Honor's Code

So let's say you just hit level 70. Congratulations! You have extraordinarily good taste and possess high intelligence so naturally you rolled a Paladin. Now that you've hit the level cap, you wish to pursue a course of putting yourself between your friends and the large scary demons and dragons that want to have them for lunch. You have a couple of basic needs. You need gold, and you need better gear. The Shattered Sun reputation rewards include a really nice shield, and an excellent neck, so you'd love to get some reputation built with the Shattered Sun. The very best way to spend your in game time may very well be Daily Quests on the Isle of Quel'Danas. Daily Quests often entail killing mobs, and for all the strengths of the Protection Paladin when we are grouped, we do give up some ability for soloing. But fear not, brave reader, for I, Knight-Lieutenant Honorshammer, Hand of A'dal, am here to help. Aside: Am I the only one who thinks the Hand of A'dal title...

(The following post contains information about Wrath of the Lich King) Gear consolidation is a new reality being added to the game by Blizzard and I believe it will have a profound impact on guilds both large and small. Essentially, gear consolidation is the attempt by Blizzard to make each piece of gear that drops be appealing to at several classes and specs. As an example, Protection Paladins, Protection Warriors, and Death Knights are having their mechanics tweaked such that each will want basically the same gear (Plate withStamina, Defense, Dodge, Parry, and Strength) Healing and Spell Damage are being combined into a single stat called Spell Power, and setting up a conversion of Spell Power to Healing. Now both healers and spell based DPS will want Spell Power gear. The impact I see this having on guilds and especially smaller guilds is that it may cause these guilds to reevaluate their loot systems for 10 mans. Most guilds run a straight /roll system for 10 mans. I believe...

(this post will be updated later with screenshots) Mount Hyjal is a lovely place full of large pulls, and AoE packs. I remember the excitement of the my first night in the place. I was fighting alongside Jaina Proudmoore, and the Dwarven Riflemen, Human Footmen, and Elf Priests. Then we moved on and fought with Thrall and the Horde, and finally with Tyrande Whisperwind and the Elves. It was like playing Warcraft 3 only as a Hero unit. There are milestones and moments that let you know you are really arriving as a Raid. Your first time in a new zone Shade of Aran Clearing Kara in one night High King Maulgar Magtheridon Vashj and Kael Clearing SSC in one night Archimonde Gurtogg Bloodboil Last night, Dominion accomplished another milestone. Mount Hyjal cleared in one night. We accomplished this despite being a little light in the AoE department with only two Warlocks and two Mages. We had Hunters, and even Paladins get into the act with AoE. I don't know how other tan...

I logged on last night and almost immediately got called to vent with my Raid Leader. I'm thinking, 'oh no, what did I write in the blog, this time?' As it turned out, the meeting had nothing to do with the blog. She wanted to talk to me about Bloodboil. My raid leader does her homework and reads copious amounts of information on every boss we go after. She found examples of guilds using every kind of tank set up with any number of Warriors, Druids, and Paladins. She also realizes she isn't an expert on all the classes, so she wanted to get the scoop on Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield. She needed to know duration, cooldown and what they removed. We went over everything and then she asked me if I felt like I could keep up on threat with her and Kee (Warrior MT). Confidence is an important part of tanking. She needed to know that I was confident (not cocky) in my own abilities. I got the impression that some people were thinking a Druid would have been a bette...

Our Raid Leader has asked everyone to come up with a Gear Plan so we know right away if we want a piece of loot or not. So here we go. The first thought that came to my mind when I finished the list was "ZOMG, Honors wants everything!", but if you really think about it's not too bad. The only items on the list I'm after are the one I have in purple text, and there's maybe a dozen on the whole page. All the others are stuff I'm interested in, but I'm well aware there are others in my raid group who have a greater need for the item. So it's stuff I'll get if and when it's not needed. KEY: Purple Text = Major Main Spec Upgrade Blue Text = Nice To Have, But Will Pass To Another Class If It's a Major Main Spec Upgrade Yellow Text = For My Holy Set, Pass To Main Spec Healers (depending on how often I need to be Holy) Orange Text = For My Ret Set, Pass To Main Spec DPS Green Text = Won't Let It Get DE'ed SUNWELL PLATEAU Tras...

I logged onto my Hunter while I was waiting for Lakini to log in for our Arenas. I hadn't been on good when I saw someone paging guild chat for a group for Heroic Magister's Terrace. I had tried unsuccessfully to get a group Friday or Saturday night. The person asking happened to be my Raid Leader on her Mage alt. My good friend, Aoesrus, was also in on the run. I haven't run anything with Aoes in what's felt like ages. I offered to tank it. We needed a DPS and a healer. We managed to get Cfchief, one of our Raiding Shadow Priests, and Brightshade, one of our Raiding Rogues on his Holy Priest alt. So basically you had 4 clothies and a Paladin tank against Heroic Magister's Terrace. I figured it would be a quick run, an hour at the most. One of these days, I'll learn to not get into a Heroic Magister's Terrace run before I'm supposed to be doing Arenas with Lakini. Vlad/Else marked up all the pulls. I paid close attention to what she was cc'...

Questions from my Email inbox. Q: With Libram of Repentance and Holy shield up I have 0.2% above the needed 102.4%,(Unbuffed),and I might go higher with the SSO shield. So I thought,"Hey,why not put spell damage and stamina gems instead of the avoidance ones I'm using?",but I'm afraid I would go under the Uncrush cap I've been trying to achieve so much. Be sure to check my article on using the mod Tankpoints to check your uncrushable calculations. Don't socket spell damage, socket stamina only. I will now wave my hand like a Jedi, "You do not want to look at Honors gloves." Basically what you have here is the need to do what my Dad refered to as a 'Sharp Pencil Exercise'. Let's take a look at the avoidance gems you might have. We pop over to the uber useful Tanking Gear Uncrushability Values guide on Maintankadin, and we find the gem you are thinking of taking of out. Let's say it's a http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24032 ...

I was talking with a couple of Dominion's Paladins last night about the Wrath changes and someone asked "Where are you getting all this information" So here are my sources: Joanadark on Paladins in WotLK http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tankspot-news/38563-joanadark-paladins-wotlk.html Lore on Paladins in WotLK http://www.tankspot.com/forums/admin/38547-prot-paladins-wotlk.html There you will learn from Lore and Joanadark, the Jedi Masters who instructed me. Siha at Banana Shoulders on Beta Change is afoot (more just a straight reprint of Beta Patch notes) Kaziel's at Kaziel's Thoughts WHOA NELLY! Rohan at Blessing of Kings WotLK Beta - Protection WotLK Beta - Judgements WotLK Beta - Judgements II WotLK Beta - Holy Builds Salvation's End Maintankadin has an entire board dedicated to Wrath of the Lich King

Wednesday is usually my night off. I knew Dominion was going back to Archimonde, and the way our raid was clicking on Tuesday, I knew they were going to kill him. I went and got a 'Kitchen Pass' to play. The guys on vent found the term quite humorous. Basically, I talked to Mrs. Hammer and asked if we could move our date night this week. She agreed, so it was HAMMER TIME!! Before the Raid, I was in Tanaris and leveled up fishing to 285. This is going to be a quite a grind to get to 375. Tanaris makes no sense from a geographical standpoint. For there to be a desert that close to the ocean, you would have to have a major mountain chain almost right on the coast to break up the the onshore precipitation that would be nearly constantly generated by evaporating seawater. But I guess Azeroth doesn't have to play by our rules of science. I was still Holy and assigned to Group 5. Our first attempt on Archimonde was very solid. We lost someone to a Grip + Airburst combo and co...