Honor's Code

Sunday night, we took another crack at Al'ar, but first we went and one-shot Solarian. I still seem to have trouble holding the adds off the AoE, specifically a very well geared Warlock named Lontra. We can't afford to wait for consecrate to tick much because we need to get DPS onto the Priests. My consecrate hits for about 120 in my threat gear. I've heard of other Protection Paladins getting that number over 200. I wonder if you need some pieces of Teir 5 to pull that off. The Boots of the Resilient dropped but I let them go to Lanorah (Warrior). I have Sabatons of the Righteous Defender which are very comparable to the Boots of the Resilient. In my opinion, the Righteous Defender are better for a Paladin. I'm not sure which set I'd use the Resilient in, maybe an all out Stamina set. With Solarian taken care of, we went to Al'ar. We were using 5 tanks this time. 2 on adds and 3 on Al'ar himself. We were flying through Phase 1 with no problems and no de

Over the weekend, I got my first chance to run Magister's Terrace. First of all, the Magister's Terrace instance is really beautiful. I was stuck immediately by the similarities between this place and the Blood Elf city of Silvermoon which I've explored on my Blood Elf alt (Level 21 Paladin on Mannoroth). The run had two significant "Wow" moments. These are the kind of moments when you really fall in love with the game. It's the kind of feeling you get the first time you walk into Stormwind and you look at those imposing statues and the music filters through your speakers, or the first time you see a Ancient Protector near Darnassus and your whole screen shakes as it walks calmly by. It's the first time you ride out of the tunnel in AV with 39 other mounted heroes with you. It's the first time you tank. The first of these moment's in Magister's came shortly after we killed the 2nd boss (which I'll talk about more in a minute). You

Over the weekend, I got a chance to run the "new" AV. At first this new AV was looking a lot like the old AV. I went with a large group of Alliance and stopped at Galv. We killed Galv with little problem. We mounted up and rode on up to the relief hut with only small horde interference. We get in, wait for Tower Point to cap and then I pull Drek, plus the dogs and I think a Warmaster or two. Everything is going fine when all of a sudden the room if filled with 10+ horde. They wipe us. For the next 20 minutes, we fought a battle against the horde. It really felt like a real battle with each and every inch of Alterac snow fought over and being turned red with blood. The Horde were behind on reinforcements, and we finally retook the Relief Hut and pulled Drek again. This time there would be no stopping us. We managed to break the Horde turtle and kill Drek. The Horde had less than 10 reinforcements when Drek fell. It seems the new AV is longer than the old one, and t

Mal Katai took another shot at Al'ar last night. Al'ar seems to be the most complex fight I've seen thus far, especially as it relates to tanks. We seem to have gotten Phase 1 about down. 2 of our wipes were caused when Al'ar tanks got quilled as they were trying to pick him up. It looks like there is a specific path or place the tanks must go in order to get back to Al'ar to prevent Flame Buffet but not get killed by Quill. The other major problem in Phase 1 was that we still didn't completely understand where on the lower ring Quill hits. On one attempt, I was tanking the Ember and when he died, the explosion threw me, and I died. When I checked the combat log, I saw that I had received damage from Quill after the Ember died. My theory is that I got thrown into the Quill area. I feel like I have a really tough job in this fight. I have to wait until the first add spawn, then wait while either a Hunter misdirects it onto me, or a healer pulls aggro and brin

I have recently started a Paladin (blood knight, level 16 now). Which brings me to how I ran into your blog and postings at blogspot. I don't have a lot of time to play, so it's important that my play be as effective as possible towards leveling. I did a search on paladins and came to your blog. The reason I'm trying to level a paladin is my guild (which is a leveling guild at the moment since we don't have any players in the 70s) doesn't have a main tank anywhere to be found. However we do have a few priests that will be endgame healers. So I decided to take it upon myself to create this paladin to become a tank for the guild. I want to level quickly, but I also would like to tank instances at the proper levels as I go up to get as much practice as possible so when we do get to the outlands instances and raids I'll be in full control of what I need to be doing and effectively do my job. So now that I've explained the situation I'm in, I was hoping for

"It's your Father's Lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon from a more civilized age." - Obi-Wan Kenobi Righteous Defense is The Paladin "taunt". Up until now, every Tankadin I know has used a macro to make the bloody thing work. Those days are at an end. Righteous Defense (RD) is true taunt now, the weapon of a tank. Not as clumsy or random as it used to be. An elegant taunt from a more compassionate Blizzard. I tested it extensively last night on the Isle of Quel'Danas. RD just works. Imagine a couple of scenarios. Two Mobs, call them Big and Scary , and a player, call him Quishy, and a Tankadin, call him, oh I don't know, call him Honorshammer. Honorshammer targets Big, and hits RD. Big now targets Honorshammer. Target the mob, RD. Mob on you. Honorshammer targets Big. Big is targeting Quishy. Scary is also targeting Quishy. RD. Big AND Scary target Honorshammer. Target the mob, and

Last night I logged in and found out we were doing a Gruul and Mag run. I did the best I could to get my UI and Addons working. I got summoned into Gruul's Lair and we started working on trash. We get to HKM and I am told by our Raid Leader that I will be tanking HKM himself. It turns out our regular HKM Tank (Warrior) was already in the new 5 man, and really wanted to finish it. No worries, this is farm. Now on my first run with Mal Katai, I was on Blindeye, then they moved me to Olm and now I get a shot at HKM himself. So we pull. HKM goes running off and takes out a healer before I can get a Judgement on him. The pull is a mess and we wipe. If I Shield Toss, I'll hit Blindeye and Olm and put a daze effect on Blindeye. All of those would be bad things. Next pull, I start running as our Mage Tank gets the countdown to 2. I grab HKM flawlessly and begin walking him over to the tank spot. His Mighty Blow hits really hard. I went down like a sack of potatoes. This happens t

Welcome to Honors Code. Today's post will lack any mention of the P word or any reference to the number 2 in close relation to the number 4. There will be plenty of blogs today that have 2s and 4s strewn all through them. Last night was kind of a strange night for Mal Katai. I logged on at my normal time, and found that nothing was really going on. I immediately got asked to tank a Heroic Mechanar. I was pretty excited about this. It's hard to write a guide to Heroics when you aren't running them much. That first room is also a little tough to get pulls down right, but once we got going we did pretty good. Our PuG Mage disconnected just as we got upstairs but Akivarr, one of MK's Shadow Priest came to rescue to help us finish the instance. I picked up an Abacus of Violent Odds for my Ret set. One day I might actually take it out of my bank. As we were finishing up our Heroic Mech, I find out we are going to try DoomWalker. DoomWalker is a outdoor World Boss. We'

Sunday night Mal Katai put together our Gruul farm raid. For the first time in a long time, I didn't really NEED anything from a 25 man raid. All my upgrades lie with Bosses in TK and SSC now. But I enjoy raiding almost as much as I enjoy hanging out with the MK guys in vent. We've developed over these past few months a culture in our guild. There are little sayings or phases like "The Wand of the West", "Deil's Mom", "I'm so excited!", or "Plix!". To a new person they make no sense at all but to a seasoned MK raider they bring a smile to your face. It's really a cool thing to be a part of. We formed up our raid. It was a mix of veteran MK, fresh MK, and the "AM guys". The AM guys referring to group of players that have transferred together from Alterac Mountains to Altar of Storms. One of the AM guys is a very well geared Retribution Paladin. It took me a little bit to figure out how to best work with him. I want

Saturday night, our ZA group did not reform due to some real life issues going on around the Easter Holiday. Happy Easter! So I wasn't doing much, a little fishing, a little farming. I got my Hunter about halfway towards 65. About that time, Agamegnome, a former guildy of mine from Heroes Inc asked me if I was saved to Kara. I wasn't. He invited me to go with a group forming up from Dominion. I agreed. He asked how I felt about the possibility of healing instead of tanking if he would pay for the respec. I was honest in my answer that I'd much prefer to tank. I also made it clear that if he was asking me to heal because someone in his group had an issue with the viability of Paladin tanks, I would not be joining the group. I get the invite and was assured by Aga that I had a tanking spot. There were only other 4 other people in the party when I joined. One of them, a Hunter, made a strong request to not be given Salvation. Now generally the way I work when I'm the o

Friday night we didn't have any 25 man raids happening, so the officers grabbed a group and headed into Zul'Aman. We had a new person in the raid, a Holy Priest named Dulue, so we opted to try Bear first because it's a less technically challenging fight. I got a nice streak of parries and dodges on the first Furious Roar the Bear Riders did and hardly took any damage from them. Bear Boss is one of the fights where I really enjoy having the Hit Rating on the Aldori Legacy Defender. Now, I'm not sure if it was because I had ALD or because I was waiting until I saw the animation of the Bear actually attacking Brindall (Warrior Tank) to taunt, but I never got a taunt resist or a failed taunt the entire fight. Usually, at least once on a Bear boss attempt, I'd taunt and nothing would happen. Sometimes, I'd get a Resist message across my screen, but sometimes, I would not receive any message. I'd taunt, and the Bear would just keep smacking away at Brindall. We

Tuesday night, we returned to the fortress of Kael'thalas to do battle with his pet, the Phoenix Lord, Al'ar. This was going to be a much more serious attempt on Al'ar. Sunday, we were just kind of messing around with him since no one had really studied up on the fight. This time, we were studied and prepared. My job in the Al'ar fight is the tank the Embers of Al'ar that spawn throughout the fight. What we decided to do this time was have a Fury Warrior (Cyrak) up on the platform where Al'ar was being tanked. He would grab the ember and bring it down to me where we would kill it with the help of an Enhancement Shaman (Bonus). Then he would go get the next one. Sometimes, I would have 2 on me at a time but it didn't seem to be a big problem. One of our Phase 1 wipes was contributed to by your humble author getting himself killed by Quill, while on the ground. My understanding was that Quill only hits the upper deck, yet there I was on the floor, and clea

*...late December back in 63...* I logged in at my usual time last night and found the raid formed up. There had been some discussion among the officers about which raid we would do Lurker in SSC or Gruul. I wanted to run Gruul for another shot at Aldori Legacy Defender. Brindall wanted to run Lurker for the Mallet of the Tides. I joked that regardless of what we ran, neither item would drop. They had opted for Gruul and some people were already inside and discussing buff assignments. I asked in Officer Chat if there was a spot available for me, and as it turned out, there was. We have changed Gruul from a "farm" raid to a "preparation" raid. A "farm" raid would mean bringing our Core people and slamming through Gruul's to farm the bosses for drops like T4 tokens. Most of our raid has everything they need from Gruul, so instead what we are doing is taking our "next generation" raiders. These are either alts, or rerolls, or fresh 70s

Sunday night we returned to The Eye to finish our little engagement with Solarian. The raid formed up pretty quick and we were in and pulling by 8:30. We blew through Al'ar's trash without a single wipe. That was the first time we managed to pull that off. You knew it was going to be a good night we were didn't pull the patrol while working on that first room. Solarian's trash is actually quite enjoyable to me as a Protection Paladin. I love taking the Squire packs and locking them down. Sometimes my Mages and Warlocks would get a little impatient and start opening up before I got all the mobs under control and before I called for AoE. This generally led to a quick and painful death for them. It seemed the Warlocks were pulling more so than the Mages. What I started doing was tabbing through targets looking for someone who was targeting a squishy and taunt. By the final pull, I don't think our AoE was taking any damage at all, although I was probably waiting l

Thursday night, Mal Katai returned to the Eye. With Void Reaver a steaming pile of used parts, we set our sites on Solarian. Of course, Al'ar was still flapping around so we had to kill his trash, again. That meant dealing with that stupid patrol in the first room. I guess it's going to be a little like the elevator in SSC, we are just going to wipe on that pull. After the Al'ar trash we get to the Solarian trash. Her trash is a lot of fun. It's group after group of 2 major elites, which my co-tanks, Brindall and Lanorah, picked up along with 8 or so smaller elites that I pick up. I went into my standard AoE tank rotation. I toss my shield, lay down a consecrate and pop Holy Shield. Warlocks and mages squee with glee and the trash goes away. During the clearing of Solarian's trash, we get not one but two Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen to drop. All 3 of our "main" tanks now have them. I say "main" in quotations because we don't have a

I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with the idea and I probably won't be the last. Giving Paladins a Block Value to spell damage conversion would grant several positive benefits at once. First of all, Paladins would have a synergistic stat for Threat and Mitigation. Currently, Paladins are the only tank that does not have a stat that gives both Threat and Mitigation. It would also have the side benefit of being the exact same synergistic stat as the other plate wearing tank, the Warrior. So now both plate wearing tank classes would receive mitigation and threat from Block Value. This would allow the developers to further their goal of having one set of gear that appealed to many different specs. You would basically need 1 set of Plate Tank gear that would be used by both Paladin and Warrior tanks. Any flavor difference could be addressed in Tier gear, such as the Paladin's need for a very small amount of Intellect or Spell hit. Furthermore, it would have th

Tuesday night, we went back to The Eye and killed Void Reaver again. For some reason it was harder the second night than the first, although we did get hit with some bad luck (first wipe at 3%, second wipe at 1%). Just 1 DPS staying alive would have turned either wipe into a kill. We were typically looking really good against the enrage timer early on, then as we lose more and more DPS, we get closer and closer to hitting the enrage timer. He dropped a Plate DPS helm, and another Hero token and a Defender. I'm pretty sure Brindall, one of our tanks, got the T5 token. MKP bids were still really high, with people spending 80-90% of their MKP on the tokens. We lost too much time getting started and wiping to get any attempts in at Solarion, but now he's fair game for Thursday. Nothing I really want from him although our Rogues and DPS Warriors were salivating in vent just at the mention of doing him. His tank drop is a set of boots, but my Sabatons of the Righteous Defender are

I've reached the point of my raiding career that I realize that I have to start picking and choosing the upgrades I go for. Everything is on a DKP basis now. I need to save my DKP for the things I really need and not use it on things I really don't. What follows will be a slot by slot analysis of my current gear and the upgrades available to me from the Bosses we are killing. Then I will make a list of the stuff I should spend my hard earned DKP on. Head: Tankatronic Goggles Available: Hard Khorium Goggles (Engy) Crystalforged Faceguard (Vashj), Faceplate of the Endless Watch (Doomwalker), Battleworn Tuskguard (ZA) Comment: Tankatronics should last me until I can get the recipie for Hard Khorium so I don't plan on spending much DKP on the T5 helm which I'm sure will go for max bids. Neck: Barbed Choker of Discipline Available: The Darkener's Grasp (Kael), Frayed Tether of the Drowned (Fathom Lord) Comment: Both of these options are nice. We will only k

Ataris on Masochist Paladin asked at the end his post "What should I bring to a raid?" So I thought I'd offer what I personally bring to a raid from a consumables standpoint. Consumables Mana Potion Injector (or Super Mana Pots ) Health Potion Injector (or Super Health Pots ) Ironshield Potions Charged Crystal Focus (from Ogril'la) Dense Stone Statues (JC only, we really need a level 70 version) Food Spicy Crawdad (or any other 30 stamina food) Blackend Basilsik (spell damage and staima, and quite yummy) Buffs Superior Wizard Oil (Gimme some aggro) Elixir of Major Fortitude AND Adepts Elixir OR Flask of Fortification OR Flask of Blinding Light

I almost didn’t log into the game last night, but I decided to anyway just to see what everyone was doing, check my auctions, and maybe farm a little bit. Then I remembered the current bane of my existence, Feralas Ahi . I’ve been trying to catch one from the Verdenatis River in Feralas for my Fishing Quest. When you hit 225 Fishing, you have to go see Nat Pagel, who gives you a quest to catch 4 fish from all over Azeroth. Nat was in Dustwallow Marsh, and Feralas was the closest point to where he was so I thought I’d start there. I’ve been through 2 of the 10 minute fishing lures, but to no avail. That’s when my little fishing expedition was cut short by a whisper I got from my GM, Doraeallin. “Would you be up for a little TK?” TK = Tempest Keep, the 25 man raid in Netherstorm. My mind went through the complex algorithm that is my decision making matrix, and essentially the result was Raiding >>>> Fishing. I had no delusions that our ragtag band of fighters co

"The fact of the matter is (and I say this as a raid leader, tank officer, and Paladin Tank for a top 100 guild), it all comes down to player skill. A good Prot Paladin can function equally as well as a good Prot Warrior in all but one phase of one encounter in Black Temple." - Lore of Eredar Here's the thread where it was said. http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=7079&start=105

I think everyone in my guild has accepted the fact that we've regressed. The weekend came and went and we had to call the Tempest Keep Raid because we couldn't get enough people on line to fill the raid. Sunday night, we managed to put together a Gruul's run. HKM took two attempts, and Gruul took four, if I remember correctly. The time has come for me to make a decision about my future with Mal Katai. Why would I want to go? The bottom line for me is that I'm not having fun. Raiding for me is the most enjoyable part of the game, but the constant wiping and struggling with Bosses that were so simple just a few weeks ago is really starting to get to me. We start late (often an hour or more after the scheduled start time). We end early. Players take frequent afks. In fact, one of our wipes on Gruul last night was because a Warrior went afk. Not only was the Warrior allowed to stay in the raid (because we needed warm bodies) but he ended up getting loot when we finally did

World of Matticus did something really cool on his blog. He lived blogged one of his guilds Raids. So I decided to do the same thing last night with one of our raids. I threw in a little twist though. See, Honorshammer is a Raider, but he's also a Husband and a Father. How do you work in all three in one night. 5:30pm Pick up Lil Hammer from school. 6:00pm Get home, help Mrs. Hammer in the kitchen (dishes/groceries/preparing dinner), help Lil Hammer with her homework. 7:00pm Dinner 7:30pm Playtime with Lil Hammer. Her favorite game at the moment is Westminster Dog Show. Somehow her dogs always win first prize. Mine do not fair as well. 8:00pm Lil Hammer's Bedtime. Log into WoW. 8:08 Raid Invites start for our 8 o'clock raid. 8:15 Our 8 o'clock raid is 16 people strong. Only 9 more to go. Horde at the stone though. 8:30 Our 8 o'clock raid is now 20 people strong. Only need 5 more! People are having to run to the instance twice as the Horde decide to camp

So I did some looking around at other blogs and decided I needed to spruce up the place a little bit. Let me know what you think.

You know you've been blogging too long when you have to go back through your old posts and make sure you haven't used the same title before. Last night was SSC night for Mal Katai. 1 shot our Farm Bosses (Hydross, Lurker) and maybe get Tidewalker down for the 2nd time. Well, that's how it was supposed to go. Add control was a constant issue. We were using 4 tanks. Brindall (Warrior)on Nature, your humble author on Frost, Blankz (Feral) and Lanorah (Warrior) on adds. I'm not sure if Blankz had been an add tank previously or not. He was trying to use Demo roar to pick up his adds, but it wasn't working. After some discussion, we got that worked out. He would Mangle one, taunt one, and swipe spam. Our first attempt was foiled when the adds went and destroyed our healers. Our second attempt wiped when one of the mages (who wasn't on vent) pulled aggro on a transition. This mage uses a Mac which apparently Vent doesn't like. Our Raid Leader was spamming a Ra

Celoria, Bacon, Lakini, this is for you! I fully support Leafshine and his efforts to undo the lifebloom nerf. The irony of the nerf is that it won't help where it should (reducing PVP/Arena), but will it where it shouldn't (PVE healing). The nerf reduces the ticks of the lifebloom, but increases the Bloom. Well guess what, in PVP, your opponent does all kinds of things to trigger the Bloom (dispell, purge, etc). When do Druids not let Lifebloom, bloom? In PVE Raiding.

I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of Gary Gygax . For those of you who may not know the name, he was the co-creator of the Dungeons and Dragons Role Playing Game. I spent many an evening playing D&D through my early teens and into my late 20s. D&D's popularity spawned several other RPGs in both tabletop and computer games. Who could forget Traveller, or Paladium, or RIFTS, or Omega Code. I remember playing Pools of Radiance for hours and hours on my 486DX in college, or the Baldur's Gate series just a couple of years ago. In fact, you could even say that WoW is a further extension of that line. I was already a Star Wars fan when I was introduced to D&D, and I was hooked almost immediately. My journey to the Geekside was complete. Thank you for your creation, Mr. Gygax. Rest in peace.

Mal Katai set our sites on the sentinel of the Black Temple, DoomWalker. Our first go at him was Sunday night. We actually had a full 40 man all Mal Katai Raid. I never thought I'd see that happen. Here we are all floating around waiting for the raid to get started. I play on a PVP server, so secrecy about your World Boss attempts is of the utmost importance. We didn't do a real good job of that on Sunday night. People were naturally curious and would fly over to him and aggro him When that happens, he yells to the entire zone: "Someone is trying to kill me, please come see if they are your opposite faction so you can come kill them." This was actually not my first time confronting DoomWalker as he was one of the few bosses I was allowed do to in my brief stint with Bloodsky. Only this time, I was on tanking duty, with my healing gear safely in my backpack. We got in one attempt Sunday night before the Horde arrived. During our second attempt the Horde went