Honor's Code

Here For The Gear managed to go 6-7 this week, an improvement over our intial week of 3-8. We more than doubled our win total while losing 1 less game and playing 2 more games than last week. We finished with a rating of 1412. We started out really poorly at 0-5, then we started clicking and went 6-2. For those of your not in the know, Here For The Gear is my 2v2 Arena team consisting of Honorshammer as a Retribution Paladin and my friend Lakini on his Shadowstep Rogue alt, Homerjay. Over the week since our intial forary into arena I had worked on Honorshammer Ret PVP gear. I had been sitting on points for about a season because I never knew if I should get the Ret gear or the Holy gear. After trying Holy and then trying Ret, I much prefered Ret. So I bought the Season 4 Gloves, the Season 3 Chest and the Season 3 Legs. I was grinding Battlegrounds pretty hard for some honor points. As Friday night rolled around, I had a choice infront of me. Spring for the Vindicator's Ring which ...

I'm tried it, I'm knocking it. We didn't have much going on this weekend. I saw one of our raiding mages looking for a 2s partner for his MS Warrior alt. I offered to respec Holy and give it try. He was somewhat surprised at the offer but took me up on it nevertheless. We thought Warrior/Paladin, we've got 1600 easy street. We thought wrong. Admittedly, I haven't been Holy since level 60, so I wasn't as familiar with all the tools as I could have been. Spells like Divine Illumination were new concepts to me. I thought my gear was respectable. I had about 215 resilience along with 9k health and 10k mana. I was generally the target of the opposing team, and it seemed my blue bar was much more the target than the green. It seemed like every class had someone to drain or burn my mana, and once my mana was gone I had no way to regenerate it quickly. We wound up going 5-8 on the night, and going from 1500 to around 1450. We played 13 matches. Would you b...

So last night as the raid was winding down, one of our Shadow Priests, Barasi, asked if anyone could join his 3v3 to finish out the games he needed to qualify for points this week. It's been several weeks since I've had time to Arena so I offered my services. The team was me (Prot Paladin), Luminati (Holy Priest) and Barasi (Shadow Priest). We had some inkling that this matrix may not give us the best opportunity for success. So I grabbed a portal to Ironforge, laid down my 20g, and insta-presto-chango, Ret Paladin! I swung by my bank to pick up all the Ret gear that has been gathering dust and strapped it on. So we queued up. Now I haven't played Ret since probably my mid 50s. If you look at the screenshot closely, you'll see I dont even have Repentance on my hotbar. I r noob! Our first match was in the Blades Edge Arena (the one with the bridge) against a Hunter, Rogue, Rogue team. Barasi is a very good PVPer and called targets. He sent me after the Hunter. I've f...

(Cross posted from my guild forums) Situation is as follows: I've been saving up for the Merciless Gladiator's Gavel. This is the 2 nd best Tankadin Weapon in the game. It's got more spell damage on it than I have in my entire gearset . I have been waiting for Season 3, so I can get it at a reduced price. I'm currently sitting on 4300 Arena points. I get about 300 a week, which means that in 2-3 weeks I will have more points than I can carry over. You can only carry over 5000 points . So should I go ahead and purchase the mace now and pay the higher price? I'm going to "lose" the points I'd save anyway because I don't think we are just 2-3 weeks from Season 3. Even if 2.3 comes out in that time frame they need to do the end of Season 2 finals before they can begin Season 3.

Last night I got on really late. I was at practice for a friend of mine who is recording a live CD tonight of their band playing. I'm running the "tech booth". It's me, a lightning guys and the sound guy. I coordinate everything going on the big screen from a computer terminal and give instructions and feedback to the other guys. It's fun, and it's hectic . Tonight will be the live performance so I hope we get a good turn out and that I don't screw up too badly. There are a couple of times where I have to time up a video with the band and if I'm off, it will be painfully obvious. When I finally did make it on, I headed out to do my dailies. Since I've been helping my buddy all this week, I kind of knew that raiding would be out for me. I flew back to Evergrove and ran into Bacon. I offered to help him with his Dailies but he declined. I was flying back to Shattrath when I get a message from Jagdelf , a hunter from my old guild, Heroes Inc. He wa...

Last night was a PVP night for Honors. It started with a game of WSG with Heroes. WSG can be a tough battleground for even the best group. The biggest problem I have with it, is that its more like Baseball than the other battleground. In Football or Basketball, you've got a clock. Barring an overtime situation, the game is going to end within some fairly regular time frame . Baseball does not have a clock. It has innings which are only progressed by getting outs. In the same way, WSG is only progressed by capturing flags. The other battlegrounds have points you hold or that your opponent holds. These essentially become a clock. Every second of the game, one team or the other is gaining points towards the total they need. The game is going to end within some fairly regular time frame . WSG can go super quick or take forever. I'm a healer in Battlegrounds, but I also make a very good flag holder. I have more hit points in my tank gear than just about anyone save a Prot War...

I was asked to switch Arena teams from PVPed in my Pants to Mew Mew Pew Pew and a Bubble. This team consists of 2 Druids, 1 Mage , 1 Hunter, 1 Warlock, 1 Shaman & 2 Paladins (one Prot , one Holy). The Mage and the Holy Paladin are played by the same player. We wanted to do our games last night but thanks to an Authentication Server issue, half the team couldn't log in. I leveled up my Warrior alt, Rabbitslayer while we waited. He's 27 now. Eventually the issue cleared up and we got to get our games in. The team we went with last night was 2 druids (Origami and Zadorr ) 2 Paladins (Me and Rhubarb) and a Shaman (Wichita). The first challenge we pose to opposing teams is identifying the healer. Unfortunately this challenge is somewhat solved by the fact that I have Season 2 Shoulders and I basically glow in the dark. However this is actually a good thing, because they target me instead of the Holy Paladin. Actually more often than not, the Shaman is the focus fire target. ...

10-5-2007: My conclusion below is suspended. A rumored change in Patch 2.3 would give 1/3 of all straight +healing as spell damage. I must reevaluate this thread. As a Paladin you get to choose from 3 sets for PVP rewards. Ornamented (+healing) Lamellar (+spell damage and healing) Scaled ( Str , Stam , Crit ) I'm going to ignored Scaled for the time being. The 2 piece set bonus on each set is +35 resilence . The 4 piece set bonus is reduced cooldown on Hammer of Justice. One idea is to mix two pieces from one set with 3 pieces from the other. This gives you an extra 35 resilience because you get both sets 2 pieces bonus. What do you give up for that 35 Resilience. Lets examine an example set of Ornamented Shoulders, Legs, and Gloves with Lamellar Helm and Chest. The difference over a 5/5 Ornamented Set is: +39 Resilience +65 Spell Damage +14 Spell Crit -12 Int -47 Healing Well you gain more than just the set bonus. You actually gain 39 resilience because the two Lamellar piec...

Oh yes, it's Arena night And the feeling's right Oh yes, it's Arena night Oh what a night (oh what a night) This is your night tonight, everything' s gonna be alright Cause it's Arena night, o what a night. My apologies to Kool and the Gang for butchering their song there. As you can tell from the tone of my post, Arena went much better last night. I think all of the practicing and theorycrafting and losing we have been going through has finally started to pay off. Our communication, especially between me and our Resto Druid (Bacon) was much improved. The other teams could lock me down from time to time, but either Bacon or even our Boomkin ( Lakini ) would get a heal on me and I'd be good. Arena master is really helping with target selection. Although, I think surprise may be one of our advantages. It seemed after we beat a team, we had a tougher time if we played them again. We even beat a two Paladin team which had been a real bane to us in the past. Our ...

Last night was Arena night for me and my 5v5 team, PVPed in My Pants. Our illustrious team members include: Me (Prot Paladin) Lakini (Boomkin Druid) Ferth (Fury Warrior) Baconstrip (Resto Druid) Lou (Assassination Rogue) You know the old saying, "You win some, you lose some." Well last night it was "You lose some, you lose some more." By the end of the night we were all pretty frustrated. The main culprit of the night seemed to be Paladins. Don't you just hate those guys? ;-) Specifically one spell Paladins can cast, Blessing of Protection. Blessing of Protection Rank 3 6% of base Mana 30 yd range Instant cast 5/4/3 min cooldown (depending on talents) A targeted party member is protected from all physical attacks for 10 sec, but during that time they cannot melee attack or use physical abilities. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or B...