Honor's Code

General Enchanting Principles Always keep in mind the total effect that any given enchant has on your ability to tank content. Sometimes, the overall "lower quality" enchants are more viable for certain pieces of gear. You do your raid no good if you are dead or if you're not holding aggro against your DPS. For that reason, if you're having problems surviving, get survival based enchants, while if you're having problems generating threat, put on some threat enchants. Moreover, if Agility on your gloves pushes you over to uncrushable, get that over spellpower and, in rare cases, if defense to bracers makes you uncrittable where you otherwise wouldn't be, get it. The same principle applies to gems. Enchanting to the strengths of your gear is a strong gearing principle. Tanks are not made best by a balanced set of gear in most cases, but a min/maxed set that specializes in something particular. This doesn't mean neglect stats, mind you, but it does mean that

General Gem Theory If you still need to reach the Uncrushable breakpoint, use your gem slots to get there. If you're already at the Uncrushable breakpoint, gem for stamina. Gear is a better place to get mitigation and avoidance. Gemming for threat with gems is not as powerful as other uses of your gem slots. Don't gem for spell damage, hit, spell hit, etc. Consumables and your weapon are better places to look at it to increase your threat generation. Not all of the gems will release in Phase One. Some of them will unlock in a later phase. Gems Solid Star of Elune (12 stamina, Blue) This gem gives the largest bonus to effective health of all gem options prior to the Phase 3 BT/Hyjal gems becoming available. If you are uncrushable by a solid margin, this will give you the most survivability of any gem option. Enduring Talasite (4 Defense Rating and 6 Stamina, Blue/Yellow) The best yellow hybrid available, giving both a modicum of avoidance and stamina.  In Phase 4, this will be

This is a list of preraid gear to get you to Uncrushable that does not rely on any drops or any reputations above revered. Using just this method, you can get your paladin to uncrushable status quickly with no luck at all. This is intended to provide a baseline for future raiding. This will not be your final gear set.  Head Felsteel Helm  (crafted) Neck Strength of the Untamed  (Cenarion Expedition revered) Shoulders Nexus-Guard's Pauldrons  (quest:  Success! ) Warchief's Mantle  (quest:  Return to Andormu ) Back Cloak of Eternity  (crafted) Chest Breastplate of the Warbringer  (quest:  Forge Camp: Annihilated ) Vindicator's Hauberk  (Aldor Revered) Wrists Shatari Wrought Armguards  (quest:  The Soul Devices ) Bracers of the Green Fortress  (crafted) Hands Felsteel Gloves  (crafted) Gauntlets of the Chosen  (Scryers revered) Belt Shatari Vindicator's Waistguard  (quest:  How to Break Into the Arcatraz ) Legs Timewarden's Leggings (Keepers of Time Revered) Felsteel

Pre raid BiS Following is a breakdown of most of what we have available to us in a pre-raid situation. (Please feel free to let me know of anything you think I've missed here.) Threat versus Mitigation At the pre-raid level, and throughout Karazhan, threat can be achieved solely through your weapon. A good spelldamage weapon like ( Continuum Blade ), properly enchanted with Major Spellpower (see Enchants guide), combined with some cheap  Superior Wizard Oil , will put you at a very comfortable threat level. In any pre-raid situation, you will produce comparable (if not more, especially on Demon/Undead NPCs,) threat to a Protection Warrior/Feral Druid on single targets, and the same to up to three targets as a Feral Druid. On more targets, and through use of Salvation, there is no spec of any class that can produce more threat, (nor mitigate as much damage, usually) than you. For all 5 mans, it is much advised to wear more spelldamage, giving up some mitigation. As long as healers c

I've informed my guild that I will be stepping down from the raid team. I'll continue raiding until they can find and gear a replacement healer, but I won't be doing any 9.1 raid content above LFR (if I do that). This has nothing to do with my guild or guild leaders or anything like that. The players in Chain Reaction have been fantastic. If you're looking for an Alliance guild on a US server, I would recommend them . It's a combination of ever-increasing difficulty of raid mechanics, a natural loss of reaction time, and wanting to pour my free time into new pursuits. Ever-increasing difficulty of raid mechanics It's like those batting cages at  Frankie's . I was crushing the fastballs in the 60+mph cage ( MoP / WoD , and even Legion ). Due to the necessity to increase the difficulty of raid mechanics as the game evolves,  BfA and Shadowlands feel like the 85+ mph cages. I'm barely even making contact.  Future raids will only continue to increase the dif

On Blizzard Watch, I wrote about the best and worst encounters in the original Burning Crusade . I played all through Burning Crusade as a Protection Paladin and it had an enormous influence on my experiences and recollections of those encounters. Rodrigo Minnemann (@Rod_Minn) was a healer in the original Burning Crusade. He follows me on Twitter and asked if he could share his best and worst encounters from a healing perspective. I loved the idea of seeing Burning Crusade through a different lens. The Best (and Worst) instances and encounters from The Burning Crusade by  Rodrigo Minnemann  ( @Rod_Minn) Ah, Burning Crusade , the first expansion of our beloved MMO. Who could forget entering that iconic portal. Into a shattered world with cosmic sights to behold! Exploring new lands, dinging new levels, and best of all, enjoying the new group content that we will soon relive in Burning Crusade Classic . Take the findings of this list with a grain of salt, for it is the recollection