Monday, March 29, 2010

Upcoming

I've already mentioned that I was pleased with my first full raid in that 3.3.3 delivered improved raid buff management more than anything.
Frost DKs are getting their chance in the sun, as evidence by two of the three DKs in Paragon's world first heroic Lich King kill being frosties.
My guild gave it a shot and our frost DK saw big improvement.
It did not, however, get us over the normal LK 25-man hump. We're still working on the transition to Phase3 and having some problems with healing and getting all the valkyr down. Heroic 25 will have to wait another week - I sure hope we at least get to it before the buff bumps up to 10%, but we'll see. It gives me even more respect for guilds like Paragon. My guild's straight dps is actually comparable to theirs - but their execution is just astounding. Watching how they place ice orbs in heroic Anub, or how they group and kill the valkyr on Lich King, is just amazing. Kudos to them.

At any rate, I spent the whole past week as unholy with a blood subspec. I'm going to run this week with the alternative - an unholy with frost subspec. The Elitist Jerks comparisons put them very very close but I want to try it on live. If is does indeed end up being very close to the same, I'd rather be blood because of the threat reduction.

Next week I'll try blood - with a few armor pen gems thrown in for good measure (I'm at 800 arpen passive right now), and try to get at least one 264 one-hander in the meantime (I have two 251s, which won't help me make a fair comparison) so I can give frost a good trial.

What this means is I should be able to do a post later this week comparing the competing unholy specs, then a blood post next week, with frost the following. Sorry for those who are waiting/wondering what frost will really do in 3.3.3. I also need to practice enough to be proficient in the spec to give it a fair try. So far, I'm feeling good about it in dummy and 5-man situations.

Finally, wanted to just post that I appreciate the recent comments, all! My system is giving me problems replying - I get an email notification, but I can't see them or reply on the blog itself. I'll rectify that asap.