Honor's Code

One of the cool things I always like was when they would show you the origin of your favorite Super Hero. The episode were Peter Parket gets bit by the spider or Dr. Banner does his experiment with gamma rays. So what's the origin behind our dashing little dwarf, Honorshammer. Well on Maintakadin, Kitsuna of Tichondruis got me thinking when he said "I'm not convinced that everyone of every class hears a "call" to spec a certain way, but I think that protection paladins often do. At some point, against all logic, we decide that we would rather not spam flash of light all day. We'd rather not stay at the back of the raid, and we'd rather not try to fill one of the numberous DPS slots. We hear the call to let big ugly things smack us so that they don't hit our cloth wearing buddies. And those here at maintankadin have answered that call. When did you hear the call? And when did you answer it? " Maraudon. I was playing utility in a group t

Last night was our Arena night with my 5v5 team, PVPed in My Pants. We went about .500 for the night. Actually at one point we were over 1500 rating, but we slipped down again after losing some matches late. We had a couple of matches glitch out where we neither gained nor lost points, nor had a game credited to our won/loss column. Our team is starting to come together. We still need more practice. Sometimes we just burn through the other team, and most of the time we give a good accounting of ourselves even in defeat. Our worst game was against a 5 mage team. They simply burned us down one by one. I couldn't out heal their dps. We run a two healer team with me and a Resto Druid. We need to get better coordinating our healing. Either we need assigned targets or I need someway to know who he's healing. More than once, I was winding up a heal on one of our team, only to see him healed to full while another teammate of ours died. If I had know my other healer was healing him,

So last night our band of Heroes returned to Quaqmarrian and Heroic Slave Pens. The group was similiar to the previous nights run. Me (Prot Paladin) Baconstrip (Resto Druid) Wichita (Elemental Shaman, respec'ed to Resto for our run) Brambles (Arcane/Fire Mage) Origami (Feral Druid) It was nice having a sheep for Crowd control on the Mind Control pulls and Origami could offtank the double Champion pulls. We wiped a couple of times. Once it was because we thought we could sheep pull and not get the adds. But oh yes, we did. I never got that pull under control and we wiped. The next wipe was a bit perplexing. It was one of those where I'm tanking away and then BAM! I'm dead. Come to find out that the Mobs were using attacks that were destroying my Armor Rating and the damage I was taking was going way way up. We wiped one time on the last boss when we didn't our positioning right, but the second time around, we got it. 9 Badges down, 6 to go for my Libram.

Last night, our entrepid band of Heroes took on Quagmarrian and his cronies in Heroic Slave Pens. Our group of Heroes included: Honorshammer (Prot Paladin - me!) Sameth (Discipline Priest) Baconstrip (Resto Druid) Lakini (Balance Druid) Wichita (Elemental Shaman) An interesting group for a Heroic. Veteran WoW players will note a serve lack of crowd control options in this group, which considering how hard the trash mobs hit for, is generally considered a "bad thing" by most of the WoW populace. Undaunted by our seemingly poor group setup, we charged into the Slave Pens ready to do battle. Our first strategy was to have the Priest mind control, only to discover that Blizzard conveintly coded the mobs with a mind control immunity. "Thou shalt bring proper CC to your instances, thy healers shalt heal". So we came up with the odd idea of trying to AoE tank them. This is an area of particular strength for my little dwarf. I felt very confident in my ability to hold 3 an

So I finally made up my mind last night and purchased my PVP rewards. I was able to get the new epic bracers (Veteran's Ornamented Bracers), and the new Arena Gloves (Merciless Gladiator Ornamented Gloves). Yeah, purple pixels. So armed with my new gear I flew off into Arena's with my 5v5 team, PVPed in My Pants. The team is me (Prot Paladin), Ferth (Fury Warrior), Lakini (Balance Druid), Lou (Assassination Rogue), and Baconstrip (Resto Druid). The first couple of matches I went with a strong +heal, and mana gear set. This was great except that I felt very squishy. One of the reasons I love my little dwarf so much is his survivability. So I switched out a couple of pieces of gear and lowered my mana and +healing but uped my armor and hit points. Our team is starting to gel a bit more. We went 6-7 which isn't too bad for us. Our rating is almost exactly where it was when we started. After the 5v5 matches, Ferth (Fury Warrior), Lakini (Balance Druid), and myself finished

It was a pretty good weekend for my little dwarf. Saturday night, I went back to Steamvaults once again. The group was me (Prot Paladin), Jagdelf (Beast Mastery Hunter), Paymon (Marksmanship Hunter), Darolynn (Shadow Priest), and Calexis (Holy Priest). This group is what you call easy on the reagents. Paladin Greater Blessing are cast on a class instead of a player and require a reagent (Symbol of Kings). So I only had to cast 3 times to cover the whole group instead of 5. We essentially mowed through the place. Warlord Kal said hello again, and once again, refused to give up either the Righteous Breastplate or the Devilshark Cape. I'm 0 for 9. Mekinner Steamrigger was kind enough to give up my Steam Hinged Chain of Valor. I spent a good portion of my playtime this weekend in Shadowmoon, near Legion Hold. I was farming for Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments. These are items you can turn in for Aldor rep. I was finally able to hit revered and buy my Vindicator's Hauerbruk.

So Heroes returned to Karazhan last night. Our group was Me (Protection Paladin) Zadorr (Feral Druid) Sevenn (Holy Paladin) Resto Druid (Baconstrip) Resto Druid (Lakini) Destruction Lock (DarkDescent) Arcane/Fire Mage (Brambles) Marksmanship/Survival Hunter (Paymon) Shadow Priest (Darolynn) Assassination Rogue(Lou) We started once again with Attumen. Just like our last run we had little problem getting him down. Is it possible to have a boss on "farm" status two nights into an instance? After that we decided to try Moroes again. The trash gave us less problems than before, mostly because we knew it better. I tried to skip a couple of pulls, but that turned out to be a bad idea. We accidently aggroed them and that caused a wipe. When we finally got to Moroes, we had a Priest for shackle. We drew an interesting set of adds (Mortal Strike Warrior, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Shadow Priest). We had our Priest shackle the Warrior, and the Hunter trap the Holy Prie

I managed to get into a Shattered Halls group last night. It was me (Tankadin), our newly respec'ed Holy Priest, Destruction Warlock, Balance Druid, and Arcane/Fire Mage. We used Charm and Sheep on about every pull. The run went very well. We had a few wipes, mainly from adds. The worse being when we pulled a 5 group and then about halfway through the fight another 5 group joins up. We had no idea where they came from. It almost seemed like we were overpowered for that instance. I'll be running it again in the future. I'm way short on Honor Hold rep. We one shot each boss, and wound up disenchanting most of the drops. I did get my Shattered Halls quests done which means I am now the proud owner of a set of Dauntless Handguards for my Uncrushable set, and a Mantle of Vivification for my PVP/Healer set. Is it ironic I'm building a PVE Healing set that I hope I never have to actually use outside of PVP? Actually healing in the 5s (5v5) is more akin to PVE Healing. I

A took a night off from playing WoW to go see my daughter's dance recital. She really loves dancing and the best present I could give her was my presence at her recital. She was awesome! Found a little tidbit on WoWInsider from an interview they did with Nihilum, the current gold standard of raid guilds. They have gotten many of the World First Kills including the end boss of Burning Crusade, Illiadan Stormrage. "Guilds that go with Protection Paladins and Moonkins will not do as well as the ones that bring an optimal raid setup. This is a fact." - Nihilum That got me thinking about being a Tankadin. When I'm tanking a mob, holding threat, and mitigating damage like a madman, I feel just like my daughter does up on that stage. I know some people who play WoW just love to see those big numbers fly up on the screen. For me, the coolest sound effect in the game is the block sound effect. I can't tell you how much fun it was fighting those Demon Hunter trainee

Last night, I logged into WoW for a bit. I started by farming up in Netherstorm for Aldor rep turins. I managed to get 2 Fel Armaments and 20+ Marks of Sargeras. I'm now only 2000 rep away from Revered with Aldor for the shoulder enchants and the Vindicator's Hauberek. Next up I joined a Warlock buddy in farming up some Primal Water. I wanted to get the Khorium Ward set for my Arena set. If the patch goes in today, I'll be able to buy the Season 2 Gloves and the new epic Bracers. My Arena set will be looking much better. While we were farming, we got an guild invite to go on Black Morass run to get some more people in our guild keyed. The group was me, a Rogue (not sure of his spec), Shadow Priest, Resto Druid, and Enhancement Shaman. I love having a Shadow Priest for that place. The first attempt did not go well. We started to get behind by Portal 4 or 5, and as Bacon always says, "Once you get behind in Black Morass, you've pretty much lost the instance."

So whenever I would read an entry like the one I made over the weekend about Kara, I would immediately wonder, what would a dashing young dwarf with six pack abs wear to face down Attumen for the first time. So here is the list of gear I wore for our guild first Attumen kill. Head: Felsteel Helm (Keeper of Time Enchant) Neck: Strength of the Untamed Back: Cloak of Eternity (+12 Agi) Shoulders: Warchief's Mantle (green gems) Wrists : Shatari Wrought Armguards Hands : Felsteel Gloves (+20 spell damage) Waist: Shatari Vindicators Waistguard Legs: TimeWarden Leggings (2 +9 stamina gems, +6 stamina, +5 spell damage gem) Feet: Flesh Beast Metal Greaves Ring: Wind Trader's Band Ring: Iron Band of the Unbreakable Trinket: Regal Protectorate Trinket: Dabiri's Enigma Weapon: CrystalForge Sword (+40 spell damage) Sheld: Aegis of the Sunbird (+18 stam) Libram: Libram of Saints Departed

So Heroes Inc takes its first brave steps into Burning Crusade raiding with Karazhan. First, our group. The tanks, Main Tank was none other than your humble author (Protection Paladin), offtank was a Feral Druid (Zadorr). Our true supporters and healers were a Resto Druid (Baconstrip), a Holy Paladin (Sevenn), and a Balance Druid (Lakini). Our face melters, I mean DPSers were Assassiantion Rogue (Sylvara), Fire/Arcane Mage (FaceEraser), Feral Druid (Origami), Marksman Hunter (Paymon), and an Elemental Shaman (Wichita) who was tearing it up. We started clearing the trash leading up to the first boss Attumen. The horses feared and we had a single bad pull because of it, but pretty much it went okay. I wasn't as shocked by the hits as they were in line with what I was taking in Heroics. Then we get to Attumen. I was take him while the Feral Druid got on Midnight, then I took them when they formed. I had the Feral stay Bear and try to stay #2 on threat. This was because I'm n

The night started out well with me and my Marksman Hunter partner (Paymon) doing our 2v2 Arena games. We did really well, went 12-4, and raised our rating quite a bit. It seems like my spec is much more an asset in 2v2 than in 5v5. I wear the Teir 2 recolored helm that just screams "I'm a Healer", but then fill in with tanking/spell damage gear. Melee DPS has a hard time taking me down. Range DPS has to deal with a mail wearing, machine of death in my partner. It was a lot of fun. I look forward to the patch so I can spend the 2000 Arena points I've saved up, and get our rating reset to 1500. I think we can make some noise in the 2v2 bracket. So last night, I attempted my first Heroic dungeon, Heroic Slave Pens. My group was me (Prot Paladin), Discipline Priest, Balance Druid, Fury Warrior, and an Assassianation Rogue. Just from the first pull, I could tell things were very different. I'm not used to trash mobs hitting me for 2000+ damage. Ouch. That's wit

So Honorshammer went back to the Arenas last night with PVPed In My Pants. It was an exercise in frustration for most of the night. We seem to get the same team about 5 times in a row. This team consisted of two so called 3 minute mages. These mages have the ability to pop a bunch of 3 minute cooldown and increase their DPS to the level they kill someone in 2 shots. Their team was really good at doing something to CC my little dwarf self. In the time it took for me to use my Trinket or Stormform or whatever I could do to get out of the CC 1 or 2 of our players was gone. We lost every match against them. The silver lining was that we only lost about 3 ratings points per match. Losing so few points indicates we were up against a much better team, and they showed it. They were probably as frustrated seeing us all night as we were seeing them. I'm sure after the first couple of "LOL, we pwned those nubs" games, they were probably hoping for a new team to play as much as we

As I was finishing up the Scarlet Monestary on my Hunter, I got a tell asking me to tank Botanica. Now it was late and I really should have gone to bed, but the Righteous Shoulders drop off the next to last boss in Botanica, and they are really nice. Sha'tar rep is a nice bonus as well from that instance. The group was me (Prot Paladin), Holy Paladin, the Elemental Shaman from my Steamvaults group, an Ice Mage, and a Beast Mastery Hunter. The Botanica features alot of caster type (low armor) mobs that the group just tore through. We had a pull of 6, followed by a pull of 9, and the coup de gras, an unintentional pull of 11 including some non-elites. Everything, even the bosses died really fast, and I was holding aggro like a champ. The High Botanist only transformed into a tree one time, and only one person got sacrificed by the demon boss. But, as the night had gone, no Shoulders. I did however pick up the Aegis of the Sunbird, which is better (from a mitigation and avoidanc

After my run to the Steamvaults, I still had a bit of time. As I was walking around Shattrath, I noticed someone spamming the trade channel for a Scarlet Monestary group. Now, I have tremendous trouble getting groups on my Hunter, Honorshummer. Add to that the fact that he has a ton of rested experience and that Scarlet Monestary Library or Graveyard are relatively short instances, and it was too good to pass up. He almost got to level 34 from that run. No good drops to speak of, but it was a nice change of pace to be on my Hunter again.

For a night that I thought I might not log in to WoW, it turned out to be pretty busy. I managed to get a group to run Steamvaults, yet again. I think its getting to the point that the mobs are getting tired of seeing me. The group was me (Prot Pally), Discipline Priest, Elemental Shaman, Feral Druid, and Balance Druid. You will note that each person in this group can heal and rez and you should also note an extreme lack of crowd control. On a couple of pulls we used the Priest to mind control, but for the most part I ran in and tried to keep aggro on 4 mobs. The run when well and the only time anyone died was when I got silenced and the mobs got away from me. Silence = no spells = no threat = bad. For the last boss we switched out the Discipline Priest for his Fury Warrior because he wanted a shot at the nether, with the Balance Druid picking up the healing. Of course, no Nether, no Devilshark Cape, no Righteous Breastplate. This boss does not like me. This was my 8th, yes, 8th

So it looks like Heroes Inc will be venturing into Karazhan for the first time on Saturday night. I will be one of the tanks and the raid leader for this little excursion. I'm still fully crushable in my 10k hitpionts gear. I could switch out some pieces and get to 14% crushable, but I'd have to drop down to 9k hit points to do it. I've read up on the first boss Attumen the Huntsman. He seems fairly straightforward. I haven't found any information on the trash packs to get to him, so I wonder what suprises await me there. I'm glad that Sevenn is planning on coming to the raid. He's actually been inside Kara before and should be able to keep us for getting too lost. This should be interesting to say the least. Heroes isn't a raid guild per se. We do a little PVE and a little PVP. Our main focus is on having fun. I heard it said once that WoW players fall into two groups, those who play to win and those who play for fun. I think Heroes is definately in

I spent last night doing Areans with PVPed in My Pants. It seems we are getting better. The main causes of our losses were disconnects, or just not playing smart. There was one match where we faced a team that was setup perfectly to defeat us (BM Hunter, Ice Mage, Demo Warlock, Resto Druid, and a Shaman). That's like the anti Melee DPS with Paladin healer team. We did much better against teams with two Paladins. They couldn't interupt or shut down my healing. I know some people believe the Paladin is the easiest class to play in PVP and we don't have all that affect on the outcome. My experience is that my play has a large impact on the outcome. When I play well, my team stays alive longer and we win. If I play poorly, my team generally loses. With abilities like Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, Cleanse, and my healing, I feel like I make a major contribution to whether or not we win or lose. After Arena's I worked on my Cenarion Expedition rep a bit b

Over the weekend I helped some guildies do Shadow Labs and get a couple more people keyed for Karazhan. The Aldor reputation turnins were dropping pretty good. I wound up with 2 Fel Armaments and about 30 Marks of Sargeras. This insprired me to go do some Aldor quests out in Shadowmoon at the Ruins of Ba'ari. Now at first I hated the place, because the dang Ashtongue Workers would run off and grab some friends. Now, normally as a Prot Paladin, I grin a bit when I get adds, however in this place there are a ton of portroling mobs including a shaman type with a nasty AoE fire totem (ouch), and a Satyr/Demon type that has a Mortal Strike ability. Thanks, guys! Of course, after having a runner cause me a death/repair bill, I remembered that old friend, Judgement of Justice. I literally could kill these guys if I was AFK now. I'm sitting at halfway to revered with Aldor. So last night, I once again go to Steamvaults. This was my 7th run to the place. Joy. The last guy Warlord Ka

Last night was a big night for my little dwarf. Heroes finally, finally beat the Black Morass. Our group was me (Prot Pally, main tank), Ferth the Fury Warrior, Sameth the Discipline Priest, Origami the Feral Druid, and Lakini the Boomkin. Fury Warrior on the adds, witih me Feral Druid and Boomkin on the Elites/Bosses. The run went quite well, except for me making a huge mistake on Temporus. On our last failed run, I didn't move away from the portal enough and aggroed adds with a Consecration. That eventually led to a wipe, so I made sure to tank him off the left of the portal. Well sure enough, he knocks me back, and resets. Lovely. So now we have to kill him twice. The Mortal Strike debuff got up to as high as 5, then fell off completely. I guess I just got an unlucky streak there. We had to drop 2 becaons and still the shield was down to 11%, meaning only one shot at Aoenus. I was chugging health pots and doing everything I could to make sure I kept my hit points up. It got

Last night our guild ran Botanica. It was another really good run. The group was me (Prot Pally), Ferth (Fury Warrior), Zadorr (Feral Druid), Sticker (Fire Mage), and Baconstrip (Resto Druid). We only had real trouble with the 3rd boss (The Tenderer). He's the oneo who does a Hellfire and also periodically sacrifices people (and wipes his aggro). A couple of times, Bacon would get a heal off or Sticker would land a Scorch just after he wiped his aggro. I should have brought some Fire Resist pots since I have almost no Fire Resist gear. I was much better chugging potions anytime I got low. I figured I'd err on the side of drinking too often versus causing a wipe. It's amazing how much things have changed since I went to more a spell damage build in my gear. My guildmates have been very impressed with my ability to hold aggro. I'm still uncrittable in my gear, but my hit points are little lower than I'd like them to be (about 8500 unbuffed). However, with Kings,

So Tuesday night we again tried Black Morass. This time the group was me (Prot Pally), Ferth (Fury Warrior), Baconstrip (Resto Druid), Sylvara (Rogue), and Lakini (Boomkin). It was our best attempt to date. We got all the way to the last boss, but we wiped when he was at 10%. Ugh. I got killed when he stunned everyone and my health was too low. The group was really impressed with how I handled the second boss. His healing debuff never got above a 3 stack. I've really got to learn to use pots. When I was Holy spec, I'd use mana pots in the rare event I got low on mana during a boss fight. It was pretty clear when to use then, and if I forgot, standing there with no mana usually clued me in. With tanking, its very different. You've got a couple of seconds to react or you'll be thinking about the health pot while you chill with a Spirit Healer. I'm really in something of a conumdrum with my gear. I need about 250 spell damage to hold off the dps (especially the

I had some time after Arena's so we put together a Steamvaults run to help a couple of guildies who needed the SteamVaults fragment of their Kara key. The run consisted of me (Prot Pally) tanking, Aleks (Arms Warrior), Sameth (Discipline Priest), Calexis (Shadow Priest), and Origami (Feral Druid). The run went incredibly quick and smooth. We only wiped once on the last boss because we didn't switch fast enough to the tanks and Origami couldn't find the back of the tank to use shred. I really feel I'm starting to arrive as a tank in this run. In one of the 4 pulls Origami asked if he should offtank. The group felt it was better for him to stay cat as their Prot Pally could hold all 4 quite well. Then on the failed attempt on Warlord Kal, he got enraged by consuming 3 tanks. The group was very impressed that I survived as long as I did. I guess most tanks they have run with couldn't last past 1 or 2 enrages. Of course Warlord Kal refuses to give up my Devilshark C

Monday night and I'm back from a nice weeklong WoW vacation. We did Arenas Monday night. PVP as a Protection Paladin is interesting to say the least. This last patch I respect to something of a healer/tank hybrid with points in Spiritual Focus and Improved Concentration Aura. I had to give up 1 handed spec and reckoning. I didn't miss 1 handed spec much. It's one of those passive talents that you can't really see working. But reckoning, oh man, that was a rough one to give up. However I can say that PVP healing is much easier now. Before I speced into Spiritual Focus, something as simple as a hunter pet on me made my heals take so long that my team mate was dead before the heal ever got off. My 5v5 team is called I PVPed in my Pants. It consists of me (Prot Pally), a Fury Warrior (Ferth), a Rogue (Lou), a Boomkin (Lakini), and a Resto Druid (Baconstrip). We played about 20 games and won about 9 or 10. The good news is that I now have enough points to start getting