Tag Archives: factions

Holy Paladins: Choosing Your Faction Goals

1 March, 2008 Siha 6 Comments

There are a number of very good rep rewards available for paladins, particularly Protection and Holy paladins. I thought I’d do a bit of a rundown for those who are levelling a pally and haven’t identified their faction goals yet. If you’re a holy paladin in pre-raid gear, you might want to aim for:

Honor Hold/Thrallmar – Revered.
For Ring of Convalescence/Ancestral Band and Glyph of Renewal at Revered. (Sage’s Band/Farseer’s Band at Honored is a nice addition to your DPS set, too.)

Cenarion Expedition
You can actually skip CE faction if you’re purely Holy, unless you want Windcaller’s Orb (at Exalted) until you get a good healing shield. I wouldn’t recommend it personally – but hey, some pallies wear cloth, too.

Sporeggar
Nothing for you here.

Aldor/Scryers – Exalted.
For Greater Inscription of Faith (for Aldor) or Greater Inscription of the Oracle (for Scryers) at Exalted. (You can use Inscription of Faith/Inscription of the Oracle (Honored) until you hit Exalted.) Aldor also offers Vindicator’s Hauberk (the best pre-raid tanking chest) at Revered, and Medallion of the Lightbearer at Exalted (although there are better-balanced pre-raid neckpieces out there, this one does have good base stats). Scryer-aligned paladins can get Seer’s Signet at Exalted, which is very good for a shockadin set.

Lower City – Revered.
For Lower City Prayerbook, an excellent trinket for paladins that many prefer over epic alternatives. Gavel of Unearthed Secrets at Exalted is a good shockadin mace, too, and if you’re building a tanking set it’s the best tankadin mace you’ll find until raid or arena gear.

Kurenai/Mag’har
You can pretty much skip Kurenai/Mag’har faction altogether, from a paladin point of view.

The Consortium
You can skip this one, too.

Keepers of Time
For a pure Holy pally, you can skip KoT faction too. If you’re going to be doing some tanking, I’d recommend aiming for Revered for Timewarden’s Leggings and Glyph of the Defender (and Continuum Blade until you get to Exalted with Lower City for the Gavel).

The Sha’tar – Exalted
For Gavel of Pure Light, an excellent healadin mace (I got a Hand of Eternity crafted before I got to Exalted Sha’tar, but the Gavel of Pure Light isn’t far behind it). You might also want Crest of the Sha’tar (Exalted) for a tanking set, and Xi’ri’s Gift (Revered) for a shockadin set.

Ogri’la – Revered
For Apexis Cloak. Ogri’la Aegis (Revered) is a good tanking shield before you hit Exalted Sha’tar, too.

Sha’tari Skyguard
You can skip this as a healadin. Airman’s Ribbon of Gallantry (Exalted) is a decent shockadin trinket, though, when you consider the fact that you’re likely to be playing as a shockadin for solo content only – grinding and questing.

Netherwing
You can skip this too. Commander’s Badge (Revered) is a nice tanking trinket, though.

Shattered Sun Offensive – Exalted (New in 2.4!)
For Shattered Sun Pendant of Restoration, which is an amazingly good pre-raid healing neck. Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen (Exalted) is also good for a shockadin set, and Sunward Crest (Exalted) may suit tanking pallies for threat generation.

Game Info

One Good Reason to Play The Lunar Festival Game

8 February, 2008 Siha 4 Comments

The first two posts I saw in my RSS reader this morning were from Aurik and Big Bear Butt, both talking about the replayability of the Lunar Festival.

Here’s one good reason to go around and collect all the coins: reputation. Each coin gives you +75 rep with all Alliance or Horde factions, for a total of 3750 rep for all 50 coins. (Or 4125 rep if you’re human. *smirk*) It’d take you 250 stacks of Runecloth to achieve the same effect, and unless you’re an AoEr with seriously heavy-hitting damage, I’m willing to bet it’ll take you less time to get the coins than the cloth. (And there are still reasons why you might want Exalted with old-world factions, of course.)

And that’s, you know, the totally mercenary reason for doing it. I’m still having fun charging around on my level 70 pally getting all the coins – two years ago I got all bar the instance coins on my then-low-40s night elf shadow priest (and boy were the Horde cities challenging :)) when I was flirting with the idea of making her my main, and I didn’t do it at all last year because I was in hospital. So this is all new on my pally, and I can tell you that bubble-hearth sure makes things easy. ;)

Game Info

The Mighty Tabard Collection

30 January, 2008 Siha 20 Comments

Everyone has their little foibles, right?

Well, apparently I’m addicted to tabards. Some time before TBC was released, I realised I had almost every tabard in the game (available to my faction, obviously). What a worthy goal it would be to fill out that collection, I thought.

I’ve always been a bit of a reputation junkie; this just sealed the deal. I’m still missing a few of the tabards, but let’s take a bit of a tour through the wardrobe:

Left: Tabard of the Argent Dawn, awarded during the Scourge Invasion when Naxxramas was introduced in patch 1.11. Right: Tabard of the Protector, awarded during the opening of the Dark Portal at the launch of The Burning Crusade. As you can see, they’re identical, except that the Tabard of the Protector has a Use: effect on a 5-minute cooldown that looks like a Holy Nova. Neither tabard is available now.

Left: Private’s Tabard, purchasable under the old honor system at Private rank, or now for 3 AB Marks of Honor and 3 WSG Marks of Honor. Centre: Knight’s Colors, purchasable under the old honor system at Knight rank, or now for 20 AV Marks, 20 AB Marks and 20 WSG Marks. Right: Stormpike Battle Tabard, previously purchasable at Exalted Stormpike reputation (the Alliance faction in Alteract Valley), now purchasable with 60 AV Marks of Honor.

Left: Tabard of Frost, purchasable from Upper Deck Entertainment with points obtained from buying packs of the WoW Trading Card Game. Right: Tabard of Flame, obtained via a rare “loot card” in the WoW Trading Card Game. In both cases you get a special code from UDE, the publisher of the game. You redeem the code and get an in-game code, which you take to Landro Longshot (a goblin in Booty Bay); he gives you your reward.

Left: Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari, a quest reward from Battle of the Crimson Watch (a fun group quest in Shadowmoon Valley). Right: Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, a random drop off Scarlet Trainees in Scarlet Monastery, the non-elite who run in to be AoEd to death after you kill Herod in the Armory wing.

Cenarion Expedition Tabard, Consortium Tabard, and Honor Hold Tabard respectively: all attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Kurenai Tabard, Lower City Tabard, and Ogri’la Tabard respectively: all attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Scryers Tabard and Sha’tar Tabard respectively: both attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Skyguard Tabard and Sporeggar Tabard respectively: both attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Update: 24 Sept 08

Left: Keepers of Time Tabard, attainable at Exalted with Keepers of Time. Center: Tabard of Summer Skies, a reward from this quest to kill Lord Ahune, a seasonal boss during the Midsummer Fire Festival. Right: Competitor’s Tabard, a reward for competing in a Battleground during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Tabards I Haven’t Got (Yet)

Arathor Battle Tabard: requires Exalted with the Alliance AB faction. Such a grind. Ugh.
Silverwing Battle Tabard: requires 60 WSG Honor tokens. I just haven’t got around to this one yet.
Tabard of Brilliance (white), Tabard of Fury (yellow), Tabard of Nature (green), Tabard of the Arcane (purple), Tabard of the Defender (orange), and Tabard of the Void (black). All are purchased using UDE points from the WoW card game. They have the same design as the Tabards of Flame and Frost (above), just in different colours. Tthey’re being implemented in stages; as of September 08, the Tabards of Brilliance and the Defender aren’t in-game yet.
Purple Trophy Tabard of the Illidari: One of two random quest rewards, the other being the Green variant listed above. You can only get one of the two, so I can never get this.
Tabard of Summer Flames: One of two rewards from a one-off quest during the Midsummer Fire Festival. You can only choose one tabard each year, so I have to wait til next year for this.
Aldor Tabard: I’m a Scryer, so I can’t get the Aldor tabard without doing a very long handin grind to abandon my Scryer standing. I already did that once in reverse, from Revered Aldor (for Jewelcrafting recipes) to Exalted Scryers (for Jewelcrafting recipes and the shoulder enchants).
Tabard of Stormwind: Not in game yet.
Tabard of the Hand: a Draenei-only tabard; part of the quest reward from the final quest on Bloodmyst Isle, which is not available to non-Draenei.
Blood Knight Tabard: part of the reward for the level 60 epic mount quest for blood elf paladins. Obviously, I am not a blood elf, so no dice.
Any of the seven Horde-specific factional tabards (Defilers [AB], Warsong [WSG], Frostwolf [AV], Mag’har [equivalent of Kurenai], Thrallmar [equivalent of Honor Hold], Scout [equivalent of Private], and Stone Guard [equivalent of Knight]).

I think I need a new hobby.