A paladin was my first character in World of Warcraft. Kershocker the Holy Paladin. I know what you’re thinking: “LOL u leveled as holy, noob l2p.” I admit it, I was definitely a noob [Proof], but one day, while spamming Holy Shock and Exorcism, I decided to learn how to play my class. Boom! Retribution Paladin!

When it comes to DPS, I’ve always loved the Melee classes. Inflicting as much damage while standing right in the middle of all the action is good times. When you want to gear a Plate DPS class, all of them share one thing in common: Strength. That’s why it’s quite simple to identify an upgrade, if it has more Strength than your current item, it’s probably an upgrade. Still, there are a few other stats you need to consider if you wish to maximize your DPS. I’ll try to make a priority stat list for every single Plate DPS class and it will be followed by gear you can and should get before stepping into heroics.

Retribution Paladin: Strength > Hit Cap = Expertise Cap > Mastery > Critical Strike > Haste

Dual Wield Frost DK: Strength > Hit Cap = Expertise Cap > Mastery > Critical Strike > Haste

2-H Frost DK: Strength > Hit Cap = Expertise Cap = Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike

Unholy DK: Strength > Hit Cap > Haste > Mastery > Expertise Cap > Critical Strike

Fury Warrior: Strength > Hit Cap = Expertise Cap> Critical Strike > Mastery > Haste

Arms Warrior: Strength > Hit Cap = Expertise Cap > Critical Strike = Mastery > Haste

Now on to the gear.

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No longer relegated to a permanent tree form, choosing the right equipment for your Restoration Druid is more important than ever! But you’ll have to wait until you your gear is up to snuff before you start playing dress-up. As with all of our Cataclysm Gear Check guides, we’ve provided you with a variety of ways to hit that elusive 329 ilevel cap required for entrance to Heroic 5-man dungeons.

Remember that while it eventually evens out a bit once you outfit yourself with Heroic and raiding items, initial healing and mana management can be a little tricky in this expansion, even with the pieces shown below.

Stat Priority: Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit

Generally, you are going to want all of your gear to have spirit on it. However, if a piece has a significant abundance of intellect, don’t hesitate grabbing it!

As a Druid, we are gifted with the nifty ability to wear cloth gear. Or more appropriately, we were. We now receive a intellect bonus for wearing all leather, so that is definitely worth going for.

Chances are if you have leveled to 85, you have ran into all of the six new factions this expansion. As it turns out, these guys are real nice and are willing to hand out some (more or less) free blues to get you started. I would recommend checking them out.

• Baradin’s Wardens (Alliance): Shimmering Morningstar ( Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
• Dragonmaw Clan (Horde): Spaulders of the Endless Plains (Honored), Withered Dream belt (Exalted)
• Guardians of Hyjal: Cloak of the Dryads (Honored)
• Hellscream’s Reach (Horde): Shimmering Morningstar ( Revered), Mandala of Stirring Patterns (Exalted)
• Ramkahen: Ammunae’s Blessing (Honored)
• The Earthen Ring: Pendant of Elemental Balance (Honored), Leggings of Clutching Roots (Honored)
• Therazane: Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Honored), Greater Inscription of Charred Lodestone (Exalted)
• Wildhammer Clan (Alliance): Mantle of Wild Feathers (Honored), Belt of the Untamed (Exalted) Continue Reading

Cataclysm has brought on a lot of changes for rogues. Subtlety may again see the light of day as a PvE spec, Hunger for Blood is replaced by Vendetta, and weapon specializations taken away from Combat just to name a few changes. This post will help you determine what gear you will want to go after in the endgame, and what you should be looking for while leveling.

The first thing you want to keep in mind are what stats you are going to want for heroics and raiding. While this doesn’t matter much for questing, if you are leveling in dungeons or preparing to do heroics, you should start looking to build your set while you are leveling.

Stat Weightings

With reforging, you can move some of your gear’s stats around. It’s important to know what stats you are looking for and reforge the stats that aren’t very good for you into better ones.

For Combat, this is what you are looking at:

Agility >> Hit (pre yellow cap) >> Expertise (pre cap) > Haste > Hit > Crit > Mastery

Basically, agility is way better than everything else, hit is way better than other things until the yellow cap, then hit and haste are about equal, but both better than crit and mastery.

Your hit information can be obtained by going into your character stats sheet. At level 85, here are the caps assuming you picked up 3/3 precision:

• Yellow: 241 (2%)
• Spell: 1127 (11%)
• White: 2523 (21%)

Basically, hit rating is really good until the yellow cap, then its about as good as haste and expertise. It stays about that good up until the white hit cap, at which point it is useless. You won’t be anywhere near that number, so don’t worry about it too much. Expertise is capped at 781 for most races; if you have a racial that increases your expertise with your weapons (like Gnomes or Orcs), you are looking at 691.

A note on weapons: You are going to want a slow main hand and a fast offhand. The type of weapon doesn’t matter (unless you have a racial bonus), but the only fast offhands are daggers, so put a 1.4 speed dagger there.

Read on for the full list of gear you will want. Continue Reading

Making people merry, one blog post at a time

One thing that is always daunting for the majority of PvE content is gearing up — and our effectiveness being 50% dependent on that gear. Mention that only one or two pieces drop in a single dungeon, and it makes a new tank just a tad hesitant to move into a full-time job.

Tanking doesn’t have end-all, be-all rules and guidelines that other roles must strictly follow. It’s one of the more forgiving archetypes to play (as long as you’re able to get the job done, of course).

The most favorable stats are different depending on your class, such as Druids having little to no use for Parry.

I won’t proclaim to be an expert at this point, especially since  Tanking stat priority is still heavily disputed in the community right now as to what’s most favorable, but prevailing theories claim the following:

Warriors: Stam > Parry > Dodge = Mastery > Hit = Expertise

Druids: Stam > Agil = Dodge > Mastery = Hit = Expertise

Paladins: Stam > Parry = Dodge = Mastery > Hit = Expertise

Death Knights: Stam > Mastery > Dodge = Parry > Hit = Expertise

I list Stamina on top for every class, because personal experience dictates that stacking it is the most reliable way to provide effective mitigation, giving more time for healers to launch their spells. It also relies less on the Random Number Generator.

Example 1

Boss is hitting for 25k every 3 seconds, and you have 175k. That gives the healer 21 seconds to get at least one heal off.

VS.

Example 2

Boss is hitting for 25k every 3 seconds, and you have 120k HP. That gives the healer just under 12 seconds to get some sort of heal off.

Read on to see my final analysis of Tanking stats and a full list of gear that will put you over the threshold and into Heroics, to then have fun progressing there!
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