One of the big downsides to the protection tree is that it offers pretty much zero single target damage. I think it’s one of the issues that turns people off (well okay, in addition to raid needs and recruitment issues, but that’s a different post). If you know how and where to do it, Protection offers by far the most efficient method of grinding. How? AoE farming.

Keep in mind that I spec’d protection after I had leveled to 70. So if you are a leveling paladin, this post might be somewhat skewed. You can technically spec into AoE farming at level 35 (Reckoning), but it’s a much more feasible at level 40 when Holy Shield becomes Available.

You want to find a good patch of melee only mobs that don’t run (having 20 mobs running to the 4 corners of the earth simultaneously is not real fun lol). NOT CASTERS, CASTERS WILL RAPE YOU. If you are sub-70 and are leveling, I would suggest starting with 4 to 5, move up to 6 to 8 etc if that’s too easy. For moderate to well geared 70, go wild. Entire villages will fall.

Gearing Up
Protection farming isn’t all that super duper gear heavy. The better your gear, the more mobs that you can fight simultaneously. I would at the very least though, invest in a decent 1-hander (2.0 or faster) and a good shield. Your shield is probably the most important piece of your AoE grinding equipment; Find one with a high block Value and some block rating and put a spike on it. Shields with a proc on block ability are absolutely golden (recall that Block Value affects how much you block where as Block Rating affects how often you block).

I prefer to wear a good balance between defensive stats (def, block rating, block value, etc) and spell damage. You probably want to balance your stamina/int in such a way where you have a decent health pool, but aren’t going out of mana after 2 seconds. How you balance your gear is up to you and your grinding style (I tend to favor spell damage). In general, it’s a trade-off: In my tanking gear I take close to zero damage against non-elite mobs, but my mana pool is severely limited. I don’t take damage, but it takes longer to farm. In my full spell gear, I can take things down pretty fast, but I am slightly squishier.

• Shield Spikes: Get one crafted and use this over the other shield enchants.
• There’s a shield that you can get with Sporeggar rep (can’t think of the name/don’t feel like looking it up) that does a 12 damage DoT on block. That is one of if not the best farming shields.
• [item]Figurine of the Colossus[/item]: Heals for 120 on block. This allows you to pretty much chain pull MASSIVE amounts of mobs. When you start getting low on HP, pop it, and watch it heal you to full.

Buffs
Any buff that reflects damage is nice. Though Ret Aura and BoSanc damage may seem piddly it adds up, especially against craploads of mobs.
Retribution Aura: Returns damage when you are hit
Blessing of Sanctuary: Reduces damage taken by a small amount and deals damage on block.
Righteous Fury: Imp RF reduces ALL damage by 6%

Seals and Judgements
Since Reckoning will proc frequently with the amount of hits that you will be taking, your seals have a chance at procing a lot. If your damage mitigation or mana isn’t quite up to par, you might want to go for Seal of Light or Seal of Wisdom respectively. Personally, I like Seal of Righteousness because I am impatient and it speeds the fight up a little it. Same logic with your judgements: Wisdom for mana, Light for Health, Righteousness for DPS. If my targeted mob is dying fast, I don’t bother judging usually.

Methodology
Throw on a seal, judging if needed, spam Holy Shield and Consecration. Holy Shield is most important. If you want to conserve mana, try downranking spells. If you have a decent mana pool and aren’t being hit very hard, just spam max rank everything. This technique works well with good spell damage (600+). Otherwise, you can put on your damage mitigation gear, Seal/Judge Wisdom, and spam a very low rank of consecration, relying primarily upon reflective damage from Holy Shield and your buffs.

Once you have the mobs aggro’d, walk backwards until they are all in front. Remember that you cannot block or parry mobs that are not in front of you. It’s also probably worth noting that “front” is defined as a 180 degree radius. You can, if needed, actually go full run and still block and parry if you carefully strafe at just the right angle. This is useful for any encounter or situation where you might need to relocate fast or kite-tank.

Spots
Ez-Mode Consortium rep: The ethereals south of Area 52. The Consortium NPC in Area 52 has a repeatable quest. 250 rep (275 human) per 10 Zaxxis Signets. The mobs south of Area 52 drop the signets at an approximate 30% rate, in addition for a chance to get the keys. They also shit cloth and trash greens. Downside: A lot of people seem to like to grind here. I feel like a complete dick mass pulling everything.

Ez-Mode cash and Scryer rep: SW side of the middle tier of the Black Temple. There’s one side with a crapload of Demon Hunter Suplicants around a tent with a patrolling elite. Wait until the elite patrols away, then destroy them. Drops: asstons of cloth, Arcane Tomes, Sunfury Signets, etc.

BTW: The elite isn’t that hard to kill. He doesn’t drop anything other than a piddly amount of silver, but it’s fun just for satisfaction. Wear your tanking gear, JoW & SoW, blow all of your mana and go all out when you pull, he mana drains it anyways. Keep holy shield up. Takes a while but not that hard.

I’ve made revered with the Consortium, Ogri’la and the Sha’tari Skyguard, my current reputation projects. Working on the Consortium for the monthly gem bags and because it’s stupid easy, working on the other two because I want my ray mount and the daily quest gold. There are a total of 6 really easy quests that can all be completed in around an hour for 11g 99s each. The extra gold means that I can stock to the teeth with potions and flasks during raids.

Forgot to post: Took Nightbane down for the first time last weekend. It’s a fairly long and healing intensive fight. Other than that, it’s not all that super complex or difficult. I do though, usually end up popping around 3 or 4 Super Mana Potions. Having a paladin AoE tanking the skeletons makes the Air Phase pretty trivial. Picked up a nice shield for my spell damage set (which sits at around 650 spell damage at the moment).

This weekend: The Gods of loot smiled upon us and dropped tanking gear, including the elusive Moroes dodge trinket, breaking the 2 or so month long guild curse. Actually, a good mix of items dropped, including a chant. Picked up the [item]Justicar Faceguard[/item] and the [item]Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden[/item]. Also accidentally master loot nina’d the [item]Boots of Elusion[/item]. Bah…I guess it had to happen at one point or another, I’m the only officer that hasn’t mis-ML’d an epic (though there’s a confirmation check now, I need to pay more attention) :<

Also ran some quests with guildmates, farmed a bit, and had my baby mage twink ran through Gnomer. If I have a spare chunk of expendable gold, I am so going to buy a [item]Staff of Jordan[/item] and chant it with either +40 spell damage, +30 int, or if I am really rolling in the dough (highly doubtful): [item]Formula: Enchant Weapon – Soulfrost[/item] (dropped off of Illhoof this weekend). Uber PvP twink!

Other than WoW: Played some more Oblivion and what not. I really want to start running at least a couple of miles on the weekends again, and lifting for at least a half hour 2 or 3 times a week (that shouldn’t impact my schedule much at all). Since starting a regular job, I have fallen out of a regular gym routine.

There are many macros similar to these that do much much more, but these cater to my individual tastes and needs. If you want additional information, the macro section on WoWWiki has a huge honking list. Also, the World of Warcraft UI/macro forums is a decent resouce. There should be a long ass sticky detailing basic macro creation, It’s a good read.

Raid Shouting
Works in parties and raids; Only promoted/party leaders are able to use the raid warnings. %n will be replaced with whatever or whoever you have targetted
/rw Attack my target: %n!

Inspect
Inspects people 😛
/inspect

Weapon Swap
I’ve had this one since the beginning of time, it’s one of the only complicated macros in my list that didn’t break with 2.0. An bag spot specific weapon swap macro. Weapons to swap must be kept in upper-left corner of your leftmost bag. It will swap 2h <-> 1h + offhand as well.
/script PickupInventoryItem(17);if(CursorHasItem()) then PickupContainerItem(4,2);PickupContainerItem(4,1); PickupInventoryItem(16);else PickupContainerItem(4,1);PickupInventoryItem(16); PickupContainerItem(4,2);PickupInventoryItem(17);end

Toggle Mount
Press once to mount, press again to unmount (the warlock and the paladin specific mounts are considered spells). If I can’t use my flying mount, my Charger will be summoned. If I am on my huntard, his battle charger will be summoned.
/use [nomounted, nocombat] Swift Blue Gryphon
/use [nomounted, nocombat] Stormpike Battle Charger
/cast Summon Charger
/dismount

Random Mount
Similar to the macro above, but will randomly select a mount.
/userandom [nomounted,nocombat] MountName1, MountName2

Cast BoS on a specific player
If for some reason you want to cast a specific spell on a specific player. Example use: I have a guild member who needs BoS during boss fights. I can’t give him a greater blessing because it will overrride GBoK on other people of that class, so I made a macro for my convenience.
/cast [target=PlayerName] Blessing of Salvation

Righteous Defense Target’s Target
Essential macro! Allows Righteous Defense to function like a normal taunt. If an ally is targetted, RD will be cast on them. If a hostile is targetted, it casts RD on the mob’s target.
/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

SoR Spam
Allows you to keyspam SoR/JoR without repeatedly recasting SoR. If you have a seal active, it will judge it and will only allow you to recast SoR after 30 seconds.
/castsequence reset=30/combat Seal of Righteousness, Judgement

SoV Spam
Same as above, buy for SoV
/castsequence reset=30/combat Seal of Vengeance, Judgement

BoP Target’s Target
BoP’s yourself or your target’s target if a hostile is focused.
/cast [target=target,help] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget,help] Blessing of Protection

Divine Favor/Holy Light
Divine Favor isn’t affected by the global cooldown. Casts DF then HL for a (use to be free) crit heal.
/cast Divine Favor
/script SpellStopCasting();
/cast Holy Light(Rank 8)
/script SpellTargetUnit(“Player”);

So Karazhan is almost on full clear; Just Nightbane is left, who we took down to 20% on Saturday, our first night of real attempts (we poked him on Monday after Prince for good measure). I’m surprised, it’s not nearly as complicated of a fight as I had previously thought (it reminds me of Onyxia a little bit, that’s probably why). It is though, healing intensive…I need to make sure to come stocked with mana potions so I don’t have to mooch off of people mid-raid.

I won the [item]King’s Defender[/item] from The Chess Event this weekend (chanted it with +40 spell damage). In theory this means that I can stop pining about the Sun Eater (and start pining about something different, like a certain trinket from a certain boss). HP broke 12k unbuffed, but I still feel that’s rather low for my gear level. I need to make a gear wish list.

Oh, and I guess the main topic of this weekly post: I finally updated and changed my UI yesterday (designed for 1680×1050, screenshots are shrunk down). The main idea was to condense it so that not so much space is wasted. I like the original default “2 columns of 12-button” layout, but the decorative frames on either side of the main bar is a waste of space. The only big difference is that the targetting frames are now on the bottom in the middle, which feels sort of awkward.

Unfortunately I don’t have a screenshot of the raid UI because I haven’t fully tested it. It’s actually not all that different because I stuck with CT Raid instead of moving to oRA2 and sRaidbars. It’s an old standby, but it works and there really wasn’t any reason why I felt the urge to change it. Plus, it’s already configured perfectly. I was originally going to swap everything over to Ace2 mods but eh, RAM usage isn’t really a problem.

Edit: Might give PerfectRaid a go tonight.

I feel a bit silly: I have had access to [item]Gavel of Unearthed Secrets[/item] for quite some time but have ignored it. It's the Lower City exalted spell damage mace. Recall that Seal of Vengeance favors weapon speeds that approach 3.0; since SoV procs 20 times a minute, a 3.0 speed weapon would guarantee a proc each hit. 2.7 is damn close.

Though a 2.7 speed weapon procs JoW/JoL less, it will proc SoV nearly every single time. SoV is very very streaky with my 1.8 speed sword, which has a fail rate of about 30%. In fact, the DoT drops off of the mob quite frequently…it's a problem. A 2.7 speed sword has a fail rate of about 10%. It's worth some testing.

Also, since the AQ enchants are going to be accessible next content patch, I am wondering whether it would be better to put 2% threat on my gloves over 20 spell damage. Need to work the math out when I have time. Mmm threat.

Edit: I didn't notice all that huge of an increase in my TPS, considering I chanted it with +40 spell damage (never bothered doing that on my other weapons, the pattern dropped for me last week…I am cheap and hate outsourcing chants). BUT it was Friday and I was tired. I should test SoV more.

Oh, and I have a new tanking weapon which will be mentioned in the next "Weekly Update." I am feeling posty lately, might even make an entry over the weekend for once.

Wow, the 2.2 PTRs are up! I honestly was't expecting the next patch to roll around until after BlizzCon, it's nice to see that I was wrong. The current patch notes though, are lacking anything substantial, so I am assuming that this is a very early build. According to blue posts, "voice chat is undergoing some additional polish."

The paladin blessing durations have been increased: Normal blessings to 10 minutes and greater blessigns to 30 minutes. I am looking forward to having my regeant costs being cut down and not having to rebuff as manically. I never realyl understood why they weren't 30 minutes to begin with. I know that the paladin blessings were designed to be highly situational, but like…how often do you change the greater blessings? lol.

I won't complain, I distinctly remember having to literally reapply the 5-minute blessings in 40 people constantly for 6 hours in the Molten core days (approximately every other pull). Or better yet: reapplying the blessings before a boss pull, only to have someone go AFK or delay the pull in such a way where we would have to buff all 40 people all over again. /rant

What's up with the nerfs, a 1-minute cooldown on Blessing of Sacrifice is harsh, no? Was this change PvP or Karazhan inspired? If the former is true, BoS is an easily dispellable buff, not sure why it's getting the nerf bad this hard…especially when it will affect PvE situations. Perhaps a blue post will enlighten us. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to shrink the duration down to 10 to 15 seconds or something?

The SoV buffs are interesting. The 25% duration increase is nice, though I am not convinced that it's going to make keeping SoV up that much easier, since it's not as if they up'd the PPM (which is 20 if I recall correctly). I am very very interested in knowing how much instant damage SoV does now on mobs already stacked with 5 applications, the spell damage coefficient, frequency, etc. I don't think that anyone is copied over yet though so I will have to wait.

Not paladin related, but I am an enchanter so this is worth noting: All of the AQ enchanting recipes are being added as BC faction rewards (mats are being adjusted). This is great because it was silly having some of the best enchants in the game exclusively from an old world dungeon (and a difficult one at that…doubt anyone is up to farming Twin Emps now-a-days). Additionally, Nexus Crystals will be enchantable into Small Prismatic Shards.

Let’s see, it was a fairly interesting/busy weekend both in terms of WoW and real-life. I was going to only login for around an hour Monday to check my mail and farm, but raided a little bit instead. We wanted to get another crack at Prince before the Tuesday reset. We’re weekend raiders and thus never do Mondays, this was actually a first.

It’s a good thing that we did! First guild Prince Malchezaar kill last night on our first try of the evening. He was at 1% health, 9 people down with a single hunter up. Hunter solos prince! Nearly every single boss in Karazhan dropped some sort of healing gear this week. I think the actual loot percentage is at around 70% healing gear, maybe more. I swear that can’t be a coincidence lol.

Picked up the Breastplate of the Lightbinder to semi-replace the Earthblood Chestguard. The shaman chest has a lot more stamina though, and almost identical healing stats. Also picked up Formula: Enchant Weapon – Major Spellpower last night while questing in Blade’s Edge Mountains. It was off of the second kill too, I was expecting to have to farm for days to get that pattern.

I swear that I am just about to give up on The Sun Eater and settle for the King’s defender, whenever it drops from the Chess Event. The minute that I get and bother chanting another weapon, I bet it will drop. It taunts me…

One of my favorite WoW podcasts, World of Warcast just finished a two part segment on guild management that I thought was well done. It’s definitely worth a listen, especially to those considering starting a casual and/or raiding guild.

On a similar note, I have a fair bit of guild experience myself, having been the guild peon who didn’t know where the entrance to the Molten Core was (in my glorious shitty greens), an inherited guild master (oh God long drama story), a founding guild master, disbander of a guild, witness to guild merger, alliances, implosion(s), casual to raiding transition, etc.

I thought that it might be interesting to share some guild/raid management tips as well as some of the things that I have learned along the way as guild master, since it doesn’t seem to be discussed a whole lot (either that, or I don’t read around enough).

It’s actually a topic that I have been meaning to write about for a month or so, just haven’t gotten around to doing it yet, in between all of the other nonsense that I type. It’s such a large topic, especially in regards to raiding…