New skills:
Concentration Aura - I've never used this as ret or prot. I believe holy paladins get the most benefit from it.
Seal of Justice - I suspect this seal is for PvP mostly. Not very useful for tanking.
New skill ranks:
Holy Light rank 4
Blessing of Might rank 3
I'm starting to get a bunch of "tougher" dungeons such as Deadmines and Stockades. For the most part groups are good, though going is slow at times.
My biggest beef at this point is that I'm kinda running out of mana and I don't have many ways to recover it, short of drinking after every couple of fights. I'm trying to be smart about it though, in order to keep downtime to a minimum.
The main culprit here is Consecration. Whenever I pop it, it gobbles 100 mana. When you have less than 900 mana, that becomes a problem. Judgement of Wisdom isn't enough to gain my mana back because it only gives about 10 whenever it procs. I use Arcane Torrent, the BE racial every time its cooldown is up but that one gives me around 50 mana and the cooldown is a very lengthy 2 minutes.
So I'm trying to manage my mana carefully, first of all by not using Consecration unless there are 3 or more mobs attacking me. I can manage 2 mobs without Consecration by taunting and Judging, for example.
At level 23 I managed to snag a cheap Glyph of Sense Undead (my first minor glyph) for under 10 gold, whereas the price for the past week had been at 40 gold. Good thing with these price wars.
Level 24
New skills:
Turn Evil - I don't see myself using this skill since fear-type effects can be dangerous in instances.
New skill levels:
Blessing of Wisdom rank 2
Redemption rank 2
Hammer of Justice rank 2 - higher ranks of the hammer are always welcome.
Hand of Protection rank 2
Throughout this level range I've run a bazillion Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps and Stockades. I now know these dungeons intimately and frankly I'm getting kinda sick of them.
One thing I'm starting to notice is that levels don't seem to fly by so quick, what with the lack of heirlooms and quests. Occasionally someone has a quest to share but most often they don't. Alliance dungeons such as Stockades and Deadmines have zero quests for the Horde.
Another shitty thing in these primitive dungeons is that drops are particularly crappy. For the past 3-4 levels I haven't found any good drop that will increase my stats by even a small amount. My last 2 good drops before these 3-4 levels were Phantom Armor and Baron's Scepter, both from SFK.
At 25 I did get a couple of new upgrades from Razorfen Kraul. Some minor green stuff that I won't bother listing.
I think I've had a duh! moment in RFK. I ran with a holy paladin healer and she put Blessing of Wisdom on me. My mana problems were gone. I never drank once. So from now until level 30 I'm gonna use wisdom on myself instead of kings. Lesson learned (I hope).
I also have about 140 gold at this point. Things are still selling slowly and my mining is lagging behind my skinning. I've encountered Iron nodes in RFK but the most I can mine is Tin. On the other hand I can skin everything that I encounter.
Talents at 25: 0/16/0
Now onwards to 30!
Armory profile
P.S. Notice the pansy-ass shoulders.
7 comments:
At level 30 you'll get Blessing of Sanctuary "...when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 2% of maximum displayed mana." It's companion ability, Holy Shield, doesn't arrive til 50 but hopefully Sanctuary will help alleviate mana issues. Could pots be a temporary solution til then?
I never bother with Turn Evil either; it seems a waste to me. Even when you're out in places like the Plaguelands, you're just asking for trouble Fearing enemies away.
Yeah, I was just going to suggest Wisdom for you; I used that for a long while when I was leveling my Pally as Holy Spec just to keep my mana up. Once I hit the threshold of around 50 and I switched to mainly Ret Spec, I was able to take advantage of the occasional mana potion to supplement my Judgements.
As a lock, I find Fear to be useful when I've over-pulled. If not too tight of location, I can fear the accidental aggro and give myself a little time until they get back to me.
It's also great when I am a few levels higher, say going back to do those dailies (kill 10 beasts), and I want to avoid damage. Dot + Fear = free kill. Sometimes they bring friends and I don't need to run them down.
Curious, did I miss why are you not running the BOA gear with the +10%XP bonus? On my alt's, I've equipped 2 pieces of +10% gear, just so I can skip some of those quests.
@Elkagorasa:
He's going completely without help.
And yes, Fear for a Lock (or even my Shadow Priest) can be a lifesaver, but for a Pally, I'd rather keep my enemies closer and not have them run away.
One of the things I noticed leveling my prot pally was that I hardly took any damage when running instances - certainly not enough to make it hard for the healer to heal me. For most instance runs you can easily set your buffs up to get more DPS/threat or mana (depending on your needs) at the expense of survivability without having to feel guilty about it.
More specifically, I would suggest you keep running with BoW until you get Seal of Wisdom at 38. Then you can switch to Blessing of Sanctuary - the seal along with judging wisdom should be enough.
@Gyldenfeax oh, believe me, I know all about Blessing of Sanctuary. I can't wait to get it. That talent is so good in every possible way for a tank. Don't forget, I have a level 80 prot pally on my main server, that I don't know how to tank with unfortunately.
@Elkagorasa I've decided to do this tanking experiment on a new server and a different faction, just to see how a character will fare without the help from his high level characters. Otherwise I would have definitely worn the heirloom. As it turns out, this is very much an exercise in self-flagellation :) There really is no good reason not to wear heirlooms if you have access to them.
@Tal yeah damage has started to become less of a problem, especially in "green" instances and especially if the healer is higher level. I really hope Blessing of Sanctuary will alleviate my mana problems, otherwise I'm gonna be a sad puppy.
LOL, definitely. I am not even about to start leveling another toon from 0, so I salute you on doing that. Without access to your gold, and across faction, even more so.
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