To All The Blades I’ve Loved Before…

Most players develop some kind of emotional attachment to the various baubles that we pick up along the way in azeroth.  I’ve known players who sacrifice storage room for sets of gear, roleplaying clothing, various doodads from quests.  As a warrior, my fetish has always been the weapons I used to tank.  For some reason I have always developed a bond with them, and above any other piece of gear I aquire it is the one I am most likely to keep.

In fact my vault is littered with weapons that have long become outmoded and useless.  Looking back through it you can see a history of sorts of the progression I made as an “aggronaut”.

 

The Old World Era

During the old world, I was relegated to the role of a tanking alt.  Back then raided actively as a hunter, and a pretty piss poor one at that.  Lodin was the character I played for business, and Belghast the character I played for fun.  As a result I whored myself out to any group that would take me as a tank.  I managed to get experience tanking Ony, MC, BWL, ZG, AQ20, AQ40, and a little bit of Naxx.  I never had the best gear available, but I managed to accumulate enough to make me a viable tank in most situations.

 Ancient Hakkari Manslayer – This was my first real epic mainhand.  I remember how proud of I was of this weapon.  Back then House Stalwart was a mostly casual guild, and I was one of our few players that had an epic anything, let along an epic “tanking” weapon.  I used this thing with pride for months.  I still think it was one of the coolest weapons I have ever had the luck to swing.

 Bloodlord’s Defender – This was my first true tanking weapon.  I had been waiting for months to see one of these drop and when it finally did I beat out a few other tanks for it.  I swung this with pride all the way until Burning Crusade was released.  I never did manage to get an Aegis of the Blood God to drop in the time we were actively running Zul’gurub but I have since picked one up to use as a set.

 

The Burning Crusade Era

Burning crusade was the great equalizer.  Most players sat around and bellyached about replacing hard fought epic gear with quested greens, but for me I looked at it as an opportunity to catch up to those bulletproof tanks I admired so much.  It was in BC that I shifted my focus to be the best damned tank I could be.  In truth it was a good thing, most of the old guard of tanks had gotten disillusioned and moved on to dpsing so the voids were all too neatly filled by me who was more than willing to do the leg work.  While the expansion ultimately killed the Late Night Raiders, I was able to keep my contacts and keep raiding.

 Latro’s Shifting Sword – This was the first weapon that I used with any frequency in the outland.  While not technically designed by blizzard as a tanking weapon, it did an amazing job at generating aggro.  I’ve kept it all this time because of the graphic.  I still think this was the best looking sword of the BC era.  It has this whole futuristic swashbuckler appeal.  It only became cooler after sunwell when they introduced it as part of a new weapon set.

 The Sun Eater – I ran heroic Mechanar every day for 2 weeks before I finally saw this beauty drop.  After getting mine it started dropping every single time we went in.  Our mages, warlocks, rogues…  basically every player that could wield it had one for cosmetic purposes.  Still one of the best looking tanking weapons especially when enchanted with mongoose.

 King’s Defender – Yet another weapon that was hard to acquire for me.  I think we ran Kharazhan for 3 months before I saw a King’s Defender drop out of the chest.  This weapon was such the archetypal burning crusade tank weapon.  You weren’t a serious tank until you had this thing or better.

 Mallet of the Tides – This weapon and I have a love/hate relationship.  It was the be all end all tanking weapon of the day, but without a doubt the ugliest piece of shit the blizzard artists have ever thrust upon us.  I am pretty sure this was designed by a summer intern…  and simply never got replaced with a real graphic.  I keep it as a reminder of how awful the blizteam’s sense of style can be.

 The Unbreakable Will – The night this weapon dropped was one of my happiest moments in WoW.  If I did not clearly state it above, I hated the Mallet soooo badly that I was jumping out of my skin at the prospect of replacing it.  The side benefit was the fact that was hands down the best weapon a human warrior could wield.  It served as my best friend all of the way leveling through Northrend content.

 

Northrend – The Modern Era

While I am not sure you can really count these as classics yet, they are still adding to my armory of tanking history.  I am hoping to keep replacing them with better and better main hands all the way through the northrend dungeons.

 Red Sword of Courage – This is the defacto first Northrend tanking weapon.  While Utgarde Pinnacle is not the easiest of heroics, it takes the place of Sun Eater as your first farmable epic tanking weapon that can carry you onward.  Due to shitty luck, our secondary tank has been using this weapon all of the way through 25 man content only to be recently replaced by Last Laugh.

 Broken Promise – I picked this weapon up, wanting to test out tanking with a slow hard hitting mainhand.  It wasn’t for me, so this one hands out in my bag for fights where I am needing to conserve rage.  Not exacty the best looking weapon, but it is certainly unique.  There are many tanks out there using this one with pride.

 Slayer of the Lifeless – This was the one weapon I HAD to have before moving out of Naxx.  I wanted it back in the oldworld when it was called the Hungering Cold, and I like it all the same under its new name as well. For a human warrior I still believe this is the best pre-Ulduar tanking weapon, and as a result I still use this with pride.  I am however ready to replace it with a Titanguard as soon as I can.  I wanted this weapon for stupid reasons as well.  There is a DC Comics action figure that looks almost exactly like Belghast, and this is the badboy he is swinging.

 

A Weapon Out of Time

Every so often I get something stuck in my head and I have to acquire it out of all costs.  Towards the end of BC one of these mad quests hit me.  I had to track down Foror’s Compendium of Dragon Slaying at all costs.  After much farming of Dire Maul with no luck, I finally located the book on the horde auction house and traded it across in Booty Bay.

 Quel’serrar – In the classic game, I wanted this weapon more than almost anything.  I had no luck getting the book to drop, nor could I have ever afforded the 1500g price tag attached to it on my server.  So I stood at afar lusting over its awesomeness.  During the pre-Wrath boredom that sat in, this became my obsession and after lucking across the book for 200g I pulled together a spur of the moment Onyxia run late one night and forged the badboy.  Since then I have tanked all manner of content with it.  I find it a challenge trying to hold aggro with this old of a weapon. but damned does it look sexy.

 

The Naked truth

Now you all know what my personal obsession is in this game.  Everyone has one.  I know plenty of pet and mount collectors out there.  What are your obsessions?  What are the doodads you have littering your vault that you will never be able to bring yourself to part with?