After several weeks of painful rep grinding with the Paladin, Sythrick has finally hit Exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Don’t get me wrong – the quests aren’t too bad, and they were a breeze to do on my Mage.

However, that island is a nightmare for a Protection Paladin. The Wretched dudes have a nasty mana drain, which makes it take a long time to take multiples. The Sentinels have annoying magical damage, and the Demon field is littered with Fire Damage mobs. The Dawnblade Marksman are easy to wipe out, but the Summoners do a decent amount of Fire Damage, and the Blood Knights have a heal – try tanking three of them at the same time… lol. Really the only place that it’s appropriate to AoE grind is out on the boats, so I spent the entire time in my healing gear doing some gimp Holy DPS. Bleh.

But now it’s over. And I got new gear.

Tanking Shield – Sunward Crest

I finally picked up the Sunward Crest that I’ve been talking about. It offers a decent amount of extra avoidance by way of Shield Block, which helps replace the avoidance I lost on some of my other items (like my chestpiece and belt). It also offers a nice boost to my threat generation, which was somewhat lacking at ~200 spell damage a few weeks ago.

That was fine when we started Kara, but now that other people are gearing up – I need to pump out the threat.

As an added bonus, the shield looks pretty cool. It fits much better with my other gear (including T4 Shoulders/Gloves and the new badge Pants) than the old shield did. Sythrick is starting to look pretty cool.

In the screenshot, you can see him standing outside of the Aldor bank, showing off his new loot.

Healing Pendant – Shattered Sun Pendant of Restoration

I also picked up a Shattered Sun Pendant of Restoration for my healing. The healing set was coming along nicely, but I was still wearing an old blue neckpiece – Natasha’s Guardian Cord.

If we put the proc effect to the side for a second, the new neckpiece is a pretty nice upgrade. There’s 19 Stamina instead of 10 Intellect. I’m fine with that, since my mana is usually not an issue, but my health is kind of low. The SSO pendant also offers an extra 15 Healing and an extra mp5. No doubt that this is a nice upgrade.

On top of that nice little boost, there’s an awesome proc effect. Some people on WoWhead have tried to argue that the Scryer proc is better for a Paladin, but I love the Aldor proc. +220 Healing for 10 seconds, proccing roughly every 45-60 seconds is awesome. The extra healing turns out to be ~100 extra healed per Flash of Light and ~155 extra healed per Holy Light.

The smaller boosts, spread out over multiple heals, offers a lesser chance of overhealing than if you get a single boost of healing – 650-1000 with the Scryer proc.

Brand New Suits – Aldor/SSO Tabards

For a week or so now, I’ve been wearing the Cenarion Expedition Tabard. I was tired of looking at my ugly chestpiece, so I just grabbed the first decent looking tabard I found.

After hitting Exalted with SSO, I immediately picked up their tabard. I think it looks awesome, and you can see it in the screenshot above of Sythrick with his new shield. It blends nicely with my Healing gear, which is more of neutral colors and gold. It seems to clash a bit with the purpley hugh of my tanking gear, though, which means I need something spiffier.

I started looking through WoWhead, and I found the perfect tabard – Aldor Tabard. The Purple and accent colors match perfectly with the rest of my gear, including the Belt of the Guardian. The only thing that looks a bit odd are my boots… But once I get my Blue’s Greaves of the Righteous Guardian, I should be looking top notch.

Hurray for nice looking gear.