Leveling your DK: 55-60 & miscellaneous considerations

So, given several requests for information on leveling DKs, I'll accelerate my plans to blog this topic and get started.

First, my qualifications to give suggestions on leveling DKs:
1. I leveled a DK 55-80 on the beta, which is when I decided DKs were for me. I tried all three main talent trees as I went.

Raiding gear: headset

I've heard of people that say they use the built in speakers and/or microphone while they raid.

I've also heard of huntards that raid without a pet, DK's that equip spellpower gear, and seen many a talent spec where the player evidently randomly assigned their points.

DON'T BE AN IDIOT.

Rogue Vanish fixed? 1357 days and $1 million short...

Vanish has never worked correctly, and they're just 'fixing' it now?

Could have been nice way back when I had a rogue main. Vanish is a lot of fun, but there's nothing quite so frustating in pvp or pve to hit that button in desperation and to watch the mob/player still hit you as if you were a warrior in leather.

Ah well, there's no going back for me. I took the red pill and my rogue will just have to wait. I'll test drive vanish maybe, but mostly Hiro (my rogue) will just have to sit in the garage and look pretty.

And My Niche Is..... It's a Tie???

Drumroll please...........

dum de dum de dum

Blood!

No, 2H Unholy!

No, Blood!

Damnit! :)

Theorycrafting aside, these two specs performed very well, and had definite advantages over DC spam - which, although fun, didn't quite provide the dps of the former two, and frost, which underperformed and I personally didn't enjoy.

So, which is it for Hinenuitepo in 3.2.2?

FMN: 2H Unholy and the Return of Scourge Strike

Hello Scourge Strike my Old Friend!
I've come to talk with you again! :)

It's a wrap (sort of): the final installment of my testing is done, for now. I tested the 16/0/55 spec that has emerged from the 3.2.2 changes to rebuff Scourge Strike. This spec is very similar to the old 17/0/54 spec that was rampantly popular at LK release, and the one I raided all of Naxx/T7 with. Changes are that epidemic and reaping are dropped and the rotation is shortened to 10 seconds. Instead of maximizing Scourge Strike spam, the attack is just part of the rotation which maximizes death coils using glyphed Icy Touch and ensures desolation stays up via more frequent Blood Strikes. Consider over at Elitist Jerks gives a very nice write up of the spec, how to do it, and why to choose unholy over frost or blood.

Finding My Niche: Here's Why (Theorycrafters Can Be Wrong).

In figuring out a bit of this blogging thing, I perhaps made one of the classic mistakes: I didn't write enough for my "audience" and wrote more from a personal perspective.

Finding My Niche is an ongoing personal journey about best performing my role as a DPS Death Knight and therefore the quintessential topic for my blog and entire WoW experience.

If you raid as a dps DK (or a tank for that matter), I'd imagine that would be your primary concern as well.

Now, you can spend a lot of time keeping up with the various theorycrafters, most famously found at Elitist Jerks - I certainly do. There's a lot of famous and smart people that post there and a lot of good tools.

So, why don't I just adopt the cookie cutter spec that the theorycrafters say is the best?  GC said it very well with some general comments about theorycrafting in general and dps specifically:

FMN: Blood

It's all about the Blood!












The third raid dps spec I tested for 3.2.2 was the big bad 2H Blood build. This is the classic Death Knight-with-a-big-two-hander-hits-hard spec. Late in the 3.1 Ulduar cycle it gained prominence as the top single target spec and became one of the two most popular dps specs overall (with 2H unholy pre-SS nerf). In 3.2, it remained very powerful. In 3.2.2, it received somewhat of a nerf by halving the damage done to the second target of Heart Strike, and with armor pen being weakened as well. I used the Fordragon Blades for the raid, the 232 version, so the weapon is comparable to the one-handers I used on the DW tests. So, will blood be my choice for now? Or will my niche be in the unholy tree?

Tanking as a DPS DK/heroics are FUN????

Over at Pwnwear.com, Gravity was gracious enough to let me post an article on what happens when a DPS DK is asked to tank.

Since a one-sentence blog entry is.... short, I'll add to it that one of my favorite activities lately has been tanking heroics (if you've heard this from me before, move along :)).

Yes, the DPS DK, melee damage dealer extraordinaire, enjoying tanking non-raid content! LOL, you say? Yes. Indeed.

ONY!!! ONY!!! ONY!!!

Onyxia!!! After running 25-man VOA and TOC last night, we had a few insomniacs decide to peek into Ony's Lair on 10-man and see what she might offer us.

FMN: Dual Wield Death Coil Spam

Is DC spam moar better than DW Frost? :P

Right, my second attempt to figure out what might be 'right for me' in 3.2.2 was the DC spam build. Talk about a wonky spec; none of those typical FU FU (frost/unholy) big strikes, and the only spec in which unholy presence is favored.

Blood Sun Rising

The photo doesn't come close to doing it justice, but driving in to work today, I was struck by the sunrise. Well, not the sunrise, but the SUN itself. It was the most vivid blood red color, and looked huge!


AND I immediately thought of Hellfire Peninsula and some of the gorgeous and garish red skies there :P

EDIT: After posting this, and then my DC spam review, I chuckled to myself, wondering if it's a portent of things to come. Will Hine be Blood for 3.2.2? We'll see!

Noob to blogging, not so noobish in WoW

If you've found your way here, welcome!
I appreciate you taking the time to stop by.

I started the blog this weekend, after the thought had been germinating in my mind for some time. In any case, I'm a noob when it comes to blogging, and any suggestions or feedback would be welcome. Thanks in advance!

-Hine

DKs overpowered?

Ghostcrawler: "We didn't make DKs intentionally OP. While we want people to purchase Wrath of the Lich King, there are lot of logical flaws with making one class purposely overpowered (such as angering all the players who play the other nine classes).We made a few mistakes though, which I don't mind being up front about."

Hinenuitepo: News flash: DKs aren't overpowered any more.

FMN: DW frost

So, is this how my DK will be raiding for the foreseeable future?








Ok, pause first for a few prefaceorial (yes I made that up) comments. For all of the major dps specs, I have at least adequate gear to try them out (almost all at least T8 gear). I have 232 weapons for each spec. I raid with a guild that's organized around allowing time for rl, so we 'only' spend about 8 hours of raiding a week - nowhere near as much as hardcore guilds and thus don't attempt world firsts or anything close to it. Still, we're at 12/14 ulduar (focusing on TOC now) and fully cleared regular TOC 10 and 25 the week it was available. Heroic TOC is a work in progress.

Finding my niche (Intro)

If you're like me, you're serious about your Death Knight.

You've probably watched the patch notes to see how 3.2.2 will affect your day-to-day functioning. You know that Scourge Strike is back in, Obliterate is out for Unholy dps, and that DK tanks are getting a slight buff in the form of reduced cooldowns.

So, if you're a raider, what will you be running for Trial of the Crusader/Heroic TOC?

I'm still trying to figure it out. :)

Who is the Death Goddess? Part 2

“Why oh why didn’t I take the BLUE pill”? (Cypher, The Matrix 1999)

How did I fall down the rabbit hole that is the World of Warcraft?

In my college years I dabbled in a few pc-based games like Master of Orion and even Starcraft, but I avoided MMOs because of their reputation as ‘addictive’ and I was attempting to focus on school. This turned out to be a wise decision as Evercrack never existed for me and I blissfully sailed through graduate school and started a family and career without the distraction of the never-ending treasure hunts that MMOs offer. Unfortunately, I was later marooned on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (Terceira, a part of Portugual) with little to do for two years while I completed my Air Force service, and a friend’s son came to visit for Christmas.

I wasn’t offered a forget-this-ever-happened blue pill. He gave me the RED.

Who is the Death Goddess? Part 1

This blog centers around the main character of my World of Warcraft existence: Hinenuitepo. Hinenuitepo is currently a female Draenei Death Knight on the Moonrunner US server. When I decided to roll a Death Knight for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I selected the name based on the sound of the name itself and the mythology surrounding the Maori princess. It’s pronounced “Hee-nay-new-ee-teh-poe.”
The name Hinenuitepo itself comes from a Maorian legend, which can be found on various sites on the internet, including this site and at Godchecker. Hana Weka is credited with this version of the Goddess’ story: