So, Patch 3.1 hit this week, the servers are not sure wither to be broken or not, and we have new content to explore. I would give you a complete review of the changes, however that has been covered by everyone else in the blog-o-sphere.

So I did something that surprised my guild this week. As soon as my server came up, I made my way to Ironforge to duel-spec Ret and Prot.

Now I have a full Prot set already. I have tanked in both Nax 10 and 25 thought I have never completed either. I have tanked OS 10 and 25 and have kills in both. In my tanking kit I have just shy of 30k health 30k armor, defense cap. I’m not the best geared tank on the server, but I hold my own just fine.

Likewise I have a full set of Holy Gear. I’m sitting at about 1600SP and 35% crit with no enchants. The set isn’t quite as nice as my Prot gear, but it more then gets the job done. I have a few more epics to pick up, and plan to start working on getting it enchanted in the near future.

So when 3.1 hit what did my Ret set look like? Well... does the Helm of the headless horsemen count as a set? Well then I didn’t have one. As I said in my introduction post, I have no experience with Ret. This resulted in surprise for several of my guild members when I picked it up as my offspec.

Now I don’t want to give anyone the idea that I have converted. I will be offspecing Holy at some point down the road. This however gave me a prime opportunity to experiment in depth without giving up my ability to be the on call main tank for my guild.

So I set up a probably poor inferior talent build and off I went. My level 75 warrior had a full set of savage saronite banked that he not so happily donated to the cause. He was also able to toss in a level 72 blue 2H Axe without to much trouble. Of course upon receiving the axe my paladin said “What am I suppose to do with this?” and headed off to begin leveling the new weapon.

Last night I visited all my favorite quartermasters. I was able to collect a epic chest from the Argent Crusade, as well as epic leather boots. The Sons of Hodir where kind enough to provide me with a nice rare belt and shoulder upgrade as well as a glyph for said shoulders. The Knights of the Ebon Blade let me purchases a nice head glyph. I was also eyeing a nice 2H sword there, but decided to hold off on that for now. Finally the Wyrmrest Accord had nice epic pants for sale when I dropped by. I quickly snatched these up.

My warrior today was able to craft me an Epic helm and a rare bracer upgrade. Finally using jewelcrafting, I pulled together 2 nice trinkets and a ring. For now I am going to continue using my old tanking gloves. They are better then anything I can buy or make at the moment and I have a cloak, a neck and a ring I will be replacing in the near future with crafted epics and rares. I am also lucky enough to have an enchanter in my guild that is supplying me with all my attack power and crit needs.

So as of this posting I am sitting at 21.5% crit, 5.5% hit, 4.5% haste, and 3300 attack power self buffed. Rearmed, I headed off to the target dummies in Ironforge. I quickly found myself putting out somewhere in the 1400 DPS range. Kind of low, but respectable considering I had done all this in two days. I also believe my addon is lying to me. Later, without any changes in rotation, gear or talents, I was killing fire dudes behind the Sons of Hodir area (for epic cloak mats) in about 5 global cooldowns. That’s about 12000 hit points in 7.5 seconds putting me closer to 1600 DPS.

I am really looking forward to seeing my performance after my last four gear upgrades. O yes, my weapon. I will be going after the 2H Sword from the Argent Tournament. Im about 7 days away currently (I think), it might be 9.

So yes, in close, I will keep you apprised as I adventure into the realm of Ret. It should be an interesting adventure.

May the Light Bless You,
~Bloodgarde

P.S. I will not be posting my starting gear list. It is heavily reliant on Jewelcrafting and Rep, and isn’t practical for a "new" 80.