Death Goddess

How to get into the guild you want

2012-01-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

SPLASHY CLAIM HERE:
If you follow this post in detail, ad nauseum, to the "T," I 'guarantee' you'll get into the guild of your dreams!
*TM money back guarantee honored if receipt is provided in person

There have been plenty of posts out there in the blogosphere about how to get into a guild. I've even blogged about it before myself. Why am I posting on this topic?

Because I want to!

I was recently thinking about how happy I am with my current guild and how 'lucky' I was to get into it.
Luck had little to do with it.
If you want to get into a good guild, it's going to take some work.
But I can tell you that once I've decided I want in, I'm Getting In, Dammit!

So, take a seat because this post is going to get pretty long.

STEP ONE:
Decide what you are looking for in a guild.
Before putting in the time to create your application, you've got some homework to do first.
So, list what you want from a guild, and prioritize.

Here's what my 'wish list' looked like - roughly in order - of what I wanted:
-Raids after 8:30 pm PST
-Raids no more than 3 nights a week (preferably two)
-Progresses reasonably well. In my case my criteria at the time was that they were clearing Firelands normal and started on Heroic Modes (I'd never even seen FL).
-25-man raiding
-Guild values maturity. I personally can't stand guilds full of /general channel trolls, rascist/sexist jerks, or run around saying how awesome they are and everyone else on the server sucks.
-Needs a dps DK
-Alliance

The latter two weren't dealbreakers for me, but it definitely helps your chances if they need the class/spec you have to offer, and it helps your wallet/rp values to stay the faction you started with. I ended up with all of the above except staying Alliance. I nearly caved and applied to some 10-man guilds but was able to find a 25-man guild that met my needs and happily was accepted there.

So, you need to know what you're looking for before beginning your search. Do try to keep some realism in play here - if you've never raided hardcore, apping to the World #1 guild is probably an extreme longshot. Otherwise, the sky is the limit.

STEP TWO:
Decide what guild(s) you want to apply to.
This may sound easy, but it's not.
Spend some time on the internet researching guilds that meet your criteria. If one of your values was staying on the same server, you may look in /general, /trade, or /guild recruitment channels in game.
Otherwise, you'll be looking at the official wow guild recruitment forums. Literally thousands of guilds post their interest there, so it's a wealth of potential guilds. I look for threads that suggest what Iooking for: "Late Night PST guild" is a decent start. "Late Night (pst) guild LF DK for HM progression, 2/8" is better, but feel free to look at every thread on the offchance they may be what you want. You can create a brief thread of your own, but I prefer not to do so. Still, guild recruiters do sometimes respond to those and I've even found a few possibles myself looking at responses to player posts.
Other places to look for guilds: Elitist Jerks has recruitment forums and the guilds that usually post there are typically fairly well-established, progression-minded groups. On the other hand, not nearly as many guilds post there. Still, it's worth a look. Looking For Guild I believe still has some current guild postings, or you could try Wow Lemmings. You can certainly Google the main things you're looking for and sometimes hit on recruitment forums or even specific guild forums directly.
Done?
Not even.
Build a list of guilds you're interested in. It should be several - if not 10 or more - guilds long. I actually create a folder in my browser and put the links to all of them there. Go to their forums. Read their 'before you apply' and 'about this guild' posts. You want to know what they're about. If they're what you're looking for. And of course, if you're what they're looking for as well.
Done now?
Nope.
Next, I read their application form and start thinking about how I might fill it out, but before I do, I look to see what previous applicants have written and more importantly, what responses they've received. A few guilds have fully private apps which sucks. Otherwise though, it can be very telling which applications were well-received and which ones were declined. Study that, and learn from your predecessors' successes and failures.
Find a few that get you excited? Great!
Let's get started Finally!
One caveat: I recommend that you apply to one guild at a time. If you're too impatient, you may choose to apply to multiple guilds, but it's generally a good idea to let them know you're also apping elsewhere (Good Form, Peter - but also if they find out and you haven't told them they probably won't be pleased).

STEP THREE:
Writing your application.
A: Obtain the guild's required form
Some guilds have an online fill-in-the-blanks form (guildomatic, etc), some will have very specific questions, and some simply say: "convince us to accept you." Read their instructions carefully. I can't tell you how many rejected applications I've seen that were simply due to ignored instructions. If they tell you to include a WOL parse (World of Logs), then include one! If you can't, at least explain why you can't - DON'T ignore it.
B. Fill out the application in detail.
Answer EVERY QUESTION. I even like to answer questions they don't ask - as you'll see on my most recent successful app below. I've never seen an app rejected simply because it was too long.
C. DO
Be polite, check your work (I write my apps in Word so I can edit and spellcheck first before I paste into their forums), research your answers, use humor carefully, sound confident yet humble :), get fancy with colors, demonstrate your knowledge of your class, be honest, be earnest.
D. DON'T
Be a jerk or arrogant, say you'll 'pwn' their meters if accepted, use leetspeak, use poor grammar, leave questions blank, Write ONE LONG PARAGRAPH, show your lack of class/spec knowledge, try to hide a spotty gear/spec setup, try to hide a past of guild-hopping or trolling forums/chat, give one-word answers, be dishonest, or expect that saying you 'were a hardcore raider in BC' will earn you anything. This list could go on and on.

At this point, let me offer a few examples of poor applications. I'm stealing all of these from fairly well-known and successful guild's site(s) (not my own) and obscuring only identifying information. Since this information is in the public domain, I have no problems stealing it.

"Hello,

I was a hardcore raider back in BC and WotLK. Between the time of Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader our guild lost raiding motivation. I played casually into Cataclysm but never raided anything. I took a break from WoW to get my life on track. Now I feel confident that I can balance college, work, and WoW.
Link to armory page: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
I am able to play Arms, and Tank. Both my sets are geared for DS. I am currently learning to master the fury-titans grip spec.
I am seeking a guild that is laid back but fun to get along with. I think having fun while raiding is very important. I am seeking a guild that understands what a life is and that it comes first over everything. I am currently on the Bloodhoof server, but I am willing and able to transfer.
Thank you for your time."

That's the whole application. All of it. It does not tell you anything about how the person is as a raider, nor does it tell you much about the person except to suggest that he/she is lazy.

1) What class do you play?
Surv Hunter

Response: "With our current roster there is zero chance of bringing in a hunter. Sorry."

Problem here? Their app was ok, but they proceeded to apply despite no vacancy in the guild recruitment post. Some guilds will post that they are always willing to accept exceptional applicants, but in practice, if they're full of a spec, it's very difficult to get in despite that. Not impossible, just very difficult. Your best bet at that point is to either: 1) get a current guild member to vouch for you, 2) accept a friends/family invite and hope to get a benchwarmer spot, 3) Have a truly stellar app, or 4) all of the above

1) What class do you play?

Holy Pally
(snip for demonstration purposes)
12) Are there any members that can vouch for you?

IDK nvr looked

Response 1: "3 unenchanted items. 3 Int/Crit gems. 2 Int/Mastery gems but you are reforging away from mastery. Power Torrent instead of Heartsong. Yellow gem in a red socket. Ember meta instead of Burning. Purple gem in a prismatic socket, and another bad yellow gem in another prismatic socket. 2 points in Blessed life. Only 2 Morchok normal kills, while we are working on heroic DS.

I would suggest reading http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3657280029 before trying to app to another guild.
App declined due to inexperience and gems/enchants/spec."

App response: "lol...gems and chants can be fixed in 2 mins...as for some of what you said....IF U READ WHAT U TOLD ME TO READ...playstyle really ....what works for u ,don't work for everyone. yes 3 items unchanted that i can fix EVERYTHING else...is a arguement of playstyle. as far what i have done and not that i can not fix so easily....thank u for your time and best wishes....try a positive approach u will get farther.. i'm a good healer and a quick study. but,huh better luck next time lol"

Response 2: ""What works for you won't work for everyone"
This is true, however if you want to stick to a certain playstyle you should be consistent about it. What you did isn't a certain playstyle, it is arbitrarily picking whatever gem suits your fancy, or whatever reforge. You didn't put time into your toon, to optimize or to learn how to be the best you can be. I don't have to be nice when you don't put any effort in."

Problem(s) here? Application was very brief, and demonstrated lack of effort (IDK if there are any members he knows). The officer reviewed the links the applicant did provide and commented on his poor gemming/reforging. The applicant was defensive and critical. When a guild provides feedback, feel free to defend yourself gently and with supporting evidence, but don't ever tell them they're wrong.
Most Importantly, Your application must prove you are a good player. DO research your class even before you apply (I didn't mention this earlier, because you should do it before you even look for a guild). Make sure you have the right enchants/gems/reforges, that your spec is 'right' given your role, etc.
If you're using heartsong on a crappy weapon, respond that you were saving for getting a better weapon before using power torrent, but you WILL put power torrent on that weapon if desired by the guild. When the guild reviews your armory, you want them to nod and say that you clearly know what you're doing. When they look at your WOL parses (provided you have them) you want them to be happy with what you see. If you don't know these things, take the time to research them on Elitist Jerks, any other applicable sites, and ask friends/guildies about them before trying to get into a new guild.

Ok, what about a reasonably good app? Well, here I'll link mine because it got me into my current guild despite severe gear and experience gaps. You CAN get into your guild of choice, but having excellent gear with the correct setup and spec will help tremendously. It's definitely TLDR: but I'll comment on the app at the bottom if you don't want to read it and just skim down:

Casual Corps App

Name: Hinenuitepo

Level: 85

Class: DK

Race: Worgen

Please take the time to answer these questions in detail. This is your opportunity to sell us on you. Generally answers should not simply be "Yes" or "No".

1. Provide a link to the Armory profile for your character. Since the armory can be unreliable, please also link both the talent spec you'd raid with and your current dual spec. PLEASE STAY LOGGED OUT IN YOUR MAIN SPEC AND RAID GEAR. Caveat #1: I am coming back from a 7-month ‘retirement’ from Wow, so my gear and character don’t look at that great at first blush. Yeah, I know. >.> Obviously, I’m apping for a server transfer, and would (for the first time ever) faction transfer as well if accepted. http://xxxxx/. Unholy main spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#xxxx, Blood Lichborne offspec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#xxxx. Of course, right now Frost DW is fotm and while I prefer unholy I’m willing to give frost a shot.

2. Do you have any other characters you play regularly? If, so please list them (Name, Class, Guild, and Armory Link). If you don't disclose them here, we'll assume you're hiding something. Hinetitama, Shaman, unaffiliated http://us.hinetitama/; when I feel like healing a bit I hop on her. My only other 85 at the moment, as I quit playing not long after Cataclysm came out. In the past, I’ve played a number of other chars. Level 80s: Hirohubris (rogue), Hinemanu (hunter), Annunakis (DK). I have several other 60+ alts but not sure if I’d be playing them much at this point.

3. What time zone are you in? Are you available during our primary raid time? (8:50pm-12am server time, Wednesday and Sunday.) Will running late be a problem for you? How much are you likely to play outside of our primary 25-man raid times? I live in XXXXXX(PST). Your raid times are ideal as I play after the fam is tucked in. It’s conceivable I might be late very occasionally, although it should be very rare. In considering returning to Wow, I made a decision to make every effort to limit my outside of raid times. Short answer: only as much as is required to keep my consumables stocked and any initial rep grinds/point runs needed to prepare for raids. Permit me a short digression here. I’ve been playing Wow since Jan 2007. I was introduced to the game while (snip for excessive personal content) I pushed my DK as far as I could, regularly putting out first-page WOL parses and even starting a DK-centric blog (http://dkdeathgoddess.blogspot.com). I earned my first legendary – Shadowmourne - and had a lot of fun, but eventually the 4 late nights a week coupled with still playing 25-plus hours a week took a toll and a couple months into Cata I decided it was time to move on. Familiar story, right? After my 7 months off I’m still finding I miss the game and reactivated my account. There is no question I can perform at a very high level. I love to theorycraft, I study all the fights, and generally do whatever it takes to min-max my role as a raider. The question is, can I balance RL demands with raiding? Casual Corps looks like the perfect fit for me. Raiding – with what sounds like a mature, focused group – two nights a week = perfection. I’ll still log on enough to be raid-ready each night, but otherwise don’t plan to spend a whole lot of time online. If CC wants a raider who will come in, do whatever it takes to complete an encounter, but doesn’t expect him to be online all the time, I think we’d be a great match.

4. Please list your recent guilds and your reason for leaving them. Please include all of the guilds you've been a member of during this expansion. I was in Insomnia of Baelgun for most of LK and early Cata. I left the game because of burn out and too many hours required. Insomnia has apparently dropped to a 10-man guild with a 4-day schedule still, so I don’t intend to go back to them, although we’re still on friendly terms and I’m sure they’d take me back if I were willing.

5. What in-game activities do you partake in regularly (Raiding, PVP, Farming, Annoying people, Collecting Twill…) and what do you hope to find in Casual Corps to support these interests? Raiding is why I play the game. Additionally, I farm and play the AH. I NEVER grief or waste my time in /general and find the immaturity of most /general communities annoying and simply a waste of time. In the past I’ve levelled alts or done pvp, which I do enjoy but don’t anticipate doing as much in my return. As mentioned above, CC appears to be a focused raid group; perfect!

6. Do you have a functional microphone for use with Ventrilo, and are you able to use it quickly during combat as required? Yes

7. How much latency do you normally play with? What FPS? Do you crash or disconnect during raids? Around 100ms, about 30-50 fps, but never have problems with aoe-heavy fights. I almost never crash or d/c, but if I do, it’s thanks to our friends at Comcast. As I submit this, I’ll be creating a couple level 1 alts to see how I do with your server and to hold my name(s) for me.

8. Do you have any previous experience with members of Casual Corps? How did you find out about us? None: I’d be transferring if accepted. I saw your post in EJ’s /LFG. I had three criteria in looking for a guild: 1) competent raiders, 2) compatible raid times/lower hours total raiding (w/ decent progression), 3) mature individuals who aren’t continually posting that they ‘roll deep.’ It appears that CC is an ideal match from what I can see.

9. What Add-ons do you use while raiding? What raid frames do you use? Do you use an add-on for debuff monitoring, etc? This is your chance to explain how you utilize your UI elements to be an effective raider. Please provide a screenshot of your UI in-combat during a raid. I use DBM, Power Auras, DKI Runes, Omen, Recount, Tiny Melee Stats, IceHud, Grid, OneBag, SpartanUI, and a few others that don’t do much during raids. As far as debuffs applicable to DKs, Grid can be configured to do what I need. Essentially, I try to find the balance between keeping the screen as free of clutter as possible so I can see the fire to avoid, but enough information to ensure I do the best job I can. IceHud, for example, puts my health in big bold colors so I can see when I need to not tunnel-vision on dps and take care of myself. TMS tells me when to use my cooldowns optimally (when procs will optimally buff my gargie), Grid lets me brez if needed, general raid awareness, and debuffs, etc. I’m no purist – addons are ftw. I’m always open to new/improved addons that will help me do my job(s) better. Meh, here’s what I was able to dig up in terms of old screenies: http://imageshack...jpg/ & http://imageshack.jpg & http://imageshack..jpg and here’s a couple of ones since my return. I haven’t been in any raids yet but will get them to you if you want them and I can get in any (I was in BWD a week or so after Cata release downing bosses in my heroic blues, but two groups last night wouldn’t take me since my gear is sub-360).

10. Please give a brief description of your main spec gear (list the unbuffed stats pertinent to your class and spec) and your dual spec gear. Is your dual spec raid-ready? Explain why you've chosen the gear you're wearing, and how you've come to select it. If you have weaknesses in your gear, explain why, and what you hope to do about it. Please include Glyphs. As you can see from my armory, I’m primarily 359 geared, which as previously mentioned is due to quitting back in January. Therefore, my gear has lots of weaknesses. I actually explained my upgrade strategy in one of my last blog posts if you’re interested lol, but in general I’d go for ilevel upgrades first, try to get an early set bonus, and then try to get items that will have a longer shelf life before filling in the blanks. I’m upgrading fast now and spent the extra gold I had lying around to purchase a few upgrades to help me get caught up. My biggest weak spots are my blues that are harder to replace out of raids (head/wrists etc). In general both frost and unholy dps stat priorities are pretty simple: Str -> Str -> Str -> hit to cap -> haste -> mastery -> crit -> expertise, with expertise having relatively more weight for frost due to DW. Given that frost is currently predominant, I’ll be working on 1H weapon upgrades. I have a soul blade, but need at least one decent OH from one of the troll heroics. I’ll keep upgrading as much as I can, but I’m not particularly keen in joining BWD pugs and spending hours wipefesting with incompetent raiders. I’d definitely much rather join an established raid guild for additional gearing if at all possible. In any case, I’m first and foremost a dps DK. I’ve long preferred the unholy playstyle to dpsing any other way, but I’ve raided as blood (back in the day) and frost. The pendulum swings, and I often follow it. The Frost rotation is actually fairly simple right now and I’m more than capable of running it, but I’d rather see if I can get a shot/permission to run unholy. Like BRK in his Cata raiding return and ‘proving’ he can rock the BM spec, I think I’d be able to demonstrate my raid-worthiness as unholy, but could always go Frost if needed. I know you recently listed your preference for a tank. I’ll be honest. I won’t be happy as a full-time tank in perpetuity, but have raided as a main tank from time to time when one was needed (while a replacement was being recruited) and my off-spec is typically tankie/Blood. My raid off-spec gear is sad at the moment, having prioritized dps gear and not playing very long in Cata. That being said, I’m willing to fill in as a tank as needed and to OT whenever an encounter calls for it. I’d consider myself a moderately proficient tank in terms of raids – I’ve tanked most heroic LK raids (and all the normal ones) for example. In terms of glyphs, my preferences for unholy are pretty standard: Death Coil, Scourge Strike, Raise Dead, AMS, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Blood Tap, HOW, Death’s Embrace.

11. What consumables do you use while raiding? I’m partial to beer basted crocolisk, but I’ll sneak in the occasional fortune cookie – gotta watch my figure though! I generally keep lots of Flasks of Titanic Strength and/or Golemblood Potions on hand. If expected to tank, I’d make sure to have my alternate foods/flasks/potions on hand as well (Ironically, avoidance > stam for now).

12. Please provide combat log parses for at least two recent raids (http://worldoflogs.com preferred.). Parses from when I was raiding with Insomnia are all old they’ve expired . Not sure how I can provide a parse for you at this point. I can put up a few screenies which as we know are much less meaningful but perhaps better than nothing (see screens in ui section). If you want some ‘proof’ of my current raid competence let me know how I can do that and I’ll do my best.

13. Describe your raiding experience with this character and any other characters. Ooh, a question I could write a book about (please don’t, Hine)! I first started raiding on my rogue in BC at the tail end of T4. I loved getting up close and personal with the boss and slashing away. I have to be honest, I’ve loved topping the meters and endeavour to do so whenever I can. I learned early on, though, that a dead rogue does no damage and gradually got better at living to see the boss die. As the DK has matured as a class, I’ve become content with hybrid roles at times (such as controlling adds on Magmaw, etc). I’ve raided every boss in the game through LK and the first few bosses in Cata (I think we were around 7/12 in mid-January when I left). I’ve raided primarily on my DK and rogue, although I’ve spent time on my shammy (resto) and lock as well. Having played every role possible from healer to tank to ranged to melee, I admit my first love and last love remains melee dps. In general regarding Wow, I know we’ve all felt it, but there’s nothing like facing a challenging encounter, wiping but learning, and eventually defeating the boss!

14. Describe your favorite raid encounter in detail. Explain the mechanics of the fight, and your role in it. Wow, there are so many… well, I guess a few of the early Cata fights were fun, and I REALLY look forward to Rag, I’d say for now it was probably Lich King. As a dps we’d run in and NOT hit the boss until he was in position (lol), then focus on single target burn while keeping a disease up on the ghouls and running to the Horror tank when plagued. Dance outside the ring. Focus raging spirits down. Run back in, spread diseases to LK. Switch to designated Valkyr and burn/slow the Valk, being careful to bunch up when called, then spread out. Hit boss, avoid defiles, kill vile spirits (usually was able to spread diseases to them if times right), rinse repeat. 10%, profit! I still remember the euphoria of the raid on that first kill. 

15. Describe the most personally demanding encounter that you have learned. What made this demanding? How did you overcome the challenge? Honestly, I think the most demanding ever was Archimonde which I did on my rogue. There was so little margin for error with the loss of one raider starting the domino effect of a wipe so easily. Having to carefully slowfall when booted, avoiding that nasty fire (especially when disoriented), and so on! For me personally, and for raids in general, I think that’s when warcraft raiders started learning how to put together multiple fight elements, survival in tension with dps, and overall encounter complexity, and we’ve only seen it increase from there!

16. What does your ideal raid night look like? A night with enough difficult fights that you wipe until everyone focuses, learns their role, and nails it! A night with everyone focused but still loose enough to joke about the occasional fail. A night where at least one new boss goes down, but there’s some farming fun in there as well. A night in which that guildie (or myself) finally gets that hard to get drop and the loot gods smile on us. A night where we get that achievement/title we can proudly wear in Stormwind/Ironforge (er, sorry, Alliance habits die hard. I mean, Ogrimmar! FTH! ).

17. What can spoil the fun of a raid night for you? If normally consistent raiders no-show and we can’t take on that planned new raid encounter. If some guildie gets a stick up their butt and makes it miserable for everyone. A night where we’re not focused and continue to make the same mistakes over and over. I suppose, patch night as well…..

18. Can you take sharp verbal feedback during a raid, and respond to it in a positive and productive way? Absolutely. I’m not perfect and I always appreciate constructive criticism so I can get better.

19. What do you do to prepare for progression content? How much do you rely on leadership to explain what to do? On progression, I make sure all my gear is as good as possible, I have my buff foods/materials, I’m focused, and ready to go. I read up on the fight and watch video if possible. I admit, I learn best by doing, so it usually takes me a few attempts to get the picture on how the fight goes, but from there I’m usually golden. It’s always helpful to have designated people calling things out or marking them, but having filled that role myself at times, I’m usually heads up enough to not need much direction. No, you won’t have to tell me to run out for my seed on Staghelm – more than once ;)

20. What community websites do you read or participate in? EJ, TankSpot, MMO-champ, World of Logs, Wowhead, Mr Robot Pwnwear and quite a few more blogs and sites. I’m not at all fond of the official forums.

21. Do you have a 2 minute PVP trinket? Yes, and I’m not afraid to use it.

22. How old are you? XX

23. Do you live with your parents? No

24. Is there anyone other than yourself that can prevent you from making raids? It’s possible the wife or kids may need me, but the point of late night raids is to avoid this. In years of doing late night raids, I can’t think of a single time I missed a full raid due to family issues. I think I missed one or two due to a friend being in town, but those were th/fri/sat raids, which CC doesn’t have.

25. Our reputation is very important to us. Your past and present actions create the external image of our guild. Are you the type of person that ends up involved in a lot of in-game drama, trash talking, etc? Do you understand that we have a very low tolerance for this type of behavior? I’ve been in good guilds, and not so good guilds. There’s always at least a few idiots in every one of them. I can generally tolerate that stuff, but if CC prioritizes mature, adult behaviour and can get your members to avoid the idiocy of /general or official forums, icing on the cake, baby.

26. What Else? Define yourself. I’m a highly competitive person which has suited me well in raiding, but has occasionally lead to imbalance in my wow play vs real life. I intend to do better this time around and I hope this guild will be the panacea for it. I’m a busy guy with lots of RL stuff going on; I have a doctoral degree and run a clinic for my day job. I play soccer in a 20-something league twice a week. My family is very important to me. Of lesser, but not negligible importance, are: friends, reading, beer, watching sports, and other various and sundry pursuits.

27. ***BONUS*** How do you feel the introduction of gearscore has affected the community? Obviously there has been a brouhaha about this since the first GS addon became available. I’m more pro-GS than some haters I suppose. Granted, a high GS proves nothing about skill, but when looking to pug a group or attempt a boss with strangers, GS at least tells you if the person’s gear is likely to be sufficient to be successful. It also suggests (but does not guarantee) experience with raiding and a certain level of content. Obviously, on the other hand, it’s to be taken with several huuuge grains of salt as it doesn’t tell you if the person is talented, a team player, or simply any good. It doesn’t even tell you if they are wearing deodorant. So, buyer beware. In regards to effect on the community, it’s obviously lead to frequent snobbery and not allowing people in raids that probably would do fine, and lots of rancor on both sides, but them’s the breaks. If a raid leader is cobbling together a team and won’t take anyone below a 380 GS, I probably wouldn’t enjoy running with them anyway. The irony of this question isn’t lost on me, as my primary job on this app is to convince you to overlook my low GS and see me as worth a /ginvite. ;)

***DOUBLE BONUS*** Why would you pick up Hine as a raider when he hasn’t played in eons and his gear is so far behind and he hasn’t raided Firelands at all? I’ve read a lot of apps over the years. I know many guilds would look at my app and say: ‘the dude is articulate and talks a good game, but we really don’t need a DK right now,’ or: ‘we really want raiders who are geared and know the fights.’ I think I’ve already made the case that I’ve played this game for many years and know how it works and how maximize my contribution as a raider. I’ve been back a week and am already dramatically better geared than I was a few days ago; I’ll gear up fast. I’m willing to wait for a spot in the right guild (and I’d really prefer it to be yours) that I feel is a good fit for both myself and the guild. I’ll bring maximum raid performance, focused attention and attendance, and ‘good guildie’ behaviour/zero drama. I would expect if given a shot to most likely be sat on progression fights until my gear/experience catches up, although I’d be more than happy to contribute my best whenever called on. Eventually (very soon) though, I’m confident you’d find me worth keeping in on every progression fight where the Blizzard gods haven’t created a melee hell.

Thanks for taking the time to consider my app. I hope you’re willing to consider inviting me to your team and giving me a shot.

Ok, looking at this app (mine) It's obvious that a lot of time went into writing it. It portrays someone who's willing to expend considerable energy in preparing an application - probably someone who'd be willing to contribute to the guild as well. I posted considerable information about my class to demonstrate my knowledge of the class and ability to access current information about how to play it. I polished it as much as I could to demonstrate my ability to use the English language and a sense of humor as well. I answered every question in detail and especially anticipated those that demonstrated weakness to try to answer why despite some of my shortcomings I felt I would be able to contribute. I wouldn't expect every applicant to fill out an application in this detail, but a highly motivated one (such as myself), trying to convince a guild to take me, yes, it does nothing but help.

Bottom line: Guilds are looking at applications to give them enough information to make a decision about whether they want you in their guild. And what do they want? An applicant who is skilled, dependable, mature (usually), and hardworking. If you can convince them of these four things and they have room for you, you're in.

Good luck with your search for a guild!

-Hine

Hine Is BACK (Sort of)

2011-11-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER:
This post is a personal update and in no way implies a return to DK blogging.... (sorry)

After taking over 7 months off and not touching the game, I found that I continued to miss the it. I stayed in touch with some of my in-game friends, read forums, and otherwise continued to maintain interest in Wow. I also didn't really have anything else hold my interest or fill my late-night time in a way that Wow did, so I decided to try playing again - on an even more limited schedule.

Several of the reasons I left in the first place have not changed, so playing 40 hours a week remains a Very Bad Idea.

I found a incredible guild that raids 6 hours a week yet still progresses (according to WowProgress, after our H Baleroc kill we were top-40 worldwide for guilds that raid 1-2 nights a week), has great people, and a good schedule.

When I came back, I didn't start blogging again for several reasons - which all still apply today.
1. I'm not sure I want or am able to devote the time and energy to Wow overall to also write a blog.
2. There's a lot of good resources out there. There are a couple of very good blogs on DKs, Elitist Jerks is a great place for theorycrafting (and #Acherus although I don't really go there), and sites like WOL and RaidBots provide a wealth of information for the performance-minded DK. Not sure what I'd contribute at this point.
3. I 'wasn't myself' when I returned - it had been over 7 months. My gear was way behind, Firelands was well in progress and I'd never seen any of it, and I had computer problems holding me back (turns out my MBP wasn't that great for raiding after all). Additionally, I found I 'had' to play frost which I've discovered/confirmed that I really don't like and am not good at (I didn't get ranked on any fight until this week when I went unholy on Baleroc N during our achievement run).

So, the bottom line is, Yes, Hine is back in Wow, playing DK. I'm loving it so far (although Skyrim is a very compelling diversion at the moment) and having fun. I've maintained a reasonable balance with time/energy invested, and feel like I can continue playing long enough to probably make an annual pass worthwhile.

I may or may not do any more blogging, and even if I do, it will likely be more sporadic, and probably more 'personal' rather than focused on optimizing DK play.

Thanks for the well-wishes in the interim, and hope you are all enjoying Wow, and DK-ing (and yay for 4.3 buffs!!!).

-Hine

Hiatus

2011-01-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

Sorry all that I have to post this, but:
Due to a variety of personal, professional, and medical reasons, I've had to take a hiatus from raiding.
I don't have an eta on my return.
Given that this is a raiding-DK-centric blog, it's doubtful that I'll be posting until/if I return to raiding.

I'll miss it, big time, but for now will have other priorities.

Cheers to all and thanks for reading.

-Hine

So I've started raiding: How do I bid on gear?

2011-01-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

I'm assuming you've looked at the generally accepted 'BIS' (best in slot lists) posted on Elitist Jerks (if not, check them out here - Frost and Unholy).
So, now you know what to bid on, right?

Actually, it's not that simple.

While the systems vary, almost any loot rules in any raiding guild are built around one primary principle; fairly distribute loot. DUH! Which means, you won't get every single melee/plate dps item that drops. DUH, again! Which means, you'll have to pick and choose what to bid on, prioritizing how best to improve your overall performance as a dps DK. DUH, thrice!

Still, let's think about this for a moment.
What should you do when that lovely shiny purp drops from Magmaw? Bid? Or not?
And how should I spend my Valor Points?
Where does all the other stuff (rep, professions, boe etc) fit in?

I'll share a few ideas, but I'm sure there will be as many different approaches to gear decisions as there are raiding DKs. I DO have a few principles/guidelines that I hope are fairly clear and will make my own (if nobody else's) bidding decisions easier and more efficient/effective.

1. Melee/Plate DPS gear of the same tier is more similar than it is different due to the wonders of reforging. While some pieces are clearly better than others, even the presence of a 'bad' stat isn't as bad as it seems, since you can often reforge much of it away. Example: I bought the Hyjal exalted tank cloak, but reforged dodge to hit. It was a big upgrade over my 333 blue cloak.

2. Think long term. When you have the luxury, pick items that will last you longer.

3. Above all, UPGRADE FIRST, then go for BIS.

Example time:
Last night on Throne of the Four Winds (or, as we call it, ...Of the Monkey Raid) a plate belt dropped. The mystery stats were haste and crit - actually pretty good! My fellow dps DK bid on it, but I did not.
Why not? It would have been a very good item, almost BIS. I didn't bid on it, though, because I already have the Hyjal exalted belt. If I were to have bid on it, and won, I would have lost points, or priority, or my list position, or whatever it is that my guild uses to determine who gets the next epic. And if a nice set of bracers dropped next, I wouldn't be able to get them, even though my 346 blues aren't looking so impressive any more.
Bottom line is; don't bid on a 359 upgrade when you already have a 359 item, yet. Once you have full or nearly-full 359, feel free to bid on BIS items. But for now, while we're gearing up, take items that upgrade blue or green items first.

What about valor?
You can grab the cheaper items first, but they won't give you as much raw stat jumps as a more expensive item does (e.g., the gloves would be a 22 str upgrade while the chest would be a 42 str upgrade). Also, according to #2 above, if I buy a cloak or boots or some such, I could very well be upgrading them soon, while other items (the ring and relic) may last you well into hard modes or beyond. It's actually a fairly tough decision. For me, though, while I find the chest and helm intruiging, I'll probably go with the following.

So here's my plan:
1. Bid only on upgrades from blue 346 gear to epic 359 gear, saving points for bigger upgrades
2. Get all the rep/crafting gear I can. I have the Ramkahen neck which should last until hard modes. I have the Hyjal belt AND back (I reforged the dodge to hit - it will be replaced but is a decent filler for now), and so on. I won't bid on upgrades for my rep/crafted epics until the other slots are upgraded. Sure, Ill hope for a Scirrocco or Zin'roc from archeology, but I'm not holding my breath. I WILL bid on weapon upgrades.
3. Valor: buy a) relic first b) ring second since they both last deep into Tier 11 content. Next, buy the gloves because they're cheap and allow me to get 2-piece Tier bonus sooner rather than later. Dps DK set bonuses are tasty. Next, spend valor on non-set pieces that I don't have an epic in that slot, and then finally on any set pieces I don't have yet.

Well, I've probably gone on long enough about this, but it IS a fairly important process, after all.
Happy Gearing!

Cataclysm Heroics III: DPS DKs

2011-01-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

Time for another heroic!
Which one shall it be this time, Mmmm? :P
In the absence of requests, I'll go with Stonecore, which I've found to be quite melee unfriendly. There are a few fight mechanics to perfect, but once accomplished, this heroic should go as smoothly as the others.

Since I've commented on this in my other posts, yes, my guild has started 25-man raiding, so while we're not up there with Paragon just yet, we're working through raiding. Expect raid DK guides to start in a couple of weeks.

Stonecore (sometimes abbreviated as SC) is an unforgiving 5-man for melee in sub-359 gear. I think it's also a little easier than Grim Batol, but still more difficult than VP (Vortex Pinnacle). You get four different types of bosses (gyreworm, drake, elemental, witch), but as the name obviously implies, it's a rocky instance and has the obligatory mineable elementals in it.

The instance is linear and none of the bosses are skippable.

I don't normally talk about trash, but the trash in here just love to eat melee.
The first pull can be a challenge. I believe it's the earth elementals (correct me if I'm wrong) that do a spinning aoe that can wreck the group quickly. A stun will stop them, and as we DKs don't have a stun, we're useless, right? Actually, you can back away a bit, and death grip them, which stops the spin, although a warrior or non-DK tank, a rogue or anyone else with a stun should use it here.
Rock flayers can kill you quickly as well, if your tank isn't aware. The tank needs to face them all in one direction, and then you can get behind them and dps. but when they do their frenzy attack, if you can't get behind them all, run away! I've died a few times to these buggers.
Finally, the big rock elementals (can't remember their names at the moment); they do a big stomp that hurts and can be hard to see when you're on their butt. If you can, watch for the stomp that's bigger and slower than the others, and jump shortly after their foot starts down, and you'll avoid the damage.

Corborus:
The first boss is an elemental gyreworm who shouldn't cause you too many problems. As a dps DK, you obviously need to stay out of crystal barrage, which can kill you fairly quickly on heroic. Similarly, when Corborus submerges, you need to watch when he's about to come back up (indicated by a dust cloud on the ground); if not avoided it's likely to one-shot you. Finally, it will be much much easier if a ranged focuses on aoeing down the adds. You can kill them, but if they get close, they'll explode and more than one or two of these is likely to be deadly.
Otherwise, just dps the boss. Probably the best time to pop cds is right at pull - as usual, save your frenzy (if UH) if a member uses a heroism buff, otherwise pop it along with the rest. Focus on the boss. If you have a ranged killing adds, don't worry about them. If they need help, you can drop a D&D on them or turn and HB, but otherwise you really don't want to spend time on adds.

Slabhide:
This drake is honestly fairly forgettable. The mechanics are similar to normal mode, just a little more unforgiving. As with most drakes, stay out from in front as has a conal attack (Sand Blast). As far as I can tell, there's no tail swipe so off to the side or back will work. You'll need the room, because you obviously have to stay out of eruption (magma circles), avoid dropping stalagtites, and line of sight when Slabhide lands and starts Crystal Storm. Stay too long in any of these effects and you'll spend the fight on the floor. Pop cds at the beginning, even though some of them will be wasted to Slab's flight phase - there's really no good time to burn them otherwise.

Ozruk is the most unpleasant fellow in the instance. He's also the author of the last time I actually abandoned a pug after repeated failure after failure. He's not terribly difficult, but for some reason I've found pugs - especially tanks and melee - have a hard time with it. Basically, you'll be taking bleed damage from spike shield throughout the fight, and strangely, this is your friend. Why? Because he casts paralyze which will incapacitate you while he winds up for his Shatter. Fortunately, because you have the bleed on you, this will break the paralyze and you can run out. You'll need to watch for the emote, because sometimes you won't notice the paralyze - you'll take a tick of damage so close to paralyze you won't notice it. Obviously, you need to run away from the boss or Shatter WILL kill you on heroic. And - fun ain't it? -you'll need to be very careful while running back in, because he'll start his conal ground siege shortly after shatter and the tank may not have a chance to face him away. So you'll need to be ready to run to the side that isn't getting the ground siege before running back in. This cycle repeats itself several times. As I said, not difficult, but you don't have a ton of time to run out so you'll need to do it quickly. Frost DK will have more trouble with this due to being in frost presence, so be ready to hit unholy presence, or even use darkflight or rocket boots as necessary.
As for dps, just pop the cds at the start and on cooldown as needed.

High Priestess Azil: the end boss of the instance. Not too different from normal mode besides the typical increased mob health and damage, with one exception. This time, instead of a mechanic that can kill you, the mechanic we're concerned about can kill the tank. Force Grip - nicely stolen from Star Wars - lifts the tank in the air and does massive damage to the tank. If not interrupted, it will probably kill the tank, so make sure to save some rp for interrupts. I also love to try to sucker a mess of adds to chase me, then run under one of her rock targets, killing the adds for you. Of course you can kite them through Dark Portals as well.
In this case, I actually save my cds for the first add phase, the better to burn them down, and then army during the second add phase. Remember that your army will taunt the boss, so use it only in emergencies. However, if you summon it when all the adds are coming, it actually will keep them off your healer and help kill the adds faster. Not too bad of a fight, though.

And, that's another heroic down! Let me know if there's another heroic you want some DK notes on before I move on to raids, and enjoy. :)

Heroic Halls of Origination: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-12-27T11:17:00.000-08:00

Time for another heroic!
Like I said on the last one, I probably won't get through all of the heroics, but I'll review a few of the ones that seem to give people trouble and make some suggestions on optimizing your DK play in heroics while gearing up. If you have a particular instance you want me to review or suggestions, let me know!

With many guilds starting 'regular' raids soon (my guild has downed 5 bosses so far in 10 man, starts 25 man raids this week), I may start reviewing raid bosses as well once I have a feel for them.
Halls of Origination (HOO) is a long and fairly challenging 5-man in sub-359 gear. I think it's a little easier than Grim Batol, but still more difficult than VP (Vortex Pinnacle). It's an Egyptian-themed instance carrying on the desert motif of Uldum. Nice artwork, fun layout. In general, a fun instance, but again, fairly long.

Instead of a separate article for each boss, I'll just put in a few comments for each boss from a DPS DK perspective. In this instance, you can pick the order of most of the bosses, and one boss is optional. I'll also not review the four gatekeepers since they're better referred to as minibosses and essentially have only one elemental attack. I've died on most/all of them at some point, but for the most part just stay out of bad and kill them. I'll focus here on the 'actual' bosses of HOO.

Temple Guardian Anhuur:
This boss unlocks the instance and lets you find Brann. He's a Tol'vir who stands on a platform in the middle of his room. A review of his abilities made me scratch my head (oh, so that's what he does? hmm). Even on heroic, as a dps you just need to stay out of obvious 'bad stuff' when dpsing him and you'll be fine. No mechanics that will wipe you, really. The key to this fight is that after a while he'll put up a Shield of Light which makes him invulnerable. I've usually done this on heroic by having the whole group jump down to the left switch first. As a plate-wearer, I usually Death & Decay and blood boil to keep the switch person from being hit and then start running for the right side switch. Those snakes' damage can add up, so try to stay in line of sight for your healer. Hungering Cold is win here. Other than that, though, no real tricks to it. I burn my cd's right after we interrupt Anhuur's cast, but each phase is fairly short so there's no way to avoid 'wasting' some of your cooldowns.

Earthrager Ptah:
Ptah is the optional boss that's 'outside' in a courtyard. He's a Bone Wraith (looks a lot like Marrowgar) that summons adds. Things that will kill you: inattentiveness. The Earth Spike hits pretty hard on heroic. It won't one-shot you, but if your health is down a bit, it will kill you. As usual with this sort of thing, the spike has a crumbly, dusty spot on the ground shortly before erupting. If you get hit with it, not only will your nether regious hurt like the dickens, you'll be launched in the air and take fall damage upon return to earth. As usual, stay out of bad. To maximize dps, fight from behind the boss but be ready to adjust to either side for spikes. When the adds come, give the tank a moment to collect them, then spread diseases and full aoe rotation. I like to pop my cds here, but you certainly can burn them at the beginning of the fight as well.

After dancing with the roving packs of troggs and killing the elemental mini-bosses, Anraphet comes out and finishes off the troggs. The Big Meanie (aka Titanic Watcher) does two things which can kill you quickly as dps. First, the Alpha Beams. They target a random player, and channel nasty circle of death. Move fast, naturally. The second occurs during his Omega Stance. This aoe can hurt, but I usually use either AMS or IBF to help. A guildie said that moving or jumping helps reduce damage. I can't find anything written about this and can't prove it (comments, anyone?), but I've found myself jumping like a bean during this phase anyway. :) Generally, pop cd's at pull and use them when they're back up. Nothing special, although he hits hard and the aoe can hurt, so try to kill him quickly, save some defensive abilities for Omega Stance, and then try to have some for the last 30 sec when his Alpha Beams start to cover the floor.

Seats of the Keepers:

The next four bosses can be killed in any order.

Isiset is the construct of magic; like all four keepers she is a Titanic Watcher. As with most heroic bosses, there's a lot of aoe that can drop your health so you'll want to keep an eye out, but no big fight mechanics that can one- or two-shot you. Pop cd's at pull. Since you can do this for all four keepers, my current sequence looks like this:
Hit on use str trinket (JC boar figurine for example) while running in. Before you reach her, outbreak your diseases on her. Unholy Frenzy. Even with no preserved runic power, once you Scourge Strike, Festering Strike, SS, FS, you'll have the rp to summon your gargoyle. Use any Sudden Doom procs in between. Blood Tap. SS and FS and now use any remaining rp to try to get Dark Transformation up quickly. I can usually get my transformed ghoul up before UF wears off. Frost can be similar - although wait to use POF at least until the first melee hit so you don't waste it. Then normal priorities from there.
At any rate, when Isiset does her supernova, you can spin around or just step through her - both work fine. When her little starry adds pop out, I usually just pestilence to them, but if your group wants you to, pestilence, then switch to them and kill them, and then back to boss. Sometimes I also put my pet on the adds and stay on the boss myself. For Frost, your HB should do the trick nicely to aoe the adds. We kill the Astral Familiar first, but I don't think it matters much. Overall, a fairly simple fight for DKs.

Ammunae: the construct of life. Pop cds at pull as above. The big key to this fight besides not getting yourself killed, is killing the seedling pods quickly. Just kill them asap. You can pestilence to them, but they tend to die pretty fast, so you can just OB/SS them quickly down, and return in time to keep diseases up on Ammunae. As the pods proliferate, send a pet to kill stray ones as well. As with Isiset, no insta-kill mechanics, just a lot of attrition for your healer to keep up.

Rajh: the construct of radiance. Rajh does a lot of targetting a player or area and attacking. Just like in martial arts, the key is not being there when the attack arrives. Interrupt Summon Sun Orb. With how many interrupts are needed in heroics, endless winter is a nice talent in here. In any case, try to prevent an orb from being summoned, run away otherwise. Save AMS for Blessing of the Sun, while he's aoeing. Even in blues/greens, this barely tickles with AMS up. Obviously, pop cds at pull, avoid bad, win.

Setesh can be a bit of a challenge. Probably the most difficult boss. He's the construct of chaos and he tries to overwhelm you with void Wurms, Void Seekers, and Void Sentinels. As I'm sure you know, Setesh can't be tanked so the tank's job is to tank the Sentinels. Most tanks I've run with can kill the wurms pretty well and need only a little help on Seekers (we usually assign a ranged to this). Your job is to #1: kill Portals! (Yes, Jaraxxus-style) Portals need to die fast. In between, dps the boss. This is a race against time in current gear, with the soft enrage being some time around the 6th portal (tank/healer will be overwhelmed and die).
Ask your team if they have a heroism/bloodlust; if they do, they'll probably use it at pull. If so, use your str or on-use trinkets and summon gargoyle, but don't use unholy frenzy yet. This is becuase you'll waste a lot of the UF effect due to being overcapped for haste. Save the UF until heroism is down and you have a ghoul ready to DT. Obviously, frost can use POF and all cds with heroism.

So there you go! Oveall, less raid-like mechanics in here than in Grim Batol, but still a visually pleasing instance, and some fun fights.

Heroic Grim Batol: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-12-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

Similar to my raid posts looking at the role of the DPS DK in in ICC, I'll do some reviews of the heroics that most people are gearing up in for Cataclysm.
I know, some folks have moved on to raids, but I know the majority of players are still leveling and facing the challenge of heroics in their leveling blues and greens.

So, while it won't be long before epic-geared players are rofl-stomping the heroics for their random daily valor points, until then there are a few things that undergeared players need to know. I don't know if I'll do this for all the 5-mans, but I thought it might be helpful to talk about a few of them at least.

Grim Batol is a challenging 5-man in sub-359 gear. It's definitely doable, but each boss fight has several elements that make it more like a regular raid than past 5-man instances. Make a mistake, and it's easy to go from 100% to 0% very fast! Given the tuning and the raid-like mechanics, I have to say I really like this instance! In difficulty I'd put it about in the middle, somewhere between Stonecore (very DK/melee unfriendly) and Vortex Pinnacle, in which the boss fights seem quite easy (at least to me).

Instead of a separate article for each boss, I'll just put in a few comments for each boss from a DPS DK perspective.

General Umbriss:
The first boss you'll face in the instance, he can be a tricky one for inexperienced/undergeared groups. Like all of the bosses in here, there are several things that will cause damage to you, but unless they're specifically a 'death mechanic' (they'll kill you instantly if you screw up) I won't say too much about them. Umbriss is a black dragonkin. He does two things that can kill you quickly. The first is Ground Siege which does a lot of damage in a frontal area - just move behind him when he starts casting it and you'll be fine. The second is Blitz - he'll target a group member and start to cast Blitz. As long as you move to one side about 10 yards you won't get hit. The third major element to this fight is when he summons a group of troggs. (Why did it have to be Troggs?) Most of the troggs can essentially be ignored - if they get on you, merely kite them to the tank and let splash damage kill them (feel free to pestilence/death & decay). But one of the troggs will be bigger and have a purple haze around him - a Malignant Trogg. These MUST be killed away from the boss because if they die close to Umbriss they'll frenzy the boss. In addition, they do a nasty aoe blast when they die. Be careful; if your AMS is up, use it. If not, hit them with chains of ice and move away before they die. There's no reason any ranged couldn't take care of the Malignant Troggs, but it seems I've always been asked to kill them.
If you avoid the two main attacks that will kill you, and control the Troggs, this fight will go much easier.

Dragha Shadowburner:
The fight opens with a fairly quick burn on Dragha. Don't waste cds on this part, as it's pretty quick and of very little danger. The only thing to be aware of is the Invoked Fire Spirits that Dragha summons. There will be a fire patch that spawns the Spirits. The tank should kite the boss away from the patches and you should stay away until the Spirit appears. When it does, if it targets you (by a fiery line attached to you), run away! If not, hit it with a chains of ice, then run to it and kill it quickly. If it reaches it's target, people die.
After Dragha is dps'd down a bit, he calls his dragon, Valiona. When Valiona lands is a good time to pop your cooldowns. He hops on her and you'll need to continue dealing with Invoked Fire Spirits, as well as avoiding bad stuff on the ground, and staying out from in front of Valiona who does a conal flame attack to the front that can wipe you. Once Valiona is down, Dragha returns and is fairly quickly killed.
The main things to remember are quick target switches from killing the boss to the Spirits, and staying out of the fire/pools/cleave.

Forgemaster Throngus:
Throngus is a giant ettin pathing past several smaller chained ettins. Be careful clearing the trash as he can pat to your group and fighting him and his trash simultaneously is often lethal.
Open with your cds and dps away. For the first 20 sec or so it's just a tank and spank. Then Throngus will emote that he is picking a weapon. Mostly, the tanks and healers will want to be wary of what he's doing, but as a dps you'll just want to be aware of what could kill you.
If he picks a mace, the tank needs to kite him slowly around the ledge. If you pull aggro here, you'll die as his mace hits hard. Also watch the fire patches on the ground. If he picks a shield, there will be aoe damage to the group, but not too scary. If he picks two swords, the damage to the tank will be high, but it won't affect the dps too much. Be on the lookout for falling rocks/ceiling throughout the fight as the damage can add up. In a pinch, you can pop army of the dead towards the end to keep him occupied. I finished a fight from 15% after the tank died by popping army and the shammies popped earth elementals and we survived barely. As a side note, be aware that while AotD doesn't taunt raid bosses, they DO taunt every 5-man boss in Cataclysm I've used it on.

Erudax:

The final boss of GB is a Faceless One. Start in the middle of the room (doesn't really matter too much where), with normal dps. He does some aoe, but nothing big. When he drops a Shadow Gale focus in the room (looks like a dark whirlpool), the whole group stacks IN it to avoid dying to his Shadow Gale. As soon as the Gale is done, Erudax summons two Faceless Corrupters. They'll come from the hall you entered from. One each will head for the eggs. They need to be slowed and dps'd hard. If they're not dead when they get to the eggs, they'll start casting Umbral Mending. Try to interrupt it and/or finish them off quickly. If you don't, they'll heal the boss to full fairly fast. If your dps on the adds is fast enough, you can pop your cooldowns on the pull, otherwise save them for add phases. You should be able to kill Erudax within 2-3 Shadow Gale/add phases, but it can be done in more phases as long as you kill the Corrupters each time.

I hope that helps, and I hope you enjoy Grim Batol as much as I have!

Random thoughts on levelling a DK in Cataclysm

2010-12-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

One word: OOOOhhhhhh YEAHHHH!!!

It was a ton of fun racing to 80 - as I mentioned Monday, once I stopped trying to get there first.

So here are some thoughts I had during levelling and reflecting on the process of getting to 85 and the first things to do when you get there.

1. Frost spec works like a charm. As I mentioned prior to expac release, I was going with a 2H Frost spec for levelling. It worked fine for every situation I found myself in. Generally speaking, mobs died before I'd expended all my runes and runic power, even in Twilight Highlands.
Start off with maxing Frost, then add bladed armor, and from there take your pick of talents. You get burst, mount speed, and don't have to worry about diseases. It still works very well in 5-man levelling dungeons. In fact, howling blast on trash packs is a wonderful thing, and overall the rotation was pleasing and easy to maintain! For questing with normal mobs, all you do is drop off your mount, preferably next to one mob while you death grip another to you. make sure they're both in front of you, howling blast, obliterate, frost strike if full of rp, and obliterate/FS until they're dead. There's a good chance you won't even need to use your blood runes, but if you do you can toss a few blood strikes in there.

2. Stick with an area till it's done. Technically, you can go to Deepholm when you hit 82, but if you're not done with Hyjal/Vashjir, I recommend staying until you have the loremaster achievement. Do the same thing in each zone. Several reasons for this: quests are linear, and quest rewards get better later in chains. Also, you want to get as much 'free' (non-grinding) rep for each faction as you can.

3. Find each of the 5-man instances as early as possible, and run each of them at least once. First, they're fun! Also, as you enter each of them, there are a number of quests just inside. These have nice xp and often item rewards. Finally, you'll get familiar with each of them before you come back on heroic difficulty, and it will help you a great deal to know what to expect. Many people have written that it's not efficient to level by farming 5-mans and they're right. If you really love instances, feel free, but running them over and over is a slow way to level, especially if you're not using rest.

4. Keep every meat drop you get. Eventually you'll use the meat for cooking (or if you refuse to cook, sell/donate it, but do not vendor it). Especially crocolisk tails. This meat is used for the best individual buff food for dps DKs. Side note: the best place I've found to farm this is next to the Tol Barad keep in the swamp. Any other suggestions? There are lisks up and down the banks of the river in Uldum, but they're farther apart.

5. Buy the highest speed mount you can afford. Travelling fast has always been and always will be the biggest boon to levelling. And if it feels expensive, it's really not too bad. From 80-85, if you have nice big bags to allow you to vendor greys, keep boe greens for disenchanting, and so on, you can easily make 5-10k gold! I had 7 thousand more gold at 80 than 85, and that doesn't include enchant mats or my mining. I leveled fast, and sold the first 20-30 stacks of each or I got in part to make even more gold, which I did. Even now, where there are plenty of gatherers out there, you'll make plenty of cash if you level a gathering skill (side note again: I'm dropping mining to level LW this weekend). Random thought #5 could easily turn into its own post about making gold, but suffice it to say that you'll make plenty of money while levelling, so don't be shy spending it!

6. Get ready to raid! You can do this even as you level. By doing the daily level-appropriate 5-man, you'll be getting justice points. If you're maxed out, buy gear and stockpile it for when you're 85.
    6a. Level professions. If you're on Elitist Jerks, you know that JC/LW are the 'ideal' way to go, but most professions have something to offer. Level them as quickly as you can so that by the time you're raiding, you can have one or two nice epics to go with your justice and heroic gear to help you succeed in that first 10-man. JC gives a nice trinket that's worth using, and of course LW allows you to do leg and bracer enchants.
   6b. Grind reputations. If you're questing, finish off each zone. You'll get really nice reputation for questing for each faction. While most factions have something worthwhile, in particular you'll need:
        -Therazane. They're your Hodir as many have said; your shoulder enchant unless you're an inscriptionist. They're easy to max. Unlock their dailies via questing in Deepholm, then do the dailies. DON'T wear their tabard; I was exalted with them three days into the expac following the above. The shoulder enchant is pretty cheap - buy several and put it on every upgrade once you hit 85.
        -Wildhammer. They're your dps head enchant. It will take a little longer, but I recommend doing their dailies (in northern Twilight Highlands) and not wearing their tabard either. Why? Because...
        -Ramkahen is probably your other most important rep. The epic neck you get from them at exalted will last you until heroics in Tier 11. Right now there is only one daily, so as soon as you get enough rep from questing in Uldum, get their tabard and wear it.
    The other reputations aren't as important, as they can offer some decent stuff, but none of it will last that long, so feel free to level them at your leisure.

Once you're 85, do both the normal and heroic daily. If you're having trouble with heroics, do normal 5-mans until you have enough justice points for a few items - it won't take long. Heroics can - as has already been written about many times - be very challenging, with raid-like mechanics, but with familiarity, gear, and practice, they're all very doable.

It may take a little time, but you're goal should be the achievement Cataclysmically Superior (blue superior item in every slot). I got mine just yesterday, and am now officially ready for raiding!

Good luck to all in leveling and preparing for raids!

Cataclysmic Week

2010-12-13T10:22:00.000-08:00

No, the week was not a catastrophe for Hine.
Ironic, that Azeroth's loss has been our gain.
Regardless, the past week has been one of entering new territory, seeing it, and conquering it (and being conquered, over and over).

No, I didn't blog this week, the first week of Cataclysm, I played the game.
A lot.
I will plan to write a bit about leveling a DK in the near future. Suffice it to say for now that
1) leveling as Frost works like a charm. I'm sure it would generally be just fine as Unholy, less so as Blood but still feasible.
2) While predictions were as low as 9 hours for leveling to 85, without the benefit of being in the beta, a more reasonable estimate for most folks is probably in the ballpark of 20-24 hours. With rest and less bottlenecking it may be shorter.

I did, however, post in various forums about my experiences. So, I decided to paste a few of them here to give you a few reflections on the Cataclysm experience so far.

WARNING: There are some very minor spoilers in here. I'll try to keep them to somewhat of a minimum, or at least cryptic, but if you don't want to know anything about what's ahead, don't read. :)

On the question of How goes the leveling? (late Tuesday):
"I did NOT get any server firsts, as my lack of beta access clearly bit me in the butt from the start. The bottleneck quests in Hyjal quickly became a nightmare as dozens camped specific spawns, and then in Deepholme, when I simply couldn't figure out a few quests. In any case, once I relaxed I had a good time, hit 85 4th for DKs on the server and messed around with professions. Made about 18k from mining so far, hope to finish up about 30-40k more before I start my own JC leveling.
The zones are beautiful, and I thought the questing in Uldum was superb. TwiHi wasn't as bad as many said (in terms of mobs hitting hard) and almost all of my gear was replaced by 85 (only things left are helm and Shadowmourne). Awesome trinkets from quests. I though Hyjal was too bottlenecked for release, and Vashj is pretty but slow and too distracted (side quests all over). As good as it is, Uldum could be renamed 'cut scene zone.'

I've done almost all the 5-mans and they're a blast.

Hope you're all having fun. Good night!"

And:
"Cindermaul was an example of a quest that should never, never, never be repeated.

I was stuck for 45 min on that one despite the fact that I was in a 5-man the whole time.

We got fed up of being ganked by hordies after the first 5 min and enjoyed killing the 'top' guild over and over and over after that.

By the way, on that and several like it, aoe does not tag the mob. After we finally figured it out, I macroed the mob name and howling blasted like a mother and got that one and the next pretty fast."

On the guild leveling issues:
"Fun in't it?

We had our guild xp reset several times, so we've made level 2 at least three times, only to get it put back to 1. ;("

On the difficulty of Cataclysm heroics:
"Pugging can be pretty rough. I don't think I've fully completed a heroic in a full pug. It can certainly be frustrating to spend 2-4 hours wiping over and over on a 5 man boss!

This is where we say be careful what we ask for!
We asked for more difficult content. We asked for cc to count. We asked for non-faceroll challenges, and here we go.
Even the lowest level of multiplayer content is now challenging. In current gear. It will be faceroll easy very soon for raiders.
OTOH, I personally have found them quite refreshing and enjoyable. I've heard and even said a few times that many of the 5-man bosses actually have raid-like mechanics and require players to actually utilize raid-like strategies and awareness. It's been great learning these. I've completed almost all of them on heroic now - as I said, always with at least one guildie with me - and it's been a blast.
If you do have trouble with a specific fight and don't want to read forums or wikis, feel free to post and I'll help when I can."

On the 'New Healing' (in which the OP expressed frustration in general but also that dps that don't self-heal may not get heals from him/her):
"Early early early.

I've already notice regular 5-mans getting easier. I think it will be a pretty fast progression to heroics being easymode too.

Just like dps, where so far I'm barely cracking 10k in 5-mans (and no dps I've been with has). Our crit is horrid, we aren't hit capped, etc. These things will ramp up really really quickly and at least in 5-mans, mana will be less of an issue fast. In raids? It will/should (I hope) take a little more time.
As a dps, I have to take issue with your assessment though. You obviously have to triage, but forcing dps to self heal - except in emergencies - is a waste of our resources. My self heal is a rather weak death strike. Even 'per mana' your heals are far far more efficient. My assessment would be: don't try to keep dps topped off (try to keep them alive) If they pull aggro or don't avoid damage they should be avoiding - then let them die. Of course, if you're oom, then of course you have to self heal and tank heal first, but don't simply refuse to heal dps if they 'aren't' self-healing...."

and

"I know Xxxx wasn't saying he wouldn't heal dps.

And I'm not advocating healing stupid.

Just tonight, while healing Throne (on my shammy), the same hunter stood in green three times.

I didn't heal him the third time.

Yes, healers are having to smite/shock/whatever to have the best mana management right now. And it's hard.

So dps need to not make it more difficult.

I should leave it at that, but I won't.

Saying dps self-healing is the cutting edge? Not really. You know that I do what I can to mitigate damage. Like knowing when to ams and running out, etc. But a Death Strike, just one, fucks me for the rest of the fight by throwing off rune pairs. It's a really really crappy heal, and it's going to make the whole fight last longer (oooh, and require more healing/mana from the healers) because my dps will drop significantly. That's the opposite of the current game mechanics that require a healer to dps to be effective. If I self heal, I'm drastically decreasing my effectiveness over the fight.

Does that mean you won't see DS on my logs? By no means. I'm well aware of the correct order of things. If the whole group is low and about to die, healer self-heal, then tank, then dps. SO I'll bandage, DS, or whatever I can. Don't worry. And of course I'm well aware of dead dps don't. So I prefer to dps by staying alive, just that self-healing is really truly only an emergency thing to do for dps, while dps is part of the current plan for healers."

On our log of Blackrock raid (we did kill the Tol Barad boss earlier):
"I looked over the logs last night and quickly noted a few things:

1) dps is decent. Could be a little better but already on target.

2) Players in general lasted reasonably long into the encounter, particular in the latter half of our 23 recorded attempts, but at that point healers often tended to be the first to die. Not sure what to think of that.

3) Interrupts of the arcane dude are crucial and we did much better on that. However, every dps that can interrupt, should. I saw zero interrupts from one of our shammies.

4) I personally took a lot of damage (behind the tanks), but I lasted long enough, often to tank a boss for a few seconds and had only one bad death in the last 10 attempts. But I will still look at taking less damage.

5) I think we can still do better with that aoe fire attack from magnotron - trying to keep him still and all players finding the safe 'lanes' to sit in.

side note: I love the trinket (I got the boe epic Fury of Angerforge), but until it's fixed it's probably not better than the blue trink I had before. Even going back to dual-wielding didn't seem to help much. I commented on wowhead about this under 'Hirohubris.'"

All in all, a fantastic week!
More to follow. ;)

Happy Cataclysm Eve!

2010-12-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

To all you EU players out there: less than 8 hours till launch!
To all of us US players, tonight is your night, bro! (hurrah for ancient Schwarzenegger/DeVito references)

I know we're all excited, and, I hope, prepared.
I've talked about my preparation several times, so the tl:dr version now is:

I'm frost 2H for leveling; one can pretty much howling blast/obliterate/frost strike spam everything that's non-elite, at least until Uldum/Twi Hi

I have my flasks and food prepared.

I will mine when I can, but my primary goal is leveling, so you will likely not see another post here, nor will I level cooking, rep, or anything else until I'm 85. Once I'm there, I'll have the remainder of the week to work on those things.

Good luck all, have fun, and See you on the Other Side!

Another blogger alt post

2010-11-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

Apparently, 'every Wow blogger on the planet has an alt post' (see comments) so I wouldn't want to disappoint! :)

With my guild taking a break from raiding the last couple weeks, there hasn't been a lot going on from an organizational standpoint.

So, what does one do?

Of course, I have spent a little time familiarizing myself with my leveling (frost) spec and am fairly comfortable with it, so I feel reasonably ready to run with it in less than a week. :) I have some 23 quests ready to turn in the moment we log in with the new level cap. I have my mats, my gold, my mounts, and my mojo.

So, what to do for the next week(s)?

A number of my guildies are running their mains through the lowbie zones doing loremaster-type quests, which are fairly easy to do at this point.

That sounded pretty boring to me. On the other hand, leveling or running lower-level characters through Azeroth wasn't all that appealing either.

I'll admit, I still wasn't sold on the idea of 'merely' changing old Azeroth and making it 'new.' Adding a few zones, letting us level to 85 instead of 90, along with new raids, still seems/seemed like an expansion-lite.

I was pleasantly surprised then, when I decided to do a little questing on my slowly-leveling level 40ish mage. As apparently everyone already knows, a few things have changed! LOLAS (as in, laugh out loud at self). My little mage had been spending time in the lush Stranglethorn vale merrily frostbolting stray gorillas. I logged in (finally) to discover that most of her quests were gone, and the few that remained were gray. She had a new quest to report to Western Plaguelands. WPL! You know, that place you never really had to go any more, because more accessible zones were more than adequate to allow you to level to 58 and on to Outlands? Hmm, after a little hemming and hawing, Hinetapeka got on Filly, her newly-epic mount, made her way to Chillwind Camp, and it was ON!

Yes, as has been oft-repeated, the questing is quite linear. In WPL alone, each hub has only a few quests, with maybe 3-4 quests and 2-3 follow up quests, then it's off to another hub nearby. There is often a flight path available, or even a 'free' horse or carriage to take you to your next hub. And in many of these places, your actions seem to change things (yay for phasing, something I lauded way back at LK release, and which Blizzard is understandably making more use of). The quests, while linear, facilitate storytelling in a much more cogent manner, and it at least gives the feel of accomplishing something (as opposed to those level 40 skellies simply respawning 60 seconds after you 'cleared the road' by killing 12 of them). At least for me, for now, what it lacks in 'freedom,' it makes up for in clarity, simplicity, and quality.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, my 10 year old son complained that he wanted a flying mount. To which I replied that he'd never leveled a character high enough to do so (except starting DKs on my account). So, I issued him a challenge. If he leveled an Alliance character on my main server past 10, I'd help him with leveling, and if/when he got to 60, I'd buy any and all mounts he wanted. So, he started a hunter and quickly exclaimed how the human starting area was so different. Inspired by Tamarind and Oddly's posts about priests, I finally caved and started my very first priest ever. I quickly leveled to 10 - the Draenei area appeares completely unchanged to me - and travelled to Stormwind. From there on, I had the opportunity to see not only the 'new' Azeroth, but this 'new' Azeroth, through 'new' eyes; my son's. We quested together and did his very first 5-man instances together. It was a blast to have him exclaim every few seconds at how fun it was. He aquitted himself reasonably well, too, finishing higher than at least one other dps in every run we did. Sure, he needed to be informed that one does NOT need on spirit cloth as a hunter, and that he had to target the mob that the tank was hitting, but he picked it up quickly! ;) I had chosen the holy tree for starters and so enjoyed the oom-ness that is lowbie healing. We even had a boss fight that we barely survived when the tank pulled extra mobs, died, then the other two dps died, but my son finished off the boss and the final add with 10% health while I squeaked out the last few bubbles and renews to keep us alive. Wow! That was, indeed, fun! And while I'm sure Cataclysm will put somewhat of a damper on our tandem leveling, he's parading proudly around Stormwind on his proud level 20 steeds. I look forward to seeing him soar in Outlands and Northrend as well. :)

While Azeroth is still Azeroth, the sundering changed things for us. Cosmetically yes, but more fundamentally in how we interact with the world, quest, tell/receive stories, and progress through content. And while I'm still a little concerned about the feeling of not 'getting enough new content,' I'm entirely on board with how it's being delivered to us!

Cataclysm is almost here!!!

Leveling as Frost in Cataclysm: Okay, I'll give it a try

2010-11-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

For readers of my blog, you'll have noticed that I've spent little time as Frost.
I leveled and tanked as Blood. I've primarly dps'd in various incarnations of Unholy.
Besides a few dalliances with DW Frost in TOC, I haven't spent much time in Frost spec. I know, there are lots of players out there who love it, but for some reason, it's never floated my boat.

I was convinced recently, however, to give Frost a try for leveling after reading this short comment on Consider's blog:

"Grizzi says:
Because it has greater burst, and you can start out with oaph from level 80, and it runs in unh pres. If u level as unh be it DW or 2H, then u will rarely get DT up, and ur pet will spend time spawning whenever you dismount, and the pet is to big a part of your dps for that to be worth it."

I'll put in a Frost leveling spec tonight and start trying it out. Note, while I will have most of the dps-heavy talents, I will likely take both On A Pale Horse which is so powerful for leveling, as well as Lichborne and the Lichborne glyph (for self healing). Self healing and travel speed are overpowered for leveling, which in this case Frost offers along with the dps talents that a blood spec would lack. Grizzi's points about burst and the pet's drawbacks for levling purposes are well-taken, as well.

I'll give Frost a try and hopefully will rock the DK leveling race!

Now that the Shattering has occurred, I'll see you on the Dark Side!

Putting my money where my mouth is; the Shattering

2010-11-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

After my last post, I kept thinking about different gamepads. Logitech's G13 is consistently lauded as superior to the Nostromo/Belkin n52, and claims to support Apple products these days. Since I posted that the lull before the expansion was a good time to try something new, I thought I might follow my own advice and give the G13 a try. It will run you $70-80 US, so it's not cheap, but has a plethora of programmable options to expand your gameplay.

Why the Shattering in the title?
Try it and find out! Regardless if you've been using your traditional keyboard or something else, any time you change the layout of keys/buttons/etc, you'll find it takes some time to adjust.
Just like shooting free throws, a small change in biomechanics can take quite a while to adjust.
It may feel like everything you knew before, those effortless run-jump-spin-strike abilities, all of it is just gone. Just like our old Azeroth will be tomorrow.

My most vivid memory of this, strangely, comes from bowling, an activity I do less than once a year. When I was a child, my family went bowling with my uncle's family. My uncle bowled semi-professionally at the time. I was a kid, of course, and my parents had shown me the basics of bowling but I really didn't know what I was doing. I usually bowled about a 120-140. My uncle took one look at my 'form' and started correcting my walk up, my swing, everything. I tried doing what he told me to, and I was horrible! Of course, his corrections were, in fact, correct, and as I practiced them, I eventually got better.

So, over the weekend I messed around with the G13, trying some different key combinations and just trying to get used to it. It was actually very frustrating, because I didn't know where my abilities were! I felt like such a noob and had to force myself to find the keys on the gamepad rather than resorting to clicking with my mouse, but I did get to the point eventually where I could at least stand behind a dummy and feel comfortable. In fact, the biggest change made me the most comfortable dpsing. That is, I'm trying to use the little thumbstick to move around instead of using keys. If you can move with your thumb, it frees up 4 keys in the middle of the keypad that can then constitute some of your most-used attacks. It feels great Scourge Striking from the 'rest' position, instead of having to constantly move my hands up to the number row to do my attacks.

The keypad is very easy to program. At it's most basic, you can just click on any G-key and then hit a key on your regular keyboard and you're set. I just translated my keybindings from before to the G13 (for example, the G1 key is set to 'H', my Dark Transformation). For how to set up and run the G13 in Wow, Gravity at pwnwear.com has a couple of superb threads on the topic, so head over there and search for 'G13' if you're interested!

I'm feeling a bit Shattered, but if I can stick with it, I think in the long run I'll be very happy with the results.

On a side note, I'm excited for tomorrow, and the next few weeks!
Yes, there will be turkey in a few days, but I can't help but anticipate the case of Monsters I'll be imbibing as of December 7 just as much. :)

Is your gear ready for Cataclysm?

2010-11-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I look at the gear we use to play the game. I've talked a little in the past about headsets and mice, so I thought I'd talk a little more about the rest of the equipment we use.

Obviously, in general you need to have a computer capable of playing the game. Fortunately, the hardware demands aren't too intensive and it's fairly cheap to get a computer that will allow decent game play.

My old (5+ years) computer finally fizzled out about the time of the 4.0 patch, so it was time for a replacement. Desktops are obviously better in terms of price/performance, but I needed something I could take on the road when I travel for work or teaching. So, what kind of laptop is needed? The good news is that even relatively inexpensive laptops can run the game fairly well, but I'd advise investing in at least a moderately good graphics card. As a 'non-techie' person, I focused on pre-built models and was intruiged by Dell/Alienware's M11x, which I'm sure would have done the job. In the end, however, I went with Apple. I was a little nervous about the 13" Macbook Pro's ability to run the game, but I needn't have worried. It runs the game on good to excellent settings more than adequately, even in aoe-heavy 25-man raids.

Of course, peering at a small screen is rough on the 'ol eyes, so with a laptop, it's preferable to purchase a larger screen. Fortunately, even fairly large screens are fairly cheap these days and I went with a 28" monitor for my everyday gaming, as you can see above. Oooh, almost forgot: I was told to get HDMI when connecting the comp to the bigger monitor, but it resulted in a pretty crappy picture overall. DVI gave me a much better picture; your results may vary of course.

In the end, we're lucky that in the interests of accessibility, Blizzard has kept a balance between pretty graphics and pixel-punishing gameplay, allowing the everyday person to afford to play on moderately decent computers.

More important from my perspective is the choice of input devices. I've already discussed mice in the past. There are many options, but in general I'll just reiterate a point or two: you want one with little lag time, which almost always means a wired mouse. Second, more buttons on the mouse means less hunting for keys. Find what works for you. Razer's Naga ends up being too many buttons for me, but I know a lot of players, particularly healers, who love it. I like Logitech's products, but Razer's Mamba is my current favorite for comfort, performance, and button layout/feel.

Finally, the keyboard/keypad. There are a lot of options out there besides the 'vanilla' keyboard that came with your computer. Sure, you can 'asdf' your way through raids, and I'm sure that's exactly what most people do, but I think in the end, your performance can be signficantly improved by changing up the keyboard you use. As an Apple user, there are quite a few devices that won't work, sadly. So, there are a few that look promising, but I haven't had the opportunity to try. Regular gaming keyboards have the traditional qwerty layout with some added functions and snazzy looks. Those are fine, I guess. I've always wanted to try a Zboard. But what can really transform your gameplay is a keypad that makes reaching your important keys a lot easier in the long run. Pads like the Cyber Snipa or the classic Nostromo N52 look fantastic and get consistently positive reviews. I've attempted an older Nostromo and didn't like how hard the keys were to press, but I've heard the newer ones are better ergonomically. What you see on my desk is the Wolfking keyboard that utilizes a circular layout to make keys more accessible to your fingertips. Don't try typing with it though! I use the laptop's keyboard for typing text.

My main point in here is that we do want to have the best, most effective gear we can, and even though sometimes there is a little extra expense, if you can afford it, in the long run I think it's probably worth it.

Why now? Well, I'm posting in part because I just got the new comp, but also because now is an ideal time to try a new gear setup. It generally can take a solid 10-20 hours to get your brain rewired around a new keyboard/keypad setup and you'll want to be ready to go when Cataclysm comes out! Good luck, and happy shopping!

*(note, I'm not reviewing products, nor am I endorsing any in particular. I couldn't give two farts which ones you choose, nor am I being compensated in any way for anything in this article).

Twilight of the Lich King

2010-11-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

The eponymous (heroic) Lich King is quite the bugger, even if pugs are defeating his lesser non-heroic doppelganger daily.

Still, there's really not much left to do for the 1000+ guilds that have been raiding Icecrown for many many months now, and that have completed all but the most difficult of encounters available.

What is there to occupy our time?

This week is the last my guild will raid until we're all 'fresh' new level 85 characters, ready for the new challenges the Cataclysm will bring us.

We've been essentially messing around with achievements, battling the ennui and lack of focus rampant in Wow raids these days (nights).

Sure, a while back I posted our server-first Grand Crusader, which was still somewhat of a challenge even if it was a tier old.

Sure, we 'Observed' the Fall of Algalon and accomplished the mount-related Ulduar achievements, even if they were two tiers old.

But one achievement had still eluded the vast majority of guilds out there, hanging out like the lowest yet heretofore unobtained fruit on the Forbidden Tree: the Immortal! Yes, random pugs have been doing Undying on various alts (I have that title from the one and only attempt I made on my at-the-time terribly undergeared resto shammy), but the Immortal has been foiling guilds for almost two full years. The guild I raided with two years ago was able to accomplish all the achievements in Naxx25 prior to the release of Ulduar save one: the Immortal. On our very last week prior to Ulduar, we had made it through every boss without a single death to Sapphiron. And, wouldn't you know it, we were at about 50% when my mouse died, shortly followed by the agonized cries of 25 raiders when Hine expired prematurely.

Thus it was with some trepidation that our undermanned (19 raiders, but almost all mains) Monday night group entered that vile pyramid in the sky.

Fears which turned to groans when we stood before the Silly Taunt Boss (Razuvious), and our ice mage summoned his pet and it was inexplicably set to aggressive. Sure enough, the botched pull resulted in a clothie getting one-shot and having to run out. Thankfully, the instance can be reset if you run out before killing any bosses.

The second time the pull went reasonably well, but the poor priests, long unaccustomed to the silly mind control mechanic of the fight, missed a taunt and a caster pulled agro, once again resulting in a clothie insta-gib.

Groans and frustrated expletives burst out via Vent, with some questioning the commitment of others, and general dissatisfaction was expressed. The GM asked if we just wanted to give up, but Hine and others said, 'there's no reason we can't do it.' Whereupon I discovered Hine had 'entered to many instances recently' to partake. So, I flew around the carrion fields below Naxxramas, pretending to be one of the elite drakes circling the instance, until, thankfully, the Instructor got his own lesson in Threat and all the clothies survived. Since I still couldn't enter; I had to wait while the 'scary' bosses were challenged next, but the IceTomb Boss and the Swirly Circles of Doom On the Floor Boss were vanquished without incident. I wouldn't say the mood was jubilant. I wouldn't say the mood was expectant. But at least my 18 intrepid colleagues might have started to think, 'maybe we can do this, after all.'

We trudged through the Construct Quarter, where the Big Tank n Spank (dps check? um, check.), the Slime Slobberer, the Doggie, and even the Electric Charge Boss expired without much fanfare. The latter boss elicited some concern, but rather than risk crossing charges, most of the ranged simply spread out and stood unmoving, ignoring the charges and leveling their lethal attacks in an iconoclastic manner.

We sludged through the Arachnid Quarter, where very little resistance indeed was offered by its denizens. The Ubiquitous Beetle's shell was simple to crack, the Widow's candles blew out with a puff, and the Not So Itsy-Bitsy Spider's webs proved little challenge.

Next we finished off the Military Quarter, where Gothik's spawning adds laughably died in pitiful piles of corpse dust, and we rode herd on the Horsies Of Something Supposedly Scary, being careful to not clump up on the One that Chains Lightening in Bad Ways.

With growing confidence, we hastened to the Plague Quarter, killing Goat Head Guy before he ported, Dancer before we crossed the floor more than once, and yes, the Healer Interrupter before he prevented much healing at all.

We battled the killer foes of boredom, lack of focus, and low motivation, and came up.... interested, focused, and motivated enough, if only just.

Not only that, but we defeated the Ledge Boss, the Frogger Boss, and Most importantly of all, the RNG Boss - that final boss that had always managed to fell mice, disconnect tanks or otherwise torpedo the success of so many raids in the past.

We Did It!!!
Of course, just like this tale, the achievement was more than a little anticlimactic, and rather than the typical jubilation at overcoming a difficult challenge as a guild, by far the most prominent emotion was relief.

But, we got 'er done, in these Twilight days and nights of the Lich King. We got 'er done. And I'll wear my Immortal title with pride, no matter when it was obtained.

Death Knight UI/addon 4.0 update

2010-11-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago I wrote about the addons any good raiding dps DK needs. Wow, can't believe it was so long ago!

I've actually turned over more than half of my addons, so I thought I'd write a little about them now, realizing that at least some of these are likely to change as their authors may or may not update them for Cataclysm and we're likely to see some new shiny addons come out at that time as well.

I'll copy my format from that previous post and comment on any changes/updates here.

1. Raid Warnings/Events: Still absolutely essential for raiding, despite what some misguided snottydins might tell you. DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) is still the industry standard, but I've converted to BigWigs, as it is less memory-intensive. Both work very well for helping identify important events during a boss fight, and allow some customization of how you want to be alerted (BIG letters on screen? A sound? Both? you got it).

2. Proc Alerts: Blizzard's version is a very nice start, and quite a few bloggers have commented on how visually pleasing their HUD notifications are. As unholy so far, the Dark Transformation and Sudden Doom procs are very easy to identify by their visual alerts. So far, I'm not aware of the in-game system having a Runic Empowerment alert, which would be nice to know so that I could hold off on Death Coils for three seconds (unless runic power is capped and no runes are available). I haven't used Mik's Scrolling Battle Text for a long time: I used Power Auras for a while, but haven't loaded any proc alerts for 4.0 yet. If you prefer auditory alerts, one of these addons still might be best for you. I haven't tested Frost to see if their in-game proc alerts work as well - but I've seen screenies of Rime procs etc that look pretty good, so you might be able to rely on the default system for now, although a Runic Empowerment alert is even more important for Frost than Unholy.

3. Rune/Disease Watch: I'm still a 'thowback,' although I'm not using Rune Hero any more. It remains as important as ever for you to know which runes are ready to be used, which ones are almost off cooldown, and how much runic power you have. Even more importantly, you need to know how much time is left on diseases so you can ensure they don't fall off. The default Blizzard interface fails hugely here and it's very difficult to use their rune display effectively.

I like DKI Runes, and even though my health bar (when I'm being targetted) superimposes on it, it doesn't cause problems with the rune display and I prefer to have it front and center as you can see from the big screenie below.
You have many options - try a few out and see what you like best. DDR is the very popular choice on Elitist Jerks right now (Docs Debug Runes) but I'm not fond of it at all. DKI Runes has (as you can see) a sword-looking addon that is more compact and well-designed than my old fave Rune Hero, and has a nice disease watcher as well. I was a BIG fan of Acherus Runes, but it hasn't been updated and doesn't work for 4.0. One advantage of DDR over DKI is it has a nice obvious display of Shadow Infusion stacks (it may be possible to do for DKI as well, I just haven't discovered it yet).

4. Communication: Ventrilo is still the gold standard. It's the one 'addon' not available at Curse.com. (But download is free at several sites). The in-game voice comm is horrible and I don't know of any raiding guilds that use it.

5. Threat Meter: Threat meters are again relevant for 4.0 and I've noticed it's easier to pull a mob/boss than it was before. We don't have any passive threat reduction, and misdirect abilities have been nerfed. Good tanks still hold threat, but as a raider, you're responsible to watch your threat. Omen is by far the most popular threat meter, and the one I still use.

6. Damage Meter: I realize quite a few players/bloggers out there like to demonize meter-watchers, and rightly so in some cases. If you attempt to simply max dps without paying attention to fight mechanics or what your role might be, you're a bad player. But, when your primary role is to dps, why wouldn't you want feedback on how you're doing? As I've mentioned before, the meter gives you instant feedback that you're doing something right - or wrong. I can't tell you how many times I've noted a drop in my dps - and thanks to the meter - realize that after that last wipe I forgot to summon my ghoul, or after changing specs to pick a presence, and so on. Damage meters for bad players? NO. Bad players are bad players. Good players use damage meters. By the way, I've dropped the resource hog Recount and now use Skada. I still prefer the useability of Recount and may go back to it, but for now Skada is what I use.

7. Attack Power gauge: I was VERY pleased with Bleeding Hearts and had a separate post on it previously, but it seems to cause huge lag problems and sometimes seems the culprit in disconnects. It hasn't been updated in a long time and sadly I've had to delete it. Tiny Melee Stats still works but it's not my favorite. I'm still looking for a good option here. In any case, it's very helpful to see how much attack power you have to help with determining when to summon pets. Now that they also get our haste, it would be nice to have a haste indicator as well. I'd love to see a thermometer type gauge like Bleeding Hearts for both stats somewhere on my screen.

8. Others: For the most part, any other addons are for personal preference and won't contribute to your performance as a dps DK.

-MetaHud, one of my long-time favorites, is currently not working in 4.0. *sadface* The HUD you see in my screenie is IceHud, which is fairly similar and not too bad.

-Grid. You don't need this as a dps DK, but I do like to see who's alive during a fight, or be able to quickly find someone to target their target etc. It's essential for healers/raid leaders, not so much for dps DKs.

-OneBag. This addon broke for me, although I think it works for others. I'm now using Bagnon, which also has a feature that lets you see your bank and/or alt's bags/banks.

-Postal. Makes mailing and opening batches of mail much easier, as well as keeping lists of who you've mailed.

-Carbonite. Somewhat dated these days, so I'm not using it any more. Questhelper addons can still be useful, but the in-game map and tracker work quite well for me now.

-Gearscore. I actually used GS lite for a while, now I don't have either turned on.

-SpartanUI. As I posted more recently, the UI mod I use. It also requires Bartender but the download comes preset for SpartanUI. nUI is also very popular and even has a DK skin, but I've tried it and didn't like it. It's not bad - and is very similar in many ways, it's more a matter of preference. These addons preferably clean up space on your UI and are visually pleasing as well. You can make a case for these helping your raid performance by allowing you to be more aware of your surroundings and being able to find your target easier. I used the default UI for many years and it works just fine if that's your preference.

-Bloodhound. A very lightweight addon for helping gathering (which a dps DK IS NOT, but at the moment I'm mining until 85). There's better ones out there, I just don't need them.

-AutoProfitX. There's a dozen small addons that will dump grey items either automatically or put a button in the vendor tab. Nice to not have to click each one to sell individually.

-AuctionLite. I'm not enough of an Auction House mini-game player to get into Auctioneer. AL does what I need. I dont load it for my DK though - just my bank alts.

-Parsing sites: over the past year I've made multiple mentions and uses of these sites. Back on my original post, I was using WMO Online, which is still in operation, although I prefer World of Logs these days.

-Achievement Screenshotter: I had forgotten to add this one back in and was bummed when I looked for screenies from a couple of achievements my guild got over the past few days. It's back now, and screens from all sorts of random achievements will be dumped in my folders over the next few months.

And there you go - an update on addons that are useful for raiding dps DKs in late Lich King 4.0! (and a few that don't matter, but make life in Wow easier/better). Enjoy!

Unholy 4.0 first raid impressions

2010-11-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I've had a chance to do more than just hit a dummy on PTR finally and while I'm a few weeks late, I'll start by posting on how things are going in my first raids as unholy. While I also realize that things are still going to be changing as we move towards Cataclysm and 85, it's still worth looking at how the mechanics changes are affecting us in raids now.

First of all, yes, people are seeing rather dramatic increases in dps overall. Unholy is doing well, and while the theorycraft says frost should be on par with unholy, due to bugs and some factors that affect actual raid conditions, unholy remains potentially the top dps spec.

AND, that means bupkis. DPS at 80 is unimportant. Sure, it's still fun for the next month, but it's completely meaningless. Blizzard will continue turning knobs and you should expect your dps to go up and down accordingly. What matters is what we'll be doing at 85, so I'll write less about maximizing dps (I know, quite a shock coming from Hine) and more about playstyle for now. While I AM properly gemmed/enchanted/reforged, I'm not even trying to do max dps per se for now (for example as I mentioned earlier, I've already dropped blacksmithing and have leveled mining which is a significant dps loss).

So, in no particular order, a few musings on unholy in raids at the moment.

1. Unholy aoe is still very strong. While they messed around with aoe a lot, and nerfed a lot of coefficients, unholy has several very powerful tools in it's arsenal. Death & Decay remains an extremely powerful tool, especially for large groups. Diseases are at a reasonable level right now, and while they will be tweaked from time to time, Blizzard continues to say that pets and diseases are central to the spec. So naturally, we'll be pestilencing diseases to extra mobs for the forseeable future. Blood boil also is very effective aoe with larger groups, particularly when combined with the pestilence and blood boil glyphs. Even with smaller groups (2-3 larger mobs) unholy can be effective with a Dark Transformed ghoul cleaving like a mini Fury warrior.

2. Unholy pets are insanely good. I have a feeling they're 'too good,' which eventually will result in nerfs. I hope for unholy's sake that Blizz can find a happy medium. The ghoul alone will account for well over 20% of your damage as unholy, while gargoyle and army chip in extra dps as well. I'm very very fond of how the ghoul synergizes with the unholy spec now. Not only is the Dark Transformation (DT) such a cool new toy, it's visually impressive and is very powerful combined with heroism or unholy frenzy.

Of course, the strength of pets is also a significant concern for any fights like Blood Queen Lanathel, where our pets don't get the same buffs we do, making unholy very weak for those fights. I really hope Blizz pulls their head out on this one and lets pets get the appropriate buffs for all their cool new fights.

Pet management will separate the women from the girls in Cataclysm (sure, rune/rp management will too, but pets will really differentiate the goods from the greats). You want to use your DT as often as possible, but there will be times when it will be a good idea to wait for a cleave opportunity for line it up with buffs. I had macroed it to several attacks, but am putting it on it's own keybinding for now so I can have more control over it. I've seen discussion of maximizing uptime by pooling runic power when the cooldown is up for DT, but that too has to be done with caution, because hitting Death Coil repeatedly is a dps loss due to losing Runic Empowerment uptime. Also we'll need to figure out when it's better to get gargoyle up as quickly as possible on boss fights vs getting DT going as quickly as possible (it's very difficult to try to do both). Interesting times.

3. New talent trees. To be honest, I'm not a big fan. Yes, I've read ad nauseum from Blues about how we 'didn't really have a choice' before because we always found the ideal cookie cutter spec anyway, but halving our talents still just feels like a ripoff to me, especially while leveling where each 'ding' meant new shinies to play with. Additionally, we don't have the opportunity to go as deeply into trees other than our designated specialty, which I think could potentially have added lots of good flavor to our specs. Ah well. I do like some of the new talents, just not particularly the way Blizz is giving them to us.
While I'm on talents, I've said that I LOVE Dark Transformation. I DO I DO indeed. :) It's almost as good as my favorite trinket (Deathbringer's Will for those of you who may have missed it). Additionally, I like how the talents interact with each other and allow greater synergy with pets. They certainly make Scourge Strike a beast, especially when coupled with the prime glyphs. However, I still have one major major disappointment; Unholy Blight. Like so many, I miss the old UB and wish they could do something cool/fun with it like it used to be. Shoot, I'd be happy with almost anything, just not the terribly weak, boring, passive and generally almost useless tiny dot it has been for the past year.

4. Single target dps: AKA, the epeen-measuring yardstick by which our 'goodness' or 'badness' is demonstrated for all to see: I think we'll be ok. I've already said the numbers don't matter right now. So, while unholy DKs are posting Saurfang parses well over 20k, I don't really care about that right now. What I do see is that unholy has a manageable way of approching such fights. It will be even better when we have outbreak, but even so, it's really not too bad. We start off with Icy Touch and Plague Strike for diseases, then alternate between SS, FS, and DC. While it's fairly simple - and not that different from before - for some reason I prefer it. It used to be that we'd dump runic power at the 'end' of a rotation, but now you want to space out death coils whenever possible. I'm still getting used to it, but you'll see how wonderful it can be to keep those rune refreshes going at a hugely accelerated rate. I do very much like that they changed the rune requirements for SS to be a single unholy rune, and FS to be blood/frost. It very much simplifies them so that we can line them up well. The nuances will come in time (fun stuff like how to use blood tap and all that jazz), but for now the basics are in place and working well.

This obviously is not a 'how to' for unholy dps - elitist jerks already has well-written guides on that - but an over all 'feel' for where unholy is. And overall I'm fairly pleased.

Now, if only I could name my ghoul!

It's ... Just ... About ... Time!!!

2010-11-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

I finally got a computer that works (I hope I hope), all Wow patches applied, and figured out what what plaguing the first 'dead' laptop I bought - problems with plugins and my Wolfking keyboard. More on that later.

Hine's level 80 gear/spec/gems/reforging are all in, and she's ready to roll! I have spent far too little time becoming accustomed to the changes, so tomorrow's raid should be .... interesting. :)

In any case, I'll give her a shot this week, focusing on getting Hinenuitepo up to speed. Hopefully I can start commenting on what it's looking like as we head into the final month of waiting for Cataclysm, and talk more about what to expect in the next expansion.

In addition, I'll try frost out if/when I have a chance (my second spec is blood tanking at the moment), and put in level 80 talents etc for Hinemanu (hunter) Hinetitama (shammy) and go from there.

Sorry for the long silences, hope you all are doing well, and getting excited for the Cataclysm!

4.01 Please Hold While We Redirect Your Call

2010-10-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

1) I spent about 20 minutes on hold with an opthamologist's office yesterday, trying to set up a consult (look up 'lack of pupillary response' and imagine it's you if you want to alarm yourself, yay for interwebs). Finally they come online and tell me they need to get me in right away. Concerning, but hopefully I can get a little assistance with why my vision has been getting worse.

2) I'm in week 2 of teaching some grad courses up in Seattle again. 60+ hours on top of regular work schedule... ouch. Rewarding, but very draining. Will have grading to do next week, but hopefully more time for good stuff like family, rest, and... WoW of course. :)

3) Trying to apply the patch was a joy yesterday. The download was horribly slow and when it says it's done, I get errors. So, no working patch for me yet. I'll keep trying.

4) What I have been able to see so far in theorycrafting sites and brief visits to the PTR is very encouraging. After months of silence, the past month has seen DKs get their game on. Frost still needs some work, but blood tanks are starting to look pretty solid, with some of the standard tank tools yet still maintaining their 'flavor' - the rune strike change looks like just what the Dr ordered. I'm curious as to what the Death Grip glyph might do for them... will it be spammable?

5) My long time love, Unholy, is looking better than ever. The synergy between the ghoul and DK are better, and not just an autoattack bot as it has been. I really love Dark Transformation! I'm a little concerned that it makes up so much of our damage, since it's vulnerable to the dangers of OP pets like BM has been at times for hunters, and at others it doesn't scale well, like the current Blood Queen Lanathiel fight. Still, the rune use, ability to 'roll' diseases (in a different way), pet use, not having to worry about the proccy aspects of Runic Empowerment... all of it looks really good to me! I'll still give Frost looks - in part to see how it works, in part to test it for readers of this blog, but as it stands now, Unholy looks like the bee's knees to me.

Sorry for putting everyone on hold yet again, but we're getting.... so.... very..... close!!!!

Not Done Yet

2010-09-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

With the abundance of nostalgia posts floating around, you might think I’d jump in as well.

But no, not Hine!

I haven’t posted much because:

1) I’ve been very busy with RL stuff. In addition to the day job, I’ve been working at least as many hours on a ‘side’ job, leaving very little time for much else. I haven’t even raided much recently.

2) As a raiding-focused DK, there just hasn’t been much new to write about for the remainder of the Lich King expansion.

But I’m Not Done Yet!

I may not write a whole lot until just before or even just after Cataclysm release, but I certainly plan to return to my ‘typical’ blogging ways when we have more to write about. I never got a beta invite, so I don’t have much pre-Cataclysm stuff to discuss, and even though I’m on PTR now, I’m still waiting for the dust to settle on the class before posting much.

So, what’s happening in the Hine camp now?

-Zombie Raiding. My guild, like most, is mostly going through the motions. When I’m able to make raids, we quickly bolt through Icecrown Heroic, kill Lich King on normal, do the weekly raid, VOA, and maybe a side raid or two. 2-3 nights later, there isn’t much going on. The raids are a jumble of joking, lack of focus, and general malaise. Many of my guildies are sleepwalking through the raids, and who can blame them. It’s time for something new and different, and the motivation to push Hard Mode Halion or LK just isn’t there. So, we’ll do what we can, raid, maybe do a little 10-man raids, and wait for Cata.

-Preparing Hine for the Change. No, not that change – she’s undead for goodness sake! I don’t think offspring were ever in her future anyway, but no, no worries about hot flashes for her!

I’m hoping to take a week off the week of release to try to level as quickly as possible. A server first Death Knight/Draeni would be lovely, but just the fun of immersing myself in the new content for a week will be worth it (as it was for LK release; I was the Alliance first DK, but one Hordie beat me to 80. Still, it was an amazing experience).

I’ll have a nice surplus of buff foods/flasks etc to max my leveling experience, and yes, I plan to level fully buffed as much as possible.

I’ve already dropped Blacksmithing (keeping JC) and leveled mining to 450. I’ll mine as I level and as much as possible the first couple weeks of the expansion. First priority will be to obtain enough materials to powerlevel my JC and BS professions to the new max level as quickly as possible, and secondly to make some extra gold for the expansion. I already have the materials set aside to level BS back to 450, so I’ll just need the new Cataclysm mats.

I’ll spend enough time on the PTR to be familiar with the new rotations and talents so that it won’t slow me down as I level in the ‘new’ ‘old’ Azeroth. Since I already have a 310% mount, all I’ll need to purchase will be the relatively inexpensive flying skill for Azeroth and I’ll be off! I’m already almost as ready as I can be, but I’ll do everything I can to be prepared.

Other than that, in my remaining time available, I’m just playing around. I’m very slowly leveling a mage, Hinetapeka, and my warlock (75) gets an occasional turn through a daily dungeon before going back in the garage.

I can’t wait for Cataclysm!

I Went to Icecrown and all I got was this Lousy Screenshot

2010-09-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Icecrown is where it's at. Not Dragonblight, which has these little diversionary 'raids,' requiring us to run around a big room and learn one real boss fight. Certainly not that glowing spiraly purpley tower on the edge of the Borean Tundra.

Icecrown is where the Frozen Throne is. The Big Bad Lich King. Frostmourne. Nemesis of all, but particularly so for Death Knights who have experienced the half-life of being in his thrall. So, in the waning days of the second World of Warcraft expansion, it's still where raiders find themselves come time to join with their band of 25 or so plucky adventurers, finding what challenges they may, and overcoming them!

In my case, we've been doing the Glory of the Icecrown Raider achievements, and while a few of them were tricky (the tank swaps of Sindragosa's Buffet in particular), last night we found ourselves with only the Neck Deep in Vile achievement separating us from our mounts of skeletal swiftness. On two previous nights, we'd successfully gotten LK down to 1% before his explosion when a Vile Spirit hit someone. Unfortunately it was too late to keep from killing LK and we failed the achievement. Both times it was too late to wipe and the Lich King died without giving us our due. We were determined not to fail this time, and carefully modifying our kite path to ensure no wayward defiles were dropped in the middle, we managed to defeat him without encountering any Vile Spirits, although we still had to check our logs after the explosion to make sure.

Riding the exhilaration of the moment - and our shiny new mounts - we decided to see if we could accomplish an achievement sweepstakes for the week. We'd only just the previous week killed Anub'Arak in TOGC as a guild for the first time. I know, I know - that is SOOO 2009, but Insomnia had been working on the fight late last year, only to drop it when ICC opened. Now, in better gear the fight is certainly easier, but with better gear also comes more health, which means more healing for Anub in P3. We actually wiped quite a few times in getting that first kill.

We'd already cleared the first 4 bosses in TOGC without the careless mistakes that results in wipes on old content. 50 attempts remaining on Anub. Soulstones were placed on our misdirecting hunters who are so fond of attracting shadowstrikes. And we did what we so rarely have done; focused on our first pull, defeating the Beetle on our first try!

A few people had mentioned that they thought this hadn't been done by the other guilds on the server, and confirmation arrived in the announcement realm-wide of a realm first achievement! :) Many reading this will scoff, for it is an old achievement, but still one that is undone on the majority of realms. Trade was an interesting place to be afterward, with the mix of "you stupid nooobs, you suck. This server sux. Ally sucks!" along with congratulations from other raiders on the server.

In any case, my screenshot addon was apparently on the fritz, so all I have for you is this haphazard snapshot of the last few achievements, with my drake peeking from behind the window. Sorry.

I went to Icecrown, and all I got was this Lousy Screenshot.

Still, it was a fun night that reminded us of why we do this thing called Wow.

Have a great weekend!

Halion: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-08-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I had one of these posts, and yes, I know, most of you have killed Halion quite a few times by now. This is the type of fight that the mechanics are fairly straightforward, but there are a few tricks I can mention that might be helpful for maximizing dps nonetheless.

This is likely to be my final Boss review for DPS DKs prior to Cataclysm. I don't plan to discuss the three mini-bosses preceeding Halion, as they were puggable on day 1, and although you can still get ranked on World of Logs (I've been ranked on General Z a number of times), these fights aren't true boss fights.

Halion is is a fairly simple portal-type fight, in which your dps team is split in half for much of the fight. For most groups dps is not the primary concern - especially on normal difficulty - so your priorities on this fight actually are: 1) Don't die, 2) Balance dps in both realms, and 3) Do as much dps as you can given 1) and 2).

So, here we go!

Pull/Phase One: Tank runs in from just outside the circle, often perpendicular to the raid for optimal boss positioning.
As usual, it's helpful if your tank gives a decent count before the pull so you can summon your army. As most of you know I like to summon just in time to pop haste potion just before entering combat. Then, of course, run in and start hitting the boss.
It doesn't matter whether you're unholy or frost for this fight. For the most part there are no range issues to consider, and for heroic both specs do well on adds.
So, for phase one, you should simply dps your merry heart out. Depending on when your raid does heroism/bloodlust, you might want to save your pet cooldown. My raid heroes at start of P2, so some prefer to save their gargoyle/ghoul cd. Even with heroism in P2, however, I use my gargoyle at pull, because the cd is usually up again in P3 if I use it early. Two gargoyles without heroism > 1 gargoyle with heroism. I usually pop my second haste potion during P2 heroism.
During Phase 1 you'll be standing to one side of Halion hitting him with everything you can, and the only thing to watch out for is the Mark of Combustion; obviously, if you get it run to the edge of the circle until you are cleansed, then run back in. The flame trails after Meteor strike are actually very small and you can stand almost on top of them without taking damage. If you happen to have a few empty cooldowns, pop anti magic shield, stand on a flame, and death coil or frost strike away. Just make sure to stay in melee range when doing so.

Phase Two: Take the portal and start dpsing Halion in the shadow realm, but be sure to let the tank get agro first. We pop heroism here because we want to get through the phase as quickly as possible. The main ability to watch out for is the Twilight Cutter. On normal, you can survive getting hit with it, particularly with AMS up. On heroic, you'll usually die. Obviously, keep an eye on the orbs so you know where it will come from. There are two ways to do this effectively. One is to have the tank constantly turning the boss with the orbs, and the other is to have the tank stay still between Cutters, and only move when a cutter is about to start. On heroic, to be safe we just move the boss constantly. In any case, what I like to do is move as far to Halion's front left shoulder as possible without getting cleaved, stop, and dps. We can dps on the run fairly well, but, still we are at our best standing still. I stay in that spot doing dps until Halion has turned far enough that I'm on his back left hindquarter, just before I'm in tail swipe range. Then, I strafe to his front left and start over.

Strafe - DPS - Strafe - DPS.

During cutters, I try to stay pretty much in the middle of the cutters just to be safe (on normal there is more room to continue the strafe-dps-strafe-dps strategy if you want).
Drop Soul Consumption as far to the front left as you can, so you minimize running out time while still doing some dps.

Phase Three: Actually, DKs should almost always stay in the shadow realm, since melee are much less affected by the movement than ranged. If your raid is very melee heavy, you may be asked to move back to the physical realm. But for the most part, you'll be in shadow, where you'll continue the same mechanics as P2. The only wrinkle of course is you may need to slow dps is the physical realm falls behind. No additional tricks for more dps here, I'm afraid. If you popped your gargy early, however, you should have another chance to use it in P3.

DPS for DKs should be solid on this fight. There aren't any major dps buffs, but for the most part you should be able to stay in melee range and keep hitting the boss.

New Post

2010-08-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

There has been an almighty ruckus in various forums about the lack of work on DKs in Cataclysm, just in case you haven't noticed!

I can sum the whole thing up thusly: as early Cataclysm changes were being announced, Blue posts indicated Death Knights were getting their rune system reworked, primarily to address our gcd-locked situation. Various DKs in beta have demonstrated - in theorycrafting and in live beta servers - that we're more gcd-locked than ever. In addition, the class mechanics are simply borked. As new builds have rolled out, Death Knights have seen perhaps the fewest changes and the least blue posts in official forums of any class. And Death Knights have gotten very very little in the way of new or fun stuff, compared to most other classes.

Let the QQ begin!!! In fact, one of the very few Ghostcrawler posts addressing Death Knights has been merely to chastise us for QQing, and to tell us to settle down. Thanks for that.

My position throughout has always been; wait and see. Blizzard has always done a good job in the end with class development, and it's inevitable that some classes have to wait while others get worked on first. Is it annoying that we haven't heard much from the devs on our class? Absolutely. Is is poor PR from a company that should know better, to not at least tell us that we'll get fixed? Definitely. It leaves openings for people to insert all kinds of 'the sky is falling' proclamations as is public forums grand tradition to do. And certainly, if Blizzard does indeed think DKs are 'fine' as they are, then I like many others have a variaty of alts waiting in the wings ready to go. I could always level one of those first while waiting for Blizz to realize they need to fix us. I'm still not that worried, though. I have a very hard time believing Blizz thinks DKs are fine, with all the evidence to the contrary.

So, we'll have our day in the sun.

Our pasty white undead flesh could use a little, eventually.

On a side note, my guild's recent achievement-hunting has resulted in very little work on the last remaining hard modes (LK & Halion), but we'll get there eventually. We had a <1% fail on neck deep in vile achievement, the last achieve we need for our 25 man drakes, so I'm sure we'll do that again next week and hopefully soon get back to heroic modes. Halion in particular isn't a terribly tough heroic fight, and Halion has several of the last remaining bis items I need, outside of tokens.

Have a good weekend!

Milestones n fun n stuff

2010-08-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

A few of my guildies have been bored recently, so they've been knocking out fishing achievements. One of them unsuccessfully tried about 3000 casts to get the Dark Herring (mine took about 200 casts), but he did get the turtle and also got the Ironforge fish in about 30 casts. I have yet to get the Ogrimmar fish after 3000+ casts, and I've sorta given up. I also lack the fishing derby achievement for the meta, but I'm never online for the contests, so not sure if I'll ever get that one.

In any case, a few other 'milestones' for my Warcraft toons have kept things fun.

I had a 20k fight on my DK, which admittedly isn't that hard on Blood Queen Lanathiel 10 man heroic. It's just that I've never been the first bite in 10 or 25 man before. At the time, recount suggested what would have been a top 50 parse on WOL, but we didn't have anyone parsing combat logs. Still, it was fun so I thought I'd satisfy the 'screenshot or it didn't happen' crowd. ;)

Despite my limited Wow schedule, I've spent a little time here and there leveling two of my alts, my hunter and my warlock. One of my goals is to have them 'Cataclysm ready' by release date, so I've occasionally logged onto them to nudge them in that direction. It seems the best way in general to level quickly is to quest, but if you have limited time, just doing the random 5-man dungeon is very effective, since the mobs give double xp and they usually go very quickly to the 33k dungeon completion xp bonus, along with the emblem. At any rate, I've been working a little extra on my hunter this week to get her to 80, and she's got 1 1/2 bubbles to go! The 'class I'd never play' has made the long journey to 80! Tea party at 7. Next up, gnome warlock does Northrend (he's 75 at the moment). That will make my DKs, shaman, rogue, hunter, and warlock sitting at 80 for now....

Last but certainly not least, my unscheduled raid has managed to run for 1-2 hours each of the past two weeks, accomplishing an achievement or two towards the meta-achievement.... Drakes here I come! Hopefully before Cataclysm anyway. ;) I have a few achievements left, but when I have the drakes, I'll try to remember the screenshot of that too :) Some guildies finally got Bane of the Fallen King this week, but unfortunately I don't spend enough time on 10-mans to try for that, so we'll see what happens in 25-man attempts. It was fun doing some hardmodes in Ulduar with my guild last night, but naturally somewhat anticlimactic. Still, in my first visit to observe Algalon, he did offer us a friendly chat before we punched his phase ticket to nowhere.

Hope you're still enjoying your Wow time, or if not, your hiatus until Cataclysm arrives!

The 'Little Things'

2010-08-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

Given that this expansion is winding down, I suppose the paucity of posts on my favorite topic, DK dps, is no surprise.
The mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses of the class are well known.
DKs aren't going to see any changes prior to Cataclysm.

So, I'll probably write here and there about my DK, but otherwise, my blog will remain.... just a blog. :)
Well, unless I get into beta and then I'll have something to write about again.

In any case, I still have folks dropping in on my server to ask about their DK and how to improve their play, so I thought I'd write a short reply here.

As usual, I'll point to Elitist Jerks (see my links) for a plethora of information on Death Knights. Whether you're a frost or unholy DK, EJ is a one stop shop on how to play. Of course, there's Tankspot which has some decent forums and threads as well. In any case, I don't try to reinvent the wheel when they do it so much better than I ever could.

The interesting thing is, the last several people stopping by Baelgun to say hello looking for help have pretty much known all their basics. They know gearing choices, rotations (priorities!), and so on. And yet, they're looking to improve even more.

Good for you guys!

What to say, though?

I don't really have a lot to add for the experienced DK, but I'll make just a couple of comments.
1) Do the 'Little Things' that maximize dps.
Example: on a fight like Saurfang, summon your army ~8 seconds before the start of the fight. This allows your runes to refresh just as the fight starts. Haste pot 1-2 seconds before the fight starts. Then you can haste potion again when your gargoyle is off cooldown. Don't be lazy. Don't worry about cost. Do every little thing possible to get every last little bit of dps out of your toon. It all adds up.

Sometimes, you have to sacrifice dps to ensure you successfully complete a fight. Sometimes you can go nuts. This week, just like last week, we found our raid still not full, so we cleared VOA again. As I mentioned, this time I decided to try to maximize dps and 'cheese' the Emalon encounter. Despite missing several of our best dps (which shortens the fight and increases personal dps ratings), we beat Emalon shortly after the first big add. I didn't switch to the add. I DnD'd. Even though I'm sure I could have done better, I finished with a #6 rated parse on World of Logs. Who cares, you ask? It's just Emalon - old news. And yes, it is old news! I just wanted to have fun and see what I could do. Two messages here. Do every thing possible to maximize dps, but also stay within the parameters of raid success. My raid didn't need me to switch to adds, so I didn't - but other times, personal dps loss is secondary to raid success, and you know which comes first!

2) Think at least 1-2 rotations ahead. The thing about PVE as opposed to PVP is that encounters are scripted and well known. Most likely you already know a lot about the fight before you ever attempt it. Once you see it the first or second time in person, you know what it's all about. It's not changing. You need to take each fight, and think ahead. Putricide phase change coming soon? Hold your gargoyle until the adds are out, so you can burst the oozes down faster. Valkyr coming soon? Drop DnD where they will be, and save a blood rune for a second so you can pestilence to them as soon as they come down (breaking the normal rule of spread diseases first, then DnD. Why? because you have free runes and DnD will last long enough, and you want all your runes free when the Valks have landed). Think about each move and anticipate. Watch your runes. Death Coil when you have a free gcd, rather than waiting to the 'end' of the rotation.

It's very difficult for me to come up with concrete suggestions to veteran players that already know the class well. Still, what separates the top players from the many good players out there?

Doing the little things, and thinking thinking thinking.

Good luck out there, guys!

Cataclysm Release Date: Take #3009

2010-08-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

I stopped by my local GameStop to get my pre-order in (I'm slow, I know) for Cataclysm and asked what information they had on the release date. They said 'November,' but of course we all know that that may mean something, or nothing.

Ever since Blizzcon last year there has been speculation, and literally dozens, if not hundreds of release date threads on official forums.

"Logic" or "evidence" has been mulled over non-stop, and optimistic predictions of a Spring 2010 release have faded into oblivion amid jeering "LolFails."

Primary arguments have been:
1) looking at the announcement, beta, and release cycles of the game and its two previous expansions. This examination suggests an approximately Oct-November 2010 release.
2) The announcement at Blizzcon last year that said people would be whining about goblins and worgens by the next Blizzcon. This suggested a release date by the end of the summer

In any case, with closed beta well under way, we can say with some confidence that it's unlikely the end of summer scenario is accurate, which leaves us with Q4 predictions, and hopes that nothing occurs to slide the expansion into next year.

I need to plan my time off work, after all.

My guess is 18 November.
It could be 11 November.

Sooner - while surprising, would be ok with me. As long as they can get Death Knights properly put back together after they've ripped the stuffing out of the class.

And I sure hope it's not later. I want my Cata!

What's your take at this point?

But, the Meters!

2010-07-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

If you want to get silly and see what currently-geared raiders can do if they don't worry about fight mechanics at all, try running your 277-geared raid through some old content.

We started the night 3 short of a full group, and with Lich King and Halion left, we were left to call the raid early, or do alternate stuff. We did the weekly raid (Patchwerk) and silly melee pulled some hatefuls and died. Still, with live streaming of our parses, several of us were in the top100 on that fight.

Raid still not full. We went to do Toravon, and a good number of us cracked the top50 for our respective classes.

Raid still not full. What the heck, let's clear VOA. So, we hit Archavon, then Koralon, then Emalon. By the time we got to Emalon, we were simply having fun. We grouped the adds on the boss and I saw cleaves, fan of knives, and volleys going off. I kept myself to 'merely' pestilence, and yet the boss died before I could say 'boo.'

After the carnage and boss body parts settled to the ground, we examined the meters.
It was a good laugh on an off night.
We had three raiders finish as the top dps in the world on WOL for their class on the Emalon fight, with Massakur the furious warrior #1 for any class by over 7,000 dps (he was over 31k for the fight). I was merely around 23rd for unholy DKs. Laughing, I said I'd have to Death & Decay and we should come back next week for the fun of it and flask.
On the night, I was ranked in the top 50 for 4 of the fights, and pretty much every raider cracked the top 200 for their spec, worldwide.

Want to have some fun? Convince your raid lead to take you through some old content and run a log. :)

Fortunately, our raid did fill and we did one of the Lich King achievements. (Hopefully a drake awaits in the near future).

Have a good weekend!

Forming a raid Redux (x2)

2010-07-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Remember how I stopped leading a regular ICC10 because I couldn't commit to a regular schedule, and because a consistent group had never shown up?

Well, looky here!

1) In which I was once again a reluctant RL - but got lucky

So, on Saturday I found myself at home (as opposed to out of town), not busy and able to log on. I decided to hop on my shammy and maybe do a VOA or something low key. Moments after logging on, a couple of guildies whispered me asking if I was going to do anything or form a group. I replied, "I really don't want to lead anything, so I think I'll just mess around a bit." I heeded the Dalaran call for a healer for VOA 25, and while preparing to kill Toravan more guildies /whispered me that one of the newer mages in the guild was putting together a group for ICC10. They said, "it looks pretty good." I said I'd be willing to heal it after Toravon, and joined a full group as soon as Mr T was dead.

Group composition:
Heals: shammy healer (myself/alt), holy pally (pug), holy priest (pug)
Tanks: bear (guild raider/offspec), protadin (pug)
DPS: rogue (guild nonraider/alt), rettie (pug), mage (raider/main spec), warlock (pug), spriest (pug)

Well, I've seen this before. One main raider, the rest alt/offspecs/pugs, and it usually doesn't end well... still, I'm here on my resto shammy, just gonna have fun.

Zoning, in, getting asked for vent info. I hit my macro button, and see who hops on vent. Eventually, the mage who formed the raid gets in vent, but no one can hear him.... uh oh. He rages in /raid about his new $50 mike, and silence ensues.... who's gonna RL now?

*eyes swivel to Hine*

Oh.
Oh no. I said I didn't wanna *cry*
*cringe*
Oh, okay. *sigh*

So, we clear trash uneventfully, and after brief discussion decide to just do normal mode ICC10 given the pug nature of the group, fortunately inspection reveals that at least everyone is reasonably well geared.

Surprisingly, Marrowgar is one-shot, nobody dies, everyone seems to know their role, and even the dps all seem competent! (all over 7k dps for the fight). Hmmm, might not be so bad after all!

Lady Deathwhisper was smoooth, even when half the group hadn't heard of the initial strategy of starting on the stage behind LDW.

Gunship? We toyed with doing On a Boat before cooler heads prevailed and we toyed with the Lootship normally.

A couple of hours later, we sat in front of Sindragosa, having one-shot every boss. Wow, everyone was commenting on how this pug was better than most guild runs. But, I thought, Sindragosa is where pugs come to die. Especially when the tank admitted he hadn't completed the fight. Taking a deep breath, I explained the fight to those who hadn't done it before. Then, we killed the mini-drakes and pulled Sindra...... and one-shot her too!
I think most of us had trouble scooping our jaws off the floor for 5 minutes afterward, even as we ported to the room of the infamous Lich King.
Now, here is where the happy story ends, but make no mistake. It IS a happy story. Just because we came back the next night - replacing only the warlock - and wiped on LK for the duration, it felt good to clear 11/12 ICC in a pug, and even have the confidence that this group can kill LK next time around.
I clearly had very little to do with it. The group somehow had a full complement of competent and decently geared pugs, and everyone quickly adopted their assigned roles even if they hadn't done it before. I can claim very little credit. Maybe the mage has some raid-forming mojo. I don't know, but in any case it was fun. We'll see what happens next week.

2. In Which I get Lucky Again.

Over the past week there had been several threads in guild forums by newer members looking for a regular ICC10 group. Unfortunately I still find myself unable to commit to any raid times outside of what is already scheduled. And then I had an idea. We're still raiding 4 nights a week, and it's an unusual week where we don't call a raid or two early, or even have Monday off when we're done with all current content. So, why not plan to run a 10-man ONLY when raid is called early? What a concept! In forums, several had trouble with how this might work. I clarified that mains and alts are acceptable, as long as the alt is well-geared. These raids would not be about getting gear. They would be about getting the achievements required for the mount. Enthusiasm was surprisingly relatively high.

Monday, the only thing left was TOGC and that lasted about an hour. So, announcing in vent I would be doing the 'standby' 10-man (I'll have to come up with a good name for it - but this won't be the Tard Ten reincarnated), I quickly had more people than I could take along, competent raiders all. In fact, the co-GMs, an officer, and several of the more-skilled raiders brought toons. Thus, it was with confidence that we entered ICC10, and proceeded to fairly quickly and efficiently kill most of the first two wings on heroic, while doing several achievements. Not bad for 'filling in' a raid during regular raid time!

3. Maybe, just maybe.....

This might work. One can only hope.... :)

DPS Scaling in ICC: Another Angle

2010-07-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

Curiosity struck again as I was wandering around in World of Logs, so I thought I'd do another post on dps scaling. My previous posts on the subject can be found here, here, and here.

One of the comments (among many good ones) was that looking at only the top 10 of a class didn't get at what was the 'typical' dps in a raid situation. To which I replied: I don't care about 'typical' dps, I'm interested in what can be accomplished under ideal conditions. I'm still not interested in 'typical' dps. I want to know what is the best dps each spec can do and how each class/spec has fared in regards to max potential as we gear up in Icecrown Citadel.

Another angle at the top end of dps performance is to look not at the average dps of the top 10 of each class, but to simply look at the top 100 dps overall, and see what the class composition for each boss fight in ICC is. If 50 of the top 100 dps on a particular fight are, say, arcane mages, then that suggests a couple things: 1) arcane mages do good dps on that boss (relative to other specs), and 2) that particular fight is very arcane mage friendly. If arcane mages are very well-represented in the top 100 for all the bossfights, that suggests that mages do very well overall compared to other specs, and that they have scaled well in current content.
My numbers aren't perfect, because there were a few scattered arms warriors that hit the top 100 here and there, and a couple of survival hunters or destruction warlocks on a fight or two. There were maybe a total of 7-8 of these specs combined, so when one of them was in the top 100, I just moved to the next dps below them to include in the chart.
Something else I glossed over last time was the sample size. In general, this 'sample' is fairly small - only 100 players for each boss, for a total of 1100 players on each difficulty. However, the number of potential players ranked - that is, how many rogues/shaman/druids/etc are parsed on WOL - is in the tens of thousands. There are typically 125 pages (40 each page) of ranked players for each bossfight. So, while my sample is not representative of what each spec 'typically' does, I think it's fairly safe to say my sample is representative of the 'best' each spec has to offer.

The number crunching for this post was, thankfully, far easier than for the last one. All I did was count how many of each dps spec was in the top 100 dps for each bossfight. The results are below:

As one would expect from this slightly different take on the same question, most of the same basic conclusions of my previous scaling examination remain the same. Still, take a look and see what your thoughts might be with this variation on the theme.

Looking at the 25 man normal difficulty, a few things jump out at me.

First, of course, is that fire and fury are just as dominant as the previous post suggested. 43% of the top 100 dps over all of the ICC bossfights was one of these two specs.
Combat rogues, in third place, didn't even make up 10% of top dps, and it went downhill from there.
Two specs, 43% of the top dps. The other 14 'viable' dps specs? 57%. Ouch.

And that's only on normal difficulty. Let's take a look at the heroic chart, where scaling really starts to take hold.
1) Fury is back on top by an incredible 2-to-1 margin over its nearest competitor.
2) Fury and fire now account for almost 67% of top dps for all of Icecrown, leaving a mere 33% for the remaining 14 specs. Um, something is not balanced in the State of Denmark.
3) On heroic Marrowgar, a whopping 79 fury warriors were in the top 100 dps. 11 specs didn't have a single player ranked. That means that the 79th-best warrior did more dps than the best hunter, warlock, DK, shammy, priest, .... well, you get the picture.
4) Overall, fury has more players in the top 100 than all 14 non-fire specs, combined!
5) Interestingly, it appears that unholy DKs and shadow priests did fairly well - as opposed to their showing on the previous examination. It's clear, though, that this is entirely due to the fact that both specs have 'specialty fights' - fights where they seem uniquely suited to a good performance (spriests on Valithria, DKs on Sindragosa and LK). Take away their specialty fights, and they combine for about 3% of top scores.
6) Six specs couldn't even manage an average of one score in the top 100, and poor enhancement shammies didn't have a single top-100 score in all of ICC.

EW. Dead horse. Beaten.
I'll continue to do the best I can in my role as a dpser, and focus on competing with my spec peers, rather than bashing my head against the wall of superior warrior scaling.
That's all the have nots - everyone but fury and fire, really - can do.
And keep our fingers crossed for Cataclysm.

Good News! The Guild Talents are Flowing Again!

2010-07-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

I had been concerned that Blizzard was rushing to get the next expansion out the door and was struggling to make things work (still am).

Many things promised have either been dropped completely or changed/cut back dramatically.

I had thought that the guild talents was going to end up in the trash heap as well, but it looks like Blizzard will be implementing it after all! MMO-Champion among others has presented us with the list.

And they suuuure to look purty!

The talents listed provide plenty of 'spice' to look forward to as an incentive to participating in guilds. They will be very very useful without providing any actual assistance in killing raid bosses. Just the right balance. Extra experience, increased mount speed, raidwide summons, all sorts of wonderful goodies! :)

Blizzard has said one of their main intentions is to encouraged players to show more loyalty to guilds and it certainly seems to fit the bill - players will want to have these 'buffs,' but won't be crippled without them. And losing them will make players think twice about casually gquitting, but if they really need to make a change can still do so.

Of course the question on our minds now is what actions will be required to level guild talents, and how long it will take to progress. I'll be waiting eagerly to find out!

Best in Slot: Final Answer (ICC)

2010-07-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, for the current level of content I've concluded that Unholy 2H is the best spec for dps DKs unless your raid doesn't have the haste buff.

As is the case with every tier, one looks at the 'new' stuff that's available and slobbers over the nice, bright shinies and hopes to accumulate as much of it as possible. Why? It's fun of course, and more importantly puzzing together the jigsaw puzzle of gear helps us do our job that much better.

At any rate, with things pretty well-settled in terms of stat valuation, I've settled on my 'ideal' gearset that I'm hoping to end up with now that I've obtained Shadowmourne.

For those not accustomed to the practice, I've assigned a value for each stat in terms of how much attack power it's worth (AEP) and then calculated the total value of each item. These values are based on simulators such as Kahorie's or Mr Robot. As you can see, in best in slot gear, haste is very good, second only to strength. With the Icewalker enchant on my boots, I can cap my hit (as a Draenei). For gem slots, I assigned a flat 60 AEP based on gemming for strength.

Strangely enough, the thing that immediately jumps out at me from this list is that it completely lacks expertise. Now, I'm usually a big advocate of capping stats like hit and expertise, but before you go getting all upset, here's the thinking. First, all the simulators I've used are currently rating expertise as a very poor stat, on par only with agility. I think this is mostly due to the fact that haste is so good. Haste scales extremely well, while expertise.... doesn't. Thus, if you can get enough haste on your gear or with gemming (around 250-300 rating seemst to be the break point), expertise becomes irrelevant. With enough haste, those dodges won't cripple your rotation. That is, as long as hit remains capped. Sims actually rate hit much higher prior to the hit cap, but I put in a semi-random number just to ensure I am capped when all is said and done. If you DON'T have a lot of haste, then you should try to keep expertise up a bit.

As you might have guessed, any time new content is released, I add to this spreadsheet to help me prioritize gear selections. In any case, for those of you who are interested, here's the BIS list I came up with. Arguments can be made for the gloves over the legs for non-set piece, but I think the legs' greater haste wins out. You'll also notice I find Halion's leather bracers to be the best, although the plate ones are quite nice, too, but the itemization is better with the leather piece.

Good luck to all in gearing up your Death Knights!

Template change

2010-07-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

They say black is a terrible background for a blog.

I suppose even Death Knights can't be Goth all the time.

So, let me know if you like the new theme, or the old one!

Oranje!!!!! (Orange)

2010-07-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Netherlands football team which came so close to a World Cup title (and congratulations to a well-deserving Spain), I finally have some ORANGE of my own!

As I wrote about last year (and here), I've always been late to the party or in the wrong place at the wrong time for a legendary. I didn't play Wow until a few weeks before the first expansion, so the vanilla legendaries weren't an option. I started raiding just a little too late (and bounced around a few guilds) into the raiding cycle for Burning Crusade so my at the time main rogue was on the outside looking in. I gave up my head-of-the class position in my last guild in search of a more successful raiding experience, and thought I'd lost the opportunity to get Frostmourne before the next expansion when I joined Insomnia. However, I plunged ahead and got my Shadow's Edge, did the quests, and due to some turnover and lack of competition, after Masskur got his weapon, I was able to start building mine!

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

And there was much rejoicing!

Hine nearly cried tears of joy at being entrusted to carry the legendary weapon into battle on behalf of the Alliance and all the free peoples of Azeroth!!!

Now, we'll get to see how this DK can do with this baby. I'm grateful and happy to have a chance to use the legendary while we still have a few 'progression bosses' left (heroic Sindra, Halion, Lich King). It's unfortunate that one has to have this weapon to be competitive on the world meters, but I look forward to seeing if I can earn my place there now that I have the gear to give it a go. :)

Oh, screenshot plz you say? Ok, done. Apologies that it's not all that great. I'll try to get a few more and see if I can improve on it. But at least you can see Massakur and Hine standing joyfully in a mostly sleepy Dalaran last night.

So there you have it - Oranje!!!

Still Undead and Kicking

2010-07-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys for the long absence!

The job required a trip to Alaska where the access was not conducive to blogging, and the family peace and happiness required a camping trip where the access was.... not. :)

Hine is still Undead and Kicking though, back to raiding and closer than ever to Shadowmourne (good chance of getting it this week). More Wow and DK-related stuff to come this week - I've had about 5-6 articles all bouncing around in my head for a bit, we'll see which one(s) spill out.

In any case: Anchorage was a good experience and I'll leave you with a few impressions from my RL 'raid' there:
1) Moose's Tooth is one of the best pizza and microbrew places on the planet.
2) The glaciers ARE worth seeing in person.
3) Don't get lost anywhere outside of town.
4) You can get liquor delivered via 'bush plane' to just about anywhere.

And from my camping trip to the shores of Lake Roosevelt (Columbia River above the Grand Coulee Dam):
1) Having a HUGE camp area for the family and friends is priceless (including our own little cove for our watercraft).
2) wake surfing isn't hard, but it is a rush!
3) DO tell your noob-to-camping children to pee outside the tent.
4) DON'T bring 4x the amount of food you need for a one week trip. Although the squirrels and ants will be happy if you do.

A good week!

2010-06-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

What a boring post title!

Who wants to read this stuff? :P

Unfortunately, the only other topics I could come up with for this one were either just as boring, or didn't make any sense.

In any case, despite my reluctant farewell to my 10-man group, the past week of Wow and RL were very enjoyable.

I made a looong road trip to Santa Barbara, which remains one of the most beautiful places in the US, and my top choice for 'Where I'd Love to Live... if I Could.' The spouse had never been to SB before and goals #1 and #2 were both met: we both agreed In N Out is by far the best fast food on the planet, and #2 SB is pretty much Paradise on Earth. Oh, and the wedding we attended was beautiful.

As far as raiding goes, I made it back in time to jump into the final night before reset with 9/12 ICC25. We'd been working for heroic Putricide for a few weeks, and were struggling to survive goos and transitions. Monday, we reviewed the strategy, buffed, and one-shot Putri for our first kill! Whey did he die 'so easily' after lots of wipes on previous nights? Everybody was focused and knew our role. Whether that happens on attempt #1 or attempt #20, progression kills have little margin for error and require everyone to be on the ball - which we were on our first attempt on Monday. Of course, we apparently spent all our focus points for the night on that attempt, because the rest of the night people apparently completely lacked the ability to place ice tombs and avoid bombs during heroic Sindragosa's air phase. Oh well! ;)

Several folks have stopped by on level 1 (or 55 DK) alts to say hello and/or to ask questions, and I wanted to say /hello and /wave to you! I'm more than happy to chat with anyone regarding DKs or other topics. If you do happen to roll a toon on Baelgun to talk to me, I'm flattered and happy to talk. If I'm in a raid however and don't respond much, please don't be offended. I tend to get pretty focused in raids.

Last autobiographical update for today: I hit the halfway mark on Shadowfrost shards, so in 3-4 weeks I'll hopefully have that shiny new orange!

I'll be back in Alaska for the next couple weeks, so if my internet connection is solid, I'll still be able to raid - and blog, so fingers crossed!

Deforming

2010-06-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

... or, Adjorning as Defined in this post I made in April.

Yes, my 'Tard Ten' as I affectionately called it, will no longer have Hine to blame for it's failures.
Unfortunately, the ICC10 I attempted to shepherd on Sat/Sun never really made it past the 'forming' stage, even after months of blood, sweat and tears.
Trying to put together a third primarily guild ICC10 in a 25-man guild is often an excercise in masochism, I've found. New guildies often got absorbed into the more established runs as people left those groups, and the third group only had 4-5 players consistently attending. I never had the same group two nights in a row, and typically pugged 4-5 players. This meant no heroic modes, no additional Lich King kills, no achievements to speak of (and certainly no fancy mount) and lots and lots and lots of wearing my voice out on vent explaining fights to pugees.

I'll be honest, it was almost a relief when a survey of my summer schedule put the inevitable in the demise of the Tard Ten. I'm out of town at least one of the two nights for the next month, and start teaching classes for the university in the next city up the freeway in the fall - of the Fri/Sat/Sun seminar variety. So, if my poor fellow Tards choose to continue the good fight, I won't be there for much of it.

In any case, a few semi-fond recollections in retrospect that some of you may be all-too-familiar with:
-raids that started at best 45 minutes after posted start time due to need to pug players every night.
-5700+ gear score dps that couldn't beat out our tanks for overall damage or top 5000 dps on boss fights(how do they DO that?)
-Plate dps in spell power gear (and not just pallies)
-warlocks that stack hit to 600+ and can't seem to hit their cookie or summoning portal buttons
-lots and lots of players that don't know fights but seem incapable of listening in vent
-healing, tanking, dpsing. Then, healing, er, tanking, no, dpsing, as the raid needed role switches. Several long-suffering guildies never knew that they'd be doing each time they logged in, and logged more time on an alt in an alt spec than playing on their mains.
-gearing up total strangers every week, since most guildies didn't need any gear from ICC10.
-the satisfaction, at times, of seeing a group that's never run together pull off one-shots of semi-difficult fights like putricide, blood queen, and sindragosa.
-the occasional levity of 'night off' raiders whose inebriation or lack of focus was still somehow more amusing than annoying.
-and, of course, the hilarity that was AVR (RIP) in a 'fun run' raid.

So long and thanks for all the fish, guys.
____________________________________________________
A couple of other updates with apologies for lack of screenshots.

My hunter Hinemanu is still gradually leveling on weekends and has crossed the level 60 mark and is happily flying around Hellfire Peninsula. That outlands gear isn't too cartoonish! Oh, wait, it is. :) I'm still enjoying the 'the class I Swore Never to Play.' :P

I hit the 20 shards mark on Shadowfrost shards, so another ~4 weeks and some goodness will hopefully be in my hot little hands (barring an inability to to raid from the hotel room on the road on an upcoming trip. but even so, it won't be too long!). I did manage a few decent parses this past week despite all the top spots being taken by legendary axe wielders. I look forward to re-entering the lists once I have the proper jousting weapon again.

Tiny gold-related comment: is it just me, or has the AH become a rather dry wasteland? I'm feeling lucky these days to make 15g profit on cut gems, and if I list more than 5-6 a day, the listing is inevitably wasted. There's still gold to be made out there, it's just not that much. I suspect that unless you're very determined and very well-organized, the best gold-making strategies the gurus post won't do much for us until Cataclysm drops. That's ok I guess. There's really nothing to spend it on, anyway.

Until next time, have fun out there!
-Hine

Correction: Heroic Lich King added

2010-05-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted the top ten dps averages for each class in normal and heroic ICC-25, but somehow the numbers for the heroic Sindragosa fight got pasted onto the Lich King fight. I've now corrected the chart; see below:

Paint wasn't very cooperative, but hopefully it's clear enough.

Not much changed, as I predicted. A few classes/specs flip-flopped one spot on the chart, but rarely even as much as a 160-point dps difference that I used as my 1% criteria, so essentially the conclusions discussed yesterday remain valid. Just wanted to have the correct data up there.

-Enjoy!

DPS Scaling in ICC: The Numbers Are In

2010-05-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

And it's not pretty!
I've crunched the numbers, and my primary question - how have DPS DKs scaled in relation to other classes - has been resoundingly answered. In addition, loads of additional findings and questions have been raised by my trip into Dataland.

THE METHOD:
I took the top ten dps of each class/spec for each boss fight on normal ICC25. I obtained an average dps for each spec on each fight. You can easily examine each boss to see which fights are 'melee-friendly,' 'ranged friendly,' and which classes do well on specific fights. While certain strange events occur and can skew the data, like Dusk's crazy speed kill of Lady Deathwhisper, there is enough data here to smooth out any bumps. Regarding the above, two marksmen hunters for the LDW fight did very well - doing more than 5k better than any other hunters. This made hunters look better overall, but averaged across all 120 data points (10 hunters for each of the 12 fights), hunters still were found to be about the 5th best dps class overall.
In the end, I hand-entered 4,200 points of data, giving a very good sample size from which to draw conclusions about how each class/spec is scaling as guilds continue to progress and gear up in ICC.
Remember, I chose the top ten dps because I'm interested in what the maximum dps potential is - so even if it's not realistic for every class to get power infusion, or tricks/hysteria all the time, or to have the luxury of staying on the boss the whole time, we're looking at what CAN be done under the right circumstances.

Destruction warlocks, survival hunters, and blood DKs did so poorly on examination of normal modes, that I saved myself the effort and didn't calculate their scores in heroic modes.

THE RESULTS:

EDIT:
I just noticed my Sindragosa data for heroic got pasted over the Lich King info. I'll check this and repost if anything changes. As far as DKs go, though, this will only hurt. Their best fight in ICC relatively speaking was Sindragosa.

1. DKs are in a sorry state. Unfortunately, my hunch was borne out, conclusively. On examination of Normal modes, DKs started in the middle of the pack through Festergut's tank n spank, and faded fast to the end. By the end of the 12 fights, the BEST DK spec, unholy, was beaten out by at least one spec from EVERY class except poor, poor shammies. Unholy came in as the 11th-best dps spec in the game, and frost was 14th. The by-now-abandoned blood spec came in dead last - 19th - of the specs I looked at.

By the way, I did eyeball beast mastery, arms, and subtlety, but as expected they were so poor I didn't even put in the effort to add them to the chart. (well, arms did ok on some fights, but fury is so vastly superior that it wasn't worth it).

In any case, the expansion-long public perception that Death Knight are overpwered can be conclusively rejected at this point. THEY ARE THE SECOND-WORST (OR THIRD, MAYBE) DPS CLASS IN THE GAME right now.

Heroic modes wasn't much better. All of the 'Shadowmourne classes' (Warriors, Pallies, DKs) did see some improvement in heroic modes, but DKs once again scaled the poorest, by far. In fact, they still ended up the third-worst dps class in the game, barely passing priests, despite the fact that if you don't have a Shadowmourne, you can't even get on these charts. I didn't look at every fight, but on every one I did look at (Saurfang, Festergut, Sindragosa), EVERY Warrior, Paladin, and DK on the charts had the legendary. Do you scale an entire class around the assumption that they have the (very rare) weapon? Even so, DKs come out smelling putrescent.

2. The rich get richer. It's been well-known from vanilla and through two expansions that warriors scale well with gear. The proof is here. Blizzard has stated their goal for all dps classes to be as close as possible - within about 1-2% of each other, with the 'pure dps classes' on top.

The 'pures' didn't do too badly with the four classes filling the 2nd through 5th spots on the class charts, with the exception of warriors. Warriors finished 2% better than the second-best class (spanning the stated goal for all classes from their nearest competitor) and more than 17% better than the poor enhancement shammies. On heroic modes, they got even richer, finishing a full 6% better than second-best, and over 25% better than enhance shammies. As a hybrid class, that's hardly in line with Blizz' goals, and hardly fair to other classes. I'm not QQing here - just presenting the information. I like warriors, but clearly their dps is out of line with 'balance' in the game.

In heroic modes, Retribution used their Shadowmournes to leapfrog several 'pure' classes to finish in the third spot. Unholy did benefit from the legendary, but just not nearly as much as the other two classes.

And as has already been stated, the dps for shammies was much worse than any other class. Obviously, Blizz' announcement that there will be other heroism classes paves the way for shaman to get a big boost - and rightfully so.

3. Other observations: (some of this I'm sure many of you knew already; I'm no expert on every class):
    -I was surprised fire mages did so much better than arcane, particularly in better gear. They were convincingly the second best spec in the game. Arcane did quite poorly in heroic modes, dropping six spots.
    -Overall, the melee vs ranged divide was well-balanced. There was a fairly consistent split between ranged and melee overall, and there are several fights in ICC which favored one or the other. Decent balance.
    -Rogues can't complain too much overall. I've seen lots of concerns with how they've scaled. Obviously, combat is doing fine, so one can't complain too much. Of course, if one is referring to mutilate, then yes, rogues have a point, but at least they have ONE spec that is doing well.
    -Balance isn't scaling well. Balance druids did fairly well in normal modes, but hardly saw any increase in dps in heroic modes, and saw their relative position on the charts drop significantly.
    -Shadow priests aren't as bad as their reputation. But, they could do better. They still ended up as the second or third worst class/spec, down there with DKs on the junk pile.
    -Demonology warlocks aren't doing too badly. Yes, affliction is the 'best' spec in most cases, but Demo is actually viable, and proved itself to be better than destro. Destruction - once the 'only' spec for raiding locks, has fallen on hard times.
    -Blizzard needs to allow pets to benefit from buffs. Fights like Blood Queen Lana'thel really hurt when your pet doesn't get any help from the buff you get.

DISCUSSION:
I'm not going to try to cover nearly everything here.
In fact, I'm only going to talk briefly about DK scaling, so for additional discussion, please leave a comment, or link this post in a forum somewhere :)
Why are DKs scaling so poorly?
1. Pets scale poorly. As a pet class, we may benefit from increased crit or other buffs, but the pets don't.
2. Knee-jerk nerfs. I've written about this previously. Early in beta and to some extent in Tier 7 content, DKs were certifiably overpowered. Since then, throughout the expansion there has been a perception that DKs are too strong, and that doing good dps is 'facerolling.' More recently, two abilities that needed adjusting - Tier 9 set bonus, and Scourge Strike - gave the impression again of being overpowered, but were nerfed to the point that the class has fallen behind. Frost DW was nerfed during Tier 8 content and still hasn't recovered even with some 3.3 buffs.
3. Other melee classes get more benefit from gear. Because DKs are a hybrid melee and spell based class, improvements in gear do less for them than the other melee classes. There are several ways to potentially fix this, from buffing talents that increase spell damage more from attack power, to adjusting the percentage of physical damage on abilities like Scourge Strike even more. Increasing the coefficient on obliterate etc is also an option.
4. In any case, Blizzard has made a commitment to continue balancing the classes. I hope they're monitoring the data that's readily available, and can give a little help to the poor classes (which right now are shaman, DK, spriest, and balance druids) and bring warriors back in line with other hybrids. I know they're focused on Cataclysm at this point, but there's lots of time to improve the raiding experience in this expansion still, and I hope they don't abandon us to our plight.

Enjoy the data, all you nerds out there! :)

DPS Scaling in Icecrown Citadel: Intro

2010-05-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

Some changes to DKs have been obvious.
The T9 four piece bonus was vastly overpowered and needed to be nerfed. Even after the changes, many DKs (including myself) had a hard time letting T9 go. Even after I had 4-piece T10, I still used T9 in aoe situations for a while. In other words, early T10 gear was underwhelming and DKs didn't get much better in it.

Other changes have been more subtle.
Over the past couple of months, my guild has progressed past normal Lich King kills deep into heroic modes. Our raiders are sporting many shiny new pieces of gear. My gear is solid; enough that not only does normal ICC10 hold nothing of interest gearwise, normal ICC25 has no upgrades, and HICC10 has only a couple of side grades. And yet, I've watched my perch on the dps charts slide from 1-2 for most full night's runs to 3-4 and it's to the point now that a 5th or 6th place finish isn't unusual. A guaranteed top-3 spot on tank and spank fights has turned into frequent forays onto page two (below 7th) on my recount.

Has my guildie's gear changed enough to cause this? No. Our gearscores have remained fairly similar for the past several months. Itemization? No, ICC is itemized quite well for DKs. Skill? Did I just start sucking, or my guildies get dramatically better? Doubtful.

So, with the slide of my spot on the charts, I've started wondering if this is consistently the case.

A while ago I briefly mentioned that a fellow DK had looked at melee and argued that mutilate rogues, fury warriors, and combat rogues were comfortably ahead on the Saurfang and Festergut fights, while kitties and ret paladins edged out unholy/blood DKs, followed by enhancement shammies and distantly by frost DKs. Skill/gear aside, shortly pre-3.3, I was happy with DKs being relatively close to other melee classes. Warriors were probably a bit high, and enhance a little low given that all but rogues are hybrids, but still in general with most raiders in 264 gear, the gap wasn't too bad. It was still possible for a good DK to keep up with most of the other classes.

Has it really changed that much since then?

So, I decided to take a look.

Information is readily available out there, and I chose World of Logs because it's the parser that my guild uses, and looking at different classes for each fight is very easy to do. Of course, not all guilds put their parses on the site, and not all guilds choose to make their parses public, but the sample is large enough to be considered fairly well-representative of the whole in my opinion.

I'll take ALL of the 'viable' dps specs this time including ranged as well as melee. I'm going to include EVERY boss fight in ICC25 (except gunship). I'm looking at BOTH normal and heroic, because the fight dynamics change from normal to heroic (just as one example, many melee classes can stay in and dps duing bone storm on normal but can't on heroic). I'll take the top 10 dps for each class/spec, and obtain an average. Would a larger number be 'better'? Perhaps. Here, I'm only interested in the upper range of what a spec 'can' do - so 10 seems sufficient.
________________
Since I wrote this part of the post, I've laboriously been crunching the numbers. So far I've looked at normal ICC25 Marrowgar through Putricide. And the results are interesting! Some, I expected, and others, I did not.

I'm going to keep crunching the numbers for now, and post them as soon as I can!
I'm afraid there's so much fodder for discussion that I'll probably have to break up my response to the data into more than one post.

For now, stand by.
More to follow!

DPS DK optimization: Heroic Mode review

2010-05-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: My guild has not yet cleared ICC-25 on heroic modes yet. We are 9/12 and thus have not attempted Lich King on heroic yet. However, I've dps'd all of the fights (with the exception of LK of course) and feel I can speak to how to optimize your play as dps DK even on Putri and Sindragosa who haven't fallen over for us yet.

I'll also just do this one post for all of them, since most of the suggestions for each fight are still valid.

Marrowgar: Actually, if you weren't doing it before, on normal mode with a full 264-geared group, you can stay in for Bone Storm, using IBF as needed. The damage isn't that bad, and healers can easily keep you up through it.
For heroic, however, I doubt you'll be able to stay in even in full 277 gear. It hits HARD. So, stay out. Mostly, stay alive. Second, dps the people in bone spikes since those continue during bone storm. Third, IF and ONLY if you have both health and no one needs to be broken out of spikes, you may Icy Touch/Death Coil Marrowgar. More importantly, know when the storm is going to end and start cheating back towards him so you can jump on him as soon as he stops.

Lady Deathwhisper: we found this a little challenging. Of course, the mind controls and adds continue throughout the fight.
In P1 we pull all the adds on top of the boss for aoe to get them down fast. You may be asked to help death grip or control adherents. I actually have an assigned adherent that I DG to the stage. Positioning can be a bit tricky with the pillars - the LOS can work both for and against you. Once I get them on stage I usually mind freeze the next cast and then drag them to the perfect spot if they weren't already. If you're on add duty, you'll be gaining aggro frequently, so make liberal use of interrupts and ams to ensure you don't die. You can aoe, but be careful to not kill your mind controlled fellows. Interesting finding: when you're on add duty, you don't seem to ever be picked for mind control. I've done dozens of LDW attempts/kills on heroic now, and never been picked once.
In P2 if you're on the boss/add duty I recommend speccing deep enough into frost for free mind freezes regardless of main spec because you DON'T want to miss and interrupt. I stay on add duty, so I continue to control adherents and keep them in the 'cleave team' for maximizing kill time. Pestilence is definitely your friend throughout the fight, but death and decay rarely is, since you don't want to kill mind-controlled fellows and there are rarely enough adds standing in one place to make use of it. As unholy, I usually leave my ghoul on the boss, but if we're falling behind on adds, I'll pull him off for a little extra oomf.
By the way, a simple /petattack macro is your friend. I don't believe I've mentioned it before, but on fights like this where you're switching targets often, it's really nice to just have a keybind to send your pet to your target.

Gunship. Really? Just kill stuff.

Saurfang: I don't do anything different on this fight. If you're unholy, be sure to pestilence the adds asap - they need to go down fast and giving your ranged more dps on the beasts really helps. If your raid leader says not to - they're wrong.

Rotface: Just be careful when running around to avoid people with vile gas. DBM is ok for some things, but AVR/AVRE really shines on this encounter, showing you the danger zone for those that are vile and also where the ooze explosion is going to land. However, dps optimization is the same as before.

Festergut: Just make sure to avoid getting goo. If you do, the haste debuff will KILL your dps. In a pinch, you can still easily survive a pungent blight without getting all three inoculations with IBF/AMS, but try to ensure you get all 3 anyway - save your healer's heart, and mana.

Putricide: A wonderfully challenging fight! If you enjoyed the fight in T9 gear, the heroic version is a nice challenge in 264 gear, too! A few differences here. I pop my army at pull but not my gargoyle. Why? Because the crucial part of the fight is the phase transitions where you get both a green and an orange ooze. You'll need your burst to get your assigned ooze/gas cloud down quickly (and yes, I know the encounter assigns it for you). Other than that, it may take some ingenuity on your part to ensure you don't die because there's damage flying around all over the place.

Blood Prince Council: Blizz laid the hate on for melee on this fight, heh. You'll get a DBM warning when you get to 6 stacks of shadow prison, but it won't be very dangerous until around 10. On last night's kill, I got to 19 and survived. AMS is your friend here. If you must run, do so under cover of your shield. If you don't have a shield, don't run. The only exception to this is empowered vortex. Even if it kills you, don't blow up a healer. Run, and die. :) But really, it's fairly easy to get the stacks to fall off when you're on a boss, and so when you switch targets you can run all the way across the room safely.
Incidentally, my fellow DK is a big advocate of run speed enchants on boots. I'm not. I'm 32 attack power all the way, but he swears by it. This fight and Marrowgar are two where I can see the point.

Blood Queen Lana'thel: Nothing really different here. Just moar dots (dps). During her air phase, it's even more important that you don't blow up squishies, and you might as well save your ams to ensure you don't die.

Valithria: same ol same ol. Seriously, on our kill last night someone commented at the end: "that was heroic?" Once your healers know how to travel as a pack in the portal, the fight goes very quickly. I don't care about dps on this fight at all, and just focus on doing things like keeping the mages from casting their frostbolt volley.

Sindragosa: There is zero room for error on tombs. Without AMS, you will be killed by the frost bombs. I initially was worried about running out after her 'death grip,' but I found AMS still adequately protects you. I still don't wear any frost resistance armor. Honestly, the fight requires clean execution from every person in the raid, but it otherwise doesn't seem to bad to me.

And then there was one. He'll have to wait for later. :)

Silly Me

2010-05-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

1. In which I Poach Myself

2. In which I fail at leveling

1. Due to a couple of my 'regulars' - two of the most dedicated and skilled players - being out of town for the weekend, I logged on Sat evening with some trepidation regarding my still-forming HICC10 group (So-called 'Tard Ten' because it normally has so many hunters and DKs). After 30 minutes, there were 4 of us in group. A mage, who often heals on his pally. A still slightly undergeared rogue alt/main of a former raiding DK in my guild, and a new trial ele shammy, and yours truly. No tank (unless you count me), no actual healers. Well, nothing really. :( The Tard Ten was a Tard Four.

I made a few half-hearted scans of LFG for potential pugs, but pugging 6 players makes me want to burn my mouse hand off, so I quickly dipped back out and resumed mammoth farming.

One of the other two 'main' guild ten-mans had a few absences (I'll call it the Officer's Club or O-Club) as well, so I got a few whispers from one of their leaders asking me if we were going to get a full group, to which I replied, 'not likely.' He asked if we'd like to help them get their group going, and I, sadly, agreed. They only needed two players. I hopped into their vent channel, and recommended they take the trial to see how she did, and to take one of the other two guys, but one had just logged, and the O-Club said they wanted to only take mains that were raiders, which left the rogue out.

So, yes, I Poached myself and joined the O-Club. I felt dirty about it, too. I abandoned my group... which of course had mostly abandoned me first for other pursuits, and raided with a main-filled group that runs HICC10 every week.

And it felt good.
In that sinful way that eating a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's feels good. Guilty, but oh so yummy.

Their group got the last of the achievements for Glory of the Icecrown Raider and the skeletal mount last week (but is just starting heroic LK), but a few of them wanted an item or two from heroic bosses, and one of their regulars had missed a week and wanted a few achievements. The group was also game for any achievements I or the trial wanted, so on Saturday we ended up doing 5 heroic fights, and 5 fights on normal for the achievements. Perhaps that shouldn't seem such a big deal for someone who has the good fortune to be 8/12 HICC25 and who kills Lich King on 25-man every week, but given my hellacious struggles with the Tard Ten, it was ... nice. I did end up tanking a number of the fights, which I don't prefer, but it gave Massakur a chance to use his Shadowmourne. On Sunday we worked on heroic Sindragosa, which is still a challenging fight, and then we killed Lich King. I tanked it for the first time, and when soul reaper did our main tank in, managed to survive until the magic 10% win (good job healers on relatively squishy Hine).

I did feel badly about abandoning my group for the weekend, but given that it wasn't much of a group, what can one do? I do plan to still try to put the group together for at least a few more weeks to see if we can get it to work, but at some point I may have to call it a spade and either give myself some more time off on the weekends, or try to join one of the more successful groups. We'll see.

2. I spent a little time with the hunter this weekend. As usual, leveling with a hunter was as easy as spreading whipped cream cheese on a toasted bagel (harder than a knife through hot butter, but easier than spreading those cold butter patties on soft bread). Really, it was fairly fun and mindless play. After killing a couple of those level 60 elite giants in Winterspring (at level 54), I made a trip to Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula to train Master Enchanting. Feeling cocky with my trusty wolf at my side, I grabbed a couple level 60-61 Hellboars and killed/kited them to the guards. I thought, well, that was easy. Maybe I'll come back here a little early.

So I leveled some more, and when I hit 56 I decided to make my home in the Outlands.

Off I go, setting my hearth in Honor Hold.
Now, to level.
Quick, let's kill some Hellboars.
They went down fairly easily and painlessly, if a bit slowly due to the level difference. My dps dropped precipitously. But still, no problem.
Now what?
OH, YOU MEAN I CAN'T DO ANY QUESTS HERE? What are all those greyed-out quests I see?
:(
Bleh, slow grinding for two levels before I can quest.

Ah, well, back to WPL/EPL for two levels. Then I guess me and my silly, bruised ego can go back to Outland properly ready to kick mob fanny. And quest. :P

What now, Until Cataclysm Cometh?

2010-05-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

The lull before an expansion is the time many guilds fall apart.
The additional hurdle of the summer blues looms as well.
What then shall this Death Goddess be doing between now and Cat?

1. My lovely ladies
'Hine' is a term meaning 'woman' in several polynesian (Pacific) cultures.
Their pantheon of goddesses often but not always starts with the prefix Hine-
In searching for an appropriate name for my nascent DK, I had a long list of death and/or night gods/goddesses, and my final 10 had only two females. However, with the very important Choosing Talent, my spouse favored Hinenuitepo, and my Death Knight was born! Hence all of my toons 'born' in the LK era have been female deities, and a fun naming system it has been!

Hinemanu has been my very-slowly leveled Hunter, and she's now reached 50! Eww, female dorfs.... :)
She may or may not see 80 prior to Cataclysm, and that's fine with me. I'm enjoying the extremely casual leveling I do on her, and playing (as I've said before) the one class I said I'd never play. I've still done very little research or theorycrafting on How to Play Huntards, but I find I do just fine, thank you, as I am.

Hinetitama is currently languishing as my 'second' toon - primarily my healer - who rarely gets to play since I'm severely limiting my time in Wow and my DK is rolling both 10 and 25 man raids. Still, she has the Once Bitten achieve that Hinenuitepo lacks, and when a healer is needed for a guild run of VOA or the raid weekly or some such, out of mothballs she comes! Sometimes I feel like leveling Alchemy just to make my pots/flasks on her, since I rarely mine these days. She's herb/mining, and I almost always make my money in the AH, so farming for mats seems a waste of time.

I have several Hine-names on standby just waiting to join in the fun.
New alts? Perhaps.
Name/sex changes for existing alts? Maybe. Except for Hiro. He gets to stay the 'original' main character and will forever be my human rogue.

2. In which achievements .... suck?
Speaking of achieves, grrrrrr.
I mean, /cheer for my guildies.
I posted about forming a raid and unfortunately my 10-man raid remains unformed. I still pug 2-5 players every night, and even some of the guildies who've popped in and out of my group are somewhat less polished than most.
Hence, you can probably understand my ambivalence when BOTH the other two guild 10-mans popped up with the Glory of the Raider achievement within minutes of each other on Monday and proudly paraded their shiny new mounts around Dalaran. I'm proud of them, and I feel good for them, but I feel distinctly unsupported in my attempts to get a third group going. This could be an entirely separate blog post, but I'll cap this segment with the 'news.' My group, given its inconsistency, can't find a groove. We haven't killed Lich King since the first time, and have only managed a couple of heroic boss kills. Given that for my 'core,' 10-man regular loot is completely worthless, we've become a labor-filled farming run for alts and non-guild pugs. I've had several of my best players 'poached' by one of the other groups (including an alt-heavy Friday night run organized by the more successful Mon/Tues groups), and typically see the best new guildies gobbled up before I have a chance at them. I do feel like giving up on the group and either not raiding 10-mans, or just trying to slide into the occasional 'main' groups. That feels unfair and unfaithful to the 3-5 guildies who've stuck with me so far, so I haven't done that yet. :(
I did have a good laugh on our 25-man night after we'd made about 5 heroic Putricide attempts (lovely mess of a fight, that) when we decided to do the Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion achievement on normal difficulty and we messily accomplished the task despite oozes sprinting all over the room.

3. Shadowmourne Cometh Before Cataclysm!
We had the shared joy of watching Massakur carefully present his 50 shards to Mograine and in return our first (and Alliance server first as well) Shadowmourne. Mass is well-deserving and it does feel to me like a true guild accomplishment.

In addition, my 5 month old decision to leave my more-casual but wonderful guild has been vindicated, and more-than-vindicated. Not only has my still-not-quite hardcore guild killed Arthas (which is where my old guild and 20,000 other guilds are stuck), we've progressed to 8/12 heroic Icecrown. ANND, my belief that I was surrendering the dream of a Shadowmourne of my own has been resurrected! I put in the personal effort to craft Shadow's Edge, complete all the quests, received the support from Insomnia for the raid quests, and was the de facto - and default - next in line for the legendary! Thus, I was humbled and thankful to receive my first Shard en route to 49 more and a shiny never-before-obtained orange. :P If all goes well, in approximately 6-8 weeks I'll have the privilege of holding a nice new axe.

4. The rich get richer.
I already posted on my Cataclysm prep plans, but this summer another goal I have is to save gold and mats as much as possible to be ready for the next expansion. It'll keep me busy :) As my main, Hinenuitepo is fairly well set up with everything she 'needs,' but if it looks like heirloom items will work at 80+ (I doubt it), I'll fill out my set. If any rep or anything else is needed, I'll grind that out too.

The pre-expansion blues may slow even my fervor (as it does for so many people) - that and the incredibly busy summer I have before me - but I plan to hang around and enjoy many of the fun times to be had in Wow between now and then.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2010-05-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, the title of this post is shamelessly stolen both from David Bowie and Jim Butcher's latest Dresden Files installment. Butcher, by the way, is my favorite current fiction author, and he must be doing something right as his last several books have all topped the NYT bestseller list upon release.

However, the Changes referred to here, of course, are all about the the Cataclysm looming on our Wow horizon.

If you haven't seen some of the changes planned for the next expasion, start at MMO-Champion.com. For class-specific info, there's quite a bit at Elitist Jerks, as usual. Consider's unholy thread at EJ has links to his alpha involvement and the Cata EJ discussion threads.

What to think, what to think?

First, the obvious.

1) Rune changes. As I understand it, the primary difference is that it will allow us to 'pool' resources a bit more. As we all know, in the current system if you don't use a rune within 2 seconds of it being available, it's 'wasted' and a dps loss. In theory at least, we can use resources as soon as they're available, but not using them to a point may not hurt too much.
I've let this change marinate for a bit and I've decided I like it. It may keep us from being quite as gcd-bound as we have been (although some people disagree). It should allow us to better time combinations of moves for best effect (as a long-time combat rogue, I remember pooling energy as slice & dice ticks down, then reapplying it and going to town with several Sinister Strikes - especially when paired with adrenaline rush and blade flurry).
What remains to be seen is exactly how the mechanic will work - especially on live. Still, if it goes forward, it will dramtically change the way we play our class.

2) AOE is getting nerfed. Hard. For DKs, diseases spread by pestilence are doing half damage. Wandering plague has been halved. Of course, it looks like every other class is getting the same treatment as well.
I guess this is okay in theory. People often complain that as one overgears content in particular everything will devolve into aoe-fests.
Make no mistake, we'll still see heroics - and some raids - being pulled en masse and aoe'd down, but Blizz' move of nerfing aoe may slow that approach somewhat. The idea, of course, is to force us to use strategy and cc to get past trash and boss encounters. I get it, and I think it's a good thing. Still, I'll miss some of those eye-popping numbers like we saw on Onyxia's or Sindragosa's whelps *sigh* :)

3) Coefficient changes. This one you may not be as well aware of, but most abilities are getting a significant overhaul. So far on alpha we see:

Wandering Plague has had its damage halved.
Diseases spread from Pestilence deal half damage.
Scourge Strike has a base 140% weapon damage modifier, up from the current 70%.
Heart Strike has a base 100% weapon damage modifier, up from the current 50%.
Frost Strike has a base 110% weapon damage modifier, up from the current 55%.
Blood Strike has a base 80% weapon damage modifier, up from the current 40%.
Plague Strike has a base 100% weapon damage modifier, up from the current 50%.
Icy Touch has had its damage doubled.
Howling Blast only costs a Frost rune, has had its damage doubled, and now deals triple damage against targets affected by Hungering Cold.
Death Coil has had its damage doubled.
Frost Fever and Blood Plague have a base duration of 30 seconds, up from the current 15.
Ghoul Frenzy now last for 1 minute and heals your pet for 120% of its health over the duration of the buff, up from the current duration of 30 seconds and the current heal of 60%.
Rune Strike is now instant.
Ebon Plague now increases magical damage by 8%, down from 13%.
Death and Decay now costs a Blood Rune, down from a Blood, Unholy, and Frost rune.
Corpse Explosion now costs an Unholy Rune, changed from runic power.

Besides the aoe ramifications, one may think "whoa, DKs are getting hugely buffed!" Most of the single target abilities are seeing their damage doubled.
The short version is: no, we're not getting buffed. Sorry. The rune system changes - if interepreted correctly - mean that the coefficient increases will equate to roughly 'equal' sustained damage.
The difference is, we should see much improved burst. I can live with that. In fact, I rather like the idea.

Obviously, with all of this in development, I'm sure we'll see tons of tweaks in the numbers before live. In fact, it's fairly likely that one or more of these major changes will themselves see a major overhaul.
As opposed to my rather 'meh' response to the reported 'new' abilities, I'm positive about our mechanics changes and look forward to seeing them in action.

One thing is certain.

Everything changes. But that's another song. ;)

Cataclysm plans #1

2010-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

It's very very early in the development cycle, but enough information has come out on the next expansion, Lich King is dying weekly (so far, only on normal mode), leading me to contemplate the future and start making some plans.

1. Raiding. Yes, PLEASE! Raiding is why I play the game. While there are plenty of fun metagames in Wow, for me the game is primarily about raiding; defeating bosses working as a team with friends/guildies, and increasing my effectiveness at my chosen role.
However, the 'old' pattern of 4 days in 25-mans, and 2 in 10-mans will be a thing of the past (shared lockout), so things will be changing. For now, I plan to raid with my current guild, for sure in my current time slot, and hopefully in 25-mans. My concern is the possibility of one or the other (10 vs 25) raid 'dying,' but I hope it's not so. I suspect many people will raid their main in 25-mans, then 10-mans with their alts. I have neglected most of my other 80 level alts and would have the opportunity to play them more. I'm not certain about this, but I kinda like the idea of having a few nights 'off.' :)

2. Main characters: DUH!!! :) Actually, this is a valid question, as many players do take the time to evaluate their love for their main and consider if they'd prefer to play a different class/role. At this point in the Burning Crusade cycle, I had been raiding on both my warlock and rogue, but was planning to main my rogue (until I got on a DK in the beta, that is). I'm in the position of being able to chose pretty much anything, which is nice. While I don't have 10 characters like some do, I have a tank class in my DK, melee dps in my rogue/DK/shammy, healer in my shammy, caster - shammy/warlock, and I should have ranged dps in my hunter. I could theoretically choose any of them.

BUT NOT TO WORRY! Death Goddess plans to be Death Knight indefinitely. The other characters are fun, and will eventually hit 85, but they will remain side projects/fun diversions.

More significantly I suppose is the tank/dps question. Most of you know by now, though, how much I love dps. I really really love dps up close and personal. While I can tank reasonably well and think it's important to gear and research doing the job when needed, I find I prefer not to. I had to suit up for half of my 10-man raid and the only positive thing I particularly noted about tanking was that on several fights it was much easier for me to raid lead while tanking.

3. Professions: correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it we're getting other goodies, but no new professions. For the purposes of min/maxing raid performance, Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing have served me well. JC in particular is a wonderful raiding profession. It has given the most attack power equivalence in this expansion, but in addition it provides the most flexibility in maximizing all the necessary stats (hit/expertise/arpen/etc). Utilitywise, a case could be made for engineering, but I doubt I'll go that route. Unless something changes, I'll probably stick with BS/JC in Cataclysm, but with a twist. A couple weeks before the expansion, I'll drop Blacksmithing and level mining to max level. I'll stockpile the materials to re-level BS to max. Then as I level Hinenuitepo I'll brake for yellow dots and hopefully collect enough materials to level both professions from 450-500. Maybe even make a little gold on the side.

4. New stuff. I guess I'm a sucker for those. The Path of Archeology sounds fun and I'll throw myself into as much as possible. Worgen - I'll eventually level one from litter-hood, but at this point I think there's an 85% chance I'll switch to it from my Draenei when Blizzard allows it. I have to admit, Wolverine has been my favorite superhero for a long time, and having claws is just too cool. Flying in Azeroth - absofrickinglutely! Guild leveling? Sounds pretty cool to me, and I'll do my part within the time frames I have available. Any other 'new' things stand out for you?

5. Release plans: I really enjoyed my Lich King experience, so I plan to repeat most of it this time around as well. I'll pre-order a collecter's edition upgrade. Our mall EB has a release party, so I'll go to that. I took my then-8 year old son to the last one. :) I may take one or more of my kiddos to this one as well so they can see what a nerd I am! I doubt, however, that you'll catch me in a murloc suit. If I can time it right, I'll take a week off from work to play/level as much as possible (my employer requires 45 days notice so it's a bit dicey). Fortunately my spouse is supportive of using vacation time for said purpose. Last time around I leveled with another DK which was an absolute blast. Leveling with him kept me from being server first DK so I had to settle for alliance first on my server, but it was fun regardless. Who needs sleep? If I time my vacation right, we'll see what happens this time around.

So, I'm starting to get excited about the expansion even though it's a ways off and many things can change between now and then.

What about you? What plans do you have?

10 vs 25 man raids in Cataclysm

2010-04-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Bleh. My last post about AVR - which I still think is a game-changer - was overshadowed by the news that Blizzard plans to start having shared lockouts for 10 and 25-man raids, and will try to tune gear and difficulty to be the same for both raid sizes.

WOW... that's big stuff. I'm sure there's already 50 different blogs about this already, but it can't be ignored, and I've been too busy to read what others have said so far. At any rate, here's some of my thoughts on the planned changes.

I LIKE:
1. The possibility of having 4 days of main raiding, most likely still 25-man raids, and not feeling 'forced' to do 10-mans in addition to that as I do now. Given that most of my guild does 10-mans on heroic, there is some implication that if I don't also do 10-mans I'm not adequately preparing/gearing. I know, the 'really' hard core guilds will still run multiple full 25-man raids (or 10-mans) so they can prepare for world firsts, but even for a 'normal' guild, it's hard to pass up all those badges, practice, and gear. It might be nice to not feel forced to log on for a full raid nearly every night.
2. 10-man guilds don't have to feel like second class citizens.
3. If you really want to, it will be easier for 'hard core raiders' to feel ok about raiding with their real friends as opposed to what happens in 25-mans (inevitably there are people you don't like but you put up with for the sake of the raid/guild).

I DON'T LIKE:
1. It's easier to do 10-man raids. They may tune the difficulty, but I suspect most guilds are likely to pick their 10 best raiders and go for progression. Most guilds, even server top-5 guilds (like mine), tend to have at least 4-5 players that just aren't the caliber of their guildies. One could easily sideline them, form the best team or two, and progress more quickly through 10-man content.
2. Either there will be NO advantages to 25-mans (you can get the same stuff in 10-man) OR 25-mans will still be 'better.' Blizz is trying to walk the line on this one, but I don't buy it. They'll put more gear per player in the bigger raids or allow legendaries only in 25-mans, or different colored mounts, or something. Either way, 25-mans will still be superior, or if too similar disincentivized. Which means....
3. This could spell the death of 25-mans. I didn't raid 40-mans, but I know I would lament the loss of the 25 man raids and have always felt like killing a boss with the larger group to be the more exhilerating experience compared to the smaller 10-man raids. I'm pretty sure Blizz still wants us doing 25-mans, so it will be interesting to see how they make them worthwhile without making them the only Big Boy Raid available.
4. Additionally, there's a lot of other logistical problems. The balance issues will be huge. Homogenization could be an issue. If Blizz wants 10-man raiders to feel they're getting all the buffs, then 25-man raids will be subjected to more and more overlapping buffs and less of a feeling of each player bringing something valuable.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about the proposed changes.
Honestly, I hope they can make all this work, but I also hope they don't kill 25-man raiding - I'd still love to feel good about the 'big' raids and have a reason to keep doing them.

As far as the other raiding news, I'm happy with gating as Blizzard said, and I imagine all but the most hard core will be able to accept it. And even then, I think that in having to wait for content the 'hard core' will benefit in not simply finishing the content and then being burned out/bored. Kinda like opening ALL your presents on Christmas morning and then finished 30 minutes later. I always preferred opening a few presents a few days before, then some on Xmas eve, then some in the morning, and finishing a few more later with other friends and family.
I'm also ok with multiple shorter raids, could be cool to have locations with different 'feel,' but I also hope they have at least one 'epic' instance in each expansion. I'd prefer 4-6 boss instances to the single room instances we got in Lich King.

MMO-Champion beat me to it

2010-04-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, things have been really busy around here, so thanks to MMO-Champion for making the post I was going to make.

In any case, MMO-Champion recently highlighted a new Add-on that is the NEXT BIG THING for raiding and guilds.

AVR: Augmented Virtual Reality and AVR Encounters, downloadable from wowace or curse.com.

It will be much much abused but can be configured to only accept files from the raid leader etc., and individual scenes can be erased fairly easily.

As mentioned over at MMO, the addon can allow you to put many things on your UI that will help with fights. My guild used it for the first time on Saturday's raid and it was amazing. In combination with other addons like DBM and vamp, it allows you to respond very easily to many fights. On Rotface it shows clearly where the ooze explosion will land. On Putricide where malleable ooze is coming. On Saph, we put circles where each frozen person was to stand. With the separate vamp addon, it will put an arrow on your screen pointing which way to run to the bitee a la quest arrows from questhelper (yay no more missed bites). AMAZING. In my experience, it used very little memory and should be easily implemented without excessive lag even by those with weaker computers. As MMO-champ mentions, the addon uses the Blizz standard API so it's not bannable, but it makes things so easy I can see Blizz trying to disable it in some way.

Of course, giving raid directions is not the only use for this addon.

One of my guildies put a very large phallus on the floor as we were zoning in to ICC, and a female character with girl parts exposed saying 'click my portal' on the portal. Unfortunately, my 10-year old saw it before I was able to figure out how to configure the addon to only allow files from the raid leader. Naturally, such shenanigans can add hilarity to any raid, but just be careful!

All in all, though, it will become part of the sacred canon of raid addons along with DBM, Omen, and Recount! Good stuff!

Sometimes, Elitist Jerks are Wrong!!! (Shock)

2010-04-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Or: Haste Is Actually Pretty Good Right Now.

Most of you know how often I reference Elitist Jerks. There's tons of valuable information there for every class and it's the first, middle, and last (with maybe a few peeks elsewhere) site I go to for information about min/maxing my role/class play. The thread 'managers' such as Consider generally do a fantastic job keeping the original post updated with the 'state of the union' information so you can just look at that post for a jumping off point for DK info.

However, EJ can be wrong, and Consider's unholy thread - the 'CANON' of accepted unholy dps - was wrong recently.

First, a brief story.

During Tier 9 (I know, hard to remember that far back), Scourge Strike was not that strong, even if it was our main ability (that was before the physical and shadow portions were split off). Other than that, unholy was as it had been for some time - good, but slightly behind blood for single target dps while being supreme on aoe fights. The accepted spec was something like 14/0/57 or 17/0/54. I ran the canonized spec and rotations (including the delicious glyph of disease) for quite some time, when on a lark I equipped two one-handed weapons. I didn't change my spec. I just used one-handers. I did more dps on dummies - about 300-400 more. Hmmm. I tried it on boss fights in TOC, again, not changing anything except one vs two weapons. Dual-wielding was 400-500 dps better. I very slightly modified my spec (dropping the two-handed blood talent), and away I went with DW. I did fantastic dps, blowing away everyone in the three guilds I spent time in during that period (yes, that was while I was trying to find a new guild). Elitist Jerks 'experts' never caught on to that trend. I didn't care - I found it to be better, so I used it. Then when ICC opened, Blizz 'fixed' Scourge Strike to be more powerful - favoring the big 2-hander, and they gave us more armor penetration on gear, improving physical strikes even more. I went back to the 'traditional' 2H weapons. But the moral of this story is, EJ can be wrong.

Back to the present.

Kudos to Dreddnaught from my guild in identifying the current problem early. He'd been /whispering me for several weeks about how he felt haste was much better than the theorycrafters were saying. He had been testing it via simulations and looking at different gear, and found that haste was much more valuable for frost and unholy/frost subspec than was being said at EJ. He even made several posts about it over at wow official forums.

Turns out, he was right. Recently, Consider's front page post alludes to stat changes that may affect gear and perhaps even gemming choices. For frost subpec, haste is actually better than armor penetration, especially as gear improves. He now has stat weights seperated for blood subspec and for frost subspec.

This isn't as aggregious an error as some might think. First, to err is human (cut us all some slack eh? :)). Second, going against armor penetration in favor of haste goes against accepted thinking about DKs since their inception. Haste has been a poor stat in part because big two-handed swings don't proportionally get a lot out of speeding up a bit, and haste hasn't affected all that many of our abilities. But with the changes to Icy Talons and with gear scaling in general, haste IS in fact a very strong stat for DKs that take it.

We DKs have loved to talk about armor penetration scaling - which is indeed very good - but we have forgotten how impressively haste can scale as well. Haste ultimately scales better than just about anything because of the way it stacks. Even with arpen, there is a limit - you can cap it in great gear. With haste, talents and buffs stack multiplicatively, and there's almost always more you can keep adding for more improvement. While casters may talk about haste capping (getting spells below the gcd in cast time), for melee that doesn't apply. So, ultimately we shouldn't have been too surprised when it turned out to be so good. I for one am happy about it. It gives us three really nice stats (strength of course, and arpen is still very solid), and options for using both 2H and DW weapons. Still, what will it change? Answer: very little. Herkumi's War Token from emblems becomes a very good trinket. A few items with haste on them are more attractive. Should you gem haste? NO. Strength is still better, and will be from now until Cataclysm.

Conclusion: EJ CAN be wrong, but fortunately they eventually seem to get most things right. Sometimes you have to do what works best for you rather than go with the cookie-cutter info, but it's a very good place to start.

p.s., I'm still thinking about trying frost DW dps, but haven't had the opportunity. One reason is we're doing mostly heroic content and any one-handers that drop go to rogues/enh first so I still only have crappy one-handers. Second, dps is demonstrably NOT better for frost. World of logs parses has them 500-1000 dps less than unholy on many (but not all) fights. That's no excuse to not try it, so I expect I eventually I will do it, but I'm not eager. Maybe next week.

Putting together a raid

2010-04-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

Ah, the luxury of being in an established group! Raid invites start 15 minutes before 'first pull,' you joke around in /raid and vent, slot people into groups, and at least 12/27 people are in raid when raid time starts. You've done this before, you know your role. The Raid Leader calls a few instructions out on vent. As soon as everybody zones in, buffs go out and everyone is ready (and does so quickly after every wipe as well). Your group efficiently plows through the first bosses of ICC until reaching your current progression boss. Even there the process is effective: you review strats (that everybody has already watched on tankspot or youtube), get set up, and make your first pulls. From there, you make progress on most attempts, until the new boss bows to your combined might!

Too good to be true?

Well, a solid raid group may not be quite this idyllic, but in general, raids can be well-organized (and have been often enough in my experience) and be a pleasure to work with.

Flash to the Present.
I'm in the middle of putting together a 10-man group that is starting 'from the ground up' since we decided to move to a new night, dropping our main raiders' alts and allowing two nights to work on progression into heroic ICC10 (hereafter HICC10). This first week, we had no tank show up (and when he did, he went into a different groups' 10-man on his hunter), a healer's comp had blown up, and several dps that had indicated interest were missing. We had to pug a tank, a healer, and a dps, and have two players bring alts. I ended up tanking most of the night, switching to healing on my alt when the guild tank finally switched over. DPS was low, heals were spotty, and the tanks didn't know much beyond Saurfang (including myself with limited tank experience in ICC). We made some ill-fated attempts on heroic Marrowgar, and finally gave up on heroic modes except for gunship which only required two attempts (sad, I know, but those axe throwers DO hit hard if you let them enrage). We struggled to get to Putricide.
The second night was even worse. We had to re-pug another healer and dps (although the pug tank came back for a second night and performed competently), and 9-manned a number of attempts but never got Putri down.

I KNOW my group can get there - most of us (although a few Kingslayers were no-shows) have Lich King kills on 25- and 10- man ICC. My guild already has two 10-man groups deep into HICC10. So, how does it work?

Some of you may be familiar with Tuckman's influential work on group development. He's known for a 5-stage model that describes how groups come together and eventually are able to work on shared goals. Let's take a look.

FORMING
Wikipedia has a nice concise article summarizing these stages as well, so I won't try to re-invent the wheel, but obviously in stage 1 the group comes together. The group forms around a common goal, but not much is known about each other, or how each will fit into the the team.
Despite the fact that the core of my HICC10 group are raiders I do 25-man with, there are members who are non-raiders or are non-guildies, or doing a slightly different role (I dps in 25-man, and little else. For our HICC10, I'm RL and organizing). We started Forming when discussing the need for two nights to work on progression, and different guildies posted their interest in the guild forums or via vent or /w.

STORMING
Storming involves resolving conflicts in goals, how the group will proceed, and philosophy. It also means dealing with interpersonal difficulties that are likely to crop up between group members, early on. While some storming type behavior can occur throughout the life of the group, it's likely to occur most often shortly after forming.
A rather stressful and unsuccessful first week leaves our HICC10 still doing some Forming, but also Storming to resolve where we're at and how we're going to make the group work. I may need to replace the tank who said he'd be there, but essentially wasn't. In addition, the group's previous de factor RL didn't show at all, essentially abdicating the group's leadership to myself and another group member who is stepping in to help out. Decisions will have to be made as to how many chances guildie group members will get to drop in and out of group vs finding reliable non-guildies. Other decisions will include how many wipes to allow on heroic mode before switching to normal. Loot is a small issue in that it won't use dkp or epgp and master looter will only be used if group members appear to abuse need (unlikely). Still, this stage is uncomfortable, and I don't like being in it. :)

NORMING
If the group makes it through the first two stages, some cohesiveness and positivity start to develop. Getting the same full group for two nights in a row, starting to kill bosses quickly and efficiently, working on a 'new' (hard mode) boss fight. The first 'real' heroic boss kill, and the norming stage arrives. There is a tendency for the group to enforce group expectations, like showing up on time, and who talks on vent, and how people are expected to bid on loot. If the Raid Leader tends to dissallow contributions or everyone is too passive, creativity may be stifled in this stage, leading to stagnation and undercurrents of dissatisfaction. My group's clearly not there yet - though I hope we will be soon.

PERFORMING
The guild raids described at the top of this post illustrate a performing group, and they are a pleasure to be in! Yes, the group leaders are still 'in charge,' but their need to speak up or direct actions is minimal, and the group knows how they fit together and where they are going. They know their roles, and they know when/where their teammates will be.
A great example is doing TOGC Faction Champions. We get there, and we pretty much know who is charging in. The warlocks decide among themselves who is banishing the tree, the pally kicker already knows their job, healers set up fear wards/totems/etc, and not much needs to be said before the pull, but every Champion is controlled/interrupted/kited, and down they go shortly after.
This is, of course, the goal of any group. Good leadership is essential, but every member is valuable and plays an important role. I certainly hope to arrive there in the next few weeks as we solidify who's in it for the long haul and who is willing and capable to contribute to the group's success.

(ADJORNING)
Tuckman later added a fifth stage to indicate the ending of the group. This may happen when all the goals are accomplished, or when members have to leave for one reason or another. When this happens there is likely to be a sense of loss and sadness.
In guilds this may happen when the leadership moves on and the group decides to dissolve instead of continue. Given the nature of guilds, most solid groups can absorb the loss of almost any raider but needs to be constantly aware of recruitment needs and be ready to find new members to fill any voids that are created. One never wants a good thing to end, but eventually, everything does.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the post as I reflect on my own incipient group's process, and I'll occasionally post our progress as we form/storm/norm/perform!

Frost Delayed

2010-04-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

I still plan to do a post on Frost dps for 3.3.3, but I'll have to wait a week to do it.

My raid is progressing into some of the more difficult heroic 25man bosses and needs me performing at my best, and we already have a frost DK for the buffs. On 10-man, I'm having to tank for now - although after reset I may be able to go back to dps. When that group has settled in a little more, I may be able to go frost for more than 5-man heroics.

Comments on this blog and elsewhere have certainly been positive, and my guildies going frost have done well. I've seen claims that it may beat out unholy for dps but I haven't seen that quite yet, while it's apparent that it is competitive.

I look forward to giving frost dps a try, it'll just have to wait a week.

Also, thanks for the comments on the Cataclysm preview. I'll try to remember to address them this evening. I was out of town over the weekend.

DKs in Cataclysm; First Look

2010-04-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

The inevitable post about the first glimpses of DKs in Cata is here. :)

Meh.

I could leave it at that, but ok ok, let's ~~rant~~ discuss a little more, and damn those rogues for all the cool new shinies they'll be getting.
To see exactly what I'm referencing, you can read the posts about the changes at MMO-Champion.com.

First, the tank change.
I had a long discussion with a friend who really was disappointed with this decision. He really liked being able to tank in all three specs. I think Blizzard worked very hard and made tanks of all three flavors 'viable.' However, it became clear that of course DK theorycrafters would try to find the 'best' tank spec and unholy was not it. Blizz still managed to keep blood and frost somewhat decent, but overall, it was indeed annoying to be selecting a tank spec, working your way down to that juicy talent deep in a tree, and have to spend most of your points on dps abilities. And of course vice versa (speccing dps meant avoiding those 'useless' tanking talents in every tree). So all in all I'm in favor of the change. Blood does indeed have the most unique feel for tanking. If it's not going to be a shield based tank (and I really realllllllly hope they don't create a 'prot' DK talent permitting shields), then self-heals is a pretty cool mechanic. They can really devote the tree to providing some cool tanking talents, and maybe even a couple of different tanking approaches within the tree. Putting more tanking abilities in the tree may also mean that several of them get weaker, since having too many of them available would be overpowered.

Vengeance could be a decent way to handle increasing threat generation for tanks, compared to some of the clunky mechanics we have now.

Ok, what about the other changes?

Rune system changes: meh. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Yes, we have tended to be fairly gcd-bound, pressing keys constantly, so if this change allows us to function with similar mechanics yet be more 'choosy' about the when and where of using abilities, it could be a good thing. I'll reserve judgement.

Outbreak: I like it, but I don't think it offers much. It's kind of a glyph of disease but for openers. I guess it will be nice to be able to apply diseases a little quicker.

Necrotic Strike: Bleh. How is this different from Death Strike again? It's a hot instead of instant heal? I dunno, sounds really boring, and redundant.

Dark Simulacrum: half a thumb up? Could be kind of fun, depending on how it works. It's not clear from the description if the target has to be targetting you, or if the attack is wasted if the incoming spell isn't 'reflectable.' It does just sound like a weak spell reflection (since it doesn't cancel the incoming spell).

I do like change to passive bonuses in trees in general: speccing the majority of our points in a tree get us that 'tree buff,' so unholy and frost dks get damage buffs (this isn't new, but still worth mentioning). It rewards you for committing to the tree that suits your style the most.

It will be interesting to see what they do with presences.

All in all, though, most of this doesn't do much to excite me. I'm hopeful they come up with better as we prepare for the journey to level 85 and beyond.

Blood dps spec for 3.3.3

2010-04-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

Alas, Blood, we hardly knew thee!!!
My blood experiment has ended after two days and more than 5k gold (gemming str>arpen, then back to str, reglyphing, respeccing). I was able to get over 1200 armor penetration, and while my expertise wasn't capped, I feel my stats were sufficient to give blood a fair go.

I spent two days in heroic ICC25 as blood, and unfortunately, the end result was pretty much as expected. As my DK counterpart (unholy mainspec, frost dps off) said, "I could have told you all that without regemming."

I still wanted to give blood a try in a live raid situation out of personal curiosity, and of course because I wanted to be able to provide a somewhat informed opinion about it on this blog.

End result? Again, no surprise. Blood IS able to do competitive dps on tank and spank fights like Saurfang and Festergut. I actually had a parse of almost 12k on a fairly long (5 minute) heroic Saurfang attempt. That's better than anything I've posted on that fight as unholy. But for everything else, blood is significantly inferior. For aoe fights - inferior. For movement fights - inferior. For trash (and yes that matters) - horrible. I'll post the humiliating screenshots below, but let's look at why this is the case.

I used the standard 51/0/20 blood dps spec, with glyph of disease. It's a fun rotation, quite tight in terms of global cooldowns. I did notice a fair amount of wasted runic power from needing to keep up my regular rotation and not being able to dump more than 2-3 death coils per rotation. Heart Strike hits very very hard - I saw a lot of 16k crits. For a single rune attack, and one that can provide some aoe, that's pretty strong. Other than that, though, the cupboard is pretty bare. With less than 10% of damage from each of my third and fourth attacks (behind melee and heart strike), Death Strike and Death Coil are decent, but not enough. Diseases are very weak, there are no other big specials, and so one is reliant entirely on being able to do physical damage, on target, and having huge heart strikes. It is also extremely susceptible to interruption. Since a great deal of damage comes from using dancing rune weapon on cooldown (to allow one to use it every hysteria and once in between), it really hurts when, for example, rotface picks you to get mutated infection right after you pop drw. Ouch. HUGE dps loss. And of course, because you most likely have to gem all or almost all armor pen, your attack power will suffer, so your weak aoe (no wandering plague, extra diseases, etc) is stunted even more. I realize that my short time as blood means I wasn't as proficient with it as unholy, but I've played it a number of times before, and I was able to find a comfort zone with the rotation, cooldowns, etc. I feel I gave it a reasonable shot of success, but sadly, blood just doesn't have the juice.

Once again, blood is fun in terms of playstyle. There was a time when it was competitive. It can still do well on certain boss fights. But because it's weak in so many situations, and requires regemming and not just hitting a button to spec out of, it's just not viable for most players. For a few guilds, the buffs from abomination's might might be necessary if not otherwise available, but for everyone else, I wouldn't recommend it. :(

Of course, the real nail in the coffin is the announcement yesterday that blood will be the tanking tree, so to some extent all of the above is somewhat moot.

Well, here are the sad but true screenshots from my short days as blood:

Overall from day 2 prior to speccing back to unholy

damage sources for blood 3.3.3

Lich King: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-04-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

THIS IS IT! The fight we waited all expansion for! The chance to defeat the Lich King is here!
I've commented previously that it is a wonderful fight and that Blizzard did a great job of designing the encounter. Most fights are either 1) dps tanknspanks, 2) survival, or 3) gimmicks. In Icecrown, the only other fight that combines several of these elements is Putricide. On Lich King, you'll have to maintain steady dps on the boss, while bursting adds down, surviving several different potential raid-killers, and coordinate target-switching and slowing abilities.

Lich King is the FINAL boss in Icecrown Citadel, the ultimate challenge remaining in normal and heroic modes (no secret boss here). YOU are NOT prepared!

Pull/Phase One (necrotic plague): DO NOT summon your army in this fight. There are too many adds that can be taunted by them. Go ahead with the rest of your dps cooldowns, including DRW/Gargoyle/ghoul. You'll be behind Lich King, but be sure you know where the Shambling Horrors are being tanked so you can run to them asap if you get necrotic plague. As unholy DK, I pestilence to keep Ebon Plaguebringer up so all the adds take more damage from plague etc, but otherwise we ONLY dps Lich King in P1. There's no need to dps adds, they'll die from necrotic plague. You'll want to max dps just to keep the fight shorter, but also time it so you don't get a third Horror.

P2 transition (Raging Spirits): Know when it's coming so you can immediately run to the edge. You don't want to burden healers while taking too much damage from Remorseless Winter. That, combined with an unfortunately timed infest and/or pain and suffering, can kill you if you're not careful. I usually take the opportunity while running to refresh bone shield and I anti-magic shield to ensure my health stays high. In addition, if you have a ghoul up, call him with you to the edge, or he'll eventually die. You can put him on passive to call him, then tell him to attack the Raging Spirit. If you merely put him on defensive, he'll run back to Lich King so be careful to keep him on Raging Spirits. You'll need the dps on the adds, and you want your ghoul to survive. Pump the dps on the Raging Spirits, you'll want at least 2/3 (on 25-man) down before the transition is over.

P2: Carefully run back in for Phase 2, keeping dps on any remaining spirits. Pestilence to get diseases back on Lich King. Pestilence again the moment Valkyr are targetable. Some DKs Death & Decay here, but I prefer to save my runes for pestilence, slowing, and dps on my designated Valkyr. Groups do this one of two ways; having 'teams' assigned to specific Valkyr, or having a priority - killing them in order. We found better success with the latter. In any case, maximize burst dps on your Valkyr to get it down quickly, but be prepared to move out of the way of Defile. A Defile dropped in the path of Valkyr is an almost guaranteed wipe. Also be prepared to use your chains of ice as needed to slow Valkyr. Death Grip does not work on them. I use my gargoyle again (or other cooldown) when the first Valkyr appear because you want to ensure they all die, along with remaining Raging Spirits.

P3 transition can be scary, but if you've learned P2 transition, you can do it! We pop Heroism/Bloodlust here to try to get the Raging Spirits down; probably gargoyle/drw/ghoul will be up again at this point. Also use your haste pot here. Since there are more Spirits, pay attention to the kill target and burst it down, switching crisply from target to target. You may well have two Spirits up when the transition is over, be careful to stay out of their way, and kill them when you can (but don't miss defiles, etc).

P3 (Vile Spirits): Run back in, but don't get greedy! You can still wipe with defiles or vile spirits (thankfully, no infest)! Your ranged can kill Viles, but as melee, just stay away! You shouldn't have to worry about the enrage at this point (at least on normal), so don't try to run to the tank too soon, and stay away from others so you don't blow each other up. In between, dps LK as you can. Something I missed originally: when you get Harvest Soul on you, if you are properly healed, you'll survive (yaay!), but be sucked into Frostmourne. Inside, (as a DK) you'll have to dps the add, and interrupt the long cast of Soul Rip - which will kill Terenas if you don't. You have 60 seconds to kill the add and escape. Once it's dead, you'll pop back out and rejoin the raid.

P4: as you know, get him to 10% and you win! This is a time for screaming and cheering while you watch the events and/or cutscene. DO NOT RELEASE! You'll be rezzed at the end and get to kill him for free from that point.

To sum up: DPS the boss only in P1. In other phases, dps the adds in the correct order as quickly as possible, then dps the Lich King. Stay away from the many things that will kill you. Spread diseases. My dps on this fight is poor compared to others, but all that matters is surviving and controlling adds!

Congratulations, you've just completed Icecrown Citadel!

These 'guides' to dps DKs have been on normal - as nuances crop up and I find ways to deal with them, I'll try to post on heroic modes as well...

Good luck to all in Icecrown!

Heroic ICC: Week One

2010-04-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Thursday's raid (as you know) culminated in a rather joyous celebration of my guild's first 25-man kill. Suh-weeeet!!!

My ten-man run has also made some changes. I had discussed with the other 'leaders' of my Friday night ICC10 regarding our lack of ability to clear the whole instance and still have time remaining to kill Arthas. We'd also been plagued by inconsistent attendance, leading to weekly pugging and raid starts at 10pm. Thus, we made the decision to move to Sun/Monday nights, parallel to our other two guild 10-man groups. This also meant that three of our group members would be unable to attend, since they had mains/alts in those other groups. A difficult decision, but we went with it, and saw a lot of interest in the two day run. This Friday we decided on a last hurrah, and decided to extend the lockout, giving us a full night to work on Arthas. Once again we didn't start until 10pm due to difficulty in filling the group. We had several alts, plus a few newer guildies who'd never seen the fight before. We re-learned it together and killed Arthas for the first time on 10-man, 24 hours after our 25-man kill! Very nice. Now, both my 10- and 25-man raids will be in heroic ICC. OOOh, can't wait.

In any case, this week I'll be raiding as blood. I bit the bullet and installed armor pen gems in every slot that had previously held strength. About 2400g later, I'm ready to go. I might have to tweak things just a little more to hit the armor pen cap, but I should be ready for raids tomorrow. Blood spec clearly will lose out on overall damage meters, as the aoe from blood on trash can't compete with unholy or frost, but I do want to see how it does on boss fights. The biggest problem with blood is that I can't just switch to unholy for trash as my gem slots are all arpen - unless I get a complete armor set for strength and one for arpen - but that's not happening soon as I'm still working on tank gear.

So, hopefully by the end of the week we'll have installment #2 of dps DKs in 3.3.3! Let There Be Blood!

Long time Comin!!!

2010-04-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a Long Time Comin, but we finally pulled our execution of Phase 1, P2 transition, P2, P3 transition, and then P3+bonus..... and Lich King was defeated!!!

Our official guild killshot can be found here.

I certainly have some mixed feelings about the kill.
It feels great to have the Lich King down on the challenging 25-man version.
The yells of excitement and sighs of relief are what is best about 'big time' raiding. :)
However, it took a 10% buff and four weeks of wipes to do it, a few days after the top guild killed Arthas on the much more challenging heroic version. I have to admit I was a little disappointed that every fight for weeks featured breakdowns on fight mechanics that we knew all about.
On the other hand, I'm glad the fight was no pushover. It's sufficiently complex and requires tight execution, not just dps burn or funky fight mechanics. Blizzard did well in my opinion, and eventually, so did Insomnia.
Well, we're no world-beaters, but we do have a pretty solid group. I like our raid times, I like the people. We're not perfect, but we're solid raiders who enjoy working together.

On to Heroic!
And early next week I'll have a dps DK 'guide' on the Lich King up for those who are interested.
Enjoy your Easter/Passover weekend!

On Trash

2010-04-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

Position 1: Trash doesn't matter! Only boss dps/kills matter!

Position 2: Boss kills = progression. Time spent on trash = less time on progression.

Needless to say, while I hear position 1 frequently, I'm in the position 2 camp.

I'm not recommending gearing/glyphing/spec for aoe/trash (unless you want to use your second spec for it), but I get sick of people losing focus and/or not bringing their 'A' game to trash. My raid has wiped three times in the past two weeks on trash, which is really inexcusable, and a huge waste of time. Wiping aside, killing trash quickly and efficiently has significant benefits for the raid.

So, to that end, I'd like to remind all of us to maintain focus and not be semi-afk during trash. Do your best! And use your cooldowns. That DRW/gargoyle/ghoul will be up when you pull the boss, don't worry. Pull out the stops and perform your very best, during trash AND boss fights alike!

Unholy spec comparison for 3.3.3

2010-03-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

So, I've done a full raid (ICC25 Marrowgar - Sindragosa, some VOA or TOGC) with the two 'cookie-cutter' specs for unholy derived from Elitist Jerks' theory/simcrafting:
blood subspec 14/0/57 (with reaping)
frost subspec 0/17/54 (no reaping)
How did it look?
I've already talked about the blood subspec. It was very solid! I was able to put in a top-10 World of Logs parse worldwide, and generally had both solid single-target and aoe dps. As you can see from the Festergut screenie, I did well, and helping me was very solid raid dps (including the top-10 fury warrior and excellent lock). Overall, I'm both comfortable and happy with the spec.

Recount dps actually lower than the WOL parse (unusual!)

How about the frost subspec? I didn't practice with it much. The only 'major' difference with the spec is the absence of reaping, which means two more blood strikes, and one less scourge strike - and therefore a tiny bit more gcd constraint. So, I was surpised and dismayed when my dps seemed quite a bit lower - especially given the 5% increase in the ICC buff! The other DK was solidly beating me on most fights.... and I was actually much lower on Festergut and Rotface than the previous week. I was about to give up in disgust when I discovered my own absolutely foolish mistake! NO FREAKING BLOOD PRESENCE! So, I have to laugh at myself. I don't have a good comparison on the tank and spank fights. :( However, once I made the correction, I was able to see frost subspec in action, and it seems quite comparable - as reports have said. You can see from my parse below, it wasn't bad even though I spent 80% of the night without a presence (add about 15% to my total and I'd have been at a more respectable ~10,600 overall). I also did one tank and spank - Toravon - and I was pleased. My recount dps was 12,229, good enough for top-20 worldwide on WOL (sorry, no screenie, but you can look me up on WOL).

So, which spec is better?
From my very limited sample size, and my tremendously flawed execution, I'm still reasonably comfortable concluding Elitist Jerks are right on the money. There is very very little difference between the two specs. EJ folks are arguing that for a non-proc weapon such as Cryptmaker or my Shadow's Edge, the blood subspec is better, and with a proc-based weapon such as Bryntoll or Shadowmourne (I don't have either), frost subspec is better.

Personally, I'm going to run with the frost subspec the rest of the week, and see how comfortable I get.

But in general, you may decide to subspec either of the above. Follow the EJ suggestions, or subspec into blood simply because the additional threat reduction is handy (I did notice I was tanking more trash than usual last night - but more careful target-switching should help with that).

Either way, Unholy is looking good!

Next week I plan to go blood: I'll probably put in 5-10 armor pen gems and give it a try!

Upcoming

2010-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

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.

The Day After Tomorrow (3.3.3)

2010-03-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

(note, I wrote this yesterday, but for some reason wordpress and blogspot sites were all blocked on my interwebs).

It's the Day After The Release of patch 3.3.3, which was a 'minor' patch.
So, how do we feel about it?

As I suggested it might be, it's looking like a big boon to raiding DKs!

Last night, our raid ran ICC25 through Blood Queen Lanathel and did the weekly raid and VOA. We had the infusion of a couple more ranged dps, allowing us to better arrange our comp to the fights.

We one-shot all the bosses (except for BQL when on the first attempt our first bitee d/c'd), but wiped on trash. A little lack of focus, but I still left the night both very happy and optimistic going forward.
Reasons:

1) Mangle lasting one minute. We didn't really have a 'mangle bot' as our kitty struggled to keep it up and dps, letting it drop frequently prior to 3.3.3. With the change, we had it the whole fight.

2) Icy Talons. We'd lost our enhancement shaman a few weeks back, and weren't getting the haste buff. Now we are.

I ran unholy last night (pre 3.3.3 spec as I didn't have time to change it), and as far as I can tell, unholy really hasn't been buffed. I did benefit from the above changes however, and it showed in our WOL parse.
In fact, it was surprising how well we did!
Granted, World Of Logs only ranks parses that guilds post, we have the (fairly recent) 5% buff, and many/most of the top guilds are exclusively in heroic now, but we had raiders ranked in the top 200 worldwide for their class over 20 times. Our Boomkin was #4 on Koralon, our Arms Warrior was 6th and 8th on Rotface and Festergut, and I was 9th and 53rd on Festergut and Rotface, respectively.
That 'perfect storm' of hitting the rotation/priority spot on, good group comp, overall high raid dps, and solid gear came together to deliver VERY solid and pleasing results.

Our somewhat undergeared frost DK did see a big improvement in his performance as well.

I did some live dummy-testing (I know, I know, dummies suck) of frost main spec/unholy subspec with my unholy gear and a fast OH almost matched my unholy dps output. Very promising. I think I'll hold off trying this in a full raid until I have a decent offhand weapon, though.
Now, if we can only put it together on Lich King (normal), we can join the heroic cool kids club. :)

All in all, I'm pleased with what I've seen from 3.3.3, and I hope going forward DKs of all specs will find success in Icecrown and beyond!

Waiting for Vizzini

2010-03-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

On the eve of 3.3, I find myself waiting.....
waiting....
We know about the changes coming tomorrow, so today, I find myself just reflecting on where my DK (and other toons) are at.

Hinenuitepo is ready.

Unfortunately, my guild has banged it's head collectively on P2 of the Lich King encounter for a few weeks now and hasn't gotten him down. Partially this has been poor execution and repeated mistakes by a few people (handling the valkyr and defile - along with infest - on 25-man is no joke), and part of it for us has been the natural attrition that takes place in guilds. We've struggled to field 25 players and often have had to settle for non-ideal comps for the LK encounter. We'll get there soon, I'm confident. We'll recruit who we need, and we do have good people. And there is, of course, that zonewide bufflolol.

In any case, My DK has been able to acquire every item pre-heroic/LK that she needed. She is essentially in best-in-slot gear until we kill the Lich King. In addition, my stocks of consumeables/gems/etc is ready to go: (have well over a 100 fish feasts/spiced mammoth/speed pot/armor pot/strength elixir, 50+flasks, etc).

I'm waiting..... for Vizzini..... (catch the reference?).

Back to the beginning..... Heroic Icecrown represents a fresh start, along with the coming final raid encounters of the Lich King expansion. Looking forward to it!

This weekend I also spent a little more time on my hunter, Hinemanu, burning through her rested experience points. She'll sit on level 38 until next weekend. Here's a shot of her recent progress:

Ding!

In any case, while there's not a lot of excitement going on, there's always things to be done in wow, like a fisherman mending his/her nets after the last trip to sea, and before heading out into rough waters again.

Happy fishing tomorrow!

How many hours Should one play Wow?

2010-03-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I'm not enough of a pot-stirrer to write the type of post that would generate dozens of angry comments with shouts of "CASUAL!!!" on the one hand, followed by "NO LIFER!!!" on the other.

I'm afraid that how many hours one defines as 'too much Wow' boils down to the old adage about driving: People who drive slower than you are idiots, and people who drive faster are maniacs, and anyone driving the same speed is 'normal.'

What is 'normal' for playing Wow? What is 'too much' Wow-playing?

There are a few clear dividing lines, actually.
Reports of seizures or even death from playing 'too much Wow' are sprinkled through cyberspace. A few examples are this 2005 report of two Wow-related deaths, a boy who reportedly had seizures after extended play, and the many many forum posts about "how Wow ruined my life."

One can, objectively, play too much. While the question of whether or not Wow can can actually be addicting is open to debate, there is no question that excessive gaming can be unhealthy.

In the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV), a mental disorder is conceptualized as a "clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom)."

It seems rather obvious to me that people's gaming can lead, if nothing else, to neglect of social or occupational commitments.
So yes, one can play too much.

Of course, few would suggest that merely playing the game is unhealthy, and millions can attest to the enjoyment derived from a few hours of participating in the world's most popular MMORPG. In fact, a fairly large body of evidence exists to support the benefits of playing video games (including this report regarding our favorite game).

Ah, so Wow isn't inherently evil?

Back to square one.
How much is too much?

It boils down to an individualized cost-benefit analysis.
Playing Wow has 'benefits' - fun/enjoyment of achievements, the rush of killing a raid boss, the pleasure in winning a battleground, social interaction with guildies, equipping that shiny new piece of gear, and so on.
On the other hand, besides the obvious medical problems possible from excessive play, dedicated Wow play can disrupt one's personal social life, and interfere with work or school (I know many a friend or guildie that has neglected/lost a relationship or left a degree uncompleted due to Wow).

_______________
Story time.
During my first 18 months of playing Wow I was living on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic. I started playing when a friend came to visit and introduced me to the game. I am a night owl by nature anyway, and in order to play with my friends, I had to stay up late - I often played from 11pm to 3am my time. I also don't need much sleep, so 4 hours a night was fine with me. Of course, as I reached max level on my rogue, I became aquainted with the endgame that is raiding, and fell in love. As my skill and gear progressed, I eventually applied for and was accepted into a top-50 US guild. This required me to raid 6-7 nights a week, from 1:30am - 7:00am when I had to head for work. I slept for a few hours after putting my kids to bed, then raided all night. I also played quite a bit on weekends. While my play schedule did not interfere excessively (in my opinion, at least) with my relationships, or even my social life, it certainly took its toll and I have to admit my work suffered. Fatigue ground into me and eventually I realized I couldn't sustain the time requirements and dropped back to a more casual schedule for the remainder of my months on the island.

After my return to the West Coast, I was able to play more with my friends at 'reasonable' hours. They were a talented, fun bunch, and established the idea of the 'hard core casual' guild that we see more of today - the concept was two raid nights a week, but serious focus and drive during those times. That should be no problem! Well, the problem was, raids started at 5pm for me. I would come home from work, immediately log in, and start playing. My family had to fend for themselves. And it was difficult on off nights to decline evening ten-mans or playing with my friends who were on at that same time. I progressively played more and more, during the evening and weekend hours, eventually becoming co-GM of the guild, and helping lead our 'casual' guild to a #2 server ranking despite our limited raid times. I was king of the world! I was having my cake, and eating it too! It wasn't until my 'cake' (in the form of my then 8-year-old) asked one more time, 'why don't you play with me any more?' and my kind, gentle, supportive spouse said 'enough,' that I clued in to the costs my Wow play was incurring. Too much. I quit Wow.

The next few months were boring. I played soccer. I went to work. I played with my family. I read a ton of books. I grilled on the backyard BBQ. Had the neighbors over. WAIT!!! WHAT??? That doesn't sound boring! In point of fact, all of the above were wonderful, and I was very glad to be doing them again. But I still hung out in my old guild's forums, read MMO-Champion, and my night owl ways left me watching way too many informercials. I didn't have to play, but I still wanted to. So, with the spouse's blessing, I embarked on an attempt to better balance Wow and non-Wow time. Limiting my time to after the children are in bed has made a huge difference. Still, what to do on non-raid nights? Run 10-man content, do daily quests, play the Auction House, BGs, arena; the possibilities are endless.

Recently, I found myself in a raid every night. And found that I was missing the extra time with my spouse, and doing other activities like reading and catching a few shows (like Chuck - wonderful!). I was still, I have to admit, also slacking on my contribution to the onerous household necessities, like (ho-hum) dishes and vacuuming.

Would I like for both my shaman and my DK to do an ICC 10-man each week? Yes. Would I like to kill Arthas? Hell yes. Two groups in my guild have killed him - they work on ICC10 two nights a week, while my Friday group has gotten to him with no time left to work on a kill. Would I like to BG, arena, or maybe do an achievement here and there, or level an alt? SURE! But, for me, the answer has become more and more clear. There are benefits to playing 7 nights a week, and to doing those things listed above - they're fun! But there are costs as well, and the costs are too high.

So, while I'm not in a top-100 guild, and I still haven't killed Arthas yet, and there is much yet left undone in the World of Warcraft, I'm perhaps at my happiest I've ever been in my Wow-journey. I still raid competitively. I still min-max my main toon and my raiding performance. I still play a lot by many standards. Yet I also have time to do many of the things outside of Wow that I enjoy. I'm not perfect, but I'm happy with being a work in progress, and in getting better at finding a balance.
______________________________________

So, what does your cost-benefit analysis look like? Do you play Wow too much, or too little? What things might you be neglecting for Wow, and should you devote more time to those other things?

"THAT" Class I swore I'd never play.

2010-03-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

If you've created a single alt besides your main character, you've experienced the joy of trying to play Wow from a different perspective.

The first character I ever created (based on those official Blizzard descriptions) was a paladin, which lasted at the time until level 20, when I realized I didn't like what that playstyle had to offer. I created a rogue, and never looked back.

While I genuinely loved my rogue, naturally the alt fever eventually started to tickle me and I created my first alt for the purposes of leveling all the way to max level (70 at the time). I leveled a shaman mostly as enhancement, although I envisioned her as a resto shammy at 70. I enjoyed the leveling, and, at 70 playing her both as enhancement and resto. Later, a warlock joined those two at 70. Like many, I found leveling a warlock both incredibly easy and fun. Having a personal tank aka Blueberry, and fear-dotting swarms of adds was crazy fun! Alas, destro lock raiding was quite boring.....

As the months and years went by I fiddled around with various classes, trying druids, shadow priest, mage, and warrior, taking each of them anywhere from level 15 to 30+. I even got the pally to level 30 - although before lowbie mounts were available, I used him for a higher run speed bank alt. :) I've now leveled - including Lich King Beta - a total of 5 characters to 80, with my poor warlock stuck at 72. I've played every class in the game, at least long enough to add a few talents, and to see if I like how they 'feel.'

But, I always SWORE I'd never play a hunter. I'm not sure why. I suppose it might have been all the huntard jokes. It might have been the melee bias (and if I'm not meleeing, then casting is ok, but not bullets/arrows???). I told myself I didn't like the concept, or the gameplay.

Even when my son played every class from time to time and asked me why I didn't like hunters, I fiercly replied, "I'll NEVER play one, ok?"

..............

Yeah.
You guessed it.
I have a baby hunter on my main's server, and she's already level 38.
The playstyle doesn't suck. And, like leveling a warlock, it's nice to have a personal tank. Killing much higher level or elite mobs is a snap.
Like leveling any alt, it's nice to be able to log on, not worry about committing to 4 hours, or even 5 minutes if I don't want to, and just do a few quests or kill a few mobs, then hearth.
Leveling a hunter isn't so bad! :P

Update: SAN

2010-03-12T14:43:00.000-08:00

I had a friend point out that 'blogging' seemed a little pretentious and self-congratulatory.

Perhaps, perhaps.

We tend to read each others' blogs, generally spew encouragement, and comment back and forth. Sometimes it seems as if 90% of our readership is other bloggers.

The past few weeks have done nothing but reinforce this perception, but it's been fun anyway, amirite?
The inception of the EU and US SAN (Single Abstract Noun) guilds has given a place for bloggers (and friends) to gather together for little of the typical reasons for forming a guild, and all about the circle-jerk that is talking about talking (about wow).

Still, I've loved the concept and was finally able to squeeze in a little time to create a Hinenuitepo-alt and join in the fun! It's a place to chat, although a number of folks are apparently experimenting with different ways of leveling, or are bringing in 'viable' alts to actually play wow. :) I also dropped in on a conversation about a GM/raider wanting to hang out in SAN for a week for a break from the grind of raiding/running a guild. Chatter ranged far and wide over the course of the few minutes I had, but then it was off to face Arthas once again! (unfortunately, the Lich King's demise eludes my guild still. But not for long!)

Good stuff, though, and I look forward to more interludes with SAN as time allows. If you're interested, you're always welcome to roll an alt and join in the fun, persnickety blogger or not!

Sindragosa: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-03-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

Sindragosa (edit: sheesh, no one even pointed out the spelling error in my title) - Arthas' own dragon. Frosty matron of surliness. Her whiny, hysterical emote of "Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic betrays you!" sticks annoyingly in my ears even now. And the one fight in T10 content where resistance gear is not yet dead. Of course, if you're a DPS DK, you have the good fortune of being able to pretty much ignore resistance gear - but we'll get into that in a moment.

Sindy is the next-to-last boss in Icecrown Citadel, the penultimate challenge remaining in normal and heroic modes prior to facing the Lich King himself. It's a reasonably fun fight mostly involving dps burns interspersed with proper placement of debuffed players. Are you prepared?

Pull/Phase One (ground phase): Pop your potion pre-pull, and summon your army as your tank is running in to pull Sindy. It should be up again in P3. Go ahead with all your dps cooldowns, including DRW/Gargoyle/ghoul. Obviously, dps from the side to avoid her various attacks that hurt. :) In the middle of the ground phase, She'll do her Icy Grip ability and pull in the raid. The rest of your group will be frantincally running out to avoid getting blasted by Blistering Cold. You? In your frost resistence-less gear? Laughing as you slowly walk backward to max melee range, dpsing all the way. Give it about a two count, then pop your Anti-Magic Shell. If for some strange reason AMS is down, you can also survive the blast of cold with Icebound Fortitude, but I would probably run out if AMS isn't available. Try to make sure just before she takes off that you refresh your diseases so they can fully tick while she's flying - I often find I have to skip one Scourge Strike to make sure she's properly diseased (or Oblit, or Heart StrikeX2).

As to frost resist, the things that will kill you are either easily avoided, controlled, or reduced by normal cooldowns. I started attempts with 2 pieces of resist gear, then one, then found I had no problems staying alive with zero resist gear - and I wasn't even a burden on the healers! Anti-Magic Shell, line of sight, IBF, and even Death Strike - there are all your friends! Know them, love them. :)

P2 (air phase): Run to designated Tomb location. like most groups, we have a pre-set drop location for each person getting Tombed on the stairs. Make sure you recall your ghoul (if up) with you or he'll die from frost bombs. I also refresh my bone shield while running back to stairs, as bone shield charges are consumed often in this fight and you won't lose any dps refreshing it then. Sorry to you blood/frosty types that lack it. :) You know to stay away from the players with a frost beacon, but hopefully you know you can actually run back in immediately before the tomb actually forms - that way as soon as it's targettable, you're hitting the first one. Our tombs are close enough together that I pestilence to all of them, drop Death & Decay, and single target the first tomb. We ride the edge of killing them too soon or not soon enough; ideally you kill each tomb the instant a bomb goes off, then move to the next, and kill the last tomb the moment the final bomb goes off. That way everyone is broken out and max dps can resume on Sindy immediately. Burn hard and hopefully you get her to P3 with only two air phases.

P3 (ground phase): I usually use my gargoyle/drw/ghoul as soon as it's back up, but if you haven't used it yet, it should be ready by now. Your Army should be ready (for unholy anyway) shortly; just use it as soon as you can. My raid has melee on tomb duty, but I can usually skip every other tomb and stay and dps the boss (the other DK and I alternate killing tombs and hitting Sindy). Obviously, you need to be careful to let mystic buffet stacks drop. In addition, make sure to let Permeating Chill stacks drop too, especially given that you're in no frost resist gear. Occasionally, my health drops low enough that I Death Strike to get some health back before I head to the next tomb. BURN THE BOSS! She dies! Win! Usually around 4-5% we stop breaking people out and just burn the boss.

To sum up: DPS the adds in the correct order as quickly as possible. Stay away from things that will kill you. Spread diseases. My dps on this fight is poor compared to others, but if most of the adds are tanked closely enough, it's not too bad.

After that, the eponymous Lich King awaits!

Hine does fail

2010-03-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not used to failing, so it was uncomfortable to be the cause of at least 3 or 4 wipes last night in our ICC25 farm run.

What??!!??! Hine caused wipes? Say it ain't so!

Unfortunately, it is so.

By the end of the night I was frustrated enough to /w my fellow dps DK to say, "I was really off tonight." He whispered me back to say that he was just catching up to me in gear (perhaps referencing the fact that he'd beaten me on the overall meters for the first time. By the way, it's not about my friend Dreddnaught, it's about me, so pay attention! :P In any case, he is a very good DK, and less geared than I so he had a point, but I digress)

Actually, the reason for my fail was that I was asked to fill roles/do things I normally don't do. However, it was still unpleasant for me to see how much of a rut I'd gotten into on these farm runs. My comfort zone has become all-out dps. In that role, I do extremely well. I kick butt, and almost never die, much less cause a wipe. It's been weeks if not months since anything I've done could be remotely construed as wipe-causing.

And the worst part of it was: IT WAS ALL FOR ME!!!!

My guild leaders decided tonight would be the night to get all my Shadowmourne quests done. Our fury warrior (since I'm doing shout-outs, Massakur is simply one of the best warriors ever) had his quests done and is getting his shards, so I was next in line to get my Shadow's Edge imbued. This requires one to:

1) be an abomination on Putricide. I'd never worn the ugly suit and sucked - literally or figuratively. However, to get the quest done, I had to put on the suit, slow the oozes, suck slime pools, and occasionally slash a mob/boss. I failed miserably the first two tries and slime pools QUICKLY ate the raid. How humiliating! :) Fortunately, I had some good advice and by the third try was able to keep slimes under control, imbue my axe, and tank phase three (very rusty there, but did ok I guess in my sadly neglected tank set).

2) survive blood mirror on Blood Queen Lana'thel. This is easily done, but I was flustered I suppose, and since it also requires one to be bitten early and therefore bite more raidmates, I failed miserably at least once and ended up mind-controlled twice. Sheesh! I've done this before, but I was biting like a newly-turned vamp on her first night at the drive-through!

Granted, a few other wipes had nothing to do with me, but the wipes slowed us down enough that my final imbuement, Sindragosa's, will have to wait until tonight.

I suppose it was good for me to fail. That hubris needed a little trimming. :)

Thanks to my awesome guildies, after tonight I should be ready to start collecting shards for my legendary - in about 8 weeks (after Mass gets his). *grin*

On posting frequency

2010-03-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

Has my ardour waned for wow and blogging?

Um, NO :)

However, like many people playing the game, we become aware of playing 'too much,' or getting too involved.

When I returned to the game, it was with the promise to my family to not become overly engrossed as I had done previously.

Of course, as months went by, I found reason to be online more and more. Perhaps it was just to check my auctions. Perhaps just my daily heroic. Then I started gearing up this alt, or leveling that 'other' class. A few weeks ago I found myself raiding every single night again: 4 nights of 25-mans, a night of 10-man on my alt, and two nights of 10-man on my main. Still playing ostensibly late at night so my children didn't miss me, but it was again, too much.

So, I'm back to trying to keep my online/raid times to 5 nights 'only.' With commensurate reducing in tertiary activities such as the auction house and/or blogging. It's gone well the past two weeks.
Will I succeed long term? Probably not.
But then is not today, it's tomorrow, and I'll face that problem when the time comes.

For now, the balance has been righted, and off I go ;)

The one not remotely about DKs, or 10 Types of Asshats

2010-03-08T15:45:00.000-08:00

Proof that while this is my 'home for dps DKs,' I may occasionally blog about topics elsewise.

No, this one is about 10 Types of ASSHATS in guilds.

First, let me break down a few of the ASSHAT types I've observed in my years of playing wow - all of them at some point have been guilded with me.

1. Stubborn Clueless Fool. This person is so unaware of their lack of knowledge that they spout things constantly in /g. What makes them an asshat is not their cluelessness, it's their insistence on spewing it, and their insistence that they're right.

2. "Wow is too easy." These are the people who complain about nerfs constantly, and are usually the ones putting up 7k dps on Festergut (when half the raid is doing 10k).

3. Generic complainers. These Eyeores don't need a reason to moan and groan. It's their modus operandi.

4. Elitists. These guys think they're better than anyone. And they may be. But they're still asshats.

5. Rascists and other -ists. While comments about gays and phrases like 'we totally raped them' are commonplace in cyberspace(and still bother me most of the time), full-blown rascists are the nastiest sort to pop up in guild. My worst experience with this was my short-lived foray into the guild Fallout in which a fellow named Jezuswaffle spouted such endearments as "Hitler had it right!"

6. Fight pickers aka trolls. More commonly found in /trade, you may still find the guildie who is willing to start an argument with everyone in sight, including other guildies. Often makes provacative comments just to get a response.

7. You're doing it wrong! The guildie who complains constantly that people are standing in fire, not biting their target, timing their heals, and son. "God, it's so simple. Just pay attention." They're also usually the person doing 7k on Festergut (see above).

8. Afkers or unreliable guildies. Everyone has real life once in a while, and has to step away. These folks, however, provide no warning, and are often gone for long stretches of time or don't show up at all, leaving 9/24 people waiting.

9. Ninjas. They may steal loot rolls in 5-mans, and try to cheese the system in guild raids (waiting to see if anyone will roll mainspec, then rolling offspec to get a coveted upgrade for cheaper dkp/epgp etc). They may also take unauthorized items from guild banks and worst case scenario try to clean the guild out before /gquitting.

10. Nascar asshats. These asshats want to rush through every bit of content as soon as possible. If a tank, they pull before others are ready. If dps/heals, they pull before the tank is ready. In raids, they constantly complain about pace and say things like, "Pull aready plz." "Buff faster." "ZZZzzzzz." This is not to be confused with occasional comments after a 20 min fight description by the raid lead; anyone might be tempted into "ZZZzzz" at that point.

Clearly, this is not an exhaustive list.
What other types am I missing?

State of the DPS Union, 3.3 Version

2010-03-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

So, where will we DPS DKs be in 3.3?

Happy, I hope!

For single target DPS, we've fallen a bit behind other classes. No longer are we the face-roller class - although I expect it will be time before the community accepts that. The link above is to my response to discussions of melee dps in which the only class behind DKs on Saurfang and Festergut is enhancement shammy. And frost DKs just weren't even in the picture.

So why would we be happy again?

First, Frost looks to be back in the picture again!
Primarily, it is getting a 20% personal haste buff that stacks with the raid buff from Icy Talons, and several other abilities are being improved as well. Frost is actually simming out as slightly superior to unholy/blood with abilities on the PTR, although where that ends up is anybody's guess. Some people really like the DW playstyle and more than the others it shakes things up with it's reliance on procs for dps. Glad to see it's looking viable.

Second, Unholy gets options. A frost subspec to get the haste buff, Black Ice, and Endless Winter's strength buff may well be superior in 277 gear to the traditional blood subspec, but both should be viable. Personally, I'm looking forward to going back to a Glyph of Disease spec that I had to abandon during 3.2. The Scourge Strike change is mostly much ado about nothing, but I still like it for the fact that switching to weak adds (like oozes or bone spikes) won't require me to try to spread diseases to them first.

Blood isn't so much neglected as maintaining the status quo - which is a straightforward playstyle, very solid dps (especially single target) spec with some nice buff/cooldowns. Still raging is the debate that in high end gear, armor penetration may outstrip strength for effectiveness. Personally, I don't recommend going full arpen gemming, simply because it's vastly inferior on aoe fights while being marginally - if at all - better on single target. Arpen scales well - and on gear it's great, but I don't plan to gem it unless I get really crazy and obtain a full second T10 dps set (unlikely).

Will the changes put us back as kings of the dps meters? Probably not, although if you work hard you can keep yourself in the discussion. We have tremendous advantages on some fights, while we fall slightly (less than 5%) behind on the Holy Grail tank and spank fights.

All in all, I think we'll be in a good place, and I look forward to experimenting a bit with different specs/gearsets.

Calling all Bloggers!

2010-03-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

Short post to open the day. :)

Greetings, fellow wow aficionados that can't enough of the game so we read about it, we write about it, we Tweet (well some of us) about it, and generally hang around the interweb discussing wowage.

Tamarind at Righteous Orbs got a silly idea to start a guild that has nothing to do with playing the game, and everything to do with discussing it.

Should be fun!
If you're on European servers, you can join Tamarind & Co on Argent Dawn.
If you're on US servers, Miss Medicina has started Tam's doppelganger there. I'll be there on a 'Hine' alt tonight. Before or after raid, of course. :P

Social guilds, unite!

EDIT: I didn't make it on last night.... just did raid and bed. Will try again now that the weekend is(will be) here.

Valithria: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-03-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

Valithria is the already famous/infamous 'healing fight' of ICC - and what a fun one it is! I love a fight that switches things up and gives healers a chance to shine. As a DK, however, this fight is a fairly mundane one (conceptually) of killing repeated waves of adds to keep them from stopping your healers. Still, your dps is very important to successfully completing the encounter, so let's get to it!

Pull/Phase One: I DON'T use my Army on the pull in this fight. In fact, I usually save it for the last 5% of the fight when adds are going crazy and threatening to wipe the raid - then it's ok for the Army to provide the last few seconds of add-tanking and may provide a few seconds of healer breathing room, since dps is not the main point anyway. Control is. Use your ghoul/gargoyle on cooldown just to help make sure you're controlling adds.

Kill Order: As you should know, the key to succeeding in the fight is killing the different types of adds in a predetermined order and manner. Depending on the fight, they kill order should probably be: 1) Blazing Skeleton, 2) Suppressors, 3) rot worms, 4) Risen Archmage, 5) Abomination, 6) Zombie.

Blazing Skeleton: IF you have a ghoul (unholy) be very careful on this mob. DON'T hit it with an Icy Touch or Death Coil from range if it will sic your ghoul on it. Also, stay away from the skelly until it's moved into melee range of it's target (use target of target). Ranged should be nuking it. When ready, unload on it. Why? Because it doesn't start its Lay Waste ability until it's in melee range. If your ghoul attacks it, or you start meleeing it early, it will get a couple more ticks of lay waste, and your raid will wipe.

Suppressors: on 10-man, I usually DON'T hit suppressors at all. This is usually the ranged responsibility. This is because we have lots of ranged, and they're good. We have the tanks pick up all the other adds and drag them to in front of Valithria's head, minimizing the need to run around. DPS time increases overall. Suppressors are the #2 priority, however, and if your raid has problems getting them down fast, then you as a melee should still run to them as soon as they spawn. IF you must kill suppressors, at least ask your raid lead to assign you to one side only.

Worms: when your aboms are dying, the abom tank calls for aoe on him. All I do is drop a death and decay on the tank - I actually stay away. Two reasons; all the aoe kills the worms fast and secondly, if you pull agro on worms, it's a recipe for a quick death.

Archmage: needs to die quickly if other things are accounted for. The dps it does isn't bad, but the slow effect can be killer. These guys in particular seem to like to go straight to the raid healer, and with the tanks picking up so many adds, I often find myself grabbing a mage and tanking it for a bit until it can be taunted by a tank or killed. Its magic damage can be easily AMS's through, and silenced when it casts.

Aboms: when I have a chance, I dps the aboms. More often than not, I'm running around putting my diseases up on all the mobs to spread ebon plaguebringer so the casters will have better dps. That's being a team player, and doing your job well.

Zombies: Ours die fast, so I generally don't get close except to spread diseases. Their explosion when they die can be bad, and even if you don't die, it puts strain on your healers.

To sum up: DPS the adds in the correct order as quickly as possible. Stay away from things that will kill you. Spread diseases. My dps on this fight is poor compared to others, but if most of the adds are tanked closely enough, it's not too bad.

After that, it's on to the final two bosses of Icecrown!

Getting enough gold for a raider's appetites (or, 1k a day keeps the poorhouse away)

2010-02-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

Much has been written on the subject of making gold and of course whole blogs have been dedicated to the subject.

Once upon a time the Goblin and Wowenomics were two of my favorite gold-themed sites. The former has generally stopped writing about making gold and the latter has unofficially closed it's doors (last post Nov 09). Wowenomics has a lot of really good links still to point towards a large number of money-making sites.

Currently I visit Marcko's site quite frequently to see what fresh gold-making ideas are out there. Contrary to what you might expect, however, I actively discourage taking the advice of MMO-Champion or Wow.com on these topics, as they're so widely read that their advice tends to move markets to the point of unviability fairly quickly.

At any rate, if you are wanting to get into the Rockerfeller category, go to those other sites and do your own extensive research: my topic today is about making - for starters - enough to cover all the expenses of raiding semi to completely hard core.

1) Profession Daily/CD. Most professions have a daily or a transmute/cooldown. Min-maxing DPS DKs are fairly likely to be jewelcrafters/blacksmiths, and the jewelcrafting daily is a very quick and easy source of 120-180g in 15 minutes or less. Cooldowns and transmutes tend to be worth a little less - about 30-50g, but still worth doing.

2) Daily quests. There are several daily quest hubs that allow one to quickly make money. Hodir and the Argent Tournament are perhaps the best known. I've read and seen vids on several sites timing the runs and gold made, and it varies from 200-300g per 40-60 min. That's not terrible, and certainly would provide enough gold to maintain the mundane raid expenses, but I don't prefer the grind that it leads to after days or weeks, and ultimately it's not as efficient as other methods.

3) Daily heroic. As I mentioned last time, the daily heroic is an easy source of cash. You need it while building up your emblem gear. Once you have all the emblem gear you could possibly want (as I do at this point), you can start selling primordial saronite for a pretty penny. Depending on your luck with pugs or guild groups, listing yourself in LFG and running the daily can take from 20-40 minutes, and nets about 250-400g. I specifically keep a tank spec/gear or now so that I can have instant LFG queues.

4) Professions. Your mileage may vary, depending on your server and profession. In a recent post at Just my Two Copper, some have suggested you can make your full 1k on JC alone. I generally list 15 (weekdays) to 25 (weekends) cut gems on the AH daily. My average profit margin is about 30g, for about 450-600g a day. This sounds good, and it is - it only takes me about 20-30 minutes daily to check the AH several times, buy uncut gems, mail them to my DK, cut them, mail them back, and list. I only list one epic gem of any given cut at a time, put a second gem up if I'm undercut three times, and list for 24 hours, letting unsold auctions expire. I list at consistent prices; never more than 40g above the 'normal' AH price even when the market is empty, and if prices drop below 20g profit, I won't make or list any gems of that cut until the margin returns. I list nightmare tears occasionally, or make epic rings/armor to sell my Dragon's eyes, but I don't sell them all. I list a few meta cuts a day. All that takes me about the same time as it took to write this paragraph. Every once in a while if the uncut market is too high, I'll either wait it out, or turn in badges or honor to get a few uncut gems to replenish my supply. This market requires a certain amount of operating capital - about 4-5k gold just to keep a decent stock of cut gems, but it pays well.

I know my market; if you get to know your 'main' profession well, there is profit there. I don't bother with blacksmithing, but I know folks out there who make hundreds a day easily in this market. Inscriptions is famous for the rail barons of moneymaking. It's cheap to make and list scripts, so the savvy investor follows the market, knows where the profit margins are, and lists dozens a day, not worrying much about items that don't sell. In any case, the picture here is that it is relatively easy to use your profession along with various dailys (quests/dungeons/etc) to make it to 1000 gold per day.

5) Still need more help? Auction House brokering is a way to make HUUUUGE money; I only dabble in this area, but the gold-cappers are masters of this technique. Again, there are whole blogs devoted to this topic. If you need help, read them. Get Auctioneer, or AuctionLite, or just wait for the next patch which will make the basics much easier. I have about 15 items that I know the market fairly well; their ups and downs, and their cycles. I'll just list one for an example. Damaged Necklace is an item that consistently sells for 320-350g, however, it fluctuates a lot. I usually buy it whenever I see it up for under 280g. Recently 20 or so were up for 250g or less. I bought 10. Concerned about the risk of the bottom dropping from the market, I sat on those 10. Prices stayed low for a while, but they eventually returned, and I've sold them all for 325-350 again. Abyss crystals often appear on weekends for ~24g, and I always sell them for 33g or more during the week. I also buy low sell high on other enchanting mats, cloth in bulk, eternals, and a few other items.

The above only scratches the surface of gold-making in wow. There's hundreds of additional little tricks and strategies to make nearly unlimited amounts of gold. In any case, I hope you can see that making 1k gold a day is very possible, without grinding or farming for hours a day. If you can hit that 1k benchmark, you'll be set not only with repairs, consumeables, and item enhancements, you'll be able to afford the crazy-expensive crafted items that will maximize your performance in each new tier of content.

How much gold do you need?

2010-02-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately this topic was doomed before I capitalized my "U," I know.
One always 'needs' more gold!

However, I'd like to take a quick stab at two simple questions that have not-so-simple answers.

..... and now that I'm actually writing the articles, this is going to be a two-parter. The latter question/answer will have to wait for a second post - coming soon! Anyway:

1) As a raider, how much gold can you expect to need to be able to do your job the best you possibly can, and 2) What are some ways to efficiently earn that amount. The latter, of course, is the source material for whole blogs, so I'll cover some basics, but leave the details to others.

So, How Much Gold Do You Need?

Many people can never get enough. Gevlon and others hoard gold for gold's sake. Others fuel their obsession with achievements or want that Traveler's Mammoth or motorcycle, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Consistent with my main goals as a raiding Death Knight, I'll form my answer simply around maximizing raid contributions, and try to give a reasonable range in my response, but I do assume one thing: min-maxing.

If you want to be the best raider you can be, you're not going to put non-epic gems in anything you bring to a raid. This was uncomfortable for me recently when I was told to bring two pieces of frost resistance gear to the Sindragosa fight. I knew I wounldn't even need to wear two pieces, as the primary killers in that fight are things I can deal with without the extra resistance, but 5 epic gems went into my frost resist boots and belt anyway! Similar min-maxing will be assumed for every other aspect of raiding as well.

So let's take a look.

Repairs. Some guilds will pay for some or all of these for you. In T10 gear, with plate, you're looking at around ~9g per death. I'll estimate 30 deaths each in 10- and 25-man content as long as you're working progression. This may vary dramatically given how many hours your group raids and how efficient you are at wipe recovery and learning strats. Let's say about 540g a week.

Consumeables. I use Mighty Strength for farming mobs that we one-shot every week. I still use my Dragonfin filet for myself and Spicy Mammoth Treats for my ghoul, but every once in a while I get lazy and eat a fish feast. For more difficult bosses that still take 2-3 attempts to down, or for progression, however, I go all out. That means endless rage, buff foods, double potting. These depend on your server, but let's say the food and pots are an average of 10g per attempt/pull. That's 300g, plus about 8 hours flasked and 8 hours of farming with strength elixir & food, about another 350g.

Gemming. Even if you're a JC (which of course I am), there's opportunity cost - equipping a gem you've cut is one you could be selling. Prices again vary by server, but I'll estimate. Early in content when you're replacing more gear, it will be more expensive, tailing off as you get most of the available gear. I'll estimate an average of 1.5 new pieces of gear per week that you have to enhance. That's very roughly about 2.25 gems a week; about 210g per red gem, about 470g per week. Some guilds provide gems - lucky you if so!

Enchanting. This one will vary a lot too. If you use a guild enchanter, you can save a lot of money, but I tend to buy scrolls except for big things like Super Stats to chest. I'll estimate 150g per enchantment - some are a lot less, some a lot more, so about 225g per week on this one.

Travel. There's always small costs associated with raiding. This might seem negligible, but flying in Northrend can really add up. I'd say, though, that this probably only puts us in the 10-15g range for a week's travel between instances, if you like to be at the entrance early like I do (and not make those poor warlocks work harder).
We could stop here, and it's really adding up, but we're not done yet! If you're truly a min-maxer, there is one other major category to consider.

Special/Crafted Gear. Often, not only will crafting or buying gear significantly upgrade your gear, it may even be best in slot for a time. The plate legs are currently the best available until upgrading the tier ones with a heroic token. And weapons.... ouch. When first starting Icecrown, many of us wanted an immediate upgrade, so we purchased a Quel'Delar or *gulp* Shadow's Edge (as I did). Of course, the cost for these can be stratospheric. My axe cost me over 60,000 gold, while the Quel'Delar ran people anywhere from 10,000g upwards to 50,000g for server firsts. The pants work out to about 20,000-25,000g worth of mats, not including buying the recipe. These items are outrageously expensive, yet being willing to buy one or more of these (I have the pants, too) is a part of doing your best as a raider. This is hard to average out, but we might say.... anywhere from 1,250g a week (20k gold, 16 weeks of raiding T10), to a somewhat crazy 5,000g a week.

Phew!

Where does that leave us?
For a raider that wants to do their job well, you can expect to spend at least 1,650g a week, depending on your server's prices and what, if anything, your guild pays for. If you take into account buying some of the high end specialty items - like Shadow's Edge (You DO want a legendary some day, don't you?) - then your per-week costs for the top end of raiding can easily be in the 6,650g per week range!

That is:
1,920g
up to
6,920 gold per week for raiding end-game content!

1920g may sound like a lot, but it's really not. Not at all.
That's only about 270g per day.

You can do the daily profession quest - JC quest takes less than 15 minutes - and you're most of the way there! The daily heroic brings in good gold from the quest reward, triumph badges, random drops, disenchanting, and if you sell primordial saronite (from your frost badges), it's easily 250+ gold in 20-30 minutes. Just those two things will easily cover your mundane raid expenses easily.

However, 6k+ per week takes a little more work.

If you want to be your best, you should be willing to show up for raids prepared and in the best gear possible.

I'll work on an overview of how to make 1g a day without giving up your firstborn.

Happy raiding!

Blood Queen Lana'thel: a DPS DK persepective

2010-02-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

Blood Queen is the second of the limited attempts bosses - of course, now that normal mode has that restriction removed, feel free to wipe on her as much as you like (unless doing her on heroic)!

This fight is a tank and spank - sort of. No adds to worry about, but several things will pull you away from consistent dps on the boss. The fight is also a dps race, but one you shouldn't have much trouble beating if your raid correctly deals with the fight mechanics itself.

Most importantly, and certainly most "funly," YOU GET TO BE BITTEN!!!

Well, off to the 'maximize your performance as a dps DK' part:

Pull/Phase One: Summon your Army pre-pull as usual. DON'T run in too fast or you'll get blood mirror, which can hurt fairly badly. Go ahead and burn your cooldowns now - they should be up again when you heroism/bloodlust (described below). I hope if you've done the fight you know to run to the walls if you get swarming shadows and to run to the middle/towards the other's with pact if you get Pact of the Darkfallen. If your health is low while running for one of these, you can AMS, but I prefer to use a healthstone and save AMS for P2. Otherwise, phase one is just a regular dps phase. How well you dps will likely determine when you get bitten.

Phase 2 (Air Phase): BQ fears as she goes into the air. From a raid perspective, this is the most important part of the fight. For us DKs, it's not a big deal. As soon as fear is broken (or expires), just make sure to be at least 6 yards from anyone. I AMS when BQ starts her bloodbolt whirl. Someone said they thought the attack was physical, but it prevents damage just fine as far as I can tell. I try to find a spot close enough to her to Icy Touch and Death Coil her while she's in the air.

Getting Bitten: Your raid will determine a bite order (10-man may be more informal). If your dps is solid, you should get bitten early, but don't be too anxious about it; only half of the dps team will be bitten before the last, BIG bite (from 8-16 bites). We usually kill BQ right at or before the bite transition from 16-32 - which results in too many mind controls and will wipe the raid. Heroism/BL should be popped as soon as you have 16 dps with essence since that's when your dps will be insanely high - the last 35% of BQ's health drops like holed gas tanks in Tom & Jerry cartoons. The key if you get an early bite is: FIND YOUR BITE TARGET IMMEDIATELY; don't keep dpsing for 5 seconds. FIND your target, hover your cursor over them or their icon on grid or other unit frame addon. My guild doesn't wait to bite, since we do okay on the dps race and we're not worried about elongating the bite process. JUST make sure your target has enough health to survive the bite; so a little waiting may be in order. My guild uses an addon - if anyone needs to know I can find it for you (only the raid leader needs to have it). The addon gives a DBM like warning to tell you who to bite and who is biting you, making the fight much easier.
Use all your cds after heroism is blown and you'll love the results. Otherwise, your dps rotation and all will be unchanged after you're bitten. Have fun!

To sum up: DPS your little heart out before and after being bitten. 'Tricks' as such to increase dps are to AMS during air phase to stay alive and to give runic power to shoot at BQ (along with Icy Touch), strafe away if you get swarming shadows so you can still do dps via IT and DC, and save cooldowns for appropriate times.

You should be on BQ most of the fight except when you have to run or during the short air phase, so you should be doing pretty good dps (especially if bitten early). It's fun be purple and big!

Blood Prince Council: a DPS DK perspective

2010-02-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

AKA, The "Twilight" Boss or the Cullen Brothers Boss.

You know, of course, that these are three haughty blood princes that we've seen before ("Naxxanar was merely a setback....."), that they share a health pool but that only one of them - the Empowered One - can be hit at any given time.

There's a lot going on, as each of them has their own abilities, but fortunately you can ignore most of it during the fight.

What do you need to pay attention to, and how do you best do your job as DPS DK on this fight?
Well, glad you asked!

Essentially this fight has only two requirements:
1) Don't die to the few actually dangerous things in the room, and
2) Do a modicum of dps to the appropriate boss (not even a dps race at all, really).

Pull/Phase One: Summon your Army pre-pull, but DON'T pop your garg/drw/ghoul on Valanar, unless your guild bloodlusts/heroisms on the first prince. Ours waits until Keleseth to heroism due to the Empowered Shock Vortex that disrupts dps on Taldaram, and the fact that due to Keleseth's constant casting, he's unable to dodge or parry any attacks.

Valanar: Speaking of the Empowered Shock Vortex: That's BAD THING #1 on this event. Just make sure all melee know which direction they're running consistently when it casts (we call out 'north,' 'south,' northeast,' etc in melee channel), because it's very easy to kill yourself or others. When the Shock Vortex isn't empowered, it's not very dangerous, but it is annoying if it's near the prince you're dpsing - stay away just to avoid the knockback. Don't worry much about his Kinetic Bombs since that's likely to be a hunter or caster's job, but if it's near the end and the bomb person goes down, putting your ghoul on a bomb, or tossing an Icy Touch at them can keep them off the ground for a while. Otherwise, just hit the effete fellow as much as you can in between Vortices.

Taldaram: Prince #2's main attack is the Ball of Flames, but it won't target you as long as you're in melee range, so get on him quickly once he's empowered. On 10-man, you may need to follow Balls for a bit to attract a few glittering sparks, but we don't bother - as long as the target kites the Ball, everyone should be fine. BAD THING #2 is actually Taldaram's frontal cone fire attack. You should know this by now, but NEVER dps Tald from the front, even if a shock vortex keeps you away from his behind.

Keleseth: Prince #3 casts Shadow Lance, but you can pretty much ignore him as the tank should be taking all the lances - and if the tank fails, you're likely doomed anyway. In dire circumstances, you can grab a couple Dark Nuclei and try to tank Keleseth briefly while awaiting a battle rez for the regular tank. But otherwise, like the others, just hit him when you can, and summon garg/drw/ghoul when heroismed. A personal pet peeve is when the Keleseth tank doesn't move the prince away from a shock vortex, so all my cds get wasted, but again, that's a communication and tank issue more than a DPS DK issue. BAD THING 3#? Honestly, I can't really think of such a thing for us DKs...

To sum up: doing your job to the best of your ability means dpsing the appropriate prince and switching crisply between them to the one with Invocation of Blood, and avoiding things that will kill you or others (although most of these are others' responsibility, or are fairly inconsequential). MOST IMPORTANTLY, run away from others during Empowered Shock Vortex. Sorry to be unable to offer many more 'tricks' to this fight - there just aren't many.

Even with running around so much, DKs should do well compared to other melee (ranged have several advantages). As with Putricide, just anticipate and switch quickly, and you'll do fine. This isn't a burn fight at all, so don't expect to do too much more than 7k dps. If you avoid careless or foolish mistakes, you'll be fine, and the Princes will bite the dust.

Good luck!

Front-burner DPS DK issues in 3.3

2010-02-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

This isn't meant to be a be-all end-all of the state of DPS DKs in 3.3, just a mention of a few topics that have been floating around on EJ and in my guild forums.

1. Blood vs Unholy for DPS. Note that I didn't mention frost. That's because frost still sucks as we can see in this thread at EJ. If you look at the tables compiled by Shrakz (a poster), you can see how DKs stack up by spec, but also against other melee classes. Somewhat ironically given our facerolling reputation, we're in the bottom half of the group, but it seems Blizzard has done a pretty good job of balancing overall.

Anyway, if you've read my blog for a while, you may recall I predicted blood would eventually overtake unhholy for single target dps. It's getting very close now. I'd bet when we see enough guilds with 2-4 pieces of 277 tier pieces blood will start to creep ahead. For single target low movement fights, blood should end up as king. For aoe and movement fights, however, unholy is likely to still come out ahead, and both provide very useful buffs. Take your pick.

The jury's still out on my other prediction that dual wield will become viable again towards the end of Icecrown.

2. Gargoyle is bugged. There has long been some odd behavior on the part of our favorite winged pet. More recently, however, the poor guy has developed the bad habit of staying close to the boss when summoned and meleeing, which is a big dps loss. It seems the gargoyle flies straight ahead of you when summoned. If the boss is there, it melees. So, remember to turn 90-180 degrees away from the boss before summoning - this should allow the gargoyle to fly away from the boss, turn, and start casting for crispy fried awesomeness. Hopefully Blizz fixes this soon.

3. Should we use Unholy Presence (UHP) on movement fights? This comes up every time a new boss with heavy movement requirements is released. The logic goes that more time on target = more dps. However, it's becoming more and more clear to me that the answer remains in every case: NO NO NO!!!! Don't do it! Blood and Unholy dps specs currently don't suffer from being gcd bound, so the rune cooldown decrease isn't helpful. Time on target is not increased by much even on high movement fights, and if you're really desperate you can either enchant speed to boots or take the talent improved unholy presence.
How do we compensate for any excessive dps losses on movement fights?

a) good positioning. In my guild, we tank Putricide right there volatile ooze spawns so we can immediately dps it down. In addition, we're tanking most of the adds at the top of the key on Valithria - less movement (only need to run to suppressors). Lich King movement is minimal when the Lich King is kited properly during phase changes, and Valkyr should be properly slowed.

b) proper anticipation and crisp target switching. I do well on Putri in part because I've noticed I'm often the first person on oozes, and know when to break off and run back to Putri, and use little tricks like position myself to be knocked back towards Putri by the volatile ooze just before it dies.

What to do about 10-man raids in a 25-man Guild?

2010-02-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

I was originally planning an ode to the awesomeness of belonging, finally, to a solid guild.

After all, I've experienced the limbo of not having a group to run with all too recently.
My best friend's real life situation keeps him from finding a 'proper' raiding guild, and getting into any form of raid for Icecrown is an exercise in frustration, and often, futility.
I'm thankful that I've found a guild that meets my unique set of needs - it's a good group of people, that aren't complete mysogynists. I can raid late at night allowing me my family time first. And we're progressing - not for world or even server firsts by any means, but Sindragosa is scheduled for some down time this week, and we have a reasonable shot at Arthas in the next week or so (on normal difficulty). I'm very happy with the situation.

There is however, a problem endemic to guild life: cliques. Let's face it: cliques are a part of guild life. Guilds are formed most often around people that know each other. Shared interests, play times, real life friendships, etc., all play a role in the smaller groupings that occur in every guild. These cliques lead daily to the kind of drama that has earned a regular column at Wow.com (Drama Mamas).

However, I experienced a different kind of problem with cliques this week, and one that Blizzard has fed into with a major game design decision - that of maintaining both 10- and 25-man raids. While I understand why Blizzard maintains both levels of raid, and in general I think the reasoning is sound, this creates major problems.

Most 'serious' raid guilds, even the 'casual hard core' guilds I've been a part of for the past several years, have been organized around 25-man raiding. 25-man loot is the best loot. The fights are generally more demanding on 25-man, and the sense of defeating a difficult boss on 25-man certainly has a more 'epic' feel to it.

The difficulties of taking a 25-man raid and reducing it to 10-man has been written about before. 2-3 tanks must become 4-6, 5 healers becomes 6, and 5 dps are left out in the cold.

What is clear, however, is that running 10-mans is not optional. A 25-man guild that is moderately serious about their raiding cannot afford to skip 10-man content. There is a decent amount of upgrades even for guilds that mastered the previous tiers' 25-man content. And the emblem system means guilds that don't run it gear up much more slowly and quickly fall behind.

HOW a guild decides to run 10-mans is one of the trickier issues they'll have to resolve. While 25-man raiding is the focus, a guild that doesn't keep its members happy in 10-man content is going to lose members, and struggle with gearing up.

The obvious solution is to for the guild organize 10-man raids. Assign members to each group, try to establish groups of equal skill, and set raiding times and loot rules. This sounds good on paper, but can be an absolute nightmare in practice. All the natural cliques come into play. People want to run with their friends. Other people get dissatisfied with lack of progress and want to 'stack' a 10-man group to push progression. Others' feelings get hurt if they feel left out.

I've been an officer in previous guilds and tried to sort this out. One of my recent guilds simply has an 'A' team, and a 'B' team. People are informed of where they stand, and are told up front which group is expected to push progression. This encourages competition and pushes players to step up their performance, but of course for the 'B' team can create resentment and groups of 'haves' and 'have nots.'

Top-down organization creates more stress for guild leadership - and let's face it - most guild leaders have enough stress as it is, and there are so many pitfalls that guilds can't help but fall into them from time to time.

Another option is to simply inform guild members that non-raid nights are up to them. If they want to do 10-mans they'll be encouraged to do so, but not required. In the right guild, this can be a great solution. If there are a lot of strong natural leaders, people step up, organize, and away they go. This feeds into the cliques, but at least people are happy with whom they are doing 10-man content. In my guild this works very well overall. We have two groups working on the Lich King already, and several more are close (including alts, we have around 5 10-man mostly guild groups). We have a section in our forums for people to post times and group needs, and for individuals to post if they have a character they want to get into a group.

People still fall through the cracks, however, as I discovered this past week. The group my DK was running with fell apart. The group my shaman just started running with was doing fairly well. So it was odd when my shaman killed Blood Queen on 10-man, while my DK was sidelined for the week and still doesn't have the 10-man Crimson Halls achievement. I'm an assertive person, so I've been able to find another solid group for my DK, but it was still frustrating for me to be unable to find a home for my main character for a while. People who are less assertive, or who feel or are peceived as less skilled are likely in for some very negative feelings of exclusion, even if they have a regular part in 25-man content. In addition, less organization may mean less progression in 10-mans as a guild, which in turn means less gear, and less progression on 25-mans.

Overall, am I suggesting it would be a good idea for Blizzard to eliminate 10-man raiding? No, I think it's here to stay, and allows smaller guilds to enjoy raiding as well. Blizzard can't disentangle the two to the extent that larger guilds will be able to skip 10-man content, so it's up to the guilds to continue trying to sort out the personal and political morass of managing both levels of raiding.

Professor Putricide: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Professor Putricide: the first of the limited attempts bosses, and the first boss my guild didn't kill before new bosses were available (we got him the week after). Pleasingly complex, somewhat challenging in that plenty of things can kill your raid members, and a fairly tight enrage timer. Good stuff!

As usual, my focus here is not a guide for your guild to kill Putri, it's to do your job as DPS DK better.
To succeed against Putri Dish, you'll have to be good at avoiding the various potential killer abilities the Prof uses, switch targets quickly and effectively, and put out solid dps. As I mentioned a couple days ago, there's no reason for your first kill or two that you're not one of the last Orcs standing as the boss dies.

Pull/Phase One: We group in the middle to ensure that Putri drops the first two mutated slimes in the center. By the time the first two slimes are down, your army should be gnawing on Putri, and you should have your diseases up on him. As soon as your ap procs are stacked, release your hounds (DRW/ghoul/gargoyle). My guild tanks Putri where the volatile ooze spawns, which allows you to dps the boss hard, and kill oozes quickly. As soon as the volatile ooze spawns, if a blood rune is up, pestilence. If not, you can just get diseases up on the ooze manually. You should always have time to hit the ooze a couple times before the knockback, even if it chooses a melee.

On volatile oozes (green oozes), as you are chasing it to it's target, make sure that you're behind the ooze, lined up between the ooze and Putri. If the ooze reaches it's target and knocks you back, you'll get punted back to Putri, where you can start dps again! A nice little trick that saves running time. I usually Anti-Magic Shell when the green ooze is out, to help reduce the strain on my healers.

On gas cloud (orange oozes), we have ranged switch to it right away, while melee stays on boss until it picks a target. Obviously, you don't want to be next to it in case it picks you and blows up. I usually Icy Touch as I run to it, to save the gcd and get diseases up on it. When you're chasing the gas cloud, it's fairly likely that DBM will start yelling at you that malleable goo will be near you. Look for it, and run out the way if possible. If not, anti-magic shell or icebound fortitude to minimize the damage.

Putri always casts two choking gas vials, one behind him to his left, one to his right. If you're immediately behind him, if the tank is slow in moving him, you'll still remain unaffected by the hit debuff. This applies even more to the mass confusion of Phase Three.

If you aren't assigned to kill oozes and you get to stay on the boss: congratulations! You'd better do a ton of damage since that's all you have to worry about.

Phase Two: Unfortunately, we're not as lucky as the rogues and mage; we can't get out of Tear Gas. :( In Phase Two, I pop all my 'extra' abilities when I come out of tear gas and Putricide is running back from his table. Using Bone Shield and Horn of Winter at that point get me 'ready' for the next few minutes of dps. If you use gargoyle/ghoul/drw again as soon as it's off cooldown, you should get to use it one more time during P3 unless your group is very high dps (any fight that's more than 6 minutes long you should use gargoyle 3 times, or DRW 4 times). Otherwise, P2 is the same as P1.

Phase Three: As soon as I get hit by Tear Gas, my finger is over the Army of the Dead button (this will only be true for unholy DK); pop it right away, along with your other self-buffs. By the time Putri reaches your tank - we start him on the back wall and kite clockwise - you should be ready to beat Putri down. We heroism right here, so I also pop my speed potion, and as soon as gargoyle is up, it comes out to play too. Be very careful of choking gas, and if range/healers start dying, be ready for malleable goo to be cast on you - hit your defensive cooldowns if so. Eat face, but I don't recommend dining on dead Putri Dish; who knows what you might catch!

Even with running around so much, I usually do fairly well on this fight. I get beat out by a few casters, but I suppose my diseases ticking during Tear Gas helps on the meters. Just anticipate and switch quickly, and you'll do fine. This isn't a burn fight until the end, so don't expect to do too much more than 7k dps, and it's certainly possible to kill Putri with around 5k damage over the course of the fight. Just stay alive and dps until the very end!

Have fun!

Bloggage

2010-02-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

I'm not much for reading non-Wow blogs, but I just have to make a short post to mention two astoundingly good blogs in this space.

Many of us were familiar with the erstwhile Big Red Kitty, one of the best wow blogs of all time. Dan Howell may not be Wowing any more, but he blogs his life on Brain Needed Space. His stories are funny and meaningful, and his interactions with his son are priceless and everyday at the same time. Add it to your regular reading list if you haven't already.

Purelandmountain offers an iconoclastic east-meets-west perspective, and, I suspect, a view from the height of a few more decades than most of the readership of Wow blogs are accustomed to. Delightful prose, and a sense of calm and enjoyment of life's little pleasures. GO READ IT!

Hope you enjoy those. I find them invaluable when I come up for air from work, wow, and family. ;)

Blizzard's Money Laundering Scheme

2010-02-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

I'm going to leave this post up because I need to be reminded that there are some things I still don't know about the game. :)

I've tortured myself for ages on this one, but Tiger and Tam pointed out that you can decide how many badges you want to trade instead of doing it one at a time, which I didn't know. Silly me!

I'd still say Blizzard could make it easier as I listed below by not requiring us to trade down at all.

Anyone who's had to trade 20 or thirty Triumph badges to Conqueror's emblems to Valor to Heroism can FEEL MY PAIN. Clicking every single time is carpal tunnel-inducing, boring, and just plain wrong.

Periodically, Blizzard introduces a change where we all go "I can't believe they did it any other way!" "how did we live with that before?"

I used to hate how mounts dismounted when crossing streams, when we had to use an addon to equip our tank/healer/dps gear, and so on. This list is very long, but it's hard to even think of examples, because the type of changes I'm thinking about are the ones that make so much sense we can't conceive of it being any other way.

When Blizzard decided to drop higher-level badges from heroics, they realized some players might still want the lower-level badge items. Good for them. The Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak is still the best rogue/enchancement shaman cloak available for badges until Frost emblems. However, to get it now one has to trade down through several tiers of emblems to get the right ones.

While there are several possible solutions to this problem, I think the simplest, most elegant and parsimonious one is to simply allow you to purchase any badge item with any combination of badges from that level or higher. So, instead of trading down to get 25 badges of heroism, I could have 5 heroism left over, 3 valor, 2 conq, and 15 triumph in my bags. The heroism vendor takes a looks and says, "bingo bango bongo! Enjoy your cloak!" Why wouldn't he be happy to give you a cloak for better badges than he's been selling the item for six months now?

I would love to just turn in my extra 30 badges for 3 orange epic gems. Or for rep tokens, or again, for that item my new level 80 alt would love to have.

I really hope Blizzard gets the picture soon and lets us stop laundering our money. My mouse clicking fingers could use the break.

The best Trinket Evar!!!

2010-02-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

EDIT EDIT EDIT:
I'm still getting hits from search engines regarding DK trinkets, so if that's what you're interested in, proceed to the bottom of the page for a quick list on DK trinkets.

This post was originally made after DBW (normal) dropped for me in ICC25.

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I'm tempted to call it the best item ever.... but the title surprises even me, because I lusted after the Dragonspine Trophy from silly old Gruul's Lair for soooo long (and never got the damn thing after scores of kills). I think I'd probably still have a more powerful response to a legendary weapon like Shadowmourne, but it's close.

Yes, I have to say Deathbringer's Will is a smash hit! (get it?)

It certainly fits the bill for best dps trinket of the Lich King expansion, providing a healthy dose of armor pen all the time - which scales extremely well in full ICC gear, but it also has the most enjoyable proc I've experienced yet in the game. The proc itself happens often, giving an amazing (in my DK's case) 600 haste, crit, or strength, and it lasts a full 30 seconds.

Best of all, it actually transforms you into a Northrend race for the duration of the proc!
Alliance version:
For haste, you get to be a Vry'kul (a little undersized imo).
For crit, you become an Iron Dwarf
For strength, you'll be looking at a fearsome Taunka!

It's a lovely, and enjoyable thing.

The only problem with the trinket that I hope Blizzard fixes soon is that whenever the proc occurs, you can't use mounts and some other actions become impossible. I can understand if Blizzard doesn't want me flying as a Vry'kul (sort of), but in instances it becomes a somewhat significant issue. For example, on Gunship, you can't use the rocket pack while the proc is active, so if you want to fly to the enemy's ship, or back again, you have to click off the proc (losing the buff and the cool animation) before you can fly.

In any case, I've still been having tremendous fun with it, and I look forward to my Beauty and the Beast proc for months to come!

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EDIT EDIT EDIT
Given that google searches tend to dump people here when looking for the best DK trinkets in Tier 10 content, here's my list (varies only slightly from what EJ says)
1. heroic Deathbringer's Will (I was fortunate to get this upgrade last week)
2. heroic Sharpened Twilight Scale
3. Deathbringer's Will
4. heroic Death's Verdict
5. Sharpened Twilight Scale
6. Herkumi War Token
7. heroic Whispering Fanged Skull
8. Death's Verdict

I arrived at this list by assigning values for each stat (attack power equivalence) based on several sims I use - similar to how Elitist Jerks does it. Then, you just calculate trinket uptime, arrive at a final AEP for each trinket, and voila!

Hope that helps for those of you looking for something like this and not just my gushing over a trinket I got months ago. :)

Dead DPS....... Don't.

2010-02-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

It's one of the classic truths of the Wow universe. DEAD DPS DO NO DAMAGE PER SECOND!!!

Yet my much-revered site Elitist Jerks uniformly and reflexively sneers at any suggestion of talents or even playstyle that smacks of self-preservation. All discussion in the dps forums is about the best spec, the best rotation/priority, the best gemming and gearing, to put out the most single target (with the occasional nod to aoe) dps possible.

That's all to the good, however, it remains that most guild-first bosskills are accomplished with a handful of raiders alive at the end of the fight. Being able to do 10,000 (as opposed to 9k) dps on Saurfang is merely hubris unless it also serves to defeat a heretofore unbeaten baddie.

I pride myself on being one of the last Draeni standing at the end of fights like Putricide, where there's a tank, a healer, and.... me. On our first Valithria 'win,' our pally healer bubbled the last few seconds of the fight and topped off the lovely dragon, but I had gone down mere moments before, after the last tank and raid healer had already expired. DKs have a unique set of tools, and if we're dying early, we're failing to optimize our performance as a class.

I spend the vast majority of my time discussing the Holy Grail of max dps, but today let's talk about surviving.

Threat Management. Death Knights do lots of dps. DPS is one way to get threat. DPS DKs that have more threat than the tank go splat! See how that works? That being said, any DK that pulls threat off the boss is a fool and repeat offenders need at least a talking to and if done often enough, a demote to non-raider. First of all, the majority of DPS DK specs incorporate Subversion, a talent that at 3/3 reduces threat by 25%. With this talent, and the lovely tools tanks have, it should be simple to avoid pulling threat. IF you pull threat often, the obvious approaches should be utilized. Wait a microsecond or two before unloading on the boss. Duh! Of course, be aware when encounter dynamics have a drop in agro so that you don't start dps too soon. As usual, if there are adds in a fight and you get agro from one of them, don't panic - run it to the add tank. Casters may need to be silenced first before they'll follow you - Mind Freeze and Strangulate work wonders here, and perhaps judicious use of Death Grip.

Encounter-based Damage.
TOC and Icecrown are full of fires. As the euphemism goes, "Do Not Stand In Fire." From the Northrend Beasts to (I'm assuming at this point) the Frozen Throne, there's avoidable damage that will kill you if you don't pay attention.

Example: Professor Putricide. Malleable Goo launches into the air from time to time. If you're in melee range of the boss, it shouldn't target you, but if you're chasing down an ooze to kill it, you may be targetted; don't run into it! If you must, know that it's incoming and use a cooldown to minimize the damage. Also, the green slime on the ground must be avoided. Don't stand on Choking Gas Bombs, which not only apply a dps-crushing hit debuff, but also explode after 20 sec. If your health is low, don't run to a Volatile Ooze that's about to hit someone. And so on. It's a survival and dps fight, and you need to be alive to beat the enrage.

So, be aware of the different things in the fight that are potentially harmful, and be careful! Don't do anything stupid to get yourself killed! Run around that slime, stay a safe distance from the ooze, etc.

Scripted Events.
Most boss fights also have those events that damage the whole raid and avoiding them isn't possible. Koralon does his fire pulse thingie, Icehowl knocks the raid back, Blood Queen Lana'Thel has a nasty aura (Shroud of Sorrow), and so on. Now, these shouldn't worry you very much. They're designed to challenge the healers and still allow the raid to live. If the clothies can survive it, you can too - on most occasions without any help. However, be aware of when these events occur. Often, it's worth using a cooldown to prevent your health from dropping too much and to keep the worst of the strain off the healers, and to keep some small amount of damage from finishing you off immediately after. When Festergut uses his Pungent Blight ability, I always use Anti-Magic Shell to take the worst of it. Know the type of raid-wide damage, and be prepared to deal with it.

Surviving; Putting it all together.
Let's look at a wonderful and pleasing case of Death Knight survivability: Heroic Twin Val'kyr. Like most guilds on heroic, my group uses the 'door strategy.' For those not familiar with it, the raid clumps up in the doorway you enter the arena through. EVERYBODY selects the dark color buff. 4-5 players are assigned to go light and 'soak' the light orbs by running around and grabbing them all when they're out. Then you simply dps the Twins down, without switching colors.

Of import here is that by not switching colors, the ENTIRE raid gets hit with the opposite colored Twin's Vortex. This does about 60k damage. That's 60,000+ damage! And guess what, you can easily survive this event without a single heal. Other classes get the shields, or are targeted for the emergency heals and swiftmends. DKs need nothing.

Let's walk through it:
Assume the decently geared and buffed dps DK has over 30k health.
Vortex should kill them twice over, even starting at full health.
Anti-Magic Shell absorbs 50% of your health in damage. 45k damage remains.
Icebound Fortitude reduces the incoming damage to 36k.
Death Strike (much less the blood tree improved version) heals for about 4k or so; you should be able to use it twice, restoring 8k health.
Healthstone heals for about 5k.
Health potion (if you use one) heals for about 3.5k.

Without a single heal, in decent but not great gear, you should survive that scary Vortex with about 10k health!
Myself, I have around 34k health raid buffed, and I use my Draeni racial, which heals about 18k over 10 seconds with a decent amount of attack power. I usually get at least a few HOT ticks, a Circle of Healing, and a Chain Heal, so typically after Vortex is over, I'm only a few thousand health below full, if not completely topped off. :)

Granted, you're burning all of your cooldowns at once, but my oh my it's good to feel untouchable!

Surviving big bad raid-wide events, avoiding silly killer mistakes, not pulling agro, and wonderful defensive/self-healing cooldowns add up to a longevity that allows you to keep on hittin till the boss is sittin!

EDIT: as a side note: Icebound Fortitude change may or may not stay in the game, but it's now providing 10% more damage reduction (about 4.5k less damage in our example), and Bone Shield for Unholy DKs reduces that damage another 20% (another ~9k reduction). Wewt for survivability!

Festergut: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-02-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

Found it!

Here you go.

Time for Plague wing dps DK optimization!

As you know, my personal rule is to only blog on maximizing performance when I have at least a couple kills under my belt. I HAVE been able to kill Putri's pets, the putrescent Rotface and Festergut a good number of times now, so you get to hear about them!

Both of these bosses have different challenges that may pose different difficulties for various guilds, but I'll pick Festergut for now, as this the one Insomnia has had the easiest time with.

Festergut is essentially a tank and spank fight, with fairly tight dps requirements. If your guild doesn't have full T9 with some Icecrown gear, it may be difficult to complete the encounter in time.

Pull/Phase One: Run in with the tank and park it in Fester's bilious behind. Summon Army pre-pull and set them on Fester right away. As soon as your attack power procs are up, use your pet cds. You should have a chance to re-use them once more before the end of the fight. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to dps your merry heart out! As usual, I assume you know the basic rotations/priority for your spec, so get to it! Besides hitting Fester as much as humanly possible (or orcly possible, as the case may be), there are only a few other events that you need to be aware of. Gas Spore: Normally, a spore will be on the melee, and you just stand there and get inoculated while dpsing. On the rare occasion, however, two melee may get a spore, and if one of them is you, you may need to run out to ensure ranged/healers get inoculated. Just know your assignments on this one.

Pungent Blight: Festergut releases the gaseous blight violently. :) As long as you've been inoculated, don't worry - it won't really hurt you! Even if you haven't been inoculated, you are one of the few classes that can survive this event without help. Just pop Anti-magic shield and Icebound Fortitude and as long as your health is topped off, you should be fine. I pop AMS for Pungent Blight anyway, as it's free runic power for more Death Coils. Don't worry about Vile Gas as this should really only affect the ranged, but if you do happen to get it, move away from everyone else for 6 seconds.

Any spec is theoretically viable for this fight, although Frost is currently struggling at the moment. It's probably best used only if your raid doesn't have an enhancement shaman for windfury. So, just like with Saurfang, for this fight you should simply dps your merry heart out. blow your cooldowns. Maximise dps; use indestructible potion before pull and haste when heroism is blown (if heroism is blown at pull, switch the order of your pots) DPS DKs should fare very well on this fight. In decent gear, you should be pulling at least 8k dps, and 10k dps in best in slot gear.

Have fun!

Rotface: a DPS DK Perspective

2010-02-08T10:52:00.000-08:00

I wrote draft posts about Rotface/Festergut while I was in AK, but I can't seem to find Festergut! If I can find it, I'll post it, otherwise I'll have to re-write it.
In any case:

Boss #2 in Plague wing is here for all you dps DK min/maxers!
I've now had the opportunity to not just kill Rotface and Festergut a few times, we did manage to kill the Professor as well, so his 'guide' will be out shortly, along with Blood Princes who've also bitten the dust a few times for my guild (several kills now since I wrote this - along with Valithria but not BQL or Sind/Arthas yet).

Rotface has less dps/gear requirements than Festergut, but has considerably more coordination required, and has been killed by fewer guilds on most servers.

Pull/Phase One: Summon your army on countdown for the pull. You'll start your normal rotation, including use of your ghoul/gargoyle/drw. You should get them back towards the end of the fight. Obviously, you'll stand behind Rotface. Some raids will clump into groups to minimize too many people getting caught by slime spray. My guild prefers to have everyone clump behind Rotface and run behind him when he sprays. It's easy to avoid and really nobody should get hit by it. What I do is stand at about a 45 degree angle behind him; when he sprays, I don't have to run straight across and do a 180, I just strafe behind him again, dpsing all the way.

When you get mutated infection, pop anti-magic shield, and strafe once again to the ooze kiter. You can Icy Touch and Death Coil - basically not lose all your dps while you're at range - while you wait to be cleansed.

I've noted that in many videos I watched everyone runs out/scatters when the ooze explosion notification pops up on DBM. Don't do that. Just stay on the boss until the MT kites him out of the center (as long as he does move out), dpsing all the way. If you happen to get hit once or twice, use an ability to keep your health up - death strike, icebound fort, etc. DON'T army of the dead with oozes up, as the ghouls will taunt them, potentially causing a wipe. Be wary of which quadrant the ooze flood is in; most people will want to avoid it altogether, but if you happen to have AMS up, you can pop it and dip into the ooze for free rp if you are away from the boss due to mutated infection anyway.

At the 30% mark, when oozes spawn so much faster, be ready to burn hard. Some guilds will heroism/bloodlust then, so pop your speed potion, and summon your pet again if the cd is up. Go to town! You have enough defensive cooldowns that you shouldn't die easily in this phase. Which is good, since dead dps do no dps at all. As before, any spec is theoretically viable for this fight, although Frost is in bad shape in general. It's probably best used only if your raid doesn't have an enhancement shaman for windfury. So, if you avoid the few aoe damaging things that can kill you, properly kite the small oozes, and maximize your time on target, you should do pretty good dps, somewhere in the vicinity of 7k in decent gear.

A few miscellaneous tidbits that might not be applicable to all (feel free to ignore). Once you are in 2pc T10, you'll be focused on maximizing your main Strikes (heart/scourge/etc) above Death Coil. You may find it hard to ignore a full runic power bar in favor of FUFU (frost/unholy rune) Strikes, but your dps will suffer if you let your runes sit idle. Some prefer to wait until they are in full T10 before switching, but I felt the upgrade from my two 232s to 251s was enough to justify the switch from 4pc bonus. Many people will have the 4pc T10 by now - I've missed a fair bit of raids with my guild transition, but will have it this week, along with the crafted legs and Shadow's Edge Stage II (I almost have my 1000 souls). For those fortunate enough to be at this point - NOW it's time to rock and roll, baby! T10 gear has some serious dps potential!

Have fun!

Out of Hibernation

2010-02-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

Wow!
(and that's not short for World of Warcraft).

Sorry folks for disappearing the past few weeks during my trip.
The dynamics of my location/times/work/etc weren't conducive to blogging. I was able to do some raiding, but generally after work/exercise/dinner with colleagues, I only had time to do my in-game stuff and then bed before the grind started over.
Strange how being in a hotel next to work, away from family and other stuff, it seemed I had less free time, not more.

In any case, apologies to all, and to anyone who's still stopping by, I do have a couple of my traditional 'DK optimization' posts ready to roll and a few other ideas in my head, so I'll be posting those soon.

Oh, and one other comment. I just realized my last post was #100! Today certainly isn't the day for a milestone post, maybe later. ;)

Anyway, it's good to be back home!