Honor's Code

Kuroshiro over at the Build Mine ( http://thebuildmine.blogspot.com/ ) has mined the Armory for spec information on all the various classes. What I am going to look at in this blog is his data on the cookie cutter Tankadin build 0/49/12. According to the data, mined from over 2 million toons, just 2.32% of Paladins are this spec. Every other spec in the top 10 was Holy. No surprise there. The top variation on 0/49/12 is shared by over a third of Paladins who spec this way. Its pretty much your standard “Main tank” build with all the mitigation and threat goodies the tree has to offer. The only talents not taken in this build are the more PVP focused Stoicism, Improved Hammer of Justice, Improved Concentration Aura, and Guardians Favor. The other talent eschewed by this build is Improved Devotion Aura. At Tier 1, Protection Paladins have to choose between Improved Devo and Redoubt. Redoubt, being the prerequisite for the highly use Shield Specialization wins out, despite that fact...

So last night began the initiative our guild leader calls "Guild Improvement Week". The basic idea being that the better geared people help the lesser geared people get better gear and work with them to improve their play. Fantastic idea in theory, not so much in practice. Now maybe last night was an abberation, but there were 2 total people asking for help. Most of the people we have identified in the guild as needing help were not online. One of the people asking for help was Robella, a gnome Rogue. He wanted help finishing up a questline in Shadowmoon Valley called the Cipher of Damnation. This is a quest line that Honors has not finished yet. When I was leveling and just after I hit 70, I concentrated on quests and quest lines that led to the better tanking rewards I would need for Kara. This line was not one of them, and I haven't made the time to go back and finish yet. We got a group together and flew out to Shadowmoon to start the event. As we engage the boss, our...

Sunday night I returned to the Black Morass to help a guild Shaman, Azywnn get keyed. It's always interesting coming back to Black Morass. My very first blog post was about how this instance was kicking my little dwarven behind. Now, it's pretty easy. Also along for the ride were Baconstrip (Resto Druid), Darolynn (Shadow Priest), Jagdelf (Hunter). The run went very well, except that I forgot where to stand a couple of times and ended up having adds run right by me. Jag was right on the ball and we got to Wave 12 with the shield at 100%. I don't know what the deal was with Temporus, but I had his debuff get really high. Thing is, if I understand the dynamics of the fight, in my uncrushable gear, he shouldn't be able to land the debuff on me. This time it was Bacon who had my back. He was able to heal me right on through it. Cool. We finished up the instance and got Azywnn his key. Afterwords I was all set to run an alt Scarlet Monestary with some guildies bu...

Saturday night was our return once again to Karazhan . At first it looked like the run might have to be called off because of a lack of healers. At start time we had only a Hybrid Druid, and an Elemental Shaman willing to respec to resto for the night. We might have also had a Shadow Priest. We waited around and eventually a couple of more people logged in. My favorite Tree ( Baconstrip ), and our Holy Paladin ( Sevenn ) logged on and things were looking up. But now we had 13 people, which meant that 3 would have to sit. We had 3 mages on, so one of them was likely to have to sit. In the end we sat 3 people who had been on the previous run a Hunter ( Schmedlap ), a mage ( Krawl ), and a Warrior ( Jenet ). The people who had to sit were understandably upset, especially since they'd been there since start time. Schmed was stuck in Deadwin with his Hearth down. I didn't envy Lakini's (Raid Leader) position. This left us with just 1 undead CC and 1 tank. So we d...

Busy weekend all around. Let's start with Friday night. This was our guild's Eye of the Storm night. Now at first, I wasn't going to go to Eye of the Storm. Our guild leader has been asking only people who can go the full time to come to PVP nights. I knew I couldn't stay the entire 3 hours, so I had resigned myself to an evening of grindin', minin' and questin'. After the first game, I see we have less than half a full group on, so I ask for invite. So what is it like as a Protection spec Paladin in Battlegrounds? How much can I contribute? Quite a bit actually. I am very good at escorting flag carriers. Blessing of Freedom and healing really help get the flag home. In addition, I'm a very good choice to defend a point. As a Paladin, I'm very hard to take down quickly, especially if I have Divine Shield available and they don't bring any Priests. Finally, I contribute simply by the fact I have a heal button. Healing in PVP is rough. There are al...

Wouldn't it be just my luck, but last night, not one but two Botanica groups were trying to form. One for normal mode, and one for Heroic. I have two major upgrades I can work on by running Botanica, and either mode would work just fine. The Heroic group was short a healer, and the non Heroic was short 1 to 2 people. So while the gruops figured themselves out, I went and ran an AV. I actually got a couple of heals and was able to tank a Warmaster. Unfortunately, I ran out of mana. This usually doesn't to me. The only conclusion I can draw is that I'm begining to over gear for trash. This means equiping more INT, and Spell Damage in my Trash set. After my AV was over the person doing the Normal group was not online, so I joined the Heroic group. We were still short a Healer. The group started out as Me (Prot Paladin), Zadorr (Feral Druid), Darolynn (Shadow Priest), and Faceeraser (Fire Mage). I chuckled to myself. A group with a Paladin, Druid and Preist, and what we...

So Wichita of ShamRadio (check it out it's cool), posed the question: What can we do as a guild to do better in Kara? Our issue last night was pretty straightforward. Gear. We had several new, or undergeared people in the raid. People have varying levels of playtime, knowledge of game mechanics (could be called skill). This lead to variations (sometimes large and pronounced) in the relative power of their toons in the game world. Said another way, some toons do more DPS than other toons. As you move into more and more challenging content, these differences become more pronounced. There seems to be a problem with the way we are forming groups now. Some weeks the groups have wild success, other weeks the groups barely get their foot in the door. Some people have had "good luck" with groups and seen many of the bosses in Kara. Others have had "bad luck" and have never been past Attumen. Players still have varying levels of playtime they want to put into the game. T...

I really have to choose my words carefully today, as I'm pretty down from my experiences in Karazhan last night. From the signups it looked like we would have about 4 tanks online so I was fully prepared to sit out. It also looked like we would be short on healers, so I wasn't even sure if the run would go. When Raid time rolled around, we had exactly 10 people, only 2 tanks (myself and a Warrior) and 2 healers. We ended up asking one of our Shadow Priests to heal for bosses. We had no melee DPS, and the raid had 3 Priests in it. We barely killed Attumen. I've never come so close to wiping on him as I did last night. I figured after getting my Bracers of the Green Fortress made, that the Vambraces of Courage would drop, but they didn't. I was not the Raid Leader for the night, and I probably stepped on the Raid Leaders toes a couple of times. I'm so used to running raids now, that I kind of slip into that mode without thinking about it. The Raid Leader dec...

Last night PVPed in my Pants did our arenas. We seemed to fight the same teams two or three times. It was pretty apparent when we were fighting a better team, a worse team, or a team about our level. We went about .500 for the night. Not too bad. My one big concern about Arenas is that I'm going out of mana. Arena matches are lasting longer as more and more players get more Stamina and Resilience, and as Protection spec'ed Paladin my mana pool just isn't cutting it. My druid team mates, Baconstrip and Lakini are really helpful with Innervates. Even though I have 0 spirit on my gear, I can get about half a mana bar from their innervates. I've taken to trying to find a player or a pet and using Seal of Wisdom to gain some mana. Most of the time it doesn't work. I either have to stop and heal, or the player runs away from me. I think Arms warriors really need a review. They wear plate, they have the best PVP debuff in the game, and they can stun as good as any rogu...

So last night, Heroes Inc had our guild PVP night in Arathi Basin. This Battleground holds the most interest for me, not so much because I like it better than the others, but that the developers decided the PVP healer rewards take a ton of Arathi Basin Marks. Under my current Master Plan To Take Over The PVP Universe (tm) , I need 100 AB Marks. This was the first night since we all hit 70, that we've been able to field a full AB team of 15 Heroes. We had a blast. AB is so different with a guild group than with a PUG. We felt like we were dictating to the Horde and not the other way around. It was especially nice as a Healer. In a PUG, if I throw a heal, it's like the Horde go "Wow, they actually have someone who is healing, KILL HIM!!" And my PuG mates just keep on killing, yelling for heals, while ignoring the Horde who is killing me. Now in a Guild group, I get heals from the other healers and the DPS is always helping me out. Of course it doesn't always work th...

Justicar Faceguard --> Crystalforge Faceguard --> Tankatronic Goggles --> Lightbringer Faceguard --> Faceplate of the Impenetrable Barbed Choker of Discipline --> (Brooch of Deftness) --> Frayed Tether of the Drowned == The Darkener's Grasp --> Pendant of Titans Mantle of Abrahmis --> Justicar Shoulderguards --> Crystalforge Shoulderguards == Pauldrons of Stone Resolve --> Pauldrons of Abyssal Fury --> Lightbringer Shoulderguards Devilshark Cape --> Phoenix-Wing Cloak --> Slikk's Cloak of Placation --> Pepe's Shroud of Pacification Panzar'Thar Breastplate == Justicar Chestguard --> Crystalforge Chestguard --> Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian --> Lightbringer Chestguard ( Bracers of the Green Fortress) --> Vambraces of Courage == Wristguards of Determination --> Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx --> The Seeker's Wristguards Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden == Crystalforge Handguards --> Gauntlets of Enforc...

Last night Heroes tried something a little bit different. World PVP. We gathered up and attacked the Orc capital of Orgrimmar. It was really exciting being in a group over 20+ Heroes, riding through the Barrens, and charging into the very gates of the main Horde city. Initially we met with little resistance, catching people unfortunate enough to still be flagged. We came in the western entrance and made our way down to where the mage and portal trainers were. We were apparently close to where the Horde ques for Battlegrounds because they started coming out to fight us. There was so much going on, I could barely see it all. Eventually we were out numbered and wiped out. Several people spirit rezed but good ole Honorshammer pulled out the Bubble Hearth card. After that, we paid a visit to Tarren Mill and killed some Horde there, and progressed up to Undercity. We went through the sewers and came up in the outer ring. We killed more Horde here and moved into the inner ring. I had alot of ...

Our run in Kara last night had to be aborted because one of our players lost power and got dc'ed. I was totally excited to be trying a new boss for the first time. We only made one attempt at Curator. We got him to 80%, even though we didn't have any significant AR in the raid. We really need to identify and gear up our Bolt Tanks so we can do better against him. I wanted to reschedule the attempt to another night, but there wasn't a night that worked well with everyone. Its really disappointing, but I have my bad nights as well. Some people were reluctant to add a 3rd night to raiding. I understand that, but to me, it really isn't a 3rd night. It more akin to a baseball game that got rained out and completed the next day or so. But I understand some people not seeing it the way I do. I am worried that we will burn out the healers. Our healers, like most of the people in my guild are more than just guildmates to me. I consider them friends. I don't them to bur...

10-5-2007: My conclusion below is suspended. A rumored change in Patch 2.3 would give 1/3 of all straight +healing as spell damage. I must reevaluate this thread. As a Paladin you get to choose from 3 sets for PVP rewards. Ornamented (+healing) Lamellar (+spell damage and healing) Scaled ( Str , Stam , Crit ) I'm going to ignored Scaled for the time being. The 2 piece set bonus on each set is +35 resilence . The 4 piece set bonus is reduced cooldown on Hammer of Justice. One idea is to mix two pieces from one set with 3 pieces from the other. This gives you an extra 35 resilience because you get both sets 2 pieces bonus. What do you give up for that 35 Resilience. Lets examine an example set of Ornamented Shoulders, Legs, and Gloves with Lamellar Helm and Chest. The difference over a 5/5 Ornamented Set is: +39 Resilience +65 Spell Damage +14 Spell Crit -12 Int -47 Healing Well you gain more than just the set bonus. You actually gain 39 resilience because the two Lamellar piec...

This is my 50th! post. Wow. (This post brought to you by the word, RWAR! RWAR, filling Fuzzy Bears with rage since 1807) Tuesday night and Heroes Inc gears up to attack Kara. I was 99.9% sure I wasn't going last night but it turned out we had enough for two groups again. My illustrious band of Heroes was: Me (Prot Paladin) Zadorr (RWAR!! Feral Druid tank with a metric ton of hitpoints) Baconstrip (This guy makes me a tree hugger, Resto Druid) Witchita (Elemental Shaman respec'ed to Resto for the night) Tanzi (Hybrid Priest) Faceeraser (Flame on! Fire Mage) Brambles (What's your hurry! Arcane Mage) Jagdelf (giving Hunter's everywhere a good name) Sylvara (He slices, she dices, and makes thousands of jullienne fries) Darolynn (Dark Lord of the Shadow, awesome shadow priest) Attumen? Sit down! For Moroes, we got a Shadow Priest, Holy Paladin, Prot Warrior, and Ret Paladin. We shackled the Ret Paladin, burned down the Shadow Priest, trapped the Holy Pala...

Zen over at Zen Tanking ( http://zentanking.blogspot.com/ ), has a fantastic blog. His latest post is about alternatives to the cookie cutter 0/49/12 spec that most Tankadins run. I don't run a 0/49/12 spec. My spec is a bit different 8/41/12.( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=qVhZVMtIxcdMMqzVbx ). I lose Reckoning, Precision, and 1 handed spec, and in its place I pickup Divine Intellect, 3/5 Spiritual Focus and Guardian's Favor, and Improved Concentration Aura. The nice thing about giving up Precision, and 1 handed spec is they are passive. You never see them working or know exactly what they did for you. Its not like the game calculates a miss by 3% and then puts "PRECISION" on your screen instead of miss to let you know Precision was what made you hit and not just dumb luck. I do miss reckoning, but only when I solo. As a tank, I want abilities I can control and count on. Procs like Reckoning and Redoubt are gravy. I always work under the assumption they w...

For some crazy reason I always think about the song "How Bizarre" by OMC ( http://music.yahoo.com/track/1263029 ) when I think about Karazhan. Part of the chorus goes "How bizarre, how bizzare, how bizzare" and I always think like "Karazhan, Karazhan, Karazhan". So anyway, Sunday night we returned to Karazhan. The group composition changed a bit from Friday. Fridays group was Prot Paladin (me!), Feral Druid (Zadorr), Hybrid Holy/Disc Priest (Tanzi), Resto Druid (Baconstrip), Hybrid Balance Resto Druid (Lakini), Fire Mage (Faceeraser), Afflication Warlock (Regolas), Beast Mastery Hunter (Skat), Marksman Hunter (Schmedlap), Combat Rogue (Agamegnome). Sundays group was Prot Paladin (me!), Feral Druid (Zadorr), Hybrid Holy/Disc Preist (Tanzi), Holy Paladin (Sevenn), Hybrid Balance Resto Druid (Lakini), Arcane Mage (Brambles), Elemental Shaman (Wichita), Feral Druid (Origami), Marksman Hunter (Schmed), and Combat Rogue (Lou). We started with Moroes. Fri...

I ran a couple of WSG rounds with my guild last night. It took a couple of games to get a full group together but it was fun. We won some and we lost some. The great thing about Guild PVP night is that you look up at the end of the night and you've got all this honor and marks and you don't even feel like you hard to work at it, because you had so much fun. I can see why people don't like doing solo BGs. My only regret was that I couldn't go longer. I made a couple of decisions. First off, I went ahead and bought a PVP Mechostrider. He's cool and as a bonus it's effected by Crusader Aura just like my Charger. Opponents don't know what I am quite as quickly. I mean nothing says Paladin quite like riding in on the Charger. The other thing I've decided is that I'm going to stick with my hunter. Out of all the alts I considered my reason for dismissing him was the weakest. I can always get groups with the guild and he's not an "endgame" cha...

Last night, Heroes Inc once more braved the challenges of Kara. But once again, we could get no further than attempts on Moroes. One of the issues we had this time was that I was the only Paladin, so that gave us only one "Get out of garrote free" card, and that was on a 3 minute cooldown. Our resto druid (Bacon) is an incredible healer, but asking him to heal a main tank, and keep up HoTs through the garrote was asking too much. I've only beaten Moroes two times, and I think both of those times we've had two Paladins, and one Shadow Priest. Even with only one Paladin and no Shadow Priest we got him down to 5 percent before our healer mana gave out and we wiped. I'm sure everyone is frustrated and upset we aren't getting him down. I've looked over the strat and my own gear, but I don't see a whole lot of room for improvement. The good news is that I'm nowhere near as upset this week as I was last week. I guess I see going from wiping on him at ...

I've always had a thing for alts. I love them, but I've always had a hard time getting one really going. They always seem to kind of peter out around level 15-20. Its just hard for me to find a class I like as much as a Paladin. I've played every class except Warlock to at least that range. I just can't bring myself to play a Warlock, the whole play with demons thing just freaks me out. /shudder One thing I've learned, I don't like cloth classes. I hate feeling so squishy. Leather is not much better, with the notable exception of Druids. My problem righ tnow, is a really good friend rolled on AoS. He's got a mage around level 34. I'd love to run with him at that level, but I can't seem to focus on one alt long enough to catch up to him. So lets toss out all the cloth classes. That leaves 6. My Shaman felt too much like my Paladin. Melee, melee, Shock, instead of melee, melee, Judge. My rogue was very hard to keep alive. I keep dying with him. I proba...

Oh yes, it's Arena night And the feeling's right Oh yes, it's Arena night Oh what a night (oh what a night) This is your night tonight, everything' s gonna be alright Cause it's Arena night, o what a night. My apologies to Kool and the Gang for butchering their song there. As you can tell from the tone of my post, Arena went much better last night. I think all of the practicing and theorycrafting and losing we have been going through has finally started to pay off. Our communication, especially between me and our Resto Druid (Bacon) was much improved. The other teams could lock me down from time to time, but either Bacon or even our Boomkin ( Lakini ) would get a heal on me and I'd be good. Arena master is really helping with target selection. Although, I think surprise may be one of our advantages. It seemed after we beat a team, we had a tougher time if we played them again. We even beat a two Paladin team which had been a real bane to us in the past. Our ...

So last night was supposed to be Arena night for Honors. Unfortunately, real life intervened for one of our players and we had to postpone. That left the night open. There was a group forming for Mechanar, so I threw my hat into the ring. I asked if anyone would mine if we did Botanica instead. We had a Priest in the group who wanted a drop, and frankly, I wanted another shot at my shoulders. The group was Me (Prot Paladin), Brambles (Arcane Mage), Wichita (Elemental Shaman), Ferth (Fury Warrior), and Calexis (Discipline Priest). There is a word for what this group had, and that word is sick DPS. Heroes is basically overgeared for all Normal mode instances and it showed. We basically plowed through the place, even AoEing some pulls. We even got a double pull at one point and came through. The only boss who was remotely challenging was the 3rd boss (The Tender). For our first wipe, I ran out of range of my healer. GG, me. Next wipe was caused by the Boss going after our DPS. I cou...

"So what now, Jack Sparrow? Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle until Judgment Day and trumpets sound?" - Captain Barbosa The plan couldn't have been simpler. Step 1: Take the boat to Theramore Step 2: Fly to Rachet Step 3: Ride through the Barrens to Mulgore Step 4: Talk to the guy at the Faire, get my Darkmoon Card: Vengence, hearth out. Simple. Only one small problem, I play on a PVP server. Everything is going dandy until I get to the Faire. There is only one level 70 Horde there, a Tauren Shaman riding a Raptor. He was standing close to the NPC I had to talk to to turn in my quest. I calmly walked by him, and started to talk to the NPC. I hear a dismount. Great. FROSTSHOCK! Okay, it's basically just me and him around, so I figured...... . . IT'S HAMMER TIME! After a few moments, I see Earth Shield go up and watch an instant heal to full life. Great, he's resto. What insued was one of the longest PVP battles you may have ever seen. Resto Sh...

For the first time Heroes was to attempt two nights of Kara. As the time for the runs drew near, the server was acting very strange. Horrendous lag, people dc'ing out of nowhere. At one point, we thought we would have to call the runs. There were a bunch of people from the first night who didn't make it the second night, so we had to origanize the groups. We had the added complication of people having Raid IDs from Friday night, so we had to keep people with the same Raid ID together. We put everyone together in one big raid while we got everything sorted out. We were running behind because of the server issues so half the people were already at Kara. I guess they got anxious and zoned in while we were all in the big raid. All the new people got Group 1s Raid ID, so Group 2, my group, was sidelined. Even with that, we still would have needed a PuG druid even to have a second group. So for everything I've put into my character and I see two bosses in Kara for the entire w...

Saturday night, I tried really hard to get a group for Heroics. I just needed two badges to get my Libram of Repentance. It was really hard to get a group together as most people were doing other things. My buddy Bacon was on, but I really didn't want to ask him. He gets so many people asking/begging him to heal their runs, that I kind of wanted to give him a break. I finally had to go to a former guildy (Mareck) to heal for a Heroic Slave Pens run. It was Me (Prot Paladin), Wichita (Elemental Shaman), Brambles (Arcane Mage), Mareck (Holy Paladin) and Zadorr (Feral Druid). We did every well. Slave Pens is much nicer with a little CC. I switched out to healer gear for the last boss as its easier to do with two healers especially if your main healer is a Paladin. Of course, he didn't drop the belt I wanted, but that wasn't a big concern. I got my badges. I went to Shattrath and purchased my Libram of Repentance. I fired up the TankPoints calculator and started swapping ...

Heroes made its next forray into Kara this weekend. We have well over 20 people keyed so we attempted to form two group. I was asked to lead group 2. It was a real honor to get to lead a group of my fellow Heroes into Kara. Our Guild Leader is an awesome Fury Warrior named Ferth and he lead group 1 with me taking group 2. We divided up the available players online and headed into our respective instances. My group was Honorshammer (Prot Paladin), Zadorr (Feral Druid), Faceeraser (Fire Mage), Tanzi (Holy Priest), Agamegnome (Combat Rogue), Elysium (Resto Druid), Origami (Feral Druid), Skatmando (Marksman Hunter), Rorst (Holy Paladin), Domemore (PuG Warlock). We started clearing Attumen's trash without much issue. We were ready to pull Midnight with plenty of time. And somehow, I messed up the pickup again when they merged. I consecrated as soon as they despawned and exorcismed when they were targetable, but my Feral Druid offtank still pulled aggro. I don't see how he could hav...

After a night of getting my head handed to me by real people in Arenas, I figured I needed to have the AI work me over in Heroics. So we got a group together. There was much discussion about which Heroic to do, and who was keyed for what. We eventually decided on Slave Pens. This was my 3rd trip to the Slave Pens, and I had nearly the same group as my last trip. Me (Prot Paladin) Baconstrip (Resto Druid) Wichita (Elemental Shaman) Zadorr (Feral Druid) Origami (Feral Druid) Two big differences from my last group. One, we had a mage in place of Zadorr, and two, Wichita, our Elemental Shaman had spec'ed Resto for that run. The lack of CC or a second healer showed up often as we made our run. I could multitank 2 or 3 mobs but with only healer, we couldn't get through the damage. Plus many of the mobs in there have abilities akin to Sunder Armor, which only makes me take more damage. We wiped multiple times on trash, and once on each boss except for the first, but we got through ...

Last night was Arena night for me and my 5v5 team, PVPed in My Pants. Our illustrious team members include: Me (Prot Paladin) Lakini (Boomkin Druid) Ferth (Fury Warrior) Baconstrip (Resto Druid) Lou (Assassination Rogue) You know the old saying, "You win some, you lose some." Well last night it was "You lose some, you lose some more." By the end of the night we were all pretty frustrated. The main culprit of the night seemed to be Paladins. Don't you just hate those guys? ;-) Specifically one spell Paladins can cast, Blessing of Protection. Blessing of Protection Rank 3 6% of base Mana 30 yd range Instant cast 5/4/3 min cooldown (depending on talents) A targeted party member is protected from all physical attacks for 10 sec, but during that time they cannot melee attack or use physical abilities. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or B...

10/15/2010 - Patch 4.0.1 has hit the Live servers. This guide is now outdated. I will not have time to continue to update it. Updated 11/17/2009 - Rewrote parts of the first Path of th Cleric section (Holy) from 40 to 50. Also corrected an issue with the duration of blessings. Both changes prompted from excellent feedback in the comments. Choosing the Paladin as your class shows remarkable good taste and high intelligence. As a level 80 Paladin, I'd thought I'd share some thoughts on leveling a Paladin character. Honors, you are a rare combination of brains and good looks, what race should I make my Paladin? Well, I'm glad you asked. Roll Horde, you're a Blood Elf. Next Question! Oh, wait, you're Alliance, excellent choice, my lad. Of the 3 Alliance races, I would say Draenei. The Draenei starting area is really cool, and tons of fun. It's also the best put together of any of the Alliance starting zones making questing and leveling much easier and frankly more f...