Honor's Code

One of my goals before the expansion was to see the end of Siege of Orgrimmar. I could have done this in LFR by now, but I’ve bene concentrating on the legendary quest line and by the time I ran the last two wings of Throne of Thunder and the first two wings of Siege my week was pretty much shot. I got offered an invite to the guild’s raid team, but it was with the understanding that the Tank spots were taken. I would be joining as main spec DPS with a tank off spec. I looked around various places like the Official Forums, Wowhead, Tankspot, Maintankadin, MMO-Champ, etc. There didn’t seem to be many (any) guilds recruiting Tanks. I decided my best chance would be to get established in a team and hope to get a role as a fill-in tank and eventually get promoted from within to a dedicated tank role. The night before the raid, I got myself gemmed, and enchanted and read over the fights as best I could. Since I had been concentrating on farming Titan Runestones, I had only been up throu...

"A communications disruption can mean only one thing—invasion." ―Sio Bibble You may have heard that WoW got a little patch last week. Once the patch hit, I threw some toys in the toy box and threw my reagents into the reagent bank. That freed up some much needed bag space. Then I threw a bunch of stuff in Void Storage. I can tell I’m going to fill that sucker up pretty quick. I’m paranoid that some green quest reward is going to be an amazing transmog option one day, but I can’t keep burning bag space with it. I know someone is already queuing up Elsa. “Let it go! Let it go!” I had transmog my Ret gear into Tier 4 and my weapon into Hammer of the Naaru. Basically, I was what Maraad would look like if he was a sessy dwarf like me. I like seeing the new and improved Khadgar. I had stripped down my UI to just ElvUI and basically nothing else. I’m actually going to be doing a full UI makeover (and no it doesn’t have anything to do with the ElvUI backdoor that th...

Wratharion gave me the Lightning Lance and told me to thrust it into Nalak and survive long enough to absorb his power. I’m sure back when Isle of Thunder was current content, Nalak groups formed almost hourly. Now a days, the Isle is deserted. Well, the quest said to stick it into Nalak and survive long enough. I have a Bubble. Would 12 seconds be long enough? 12 seconds was not long enough. I was feeling pretty discouraged at this point. I had made it through the brick wall of Lion Roars, survived a pretty tough scenario, and now was faced with trying to put together a group to kill a world boss no one kills anymore. Again, it's my fault for taking a year off and now trying to get his done, but it stills feels frustrating. I checked OpenRaid and there was a World Boss group set up for a couple of days away, but my gear wasn’t up to what they wanted. I would love to know how 530 is ‘easily obtainable’ when LFR only rewards 528. That means I would need to be fully LFR gea...

I entered the week with 13 secrets and by the time I entered Pinnacle of Storms, I had 18. I knew Le Shien was guaranteed to drop one so as long as Iron Quon or the Twins gave one up, I was golden. Iron Quon cooperated, and I was thrilled when the Twins gave one up as well. I had my 20. I knew Le Shein was guaranteed drop for either Runestones or Secrets, but I didn’t have the quest for Runestones yet, so I dropped group so I could come back and get a Runestone off him this reset. I headed back to my good buddy Wratharion and gave him my Secrets and he asked me to meet him on the Isle of Thunder. I found him and we entered into a solo scenario at the Thunder Forge. I had to fight some Mogu while Wratharion charged up the Forge. Some Shado-Pan guys showed up to help out. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to go Prot or Ret. I know at some point, you get a role specific reward, which leads to a role specific cloak, but I’m not sure at what point you make that choice. The combat started be...

Happy Patch Day! I'm assuming 6.0.2 will drop today. While you wait for the servers to come up, let me tell you a story. There were two bosses who were basically the bane of my existence when I left WoW: Tortos and Durumu. Tortos was because of the bats that he summoned. I was a 10 man raider for most of my WoW career. 25 is a lot more people and that’s a lot of bats to try to corral. I queued as Ret for that one. Then we have Durumu the Forgotten. This is another one that I like to queue as Ret for. It’s not fair to the other 24 poor saps that get in a group with me to have one of their tanks die every Eye Sore (maze) phase. I’m sure with more practice I would get it, but while I’m learning I’ll stick with Ret. I needed Secrets so I found myself back facing off with Tortos and Durumu. The LFR I was in cleared the trash to Durumu, and started the encounter. The fight was going okay until the first Eye Sore. When it was over, only one tank, three healers and three DPS were lef...

It's official. We will get Patch 6.0.2 Tuesday, October 13th . Mists of Panadaria is effectively over and we are in that weird time when we aren't in the new Expansion’s content yet, but under all its new systems and rules. What follows is a cliff notes version of the changes coming for Retribution and Protection Paladins from a primarily PVE point of view. 10/14 UPDATE! I wake up this morning and found that Theck has also written a fantastic guide to Patch 6.0.2 . Tomorrow everything is going to change. The World (of Warcraft) will never again be what it is. All the stuff that is going away in 6.0.2 is going away. The Brawler’s Guild will be shut down when you log back in, and the Proving Grounds are closed. If you want to start on the Legendary Quest chain, you have to do it before you logged out Monday. If you are on the chain, you can keep going but you've only got a month to finish it. Update Your Addons  At some point, go to Curse or wherever you get you...

When the instances reset, the Glory group reformed with the expressed goal of finishing what we started. We went back to the Tolvir. I stared down Siamat and said “So, Siamat, at last we meet again for the first time for the last time.” (Bonus Hammer points if you get reference) Our Warlock devised a strategy that ensured we all got the achievement this time. He laid down a nice hard nuke (don’t ask me what it was, I know zero about Warlocks. It was all green and firey.) We marked each Servant and killed the Minions. Gru would be so mad! We blew up each Servant in order. Once the third one died, we verified we had three stacks and blew up Siamat. Game. Set. Match. Glory of the Cataclysm Hero. Volcanic Drake. Very nice. As a bonus prize, that gave me my 50 th mount and I got Leading the Calvary and the Albino Drake. Brewmaster My next goal was to work on Brewfest. I only needed two Achievements for my Brewmaster title: Down with Dark Iron and Brew of the Month. T...

My intuition proved right. The Glory group formed up and we headed for Halls of Origination. Our first target was “I Hate that Song”. Having a Trinity group proved to be an asset on this one, even overgeared as we were. I went down and gathered up all the snakes. We kept one DPS on each lever. The last DPS and the healer stayed up top on the boss. Every time the boss would start the channel the song, our two DPS below flipped their switch and interrupted him. Meanwhile the Warlock blew up him up. Done and done. We moved on into the chamber with the elemental bosses and troggs. Being over geared, we split up. Two DPS went to one boss and the tank, healer, and DPS went to the other. We beat the timer easily. Those were the only two I personally needed, but we completed the rest of the achievements for everyone in that dungeon. We moved onto Lost City and once again failed at Headed South. One of us got it, but the rest of us didn’t have enough stacks. He starts knocking you around al...

With 6.0.2 patch landing any day now I really have to prioritize what I’m going to do between now and Warlords.  I don’t have the social capital to get a Challenge Mode group going this late in the game, and to be perfectly frank (and I would not want to be anything other than perfectly frank with you), I’m not sure I have the mad skillz to get Gold in those challenges. One of the biggest items I’d like to get my grubby little hands on would be a Garrosh Heirloom for leveling to 100, but there are significant barriers. I don’t have much social capital with my guild yet, and I hate to ask for a carry since I’m not geared for current content with my 506 Item Level. I’ve checked OpenRaid and there’s nothing in my time frame and again my iLevel and general lack of familiarity with the fights might be a concern. If you are reading this and you’ve got a spot in Cross Realm Garrosh kill (Flex or Normal) and don’t mind my low iLevel, drop me a line at Honorshammer at gmail. My bucket...