Honor's Code

I have a confession to make gentle readers. This weekend I cheated on WoW. I didn't plan it this way, it just sort of happened. It was Friday night. It wasn't a raid night so I didn't need to be online at any particular time. Of course, my weekend nights are not my own so my first order of business was seeing if my wife had made any plans for us to go out with friends. She hadn't so I was free to do whatever. I did what I usually do. I checked my Facebook and Twitter and my 3 email accounts. Yes, I have 3. One email caught my eye "Champions Online Free Trial Weekend". I had seen Champions Online back when it first came out, but I wasn't willing to shell out $60 and another $15 a month to check it out. But free? Maybe I would just download and make a Hero. Just to see what it looked like. I have never played another MMO besides WoW. What could it hurt to just see what it looked like. While it was installing I looked over the Templates. I figured they were l...

So how was your night last night? Thursday night we decided to try to knock out some achievements. We had been banging our heads against Arthas for two weeks and we needed a break. Flu Shot Shortage took a couple of tries to get it right. Luckily for me, my job really didn't change much. I just had to tank him same as I always do. We had a tougher time with Dances with Oozes. We made it just a straight DPS burn, nobody moved and Boston (Blood DK) would taunt a big one if it formed. We had a couple of close attempts and were on the verge of just killing him normally, when we finally got it. I tanked him as I always do and a late Ardent Defender proc kept me going for those last few precious percent. On both of these achievements I felt like our healers really did an amazing job. Nausea, Heartburn, and Indigestion was probably the toughest of them all. But it's remarkable (ergo, I am remarking on it) how much our DPS has improved. We pushed Professor P into Phase II with on...

We took another crack at the Lich King Monday night. We had made some good progress on Thursday and we hoped to continue that on Monday. I was still tanking the Lich King in Phase 1. Boston was gathering up all the Adds, so that meant dropping Consecrate from my threat rotation. I also had to be careful when I used Hammer of the Righteous. If I cast it while Arthas was summoning the little ghouls, I'd pick one or two up. It wasn't a huge deal if I did, but the more Boston had on him the better. The disease can jump form ghoul to ghoul and gets stronger so it really hits the Shambler hard when it gets to him. I started working Exorcism in whenever Arthas would summon the ghouls. He channels the cast so I was safe to wind up and cast Exorcism on him. It took a couple of attempts to get ourselves back into the flow of the fight. The RP dialog at the start is really cool, but it's already old. We've los probably one or two attempts worth of time to waiting while Arthas...

Thanks for all the comments on the Twinking post. I've decided to level my Hunter, and I've started working on a gear list for him. It’s almost like end game gear planning, which I enjoy, only with much less guidance. I've identified about 100 possible items. Now it's just a matter of ranking them. Monday night was dedicated to learning the Lich King encounter. Rather than overwhelm us with everything from what is a very complicated fight, Boston just briefed us on Phase 1 and the transition to Phase 2. But even just Phase 1 is complicated enough. The Lich King is a two tank fight. This was a great relief to me. I know Boston and I both enjoy tanking and we would both get our time tanking the Lich King. Nothing against Warriors or Druids, but I find something very poetic in that fact that the Lich King is being tanked by one of his former servants (Boston's DK) and a Champion of the Light (my Paladin). We started with Boston on the Lich King and me on the ...

As a guild we like to do stuff together. Heroics are beyond boring at this point, and while raid nights are a blast, we still like to do stuff when we aren't raiding. A couple of guys had this idea of making Twinks. The 39 Bracket is apparently thriving on the Nightfall battle group, and they've invited anyone who wants to join them to level a toon and 'twink' it. I was never really interested in twinking before. I didn't think it would be much fun to fight people who had little chance of putting up a fight. But now that Blizzard has set up a system to separate Twinks from non Twinks, I think it could be interesting. Apparently, in the 39 Bracket on Nightfall you get to know your cross server allies and enemies. Reputations and rivalries are formed, and the PVP is unlike what we see at the level cap. It's almost like the 39s Bracket is the Developers goal for Cataclysm PVP. Players have large health pools and the game is a little slower than at 80 where the pr...

Thursday night we headed back into Ice Crown Citadel. Tuesday I had had ridiculous lag to the point I could barely function. And it was ONLY on Altar of Storms. I tried one of my alts on Mannoroth and had no lag whatsoever. So we had our new DPS DK, CombatCow, switch to tank spec and basically 9 manned the first three bosses. I offered to drop out and have someone replace me but Boston wouldn’t hear of it. There will be some other night when one of our other team members is struggling and we’ll carry them too. I know ‘carry’ gets a bad wrap but when it comes my guild mates, I don’t mind carrying them. They aren’t heavy, they are my brothers. The Blizzard Techs did a great job, and by the time we hit Saurfang my lag was gone. I was so happy I jumped around the platform the whole time. Tuesdays are a short night for us right now so we only had time to get the lower spire and then clear Dreamwalker. We were going to ignore the rest of the instance until Sindi (Sindragosa) was dead. We h...

I've got an article up today on Paladin Schmaladin on how to run Heroics as a Paladin Tank and not go OOM constantly. You can read the full article here: http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-stop-going-oom-as-paladin-tank.html The cliff notes version goes something like this: Blessing of Sanctuary will be responsible regenerating over half the mana you'll get back during a Heroic. 10 tips: 1. Use Blessing of Sanctuary 2. Use Seal of Command 3. Use Retribution Aura if your healer can keep up 4. Use a set of gear that reaches the Block Cap (Dodge+Parry+Block+Miss = 101.6%) The Block Cap is actually 102.4% for raids, but you only need 101.6% for Heroics. Here's a handy dandy little macro you can use to check the block cap /script dr=function(x)return 1/(1/16+0.9560/x)end;DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+dr(GetCombat...