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The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new holy paladin at 80, part 2
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss the most efficient way to use your emblems of triumph to pick up great holy gear. Do any of you remember raiding Naxxramas, back at the start of Wrath? What now seems so trivial today was actually pretty easy back then too, considering that guilds in level 70 gear cleared it on their first night in. Even considering how simple raiding was at that point, loot drama could still occur. A guild on my server, one of the larger and more successful guilds too, disbanded over a loot dispute. It wasn't about whether or not hunters should be allowed to roll on one-handed items (they shouldn't), but rather about whether an item with spellpower, mana per 5, and haste should be given to a healer. The item in question is the Torch of Holy Fire, which today, we would clearly state is a healer weapon: MP5 means that a healer should be using it. However, one of the guild's elemental shamans contested that it was also best-in-slot for him, and that DPS classes deserved gear before healers did. His argument was that letting the DPS gear up was more important than giving items to healers, because more DPS meant quicker boss fights. Once an encounter was beaten, additional healing did nothing to push progression. While the idea of a guild focusing on gearing their tanks first and everyone else second is not that uncommon, the idea of DPS superiority over healing was divisive enough to rip this group apart. Healers were arguing for their fellow brethren, while DPS derided them for being selfish. Paladins were particularly focused on, since critical strike rating was far more desirable back then and we were rolling on sp/haste/crit gear along with every other caster DPS class. Luckily for us, things have changed a lot since those early Wrath months.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new cat druid at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of cats. Of the three druid specs I cover in the Tuesday column, I think it's arguably toughest to gear a cat. Bears are pretty straightforward; they want armor, agility and gobs of stamina. They're not particularly fussy about the array of DPS stats that otherwise infests melee leather, and because all three of their primary stats appear in spades on PvP gear, they've got another set of reasonable options as long as they're willing (and able) to dump some threat. Trees are even easier. If leather with spellpower drops, the rest of the party/raid groans, and you'll often get these items whether you wanted them or not. For a long time I've wondered if the continuing popularity of the tree has anything at all to do with how easy it is to build a functional healing set even when you're not trying. Cats, on the other hand, tend to face a lot more competition. They have neither the bear's indifference to DPS stats, nor the tree's benefit of playing a relatively uncommon armor/stat combination. As a cat approaching the end game, you'll probably find yourself rolling against a beggar's army of melee and hunters drooling over melee leather. Why? Two words: armor penetration. These days every Two-Hand-Harry and Shadow's-Edge-Sally has a raging lust for armor penetration, and we band of buggered restricted to melee leather are paying the price. Oh well. This article gave me an excuse to dig up a bunch of cat-related YouTube videos, and you can't stay mad for long.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new bear at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of bears. I've been getting an extraordinary number of requests to update our older posts on how to spec and gear a fresh bear, cat and tree at 80. At this point in Wrath, the information should stay fairly accurate through the end of the expansion, and I agree that this would be a great time to do it. For the next few weeks, we'll examine how to get a new feral or restoration druid into fighting shape. When we first started out, I split gear into categories like best drop, best reputation piece, best quest piece, etc., and I don't think it's necessary to do that anymore. It's so much easier to get high-quality gear by running dungeons or hunting around for some crafted drops or PvP pieces. In particular, it needs to be said that a lot of really good bear pieces can be had from PvP. If you've got a pile of Stone Keeper's Shards lying around (and many players do at this point), buy Wintergrasp Commendations with them when your faction has Wintergrasp, convert them to honor on your druid, and voila -- you've got currency for some ridiculously good pieces.
