Honor's Code

1. Buy Libram of Obstruction 2. Buy Plantium Mesh Cloak 3. Enchant Cloak with Titanweave 4. Hope to get an invite to Naxx-25 I logged on and banged out a Heroic Vault of Archavon run. Then I ran over to the Badge Vendors and bought the Libram of Obstruction and the Plantium Mesh Cloak. I found a Guild enchanter and slapped Titanweave on that bad boy. Then I whispered the raid leader that I was available. Badaboom, badabing. Invite. Thank you, very much. We had a pretty good run through Naxx25, and knocked out Construct, Military and Spider. I was offtanking most of the night and it was something of a relief to have our regular Main Tank handling the pulls. I could pull my mob off and go to town. For Tanks it was me (Tankadin), a Warrior, and two Feral Druids. I am still amazed by the threat generation that Ferals can put out, and the seeming invincibility of our very geared Warrior. I got a chance to tank Baron Rivendare for Four Horsemen. I actually tanked his level 60 ...

I answered a call for a PuG Vault of Archavon 25 raid. It was a good hour before Mal Katai's scheduled Naxx25 run, and we would only have Wintergrasp for another 30 minutes. Given the rarity of the Alliance actually ever having control of Wintergrasp on Altar of Storms, I jumped at the chance. They didn't say what they needed, only that they needed more people. When I arrived, the tanking assignments had already been figured out. A Warrior would be MT, and a Protection Paladin would be OT. I was a backup. This didn't bother me, I just wanted my two Emblems of Valor. As the other Tankadin walked up to the front of the raid, I saw something that immediately got my attention, a Hammer of Judgment. Uh-oh, do we have someone who hadn't gotten the memo about spell damage weapons not being ideal? I decided to inspect him. His gear looked okay, no other Spell Power pieces besides the Hammer of Judgment. He had a couple of level 70 pieces, trinkets for the most part. App...

I'm trying to decide what to do with my Emblems of Valor and Emblems of Heroism. I'm currently sitting on 35 Heroism and 25 Valor. When you face this decision, you can and should go read all the pick order guides you can find. There's a couple of excellent ones on Tanking Tips . We'll forgive Vene (Tanking Tips author) for being a Red Bar. He writes some very good tanking articles and if you are a serious tank his blog ought to be part of your reading. Just ignore the Warrior specific stuff. But after you read the guides, and before you go plunk down your pretty Emblems, remember this: Tank, Know Thyself! The first thing I'm going to consider when deciding on a piece of 'badge' gear is looking for weak points in my current kit. As I examine my tanking kit, I can see that I'm weak at the Bracers (Tempered Saronite), Back (Cloak of the Enemy), and Libram (Tome of the Lightbringer, my last piece of tBC gear). My Neck, Boots and Legs would be the next week p...

I found myself in what's becoming a familiar haunt to Honorshammer, Dun Niffelem. While there I saw my buddy LeeJenkins asking for an Offtank for 10 man Naxx. Because my schedule doesn't mesh well with the schedule of the 10 man Naxx groups in the guild I jumped at the chance. I had managed to grab a couple more upgrades since I last Raid tanked. The Titanium Earthguard Ring from Jewelcrafting and Bolstered Legplates from Heroic Violet Hold had been added to my kit. This pushed me into the 26k unbuffed HP range. So get my Flask of Stoneblood, and my Dragonfin Filet and start flying out to Dragonblight. I started looking around the raid group, and I got really excited. It was a bunch of folks that I ran a ton with back in Burning Crusade, but hadn't been able to run as much with as of yet in Wrath. We had 2 Protection Paladins (myself and one other) as tanks. Healers were a Holy Paladin, and Holy Priest. We had a Feral Druid, and Titans Grip Warrior as our melee. Rang...

(This post contains major HUGE spoilers. If you haven't done these quests in Storm Peaks, stop reading, and go do them. Proceed at your own risk.) So I was continuing to quest in the Storm Peaks working on a chain from the Frostborn Dwarves. This chain was trying to find Norgannon's Core. You start off by having to find a Dwarf. You find him, dying, of course. He sends you to a Watcher named Creteus. Creteus sends you off to 4 Temples in the area to try find out what happened. The little probe goes around and determines some sort of battle took place. You get back he sends you into this cave where you have to defeat a ton of Water Elementals to get the Core. As soon as you do, everything changes. Two Frostborn dwarves show and tell you the cave is under attack by Iron Dwarves. You have to fight your way through the Iron Dwarves (who weren't there when you down into the cave). One of the Frostborn tells you that King Stormheart (aka Muradin Bronzebeard) is leading the ...

Thursday I logged in and saw that Mal Katai would be running Naxx25. I got my stuff together for both my Protection Set and Retribution Set and hung around Dalaran. I'm still not 100% sure how Mal Katai decides who is going to get an invite and who isn't. All I know is that sometimes I get invited and sometimes I get virtually ignored. I got a whisper from Cryak asking me what spec I was. I answered in the way I usually do, "Prot at the moment". I hope he takes that to mean that I'm prot right now, but if you need something else, let me know. Maybe I should just say that directly next time. He then queried me as to where my gear was at. I told him the truth, a mix of blues and epics and around 24.5k unbuffed health. He must have thought that was good enough because a few moments later I had an invite to the raid. The other tanks appeared to be Cryak and Zelena. So you had Prot Warrior, Feral Druid, Prot Paladin. Most of the trash was just an AoE fest with Cr...

I know I stopped talking about my solo/questing as soon as I started raiding, but I wanted to give you an update. I'm still questing. I've continued working my way through the quests in Storm Peaks. The Titan Lore is really good and the quests are fun. There's even an Engineer only quest which rewards you with a schematic for a Scrapbot, which as far as I can tell is the new Repair Bot. Mats are fairly cheap only Saronite Bars. One of my favorite quests has you doing battle with a Giant Robotic Gnome. And you thought the real ones were scary! I've also reached the conclusion of the Thorim / Loken chain. Most everyone will start on the Thorim chain because it opens up the quests to start gaining Sons of Hodir rep. You continue the chain and ultimately there a mono y mono between Thorim and Loken. But my favorite chain thus far has to do with the Frostborn Dwarves. Once you start doing quests for them they send you out to take their Warrior test. On the way, your...