Honor's Code

Fan Fict: Frozen Hammer

2013-04-25T10:33:00.005-04:00

Shoveling snow. Stanis never thought that when he and Gerald signed up for the Argent Crusade his days would be filled with this menial task.

We'll see the world, Gerald had said.

We'll be great heroes, Gerald had said.

On the outskirts of the Argent Tournament Grounds, in northeastern Icecrown, Stanis worked alongside a half dozen other knights as they cleared a bank of snow. A pile of fresh lumber to build new Bolvar Fordragon Memorial training facility sat in a neat pile nearby. At any time Highlord Tirion Fordring would arrive to check on the progress.

Stanis leaned on his shovel. Here he stood, on the roof of the world, as it passed him by.

With the Lich King defeated, the Scourge had become almost sedate. They could still deadly if provoked as poor Gerald had learned the hard way on their patrol three months ago.

The new recruits from Hearthglen told of great gains being made against the scourge, but also of the terrible carnage of Deathwing's Cataclysm. The last group of recruits brought stories of newly discovered land, once enshrouded in mists. The Horde and the Alliance warred over the new land as they did over everything else on Azeroth.

Stanis glanced down the line at a Troll wearing the Agent Crusade's tabard. The Crusade had no interest in their war.

The bell on the mess hall rang. Stanis wiped his brow and decided to take one last shovelful before dinner.

With a clang, his shovel reverberated in his hands as it hit something hard. Bending down, Stanis brushed the snow away from the object.

His hand trembled and he shot straight up.

"Call High Crusader Adelard! Quickly!"

# # # # # #

Two years earlier

Kabed Bronzebeard, known to his friends and comrades by the call sign Honor's Hammer, banked his bronze drake north toward the newly built Argent Tournament Grounds. Highlord Tirion Fordring had called for a gathering of heroes right on the Lich King's doorstep. Honors and his team, fresh off their victory over the Old god, Yogg Saron, had nothing to prove. They had ended a long list of evils and tyrants in their time together. They didn't need to jump through any hoops for Tirion Fordring. Still, they answered the call, just like they always did.

A shadow blocked out the afternoon sun interrupting Honors thoughts. He looked up expecting to see the Skybreaker, but instead drew in a quick breath as he recognized the silhouette of a Frost Wrym - the largest of its kind he had ever seen.

He had dealt with them before. Most recently, Saffiron in Naxxrammus. But that had been with the backing of his entire team. Honors directed his bronze drake toward the mountains hoping to avoid detection.

He checked the position of the Frost Wrym again. It banked around and dove toward him.

Failure. He had been spotted!

Honors drove his spurs into the drake's side begging for more speed. A high pitched shrieked filled the sky followed by the sound of rushing wind. Tiny shards of ice pelted him as the impact of the Frost Wryms icy breath crashed against the back of his drake.

He reached a hand down to the neck of his drake, "Steady girl," his voice creaked. Her wings had already gone slack. Wind rushed by pinning him to the saddle.

The ground came at him quickly. Calling on the Light, he surrounded himself in a golden shell of protection as the dragon slammed into the soft snow.

He blinked twice and took a quick inventory. Nothing seemed broken, and he could still breath. The Light had protected him.

The snow and ice entombed him. He could barely move, and already the chill seeped through his armor and into his old bones. He tried to dig out, but fresh snow and ice filled in every crevice he created. Drowsiness worked its way into him. He fought it as long as he could, but slowly he felt his will to keep conscious slipping. In one final act, he forced his body to turn to stone. That should keep him alive long enough for the search party to arrive.

# # # # #

You could smell the Great Forge from anywhere in Ironforge. It smelled like home.

Honors found himself lying on a stone table, wearing some sort of cloth robe. The aroma of the Great Forge was no distant memory. It was present and real.

He opened his eyes and looked around. He recognized the bluish stonework inlaid with turquoise - the Mystic Ward. How many years had he walked these halls during his training.

But something felt wrong. Hadn't he been in Northrend?

Memories flashed through his mind. The Tournament. The Frost Wrym. Falling. The Cold.

More questions followed, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he considered them. How had he gotten back to Ironforge? What had happened to his gear?

Honors hoped off the stone table and tried to open the door.

Locked.

His unease turned to anger. He summoned the power of the Light and directed it into the door.

Nothing happened. The door had some sort of magical protections. Honors had seen enough. Even though he knew it would be fruitless he rammed his shoulder into the door. It didn't even budge.

He searched around for a menas of escape when he heard the footfalls of someone approaching. He scrambled back to the table.

A few moments later, a pink haired gnome entered with a tray of food and drinks.

"Oh good, you're awake!"

"My weapons-"

"Don't you worry one little bit," she said putting the tray down next to his table, "we'll make sure you get all your effects just as soon as the High Priest checks you out."

Honors glanced at the door. The gnome had left it slightly ajar. Despite the growling from his stomach, he bolted for the door.

"WAIT!" the gnome yelled after him.

He cleared the Hall of Mysteries, his heart pounding a rapid cadence. His intuition proved correct. Something was wrong. Just across the way he spotted two soot colored dwarfs. Dark Irons! Here in Ironforge! They didn't appear to be in combat, and none of the other drawves around them raised an alarm.

What in the name of the Light is going on here?

He prayed to the Light for the might to take on these usurpers even without his weapons. Raising his fist in the air, and letting loose with a battle cry, he charged.

The two Dark Irons looked at him with a mix of shock and fear, but just as he reached them, he felt a sudden pain in his side. An arrow had lodged itself in his gut.

Thanks for the weapon.

Honors pulled the arrow free and spun it in his hands. He raised it to strike the Dark Iron, but his arm went limp. He knew immediately what had happened. Wyvern Sting! His whole body relaxed and though he tried to fight it, sleep took him and the world faded to black.

# # # # # # #

In the Stonefire Tavern, Honors sat across the table from SI:7 agent Sully McLeary working on his third flagon of mead. It had been just a few hours since his encounter with the Dark Irons. Sully had explained to him just how much had changed in the two years since he had crashed into the ice near the Argent Tournament. The world as he had known it was gone. Arthas defeated, a Cataclysm that remade most of Azeroth, the Hour of Twilight, King Magni turned to a crystaline statue, the Council of Three Hammers, and now the discovery of a new land.

Even worse, Honors learned his entire team had perished during the Cataclysm. Honors took another long drag off his flagon. It was a lot for one dwarf to take in.

After a long silence, Honors looked down and said, "What do I do now?"

"Well, " Sully said, "your reputation from Naxxramas & Ulduar is well known. King Varian Wyrnn would very much like to meet with you, and ultimately have you accompany me to this new land we have discovered."

"What did you say it was called?" Honors asked.

"Pandaria!"

# # # # # # # # # #

All Good Things......

2013-04-12T09:10:00.000-04:00

.....must come to an end.

I know a guild breakup is the definition of a first world problem, but I'm still feeling a little down tonight. I should be preparing for a raid that isn't going to happen. My guild has made the decision to cease raiding operations effective immediately.

Our guild was small one, 12 to 15 people. My raid leader was the guild leader. We talked for a while last night. He explained his reasons. I completely understood his reasons. I completely supported his decision. He was doing the right thing for the right reasons. He has my full and unwavering support.

Most of the guild is transferring to a PvP Server. We are becoming a PVP guild. They will be doing LFRs and PvP. PvE raiding is done.

Football players on the verge of retirement talk about being done with the game before the game is done with you. I'm not done with WoW.

I don't know that I can truly express how much I don't want to be on a PvP server. Apparently the one they have chose 'might as well be a PvE server' because the ratio is something like 10 Horde:1 Alliance. That won't do much for the Night Elf Rogue who decides he wants to interrupt my fishing run through Townlong with a little PvP.

RIGHT.
NOW.

Did I mention I stink at the PvP? I do. 5 years ago I was worlds better. Now, I'm cannon fodder.

For most everything I could do with them, we can BattleTag group, even if I'm still on our old server.

I have been raiding with this team a majority of my WoW career. Our raid leader was right there for my first Attumen the Huntsman kill. (Ironically enough, I was leading the raids way back then. Anything to tank as Paladin in Burning Crusade). I'm going to miss our nights raiding.

I'd like to continue PvE raiding. I'm just not sure which toon I want to concentrate on. I have two at level toons: my 490 Paladin tank, and my 485 Hunter. I'm not sure which would be easier to place. At least for this patch, it seems like the Hunter would be best bet because of all the dinosaur fun to be had with pets and the lower stress of the role.

I really haven't started looking hard for a home yet, so if you happen to know a great place, drop me a line or leave me a message in the comments.

Here's a couple of screenshots from our kills. It's been a great ride.

The New Class WoW Needs

2013-03-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

WoW’s next class? It needs to be the Fighter-Mage.

Basically this idea came about because I love tanking, but I prefer ranged DPS to melee DPS. The only way to have both Ranged DPS and tanking would be to roll a druid, but if you don’t enjoy Boomkin and Guardian you are out of luck. It’s time to change that.

In my days playing Pen and Paper DnD there was this concept of playing a dual classed character. What if we brought that to WoW?

Currently you are limited to 2 specs from a choice of three. What I propose is to make that a choice of 2 specs from a choice of 33. Maybe you are an Arm Warrior/Frost Mage, or a Holy Priest/Demonology Warlock. I would make mine a Protection Paladin/Beastmastery Hunter.

Since the introduction of the new talent system, the individual specs of the classes have become more and more distinct. Each spec has a specific kit of tools. A Retribution Paladin has more in common with an Arms Warrior than he does with a Prot or Holy Paladin. He can’t even consecrate for crying out loud!

Bring the Player

This idea would also help the Pure DPS classes. The hybrid tax is largely gone, and no one has felt the effects more than Rogues. With MoP, Blizzard introduced another leather wearing 3 way hybrid. The Monk can tank, heal and melee dps. The Rogue can just DPS. The game has three three way hybrids (Monk, Druid, Paladin), four two way hybrids (Warrior, Priest, Shaman, Death Knight) and four Pure DPS classes (Warlock, Mage, Hunter, Rogue). This change would level the playing field and make every toon a three way hybrid.

This would also help fill out raids and reduce queue times. Everyone of your raiders is a potential tank, healer or DPS.

There is an encounter in Throne of Thunder that is punishing if you don’t have Paladins, or Priests in your raid makeup. The mobs put a 5 minute disease on a player. Priests and Paladins can cleanse it, but Shamans and Druids can’t. This would let one of those Druids change their secondary spec to a Priest, and suddenly they can do the encounter no problem.

This is basically Bring the Player, Not the Class taken to its highest, logical end.

Choosing a Kit, not a Class

Each class contains certain baseline skills. Those would simply become part of the kit. All Paladins get Judgment for example. Judgment becomes part of each Paladin specs kit. But if you aren’t in a Paladin spec, you wouldn’t. When I am in my Protection Paladin spec, I have Judgment. When I’m in my Beastmastery Hunter spec, I wouldn’t.

The time to introduce this would be with the Proving Grounds concept the developers discussed. Proving Grounds are single player scenarios (like the ones you do to advance the Island of Thunder through it stages). In Proving Grounds, you have to tank, or heal or DPS. Before the game would let you queue for LFR, or LFD with your new spec, you would have to pass the appropriate Proving Ground (using the Challenge mode gear scaling mechanic so as not to punish undergeared or overgeared people).

If you have a dedicated group that wants to take you in your new spec, more power to you and your friends.

Loot

How would loot be handled? Exactly like it is today. Whatever spec you are in for the kill is the table that LFR looks at for your loot.
And talk about stuff not being sharded! You’d still have most guilds use main spec over off spec, but every piece of gear would be potentially useful if someone wanted it. This would also give a boon to 25 mans who usually have more ‘extra’ gear to give away than 10 mans.

I know its highly unlikely this ever happens, but I think this idea would be fantastic!

What do you think?

The 7th Sha

2013-03-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

We know the Sha are the last breath of the Old God Y'Shaarj. Y’Shaarj had seven heads, so it follows there would be seven sha. So far, only six have been revealed. Those six are Fear, Doubt, Hatred, Despair, Anger, and Violence. We don’t know the seventh.

However, I think Blizzard may have accidently let the name of the seventh Sha out in a preview of the new 5.2 raid. Community Manger Draxxari was interviewing Lead Encounter Designer, Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas. You can read the entire blog here.

What I want to concentrate on is their preview of Tortos.

Ion: Along with asking why we fight, and learning that our true enemy is war itself, a major theme of the Mists of Pandaria has been killing turtles. This raid encounter elevates that motif to all-new heights, presenting players with the chance to fight a huge turtle, and small turtles, and also the ability to kick one of the small turtles into the big turtle. What more could you ask for?

Emphasis added. Our true enemy is war itself. What if the seventh Sha is the Sha of War. Crazy? Maybe. We know that in order to meet the new accelerated patch schedule, the developers are working on multiple patches simultaneously. Since 5.2 is releasing today, Ion must be knee deep in 5.3 and 5.4 content. He might have lost context and exactly which patch which piece of lore was released. He's an encounter designer, not a lore nut.

But there are other indications that also indicate that the seventh Sha might indeed be the Sha of War.

Warlord and the Monk
We know all six Sha are mentioned in The Warlord and the Monk. This scroll can be found on the south side of the upper level of the Scrollkeeper's Sanctum in the Temple of the Jade Serpent in the Jade Forest. It tells of a time when the mogu fought the Pandaren. The Pardaren tricked the mogu into turning on each other.As the mogu turned against each other, it says: "War waged before the temple as the mogu destroyed themselves, unleashing the full weight of their doubt, anger, fear, hatred, violence and despair."

Six for six. What else is mentioned there? In fact, what’s pretty much the only other things mentioned there?
War.

The Seven Burdens of The Seven Burdens of Shaohao
Some of what we know of the Sha comes from the Lorekeepers scrolls that make up the The Seven Burdens of Shaohao. These stories tell how the Last Emporer defeated his fear, doubt, anger, hatred and despair. Yet, despite having defeated all these negative emotions, when he tried to move the land, he failed. There was one more Sha he had to defeat.
The Jade Serpent came to him and said "Your enemies to the west are as much a part of this land as your empire behind the wall."
Shaohao had to embrace his enemies. He had to let go of his conflict with the Yangol and the Mantid. He had to defeat his desire to war against them. When he did let go and defeat the desire for War in his spirit, then, and only then, he became one with the land. At that point, he could save it from the Sundering.

Garrosh Hellscream
We know the Sha try to inhabit hosts. The more powerful the Sha, the powerful the host it wants. We know the Sha use the negative emotions present to inhabit their host. The Sha of Hatred used Teran-Zhu’s hatred of the Horde and Alliance to take over the master of the Shado-Pan. Teran-Zhu was a powerful warrior, and the Sha was attracted to his hatred.
We have seen Garrosh Hellscream try to weaponize the Sha. Each time he does, the intended host is not strong enough. The Sha takes over and the Horde soldier, from simple Grunt to powerful Blade Master, must be put down. What if Garrosh finally decides that he and he only is strong enough to merge with the Sha and become the unstoppable weapon he dreams of for his Horde.
What is Garrosh if not the epitomy of War?
Look at what Garrosh tells Thrall when Thrall taps him for leadership of the Horde.

"I understand battle, yes," he said. "Tactics, how to rally troops -- these things I know. Let me serve that way. Find me a foe to face and defeat, and you will see how proudly I will continue to serve the Horde. But I know nothing of politics, of ... of ruling. I would rather have a sword in my fist than a scroll!" -- The Shattering

The seventh Sha must be the most powerful Sha of them all. Garrosh would provide a suitably powerful host.

Opening Cinematic
That brings us to the opening cinematic for Mists. Perhaps it really did show us a bit of the final boss just as every cinematic before it had.

To ask why we fight, is to ask why leaves fall. It is in their nature. Perhaps there is a better question.
Why do we fight? To protect home and family, to preserve balance, and bring harmony.
For my kind, the true question is ‘what is worth fighting for’?

What are the Horde and Alliance fighting? A war. The question isn’t why we fight the war, but what is it worth going to war over? If we fight for home and family, to preserve balance and bringing harmony, is it still a war? Or has it become something more. Something better. Something higher. Something nobler.

Wratharion
We know our friend Wratharion is out to end the war. He has stated as much. His only question is which side to allow to win the war. At the end of Mists, we defeat Garrosh Hellscream, and the Sha of War. We defeat War itself. Wratharion’s purpose is accomplished. The Horde and Alliance will be ready to begin the process of preparing for the Burning Legion by taking care of the remaining threats on Azeroth (the 90-95 expansion) before finally becoming part of the Army of Light that Velen prophesied and taking down Sargeras and the Burning Legion once and for all (the 95-100 expansion).

Hole
I know there is a Maelstrom sized hole in this theory. War is not an emotion. At least not in the same way we think of Fear, Hatred, Doubt, Anger, and Despair. But would you say Violence is an emotion? Violence is an act much like War is an act.

So what do you think? Am I crazy, or could the seventh Sha be the Sha of War?

Tier 14 Retrospective

2013-03-01T13:08:00.001-05:00

Tier 14 has been a weird tier for us. It's been the most exciting and the most frustrating tier of my WoW career.

Old Faces in New Places

This was the tier where we got the band back together. Most of my guild mates followed me to SWTOR about midway through the Firelands patch. One by one, we quit SWTOR and came back to WoW. One of our guys had actually stayed in WoW and found a guild on Nesingwary. As we came back, we all just joined up with him. As the tier wore on, it became increasing clear that we needed to be back on our own and recently we've made that a reality.

The core of our team formed during Karazhan, and we really peaked in Ulduar. It has been great to have familiar voices in vent and be raiding with this team again.

Frustrations

Throughout this entire tier, our team has been frustrated by attendance issues. We had to cancel way too many raid nights simply because we couldn't field a team. I know, absolutely know, that we could have gotten farther than 6/6 1/6 with a sub 10% wipe on Blade Lord if we just would have had a consistent team. I know the easy answer is just recruiting. Believe me, we tried. Most everyone in our raid tried. Most people don't want to go backwards in progression. Honestly, I can't blame them, I wouldn't want to either. I'm hopeful that we can get this settled in Tier 15 and really knock it out.

We are pretty set on tanks. We could use some ranged DPS, especially one with a healing offspec, but most nights we just need another person. Our schedule is a bit in flux as we are trying to find the best nights for everyone. We only raid two nights a week or about two to two and a half hours at a time, usually 9:30pm EST to 11:30pm EST with the rare night that we go to midnight. All of us are adults with jobs, kids, families, etc. It's not uncommon for someone to need an extended AFK to take care of a crying baby.

We are a really laid back group. No one gets yelled at for poor performance and most of us are own worst critics. There is some friendly rivalry for the top of the DPS chart when it’s not dominated by our Brewmaster.

Least Favorite Fight

I think it says a lot about this tier that I have a really hard time coming up with a least favorite fight. If I were to include my jaunts into LFR I'd have to say Garalon. There isn't much for the tank to do on that fight, and it was fairly difficult early on. Lei Shi gets an honorable mention only for never once giving me shoulders in 11 kills, at least half of those with bonus rolls used. Sha of Fear is included as well for never giving me a Sha touched weapon in 11 kills, again with bonus rolls. I have to cut Sha a little slack since I went about four of those times as Retribution and did get the Sha Touch two hander plus two head tokens.

Favorite Fight

This was just such an awesome tier and I really did enjoy every fight on Normal. I absolutely loved the new talents and how I was able to use all of my class abilities to help the raid. The only place I feel deficient right now is AoE tanking. Yes, I know, how ironic is THAT! Don't tell my raid leader (our BrewMaster) but I semi-afk on most AoE trash pulls.

I have to give an honorable mention for favorite fight to Feng. I was given the Shroud of Reversal role and that was a ton of fun. I loved being able to take one of the bosses abilities and turn it right back around on him.

But my favorite fight this tier has to be Will of the Emporer. I hated the dance at first, but there is such a feeling of satisfaction when you do it right and the game rewards you with that extra action button. I have yet to beat our BrewMaster in Opportunitistic Strikes landed, but our last kill was very close 14 to 15. The only one I messed up was when I got two close to the wall and my camera zoomed in and I couldn't see where it was going.

Ghostcrawler's Hasty Decisions

2013-01-28T09:31:00.000-05:00

We have news from the PTR about Patch 5.2 and storm clouds of worry and concern are gathering over the land of the Tankadins.

Paladin - For Protection, we do have plans to try and lower the value of haste relative to dodge and parry. We don't want to make haste terrible for paladins, but we agree that it's odd for it to be better than more traditional tank stats. It might require a nerf to Shield of the Righteous to do this, but our goal is not to nerf survivability overall. We just wanted to provide you some context if you see odd changes to tanking abilities.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7593740975?page=45#884

Yes, my friends, that is none other than GC uttering the N word. A little further on in the thread, GC is asked to explain his reasoning.

Again in the words of the Crab.

The game just isn't currently designed to support it. It creates potential problems such as: - A Prot paladin competing with a Frost DK or Ret paladin over gear, meaning there isn't enough DPS plate to go around. - A Prot paladin considering a tier set with dodge and parry on it to be "garbage" because it doesn't stack all haste. - A Prot paladin looking at a Ret 2pc set bonus that she normally wouldn't touch because now the stats aren't that bad either. In a world where tanking plate didn't exist or every loot system used the personal LFR one or 100% efficient reforging then it might work. We understand that having a lot of haste feels fun and visceral and is more dependable than dodge and parry. We'll try to come up with a solution that keeps that in mind.

Later he thread he further clarifies

We knew haste would be attractive to Protection when we gave them Sanctity of Battle, which only Retribution had previously. That's why we gave them Sanctity of Battle. Even if you have a tanking set with no haste, there are haste buffs in the game. We wanted all the tanks to benefit somewhat from what were traditionally DPS stats, since part of the active mitigation design was to make tanks care more about hitting things with sword (and claws). It only gets to be a problem, as I said previously, if dodge and parry (which are going to be on some gear) are perceived as pointless. (They aren't pointless, but that's really beside the point at this stage.) We aren't going to reitemize every plate piece in the game to remove dodge and parry. We also don't want to nerf haste for paladins, because it is fun, and for the most part working as intended. We don't have a solution yet that we're willing to share, but that's the intent.

GC was asked on Twitter what this change meant for active mitigation.

We think active mitigation is more fun. Just need to decide what to do about dodge and parry long term.

He was also asked how they missed this in Beta.

@Ghostcrawler no offense, but you guys knew about Haste and Prot Paladins since well before live.
Re: @Zackfig At the time we thought it was an undergeared problem because dodge doesn't matter when failing a dodge kills you. Re: @Zackfig We still sort of suspect that's the problem but it's become such a mantra that it's worth changing anyway.

The first important takeaway is they haven’t announced any actual changes yet. GC just wants to give us some context if we see some really weird changes coming to the PTR - which we certainly will. This is a classic 'softening the blow' strategy. In the highly unlikely event GC reads this blog, I would just want to say thank you for the heads up.

Why Tankadins LOVE Haste

Now let’s look at why Tankadin’s love haste so much, and what possible solutions there could be. Much of what I am going to share here comes from the Patch 5.2 discussion thread on Maintankadin (you didn’t think I figured all this out on my own did you?) I especially need to recognize posters Klaudandus, Sagara, Fetzie, and Theck for their contributions.

Stat priorities can change from expansion to expansion. We rely on the theorycrafters, led by math wizard Theck, to help figure out what our stat priorities needed to be in MoP for us to be as effective tanks as we could.

The math (http://sacredduty.net/2012/10/05/damage-smoothing-follow-up/) led to the adoption of the Control gearing strategy. The strategy looks to maximize the uptime the Shield of the Righteous by making sure that none of your Holy Power generators ever miss. While this strategy leads to taking more damage over the entire course of the fight, it leads to far fewer spikes, and since spikes are what kill tanks, ultimately it leads to fewer tank deaths, and since tank death generally equals a wipe, it leads to less wipes.

The strategy says to get to the Hit cap and Hard Expertise cap (15%). After that, the advice was to go either Mastery or Haste. Haste and Mastery pretty much tied for effectiveness. Mastery is held back a bit because it is less effective in the double roll system (where a block is a separate roll).

Haste gives you an added benefit that Mastery doesn't Haste increases your DPS, and in a world with Vengeance, tanks do some decent DPS. It’s enough that Haste became the go-to stat (after caps) especially for Heroic Mode raiders. Haste also allows us (at specific breakpoints) to get extra ticks from Sacred Shield.

Huzzah! The developers accomplished their goal. Haste is a desirable tank stat. The problem is it’s too desirable. Tankadins like it better than the traditional tank stats of dodge and parry, so much so that a piece of gear with only dodge and parry (like Bracers of Six Oxen) is consider ‘garbage’. Diminishing Returns are so strong on avoidance (dodge and parry) that even at low rating levels that the amount of avoidance you get per point simply isn't worth it.

Tanks really haven’t been a fan of avoidance for about 3 expansion. Once upon a time, back in the olden days of 2009 tanks debated (quite fiercely, if I remember) about Avoidance versus Effective Health. The Avoidance tank would take less damage overall (what is now called TDR or Total Damage Reduction). The Effective Health tank would take more damage over the course of the entire fight, however; he would take smoother and more predictable damage. As long as you didn't run your healers OOM (out of mana) and become the so called Mana sponge, you were easier to heal and had a better chance of surviving the encounter (which, in the final analysis is really what tanks WANT to do).

Possible Solutions?

Again major kudos to the posters over at Maintankadin who have suggested a couple of possible solutions. Short term, the best place to reduce the value of Haste would be Sanctity of Battle (SoB), but the community didn't think that is what the Developers will choose to do. SoB was made available to Tankadins to give them a defensive benefit from Haste. The developers just didn't see that it would be such a huge benefit as to overshadow traditional tanking stats like Mastery, Dodge, and Parry.

I think we will see quite a bit of experimenting because the Developers have to be careful. By changing our gearing strategy, you are changing the gear we want. This isn’t just a simple regem / reforge / heywheredidallmygoldgo. This is replacing several pieces of gear. Gear that might have been upgraded with Valor points. Yikes! Tread carefully, dear Crab.

If the Developers want Tankadins to value Avoidance, it needs to serve a niche. The niche it fills right now is TDR (total damage reduction). If tanks were mainly concerned with TDR, that would work. But right now its simply filling a niche no one cares about sort of like a hockey game on the night of the Super Bowl.

Assuming they don’t want to simply nerf SoB, Avoidance could become more desirable by adding it to an active mechanic. Something along the line of Revenge. Grand Crusader would fit the bill well. It hits three targets like Revenge and it’s already a proc. Simply make Grand Crusader proc off a dodge or parry. This would also help Tankadins AoE threat which seems a bit lackluster especially next to my Monk co-Tank.

There's another, longer term solution (and one I suggested back in 2009), but as this post is already too long, I will detail that tomorrow.

Thunderstuck!

2013-01-24T00:21:00.002-05:00

Do you think maybe someone on the Blizzard Developement team was an AC/DC fan? I'm sure by now you've heard of the new Thunderforged items on the PTR. According to CM Crithto, this is Blizzard's attempt to revitalize 25 man raiding.

To attempt to navigate this minefield, we’re going to try having Thunderforged items drop more frequently in 25-player raids. They’ll be somewhat rare in both cases compared to the standard versions that’ll drop, but they’ll be even rarer in 10s. Overall, a 25-player group will be more likely to end up with a slightly higher item level after several weeks of raiding.

There are some excellent responses in the thread, and I would especially highlight the response of Moshne of Something Wicked.

One of the suggestion I have seen several tims is giving 25s gear with one upgrade. This was actually something I thought about before Thunderforged gear was announced.

In addition to the points being brought up, I think one issue that isn't getting enough play is actually one of the core issues in this discussion.

Where do new 25 man guilds come from?

The question the Developers need to ask themselves is why is this guild going to take on the extra logistical demands of becoming a 25 man guild? Even if they can recruit to get the numbers, they will have to reset their progression and start over at Stone Guard. Somehow, I don't think improving their odds at an improved piece of gear is going to help.

Would you like some RNG in your RNG?

Applying this to my own situation, what would it take for me (and my crew) to want to go 25?

First off, I have zero interest in leaving my awesome raid team, which sometimes struggles to field 10. So I really don't have horse in this race. Most of us truly prefer the 10 man format. 25 mans are simply too chaotic. We raided as a 10 man back when 25 mans got better gear (to the tune of 13 iLevels). Back then, the attitude of 25 man raiders, who looked down on 10 mans as not being 'real' raids was much more a nuisance than any loot.

But let's say, just to demonstrate the issues that face the developers, what would it take for us to go to 25s.

My guild actually operates two independent, ten man teams. We should be the perfect candidate to become a new 25 man raid guild, but it's not going to happen.

Let's suppose each team was willing to try a 25 man raid night. Let's also suppose we could work out a schedule that works for everyone. Even if we get around the scheduling issue, the combined lockouts make any trial night a risky proposition. Once we attempt the 25 man night, we've locked ourselves out of doing the 10 man raid.

Once we actually kill something, we have to figure out loot. Loot drama is basically non-existent in our team. I have dibs on Plate tank stuff. Our main tank is a Monk. There's some contention over cloth gear with a Warlock, Mage, and a Priest. Our Resto/Elemental Shaman is our only mail wearer. We DE a lot of Agi Mail. Plate DPS is the most competitive loot with two Ret Paladins, and a Fury Warrior. Despite that, everything is just done with a /roll. I'm sure the fact we've been together so long helps too. Going to a 25 man, we'd need some sort of EPGP, or DKP system with the accompanying clerical work to support it. Maybe one suggestion would be for Blizzard to improve the native UI to support EPGP, Suicide Kings, DKP and other popular systems.

Another issue we would have to deal with is the tanks. Combining our teams gives us 4 tanks, 6 healers, and 10 dps. In order to do 25 mans, 2 of our tanks need to switch to either DPS or heals. Our tanks are tanks because (shockingly!) they LIKE tanking. If they preferred healing or dpsing, they would be those roles!

Just to reiterate for my guild mates - I am not asking for, nor am I suggesting in ANY way that we try 25 mans. I like the dynamic we have going (my fail tanking not withstanding).

LFR Loot Improvements

2013-01-18T00:32:00.001-05:00

Come on, you had to know when I got back into blogging about my time in World of Warcraft, I’d get around to loot.

On Ghostcrawler’s twitter account , @Ghostcrawler , he was asked if he felt LFR gave out loot often enough. The crab responded.

The numbers work fine overall. I do wish there was a fix for perennially unlucky players, which couldn't be exploited.

Well, Ghostcrawler ole buddy I’m glad you asked. I've got two suggestions.

First suggestion: The Gallywix Coin

The Gallywix Coin would be a special coin introduced to the game. The coin is named after Trade Prince Gallywix, the leader of the Goblins. Gallywix ain't the type to roll the dice and hope for an epic reward. He’s the kind of guy that would stack the deck in his favor, big time.

Basically, a Gallywix Coin would be a guaranteed loot drop. You spend the coin, you are going to get something off the boss. I would set the price at 5 Elder Charms plus 4000 gold. There is no way I see Gallywix getting on board with this without you handing over some scratch.

Essentially, it let’s players choose if they want to trade in 5 shots that might or might not give you loot for one shot that definitely will give you loot.

So what you have to ask yourself is, do you feel lucky, punk?

Second suggestion: Lady Luck Buff

Speaking of luck (segue ho!), my second suggestion is all about luck.The truth is that it stinks to go a long time with no rewards coming from LFR, especially if that is your only or even primary means of gearing up your character.

The way I see the Lady Luck Buff working would be every time you looted a boss, but only got some gold, you would get a stack of the buff. Each stack would increase your chance of getting loot by some percentage, let’s say 5%. Once you got loot, then your buff resets to zero. The developers would have the option of making this an invisible buff so they could implement and the player base would never know. Come to think of it, it could already be implemented in some form, but they have kept it a secret like the ancient aliens.

Aliens?

Humans?

Anyway, I actually think it would be more fun if they made it a visible buff. Can you imaging the epic stories.

“Dude, I got no loot and I have 90% Lady Luck!”

Maybe the Developers could even put in an achievement for getting your Lady Luck buff up to 100%. They could have it award a title The Unlucky.

I think both of these suggestions would address Ghostcrawler’s desire to help out perennially unlucky players, and I don’t see how either one could be exploited. But I know you guys are much smarter than ole Honorshammer so let me know what you think of these two suggestions and also let me know how either could be exploited.

Race Change!

2013-01-09T22:04:00.001-05:00

When I came back to World of Warcraft from Star Wars The Old Republic, I switched servers to join some old raiding buddies. In the process, I race changed my Paladin to a Tauren.

This is something I had always wanted to do, but by the time they announced Sunwalkers, SWTOR was already in my thinking and I didn't see the point in putting money into a game I was getting ready to leave. Then my guild switched to Alliance midway through Firelands, and I changed to playing my Hunter as my main and it simply wasn't an option anymore.

I much preferred the SunWalker take on the Paladin as sun powered druids over the Blood Elves sucking dry a Naaru. I leveled through 85 to 90 as a Tauren and even did the first couple of raid nights. I had reclaimed my spot in the tanking corps, and when you are Horde, Tauren means Tank.

But as we started raiding, I noticed I was having more trouble than usuals. I wasn't sure if it was age starting to catch up with me, or what. The Tauren model is big, really big. He eats up a good deal of screen real estate. His size also makes him feel ponderous and slow. The final straw was my transmog gear, especially my beloved Tier 6, looked awful on him.

I decided to go back to a Blood Elf.

I really wish Blizzard had done more to update the lore on the Blood Knights in the wake of the events at the Sunwell. But from what I've gathered, Blood Knights are now powered by the Sunwell directly. I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of role Lor'themar takes in the lore as we move through the expansion.

I've been very happy with the decision. The Blood Elf model looks great (of course it would!) and almost immediately I felt my performance improving in our raids.

In Defense of the Reputation Grinds

2013-01-03T09:26:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

My guild has been enjoying a nice holiday break from raiding. This has given me an opportunity to see the other side of the Pandaria reputation system, and I have to say I see some real positives to it.

The Pandaria reputation system of dailies has been decried pretty much universally across the interwebs, and at first I was in total agreement. The issue I saw with it was it essentially provided a second gate to gear. As a time constrained player, I was getting Valor in raids and dungeons, but then I would lack the reputation to spend the Valor because I hadn't done the requisite dailies.

Eventually I started to get caught up on my reputations, and buying some Valor gear to fill in for the raid drops. With the pressure to get 'raid ready' off, I could see the upside.

Usually, by this point in an expansion raid nights were about the only night I would really play my main very much. They were the only place left for me to improve my gear. Log in, raid, log out.

What the new reputation system has done is given me a reason to continue playing my main, even on nights when I don't raid. I can still build up Valor and reputation needed to buy gear that will be an upgrade for my character. It gives a purpose and a goal to the grind, and its kept me playing my main longer than any other expansion I can remember. It has almost done too good a job. My poor disenchanting alt is still mired in the low 30s.

As an added bonus, we've gotten some fantastic, progressive lore to go along with the grind. The Klaxxi quests introduce you to new questgivers and new dailies at every major reputation increase. Their lore has been exciting, but the best implementation of this has been the Dominance Offensive dailies. It seems like every couple of days I open up another story quest. These quests are great for a lore nut like me because they show some seismic changes happening within the Horde.

Since I've switched back to Blood Elf from Tauren, I was most delighted to encounter Lorethar on one of the Dominance Offensive quests. I'll talk about why I switched later.

Between the lore, and the gear rewards, these dailies have not felt like a grind. I've wanted to do them and as a bonus I've kept playing my main and thoroughly enjoying the class. The Pandaria take on Paladin might be the best one yet, but I'll have to save that for another time.

Look Upon Gara'jal and Die!

2012-12-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

The first two fights in Mogu'shan Vaults really stress the tanks to do their job well, so it was nice to get a little respite and have the burden shift to the DPS and healers for Gara'jal.

Aside: I find the similarities between the name of Gara'jal and Gharj, one of the early SWTOR raid boss, to be an interesting coincidence.

We made several solid tries on Gara'jal. We were really struggling with who was going in the Spirit World and who wasn't. Sometimes no healer would get in, sometimes three DPS would go.

The next night our raid leader used the addon Gara'jalAnnounce. This was a huge help, but we simply didn't have the DPS to take him down.

That's when we switched from three healers to two. That put huge pressure on our two healers, but we did better against the timer after that.

On our final attempt of the night, everything was going well, but one of our healers got stuck in the real world with back to Voodoo Dolls right before we hit 20%. The guy was running on fumes the whole lost phase and the raid started to buckle. We watched the health tick down, along with the timer.

Then we heard him emote

"Enough! Off to de spirit world wit' ya!" His enrage was up. Any second we would all die an ignominious sub 1% death.

And then...

...he fell over dead! That's not entirely true. He doesn't fall over as much as he enters the spirit world. It must be one of the 'become more powerful than you can possibly imagine' kind of things.

Focused Shield versus Battle Healer

I really struggled on my Glyph choice for this fight. Focused Shield would increase the amount of DPS I was able to contribute to the raid. Battle Healer would really help out the healers who stretch to their breaking point and beyond.

I decided in the end to go with Focused Shield. More DPS should mean the fight goes faster which should help our healers as well. I also threw out Light's Hammers as much as I could to help with the AoE healing.

Guardian of Mogu'shan

2012-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

NaNoWriMo I didn't 'win' this year which is to say that I didn't get 50k words. I got about half that. The biggest thing I learned is that I've got to work on my time management skills. I still raiding during NaNo which means I could have done more, but even if I hadn't raided at all during NaNo I wasn't hitting 50k.

Raiding and Tanking I have, largely of my own accord decided to christen my raid team Team Rainbow. We operate within a larger guild. There's another raid team for the guild, but we are completely independent with our own group, own loot rules, etc. I chose Team Rainbow because many of our members have color names like Pinkale, Orangeporter, Blacktouch, and Blueshadez. Plus, at one time, every player in the raid was a different class so it truly was a rainbow in the guild frames.

We've been working our way through Mosh'gun Vaults on Normal mode and hitting up LFR every chance we get. I really wasn't sure what my role was going to be. I have come back to the team after an extended hiatus in Star Wars. WoW is my main game again and I'm having a blast with it, but I didn't expect to walk in and just be handed the tank position back. I guess everyone had in their head that Honorshammer = tank so I'm back in my familiar position of pissing off large mobs that want nothing more than to rip my face off. Fun times! I was really worried that I would hold us back because I have much less playtime than most of the other guys but so far it hasn't seemed to be an issue.

The Dogs

I'm going to do a post next week about my new UI.

It took me several nights to get the Stone Guard fight down. There is just so much you have to do as a tank on this fight. You have to watch for stuff on the ground. You have to stay parallel to your co-Tank. You have to maintain your rotation to keep your active mitigation up. All that would be plenty for my mental bandwidth to be nearly exhausted, but you also have to keep track of which mob is powering up and what the power level of the other two dogs are as well.

It took us a couple of weeks, but as people got more gear from LFR we eventually broke through and got the dogs down.

Spell Steal

I am the Reversal tank on Feng, and I have to say that is an enjoyable job. I still get angry with myself when I mess it up, especially the time I forgot to click on the crystal to get the buff. It's fun to take a boss ability and turn it around and use it on the boss. We learned the first two phases very quickly, but phase three's square dance of run in, run out, run in, run out took a little while longer.

Talents

I find Hand of Purity to be a great help on both of the first two fights. Feng puts a large Damage Over Time on you in each phase, and the Dogs all put a bleed on you. I wait until I have two stacks, or both dogs on me and then I pop Hand of Purity to reduce the damage.

I also find Light's Hammer to be useful. Both fights have periods where strong AoE healing is needed, and I like to be able to throw out Light's Hammer to help take some of the stress off our healers. I like the control of Light's Hammer and being able to target it at our ranged DPS and healers.

Going Dark

2012-11-14T20:54:00.003-05:00

There's this thing called NaNoWriMo. You try to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month, or about 1600 words a day. Now, I don't want to go into this preparing to fail, but 1600 words a day is going to be a tall order. I only have so many hours in the day and honestly, most of them are spoken for before the sun rises. Work, and basic life maintenance (eat, sleep, driving, bathroom, bathing) account for a decent chunk, and aren't terribly negotiable. I only have a few hours every day to really call my own. Somewhere in those hours I need to do everything I need to get done. In order to get this done, somewhere along the way something’s got to give. One of those things, for the month of November, is this blog. I'll be relaunching the blog at the end of the month (and I'll let you know how I did).

First Heroics Foray

2012-10-29T20:55:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who suggested the Ghost Iron Dragonling. I had one of our engineers make me one.

The plan was to spend the evening banging away on normal modes and Klaxxi rep, but between the trinket and some quest reward 437 boots, I noticed I was just 2 points shy of what I needed to start running heroics. We had a group forming in guild chat with 3 DPS: a Warlock, a Hunter, and a Feral Druid.

My Warlock friend suggested I buy some PvP gear to get over the hump so I could tank for them. I only needed to have the gear in my bags, I didn't even need to equip it. I usually hate ‘gaming’ the system in this way. I feel like I should only go if I legitimately have the gear needed. I don’t want to be selfish and risk everyone else’s time and repair bills just because I want to run Heroics before I’m ready.

All three of my guildmates assured me that Heroics were pretty easy and they were willing to risk it. I bought the chest which put me over the hump. I figured that if I just blew up on the first couple of pulls, I would apologize to the healer and bow out. We also had the Hunter’s turtle and the Warlock’s Voidwalker to take a couple of hits if things got dicey. The Feral could go bear.

We got the Gate of the Setting Sun. I had never been there before, but it was bugs, lots and lots of bugs.

I took a deep breath, powered up my Avenger’s shield and let forth with my battle cry.

IT’S HAMMER TIME!

The first pull went fine. The healer had no problem keeping me alive. We ran all the way up to the first boss. There was more fire on the ground than I’ve seen since we did Firefighter in Ulduar, but I lived.

We continued on through the rest of place. The bosses were fun, but it was a lot of picking up adds. I once again mourned for the loss of my beloved Righteous Defense. Have the devs ever said why they took it away?

Finishing the dungeon was my first disappointment of the night. I’m barely geared for Heroics, scratch that, I’m wasn’t even fully geared for Heroics, yet we blew this dungeon with ease. If we are AoEing and mowing through ‘Heroics’ in blues and greens what are these places going to look like in full epics? How about in the next tier or the one after that. Are ‘Heroics’ really supposed to be ‘press button, get gear’?

It made sense why the guild mates were insistent we should go ahead and run them.

I was the boat anchor, a position I don't enjoy. I was the only one in our group who isn't ready for raiding. It was time to start chain running these things for gear.

The next one we got was Siege of Niuzao Temple. We had a little more trouble this time out.

My favorite fight of the whole night was also the most difficult. The boss is Commander Vo’jack. The DPS throw bombs on the adds that come up the steps. The dialog from Pa’valak is pretty funny. I wasn’t sure if just the Feral Druid needed to move out of whirlwind or if I needed to as well. After tanking the floor, I decided that I should run out, too. The Warlock resurrected me. That still sounds weird. I taunted and died again after a few moments, but we got him down, and I got an achievement called “Where’s my Air Support?”

The last fight was really odd. The boss creates this wind barrier. You have to silence him or interrupt him somehow. Avenger’s Shield works, thank goodness.

It was getting late, but we ended up doing one more. We got Temple of the Jade Serpent. I've run this a couple of times on Normal so I knew the fights, and there wasn't anything too surprising in the Heroic version.

Once we were done, I had my second disappointment of the night. Despite running three heroics, not a single piece of plate dropped. Talk about your dry spell. I did bank some Justice Points and some Valor Points.

I flew out to Townlong and found the Justice vendor. To my surprise he had the chest, which I thought was a reputation reward from the Klaxxi, but instead it was on this vendor for 2200 Justice Points. So despite not getting any drops, I still managed to snag an upgrade.

Push For Heroics

2012-10-18T00:35:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm 90 I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you can do. There are so many different reputations to start, not to mention I have two entire zones I haven't even started.

My primary goal is getting the gear needed so I can help the guild out by tanking heroic dungeons and eventually be available to tank raids.

First thing I did when I logged in was to spec my Level 90. Thank you, Matticus! I went with Execution Sentence for my Level 90 talent. The next order of business was to head to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms since I had already done the quest to unlock it, and buy flying.

Yeah, flying!

My current iLevel is 421. I need 435 for Heroics. My lowest pieces are my neck (399), one trinket (399) - the other is the Brewfest one (470!), chest (414), sword (414), and shield (414).

I didn't have a ton of Justice Points saved up from Cataclysm because I was burning them trying to get up to LFR before Mists so I could see the Deathwing raid, which I did.

The first thing I did was use my Jewelcrafting to craft a ring (Heart of Earth 450) and a neck (Reflection of the Sea 450).

Then I queued up for the Arena of Annihilation scenario and got a weapon, Maki’s Mashing Mace (450). I went to transmog it, but Maki’s Mashing Mace is a One-Hand weapon and what I wanted to transmog it to, the Hammer of Judgment is a Main hand. I think it’s a little silly you can’t transmog a main hand onto a One Hand. I think just about everything in the game now is One hand. Do they even make Main Hand weapons anymore? I really wanted to run around with my Hammer of Judgement.

In short order I had upgraded my neck, one of my rings and my weapon.

I had been to the Shrine of Two Moons during questing, but now that I was 90 the place lit up like a Christmas tree with quest givers. Basically any reputation I wanted to start working I could get started on right there. I noticed one exclamation point was a different color. It was orange instead of yellow or blue.

I went and talked to the guy and I got a quest to go to the Veiled Stair and meet the Black Prince. It turned out to be Wratharion. I remember doing the quest in the Badlands to save his egg. I loved that quest. He talked to me about terrible things coming to Azeroth and asked me to prove myself by raising my reputation with various factions.

I looked up places to upgrade my chest and found Chestplate of the Stone Lion. It’s a hit and mastery piece which should work well. I’m way short of both the hit and expertise caps. It’s available from the Klaxxi at Honored. There were two options for shields. One was a drop in Shado-Pan Monestary (Normal) and the other was a quest reward from the Klaxxi.

I queued up for Shado-Pan and grabbed a kite to the Dread Wastes. The run through Shado-Pan was fairly uneventual, but whoever at Blizzard thought that removing AoE taunts from tanks needs to take a long walk off a short pier. Actually I could probably handle no AoE taunt, but what I really missed was Righteous Defense. I used to be able to glance at the party frames and see if anyone was taking damage. If they were, I would target them, and hit Righteous Defense, which would taunt the mob attacking them. Man, did I miss that skill.

The shield didn't drop, but I did get some new boots. They were haste/mastery but no one seemed to complain (especially the Fury Warrior). I was a good tank and didn’t roll on the 2 hander that dropped at the end boss.

I hadn’t done a single quest in the Dread Wastes, so I headed over there and began questing. As I started to kill Mantids I noticed I was getting not Klaxxi reputation but Black Prince reputation. I got Klaxxi reputation when I turned them in . So now I was working on two reputations at the same time. Score!

The Klaxxi have a chest at Honored By the end of the night I was friendly with both the Klaxxi and the The Black Prince.

And Now He's 90!

2012-10-16T18:47:00.002-04:00

Last night I finally made it to level 90. I was busy finishing up the quests in Kun-Lai Summit when I saw someone in the guild asking for a sub 90 dungeon run. Most everyone in the guild is already level 90 and they are busy grinding away on Heroics. There is some quirk to the LFG system where if you have someone in your group who has a much higher iLevel than the rest of the group, it won't let you queue. I knew I was close to 90, but I offered the services of my shield.

The group was Paladin Tank (me!), A Boomkin, a Warlock, a Shaman and a Tree.

We got the Shado-Pan Monastery.

I was a bit nervous. I had tried to tank Shado-Pan Monastery back when I was 87, and it didn't go well. That was a pure PuG and immediately the DPS Death Knight and Priest healer were concerned about my health pool.

I've been playing WoW a long time. I had a really hard time getting my head around the concept that having over 200k hit points was considered being low for a tank. After a couple of wipes where I went splat, we let the DK switch to Blood and I switched to Ret and we finished the place.

This time I had over 300k hit points and it was full guild run. Granted, these were all new people to me, but we are all from the same guild.

The run went pretty smooth. Only a couple of times did my health get low and apparently I was standing in some sort of Sha fire. Oops. Those guys love to leave some sort of painful zone on the ground when they die.

It was really special for me to ding in my Prot spec. Honors started out as a healer in Molten Core and Zul'gurub, but as soon as Burning Crusade hit, he was a tank and he's been that way ever since.

I managed to pick up some new tanking gloves and a new tanking belt from the dungeon. After we finished the run, I did the final quests in Kun Lai, got the achievement for the zone and went to bed.

This was when I hit max level in Cataclysm. I was playing the Hunter as my main then and for some reason didn't get a screenshot of Honorshammer hitting 85. It's obvious he did as you really can't hit level 90 without at some point hitting 85.

This was level 80 in Wrath. I hit on Christmas day. I love having a blog.

Finally this is me out in Nagrand in Burning Crusade. One of my favorite things to do back then was solo elites so I thought it would be supre cool to solo an elite to ding. Then this 'helpful' Warrior came by.

Tank Once More, If Only For a Night

2012-10-03T22:00:00.002-04:00

I finished up the Jade Forest last night, and I have to say I really like the way Blizzard worked the story lines into the zone. The end of the zone was excellent and set up the Jade Temple dungeon well. I loved the cut scene at the end, and how we deal with the aftermath.

I saw some guild mates asking to run a regular dungeon and I volunteered to go along. I was fine with going as Retribution, but they figured I wanted to tank. For the first time since coming back to WoW, I was going strap on my shield and tank.

I quickly read the Basic Training thread on MainTankadin so I would have a clue as to what I was doing and off we went. This was my first time in the Jade Temple dungeon and my guild mates talked me through the fights. We had a very good Death Knight with us, and I struggled to maintain threat, especially in AoE situations. I really missed not having Righteous Defense.

Note to self, Sha puddles HURT. Yowza! I was tanking the floor for the rest of that pull.

I like that we use Consecration again, even on single targets. It hearkens back to the 'Round them up and Consecrate' early days of Paladin tanking.

Holy Power generation feels much less fluid as Protection than it does as Retribution. I felt like I was constantly starved for Holy Power. Most of the time I dumped it into Shield of the Righteous. Only occasionally did I use Word of Glory.

We did the water boss first (sorry for not remembering the names). Our Death Knight death gripped the elemental over, I taunted and our dps burned it down. Then we ran around the boss, and burned him down.

We went to the library next and got the fight with the two mobs. We weren't great at switching DPS and the buff these guys get stacked pretty high. My health yoyoed around like it hasn't since Ice Crown Citadel. To survive I made liberal use of all my cooldowns: Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Bastioned up Word of Glory. I even quaffed a pot or two.

After defeating those two we went back to the front and fought the Jade Serpent. I'm not really sure why. She was nice to me while I was questing, but now she wanted to make me a dragon chew toy and barbecue me. That lead to the final boss, the Sha of Doubt. Everything was going great until he called in our doppelgangers, then it got a little crazy. I survived those, and I think the incredible DPS our team was pulling down helped a lot.

We decided to queue up again after the dungeon was cleared and got the Brewery. This was a crazy place. Lots of adds everywhere and lots and lots and lots of beer. The first boss I've dubbed the Donkey Kong boss in my mind for all the barrels flying around. They hurt when they hit you though. We had lots of fun with the rabbit boss and the hammers the vermin dropped. The giant rabbit did a spray attack almost exactly like the Jinyu boss in the Jade Temple. Somebody on the dungeons design team really liked the Lurker Below fight. The final boss was a bit rough, and the Death Knight did almost as much tanking as I did. We had to get into these bubbles and fly around, a little like the Magister's Terrace fight.

It was a good night. Despite being really rusty and having a bunch of Cataclysm level greens I managed to survive both dungeons. I finished the night just a couple bars shy of 87.

Guild

I enjoyed being back in the tanking saddle again, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back to tanking once I get to raiding. I still really don't know what's going on with the guild.

My friend Blue, who gifted me the scroll of resurrection came to this guild after I left for Star Wars. These guys raided all through Cataclysm and did pretty well. Toward the end of Cataclysm, several of my former guild mates came back tot he game and we all sort of congregated in this guild. I don't know if we will be trying to raid with the guild or if we will be forming our own team.

I'm leveling way slower than just about anyone else. I think some people will have an alt at 90 before I get there on my main. Once I do get to 90, I'll need to prioritize one role to get geared enough to raid.I just don't have a clue what role that will be.

Lowbies

I ended up making a Panda Monk, but I also made a Blood Elf mage. I've wanted to try a mage as my next class and a Blood Elf just seem to make more sense. Let's face it, male or female, they look great in the dresses and robes mages wear.

I've got a couple friend who stopped playing early in Burning Crusade and have never had a toon over Level 25. We are going to sort of go through the game together. As soon as they get their Monk and Shaman off of the Wandering Isles, I'll take the orb from Silvermoon to Undercity and catch the Zeppelin to Orgrimaar.

It's going to be wild seeing all these old sites through new eyes.

So are you raiding yet? How are you enjoying MoP so far?

Slow Boat to Pandaria

2012-10-02T10:25:00.001-04:00

I'm working my way through the Jade Forest on Honorshammer leveling with all the speed of a rush hour commute. Most of my guild mates have already hit level 90. Me? I'm Level 86 (and a half!).

The questing in MoP has been very good so far. The stories are good, not great, but they move along well and leave the focus on questing. In SWTOR, I felt like I was constantly trying to get to that next bit of Class Story. With WoW, it's all just one story. The arcs aren't as separate. It's not told with the same intensity or panache, but I enjoy it.

I did enjoy the one quest where the scouting party comes back and you relive their tale by taking control of them at different points. Very nice use of phasing and voice acting.

I do have to question the Hozen. They talk funny, and seem to be put in for a bit of comic relief. I think I liked it better when I was killing them by the bucketload early on in Mists. To me, the Hozen seem to be WoW's Gungans.

Retribution

I'm leveling as Retribution, though I have ambitions to be a tank once I hit 90.

I have to say that playing the Ret Paladin feels a little weird to me. I started playing my Paladin in Patch 1.9. In those days of yore, Paladins learned to body pull or stock up on EZ Throw Dynamite. Now being able to expend 2 GCDs from 30 meters (Judgment and Exorcism) feels just a little odd. I'm adjusting though.

I've transmoged (is that even a word?) my sword into an Untamed Blade replacing the mace I had transmoged into Verigan's Fist. I know that mogging has been around a while, but I'm just discovering it, and its been a great addition to the game. I can totally see myself going back to the older raids once I'm geared up at 90.

Lowbie

I'm also getting ready to roll my Panda. A friend from work has decided to roll his Panda on my server. He's making a monk, so I was thinking about what I should make.

I have three former max level (85) toons: my Paladin, my Warrior and my Hunter. I have a couple of others that are close. My shaman topped out at 83, and my Druid at 80. I've taken a Death Knight out of the starter zone, but never any further. My highest mage is level 36. I've never rolled a Warlock, and never got a Rogue out of the starter area.

Pandas can't be Rogues or Warlocks, and my friend is already a Monk. I tried making a mage, but they just look silly in the mage robes on the starter screen. I guess it wouldn't matter much if both me and my friend were monks.

Now I really wish there was some way to send the full set of hierlooms I have over on Arygos to my Panda on Nessingwary.

My First Night of Pandaria

2012-09-28T00:17:00.001-04:00

SWTOR

I got word today, via our guild forums that my SWTOR guild has officially folded. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. I did. I know I could try to find another guild in SWTOR, but I really want to see how the game does with the conversion to a Free To Play model before I make the commitment to a guild. If I’m just going to go Free to Play in November, there’s little point in trying to get established in a guild right now.

Besides I’m a little busy with Pandas.

WoW

I have three Level 85 toons in WoW : Hunter, Paladin, Warrior. I had already decided I wanted to take the Paladin to the new level cap of 90. I couldn’t take any time off of work so I didn’t get started until Tuesday evening. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I did. I have a toddler at home, and he makes it very hard to do anything on the computer when he’s awake.

I started out in Orgrimmar, and like most of my nights I knocked out the cooking and Jewelcrafting daily. I figured it would be some fast, free experience points. The bar barely moved.

As I was flying around, I noticed the quest giver mark over the Battle Pet trainer. I flew down and, trained, and did the first quest. I also hadn’t gotten into Beta, nor had I read much about MoP. For the first time with an Expansion pack, I was going in fresh.

Pet Battles

I had not intended to do Pet Battles. I thought the entire idea was silly. Pokemon, really? But I figured, again, that this would be fast, free experience.

The next 30 minutes vanished in an blink.

I didn’t want to like Pet Battles, I really didn’t, but it was so much fun.

WoW has given us this wonderfully deep mini-game. Pets have different classes (Beasts, Mechanical, Flying etc.) and they have different attacks. Each has strengths and weakness against other types in a very rock, paper, scissors kind of game. It’s a system that is easy to learn, but tough to master. I love the fact it’s turned based. Over my years of playing WoW, I’ve observed my reflexes have gotten slower. Reflexes don’t matter with Pet Battles.

I leveled my Panda Cub, and then one of my guild mates suggested the Curious Wolvar Pup. He did really well, and he has this trap attack that really does major damage.

Jade Serpent

While I was channeling my inner Ash Ketchum I saw one of the warriors asking in guild chat if anyone wanted to queue. Even though I hadn’t stepped foot in Pandaria, I went ahead and queued up. We got Temple of the Jade Dragon or something like that. You know, it’s funny, I find doing dungeons as DPS to be like being a passenger in a car going someplace new. You get a general idea how to get there, but not the detail you get when you are driving. When I’m tanking, I tend to soak in more details like I would when I’m driving.

I learned one lesson very quickly. Sha puddles HURT. Thank you, repair bill. The first couple of bosses were pretty simple. It’s gotta be a little tough on the encounter designers. We’ve seen so many diferent raid and dungeon bosses, it’s almost a game of figuring out which mechanics we’ve seen before. The first boss did a Lurker Below kind of spray around the room. The final boss summoned copies of ourselves. We wiped once on that boss. I’m not sure why. The tank told us to stand on him and we did. The healer said he messed up, and we pulled again. This time we killed him.

I completed the two instance quests. I briefly thought about switching to my Prot spec before picking up the reward, but someone said there would be a vendor to buy tank gear, so i went ahead and got the Ret Bracers, and Legs.

I still don’t have a good bead on what I’m going to be doing in our raids. I’m hoping that gets settled soon.

Pandaria

When I left the dungeon, I was back in Orgrimmar. I did the quest to talk to General Nazgrim and saw the cut scene between him and Garrosh. Honors made a rude gesture to Garrosh right before he ran out of the room. It sort of makes me wish I was more into RP because Honors is a very conflicted character these days.

I finally got to Pandaria and started questing in earnest. We lost another gunship. Gallywix is going to love that. I’m sure he’s bidding on the contract to replace it already.

I didn’t get very far and logged off just after I started on some quests to kill these monkeys called Hozen.

Impressions

I know some people have commented on how linear the Jade Forest is, and I’m sure it’ll be a grind on my 3rd or 4th alt, but last night the story was amazing. I felt a sense of wonderment and exploration I haven’t felt since the opening of the Dark Portal. I loved the fact that my toon was IN a couple of the cut scenes. It isn’t as good as the SWTOR storytelling, but it’s not as invasive if that makes any sense.

Putting a Bow on Cataclysm

2012-09-24T23:45:00.004-04:00

I realize I'm a day late with this post. I'm writing it on Monday, but you probably won't see it until Tuesday with visions of pandas swimming in your head.

With the three End Time heroics down, there’s was only one thing left on my bucket list.

Deathwing.

I knew this weekend would be my last chance, unless I found an achievement hunting group that would go back at Level 90. I asked in guild if anyone wanted to queue with me. Most of them were, understandably, sick of seeing the Deathwing raid. However, Blue, one of my old guild mates, agreed to queue with me on his Disc Priest.

One thing I noticed overall was it seems like people are back to playing Paladins. I know we can fill all three roles, but it seemed like there more Paladins in the raid than any other Plate wearing class.

We started with the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. Much like the final End Time heroic, it was weird being back in Dragonblight and seeing everything changed. The giant gaping maws reminded me of a Sarlacc.

Everything was pretty chaotic. As I had figured, going as Ret was my best bet. My DPS was in the bottom half the DPSers, but no one complained. If I'm going to be main spec Ret in Mists, I'm going to have to get much better at managing my cooldowns and putting up numbers.

The fights were something of blur. Blue did his best to talk me through the fights. The mechanics seemed pretty straight forward and it helped that Blue could call upon some of our mutual raiding experience like 'hide behind the spikes sort of like Sindragosa'. Some one in the raid shouted which color slime to attack on the slime summoning boss. I tried to follow the crowd and attack whatever mob had a ton of debuffs on it.

It was wild doing a raid in Eye of Eternity again. I'm just so thankful they didn't make us do a phase on dragons like the Malygos fight. It was kind of cool running around with the lightning and shorting out the totems. Up to this point, the entire raid sort of felt like a montage episode of your favorite show where they go back and show clips of the older episodes.

Loot was really strange. Most bosses I got a sack with 25g, but one one boss an epic appeared in my bags. It was a plate DPS belt. Unfortunately, I had purchased the 397 belt already from the Valor vendor, and the belt that dropped was a 384.

I'm kind of curious, since the loot is doled out automatically, how offspec loot is handled? How do you gear up an offtank, or that 3rd healer for your 10 man?

After we completed Siege of Wyrmrest, we decided to queue for Fall of Deathwing.

The first fight was Ultraxion. It kind of reminded me a little of Ruby Sanctum with phasing in and out of the Twilight realm. After Deathwing destroyed the Horde Gunship, we hopped on the Alliance one. Since we are Horde, shouldn't he have destroyed the Alliance gunship, and we use the Horde one? Oh well, more gold for the Gallywix and the goblins to build a replacement I guess.

I love that Blizzard still has that sense of humor. After we defended the gunship, we were led on our parachute drop by Captain Swazye and Ke'anu Reeves. Point Break here we come.

The fight on Deathwing's back was crazy. There was so much going on. I got really confused because people were yelling for us to stop DPS. I stopped and moved out of melee range. I even sheathed my weapon. I wanted to be sure people saw I had stopped. My main goal was not to get kicked out of the for being a fail DPSer. Blue told me to look for a little number on the mobs portrait and stop when it got to 9, but I use ElvUI and I didn't see any number on the portrait.

How do you decide what gear to keep for later Transmog purposes? We only have so much bank/void storage space.

Eventually we got it down, and I snagged a tier token for a helmet. I'm pretty sure it was that boss, but it might have been the gunship itself. The helm was another 384, and I already had the 397. I wasn't sure if I should grab the Holy, Prot or Ret tier piece. My raid group is still sort of organizing itself and I'm not entirely sure what role I'll be asked to play. Prot would obviously be my first choice, but I'll do whatever the group needs. I ended up buying the Ret helmet. My Prot and Holy sets are in pretty sad shape, and basically its transmog gear at this point.

There was a cool little cut scene, but it again underscored one of the problems I have with current WoW storytelling. We, as the heroes, are there. We are helping Thrall and the Dragons. But at the critical moments, we are little more than bodyguards. It's Thrall who is the true hero, just like it was Tirion and Bolvar in ICC. Is it too hard to have someone from the raid inserted into that cut scene and have them wield the Dragon Soul and bring down Deathwing?

Well, Deathwing goes splosh and for a moment I think its over, but people don't start abandoning the raid en mass, so that's a clue it's not. We did lose four people including two healers, but one of the tanks wasn't watching that I guess, and started the final event. Even down four people, two of them healers, we still go through three platforms. I did what I could with Selfless Healer procs, but if I tried to any major healing, I ran dry in about three spells.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we queued and filled the last four spots. The next pull went better.We moved from platform to platform. When we got to the fourth platform, something happened, I'm really not sure what, but me and about four other people just went splat! The raid was able to hold together and finish Deathwing off.

There was another cool cutscene, and Alexstraza declared the Age of Mortals to have begun. Aggra looks much better in game than she did in the cut scene. Cute and Orc just don't go together well.

It was almost like a graduation ceremony. The Aspects have decided that the mortals are strong enough to guard Azeroth ourselves, and really we've been doing a pretty good job of it for a while now. Look at all the threats we've defeated. Ragnorus (twice!), C'thun, Ke'Thuzad (twice!), Kael'thalas Sunstrider (three times!), Archimonde, Illidan, Yogg-Saron, Alagon, Arthas/Lich King, Nefarion (twice!), Cho'gall, and even Deathwing himself. All vanquished before they could destroy Azeroth.

Now that Deathwing is defeated, I'm ready to move on to the new lands and challenges of Pandaria. I never would have guessed when I left WoW a little over a year ago that I would be back for the expansion, but here I am. I only hope our raid group gets organized and we have a good group to explore the challenges that lie ahead.

SWTOR and WoW

2012-09-20T23:35:00.001-04:00

If you would indulge me today, I’d like to talk about what I miss from each game when I play the other.

Stuff I miss from SWTOR when i’m in WoW

Lightsabers - the iconic weapon of a Jedi. It makes a beautiful snap hiss as you enter combat.
Music - There is just nothing like going into combat with a John Williams soundtrack playing in the background. SWTOR saves the really iconic music like Duel of Fates and the main Star Wars theme for Raid Bosses. It still sends chills down my spin to Force Leap into Kephess as the main theme starts playing.
Companions - Soloing in WoW feels lonely now that I’m used to having one of my trusty companions by my side. They add a little chatter both in combat and out. They also really help when you level up in a support role. You can really level as a tank or healer because you always have a group, even if it only you and your companion. As a corollary, I miss the romance options and having your companions send you out on missions for them and advancing their story. I also love being able to send my companion out to sell all my grays items.
Writing /Stories - The writing in SWTOR is outstanding. The story arcs are tight and the characters are deep. The twists and turns keep you on your toes. At the end of a major chapter quest, I’m blown away. Knight is my favorite story so far, followed by Trooper. I haven't played the other stories to completion but Smuggler and Agent have some great lines.
Color Matching - Basically all your gear takes on a color scheme that matches your chest piece. It gives a nice uniform look, and its how SWTOR avoids the 'clown suit' problem.
Out of Combat Rez for all classes - I know pretty much everyone has Mass Resurrection now, but it’s still nice to have.
Out of Combat Heal/Recharge - Every class has a spell that heals them up out of combat and recharges their resource. Yeah I know I can carry food and water, but it have it as a power is more convenient.

Stuff I miss from WoW when I play SWTOR

Addons - SWTOR UI is customizable enough, but its all the other little things we use addons for that I really miss, especially the auction house addons. SWTOR Auction House is very much like WoWs before Auctioneer or other addons like it.

Macros - Much like addons, my goodness do I miss macros. Even a simple target marco helps so much when I’m tanking in WoW, and would be really nice to have in SWTOR. Healing without mouseover macros is painful.

Threat meter - I play both DPS/Heal and tank toons in SWTOR. I really miss that little % threat over the head of the mobs.

DBM - This is important enough to be its own point. SWTOR telegraphs a lot of boss abilities, but the timers and notifications DBM gives you are nice, and I definitely miss them. I think my guild would be further in SWTOR with something like DBM.

Dual Spec - You can purchase the ability to respec anywhere but you still have to reset your talents manually, and set all your bars up again. A true dual spec would help a ton, especially on my Commando Trooper.

Equipment Manager - Much like dual spec, having a one button function to switch from DPS gear to healer gear would be very appreciated.

Ease of Travel - SWTOR has way too many load screens, and unnecessary running around to get from point A to point B.

Flying Mounts - This is another one I wouldn't have anticipated, but after having the freedom to fly around so much, it's really missed. You just feel constrained with just a land mount.

Achievements - There are similar things in SWTOR, but WoW's are more varied and better presented.

First MMO problems - There's just a host of tiny annoyance that seven years of development have eliminated from WoW that still plague a young game like SWTOR.

I'm actually not planning on taking a break from SWTOR. I'm going to switch to SWTOR's Free to Play model once that goes live and enjoy the excellent story content in the game. Meanwhile, I'll be doing my raiding and group stuff in WoW.

Over One Hump

2012-09-20T00:00:00.001-04:00

I made the decision to reactivate my account. I still hadn’t seen the End Time instances or the Dragon Soul raid. I’m going to play my old Paladin, Honorshammer. Right now I’ve got him as Ret spec because I figure it will easier to PuG End Time and Dragon Soul as a DPS rather than as a Tank.

I also love the changes Patch 5.0.4 made to Retribution. I feel like I build Holy Power so much faster. The rotation is smoother, and a little more forgiving. The new talent tree is interesting. They feel more like glyphs. I don’t care what the math and sims say, nothing is more fun than Holy Avenger.

5.0.4 made some of the previous Valor gear available for purchase with Justice Points and in very short order, Honorshammer was ready for End Time.

I let the group know this was my first time and asked for any tips. For the most part people were tolerant, if not helpful. The fights weren’t too bad, and I only ended up dying on Sylvanas. Then we got to Morzubond or whatever his name is.

It’s really cool to return to the place where you met your future self in Wrath of the Lich King as you leveled up in Dragonblight.

This has become my favorite fight in WoW.

You get to pop all your cooldowns, and then they reset throughout the fights. Avenging Wrath plus Divine Ashbringer along with Guardian of the Ancient Kings, sign me up. The holy power flows in so fast I can hardly spend it fast enough, and it just looks awesome with my Paladin flaying away with Ashbringer. Something or other is going one with an hourglass but I just keep hacking at the dragon. I managed to pickup some sick looking shoulders as well.

I ran that a couple of times in a row before I got Well of Eternity. This was really exciting for me. We’ve heard and read about the events surrounding the Legion coming through the Well for years, but now we were actually going to experience it.

I gotta say it felt really weird to fight side by side with Illidan. I just kept looking at those glavies and thinking back to how they became the giant Fire elemtentals I tanked in Black Temple. The group moved quickly and the healer gave me a couple of tips after I explained it was my first time in the dungeon.

We moved through the dungeon pretty quickly. It was awesome to finally see Azshara, though we really didn’t fight her, just her minions. I guess they are saving that for another expansion.

I don’t know if newer players feel the same impact I did when Illidian brought out the vials from the Well of the Eternity. I had to work so freaking hard to get those Vials back after he gave them to Vashj and Kael.

The final fight was a bit chaotic and the buffs you get skew the dps numbers to the ridiculous at times. I died to the the fel firestorm.

I ran several more End Time and Well of Eternity before finally getting the Hour of Twilight. How many times I have escorted Thrall somewhere by now? This was the least memorable of the three new instances, probably because I’ve only run it one time.

Heroic Intimidation

2012-08-25T17:32:00.001-04:00

Time to Queue

I was still well short of the gear needed to queue for End Time. I wasn't overly excited about using PvP, fearing it would be an instant kick from most groups, but now I had enough gear to try queuing for a regular Cataclysm Heroic.

I have to admit I was more than a little intimidated by the idea. I know how groups in WoW can be, especially to someone who actually could use the gear that drops. I knew my DPS was going to be low, and I mentally prepared myself to be kicked out of the group.

The queue came up and I got Heroic Deadmines. I had run it many times on my Warrior and Hunter. Never on my Paladin. This was in-progress group about to pull the big robot boss. The tank asked me to drive the robot. Well, at least no one would question my DPS. I did okay, no one died. The boss dropped a two handed mace. I was still using the axe you get for completing one of the chains in Earth Elemental zone. The Warrior tank asked if he could roll on it for his PvP set. I hit need, but didn’t comment. I’m not sure if he rolled on it or not, but I won it. Upgrade!

We finished the entire instance, and I even got a couple of achievements, including the one for finishing the dungeon. I guess people just quietly accepted me. With the hutner doing 30k dps, I guess they figured we were okay.

Throne of Tides

The next one I got was Throne of Tides. Again, I knew the place from my other toons. My DPS as still south of 10k, but the mage and hunter in this group were also in that range as well. The tank, a Death Knight, was leading the entire group.

I guess I shouldn’t be so focused on my numbers, but I just hate the idea of being dragged through something or being a boat anchor that holds the rest of the group down.

I did get a comment on my title. For a while on Honors, I’ve been going around with Hand of A’dal. Old player. Old title.

I picked up a Relic on this run. i can’t remember if they changed relics to be used by Shamans, Paladins and Death Knights before I left or after.

In each run, at least one person asked for grace because they hadn't played the toon they were on in 9 months to a year. Finally I asked if they were just changing toons for the expansion, or were coming back to the game. In every case, they said they were returning players.

Despite the two runs I was still short of being able to try End Time. I talked to my friend and he told me to check to see what I could buy with Justice Points. Apparently now Firelands gear was available. I had enough points to buy the chest, so I did. Then I saw someone advertising to sell the Justice Point bracers for just 200g. That was about 10% of my funds, but I bought them anyway.

Stiffed by Trolls

I gemmed it up and queued again. This time I got Zulu'Gurub. Uh Oh. It was a rather long haul. The Paladin tank didn't know the dungeon and the Resto Shaman had to talk him through it. I did okay. I died on the snake boss after getting painted into a corner. Somehow the group didn't kick me. The other bosses weren't too bad, but I ended each fight with Forebearance after using my Bubble (oh how I've missed you on my Warrior/Hunter). Long Arm of the Law helps a ton on Zanzil, and Holy Wrath is great on the final boss.

I got really excited when it looked like we had a shot at killing the final boss. He drops a sweet axe. I knew the Paladin tank might roll on it, but I would still have a shot.

After two wipes, we got him down, but he dropped two staves.

When I logged off, I was still about 9 points short of the iLevel needed. I’d really like to see End Time before my free time is up, but I'm going to have to make a decision this weekend. I may just make up those last two points with PvP gear and go for it.

Getting Accliminated

2012-08-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

With my addons working I could post some of the crafting materials on the auction house. That helped both with the inventory space problem and hopefully will help me rebuild my coffers. Next up, I knew I needed to do some dailies.

All These Buttons!

The game can be intimidating for a returning player. I didn’t even remember what half my buttons did. I leveled as Retribution, and pretty much as soon as I hit 85, I stopped playing him. First thing I did was turn on verbose tooltips. Then I went through and looked at what each button did.
My next thought was to go whack a target dummy. I was pretty terrible. My friend who sent me the Scroll directed me to icy-veins.com. This is a very nice resource for all classes and specs. At least now I knew what I was supposed to do.

The first daily I did was the cooking daily which involved flying all over Orgrimmar and picking up crawfish. That was when I realized I hadn’t trained my cooking since Wrath. Oops.

I had a couple of quests in my log that were introduced with the major patches. I had done them both on my Hunter and Warrior. One was the troll quests in Stranglethorn, and the other was the Thrall quests in Hyjal. Both quests were very different this time around as I was practically the only one doing them. It took a little longer for the Thrall quests, but I managed to get both of them done without dying too much. I got the epic cape from the Thrall quest and picked up the Retribution one.

Blast from the Past - Ice Crown Citadel
While I was out doing the Troll quests, the guild was putting together a raid. They were going old school and doing ICC25 because one of their members, a Death Knight tank, was working on his Shadowmorne legendary quest. They invited anyone online to go including myself.

It felt really weird to be back in ICC. It felt even weirder to not be tanking. I may have burned out a bit on tanking before I left WoW, but I definitely miss it sometimes. We cleared up to Blood Queen but couldn’t kill her before everyone got mind controlled. I’m sure my DPS was sub par.

Tank?

With everything changing in just a few days, I don’t see where it benefits me to try to learn to tank again right now. Once 5.0 ships, I can start working it out with everyone else. I’ll be recording all the information I gather and decision I make on the blog. Hopefully, people will find it helpful, even though I feel like I’ve gone from a guy who could write the guide to the guy who needs the guide. But honestly, even when I was blogging full steam, I really just collected and syntheized information which is much the same thing I’ll be doing now.

If I stay for MoP, I think I’ll level as Prot/Ret and then just see what the guild needs. With another tank added to the game, I wonder how the tanking mix will work out. Once I hit 90, I see what the guild needs. Tank spots are ususally pretty tough to come by, and my schedule will be decidedly more casual now.

Goals

There’s two things I’d really like to do before my free time runs out. I’d like to run the new End Time heroics, and I’d love to see Dragon Soul, even if it’s on LFR difficulty. I'm building my Ret set because I figure it will be easier to do Dragon Soul for the first time as a DPS rather than as a tank. The problem is my gear isn’t good enough to queue for the new Heroics and the guild isn't running them.

I had a completed quest in my log for killing a boss in Stonecore, and I needed to turn that in at Therazane. I couldn’t even remember if Therazane was a current reputation. I checked and saw it was. I was close to Revered with them. I was at Honored with all the other Cataclysm reputations. I saw a bunch of dailies to do and figured I should give it a go. I had done the dailies many times on my Hunter and my Warrior so I knew basically what to do. By the time I was done, I was revered and picked up some new gear.

The next thing I did was go open the Firelands dailies. I’m pretty sure you can get some nice gear from them, and I had never done those on my Paladin either. The dailies would help the my lack of gold as well.

Addon Issues

2012-08-21T22:18:00.002-04:00

Filling up Void Storage helped with my inventory issues, but didn’t do anything for my gold issues.

Before I used the free transfer to the Nessingwary server that came with my Scroll of Resurrection, I wanted to move some of my gold to my Paladin. That’s when I made the amazing discovery that I had already moved most of my gold to my Hunter who now Alliance and on another server.

All that money I made when epic gems came out, and doing all those dailies (Shattered Sun I’m looking at you) was stuck on another server. I was sitting on less than 2000 gold.

I needed to make some money. I had two options open to me, the auction house and dailies. Neither seemed like a great option.

I was still stuck using the default UI. I had downloaded some addons, including auctionator, but none of them were working. The little Addons buttons was missing on the log in screen. I did a google search and found out all kinds of information about problems people had when they upgraded from WinXP to Win 7. My game was a fresh install on Windows 7. There was also some advice about putting the game in a directory called C:\Public\Games which didn’t exist on my computer. I installed it on my E drive. I have two hard drives in my computer: a small one for Windows and system stuff, and a large one for pictures, music, writing, and games.

I was starting to think I needed to reinstall WoW, but then I came across a thread on the Customer Service forum. The Blizzard Customer Service representative talked about how the addons come as zip files and sometimes there’s an extra folder in the zip.

For instance, you unzip Recount and you wind up with a folder called Recountv3.1.6. If you put that folder in your Interface\Addons folder, the game doesn’t see it. Under Recountv3.1.6 is another folder called Recount. That has all the files for the actual addon, and that’s the folder you need to put in your Interface/Addons folder. Once I fixed all the folders for my addons, everything worked.

I didn’t go too crazy with addons because I don’t know how long I’m going to stay and even if I do, I’ll have to rebuild the UI for Mists.