Love is in the Paladins: Updating the Blogroll

The ol’ blogroll was due for a good scrubbing.

I did the sad task of deleting all the blogs that hadn’t been updated for a bit over a month, then took on the daunting mission of finding the new and promising paladin blogs waiting to be discovered.

I swear that finding new pally blogs gets harder and harder. I do come across exciting new blogs…only to have them die before they’ve been around long enough to link to.

Don't DIE! (Note: No paladins were injured in this screenshot. Character is not a paladin.)

And it seems that new bloggers are getting shyer about advertising themselves.

New pally bloggers, I beg of you, stop making my blogroll task so difficult dammit. I want to find you, so quit it with the hiding!

The Goodbyes

I was pretty merciless in my pruning. Whether they were friends, or bloggers I didn’t know too well, I hit the “delete” button for when I noticed that their last post was over a month ago.

The one blog that did make me do a double take was Paladin Shmaladin. Notice I didn’t link to it? I had noticed their lack of posts, but I wasn’t expecting to find a “page does not exist” when checking the blog.

I never liked Ferraro (oh yes, I am totally mean girls!). The content was often questionable, and, mostly, the writing style had always been a little…off… To the point that when it was revealed that the writer(s) behind Paladin Shmaladin had been stealing someone elses identity, I couldn’t understand why anyone was surprised.

But, in all fairness, Paladin Shmaladin had some excellent moments.

I have to give at least some respect to the person who posted the rotations of every spec of every dps class using game icons, to prove that ret paladins weren’t the most faceroll class out there. I can’t imagine how many hours that took. The guides, while usually not very accurate, were still the best illustrated and easiest to read in the blogosphere. And, most of all, Paladin Shmaladin provided us with the most fascinating blog drama I’ve ever witnessed in the WoW community.

So in thanks for the countless hours of entertainment, I give a goodbye salute to Ferraro and Paladin Shmaladin.

Welcoming the new general paladin bloggers

In the general paladining category, you can now find a link Ask Mr Robot. Mr Robot isn’t paladin exclusive, and I’ve yet to really use the resource myself, but it comes highly recommended as a starting point reference. New to your class and want a basic idea of how to build it before giving yourself a headache deciphering Elitist Jerks? Ask our friend Mr Robot.

I also added Miri’s blog Guarded by the Light. I’m actually not sure why it wasn’t already there… She was our pally tank rep on The Double O Podcast’s Tanking Roundtable, and is fluent in both Protection and Holy. She writes about general WoW topics as well, making her an excellent addition to any feedreader, paladin centric or not.

Welcoming the new Holy bloggers

As usual, Holy is the most active link list. I’m not sure if I just stumble across Holy blogs more than Ret or Prot blogs because I’m Holy, or if it’s just that us healer-types are chattier.

I added the podcast My Epic Heals. It’s not paladin centric, but Eade is a paladin (his blog, My Pally Heals, used to be on my blogroll, but I had to take it off for inactivity. Don’t panic though, the podcast is still going strong!), and they are healing-centric.

We’ve also got Amowrath joining our ranks with The Light’s Wrath. Out of all the holy bloggers who’ve opened shop since my last update, Amowrath is one of the two that are still among us. Head over to his page, give him some love, and convince him to stick around!

The other holy paladin blogger is Dreamy from Drunkard’s Regalia. Her style is completely unique, and, in my opinion, a refreshing change from the many more formal blogs out there. She’s fun, bouncy, and a tad gory. If you’re looking to add some spice to your blog reading, Drunkard’s Regalia is a good place to start.

Oh, and I fixed the link to the Paladin forum at Plus Heal. You can now use it again!

Welcoming our new Retribution brother

We have a new retribution blogger! And a good one at that! Chronicles of a Casual (and don’t let the name fool you, he is a raider, a dps paladin, and informative) fills in a huge gap in the paladin community by writing, with a teachy approach, about his adventures as a ret pally, both in raids and with the target dummy. Considering that I’ve slowly been learning retribution as an offspec myself, I’ve been following his blog in earnest, excited to see what he’ll show me next.

I added a link to Rel Pal too, a great resource for beginner Ret pallies (like me!) as well as more intermediate ret pallies.

Welcoming our new Protection sister

Bravetank is, well, bravely, leveling a tank through Azeroth’s deep dark dungeons. She shares her observations, be they about tanking or about the people she meets or about the general game in frequent, juicy, meaty posts. If you’re leveling a tank too and want some chicken soup for your soul, or if you just like to read solid blog posts, you’ll love Bravetank.

And non-Paladin links!

I don’t usually do a lot of maintenance on the non-pally blogs. Deciding which ones I’m going to link is always frustrating. My paladin blogroll is already quite long and if I added all the blogs I read, we’d have the list that never ends (yes, it goes on and on my friend). I aim for active blogs on general topics and/or blogs of more personal friends (because, yes, it’s my blog and if I want to play favorites, I’m totally allowed).

So I added Clockwork Bard. If you’re a long time WoW blog reader, you might recognize the writing style of More Bars Than You‘s Skip Cocoa. He’s a close irl friend of mine, and more importantly, a fantastic writer with an endless imagination. And thus Clockword Bard appeared on the blogroll.

The other blog I added is Healer by Nature by my guildy, raid leader and friend (I hope!) Thespius. Normally I’d require a tad more frequent posting for a blogroll listing, but because Thes is awesome, he gets to be an exception.

Know other Pally blogs that I need to list?

As mentioned in my intro, I’m totally open to shameless self promotion. Us pallies need to stick together and the only way we can do that is if we know each other.

As long as a blog is written in a paladin perspective, has been alive for a couple of months and has been active in the past month, there is a spot on my roll for it.

By the Light!

I Was Due for a Proper Blogroll Update

It seems that my last blogroll update was from January, so about 6 months ago. No, wait, that’s exactly 6 months ago. Or it was yesterday when I started writing this post.

Time flows faster on the internet. Since my last blogroll update date, we’ve had bloggers leave us, we’re have retired bloggers make a return and we’ve had new bloggers introducing themselves. We’ve even had new bloggers to the scene who’ve already retired. That’s how fast time flows on the internet.

Personal links

That’s right, I’m starting with my own links first, egomaniac that I am. Under the paladinning section, I added my non-raid gear post and the Holy Paladin 101 I wrote for Top Rosters. I also tearfully cleared out a few posts that were too outdated to be of any use. That’s the sad side of playing a class that gets revamped every patch: your hard work never lasts long.

Please Welcome Back

After sorting through the Paladin and the Retired folders in my RSS feeder, I discovered that two bloggers have returned from the nether for our reading pleasure.

Caer Morrighan has had her arms (and timetable) full with motherhood, but has still managed to give us some of her famous and much anticipated Crib Sheets for paladin dps, priest healing(!) and a healthy variety of Cataclysm raid bosses.

Ruthra from Holy Shock has also made a comeback, writing about Holy Paladins as well as other topics that cross his mind.

Please Welcome

When three major names from the Protection paladin community, Anafielle, Theck and Meloree, joined together for a blogging project, I thought “this is too good to be true!”. But I was wrong, it was true. And the end result, Sacred Duty is going strong with regular, informative posts on paladin tanking as well as thought-provoking commentaries on tanking in relation to other aspect of the game.

Another new Protection blog (which also has a great magey half) is D/E the Tank with Orv and Nymphy. They’ve got a lot of resources for new and leveling tanks as well as some extra fun for those of the mage persuasion.

On the Holy side of the paladin blogosphere, we’ve got Heavy Wool Bandage written by Glorwynn Lightbraid. Her voice is one of a kind, and she covers the ground that tends to be forgotten by the majority of holy paladin bloggers: healing in low level instances. There’s a lot more than leveling guides though, so take your time and browse through her pages.

Another Holy blog that has made an appearance is the interestingly titled I am McFluffy, he doesn’t update too often, but maybe if we nudge up, we’ll be seeing more of him.

Kallixta’s Notes is a Holy blog that has actually been around for quite some time. She chronicles her adventures through all the sides of Warcraft, from raiding, to leveling, to RPing to farming.

And last, but not least, Word of Glory is written by the lovely Lynesta. She’s another who doesn’t update often, but when she does, her posts are well written, her topics are relevant, her guides are helpful and she’s overall a lovely voice to read.

Got a Paladin blog?

If you know of a paladin blog I’ve missed, let me know! I’ll list all blogs that meet the following criteria:

1) Blog must have at least one regular paladin contributor (they don’t necessarily have to write about paladin-related stuff)
2) Blog must have existed for at least two months, or one month if updated 3 or more times a week.
3) Blog must have been updated within the past month (some exceptions might apply, but they’re really exceptions)

I’m not political when it comes to my paladin blogroll so if you’re not listed, it’s either because I’m a tad out of touch with the current blogosphere, or of oversight due to human error (I know it’s hard to believe, but I do succumb to that on occasion ;D).

EDIT: And here are some more paladin-flavored blogs for your reading pleasure!

In the tanking department we’ve got Sheep the Diamond by Stubborn who doesn’t write about tanking much, but when you stop by his blog, I can guarantee that you’ll find pages and pages of insightful, thought-provoking posts.

In the healing corner, we’ve got Gina’s Healbot.net, which I swear I have no idea how I missed her blog. (I mean, we’d even chatted on twitter a couple of times! Clearly I’m in the clouds these days.) Each one of her guides (and she’s written a lot of them!) is perfectly planned out and incredibly easy to follow. Head to Healbot.net for paladin and priest healing guides, fantastic 10 man boss guides and discussions on healing.