Honor's Code

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...

Tier 14 has been a weird tier for us. It's been the most exciting and the most frustrating tier of my WoW career. Old Faces in New Places This was the tier where we got the band back together. Most of my guild mates followed me to SWTOR about midway through the Firelands patch. One by one, we quit SWTOR and came back to WoW. One of our guys had actually stayed in WoW and found a guild on Nesingwary. As we came back, we all just joined up with him. As the tier wore on, it became increasing clear that we needed to be back on our own and recently we've made that a reality. The core of our team formed during Karazhan, and we really peaked in Ulduar. It has been great to have familiar voices in vent and be raiding with this team again. Frustrations Throughout this entire tier, our team has been frustrated by attendance issues. We had to cancel way too many raid nights simply because we couldn't field a team. I know, absolutely know, that we could have gotten farther th...

We have news from the PTR about Patch 5.2 and storm clouds of worry and concern are gathering over the land of the Tankadins. Paladin - For Protection, we do have plans to try and lower the value of haste relative to dodge and parry. We don't want to make haste terrible for paladins, but we agree that it's odd for it to be better than more traditional tank stats. It might require a nerf to Shield of the Righteous to do this, but our goal is not to nerf survivability overall. We just wanted to provide you some context if you see odd changes to tanking abilities. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7593740975?page=45#884 Yes, my friends, that is none other than GC uttering the N word. A little further on in the thread, GC is asked to explain his reasoning. Again in the words of the Crab. The game just isn't currently designed to support it.  It creates potential problems such as:   - A Prot paladin competing with a Frost DK or Ret paladin over gear, meanin...

Do you think maybe someone on the Blizzard Developement team was an AC/DC fan? I'm sure by now you've heard of the new Thunderforged items on the PTR. According to CM Crithto, this is Blizzard's attempt to revitalize 25 man raiding. To attempt to navigate this minefield, we’re going to try having Thunderforged items drop more frequently in 25-player raids. They’ll be somewhat rare in both cases compared to the standard versions that’ll drop, but they’ll be even rarer in 10s. Overall, a 25-player group will be more likely to end up with a slightly higher item level after several weeks of raiding. There are some excellent responses in the thread, and I would especially highlight the response of Moshne of Something Wicked . One of the suggestion I have seen several tims is giving 25s gear with one upgrade. This was actually something I thought about before Thunderforged gear was announced. In addition to the points being brought up, I think one issue that isn'...

Come on, you had to know when I got back into blogging about my time in World of Warcraft, I’d get around to loot. On Ghostcrawler’s twitter account , @Ghostcrawler , he was asked if he felt LFR gave out loot often enough. The crab responded. The numbers work fine overall. I do wish there was a fix for perennially unlucky players, which couldn't be exploited.  Well, Ghostcrawler ole buddy I’m glad you asked. I've got two suggestions. First suggestion: The Gallywix Coin The Gallywix Coin would be a special coin introduced to the game. The coin is named after Trade Prince Gallywix, the leader of the Goblins. Gallywix ain't the type to roll the dice and hope for an epic reward. He’s the kind of guy that would stack the deck in his favor, big time. Basically, a Gallywix Coin would be a guaranteed loot drop. You spend the coin, you are going to get something off the boss. I would set the price at 5 Elder Charms plus 4000 gold. There is no way I see Gallywix get...

When I came back to World of Warcraft from Star Wars The Old Republic, I switched servers to join some old raiding buddies. In the process, I race changed my Paladin to a Tauren.  This is something I had always wanted to do, but by the time they announced Sunwalkers, SWTOR was already in my thinking and I didn't see the point in putting money into a game I was getting ready to leave. Then my guild switched to Alliance midway through Firelands, and I changed to playing my Hunter as my main and it simply wasn't an option anymore. I much preferred the SunWalker take on the Paladin as sun powered druids over the Blood Elves sucking dry a Naaru. I leveled through 85 to 90 as a Tauren and even did the first couple of raid nights. I had reclaimed my spot in the tanking corps, and when you are Horde, Tauren means Tank. But as we started raiding, I noticed I was having more trouble than usuals. I wasn't sure if it was age starting to catch up with me, or what. The Ta...