Honor's Code

We knew we weren't going to be able to clear all the way to Illidan last night, but we figured we would get as many bosses down as we could. A couple of our core raiders were unavailable and as raid time rolled around, we only had 22 people online, and one of those people wasn't even level 70 yet. It's somewhat challenging to field a 25 man from 21 people. We went ahead and cleared trash to Gorefiend hoping that 4 more would log on as we cleared trash. We got through the trash and were starting at Teron, but we realized our chances of 21 manning him were rather slim. We thought about PuGing the last couple of spots, but Terron is not the most PuG friendly boss. We thought about PuGing Mount Hyjal, but there wasn't enough interest. We floated the idea of playing in Sunwell trash. Someone felt that the trash would not drop epics until the first boss was down. That was the first I had heard that suggested. I had read on the trash, and a couple of weeks ago aske

Now I know you dont run an advice column, but I find myself in a similar situation one you were in and I thought you might possible give me the insight granted of your experience. Im currently in a very small guild. We've only got 6 core players. We're all friends from work. These friends are the reason I even started playing wow. I just dinged 70 and I find myself wanting more than my guild can give. We are barely in posistion to run heroics. And to be honest only 4 of our players, myself included, have enough skill to even be successful in the heroics. But I want to see more of the game then that. I know WotLK is coming and so of the dynamics will be changing, but still my guild is not in any situation to even be close to taking the new 10 man's. My dillema is that I have been requested by a guild who's doing Kara and ZA and running Gruuls and even venturing in MH. I dont want to leave my friends high and dry without a tank. They've helped me level and get my e

(This post contains information about Wrath of the Lich King) Expansions are a great time for making changes: changing specs, changing classes, changing servers, etc. first zone One of the first decisions you'll face in Wrath of the Lich King is the starting zone. Blizzard has provided two zones from which you can choose : Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Each zone provides content for toons level 68-71. Alliance side, I expect most people will go to the Borean Tundra. It is the zone you are taken to from the new Stormwind Harbor. This was the pattern I followed initially. Go the Stormwind, check out the new harbor and board the boat for Northrend. It'll drop you off at Valiance Keep in the Borean Tundra. But this weekend, I wanted to check out the Howling Fjord, and man, am I glad I did. To get to Howling Fjord, you take a boat from Menethil Harbor. This is a little bit out of the way for most toons, and I suspect people will only go there if they already know about it. First

I spent some time this weekend getting Honorshammer working on one of my pre-Wrath of the Lich King goal. The Goal: 375 First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing First up was First Aid. I had planned on AoEing my way through various mobs to drop cloth and level my first aid from where it was at 225 all the way up to 375. Luckily for me, I ran into a couple of old friends, Saisuke and Rika who were kind of enough to gift me much of the cloth I needed to level up to 330. From there, I used a stash of Netherweave I had on banks and alts to finish the grind to 375. So, I now have maxed out First Aid. My cooking is sitting at 366, and to finish leveling it up, I need high level fish, which comes from Fishing. My fishing was sitting at 306. I did the fishing Daily's and got the Weather Beaten Journal (which allows you track Fish on your mini map) and the Weather Beaten Hat (which increases your fishing skill). I spent time in Stormwind, Nagrand, and Terrorkar catching fish and skilling up

Dominion is racing to get an Illidan kill before the ‘clock strikes midnight’ on Burning Crusade. At the same time we are facing the normal turnover that I would think happens in most raid guilds. People decide to raid less or stop raiding at all, or their real life schedule changes in some way that makes them unavailable certain nights. It got to the point that we had to cancel Tuesday’s raid. They were able to raid on Wednesday, and successfully knocked out 4 bosses in Black Temple. Our healing corps has gone through some interesting changes in my time with Dominion. When I first joined, the bulk of our healing corps was Paladins. It got to the point that I was Blessing Sanctuary on the Priests. Then things changed and our healing corps was Druid heavy. Our raids looked like a veritable forest. Then it shifted again, and you could hardly move around our raid for all the Totems the Shamans had dropped. Now, it seems we have come full circle as we are once again filled to the bri

I got my Figureprint!! I don't think any of the pictures really do him justice, as he looks much better than my camera has captured. But here it is! Apparently Honors tried to tank my cat.

Raid is called off. Now what to do? Drink, and drink heavily. Brewfest!! I rode down to Ironforge and picked up the Brewfest quests. I defended the Brewfest camp against the Dark Irons. I refuse to call those traitorous louts Dwarves. I rode the Brewfest Ram and put it through it’s paces, and I picked up a quest to dispose of Coren Direbrew in Black Rock Depths. I haven’t been to Black Rock Depths since I was doing my Onyxnia Key stuff back at level 60. (Note for Horde readers: Alliance have a long quest chain that involves BRD for our Onynxia Key, or at least we did before Blizzard removed the Onyxnia key). I saw a group doing a LF Tank for Brewfest in trade chat. I whispered them and chuckled to myself. They think they were getting RandomPaladinTank, but they were getting one of the better geared Paladin tanks on our server. The Horde were camping the entrances to the zone. Do they really have nothing better to do? See the kind of ‘fun’ you miss out on being on a PVE se

Tuesday night I log in ready to assault Black Temple. When time for the raid rolled around, we were looking a bit short, especially in the healer department. I did a double take as my Pally Power dutifully reported a complete lack of Roguery in our midst. Lack of healers would be rough. Lack of Rogues would pretty much mean RoS would be impossible. It seems Expansionitis has hit Dominion. boredom with early bosses I know many people don’t find the early bosses in Black Temple exciting anymore and many people have gotten all the loot they could want from them, but we still have to kill them to get the harder bosses people do find exciting and from which people do want loot. For me, I was on because I enjoy raiding. It’s fun (or I wouldn’t do it). Loot is fun too and I love getting a new piece of armor for my character, but ultimately it’s raiding that I enjoy. It’s joining forces with 24 other people on my team and facing down the monsters and Bosses ahead of us. It’s also th

Title inspired by the new Fireproof movie. So this is the promised post on how I put together my Fire Resist gear for Illidan. In this gear I have 13947 unbuffed hit points, and 4728 unbuffed mana. I have 295 Fire Resist unbuffed which means that with Fire Resist aura up, I sit at exactly 365 Fire Resist, which is the Resist cap. I have 449 Defense which is well below the 490 uncrittable mark, but I make up for it with 86 Resilience. Combined the 449 defense and 86 Resilience give me a 6.14% Crit chance reduction. This is 0.54% above the needed 5.6%, which means I am uncrittable. It also presents and opportunity to lower the Crit reduction to closer to 5.6 and pickup either some additional stamina or spell damage. Head : Tankatronic Goggle with Honor Hold/Thrallmar Fire Resist Enchant. BoP Engineering crafted item. Neck : Amulet of Torn Heart. This is a quest reward from a long chain out in Shadowmoon Valley. Shoulders : Lightbrinder Shoulderguards with the

We began the process of learning Illidan last night. Vlad (Warrior) and I got together before the Raid to practice our kiting paths. It really helps that you can practice it right there with Illidan since he doesn't aggro until you talk to Akama. After getting in some good practice and both us feeling pretty good about our readiness, we started up the Raid and got going. Phase 1 is pretty easy. Our Main Tank Warrior (Kee) does a great job of kiting Illidan and preventing himself from getting Sheared. Phase 1 is very similar to the Solarian "Bomb". When you get the Shadow Fiend debuff, you have to get out of the raid, and over to two mages who take care of the Fiends that pop. The little Shadow Fiends tend to die very very quickly. We only wiped in Phase 1 once or twice when we lost Kee. I would throw a couple of heals if one of our healers got the Fiend debuff, or toss my Avenger's Shield at the Fiends (to daze them) or throw it at Illidan himself. A coup

I didn't do much over the weekend but one of the really cool things I had a chance to participate in was Beta Paladins Unite! Basically, we gathered up as many Beta Paladins as we could and went to a cave in the DragonBlight. We had Alliance and Horde Paladins together in the cave and we all got on vent. On the way there, I ran by a Troll Shaman. I immediately dismounted, sealed up and got ready to be Earthshocked. Only it never happened. The troll stopped, and looked at me (you could almost see him tilting his head as if to question my action.) Then I noticed, his nameplate was blue and not red. "You rolled on the PVE Beta Server, noob!" Thank you voice in my head. (See, Auz, you aren't the only one). It was really exciting for me to see in game some of the guys who I had talked to over the MainTankadin forums and blogs. Myself, Modus, Mortehl, and of course, Galoheart. I couldn't actually talk to Galo, seeing as he is a mana addicted Blood Elf, but it was cool t

My team had done it. Wednesday night they had gotten Akama, Gurtogg, Teron, and Mother. That meant the entire evening would be devoted to a progression kill on Illidari Council. I found myself back in my usual spot of handling Veras Darkshadow, the Rogue on the Council. We were running 8 heals. After a couple of attempts, I was asked to bring tank the rogue closer to the raid so my healer could be in range of more of the raid while Veras was vanished. Our Holy Paladin was also helping my stunning the Rogue with Hammer of Justice. I immediately started having more problems. With my original tanking location, I had a good idea of where the Rogue would spawn and I would be able to spot him as he came up. With my new tanking location, he seem to spawn just about anywhere, and would more often spawn behind me where I wouldn't pick him up as quickly. He seemed to be getting Blessing of Spell Warding much more often in this new location, than he had in the old. Then on the next attem

Raiding Black Temple We started up another week of Raiding in Dominion. We need to burn through the Bosses faster so we have more time to work on Council and eventually the big guy himself. We now have a release date on Wrath so the pressure is on to accomplish our Burning Crusade goals in the limited time we have remaining. We managed to down 3 bosses last (Najentus, Supremus, and Reliquary of Souls). We do Reliquary on Tuesday because Dominion loves me for Phase 3. Basically you get to me in Phase 3, and you’ve got a kill. I don’t raid most Wednesdays due to real life commitments, so they do other Bosses on those nights. It would be really nice for our team to get Akama, Teron, Gurtogg and Mother tonight so we would have plenty of time to on Council, and maybe even get a kill. There are few things I find more enjoyable in game than being in on a Progression Kill. Loot Frustrations There are few things I find more frustrating in game than waiting on your loot to drop. Yep,

I've generated a spreadsheet that shows the new values on 40+ common tank gears. Then I've ranked them from best to worst in the slot. Please note, this does not include all gear but a decent cross section of what's available to most people. If there is a specific piece of gear you'd like to see added I can do that. You can see the spreadsheet in it's entirety: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pxRKUgjn9TRr-KY-8OzuQRQ

So Saturday, I decided to trapse off to the frozen north. Not long after logging in I said hi to Fridmarr and Jennsarri, two names I know from the Maintankadin forums. The quickly invited me to their guild, Order of the Silver Hand. The first stop on my little journey was Stormwind Harbor. While the harbor itself is pretty remininscent of Menthil Harbor some of the architecture surronding the harbor is really nicely done. My personal favorite touch is the giant lion statue that reminds me of the giant panther statues outside of Bank of America stadium. The boats themselves are beautiful, and as an added bonus you can stay mounted on the boat. Speaking of mounts, it seems like everyone in Beta has a Bear mount. I took the boat and soon found myself at Valiance Keep. If you've never noticed before, I'll let you in on a little something, every Keep in the game is based off the same model, but not Valiance, This is a brand new model and it's pretty cool. I ran around and pi

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/splash-wrathdate.htm http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/080915.html http://thebigbearbutt.com/2008/09/15/surprise-expansion-releasing-mid-november/ http://www.isheepthings.com/blog/countdown-till-wrath/

I love Macros. They can be really helpful in accomplishing many tasks in game. Most all the Macros I use I got from reading various threads on Maintankadin . It's a fantastic site, and I'd recommend anyone interested in Protection Paladins read the stickies. Unfortunately, it's been something of a victim of its own success, and as it continues to grow in membership, it starts becoming less and less of a place where passionate Paladin tanks share their knowledge and experiences and more like the WoW General forums from which it used to be a nice escape. Most of the Macros I use today are Pickup Macros. They are used to help me pickup targets quickly and make up for my 30something years old reaction time. Halazzi (ZA) In ZA, I use a macro for picking up the Spirit Lynx during the Lynx Boss encounter. /cleartarget /targetexact Spirit of the Lynx /cast [exists] Judgement The biggest mistake I make with this macro is NOT having a Seal up. Fathom Lord Karathress (SS

I logged into the Beta server and found myself right where I had left off in Shattrah. But already I was different. All my gear had been changed and was now loaded with +STR, and all my talent points had been reset. On Live I have 532 spell damage. I have 16457 hit points. Here are what my Melee and Defense tabs look like: First things first, I had to respec. I decided to go with a Prot spec that was more of a Raid Tank spec. Respec fees are only 1c in Beta so I could afford to do that. Once I had all my talents points arranged I looked at the results. I took every Stamina talent I had in live but I have about 500 less HP because they changed Combat Expertise to give less Stamina. Not really excited about that, but I'm hopeful when they do the 'numbers pass' they will see if it's a problem. I have about 1200 less mana. My spell damage became Spell Power and went up by about 100. My Attack Power and Hit Rating went way up. In addition, my Crit went way up. My Dodge went

IT'S HAMMER TIME!!!

Raid leaders are more than just good players and good organizers, they have to good at managing the morale of a guild. Last night we were going to take on Gurtogg Bloodboil in Black Temple. He's probably the most difficult fight for healers in the entire Instance. My Raid Leader was also aware that she was working in a couple of new healers, and wasn't entirely sure how the fight was going to go. So to lighten everyone's mood, right before the pull she had us watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNbFYSXON6Q I was a fan of this clip before it got the subtitles. It was one of my favorite skits from the Muppet Show. The person who made this video did a really good job. I think he should have made Kermit a Paladin, but that's just me. Gurtogg did prove to be something of a challenge, but in the end, our new healers learned the fight and we got him down.

My guild, Dominion has an opportunity for those of the healing persuasion. I'm talking to all you wonderful Holy Priests, Resto Shamans, Holy Paladins and Resto Druids. And now that you can transfer from PVE servers to PVP servers, we would love to welcome you to Altar of Storms. Dominion is a PVE focused guild on the PVP server Altar of Storms. We are currently working our way through late Tier 6 with the goal of completing all Tier 6 content before the Expansion. We are currently 5/5 7/9 and have begun working on Illidari Council. As we are short on time to complete our goals, we would prefer candidates who are already geared for our level of content, but Badge gear (with high level gems and enchants) works well for many classes. Our raiding schedule is Monday through Thursday, 8pm Server to 12:00am Server. We will on occasion go as late as 12:15am server. Altar of Storms is an EST server. You can find our website here: http://dominionguild.guildlaunch.com Please fill out an app

Hi! I recently started reading your blog. I love it. I play a prot pally. I am just getting to ZA, so I will probably never see some of the content you are currently blogging about. I was wondering what addons you use? My UI is something that I continue to struggle with. I need something flexible enough to allow me to be an effective tank, a decent healer and a solid member of my PVP teams. I still feel like my UI is entirely too cluttered. I'm not really going to do much with my UI until I reset it for Wrath. All the mods will break and I will need to replace them, plus I'll have the entire 70-80 leveling time to learn my new UI. Despite being pretty computer savvy, I tend to get lost when it comes to Addons and Macros. I choose to not spend the time to customize them to any degree. Let me briefly give an overview of the Mods/Addons/UI that I use, and why I chose each one. My main UI is a combination of Xperl and Fubar . Tankadin - This mod will flash your screen yellow

Tomorrow, I'm publishing my UI/Addons post. Then Monday, I'll be publishing my Helpful Macros post. I almost feel like a real blogger. Now onto today's post. It was 1 year ago today when I left my first guild, Heroes Inc. I had applied to a guild called Bloodsky when they had put a post out saying they were specifically looking for a Protection Paladin. At that point and time, it was very rare for Raiding guilds to use Protection Paladins in any capacity. I was so shocked when I saw their recruitment post on the AoS forums that I applied, fully expecting to be rejected. Bloodsky was a 25 man raid guild working on SSC and Heroes was still working on Karazhan. In our best attempts, we had gotten Prince Malchezaar into the single digits. Remember, this was a year ago, before the 2.3 or 2.4 badge gear. I'm not even sure that Season 2 was out yet. When I was accepted, I had to make a choice. I have a place I go to when I need to think, and for me that's Uther's Tomb

We will always remember those who lost their lives in the Terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

My only regret is that I didn't write this myself, give it a read: http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=13335 I've got 5 or 6 post in draft mode, they will up as I finish them. I don't want overwhelm readers with too many. Enjoy them as they come. In other news, I'm now listed on the Twisting Nether Wiki .

Dominion went back to Black Temple last night. At the same time we were forming up, Mal Kati was also forming up their raid. I felt like a guy at a party when his ex-girlfriend walks in. Everyone in Mal Katai was super nice and a couple of guys said hello. We pulled to Najentus, and I had already switched into my healing gear when my Raid Leader announced I would Main Tank for this fight. I relish every opportunity I get to Main Tank. We may several very skilled and knowledgeable Tanks in our Guild, and each of them does a terrific job when called upon. The attempt on Najentus wasn't going as smoothly as everyone would have liked and I could discern a level of frustration in the Raid. One of the healers commented that they felt like I was taking more damage than our usual tank. They said this in a private Healer channel, which they probably didn't think I was monitoring. I offered, in said channel, that the major difference would be if Demo Shout or Thunderclap were not

(Bonus points if you get the reference from the title) Our merry band returned to the Black Temple last night. The evening started by distrubuting Shadow Resist gear to our new Raiders because we were going to face down Mother Sharaz. Mother's trash is some of my favorite in Black Temple. There are a bunch of AoE groups which are fun for a Protection Paladin. Be careful if you tank them, because much like how the birds in A'lar's trash can shut you down with their silence, these mobs have an annoying stun. The good news is you don't loose aggro when they stun you, but it can frustrating trying to get off your next Consecrate and unable to do so. We've only killed Mother one time, and that was a couple of weeks ago. Several people in our Raid had not seen the fight yet. It took a couple of pulls for everyone to really understand the fight and get the movement down. Offtanking Mother is not the most exciting job in Black Temple. It's mo