Ain't no rest for the wicked

Happy post-thanksgiving to everyone, hope your turkey-day was good, let's get down to it.

MMO-Champion has graced us with even more information on the legendary Shadowmourne, check out this video on the weapon and it's effects:

Pretty spiffy effect, nice to let everybody know what your toting around, as if the BIG BLUE GLOWING AXE OF DOOM wasn't enough of a tip-off.

More interesting to those though who are waiting for their appetites to be sated by 3.3's release is the consolidation of information on the illustrious quest line to accompany chopper. As with any pre-release information on a site, it's subject to change, but we can go over it a bit. Those that were wondering what the price of entry on legendary piece of loot was, we've got answer of friendly reputation with the Ashen Verdict, 25 Primordial Saronite, and what they're reporting as quest items from Festergut and Rotface, the first two abomination bosses in the plague / unholy / construct / green wing of Icecrown. Of course it goes on to require more boss items from each of the end bosses of each wing, which limits the first possible siting of this beauty to the 3rd gate unlock. We also still don't have an exact spot of when we take up Shadow's Edge in our crusade to create this monster, which is a very formidable piece on it's own.

Might as well take a step back to mention that Icecrown is one of the greatest culminations of epic weapons to occur in the game. Public enemy number one holds Frostmourne, while the valiant verdict has employed the purified Ashbringer, and amongst the raiders we'll have Quel'Delar (a sister blade to Onyxia's Quel'Serrar) and soon Shadowmourne in the ranks as well. It's a lot for lore nerds to geek out about, and if your invested at all in the story, check out some of the links.

For those looking to get a head start on what's going to be the hardest raid this expansion, take a hop on over to TankSpot some time. Spiritus has been compiling guides for bosses tested on the PTR's and has some rough strategies for bosses that are worth taking a look at.

P.S. Good song

Ashen Verdict has plans for you!

Browsing around some WoW sites and forum, I've come across a handy link on Wowhead showing what the Ashen Verdict has to offer to crafters once 3.3 hits.

The Ashen Verdict's Reputation Rewards

For those of you who don't know, the Ashen Verdict is a new faction of master crafters from the Knights of the Ebon Blade and the Argent Crusade. It looks like they'll also be heavily involved with Shadowmourne quest line.

You can see the first iterations of the rings offered with reputations. These are looking to be quite good for most classes and should serve frugal players well. If you've got some bank though, you can pair them up with the new Kirin Tor Signets that are also being reported to be ilvl 251 on release.

Take note of materials on these material list and expect to see them go up in price on the first few weeks of release. With the introduction of the new lfg system, I suspect that some of the hardcore raiding sects will be bringing out their alts and running randoms every day for badges to convert into Primordial Saronite, the new crafting orb for 3.3 (this is assuming of course that these orbs will be buyable with the highest badge when 3.3 hits). At least, thats my plan >_>

The axe, the myth, the legend:

So they've datamined Shadowmourne's legendary version off the PTR, here is what we have in all it's glory:

Shadowmourne

Binds when picked up

Unique

Axe

Two-Hand

Speed 3.70

954 - 1592 Damage

(344.1 damage per second)

+198 Stamina

+223 Strength

Red Socket

Red Socket

Red Socket

Socket Bonus: +8 Strength

Classes: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight

Durability 145 / 145

Requires Level 80

Item Level 284

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 114.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 114.

Your weapon swings have a chance to drain a Soul Fragment granting you 40 strength. When you have acquired 10 Soul Fragments you will unleash Chaos Bane, dealing 1900 to 2100 shadow damage split between all enemies within 8 yards.

Pretty much speaks for itself. This is the endgame of all endgame's for Plate DPS. The 3.7 Swing Speed ensures some beefy hits on all your instant attacks. The red slots scream "socket me with dps gems" And the unique proc is now better than ever. The undead clause is gone, and a straight strength gain for each shard is just godly good. You don't even have to ask who gets the weapon as it's slapped right on there for reminder. It's not a hunter stat-stick, it's not the rebirth of Enhancement 2h, this is strictly a plate 2 hander. That of course brings up the question of it'll work as a tanking axe for the Death Knight community.

You can look at the stats and see that yes, everything you need to tank with is on there: Strength for parry, a great chunk of stam, slow swing speed to avoid parry gibbing, gem slots for what have you. So yes, it'll work as a tank weapon. It is a supreme waste to use it as such though. Raid members who dps at the top of their game and have the talents to maximize the effectiveness of the weapon is what this thing is for. The armor pen on the weapon speaks more usefulness to Warriors more than Death Knights and Paladins, but armor pen is still a dps increase for all the classes listed above.

In short, give it to your highest plate dps, where it's going to have the most usage.

Of course, we're still not entirely sure how you "give" this weapon, as starting details of the quest have yet to be unveiled. We know that you you'll end up turning Arthas' old hammer into the progenitor of the legend, but what starts the quest has yet to be determined.

Another interesting note with the quest for the legendary axe is that parts of the quest line, at least on the ptr, have noted acquiring certain elements from ending bosses of each wing of Icecrown. Coupled with the delayed lockout that was recently announced, don't expect to see this baby in the hands of hardcore raiders until after quite some time.

P.S. I ever see anybody socket this thing with an AP gem, I will hunt you down!

Icecrown Loot 2: Electric Boogaloo

More PTR testing with bosses and loot tables shows us some more cool gear, so lets hop into the interesting stuff:

Trauma

Binds when picked up

Mace

Main Hand

Speed 1.80

113 - 359 Damage

(130.9 damage per second)

+53 Stamina

+53 Intellect

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Increases spell power by 741.

Each time your spells heal a target you have a chance to cause the target of your heal to heal themselves and friends within 10 yards for 217 each sec for 6 sec.

So for all the healers that didn't manage to assemble a Val'anyr to call their own, we have the alternative end game. Starting off with a huge chunk of spell power is always great as well as a moderate amount of Int and Stam to go with it as well. After that though, we trade out other stats that we'd find on a typical healer mace for a unique proc (somebody has to come up with a name for these things). This proc favors raid healers who hit lots of different targets in order to spread the the aoe hot around, though I'm sure this will look attractive to MT healers like disc priests and paladins. This will probably end up being another tool for healers to use in order to customize particular sets. Cross your fingers for this one off Rotface 25 healers.

Deathbringer's Will

Binds when picked up

Unique: Deathbringer's Will (1)

Unique

Trinket

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 155.

Your attacks have a chance to awaken the powers of the races of Northrend, temporarily transforming you and increasing your combat capabilities for 30 sec.

So here we have a new unique trinket for our dps classes that favor armor pen. I'm starting to suspect that this trinket is probably one of the defining reasons for the new unique classification line. The procs from these trinkets have been cached and show a bunch of different forms that increase your stats based on the form (Northrend beasts like Magnataurs and Tuskarr). Keeping track of these forms is probably easier when you only have one proccing. Very cool trinket indeed. (here's the heroic version)

Icecrown has loot!

Update 1: MMO-Champion has some T10 stats up, along with ICC 10-man stuff

Well, if you haven't seen it yet, hop over to MMO-Champion when you get the chance to take a look at the loot posted on the PTR for patch 3.3. Decided I'd go over some of the notable pieces that strike my fancy:

Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter

Binds when picked up

Axe

Two-Hand

Speed 3.40

801 - 1203 Damage

(294.7 damage per second)

+107 Strength

+99 Stamina

Red Socket

Blue Socket

Socket Bonus: +6 Strength

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Chance on hit: Steals 2138 to 2362 life from target enemy.

As having my fair expertise with a 2-handed melee class, I've got to say that I'm getting really tired of seeing a 3.4 swing speed attached to neigh every weapon 2-handed piece in the game. Few and far are the exceptions to this rule, and it probably helps balance out bursty aspects of 2h (plate really) dps classes.

I digress...

This is a very curious weapon as when we compare it to top-end stuff from ToC, (i.e. the Dual-blade Butcher, Regular or Heroic) we see less strength and less stam on this weapon. This begs the question as to who this axe is the most value. A higher low and top end damage from the reg DbB (but not heroic) is going to give dps classes a boost, no way around that. But the lack of stats really begs the question as to who gets the most value from a life drain proc.

Answer is simpe: Death Knight Tanks. Having a constantly dipping health pool through fights where tanks will be dodging less and taking more consistent damage gives this axe a place to shine. Judging from the icon, expect to yank this sucker off of Lord Marrowgar.

Black Bruise

Binds when picked up

Fist Weapon

Main Hand

Speed 2.60

471 - 707 Damage

(226.5 damage per second)

+69 Stamina

Durability 75 / 75

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Increases attack power by 93.

Your weapon swings have a chance to grant you Necrotic Touch for 10 sec, causing all your melee attacks to deal an additional 9% damage as shadow damage.

Now THAT is a cool looking fist weapon. Once again, the only stats we get off this set knuckles is stam and ap along with a unique proc. I'm sure it'll be theory-crafted the hell out of and found that this'll be pretty damn good for CQC rogues. The real question comes is how well this is going to work for Enhancement Shaman.

Band of the Bone Colossus

Binds when picked up

Unique: Band of the Bone Colossus (1)

Finger

+90 Agility

+90 Stamina

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Improves hit rating by 62.

Equip: Improves haste rating by 57.

Equip: Increases attack power by 121.

A pretty standard dps ring for mail and leather wearers, the real interesting piece comes from the unique line. My thought is that this will make it so you cannot have a regular and heroic version of the same ring on, which is a little bit odd. Three other ilvl 264 rings have this bit on them as well.

Those are the most interesting ICC pieces I see up at the moment, but there is plenty more from the dungeons.

We've finally got the quest rewards up for the Quel'delar quest line:

Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Sword

Two-Hand

Speed 3.60

769 - 1155 Damage

(267.2 damage per second)

+164 Strength

+164 Stamina

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Improves haste rating by 91.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 99.

Plate DPS sword, extremely attractive swing speed with stats that every class can use (haste being given a funny look by all)

Quel'Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Sword

Two-Hand

Speed 3.40

727 - 1091 Damage

(267.4 damage per second)

+144 Agility

+136 Stamina

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Increases attack power by 197.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 99.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 91.

Hunter Weapon, straight-up (unless you really like armor pen that much). Solid stats all around, it's just a shame that pretty model will be sitting on your back instead of getting swung around.

Quel'Delar, Cunning of the Shadows

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Sword

One-Hand

Speed 2.70

388 - 722 Damage

(205.6 damage per second)

+62 Agility

+54 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Increases attack power by 88.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 42.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 39.

Rogue Main-Hand, and what a main hand that is. That 2.7 swing speed is to die for as a combat hack-n-slash rogue. Hunters can also pick this up if they're going to get more stats with a comparable off-hand to go with it. If your a Death Knight thats dead set on dual wielding, this will also work quite well.

Quel'Delar, Lens of the Mind

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Unique

Sword

Main Hand

Speed 2.10

120 - 379 Damage

(118.6 damage per second)

+59 Stamina

+59 Intellect

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Improves haste rating by 49.

Equip: Increases spell power by 657.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 54.

Caster sword for the other half of the game. These are stats that are generally every-man for casters, and even works as a healing sword for the Holy Paladin. Warlocks and Mages though, 657 spell power. SIX-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-SEVEN-FRIGGAN-SPELL-POWER.

Thats a lot of spell power.

But of course, Blizz hasn't forgotten about Priests, Druids and Shaman:

Cudgel of Furious Justice

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Mace

One-Hand

Speed 2.60

374 - 695 Damage

(205.6 damage per second)

+62 Agility

+60 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Improves haste rating by 40.

Equip: Increases attack power by 83.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 42.

So this is for Enhancement Shaman to have something to swing around, but will also work Death Knights and Mace spec'd Rogues (ironically, no armor pen on this for your talents). The swing speed is a solid 2.6 and the stats are once again solid. The only thing that bites about this weapon right now is that it's sharing a model with one of the TK temp legendary weapons, the Cosmic Infuser, which honestly, just doesn't hold a candle to any of the Quel'Delar models.

Hammer of Purified Flame

Heroic

Binds when picked up

Mace

Main Hand

Speed 1.80

103 - 325 Damage

(118.7 damage per second)

+59 Intellect

+59 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Restores 25 mana per 5 sec.

Equip: Increases spell power by 657.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 54.

Mainly for the rest of the healers first, but it'll work great for an Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest or Boomkin. MP5 over spirit sorta makes this scream shammy even more, and once again has a kinda funky model, looks like an offhand.

Lightborn Spire

Binds when picked up

Mace

Two-Hand

Speed 3.20

684 - 1026 Damage

(267.2 damage per second)

+144 Agility

+144 Stamina

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 251

Equip: Increases attack power by 191.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 103.

Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 84.

So here we have the mace to quell all the feral druids. It's a great bear mace and a pretty good kitty one too at that. It's model is actually pretty bad-ass to boot! Doesn't have a heroic tag though, hmmmmm...

251 ilvl weapons for DPS classes is just damn crazy! This is really good on Blizz tho imo as weapons are often one of the things that hold back a lot of dps classes, and having something baseline that will be obtainable by those who don't raid is solid. Bitch all you want about catering to the casuals but I think this is a good thing.

(plus I'm happy that I don't have to decide between a tank sword and a dps sword ^_^)

And finally, we've got posted the 219 and 232 loot from the Regular and Heroic 5 mans coming with 3.3. And there are a staggering ton of items to look over.

Out of the 219, we've got a pretty standard offering, but with a lot of cool models. For the sake of brevity, I'll just post links to some of the cooler looking items:

Hate-Forged Cleaver - Very Horde-looking axe

Crypt Fiend Slayer - Looks like a model they never used for EoE

Ghoulslicer - Roll a DK, Dual-Wield these

Mourning Malice - Another EoE model, looks smaller than the Ghoulslicer

So the 232's for the serious guys here:

Nighttime

Binds when picked up

Axe

One-Hand

Speed 2.60

325 - 605 Damage

(178.8 damage per second)

+52 Agility

+39 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Improves haste rating by 34.

Equip: Increases attack power by 78.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 34.

Cool looking model and great stats, I'll probably be saying this a lot.

Falric's Wrist-Chopper

Binds when picked up

Axe

One-Hand

Speed 1.60

200 - 372 Damage

(178.8 damage per second)

+52 Strength

+77 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Increases defense rating by 27.

Equip: Increases your parry rating by 21.

Equip: Increases your shield block rating by 31.

Ok, now this is supremely interesting to me. First off, this thing is huge, how the hell is this a one-handed weapon? It's going to look awesome with a shield, which it will always be used with because...

...gasp...

IT HAS BLOCK RATING, not value, RATING! This is amazing to me! This squares this weapon away as a Paladin / Warrior tanking weapon. I mean, if you ignore the block rating, I guess prot DK's could use it as an offhand I guess. Swing speed is kinda fast, but we haven't seen a slow prot weapon since Naxx. The final thing wroth noting is that there isn't a single point of dodge on this prot weapon. This is kind of perplexing to me. If your below 20% dodge for ICC, then dodge does nothing. There are a few more pieces in the 5 man heroic that have this same "parry and def but no dodge" situation.

Tyrannical Beheader

Binds when picked up

Axe

Two-Hand

Speed 3.50

651 - 977 Damage

(232.6 damage per second)

+129 Strength

+137 Stamina

Yellow Socket

Socket Bonus: +4 Strength

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Improves haste rating by 92.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 53.

Once again, great model, good stats, very Warrior / Death Knight thing. It will serve you well ...while you look for your Quel Delar.

Black Icicle

Binds when picked up

Mace

One-Hand

Speed 2.60

325 - 605 Damage

(178.8 damage per second)

+39 Agility

+39 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Improves hit rating by 29.

Equip: Increases attack power by 103.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 38.

Damn good looking mace.

Seethe

Binds when picked up

Sword

Main Hand

Speed 2.20

109 - 346 Damage

(103.3 damage per second)

+52 Intellect

+39 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Improves hit rating by 39.

Equip: Improves haste rating by 52.

Equip: Increases spell power by 550.

Reskinned Broken Promise likes AMAZING!

Rimefang's Claw

Binds when picked up

Sword

One-Hand

Speed 1.70

213 - 396 Damage

(179.1 damage per second)

+52 Strength

+77 Stamina

Durability 105 / 105

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Increases defense rating by 27.

Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 31.

Equip: Increases your parry rating by 21.

Spectacular looking tanking sword @_@. Seems to be a very twisted looking Kirin Tor design. This also has a tad bit slower swing speed than most tanking weapons as well, so if you want an extra bit of threat, this might be what your looking for (I'd probably consider swinging a 2.6 speed dps weapon though if your having threat problems)

Second Helm of the Executioner

Binds when picked up

Plate

Head

1925 Armor

+157 Stamina

+84 Strength

Meta Socket

Blue Socket

Socket Bonus: +8 Defense Rating

Durability 100 / 100

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Increases defense rating by 82.

Equip: Increases your shield block rating by 55.

Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 53.

If you've got a custom block-cap set (or uncrushable set, or whatever you want to call it) This is a very attractive helm that you'll want to pick up. (P.S. I love block rating)

To round out the final bit, we've got three unique trinkets to take a look at:

Needle-Encrusted Scorpion

Binds when picked up

Unique

Trinket

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 114.

Chance on melee or ranged critical strike to increase your armor penetration rating by 452 for 10 sec.

This is going to jump out a Feral Druids mostly but other classes that look at the soft cap of Armor Pen should take note as well. While this trinket is going to provide you less armor pen than the procs from a Grim Toll or a Mjolnir Runestone, it'll give you a little more crit over the latter. If your in the position of getting some more gear to stack some more armor pen, you'll end up having a little more passive damage and less reliance on your proc. It's a step up if you have the other pieces of gear to support it.

Ick's Rotting Thumb

Binds when picked up

Unique

Trinket

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 113.

Increases maximum health by 4104 for 15 sec. Shares cooldown with other Battlemaster's trinkets.

Damn solid tanking trinket. It's a ton of dodge that'll help you jump over that 20% dodge limit if you need it (you really really really shouldn't though) and the battlemaster use will be handy in Icecrown, a place thats going to test how well you use your cooldowns. If your carrying a mitigation set, this trinket is for you!

(wonder how close we are to a dodge capped rogue set...)

Ephemeral Snowflake

Binds when picked up

Unique

Trinket

Requires Level 80

Item Level 232

Grants 464 haste rating for 20 sec.

You gain 11 mana each time you heal a target with one of your spells.

Now this seems really really really interesting to me on first glance. Obviously a healer trinket, the on use haste function will probably work well as oh shit button we you gotta lay on heals, but it's the second part that needs answering quick. At worst, this is going to make healers spells all cost 11 less mana, which would probably make a lot of healers shrug. Now if it gives a healer 11 mana off of every tick of a hot, then we're looking at something that could potentially be a best in slot kinda thing in terms of longevity.

Well, thats everything I'd define as super interesting. Hop over to MMO-Champion if you want to take a look at the armor and other stuff, because there's a ton of it.

Expect more posts as we get more info!

Modular Monday - OPie

Today we've got a surprisingly light-weight mod with a lot of functionality, especially class to class. OPie is a tool that aims to save you space on your action bars. It's kind of hard to describe, but the video above gives you a pretty good visualization and a basic idea: set up hot keys in order to make ring-like menus pop up (basic or animated) at your whim. Like PowerAuras, a lot of the specialization and customization comes based on the class you play. All classes can use it as a cool way of managing your mounts, pets and trade skills for example, but here are a few cool uses for each class specifically

Paladins - Easy way to manage your auras blessings and seals

Mages - A godsend for keeping all your portals and teleports on a few buttons.

Warlocks - Great for keeping all your pets on one button, as well as soul and spellstones

Druids - All your forms at your fingertips

Hunters - Aspects on the fly, pet commands whenever you need

Death Knights - Easy presence swaps, ghoul commands and various cooldowns

Warriors - Stance swapping for all you dancers out there

Rogue - Stealth, Vanish or Shadow Dance, poison management, and stuns plus crowd control on one key

Priests - All your raid buffs on a ring, and quirky spells like Mind Control or Mind Soothe

Shaman - Can be used in conjunction with your new call totem spells, plus a great way to manage weapon imbues

I'm sure there are a ton more out there. The default rings on the mod include things like trade professions, raid markings, mini-map trackers, and other class specific rings. It's super customizable and I highly recommend you give it a shot.

Shazam-all-up-your-Interface-holez

(title taken lovingly from one of my favorite in-game shaman macros)

One of the first things a lot people will ask after looking at videos or screenshots of different WoW players are questions about their User Interface or UI. I myself run a pretty heavily modified UI and thought I'd get to sharing it. So let's start with a screenshot of me at a Test Dummy:Obviously most of the heavy customization comes at the bottom, so we'll start with a closer look at that:

Probably one of the most commonly used Mods for moving around your action bars is Bartender. It's pretty much everything you could ask for in terms of being able to move and resize your your action bars. Bartender can be somewhat of a double-edged sword however in that it can take quite a long time to set up, and isn't the most user-friendly when it comes to the set-up. If you keep it turned on for all your characters, expect anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes setting up your bars the first time you log in.

The next most noticeable UI element is the black bar across the bottom. Initially I was turned on by the wide screen look after watching so many Tankspot videos posted by Ciderhelm. While he initially posted the mod that he uses as CBH Viewport, it hasn't been updated in quite some time and is prone to integrating background elements. Skinner is the viewport mod that I use now and works quite well. It also has the option of reskinning the rest of your interface by taking away some of Blizzards default graphics and creating a more sleek and unified feel that I enjoy a great deal.

The in-game minimap can be moved around with a lightweight mod called simpleMinimap. If you feel like adding a little extra to your minimap, try Sexymap instead, as it will literally make your minimap quite sexy with some in-game resources. Outfitter is also posted closely to the minimap. Even without dual spec, it can be very helpful for players with multiple sets of gear (I used it to manage a Mitigation set, a Stam set, and a Frost resist set).

The middle shot is a very simplified shot of where a lot of action can take place. At the bottom near my feet, you can see a timer surrounded by some faint blue lines. Thats PowerAuras showing my Divine Plea uptime and how long I have till it falls off. PowerAuras has a metric ton of different usages by giving you a very easy to use resource of creating in game graphic overlays. It excels at giving a quick information through whatever visual cue you want to set up, and every class can find something handy to use it for. Death Knights can create visual symbols to show that your target has your diseases set up on them. Rogues can create a more visual combo points frame. Enhancement Shaman can show Maelstrom weapon procs. If you ever find yourself constantly looking up to your buffs to see if you got a proc of some sort, I highly encourage you check out this mod.

The text on the left of the shot showing my Blood Draining proc is Scrolling Combat Text or SCT. It's another mod with lots of customization that can give you a little or a lot of info. I currently have mine set up so that I see incoming buffs on the left of my screen, and incoming damage on the right, essentially creating a flowing combat log thats very easy to see. This helps out a ton when tanking as I can easily look at a glance how much the boss is hitting me for on average, if I block / dodge / parry an attack, or even if I'm taking damage from standing in one of WoW's numerous fires.

Over on the right of the screen is a more recently downloaded mod called CowTip. Simply put its a Tooltip mod that allows me to reposition the tooltip box and lets me see more data than what the in-game tooltip offers. It's handy just for moving the tooltip box to a certain section of the screen.



Up at the top we have two simple mods even though only one is present at the outlook. The first that is a unique mod for Paladins out there is Pallypower. If you are a paladin that does any kind of dungeons, raiding, or even pvp, you absolutely MUST get PallyPower. It's a very simple buff manager for paladins that syncs with other paladins in your group. As paladin's have the widest selection of buffs to hand out to a group, this helps out immensely with coordinating buffs and making sure reagents don't go to waste. I can't stress this enough, if your a paladin that plays in the endgame GET PALLYPOWER.

The less obvious mod present in the screen shot is a handy tool called Buffalo3. This mod allows you to reposition your buffs anywhere you like, very similar to how bartender lets you move around your action bars. Just handy if you want to line everything up or resize your buffs.

The mods mentioned here are only a handful of what I run on any given day. I'll list the rest now and go more in-depth with posts on Modular Mondays

-ArkInventory

-AutoRepair

-Bigwigs (and all the boss plug-ins that come with them)

-CLCRet

-Grid

-Omen

-OmniCC

-OPie

-Postal

-Quartz

-QuestHelper

-Recount

-Titan (panel hidden up top until mouse over)

-Utopia

Readycheck and go

So for post number one I'll talk about how I got started with the game, what I do now in-game, and what kind of posts to expect in the future.

Being stuck with Mac computer most of my life, I've been at the whim of whatever cross-platform developers have managed to ship my way, so Blizzard products have been one of mainstays. They managed to get me early with Warcraft 2. Followed up by Starcraft and Diablo uno and dos, you can say that I've been a loyal customer or borderline fanboy. Warcraft 3 offered quite the narrative to follow, and the Frozen Throne left a sizable cliffhanger. Then we had World of Warcraft, a game I was reluctant to start as every online service that Blizz had offered me before came free with the CD-Key. Eventually I took the dive with a free trial when The Burning Crusade hit, followed by a quick upgrade to the full thing with the appeal and promise of playing the versatile Paladin class horde-side as a Blood Elf. Oh the wonderful promises of being a Holy, Plate-wearing Juggernaut, swinging a holy blade, cleansing evil across the land...

...And then I finally hit 70 and was introduced to the brutal world endgame world that could be summarized as the common slang term as "lolret."

With the advent of Wrath of the Lich King and the total reworking of the Ret Tree, the Paladin class as DPS is a far cry from what it used to be endgame. Still, running Karazhan at 70 week after week, I managed to build up a tank set and dabble into the damage receiving talent tree, since the damage dealing tree was so woefully underpowered compared to other classes. It was a diversion to experiment with every other week or so, eventually translating to me keeping 2 sets of gear in my bags, even when leveling when Wrath hit.

When I hit 80 about a week or so after Wrath's release, I found myself among many dps in a frantic rush to run heroics, build up badges to turn into gear and get to raiding asap. Even with the introduction of a fourth tanking class to the game, Tanks were still in short supply on my server, so I found myself doing heroics more and more as protection and raiding as retribution. Eventually, a guild switch and server jump, I found myself enjoying more and more aspects of tanking, like leadership as well as caring about different stats, my worth no longer being measured by a dps meter but rather if I was alive or dead.

It's a little bit of condensed explanation, but basically I started the game as a dps and now I'm a tank, and more often the main tank and a raid leader. Dual Speccing has probably been one of the best investments I've ever made on my main, as I love to quest and daily (and occasionally do a dungeon or a raid) as dps, but when it comes raid time, I love taking control of a boss and seeing what the best way I can take the damage is.

So what am I going to write in the blog? I'm an avid wow player and like keeping up with the current trends of the game, and raid content as well. You can expect to see lots of rants on tanking and dps philosophy, as well as thoughts and opinions about new raid content or ptr info. While a lot might be Pally-flavored, there will probably be points of interest to most raiders and players in general. Expect to see posts and updates soon!