Tanking in DPS spec and.... DPS in healing spec?

I've commented before about tanking with my DK in 5-man heroics with my dps spec (preferably blood) and tank gear. It's fun, fast, and .... fun!

The last few days I've been running chain heroics, trying to help guildies get Glory of the Hero achievements, and collecting badges for my enhancement offset.
Generally, I've had a guildie tanking, which means we vastly, vastly overgear it.

So far, when I've healed the runs, I've still been in resto spec, with resto gear.
It's been very fun, though, to keep Earth Shield on the tank, occasionally riptide, and toss a chain heal in there once in a while, and then dps. I've been dropping magma totem, and then stepping back to toss a few flame shocks, lava bursts, and lightning/chain lightning out there. Nothing amazing, but given that ~700-1000 healing per second is all that's needed, I've been able to top 1000 dps sustained with my healer on these runs. Fun stuff!

I think I'll have to drag a couple of pieces of elemental gear with hit on it out of my bank and equip them for heroic 5 mans to allow me to combine healing and dps better!

I'm sure some of you out there have experimented more extensively with such shenanigans, but for now let me tell you, it's a blast! ;)

3.3 loot preview

 MMO-Champion has given us the first preliminary loot lists from Icecrown.

The 5-man loot will be ilevel 219, heroic 5-man ilevel 232

10-man loot will be ilevel 251 and  264, respectively.
25-man loot will be 264 ilevel  and 277, respectively.

Death Goddess Keywords

I've recently seen a few posts that commented on search terms that lead them to their site, so I thought I'd take a look at mine and put up a brief post here.

No surpises with the top search terms: Three of the top four were:
'death goddess wow'
'dkgoddess'
'dk death goddess'

So clearly a few folks have been looking for my blog :) and google/yahoo/etc are kind enough to point them to me when using the terms used in my blog title.

I've also gotten some hits from more 'informative' search terms like:
'dk wow 3.2.2 dc spam'
'best food for death knights'
'3.2.2 frost dk pve spec and rotations T8 geared'

which relate well to articles I've posted on Death Knights, so it's no surprise that search engines eventually point here. Most of the 228 different keyword search strings leading to my blog have 'dk' in them.

However, every search engine has its quirks, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that some poor souls ended up here when they entered:
'overpowered' :P
'elite jerk dk'
'snottydin' (hey, I did put snottydin in a post title)
'broomhilde' (wtf? how did that happen? I can't even find my blog on any page when I enter those terms)
and: 'Hawaiian hine' - at least it's not pron!

If you're a blogger, how did searchers find you?

Anub'arak: A dps DK perspective

The final fight in Trial of the Crusader is the Traitor King, Anub'arak. We've all fallen through the floor by now. How do we DKs provide the pwnage? It's actually one of the more straightforward fights:




Pull: Just run in. Be a bit behind the tank so you don't get cleaved while the tank is turning him. Icy Touch while running in. Plague Strike. Regular dps rotation blah blah (we got it Hine). Get proc-buffed pets out and diseases rolling as per normal. IF you are on hard mode, you have to be stingy with your permafrost, so you'll likely be asked to Death Grip an orb to Anub's hip. The adds will be tanked here to allow aoe/cleave damage to take the adds down. When you get two adds, pestilence and Death and Decay to hit both them and the boss (or just pest and howling blast as frost). If adds are tanked seperately, usually just the ranged will dps them and melee stays on boss.


If you're not completely foolish with aggro on Anub, the biggest risk of dying here is not paying attention and getting hit by spikes in P2 or going totally nuts on adds in P2 and getting too many stacks of their acid drenched mandibles debuff.

Twin Val'kyr: A dps DK perspective

The fourth and second-last fight in Trial of the Crusader is the Twin Val'kyr. The Twin Eredar are magic-based mobs who love to buff you with their orbs. :)




Pull: One needs two tanks. You can tank them seperately, but there's no reason not to tank them on top of each other. They don't cleave or anything. And all of your raid's cleave effects will hit both Twins. Just mark them both to assist with target switching. As DK, park behind your selected Twin and bang away.

Faction Champions: a dps DK perspective

All right, we've had a few other topics on our minds over the past week, but time to get back to our DK perspective on TOC! The Faction Champions are the famed "PVP in PVE" encounter of the Lich King!

As I'm sure you know, in this raid you'll get mobs of the opposite faction with typical class abilities and a decent-sized health pool. The AI is relatively sophisticated but also predictable on this fight. As you know, they'll crowd control (cc) your raiders, heal each other, and on heroic even break crowd control. It is a challenging fight particularly if you don't pvp at all, and heavily emphasizes your raid's crowd control abilities - something recently debated quite a bit on various blogs.

Too Many Healers??!!!

Most of you know that my shammy is primarily resto.

There's a problem with the 'Alt Math'

Every raid has:
1-3 tanks
4-6 healers
11-20 dps

Right?