I added a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and a Solid Dragon’s Eye gem to it and with the stam bonus, received an extra 137 stam from that trinket alone! Right now, I have 24,544 health. These numbers are based on the rules of 3.0.3.

Health Pool

Since 3.0.8 was [finally] released today, I get a few buffs to my gear. For my tanking helm, I currently have the Tempered Titansteel Helm.

3.0.3 helm stats

In this patch, this helm gets a new blue gem slot AND a meta gem slot. The blue gem will be filled with a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and the meta gem will be filled with a Austere Earthsiege Diamond. These two gems will give me 56 more stamina, for an additional 560 health.

3.0.8 helm stats

Also in 3.0.8 is a new bracer enchant that gives 40 stamina. So now I’m up to 96 more stamina or 960 health.

3.0.8 bracer stam enchant

Yet another change for prot pally tanks is that the prot talent Sacred Duty now gives 8% stamina (up from 6%). I don’t know the exact number that works out to in my current gear but I’m sure it will be enough to give me over 100 extra stamina (or 1,000 extra health).

All of these stamina increases will put me over 25.5k health, unbuffed! Whatever problems I had with my health pool are now over. I feel very good with the amount of health I have for tanking heroics.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, enchants, gear, gems, heroics, jewelcrafting, pally, prot, stamina, Tanking, tempered titansteel helm

Naxx

I raided Naxx with my guild on Friday and Saturday nights. On Friday, we did the Arachnid (achievement) and Plague (achievement) quarters. On Saturday, we did the Military (achievement) quarter and attempted the Construct quarter. On the Construct quarter, we downed Patchwerk and attempted Grobbulus a couple of times. We couldn’t get Grobbulus down since over 1/2 of the raid was lagging including our MT (who d/c’d on 2 of the attempts). We called the raid after the last wipe.

I walked out of Naxx with four drops, three of which are holy! The fourth drop was a cloak (that I will link when I am able to log into WoW) that is not any better than my current cloak. The holy pieces were Helm of the Corrupted Mind and two others that I’ll name and link when can log in to WoW.

Tanking

We were going to try and finish Naxx on Sunday night but couldn’t since one of our healers was having internet issues and couldn’t log in. We decided to split up into groups and do some heroics instead. Our MT has been wanting to respec ret and knows that I’ve been wanting to try my hand at tanking so we switched specs. I went with the most popular prot pally build (5/60/6) according to talentchic.com.

We attempted the first boss (Slad’ran) of Heroic Gundrak three times before skipping him in hopes of getting some emblems from two other bosses and then returning to him.

We downed the other bosses in the instance without a problem and went back to Slad’ran. We wiped on him once more before the freshly minted (read: very low dps) lock logged out and into his much better geared mage. After that switch was made, that boss was very trivial. Once attempt, one downing, altar switched and then it was onto the last boss, Gal’darah. The last boss was just as trivial as the others.

I got the achievement for completing Gundrak on Heroic. After reviewing the dps of my group (to myself), I commented that I should get the achievement for tanking my first heroic. Then I looted the boss and saw my achievement waiting: the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets! Those dropping was the icing on the cake for me.

The dps for the group was pretty low considering it was a heroic run. The top dps-er averaged ~1400 dps while the second was 1100ish. The fresh 80 lock averaged just over me, with 900ish dps. I rounded out the bottom with 823 dps (which I feel is extremely low for a WotLK tank).

I had a lot fun tanking that instance, despite the low dps of the group and the many wipes we faced. Tanking is a lot more hectic than dps but I’m ready to tank some more.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: epic, gear, gundrak, heroic, holy, naxx, naxxramas, raiding, ret, tank

I want my health to be 24,000 unbuffed.  I’ve been looking over the spreadsheet I made yesterday, trying to determine what I can get that will bump my health to at least 22k but much closer to the 24k mark.

After about an hour, I have created yet another spreadsheet that notes how I can almost reach my goal. I’ve found 197 extra stam, 41 extra defense and some other stats as well. I have a net increase of every stat across the board (I believe). The mats for these upgrades are very cheap in my opinion, especially for what I’m getting in return.

Notice that none of the gear I’ve listed includes either of the major stamina trinkets that jewelcrafters can create! Once I get that, I should be over 25k health!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 20000, 20k, gear, health, heroics, jewelcrafting, prot, stamina, tank, trinket, upgrades

This is all pre-raid gear since who know when I’ll step foot in Naxx, if ever. There are also tabs for enchants and gems.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: gear, google docs, heroics, prot, spreadsheet

The old, 3.0.3 version looks like this:

AP: str 113 => 259.9 AP (str x 2.3)
Crit: 66 => 1.27% crit (agi/52.08, it takes 52.08 agi to give you 1% crit)

The 3.0.8 version looks like this, (image courtesy of WorldOfRaids.com):

AP, JC pally:  97str+27str (from JC gem, see below) = 124str  => 285.2 AP (str x 2.3)
AP, non-JC pally:  97str+8str (from Soverign Twilight Opal) = 105str  => 241.5 AP (str x 2.3)
Crit: Crit Rating 52 => 1.13% crit

Overall effect of change (for JC pallys) = +25.3 AP, -0.10% Crit
Overall effect of change (for non-JC pallys) = -18.4 AP, -0.10% Crit

The nice part of the change is that there is now a blue socket in the helm. That will help my pally by freeing up the gem slot that I added with the Eternal Belt Buckle. Currently, I have a blue gem in there, the Perfect Sovereign Shadow Crystal. I will be able to move that gem from my belt buckle to the helm and replace it with either the Bold Scarlet Ruby (+16 str, blue quality gem) or the Perfect Bold Bloodstone (+14 str, green quality gem, perfect cut). Eventually, when my JC is high enough, I’ll probably just drop a Bold Dragons Eye (+27 str, prismatic) so that I can make the most of this helm.

This is going to be a major buff for my attack power but a slight nerf to crit rating.  Overall, I’m calling this a buff, for pallys who happen to be jewelcrafters and a nerf for non-JC pallys.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, gear, math, patch, spiked titansteel helm, titansteel

This happened to me again last night! I ran two heroics and got some new gear, so the draft post I had needs to be modified, yet again!

This is a filler post basically saying that I plan to recreate my gear wishlist with heroic gear as well as showcase what I’ve gotten and how I have gemmed and enchanted it!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: attack power, enchants, gear, gems, heroic, Paladin Blogs, ret

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: dps, gear, pally, ret

Now I get to start working on leveling up jewelcrafting and eventually cooking.  I just got my mining to 450 this morning and that means that I can start to craft some Titansteel Bars!  My first goal will be the Spiked Titansteel Helm, followed by the Titansteel Destroyer.

The Spiked Titansteel Helm requires:

• 4 Saronite Bars
• 4 Titansteel Bars
• 1 Frozen Orb

The Titansteel Destroyer requires:

• 8 Saronite Bars
• 8 Titansteel Bars
• 2 Frozen Orbs

Each Titansteel Bar requires:

• 3 Titanium Bars (each bar requires 2x Titanium Ores) = 6 Titanium Ore
• 1 Eternal Fire
• 1 Eternal Earth
• 1 Eternal Shadow

Miners can only make one Titansteel Bar every 20 hours so this set will take me a while to obtain. I think the only things that I will need to by off of the AH are the Eternal Fires and the Frozen Orbs.

I did manage to level my jewelcrafting from 99 to 276 last night! That took around 700ish gold but that is only because I couldn’t get to my stockpile of ore and stones in the mail. I will put most of my leftover ore back in the auction house so that I can recoup some of my spent gold.

I now have to start questing again so that I can earn some more gold to help pay for my new gear and enchants!

Since I did all of the quests in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills, along with many, many instances while leveling, I still have Zul’Drak, Sholazar Basin, The Storm Peaks and Icecrown Glacier zones left for questing where I’ll be earning gold!

That will definitely help me to get my JC leveled and my Titansteel stuffs!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: ding, gear, ret, titansteel

I also picked up the Blessed Spaulders of Undead Slaying from the fourth phase of the zombie invasion.  Wowinsider.com has a nice writeup about the event and the related quests.

With the extra strength from the shoulders, my attack power is up to 1850, self-buffed (with Blessing of Might)!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: gear, reputation

All-in-all, I was very pleased with how things turned out yesterday, despite having so many issues finding (and keeping) a group.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: drop, gear, instance, pally, ramparts