Alt Appreciation Week: Priests

Day 30: Found

 

Look what Thera the rogue found while questing in Townlong Steppes.Yeah, I don't know.

Laeleiweyn over at World of Lae has come up with the idea for several weeks of Alt Appreciation. And this week it's Priests. So I looked through my roster to see what I had. I don't have many priests. Two, actually, and neither of them is anywhere near max level. The other surprising thing I noticed is that they're both Alliance. I play mostly Horde, but I do not have a Horde Priest! Without further ado, meet my priests:

Corbin

Level 42 Shadow Priest
     I made Corbin at the very tail end of Cataclysm when I was looking for something to do and decided to  help out with leveling in a friend's guild. Decided to try something I hadn't played before. I was having fun with him for a bit, but when the new patch hit just before Mists I didn't bother figuring out what his new rotation was like. I still don't know, really though I did try to do a little pvp on him very briefly with the husband's ally rogue one day.

Ysolde

Level 27 Discipline Priest
     Arthurian names again, can't seem to resist sticking those on my human characters. Ysolde was made to level with my husband's paladin tank. They got in a few days worth of questing and one or two dungeon runs and that, so far has been that. I do like Ysolde, priest healing does seem like it could be kind of fun.

     Which leads me to what I'm considering for this week. I might make a Horde priest. It seems wrong that I don't have one, and well I always enjoy having an excuse to make more alts, even though I really don't need them. If I do, they'll get a post later in the week, but in the mean time... enjoy my priests.

Paladin Week Recap

Day 29: Gold

Rim is very gold and so are parts of the Vale, still. I love these golden trees.

     Today was a fairly busy day. One of my battletag friends was looking for people for a world boss group so Seish got in on it. Smoothest Oondasta group I've ever been in on. I don't think there was a single death! Nalak worked out fairly smoothly, then we did all four of the Celestials to help some people with their Legendary quest. Seish got a nice new pair of gloves from Yu'lon: Gauntlets of Winged Triumph. Nice being a jewelcrafter, cause I switched to them and gemmed them right on the spot between Celestials. After a couple more item upgrades he's up to 520 and that might improve some more when I figure out what to use the burden of eternity he's carrying around for.
     Laen got to run two dungeons today, and got up to level 26. No new gear, but still no fatalities, even with yet another warrior tank that would not stop moving. It wasn't that they were at all hard to heal, but when they were moving so fast that the mage and lock couldn't really cast and the rogue couldn't stealth and people kept getting left behind so I had to choose between healing the tank or them... it got frustrating. And I laughed because I asked them to slow down, they said 'sure' and didn't do a thing different at all. Oh well, I'm still enjoying paladin healing and plan on continuing to level Laen even now that paladin week is over.

     He's already had to give up on a shield for now because this off hand had better stats. Hopefully Tai will get in gear and get him an heirloom shield soon.

And to finish up my recap, here are (in not particular order) 10 things I love about paladins in WoW:

1. The concept. Holy knights fighting evil and protecting the innocent. I love that. I particularly like in WoW that it seems like they serve the Light and combat evil, but don't really spend a lot of time trying to convert people to their chosen way.
2. Versatility. Tanking, Healing, DPS, paladins can do all of that. Yeah, apparently I'm pretty much a fan of hybrid classes.
3. Armor. Paladins have some of the best looking plate armor in the game. At least I think so.
4. Survivability. Compared to other classes paladins seem to have some of the best. Even Seish, my ret pally, often manages to survive stuff that surprises the heck out of me.
5. Righteous Fury. I love this. I call it paladin cologne, and one day filled guild chat with nonsensical slogans for Righteous Fury cologne ads. (Righteous Fury: Your priest will thank you.) It's amazing for all kinds of situations, if a tank drops in an instance the ret pally can pop it on and try to get control of the fight (depending on the healer this might be short lived, and so might the ret pally) Running low levels through stuff in any spec. The only time it's not amazing is if you're the tank and forgot to put it on. Rim's done that a time or two.
6. Lay on Hands. Who doesn't like a 'Get out of Death Free' card?
7. Paladin mounts. Need I say more? Oh yeah, free riding at level 20.
8. Heart of the Crusader. Passive mounted speed boost is nice, though I do miss when it was an aura and I could share it with my friends.
9. Avenger's Shield/Exorcism/Holy Shock. Especially Avenger's Shield for prot pallies. Has to be one of the most fun abilities in the game. But Exorcism is fun too, especially now that it's an instant. Holy shock is my favorite holy ability so far. We'll see if that changes.
10. Bubbles. So many uses.

     I could probably go on. There are a lot of things I love about paladins, a few things that were changed to that I miss (and some that I really don't.) I miss relics, just because I liked the idea of them carrying a holy relic around that increased their power. I miss Auras too, it was fun coordinating them in a multi-paladin group to get as many as possible up. But on the flip side I love the changes to retribution paladins that have let me main my main this expansion. I still miss him having consecration but it was well worth losing it for having multiple abilities generate holy power instead of just Crusader Strike. (I never could luck out enough in LFR to get the two piece tier bonus that let judgement do it too.)
      I love that inquisition now lasts twice as long too. Those were the two things I complained about on retribution paladins in Cataclysm, and they've fixed both of them to make the rotation so much more fun. Playing Seish in Cataclysm I felt bad and gimpy. Playing him now, I feel powerful, but more than that I'm having fun when I'm hitting things, spending a bit less time thinking about inquisition and a bit more time watching health bars drop very quickly.
     Overall it's been a pretty good paladin week for me. I might have liked to accomplish a bit more on Seish or get Laen a few more levels, but I plan on leveling Laen all the way up anyway. Paladin week was just a very good excuse to get started on it.
     Thanks again to Laeleiweyn at World of Lae for her Alt Appreciation idea! I've been having so much fun with it.

Paladin Week Continued

Day 28: 10 o'clock

Where Seish was around 10 am server time. Waiting in a queue.

     And speaking of queues... why is the queue for the newest content 46 minutes long and the queue for Throne of Thunder only 15? It ended up being the Pinnacle of Storms LFR I did today rather than a second shot at maybe getting all the bosses in the second wing of Siege, so I'd have the achieve for next week. I just didn't have the time or inclination to sit in another 40+ minute queue. Got one more Secret of the Empire from that wing, from Lei Shen. Wondering if they nerfed the drop rates on them. Seish is at 10/20 on those and 40/40 Trillium. The rep part is done and handed in already.
     Last night I noticed that Os' rogue was doing some dungeons so I offered to join in. Laen healed two runs of Shadowfang Keep and one of Blackfathom Deeps that got him to level 24. And nobody died. Not a single person, not even the warrior tank who ran off ahead of the entire group through the entirety of Deeps and never bothered to look back. Laen was grateful for the rogue and shaman that helped peel stray adds off of him as they all ran to try and keep up. Not sure I'll ever understand why people queue for an instance as a group if they don't actually want to work together with anybody to do it.
     But that aside so far I'm enjoying paladin healing, though it's low level and relatively low stress so far. We'll see how I feel about it as Laen keeps progressing. I'm really looking forward to leveling him some more.

More Paladins

Have two days worth of Screenshots since I was lax on getting a post out yesterday
Day 26: Curve

This wasn't what I originally meant to use for this but I forgot to get screenshot of what I wanted, and this is pretty so here it is.

Day 27: WTF?

Seriously WTF?!

Random paladin week happenings:

     Wednesday night Seish spent a little time on the Timeless Isle. Not a lot happened except that once again I helped take down Zhu-Gon the Sour. Only this time he was nice enough to drop a pet. :D Now I've only got about a million more rare drop pets to get.

     Yesterday afternoon I finally queued Seish into the second wing of the SoO LFR. After a 40 minute queue...I came in on the trash before the last boss. I really wish there was some way the Raid Finder could check things and make sure you at least get a fresh run on your first time through. I won't say I'm not there for the shiny loots but I'm also really there for seeing it and was disappointed that I didn't get to see any of the first three bosses. We wiped twice on Nazgrim but then got him down. I was still standing on the final go because I hadn't stupidly stood in anything... or run into flying axes while answering the phone like I did on the second wipe.

       Last night Laen hit Level 20! He got riding and a key to Seish's extensive stable for his journeying enjoyment. He finished what I wanted to do in Ghostlands (Mostly the Dar'khan quests since I don't think I'd done them since Seish.)

     He left there at level 19 and had picked up a quest to talk to Lor'themar. About the time he was heading off to Silvermoon for that I saw Os' rogue alt asking for help on a quest in guild chat. They're about the same level and being the warm-hearted and helpful paladin he is Laen made his way straight to Orgrimmar and sprinted across Durotar and Barrens to help out. That got a bit more xp and then after all the back and forth between Lor'themar and Sylvanas it only took a couple (rather low level quests) in Barrens to get him level 20! The rogue reached 20 soon after so perhaps Laen will have some occasional company on his journey.

     

     And then even though it was late and I really should have gone to bed I popped over to Tai for a bit because I was still talking to SprYte on WoW and wasn't quite ready to sleep. In between conversation I flew over to give a shot at Proving Grounds again. I'd done them shortly after the patch, managed not to do any better than bronze on the heals. I'm still not very good at group healing due to learning in two-manning so I'm having to reteach myself some stuff. But last night on my first go I managed this much at least: 

     It's not very impressive compared to people doing waves of Endless but I worked hard for that and between my last attempt at it and this attempt I had drastically improved my technique. So it makes me proud. Later on some time I'll be going back and banging my head on gold until I manage it.

In the Ghostlands (More Paladin stuff)

Day 25: H is for...

Heroes. And Horde. Seish being overly pleased with himself in Orgrimmar.

Laen's Journey Continues.

     I can be kind of a slow leveler. Then other times I rush right through and level very quickly. Laen is moving a little on the slower side. I've been futzing around with his professions. (Both are coming along nicely.) And questing my leisurely way around Ghostlands... with a side trip to Orgrimmar for a tabard. He's hit level 16 as of this posting though, and can do dungeons now, and he will, though probably not until I feel done with Ghostlands.
     I did a lot of the quests in Ghostlands with Seish when I was first leveling and then on most of my blood elf alts since I've either moved onto Barrens or Silverpine to continue. Or just jumped straight into dungeons and done nothing much else to level. But feeling a little nostalgia, poking around stuff I remember from leveling Seish and it's fun, so I'm going slow with it. Probably won't do all the quests in the zone, but there are a few I definitely want to hit.
     I did Windrunner Spire,  Laen wandered around looking at things and finding chests and nifty places to screenshot.

     Then I suddenly decided that Laen's leveling pet friend should get some levels so it was straight down to the beaches to fight spirit crabs until Dawnglow the Phoenix Hawk Hatchling hit level 6. Didn't take long.
     After turning in that quest Laen headed back down to the Dead Scar where he engaged Luzran in fearsome solo combat. After a hard won victory and a few pats on the back for himself, Laen, flush with confidence went in search of the hideous Knucklerot intent on bringing him to justice...
     Knucklerot did not play fair. He tossed Laen into a bat and well... On Laen the overly self-confident's second attempt at Knucklerot, a couple of lovely blood elf ladies came along to help out and it went much more quickly and smoothly. And turning in that quest was enough to give him level 16, and a ring with intellect! Thank the Light. Though by now he's picked up a pair of mail gauntlets that miraculously have some and a shield of the gorilla with intellect and strength but hey beggars can't be choosers.
     It may be fairly obvious by now that I'm having a lot of fun leveling this little paladin. When I'm done with Ghostlands he'll be heading into dungeons for most of his journey, since the point in leveling as Holy is to learn to heal and the best way to do that is to practice on a group. But I have to admit for now I'm enjoying questing too.

And for nostalgia's sake, here's one of the very first screenshots I ever took. Of a level 20 Seish in Ghostlands. Oh that stylish leveling gear.

   

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.