Soloing up a Paladin

Levelling up my Paladin has not been fun. Level after level the going seems to get slower and despite good weapons and reasonable gear, the process has been very slow. I prefer my rogue. I do enjoy my feral druid when the mood suits despite her awful gear, but not so much the paladin. Why play one then?

First reason: I am a jack of traits and my ultimate aim is to have a level 70 of each class topped out in all the professions. (I fear that my engineering gnome mage may present issues here, but that's much further down the line.)

Second reason: DH plays a mage and our duo needs a tank to hold the aggro. My feral druid, even in days gone by when she had excellent gear, couldn't quite manage it and my rogue can't manage it at all. When playing his mage, I tend to spend my time running back and forth aimlessly, or so it appears. A paladin is ideal with the added bonus of healing powers, so it's the best gal for the job.

Third: Paladins are popular. There must be a reason why. I am determined to discover the way of the tankadin. I hope blindly that all will be revealed when she rides out on her shiny white horse at level 40. Rides out imminently, I should say. She's level 39 and three quarters.

My chief dislike has been the drinking. I dislike the waste of time between every single fight. She can take on a mob of three, which is nice, but then she has to drink. A lot. The drinking is costing me a fortune in and of itself. Both in the beverage purchasing department (an issue which will be resolved when she's old enough to play with DH's mage) and in the loss of time and time is money. I was at the verge of abandoning her all together, even though she's so close to a major landmark event, simply because I couldn't put up with how slow the leveling goes. Instead, I decided to try a experimenting a little more and alas, me thinks I have found a reasonable solution.

She can keep both her health and mana bar above 90% end fight if the following condition is met and her play style plays along. First: take on singletons that are the same level or a level or two lower than she is. Second: play to minimize expenditure. This can be done as follows:

• Use the Blessing of Wisdom buff and whichever aura is most appropriate.
  
• Start with 'Seal of Crusader' as she runs into melee range
• Hit Judgement, which is immediately followed by Seal of Justice
• Let her fight for 10 seconds whilst Judgment finishes its cooldown
• Judgment again, immediately followed by Seal of Wisdom
• Let her fight for 10 seconds whilst Judgment finishes its cooldown
• Judgment again, immediately followed by Seal of Light
• Let her fight for 10 seconds whilst Judgment finishes its cooldown
• Judgment, immediately followed by Righteousness (if there's time left)

Watch the health bar of the opponent. As soon as it gets to 35%, hit Consecration to hurry along the last bit. For things that tend to run at low health, use stun as soon as they start running, thereby keeping them inside the consecrated area and they're dead before stun has elapsed. At the end, my paladin is between 90 - 95% of both health and mana and can immediately go into the next fight. The fight itself is still a little long (32 - 48 seconds against a steady 18 -23 seconds for my rogue in a similar fight), but at least there's no 10 - 15 second wait inbetween. I plan to shorten this time by investing in an extremely good one-handed weapon whilst plunging talent points into one-handed weapon specialization. Watch this space to see how that goes.

Screen Shots

It took me a while to find, but I've found the shortcut keys at last! To take a screenshot within WOW without the user interface, press Alt-Z (it all disappers), then PrtSc (as usual), then Alt-Z (UI is back).

When to buy, when to sell

Auction House Tip Of The Day: Buy at off-peak times and sell at peak times.

In other words, for good sales, hold back all your key items for the weekend. If you want to sell things during the week, sell your lower priced items and only commit to 12 hour auctions that nicely cover the evenings.

When buying, log on when nobody else does, i.e. the early morning hours. On the weekend, shop for bargains on rarer items that may not be available at all during the week. On weekdays, buy the common stuff for a tenth of the price you'd pay on a Saturday afternoon.

Covering the territory

I tend to forget just how big Azeroth is. The first ten levels take place in the start-up area, the next ten in the nearest 10 - 20 (Auberdine for Night Elves, Bloodmyst Isle for Draenei and Loch Modan for dwarves and gnomes). From level 20 upwards, every 5 levels or so, it's time to migrate to a new region and it's only then that I am reminded that there is plenty of see and much to do. (For the early birds keen to fly the next, there is the opportunity to begin the area to area migration at level 15 by moving on to either Redridge Mountains in the Eastern Kingdoms or Stonetalon Mountains in Kalimdor.)

When soloing, I do find it convenient to level up in 2 - 3 similar level regions. It provides a little variety, more choice for farming trade supplies and the option to complete only the type of quests I like - kill quests, drop quests and courier quests. Personally, I tend to stay close to home until like most players, I favour the Eastern Kingdoms as an alliance player. That said, I do have a Kalimdor list as well, but I tend to wait until level 40 and a mount before racing through Kalimdor for key supplies and flight routes. This is my current strategy for questing, farming and picking up flight paths as Alliance. I have made it to level 44 and so far, so good:

• Level 20: Wetlands
  
• Level 28: Hillsbrad Foothills (20 - 30)
  
• Level 30: STV (Stranglethorn Vale), Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains
• Level 35: Dustwallow Marsh (Eastern Kingdoms) and Swamp of Sorrows
• Level 40: Feralas and Tanaris
• Level 45: The Hinterlands, The Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge
  
• Level 48: Aszhara, Felwood, Un'Goro Crater
  
• Level 50: Burning Steppes, Western Plaguelands,
  
• Level 53: Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring
  
• Level 55: Silithus, Deadwind Pass
  
• Level 60: Off to Outland!
  

Aside: I tend to pick up Kalimdor flight paths and mats once I have a mount by running through Darkshore, Stonetalen Mountains,Thousand Needles and Desolace to reach Feralas as end destination.

Auction House Basics

It's virtually impossible to finance levelling up without making frequent use of the Auction House. Not all of us are budding economists, but a basic understanding is required. Even if you never buy an item on the AH, you definitely will be selling a plenty.

I was a little intimidated at first, but now that I have placed a few bids as well as auctions, it's surprisingly simple. There is no hard and fast rules to make money by putting things in the AH, but if you want to give it a go, there are a few simple facts that is most definitely need to know. All the basic formulas are at Wow Wiki.

Three pieces of information are crucial for any auctions in the faction AH.

One: On putting an auction, the AH will charge you a deposit immediately. In the faction auction house, the deposit is roughly as follows:

• 15% of the MSV (merchant sell value) for a 12 hour auction
• 30% of the MSV for a 24 hour auction
• 60% of the MSV for a 48 hour auction

Two: If your auction is unsuccessful, the AH will keep the deposit you paid.

Three: If your auction is succesful, the AH will take a 5% cut.

Happy Auctioneering!

April Fool's Day

It's the morning after April Fool's Day that's usually interesting. This is the time when it comes to light which hoaxes were pulled off well and which of us are the most gullible. It's also the day of reflection on the best jokes of the past and a few good ones are recounted at Wikipedia.

Blizzard had it's own fun as well with The Bard Hero Class and the Molten Core console. I would say that the Bard is a hoax, but the Console more of a joke. I can see some people accepting the bard story as truth, but the molten core story is so obviously not even meant to reflect truth in any way. Similar to the 'Penguins can fly' BBC footage, it's the end that completely give it away. For the Penguins, it's the migration to the rain forrest for the winter that's the nail in the coffin and for the console it's, and I quote: "Blizzard's World of Warcraft: The Molten Core Collector's Edition, also announced today, will include tinted cellophane TV overlays, further increasing the array of colors available to players."

From the land of the grazing kodo, the green field's of Mulgore, comes the joke of the day: The Tauren Marine for Starcraft II. Google it, and you'll discover just how far and quick this idea spread.

Nobody plays at 6 a.m.

At six in the morning I still feel pretty much the way I did at four and then at five. Annoyed. Tired. Frustrated. I am not a morning person and neither is the person I share my bed with who had to get up between four and five to go to work. The only difference at six a.m. is that now I have the added emotion of guilt. I am here, waking up gradually whilst scanning the auction house for bargains. It's most definitely not the worst way to wake up. The worst way to wake up would be commuting to work right about now. I remember leaving for work at 6 a.m. in the morning a while back and it's the fabric of nightmares.

In all fairness, it's not the early morning that gets you but the late night, the interrupted sleep and the disturbed sleep pattern. I could manage early mornings if they were all early, I suppose. I still wouldn't like them, but it'd possible feel a little less of a torture. I suppose. The earliest I ever had to get up on a regular basis was at 6:00 for school years and years ago. But six then became 6:15, then 6:30, then 6:45 to be out the door at seven a.m. I guess I am just not a morning person.

Logging in at 6 a.m. this morning I did learn something. Less people are morning people than you would think. Also, quite a few must be getting ready, going to or at work already. It's 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and the Auction House is empty and Ironforge a ghost town of NPC's.