Iamapaladin's Purpose and Gearing Philosophy

I apologize for the very, very long hiatus. BTW, Happy belated Halloween!

When I first started this blog, I sincerely meant to blog in it weekly because I hated not having anything to read from my favorite blogs. Yet as time went by, my posts became more and more sporadic. Sometimes I would post a lot and then I would stop posting at all and repeat this again.

I don't know how many readers I have following me but this isn't fair to you guys. With that said, I am not shutting down my blog but I guess I want to clarify the purpose of this blog's existence.

I didn't really mean for this blog to be a site for holy paladin mechanic discussion but because that is what I play, that is sort of what became this site's content. The problem is that in order for this site to be even useful for holy paladins in that regard, regular and timely updates are necessary.

I don't really feel up to that as I want this blog to reflect my mood and current thoughts. I feel I am the type of writer that needs time to let thoughts ruminate before I let it out. I also tend to take a long time writing posts though sometimes that is not the case.

Some of my more popular posts were the end results of thought processes and reactions to experiences I had, which I had taken the time to reflect upon. All of my posts draw on my in game experiences but if I'm too busy posting or trying to write a post, I can't play WoW! At the same time if I am really busy with WoW, I won't be able to really post as I am just busy doing stuff in game. I just try to do this blog in my free time.

So I hope that you guys still continue reading my blog but forgive me if I do let it fall by the wayside from time to time. I hope you guys will be able to come by from time to time to read my blog. Thank you!

Anyway, now that my little speech is over and done with, I just want to note that many people like to look at BIS (best in slot) lists for their particular class or spec. However, with the holy paladin changes (Replenishment, Illumination, Divine Intellect nerf) that took place a while ago, holy paladin BIS list is actually NOT that straightforward right now.

It used to be that BIS meant haste/crit/SP itemization and the item with the most of this was win since there were usually only 1 haste/crit/SP item for a slot available while crit/mp5 or haste/mp5 was just ignored. That is definitely not the case nowadays but that also means it opens the door wide open as to what is really BIS for holy paladins.

Is there really a discussion you say? Yes, there is because due to crit being devalued, haste/mp5 is actually as valuable as haste/crit/SP (or even more!) and in some cases you may actually want crit/mp5 but it all depends on the individual paladin such as their stats or preferences.

For example, I like to use this website's loot ranking sheet to figure out what is BIS for me. I tend to value haste much more than crit and as crit/mp5 items seem to predominate in the ToC era, what may seem like BIS on paper is not really BIS for me due to my preferences.

How did I figure out how to weight my stats? Well, I try to center my stats around having high intellect as SP will come by via gear naturally as well as indirectly via my total intellect. In addition to that, I focus on keeping my haste at least around 640 - the magic number is 676, for the soft cap I believe but I actually wouldn't mind if my haste was a bit over that.

This means that with any upgrades I get, I am always balancing my gear around my haste because I am trying to always be at a good haste rating. I would use Sunforged Bracers over Bracers of the Broken Bond if I felt my haste was too low despite the higher int and SP from the heroic bracers.

As for crit and mp5, I don't actively go for those stats since I am still relying on my high intellect to give me back mana via Divine Plea, Arcane Torrent and Replenishment but even then the incidental mp5 and crit I get from gear and talents alone is sufficient for my tastes.

So with this in mind, I give int my highest weight at 4, haste a 3 weight in the loot rank sheet. Also, since I actually value mp5 a tad above crit, I give that the same weight as SP at a value of 2 while crit comes in at a weight of 1 as I have ~40ish crit in raid buffed setting and considering talents for spells.

Keep in mind, that I am what you would call a HL paladin so I gear and gem for being able to use HL predominantly. If you like to use FoL more and not HL very much at all, you would probably value SP, mp5 far above crit with int in between. The gems FoL paladins use would also be different and thus change the ranking of items in the loot rank sheet.

So what is the point of this? The point is that there is no one way to gear a paladin and no blanket BIS for all holy paladins. For example, 4 pc T9 set bonus is more valuable for a FoL paladin than a HL one so non set pieces may be much better and that is a factor that has to be individually considered. Therefore, BIS lists are moot and I have removed the BIS link from my tabs.

This isn't a very interesting post (though long) but I will eventually get around to a post on how to heal as a paladin (I hope!) for newbies. There are also a lot of upcoming changes to the paladin class and Icecrown is drawing near! I'm just going to wait and see if I have anything valuable or interesting to say about any of this. Stay tuned! =)

Till next time!

A sneak peak at what else I've been up to =P