Heads Up
The final installment of the Paladin AoE Grinding series is nearing completion.Over the weekend I decided to go ahead and roll that Death Knight Tank I had mentioned last week. I have a post in progress to discuss the details of tanking with a Frost DK that should be coming out sometime this week, but if you want details on him right now then you can check out his armory link: Psynister. I bet you didn’t see that name coming, did you?
Today I want to tell you about an especially great group that I found myself in over the weekend. Generally when I queue for a random I run the dungeon and then regardless of how good/bad we did I go ahead and leave group and go find fresh group all together. That seems to be the norm from how quickly most people drop group after the final boss is down.
There was something different about this group though, so I went ahead and stuck with them. I think three of us asked at about the same time after the first run if everyone was up for another. With some amount of surprise from me everyone said yes. The second dungeon went down and we queued up as a group again. I think all together we did three dungeons, but there may have been a fourth in there as well.
I think as a group we functioned extremely well in the dungeons that we ran, and it was interesting to see that even though both the warrior and myself were queued for both Tank and DPS, the role of Tanking was mine every time we queued. I’ve seen the LFG tool swap people’s positions before so I know it can change, but every time it came up as mine.
Generally I like to keep my Real PUGs of Power posts to a single person, but this group worked so well together that I’m throwing them all in there together. Deciding on the title was a bit of a challenge this time since it’s about four people instead of only one, but it works for me even if it is a bit awkward. With four people deserving some praise, I initially was just going to write a regular post about it, but I think something like this shows a bit more sincerity when I say thank you.
Mr. I Had A Group Full Of Win’s Guys
Bethannie, Druid Heals
Nikedawg, Warrior DPS
Aldy, Mage DPS
Adolat, Priest DPS
Psynister’s Notebook presents: Real PUGs of Power
(Real PUGs of Poweeeer)
Today we salute you Mr. I Had A Group Full Of Win’s Guys.
(Mr. I Had A Group Full Of Wiiiinn’s Guys!)
You’ve shown us how a real group clears an instance.
With DoT’s, HoT’s, AoE’s, and Whirlwinds.(I think we could one-shot Arthas!)
Taking down bosses and trash mobs with ease,
And acknowledging the strengths of every member.(Great job with the heals!)
Pathing mobs get pulled, no problem.
Mage’s pet was set to aggressive, who cares?
The tank got mind controlled? Lets bring him down!(Dang it, I wanted to kill him!)
So crack open an ice cold Frost Tank’s heart, you group full of epic win.
There’s no such thing as an unbeatable instance, when the five of you group together.(Mr. I Had A Group Full of Wiiiinn’s Guys!)
In case you’re wondering, yes the warrior did really try to kill me when I got mind controlled just before the boss in that screen shot went down. We were both trying to fill that tank spot each time we queued, and he never got it. I planned to give him the chance regardless in the next run since I have yet to be chosen as DPS, but the group needed to split right after that boss, so I never got the chance. It was all in good fun (at least, I think it was…) and I think we all had a great time and enjoyed the group.
Hopefully luck will be on my side and I’ll find myself queued up with them another time in the future.
Update to: I Play to Level, Not to Raid
I haven’t spoken with the GM yet myself, but I did sit in and watch the chat log as my wife talked to him which gave me a somewhat clearer understanding of the overall situation.
When she started talking to him he immediately went defensive, which is pretty understandable since he had no idea it was coming and she caught him just as he logged in. But, defending yourself in a defensive way is counter productive to solving problems; go figure. For about the first 3/4 of the discussion he stayed defensive and deflected all the questions, giving no answers at all and focusing on minute little details rather than the issue. At that point I was about ready to tell him right where he could shove his attitude, and knowing my wife as I do, had he been there in person there would have been large, dense object flying at his face (been there, felt that).
Eventually though he stopped dodging the issue and got down to explanation. Some of it I disagree with still, but those are his calls to make as the GM. The root of the problem is/was communication. The two slots that were open (heals/dps) that my wife and I could have easily filled since we were both right there were given to other people for reasons that were never communicated. The dps had been at the scheduled raid (ICC) but had to log off for a while due to personal issues, and he required a summon the new raid because he had logged out in the original location. The GM had saved his spot for him because of that, but had not mentioned it because of the personal nature of the player’s situation. The healer’s spot, which went to the healer who logged in late, had been saved for them because they were looking up strategies on the new boss per the GM’s request instead of logging in and showing up early.
None of that was communicated to anyone, and none of us were aware of it. The reason why is because communication of those issues took place outside of the game. I’m not in the habit of keeping personal contact information for my GM in a casual raiding guild, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe the people involved are long time friends or something, so they have that sort of relationship; I don’t know, couldn’t tell you.
The other dps slot that was filled with the guy who was whispering me, that either of us could have filled, was given to him because of yet another reason that was never communicated. It’s apparently an unwritten rule that couples raid together or get turned away together. They don’t want to cause any issues by letting only one of the people in, thus causing marital issues as they say it has in the past. It’s a fair enough guideline to have in place, but there is an “Opt Out” option in that right? We let him know as soon as that came up that we don’t care if only one of us gets to go, as we’re both strong altoholics and neither one of us cares if only one is able to raid that night.
That rule explained why I wasn’t invited to the raids I missed as well. Since my wife hadn’t been invited they turned me away as well.
After the conversation was over my wife turned off the game, cried out some of her frustration and disappointment, and then spent the rest of the night watching tv. They have invited her to a couple of raids since then, but she’s turned them down for other commitments or because she just wasn’t up for raiding at the time. My wife did join in a raid over the weekend, but her computer had some serious lag issues that I’m pretty sure are hardware related yet have no idea how to fix, so she asked to be replaced by someone who could actually see their screen get updated more than once every 2-4 seconds.
They invited me to a raid on the night of the discussion as well, planning to down just a single boss, so I went ahead and joined them in that, but otherwise turned down the invites over the weekend as well.
It’s hard after having a discussion like that, to accept an invite to participate without thinking that they’re inviting you now simply because you just had the discussion. “We didn’t really want you to come along, but since you just threw a fit we’re going to invite you anyway.” You’re sort of screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t in that situation as you either don’t bring up that it’s an issue and keep getting left out for reasons unknown, or you get an invite but feel like it’s a charity invite instead of an honest one.
So in the end it all comes back to communication being the key. If you leave people out because of a rule you’ve never bothered to express, there’s going to be issues. It’s been said thousands of time before, but I’ll say it again – communication is important in every kind of relationship.
We’re staying in the guild, continuing on as normal for the time being. My wife is on a partial break from raiding until we can find out what in the world is causing the game to lag for her at random intervals, and I’m on a partial break as well as I focus on leveling A Death Knight Tank.
Today’s post is brought to you by a mixture of frustration and QQ. It’s a bit of a rant, and a bit of just putting my thoughts down into words. This blog is here to give you information about leveling your characters and having fun while you do it, but today’s post is about raiding and some of the parts of it that can suck from time to time. But hey, it’s my blog and I’ll QQ if I want to.
[I'm at work as I write this, and having just finished writing it things are now starting to get busy. I don't want to have this ranty post dangling in my mind all day, so I'm going to go ahead and post it as is without rereading for mistakes. So here's a heads up for you.]
Start at the Beginning
Right now my main character is in a casual raiding guild. We do run progression content three nights a week, but we take a pretty laid back approach to it.
For instance, we don’t have sign-up lists for dungeons we’re running, instead the raid leader looks at who all is in the area during the designated raid time and whoever shows up is who gets to go. Now, obviously we can’t take ten DPS into ICC and expect to get anywhere, so we do make a group that actually functions with the right number of tanks, heals, and deeps. And we can’t take twelve people into a 10-man raid, so people do get turned away. The people that don’t get into the raid are put onto a Turn Away list so that they get priority in being chosen for the next raid.
Generally that means you are more or less guaranteed a spot in the next raid, but again there may not be enough slots to hold everybody in particular roles, so you may get turned away twice in a row, but that is noted too for the sake of fairness and trying to get everyone cycled through in raid slots since we’re still only large enough for 10-man’s without having to PuG in extras for 25’s.
A Problem Arises
I’m getting to the problem, hold your horses. You know how long winded I am, sheesh!
We’ll start with me since my side isn’t quite so big a deal to me as her’s is to her. Last week we decided to hit ICC-10 with the guild and both my wife and I got our invites, so in we went. We wiped either once or twice on Lord Marrowgar as people who had never been there before got used to the fight, but we quickly recovered from that and took him down after we got used to him.
We moved then to Lady Deathwhisper where we wiped several times. The fight with Marrowgar was explained to me before we began, so I was pretty good on that one. When we got to LD though we asked for an explanation and nobody gave it, so while a couple of people were afk I tabbed out and did some research myself. As I got near the end of a YouTube video on her someone gave me a quick run-down of the fight, and while things didn’t match up with the video they sounded alright to me so we went with the guild plan. We wiped once, we wiped twice, we wiped thrice, and then we wiped again.
The guild’s plan was to have everyone focus on the adds when they popped so that the raid as a whole had more time to focus on LD in between spawns, while the video I watched mentioned doing something similar except that one ranged dps stayed on LD the whole time to get her down to Phase 2 sooner. The four times that we wiped there were tons of spawns and we were getting ready to call it a night. So on the fifth attempt I broke the cardinal rule of following the raid leader’s plan and I focused my mage on Lady Deathwhisper alone. I had seen during the failed attempts that we had a strong enough mix of melee and caster DPS to take down the mobs even if I wasn’t focused on them, so I changed up my role for the last attempt of the night.
When I made the change over to focusing on LD we had about one third of the number of spawns come out and it was the only attempt of the night that we actually made it to Phase 2. She still ended up wiping us again that night, but it certainly went a lot better. Nobody brought up my decision to change what I was doing, but we decided to give it another shot the next day. So along comes tomorrow and since we had such an improvement with the encounter as a whole with my switch the previous night I went ahead and followed the strategy of me focusing on LD again.
The fight was going well, but towards the end of Phase 1 one of the guild members asked over vent, “Bels (that’s me), why are you only targeting the boss!?!?” Being in the middle of a boss fight, I didn’t bother explaining myself at that time, I just kept on doing what I was doing, and sure enough we took her down about a minute later. Everybody was pleased and I replied during the looting, “To answer your question, with all the wipes last night I went ahead and implemented what I saw in the research I did last night. It mentioned a change to a single person versus what we were doing, so I gave it a shot.”
My little bit of rebellion for the sake of helping the guild there turned out to be a blatant improvement on the result of the raid, but I did still break the rule of always following the raid leader. I don’t mind following directions, but when something’s broken and nobody’s fixing it, I’m sorry but I’m going to do something to try to improve the situation. The raid leader and two of the officers gave me a bit of a talking to about doing things the guild’s way and their reasons why. It was a bit excessive given the fact that my change resulted in success, but whatever, I understand the concept of being a team and following the leader so I’ll do what I’m told.
I started to see the problem arise in the next boss fight when the raid leader started off the explanation of the fight with, “Regardless of what the online strats tell you, this is how we do it…” Alright, so I obviously pushed a button by not following the strategy on the last boss, but my research had been done on Deathwhisper alone since she was the bottleneck, so I listened to the plan and away we went to down another boss. The next boss comes up and again “Regardless of what the online strats tell you…” That time it was a bit annoying, but whatever.
We made it up to Festergut with similar comments and after three wipes there we had to call it a night and would pick it back up a couple of days later. The day to go back in arrived and I sat there waiting at the portal as usual, and my invite never came. “I’ve got Bels down as a turn away. 
” It seemed a bit odd to me that I was turned away despite being saved to it, but that’s the way it goes sometimes so I went and did other things.
An Issue Persists
A couple of days pass and the guild’s headed into a different raid, so I show up to it and wait at the portal; no invite. “I’ve got Bels down as a turn away. ” No problem, I was really more in the mood to play my Warlock that day anyway, so no big deal. The other raids for the week were using alts to clear ICC and VoA, both of which I was already saved to. No problem with that, sorry I didn’t have an 80 alt to give them a hand with it.
And now we find ourselves at last night’s raid. The guild is scheduled to hit ICC, and we’ve got about 45 minutes or so before raid time, so I check the clock on Wintergrasp and decide to head over there while we wait. WG opens up and the battle begins, and in less than 10 minutes we kicked the Horde in the teeth and took back Wintergrasp, which opened up VoA to us. There were only about eight people in the guild online at that time, but the question comes up if want to switch the raid to VoA for the new boss since we just took WG. Everyone agrees with that, so VoA it is.
I was already there at the portal, but it was definitely too early to go in and we didn’t have enough people online yet anyway, so I started farming ore. I then noticed that my CurrencyFu addon showed my Honor Points at 75,000 and that it’s red. So I say to myself, “Self, it’s a bit odd that we just happen to hit exactly 75k honor, and the fact that it’s red seems a bit odd too.” So I ask in guild what the honor cap is and my buddy in the guild tells me 75k it is. So, I decide I better go to Stormwind and spend the honor points now before I forget. So I teleport to SW with my mage-porting goodness, grab two pieces of gear, port back to Dal, take the portal to WG, and there I am at the portal again in about six minutes time.
During that time other members had signed in and were showing interest as well, so I starting killing off the random Horde that were still flying around while I wait for the raid invites to start. One of the other guild members whispered me, “Crap, I think I missed the raid invites.” I still hadn’t gotten one myself and neither had my wife who was also waiting at the portal, so I replied, “Fyn and I haven’t gotten one either, I don’t think they’ve started yet.”
Eight of the guild members were sitting there in WG, and three of us at least hadn’t had any invites yet. I keep on killing the horde losers that think they stand a chance against twenty of us, and then I get another whisper from the same guy, “Dude wtf? I got in, but you didn’t?” I check the guild roster, and we’ve got 9 people in WG, but still no invite for me or my wife. I ask her if she knows what’s going on and she says she hasn’t heard anything either, so we go ahead and wait. A few seconds later, in comes the message in gchat, “I have Bels, Fyn, and (two others) as turn aways. Sorry, guys. “
I just fought to take WG with two of my guild mates, sat there for 25 minutes for the raid to start, and then got turned away despite already being on the Turn Away list twice in a row. I can’t say that I was very happy at that point. I wasn’t exactly mad, but I was disappointed in how it was handled and I was a bit upset. I didn’t really feel like playing the mage right then, but I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do so I hung out there for a minute trying to figure it out. The guy that whispered me did so again, “Why did I get invited and not you? You were here way before I was?!” I didn’t know either, but something about his comment in addition to me being frustrated just killed my desire to play for the night so I logged off of vent and exited the game.
Things Get Worse
I decided I was just going to go watch some TV or something, so I started to do that and noticed the look on my wife’s face. I might have been frustrated, but she was flat out pissed. She had been waiting there at the portal on her Enhance/Resto Shaman almost as long as I had, but she hadn’t received an invite either. But she also saw something that I didn’t see, which was two other members of the guild get summoned to the instance. One of the people summoned to the instance was a DPS, and the other was a Healer. So my wife (DPS/Heals) and myself (DPS) were turned away, but two other people were summoned to fill those two slots.
After being turned away from raids the previous week, I can’t say that I was all that surprised to be turned away from VoA last night, and I can’t help but feel that being turned away three times in a row where you usually endure only one, has something to do with my going against the guild’s plan on Lady Deathwhisper. Yes, I ignored the guild’s strategy. But, I did not have the guild’s strategy explained to me until after I had done the research myself, and the change that I made obviously had a positive impact on our performance.
Now my wife, on the other hand, is main spec Enhancement and really wants to be able to run some raids as a DPS. When she gets in on the raids though, about 75% of them she’s asked to heal in instead. She doesn’t mind doing that, it’s why she dual specced in the first place, but she really wants to do DPS. And despite the good intentions of the “Noted as Turned Away” system, she’s actually been turned away more than anyone else I’ve seen in the guild. She’s arrives early to the raids every time, fully prepared, and yet she’s turned away. And when she’s not turned away she’s almost always asked to use her secondary spec instead.
Where We Stand Now
As far as I am aware, the guild operates on inviting people who are in the instance’s zone because they want to take whoever shows up to raid, not stick to a specific set of people all the time. They want people who are making an effort to participate and be a part of the raids, not people who simply expect to get invited and feel like they deserve a raid spot. The guild doesn’t want elitist attitudes or favoritism in the guild because that’s why they all left their previous raiding guild. So they keep some open practices in play to counteract those that have worked out pretty well and I’ve actually enjoyed that quite a bit.
But the actions taken by the raid leader/guild leader last night seemed to go directly against that. Two people who were ready and waiting to fill the last two slots got turned away for two people who logged in late and had to be summoned to the instance? I haven’t been in the guild for all that long, but I can’t remember a raid in which that particular healer hasn’t been in, and the DPS that was summoned is in pretty well every raid when he’s logged in as well. Hmm, doesn’t seem very anti-favoritism to me. But, I’m just a rebel, so what would I know?
There are reasons why I am such a big fan of leveling, and doing it solo. Situations like this remind me why I play to level, not to raid. Maybe Belsynis needs to find himself a nice, forested mountain range and take a vacation for a while.
Now, about that DK tank… /rollnewtoon
After fourteen months of waiting, I have finally stumbled onto a Death Knight tank that doesn’t suck. Actually, we have a couple of DK tanks in my new guild that are actually very good as well, but this post isn’t about my guild, it’s about a Death Knight I found in a random heroic PuG. I’m not in much of a creative mood today with work going crazy, so I won’t be putting this successful PuG story into a Real PuG’s of Power format, but I want to share it anyway.
Where Does Psynister Stand On Death Knights?
In my experience, DK’s have always been strong on the DPS front, and I never minded having them fill that role. Doing stupid crap like Death Gripping the tank’s target off of him was sort of the norm, though exceptions to that were apparent enough that you just knew from that point that it was a Death Knoob. On the tanking front though, I found nothing but failure. I’ve said it before here on the blog, I’ve said it in game, I’ve said it on Twitter, and I’ve said it in comments on other people’s blogs as well – “Death Knights suck at tanking”.
People kept telling me of how many good DK tanks they knew, how they themselves were good at tanking, how their raiding guild’s lead tank was a DK and so on, but despite all of the stories I never saw them for myself. A lot of people agreed with me too, that DK’s sucked at tanking. There were several testimonies in favor of them, but those in opposition were just too many to ignore. And regardless of what other people told me, every single DK I saw sucked at tanking.
I stood by that statement for a long time, never seeing even the slightest indication that I needed to eat those words. But, after running with Khanus from the Elune-US server, I had to do just that. My mage, Belsynis, is currently running an Arcane spec and he packs a pretty decent punch for having reached level 80 just a few weeks ago. He’s got a high crit rate, a fair amount of DPS, and he’s been known to pull agro off of every tanking class he’s ran with up to this point.
What Changed Your Mind?
When I ported into the random, the first thing I noticed (from the loading screen) was that it was one of the new dungeons, which I enjoy quite a bit. The second thing I noticed was that the tank was a DK, and thirdly that his health was at 25k. Now, I’m not one to judge a tank based on their health, but it is a good indicator of what kind of gear the person has or how they gem/enchant it. As long as the tank has more health than me, then I don’t have a problem giving them a shot. I certainly don’t assume failure if the tank doesn’t have 40-50k health like other’s I’ve seen.
In my experience with DK tanks though, I knew I wanted to take it a bit easy starting out and get a feel for how he pulled and how well he generated threat. The first couple of groups went down just fine, so I decided to step it up a notch. Again we had no problems, so I kicked it up into normal mode for heroics and went ahead and just let the mobs have it. We got through the first boss and all the trash leading up to the second boss with no threat issues, so I decided to go all out on Ick.
I popped my cooldowns at the beginning of the fight and pulled out all the stops, intentionally trying to pull threat off of him, knowing that I could use Invisibility to immediately dump it if necessary and then I could back off and just fill my role. I unloaded some serious hate on Ick, but Khanus just kept right on trucking, and while I did steal agro for about half a second, he was immediately right back on the DK. From there I just nodded my head and went all out on everything. Each time I managed to steal agro, whether it was on single target dps or during AoE pulls, it took Khanus less than a second to pull the threat right back to himself.
It was truly an amazing display of tanking from a class that I have written off for a very long time as a fail tank.
What Else Is Going On?
I have been putting some thought into rolling my own DK tank for a while now for the sake of blogging about it and trying to express to people how it’s done similar to how I’ve handled the Paladin series here. After seeing failed tank after failed tank I felt it was sort of my duty to go out and find out how to do it so that I could tell other people how it was done as well, but I’ve always managed to talk myself out of it.
Right now I am focusing on leveling a Resto Druid and an Affliction Warlock. I have several other toons in the works of course (as always), but those are the two I’m focusing on lately. After seeing Khanus as well as a couple of the Death Knights in my new guild, I’m growing ever more tempted to go ahead and roll a Death Knight and actually get him leveled up all the way to 80. Our strongest DPS in the guild right now is a Death Knight that consistently pulls over 7,000 DPS (did I mention we’re a casual guild?), and one of our primary tanks is a Death Knight as well.
I have a leveling post near completion on the Warlock’s leveling, and one started on the Druid’s leveling, but don’t be too surprised if within the next month or so you see a post about leveling a Death Knight.
Helpful Links From Others
Since I have such large group of WoW friends that I communicate with online I asked them to share with me whatever online sources they felt were helpful in relation to Death Knight tanking. The following is a list of all the sites that I have been linked to:
pwnwear.com
pwnwear.com Frost Tank 3.3
Aurdon’s Death Knight Outland Gear guide
2fps.com
Kurandir’s Kompendium
Plagued Candles – DK Tanking and You
Chill of the Grave
Tankspot.com – Comprehensive Guide to DK Tanking
The last installment of the Protection Paladin AoE Grinding Guides has waited quite a while for the final piece of the puzzle. It has been asked for several times by my readers and while I took the request seriously I’ve certainly failed to deliver on that promise. At least until now. Well, sort of.
I am going to start off with some updates from the previous guides as recent patches have changed the way some things work. After the updates we’ll get into the juicy part and start talking about the portion we’ve left uncovered so far; AoE Grinding in Northrend.
As you read, keep in mind that the whole point of this post is tell you how to AoE Grind. This isn’t a tanking guide to tell you how to tank Heroics and Raids. Even once we reach level 80 and I begin discussing that, I’m still focusing the information here on AoE Grinding whether it be for mat farming, reputation farming, gold farming, elite mob solo thrill seeking, or showing off your greatness to those around you.
Part 1 here is going to cover the technical side of things, what you need to do with your character. Part 2 is going to cover specific areas for you to grind in. I’m splitting this post into two because I’ve had this portion written for weeks now, waiting only for me to get together a full list of specific locations across all of the zones in Northrend for you to grind. Rather that keeping you in the dark even longer, I’m just going to give you what I have right now and then write another post for the rest of it at a later date.
Update: Glyphs
In the AoE Grinding: Glyph Edition post I gave you what I felt at the time to be the best glyphs for helping you while you leveled. Since that time though, we’ve had some changes that definitely impact those choices.
I will break down the glyphs by level here, listing Majors first, then Minors, and each of those sections will have glyphs listed in the order that I would recommend them. Also, take note as you read this section that these glyphs I recommend primarily for the sake of solo leveling, not necessarily for raiding.
| Level 15 | 1 Major: 1 Minor |
| Major Glyphs | Minor Glyphs |
| Glyph of Consecration | Glyph of Lay on Hands |
| Glyph of Judgement | Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom |
| Glyph of Divinity | Glyph of Blessing of Might |
| Glyph of Exorcism |
If you like using Exorcism to pull at low levels then you might want to go ahead and use it’s glyph over Consecration. With Exorcism now having a cast time where before it did not, I’m not sure how much I would use the spell while leveling up, and so I’m not sure I could justify devoting a slot to a spell I use once per encounter instead of one such as the Glyph of Consecrate which will be used constantly.
| Level 30 | 2 Major: 1 Minor |
| Major Glyphs | Minor Glyphs |
| Glyph of Consecration | Glyph of Lay on Hands |
| Glyph of Judgement | Glyph of the Wise |
| Glyph of Divinity | |
| Glyph of Exorcism |
By this point the only Blessing you should be casting on yourself is Blessing of Sanctuary, so the glyphs for Might/Wisdom are now worthless. You probably aren’t going to have to recast Seal of Wisdom (SoW) very often, but just in case you find yourself cycling through SoW/SoL during combat, this is the best way to save your mana through the use of your Minor glyphs.
| Level 50 | 2 Major: 2 Minor |
| Major Glyphs | Minor Glyphs |
| Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous | Glyph of Lay on Hands |
| Glyph of Consecration | Glyph of the Wise |
| Glyph of Holy Wrath | Glyph of Sense Undead |
| Glyph of Judgement | |
| Glyph of Exorcism |
I’m slipping Glyph of Sense Undead into the mix here because during your run through Eastern/Western Plaguelands you’re finally going to start fighting enough undead that having this increase in your damage is going to start paying off. Using this glyph prior to level 50 is going to be a bit of a waste in most cases, but where you level is what decides that. At the same time it’s usefulness takes another dip when you get to Outlands, but surprise surprise it picks back up in Northrend.
If you don’t like the idea of buying and replacing glyphs, then go for GotW over GoSU until you hit Northrend.
| Level 70 | 2 Major: 3 Minor |
| Major Glyphs | Minor Glyphs |
| Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous | Glyph of Lay on Hands |
| Glyph of Divine Plea | Glyph of Sense Undead |
| Glyph of Consecration | Glyph of the Wise |
| Glyph of Holy Wrath |
Divine Plea is going to help keep your mana topped off while using the glyph will help keep your health topped off. Once you hit level 71 I suggest you finally replace GoC with GoDP. You are also going to finally have enough attack spells on your action bar that you will find using the 969 rotation is the smoothest way for you to grind, so having an extra 2 seconds on Consecration is going to throw you off instead of helping you out as it did before, so I suggest dropping it for Holy Wrath instead. While the 969 rotation is used to describe the preferred rotation for tanking, it’s use applies the same to grinding.
As for minor glyphs, I suggest you stick with those three until Blizzard introduces some more minor glyphs to us, but only LoH and SU have any real importance, and SU only when you actually activate the ability associated with it and with the assumption that there are Undead for you to fight in the area.
| Level 80 | 3 Major: 3 Minor |
| Major Glyphs | Minor Glyphs |
| Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous | Glyph of Lay on Hands |
| Glyph of Divine Plea | Glyph of Sense Undead |
| Glyph of Shield of Righteousness | Glyph of the Wise |
| Glyph of Holy Wrath |
HotR and DP are your two primary glyphs that you don’t want to give up at this point. SoR and HW are interchangeable here though based on where you are going to grind. If you want to grind undead mobs then you’re better off with HW, otherwise you’ll get more use out of SoR.
I want to emphasize once again that these glyphs are for leveling and grinding, specifically here at level 80. If you want to tank dungeons and heroics then you’re going to have a different setup on your major glyphs when you hit 80 so that you can maximize your threat generation.
Update: Talent Points
There hasn’t been a whole lot of change in the talent department, but to give you a single glimpse at how you should spend your points, here you have it.
Level 10-30
Divine Strength 5/5: Increases your total Strength by 15%.
Anticipation 5/5: Increases your chance to dodge by 5%.
Improved Righteous Fury 3/3: While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 6%.
Toughness 2/5: Increases your armor value from items by 4% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 12%.
Improved Devotion Aura 3/3: Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by any of your Auras by 6%.
Toughness (+2) 4/5: Increases your armor value from items by 8% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 24%.
Blessing of Sanctuary 1/1: Place a Blessing on a friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. and increasing strength and stamina by 10%. When the target blogs, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 2% of maximum displayed mana.
Level 31-60
Toughness (+1) 5/5: Increases your armor value from items by 10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 30%.
Reckoning 3/5: Gives you a 6% chance after being hit by any damaging attack tht the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack.
Sacred Duty 2/2: Increases your total Stamina by 8%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 60 seconds.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization 3/3 Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 10%.
Holy Shield 1/1: Increases chance to block by 30% for 1-0 sec and deals 274 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each blog expends a charge. 8 charges.
Ardent Defender 3/3: Damage that takes you below 35% health is reduced by 20%. In addition, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed by up to 30% of your maximum health. This healing effect cannot occur more than once every 2 min.
Reckoning (+1) 4/5: Gives you an 8% chance after being hit by any damaging attack tht the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack.
Redoubt 3/3: Increases your block value by 30% and damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.
Combat Expertise 2/3: Increases your expertise by 4, total Stamina and chance to critically hit by 4%.
Avenger’s Shield 1/1: Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec.
Touched by the Light 3/3: Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 60% of your Strength and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%.
Guarded by the Light 1/2: Reduces spell damage taken by 3% and gives you 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Plea spell is 50% less likely to be dispelled.
Shield of the Templar 3/3: Reduces all damage taken by 3% and grants your Avenger’s Shield a 100% chance to silence your targets by 3 sec.
Combat Expertise (+1) 3/3: Increases your expertise by 6, total Stamina and chance to critically hit by 6%.
Guarded by the Light (+1) 2/2: Reduces spell damage taken by 6% and gives you 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Plea spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled.
Hammer of the Righteous 1/1: Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 4 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.
Level 61-80
Deflection 5/5: Increases your Parry chance by 5%. (Retribution Tree)
Improved Judgements 1/2: Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 1 sec. (Retribution Tree)
Benediction 4/5: Reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells by 8%. (Retribution Tree)
Vindication 2/2: Gives the Paladin’s damaging attacks a chance to reduce the target’s attack power by 46 for 10 sec. (Retribution Tree)
Pursuit of Justice 2/2: Reduces the duration of all Disarm effects by 50% and increases movement and mounted movement speed by 15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects. (Retribution Tree)
Crusade 3/3: Increases all damage caused by 3% and all damage caused against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by an additional 3%. (Retribution Tree)
Reckoning (+1) 5/5: Gives you a 8% chance after being hit by any damaging attack tht the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack.
Benediction (+1) 5/5: Reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells by 10%. (Retribution Tree)
Update: Pulling Mobs for AoE
At level 16 you get your first taunt that you will also be using to pull mobs, called Hand of Reckoning. It will taunt a target for you, though it can miss, and if the target is not already targeting you then it will deal Holy damage to them as well. This should be your primary method of pulling mobs throughout the game in order to take advantage of the damage that it deals (1 + half of your Attack Power) to mobs that aren’t already targeting you. You can use this spell to pull additional mobs to you after you’ve already started your AoE grinding, but be sure to use it on mobs that do not already have you targeted so that it will deal damage to them.
At level 20 you get a spell that can be used to pull, called Exorcism. You will generally deal more damage with Exorcism than you will with Hand of Reckoning, but it does have a cast time and using it does remove your ability to damage mobs with HoR if they target you from your Exorcism cast. It’s a ranged spell with a 1.5 second cast, so it’s fairly easy implement its use for pulling as long as you don’t try to cast it during combat which removes all of your avoidance.
The best way I have found to use both Exorcism and HoR in a single pull is to cast HoR on the first target followed by Exorcism either on the same target or an additional target. Personally I would target a second mob for the Exo cast so that I had two mobs that had already taken damage before I start my AoE rotation, but you can do it either way.
At level 50 (assuming you’ve spent your talents as I suggested above) you get your big pull spell which is Avenger’s Shield which will hit up to three targets and dazing them in the process. If you spend talent points in Shield of the Templar as mentioned above, then you also silence those enemies when you hit them which will help you in pulling caster mobs which are usually the bane of your Paladin existence.
Both Avenger’s Shield (AS) and Hand of Reckoning (HoR) can be used while in combat without sacrificing your ability to dodge, parry, and block enemy attacks. HoR needs to be cast on mobs that are not already targeting you to be of any use, but AS can be cast on any mob that is within range and still be beneficial. You can either use it to help kill the mobs you are already fighting, or to pull additional mobs to you.
If you wish to use all three of your pulling spells in a single pull then the best way to do it is to cast HoR on the first mob followed by Avenger’s Shield on either the same mob or one close to it, and then take advantage of the Dazing property of AS to cast Exorcism on another target. If you can use each of the three spells on different mobs then you can get the best results for killing the group quickly. If you have three groups of mobs, or one or two groups along with a pathing mob or two then you’ll have the best setup you can get. It’s alright to cast Exo when you’ve only got one or two mobs on you and they aren’t hitting you hard, but any more than that and you’ll be better off sticking to just HoR and AS.
New Spells: 68-80
Alright, enough with the updates; it’s time to move on to something new. First up on that list is our new spells that open up after level 68.
Avenging Wrath (Level 70) Increases all damage and healing caused by 20% for 20 sec. Cannot be used within 30 sec of being the target of Divine Shield, Divine Protection, or Hand of Protection.
Divine Plea (Level 71) You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec, but the amount healed by your Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Holy Shock spells is reduced by 50%.
Shield of Righteousness (Level 75) Slam the target with your shield, causing Holy damage based on your block value plus an additional 390.
Sacred Shield (Level 80) Each time the target takes damage they gain a Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage and increasing the paladin’s chance to critically hit with Flash of Light by 50% for up to 6 sec. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 sec. Lasts 30 sec. This spell cannot be on more than one target at any one time.
Avenging Wrath is what is often referred to as our “Angel Wings” because that’s the animation put up when you use it; a couple of wings that pop up behind the paladin. It’s a 20% damage increase for 20 seconds that also cuts your healing spells in half while it’s active. If you’re just grinding then you might as well use this whenever it’s not on cooldown just to help you clear the mobs faster. The cooldown is only 3 minutes, which is pretty standard for a cooldown buff.
Divine Plea becomes one of the most welcome additions to your arsenal, providing you with a near constant resupply of your mana while in combat (25% of your mana over it’s duration). It has a 1 minute cooldown and a 15 second duration, but if you’ve spent talent points in Guarded by the Light then you will refresh it’s duration every time you make an attack. “Attack” in this case refers to a melee attack, not a spell. So Judgement of Light will not reset your cooldown, but a melee attack will. This spell should be on you at all times. Use it right before a pull, shortly after a pull, or whenever you are not in combat and need to get some mana back.
Shield of Rightousness is a strong single target attack spell that fits nicely into your rotation. Use it to take down the mobs that you’re fighting even faster, but as a single target spell it’s not as important as other attack options if you find yourself low on mana unless you have only one mob to fight.
Sacred Shield is our reward for reaching the current (as of 3.3) level cap of 80. It’s generally considered more of a healer’s spell than a tank’s, but since we’re soloing here and it does have a useful effect we’ll count it as another tool regardless. It absorbs 500 damage by default, and the amount is increased by our spell power. As I write this my own paladin is only level 78 so I have no personal experience using this spell. As I ponder it though, I don’t think that I would include it in my default grinding rotation, simply because I don’t take much damage right now as it is. It certainly still has it’s place as a damage absorbing spell, but with so many other options available to us for healing and damage prevention I’m not sure that it will matter. Perhaps one of my readers can enlighten us though. (I know Cassinni’s out there somewhere.)
Grinding Locations: Northrend
Once you reach level 68 you have two options open to you. You can either stay in Outlands where your best AoE Grinding will likely be found near the entrance to the Black Temple raid entrance, or you can head on to Northrend. You will have an easier time handling the mobs near black temple, but you will get better rewards overall if you just head straight to Northrend.
If you reach Northrend at 68 then either of the starting zones in Northrend will suffice, otherwise you will do better in Dragonblight though you may have have some gear issues if you’ve skipped questing in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord.
I will get into further detail on where to go and which mobs in particular you should be grinding on in Part 2.
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