Gregg Reece
Antioch, TN - http://www.wow.com
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting the Crimson Halls
by Gregg Reece 
on Jan 28th 2010 (12 days ago)
We're continuing our looter's guide to the Icecrown Citadel. This week we're delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they're kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she'd probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they'd become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I've actually seen that one.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Incentives for appropriate gear types coming in Cataclysm
by Gregg Reece on Jan 28th 2010 (12 days ago)
Bornakk revealed on the forums that gear will start having incentives to make you wear the appropriate type of armor. This means that holy paladins who are currently rolling on cloth and mail items will have incentives to stick to plate. What are these incentives? We don't know. It could be as simple as something like the current gem socket bonus system or a little more complex like a percentage increase in a particular stat. This could even be a generic spec based set bonus that gave you something if completely geared in class appropriate armor. We won't really know until more details are released.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Breakfast Topic: What really happens during maintenance?
by Gregg Reece on Jan 26th 2010 (14 days ago)
Goblins and gnomes are using refitted shredders to sweep the streets and repaint the buildings. Mankrik's wife has stopped playing dead for a little while and is grabbing a bite to eat with her husband. The stormforged dwarves are hard at work forging more drops for the raids that have reset. The streets of Orgrimmar are empty with tumbleweeds blowing down the streets and an old orc in a rocking chair is playing the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on an old harmonica (the music was in the tumbleweed's contract).
What do you think the World of Warcraft does while we're temporarily forced offline?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting in the Plagueworks
by Gregg Reece on Jan 23rd 2010 (17 days ago)
A quick service announcement: We will be moving The Light and How to Swing It over to Thursdays. We'll still have the weekend spot as well. How are we doing this you might ask? Chase Christian will be doing a holy paladin only version of TLaHtSI during the weekends with my coverage of retribution and protection on Thursdays.
A looting we will go. A looting we will go. Hi-ho the merry-oh, a looting we will go. This week, we're delving into the geist filled section known as the Plagueworks. Precious and Stinky aren't technically bosses, but they're still fun little encounters, so I figured I'd give at least one of the puppies center stage in today's header. Last week, we looted our way through the lower spire in Icecrown if you want to go back and take a look. Otherwise, onto the loots!
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting Icecrown's lower spire, page 2
by Gregg Reece on Jan 17th 2010 (23 days ago)
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting Icecrown's lower spire
by Gregg Reece on Jan 17th 2010 (23 days ago)
Sometimes, you just have that maddening compulsion to make your wish list of various things you want to acquire. I've got one on Amazon for a woodworking shop and another of things I want on WoW (which does happen to include a pony, Ghostcrawler). However, with the last of the loot being divvied up in these final days of Wrath, let's go through Icecrown Citadel and make a shopping list of gear we'd kill for.
Filed under: Paladin, Items, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Wrath of the Lich King
Possible changes to tabards, backpacks, and banks
by Gregg Reece on Jan 16th 2010 (24 days ago)
All three of these are long standing issues that have usually been avoided when direct questions came up, usually invoking the safe and often used "we'll see" remark. I would love to be able to replace my backpack with a Glacial Bag and gain six storage slots or clear out the bank space I'm using to store specialty tabards. Let's take a look at their responses after the break.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Better pet scaling promised in Cataclysm
by Gregg Reece on Jan 15th 2010 (25 days ago)
With hunters, warlocks, and unholy death knights, there are a lot of talents and glyphs that affect the scaling of stats to your pet. If you allow certain stats to scale too well, you suddenly unbalance the class. If the stat scales poorly, then the class falls in the other direction. Every talent and ability that taps into these has to be checked to make sure it doesn't throw things out of whack. Considerations on diminishing returns on certain stats scaling would also need to be checked.We'll try to do what we can. Technically it's just more challenging than you might think. For Cataclysm, we have on our list that 100% of stats scale. If they don't then certain stats just won't be as valuable for pet classes. At the very least, we can do stuff like convert your X into damage for the pet so every stat is valuable. Getting everyone to scale with every stat better is a major goal for the class team for Cataclysm.
Overall, there is a lot of number crunching and statistical analysis involved in trying to find the right balance between all of the knobs that they need to adjust. However, the frustration of out-gearing your pet will hopefully be behind us either in an upcoming patch or (more realistically) when Cataclysm hits.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Hunter, Warlock, Death Knight, Cataclysm
The Light and How to Swing It: The low level tank part 4
by Gregg Reece on Jan 9th 2010 (1 month ago)
Here we are again with the final section on the low level paladin tanking guide. You can go back and read parts one, two, and three if you need to catch up. This final part deals with consumables, macros, and addons. As a dungeon runner, you don't have the high requirements usually associated with raids, but there are a couple things you'll want to keep an eye on. You'll want to keep reasonably buffed, have some useful macros to fall back on, and have some addons to help organize some of the more procedural steps. Let's take a look after the break.
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, Instances, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: The Paladin of 2009 part 3
by Gregg Reece on Dec 26th 2009 (1 month ago)
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
