Honor's Code

According to my nifty little site counter, this site has reached 50,000 views. Thank you to all the visitors, commentors, and Lurkers. I hope you continue to enjoy what you find on my blog. Big thanks to World Of Warcraft , Ardent Defender , Positive Warrior , MainTankadin , Repair Bill , and Zen Tanking for linking to me and referring people here.

2.4 was announced that Blizzard would be introducing "Tier 6" level Badge gear. The Legs and Ring look pretty good. Both of the Chests have possibilities but the boots are just bad. The Belt is situational. You would think for their cost and being an entire Tier above the 2.3 Badge they would be clear upgrades in all cases. Not so much. First up we have the big ticket item, Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor 1406 Armor 78 Stamina Red Socket Yellow Socket 25 Defense 43 Dodge 37 Spell damage Comparing it to the 2.3 Legs, Unwavering Legguards. 5 stamina, 3 defense, 43 dodge, 37 spell damage -1 socket, -30 Block Rating, -59 Block Value The stamina and defense are easily made up by the extra socket, but the Dodge and Spell Damage blow the old badge legs out of the water. It seems like I'd want the new Badge Legs for Bosses and threat fights and use the old badge legs in my Block Value set. 100 Badges and it looks like a definite BUY! They've also added a new Tanking Ring to ...

Not really much to report from last night. I logged in and got asked to do a Kara run for a group of alts. I asked if I could take my friend's mage. Aoesrus has changed jobs recently and his work schedule makes it difficult to raid, so I've been trying to get him in some Kara's for badges, and a couple of pieces of loot that he needs. Last week, I was able to play Aoesrus in Kara for a PuG and I have to say it was pretty fun. Before I zoned in, Adam, Aoesrus real player, gave me a spell rotation and some tips on how to play a mage. The first boss we did was Curator. I died a couple of times on the trash when I would run in and start Arcane Explosion on the little mana feeders. Adam told me later Blizzard would have been a better choice. We get through that and pull Curator. I was Ice Lancing Astral Flares and Frostbolting Curator during Evocation. I think I did okay. After that we went up to Shade of Aran. I did my best to counterspell his Fireballs, but wow does count...

Hey Honor how you doing? I have only been to kara once since we spoke. But anyway, I main tanked Attumen, Moroes and healed on maiden. The others said that a pally tank wasn’t any good for maiden, so I just off healed, question is, is that true? We made it to romeo and Juliet and wiped a few times and everyone called it, couldn’t get a group since. So I took on romeo, dispelled the poison off myself since no pally healers, and got him down to 4%, and the rogue missed the heal on Juliet as she healed herself from 3 to 27% and the healer missed heal on me. We wiped and people started to break and that was that. I am now like 516 or something and 1.98% crushable. I didn’t seem to get one shot at all. Sorry for such a long email, I was just happy with my performance, that I owe all to you from reading your blog and wanted to give you a little info on how I did The other question that I meant to ask is what do you do for spell power? With all the gear that I have obtained is for defens...

You ever heard a story from your friends from a party or event you should have been at, but for whatever reason you weren't. This is one of those stories. Back before I got involved in battling the Burning Legion and becoming a Hero of Azeroth, I played table top Role Playing Games. I had missed the previous nights session, so my gaming buddies relayed the events of the night. It started out pretty normal. Our party was in Waterdeep. My character, a Bard named Pter was off playing at a local Inn. The others were investigating some mysterious happenings near the mansion of a prominent Noble. They were noticed by the guards the Noble has employed to keep his property safe. A fight ensued and the guards will killed. At this point, 3 young ladies entered the room where my friends were playing. They were friends of my GM's roommate. Small talk ensued, and the girls asked the GM, named Bob, what he did for a living. He replied that he worked for the VA. Bob then asked Larry, w...

I record all my boss fights and upload them to WoWWebStats . WWS is a great tool for examining how you are doing. I generally look at things like how much damage the boss is doing to me or how many crushes I took. I went back to a couple of my WWS parses because I wanted to see what kind of TPS numbers I was producing. Omen or KTM can give you a snapshot of what you are doing at that moment, but at least for me, my TPS can vary quite a bit as the fight goes along. I got thinking about this when one of the posters on MainTankadin announced that T5 Tankadins should be producing 700 TPS. I wanted to know how I stacked up to that. So what I wanted to do was take the total threat produced and divide it by the time of the fight. The first problem I ran into was that there isn't a fight I'm doing right now that is just a "stand there and produce threat" the whole time. So with that in mind, I'm going to list out the fights, what my role is and what TPS numbers I produce...

My WoW weekend was fairly uneventful. Friday night, our progression Tempest Keep was cancelled. We had enough people online, just not our “core” people, so instead of risking a wipefest, the raid leaders simply called the raid. I didn’t log on Saturday night at all. Over the weekend, we had a new Tankadin apply to Mal Katai. When he applied, I went and pulled him up on the Armory. Basically, this guy had been Ret for leveling and didn’t have much tanking gear at all. His gear was still primarily Ret. His spec was a Holy/Port Hybrid. He was both crittable and crushable. All throughout his application, he talked about wanting to progress and tank. I had to level with the guy, he just wasn’t ready to tank, well anything. What was in my heart of hearts was to help him. Apparently, my honest appraisal came off a little harsh. So I offered to help him in anyway I could. I linked him to Tankadin 101 and to the MainTankadin boards. One nice result of the discussion I had with him on ...

Last night saw another Raid night come and go with no Raid. We had rescheduled our SSC run for the bosses we have down (Hydross/Lurker/Tidewalker) from Tuesday to Thursday. I logged on about 8:15pm, half expecting the raid invite window to be up on my screen before I fully rendered into the game. It didn’t come. So I flew over to Skettis to pick up a quick 12g from the bombing run there. Our GM said we were a little light on heals, so I whispered my old friend from Heroes Inc, DarkDescent. Double D, as I call him, runs some of the best premade BG groups on the server. I was fortunate that he had a spot open for me so I ran a couple of Warsong Gulch games with him and a bunch of my old buddies from Heroes. We won a couple of game fairly easily. DD really runs a tight group. If he had a passion for PVE instead of PVP, he’d make an awesome Raid Leader. As it is, he’s an incredible PVP team leader. After that, he needed to give my spot to one of his guildies. I totally understood t...

We didn’t raid Tuesday night. I’m not sure exactly why but I think it was because our Raid Leader was ill. So we didn’t get another kill on Hydross/Lurker. So instead of raiding, I was doing Dailies, fishing, and playing my alts. I got my Hunter up to level 62. Ganking in Hellfire Peninsula is an order of magnitude worse than when I leveled Honorshammer, and it’s especially bad around the little Cenarion Camp in western Hellfire. I play on a PVP server, so I understand that ganking comes with the territory. I had one run in with a Horde hunter that was particularly bad. We must have had all the same quests because I ran into him killing Void Walkers. He engaged and killed me. No big deal, PVP server. I came back, drank and bandaged up and attacked him. I had every advantage I could think of: he was engaged with a mob and I got the drop on him. He killed me anyway. Okay, time to find another quest to do. I go halfway across the zone and start working on another quest. He must have had t...

Monday night, Mal Katai put together a raid to go to Gruul’s Lair. Despite our success on Friday with Tidewalker, we really struggled in Gruul’s. This should have been a quick farming run, but once again, we had new people, and alts. The raid had zero Rogues in it, so we struggled stopping Blindeye from healing. We actually wiped on the first try, but we got him on the second. Then we went to Gruul. Our Warrior Tank was Lanorah. Within a few moments of the start of the fight, I could tell there was a problem. Lan just wasn’t putting out much threat. He was around 400 TPS the entire time. I really had to hold back to keep from passing him. This held back our melee dps as well as they had to stay below me and I had to stay below Lan. We had people dying to Shatters. After two attempts, Lan left the raid and Devona joined. Devona was able to put out much better threat. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get over 80% of his threat and was constantly chugging mana pots. That opened it up f...

One little tidbit I failed to mention in my Tidewalker post were the drops. I honestly don’t remember them except for the Ring of Sundered Souls. When I saw that drop, I almost sqeed. Many Tankadins consider Sundered Souls to be one of the best Tank rings currently in the game, better even than the ring that drops in Black Temple. It's a solid combination of Stamina, Defense, and Dodge. It’s paired with the Mount Hyjal repututation ring as the #1 combination for Protection Paladins in MT Gear Progression guild on MainTankadin. I pulled up the loot master and typed the whisper for my MKP bid. You ever notice how long it takes the loot master to get around to a piece of loot you really want. None of the Druids bid, which I thought was odd, but I know very little about Feral Tank itemization. One of the Warriors, Lanorah, bid. Lan is one of our tanks for SSC and Main Tanked our Guild first Gruul kill. We had both bid 5. I knew I had 6 MKP, so it was up to me whether to increase my bid...

Friday night Mal Katai managed to get the raid together and launched attacks at Morogrim Tidewalker. The strategy we were using had me front and center in handling the Murlocs. I would have Valdrin, a Warlock, Life tapping as the Murlocs spawned, and start casting Holy Light on him, until I had the Murlocs on me. Our first attempt, the Murlocs simply ignored me. This was despite the fact that I landed nearly 10k in healing on Valdrin. They streamed right to Akivarr, a Shadow Priest. The next attempt, at the beginning of the fight, I judged Light on Morogrim, and then whacked him a couple of times to make sure he knew I was there. This time I was able to get the Murlocs to aggro to me. The first Holy Light didn’t do it, the second Holy Light didn’t do it, but when the third one landed, you could see them change their path and head for me. I chose to tank the Murlocs in-between the melee and the ranged. While this did mean I was in range for Watery Grave, it also meant that the A...

Thursday night, our intrepid team of adventures once again faced the perils that awaited them inside the troll city of Zul'Aman. The night started out inauspiciously when our Feral Druid disconnected pulling trash to Bear boss. We were able to compensate, and he was able to get back online. We still managed to beat the Bear boss timer, but it was close. Then we dashed over the Eagle boss. The attempt went very well. A couple of times one person wouldn't collapse in quite far enough. This was without exception a healer (including me) who was trying to get off one last healing spell before the timer was up. Everyone reacted quickly and we didn't lose anyone, although one of our Holy Paladins had to bubble to keep from dying. We missed the timer on him by about 1 minute. We were disappointed, but we have greater confidence we can get him next time. And speaking of next time, this time was the next time he would drop the Amani Punisher. I had lost the mace previously to o...

Tuesday night Mal Katai went back into SSC and killed our farm bosses, Lurker and Hydross. Hydross was a normal one shot. Lurker would have joined him but he despawned coming to the surface at 1%. We pulled again and killed him. I got myself killed about halfway through the second attempt, but one of the Feral Druids was able to pick up my add flawlessly. Unfortunately, that was all we had time for. In fact had we not gotten him down that attempt, we would have started losing people. It was a fairly typical Mal Katai raid. Start time was 8pm, first pull was after 9pm. It took that long to fill the raid. We had a healer who went emo and left the raid (mid pull) after losing out on loot. We use a customized DKP system which we call MKP. He had less MKP than one of the other Holy Paladins, so the other Paladin got the loot. I can understand being disappointed when you loose out on loot, but you know the system going in. Our DKP heavily favors people who farm mats for our raids. ...

Sunday night, and again, no 25 man, but we got our main group together for ZA. We again beat the Bear Boss timer, and we were looking good on the Eagle boss when our tank died. We had 3 melee dps along with our tank (Fury Warrior, Feral Druid, Rogue), so when one of them got hit with the static charge from Akil’zon it really hurt. We are fortunate in that our Tank for Akil’zon is our Nature Tank for Hydross so he can wear some of that gear. For this fight I throw on my healer gear and help heal the real dpsers. Akil’zon is almost always casting something, and most of his damage is magical in nature. Those factors make it more of a Warrior or Druid tank fight. Plus, there is high amount of collateral damage to the raid so my extra healing is seen as more valuable than our Warrior Tanks extra dps would be. He dropped this amazing Plate DPS chest. Our Fury Warrior said no thank you, so it up to me to and Brindall (our Warrior Tank). I decided to pass and let Brindall take it. I can work ...

The weekend was something of a bust. Friday night, our SSC raid was cancelled due to lack of people online, and our attempts to reschedule on Saturday proved no better. We couldn’t even get a Zul’Aman group going. I understand we are a “casual guild that raids”, but it’s frustrating seeing Raids get cancelled. I spent some time grinding Consortium rep and farming for Primals. I even worked on my Fishing (all the way up to 150).When you are in a Raid group, you can’t do Daily’s and you can’t quest at all. My favorite place to grind Consortium rep is The Heap south of Netherstorm. I can pull a group of 6-8 and take them down with Consecrate, Holy Shield and my Petrified Lichen Guard . I could take larger groups but I play on a PVP server and there always seem to be some friendly Undead Rogue or Tauren Shaman ready to help those pesky Ethereals. I also got my Hunter, Honorshummer, to level 60 so I grabbed a couple of guys to go into Zul’Gurub to tame one of the tigers there. The tiger sk...

My ZA group dove into the instance last night. Our goal was to beat the timer on the Bear Boss. The group had done it previously, but I personally had never beaten the timer on the Bear Boss. We started pulling like mad. Our Warrior Tank for the night was Brindall. I really have to give major kudos out to Mowbray (Holy Paladin), Celoria (Tree Druid) and Doraeallin (Holy Priest) as they did a great job. I have never felt so safe tanking the Bear Rider trash. I never got anywhere close to in danger. Then we come to the Bear Boss himself. It's going to be close on the time. First transition comes up, and I taunt, and nothing happens. The Bear is just happily banging away at Brindall. My taunt is on cooldown. Mel, a Fury Warrior steps in and taunts (of crits 3 times in a row I'm not sure, it had the same effect). So Bear Boss decides to go gnaw on him long enough for my cooldown to come back around. I taunt and get him on me for a few seconds before changing forms again. I don...

As you may or may not know (as if you didn’t, you will now), I play on PVP server called Altar of Storms. My experience with PVE servers has been somewhat limited. I originally rolled my Paladin on Rexxar, a PVE server, and if it had been my choice I probably would have stayed PVE. But Aoesrus, the real life friend who got me involved in the game, wanted to be on a PVP server called Dark Iron, so we rerolled there. My Paladin on Rexxar was all of 16 or 17, and questing in Redridge. I really should go back and play him sometime. I would eventually transfer off of Dark Iron and come to Altar of Storms. There are times when I really like the fact that I play on a PVP server and times when I don’t. The biggest pain of a PVP server is that pretty much from around level 20 on you are permaflaged for PVP. This means that in addition to fighting and questing your way through the levels you always have to be on the constant lookout for Horde. There are different types of Horde you encounter as...

So I did a post on Tanking as Holy . I thought I did a pretty good job and I'm sure it was helpful. I was reading Banana Shoulders and read his post today on Holy Tanking. The advantage he has is that he is actually a Holy Paladin, who has done some Tanking in Holy spec. It is always good to hear it from someone who has actually done it, in addition to the perspective of one who can theorize about it. If you are Holy, and want/need to do a little Tanking, give it a read .

With the reset on Tuesday, we ventured back into Serpentshrine Cavern. We managed to 1 shot Hydross, and then go 1 shot Lurker. Even though we've one shot Hyrdoss two weeks in a row, it still gets the blood pumping every transition. This was only our 2nd Lurker kill. He went from Progression to Farm in one week. We still lost some people to Lurker but despite our losses we were able to get him down. We were concerned when he dived at 1%. If any of the Guardian's got loose we could still wipe. Luckily that did not happen, however because we were short on DPS I was still tanking the Ambusher when Lurker resurfaced and started spouting. I was preparing jump into the water and heal tank the Ambusher but Lurker died before Spout got to my location. After the Raid, I got on my Hunter for a bit and managed to level him to 60 questing in Hellfire. While I was questing I got rolled by a group of level 59-61 Horde. Rogue, Feral Druid, Warlock, and Hunter. I ran back to my body ...

(Please note, this post is outdated. I'll be doing an updated version when I get closer to level 80) As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to be respcing again. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how I want to spec my Paladin now and I'd thought I'd share my thoughts. Remember, I am a Protection Paladin who spends the majority of my playtime in T4 and T5 raids. Decisions I make regarding my spec reflect that. First off are the essential, spec defining talents. These are a must have and non negotiable. They are Improved Righteous Fury, Holy Shield and Improved Holy Shield. I just can't call myself a Tankadin without those. Next up we have the really powerful talents. These are also must haves, but if someone made a really strong case to me, I'd consider it, but it would really take a good argument. First up, you have the two Stamina talents. We lack base stamina compared to Warriors, so we need to get the talents to bring us up to their ...

After my experiment with Ret, I respec to Prot for our SSC attempts last night. This time I left Improved Crusader out of my build. I recorded both attempts in WWS, so now I can do some comparison. I'm going to use Hydross because it was a fight where I was able to keep Improved Crusader up the entire time and both attempts were one shots. The sample size may be too small, but let's see what the data reveals. Remember that Improved Crusader gives 3% crit to the entire Raid. First I'm going to look at one of our Hunters, Araxe. I know from my dealings with him that he is a skilled player and knows his hunter well. In the attempt where I had Improved Crusader, his crit was 23%. In the attempt where I didn’t have it, his crit was 30%. He actually crit more when I didn’t have Improved Crusader. Well, maybe he made changes to his own spec, or he got a new piece of gear. There are a lot of variables, so let’s keep digging. Looking at Lococrazy, another hunter, his Crit ...

So last night as the raid was winding down, one of our Shadow Priests, Barasi, asked if anyone could join his 3v3 to finish out the games he needed to qualify for points this week. It's been several weeks since I've had time to Arena so I offered my services. The team was me (Prot Paladin), Luminati (Holy Priest) and Barasi (Shadow Priest). We had some inkling that this matrix may not give us the best opportunity for success. So I grabbed a portal to Ironforge, laid down my 20g, and insta-presto-chango, Ret Paladin! I swung by my bank to pick up all the Ret gear that has been gathering dust and strapped it on. So we queued up. Now I haven't played Ret since probably my mid 50s. If you look at the screenshot closely, you'll see I dont even have Repentance on my hotbar. I r noob! Our first match was in the Blades Edge Arena (the one with the bridge) against a Hunter, Rogue, Rogue team. Barasi is a very good PVPer and called targets. He sent me after the Hunter. I've f...

There are subtle clues, hints per se that the game gives you. What you have here is a subtle hint that we may have run Karazhan one too many times. This is a screenshot of Raistilan, Raid Leader and Mage Extrodinare. He's been every spec of mage you can think of and some that you can't. What you see him weilding is none other than a King's Defender .

Mal Katai went into Serpentshrine Cavern this weekend with one thought on our collective minds, Morogrim Tidewalker. Tidewalker is a fight that I've been wanting to do since i first saw Lore's video on MainTankadin many months ago. The fight involves a pack of rabid Murlocs who much be controled and AoE'ed down. There are 12 murlocs in all, 6 from the north and 6 from the south. I felt pretty good about my chances to round up 6, but then I had read about a strat where I could pick up all 12. The strat called for me to heal a Warlock. Warlocks have a self buff called Fel Armor which increases healing taken. With that and Blessing of Light, the idea was that I could get healing aggro on the Warlocks, thereby controlling them rather easily. On a couple of attempts this worked well. Other times it did not. The southern pack seemed to be no issue getting a hold of, but the northern pack was much harder to wrangle. I don't know if it was a line of sight issue or...