Holiday Bosses Are Awesome

Headless Horseman in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard

As a non-raider, one of the best things in the game that I enjoy is the holiday bosses that are available for several of the "big" holidays. You can kill them once per day and each one drops some sort of epic quality gear that is almost guaranteed to be of some benefit to your characters.

The best part? You can farm the bosses for their dropped loot and then you have another shot at cool items from the once a day goodie bag you get as well.

During Brewfest a few weeks ago I got ilevel 365 trinkets for all specs for Bandin, Segovax, and Alakavish. During the Midsummer Festival I got capes for all of them, and now during Hallow's End going on right now I've gotten rings for all three as well.

It's a great way to fill in some gaps once a year because Blizzard upgrades the items dropped each time to be consistent with current content.

Sometimes, being a non-raider does have some perks that make gearing a little easier if you just know where to look.

Transmogrification: Bold Armor as Bandin's New Protection Set

Armor sets continue to be something that are getting talked about an awful lot around the World of Warcraft forum and blog environment. Everyone is rushing to collect the very best looking sets they can before patch 4.3 hits, and I am no exception. While most players seem to be gravitating towards older tier sets for their transmogrification needs, I've been spending lots of time in Outland farming dungeon sets that I think look just as awesome.

After a lot more farming than it took to gather Bandin's new healing set I have finally got all the pieces for his tanking gear:

This armor set is officially known as the Bold Armor and can be found in normal and heroic versions of Outland dungeons. Each piece has a drop rate of about 15-20%, so it takes a bit of luck to get them all quickly, especially the pieces that come from heroics where you only have one shot per day.

Once again, I found the set from the extremely helpful WoW Roleplay Gear website. It was much easier to know where to look for each piece using their already very well done research. All of the pieces of the main armor can be found in Outland dungeons, but the shield is a drop from a Northrend heroic, which took me the longest of anything to actually get to drop. The sword is one I found on the auction house. I wanted a simple weapon that looked like something a tank would use to "get the job done" so to speak. I think the dark steel appearance of the sword fits that idea perfectly.

Here is an item by item breakdown of each piece:

• Warhelm of the Bold
• Shoulderguards of the Bold
• Breastplate of the Bold
• Gauntlets of the Bold
• Legplates of the Bold
• Lion's Heart Girdle
• Eaglecrest Warboots
• Devilshark Cape
• Scorpion Sting
• Royal Crest of Lordaeron

There is one disappointment with this gear set. The helm looks awesome, but currently for whatever reason it is in the game entirely mis-colored. I submitted a help ticket about the issue and was told that the developers are aware of the issue. That's as much as I could find out. So, for now I have to operate without the helmet visible, but someday it will probably get fixed and I can use it then. 

I'm still not sure what mount I will use with this gear, but I may stick with the Argent Charger I'm planning to use with my healing gear set. I might still find something better though. Possibly even the normal paladin Charger which fits the color scheme a little better, but admittedly doesn't look quite as cool. 

Also still looking for a good tabard, but haven't found anything yet, so for now I'm going to stick with the Storm Sons guild tabard. Up next in the Transmogrification series will be the gear I currently have picked out for my Retribution spec.

Taking Up Jewelcrafting

Now that Bandin has effectively reached best in slot (for a non-raider) status for his healing gear and is only two items away from best in slot for his tanking gear (we won't go in to how bad his newly minted dps gear is), I've been looking for a way to get just a little more juice out of his stats and gear.

When Bandin first came to be I took up mining and engineering as his professions because I though engineering would be fun. It had some cool gadgets and quality of life things that would make playing in a more individual atmosphere a little easier and more fun. To be honest, I had a good time with engineering, but in the end I grew a little bored with it.

Then the Blizzard developers decided to revamp how the glyph system works in game and I became intrigued by all that the inscription profession could do. I liked the idea of being able to create glyphs for my own characters and those of friends so we didn't have to pay crazy auction house prices anymore. I also liked that it had a special set of shoulder enchantments that were better than anything else in the game that I could use for Bandin on all of his gear sets.

So, off I went to level herbalism and learn everything there is to know in the inscriptionist's toolkit. It took a really long time to finally gather all of the glyph recipes because I had to do daily research and then I had to earn the gold to buy about 40 Book of Glyph Mastery from the auction house over time. Those things originally started at about 150 gold each, but quickly rose up into the 1200 gold range after the expansion took hold of everyone trying to level new professions.

It was only two weeks ago that I finally managed to complete my glyph recipes and so now I'm ready for the next profession challenge (ignoring that I have neglected archaeology completely). I did some research and discovered that it truly is more beneficial to performance to have two crafting professions instead of one crafting and one gathering profession. While it is more convenient to maintain a profession if you have the matching gathering, you get another 80 or so of an important stat if you go double-crafting instead.

Therefore, I just recently dropped herbalism on Bandin and I am using my trusty alt death knight, Segovax, to provide him with piles of ore to prospect and find gems with to level jewelcrafting. Not only will Bandin benefit from the extra intellect, strength and mastery from the jewelcrafter-only gems, but it will be beneficial to my future alts and those of my two guildmates as well.

Now, I just need to make sure I don't blow through all of my gold trying to power level through the profession. It's so much cheaper to gather it all myself.

Retribution: Where DPS Comes From

Lately while playing a lot of my characters I've been thinking a lot about where all of my DPS actually comes from. Which abilities, which rotation, which buffs, etc. So I decided to do a little bit of target dummy testing with Bandin in his newly minted Retribution spec and see what I could come up with. Basically the idea was to start with nothing but auto-attack and then add in each ability that is part of the more or less "standard" rotation one at a time and see how my DPS was affected.

I'll admit, I had a lot more fun doing this than I originally thought I would, and I intend to do the same thing (or a slightly adjusted version of it) for all specs of my characters over time.

First, let's go over the ground rules I used to keep things consistent:

Each test rotation I did was 5 minutes long. This was to try and alleviate any concern over the random factor that is rather prevalent in the Retribution rotation at the moment. I used Bandin's current best gear available for Retribution which averages out to a 349 ilevel; substantial, but by no means overly impressive. The gear is a mixture of Molten Front epics, dungeon gear, justice point gear, and questing greens from the auction house. DPS was measured using the most recent version of the Skada addon. Testing was done against the level 85 mob targeting dummy in Stormwind.

Spec and glyphs used for testing can be found here: 7/2/32

The only buffs active were Seal of Truth and Blessing of Might.

That's all I went with. Nothing too fancy as I was trying to limit the amount of factors that could have an impact throughout the tests. See below for the criteria of each test and the result.

***Unless specified, all abilities were used as close to on cooldown as possible***

AUTO-ATTACK
DPS: 2481.8

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT
DPS: 3406.0

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE
DPS: 6086.5

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE + 3HP TEMPLAR'S VERDICT
DPS: 8201.8

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE + 3HP TEMPLAR'S VERDICT + ART OF WAR PROC
DPS: 9275.9

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE + 3HP TEMPLAR'S VERDICT + ART OF WAR PROC + DIVINE PURPOSE PROC -> TEMPLAR'S VERDICT ONLY
DPS: 9733.0

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE + 3HP TEMPLAR'S VERDICT + ART OF WAR PROC + DIVINE PURPOSE PROC -> TEMPLAR'S VERDICT ONLY + HOLY WRATH
DPS: 10550.3

AUTO-ATTACK + JUDGEMENT + CRUSADER STRIKE + 3HP TEMPLAR'S VERDICT + ART OF WAR PROC + DIVINE PURPOSE PROC + HOLY WRATH + INQUISITION MAINTAINED 100%
DPS: 10154.7

There were two things that stood out to me when I was done testing.

First, I hit over 8,000 DPS using only three abilities on cooldown. That is about the average I see in a lot of heroics that Bandin does healing for, and above average for most of the normal version dungeons. I thought it was pretty impressive that I could put out that type of number only using about a third of my toolkit.

Secondly, when trying to maintain 100% uptime on Inquisition, my DPS took a hit by about 400 per second. Logically that seems like I'm doing something wrong because Inquisition is a 30% buff to my Holy damage as long as it is active. The only explanation I can think of is that I am either working it into the rotation incorrectly (doubtful after checking many, many guides by those much smarter than myself), or it has to do with damage scaling with my gear.

In order to keep Inquisition active I had to give up about 2 or 3 global cooldowns each minute that could have been used for additional Crusader Strikes or Templar's Verdicts. I'm thinking that when I reach a higher gear level the damage increase of those abilities will overcome the loss of the global cooldowns and net a DPS increase. It definitely gives me something to look for in a follow-up test someday.

Also, you may have noticed that I did not incorporate such DPS cooldowns as Zealotry, Avenging Wrath, or Guardian of the Ancient King. I did this on purpose. A large amount of time those abilities are used most specifically on boss fights, and that wasn't what I was trying to test this time. The use of those abilities really can swing DPS numbers all over the place if used improperly, so I intend to do a second test in conjunction with retesting at a higher gear level to see what happens.

Overall, it was certainly an interesting experiment, and I am excited to try again when I reach an ilevel closer to 360-365 and see if that makes a substantial difference. I also am very excited to see what sort of different doing this type of testing makes when using the Protection spec sometime, so keep an eye out for that.

Patch 4.3: Judgement Changes to Passive Mana Regen Instead of Active Mana Regen for Holy Spec

There is no spell in Bandin's spellbook that he uses more than Judgement. It gets constant use by all three of the paladin talent trees and is one of the most basic of abilities for the paladin class. Bandin spends most of his time as a healer as it is my favorite role, and the use of Judgement is paramount to successfully healing a dungeon or raid group.

As it stands now, Bandin uses Judgement on cooldown when healing a dungeon group, and it provides the following when used with Seal of Insight active:

Unleashing this Seal's energy will deal 1988 Holy damage to an enemy and restore 15% of the Paladin's base mana. 

This benefit from Seal of Insight basically makes Judgement on cooldown an active mana regeneration for all healing paladins. If you keep hitting that button every 8 seconds you get back 15% of your base mana every single time. For Bandin, that translates into 3513 mana for every application.

To put that into perspective, with the immediate return in mana Bandin receives from Judgement he can then apply Holy Light to a target for 2810 mana, and have actually come out ahead. He can then immediately toss out Holy Shock for an additional 1639 mana and only come out having expended only 939 mana total. Talk about efficient.

Keeping Judgement on cooldown has become 100% ingrained in everything I do when healing dungeons with Bandin. I do it without thinking, and I've reached a point where there is never a time that ability isn't on cooldown from the time my group first engages the first pack of trash, to the time the final boss is dead.

But, patch 4.3 is bringing about some changes in mana regeneration for Holy paladins. I think the reasoning behind the following change has a lot to do with how incredibly mana efficient Holy paladins are at this point in the expansion (Bandin is rarely below 90% in normal dungeons, 75% in heroics), and the developers needed to do something.

With the patch, Seal of Insight will be losing the mana return portion it currently has and return to simply dealing X damage with each application. Instead, what will happen is that the first tier talent Judgements of the Pure will go from providing the following:

Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste by 9% for 1 min.

to instead providing:

Your Judgement increases your casting and melee haste by 9% and increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 1 minute.

Now, I don't have the mathematical accumen to translate those percentages into great numbers across the board and do a ton of comparisons at different levels of gear and so forth, but given that Judgements of the Pure is the first talent any self-respecting Holy paladin fill out to all three available talent points upon unlocking their talent tree, it is safe to assume every Holy paladin in the game will be gaining the 30% Spirit benefit from Judgement.

So, before patch 4.3 if Bandin keeps Judgement on cooldown every 8 seconds for a full minute that means he will get 7 Judgements applied for a total of 24,591 mana returned. If we then subtract the mana cost of 7 Judgements, we have 24,591 – 8,197 = 16,394 net mana returned using the current format.

After patch 4.3 we switch to the new system. Bandin will need to apply Judgement 1 time every minute to keep the Judgements of the Pure buff active, which leaves 6 new global cooldowns for healing abilities each minute (which will be awesome). Currently Bandin sits at 2,856 mp5 (mana generated per 5 seconds) while in combat with his self-buffs of Seal of Insight and Blessing of Might.

30% of 2,856 is 857, so Bandin really will have a combat regen of 3,713 mp5. That's a pretty significant amount of mp5 for anything Bandin is currently attempting to do. If you break it down further, that means that the new system for Judgement provides Bandin with 10,284 mana gained per minute.

The difference between the current system and the new system is a loss of 6,110 mana regenerated per minute for Bandin specifically. Clearly a nerf to his mana regeneration, but given his gear level and the fact that he doesn't raid, but rather runs 5-man dungeons, it shouldn't be a nerf that really affects his ability to heal groups effectively.

Of more concern for me at the moment is what I'm going to fill 6 more global cooldowns per minute with instead of standing around waiting to heal someone. That many globals is a significant amount of time in a healer's rotation, so that should be fun to experience.

Overall, I think the change is a good one. I'll appreciate not having to use Judgement so often even if getting out of the habit takes a little while. Was the change really necessary? I'd say not really as it doesn't change much, but then I'm not a Blizzard developer, so I don't know all of the more minute details behind such decisions. Generally, I think they were just looking for a way to give Holy paladins a slight mana regen nerf and this was the most straightforward way to accomplish it.

Transmogrification: Righteous Armor as Bandin's New Look in Holy Spec

With the advent of patch 4.3 nearing in the next few weeks I've been spending a lot of time running old content to try and gather up some nice looking, matching gear for Bandin to wear depending on what role he is playing at the moment. I set my sights on finding something to wear while acting as a dungeon healer and I think I've hit it right on the money with this look:

This armor set is officially known as the Righteous Armor and I think it looks amazing, especially when worn by a healer. I think it embodies everything about the idea of a plate-wearing healer using holy light to get his group through the trenches.

Luckily for me, The Visual Roleplay Gear List exists to help players like me out in finding good looking sets for this new transmogrification feature coming soon. I had to grind out many, many runs through several normal and heroic version Outland dungeons to gather all the pieces (especially the shield and shoulders), but it was well worth the end result. The weapon is the only thing you can't find in an Outland dungeon as it drops from Molten Core instead, although there is also a main-hand only heirloom version as well. Below is a list of each specific item:

• Helm of the Righteous
• Spaulders of the Righteous
• Breastplate of the Righteous
• Gauntlets of the Righteous
• Legplates of the Righteous
• Girdle of Valorous Deeds
• Boots of the Righteous Path
• Thoriumweave Cloak
• Shield of the Void
• Aurastone Hammer

I don't have the helm on display in the pictures, but you should be able to find a screenshot located in the appropriate link above. I like to see my beard, and this particular helm is not one of the more updated ones that allows the beard to flow out the bottom; instead it cuts it off, which just looks odd on the dwarf model.

There are two things I'm missing to go with this gear set however; the tabard that matches perfectly from The Silver Covenant, and the Argent Charger mount from the Argent Tournament in Northrend. I need to spend a few days doing dailies at the tournament again to gather the appropriate number of champion seals for the purchases. As soon as I obtain those I will post some pictures for everyone to see. 

Thankfully, I'm not limited to just one set of gear for transmogrification in patch 4.3, and I have been working hard at gathering a couple other sets to go with my Protection and Retribution talent specs as well as some alternatives for whenever I feel like a change of pace. Check back to see posts about those individual sets in the near future.

Swift White Hawkstrider

Bandin on his new Swift White Hawkstrider

Yesterday during my daily run through Heroic Sethekk Halls and Heroic Magister's Terrace I finally managed to get the Swift White Hawkstrider mount to drop for Bandin. It took about 20 runs or so to finally get it to drop, and I'm still waiting on my Raven Lord mount from Anzu in Sethekk Halls. 

I've always wanted this mount because it is one of the few non-Alliance look-a-likes available. 

Riding it around is a bit jarring to the eyes though as it seems like it's bouncing along the road on some kind of Azerothian crack, but maybe that's just me. This one is Bandin's 61st mount, and will likely not see a lot of riding time due to my preference for others and a lack of need for ground-only mounts nowadays, but it's a nice addition to the collection.

Streamlining the Process of Alt Leveling to Maximum Level

Creating alts is a lot of fun. I've probably created about 100 in the time I've been playing World of Warcraft, ranging from some that get just a couple levels while I'm wasting time, to a handful that have made it past level 60 and beyond only to get deleted a short while later because I just simply don't have much time for them and I sort of feel guilty when they are staring me in the face on the loading screen and they don't get any of my attention.

However, if I were to have a full stable of alt characters, I think I would use the following basic checklist for getting them situated at level 85 and then they would be prepared if I ever decided to take them a little more seriously and use them as crafting alts, or a temporary main, etc.

Truth be told I would very much like to have a max-level character of every class someday, but after pushing really hard this year to make that happen I burned myself out and discovered that I'm not really ready for that undertaking just yet.

Basic Alt Checklist for Reaching Level 85

Talent Specialization
It's my advice that you pick just one talent tree and stick to it from level 1 all the way to level 85. Not only is it far easier to keep a handle on learning a good rotation or spell usage habit, but it is also much faster for getting your gear in order and being ready to contribute in a meaningful manner.

Don't worry about purchasing dual-spec at level 30 unless you have some really intense burning desire to do so. I personally feel it's a bit of a waste if the character is just an alt you won't be spending a ton of time playing at max level, but to each their own.

Take a few minutes and think about which spec you are most interested in playing for the new character and just go with that. It speeds the process up, and helps ease the frustration later on, trust me, I know.

Professions
I've tried several ways of dealing with professions on alt characters, and after lots of different approaches, the best I have found is to simply grab mining and herbalism, and gather to your heart's content on the way to max level. With the changes to these two professions to provide experience with each node you gather from, not only are you getting to level 85 much faster, but you will have all the gold you need for things like training, mounts, etc as part of the leveling process.

Save the crafting professions until you hit 85. You'll find it is super fast to use the appropriate gathering profession and power-level the crafting profession once you've made a final decision on what you want it to be.

Mounts
This one takes a little bit of self-control because mounts are really cool. If you've ever purchased a mount from the Blizzard Store you are good to go, you never need to purchase another mount for your alt characters. If not, simply buy the appropriate faction mount at level 20, use it all the way to 60, then buy a basic flying mount as soon as you get to Outland and don't worry about anything else.

You save gold, you save time, and you save hassle. Now that mounts scale with riding skill, there really isn't a need to buy more than the absolute minimum.

Gear
Keep it simple. If you are leveling by questing, just use the stuff you get from quest rewards. With the re-tuning of level 1-60 you will always be overpowered anyways and stuff will drop with hardly a glance. If you drop in on a couple of dungeons along the way, use those drops to supplement your quest rewards as appropriate.

Never, ever, ever buy from the auction house with an alt character. It's a waste of gold and you'll replace the gear in two levels anyways. Once you hit 85 you can start taking a close look at fine-tuning gear piece by piece, but until then, don't bother.

Miscellaneous
I like to make sure each of my characters has the following while leveling since I have a main who can provide a little financing from the start:

1. 4 Netherweave Bags
2. Full bank (filled with 7 Netherweave Bags)
3. 25 gold

I've found that by passing these materials along to a new character it takes out all of the hassle of needing to empty bags all the time, pay for skills training, and finding storage for all the materials I've gathered from my professions along the way.

Heirlooms

If you have access to them, use them. If not, don't worry too much. Levels 1-60 fly by even without them and Outland goes by quick as well. In a few weeks with patch 4.3 Northrend is getting its experience requirements nerfed to the ground and it will go by fast too and you'll be level 85 in no time.

Nowadays with all of the improvements made with Cataclysm you should have no trouble reaching level 85 in about 3-4 total days (72-96 hours) of play time.

Paladin Tier 13 Armor: Hell Yes!

Tier 13 Paladin Armor from Deathwing Raid

Tier armor is one of the coolest things about gearing a character in World of Warcraft. Each time a new raid is released during an expansion every class gets a specific armor design to accompany it. Generally there is a lot of grumbling back and forth between the players on whether or not the designs are "cool enough," or "too boring" and so forth, but most of the time the general consensus is that the tier armor sets are pretty awesome across the board.

The paladin armor for Tier 13 is no exception. Of all the armor sets this one seems to fit the class it represents the most. I just finished reading The Song of Fire and Ice series (also known as Game of Thrones) and this armor seems like the designers over at Blizzard tore it straight out of what I imagine the knights in that series wearing.

The look fits so closely to some of the mental images I put in my brain while reading those books, and for whatever reason that makes me love this armor even more. Unfortunately, unlike previous tier sets, this one will not be available for purchase with valor points, so I may have to take the occasional trip into the upcoming Raid Finder feature to see if I can get the gear at some point.

In my opinion, this is the best paladin armor set to date. Great job Blizzard!