Honor's Code

I knew I was going to be late last night due to an iRL conflict. I sent an email off to my Guild Master (Dora) and Raid Leader (Raist) letting them know. I logged on about 8:40 or so. The raid was mostly formed except for Dora and Brindall who themselves were running late. Raist had posted that we would be trying High Warlord Naj'entus. If you remember, about two and half weeks ago, we went in to explore the Black Templ e, and somewhat stumbled our way into High Warlord Naj'entus. The thought our Leaders had was that if we brought the "Core" group, we could actually kill him since we got him to 60% with fresh 70s and non Core people. Dora and Brindall logged in and we got started. We killed the patrolling nature elementals and setup for the first pull. 2 Generals, 2 Soothsayers, a Harpooner and his Turtle. We knew from our previous experience that the Generals could dispel just about every CC known to man (or gnome, or dwarf, or elf), but that their dispel had

Since I posted about the Hydross fight, and the fact that I'm our Frost Main Tank, I've gotten questions about the kind of gear I wear for the fight. So I'd thought I'd share how I tackle that overgrown water balloon. I use all 3 pieces of the Iceguard set (Helm, Legs, Chest). Then I use the epic Frost Resist ring, and the blue Frost Resist neck. Both pieces are made with Jewelcrafting which I conveniently have at max skill level. I use my Justicar Shoulders and Gloves. What I'm after here is the 2 piece set bonus. I need good threat on the Hydross fight, especially as the Frost tank. The time from the pull to the first transition is "free" dps. I don't want my DPS team holding back due to threat issues. I use the Merciless Gladiador Gavel and the Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall. The benefit here is to get Resilience. The Resilience on these "pvp" pieces helps make up for the lack of defense I have in this gear. I think it's around

Before I went raiding on Monday night, I flew by the Isle of Quel'Danas and visited Smith Hautthua. He had used the Naga ore I brought him to craft me a new ring (comparision made to the Voilet Signet of the Great Protector (left) and the Ring of Sundered Souls (right)) and a new set of pants (comparision made to the Unwavering Legguards). At first I was a bit dismayed because when I changed out the gear, I was sitting at 487 defense. This will never do. So I swapped a Solid Star of Elune out for an Enduring Talasite in my Justicar Shoulders. It was only a net loss of 2 stamina because I picked up the socket bonus. Honestly, I should have done it sooner. My new unbuffed hit points sit at 16,157. My dodge is up over 25%. Fully buffed up in Mag's later on, I was able to hit 22k hit points, 51% pure avoidance (dodge + parry + miss), 18k armor, and 500 spell damage. I'm very happy with where my little dwarf is at gear wise. Monday night, we did our normal Gruul and Mag f

I'm tried it, I'm knocking it. We didn't have much going on this weekend. I saw one of our raiding mages looking for a 2s partner for his MS Warrior alt. I offered to respec Holy and give it try. He was somewhat surprised at the offer but took me up on it nevertheless. We thought Warrior/Paladin, we've got 1600 easy street. We thought wrong. Admittedly, I haven't been Holy since level 60, so I wasn't as familiar with all the tools as I could have been. Spells like Divine Illumination were new concepts to me. I thought my gear was respectable. I had about 215 resilience along with 9k health and 10k mana. I was generally the target of the opposing team, and it seemed my blue bar was much more the target than the green. It seemed like every class had someone to drain or burn my mana, and once my mana was gone I had no way to regenerate it quickly. We wound up going 5-8 on the night, and going from 1500 to around 1450. We played 13 matches. Would you b

So I was reading a post over at Big Red Kitty called " You Know We Are At War ". Buried in the comments was this little jewel: "When you download your addon (and these are almost entirely from addons) take a moment before installing them to examine them. What, you use an autoinstaller? No, or at least not any more unless you’re willing and able to do the checks in the addons folders before running. (yes, I love Aces autoinstaller. I do manual checking.) Anyway, examine them before you load WoW if not before you install. Safe files are those that end in nothing, toc, lua, and txt. Unfortunately all the addons have to have an xml as well so regretfully we have to allow that too. Now anything else is to be treated with caution - but not automatic rejection. For example Auctioneer has an mp3 file, and cycircled (along with most other addons that do visual changes) uses tga files. If it’s an exe, com, bat, jpg, scr, html, or any other ‘executable’ file extension, stop. Del

We were doing SSC Thursday night, but our Nature Tank (Brindall - Warrior) was running late. I've been there. Real life happens. So we clear to Lurker. Raistilan is great at putting raids together but he's not as comfortable doling out assignments. I know how he feels. I'm not always comfortable giving out healing assignments. I sort of took over, assigning tanking targets and making pulls. I originally had myself on the first target, a Coilfang Shatterer. The Shatterers put up a spell reflect shield which reflects my judgements back at me (wouldn't you LOVE something that reflected judgements in real life?) I also couldn't Consecrate because of the sheeps going on, so my threat was really low. I lost threat to our melee dps and a couple of them died. I changed myself to the 3rd mob to be killed and put Vini (Warrior) on the first mob. I still wanted a Warrior on the Honor Guard (2nd target) because sometimes he fears and I like to have a stance dancing Warrior the

(If you get this in a reader, sorry about the early / aborted post) Wednesday night I went ahead and wiped the hard drive on my computer, and reinstalled Windows and WoW along with my security software. I never successfully identified the Malware that gave my account information. That worries me greatly because I don't have any corrective action steps to identify and take that would prevent this from happening again. There are other possibilities, like my friend AoesRus' machine being the one with Malware. They could have logged into his account, found him relatively low on funds and materials and decided to move along to a more lucrative prize like Honorshammer. Other possibilities that have been suggested to me are too disturbing to think about very long like the idea that someone at my ISP is "listening in" on my connection. Even more troubling was the idea that perhaps the gold sellers have someone "on the inside" at Blizzard with access to account infor

I was all set to nuke my hard drive and reinstall everything. Just one little, small, itsy bitsy problem. I had loaned my Windows disk to a buddy of mine who was having some computer problems and needed to start from CD. So instead I logged into WoW last night against my better judgement. When I logged in I found my mailbox full of mail from Blizzard Support. In the mail was everything I had had on Honorshammer. All my wonderful epic tanking loot. All my Hydross gear. My Hammer of Judgement. The last mail was the best, as it had all my gold in it. They still have not been able to restore anything I had on my bank mule which means I lost hundreds of gold worth of food, pots, elixirs and flasks. My guild is being very generous in resupplying me. The whole experience of being hacked has taken some of the fun out of the game for me, but getting my gear back did help some. Dora (my Guild Leader) talked to me about not letting this get me down. The best thing I could do was go out and

Thanks for taking the time to write a very informative blog. I am just a tad behind you with my paladin as far as gear and progression but I learn lots from reading your blog. I am sorry to hear that you got hacked and lost all of your stuff. This is one of my biggest fears and I think that if this happened to me, I don't know what I would do. As far as my progression we are 2/6 in SSC and 2/4 in TK but only 3/6 in ZA (stupid dragonhawk boss has been owning us) I guess that my raids have been having a problem with AoE'ing stuff down. Any advice on how to keep the adds on me (or at least 2 or 3 on me) with the hydross fight? Again hang in there and thank you for a wonderful, informative site. (one that isn't blocked from work) :) - Altair from scilla I'll do my best, even though I've never actually had to do this. I don't tank adds in the Hydross fight for Mal Katai. I'm our Frost Resist tank and main tank Hydross while he is in the Frost form. Edit 4/25:

I've run just about everything I can at my computer. I've tried several free or time limited Virus Scanners, Trojan Removers, Ad scanners, Spyware Scanners. They all found nothing that would point to a culprit. I've even put a HiJackThis log on BleepingComputer.com. They take at least a week for their volunteers to get back to you. I can't wait that long. So what to do? I'm going to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows and Warcraft. I've backed up everything I could think of (documents, pictures, music, etc). Since I was running McAfee at the time I was hacked, I lost a bit of confidence in them. I realize it might not have been their fault, but I run their software to protect me from stuff like this, and I wasn't protected. I'm not sure if I'll go with something like a Norton or go a la carte and get a combination of AVG or Avast, ZoneAlarm, and Adware/Spybot. I don't mind spending some real money to get real protection. I'm going to

I got quite a shock when I logged into my account last night to find my bank mule, Maersk no longer on my account. Also missing in action, was my Druid alt, Honorsclaw. I logged into Honorshammer. He was just outside of the Shadow Labs in some weird assortment of gear. ZA DPS Plate Chest, Season 2 Gloves, Teir 4 Helm and Shoulders, 2.3 Badge Pants and Boots. He had 16g to his name. In his bags were his Epic Engineering Helicopter, a Hearthstone, and 2 Super Mana Pots. I hearthed him back to Shattrah, and found an empty bank. Well not completely empty. Whoever had been in my account had left his some Obisidan Warbeads, Oshu'gun Crystal Powder, his Holy Mightstone, all of his PVP tokens (WSG, AV, AB, EotS), the Singed Page I kept from the first time I main tanked Prince into the ground, and all 201 Badges of Justice that I had been saving up. They had also abandoned everyone of Honorshammer's quests. My Hunter was out of gold, he had all his regular gear on. His bags were emptied

I'd also like to give a shout out to my old friend in the guild Heroes Inc. This was my first guild on Altar of Storms, which I left last September. I was approached by a 25 man Raid Guild on my server about taking a spot. The kicker was they were specifically looking for a Tankadin. I don't know how many of you were around back then, but Tankadin's were much more rare than they are today. A T5 guild actively recruiting one was even more rare. At the time I was leading raids for Heroes but the officer's weren't sure if they would ever do 25 man content. I talked things over with a couple of the officers and we decided it was 50/50 if Heroes would progress any further. So I said my good byes and left for greener pastures. I lasted all of a week with that guild. I thought I could make their schedule but my real life prevented it. I found myself between a rock and a hard place. I was very fortunate to land on my feet with Mal Katai. I've maintained connec

Mal Katai has a little unfinished business with one Fathom Lord Karathress. We were all a little torqued by the 1% wipe that ended our last attempt on Tuesday. We formed up Thursday night and headed back to face him down. Tanking assignments got handed out. Druid on the Shaman. 2 Warriors on the Hunter, 1 Warrior on the Priest. Paladin on Karathress himself. That Paladin would be your humble author. I pull Karathress to his tanking spot. I've really got to work on my movement skills. In order to move quickly I try to "strafe" like I would in a first person shooter. This is faster than walking but still allows me to block, parry and dodge. Unfortunately, I got it wrong and ended up eating a crush as I moved him into position. Luckily our healers were on the ball and I never went down. Our initial problem was losing healers, mainly to the Spitfire Totem. We had to emphasize to DPS that the totem must go down. We regrouped and pulled again. Our healers communicated rea

F.Y.I: All the stats on these pieces of gear are changing in 3.0. I will need to revisit this post soon. I see the "What Should I Buy First" question come up all the time on Maintankdin . Then I saw this excellent blog from Tanking Tips listing the Badge Purchase Order for Warrior tanks. It's a great read, but as a Tankadin I look at gear a bit differently than my Warrior brethren. So here is the Honors Hammer Badge Purchase Order. Questions, Comments and Concerns are always welcomed. Don't follow this list blindly. If you are really weak in one particular area buy that first. For instance if you have been running Kara and have most all the epics there but Nightbane just won't drop the Panzar'thar Breastplate , the Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian moves way up the list for you. The Top 10 #1 Libram of Repentance - At just 15 Badges, its a quick and relatively painless piece to get. Uncrushable is a major milestone goal for every Tankadin. It's simply a

Reset day and the merry band of Mal Katai got our hip boots ready to slog through SSC. Real life had me running a little behind so when I got summoned we were already at Hydross. I was surprised to see some of the guys who had blown us off for Arena the night before in the Raid. I guess they worked their stuff out with our GM. We burned Hydross down pretty quick, and moved onto Lurker. We only had one mage, so we had to adjust our strategy just a little bit. We used traps, fears and burned down more adds than usual. Something really strange happened during the Lurker fight. I got hit by spout, under the water. It only happened once, but it isn't supposed to happen at all. Fortunately, I was able to survive. We were double fortunate that Devona was in the Raid and not assigned to tank anything. He flawlessly picked up my Guardian and saved the raid. I picked up the Libram off Lurker which is really nice since it lowers the cost of Holy Light and going OOM while healing is one of m

Only Leotharas the Blind and Lady Vashj remained alive as we prepared for our Raid into SSC last night. I've been talking to the Officer's pretty much since our first SSC raid about how I should be the tank for Leo's Human phase. I had read every strat I could find, and watched every movie I could find on the Leo fight. I grabbed every consumable that I could think of for the fight. Our Guild Leader was having some real life issues going on which was causing the raid to start a little late. That's when 5 of our Raiders decided to go Arena instead of Raiding. Most (maybe all of them) don't really NEED anything from Raiding as they have access to the Season 3 PVP gear which is superior to any drop from SSC. But this night was to be about more than gear, this was a Progression Night, a chance to kill a new boss and put another notch on Mal Katai's belt. Our Guild Leader made it on and we started to fill the raid. We had over 40 Level 70 Characters online, yet

Saturday night we went for another Mt. Hyjal farming run. We are continuing to fine tune our strategy for the trash waves. It seems the wave of 6 Ghouls and 6 Aboms are still where we get behind. It's not so much that we are getting killed, it's just that our DPS can't kill the wave fast enough. Must like Black Morass, once you get behind in Mt. Hyjal it's hard to catch up. We were about to call it, when I asked for one more run. I was just 50 rep short of being Honored. Honored with Scale of Sands opened up a whole new set of Jewelcrafting recipies. Once the Badge vendor selling BT gems opens up, I'm going to park myself on the Isle of Quel'Danas and sell cuts for 10g a piece. Also during this final run, this little beauty dropped from trash: The Hammer of Judgement. I immediately rolled on it, out bidding the Shadow Priest who was interested. I've been hoping to see this ever sense we stepped foot in Mt. Hyjal. I immediately start getting teased a

After our marathon session on Tuesday to get Hydross/Lurker/Tidewalker down, the way was clear for attempts on Fathom Lord. I studied up and made a macro for picking up the pet that the Hunter add calls in. Only I wouldn't be tanking the Hunter this night. Our Feral Druid (Blankz) was no where to be seen so your humble author was asked to take on Tidevallas, the Shaman. We had a DPS Warrior (Shadwick) picking up the pet and bringing it to Lanorah (Warrior) who was tanking the Hunter. Another DPS Warrior (Cryak) was tanking the Priest with Revor (Rogue) and Hetrix (Enhance Shaman) for interrupts. Goldielocks (Warrior) would be on Fathom Lord himself. The Shaman is capable of some really crazy spike damage. He has almost all the attack spells a player Shaman would have, and his Windfury seems to proc nearly every hit. I had two healers assigned to me: Our best Holy Priest (Dora) and a well geared Holy Paladin (Ryken). The plan was to kill the Hunter first, then the Shaman, th

This ever happened to you: You read a blog post or forum post, not giving it much thought, and then something happens, and you remember reading it, but just vaguely. Then you go back and (hopefully) find it and read it again. Now, it makes more sense because you've just experienced the very subject matter for yourself. Well this happened to me last night. Weeks ago, I was reading World of Matticus . He had a post called " Dealing With Raid Hangover ". I read it over, thought it was a well written piece (as most all of Matt's writing is), but didn't give it much more thought. Until last night. We were to start the night with good ole Bagtheridon. I call him Bagtheridon because Mag drops 2 bags now, a bag of gems and a 20 slot bag. Mag has been farm content for us even before 2.4 and with the nerfs to the encounter, he was even more of a loot piñata. Last night we wiped repeated on the big ole lizard. We had one wipe due to a clicker getting disconnected from Wo

Saturday night, MK gathered up a group of players to go take a look at Mt. Hyjal. Saturday is typically not a raid night for us and most of our Core people we off doing their own thing that night. We ended up PUGing about 1/4 of the raid. This was really cool because I got to invite a couple of my old friends from Heroes Inc including Wichita. Our main goal for the night was just to have fun. We just wanted to see what Mt. Hyjal was all about. We didn't have any aspirations to kill any bosses. We were a little light on tanks. After having done Mt. Hyjal now, I'd really like to go with 5 tanks (2 must be Feral Druids or DPS Warrior who can DPS on bosses). Hyjal seems like an upgraded version of Black Morass. The trash comes at you in waves, cresting over a small hill before coming pouring into your base. It was like I was playing Warcraft 3, only this time, I was the Hero unit. There Knights, Riflemen, Footmen, and Priests fighting against Ghouls and Crypt Fiends and Abomi

Our focus in MK has shifted to SSC. Last night we crossed paths with Morogrim Tidewalker. Morogrim is a boss we've killed once or twice. Not exactly what you'd call a farm boss, but in that funny transition period from Progression to Farm. Most of our issues last night were what I refer to as "meta-game" issues. That is things that occur around the game and outside of the game had a real negative impact on our performance. The first being Omen. We had everyone install the EXACT same version of Omen. We STILL had people not able to see the tanks or the DPS on their Omen readout. That issue was rather small, a mere annoyance really compared to the other two. Our Druid Main Tank for Tidewalker (Blankz) got an "Invalid Target" error every time he tried to use one of his Bear abilities. It was the same error message you'd get if you tried to sheep an undead. He was left with only white hits to try to hold aggro with DPS flying blind because of the Omen i

I've run into a problem and I wonder if other Protection Paladins run into it as well. 90 Bag slots. Full. 124 bank slots. Full. BankMule with 58 bag slots. Full. BankMule with 95 Bank slots. Full. Once piece of advice I got leveling up my Tankadin from 60 to 70 was keep everything. You never know when you are going to need to a piece with a particular set of stats on it. It used to be that I needed only a couple of Tanking sets. Max Stamina for Heroics, Uncrushable for Kara, and Righteous for 5 mans. Now it almost seems like every boss I do needs it's own set. I need AoE set (Block Value)- Used for:Dragonhawk, Tidewalker, Solarian, Solarian Trash, Eventually MH trash Uncrushable Survival (Stamina, Armor)- Prince, Nightbane, Lynx, Magtheridon, Doomwalker Crushable Survival (Same as above, but different Libram)- Bear Avatar, "Hard" Heroics (Magister's Terrace, Shadow Labs, Arcatraz) Uncrushable Threat (Spell Damage, Int, Stamina)- Karazhan (except Nightbane and Pri