Honor's Code

So I was approached by someone on my server about getting some tanking advice. He is a Holy Paladin for his guild, and they would like the option of having him offtank in Karazhan and possibly High King Maulgar. The only piece of tanking gear he has if the Battlescar Boots from the Chess event in Kara. How can he pick up some quick tanking gear? At what point should be alter his spec? When can he try tanking? If you've been playing for a while as Holy, one advantage you will have is that you will have already gotten your reputations up with the various Outland groups. Let's see what kind of quick tanking suit we can build for the Holy going Prot type. It's time to go shopping. Head = Felsteel Helm (BS crafted) Neck = Strength of the Untamed (CE rep) Shoulders = hope you didn't vendor or DE your Righteous shoulders. If you did look on the AH for a green "Of The Crusade" or "Of the Knight", or farm 5 Ethereum Prison Key ( http://ww

Lurker is our 3rd Progression Kill in January. I love that. My job on Lurker was to tank one of the Guardians that spawns when Lurker submerges. They don't hit very hard with their normal melee, but they have an Arcing Smash ability which can hit pretty hard. Their normal melee on me was around 2k, and the Arcing Smash got as high as 4300. I'd drop a Consecrate as they were swimming up and hit them with a Judgement of Righteousness. One of the DPSers in my area was Trelic, our best geared Feral Druid. During our 2nd attempt, he ripped the Guardian right off of me, and got killed. After that I added in an Avengers Shield to my rotation to make sure I kept him up. Not only did I have Trelic, but I also had Raistilan, probably our best geared mage and one of the Raid Leaders. I burst my threat hard when he spawned and my Guardian went down pretty fast. We usually had about 5 seconds to stand there and catch our breath while we waited for Lurker to emerge. While Lurker was

Dis is how we make da Fishie Chowder. First we take our ingredients: 3 Rogues, extra sharp 4 Mages, sheared 3 Priest, 2 light and 1 dark 2 Warlocks, extra dark 3 Hunters, frozen 3 Warriors, toughened 2 Druids, fury and 1 druid, leafy 5 Paladins, light and 1 Paladin toughened Combine all ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Take 1 Warrior and beat on him constantly until well smoothed. Add in 1 Extra Large Fish. Fry, Freeze, Stab, Slice, Shoot and Drain Life well until Fish is a golden brown and quite dead. Serve extra cold with purples.

I've often wondered what life would have been like if Paladins had been better tanks in the Pre-BC world. I got a little bit of a chance to find out when I went to Molten Core on Saturday night. Our SSC raid was called because we lacked enough people. Initially there were only about 4 or 5 of us but eventually we grew to 15. I had done MC back in the day, but it was a 40 man raid back then. I was assigned a Warrior to heal and basically had to keep cleansing everyone constantly. Luckily, there was a mod called Decursive back then that figured out who needed to be cleansed and cast the spell for you. Just bind your Decursive to a button and spam away. What I discovered was that MC would have been very hard on Paladin tanks, but with a couple of places where we would have really helped. First of all, there is a ton of magic damage flying around from nearly every mob. The Crushing Blow mechanic would have had to have been removed from most of the bosses for Palad

DING! Exalted Aldor. This is a goal I've been working on since my first day in Shattrah, but it seemed like there was always another goal that was more immediate and took precedance. In addition, getting Aldor rep could be gained almost as a side effect of other activities like questing to level 70, doing my dailies, or running Shadow Labs. It was never something I really went out of my way to get. Until I got close to Exalted. Being so close, I wanted to see it completed. I flew out to Legion Hold, gathered up a bunch of the WraithWalkers and went to town. I couldn't take them in as large of packs as the Demon Hunter Supplicants because they were not as tightly packed and they have a magic damage attack which you have to run out of. With 3 or 4 of them doing it, it was hard to find a place to run out and not take fire damage. Once I was Exalted, I went out and purchased my Greater Inscription of Warding and slapped that on my Justicar Shoulderguards. (wowhead photo) Unfortunat

Friday night was Progression night. I was all excited. Then Mrs. Hammer informs me we are going out to dinner with a couple friend of ours. See Hammer is a happily married guy, and one of things that makes Mrs. Hammer so incredible is she understands / puts up with my WoW addiction. One of the things I do to keep it that way is to make sure WoW never interferes with our life. Basically, if she wants me at any time for any reason, she gets me. I don't tell her, "Not tonight, I've got to raid." Because of that, she never gives me hard time about playing, and because she knows she takes priority over the game, she rarely feels the need to test it. The net result is I get nearly all the time I want to game. Dinner was at 6:30pm. That gives me two hours to still be on at a reasonable time. Of course I didn't log in until almost 9pm. To my great surprise, the Raid has not started yet. Not only was the Frost tank (me) a no show, but we needed a couple of he

Galoheart remembers the day the created his toon. I've long forgotten (sad I know). Honors was my 2nd go at the Paladin class after creating a Human Paladin named Ittai on Rexxar (PVE) in March of 2006. But we just passed a major moment in Honor's virtual life. The day he passed through the Dark Portal. A week ago Wednesday was the 1 year anniversary of the release of the Burning Crusade. How I missed it is beyond me. It may not have been his Birthday but it signaled a rebirth. When Patch 2.0.1 hit on December 5, 2006 I threw off the chains of Holy, and changed my spec to Prot. I transferred from Dark Iron to Altar of Storms and became part of the guild known as Heroes Inc. When I stepped through the Dark Portal, I was wearing (as best as I can remember) : a Soulforge Belt , Soulforge Gloves , Zandalarian Bracers , PVP Shoudlers , a Briarwood Reed , a Lightforge Breastplate , and a Helm of the Holy Avenger . I had my trusty Immovable Object and my axe, Serathil along with the

"I'm sure you get this all the time but i could use some help. please tell me why i am getting rocked so hard in heroics http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tortheldrin&n=Seik " This was left as a comment on my post about hitting 375 Engineering and getting my ROFLcopter. I don't mind helping people but I'd much prefer you email me a question of this type rather than leave it as a comment on a completely unrelated post. You will find my email address to the left side of the page. Also the more specific you can be in a question, the better I feel I can offer some advice that might help like which Heroic or which mobs, etc. That said, let me see what I can offer to assist this magic addicted, light stealing Blood Elf. "rocked so hard in Heroics". So it seems the major concern is the incoming damage from Heroic mobs. You are probably not going to dig my response, but here we go: Welcome to Heroics. The fact is that

So I've been analyzing and analyzing Badge of Justice rewards because I've got a big ole pile of Badges sitting in my bank. I've made posts, spreadsheets, Warcrafter profiles, argued on Maintankadin, and basically tried to make sure that I was making the best decision I could make. In my indecision, I had accumulated over 100 Badges. I knew I was pretty much down to the Belt, Boot and Bracers. It was time to get off the proverbial pot. I already had the 3 big upgrades I wanted from Badges: the Chest, Legs and Cloak. Nowhere in my gear was there a glaring weakness. I basically had good enough gear to tank anything Mal Katai is going to put me up against in SSC or TK as either the Main Tank or an Offtank. There was an upgrade/sidegrade to each Badge reward very close at my current level of progression. All this made the decision very difficult. So here's what I bought and why. First of all I bought the Girdle of the Protector (cue screenshot!) Numbers are compared to the

The grind is done. I finally hit 375 Engineering. Of course this meant one thing. Time to build my helicopter! I had all the mats already purchased except for the Hula Doll. The Doll you buy from Grifthah. Now in patch 2.3, Griftah was banished from Shattrah and was hanging out just outside. I flew up and down the road looking for him. Then I remembered talking with Aoes who about the amulet vendor in Lower City. Sure enough, somehow Griftah managed to swindle his way back inside the city. I bought the Hula Doll from him and headed to the forge. You can actually see the Hula Doll on the dash. Nice touch, Blizzard! One of our hunters had just finished his grind with Netherwing so we met in Shattrah for our new mount screenshot. I like the copter so much better than the Gryphon. I appreciate its loyal service, but it will remain banked for the foreseeable future.So another big goal accomplished. I set the goal, put my mind to it and accomplished it. Now the goal moves to paying back the

Hello, I've been reading your post for a few months now, and I really enjoy your posts. The information has been excellent, and has helped me in my pursuit to be a Tankadin. I had an issue the other day where I was running Heroic Steam Vaults with a pally healer. The issue was in pulling the oracles on the way to the first boss, we were consistently feared. The pally starts picking apart my talents and calling me a noob for not having Unyielding Faith, or the points from the holy tree leading up to it. Basically my build has 44 points in Prot, and 17 in Ret, with benediction, parry, improved judgment, pursuit of justice, and improved Ret aura. I guess I'm pretty confident in how my prot build sits, but it is still a little unnerving having another pally tell you to L2P pally. My question is what are your thoughts on putting your points in holy vice ret? My tankadin is Aarogan on Black Dragonflight if you want to see my toon. Thanks again for keeping your blog chocked full of u

Dear Honor’s Hammer: Hello! I have a 61 Paladin who I’m leveling with the goal of main-tanking for my casual guild when he hits 70. As I work my way through the various quest chains in Hellfire Peninsula, I’m finding it difficult to choose my quest rewards. Potentially, nearly any item I pick up will help my Paladin—Strength lets me hit harder and block better, spelldamage gear will help me maximize my spells and hold aggro in instances, and Stamina and Intellect will both keep me up longer. All of the stats seem desirable (well, except Spirit), and I don’t know which drops to roll on or which quest rewards to pick. Do you think you could come up with an ordered list of preferred stats for the leveling Paladin? I’m earning most of my XP by either AoE-grinding my way through quests or tanking for 5-mans. Thanks for any assistance you can provide! Svyetlii In most cases what you want to do with quests is take the plate rewards. Any plate with spell damage, intellect or mana per 5 is m

Another less than completely successful night in Gruul's Lair last night. The plan had been start SSC, kill Hydross and move on to attempts on Lurker. The problem was our Nature Tank was sick, so we couldn't do Lurker. We were also a bit thin on AoE classes. We lacked Crowd Control for Magtheridon. So we figured we get the farm instances out of the way and take care of Gruuls. HKM was very messy. Hunter's didn't misdirect on the pull, and the Warlocks were slow controlling the Fel Puppies. I've never been a Warlock (not even level 1) so I have no clue how difficult it is for them, so I won't comment any further. We got HKM down on the 2nd try but it was not what I would call a "clean" kill. Then onto Gruul himself. People did not spread out well and we kept losing people to Shatter. Also, our DPS felt a bit low. We got Gruul to sub 10%, but then the tanks started going down because the healers were either dead from people Shattering on them or

Last night was an interesting night for me in WoW. I'm starting to see some things in myself that I never thought I would I see. I logged in and saw we had a group already in Gruul's. I asked how long they had been there and I get the idea from the response it had been about 10 minutes. I start to get a little upset because I had posted on our forums when I'd be on. I basically expected them to hold me a spot. GG me. When the group struggled to kill Gruul, they called me to come in. At first, I was going to turn them down. I was in a snit for lack of a better word. Sulking. Being real mature. But I decide to go anyway. On our first go, the Main Tank had him too far away from the healers so he was moving him around a bit which made it very hard to keep him in the Consecration. Then I lost #2 threat to a DPS Warrior. I blew my whole mana bar and a mana pot trying to get him back, but because the healers were trying to keep the DPS Warrior up, I got caught low rig

Hello I really enjoy your blog and I have a question for you. What is the optimal speed weapon that I am looking for to use to get the full impact from reckoning? I am still leveling (lvl 33 as of this writing). Thanks - Paul Ah, Reckoning. It has, in all its various forms and iterations, been one of my favorite Protection talents. For those unfamiliar with Reckoning, here is the official description: Reckoning Rank 5 Gives you a 10% chance after being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack. You see that 4 swings within 8 seconds (of course you did, I bolded it.) That would seem to lead to a straightforward conclusion that you need a 2.0 speed weapon to be able to use up all 4 charges of Reckoning. However, there is more to it than that. Reckoning is a proc, and one that is triggered by damage you take. Now the complication arises with your swing timer. You don't know where in your swing timer you are go

After a wonderful afternoon of watching football, I got a call from my buddy Aoesrus. Raydz was looking for an offtank for ZA. I don't get many chances to run ZA, so I logged on and got into the raid. I was in the back of the raid picking up the 2 trolls that spawn from that direction. Cellestia, our Holy Paladin was taking care of the birds at the front. The trolls in the back are annoying because they spawn with aggro on a someone (generally a healer), and there first move is a Warrior like Charge which stuns you, leaving them free to go after the raid. We cleared trash without much issue, although it got kind of tough towards the end. As per usual, I slapped on my healing gear for the Boss fight. Eagle is very heal intensive, and it only requires 1 tank. Neither me or Raydz does much DPS and by having him tank and me heal with have 1 less in melee. We had two rogues in our party, so that would have been nearly half the raid in melee range. With Static Dispution flying around, yo

My Internet connection decided to behave Friday night, and I was able to go raiding. I logged on around start time to discover we didn't have enough people online to get the group together. We waited for guys to log on to the game. It took a little over an hour but we finally got to 25 people with the right mix of Healers, Tanks and DPS. We had a new guy in our raid, a Resto Shaman. This is unusual for my guild because we don't have many Shamans of any flavor that raid with us. Almost all our Shamans are alts of other players in the guild. This Shaman was a "little" undergeared, or at least that what some who inspected him say. I think we as players are a little quick to judge someone based entirely on the color of the pixels on their gear. There are some really fine green and blue items in the game. Well despite this guy being "undergeared", he did a fantastic job. We went into SSC looking at his Dukeness, Hydross. I used my invisiblity potion and cre

MK is a "casual" guild. I know that means different things to different people. For Mal Katai, it means we try to limit our exposure to 25 man Raiding to no more than 3 nights a week. We tried our hand at SSC on Tuesday, and we are planning our "big" raid for Friday, and we want a run at Gruul/Mag sometime this weekend as well. To keep from getting too burned out on 25 mans, we decided last night would be for farming/Kara/Heroics whatever. I started out 'doing my dailies' and made laps around Zangarmarsh looking for Water Clouds. The Primal Air market is collapsing on my server due to Engineers overfarming the Air Clouds in Nagrand. So I'm going to Zangarmarsh for the more stable, yet less abundant, Water Clouds. With my Epic Flyer, I can cover a good deal of ground pretty quickly. While I'm out buzzing Zabra'jin and Swamprat Post (lol @ Guard's Mark), I get asked to tank a Kara. I have to honest, Kara just doesn't get the juices

I made this data into a (in my humble opinion) easier to read format here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pxRKUgjn9TRpechmWBPU_Xg&hl=en (also at the end of this post) Belts! I'll start by comparing each Badge Belt to it Kara counterpart: Irontusk Girdle(60 Badges) versus Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable (own) For your 60 Badges you get: 88 Armor, 9 Stamina, 33 Dodge, and 1.6% more Pure Avoidance. You lose 3 defense, 20 Block Rating, and 1% less Uncrushability. Girdle of the Protector(60 Badges) versus Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable (own) For your 60 Badges, you get: 88 Armor, 4 Stamina, 27 Dodge, 18 Spell Hit, 23 Spell Damage, and 0.78% more Pure Avoidance. You lose 13 Defense, 20 Block Rating, and less 1.98% Uncrushability. Next I compare each belt to its SSC counterpart: Girdle of the Protector(60 Badges) versus Belt of the Guardian (SSC Pattern) Protector has less Stamina (-8), Defense (-8), Block Value (-33), Intellect (-13), Spell Damage (-2), but more Dodge (

The plan as usual was a good one. Return to SSC, kill Hydross again and proceed to Lurker. Good plan. The execution left a little bit to be desired. First problem, I was late. I had a meeting at 6:30pm and I told the Raid Leader I wouldn't be online at 7:30pm when the invites went out. I figured I'd be home at 8:00pm at the latest. Sorry, wrong answer. Thanks for playing, we've got some lovely parting gifts for you. I roll in the house at 8:30pm. Ugh. I log in expecting to find them in SSC working on Lurker and me begging for a spot. I get an invite as soon as I log in. We form up the Raid and set off to do battle with the Duke, Duke, Duke,.... Duke of Currents......Duke, Duke. (my apologies to Gene Chandler). We get one attempt in before we start losing people. This one has to go, so we get a replacement. Then the next one has to go. This leads to long breaks in between attempts as we have to stop, and summon, and get the raid going again. We've only

Posted on Maintankadin as a way to address the many Badge Reward posts. Any discussion of Badge rewards must start with the Libram of Repentance. It is the essential purchase for any tank looking to reach uncruhsable. After that, it is generally accepted that the Chest, Legs, and Cloak are very strong rewards for anyone at the T5 level and below. Order of acquisition of these rewards should be prioritized on which slot of yours needs upgrading the most and which slot can be most easily filled in the instances you are running. After those three, there is not a strong consensus on which route to go, although the Boots, and both Belts are seen as strong options that are a tier below the Chest, Legs and Cloak. For both the Boots and Belts, there are numerous non Badge rewards that are competitive with the Badge rewards in the T4 and T5 instances. The choice of which Badge Belt should largely be made depending on your expected role. Main Tanks tend to favor the heavy defense of the Iron Tus

Last night Mal Katai had some unfinished business with Gruul the Dragonkiller. This time we brought our normal Raiders. I was in my normal offtank position eating Hurtful Strikes. About halfway through the fight, everything kind of stops, and I get disconnected. That is a bad thing. I alert the backup Tank, Radyz to get ready. I log back in as fast as I can and low and behold I still have 2nd hate. We finish up and one shot his sorry behind. Still no Aldori Legacy Defender. The Shield that no less than 4 of us all want, has never dropped, not one time. Boo! Well that was a nice warm up but then it was on the main event. Magtheridon. We all set up in our positions. The first Warlock goes down and I aggro a couple of stray infernals before the Warlocks banish them. About 35 seconds before Mag spawns I get ready to go pick him up. Then I notice that I can't move, I can't cast and everyone is running in place. DC'ed again!! Raydz was able to pick him up but the attempt en

Friday night Mal Katai set our collective sites on Hydross the Unstable. About 30 minutes before start time, Doraelian, the Guild Master of Mal Katai whispers me to tell me they want to try me on Frost. I hearthed to Shattrah where I was given the Iceguard Helm , Iceguard Breastplate , and the Iceguard Leggings . Guildies searched their banks, and their alts to provide me with the materials to make The Frozen Eye and the Pendent of Thawing . The decision to give me this gear and use me as the Main Tank for Frost was never question once (at least where I could see it). Even if it had been questioned, Dora is the type that once she's made a decision, she's going to stick to it. This is what my prepull paperdoll looked liked. I had 377 Frost Resist, and 473 Defense. This is well under the Defense cap, but I have the Resilence from my Merciless Gladiator's Gavel. According to the WWS Report , I only got Crit 1 time the entire night. Since our initial attempt, I've ob

Soridormi looked over the assembled heroes of Mal Katai before her. These creatures of Azeroth, dwarf, human, elf, gnome, and draenai had been sent to her from Andormu. They had been successful in stopping the Infinite Dragonflight from altering the timeline. The Dark Portal opened as it should have, as it did, as it always will. She began her address to the mortals. "Seven vials were drawn from the Well of Eternity by Illidan. He poured three into the lake on top of Mount Hyjal and a second Well of Eternity was created. For years the rest were believed lost. With the opening of the Dark Portal, we've come to know that he gave one each to his lieutenants Kael'thas and Vashj. Retrieve what remains of them; we will need them as foci to open a gateway to any events tied to Mount Hyjal, recent or ancient. The outcome of the Battle of Mount Hyjal must be preserved." "We understand, Soridormi. Mal Katai will not fail." Mal Katai left the Caverns of Time and return

Last night, Mal Katai had a couple of Kara groups going. After our struggles in Gruul's, it was nice to go back and just own a place. Even going, as I did, with the "alt" team, we had little trouble. Our group consisted of 3 Paladins, 2 Priests, 1 Druid, 1 Warlock, 1 Warrior, and 2 Hunters. Everyone was relaxed, and joking around. The pressure of 25 man raiding put aside for at least one night. We killed Attumen, Moroes, Big Bad Wolf, Maiden, and Nightbane. I tanked Nightbane with 2 Fear Wards and used my "flash" Divine Shield to break out of one fear. (Flash Divine Shield is where I bubble to clear the fear or any debuff and then immediately cancel it). This run was especially rewarding for ole Hammer because Moroes finaly dropped the Pocketwatch. This was the last upgrade I needed from Karazhan, and it's the only drop in there that I really can't replace. Curator was stingy with his Legs, no problem, Badge me baby. Nightbane like ke

Phenomenal Cosmic Powers!! Itty bitty Tankadin. Gnomish Technology at its finest.

So I broke down and borrowed 700g from a Guildy last night to buy my epic flying skill. We flew out to Shadowmoon Valley together and I laid down my 5000g. Since my engineering is still at 368, I couldn't make my Epic Copter, so I'm back to a bird. My thinking is that I'll be able to do my Dailies faster, farm faster and basically make money faster with an Epic. The Epic Copter shall be mine! Besides, going Zoom Zoom Zoom through Shadowmoon Valley is fun. I picked the Purple one because I thought it looked the best on me. Of course, the first thing I had to do was head up to Netherwing to check out the new quests I could do. I gotta say I'm not a big fan of them. All of them require you to kill mobs, and hope for infrequent drops. The little glob things run from you at half life and refuse to stay in my Consecrate like good little mobs and die. The flayers and the Ravagers are pretty easy but heavily farmed. I don't skin, mi

Like so many things in the Tankadin world, which Aura and Blessing you should use are highly situational. My main 2 Auras are Devotion Aura and Retribution Aura. In situation where I am going to get hit pretty hard, I use Devotion Aura. In situation where I'm not going to take a lot of damage or anytime I'm in AoE mode, it's Retribution Aura. I also tend to switch Auras during a fight. Let's say I'm on a good run of bad luck and just had a series of Dodge, Parry, Miss, Miss, Dodge. My healers are probably wondering what is going on as my life bar isn't moving, but my Mana bar is. I see that I'm low on mana, but high on health, I'll switch to Retribution Aura for 1 hit and go back to Devo. Changing Auras only costs you Global Cooldown, there is no Mana involved. I don't ever use Concentration Aura while tanking. Everything I cast as a Tank is an instant. The Resist Auras, I try to get up any time I know that I'm going to take damage from that elem

(Somewhat grumpy, emotional, and ranting text to follow. I'll have a nice Auras and Blessings post later) Last night was awful. The plan was great. One shot High King Maulgar and Gruul and then hopefully get Magtheridon down again. Then we'd be open to SSC on Friday. I logged out right at Gruul's Lair because I knew I wasn't going to be logging on until basically start time (8:00pm). I log on and get an invite and see only 15 or so in the Raid. I did notice some new faces like my buddy Aoesrus. We couldn't summon people in because 2 different Horde guilds were outside. We don't start pulling until almost 9pm. We wiped 3 times on High King before we finally got him down. Some of it was bad luck (Mage Tank getting his Spell Steal resisted), and some of it was poor execution (not getting Fel Hunters under control, dispelling the Spell Shield before our Mage Tank could steal it). We took several attempts at Gruul, but to no avail. The closest we got him

If you talk to me for any length of time you will undoubtedly hear me talk about ways that Protection Paladins can be improved (buffed). Some people interpert this as me thinking that Prot Paladins can't do the job. There is a big difference between thinking a class needs a buff and thinking its broken.

Perhaps I should have entitled this "My Threat Cycle" as this post will only cover what I do to generate threat. Many of my tools are situational, so each situation is a little different. First you have to think about the basic questions that come up every time you endeavor to top the threat table. Which Seal? Which Judgement? What Rank of Consecrate? An as Alliance Paladin, I have two seals to choose from: Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Righteousness. My preference is going to be Seal of Vengeance , but I have to examine the dynamics of the fight and think about how easy it will be to maintain stacks. If the fight is fairly stationary, and doesn't involve any prolonged time away from the boss, I want to be building and Judging full Seal of Vengeance stacks. Over time, Seal of Vengeance will do more Threat than Seal of Righteousness. Seal of Righteousness is a better Seal when you need to burst your TPS (generally at the beginning of a fight). With my spell damage (