Loremaster Iralien

Creation:
The first thoughts of creating a Paladin entered my mind in the last 6 months before The Burning Crusade was released. My Warrior had been grinding the old honor system for awhile, getting up to rank 10. However, something I noticed was the complete lack of healers in Battlegrounds. I have several memories of being fully decked out in PvP gear, locked in a Frost Nova, while a Paladin wearing green gear was right next to me being completely ineffective. Just a simple dispel and I would have been smashing the face of the Mage who so horribly wronged me.

So I created a Dwarf Paladin named Uldreq. From a role-play perspective he was the brother of my warrior (Uldor).

My goal was to be a PvP healer in The Burning Crusade. Early leveling went well. I remember that feeling of being unkillable thanks to heavy armor and healing spells. I also remember Seal of Command being amazing when it worked and frustratingly boring when it didn’t. The last thing I remember of that character was being around level 30 in Darkshire, happily questing away on Worgen and skeletons.

Around that time, Blizzard announced that the Draenei would be the new Alliance race in The Burning Crusade. More importantly, they announced that these strange aliens would have the option of becoming Paladins.

I had already had some frustration with Ulreq. He looked EXACTLY like my Warrior. He used the same animations as my Warrior. But he was level 30 and I didn’t want to relevel another Dwarf just to change his looks. The Draenei announcement was all I needed to convince me to delete Ulreq.

When The Burning Crusade was finally released, the first thing I did was create my Paladin. I had a difficult time naming the character, though. Part of me loved the name “Iralien” since it worked on a role-play level AND on a meta-level (I R Alien). However, I had already established the use of “dor” in my character names (Dorgol and Uldor). So I mashed the two together and created a male Draenei Paladin named “Doralen”.

Leveling (1-69):
Much of the Paladin’s leveling experience has been forgotten. This was my 3rd time to take a character through the Alliance quests, so I was more focused on getting it done than looking for anything new or exciting. I know I was Retribution for the first 30 levels or more. Seal of Command was unreliable, but it worked. At level 50 I switched to a Holy / Protection hybrid build and started AoE grinding. This is actually one of the only times I remember grinding on mobs without have a quest to do.

I had something of an epiphany around the time of Sunken Temple when I decided to tank for the first time. Remember, I had tried to tank on my Warrior in the past, and it was a very difficult thing. Tanking on this new Paladin, though, was as simple as riding a bike. It didn’t take any extreme effort – enemies just beat on me. So from 50 to 65 I offered up my services as a tank whenever I felt the urge to run a 5-man. This is despite the fact that I wanted to be a healer at 70.

At level 60 I noticed something strange – my Paladin was nearly exalted with 4 out of 5 of the Alliance factions. This was odd since, prior to The Burning Crusade, reputation was a serious grind. Just to take advantage of this new situation, I did some starter quests for the Night Elves (getting Exalted there) and then went and bought one mount each from Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus (at the time Draenei couldn’t ride Mechanostriders, and I wasn’t Exalted with Gnomeragan anyway). This was the start of my mount collecting – a hobby that holds through to today.

At level 65 my offer to tank 5-mans stopped. I was invited to tank Mana-Tombs in Auchindoun. I zoned in, buffed up, and pulled the first two mobs – only to get smashed in about 3 hits. Everyone seemed surprised by this, so we tried again – to get the exact same result. After the third try, the group disbanded. After that point I started healing exclusively.

Doralen hit the level cap (70) in Netherstorm. He was the first character I remembered to take a screenshot of a milestone – a screenshot I still have today.

At the Cap (level 70):
At level 70 I continued to quest. This was my second level 70 character, and the last character to spend any time on a “slow” flying mount (at least until Blizzard changed flight to be available at 60).

When Blizzard added Netherwing Ledge, I went back to my Warlock and worked on his Netherwing reputation. This was the first time “daily” quests were added to Warcraft, but they were only available to people who had purchased epic flight. Well, as it turns out (and as everyone knows today) – daily quests provide a nice chunk of money. The gold I brought in getting a Netherdrake for my Warlock was used to fund epic flight training for my Paladin.

I started running Battlegrounds once I hit level 70. Remember, I created this character to be a PvP healer. And it worked rather well. In the early days of TBC Paladins were top-of-the-line healers, capable of surviving a ton of damage while still keeping their teammates alive. Of course, Blizzard took notice and that’s when the “nerfs because of Arena” started. After Season 1, Holy Paladins became the single worst healer in the game for PvP. We had no real offense, a single defense, and could not move and heal at the same time. This problem actually continued into and beyond the release of Wrath of the Lich King. My short foray into Arena healing ended poorly, and I haven’t been on an Arena team (on any character) since Season 2.

On the PvE front, Doralen moved from healing 5-man (normal) into healing 5-man (heroics). I went through the quest chain to get the Karazhan key, even though I didn’t have any real plans on raiding (I was, afterall, a casual player).

This turned out to be in my favor as my old “#1 guild on the server” friends happily invited me to Karazhan. Of course, by this point they were already graduating into raiding Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep, but I didn’t care. I was getting to run raid content. Ultimately, Doralen would heal through Karazhan, completing the questline to summon Nightbane. He would also kill Gruul and Magtheridon, earning the title “Champion of the Naaru”. It was that title that forced me to recognize that my Paladin was now my “main” character.

I would later complete Zul’aman with my guildmates. We were “good enough” to get 3 of the 4 timed chests. Again, I completed every quest involved in ZA.

On the “solo play” side of things, I fell in love with daily quests. I would regularly start my morning by completing all the daily quests I could for whatever reputation I was targeting. Ultimately I would reach Exalted status with Netherwing (for the Netherdrake), Sha’tari Skyguard (for the Netherray), Kurenai (for the Talbuk), Ogri’la (side-by-side with the Skyguard), and Shattered Sun Offensive (for the Alchemist Stone upgrades).

By the time Patch 3.0 launched (adding in Achievements) I already carried 10 mounts with me wherever I went (Horse, Ram, Cat, Elekk, Paladin Charger, Paladin Warhorse, Netherdrake, Netherray, Gryphon, Talbuk). The change of mounts from a physical item to a spell opened the door for me to go completely crazy and I obtained the 50 mounts Achievement (and the Albino Drake) before WotLK launched.

I likewise collected non-combat pets, though I wouldn’t complete the 75 pets Achievement for some time.

As TBC came to a close and WotLK neared, I found myself in the battlegrounds farming honor. Thanks to “welfare epics”, I farmed up a full set of Season 2 Retribution gear (including a weapon for the first time).

During The Burning Crusade my Paladin had been a healer in PvP, 5-mans, and raids. He had been attempted to smash faces as a Retribution Paladin in PvP. He had even tanked heroics – including Heroic Shattered Halls and Heroic Magister’s Terrace. He never tanked a raid, though.

Waiting on the Lich King (level 70):

Wrath of the Lich King launched November 13, 2008. I happily went to the store and bought a copy of the Collector’s Edition. I even had to take the box to work since I bought it on the way into the office. When I got home I quickly handed the box over to my wife and watched her wrap it in beautiful Christmas paper.

…

Yes, you read that correctly.

As a compromise with my wife, I allowed the WotLK CE to be my Christmas gift from her to me instead of buying the non-Collector’s Edition.

So now I was faced with 6 weeks of time where the rest of the WoW community would be leveling to 80 while I was still “stuck” at 70. The first 10 days of this time was spent leveling a Druid from 60 to 70 by healing Death Knight groups through Outlands.

But once that 10 days was up, I was faced with a “no what” situation.

Well, as it turns out, the Achievements were the answer.

It started with another mount: the Winterspring Frostsaber.

Being the smart guy I am, I coupled that grind with the Timbermaw Furlbog reputation grind (giving me the title “the Diplomat” since I already had Kurenai (Talbuks!) and Sporeggar (pet!)).

I enjoyed having a new title, so I next went down to Silithus and completed the “Guardian of Cenarius” by pushing my Cenarian Circle reputation to Exalted.

I completed what parts of “the Explorer” that I could (though I had to wait on Northrend to get the final title).

Then I turned my eyes to the Holy Grail of Achievement titles: Loremaster.

I already loved questing – I was only one quest short of “Loremaster of Outland” when Achievements were added. On the other hand, I had a LONG way to go before I could claim the Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Away I went, though.

It was while working through “Loremaster of Kalimdor” that a bug was reported – several quests from the Draenei starting zone weren’t counting correctly. I copied my Draenei to the PTR at the time to find that I had 53 quests completed on the PTR that weren’t listed on the live server. I was forced to wait until they fixed that bug to complete that Achievement (which is why it has a completion date in January of ’09).

According to my Achievements dates, I completed “Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms” on December 23rd, 2008. A short two days before Christmas and I was finally able to activate my Wrath of the Lich King account.

Wrath of the Lich King (71-80):
I started in the Howling Fjord as a Retribution Paladin wearing full Season 2 PvP gear. Since it was 6 weeks after initial release, I was questing alongside people who were leveling new classes. Or people who (like me) received the expansion during the holiday season.

Of course, unlike my experience in The Burning Crusade, I was an experienced Paladin. And, even though a patch or two had already been released, Retribution Paladins were severely overpowered in PvP. I took advantage of that and – for the first time in 4 years of WoW – became the aggressor in world PvP. Sometimes I would ignore other players. Never would I run, though. I would either kill them or die trying.

I would also spend some time in the new 5-man instances. I healed as Retribution in my Holy gear. On at least one occasion I healed as Retribution in Retribution gear (that was fun). I tanked as Retribution with a shield. By the time I reached 80, though, my focus was in getting back into my primary role as a healer.

After healing through a normal instance or two, I decided to try heroics. Reminder here – I had healed heroics in TBC. I had done so for over a year. I knew HOW to heal. The very first WotLK heroic I was invited to as a healer – Heroic Azol’nerub. Of course in today’s game a fresh level 80 healer could probably heal without a problem. Either the tank will be overgeared or the DPS will be overgeared, meaning the healer doesn’t have to really struggle. At the time, though, H-AN was considered one of the hardest heroics to heal. And it showed – we were unable to get TO the first boss.

In frustration I went back to Retribution and continued to work on my Loremaster of Northrend Achievement. A buddy of mine from the old raiding days happily allowed me to DPS through some Heroics, and it wasn’t too much longer that I was healing without problem again.

It was then that I discovered that Blizzard’s new raiding paradigm was a great addition for my playstyle. The old raiding guild – who was one of the top dogs in TBC – split into two different guilds. One would continue their tradition of being “top dog” in the Alliance raid scene on Boulderfist. The other would be a “serious raiding guild” with a “casual raiding schedule”. Instead of raiding 3 or 4 nights a week, we raided for only 2 nights. Not ONLY that, but attendance wasn’t required for both nights.

Suddenly, for the first time in nearly 3 years, I was raiding again. Being 6 weeks behind the initial wave of level 80s, though, meant that Naxxramas (which was never truly “hard” at 80) was really, really easy. Our group was already geared enough that I could spend most fights doing nothing – even though I was the lone Holy Paladin. This frustrated me as I really felt like I was unneeded. No one complained, I collected badges, and things moved on.

Ulduar would be my first 25-man raid that I actually felt useful on. This may be the reason why I consider Ulduar one of the best raids ever added (there are other reasons, trust me). Ultimately, our guild would go on to clear everything in there. Amusingly enough, my first Yogg kill was in a 10-man group, and we killed him with only 3 keepers.

Around the release of Trial of the Champion, I noticed that my PC was having issues. The cooling fan would spin up to full speed while at the same time my CPU cycles would spike to max (and my FPS would drop to nothing). It wasn’t killing my ability to perform my job, but there were a few close calls. As time went on, this got worse and worse. So much so that I was pulled off of healing (since I couldn’t respond to spike damage) and asked to DPS. By the time we were clearing 4/5 ToGC-25, my system was nigh unusable during initial pulls.

Then came Icecrown Citadel – the big finale to Wrath of the Lich King. And my laptop just couldn’t handle it. I was overheating even when playing solo. My FPS in 25-man raids dropped to <1 (I would literally freeze for 12-20 seconds). This meant that not only could I not heal – I couldn’t even put out decent DPS because I was missing GCDs.

So, late December of ’09 I was moved to backup status in our raid team. The expectation was that I would get a new PC in early spring and then rejoin the group. Life, of course, has other plans for people and I ended up buying a house (which is NOT a bad thing ) instead of a PC.

So I have effectively been out of raiding now for almost 5 months.

The solo-side of WotLK, though, has seen some fun additions to my Paladin. For one thing “Doralen the male Draenei Paladin” became “Iralien the female Draenei Paladin”. Part of me never liked the name “Doralen”, another part of me was annoyed when we recruited a Death Knight named “Dorlen”.

Additionally, my obsession with mount collecting continued at full speed. Like every other level 80 character, I grabbed the Bronze Drake. I also purchased every mount I could (mammoths, bears, gryphons, and drakes). I managed to get the Polar Bear mount from the Brunnhildar daily quests. I even managed to get the White Hawkstrider from Heroic Magister’s Terrace. It was that mount that pushed me over the edge and I decided to go for the “Mountain o’ Mounts” Achievement (100 mounts). The Hawkstrider was my 87th mount. That was in September.

One month later I had 93 mounts.

I started farming for rare drop mounts from Stratholme, Zul’gurub, and Karazhan. Sadly, I still have seen none of these. One difficult farm was the Dark War Talbuk (mount #96) – I even went to the point of having a friend log onto his Horde Rogue so I could kill him a half-a-dozen times. The Argent Tournament was a real boon to mount farming since there are 14 mounts available to Paladins. However, once I got mount #97 (the Exodar Elekk) I wasn’t patient enough to wait the 30 days it would take to finish via the tournament.

So for mounts #98 and #99 I power leveled Engineering and built the slow and fast “Roflcopters”. This cost me nearly 4k gold overall.

For Mount #100 I decided to splurge (I had 50k gold at the time) and so I crafted a Mechgineer’s Chopper, earning two Achievements at once.

Even after getting to 100 mounts, I continued to collect them. #101 was the Blue Dragonhawk (obviously since I got that mount for getting 100). #102, #103, and #104 were from the Argent Tournament (I have all 14 mounts now). Mount #105 was the Black Drake from Sartharion + 3 drakes – I paid the guildie who won the roll 10k gold.

I still farm the rare drop mounts on occasion. It should be interesting to see what Blizzard does with mounts in Cataclysm.

Other Achievements I’m proud of include:

Lil’ Game Hunter (75 Pets) - I’m actually up to 104 pets now. This one I didn’t go out of my way to get, but I do go out of my way to get pets on occasion. I have an unofficial goal to get 125 pets pre-Cataclysm. I have a feeling that will be an Achievement (maybe with a reward) when 4.0 launches. My “most wanted pet” right now would be either the Scorchling from the Fire Festival or the Toxic Wasteling from the Valentine’s Day event.

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been – Unlike many people, I participated in the Holiday events even when there were no Achievements. Proof? I have the “Veteran Nanny” Achievement on my Paladin – and that required me to participate in the Children’s Week event three years in a row. The addition of Achievements just made them even more enjoyable. The only “stressful” moment for me was during the Valentine’s Day event – in the last three days I was waking up every hour-on-the-hour to get my bag of candies. Ultimately, I got what I needed with a full day to spare.

Glory of the Hero – I completed this as much for the mount as anything else. I didn’t put serious effort into this overall Achievement until it was announced that Conquest Emblems would drop from Heroics in patch 3.2. I wanted to be able to say “I did these when Heroics were still “hard” and not popular”. I guess I have a little ePeen waving in me afterall.

Ready to Fight (Present):
My PC still hasn’t been replaced as of this writing (May 1st). My wife and I have decided to get a new one, though, in the next month or so. And I’m chomping at the bit to get my Paladin back into Icecrown. My guild has already killed Lich King in 10 and 25 man. The 15% buff activated this week. I fully expect our “serious” raiders to have their Frostwyrm mounts before I am able to get back into the saddle (one Alliance guild has them on our server already).

But I WILL get in there and I WILL see Arthas fall. I WANT to get the Frostwyrm Drake, but I may have to be satisfied with the kill and then move on.

Looking into the Future (Cataclysm):
Even though I’ve leveled 6 characters to 80, with another on the way, I still see no reason to stop treating my Paladin as my main character. Healing is still my preferred function, and Paladin healing (after healing on a 80 Druid and lower level Priest and Shaman) is still my favorite way to heal. I love the defensive feeling of the class, with more buffs to hand out than any other class. Hopefully Blizzard will be able to maintain this feeling despite their new healing gameplay goals in Cataclysm.

Wrath of the Lich King saw me take on the role of Main Tank in a raid for the first time. I have little doubt that I’ll be doing more of that in the future, though I don’t believe it will overtake Holy as my preferred spec.