Paladin Itemization

It's no surprise that Blizzard has chosen status quo in regards to the current Paladin itemization. Initially I wasn't very happy because revamping my gear was a problem, and secondly the drastic change to illumination called for a change in healing style. The change helped me improve my downranking speed a lot because no more can you spam mindlessly while still maintaining a full mana pool, well, that is if you don't have a shadow priest.

I've looked extensively at Paladin loot all the way to Illidan and Archimonde, and also spent some time spying at the gear paladins in top PVE raiding guilds are choosing. Surprisingly to some, DnT paladins (Ryuujin, Xaviera and Kronagan included) are continuing their tradition to keep base crit at a high level (25%~). At the same time, they have very high heal and somewhat decent mp5. I'm just a bit shocked they didn't balance their gems to get mystical skyfire (focus), instead, they socketed destructive skyfire (crit/reflect). I think that's a huge mistake. Right now they're sitting on 1.8k~ heal, 90mp5 and 25% crit.

The loot they're wearing is really the only available ones, unless you take mail or outright druid/priest loot. With their choice of gear, they could reach 2.2k heal, 100mp5 and 25% base crit. Of course, this is assuming you have access to _everything_.

Nihilum for whatever reason have chose to gear Awake/Johnnyr heavily. Possibly because both of them are in their arena team, or maybe because they're officers (kek). Both of them sit on 2.2k heal already, but are 80mp5~and 21% crit. This is evidence that in PVE you are largely pigeon-holed towards a certain set of gear, especially for healers. Gems and non-class specific loot enable players to deviate from the standard stat configurations, but otherwise you will end up wearing what Blizzard whats you to wear.

There is a 'new-age' healadin that completely ignores crit (as best as possible), but stacks mp5, then +heal. Currently I am somewhat a manadin (lol) sitting on 1.6k heal and 150mp5. Ragnor mentioned that some paladin managed to stack up 250mp5 raid buffed. This is entirely possible. One of the great advantages I have as a manadin is Talasite Owl, which alone is 29mp5 max and on average 25mp5 (oh I'll write a bit about the new JC-only gems later). It's going to be a bit annoying though when it comes to BT and Hyjal considering I'm already having problems selecting gear in SSC. Mind you I haven't got a single item from SSC yet, because I'm still in the eternal struggle to choose a fixed gear configuration.

For example, should I take Tempest-Strider Boots (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30066) or Boots of Courage Unending (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30027)? Assuming I take Tempest only after all shamans have one, the practicality of the manadin build becomes questionable. To be realistic, one would have to take the latter. And I think that's the case I'm dealing with. Should I be a rash realist or a cautious idealist? Maybe it's best to be a cautious realist.

The other ongoing issue is gemming and enchants. Hell, getting pigeonholed is one problem, having too much variety is another (-.-")! However, I am certain I will continue to use mystical skyfire, and therefore assuming I get 4p T6 (-helm), blessed adamantite bracers and girdle of hope, I'm ending up with 1 metagem slot, 5 blue slots and 6 yellow slots. So I'm intending to get 5 royal blabla whatever the 11/2mp5 ones are, 4 10 crit gems and 2 greens gems - possibly rune covered chryoprase and 5int/2mp5 one. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS =D

Patch 2.2

Significant changes are ahead. The addition of DoT damage reduction to resilience is a noticeable buff, but in the smaller brackets DoTs are simply too cheap to cast. It's stupid when a good warlock spams you with rank1 DoTs and drains you, leaving you no choice but to waste even more mana dispelling. If life/mana drain were nerfed somehow, the smaller brackets would smell less of warlocks.

What I'm rather excited about is the new healing shield. The AC buff from Triptych is very very significant, providing up to ~4% phy dmg reduction. I tried to get on the PTR to try-on its model but yep the copy has taken more than 2 days.


Also despite dedicating 4 hours to a full kara clear tonight, Prince refused to drop his cape again. It's shocking they didn't add a significantly upgraded cape for Paladins until Illidan.

I'm quite shocked that bosac is going to be on a 1min CD. It's such a drastic move. Paladins have even lesser micro now. I think it's going to be very noticeable especially when priests already have so many things to do. Freedom is also going to be 25s instead of 20s, which will make an annoying difference. However this will barely makes Paladins less dominant in the arena scene.

Ayu

When it comes to buying albums, you expect the cheapest from me. Considering how easy it was to download mp3s, buying albums was a really stupid thing to do. I remember selling pirated CDs at 5 bucks each and sold 20 or so in sec2 lol. At some point, I had 27gb worth of mp3s and had nearly 400 AYU tracks, including all her singles, all her nonstop megamixes and remixes, bar some extremely rare ones. It's hard to say whether I was really a fan of any artiste with the amount of underground work I was doing with their music. In stoic defense, I stand by the fact that I like the music not the artiste. Anyway, it all came crashing down anyway when the drive died. I believe it did some psychological damage to me.

I think it was Karl who first introduced Ayumi Hamasaki to me in 1999? when she released LoveAppears. I believe that album had Fly High, which made her very popular. It wasn't until Seasons and Evolution when Ayumi really murdered the music industry. They are still very very good.

Her ayu-ro-mix and ayu-trance albums were all top notch. The Ayu-mi-x series (nonstop) was also quite good, but V was quite disappointing. It's amazing how DJs like Above & Beyond (aka Oceanlab), Ferry Corsten, Rank1, Warp Brothers etc even get to work with her music. I remember Tiesto saying that the trick to Vocal Trance was exotic vocals. I guess Ayu was that.

It's hard to say which of her remixes is the best. I still love Surreal (Dub's Floor Mix Tranceport 006) and Unite (Airwave Club remix). The entire Ayu-Trance 3 album was insane, but the best in there imo is Voyage (Dirt Devil's Remix).

Anyway here is the music video of Evolution!



Also a kawaii video of her nearly forgetting her lines on Voyage, again!

Live Earth 7.7.7

The idea behind the LiveEarth concerts is quite radical. The 8 concert locations represent the continents on Planet Earth: Hamburg, New York, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, Rio De Janeiro and London. The artistes involved range from the legendary to elite performers and freshies. Madonna did the theme song for the LiveEarth event. It's called Hey You but it's not really great.

Critics claim the concerts to be a waste of resources and hypocritical, but I disagree to some extent. It is propaganda'ish considering the target audience is _everyone_, including the very young. But I believe the young have a larger role to play than adults. Babyboomers to Generation X and Y are simply too lazy; we have lived in such procrastination and expedience for so long to get our asses on the move. That is not to say we have an excuse to shirk off all responsibilities as the exclusive species on this planet.

LP was at the Tokyo LiveEarth concert and Chester *hugs* did so well as usual ^_~



Mikey screwed up a key early :P

Nihilum VS Millenium

It's not new news that Nihilum was trashed (quite literally) 5-nil in the SK Gaming ESWC 2007 Grand Finals. Millenium, the easoned arena team that gave credibility to Druids by renaming Moonkins to Doomkins.

Being the top PVE guild in World of Warcraft ever and surpassing the fame of Elitist Jerks and Death and Taxes, Nihilum has some weight to carry. It isn't a large surprise that Nihilum didn't win, but I am personally surprised that they didnt surprise the arena-goers. Surprise surprise.

Well at least we got a picture of Kungen and Awake lol.


For one, Nihilum played a really iffy setup -Warrior, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Doomkin. Millenium played the heavily-lauded team of Warrior, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Elemental shaman. When you cover the team names, it doesn't take more than a few seconds to expect the latter to win.Of course their achilles heal was still the lack of experience. Perhaps the lack of their custom mods hindered their best performance, and I do think they didn't perform their best.

One of the controversies surrounding this matchup was Nihilum's exception of their gear. Although they are 2nd in their battlegroup, much of their prowess could be due to gear. Anyhow, some face was lost. At least they didn't back down on the appearance. That reminds me of Nikita Khrushchev backing out Russian fleets during the Cuban missile crisis when he sent them there to "scare" the U.S.

Note: You can find a poor and incomplete video of the match-up on Youtube.

Star Spangled Banner

Sorry I've been really busy with everything so I couldn't update my blog as often as I did. I do have a number of interesting posts in draft-mode, but I did stumble on a MASSIVE blooper this week.



At the same time I concluded that Whitney's version (live) of Star Spangled Banner was clearly THE best. Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce, Yolanda Adams, Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken , etc. barely came close.

Gladiator Leonardo

What a truly harrowing experience. I could barely sleep when I woke up on the 20th in realization that I did not receive my Gladiator title and Armored Netherdrake. Aliane seiously helped me get my first 8 hours of sleep by finding the blue thread suggesting that errors might have occurred while distributing the rewards :D

I might want to take a break from WoW or something considering that my work has been neglected to a large extent.

Leon the Darkener?!

In our dreams we soar up high...