There are quite a few guilds who’ve had the purchase of an authenticator a condition for guild bank privileges. There’s no real way to check that the member actually has one, though. Obviously, this works best in a guild that’s pretty tight-knit and trusts each other.
Actually, there is. The guild leader has the member in question display their Core Hound Pup pet.
Of course, the authenticator could still be removed from the account after showing the pet, but there’s nothing you can really do about that.
Huh? When did they do this? I have the authenticator and never heard of that pet.
It went live with or around patch 3.3. If you have an authenticator, you should have gotten a pup in the in-game mail on every character on that account. They just showed up one day, and it took me a bit to figure out exactly why Breanni (the gnomish pet vendor in Dalaran) was sending me a core hound pup.
I’d contact Blizzard if you didn’t get any.
How long has it been since the last patch? I’ve done dozens and dozens of randoms since then and have never been placed in HoR. PoS, once, that’s it for the new dungeons. I know I could intentionally queue for the Icecrown dungeons, and maybe I should, but I like getting the extra badges from randoms. And you would think that statistically I would get one at least once in a while since people run them regularly. /sigh
Anyway…
Burning Dog Legion dungeon run tonight, 8:30 server. Our first BC dungeon! It’ll probably be Hellfire Ramparts, but I’ll put us in the random queue if that option is available.
This explains it. I haven’t played since early November because of my computer dying. I hadn’t heard about the pet through reading here and update sites, though.
When I get my new PC and get back in the game I assume I’ll have one in my mailbox.
I’ve been randomed into HoR a couple times, but I think both times it was because the original tank had dropped out after a wipe, so circumstances were not ideal, you might say.
Just posting to say I got my Feral Druid (Halakaya) up to 58 last night, and went through the Dark Portal. I most likely won’t be on tonight, but in the future I’ll try to be on around 8:30 as many Wednesdays as possible if you want to add me to the list. I’m not in BDL anymore (and Jag’s not even on-server anymore…), but if you want a non-DK DPS/tank let me know 
ETA: I’ll be adding a Resto dual-spec very soon, so I could probably heal also - but have never healed, so yeah…
Decoupling the authenticator also deactivates the pet. The truly paranoid could conduct core hound spot checks and demote any guild member who can’t produce one.
Finally! Back in the game, as the RL promised.
In last night’s ICC25, we cleared everything up to the two limited-attempts bosses. There were a couple of fights where I ended up DPSing instead of tanking, and I think I’m actually getting comfortable with my new rotation, including how to work Sunders in (since if I’m DPSing, it almost always means that our tanks are the Pally and the Druid, and IMO it makes more sense for me to lose GCDs to it than one of the main-spec Fury Warriors). Picked up four new pieces of gear: bracers for my offspec, tanking pants,* my T10 helm (seriously, Blizz–*ninety-five *badges?!), and my Revered ring from the Ashen Verdict! I’m feeling less squishy already. 
Once we had the easier bosses out of the way, we decided to focus first this week on Blood Queen. We’re still in the process of getting used to the mechanics of the fight–for instance, discovering that with the current timing, we end up with people having to bite during her first air phase, which means stacking at a time when you really don’t want to stack. We only had time for about four or five attempts, but they were good ones, in the sense that we made visible progress every time. I think on the best one, we had her down under 30% health when she hit her enrage timer–with a lot of the raid dead. Now, we just need to get used to consistently (a) moving right away and in the right direction when we have the flames, (b) moving right away and to the right spot when we’re linked, (c) spreading out for the air phase, using Fear-breaking abilties as we have them, and (d) being sure to pick someone to bite with plenty of time to spare and calling it out on Vent, to avoid more than one person trying to bite the same target, running out of time to get to a new one, and getting MC’d.
I’ll be interested to see how it goes tonight.
*This made me kind of sad, since they’re replacing the ones I got off of TotGC25 Jaxx: it was one of the first pieces, if not **the **first piece, of tank loot to drop for us in there for my previous guild, and the only one I got. (QQ bad RNG and four plate tanks.)
Poleaxe Specialization is still hands-down the best specialization in the Arms tree, followed by Mace, with Sword trailing last (even after the buff). A straight 5% increased chance to crit (no diminishing returns) *and *5% increased crit damage beats the pants off the other two bonuses. What you want to spec into will depend on your personal play style and what weapon you currently have access to, of course, but *if *you want to maximize your DPS, there’s no choice other than Poleaxe.
IMO, when you *first *hit 80, you’ll probably want to get a Titansteel Destroyer and use Mace Specialization, but *only *until you get a 2H Axe or a Polearm, at which point you should immediately respec and start using that. Generally speaking, Axes will be better than Polearms; the latter are usually aimed at Hunters and Feral Druids, so they’ll often have Agility instead of Strength. Agi isn’t bad, but Str is better. But a Polearm with Agi is still going to be better than a Mace or a Sword with Str.
There are two main problems with Sword Spec:
1.) It has an internal cooldown, so the actual swing procs you’ll see from it will happen less often than its alleged chance to occur.
2.) The extra hits are so-called “white” hits. Unlike a “yellow” hit (special attack), a white hit can be a Glancing Blow, or Dodged/Missed/Parried depending on your Hit, Expertise, and whether or not you’re standing behind what you’re hitting.
Mace Spec is better than Sword, but still not as good as Axe, and it also becomes increasingly irrelevant as you get closer to the soft cap for ArP, which is something every Arms Warrior should be aiming for. (Soft cap = enough ArP on your gear and gems that you hit the hard cap when your ArP trinket is used or procs.)
Really, the difference is such that it’s not even an “all else being equal” comparison. Unless there’s a *huge *gap between the levels of the items (think: an entire tier, and maybe more depending on the exact stats), you’ll always want to go with Poleaxe.
Ah right, I forgot about when your computer crapped out.
The pet is so freaking cute, too. My husband just got an authenticator, and in-game ever since he’s been running around with the pup following him.
Aha! I wondered why I hadn’t seen Jag in the SDMB channel in a while.
I haven’t done it in a few weeks, but I’m going to go back to setting up guild events on the calendar so people can sign up in case we get more than five who want to join in a particular run. I’ll send an invite to Halakaya too. We have a dedicated preist healer (Mordrin) but he might appreciate the chance to dps once in a while if he doesn’t mind the respec fee.
Oh, and grats to **Jas09 **on hitting Outland with that Druid!
Yeah, late-night raids weren’t really working for me anymore and there is only one or two Horde guilds on Cairne even trying 25-mans, AFAIK (one of which does weekday mornings…). So I found a guild on Turalyon that did weekend mornings - a much better fit for my schedule. So now I only raid on the weekends and do social/leveling stuff if I’m on any weeknights. It was like Feign Death for wife aggro 
I’m happy to DPS too, so whatever, if anything, is needed I’ll do.
Thanks SFG. As much as I’ve learned to dislike Hellfire (so much nicer having two choices when going to NR!), it’s still a far cry better than Silithus…
:smack:
TBQH, I think HFP is a good part of why some of my mid-level alts (the ones in their 40s and 50s) haven’t been getting much playtime lately. I just can’t stomach the idea of getting to 58 and doing HFP again.
Well, maybe I was a bit careless in my post, at any rate once you’re past level 51 there are so many axes and polearms available that, with the execption of being a freshly dinged level 80, you shouldn’t even have to consider using something other than an axe/polearm until you hit the raid content, and even then there is no axe shortage.
I’d roll something up on Cairne to run with the BDL, but the only option with a short catchup timeframe seems to be a DK. I can’t get my head around the playstyle because I hit buttons and things fall over, which makes it a lot less interesting for me. I don’t know about others, but I learn much faster when there’s a corpse run and repair bill on the line. 
Out of curiosity, what is the BDL generally in need of, though?
Glad to hear that you got to do ICC this week, SFG, and grats on Outland Jas!
Really? I couldn’t find a single 2H Axe upgrade for my Belf paladin from level 73-74 onwards. Finally, when I hit level 80 I gave up and bought a Titansteel Destroyer. Of course, my 2H mace skill was only level 1, so I spent a dull (yet strangely amusing) 40 minutes or so flailing away at mobs underneath Dalaran to get the mace skill up to a decent level.
I’d gladly have bought a nice 2H Axe instead, but there were never any in the AH or available as quest rewards. Very annoying.
Lizardling, several of us are leveling newer characters on Cairne - I have a 20 priest, a 41 rogue, and my 80 DK there. I’m always up for helping someone run randoms or do leveling with any of my characters, if you decide to roll something new there I usually play in the evenings.
Also, am I missing something, or do none of the rewards vendors sell foot armor? I finally earned enough Triumph emblems to replace one of the last two blue armor items I was wearing (my chestpiece), but I noticed that no one seemed to have any foot armor for sale. If they had, I would have replaced that before the chest armor, because the chest armor was of a higher level than what I was wearing on my feet.
Anyway, here’s my freshly, all-decked-out-in-purples Belf paladin, Kalathan. Glee!