Retribution

Happy New Year to all my dedicated readers, lurkers, and commenters.

I tanked an "alt" Kara run last night. Most of the people in the Raid were on alts or new people like my good friend Aoesrus. I went with Honorshammer for some Badges and because I wanted to give Moroes another opportunity to laugh at me while not dropping the Pocketwatch.

With most other drops, there is an alternative I can get from another boss, or a rep reward, or PVP or Badges. Not so with the Pocketwatch. The only trinket like it is a drop off of a Black Temple Boss, and with the way things have been going lately I doubt I'll see Black Temple any time soon.

Well, there is always next week.

I did pick up a Royal Cloak of Arathi Kings off of Moroes. This is without a doubt "Ret" gear. I've actually been building a little set of Ret gear with quest rewards, rep rewards and discarded drops like this one.

I've only played around with Ret a little bit since tBC launched. I can't say it was a good experience. I'm so used to being in tanking gear, and Ret feels a bit squishy.

What got me thinking about Ret was my need for some Primal Fire. I can't kill Elementals very well as Prot. I can't block their attacks and their attacks are Fire damage that ignores my armor.

Instead of specing Ret, I simply took the money I would have spent on the respec and bought some Fire off the AH.

Sevenn, another Paladin in Mal Katai, has actually made the Ret switch after getting a Hammer of the Naaru off of High King Maulgar. He seems to be doing competitive DPS. It's also nice to have someone else who understands what its like to be a non-Holy Paladin.

I've found a couple of really good resources for Ret in http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/ and http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/dps.php. MaxDPS is really a cool site. It lets me put in my Ret stats and ranks equipment upgrades. I like having items to go after from Rep, Quests, and drops again. Besides, Paladin tanking is becoming more and more accepted, but Ret DPS is still looked at quite poorly.

Which leads me to the final reason I'm thinking about Ret. My Tank gear is just about as good as I can get it without Mal Katai making some strides into TK and SSC. There isn't a rep reward, Quest reward or 5 man or Kara drop that I need (excpet the Pocketwatch!!). It might be fun to do one of these alt Kara runs or a BG or two as Ret.

We've got Mag lined up for Friday night, but we really need to raid more if we want to make more progress.

I'm going to see how things go over the next couple of weeks, and try to be patient.

I'm getting closer to having the gold for Epic Flying and my Engineering sits at 366. I'm one Khorium Power Core away from having the mats to make my Epic Flyer, but I've got to get those last 9 points of Engineering knocked out. My plan is to build enough Hardened Adamantite Tubes, Felsteel Stabalizers and Khorium Power Cores to be able to craft the other two Epic Goggles I can make, one for Healing and one for Ret. I can use those goggles for my last two points. I will use Repair Bots and the Khorium Power Cores for those to fill in the gaps. Best case is that I get lucky on some of these parts and manage to get a skill up or two from them.

Comments

Brigin said…
I loved running with my alt Ret. So far the only raiding I have seen with him is in Kara and I am not afraid to say that my dps is right where it needs to be with the gear that I have right now. Ret is all about having the right gear and that cloak has ret written all over it. The +hit is what makes that cloak stands out!

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