Honor's Code

I took a break from NaNoing on Saturday night to play some WoW. My first goal was to start grinding up Engineering on Jyger. While I was working on it, I saw someone asking in guild for a Molten Core run. He is working on Hydraxis Warlords reputation and wanted to know if anyone wanted to come along. He was looking for a healer and a tank, and when I saw a Discipline Priest offer her services, I offered to go to figuring my Pet could do some tanking. Having not played Jyger during Vanilla, he wasn’t attuned to Molten Core. We took care of that with a quick run through BRD, although we jumped at the wrong spot and ended up dying once to lava. Once attuned, we started working on the Core. The first thing I did was tamed a Core Hound. I’m not crazy about the white or green skins, I like the red one. I named him TheBeast. If you ran UBRS much, you know The Beast well. I figured, if wasn’t going to ever give me my Paladin shoulders, I might as well tame him. The first two Bosses dropped...

Now we’re in the home stretch. My 4 favorite Bosses in World of Warcraft to tank. #4 At #4 on the countdown, we go to the ancient halls of Ulduar, and the Spark of Imagination. One of the great tragadies of Wrath’s design is that if you weren’t around when Ulduar was current content, you liklely haven’t seen it. It, and Naxx, have been relegated to the same level as pre-Wrath content. It’s a shame because there are some really cool fights in there. Fights like Mimiron. Mimiron was a 4 Phase fight, and my favorite part of it was that your job as a Tank changed from Phase to Phase. In Phase 1, you tanked a mini-Flame Levithan (an earlier boss). This phase tested your cooldown usage, and for Paladins who lacked a second cooldown at the time, it tested your coordination with your healers for external cooldowns. In Phase Two, there wasn’t really anything to tank, so you whacked on the boss which looked a little big like a Tie Fighter. Then in Phase 3, you did some add tanking as the r...

The idea of healing again got me thinking about my sorted past with the Holy tree. It started out in what is now known as Vanilla. I dinged level 60 about 2 months before the original Naxxrammus came out. I was trying to catch on with a guild raiding Molten Core, Zul’Gurub, and Ahn’qiraj20. Back then, if you wanted to raid as a Paladin, you had one choice, and only one choice, and that choice was Holy. I had no issue with it at the time. Holy at that point was two things. Spamming Flash of Light, and spamming Decursive. Decursive was a wonderful little addon at the time. You hit the button and it figured out who to cleanse and cleansed them for you. And for certain fights, it was the only button I needed to push. Magmadar, Garr, and Lucifron can all die in the firey pit from whence they came. Over and over and over again. Debuffs go up, Debuffs get cleansed. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting game play in the world. But I went through most of Ahn’Qiraq, ZG, and MC. I got reall...

Since I’m in the process of deciding a main for the first time since I decided on Honorshammer, I thought it might be instructional to look back and see just why I settled on playing a Paladin in the first place. I got into WoW because I really enjoyed playing Warcraft 3 and dominating my buddy who would one day be known in game as Aoesrus. My favorite Hero in Warcraft 3 was the Mountain King. Since there was no Mountain King class in WoW, I wasn't sure what to do. So I pulled up the Dwarf, and started working through the various classes Dwarves could be. I clicked Warrior, but that guy had a sword and a shield. He didn't look right. I click Hunter. Again the guy is standing there with a sword. I clicked Priest. Gah, a Dwarf in a dress. No thank you. I clicked Rogue. The guy was standing there with this tinny tiny little dagger. And then I clicked the Hammer. The Dwarf Paladin stared back at me. There he was, there was my Mountain King. The other thing that really drew me to H...

I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but the shared topic on Blog Azeroth is asking about what we think are the best changes that have happened to WoW in the last 5 years. You can see the posts from other people on the Twisted Nether site. I haven't been playing all 5 years. In fact, I started playing around time the An'quiraj was added to the game (Early 2006, or Patch 1.9 for those of you scoring at home). My main toon has always been my Paladin, so I wanted to concentrate on the best Paladin changes over my time of playing World of Warcraft. But before I do, I want to talk about what I feel is the absolute best change made to World of Warcraft in the entire time that I've been playing, the 10 and 25 man Raid Split. Before, you would get to certain point in the end game where you found a wall. Here and no further. No new content for you unless you move on up to the 'Big Leagues' of 25 man raiding. It put people like myself, who wanted to raid ...

This week opened up with revisiting the Brood Mother, Onyxia herself. Onyxia was something of a demarcation point for my WoW career. As I may have mentioned before I hit Level 60 about 6 months before Burning Crusade was to come out. I was in a Leveling Guild. I had done the whole quest chain through BRD. The parade through Stormwind to confront Lady Prestor, aka Onyxia, was one of the signature moments in the game for my Paladin. I wanted to face her, in her lair, and now I would. It was much harder to catch up during that time in the game than it would be now. Guilds were also much more stringent on their applicants. A gear check was mandatory and often they would require a run through a 5 man to trial you. The cutting edge guilds were running Naxx40. They wanted applicants in AQ40 and BWL gear. Of course the guilds running AQ40 and BWL, wanted you to have all your Molten Core gear. Nobody wanted to run 'old' instances just to get you geared up to their level, but there...

I've often wondered what life would have been like if Paladins had been better tanks in the Pre-BC world. I got a little bit of a chance to find out when I went to Molten Core on Saturday night. Our SSC raid was called because we lacked enough people. Initially there were only about 4 or 5 of us but eventually we grew to 15. I had done MC back in the day, but it was a 40 man raid back then. I was assigned a Warrior to heal and basically had to keep cleansing everyone constantly. Luckily, there was a mod called Decursive back then that figured out who needed to be cleansed and cast the spell for you. Just bind your Decursive to a button and spam away. What I discovered was that MC would have been very hard on Paladin tanks, but with a couple of places where we would have really helped. First of all, there is a ton of magic damage flying around from nearly every mob. The Crushing Blow mechanic would have had to have been removed from most of the bosses for Palad...

A world boss or an instance that is listed means I've been in a raid/group that has killed that boss or cleared the entire instance. If an instance is listed as Heroic, it means I've done it on both normal and Heroic. If an instance isn't on the list (say Blackwing Lair) it means I've never done the instance. For Raids, I've listed all the bosses, and bolded the ones I've killed, and listed the ones I've attempted but not killed in italics. MT next to a boss/instance means I have Main Tanked it, OT means offtanked. If I've done both, I only show MT. Nalorakk and Void Reaver are kind of weird in that the Main Tank on them switches several times during the fight. Wrath of the Lich King Naxxramas Azjol'Nerub (D) Utgarde Keep (D) The Burning Crusade Sunwell Plateau Kalecgos(T) / Brutallus / Felmyst / Eredar Twins / M'uru / Kil'Jaden Black Temple Naj'entus(MT) / Supremus (T) / Akama (T) / Gorefiend(MT) / Gurtogg Bloodboil(...

Last night I decided to take a break from Outland and run run my alt Warrior, Rabbitslayer. He's level 25 now and doing okay. Either I am totally clueless on how to play a Warrior, or Warriors die alot in solo PVE. Well, at least my Warrior does. He has gotten some new skills which are really cool. Cleave, which helps when I've got two mobs on me. Intimidating Shout. I've never had a character who could fear. That's kind of cool. But my personal favorite is Execute. Basically, Execute is a like the mob only have 80% of his hit points. He gets down to 20% and BAM! Execute! Loot. Fun was had. One story about last night. I was questing in the Stone Talon Mountains with a level 22 Warlock. He gets jumped by a level 20 something Troll Hunter with a Bear pet. Who uses a Bear in solo PVE? Anyway the lock goes down, and I charge, and hamstring. The Hunter uses Aspect of the Cheetah. WTF? I rend, and smack him a couple of times, ignorning the Bear. I don't care if he...

One of the cool things I always like was when they would show you the origin of your favorite Super Hero. The episode were Peter Parket gets bit by the spider or Dr. Banner does his experiment with gamma rays. So what's the origin behind our dashing little dwarf, Honorshammer. Well on Maintakadin, Kitsuna of Tichondruis got me thinking when he said "I'm not convinced that everyone of every class hears a "call" to spec a certain way, but I think that protection paladins often do. At some point, against all logic, we decide that we would rather not spam flash of light all day. We'd rather not stay at the back of the raid, and we'd rather not try to fill one of the numberous DPS slots. We hear the call to let big ugly things smack us so that they don't hit our cloth wearing buddies. And those here at maintankadin have answered that call. When did you hear the call? And when did you answer it? " Maraudon. I was playing utility in a group t...