The Honor Grind - A Paladin Opportunity

If I've been absent from Paladinsucks.com over the past week, it's because I've been waiting in queues and striking faces in the battlegrounds. Unless you've been living in a cave, by now you should know all about the change to the honor system. If you're one of the aforementioned hermits, then here's how it works in a nutshell.

The first thing you'll notice is that you gain honor at an abysmally slow rate compared to before. That's because it's no longer relative in strength, but more of a currency now. You PvP and gain honor points, which you can spend - coupled with the required number of honor tokens from various battlegrounds - on all of the PvP gear that previously required a certain rank to gain access to.

What does this mean?
You no longer have to PvP 80 hours a week for 6 months to be able to snag a Grand Marshal's Claymore (or Battlehammer for the traditionalists, or the healing mace for you former EQ Clerics out there, etc.).

Two-handed Grand Marshal weapons cost 45,000 honor, with 1H weapons/shield/offhand items running half that at 22,250 honor. The entire Field Marshal's Aegis set is available for a total honor cost of just under 100,000, though you're able to pick and choose and earn it a piece at a time.

This is a rare and beautiful opportunity for those of you who have been grumbling about our presently poor raid itemization. The FM set is perhaps the best Retribution Paladin set out there (aside from Avengers) and you don't even need to be able to raid to get it.

Up and coming Paladin plebes will be able to snag the blue set and completely bypass the agonizing dungeon grind for Lightforge.

There's the obvious fact out there that expansion gear, including greens and blues, will start replacing raid gear very quickly. For hybrid classes like Paladins, though, we now have the ability to gear ourselves up once again in "leveling mode." From what I've heard via close sources participating in Beta, much of the questing to level is soloable or doable in small groups. We're going to want a well balanced set to do this, and the FM set fits the bill rather nicely. Paladins have a golden opportunity before them. If you can stand the queue times and jump into some premade groups before TBC hits shelves, I guarantee it will be time worth spent.

For those that are curious, I'm just over halfway to my GM Claymore, with plans to snag a few or all of the FM pieces after that. My AV queue is nearing, so this is all you'll be getting out of me for a while.

Strike faces diligently,
Vaelin