Honor's Code

So by now you may have heard that BioWare made the big announcement over the weekend. We know the release date for The Old Republic – 12/20/2011. I don’t think the date had anything to do with Blizzard’s own announcement of moving Diablo III back to 2012. The plan all along was to put Deathwing (and transmogrification) up against Star Wars. I’ll be starting a little earlier thanks to my pre-order. No one knows just how early yet, probably a weekend or so. I’ll need it because Tython, the starting world for Jedi Knights, and Jedi Consolers, is going to be crushed on opening day with Jedi. I came to WoW late, around patch 1.9. I’ve never played an MMO at launch. This should be an experience. In the meantime, the question now is what do I do with my last 3 months in WoW? I’d love to finish the Firelands. I just hope my team can put it together long enough to get that done.

My raid team is in tough spot. Attendance has been a constant thorn pretty much the entire expansion, but it’s becoming more of a roadblock than thorn now. We are a team that has been raiding since Karazhan. We've had some attrition over the years, but we've kept it together pretty well. It was never mechanics that held us back this tier, it was attendance. We have been constantly battling burnout from our team members, and struggling to fill raids. That's what held us back in Firelands more than anything else. I understand it. We've been at this a long time and everyone reaches their time when they say no mas. Of the last 6 attempts we’ve made at raiding, we fielded a team twice. I have to take some responsibility for this myself as I’ve only been able to raid one day a week for the past 4 weeks due to work, and the new night we tried was a night I simply couldn’t raid. But even with me there we are not fielding a full team. I'm holding out hope for our team, but

BioWare recently released a walkthrough of the Esseles Flashpoint. Darth Hater did a wonderful job with their dissection of the video and they were able to pickup several of the Jedi Knight powers used in the walkthrough. All the screenshots here are taken from Darth Hater’s dissection . It is important to remember that Esseles is a low level Flashpoint. The characters are around level 10. They classes haven’t broken into their advanced classes. This is like a Deadmines or a Ragefire Chasm.  Here we see what will likely be the Jedi Knight’s main nuke. It works for both Guardians and Sentinels, with the Sentinel getting more damage by striking with both blades. The attack is channeled which means the Knight will need to keep his target in range for the duration. I don’t know if you can move while channeling, but if you can’t I can see JKs getting kited a ton. This is an AoE (Area of Effect) attack. Guardian’s will use this for multi-target aggro, Sentinels for multi-target damage.

After our successful kill of Lord Ryloth, Devolve sets its sights on Alysrazor. Technically, we are now in Ambivalence, but I still think of our team as Devolve. Our attempts on Alysrazor went….poorly. So after clearing the farm bosses (I love that Ryloth is on farm) we headed over to Baleroc instead. We didn’t have an ideal composition for Baleroc with two hunters, but we went after him anyway. Hunters aren’t great for Baleroc because sometimes the crystals that DPS have to soak are too close in to allow Hunters to dps. Blizzard really needs to eliminate the minimum range on Hunters, especially when it causes encounter specific issues like this. I have now met my weekly quota for qq. Lakini would be so proud. We assigned 3 dps to the first crystal rotation and 3 dps to the second. I was in the second group following our Moonkin and Warlock. Both of those guys could take quite a few stacks so the time I spent soaking was minimal. We wiped a few times as we got the crystal mechanic

I was not selected for the first Beta Weekend. This is disappointing, but I can always hope for next weekend. In the mean time, let’s talk Jedi Knights. I think everyone has known on some level that Jedi Knights would be a playable class in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is MY class, my intended ‘main’. I’ve been interested when the other classes were revealed, but my attention is riveted on the Jedi. Here’s the official class page: http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/classes/jedi-knight Valiant, Determined, Guardian of Peace A symbol of hope in dark times, the Jedi Knight stands for the legacy of the Jedi Order—more than twenty-thousand years of protecting the Republic and keeping the peace across the galaxy. Though Jedi Knights have served as generals, guerilla fighters, and warriors for generations, their legendary combat prowess faces its greatest test during this age. Through years of disciplined training and meditation, the Jedi Knight hones body and mind into perfect harmo