One Tin Soldier Rides Away - (a Little Better Equipped)

As I alluded to (hell, I plain said it) I am going into some gory details about re-equipping my Pally with some better equipment. Based on my digging around various forums & blogs, the Paladin seems more equipment reliant than some classes, so this is MUCHO IMPORTANTE!!!

And for a starter, THE weapon to get is VERIGAN'S FIST LINKY . (well, for levels 20-29) It's the loot from a Paladin quest called "The Test of Righteousness" LINKY Everything I've read says this is THE weapon to have/get. (just look at the stats) But, as of yet, I still haven't compelted this quest, because I only recently found out about it. It's long, involves entering 3 different instances/dungeons and isn't easy.

As of now I have a sword & shield that are also loot from other Paladin quests. (I kind of prefer having a shield because it gives you one more item to have enchanted/etc)

Anyway, back to the story at hand...

It had the strong belief that I was sorely under equipped. To verify this, I did a little looking around.

I went into wowarmory.com and looked up my toon. There's a neat functionality to your character's info: it helps you find upgrades for each item. If you mouse over an item, it will give you the information to one side, with all the pertnent information about damage, armor and enchantments, etc. That's neat, but it's the same information you can get in-game. Now if you look right next to the item icon will be a little arrow (see picture to the left)

Now you take your mouse and mouse over this arrow and the box changes. If you move your mouse over this and click it, it starts to open up a world of possible changes you can make. It shows the options you have right now (items that you can use) as well as items that may be useful to you in a few levels

So what the heck do you do with this info? Me being me, I created a spreadsheet that listed out all my equipment, along with the relevent stats:

(I appologize for the fuzziness of the image, it's a .gif, but this blog still insists on making them less than ideal)

I looked at them, and colored them based on how "good" they were. Red = horrible, Orange = needs help, White = "ok", Green = pretty good, Blue = Class specific (pretty good)

I then went through each equipped item I had, looking for possible upgrades that I could use AT MY CURRENT LEVEL. I didn't pick blues or Boss Drops since they are nearly impossible to find on the Auction House (AH). So based on this, I created a "wish list" of sorts, that gave me an idea of what types of items to look for in the AH:

With this list in hand, and about 18 gold I earned by mining, I went into the AH and started spending. I bought the stuff I could find, or something similar if I couldn't. I also realized I had an open finger for rings, a helmet spot, as well as 2 trinket spots and a necklace spot. (turns out I can' get trinkets yet, or a helmet) but I spent just about all 18 gold, and made a HUGE change.

I got new everything, with the exception of sword & shield. (I also got a necklace and second ring, and replaced my first ring)

I went from 1329 armor up to 1419 armor. 90 points! Not too shabby! (though not as large as I had hoped, but there is a brighter spot - see below)

Yes, this is a LOT of stuff to type in , but it helps see if I missed anything, and keep track of what I'm doing, as well as help out the next time I need to upgrade.

As I mentioned I was a tad upset that I hadn't had a gain of 200-300 in armor. In fact, when I went back to WoWarmory.com, I didn't even get the full 90 armor points, because of some of my other stat changes. I only gained 86.

(taken from my WoWarmory page)

But this bit of data shows something else: I made MASSIVE gains in my abilities, especially in strenth and stamina. Did I make the right choices? I dunno!

The bad news is that I went back in to the Battleground and got skunked just as bad as I had originally. The "real" good news is that I am now able to practically solo Deadmines, and can handle a LOT more AI enemies (mobs)

Cheers for now!