Bingo.
That’s awesome. I love those little touches.
Yeah, I’d say stockpile what you’ve got now.
Well, except for that, you know, giant fucking monument in the middle of the most important hub city in the entire continent, that shows everyone exactly what happened.
Apparently it was a very exciting flower.
AFAIK there’s no news yet on how Loremaster is changing. My WAG is that you’ll still keep any sub-achievements you’ve already completed, but you’ll lose credit for any completed quests that no longer exist.
Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer, he’s a demon on [del]wheels[/del] wings…
That’s because it’s a quest that takes place in the Alterac Valley Battleground, which is an instanced area separate from the Alterac Mountains zone. If you queue for AV via the PvP window, you can do the quest once you’re inside.
To be fair, Staghelm has had some pretty fucked up shit happen to him. Mainly his son getting literally torn in two in front of him.
If you want to gear up a fresh 80 without wasting your points your best bet is to run the NON heroic versions of forge of souls, pit of saron, halls of reflection and tournament of champions. They don’t have lockouts associated with them so you can queue for them as much as you want and all the bosses drop ilevel 219 epics. Also they are fairly easy, easier than a regular heroic imo.
The statue is for us plebes who don’t have Kingslayer; the general populace of generic random peasant NPCs isn’t supposed to know (per the dialogue) what really happened there.
My main hit 80 fighting with Arthas in Culling of Stratholme. I found it suitably epic, though I really kind of hate that instance.
So, I took my baby DK out for a spin last night, and tanked my first instance, which ended up being Ramps. A few things about that:
[ul]
[li]I’d never tanked anything before. Ever. I once tried it as a level 20 paladin, but I freaked out after the first pull and dropped group.[/li][li]Going from raiding DPS (where if you’re glowing red, either the tank’s dead or You’re Doing It Wrong [TM]) to tank is a complete mindfuck. Moreover, it requires that I actually pay attention. Not just to raid warnings or special effects or debuffs, but to freaking. Everything. I feel like apologizing to every tank I’ve ever grouped with.[/li][li]Also, I need to run these instances as DPS first. I had no idea where anything was.[/li][/ul]
That being said, we only wiped once, and that was because the boss was patrolling, and I didn’t realize it. I felt like such a dork, but everyone was pretty cool. My friend who came with–whose main is an end-game DK tank–said that I did a good job of keeping aggro, but my pulls were sloppy. I guess that comes with time, which is kind of why I wanted to level this one as a tank.
That being said, I had no idea how well I did at holding aggro, since I was utterly focused on whacking things with a sword and diseases. What’s the best add-on for that? I’ve tried Omen as DPS, but I found it less useful than the regular glows; is it more useful for a tank, or do I need a different version?
Ramparts, in particular, is a really tough first instance to tank; there are tons of patrolling mobs all over the place (including that one boss), not to mention tons of ranged attackers who will happily stand back and shoot at you instead of running into the death and decay, and not many corners to run around and line-of-sight those ranged attackers. I’d say at least half the tanks I’ve run that instance with have problems with over-pulling at times.
I’m a bad night elf. I had to look him up.
I’m fairly sure his biggest mistake is butting heads with Tyrande. She’s pretty much second to Jaina in the ‘you mess with this chick and half the rulers of the world will come and fuck you up’. I’m pretty sure Blizzard would retcon lore to bring Illidan back if someone tried to fuck with Tyrande.
This leads into my rant about only the pretty, pure human or elven chicks are allowed to have love interests (out of the major characters). Sylvanas? Too dead. Vashj? Too few legs, too much tail. Any female orc? Too fugly. Moira Thaurissan? Ooooh, we have something here! But too short to be really fought over and loved for something more than her claim to the throne. Also not really a main character.
Welcome to tanking! I daresay that pretty much everybody goes through what you did, especially if they switch from another role to tanking. The first few times are scary, but it does get easier. And less stressful.
As for addons, I can’t recommend Tidy Plates - Threat Plates more highly. Tidy Plates is the main addon, and Threat Plates is a supplement for it for tanks. What it does (it’s configurable, but works great out of the box) is put up color-coded nametags for all the mobs you’re fighting. If it’s red, you’ve got aggro on it. If it’s green, you don’t. If it’s yellow, you’re losing aggro and should probably swap to that mob and give it a little more love.
(The colors might be backwards for you–oddly, my tank on Live shows things he’s got aggro on as green and stuff he doesn’t as red, but on Beta it’s opposite. I think I just realized that. :P)
Have you read *The Shattering *yet? I think both Moira and a certain female orc are probably going to be figuring quite a bit more prominently in the game for Cataclysm.
Thanks for the tip. The hammer the first boss drops in Pit of Saron (normal) was already on my shopping list, but it looks like I could fill a lot of my slots with decent upgrades. Between waiting in the dungeon finder I’ll probably try to finish the quests in Icecrown.
Couple of simple questions. Do I still get justice points for running non-heroic dungeons? And is there a PvP vendor in Dalaran where I can spend a few honor points?
There are PvP vendors down in the sewers of Dalaran (goblins towards the side of the arena area). I haven’t looked to see what they’re carrying these days.
Ret paladin, you said? You’ll want the Tyrannical Beheader that Tyrannus drops on Heroic difficulty.
Well, except Justice Points are the 2nd tier points (Hero Points being the 1st tier). So once Cata drops, T10 is still the best gear you’re going to be able to spend them on until T12 gear becomes available. That is, you’ll need Hero Points to buy T11 gear at first, while Justice Points will let you buy T10 and lower (assuming T9 and lower remains available). Then when T12 is eventually introduced, that will cost Hero Points and your Justice Points can then be spent on T11. So may as well spend them now on T10.
Since the Loremaster meta achievement simply requires you to earn all the continent-specific achievements, if jayjay already has those he shouldn’t lose credit for quests that disappear. I mean, they don’t usually take away achievements you’ve already earned.
Why would you assume that? T10 is going to be useless for new 85s. I guarantee you there will be immediately purchasable level 85 items equivalent to heroic gear that cost JP.
Also, while the Tyrannical Beheader is good, it also drops off the heroic end boss. Difficult to get. Garfrost’s Two-Ton Hammer is much easier to farm for at least as an intermediate step.
Heh - my mage also dinged 80 in Culling of Stratholme. And then got to listen to somebody’s addon issuing alerts for the rest of the run that I wasn’t using the level 80 versions of my spells. (Well, okay, not the whole rest of the run. I mentioned to that player that I just now dinged 80 and obviously couldn’t get to my trainer until we were done, and they apologized and turned it off.)
I think you get a small handful of them for completing your first random normal dungeon, but not for killing individual bosses like you do in heroics.
For those dungeons i mentioned you do get 16 points per boss, same as heroic dungeons BUT since you are specific queuing for them instead of random queuing you don’t get the end of dungeon bonus that random queuing gives you.
Just the way I read the explanation, though I admit I may have misunderstood. Blizz said that the top-tier stuff (T11, when Cata first drops) will cost Hero Points, and previous-tier stuff will cost JP. I had no level 80s when Wrath dropped (obviously, since I started playing about 2 weeks after it was released), so I don’t know what level 80 stuff was badge-purchaseable at that time aside from the first tier of lvl 80 gear (T7? iLvl 200?)
Yeah, I was just mentioning the TB as something to shoot for. Best 2-hander for a ret pally outside of a raid (Quel’Delar may be a bit better, but it’s even harder to get.)
You will be able to buy level 85 blue gear with justice points.
I read the WoWWiki entry for Moira so got my spoilers from there and I think I can guess who the female orc is. But still, they aren’t held to this romantic pedestal that Jaina and Tyrande are. They get multiple men wanting them and it kind of bothered me that there wasn’t something equivalent like a multi-game storyline with Thrall and Garrosh fighting over a prominent female orc.
Thrall has Jaina; no need to fight for some Orc. 
Old Orcish saying: “Once you go pink, you never rethink.”