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The Light and How to Swing It: Looting the Crimson Halls

Gregg Reece
Contributing Editor
Updated ·8 min read


With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown.

We're continuing our looter's guide to the Icecrown Citadel. This week we're delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they're kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she'd probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they'd become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I've actually seen that one.



The Blood Princes three

Kite the orb of fire, kill the bomb, and let the hunter tank the shadow guy. Wait, didn't we kill some of these guys already? And did he just use glitter on me? Ack! They're Twilight vampires! Let's stake them and see what they bought with their movie deal money.

  • Holy

    • Heartsick Mender's Cape - 10 man - Cloak upgrade time. We've got a red socket and it bumps up our haste as well as mp5.

    • Cerise Coiled Ring - 10 man - This ring has a bit more intellect than stamina, which is always good in my opinion. It has a red gem slot and has crit and haste with the lion's share of the itemization going to crit.

    • Mail of Crimson Coins - 25 man - If you don't have a resto/elemental shaman in your raid, you could probably swipe this chest piece. It has three gem sockets (red, yellow, and blue)with the equip stats as haste and mana per five. It actually has quite a bit of mp5 if you're looking for that.

    • Crypt Keeper's Bracers - 25 man - These are a pair of crit and haste bracers. They've also got a yellow gem slot you could toss an intellect gem into.

    • Incarnadine Band of Mending - 25 man - This ring is awaiting a blue gem of your choice (or a completely different gem if you're so inclined). Its other stats are crit and mp5 with the itemization lean towards mp5.

  • Protection

    • Spaulders of the Blood Princes - 10 man - These plate shoulders have a significant amount of health available to them. It's leaning very very heavily towards stamina over strength at almost two to one ratio. It also has two blue gem sockets on them which you could load up with stamina gems. Other things which aren't stamina include a bunch of defense rating, some parry, and some hit. However, you get these purely for the health pool bump. Don't forget to go grab your shoulder enchants from those Hodir boys.

    • Royal Crimson Cloak - 25 man - This is a pretty universal tanking cloak. It has a bunch of stamina, defense and dodge rating in equal parts as well as a little bit of hit. It also has a yellow gem slot as well.

    • Taldaram's Plated Fists - 25 man - These gauntlets aren't as heavily stacked towards stamina as other items we've been looking at, but stamina is still at an advantage. There are two gem slots colored in red and blue. The defense rating and parry rating seem to be the main stats on here, but it also has a decent amount of dodge rating as well to help you get out of that Icecrown radiance funk.

  • Retribution

    • Battle-Maiden's Legguards - 10 man - This set of legs has three gem slots in them (two red and one yellow). It's got a lot of haste on it as well as a large chunk of expertise. With the amount of strength you can shove into three gem slots, I'm not complaining.

    • Thrice Fanged Signet - 10 man - This crit and haste ring is fairly decent for ten man. You've also got a red gem slot in it for an additional Bold Cardinal Ruby.

    • Landsoul's Horned Greathelm - 25 man - It's a pretty simple helm, but includes large chunks of both crit and hit. It has a meta slot as well as an additional yellow gem socket.

    • Cryptmaker - 25 man - While not Bryntoll or Shadowmourne, it is a pretty decent two-handed mace. It's nice and slow giving you a bit more power in your swings as well as having some hit rating to make sure you actually connect (but you're already hit capped, right?). The armor penetration isn't all that important unless you're getting a lot of procs out of your tier 10 set bonus, but can be handy in that case.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel

Oh look, another tank swapping boss. However, you do get to bite people which can lead to all sorts of bad jokes. Just beware the other plate wearers as all of that metal is bad for your teeth.

  • Holy

    • Cowl of Malefic Repose - 10 man - This is a clothie head piece, so you'll probably have some competition if you decide to nab it. Its main stat is crit, but it also has a nice chunk of haste on it. It has a meta slot as well as a blue slot when it comes to gems.

    • Chestguard of Siphoned Elements - 10 man - Another piece of shaman gear (shhh, don't tell them). The chest piece focuses on haste, but has mp5 as a backup stat. The three gem slots in it are two reds and a yellow which can easily be filled with whatever you'd like.

    • Tightening Waistband - 10 man - This plate belt has a red and a blue gem socket along it before you add your Eternal Belt Buckle. It's focus is towards haste, but it also has some mp5 on it.

    • Blood Queen's Crimson Choker - 25 man - This spell necklace drops from the twenty-five man version. It's got a yellow gem socket in the middle and has a fair amount of both critical strike rating as well as a similar amount of haste in it.

    • Bauble of True Blood - 25 man - Let's just start out by saying that there are much better options. Sure, the mp5 is nice and the heal at first glance might be okay, but a free 7k heal every 2 minutes isn't that big of a deal. As a paladin, we can always Lay on Hands in a pinch or get a proc for an instant cast. The only real benefit is that as a trinket, the heal would be off of the global cooldown and instant cast. However, as I said earlier, for PvE, there are much better options.

  • Protection

    • Veincrusher Gauntlets - 10 man - As with most of the protection gear in Icecrown, these lean heavily towards stamina in its primary stats. It also has both a red and a blue gem slot that you could fill with additional stamina or even some avoidance or threat gems. The equip stats stair step down a bit from each other with defense rating being in the lead followed by expertise and then dodge.

    • Icecrown Glacial Wall - 25 man - This shield keeps with the skull motif we've been seeing a lot lately. It honestly looks a bit like Arthas' cereal cabinet door that you pried off while skulking through his kitchen. The block rating on it isn't that high, but it also has some parry rating to go along with it. However, it's almost never a bad time to upgrade a shield to the next tier just for the large chunk of additional armor it brings.

  • Retribution

    • Collar of Haughty Disdain - 10 man - This plate dps necklace has a fair amount of both crit and haste. It's got a single yellow gem slot in it waiting to be socketed with something.

    • Throatrender Handguards - 10 man - These plate gloves are pretty decent, but I wouldn't necessarily break my set bonus for them. They've got a yellow and a red gem socket in them. As far as equip stats go, they're sporting a large amount of hit as well as a nice amount of haste on the side.

    • Lana'thel's Chain of Flagellation - 25 man - This necklace is pretty close to the best in slot one for normal modes. They're identical when it comes to strength and stamina, but differ on the rest. The single socket on this one is for a yellow gem and it has expertise and armor penetration on it for its equip stats. This might be something worth passing on if you're saving up your DKP.

  • All Paladins

    • Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification - 25 man and heroic 10 man - As with the end of each of the major wings in the citadel, the final boss drops a generic armor token. These can be traded in (along with your current version of the tier ten gear) to upgrade its item level a bit. Unfortunately, these do not drop in the normal version of 10 man, but do in every other difficulty.



The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming Paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. Are you ready for the assault on Icecrown Citadel?