Honor's Code

Today in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving. I have so many things to be thankful for this year. My family, and my friends both online and out there in the 'real' world top that list. I am also thankful to be gainfully employed in a job I enjoy. I really have more blessings than I can count. I hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving this year! Honorshammer

Just a quick not to start off from a comment I got. The commenter asked me to not publish the comment, but was basically asking how I felt about another player. Since the commenter didn't sign the comment, I can't respond to it privately. If you want to know how I feel about someone, whisper me or email me, I'll tell you. Don't assume you know. Okay, now that I got that out of the way. I started doing quests in Dragonblight. The first quest had you mount up on a griffon to save villagers. When you grabbed them, your character says, "Come with me if you want to live." It was great to be able to fly again, but adding that line was wicked cool. About that time my good friend, Aoesrus had logged on, so I headed back to Howling Fjord so we could quest a bit. Nights like last night are why I started playing World of Warcraft in the first place, to hang out with my friend who happened to move 3 time zones away. This was long before I even knew what a Raid was, o

Basically what I'm going to do is run down your gear slots from helm to boots and show you the upgrades along the way in Northrend. I'm going to follow 6 mythical Paladins and show where each one will start finding upgrades along the way. Allow me to introduce our team: Rook - Just dinged 70 a week or two before the expansion Badger - Badge geared as much as possible. Justin - Tier 4 level gear Crystal - Tier 5 level gear Sixpack - Tier 6 level gear Sunny - Sunwell gear Now there are many approaches to ranking gear, and you will find many different gear lists out there. Let me briefly explain my methodology before we dive into the actual rankings and wishlists. The ranking was based on a series of formulas that looks at how the item budget contributes to Mitigation (Armor, Defense, Block Rating, Parry, Dodge, Block Value, Expertise, Str), Stamina, and Threat (Stamina, Str, Expertise, Hit, Spl Power, Block Value). Then I take both the Mitigation Score, Stamina Score, and the Thr

This post contains spoilers about quests in Howling Fjord. Proceed at your own risk. Last night I got some solid playtime in and continued my questing through Howling Fjord. I’ve only done about a dozen quests in Borean Tundra on the Hunter so I don’t feel like I can really compare the two zones. Having said that, I will say I really enjoyed Howling Fjord. The quests were excellent and I never had too much trouble with Horde. From the moment you step off the boat, you are thrown right into the action with the Vyrkyl attacking Valgarde. The Vyrkyl story is well laid out as you progress from Nifflevar to Baleheim to Skorn and ultimately to Gjalerborn. One of the main story arcs is about the King of the Vyrkyl, King Ymiron. You first meet King Ymiron during one of your trips to the Spirit World, which gives you a glimpse of the Vyrkyl from over 10,000 years ago. Ymiron is ordering the deaths of the mutant and deformed offspring of the Vyrkyl. You later discover these deformed offspr

Blizzard has announced some changes to Paladins coming in the next minor patch, which will come before the patch which will release Ulduar. We have no ETA on the patch yet. You can see the original post in all it's blueness here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12891294926&sid=1 1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield's penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin. 2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina. 3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath . Let's take these first three together because really it's parts of Blizzard's response the issue created when they caused Avenging Wrath to once again cause Forbearance. I highlighted an issue this ca

Use Them Trinkets! Big Bear Butt has a great post today about creating a macro to fire off your DPS trinkets everytime they are off cooldown. It goes step by step on creating the macro and even if you've never even opened up the macro panel before, I think it would be very easy to follow. Bear Bear writes in a very approachable manner and has a great sense of humor to boot. If, like your humble author, you are leveling as a DPS spec (say Retribution) that you haven't played much, these little nuances of playing the spec are something you may not have picked up on yet (I know I hadn't). Level 72 I'm still questing in Howling Fjord, and hit level 72 over the weekend. Right now Honors is based out of Fort Wildervar. I've been pursuing a chain that leads to a battle against Runed Stone Giants and Iron Dwarves. Part of Honorshammer character's background is something of a vendetta against the Dark Iron dwarves and he doesn't see much difference between t

When I left home to be who I am Some people said "No Way" But I laid it all down, gave everything In my head rang the words that my father said You're never far I will be where you are and when you come to me I will open my arms Welcome Home, you I know you by name How do you do? I shine because of you today So come and sit down Tell me how you are I know son, it's good just to see your face. Those are lyrics to a song call " Welcome Home " by Brian Littrell , and my way of saying I've finally gotten off the fence and decided to return to my old guild of Mal Katai. In the end, I decided that I just couldn't make the commitment and emotional investment I'd need to make to run a guild. It was an idea that was starting to sound better when I wasn't in game than when I was. One thing I noticed is how many guilds were fun by husband/wife teams. I'm not sure why that is. My wife does not play WoW, so I'd be flying solo in that regard. I sti

I was wondering what I would blog about today since I didn’t do hardly anything in game last night. Luckily, a comment to one of my other posts filled the need quite nicely. I started Comment Moderation when people started using my comments to advertise websites. As recently as this week, I’ve had to reject comments that were nothing more than an add for a Power Leveling service. In the year plus I’ve run the blog there has only been one comment that I haven’t published, and even in that case I did publish it, but then deleted it. I say all that to preface this post. I have chosen to not publish a comment I received as a comment. Rather, I’m going to reprint the comment in this post so that I may respond. I would have preferred to address this with the writer of the comment privately, however that wasn’t possible. This comment was left by Anonymous. I understand some people don’t want to be bothered with having to register for a site to comment, but you could always sign your post at t

10-7-2009: I wrote the original article almost a year ago, and it was in sore need of an update. I've now edited this post to bring it up to date. Uncrittable Cap The first and most important cap you want to reach in your gear is being uncrittable, which comes from Defense. At level 80 you need 540 Defense which equals out to about 689 Defense Rating. To quote Neo, "Whoah". It's a metric ton of defense needed. It is something you will need to actively work towards in your gear, but it is completely attainable with crafted items and rep rewards. Edit 11/21: Petrus of Gorgonnash has put together a tidy list of gear that will get you to the Crit cap without relying on a single dungeon drop. You can see his list here: http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=17158 . Well done, sir! Block Cap After you are Uncrittable, you should start working towards the The Block Cap. This may be a new concept for Paladin tanks, but it really isn't. The Block Cap is

I had a lot of fun last night questing in Howling Fjord. I headed over to the goblin who was in a dingy with a pirate flag. I immediately thought of the last scene in Pirates of the Caribean: Battle At World's End. In this scene Jack Sparrow has scene his beloved Pearl being stolen by Barbosa. Jack gets into a dingy and raises the pirate flag and starts singing 'Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirates Life For Me'. I took a boat ride from the Goblin's first mate over to the Pirate Island. There a whole string of quests opened up. I thought the plane the Dwarves used to send me from Valgarde to Explorer's Point was cool. It ain't got nothing on the plane the Pirates use to send you over to the shipwreck to find one of the cursed Vrykyl artifacts they stole. There was one quest where you had to kill this named Killer Whale. I found him but he was swimming around pretty fast. I would have given my left arm for some sort of ranged attack or distance closer (like Charge) so

Over the weekend, I started thinking about what I wanted to do as far as a Guild. The main villain of Burning Crusade was Illidan the Betrayer, although at times I felt like that title could have been my own. I’ve basically got it narrowed down to two choices. Those are either going back to a guild I was formerly with, or starting my own guild. I’ve been unable to decide on which of those two choices I want to pursue despite giving myself several deadlines. As each deadline approached, I would graciously gave myself an extension. I realize that no one other than me can make this decision, but I’m going to blog about it. I spoke briefly with the Guild Master of one of my old guilds and there would be no problem with my returning to them. In fact, a couple of the members of that guild have expressed their hope that I will rejoin their ranks. Despite my own doubts (and the doubts of others) they did manage to make significant progress in Tier 6 content finishing Burning Crusade 3/5 and 8/

Honorshammer is now level 71 and still questing in Howling Fjord. My playtime started with me putting on the robot suit for the Dwarves at the Explorer’s Outpost and ended up on an island full of Walrus people. I was sent to investigate a cave at Baelgun’s Excavation site. Inside there was a very Titanish looking guy talking about Uldar (a future raid zone in the Storm Peaks). What was strange was that this guy was talking about undoing the work of the Pantheon. The Pantheon is the Titan High Council, and this guy looked like a Titan. Why would one Titan want to undo the work of the Titan High Council? I love this kind of stuff. I was a little confused by the first quest that the Walrus man gave me. He sent me to investigate Shield Hill. When I got there it was crawling with Undead. I picked up some clues from some ancient Vrykyl. I go back to him and he sends to me to his village but starts talking about pirates. Did I miss something? I'm supposed to go talk to a Goblin so

So far I’ve run two instances, Utgarde Keep and Azjol’Nerub. Both were fairly easy and quick. I was a little surprised at how easily and quickly we completed Azjol’Nerub since most of those mobs were level 72-74, and my party was mostly still 70. The only one over 70 was a Hunter. It literally took us 30 minutes start to finish. This instance is not for anyone with arachnophobia. The whole instance looks like you are transversing a giant spider web and the mobs are all spiders and spider variants. The second boss is probably the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in World of Warcraft. The final boss in Azjol’Nerub was none other than Anub'arak. He was a Hero Unit from Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, and accompanied Arthas on his long march through Azjob’Nerub to the Frozen Throne for his confrontation with Illidan. Anub’arak dropped a Signet of Arachnathid Command . I greed rolled for it. The ring is lacking in Defense which it seems like I’ll need a ton of to stay uncrittable as I

Server Stability First of all, let me give some major kudos to Blizzard. The servers were up when I logged in, and they were silky smooth with no lag, or ques. I was quite impressed. I played off and on Thursday through Saturday and never once got a ‘World Server Is Down’ or ‘Server Restart in 15:00’. The game was imminently playable. Speed Leveling I’ve already seen a Level 77 on my server, and others have reported there already being a couple of level 80s. Some people view 70-80 as a barrier, an inconvenient interruption to be rushed through so they can get back to raiding. I see 70-80 as its own journey. I want to raid again, but I don’t see the point of rushing the leveling process to get there. We all should play a game we enjoy, but at times it doesn’t seem like we are playing the same game. It seems every time a question is asked about a quest in General chat the answer that comes back is for the person asking the question to get the mod QuestHelper. I love QuestHelper, it’s a g

"Your destiny lies upon a different path from mine" - Obi-Wan Kenobi After much debate, I have decided the time has come for me to leave Dominion. I hereby announce my resignation from the guild effective immediately. I guess you could say this is a natural consequence of my earlier decision to not run 25 man Raids with them, but as I began to evaluate the options and paths available to me, I saw that each and every one of them led to me being in a different guild. What guild that ends up being is something that I'll have to work out in due time. I don't feel it's right for me to go out and start discussing a future with another guild while I still wear the Dominion tag. Dominion is focused on the raid scene and I’m sure they will be knocking out Alliance side first kills left and right. It would be great to see them beat the top Horde guild, Cynosure, to a server first or two. Again, I'd like to thank all the members and officers of Dominion. I truly appreci

The assembly of Knights marched through Stormwind on their mighty chargers. The beasts measured gait belying the power each held. The Knights assembled in a straight line near the massive lion statue that dominated the Stormwind Harbor. Theodurn Bronzebeard looked up and down the line of Paladins that stood with him. On his right was Baelor, his massive two handed mace strapped across his back. On his left was Psiven, a fellow dwarf and one who had been a great instructor of the Knights. As Theodurn looked up and down the line, more names came to lips: Mortehl, Modus, Fridmarr, Invisusira, Sabindeus, Garath, Jensaarai, Guillex, Zaephod. All these men (and fellow Dwarves) he had served with and learned from during the Outland Campaign. A dark shadow loomed over the Harbor. The biggest Frost Wyrm Theodurn had ever seen was leading a group of Abominations into Stormwind itself. Baelor leaned over to his friend Theodurn, but addressed him by his nickname "You ready, Honors?" &quo

As I prepard to headoff to Northrend, I thought I'd take a look back at how Honors has progressed over his playing time. Level 1 Honorshammer. If I only knew then what I know now. Honors as he is getting ready to step through the Dark Portal at level 60. 'Blue' PVP Shoulders, The Immovable Object, Soulforge Bracers, Lightforge Chest, Gloves, and Belt, Helm of the Holy Avenger, PeaceKeeper Boots, Serathil One of my very first nights in Kara. Crystalforged Sword, Aegis of the Sunbird, Timewarden's Leggings, Felsteel Helm and Gloves, Boots from that awful escort quest at the end of Mana Tombs, and Warchief's Mantle. Hey I finally got some Righteous Armor (Dungeon Set 3)! By the way, Laj, I STILL hate you. Starting to get some Kara gear, Eternium Greathelm, Boots of Elusion, and Maiden's Guantlets. I got Moroes Belt and I finally finish the grind for my Season 2 Gavel. Tier 4 Shoulders! Engineering grind done. Man would I wear those goggles for a long time. Honors

In the very unlikely event any of my blog readers live in the Greater Charleston, SC metro area and would like to meet up tonight at the Midnight opening for Wrath of the Lich King, here's my plans for the tonight. There are 3 Gamestops doing midnight openings in Charleston. I'll be at the Gamestop on Rivers Ave in the Target shopping center. I'll be the the geeky looking guy in the MainTankadin T-Shirt. All my wonderful plans for getting Wrath prep done last night were dashed by server issues. Altar of Storms never came up. I've never understood the people who get really emotional about server down time. You've read the forum posts, too I'm sure. Some of those posts just crack me up. Sure I'm paying for the time, and I wasn't able to access the service. I'm out about 50 cents. I ended up playing some older games I have and watching TV. Apparently ALL the servers are STILL down. This is not a good sign with the Expansion l

Last night was kind of a quick night for me in game. I was hoping to knock out a couple of Dailies while my wife watched her “Dancing With the Stars” show, then I could grab the TV and watch a little “Monday Night Football”, (/cue theme music) and what a great game it turned out to be! But in my short time online, I realized that I had not done a good job communicating with my Raid Leader. The misunderstanding stemmed from my decision in regards to raiding 25 mans with Dominion. I didn’t do a good job of communicating that my decisions applied to both current Level 70 raids, as well Level 80 raids. My Raid Leader had understood it to apply only to Level 80 raids. So she was most surprised, and a bit disappointed, when I turned down the invitation to raid with them last night. One of our Druids had recently decided to stop raiding at Level 70 so I didn't think what I was doing was all that unusual, but it certainly caught my Raid Leader by surprise. However, I must not have

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Blog, I give the floor over to Mortehl. http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=16736 I have to say, I am very excited for wrath. I was sort of Meh on TBC because the Naruu is such a gross departure from the Azeroth world that Warcraft belongs in. Wrath on the other hand, from the architecture, to the colors is a true return. Outposts LOOK like what you remember from Azeroth, down to the color schemes. You actually have entire outposts where the roofs are painted the same color, etc. I'm sure a lot of people in this community is looking forward to the leveling process as something that is in the way to raiding, but stop and enjoy this. Wrath from it's music score, to the background visuals is the -World- of Warcraft at it's finest. You will very much feel like you're are living breathing part of the game, as opposed to someone traversing a 2 dimensional painting. Also, there's a lot of stress here about where our role i

I just wanted to take a moment to say "Thank You" to the men and women of our armed forces on this Veteran's Day. Your sacrifice for our country is deeply appreciated. Happy Veteran's Day!!!

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to run Zul’Aman two times. The first run was with group from Mal Katai. About 30 minutes before they invited me, I had switched from Protection to Retribution. I had been working on a new quest that recently opened for me from the Netherwing called Disrupting the Twilight Portal . It seemed pretty straightforward. Go to Nagand and kill the Twilight mobs. What I didn’t realize until I got over there was that there were 3 or 4 pathing level 72 Elite mobs. The other problem that presented itself was almost all the mobs were caster types. It seemed like I’d pull Elite every time I was fighting these casters. I managed to solo one of the Elites, but at the end I was almost dead. After a couple of frustrating runs, I decided to hearth back to Shattrah and portal to Ironforge. Next thing you know, I’m a Ret Paladin. It was far easier to take out the Twilight mobs as Ret and I managed to avoid pulling the Elites. I wasn’t quite finished with the q

So last night I talked to Vlad, my Raid Leader and co-GM of Dominion. She had been asking everyone to tell her their plans for Wrath of the Lich King so she could plan and recruit accordingly. I had been really struggling with a decision, and I flip flopped in my own mind a dozen times or more. In the end, I decided that I wouldn’t continue to raid 25 man raids with Dominion in Wrath of the Lich King. This was not an easy choice. I know I’ve got virtually a guaranteed raid spot in the top Alliance guild on my server when raiding starts again. That’s not a small thing to throw away. I do really enjoy raiding, and Dominion is home to some of the best raiders on the server. I’d like to say thank you to Vlad, and all the people in Dominion that I raided with over the past few months. I'd like to thank the rest of the tanking team (Vlad, Cuch, Iccy, and of course, Kee). I also want to thank my healers (Lady, Phat, Chief, Arbo, Az, Raroeb, Marsallas, Crit, Ali, Das, Sandrine - I would t

Last night there was a strong push from some of the members of Dominion to go kill Kael and Vashj one last time before the Expansion Pack to let people get their Rings and Titles. It turns out that if you had the quest for the Vials of the Eternity in your quest book when Patch 3.0.2 hit, you could still get the title from completing it. The night started out with a real treat when I saw Aoesrus got an invite to the raid. Aoes and I have very disparate gaming schedules so we don’t get a chance to run together very often. It’s always nice when we do. Lady Vashj We quickly cleared Hydross’ and Lurker’s trash and activated the bridge to Vashj. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen it - that is a seriously cool way to get to a Boss. Vashj was the very first boss I went to with Dominion, and because it’s a two tank fight I had to go Holy. (What is it with the ‘Hat’ bosses; I had to go Holy for Archimonde as well). I was actually worried Vlad would ask me to throw on my Healing s

This will mark the 500th post in this blog since I started it back in late May of 2007. I hope you continue to enjoy the blog for another 500 posts.

Me, I was in Black Temple, and not watching the Election coverage. I voted, and then let the chips fall where they may. Regardless of who won, the sun was coming up this morning, and life would move on. What was cool about last night was Chief, my Paladin Class Officer got a chance to raid as Protection. So when we got to Najentus, I suggested that he be the Main Tank. The guy did an excellent job and soon we were NOT looting Plate Boots from him. I started doing a little research since it seems my fate to have Sabatons of the Righteous Defender until I quit the game. It looks like as soon as I hit 75, I can switch over to my Jungle Stompers. Then somewhere around 78, I can run Stratholme Past (Normal) and hope to get Slaughterhouse Sabatons to drop. Failing that, I can pick up Toxin-Tempered Sabatons from the Knights of the Ebon Blade at Revered. Then at 80, I can pick up Tempered Titansteel Treads from a Blacksmith. So, I'll have Troll Feet for a while, but I don't pla

I had an interesting situation come up on Saturday night. My plan had been to log on and maybe work on a little Netherwing rep. I’m only Honored and I don’t think I’ll make it to revered before Lich King. I received a message from Leejenkins (aka Raistilan/Dotslover) from the previous nights Zul’Aman run. He wanted to know if I was saved to Mount Hyjal. I wasn’t. He invited me to a ‘trash’ party that he was putting together to help celebrate his Birthday. (Happy Birthday Raist!) Raistilan was one of my close friends in Mal Katai and we still talk quite a bit. I've helped him as he leveled up and then started gearing up Leejenkins who is a Protection Paladin. I also seem to have influenced by previous GM in Heroes Inc to roll a Protection Paladin, and he's even made a couple of posts on MainTankadin. My guild, Dominion, is generally not really cool with you running 25 mans with another guild. I knew I wouldn’t be online again until the Tuesday reset so I knew there was