Honor's Code

I work the first Wednesday night of every month and I had told our raid leader I wouldn't be on for last week's run. Technically, I volunteer, since the job I'm doing on Wednesday night doesn't pay me, but I like to think of it as work in my mind. I love my Wednesday night job so it's not work in negative connotation, but it's easier to tell someone I can't do something on Wednesday night because I'm 'working' and it has 'work' level priority in my schedule. Much to my surprise when I did log on the next night, I was greeted with a new guild message of the day that stated we were on a raiding hiatus until Legion. Old Raids Even though we have Beta starting today, Legion is still months away. A couple of the team wanted to work on the old Mists of Pandari Meta achievements and I joined in. I'm a relatively easy Dwarf to please, just point me at something that wants to tear my face off and I'm happy. We started with Pandari...

I went back to the Inn and Wratharion sent me to the Timeless Isle. After we had our little chat, I had two quests: "Secrets of the Timeless Isle" and "The Emperor's Way". I had the coins for "Secrets" as soon as he gave me the quest. But I was once again frustrated when I saw "The Emperor's Way". On my server, we have a slight  faction imbalance. The Timeless Isle is pretty much a Horde zone. Lucky for me, it's a PVE server, but groups for the Celestial's form rarely. In fact, I don't recall seeing an Alliance group on my server since I arrived (not that I was paying real close attention). I thought about checking OpenRaid to see if a group was scheduled there. I figured someone on a more Alliance friendly server might have a group and I could get the achievement done. Then one of my guild mates told me about the new Group Finder. Apparently, there's a new option called Custom Groups. He told me to pull it up and loo...

I entered the night with 9 Titan Runestones. I knew Sha of Pride was a guaranteed drop as was Lei Shien, but I knew at some point I would need the "Heart of the Thunder King" from Lei Shien so I didn't want to kill him until I was on that step if I could avoid it. I opted for the Vale of Eternal Sorrows knowing that it would give me four shots at a Runestone and I was guarenteed at least the drop from Sha. Immereus was a swing and a miss. Here we go I thought, another night of nothing. Then Protectors cooperated and dropped one. With Sha that would be 11, but then, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Norushen dropped one too! Now I knew Sha would give me my 12th as long as we could kill him. The new patch removed any drama from that event. Healers might be struggling to adjust but tanks appear nigh unkillable and DPS is through the roof. I flew my happy little dwarf behind back to the Veiled Stair and sure enough, Wratharion gives me the quest to kill Lei S...

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...

We had intended to head back into the Heroics, but first our Warlock wanted to make his Firelands run. He has been running with a group through Firelands working on the Dragonwrath legendary. This would be the last run he needed to finish that up. I hadn't run with the group before but I was happy to tag along. I went Prot even though it probably wasn't completely necessary. Firelands brought back some mixed memories for me. It was a fun place, but it was also a place where my old guild called it quits. I was again reminded that I had switched to the Hunter for Cataclysm and the Avengers of Hyjal rep started coming in. I went from Neutral to Friendly pretty quickly. We were able to ignore the vast majority of the mechanics and blasted through the bosses in short order. My guild has stopped on Baleroc so this was the first time I had seen past him. When the fire bridge appeared after his death, I was immediately reminded of the bridge in SSC that leads to Vashj. Majordomo ...

Mount farming has become a big activity in the pre-expansion lull. One of my new guild mates was working on Glory of Cataclysm Hero for the Volcanic Drake. Between my various toons, I had about 11 more to go on that Meta. I wanted to help out (and start to get to know the guild a bit) so I threw my hat in the ring. I’m actually way behind on the mount farming thing as I only have 48. Well, this can give me one more I guess. Even though it was old content, we still went with a trinity group and they asked me to tank. As much as I feared my tanking skills were diminished, it did feel good to strap on the shield (transmoged to my favorite Aldori Legacy Defender) again. We started in Stonecore with Rotten to the Core. I was nervous, but more so from a social standpoint. I was pretty sure nothing in there was threatening. The only achieve in there was the last boss, but we didn't read it carefully enough and killed the Disciples before we engaged the boss. Oops. Our next target w...

(This was supposed to go out on Friday, but I was having some Internet issues.) Avast, me hardys! In me landlubbin' days, I started me a farm in da Valley O the Four Blowing Winds. But I've had more work than I could bloody do. I needed me a scurvy lad to come help. Unfortunate as a no good swashbuckler, I wasn't best friends with any of the fine people o the valley. I set course to make one of them me bestest friend. I didn a care really which one. There be work to be done and I needed a someone ta do it, but what I needed was a bit of leverage. I started all sorts of looting, and pillagin' in the Hozen area. Whilst I be doing my best to be the scourge on da Hozen, a call went up for help from me mateys in the guild. She was a fine lass who worked powers of magic untold. We was joined by a powerful warrior. As would befit me piratical past, we ventured out onto the high seas.We repelled tha Horde boarding party, We swung over to da Horde ship to pillage som...

Once I had my sea legs under me, I ventured out to the Timeless Isle. It was an interesting place. I found a couple of chests and upgraded my Ret set a bit. When I left Honors he was still main spec Prot and off spec Ret. While his Prot set was a respectable (for the time) 502, his Ret set was about 480. Oddly enough, despite the layoff, with Timeless gear being 496 there still isn’t much in the way of upgrade his (my? Why am I talking about Honors in 3rd person?) Prot set. With a little practice and some upgrades I managed to get some of the quests done. I can handle the elite tigers and snakes okay. Most of the time I can handle the panda ghosts in the village alright too. My favorite quest was the one that gave you the waterlogged journal where you read about the adventures of a party that landed on the Timeless Isle. It was a good introduction to the place and I love lore bits like that. I read all 22 pages. I was curious to see if I would miss the action combat from Wildstar...

This past weekend was back to football. In gaming, I'm back to WoW. I cancelled my account almost a year ago. I’ve bounced from SWTOR to Wildstar but nothing has really stuck with me like WoW did. There’s a familiarity I feel with WoW that no other game has been able to match. Every time I would play with my buddies in SWTOR or Wildstar, I would remark on how something reminded me of a mechanic in WoW. It got to the point that we would do a boss fight and one of them would ask, 'so which Boss from WoW did that remind you of'? While I learned what a dagun or a rowsdower was, they didn’t stick with me the same way that murlocs or Naga did. Maybe it was because I was already familiar with them from the Warcraft RTS, I don’t know. WoW is about to celebrate its 10 th anniversary. The only anniversary I’ve missed in WoW was the 9th. 10th being such a milestone I really want to be there for it. They are also releasing of a Level 90 version of Molten Core and I think it would b...

.....must come to an end. I know a guild breakup is the definition of a first world problem, but I'm still feeling a little down tonight. I should be preparing for a raid that isn't going to happen. My guild has made the decision to cease raiding operations effective immediately. Our guild was small one, 12 to 15 people. My raid leader was the guild leader. We talked for a while last night. He explained his reasons. I completely understood his reasons. I completely supported his decision. He was doing the right thing for the right reasons. He has my full and unwavering support. Most of the guild is transferring to a PvP Server. We are becoming a PVP guild. They will be doing LFRs and PvP. PvE raiding is done. Football players on the verge of retirement talk about being done with the game before the game is done with you. I'm not done with WoW. I don't know that I can truly express how much I don't want to be on a PvP server. Apparently the one they have...

WoW’s next class? It needs to be the Fighter-Mage. Basically this idea came about because I love tanking, but I prefer ranged DPS to melee DPS. The only way to have both Ranged DPS and tanking would be to roll a druid, but if you don’t enjoy Boomkin and Guardian you are out of luck. It’s time to change that. In my days playing Pen and Paper DnD there was this concept of playing a dual classed character. What if we brought that to WoW? Currently you are limited to 2 specs from a choice of three. What I propose is to make that a choice of 2 specs from a choice of 33. Maybe you are an Arm Warrior/Frost Mage, or  a Holy Priest/Demonology Warlock. I would make mine a Protection Paladin/Beastmastery Hunter. Since the introduction of the new talent system, the individual specs of the classes have become more and more distinct. Each spec has a specific kit of tools. A Retribution Paladin has more in common with an Arms Warrior than he does with a Prot or Holy Paladin. He can’t eve...

We know the Sha are the last breath of the Old God Y'Shaarj. Y’Shaarj had seven heads, so it follows there would be seven sha. So far, only six have been revealed. Those six are Fear, Doubt, Hatred, Despair, Anger, and Violence. We don’t know the seventh. However, I think Blizzard may have accidently let the name of the seventh Sha out in a preview of the new 5.2 raid. Community Manger Draxxari was interviewing Lead Encounter Designer, Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas. You can read the entire blog here . What I want to concentrate on is their preview of Tortos. Ion: Along with asking why we fight, and learning that our true enemy is war itself, a major theme of the Mists of Pandaria has been killing turtles. This raid encounter elevates that motif to all-new heights, presenting players with the chance to fight a huge turtle, and small turtles, and also the ability to kick one of the small turtles into the big turtle. What more could you ask for? Emphasis added. Our true enemy i...