Honor's Code

Today my buddy Rhidach was talking about the abuse being thrown Paladins way both in game on the Forums. It’s even infiltrated once great sites like Tankspot. It has made meaningful discussion nearly impossible on the Official Forum, not that it was an easy task even before this. Anything from Paladins is immediately troll fodder. I don't know what it is about these two classes; we're like a couple of brothers. There never seems to be as much emotion when a Warrior talks about a Druid, or a Deathknight, as when he is discussing the Paladin. Maybe it's because we share gear, I don't know. The people behind those Warriors and Paladins, especially those players who choose to go deep Prot, are more alike than they realize. The only dynamic I've seen close to this is Warlocks and Mages. Those guys fight like cats and dogs as well. My personal favorite is the Warrior who has a Level 80 Paladin, DK and/or Druid as well and claims he’s unbiased in regards to cl

Today, I've got a new article up on Paladin Schmaladin analyzing the changes to the Paladin Tank T10 Gloves and Chest. These changes will go Live in the next Minor Patch. Enjoy! Here's a quick summary: The net difference is this. The iLevel difference of the Emblem gear is just too much to overcome. The T10 Helm/Shoulder with Cataclysmic Chestguard /Guantlets of the Kraken/Pillars of Might is going to be the way to build your progression MT set for the 10 man Raider crowd.

Monday night we assembled the crew and headed for the Blood wing of Ice Crown Citadel. We had made some really good progress at learning the Blood Princes on Thursday and we felt like we had a shot at them. I didn't put two and two together until we were running Heroic Old Kingdom for the daily but the vampire boss in hOK is none other than Prince Taldaram. He even conjures a Flame Sphere just like he does in the Raid fight. When you make the Three Princes pull, Prince Valanar yells something along the lines ‘that Naxxanar was merely a setback’. Really, they used that line again. I chuckled. That sounded familiar, so I decided to see what he was talking about. Naxxanar is the big Scourge fortress in Borean Tundra where both Horde and Alliance have a long quest chain that culminates in Valanar's death. So two of these guys we've killed before, what of the third? Keleseth turns out to be first Boss in Utgarde Keep. He's the guy who puts someone in an Ice Tomb.

GC has been posting on the forums, mostly about the needed buff to Protection Warriors sustained damage, but he's also touched on the AE aspect of tanking. Let's break down what the Crab has communicated. "There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior's burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button. :(" Let me stop right here and comment. Other tanks really seem to overestimate Consecrate. The spell isn't the be all and end all of AE Tanking that other tanks think it is. It is actually a fairly weak spell and won't hold aggro against other tanks AE. Because it ticks like a DoT, Thunderclap and Shockwave can pull off it due to their ‘snap’ aggro nature. I’ve personally seen Blood Boil, and DnD pull off of Consecrate. Although talking with my Blood DK co-Ta

And Tivonicus the Druid becomes 80 number 4. That gives me a Level 80 of every Tanking class save the Death Knight, although my Warrior has been retired for a while. I don't plan on making the Druid a Tank as I prefer Resto on him. His second spec will be Feral or Boomkin. It's Feral right now because that made it easier for leveling and soloing. I'll probably keep him Feral for farming Leather. My first order of business after training his Level 80 spells was to fix his Glyphs. All through leveling I had been using a Glyph of Healing Touch , but now that I could train Nourish , I switched over to Glyphs of Nourish , Swiftmend , and Rapid Rejuvenation . My minors will be Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of the Wild and ? I knew my Druid wasn't ready for Heroics right away, but I wanted him to get there as quick as I could. But I didn't want to be carried either by guildies or strangers in LFD. Of course, you can't buy full T9 the moment you ding. So I had to do

After the Raid I grabbed my baby Druid who had just hit 79 the night before. I've got him in IceCrown getting rep with Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade so I can wear their tabards in dungeons. My usual plan with him is to que up as Heals/DPS and start flying out towards wherever I'm questing. Usually by the time I land I've got a group. So far, every time it's been as heals. I saw the loading screen come up to Halls of Lightning. I knew when I got closer to 80 I'd start seeing the 'hard' heroics like Halls of Lightning, Occulus, Utgarde Pinnacle, and Culling. I took a deep breath and prepared myself. First warning sign was a DK tank. I've had good and bad tanks of every class, but the bad ones were overwhelming DKs. Of course, we hadn't spawned into Halls fully when he tells us to take it easy on him because his was his first time tanking. Oh joy! He proceeds to tell us he picked a particular Frost build, and no I don't remember which one. I do

After the raid, Boston talked to me about filling in for Lakini as a swing man and being the 3 rd healer. Blueshield is our DPS Warrior, I think he’s Fury this week but he changes specs often. On nights that Lakini wasn’t available, Blue would switch to Tank and I would heal on fights that needed 3 healers. It was made clear to me that the decision was mine alone. But as we saw on Tuesday night, the lack of a third healer makes it really tough to kill certain Bosses. I’m actually sort of excited about doing this. I’ve got tanking on my Paladin down pat. I could do 969 with my eyes closed. I know exactly what to do in every situation a Tank faces. I know how to gear for threat, avoidance, and effective health. I know how to balance the three in a set. Healing is a new challenge. I’m learning about completely different stats, and seeing fights from a completely different perspective. It’s new and I’m both nervous and excited about it. I'm still primarily a Tank for our group

So last night we gathered up the crew and headed into ICC. We grabbed a Hunter who I think normally runs with Perp's group. The two raid groups seem to be very good about sharing members between them. Most everyone in the two raid groups have multiple 80s at this point. I’m about to ding on my fourth Level 80 toon, and I level slower than virtually anyone else in our guild. We cleared the lower spire pretty easily. Those fights are down pat by now. Our swing man, Lakini (Boomkin/RestoD), couldn't make it. He's our DPS/3rd healer when needed. He predicted that since he couldn't make it we'd finally see some drops he could use. First boss we get Leather Spell Power boots. It's like the Boss knew. It reminds me of the one night I missed Ulduar and we borrowed Grimadin (Prot Paladin) from the other group. Of course that's the night Flame Leviathan's bracers drop. It was the only time we'd see them drop. We decided to go give a look at the new

10/15/2010 - Patch 4.0.1 has hit the Live servers. This guide is now outdated. I will not have time to continue to update it. This continues my post from Monday. This edition is a little lighter on gear. Keep in mind your key stats Stamina, Strength, Defense, Agility, Hit, Parry, and Dodge and you’ll do fine. The 40s: Pass the Plate You can wear Plate now. Don't break the bank getting a full Plate set, but see about putting one together quickly. The additional armor is noticeable. Spec There's two ways you can do your spec in the 40s. You can continue to keep Seal of Command, and continue building up the Prot tree, or you can you can consider respecing into a full Protection build. By Level 50, you'll have some great tools from a Protection build. It'll come down to how well you can hold aggro on the multiple mob pulls and how your mana is doing. I’m going to suggest you switch at this point to a full on Protection build at 40. A Protection bu

10/15/2010 - Patch 4.0.1 has hit the Live servers. This guide is now outdated. I will not have time to continue to update it. With the advent of the Looking for Dungeon tool, Tanks are in demand through all level ranges. This is great news for Paladins, Warriors, Druids and Death Knights leveling up as they find the near instant queues that we see at level 80. Tanking a sub Level 80 dungeon in greens and blues is very different from tanking at the level cap in full epic gear. But each time you run, you'll have the opportunity to gain valuable experience, and I'm not just talking about the points you need to level up. You will have a different experience every time you queue. You'll see various Group makeups. You'll experience bad pulls, aggro issues from dps not attacking the right target to your Ret Paladin using Hand of Reckoning to 'dps'. You'll see healers who are learning their toons as well and have gaps with no or low heals. You'll see