All

I apologize for my delayed absence. I have had a personal tragedy take place in the loss of a loved one and am working through it. I have plenty to write about and will be back before long.

Swing ‘em hard!

~Tharvolde

So - we’re finally here. The proverbial end (in a loose sense) of the expansion, where we get to see the final boss crumble and calm down with our harsh raiding schedules (unless you’re going onto dedicated heroic modes) and how PvP in arena has evolved over multiple mind numbing seasons.

Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King released!

Icecrown definitely has been an interesting ride - a definite improvement over Trial of the Champion and as it should be since this was an actual content patch and not just a slap to the face for a few months. I’m begging that the heroic difficulty of some of the bosses in there are actually quite challenging, I won’t be satisfied with more “just beat the timer!” (Hodir, Blood Queen, Festergut) bosses. Sunwell might have been one of the sharpest points in WoW raiding, and I definitely want to hear some input from you all to see what people have been thinking about this new content, and what they expect from the heroic modes.

Valithria Strategy

Stand around waiting. Get on adds, use Seal of Command for maximum faceroll. Go into portals, recieve buff, kill more trash while your healers heal the boss.

Stand out of things.

Sindragosa Strategy

Attack the boss from not one, but two sides of preferred. Stop attacking or casting if you get a debuff. Run away when raid gets pulled into the boss. Scream into your mic with your eyes bulging out for people who get marked to run to the middle and start to dodge the hilariously simple Sapphiron raid-wide aoe. Watch the boss land, stand in front or behind the boss for maximum effectiveness

Lich King Strategy

???

lol, Bolivar.

Arena Season 8 coming to a start!

As I’m sure everybody here read over Tharvolde’s post from a while ago addressing the problem with Retribution in arena, people are worried about Retribution’s future for this season. We all know that Ret this doesn’t scale as well as every other class does - you can blatantly see this with freshly geared players dominating in PvP as Ret while Warriors cry, and the tables turn the more gear you acquire. It has almost gotten to the point to where Retributors worldwide are having their first taste of how it was to get Gladiator in TBC, but I still believe that it was a bit harder back then.

But have no fret. If you did well last season, there is no doubt that you should be able to roughly secure the same position that you had in the past, it’ll just take a bit more dedication to compete with rampant Warriors scaling so well that your panties fling off in preparation before the fight begins. If anybody sees Retribution doing well in truly competitive arena - naming tournaments - without a gimmick/crutch (Prot Warrior on your team) (Though I suppose Protection specs are more accepted these days, but I won’t ever be an advocate for them.), make sure to get a hold of me asap!

- Megaphone

*Sorry for the lack of post over the past few days, a bug on the website prevented me from doing any posting for almost a week(!).

Cromfel the Fifth

After noticing that a post from Sir Cromfel befell our forums, I noticed that another Retribution movie from an oldie has been released. Simply put, we love all fellow Retributioners far and wide, so why shouldn’t they get a spot on our front page!

ICC For Dummies

Recently Teleros posted up an Icecrown Citadel for Dummies guide that has been getting a lot of praise and attention. Although it’s far too complicated for me and I’d never go into such detail for these extremely complicated fights (people who just joined the internet and lack sarcasm awareness beware), it’s still a nice read. Wish I could have posted this sooner before it spreaded like wildfire, but nevertheless it’s here! Just click here for the forum link or follow the hilariously big picture!

The Crimson Halls

I’d love to hear some input now that it’s Sunday and I’m sure the majority of the raiders out there have experienced the new bosses. I personally think that the Blood Princes encounter is a slap in the face to us - the “Keep the DoT up!” motto that Blizzard forced down our throats really makes this encounter a complete disaster to try and be competitive in.

Blood Queen is more of a pushover if anything, which is a little disappointing after the success of the Plagueworks earlier in the month.  What do you guys think about the new encounters? And of course, obligatory giant picture of kicks and giggles.

- Megaphone

After the hilarity of a few responses to my previous post, I took a trip down nostalgia lane and watched some of the old classic Paladin-with-retribution-like-qualities movies that not too many people know about today (Jamaz, Zalgradis, OMGSLAYTON) and decided that I would love to know what some of you out there love to see in PvP videos. I’m not just looking for what you like - I’m looking for specific examples in a PvP video so I can see it myself!

Oh, the goodies. Lookie it’s muh rauge!

- What turns you on when you watch PvP videos? What sets the mood off?

- What are some of your favorite flicks (you don’t have to confine yourself to just Paladin videos!)

- Do you light candles for the sexual sensation that is a two hour download off of Warcraftmovies for PvPness viewing?

- Megaphone

As the title suggest, Blizzard has now granted stalkers all around the World (of Warcraft) to continue eating their cheetos and drinking their red bulls while frothing at the mouths over the new Character Feed section of the Armory.

Stalking - now over twenty times easier thanks to the great minds at Blizzard!

At least now I know where my class imbalance and botched content is coming from now with resources flowing into useless - and (generally) unwanted projects like this. At least give us the option to turn it off, we know the four of you at the office can’t help but to touch eachother over the limitless amount of data on players you have, keep that to yourselves!

To which I ask, who was the genius that thought : “I think it would be a great idea to create a system that is also publicly available that lets other players see exactly what you’ve done, looted, and received over the past 50 and over events, link it to RSS so it can be on any website at any time, and give no benefit to the user’s own personal page other than seeing their character in 3D as if they never log into the game and do that regardless.”

Edit : As I suspected, some people are taking me a tad serious when I put this in the same pool as game balance. It would be silly of me to think that the same people designing classes implemented this tool! Not only is it quite useless, but I’d find it interesting if someone out there could bring a positive benefit that this brings to the table.

This might not be Paladin news, but it is certainly WoW news, and we have to cover that too!

- Megaphone