Miscellaneous Notes

None of these is deep enough to have a separate post, so I'm lumping them all together.

Playing DPS as a Ret Spec Paladin isn't so bad after all

I was so used to running dungeons as a Holy Spec Paladin that I wasn't sure what to expect; after all, I'd only dual spec-ed to a Ret Spec Paladin for my questing work. However, after a disastrous set of circumstances in the Trial of the Champion where our group must have wiped about 4+ times, Murtaugh sighed and told me that maybe my gear isn't up to spec for healing in the ToC, so he told me to switch to Ret Spec and go as DPS.

My first run as a Ret Spec paladin was interesting, to say the least. Murtaugh told me to just go in there and hit something, so I obliged. Of course, in our first trash mob, who dies? Me. Well, at least I didn't have to run far to get back in.

I also discovered that questing as a Ret Spec and dungeon delving as one are two different animals. When I quest as a Ret Spec, I hold back on Consecration unless I've got more than two monsters to deal with at one time, but in a dungeon that's the thing you should be using the most. Those first few dungeons, Murtaugh kept telling me that Divine Storm was doing the most damage for me, but it should really be Consecration. I paid more attention to Consecration last night, and it apparently showed.


I still die in the Halls of Lightning

"When those iron dwarves start their whirlwind," Murtaugh told me, "run."

I obeyed.

Naturally, I thought we were past those guys when we hit some vyrkul. Well, a couple of the whirlwind dwarves aggroed on us as well, and from my viewing angle the vyrkul blocked the dwarves. What happens?

The dwarves whirlwind.

I don't see it.

I die.

Then, to add insult to injury, my brain says "Get your ass in gear, buddy. You're the healer and you have to hoof it back." So I do.

Except I'm not the healer; I'm DPS. We have not only one or two but three people in our PuG who can Rez -myself included- and I naturally make it into the entrance before either of the other two can do it.

So I run. And run. And make a wrong turn. (But I correct myself before I run into a trash mob.)

"Quint," Murtaugh's wife says via chat, "you've got a map."

I do? I've gotten so used to not getting any help with interior maps while questing that I never even bother to look, so I was stunned to see an actual map of the dungeon, laid out before me when I pulled the map up. "Wow," I said. "I never knew that."

I could hear the facepalms from across the state.


Just What did that Pally Do, Anyway?

I'd been trying to get the To Hellfire and Back achievement for ages, and I was perpetually four quests short. I was reading on Thottbot, and I finally found what I'd been missing: a four quest chain that starts in Shadowmoon Valley.

Hot Damn! I was up early this morning, so I figured I'd get on WoW and knock those four out before work. The quest chain is the finding of the mold and the forging of the key for Heroic Hellfire Citadel, and the last quest in the chain was to go and kill a Fel Reaver to use the thing's innards for the key.

Crap. I'd watched an 80th level Pally die trying to kill one of those things, so I knew this wasn't going to be fun.

Well, I thought, let's do this. I don't feel like waiting around for help. I went out, found a Fel Reaver, took a deep breath, and went after it.

Surprise surprise, the thing went down with my only needing to pop a bubble once early on.

As I flew back to complete the quest -and the Achievement- the only thing I could think of was if it was that easy to kill a Fel Reaver as an 80 Ret Spec, just what did that other Pally do wrong? Was he using Holy Spec or something?