Holy Shield, No Spell Hit, Lots o’ Resist

Previously, I posted about reasons a Paladin would want spell hit on his gear. If Holy Shield hits or misses based on Spell Hit mechanics - meaning that it misses a base rate of 16% against bosses - there is a lot of room for Spell Hit to improve a Protection Paladin’s threat generation.

Initially, I was a bit unsure if this was true or not. There seemed to be little evidence that I could find - short of personally testing the ability - to determine if Holy Shield was indeed resistable and if that resistance was based on melee hit, spell hit, or something else. Now that I’ve re-specced Protection and had a chance to test it myself, I’ve got an answer.
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Farming Shadowmoon Valley

After I ducked out of a horrendous pug group for Magister’s Terrace, I decided to go do a bit of materials farming for my resistance sets. I have most of the ore that I need to make the armor, so what I need the most is Primal Fire, Water, Shadow, and Life.

I mistakenly thought that the gas clouds in Shadowmoon Valley would yield Motes of Fire. I flew over to Shadowmoon Valley, got out my trusty Zapthrottle Mote Extractor, and pointed it at a bit of Fel Mist. Low and behold, I gathered up five motes of Shadow!

I had previously planned on farming the Primal Shadows in the area in southwest Nagrand. There are a decent amount of demons that drop Motes of Shadow, and I could probably farm up 6+ per hour. The Mote Extractor opens up a whole new opportunity.

I spent the next 2 hours or so flying around Shadowmoon. I just couldn’t pull myself away from farming. I think it’s become my new favorite place to gather materials. It was virtually empty, and I had no competition gathering the Fel Mist and the ore nodes in the area.

The ore seemingly re-spawned instantly, and every time I passed through the zone again there was ore to mine. Every time I thought about leaving, I ran into a new node.

At the end of about two hours, I had gathered up 7 x Primal Shadows, about 90 x Adamantite Ore, about 60 x Fel Iron Ore, 2 rare gems (Talasite and Dawnstone), a Primal Fire, a ton of Primal Earth, and a couple greens from random mobs that I killed. With the exorbitant price of Primal Shadows, the farming round was probably worth 3-400 gold easily.

Although this may not be the most efficient way to farm Primal Shadows, it is a great place. On top of that, the Ore makes this an extremely profitable proposition. I sold most of the Adamantite, and I can use that to buy more Primal Waters/Primal Fires to start building the Frost Resist pieces.

Yes, I think that June 4 target will be met after all. A few more days around Shadowmoon and I’ll be well on my way to two full resistance sets.

Gathering Mats: Buy Cheap, Farm Expensive

Now that I’ve completed my latest crafting endeavour - the Belt of the Guardian - it’s time for me to start piecing together resistance sets for Hydross. Eugh, this is gonna be expensive.

Along with sundry enchantments, completing both sets means crafting six pieces of epic armor, two blue necklaces, and two epic rings. The mats for all of this are quite expensive - something to the tune of 26 x Khorium Bar, 30 x Felsteel Bar, 48 x Primal Fire, 46 x Primal Water, 48 x Primal Shadow, and 46 x Primal Life.

That’s quite a bit.
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Prot Pally Gear: Spell Hit… Why?

Since the new gear in 2.4 was revealed, people have been complaining that the Prot Pally gear sucks. Case in point: Shattrath Protectorate’s Breastplate.

The breastplate was originally supposed to have Int on it - something most Prot Pallies abhorred as useless. I suppose they’re right. However, many people have also maligned the inclusion of spell hit rating on top gear and claim that spell hit is not important for threat generation as a protection paladin. Some people have also made the claim that spell hit is useful, but not as useful as spell damage.

Is this true?
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Shattered Sun Rep: New Paladin Tanking Shield

When the most recent patch came out, I had just come back from a long hiatus. I was focusing on leveling my Blood Elf Hunter, so I didn’t pay much attention to the Shattered Sun dailies or the rep rewards that you could purchase.

Now that I’m playing my Alliance characters more - and my Paladin is quickly becoming my main - I took a closer look at what was available. I had been doing the dailies with my Mage in order to earn some money, but now it looks like I’m going to have to work the ugly grind as a Paladin. The Sunward Crest is a terrific Paladin tanking shield, and it’d be a nice upgrade from my Azure Shield of Coldarra.
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Scyer’s Bloodgem: Best Caster Trinket

The Scryer’s Bloodgem is just a lowly blue. Although it requires Exalted status with the Scryer’s, it doesn’t seem like it should be one of the best trinkets in the game for casters.

Surely, the wonderful, purple Icon of the Silver Crescent and other epics are better?

For the most part, no. I didn’t realize it until after I had purchased it, but Scryer’s Bloodgem is one of the best caster trinkets in the game for a Mage.
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Don’t Make Other People Wait

Time is precious. Time is money. Time is scarce.

When you are playing with other people, remember this. If you are wasting their time, you are wasting something valuable and limited.

If You Find a Group, Stop Doing Dailies…

If I don’t have enough guildies on to make a run somewhere, I’ll often jump in the LFG queue. While I’m browsing the queues and spamming the LFG channel, I go about doing dailies or farming something.

I don’t have all day to play, so I don’t want to waste 30-45 minutes of it sitting still looking for a group. By farming and looking for a group at the same time, I get two things done… and don’t spend any time idle.
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Downing Hydross - A Mage’s Perspective

Saturday night, my Mage, Walkere, got an invite to SSC. I really wanted to bring my Paladin, Sythrick, but they didn’t need another tank. They needed DPS.

This was my first time in SSC, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. They had already downed Lurker in the past, but they hadn’t had much luck with Hydross. They planned on things going differently this week, and went to Hydross first in anticipation of beating him to a watery pulp.
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Testing the Wowhead Item Popup

Since I started playing WoW, I hated Allakazham. The site design is ugly and bloated. I originally used Thottbot, but once I found WoWhead I never went back.

When I started this blog, I didn’t know that WoWhead produced a script to display item tooltips. I found the Itemstats plug-in, which someone developed a long time ago to make use of the Allakazham database. It works ok (although I now have to plug in item numbers, the names don’t work), but it annoys me that the link goes back to Allakazham.

So, with this post, I’m testing out WoWhead’s tooltip system.

Turbo Charged Flying Machine. Get one. And be jealous of my Paladin, who just made one.

Edit: The tooltip works flawlessly. The only thing I don’t like is that the link itself isn’t formatted to look like an in-game item link the way that Itemstats did. But I suppose with some CSS tom-foolery, I can make it work…

No More Horde Side?

Even though I came back to WoW specifically to play a Horde character, it looks like I’ll be heading back to the Alliance side for the most part. We currently have four seventies in our Horde guild - one is taking a break, one plays mostly on the Alliance side, one is on late at night when I’m in bed… and the other is me.

After a couple weeks of PVPing by myself in battlegrounds, I decided to hop on to my Alliance toons. Meet the Mage (Walkere) and the Paladin (Sythrick) that will be occupying most of my time now.
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I r dumb. Thank God for GMs!

Since hitting 70, I’ve been doing quite a bit of PVP to gather up some new gear. I never got around to getting the Sha’tar Rep for [Stalker's Chain Spaulders] (even though I need about 300 rep) nor the Keepers of Time Rep for [Stalker's Chain Armor].

I did manage to gather quite a bit of honor, though. I gathered enough honor and tokens for three new pieces, to be exact. I bought up the first three pieces on my list - bracers (first), boots (second), belt (third).

I grabbed [Vindicator's Chain Bracers] and threw +24 AP on them. I picked up [Vindicator's Chain Sabatons] and put Boar’s Speed on them. Then I bought [Vindicator's Linked Girdle].
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