Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Alt Appreciation Week: Paladins

Day 23: From my childhood
Knightly archetypes. I read lots of King Arthur. Also horses because I grew up on a ranch. And Seish on Argent Tournament dailies. I still love those.

     And Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation weeks are still going. This week it's paladins and I'm very excited. Paladins are my class. Though you probably already knew that from the name of this blog. First in my heart in WoW (though monks and hunters run close behind) and out of it. I play paladins in our weekly D&D sessions probably 50% of the time. I had a paladin in Everquest. I played one in Diablo II.  As I write this post I'm drinking tea from a mug that says Paladin on it.
     As you can imagine... I've got a horde of paladin alts. (Pun kind of intended. They're almost all Horde.) My main's a paladin and a bit further down the post I'll introduce you to the rest of them, but I've decided to do something a little different for paladin week. Instead of setting goals for all my alts (that I may not manage anyway because Seish and Tai and Rim and sometimes Tyl have a way of stealing my time.) I've decided to make a new alt for paladin week with the intent to keep leveling him even after it's over.
     I've got two level 90 paladins. On the same server even, because it used to be pretty much the only one I ever played on. Seish is Ret and Rim is Prot. I love playing both of them and this expansion they've both had a lot of attention. Seish has a holy offspec, in Cataclysm and now in Mists it's actually ended up with a fairly decent gear set. but I have never used it. I don't know how to play Holy. I've read lots of guides but they only help me so much. I tend to find that the way I learn to play something best is leveling it. So meet Laen:
     He starts off pally week at level 10 with an heirloom cape, 1k gold, a full set of bags, and a thermal anvil for his blacksmithing. And he'll be my holy paladin, if all goes well. Going to see how far I can get him by the end of paladin week, in both leveling and in his professions. Blacksmithing/Enchanting, he's on Tai's server and their guild has an enchanter gap so Laen's bravely offering to fill it even though it is one of my least favorite professions ever. I'm already getting attached to this one, so we'll see how it goes.

A Crusade of Paladins.*
(Otherwise known as 'Are you seriously rolling another paladin?!')

Seish
Level 90 Retribution Paladin.
Mining/JC
     He's my main so he technically probably doesn't belong in an alt post. And he'll probably get a whole other post to himself sometime this week, but I couldn't leave him out of the list. Seish is my ret pally. He's working his way slowly through the legendary chain and is up to an ilvl of 517 which I am telling myself isn't too bad for somebody that doesn't get to raid even Flex.
     Seish was my first paladin on WoW. I started him the day I got BC because an elf paladin was what I most wanted to play. He was retribution for character reasons before I knew that it was the dps spec, or even really what dps was. It fits him, I still love playing him as ret and I flatter myself that I'm not half bad at it, though I'm certainly not great. But when Seish hits things, they mostly die in a big freaking hurry.

Rim
Level 90 Protection Paladin
Mining/BS
     Rim's not my main, though for part of this expansion he's acted like one. Rim, along with my husband's mage Syri, is the one who did all the Pandaria reps. He'd easily hit an ilvl of 485 before Timeless Isle without ever setting foot into an LFR. (Yeah, I'm afraid to tank LFR, but I've promised myself I'm going to give it a try this patch.) On our guild's failed attempts at raiding in Cataclysm Rim was main tank. He tanked most of Blackwing Descent, and even tanked a pug of Bastion of Twilight back then, which is as close as I've ever come to actually raiding.
     Unlike Seish, who changes suits of plate regularly Rim is always mogged like this (though the weapon has changed a few times). In fact my husband is so used to seeing him like this that a day or so after hitting 90 when I'd been too lazy to transmog him yet, my husband turned to me during dailies and said. "Where's your shiny gold armor? I can't keep track of you like this." Needless to say I went right off to transmog after we'd finished for the day. This is the suit of armor I first saw in WoW and went... wow I want a paladin in that. And the Golden Lotus tabard looks gorgeous with it in my opinion.

Gawaine
Level 68 Protection Paladin
Mining/BS
     My lone Alliance paladin. Remember the mention of King Arthur? Yeah, he's named after that Gawaine. Galahad was taken on his server. Gawaine was made to level with my husband's Alliance mage, so he's hanging out at 68 until his beloved mage gets pulled back out and dusted off. I like Gawaine. The human animations kind of bug me, but I like the character and hope someday he gets a chance to hit level cap.
     Character wise Gawaine is a warm, kind hearted man and he's devoted to the mage he travels with and hopes to marry her someday. My husband and I laughed over the fact that of all the characters we play together Gawaine and Jessa are really the only two we could see being an actual couple.

Maeth
Level 35 Holy/Protection Paladin
     Maeth is played with my friend SprYte's prot pally because I finally talked her into trying one. She's been healing and has maybe taught me the beginning of what Laen will hopefully teach me, but she only gets played when SprYte's available so leveling is a slow process. Maeth's my only female blood elf paladin mostly because I hate how small weapons and shields are in their hands. Especially shields. Some of them look more like oversized bracelets than anything. It also bugs me that when they face enemies they hold their shield extended behind them instead of between them and the bad guy. Yeah, I get fussy over animations.
     But I like Maeth. She may take ages to level, but when she does she not only has a transmog set picked out, but it's already all sitting in her bank waiting for her to use it. Aside from the weapon and shield because she's not high enough level to get those for herself. Character wise she's a tough, no nonsense kind of woman. Still gentle hearted, still loyal to her friends, but tough. Right now she's leveling holy but at heart she's a tank.

Kelantheies
Level 14 Retribution Paladin
     Kelantheies was mad as sort of an experiment. SprYte and I had decided to make a set of twin paladins with really similar names. Well then husband got in on it, so Kel, Kul, and Kal were born and leveled to 14 which is where they sit at the moment. Sometime we were intending on doing some dungeons and I really hope we get around to that some day. It would be fun.

Sylrothan
Level 15 Protection Paladin
     Sylrothan is special to me. He's had more love as an RP character than as a WoW character but I'm hoping someday to fix that. He lives on an RP server, though most of the RPing I've actually done with him has been text based with friends rather than in game. Still due to the nature of his character I'd come up with an interesting leveling challenge for myself and when I continue leveling I still intend to try it that way. You see, Sylrothan in my head is a High Elf rather than a Blood Elf and he's Alliance. There's a long story about why he's horde side at the moment, involving his older brother Seish, but I won't get into that. The challenge I'd made for myself was to see if I could level him without doing any quest that involved killing Alliance NPCs. This might be a problem if he ever gets to Pandaria but...I'm hoping I'll find a way around it. :)
     Leveling wise Syl's largely on hold because he was supposed to level with a friend's druid.

Laaryn
Level 10 Protection Paladin     
     Laaryn was based off a D&D character. He was made to level with Yavi's priest alt, but since there hasn't been much playtime for them, Laaryn has now turned into the bank/pantry alt for Tai. He's waiting for his leveling buddy when they're available but in the meantime he's making himself quite useful.

     Obviously I love paladins and can't get enough of playing them, though a lot of the poor things seem to get stalled out waiting for leveling friends. I've very excited for this week of posting and hopefully seeing a lot of fun paladin posts. :D With any luck the rest of mine won't be this late coming.



*Because what else would you call a group of paladins? It's like a murder of crows or a gaggle of geese only with more smiting and heavy armor and all around righteousness.

2 comments:

  1. Finally meeting all your paladins. Welcome to the crusade little Laen! Good luck with the healing. :)

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    1. I'll let you know how the healing goes. Outside of dungeons questing isn't too bad, but queuing for his first dungeon will probably be my big test.Hopefully some of the confidence Tai has given me will carry over. :)

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