'm hoping I can finish this quest. Probably only a few days of rep grinding needed. Less if I just went out and farmed kills for it, but I prefer structuring that around the dailies. Makes it feel more manageable and has the lovely side effect of netting Seish some pocket change while he's working at it.
     Seish did the first wing of Siege of Orgrimmar LFR last night with Divi and Taiki. It was interesting. I'm glad we get cut scenes in this one! I love getting the gear and that's part of the motivation for me, but I also love the story so I'm happy when there are cut scenes and NPCs talking. Seish got a new sword! Apparently he's finally broken his bad luck trend from Cataclysm. He never did get Gurthalak.
     Tyl spent a little time on the Isle of Thunder today too. Had popped over to the Timeless Isle to pick up his Blazing Chest and when I'd finished someone was putting together a Nalak group so I joined in. It ended up being a pretty small group, so it took us a while to get him down, but everybody was really well coordinated and it did get accomplished. :D I think I had more fun in that run than I've had in a lot of the bigger group kills I've been in on. But this has only reinforced my awareness that Tyl really, really needs a new bow. His weapon and one trinket are really the main things holding his item level down, so he'll probably have to hit Throne of Thunder to have another shot at Tortos this week.