Honor's Code

I have a confession to make gentle readers. This weekend I cheated on WoW. I didn't plan it this way, it just sort of happened. It was Friday night. It wasn't a raid night so I didn't need to be online at any particular time. Of course, my weekend nights are not my own so my first order of business was seeing if my wife had made any plans for us to go out with friends. She hadn't so I was free to do whatever. I did what I usually do. I checked my Facebook and Twitter and my 3 email accounts. Yes, I have 3. One email caught my eye "Champions Online Free Trial Weekend". I had seen Champions Online back when it first came out, but I wasn't willing to shell out $60 and another $15 a month to check it out. But free? Maybe I would just download and make a Hero. Just to see what it looked like. I have never played another MMO besides WoW. What could it hurt to just see what it looked like. While it was installing I looked over the Templates. I figured they were l...

So how was your night last night? Thursday night we decided to try to knock out some achievements. We had been banging our heads against Arthas for two weeks and we needed a break. Flu Shot Shortage took a couple of tries to get it right. Luckily for me, my job really didn't change much. I just had to tank him same as I always do. We had a tougher time with Dances with Oozes. We made it just a straight DPS burn, nobody moved and Boston (Blood DK) would taunt a big one if it formed. We had a couple of close attempts and were on the verge of just killing him normally, when we finally got it. I tanked him as I always do and a late Ardent Defender proc kept me going for those last few precious percent. On both of these achievements I felt like our healers really did an amazing job. Nausea, Heartburn, and Indigestion was probably the toughest of them all. But it's remarkable (ergo, I am remarking on it) how much our DPS has improved. We pushed Professor P into Phase II with on...

We took another crack at the Lich King Monday night. We had made some good progress on Thursday and we hoped to continue that on Monday. I was still tanking the Lich King in Phase 1. Boston was gathering up all the Adds, so that meant dropping Consecrate from my threat rotation. I also had to be careful when I used Hammer of the Righteous. If I cast it while Arthas was summoning the little ghouls, I'd pick one or two up. It wasn't a huge deal if I did, but the more Boston had on him the better. The disease can jump form ghoul to ghoul and gets stronger so it really hits the Shambler hard when it gets to him. I started working Exorcism in whenever Arthas would summon the ghouls. He channels the cast so I was safe to wind up and cast Exorcism on him. It took a couple of attempts to get ourselves back into the flow of the fight. The RP dialog at the start is really cool, but it's already old. We've los probably one or two attempts worth of time to waiting while Arthas...

Thanks for all the comments on the Twinking post. I've decided to level my Hunter, and I've started working on a gear list for him. It’s almost like end game gear planning, which I enjoy, only with much less guidance. I've identified about 100 possible items. Now it's just a matter of ranking them. Monday night was dedicated to learning the Lich King encounter. Rather than overwhelm us with everything from what is a very complicated fight, Boston just briefed us on Phase 1 and the transition to Phase 2. But even just Phase 1 is complicated enough. The Lich King is a two tank fight. This was a great relief to me. I know Boston and I both enjoy tanking and we would both get our time tanking the Lich King. Nothing against Warriors or Druids, but I find something very poetic in that fact that the Lich King is being tanked by one of his former servants (Boston's DK) and a Champion of the Light (my Paladin). We started with Boston on the Lich King and me on the ...

As a guild we like to do stuff together. Heroics are beyond boring at this point, and while raid nights are a blast, we still like to do stuff when we aren't raiding. A couple of guys had this idea of making Twinks. The 39 Bracket is apparently thriving on the Nightfall battle group, and they've invited anyone who wants to join them to level a toon and 'twink' it. I was never really interested in twinking before. I didn't think it would be much fun to fight people who had little chance of putting up a fight. But now that Blizzard has set up a system to separate Twinks from non Twinks, I think it could be interesting. Apparently, in the 39 Bracket on Nightfall you get to know your cross server allies and enemies. Reputations and rivalries are formed, and the PVP is unlike what we see at the level cap. It's almost like the 39s Bracket is the Developers goal for Cataclysm PVP. Players have large health pools and the game is a little slower than at 80 where the pr...

Thursday night we headed back into Ice Crown Citadel. Tuesday I had had ridiculous lag to the point I could barely function. And it was ONLY on Altar of Storms. I tried one of my alts on Mannoroth and had no lag whatsoever. So we had our new DPS DK, CombatCow, switch to tank spec and basically 9 manned the first three bosses. I offered to drop out and have someone replace me but Boston wouldn’t hear of it. There will be some other night when one of our other team members is struggling and we’ll carry them too. I know ‘carry’ gets a bad wrap but when it comes my guild mates, I don’t mind carrying them. They aren’t heavy, they are my brothers. The Blizzard Techs did a great job, and by the time we hit Saurfang my lag was gone. I was so happy I jumped around the platform the whole time. Tuesdays are a short night for us right now so we only had time to get the lower spire and then clear Dreamwalker. We were going to ignore the rest of the instance until Sindi (Sindragosa) was dead. We h...

I've got an article up today on Paladin Schmaladin on how to run Heroics as a Paladin Tank and not go OOM constantly. You can read the full article here: http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-stop-going-oom-as-paladin-tank.html The cliff notes version goes something like this: Blessing of Sanctuary will be responsible regenerating over half the mana you'll get back during a Heroic. 10 tips: 1. Use Blessing of Sanctuary 2. Use Seal of Command 3. Use Retribution Aura if your healer can keep up 4. Use a set of gear that reaches the Block Cap (Dodge+Parry+Block+Miss = 101.6%) The Block Cap is actually 102.4% for raids, but you only need 101.6% for Heroics. Here's a handy dandy little macro you can use to check the block cap /script dr=function(x)return 1/(1/16+0.9560/x)end;DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+dr(GetCombat...

Today, you'll find an interview I did with WoW In an Hour . We talked about playing and raiding on a short schedule. I hope you enjoy it. Now from the HammerMail: Hi Honors, My guild and I are currently progressing through ICC-10, and we can now consistently with few wipes down the first four bosses. We got Festergut down on our 3rd attempt, but Rotface gave us fits for many weeks. We finally downed him this week and we feel confident we could do so again. From what I've read here and other places, Putricide might not be the best boss to progress to next. In your experiences as a raid tank and healer, should we try Blood Princes or Dreamwalker instead? Thanks in advance for your input, and keep up the good work with your blog. First of all, I'm so happy I don't have to make these decisions for my guild. Boston does a fantastic job of evaluating our strengths and weaknesses on any given night and determining the right targets for our raid. Both fights will...

As most of you know I am a Christian. For those of you who do not know, I never said I was a very good one. I am a human being with faults and failures just like you. I have big issues and I have small ones. I am not a “holy roller” nor am I a “bible thumper” I just try to live my life by the example of Jesus Christ’s life. You must be saying, OK Honors what are you getting at? The point is today I feel like I need to make share some of my thoughts with you on what is going on in the world. Many people I’ve played WoW with I consider to be friends. Some are still Alliance side on AoS, some have moved on to different servers, and some fill my raid frames each night. I think of them all as friends, and I believe some of them still read my blog. Even though I’ve never met any of you face to face, I care about each and every one of you. It's why I wrote my Leveling Guide that sort of put Honor's Code on the map. It's why I continue to write guides and helpful articles. ...

I recently received a couple of trinket questions via my Formspring account. You can send me a question via formspring.me/honorshammer. Answers go to my Twitter account, @honorshammer, and on formspring.me/honorshammer. Sometimes the questions will inspire a Blog post, like today. The question was : Is corroded skeleton key a good trinket or is it just stamina? The Corroded Skeleton Key has been a controversial trinket since its introduction with the Emblems of Frost Vendor. First of all, the question presupposes that a 'good trinket' is not 'just stamina'. I would argue there are 3 types of Trinkets for Tanks: Threat Trinkets, Avoidance Trinkets and Effective Health Trinkets. Under the umbrella of Effective Health Trinkets, are Armor Trinkets and Stamina Trinkets. I think what has happened is back when ICC first came out, some high profile tanks suggested the Key was a bad choice for spending emblems compared to the other options, and people just took th...

I had so much fun looking at the stat changes for Honorshammer, I thought I'd see what Cataclysm has in store for my Hunter. No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won't need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways. This is probably the biggest change being made to the Hunter class in Cataclysm. Hunter's will be fourth manaless DPS class (along with Warriors, Rogues, and Death Knights). Personally, I'm really excited about this change. Mana is something I've dealt with on every toon I've had and being able to DPS without having to worry about mana or going to Viper sounds like a great change. I'm frankly surprised by the amount of negative reaction this change has gotten from full time 'main' Hunters. The chief concern, as I read it, is that the regeneration rate of Hunter Energy (called Focus) will not be high enough. That may very well be the case in Beta, but it...

The Devs have unveiled some of the important stat changes coming in Cataclysm. More so than any other Expansion of World of Warcraft, I've come to think of Cataclysm as a WoW Reloaded, or WoW 2.0. Maybe it's because we are going back to the old world or maybe it's because of the depth of mechanics changes the Developers are making. So let's look at what the Developer's have announced for changes to Tanks. Bye Bye Block We've known since Ulduar that something needed to be done with Block. As Bosses hit harder and harder, Block became more and more useless. Then we got to Crusader's Coliseum, and we discovered the gimmick in the Anub'arak encounter that encouraged us to build a block centric set. Now in ICC Block is back to being something we get through other stats. We get our Block chance through Defense and our Block Value through Strength. We don’t seek it out, it just sort of comes along for the ride. The long awaited answer to Block has fin...

On Monday, Team I took care of our unfinished business in Ice Crown Citadel from earlier in the week and cleared Blood Queen, and then the Plague Wing. We had a fantastic go at Professor Putricide and even with a new person we still two-shot him. Let me give a shout out here to CombatCow our new Unholy DPS Death Knight. Welcome to the team! I managed to pickup some new gloves for the Holy set from one of the Abominations (Festergut or Rotface I can't keep them straight). One improvement the Developers have made to the Raid scene in Ice Crown Citadel is the consistency in the number of tanks needed. Both Boston and I are Tank spec throughout the instance. There hasn't been a single tank fight in the entire place and I'm very happy to see that. Of course that means the old Holy set isn't seeing much use, but I wouldn’t call that a bad thing. Healing not as bad as it was in Burning Crusade, but I still much prefer tanking over healing any day of the week. Then team h...