Honor's Code

Now gather round younglings. You kids today, I see what you write on Mr. Ghostcralwer’s boards. You have no idea how good you have it. Let Ole Grand Pappy Honorshammer spin you tale of yesterday, how things were ‘back in the day.’ Before you kids got your new fangled talents and spells. I’ll tell you how it was, how it really was, when Paladins were walking to school, three miles they walked, in the snow, two feet of snow, uphill, both days. Now I could go way back in the day, and tell you tales that me Grandpappy told me. Days before even Righteous Fury when Paladins tanked with Seal of Fury and were by all accounts darn good tanks. A time when Blessing of Kings was a 31 point talent… in the Retribution tree… and Consecrate, oh sweet Consecrate, was an 11 point talent…in Holy. A time when blessings lasted all of 5 minutes and you had 40 people to keep a buff up on. But those were even before my days. So let me tell ya the story I know da best. My story. When I started tanking, we

I’m going to try some different things with the blog as summer wears on. There isn’t a great deal going on in World of Warcraft so I’m going to talk about whatever strikes my fancy. I have ton of respect for MMO Blogger, Tobold , even if I disagree with him on some occasions. Tobold did a great job explaining some of the problems associated with the often requested feature of Player Housing. The first problem is that of space. You have to room to put all these houses. Houses in adventuring areas seem out of place. Imagine the Barrens or Desolace filled with houses. It doesn’t feel right. The only way developers seem to make really big worlds is to use algorithms. That results in worlds that are not overly detailed. If the world is too big, players will complain about it taking a long time to get from Point A to Point B, especially in the leveling game. The second problem is one of persistence. There are typically far more people who call a server home, than the number you see at

I’ve started playing a Facebook game called Backyard Monsters. It’s a fun game. You build a base by harvesting sticks and stones to build buildings, and defenses like turrets and cannons. Then you harvest Goo to make Monsters to attack other peoples bases. If you are successful, you can loot their sticks and stones and goo. The game has been fun, but recently I’ve discovered that some players have done a little number crunching, calculating Monster Health, Tower Health and Attack Speed and other variables. These guys pounded on their spreadsheets and came up with the ‘ideal’ base design. Now if I had done that, I’d keep the secret to myself and dominate the game. But these guys published their findings on the official forums. Now as I get to a higher and higher level in the game, I see more and more people copying this design. It makes your base nigh impregnable unless your opponent throws wave after wave of monsters at you, depleting his Goo resource in the process. I think it’s a d

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, I hope you’ve come to understand that I’m not type to post a ‘sky is falling’ kind of post. I’d like to think I’ve taken the good with the bad over the years I’ve played Honorshammer. But even I get uneasy sometimes when I read stuff from Greg Street aka Ghostcrawler, the Lead Developer of World of Warcraft. When this guy talks, people listen. Recently, the Crab gave an interview to Eurogamer about the upcoming Expansion for World of Warcraft, Cataclysm. The question and answer that got my Paladin Sense tingling was this one. Eurogamer: Is there a particular class that you thought needed an overhaul more than the others? Greg Street: I think the Paladin is one I'd say probably needs some of the most work, it got a lot of work in Lich King but it's still not quite there. Each individual role, the damage, healing and tanking all have problems, in some cases they're over-powered but a little simplistic in other cases, so we d

Finally, a post goes under the "Guild" tag that I'm actually happy to post. One year ago, our Raid Team broke off from the guild we had been a part of since before Karazhan and formed our own Guild. It was a move that had been a long time in coming. We decided to do something special for our Guild and Raid Leader to commemorate the anniversary of our guild. So we all pitched in and bought him a Mechno-Hog. We know he could probably easily afford one himself, but he's far too practical and would never buy it. It's been a terrific first year for our Guild. Boston oversaw our breakup from our former guildmates. Then he slowly and skillfully brought in people who would fit our guild. Next he then oversaw our transfer over to Hordeside. Each step of the way he's guided us and I'm proud to say that we've accomplished every major goal we set as a guild. There's been minimal drama, and our guild has been a great place to call home in game. Leadin

This is simply a blog post to get down on paper my thoughts on what I’m going to make my main in Cataclysm. I’ve been playing all 4 of my 80s extensively, and while I realize that they will play differently in Cataclysm, I haven’t seen anything that radically changes the play style of any of them yet. I think if I had a mage, he’d be a very strong candidate for my new main. They look to have gotten a great update with Cataclysm. You get full pure DPS with Bloodlust. On top of that you get Portals, Tables and Invisibility. The only downside is ridiculously long LFD queues as DPS. I’d also have to wear cloth and be squishy. I’m not sure I’d like being squishy. The biggest drawback to the Mage is that I’d have to level him up from Level 1. Now I want to level a new toon from scratch in Cataclysm. I’ll either level a Mage or a Shaman, Goblin, natch! I’ve heard Shaman are insanely fun after level 40, but I’ve always abandoned the class somewhere in the 30s because it hasn’t really grabbed

Sunday nights a couple of guys in our guild who enjoy PVP as well as PVE get together and form up teams to farm points from the 5v5 Arena bracket. Being the helpful sort that I am, I usually offer myself as a warm body should they need people to make the team go. I do most of my PVP on my Hunter so that is the toon I take. I chose the Hunter because he was the easiest to gear and spec for PVP. My other Level 80s are all Hybrids and generally have PVE/PVE specs. My Paladin and my Warrior are Tank/DPS. My Druid is Heal/DPS. My Hunter is PVE Survival, PVP Marksman. I also ran out of stuff to buy with his Triumphs faster because I only had one set of gear to buy, so I could afford to purchase PVP Furious Gear. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed the team we were able to put together was really strong. Most of the time we'd be lucky to win 2 or 3 games on Sunday night. That night, we won 7! We decided to try the same team two weeks in a row. Something strange happened that second week

I keep waiting for the Ruby Sanctum loot table to be released in full for 10 man Raiders. The problem is, I think it has. 11 items from one boss seems like a pretty large loot table to me. What I find odd is that out of that list there is exactly 1 items for Tanks. Tanks generally account for about 20% of your 10 man Raid, yet there is one and only one item in the loot table for them. That would be Scion's Treads. These aren’t a bad pair of Tanking boots. They are item level 258 and have 1779 Armor, +114 Strength, +158 Stamina, Blue Socket, Red Socket, Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina, increases defense rating by 44, increases your dodge rating by 60, and increases your parry rating by 52. But I find it very strange that the designers would choose the Boot slot for a new item for Tanks in Ruby Sanctum. By now most 10 man tanks will have spent either the gold or badges for the Boots of Kingly Upheaval. These are item level 264 and have 1815 Armor (+36 armor), +92 Strength (-22 Strength), +