RAF boosting W/Pally in Strat

[cmeche]

OK, got my shamans to 45 and headed to Strat. What is the best way to run this instance as a Prot Pally trying to lvl the shamans quick? I find that with the shamans healing, it pulls those dern casters to them and wipes them out quick. Does it work better with a lot of small pulls? and I notice that over a series of wipes...the mobs at the front reset.

Plus, Strat is new to me...not sure where to go...then trailing mobs wipes the shamans...sigh......lol. Any advice?

[Rin]

What level is your paladin?

If you're 70, you might find it faster/more efficient to just run BRD.. most of the pulls in there are warrior/plate types, and theres literally 200-300k exp worth of quests (with RAF) tied to that zone. Run up to stuff, throw avengers shield, conscreation, and just mow stuff down. The shamans can heal you once youre in control of the agro.

[elsegundo]

you can leave your shamans in entrance. run around with the pally and pull (retribution aura, avenger shield). bubble out of sight of the shamans, heal. run back to shamans, consecrate and attack as they heal.

you would have built up enough aggro/threat through your ret aura. you can also prep your shamans with the blessing that reduces threat if their threat is too high. also aoe flame totems help when your pally returns to the group.

start off with small pulls to see how much you can pull without having to bubble. if your pally is 70, you can run past a bunch of mobs and start picking up mobs at the far end of the street, around the corner, and run back to your shamans. this works too, and might be better since you dont have to double back with mobs attacking you both ways.

[cmeche]

Yes, 70 almost epiced out in healer gear....but speced as prot.

BRD would be completely new to me also, but if there is more melee mobs there, that would be alot better.

I am going to check out wowikki for BRD questing...but while im here:

Attunement to get in? Where are the quest givers?

[Vyndree]

If your pally is not-so-uber gear....

Gather about 4 packs of mobs and line of sight them behind some nook. Keep your lowbies well out of aggro range -- they shouldn't even be in combat. Bubble if you get too low (or LoH if you have to) and heal yourself up while bubbled. Bubble also makes all of the casters stop casting and run into melee range (because you're immune). After the bubble wears off, run your lowbies over to help heal while you finish the last of them off. If you didn't bubble, save your avenger's shields and exorcisms for caster mobs so they don't aggro your lowbies.

Particular things to note:
Make a macro to /target Eye of Naxx /cast Exorcism. I'm serious. You need it.
If you pull the Stratholme courier, kill it asap. It stuns you and you die pretty quick when you can't block/dodge/parry.
If you have a big green fat dude, he punts you. Sometimes the punt can drop aggro. Make sure to keep attacks on him to kill him fastest and regain snap aggro if you get punted (avenger's shield/exorcism works nice)
Abuse holy wrath. It's instant cast now, and a stun, so it not only helps you kill but it keeps you from dying.
Strafe when you pull. If you put your back to the mobs you'll get hurt more. Strafing allows you to block/dodge/parry SOME of the attacks while you pull. I find that using the undead fear works great for pulling. ;)
Seal light/judge light. You get enough mana from BoSanct.

If you've got gear to support it, you won't need to bubble and you might not even need heals.


I tried BRD on my pally, and it's not worth it. You can't pull big packs very easily because of the net that they throw at you. Sure, BoF might work but I prefer strat.

[elsegundo]

lol Vydree mentioned something i forgot about strath. turn a corner and AOE there due to some of the casters.

however, they usually MISS more often than not, and i am not too concerned about them. once they go OOM, they run up to you anyway. but to keep them inside your consecration area, use LOS and run around a corner, nook, etc. mass pulls are the funnest.

[Caspian]

I finally figured this out with my last RAF group. My Pally is in mostly S2 former healing gear just because of the stamina it offered and I never raided with her.

You don't really want to run the instance. I ran the UD side, then did live. It was a brutal 4 hours. The last thing I did was clear out the large undead mob packs and >BAM< I had it. Those pulls are fairly easy if you LOS the mobs. I was able to get up to 3-4 packs at a time plus a fat green dude.

I prefer starting on the undead side, get the keyif you have to. If you use a swiftness pot you can catch the one Boss that is there in the beginning. He drops teh crimson felt hat, the orginal pimp hat, it is worth having.

So you clear that first room the head to the left and clear everything out in there then go left or right in the circle working your way back to where you started. Large amounts of XP pretty fast. My little guys did nothing. If you stick to this path there is nothing that can stop your heals except being punted or the kick from the courier guy. So if you are careful you will be able to heal yourself (thank you push back change). I also am a looter, I have to loot it is an OCD thing. I made TONS of gold in there. Got an orb of deception and a couple other blues that sold ok and about 1000g worth of runecloth, which you will need for your cloth turn ins anyway. Just killing all the trash mobs netted over 100g per toon in coin which paid some training and repair bills. Which I needed since Iam getting kind of poor trying to feed like 5 groups under 70. There is also a special boss in there now that drops some decent (used to be nice) blue caster gear and he is worth good XP ~3x a normal elite I think.


In all honesty, if you are horde, Questing is faster through HInterlands, Ungoro and then WPL. But for my last group i was tired of doing that run and "back in the day" ran strat about a billion times so it was fun for me to basically solo it.

[cmeche]

Thanks for the replys. I made it to BRD....never been there and had a passer-by show my how to get there. I only had time to run BRD for about 15 min, and i did fairly good in the xp department. Mobs were all melee, the net is aggrevating but it never got me in too much trouble. But, it did seem like mobs are a lilttle spread out, at least at the start. But for the 15 min I have seen in there, it could be a good spot to grind.

I think I will make my way back to Strat, with some swiftness potions. My old build I used to powerlvl with had the run speed increase talent that is in the Ret tree, but i dont have it currently. it seemed that it kept me away from a lot of the damage with just rounding up all the mobs.

Anybody have a good prot build they wouldn't mind sharing?

My Pally Build ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eldre%27Thalas&n=Gratewhite')

Any ideads on my build?

[elsegundo]

if you're willing to respec for the boosting, plus do the mass pulls, i'd suggest going prot.

[Caspian]

I like your build. The armory is not showing my "character data" so I can't link my exact build but I am 10/51/0. I have the decrease push back and extra int in holy. I did it before I realized how amazing the reworked BoS was going to be. If I were to respec I'd still keep the push back but drop points from the extra int and put them into parry so a 5/51/5 for the next couple of weeks.

[griffin01]

I had previously posted this how-to, so I will stick it here to help out... Check out Faulxylady on the armory for the spec and gear that I use to get this done.



I numbered each group within the pull.



as a pally make sure you are specced with blessing of sanctuary... my pally is holy pally with really deacent pvp gear, use your excorcism spell to pull. Each pull is really simple as long as you do it right. You have to remember to kill the non-elite mobs as fast as you can because they will kick your heals. To avoid this I simply use holy fire to heal myself as mush as I can, when I have the group together I holy wrath to AoE and stun the mobs and cast a quick flash of light, than consecrate again. Back to holy fire, and by that time the non-elites should be dead and you are free to use your holy light heals... because the spec I have uses the blessing of Sanc in the prot tree, you never worry about losing mana, so go all out on healing if you have to.

This how-to picture was created by me pre-patch, and the only change I would do is to extend the 5th pull further up the hallway and grab another group or two... There are a couple bosses down there.

buffs/spells needed:
blessing of sanctuary
righteous fury (spec into righteous fury for dmg reduction)
ret aura
Holy Shock

good luck.


http://www.seraphimorder.net/stratpulls.jpg ('http://www.seraphimorder.net/stratpulls.jpg')

[Jheusse]

Was wondering about that list somewhere.

1- Would a T4/T5 feral be as viable to boost griffin or vyndree style? ILotP shoul dbe a big help, probably bear form cat gear swipe like mad.

2- Could a 60 pally boost with heavy support and solid gear?

[elsegundo]

Was wondering about that list somewhere.

1- Would a T4/T5 feral be as viable to boost griffin or vyndree style? ILotP shoul dbe a big help, probably bear form cat gear swipe like mad.

2- Could a 60 pally boost with heavy support and solid gear?boosting with a feral is a bit tougher since you only have thorns (similar to retribution) but swipe works wonders now that it does AE damage instead of just to three mobs. with a pally, you can have shield spikes to do damage as well as trinkets to heal on successful blocks. pallys have bubbles and healing IN normal form.

some things to note when using bear.
you can take potions and stones IN form now.
you cannot heal except through Frenzied Regen, and that isnt too great of a heal. if your boostees can heal you, that would be great.
if you already have a group on your tail, i pull with two methods: feral frairie fire, and demoralizing roar. aggroing one mob from a group will aggro the whole group, so you dont have to necessarily run through the center of the group.
since you have no shield, dodge is your best friend. and trink that will increase your dodge is a must.
dont forget when running from one group to the next, you can also use feral charge to keep distance, thus decreasing total damage taken for a few seconds.
improved leader of the pack helps a lot, but dont go for more than two groups at once. with three groups you're going to find that your healing will not be enough to mitigate damage, especially when you cannot dispell their disease. unless, of course, you bring a class that heals and can dispell the disease. then go for as many mobs as you can safely pull!
good luck with this.

[garthas]

One of the best things you can do is get the faction shield from Sporegar in Zangramarsh, it poisons on contact, then go full prot spec, and put a shield spike on that mutha

I pulled all of Gnomer with my 70 pally and killed the entire lower level, and would not have died if I hadnt forgotten to chug a damn mana potion