Dinged 85 :-D
Jul. 18th, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crimsonquills posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
adventures_in_azerothRayner dinged 85 a few days ago!
I was pretty excited. Finally, all the guides I've been reading will actually apply to me! It drives me nuts that no one writes low level guides for pallys.
Plus, now I can accumulate honor and get good PvP gear again. I can't even describe how painful PvP was from level 80 to 84. All the folks who have toons with lots of cash buy themselves awesome gear, the level 70 purples (which are pretty awesome to level 77 or 78) are suddenly COMPLETELY OUTCLASSED by Cata greens, and the level 80 purples are also badly enough outclassed by Cata greens that I wish I hadn't wasted honor on the three pieces I bought. I went out and got some Cata greens myself, but then you have to give up your resilience and everyone else has gems and enchants to get some resilience on there...gah. I got my ass handed to me so badly around 81 and 82 that I just gave up on BGs until I hit 85. At 85 Tol Barad opens up, and even though I was still in super squishy Cata greens, there are enough people in there, many of them also in Cata greens (apparently a lot of folks don't start PvPing at all until 85) and its big enough that I did OK anyway.
Two major surprises for me at 85:
(1) OMG, you get so much more honor for the same BGs! Between the little bit of honor I had saved from 80 to 84 (~700), two Strand of the Ancients, and one Tol Barad, and I had enough to get an iLevel 371 PvP chest, which costs 2200 honor.
(2) I had to give up my Prot spec. :-( Well, not entirely give up; I dual-specced. But I'm running BGs as Ret instead of Prot now. I bought the dual spec because of how badly I was doing at 82. But Prot just has so many problems with mobility. I was getting snared and slowed so badly it was crazy. Ret's speed boost, extra snare breaker via Cleanse, and sprint-via-Judgement make all the difference in the world. I really need practice at knowing when to pop my cooldowns, though! But only experience will take care of that.
I feel almost guilty going Ret after being a dedicated non-tank Prot for 84 levels. But I still use it for questing (love my durability and pseudo-AOE abilities) and I'll probably poke at Prot-PvP again once I'm fully geared.
I was pretty excited. Finally, all the guides I've been reading will actually apply to me! It drives me nuts that no one writes low level guides for pallys.
Plus, now I can accumulate honor and get good PvP gear again. I can't even describe how painful PvP was from level 80 to 84. All the folks who have toons with lots of cash buy themselves awesome gear, the level 70 purples (which are pretty awesome to level 77 or 78) are suddenly COMPLETELY OUTCLASSED by Cata greens, and the level 80 purples are also badly enough outclassed by Cata greens that I wish I hadn't wasted honor on the three pieces I bought. I went out and got some Cata greens myself, but then you have to give up your resilience and everyone else has gems and enchants to get some resilience on there...gah. I got my ass handed to me so badly around 81 and 82 that I just gave up on BGs until I hit 85. At 85 Tol Barad opens up, and even though I was still in super squishy Cata greens, there are enough people in there, many of them also in Cata greens (apparently a lot of folks don't start PvPing at all until 85) and its big enough that I did OK anyway.
Two major surprises for me at 85:
(1) OMG, you get so much more honor for the same BGs! Between the little bit of honor I had saved from 80 to 84 (~700), two Strand of the Ancients, and one Tol Barad, and I had enough to get an iLevel 371 PvP chest, which costs 2200 honor.
(2) I had to give up my Prot spec. :-( Well, not entirely give up; I dual-specced. But I'm running BGs as Ret instead of Prot now. I bought the dual spec because of how badly I was doing at 82. But Prot just has so many problems with mobility. I was getting snared and slowed so badly it was crazy. Ret's speed boost, extra snare breaker via Cleanse, and sprint-via-Judgement make all the difference in the world. I really need practice at knowing when to pop my cooldowns, though! But only experience will take care of that.
I feel almost guilty going Ret after being a dedicated non-tank Prot for 84 levels. But I still use it for questing (love my durability and pseudo-AOE abilities) and I'll probably poke at Prot-PvP again once I'm fully geared.