Honor's Code

Our intrepid band returned to Ice Crown Citadel Monday night determined to face down the mother of all Frost Wyrms, Sindragosa. We started by taking the elevator down to her room. I had bad flashbacks of the Serpent Shrine Cavern 'Elevator Boss' as the elevator flew down, but fortunately no one died. Our resident explorer and Warlock extraordinaire, Neo, warned us to not go into the room. We found out why quickly. Spiders descended down on webs and engaged us. As we were fighting them, smaller spiders would come down and join them. Once we got the big spiders down, a group of Vrykul came and attacked us, followed by more spiders. You know, after tanking the Adds in Heroic ToC, I've really had my fill of spiders. I'd like to take a tactical nuke to the entire Nerubian Kingdom. We eventually just ran out of the room and out onto Sindragosa's ledge. We cleared the first trash pack and Rimefang landed. We cleared the second trash pack and Spinebraker landed. We opted

We again experienced one of the realities of a 10 man guild last night. Team II's Resto Shaman announced he was leaving our guild because he had been offered a spot in a 25 man guild. 25man Raiders talk about how players MIGHT choose 10 mans over 25 mans if they didn't have the huge advantages they do. 10man Raiders experience the reality that players DO choose 25 mans over 10s because of those advantages. This is simply a reality of being in 10 man raid guild. It is difficult to find people who are willing to stick with a 10 man guild when the deck is so heavily slanted towards the 25 mans. The Devs are really in a tough position on this issue because when it comes to the recruitment and retention of good players, one format or the other will be advantaged. It's simply a question of which one. The Developers and 25 man raiders have taken the position that in the absence of subsidies for doing 25 mans, 10 man raids would be advantaged. Advantaged meaning that more peopl

With Blood Queen Lanathel soundly defeated, Professor P was the next Wing Boss we set our sites on. Our last time fighting him I felt like our team was really starting to get a hang on the strategy, but we stopped the raid short to go finish off Heroic Anub in ToC. Now we were back and ready to devote our full attention to the good Professor. Boston (Blood DK Tank) took over driving the Abomination and I took Professor Putricide. We had made a slight alteration to our game plan. Instead of kiting Professor P all over the room, we stayed on the side where the first Add would spawn. Our Priest, Blackhaus, decided to go Holy for these attempts. We used his Lightwell to mark where the first add would spawn. No one was to stand there so we wouldn't get any slime pools there. We pretty much own Phase 1. We could do that in our sleep. Phase 2 is where it gets interesting. Somewhere in Phase 2 we get behind on the Abom eating the Slime Pools and our DPS gets hit from a nasty hit debuff

I have 4 Level 80 toons. I have 3 Hordeside and 1 Alliance. My Hordeside toons are my Paladin, Druid, and Hunter. My Allance toon is my Warrior. Currently their professions look something like this. Prot Paladin: Mining/JC MM/Surv Hunter: Skining/Mining Resto/Boomkin Druid: Skinning/Leatherworking Arms/Prot Warrior: Mining/Enchanting Now I have a good friend who lets me use his mage for my Disenchanting needs so I haven't seen a big need to bring the Warrior over, plus I like having a toon on Allianceside to drop by and say hello. I’m wondering if it would make sense to change my Professions with an eye to making more gold. I'm just basically treading water moneywise. I make enough to cover my repair bills, enchants, gems, etc but not a whole lot more. This week in particular with the upgrades I’ve gotten and bought, on 3 toons no less, I’m down about 5k. I'm not looking to become some WoW Mogul. I'd just like to be able to do stuff like buying up Primordial

We started a discussion in the comments to a previous article about Agility gemming versus Dodge gemming. I decided it would make a good topic for a post on Paladin Schmaladin . I know some of my readers aren't enamored of Paladin Schaladin, so I'll give you the low down. Agility/Stam in Red Slots if the Socket bonus is 9 or 12 Stamina. It's all based on the math of Theck and others on Maintankadin, but the bottom line result is "Each point of Agility is around 4% more effective at reducing average incoming damage as a point of dodge rating." This holds true until your raid buffed armor reaches 42k, at which time Dodge takes back over. If you want to check the math behind how this was figured out, you can read the thread .

We spent the better part of last night getting taught lessons by Professor Putricide. Boston and I switched off driving the Abomination and tanking Professor P. It had been some time since we had last worked on Professor since our efforts have been directed at the Crimson Halls and the Frostwing Halls. But with only Professor and Sindragosa left before Arthas, he became our next target. Our biggest issue, at least from my point of view, is slime management. Phase 1 is cake. We are through that Phase before we get the first Orange Add. Sorry for the lack of proper names, but I think of them as the Orange Add and the Green Add. Then somewhere in Phase 2 the Abom, regardless if it was either myself or Boston driving the Abom, we would start to get overwhelmed by slime. I was spamming my 'Eat Goo' key as fast as I could but I couldn't seem to keep up. We kept wiping right around the 60% mark. We the attempt limiter removed we were free to try several different approaches.

Friday was a weird night. First of all I got online a little late because it was snowing in Charleston for the first time in over 10 years. I took Mrs. Hammer and Little Hammer out in the snow. We made a snowman , had a snowball fight, and made snow angels. It was one of those nights I'll never forget, and I hope they won't either. After we got in and warmed up, we put Little Hammer to bed and then I got online. While I was running the Daily Random Heroic on one of my 3 Level 80s, one of my guild mates, we'll call him Mr. D, started to put together a PuG 25 man for ICC. I think everyone in my 5 man volunteered to go. Mr.D said they just needed Heals and DPS. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped to go tank it. I was a little more disappointed when I found out one of other guild tanks was going to tank it. But it made sense. Mr.D knew him from their 10 man group, so Mr.D was probably comfortable with him tanking. I'm sure if one of the guys from my 10

Feburary 15th, 2006 I opened my WoW account which means I've now been playing this game for 4 years.

I believe you can get me through the night.... Last night was an expensive night for me. I bought the final Saronite I needed to get my Boots of Kingly Upheaval crafted by our resident Guild Blacksmith. He's been unselfishly using his Emblems to buy Saronites to make sure he's got all the patterns we need, and stockpiling Titansteel. A couple of guys pitched in and provided the Eternal Earths I needed so I wouldn't have to buy them off the AH. I've always heard the Tank's gear is not his own, but the guilds. With the Boots it really felt that way. Then I caved and bought the Lightsworm Shoulderguards. Now the last piece of sub 251 gear on Honors is his Gloves. By the time I had gemmed and enchanted the boots and shoulders I was down about 3k total on the night. But it was gold I was happy to spend. Why else am I saving it up? It's kind of like Hunters who question if they should use Epic Ammo in ICC. Why else did you buy/craft it? Raidwise, the night start

Sometimes pictures really ARE worth more than words. Courtesy of our Raids Boomkin, I give you the definitive Visual Guide to the Crimson Halls .

WoW In An Hour has written an absolutely fantastic guide on Paladin Tanking . It is written specifically for the Warrior Tank who wants to try out Paladin tanking, and it's very well done. It would also be a great read for any new Protection Paladin as it explains nearly everything you need to know about being a solid Paladin tank in a beginner friendly way. The article is extremely well done and researched and I highly recommend you check it out. The other article that you need to see this morning comes from our Death Knight friend, Gravity . He has been following the threads on Maintankadin researching the question of how many Bosses in ICC and ToC have Parry-Haste enable. This question is of great import to the Death Knight community because one of the downsides of Dual Wield tanking is the concern of causing more Parry-Haste. At first, the community was beginning think that Parry Haste doesn’t exis t in ICC. Then as more data came in and some well done analysis by

Last night was pretty quick. We just took out the four bosses in the Lower Spire. We only had a minor hiccup on Deathwhisper when our DPS wasn’t watching threat and pulled her. We lost about half our DPS right there. Boston and I got it back under control and we rezzed one of the dead DPS. We still one shot her despite that. I didn’t feel any of the fatigue I had felt during Anub’arak, so maybe it was just a one night thing. More than ever I want to get back in there and finally kill that bug. Next we went over to Naxxrammus for the weekly quest. This week on Altar of Storms, it's Patchwerk. It was kind of funny being back in Naxx again. We all remembered cutting our raiding teeth in there back when iLevel 213 was the hot stuff. Gear inflation has just been crazy this expansion. I have nearly one and half times more health than I did in those early days. Patch went down ridiculously fast. With the Frost Emblems from last night I'm getting close to my next Emblem purchase. M

Last night I was a little late getting online as I was furiously working on my resume. You may remember about six months ago, we lost our big account at work. At the time, the management group said 'we don't want anyone going out and looking for a job, but we understand if you do.' Monday that changed to 'January numbers are in. January numbers are bad. You should really be looking if you aren't.’ So looking I am. It was a great relief to escape into WoW for a couple of hours. Our intrepid little band was headed up to the Crimson Halls. We had killed the Princes earlier in the week so we were ready to fight the Queen once more. Our Lock had not seen her before and at the end of the Thursday's raid he sent his little Eye thing up to her room. He let it get too close and pulled her. We weren't sure it that had burned an attempt since we were all heading out, but sure enough it had. We gave him a good natured ribbing; at least I hope he took it that way. I re

You might have heard a football game was played last night. Congratulations to the Saints and their fans. I hope one day my Panthers allow me to feel how all Saints fans must feel this morning. The leader of the Saints is Drew Bress, a quarterback has been told his whole life he's too short to play the position. He was dumped by his old team and signed with the Saints four years ago. This interview with Drew Brees may give some insight into the character of the man who led his team to winning the Super Bowl.

I put my thoughts in an article on Paladin Schmaladin . Here's the net-net. In the end, I don't think this will have much effect on us. Some of us won't have 40k unbuffed HP anymore, but that's more an 'epeen' thing than anything else. Paladins have tanked successfully with the deck stacked far more against us than it is now, even with this small nerf. Generally, Tanks have not been the bottleneck to any of the fights so far. Maybe that will change in hard modes, but raids are wiping more to execution and learning errors, than class mechanics. For me personally, Boston (my co-Tank) seems to prefer Blood so the buff will be very nice for him. It's not like we told him to lol go DPS when DKs got nerfed hard in whichever patch it was, maybe 3.1. I have every confidence I'll be tanking on Monday night. Well except for Dreamwalker who I've been lobbying to be Holy for because dropping huge Holy Light bombs on her sounds like fun. Once the emotion wears of

I'm a bit baffled by the thread on the Official Forums where 10 man Raiders are complaining that the first Arthas 10 man kill was done by 25 man raiders. When you decide to be a 10 man raider, what you are basically saying is that you don't care about World or Server firsts. That's just part of joining the 10 man scene. Although I'm sure a 10 man strict guild has gotten a server first here or there, 25 man raiders have a built in advantage with their higher iLevel gear. It is far more likely a 25 man guild will get a server first on 10 man than a 10 man guild. We should also remember that before Wrath came out, there was an idea that Arthas would only be available as a 25 man raid boss. 10 mans could fight him, but he'd escape and leave a chest. He would only actually die in a 25 man raid. Instead, the Devs decided to give 10 and 25 man raiders the full encounter, and both groups get to kill the Lich King. 10 man raiders should be very pleased at that de

Ghostcrawler has posted on the Official Forums again about Paladin AE threat. I don't think it's Consecrate, actually. It was definitely Consecrate in Burning Crusade. I think it's HoR and possibly SoC . Again the masses have locked into Consecreate as the issue. I think that's because its the most visible spell in our arsenal. It's what non-Paladins see. Ghostcrawler is right that Consecrate isn't the issue. I disagree that Hammer of the Righteous (HotR) is part of the problem. HotR is basically Paladin's version of the Warrior's cleave. Warriors have the option to use Talent points to increase Cleaves damage, while Paladin's can Glyph Hammer of the Righteous to hit a fourth target. No, I think the real culprit is Seal of Command. Seal of Command was intended as Retribution's DPS Seal for trash and quick fights, but when the change was made to turn Seal of Command into Seal of Cleave, Prot Paladins started to evaluate if it had a place in tanki

Patch 3.2.2 is finally here. This will open up the next area of Ice Crown Citadel, which is the 'Frost' wing. Here we will face off with one of the most unique raid encounters yet seen Valithria Dreamwalker. If you aren't familiar, this is a Boss where you have to heal her to full before your raid is overwhelmed with Adds. I'm going to see if I can talk Blueshield (our 3rd tank) into tanking so I can break out the Holy set for this fight. Bombing away with Holy Lights should be a big help to my raid. I can hit 18k Holy Light crit in Prot Spec/Holy Gear. I can't imagine what that'll be when I'm actually Holy. Of course, in that Prot Spec/Holy Gear, I can only cast about 4 of those bad boys before I'm OOM. We'll also have a new Boss to play with in VoA, Toravon the Ice Watcher. It's the best shot at T10 without spending your Emblems of Frost. There are more nerfs to Heroic 5 man dungeons. I particular like the line about Brann working out to

There's been an absolutely epic thread on Maintankadin arguing armor, stamina, and the 'new EH' formula that Theck of Blackrock came up with. Apparently, the thread caught the notice of some of the ElistJerks theorycrafters who came in to offer their contribution, but along with their arguments brought a whole lot of vitriol and drama. When MainTankadin posters didn't accept their arguments, and had the audacity to point out holes and the lack of supporting data, they got even more aggressive. While I would very much like to believe I have the intelligence to keep up and understand those discussions, maybe even contribute. However, I have neither the time nor the desire to delve into theorycrafting at the level of Theck and the other posters in that thread. One thing I've always admired about Theck is that he is not afraid to admit mistakes or oversights in his theorycraft and correct them. Since he has not changed his views, he must not have seen enough e