Honor's Code

RMT stands for Real Money Trading, or as commonly known in World of Warcraft, gold buying. You use ‘real money’ (dollars, pesos, marks, euros, yen) and purchase something in game like gold or BoE epics. Some MMOs are actually based on this kind of selling for their business model. Instead of a monthly fee, they charge you real money for weapons, or mounts. But what if the tables were turned? What if instead of spending real money to buy some virtual, you spent virtual currency to buy something real. I got the idea from Veneretio of Tanking Tips . Vene and Tank Like a Girl are two of the best Protection Warrior blogs you can read. He ran this idea by me, “what if Blizzard implemented the ultimate gold sink. What if they allowed you to buy a month of WoW time for 10,000 gold?” I don’t think this would ever really happen because it exposes the truth of RMT. You really are spending something of tangible value (your money) for something without tangible value (1s and 0s in a computer ...

With the Holiday coming up we lacked the people needed to raid on Thursday. There was a time when that would have really bothered me. But Thursday I only felt a little bit of disappointment before trying to figure out what I was going to do with my evening. I was about to get into an alt run when I got a message from my Arena partners. My Arena team is one of the few that survived the guild split. My partners (a Resto Druid and Arms Warrior) stayed in Heroes. Because our raid schedules don't mesh, it's often a challenge to get our games in. With my night open, we managed to get about 40 games in. We are still working out the communication and strategy we are using and learning each other. I'm replacing a Warlock they had on their team previously and helping them learn the tricks that a Paladin can bring to the table in Arena. Arena can be a great deal of fun one moment and completely controller-throwing frustration the next. We've been alternating between CC...

In the United States, we celebrate our national 'birthday' this weekend. The Fourth of July. "Having undertaken for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith" - The Mayflower Compact "This Nation was founded not by religionist , but by Christians; not on religion, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ" - Patrick Henry "We recognize no sovereign but God and no King but Jesus!" - John Adams and John Hancock "The Constitution , A system which without the finger of God never could have been suggested..." - Alexander Hamilton James Madison conceived the three branches of Government by inspiration of Isiah 33:22. "For the Lord is our Judge [Judicial] The Lord is our Lawgiver [Legislative] The Lord is our King [Executive] He will save us." Isiah 33:22 "God who gave us life gave us Liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their basis?" - Thomas Jefferson ...

One of the mods that I sacrifice some some of my screen real estate for is Recount. So what’s a Tank doing staring at Recount? Well, I’m not raid leading so I’m not monitoring the DPS levels. It wouldn’t matter much anyway because the DPSers in my guild tend to be very good. I don’t have Recount opened to Damage Done or DPS. I have it opened to a page called Deaths. Recount will faithfully count up the number of times your raid team members have died. I’m usually up there, but sometimes an ambitious mage or rogue will lead the way. While it’s nice to know that I’ve now died 11 times in this Ulduar run, that’s not really important. However, by left clicking on my toons name in the Recount frame I can bring up the Death Report. This will show me the last 10 seconds or so of my toons life. Heals received and damage taken, and help a Tank answer the most important question of any raid, ‘why did we die?’ The first thing I look for it mistakes on my part. It’s fairly easy t...

There was a time in my Paladin's life when I could tell healers and DPS the World of Warcraft over, "As long as you stand in the Consecrate, you're safe." Other tanks learned that once a mob was in the Consecrate, they weren't pulling it off me without a taunt. That doesn't appear to be the case anymore. Mobs run right through my Consecrate and keep on trucking. I've lost mobs in AoE situations to Fan of Knives, and Death and Decay. The first time I really noticed it was during our Sarth 2D and 3D raids, when I was Whelp Tanking. Then I have especially noticed it in Ulduar on stuff like Hodir's Worm trash, Mimiron's Trash trash and Thorim's whole arena. In fact, it was my failure in the Arena that really got me thinking about Consecration again. I know that spells like Blizzard can crit now and they couldn’t in Burning Crusade. But Consecrate seems to lack burst threat. It’s nice threat over time but there’s just no burst. Shockwave at le...

I hope no one has the delusion that just because I write a blog I have everything figured out. I don't. I read alot, but still struggle with decisions all the time. My current pondering is what to do with my Emblems of Conquest. As you may know, my guild raids 10 mans only. We've gotten some Conquest through Emalon PuGs, but the Alliance having Wintergrasp is a rare occasion on my server. Then you have to hope you luck into a decent PuG that can down him, even nerfed. Most of our Emblems of Conquest come through various Hard Modes we do. But sometimes we don't get the right people on for Hard Modes and can't do them. I'm not complaining mind you. I'm just trying to explain that that for my entire raid group the Conquests badges don't come quickly. I've currently got 19 EoC, exactly enough to buy the neck piece : http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45821 . BUT I could also save up for Tier Pieces I'll likely never see like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45632 ...

AD Changed on the PTR Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health or below is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum. When I first heard the change, my initial reaction was ‘QQ got it nerfed’. But anyone who looked at the first pass of AD knew it couldn't and wouldn’t make it live like that. You can't really say something has been nerfed when it's still going to be better than what's on live now. The new AD will be a buff to Paladin tanks. The current form on the PTR is hopefully balanced enough to make it to Live. I've never wanted Paladins to be overpowered tanks, just appoximately equal tanks. But come o...