Honor's Code

I was quite surprised when I logged in last night and received an invite to the SSC Raid. I whispered my GM and ask her if she was sure she wanted me to go. She did, so I went and grabbed my supplies and got ready to raid. It seems most of MK doesn't read my blog as no one said anything to me about being in the raid despite the post I had made about leaving. I did not go by the Guild bank, instead I went down to the Iron Forge Auction House and dropped about 100g in Consumables and enchant mats for my Pepe's Cloak of Pacification. I was really struggling to figure out where I'd use Pepe's over Slikk's Cloak of Placation. I get 5 more Dodge Rating from Pepe's but I lose the Armor and Defense on Slikk's. I could see using Pepe's when I do Bear Avatar in ZA to try to make sure I don't get a taunt resist, but last night helped me see another use for Pepe's. First up on the docket for MK Sunday night was Fathom Lord. Since we had two Feral Druids ...

My first thought now that I've set things in motion, is to minimize the damage my leaving may do to my guild, Mal Katai. Dismissing for a moment the emotional pain from seeing a friend go (as there is exactly zero I can do about it), I can see two major areas where they will be hurt. They will lose their Frost resist tank for Hydross and they will lose their Prot Paladin for Mount Hyjal and Tidewalker. The second problem can be solved pretty quickly by Ryken respecing to Prot. I'm sure he's gotten some decent tanking gear from Kara runs and they can Badge him up pretty quick. Nearly all my gear is Badge gear anyway. Ryken is played by one of Mal Katai's co-GM's and he's a tremendous player who always does well with whichever of his multiple 70s he chooses to play. As to the first problem, what I have been doing is going out each day since I've made the decision (so Friday and Saturday) and farming up Primal Water from Zangarmarsh. Then I sent everyth...

I have come to the realization that I want something different from WoW than my guild may want. My efforts to try to bring Mal Katai closer to what I want have led to an increase in the stress level of Mal Katai's leadership. At the same time, I have become increasingly frustrated. I have been putting this decision off for weeks in the hopes that things would get better. They haven't. This isn't about 'greener pastures'. I have not app'ed to a single guild, though I now plan to start looking. I would write out all my reasons for doing this, but I'm afraid what it would look like is just a laundry list of "Things Honorshammer thinks Mal Katai did wrong." I don't want to do that. The officers put a ton of work into Mal Katai. I truly appreciate that. They have made the guild into the guild they want it to be. I put an add on Tankspot.com's recruitment forums, and got an almost immediate hit, but they wanted me to transfer to a ...

Last night Mal Katai went back to SSC to finish up what we started on Tuesday. A Rough Start I could tell pretty quickly it was going to be one of "those" nights. We started over an hour late. When we did start, we were wiping on trash and eventually needed to get Raistlan to switch from his Warlock back to his mage for crowd control. I will say, in the interest of full disclosure that I caused one of the wipes. We were pulling the last Naga group before the Murloc trash on the way to Tidewalker. I went in and grabbed my Naga, then got turned around and walked too close to the Murlocs as they were patting back. I pulled the Murlocs and ended up wiping the raid. I changed the way I was pulling the Naga and had a flawless pull the next time we tried it. An Argument Avoided I'm really not sure how it started. Someone was talking in vent, I think it might have been Raist, but I'm not sure. One of our Holy Priests made a comment to me that I need to relax. I first p...

I'm sure the WoW Blogging world is all a twitter about the new information released on WotLK. You can read about it on World of Matticus and Ardent Defender . Here is the Gamespy interview where you can find all the juicy details. Matt (World of Matticus) summed up my reaction pretty well. Enjoy!

Tuesday's Raid We started a new Raid week last night. I got on a little late due to putting my daughter's room back together. We have been redecorating at my house and had moved my daughter into the "Spare" Room while we painted her room. Last night we moved her back into her room which involved moving her bed, bookshelf and dresser around. The raid was already formed when I logged in and I got an immediate invite. Brindall (our Nature Tank) was nowhere to be seen, so we skipped Hydross and went straight to Lurker. One of the things I don't like about Lurker is that I get almost tunnel vision. I can only see (and influence) what is going on, on my little island. It seemed that one of the other tanks was having trouble getting initial aggro on his mob. I really don't know how Warriors do it. You are sitting there with and empty rage bar, and BAM, up comes this Naga and you've got to get your threat going pronto. Meanwhile I've already got a Consec...

The original plan last night had been to make some progression attempts on Leo. He and Lady Vashj being the only two bosses still alive in SSC. I was a bit surprised when I was summoned, not to SSC, but to Gruul's Lair. It seemed the plan was to do Gruul's/Mag and then go to SSC. I will tell you, faithful reader, that I was not in agreement with the plan, however; I decided out of loyalty to my Guild Leader to "not make a fuss". I faithfully towed the line. I tanked Olm, or more correctly, let me say I ran all over Maulgar's room being Deathcoiled. We lost Raistilan, our Mage tank. Krosh proceeded to make a couple of our team rather crispy, and it looked like a wipe was imminent. Aerlion, one of our other Core mages, managed to get Krosh's Spell Shield off of him, but he wasn't geared for Mage Tanking. Thinking quickly, I ran over towards Krosh, far enough away to be well out of his Blastwave, slapped on Fire Resist Aura and taunted. He nailed me with...