Honor's Code

This weekend, I got invited to run Sartharion 10 again with Heroes Inc, once again as Ret DPS. I had the benefit this time of watching one of their Ret Paladins who was much better geared than I was. I didn't hold out any hope of keeping up with him in DPS, but I tried to watch to see if he did anything different than I did. The one thing that I did notice was that he used Consecration much more than I did. I came to the conclusion that I'm being too frugal with my mana pool. I'm so worried I'm going to run OOM that I don't tend to use Consecrate in single target situations. I also switched from Seal of Command to Seal of the Martyr. With those changes I broke the 1500 dps barrier and posted 1700 DPS despite really poor gear. If I'm going to keep running as Ret, I need to start saving up for a Titansteel Bonecrusher. That would be the single biggest upgrade I can get. My preference would be to start running stuff as Prot, but my flexibility to go Ret when ...

Hey there, glad to hear you're raiding again. I've myself hit 80 just a bit before you posted you did, and heroiced ever since. Or tried at least. I'm currently standing on uncrit, 21K health, and 23K armor, and yet 70% of the heroic groups I try to get into say i'm not geared enough. Now,i know that good tanks at the moment on my server have 30K+ health, but, how am I supposed to gear myself, if I can't get to heroics? I got almost every rep upgrade to my gear I could get,and enchanted every stamina enchant that's better than it's fellow enchants to the same piece of gear, yet still, I can't find a group to the harder instances.What buggs me the most is that with friends, I finished HoL heroic, I even Offtanked Archavon on a time(even outthreated and lived our full epic MT), and I know I have the skill to tank almost every thing in this expansion, considering the time I spent as tank, and the fact that I leveled prot 58-80. How can I get out of this sit...

(I apologize for the lack of screenshots. I logged off WoW sort of late, so I didn't get a chance to grab them) So there I was happily banging away on the anvil working on my Engineering when I get a whisper from my old buddy Wichita of Heroes Inc. Only Wichita doesn't play Wichita anymore. He put down his totems, and took up a Runeblade and now plays a Deathknight named Ellevis (man, I hope I spelled that right). I still think of him as Wichita. So when you see me say Wichita in this post, I’m actually referring to Ellevis the Death Knight. Anyway, Wichita wanted to know if I was saved to Naxxramas this week. I responded that I wasn't. His next question was to find out if I'd be interested in running with his group a little later on that night. I told him that I would be very interested. He told me he wasn't sure how the group was going to stack up so he might need me to be an Offtank or DPS. I told him either would be fine. My preference would be tanking bu...

So I got online last night and said to myself, “Self, it’s time to get some upgrades. I can't control what does or doesn't drop, but I can make sure I've got as good of stuff as I can get otherwise. I don’t have any major expenses that I can see coming up so let's go make some people on Altar of Storms rich.” I got with one of our guilds Blacksmith’s and found out what he would need to fashion up a Titansteel Shield Wall and a pair of Tempered Titansteel Treads for me. This very generous guildy had some of the mats on him and offered to use those mats to make the gear. Did I ever tell you we have some of the most generous/nicest people on the server in Mal Katai? What was required was some Saronite, Titansteel, and Frozen Orbs. Yes, last night would have been a good night to have that stuff listed, because I was buying. Money was no object. I met up with my Blacksmith friend at the Great Forge in Ironforge. Being a Dwarf I felt this was very apropos, and a coup...

Last night I took at shot at my first Heroic. I was out working on my Sons of Hodir daily quests when I see someone in Guild Chat asking for a tank for Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. I hesitated for a moment because I wasn't sure if this was the best Heroic for me to begin with, but I figured I'd give it a try. I had thought it was an all Mal Katai group because I got the invite from Guild Chat. I was wrong. This was a PuG. It was myself and Death Knight from Mal Katai, a Holy Paladin from Dominion, an unguilded Warlock and a guilded Warlock from a guild I didn't recognize. The Holy Paladin seemed to know me from Dominion, but I didn't recognize his name. I've had to PuG most of my groups since going back to Mal Katai. I'm hoping to start getting invited to some guild runs soon, but in the meantime I need to do everything I can to improve my gear and be ready once a spot opens up in a guild run (5 man, 10 man, whatever). I know I've got to be patient. I ba...

Last night, I got a whisper from my old buddy Ferth of Heroes Inc who wanted to see if I was saved to the Sartharion raid. Sartharion is a single boss "Onyxia" type encounter. I didn't want to get caught committed to Heroes group, and then have Mal Katai need me so I checked with Raistilan, who gave me the go ahead to run with Heroes. Heroes group was a little heavy on tanks, so Ferth asked if I could go as Retribution. I thought that was actually a pretty good idea. It would be good to see the fight from any angle so I have a better understanding of it when I need to tank it. Also, when dual specs come out I intend to run as a Prot / Ret Paladin and getting a little practice as Ret would be a good thing. Basically I can go Prot or Ret, just don't ask me to go Holy. I was about to say don't ask me to heal, but I made a macro for Art of War. Art of War makes your Flash of Light instant, so it only costs you a global cooldown. My macro targets the tank, cas...

Man, it's good to be back. I hope everyone had a great holiday and New Years! I started out last night starting to work on my neglected professions. I've had a very generous guildmate provide me with some materials to work on my Jewelcrafting. For Engineering, I kept all the Crystalized elements I got while leveling, and bought the Cobalt and Saronite bars. I've been taking it in spurts rather than just try to level 375-450 in one night. Actually, as I've started researching it, it seems professions start to peter out around 440. There is really no reason in the current version of the game to push to 450. The server first Feats of Strength are long past. I worked my Engineering up to 400 and my Jewelcrafting to 390. Then I got to train one of the Tinkers (Engineering type enchants) called the Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket. Here are a couple of screenshots of it in action. I don't need another range pull since I have Avengers Shield, but I can use this when Avenger's ...