violet hold

“You know, I take it back, I’m not really in the mood to help these folks out anymore,” Vashfontane said, rubbing his thick hands through his mane with obvious nervousness. The Undead behind him chortled, his voice thick and raspy.

“What’s the problem, Beefy?” he asked nonchalantly. Vashfontane glared over his shoulder at the Death Knight.

“Well, nothing, I guess, I just…” He gulped and stared into the center of the room, where the Dalaran defenders were pulling their swords from a freshly killed, massive dragonkin. “Just don’t like dragons much, is all.”

Saelym stood a few steps ahead, watching the humans. They’d not yet been noticed, the three of them, and she was content to leave it that way for the moment, instead letting her eyes trail the damaged prison. Behind her, her pet Archaia let out a low growl and lowered to her belly on the cool stone floor, obviously agitated by the scent of blood and fear in the air.

“Eternal,” she called softly to the Death Knight. “Are you ready for this?”

“Nobody’s going to ask me?” Vashfontane whimpered.

“Always ready,” Eternalash replied with his trademark grin, scratching his taloned fingers across his bald skull, creating a noise oddly like fingernails on a chalkboard. Saelym looked up, through the massive hole in the ceiling through which the afternoon sunlight streamed, and nodded slightly to herself.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

At the Ebon Hold anvil, Elnoriah has learned why it is probably not the BRIGHTEST idea to use a hammer on a saronite bomb…

Greetings class, sorry this lesson is a bit overdue but here in the USA we had our Thanksgiving so it has been quite hectic around my house. So I apologize for the lightness in content around here lately, but it will be back on track starting now!

Last week, if you remember, we talked about a few professions and gathering skills as to their usefulness as a Death Knight Tank. The list so far is that 3 of the 5 discussed last week gave us enough incentive (through buffs given to you) to even bother leveling said skills. This week we are going to talk about the other 6: Blacksmithing, Engineering, Jewel Crafting, Alchemy, Leatherworking, and Inscription.

Now, we spin the roulette wheel of death and see what categories we will talk about. By categories I am talking about the general needs for that tradeskill based upon the gathering skills, as an example think “mining-based” or “herbalism-based”.

Still note that the perks mentioned are based upon a 450/450 skill in each of the following!

Mining-based Skills

Blacksmithing
Taking hot metals to an anvil and bashing them to create “art” is both awesome and a great stress reliever. In addition to being able to make some pieces of really good armor you can makes items required for other trade skills (such as enchanting rods) and are able to make a fine sum of gold by doing so.Now if that still has not sold you then the perks that Blacksmiths get will most certainly do so!

The perks that Blacksmiths get are down right awesome, first you can socket your bracers, and be able to socket your gloves to boot! Think for Tanking we can get 60 more STAM just by putting a +30 STAM gems in each. Yes, like Mining we get around a bonus of 600 HP and will be able to make ourselves some good armor.

Elno’s Thoughts: Manly AND useful? DO IT… DOOOOO IT! The extra sockets are amazing, and so isn’t some of the gear that you can make!

Engineering
This is not a skill for the faint of heart, but if you like to paratroop off of cliffs, or run like an imbecile this is your ideal trade skill. We can make bombs, warp to places in Northrend, and make some sexy mounts/mini pets. If the cute-destructive nature of Engineering has not sold you already, then you probably have your wits about you. Yes I use this, but it’s more for fun than the perks, which for Tanking are kind of… bad at the moment.

There are many perks, but as I already said there are only one or two that I think will make a good impression to you, students. Nitro Boosts, the crit rating on them is useless compared to the +22 STAM that it is holding off, but I will say they are fun as hell to use! Mind Amplification Dish it has more STAM than the leading head enhancement, but the Defense Rating we would be using by not equipping that is kind of sucky. In a PvE setting we should not need to MC, that’s what Spriests are for (BURN, but I still love you guys)!

Reticulated Armor Webbing THIS however is not half bad at all, there is a good amount of mitigation between this, but for gloves I still prefer to use the Enchant Gloves- Armsman. Although the avoidance is not worth the Enchantment, the 2% increased threat generally is desired over the 850 Armor. Frag Belt, YES YES YES! A great way to increase threat, and CC a Faction Champion the Frag Belt is probably the only thing in Engineering I would even SUGGEST to a Tank.

Elno’s Word: As much as I love the goofiness of Engineering, the perks it gives us are certainly not worthwhile. If you are focusing on being a Tank, this should not be your first pick.

Jewelcrafting
What’s the best way to propose to a girl? With a sexy ring of course! As a Jewelcrafter you can do just that, and give them a great bonus in their Stamina to boot (aaawwwuuuhhhh yeeeaaaa). Seriously though, Jewelcrafting is undoubtedly one of the best skills in WoW for ANY class/spec/role. You will save money on socketing your equipment, along with some pretty sexy perks!

In addition to being just plain awesome, a Jewelcrafter is able to make a Trinket with 2 gem slots, some dodge, and a bit of STAM. However, compared to  the easily obtainable The Black Heart, and the Brewfest Trinkets I am not enticed to use this. A newly geared Tank? Not half bad! The special JC only gems they can make, however, good call! Considering the normal person can acquire a +30 STAM gem, and they are expensive as hell, the JCer can use 3 Solid Dragon’s Eye which gives +51 STAM per gem. So let us use some basic math to determine how much more STAM you would receive!

3(51 STAM) – 3(30 STAM)=lolmorestam
153 STAM – 90 STAM=lolmorestam
63 STAM = lolmorestam

63 more stam is the equivalent to about 630 HP, which is more STAM any Tradeskill has given us thus far. It’s safe to say that this is very… VERY good!

Elno’s Word: You will save a killing on gems, plus make the best gems in the entire game. Although this does not end only at Stamina gems, there are plenty of other ridiculously awesome gems available to you! GET THIS… NOW!

And that is what you get when you piss me off!

Herbalism-Based Skills

Alchemy
Any Raider (casual or hardcore) will spend tons of their gold on Flasks and Potions each time they decide to go on a Raid. As an Alchemist you are the sole provider for these poor souls, the booster of their performance as a Raider, and for this you are greatly compensated. Plus, you can transmute worthless metals into Epic gems as well as Titanium bars and Eternals. Sounds pretty sweet, right?

Well luckily for you the Perks are pretty kick ass as well. Although they do not right-flat-out give you a bonus to stats like most of the professions, they are still quite awesome. All Alchemists are affected by Mixology which boosts the duration of any flask or elixir you drink. Instead of the base 1 hour duration on your Stoneblood and 1300 HP increase it is now a 2 hour duration with a 1950 HP increase. So by a 650 HP increase it is about on-par with the 60 STAM increases that most of the other Death Knight Tank-worthy professions are so keen on doing.

Plus as an added mini-bonus, there’s a Trinket which is about on-par with the Jewelcrafting one. As I said that time, it’s a pretty good Trinket, but for an end-game Tank, there is certainly better obtainable. Both are not bad (the JC one is probably better, 2 gem slots for STAM + 93 on it already, and an O.K. use effect).

Elno’s Word: Ehh, it’s pretty good. Though it does not directly affect us 24/7 it helps out when we REALLY need it. That’s all we can ask for, right? Plus, the amount of money saved is not a bad bonus as well!

Inscription
If I told you to go and pick pwetty flowers and crush them into finely colored inks, who would do this? For the frickin’ Glyphs and Perks I sure as hell would! Glyphs are some of the most expensive things to gear up with, so by being able to make these instead of being a pain in the ass is certainly a bonus. And you are able to make the cards to some of the best decks (trinkets) in the GAME, you will be rolling in cash, then send some to your best buddy and let him roll in the excess cash. To top it off you get basically another hearth stone, free of charge, making it easy to get to and from Dal (or any other place I guess).

The perk is not only an easy pass for the lazy Tanks, but it is also the best damn shoulder Enhancement of all time… OF ALL TIME! Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle deserves to be loved by every Tank, or envied for that matter. Compared to Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle a Scribe has quite a lead on the rest of the Tanks in terms of Shoulder Enchantments. 40 Dodge is a pretty significant amount of avoidance, plus you do not need to spend extra time doing all of those forsaken Sons of Hodir Dailies.

Elno’s Word: Pretty good, we all need avoidance and to not have to see those bloody giants. The amount of cash you will save/make + the Shoulder Enchantment is well worth the time spent to level Inscription.

I still don't believe I went "overboard"...

Skinning-Based Skills

Leatherworking
So you just ripped the flesh off of every Rhino in site, waved the carcass in front of a group of Vegetarians, and laughed your ass off. Instead of just merely going to the Auction House you can turn this stuff into gear for the Bears, Kittehs, Hunters, Shamans, and those damn Rogues. Plus there is a bit of profit to be made by doing so! At the end of the day you may question your sanity by crafting gear out of dead hides, but then your Rogue friend wants some gear and you forget about your sanity.

Perks? Hol-e-shit there are quite a few, first of all you can be one of those Paladins and give your entire raid an 8% to all stats “kings” buff, or be a Druid with the 750+ Armor, 37 to all stats, and 54 to resistances buff of the wild rip off. Yes, you do not need to have a Druid in the Raid anymore, or make the Paladins struggle to buff the entire Raid with your Drums. The downside of you being a buff master is that they are not as good as the buffs that they “rip off of”, so it still helps to have smart Paladins and at least one good Druid.

As for gear Enhancement you get a free leg enchantment which is the equivalent to the very pricy leg enhancement available to everyone. Although exclusively to Leatherworkers Fur Lining- Stamina is available to put on your bracers instead of the +40 STAM enchant. Just one thing… it gives +102 frickin’ Stamina, for basic purposes let us just say that each point of STAM contributes to the bare minimum (10 HP per 1 STAM). You get at LEAST 1020 HP just from one enchantment. Yes, this undoubtedly the best thing for Tanks since… since Death Knights!

Edited to show some maths as to why this is really good, but still on par with most of the other professions

102 STAM (LW Bracers) – 40 STAM (Enchantment) = lomorestam
62 STAM = lolmorestam

So it is actually on-par with every other profession, but why would I say it is really, really, REALLY, good? Well the fact that on my server the best Tanking Leg Enhancement is about 250g+ and LWers can do said enhancement on themselves for practically nothing is a huge incentive for most anyone. Yes, it is on par, but it will save you one hell of a lot of gold by keeping you on par!

Elno’s Word: Killing animals never felt so good, then we can put their dead bodies on our wrists and legs for practically no cost? HELLS YES!

Conclusions

So out of the 11 available Trade Skills, which ones have we ruled as completely viable to use as a Tank? Well, all are viable remember, just some actually HELP us stat-wise rather than only give us a cool mount or some “lolz”.

Pro

• Mining
• Enchanting
• Blacksmithing
• Jewelcrafting
• Leatherworking
• Inscription
• Alchemy

Kinda?

• Herbalism (useful, but I would not get it solely for the bonus)

Con

• Engineering
• Tailoring
• Skinning

Hopefully, class, you can now go out into the world and figure out what you would like to do with your lives as crafters. Remember, you can do anything your little heart desires, but for an extra “boost” there are some that are definitely more helpful than others.

Check back at the beginning of the week next week for your Death Knight Tank and You: lesson!

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

So…I took the week off work because I had vacation days to use up. Great week for it, with Pilgrim’s Bounty and all. Karius and Kalyon both achieved Pilgrim status and got their plump turkey pets.

Kalyon got frustrated with all the people turkey hunting in Elwynn, so he decided it would be easier and more devious to go kill Horde turkeys in Tirisfal.

The rep bonus from eating at the feast tables gave an extra 10% rep for an hour. With that on top of the 10% human racial bonus, I decided it was time for some grinding. So Karius took one day and ground out the starting zones to get exalted with all the Alliance cities. His horse grew wings near Azure Watch thanks to a furbolg shaman.

Achievements he got that day included Exalted Champion of Ironforge, Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan, Filling Up The Barn, 10 Exalted Reputations, Ambassador of the Alliance, and Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? … yeah he did Dun Morogh by punching all the mobs.

Kalyon used the bonus rep to farm Baron Rivendare over, and over, and over, and over …. no freaking horse. He killed him 12 times yesterday. Well, at least he got his title. Behold .. Kalyon the Argent Champion.

He also did some heroics and finally bought a couple upgrades with badges. And he ran around with Blood’s latest character doing the Noggenfogger quest. So, yes, once again … you get to see dancing skellies on the blog. Hurray!

Con l’uscita di Scourgwar, l’ultima espansione di WoW TCG, è finalmente possibile incominciare a dare una prima impostazione alla classe del Death Knight fino ad ora tenuta da parte viste le poche carte con cui poter far girare un deck abbastanza competitivo. Il deck in questione è un Unholy Death Knight i cui punti di forza risiedono nell’uso dei Ghoul Ally Token e delle armi.

Eroe
Triton the Sacrilegious

Il flip dell’eroe Triton the Sacrilegious non è certamente uno dei migliori  flip esistenti: nel turno di attivazione tutti gli eroi e tutti gli alleati avversari devono attaccare Triton se essi sono nelle condizioni di attaccare, unica condizione è che in gioco ci sia un altro alleato Death Knight. Tuttavia la scelta di utilizzare Triton come proprio eroe è in realtà dovuta al suo talento, Unholy, che viene richiesto per una carta chiave di questo deck: Corpse Explosion.

Alleati 15
4x Rak Skyfury
2x Drandus the Deathcaller
2x Deathcharger
4x Twilight Vanquisher Knolan
3x Vanessa Fairgraves

Per quanto riguarda gli alleati, il potere di Rak Skyfury, per il solo fatto di essere entrato in gioco, consente al proprio eroe ed ad una arma di tornare ready, cosa questa che permette un attacco aggiuntivo; Drandus the Deathcaller è un alleato protettore che ingligge danni shadow e che conferisce ai prori ghoul 2 Assault; Deathcharger è invece la nuova mount del Death Knight con cui, oltre a velocizzare il completamento di missioni facendo pagare una risorsa in meno il loro costo di attivazione, consente di attribuire ad un eroe o alleato bersaglio -3 punti ferita in un turno; Twilight Vanquisher Knolan è un alleato 3/2 che ha il potere di entrare in gioco senza pagare il costo di attivazione nel caso in cui  il proprio eroe o un alleato abbiano inflitto danno shadow all’eroe avversario, carta questa da usare in combianzione non solo con Drandus the Deathcaller e Death Coil ma anche con Blade of the Empty Void; infine Vanessa Fairgraves  chrcrea un Ghoul 3/3 nel turno in cui viene distrutta. Altri alleati che sicuramente potrebbero essere utilizzati in un deck di questo genere sono: Bloodsoul ed anche tutti gli alleati con la keyword Will of the Forsaken.

Abilità 20
2x Army of the Dead
3x Raise Dead
3x Death Coil
4x Suffocating Grip
4x Mind Freeze
4x Corpse Explosion

Le abilità si possono suddividere in due tipologie. La prima tipologia è centrata sui Ghoul Ally Toke: con Army of the Dead è possibile distruggere tutti gli alleati presenti in gioco, propri ed avversari, e creare tanti Ghoul 3/3 sotto il proprio controllo, ottima quindi come carta di chiusura  da giocare anche in combinazione con gli alleati Will of the Forsaken; Raise Dead alla fine del proprio turno e se non ci sono propri Ghoul in gioco, crea un Ghoul 3/3 rimuovendo dal gioco un alleato presente in un qualsiasi cimitero; e Death Coil con cui, oltre a infliggere 3 danni shadow ad un eroe o ad un alleato bersalio, è possibile anche far tornare pronto un Ghoul bersaglio capace anche quindi di compiere un secondo attacco in un round. La seconda tipologia consiste in abilità controllo generico: Suffocating Grip, al costo di 3 risorse, interrompe una qualsiasi carta alleato con costo x giocata ed  inoltre il proprio eroe infligge x danni all’eroe avversario; Mind Freeze interrompe una carta abilità o alleato e spossa, nel caso di successo, tutte le risorse avversarie; ed infine Corpse Explosion con cui è possibile infliggere 3 danni shadow ad ogni eroe o alleato avversario pagando solo 3 risorse e rimuovendo un alleato presente in un cimitero dal gioco.

Equipaggiamento 10
3x Blade of the Empty Void
3x Vengeful Gladiator’s Cleaver
2x Jin’rohk, The Great Apocalypse
2x Bonefist Gauntlets

Per quanto riguarda gli equipaggiamenti, la spada ad una mano Blade of the Empty Void, oltre a far diventare il proprio eroe protector qualora essa sia presente nel cimitero, è un arma che infligge danni shadow e quindi da usare in combianzione con Twilight Vanquisher Knolan; Vengeful Gladiator’s Cleaver invece è un ascia ad una mano che ha il potere di conferire al proprio eroe l’abilità dual wield; Jin’rohk, The Great Apocalypse è una spada a due mani di chiusura che distrugge tante carte controllate dall’avversario quanti danni vengono inflitti con essa  all’eroe avversario; infine Bonefist Gauntlets ha il potere di far pagare 2 risorse in meno il costo di attivazione di una qualsiasi arma.

Location e Missioni 15
3x Undercity
3x Hazardous Materials
4x Brothers in Death
3x Forces of Jaedenar
2x Information Gathering

Essendo Triton the Sacrilegious un eroe Undead DeathKnight è stato possibile inserire delle risorse specifiche come Undercity, che permette di curare il proprio eroe di 2 punti ferita per ogni alleato rimosso da un cimitero e compreso il cimitero avversario, Hazardous Materials, che aggiunge +1 ATK counter ad un arma e permette di pescare una carta aggiuntiva, e sopratutto Brothers in Death, che rimuovendo dal gioco un alleato bersaglio da un qualsiasi cimitero, crea un Ghoul 3/3. Infine Forces of Jaedenar e Information Gathering assicurano un discreto draw aggiuntivo di carte.

Side Deck 10
1x Army of the Dead
3x Galvanize
3x Blood Presence
3x Shield of Distortion

Per quanto riguarda le Side Deck, oltre ad una copia aggiuntiva di Army of the Dead, sono state previste tre copie di Galvanize, abilità con cui è possibile aumentare per un turno +1 ATK di tutti i propri Ghoul o +3 ATK di un prorio Ghoul bersaglio; tre copie di Blood Presence, abilità ongoing che aumenta di +1 qualsiasi tipo di danno inflitto dal proprio eroe e che cura 1 punto ferita il proprio eroe ogni volta che esso  infligge  del danno; e tre copie di Shield of Distortion, abilità istant che previene nel turno tutto il danno non da combattimento inflitto al proprio eroe o ad un alleato bersaglio.

Nonostante per i deck Ally Token la classe più specializzata sia il Druid e per le armi il Warrior, quella che si è voluta proporre è una prima prova per un deck basato sulla classe del Death Knight, una classe che, nonostante sia abbastanza buona come ally control e nonostante le innumerevoli aggiunte previste nell’espansione Scourgewar, a giudizio di chi scrive, ancora stenta a confronto dei deck tradizionali; ciò è dovuto in parte alla mancanza o alle poche  carte di controllo o di rimozione, soprattuto se si pensa alle abilità ed agli equipaggiamenti, ed all’assenza totale di carte che agevolano il draw, lasciando così il Death Knight in balia dei deck basati sull’hand control.

Short post is short.

Next couple days will be light on content – I’m on vacation and my battlegroup is down.

I have rolled a DK on another server and I’ll say, it’s kinda weird the second time around.

First off, I practically had the zone to myself.

Soth also rolled a DK on the same server. He choose an obvious name while I choose, well, a name.

I waved at him. He waved back.

He poked me. I poked back.

He whispers if it’s who he thinks it is. I whisper back if it’s got pointy ears you know it’s got to be me.

Next year's Halloween costume?

We steamroll the starting area. It’s just the two of us as well as Lilslutt and Lickkmyass of the guild “My other server is down.”

It was odd being able to actually see the NPCs instead of clicking blindly through a sea of brother death knights.

Noth was there, and Patchwerk and Gothik and Instructor Raz. It’s like a happy little pre-reunion. I know you! You dropped some phatty loot for me back in the day!

Except that wasn’t me, it was the other me… damn this is like talking to Chromie.

Now that I’ve cleared Naxx umpteen times I got the little jokes in what they were saying.

So Noth, where is Heigan?

And with the information about Icecrown that’s available it was like I could look ahead and say, “Yeah, I’ll be killing you in a few months. Just you wait.”

All your lootz will belong to us.

On my first DK I was so amused with the starting quests that my husband had to ask if I was OK. Apparently maniacal cackling could be interpreted as having an issue of some sort.

Pffft.

This time through the amusement was tempered with the frustration from being in the middle of something on my priest when my normal server went down, AGAIN.

I still enjoyed myself, but was able to keep much of my mirth from slaughtering villagers contained at a manageable level.

The epic battle at Light’s Hope was more epic and less epic at the same time, resulting in a neutral amount of epicness as compared to my first time there.

There was just the 4 of us so I could actually read all the text that was going on instead of my chat pane being spammed with a thousand people whining about “zomg too much story, let’s just go now.”

But this also meant that I had more of a clue as to what was going on and was a little confused about our surrender.

According to my display, we still had over a thousand combatants to their 200. Why the fuck are we giving up? CRUSH THEM!!!!

Well, we got sent off to Stormwind (/gasp! Alliance DKs!) to go talk to King Douche, er, Varian.

I’m following Soth who obviously has not spent much time in Stormwind. I suppose I can forgive him for not knowing the layout, it’s hard to get your bearings when you’re aggroing every guard and player in the whole city.

But this time our mission was one of peace and love.

Stroll into the King’s chambers, the guards are having a field day using Soth as target practice with produce and ignoring me.

Hmmm….

There’s the kid.

There’s the throne.

When we’ve been here to kill him, he’s always standing right there…

God dammit.

A For the Horde must have just gone through here.

Guess we should have rolled Horde.

Fuck it.

/logout

The Tier 10 set bonuses will come with the newest patch 3.3.

All set bonuses are listed below, classes arranged in alphabetical order.

Death Knight

• Death Knight T10 Tank 2P Bonus – Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.
• Death Knight T10 Tank 4P Bonus – When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 sec.
• Death Knight T10 Melee 2P Bonus – Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities deal 10% increased damage.
• Death Knight T10 Melee 4P Bonus – Whenever all your runes are on cooldown, you gain 3% increased damage done with weapons, spells, and abilities for the next 15 sec.

Druid

• Druid T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – The healing granted by your Wild Growth spell reduces 0% less over time.
• Druid T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration.
• Druid T10 Balance 2P Bonus – When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 10% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.
• Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus – Reduces the cooldown on your Eclipse talent by 6000.
• Druid T10 Feral 2P Bonus – Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.
• Druid T10 Feral 4P Bonus – Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.

Hunter

• Hunter T10 2P Bonus – Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for until cancelled.
• Hunter T10 4P Bonus – Your Shot abilities deal 4% increased damage to targets afflicted with Viper Sting, Serpent Sting, or Wyvern Sting.

Mage

• Mage T10 2P Bonus – Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.
• Mage T10 4P Bonus – Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 3 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.

Paladin

• Paladin T10 Holy 2P Bonus – The cooldown on your Divine Favor talent is reduced by 60 sec.
• Paladin T10 Holy 4P Bonus – Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.
• Paladin T10 Protection 2P Bonus – Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
• Paladin T10 Protection 4P Bonus – When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 sec.
• Paladin T10 Retribution 2P Bonus – Your Seals and Judgements deal 10% additional damage.
• Paladin T10 Retribution 4P Bonus – Your melee attacks have a 4% chance to reset the cooldown on your Divine Storm ability.

Priest

• Priest T10 Healer 2P Bonus – After your Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 sec.
• Priest T10 Healer 4P Bonus – Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.
• Priest T10 Shadow 2P Bonus – The critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells is increased by 5%.
• Priest T10 Shadow 4P Bonus – Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 51%.

Rogue

• Rogue T10 2P Bonus – Gives your melee finishing moves a 13% chance to add 3 combo points to your target.
• Rogue T10 4P Bonus – Your Tricks of the Trade ability now grants you 15 energy instead of costing energy.

Shaman

• Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
• Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
• Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus – Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
• Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus – The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
• Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus – When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
• Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus – Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Warlock

• Warlock T10 2P Bonus – The critical strike chance of your Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Corruption spells is increased by 5%.
• Warlock T10 4P Bonus – Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction spells deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 12% spell haste for 10 sec.

Warrior

• Warrior T10 Protection 2P Bonus – Your Shield Slam and Shockwave abilities deal 20% increased damage.
• Warrior T10 Protection 4P Bonus – Your Bloodrage ability no longer costs health to use, and now causes you to absorb damage equal to 20% of your maximum health. Lasts until cancelled.
• Warrior T10 Melee 2P Bonus – When your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities deal damage you have a 2% chance to gain 20% attack power for until cancelled.
• Warrior T10 Melee 4P Bonus – You have a 20% chance for your Blood Surge and Sudden Death talents to grant 2 charges of their effect instead of 1 and for the duration of the effect to be increased by 100%.

With my DK closing the gap to 80, I’m trying to find more tanking info since that’s the only role I’ll be filling. I’m running in to a few issues, though.

The information I’m finding is either outdated or non-existant when talking about pre-raid/heroic gear, but I suppose I could just use the older list and add in the normal ToC 5-man loot myself. I’m also interested in trying an Unholy tanking build but from what I’ve been told and what I’ve read, Blood is the best single target spec and Frost is the best AoE spec while Unholy falls through the cracks as the “anti-magic gimmick tank” or a “poor mans Pally tank”. I’m not opposed to trying Frost and I’m liking Blood so far, I just want to try Unholy for the anti-magic clubhouse, Boneshield and having a perma-Ghoul.

My main focus at 80 will be tanking heroics and maybe some of our “fun runs” for Naxx or Ulduar, but nothing end-game or too serious. I also have no intentions on dual-weild tanking. It’s just unappealing.

So on that note, I have a few questions and hopefully some of you have answers.

Are there any significant disadvantages that I would have running with an Unholy tanking build over Blood or Frost or does it really just boil down to personal preference?

If there are disadvantages, what are they?

What is Unholy lacking that doesn’t allow it to run on par with Blood or Frost?

What spec do you prefer to tank with and why?

What made you choose that spec over the other 2?

Can you recommend any good DK tanking blogs, forum threads, etc.?

We find our hero in the Ebon Hold terrorizing the newbies with Munchy’s “War Stories”. Yes, he really did man the 50cal…

Generally as you live your life and do any sort of team sport/activity you will meet friends. With these friends you will complete the activity/win the sport together, and you begin to trust in them. You trust that they will always have your back if something goes wrong with your strategy, you trust that they will save you if you are getting hurt, and much more.

Then after spending so much time together with your new friends you can basically complete any activity and KNOW the person. By this I mean, know what they would do, if they were to have trouble, and basically work together so simultaneously you are surprised you are not fused to each other’s hips.

This is what we call Synergy, and you will find this in your WoW “life”. Everyone has friends/guildies that they know very well and will be able to work well with no matter what role you play (DPS/Tank/Healer). This is probably one of the most important ties that you can possible have, and one should make use of this tie.

Raiding is like a Soccer Team, you have your players and are all part of the same team striving for the same goals (no pun intended, but it’s there anyways). If a few people do not do their jobs, you will wipe or lose the game for your team. Now if the team is full of synergy, you WILL not fail because you all know each other’s strengths, limits, weaknesses, and ability. Working together with perfect synergy is essential for both activities to succeed.

The Backstory

Yes, I joined a new guild, a 25m Raiding guild with high ambitions and two very great Raid Leaders with my friend, Bigblakbul and some other of the “core raiders” from my other guild. So far it has been pretty good, we downed everything up to the Val’kyr and decided to finish them off last night.

Just one problem, we didn’t, we sat there and wiped for quite some time until we finally just called it. Was it a Tanking problem? Hell no, Blak and I brought our A-Games for sure. The Healers were pretty good as well, but what was wrong, was the DPS. There were quite a few Melee DPSers that never switched targets throughout the night, as I am sure there were a couple of Ranged, but melee was our largest problem of them all. So what does this have to do with Synergy?

The Back Story After the Backstory

After the Raid our RL (Boomkin/Feral Tank OS) and our other RL (Prot/Ret Pally) asked Blak and I to hop into a private channel in vent with them. I knew that we had not done anything wrong, but I feared for the worst anyways. Here is (basically) how it went down, and luckily my fears were proven completely wrong!

RL: El, Blak, how familiar are you with ToC?

Me: We have both done it and lead it multiple times, why?

RL: Well, the way this used to be done made things become very “cliquey” now Co-RL and I have Tanked together and know each other very well, just like you two are comfortable Tanking with each other. What we want to do is not make this cliquey so that all of us (Tanks) are familiar with each other, because face it we will not all make it to every Raid and will have to Tank with each other regardless.

All: Damn Straight (In multiple variations, but that one sums it up)
RL: What we hope to do is to gear up people and get familiar with each other in 10m ToC, because the guild has more than enough people to do these full-guild we will be splitting off into 2 groups. Me and El will Tank the first one together, and Co-RL and Bigblak you guys will Tank the second so that we can break up any “cliques” and get to know each other.

All: Sounds good!

After, we talked about times that would suit us best and what-not, but I thought this was an extraordinary idea and it should work out very nicely. There is very little loot competition between the groups except for Trinkets/Rings/Neck/Cape and it will be easy to create a synergy since the groups can/will be swapped around once and awhile.

Skiiing! Yay!

How to Create Synergy

What my RL suggested was a great way to create Synergy between Tanks, you simply Tank with the people you will most likely be grouped with. After a few sessions you will know the person like he was your own brother in terms of Tanking. Once this happens, it will be a very powerful and effective tie for your Raid to have. Sure, the best geared Tanks in the server could do a great job Tanking some boss, but they will never know each other’s limits if they do not make a bond with the other.

Synergy is stronger than gear, being able to seriously know the person you are fighting beside is a huge advantage in any field, especially WoW. But are Tanks the only ones that need synergy?

Hell no! In fact there are multiple synergies that can be created in WoW, there are exactly 6 different combinations. These include:

• Tank to Tank
• Tank to DPS
• Tank to Healer
• Healer to DPS
• Healer to Healer
• DPS to DPS

So how does one actually create synergy? Very simple, just like our RL has done you “force” each other into playing alongside one another until you create a very strong bond. With said bond everything becomes easier because you have someone you can always count on to get the job done.

What does this have to do with my performance?

You are a Rogue and your best bud who you play all the time with is a Healer. Your buddy KNOWS that you are not always aware of fire and will be sure to top you off accordingly. The Healer buddy just saved your life and allowed you to keep DPSing your heart out. See the connection? Without that synergy your Raid would be left with one less DPS, and that can make a significant difference as to if your group will finish or crash and burn on the spot.

Let me take Klinderas for an example. There are points when my Runes start to stay on C/D and can be very tricky for me to get Aggro, as a great Hunter and friend he knew when to pop an MD on my ass and keep me Tanking when it really mattered. Hell, there were times back in TBC where he would put a Trap on me to lessen the inevitable chance of my death, it felt good to be able to count on someone.

As a Tank we will generally pop our OH SHI- buttons when needed, but depending on the Healer’s capabilities we may have to pop them earlier than we expected. If [Insert Healer friend here] and I were in the middle of a fight and I know when his heals start to dry out due to synergy, I press my shiny buttons and save both of our hides for a few more seconds.

This is very confusing, what is the point of this?

Look, we all establish ties with someone, and as *ahem* awkward as it sounds a bond with a friend is extremely valuable. Synergy is when this bond grows to the point of us being able to successfully complete tasks as if we were somehow turned into that person, and by doing so we know each other’s next move and limits. With this knowledge we can have a more wholesome experience in our Raid/Everyday life because we know who to count on and what they can do.

Synergy, it has saved my Raids, will continue to save my Raids, and makes the game that much more enjoyable because I KNOW that I have friends that I will entrust my virtual-life with.

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

On a Separate Note

@Baenhoof was taking requests for a free fully colored commission of their WoW character. All we had to do was be the 1st to tweet her with a screenshot of said character at the loading screen. Guess who got that commission?

No, I'm not taking off my pants, that costs extra!

Me! Still I question why no woman wants this hunk ‘o Blood Elf love. Those aren’t tattoos ladies, them be fightin’ scars!

“OMNOMNOM, ME LOVE SANDVICH!!!” Screams Elnoriah as he devours sandwich after sandwich at the Ebon Hold’s café delicious…

Raiding can be quite the expensive investment, as a Tank I put in about 100g a night of raiding in repairs, and receive emblems and possibly loots. Of course I have tons of fun, which is worth every copper of that damned virtual currency. Nonetheless there is more to Raid expenses than just repairing, and these my friends are called consumables!

What IS a consumable?

The best way to describe a consumable is something that you “eat” and in WoW, most likely buffs you. The three examples that you will be most familiar with will be Flasks, Food, and Potions. Just by having enough of all three of these items can increase your performance quite a bit, and so most Raiding Guilds REQUIRE you to use these on Guild-Run Raids. PUGs for specific Raids, not so much, but if you are tackling hard content, then you may as well strap a few of these on with you.

Hine over at Death Goddess wrote an article on Death Knight DPS consumables, so for any of our DPS cousins I suggest you hop over there and take a peek!

Food

Up until 80 we generally only think of Food as the way to get our HP back in between pulls, but in fact cooks can create food that can buff the whole Raid/Party or just yourself. As a Tank, there are quite a few decent choices we can get, and the expense to acquire the consumables may vary depending on the server. Regardless, let us judge only by stats, not by a virtual currency.

Fish Feast: As goes the same with what Hine wrote, it’s free and it’s a pretty good buff. Generally I would use this with my guild if we were doing something that is on farm, and/or not a challenge to the group. Honestly, there is no reason to break my back fishing or break my wallet purchasing food if it is for a cake-walk Raid. As with most consumable foods it gives 40 STAM (contributing about 400 HP), and for a whole hour is a pretty sweet deal. On top of the 40 STAM, if that was not already enough to sell you, is 80 AP which of course boosts your DPS. To us this means that because we do a bit more damage, we will be doing quite a bit more TPS (Threat per second).

So for Farm content, or just plain easy instances/Raids mooch off of a friend and eat their Fish Feasts, eat them up!

EDIT: (Thanks for correcting me on that Gravity)

Blackened Dragonfin: Is certainly the best food out there for a DK Tank, with its 40 Agi and 40 STAM there is virtually nothing that can compete with it. The 40 STAM is a keeper just on its own, but what does the Agility do for us? Well, Agility as a stat increases Dodge, Armor, and also gives us a tiny bit of AP. Avoidance, damage mitigation, and a bit of Threat, exactly everything we need in a single stat. It is simply delicious, as a food and as a buff, go blackened and you will NEVER go back!

Personally I would only be using this if either your Raid has no Fish Feast (Very Unlikely) or if you are progressing through harder content that is not on farm or ridiculously easy!

Snapper Extreme: I will be completely honest, use this ONLY if you are severely lacking in Hit Rating. As a Tank we do want to get a bit of Hit, maybe not the Hit Cap, but we want to be “up there” enough to be able to successfully use each of our abilities. The problem with getting “up there” is that in ToC there are VERY few Tanking items with Hit on them, so we need to scrounge what we can out of the T9 Helm/Chest and possibly even use a couple gem slots for +Hit. Dark times indeed, but food can actually limit the amount of gems we need to “waste”! The Snapper Extreme gives 40 STAM still, but also 40 Hit Rating, which is about 1% Melee Hit and 1.5% (ish) of Spell Hit. The extra percent can easily boost your threat IF YOU NEED THE HIT RATING, otherwise like DPS overcapping HR it is completely useless.

So if you are lacking HR to the point of not being able to hit Raid Bosses and keep them on top of you the entire fight, grab a Snapper Extreme to give you that boost. Fish Feast and the Dragonfint are better but if you can not hit the Boss, you are not producing threat. What is the point of all of that survivability and uncrittable gear if you can not keep the boss on you?

Yeap, I look like a stripper now. Mother will not be pleased!

Flasks are made by Alchemists, think of them as potions that last for a whole hour and persist through death. Flasks are VERY important to have, you can go without Food for Farm content, but you should always have at least 2 flasks on you for the duration of the Raid. (Onyxia/VOA/OS you could probably get away with not using one) These flasks will increase performance pretty significantly, and they are not even that expensive! Considering there are only 4 choices to choose from for Flasks we will only be using 1 as a Tank.

Flask of Stoneblood: 1300 HP ’nuff said. Really, that is a significant amount of HP to gain just by drinking some concoction, and it will make quite a big difference in terms of your survivability. Take me for an example, normally I have about 35.9k HP, and by drinking this I am at 37.2k HP self buffed, obviously this is a great deal of difference and will help the Healers not have to work their asses off to keep me alive. Sounds like the 25g a wack is certainly worth it!

Like I said earlier, you would be able to get away with not using Flasks in Ony10/VOA/OS if you are just futzing around with a PuG. Regardless, find an Alchemist and make friends with him/her, because you are going to need them!

Potions

Potions are the trickiest of the consumables to truly understand. You can only use them 2 times in a fight, once before the pull and once during the pull, so you will need to have a bunch but be able to use them wisely. Choosing the right potions is also a huge part of it, but luckily for us we only have one that we even need to think about as a Tank. Yes we are cheaters, but we are the ones keeping you from getting pounded by that fire-breathing worm over there!

Indestructible Potion: Words can not describe my love for this potion, because frankly, it has saved my life on multiple occasions. 3500 Armor is a ridiculous amount to come out of a potion, so much that it completely takes the Runic Healing potion’s potential use and throws it out of a window. The mitigation is tremendous, but that is not all that it gives you. If you have Bladed Armor you can get around 100 AP extra just by popping one of these, so on top of the amazing amount of mitigation it provides, it also gives us a ton of bonus Threat. Just incase we were questioning its awesome power.

Keep about a stack of these with you at all times, because you will never know if you need to whip one out. They are cheap and easily replaceable so do not worry!

So let us add all of these together, if we are fully buffed with all of the best foods/potions/flasks available we will receive about 1700Hp, 3500 Armor, a tiny bit of parry, and 180-200 more AP. A noticeable difference for sure, but it does come with a price. To get fully buffed/flasked it can cost 80g+, but there are ways to limit the costs, but generally only through a little bit of elbow grease.

Level your cooking and fishing to 450 on an Alt or even your Main. The cost of Food is certainly the most expensive of all of these, so by putting a bit of effort in you will be able to cut the cost of Raiding by quite a bit. If you have a gatherer/Alchemist get them to max level and farm on them for the mats/flasks/potions, this can be a bit time-consuming, but it gives you something to do on those boring times of the day.

Great job today guys, now let us take what we have learned and apply it on our next Raid!

Unless it is OS… just face roll. *snickers*

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

On a Side Note- we now have a Guide section for the site, go to the page and you will be able to view all of the Guides written by myself and Aifel! Enjoy!

I’ve always wanted to write a gaming blog following a character from it’s inception right through to level 80 and into raids. A blog that would be dedicated to that character and it’s class. I like the idea of a coherency and something of a journal to add flavour to the character experience.

Talking with my girlfriend (rather unnecessarily sheepishly I might add) about the idea of the project, being able to play around with blogs and agonizing over what kind of character to choose, she very nicely sat with me as I shyly showed her the World of Warcraft classes page and explained the various different classes that I was interested in following from it’s beginning stages to level 80.

So she listened as I explained what a Character Class was, like an adventurer profession and highlighted Druids, Paladins, Mages, Warlocks and Death Knights. She asked questions about each and then surprisingly said “Well, you’ve got a bit of a White Knight syndrome in real life, so I think you should play something outside your comfort zone. Play the Death Knight.”

So once I was back at my computer I poured over the details of this new character, I played with skin tones, races and hair styles until I

eventually landed on Blood Elves and made a nearly perfect WoW likeness of my girlfriend. I liked the idea of playing something with a certain degree of elegance and the Blood Elves have it in abundance. Plus it also doesn’t hurt that I’ll be looking at my girlfriend’s virtual rear half the time anyhow.

So with DiNightshade born I begin my trek into the vast unknown discipline of the Death Knight.

I do not see what the big deal was with that place. Sure, it took 5 people a year ago to do it, but it took 1 Elnoriah now! *flex*…

The Burning Crusade was WoW’s very first expansion pack, and certainly its finest. Some of the most challenging Raids and Instances were home to TBC, and honestly it has shaped many a player. Every pull had to be carefully executed, it was like a well-rehearsed ballet. A Hunter trap here, a polymorph there, and Sap that caster! I miss those days.

Will CC (crowd control) every be back in the PvE portion of the game? I sure hope so, it made every instance a new-found challenge. In the meantime though, the only thing we have left of those days are the memories we all shared, and one of my favorites was doing Magister’s Terrance.

A History

The Sunwell patch was the last official content patch for The Burning Crusade Expansion, and with it there were the Isle of Quel’Danas Dailys,the Sunwell raid (25 man) and of course Magister’s Terrance (5m and Heroic 5m). Both of which were hard, and both of which made me question my faith in a higher being. The group had to be fine-grained in the sense that you pretty much need 5 REALLY good people to complete the Heroic (or even normal) instance, and like the traditional group makeups of TBC Instances you had a Tank, a Healer, and 2-3 DPS that could CC.

The most fun I had here was on my Warlock, I was seducing, banishing, and christ knows what all at the same time.

Each of the fights were inventive, and of course a challenge! My favorite of which was the Faction Champions esq boss before you fight Kael’Thas. Think of it as Faction Champs but with less people, and it being about 2x as hard. It was a nightmare, but when you completed it you felt like you were THE SHIT! If someone misplaced a CC you were practically done for in that boss fight, it was stupendous. Sure, to the point that many people never even finished it in its prime, but the ones who did can agree it was hard as hell and rewarding once you finished it all.

Blizzard, you made me a happy Warlock and a very stressed Priest, and to that I thank you.

Elnoriah’s Adventure

Longing for the feeling to go back and get even with the bosses of Magister’s Terrance once again, I decided it was far overdue to make a trip through MGT and solo it. The only turn-off however was that I needed to be “attuned” to the Heroic, and so I picked up the quest and ran straight into the Terrance. With that. . . our story begins!

*Looks around*
Trash! Simplistic, these first two pulls consist of two mobs to a pull. I think the saddest part of the first two pulls is that you can literally 3 shot these things, damn straight 5k Obliterate crits are EPIC!

Now, there is a large circle with two groups of mobs on either side, which path do I choose? It does not really matter so pick the left! Let us see, 5 Belfs and an Imp, you would think this would be easy as sin, but in all honesty this one pull was harder than any trash fight in WOTLK Heroics. At the end of it I literally had 2k HP left with IBF (Icebound Fortitude) and AMS (Anti-Magic Shell) on cool down, but this will be the hardest fight in quite a while so the thrill was short-lived.

Launching myself like Kirby at the trash pulls I was a GOD, and seriously it felt GOOD! I kept up on my silences, and was doing wonderfully, and then I reached the room of the first boss, Selin Fireheart. Being the first boss, he is arguably the easiest in the entire instance, and certainly a cakewalk to solo now. Back in the day however, he was still pretty simple, but was more of a DPS check (we will talk about this in a minute), trust me, I passed the test with flying colors.

Unfortunately for you I'M the god, not you Selin!

The Boss Fight- Selin Fireheart

• Keep him in the center of his platform, the farther away he is from those crystals the better. Commence Tank and Spank!
• After he gets bloodied up enough, he runs over to a crystal and starts channeling the power from it. The longer he channels the bigger he gets.
• The crystal he is channeling from is targateable, so of course NUKE THE LIVING @!$% out of it!
• No matter how godly you are, he will still get a bit bigger and scream really lame catch phrases that only work for ME.
• After each yell he explodes with a nova of green clouds, so squishies need to move the hell away.
• Rinse and repeat until dead.

Now that he is dead we can continue to the next boss, but first the pulls before him! Mana Wyrmlings, just like the ones you have to kill at the Belf starting area, except much more of a pain in the ass. The first couple are just single squishies and are easy to kill, but afterwards they start grouping up into larger masses. Until finally in the next boss’ room down the hallway of worms there are 4 groups of about 10-15 worms per. If you are a Tank pull all of these bastards and pop a cooldown, because after each dies they explode and do a bit of damage. (Killing Machine + Rime Proc = 1 shot and a TON of lag as they asll explode)

Congratulations, you now get to fight a Voidwalker by the name of Vexallus! Honestly this was more of a Healer-Intense fight in which there was a lot of damage going out in multiple places, but if everyone was paying attention it was a cakewalk.Think of him as  mini-Curator (and if you never did Kara go do it now), which is another fun fight. I will warn you though, he is mostly a Tank and Spank . . . mostly.



Rough 'im up boys!

The Boss Fight- Vexallus

• Run in there and pop every C/D known to man. Burst him until it is not funny anymore.
• It’s still not funny, keep killin’ him!
• Pansy, you call that breaking a spine!?
• Sparks will now start shooting out, kill these things, because they tend to explode and do more damage then they are worth.
• With a group each DPS should be getting 3 each. Each spark gives a stacking buff that increases damage done, as well as received, so it can be problematic with too many stacks.
• Rinse and repeat until he is dead.

If you have the quest go to the back of the hall and laugh at the dying Belf. [Badass name] [Something with Strider or any other Belfy suffix] will give you a new one which is to go outside and use the scrying orb to spy on the Sunwell. Proceed in doing  as told and watch the cut scene that follows, and yes the guy who narrates the other cut scenes does this I think so you can listen to the liquid candy that is his voice.

What a coincidence a Blue Dragon flies down and tells you his life story, pick up the quest from him! This quest tells you to kill Kael’Thas (final boss), and by doing so you will unlock the Heroic mode for MGT.

“Wait we… AREN’T killing… the blue dragonflight?”
Not today, Munch, remember this was before Malygos decided to go crazy, so he is still “cool” with us. Well, not Bronze Dragonflight awesome-
“You know… his hair is… blue like… yours!… Except it actually… LOOKS GOOD…”
Note to self: Put less sass in his lettuce, he certainly does not need anymore.

Alright, you get your awesome buff thanks to the Dragon hanging around, and continue your quest to kill Kael. There are two robots in the hallway proceeding to an outer courtyard. They are easy, just kill them and let us get to the interesting pulls!

No, these are not holigrams, these are actual Belfs and Demons hanging around this courtyard, about 7 per pull. Remember the difficulty in the first couple pulls? Take that and multiply it by 2, damn right it’s fun! For maximum skippage pull the right or left group closest to you, kill them, then pull the middle. At level 80 you should be able to just walk down the path leading towards the next room, avoiding the back pulls.

Another robot will be patrolling the hallway proceeding to the next courtyard, be sure to pull him far enough away from both the groups of mobs you skipped, and mobs you have yet to touch.  Not bad, could have gone cleaner, but now your next task is to heal up and clear out the first half of this new courtyard. You will figure out why in a minute.

Alright, head into that Greek-Building-esq thing in the middle of the courtyard, and you will spot 5 characters. 4 randomly generated characters, and one stable person, the Princess  (Purple lady with too many arms). Incoming hard fight, GO!

So, why is there a Belf with two Fisticuffs and no shirt...?!?

The Boss Fight- Faction Champions Princess-I-Need-Less-Arms

• Do the strategy you would for Faction Champions, burn down and interrupt the Healer.
• When this is done kill the next most annoying of the bosses.
• There is no threat table, they will randomly jump from person to person. (If you are soloing then go figure)
• Destroy all of them!
• ???
• Profit!

Quick! Run into the fancifully decorated hallway ahead of you, yes, Blood Elves ahead, who would have guessed!?

There are literally about two groups of Mobs left to down before you hit Kael’Thas, and these actually are some of the easier ones. Just remember to oust the Healers first, no need to make this anymore complicated than it needs to be, no? Don’t question the Naga in the pull, I assure you most Blood Elves have no positive association with them.

TEMPEST KEEP WAS MERELY A SETBACK…

“Asshole… I haven’t done… Tempest Keep… yet!”
Didn’t miss out on much, Munchy, we killed him and he apparently rose from the dead.
“…That’s my… job…”
HE TEWK YER JAWRB

YOU TWO ARE LIKE TEENAGERS IN A MOVIE THEATRE… DAMN IT, LET’S JUST FIGHT!

My, Kael'Thas, what rotten skin you have!

The Boss Fight- Kael’Thas, trust me it won’t fail this time!

• Being the prime example of a Mage, Kael will shoot fireballs at you, do try and interrupt to minimize damage taken
• around 75-80% he will summon a Pheonix, this needs to get burned down ASAP!
• Every so often Pheonix eggs will be spawned, destroy these before they can spawn the actual Pheonix inside.
• About 60% he will cast an ability that will literally take the gravity away from you for a while, much like the Tempest Keep fight.
• During this you need to fly around and dodge the purple bubbles that will be flying towards you.
• Do this successfully and he will be stunned for a few seconds before repeating this again.
• Keep killing the Eggs!
• Rinse and repeat until finished!

It is an easy fight in theory, but then again this is coming from a member of a species that thought the sun revolved around the Earth. Honestly, even on Normal mode and switching between Unholy/Frost specs I was no able to defeat Kael’Thas, and yes I was using my OH SHI- buttons and the like. It is an extremely hard fight, both for its respective level and to solo, so I will have to bug ask Aifel to help me out with that.

Either way, it was as fun of a run as it was back when I did it at its respective level, and honestly harder than any of those damned things we call “heroics” nowadays! So go try it out, and have some fun.

I’m comin’ for you Kael’Thas!

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

P.S.

As a note to all of you aspiring Tanks that have not “gotten the hang of” when to use your OH SHI- buttons, do the first trash pulls in MGT: Norm, you will know by the end of those, seriously.

So I’ve decided to join the ‘blogosphere’ finally. Lets give this a shot.

I’m Calum, an 18 year old University student from Australia. My main time sink is World of Warcraft, which I’ve played since vanilla (will update with the day I actually started). In the many years since I started playing I’ve gone through just about every play style, from a inexperienced noob who didn’t know what a GCD was, to hardcore raider spending 6+ hours a night attempting progression. Now however I am barely casual on my 80 Death Knight, but its still fun.

I plan *fingers crossed* to update this a lot, and bring some good information out, along with some personal speculation.

Stay tuned.

So, I was tagged by That is Amazing (WoW)! to do this DPS Q&A thing.  I’m going to do it.  I’m not going to tag anyone else because…to be quite frank, all of the people in what I consider my “circle of blogs” have already done it or been tagged.

On with the show…

Started over at http://dkdeathgoddess.blogspot.com/

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary dps?

Kered, Death Knight, Dual-Wield Frost

What is your primary dpsing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Mostly 5-mans, but I get to throw him in on the occasional alt 10-man run from time to time.

What is your favorite dps spell/ability for your class and why?

Howling Blast…when Rime and Killing Machine both light up at the same time, I love hitting that Howling Blast button and seeing the free auto-crit…especially in an aoe situation.

What dps spell do you use least for your class and why?

I’m going to go with a talent that is in the tree I use, but I haven’t specced into.  Hungering Cold.  It’s primarily a pvp talent and I don’t currently pvp with Kered.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your dps class and why?

I can put out some prime-time aoe when I want to.  The why is pretty self explanatory.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your dps class and why?

Threat.  My current spec doesn’t have the threat reduction talent, so I pretty much always have to be aware of how much threat I’m putting out.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best dps assignment for you?

Blowing stuff up.  If there is interrupting to be done, I can excel at that as well.

What dps class do you enjoy dpsing with most and why?

There are other dps classes?  I wasn’t aware.  I suppose it would be anyone that buffs me nicely, so pallies & shaman are nice.

What tanking class do you enjoy dpsing with least and why?

I don’t think the class really matters, it’s the players that suck.  I’ve had overgeared pallies not able to maintain threat while undergeared pallies did fine.  Same with every other tanking class.

What is your worst habit as a dps?

Probably tunnel vision.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while dpsing?

Bad tanks.  Being a good tank, bad ones drive me crazy.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other dps?

If, by balanced you mean I am usually outdpsing everyone else that has similar gear levels, then yes…we are quite balanced.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a damage dealer?

Recount and boss death frequency.  If the boss dies, I’m doing fine.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

They are ezmode.  Yes, Death Knights are easy to play.  No, Death Knights are not easy to play at a high level.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new dpsers of your class to learn?

I suppose gearing issues, but I dunno really.  It’s hard for someone who actually takes the time to research and learn about a class to understand those who don’t.

What dps class do you feel you understand least?

Warlocks, they are the only class I’ve never played.  Not even at level 1.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in dps?

Power Auras is probably the best addon for any class with procs.  Omen helps me not die.  Recount helps me judge my performance.  OmniCC gives me a nifty little counter on my buttons to let me know when my Cooldown is up, that’s helpful.  DeadlyBossMods is essential for anyone raiding, dps or not.

Strength over other stats or balanced stat allocation, and why?

Hit to 8% then STR, STR, STR and more STR.

“Munch, I am going to grab some water, do NOT touch the frag belt I just modded, alright?” Says a goggle-wearing Death Knight…

*Boom*
What part of do NOT touch did you not understand!?
The part… with you being … a Blood Elf…

Welcome class, my regrets for your classmate, he should have known not to stand near Munchy in the middle of an explosives lab. Worry not, Gnomes will be even more replaceable once we get access to Goblins! Trust me, he will be in good hands.

As any character, you should pick up two professions. The first reason for this is to simply make some quick cash, because face it, you can not repair all that plate gear on you without any cash, students! Secondly, professions have an indirect and/or direct effect on our performance as a Tank. Each profession has gear that can be created for any player in WoW, but they also give special bonuses for you to boot!

There are 3 gathering skills (skinning/mining/herbalism) and 8 crafting professions, each of these gives a flat-out buff, special ability, or gear enhancement specifically for the player. Any combination of these has a chance to be beneficial for a class in WoW, but as a Death Knight Tank, what should we be looking for out of our professions’ bonuses?

Well, with 24 different combinations of skills available to a single player,  and the ability to only pick 1 of those combinations, it can be quite a challenge to pick which is beneficial to both your income of Gold and increased performance as a Tank. Let us cut into this so-called chase and explore which skills will be beneficial as a Tank, but do remember, you are entitled to your own opinion! (Just your opinion may not be most beneficial as a Tank).

Note: The benefits listed are based upon 450/450 skill in them!

Gathering Skills

Simply put, each of these skills allows us to take from the world. Whether it be picking flowers, finding ore inside of a rock, or ripping the skin off of an animal, each acts as a base for practically every single profession in the entire game. All are simplistic to level up, as well as great ways to rake in the cash.

Herbalism
Pickin’ flowers eh? Fine, if you want to frolic amongst the Priests you may. As a Herbalist the ability Lifeblood is granted to your worthless soul! Once clicked it allows you to be a Resto Druid for 5 seconds, every 3minutes. This meaning that you can heal yourself for 3600 HP with a bunch of pretty little flowers placed all around you. How  useful! Hell, another free Heal is never a thing to pass up, so in that case it is  certainly an O.K. profession to fill in the void.

As a Herbalist, your Herbs are needed by Scribes and Alchemists in order to create potions, flasks, glyphs, and scrolls. Since there is constantly a great market for all of these items it will rake in the cash substantially. Even if you do not AH your findings and instead use them to craft your own items you will be able to save a KILLING on some very pricey Raid Flasks/Glyphs!

Elno’s Word: Alright, it is certainly an easily defended choice of profession. The Lifeblood ability produces a noticeable amount of HP, and it is very simple to level. Is it my top choice? No, but it is definitely a good option to consider as a Tank.

Mining

If bashing a rock, armed only with a tiny pick, does not sound manly to you, then I have absolutely no clue what would be. Out of all of the gathering skills combined it is the proud owner of the most useful “ability” for a Tank. Toughness at its max level of 450 adds an extra 60 STAM to your stats. A little over 600 HP by leveling one of the easiest trade skills in this entire game? Sign me the hell up!

From a money perspective, you will be able to mine Ore needed by Jewel Crafters, and turn that ore into bars for the Engineers and Blacksmiths (Jewel Crafters as well) on your server. Titanium and Titansteel bars will sell for an absolute killing, and the gems you gather as you scour the regions for these nodes will be able to be turned into useful gems to place into gear.

Elno’s Word: Honestly, I would be hard-pressed not to take up Mining as a Tank. It is practically brainless to level, produces an excellent amount of cash, and gives 60 STAM to boot! What is not to like about this?

Skinning

The Native Americans used practically every part of any animal they would kill. It is a damn waste to leave that Rhino laying there to decay! Luckily Skinners will take these rotting carcasses and recycle them into useable pieces of fine leather. The bonus it gives, however, is the least-desired out of all of the Gathering Skills. Master of Anatomy, despite having a badass name, is not desired for a Tank. We do not need Crit, if it comes off of the 2H that is perfectly fine, but we should not be gemming/enchanting/leveling trade skills solely to get the extra Crit. However, as a DPS the extra 40 crit is not half bad.

As for being a tycoon as a Skinner, your audience is not horrible. You get Leatherworkers and maybe a Tailor to consume your dead animal skins as they make “stylish” clothing articles for everyone to wear. Yes, you are the sole reason RPers look so good, congratulations!

Elno’s Word:  Despite being useful, I would rather pick flowers than skin wild beasts, the benefits are just not worth my time. Although it is the easiest Gathering skill to level, a Tank should not be touching this with a 10 ft pole.

We can dance if we want to!

Tradeskills

At this point in time of WoW there are 5 different Trade skills to choose from. All of which have their uses and perks in-game. Most of the trade skills require gathered materials that one (or more) of the three Gathering skills can acquire, because of this many people level a gathering skill and a trade skill that cooperates with it well. The perfect synergy, but what Trade skills (if any) will we be choosing!?

Tailoring

What could be less many than picking flowers for a living? Why making dresses of course! First of all, as a Death Knight we do not even bother wearing Cloth, and as a Tank this goes double do to the lack of useful Stats and armor. This is solely needed for the clothies, and just incase you have not noticed, we wear PLATE, especially as a Tank. The only use we would be getting out of Tailoring will be the bags, so if you are that dead set upon leveling it, go make a Priest for Christ’s sake.

Tailors can make leg enhancements for everyone, but as a perk for a Tailor these leg enhancements only cost a mere 1g thread to create. These enhancements are called Master’s Spellthread and Sanctified Spellthread; they give 50 spellpower and 30 STAM, and  50 spellpower and 20 Spirit respectfully. Just to burst your bubble, despite the fac that we do have Spells as Death Knight Tanks, they do NOT scale based upon spellpower, instead they work off of our Attack Power. That perk? Useless, but hey, you can make a Magic Carpet mount which makes it totally worth it! (Seriously, it is pretty epic)

Edit: Thy whom make bags also have an embroidery for their cloaks, on top of the Spellthreads for their legs. Shadowguard Embroidery, Darkglow Embroidery, and Lightweave Embroidery would be their names, and of course the mats are pretty cheap and worthwile. However, if you are a Tank, it is TOTALLY not worth your time to go for any of these. First, Darkglow and Lightweave are completely useless because once again, we do not use spellpower and do not even have Mana as a rescource. Shadowguard is not half bad however, but for the amount of time to get to that point in Tailoring is just not worth a 400 AP chance on hit proc on my cloak.

Elno’s Word: For Christ’s sakes, I know it is extremely easy to level, but there are absolutely no perks into leveling Tailoring. Even if it was useful, do you really want to be THAT GUY who makes dresses at the Ebon Hold?

Enchanting

Everyone who wishes to accomplish anything end-game will find your name and make you their new best friend, seriously. You are the guy that can boost their performance, and you can make a killing off of doing so. As an Enchanter you suck the life out of all of the useless Green/Blue/Epic items of the world and turn them into useful materials needed to put powerful spells in your’s and other’s gear. So pick up that rod and let us get to work!

As a perk for Tanks, you can Enchant Ring- Stamina to both of your rings. 30 Stam x 2 = 60 Stam! Yes, about 600hp solely off of Enchanting, and that is pretty frickin’ sweet. Plus, you do not have to go out of your way to buy mats for your own personal enchants, so you will be guaranteed to save a killing off of that.

Elno’s Word: YES! 600 HP extra is certainly a magnificent bonus, just a small price to pay for being the “enchanting bitch” and staying at the bank after Raid nights enchanting guildy’s gear. Trust me, it is made of pure win, and some arcane.

Conclusions Part 1.

As I said earlier, you can make great cash off of any of these gathering skills/trade skills, but which ones should you choose from a Tanking perspective? So far Mining, Herbalism, and Enchanting are the only “viable” options that we have explored so far. Do not worry though, next week we will take an in-depth look into Black Smithing, Jewel Crafting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Inscription, and Alchemy. I hope to see you all there!

Do you have a Death Knight Tanking question you want answered in The Death Knight Tank and You: weekly miniguide? Drop us an email at Plaguedcandles@gmail.com !

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

It seemed like 6 or 7 people in our guild had RL stuff going on for Saturday’s ToC-25 raid, but we were really lucky with the PuGs we picked up and one shotted every boss. It’s always nice to be in and out in less than an hour! It’s also nice when no upgrades drop until Anub dies and Suffering’s End is up for grabs and you win the roll against 5 other people.

That’s right, fools! IT’S MINEZ!

Ignore the stats.. I'm not in Moonkin form.

I’ve stuck to my guns and kept with the new DK, getting from 58-70 over the weekend and getting the Cobalt set crafted from a guildie. It’s going super fast with a Blood Tanking build that our guilds Blood Tank helped me with, but I still miss a few things about Unholy. I think when I hit 80 I’m gonna drop the 1000g for dual speccing and pick up a Blood Tank spec for single target and Unholy Tank spec for off-tanking/AoE tanking.

Speaking of dropping gold on stuff.. I picked up the BoA tome of Cold Weather Flying at 68 and then dropped the rest of the gold for epic flying and the Death Chicken flyer at 70, so leveling should go that much faster. I’m still left with around 4500g so I can live with that.

How it's holding the weight of my armor alone is beyond me..

Now I just have to get to 72 so I can learn the “tanking” rune and stop using the Parry rune. The Parry rune is OK so far since it’s a higher chance for me to use Rune Strike.

Here we are again with Getting Started in Warcraft. Today I’m going to cover selecting a class to play. Just like selecting a good server realm to play on (see Part 2), selecting a class that fits your play style will go a long way in making Warcraft more enjoyable for you.

There are ten players classes in the game today: death knight, druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, and warrior. Each class has its own unique abilities and play style although many of the classes overlap in the roles they perform within the game. We’ll go over the differences in the various classes later on.

One special note about the death knight class if you are starting World of Warcraft for the first time — you cannot create a death knight character unless you already have another character that is level 55 or higher in the game. The death knight is considered a “hero” class and starts with a set of near epic level armor, an epic mount, and higher profession skills than a beginning character. As such, Blizzard has limited it to players who already have a high level character in the game.

After you’ve selected the realm you want to play on, the character generation screen will appear.

Now, there's a handsome looking devil.

I’m going to leave the selection of which faction to play, Horde or Alliance, up to you. If you have friends that already play one faction, go ahead and select that faction. If you are starting to play World of Warcraft for the first time and you don’t know or even care which faction you play, I suggest doing a little reading on the WoWWiki and Blizzard web sites to get a general understanding of each faction. You can also try out a few of the beginning zones as a Horde or Alliance character and see which faction appeals to you based upon the beginning quests and the lore behind them.

Looking at the Alliance, you have the following races to choose from: Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome, and Draenei. For the Horde you can choose from the following: Orc, Forsaken (also known as the Undead), Tauren, Troll, and Blood Elf. After you choose your race, you can then select the sex of the character, the class, and also customize the facial features, hair color, and so on by cycling through the options at the lower left of the character generation screen. Once you have all your options picked out, read up on the description text at the right about the race and class to get some background on your selection.

Overall, the classes can be divided or categorized a couple of different ways. The first important way to look at classes is whether they are a “pure” class or a “hybrid” class. Pure classes are ones that can only perform one “role” in the game; they cannot fulfill multiple roles such as damage dealing and healing. The pure classes include the hunter, mage, rogue, and warlock. Hybrids, on the other hand, can be set-up to perform multiple roles such as tanking, damage dealing, and/or healing. The hybrid classes include the death knight, druid, paladin, priest, shaman, and warrior.

You may wonder why you would want to play a pure class if the hybrid classes can perform multiple functions. Pure classes do have one major advantage over hybrid classes. Given that all things are equal such as gear and level, a pure class will be able to generate substantially more damage and have more ways to reduce the amount of damage they incur from other players or computer generated monsters than a hybrid class. For instance, the hunter class is able to provide the greatest ranged damage of any class and can avoid getting attacked through the use of various traps that incapacitate enemies for a certain amount of time. The other pure classes have similar abilities. A hybrid class such as a priest, on the other hand, may not be able to create as much damage as the hunter, but would counter the hunter with a combination of damage and being able to heal itself. You can see how this can make for some interesting fights between classes and how they counter each other in player versus player combat.

Looking at class roles, there are three roles that players can perform when working in groups to complete quests or dungeons. These roles are “tanking,” “damage-dealing” (also called “dps”), and “healing.”

A paladin tanking a mob.

Tanking involves attacking a computer-generated monster (also called a “mob”) and being able to withstand huge amounts of damage while keeping the monster’s attention on yourself (so he doesn’t attack the other members of your party). A tanking class will have a large amount of armor, usually wearing high-quality plate armor and carrying a shield. Tanking classes include the death knight, druid, paladin, and the warrior. A good “tank” is absolutely essential to a group and is generally looked upon as the leader for the group, choosing which targets to attack first and in what order. If you enjoy getting into the face of monsters and being able to take a massive beating, this is the class role for you.

A “dps” or damage-dealing class is one that assists the tank in defeating enemies by generating huge amounts of damage and using “crowd control” methods such as traps and stuns to remove any monsters or enemy players from combat while the main target is brought down. Damage-dealing classes differ in how they go about this. For instance, rogues have the ability to make themselves invisible and can stealth up to targets to stun them and perform damage. Hunters can shoot with a bow or a rifle while using a trained pet such as a bear or tiger to attack the target. Mages and warlocks use a combination of different types of spells to perform their damage either directly or over a certain amount of time. The dps classes wear mail armor, leather armor, and/or cloth armor which provides less protection than the plate-wearing tanking classes. The classes that can perform damage-dealing include almost all the classes in the game and classes that are usually viewed as best for one role such as tanking, can also specialize in damage-dealing as a secondary role (such as the warrior). However, the primary damage-dealing classes are the hunter, mage, rogue, and warlock. If you prefer to dish out lots of damage and use your cunning to escape from opponents, then a damage-dealing role may be the one for you.

A druid in bear form (for tanking) and a hunter.

The healing classes do exactly what their name implies — they keep all the other members healed so they can kill the target or complete a necessary quest. A good healer is invaluable to a group and are highly sought after by guilds. Healers not only heal but provide important utility or “buffs” to a group such as additional armor or health for all the party members. Healing classes include the druid, paladin, priest, and the shaman. Healers generally will have less armor or protection capabilities than a tanking or damage-dealing class (which is made up by the fact that they can heal themselves when needed). Playing a healer can be especially gratifying knowing that you kept your party alive during a difficult dungeon fight or quest.

The best advice I can offer when selecting a class is not to be afraid to try them. You have nothing to lose by trying out several until you find one that you really enjoy. In the next installment of this series, we’ll take a look at starting to play in the beginning zones and choosing your professions.

Welcome to Monday, again. Yeah, I’m not thrilled about it either. I AM thrilled about the updates I have for you from my weekend though. You ready for screenshots? Good.

Weekend Raiding

Yesterday afternoon we headed into Ulduar to continue where we left off on Tuesday. We started on Iron Council since we had downed them before, figuring it would be best to warm up on a fight we knew. They dropped this cute little dagger, Stormtip, so now I can bank that uglystick.

From there we headed to Thorim. I was on the arena team. I was a bit nervous about aoe’ing at first. I’ve died on whelps a few too many times I guess, and I’ve never been frost so the whole blizzarding is not really my thing. Didn’t take me long though to determine that it is just about impossible for me to die on this phase, as long as I spellsteal the Runic Shield and the Runic Mending that are cast by the Dark Rune Evokers.

It took a couple tries for the gauntlet team to get their part down right. I was pretty busy concentrating on my own assignment, but it sounds like there are several things to watch out for in there. Anyway, once they got through it intact and Thorim jumped into the fray, the rest was easysauce.

I got the T8 shoulder token off him, and still had the T8 pants token in my bag from Tuesday, so after the raid I said goodbye to T7 set bonus and invited the T8 set bonus over for dinner.

Mimiron was next. I dearly love the hallway leading up to him, hopping in one of the ‘tank things’ as our raid leader called it and jumping into the next pack. Good times. Our resto shaman wasn’t along this time though, so Fiaked got the bombs misdirected to him instead. Too bad he’s smart enough to shield/pain suppress and lived through it. :p

Mimiron is, um .. interesting. We got the first phase down pretty fast, but it took a bit to figure out the second phase. I died on it many times and still don’t know why … I guess too slow spreading back out after the special attack thing. Each try though we got a little closer and a little closer and eventually … we got to the final stage. Yes, the stage that combines all the attacks from the first three stages. omg there is waaaay too much stuff to look out for. Second try on the final stage, it looks like we’re gonna do it. Most of the raid is down, the three sections are at like 5% each …. and my dumb butt is concentrating so hard on getting the dps on them and getting it down, that I stand in one of the runes too long and don’t get out of the way of the laser bomb thingy. @#@$%. The raid leader is calling it a wipe, but the other mage and Fiaked are still up. That’s the second keeper that has been defeated at the end by Fiaked the Greatest Priest Ever nuking. Smite ftw!

From there, we headed down the Descent to Madness to see General Vezax. The architecture on the way there is absolutely gorgeous. Karius had to stop and admire some of it.

The trash on him is fun. Kind of like a mini faction champs. I got to sheep .. hurray! The general himself, though … we only tried a couple of times. We’ll extend the lockout and get some time in on him tomorrow.

Friday night Karius went to ToCr25 because they needed more people, even though he’s not quite geared for it yet. He got an ilevel 245 robe out of it though so he really raked in on the loot this weekend. I had a screenshot of the achievement but you’ve seen enough of those and they’re boring, so you get to look at Kalyon instead because he’s hot.

Arena

So, there was a post a couple weeks ago or thereabouts over at Critical QQ where it was mentioned that paladin wings (Avenging Wrath) can be spellstolen. Well, of course I had a goal from that point on to not only steal wings, but get a screenshot of it. That was more successful than our 5v5 team.

Still working on the sheep with wings.

Oh yeah, Kalyon has his own team now. Fiak trasferred over his druid so we could do some 2s. Since the druid, Fiaks, used to be a female tauren, and Kalyon used to be a female draenei, our team is named We Used To Be Chicks. I think we went 4-12 which was better than both of us expected to do.

The Naked Part

Wut? It wouldn’t be my blog without it. Schubert, you are a bad, bad gnome.

Karius certainly looks happy though.

Yes, that’s a Dio joke. Grats if you got it. I pity those that didn’t and somewhere, Ronnie James Dio is shedding a tear shaped like a hand forming the sign of the beast. That’s a lie because we all know Dio doesn’t cry. Oohhh I rhymed! DiOwned!

Where was I going with this.. oh yeah! Being a late blooming noobsprinkle and just NOW leveling a new DK as Unholy. Why Unholy? Because it’s METAL! And Dio is metal. Well, mainly because it seems like the most fun on paper because it seems like some weird form of melee Battle Warlock (pets and DoTs) death machine. Is it the most fun? That’s not for me to decide.. it’s up to YOU.. and Dio.

I started off just cramming points in to Unholy from 55-58, having little to no idea what these things do. We’ve all at least leveled a DK in the starting zone, right? Getting 49 talent points in the span of 2 hours while trying to figure out class mechanics at the same time is pretty mind numbing and you’re bound to make a lot of mistakes.

My first two hours were something like..

Oh sweet, a metric crap-ton of talent points! OooOooOo I can make dead people EXPLODE! SCORE! *talent point* I remember Unholy Blight being totally OP 10 months ago too. Hmph.. this isn’t the same Unholy Blight I remember. Where is the massive flying bug swarm?! Wait.. did it just tick for 6? 6?! What the hell is a Death Rune? I’m respeccing at 58 >.>

After questing and instancing for a few hours, I had a general idea of what talents I was happy with, which ones were confusing, which ones sucked elekk nards and which ones I SHOULD have taken. After hitting the big six-zero I started thinking about tweaking my DK’s Unholy leveling build last night and dropped my demonic Narnia closet to head on back to Acherus for an R-E-S-P-E-C.. dammit that didn’t come out as good as I’d hoped.

But I digress.. I definitely noticed a significant boost in leveling speed as well lack of confusion. By “confusion” I mean I didn’t feel like I just had to hit any button that wasn’t on cooldown and everything seemed to flow smoothly. I’m no pro though – It’s only been 2 days, but here is the basic rundown of the talents that I picked, why I picked them and also why I didn’t take certain ones.

Tier 1

• 2/2 Vicious Strikes – Increases the crit chance by 6% and crit damage bonus by 30% of Plague Strike and Scourge Strike. (PS and SS are stable attacks. Increasing their crit and crit damage was a no-brainer.)
• 3/3 Virulence - +3% hit chance for spells and 30% reduced chance in your diseases being cured. (It was either 3% hit or 3% dodge and I hate missing more than being hit in the face.)

Tier 2

• 2/2 Epidemic – Increased duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 6 seconds. (Extended durations are good, especially in AoE kills after spreading diseases with Pestilence.)
• 3/3 Morbidity – Increases damage and healing of Death Coil by 15% and reduced cooldown on Death and Decay by 15 seconds. (I took this mainly for the reduced duration of Death and Decay but the 15% boost to the damage of Death Coil is showing itself a bit more than I anticipated. Once I pick up Unholy Blight it’ll make this talent worth a bit more.)
• 3/3 Ravenous Dead – +3% Strength and ghoul receives 60% more contribution from your Strength and Stamina. (More STR means harder bonks to the head of my enemies and injecting my Ghoul with permanent steroids is a plus.)

Tier 3

• 3/3 Outbreak – Increases damage of Plague Strike by 30% and Scourge Strike by 20%. (More damage to 2 of the staple attacks. Yes plz.)
• 5/5 Necrosis – Auto attacks deal 20% additional damage as shadow damage. (You will auto attack every fight. It’ll hurt more. GG.)

Tier 4

• 2/2 On a Pale Horse – 20% reduced duration to stuns and fear. Also increases mounted speed by 20%. (I don’t play on a PVP server so I could care less about the stun and fear duration reduction.. but 20% speed bonus on any mount is worth more than 2 talent points IMO, especially now that you can fly at level 60. Fwooshing through the sky like a disease infested death machine at light speed while looking like a plate-wearing clown in Outlands gear is hotsauce.)
• 3/3 Blood-caked Blade – Auto attacks have a 30% chance to cause a “blood-caked strike”, dealing 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% per disease on the target. (I’m usually not a fan of procs for leveling builds but I see this more often then I don’t.)
• 2/2 Night of the Dead – Reduces cooldown of Raise Dead by 90 seconds and reduces the amount of damage your pet takes from AoE by 70%. Also reduces cooldown on Army of the Dead by 10 minutes. (Obviously I get no benefit from the reduced Army of the Dead cooldown, but the AoE damage helps a bit leveling and instancing and the reduced cooldown duration is an added bonus incase your Ghoul takes one for the team.)

Tier 5

• 5/5 Impurity – Spells receive an additional 20% attack-power benefit. (Spells and diseases doing more damage is always a good thing. Things dying faster means you level faster.)

Tier 6

• 1/1 Master of Ghouls – Your Raise Dead ability grants you permanent control over your Ghoul. Also reduces cooldown of Raise Dead by 60 seconds. (Gives your Ghoul a name.. a personality.. makes you care for it like an unexpected mother of one. When it dies you spawn another. Go go DK pet class!)

Tier 7

• 2/2 Improved Unholy Presence - While in Blood or Frost Presence, you gain 15% increased movement speed on foot. While in Unholy Presence, the cooldown of your runes will be reduced by 10%. (There are few things I’m enjoying more than tearing ass through packs of mobs. Getting from one mob to the next as fast as possible without having to leave Blood Presence is a good time.)

Tier 8

• 3/3 Crypt Fever – Diseases debuff the target with Crypt Fever, causing the target to take 30% additional damage from diseases. (Target takes more damage. Target dies faster. Dead target is dead.)
• 1/1 Bone Shield – Surrounds the Death Knight in bones, causing them to take 20% less damage and deal 2% more damage. Each attack on the Death Knight consumes 1 bone charge. Lasts 60 seconds or 4 charges. (Honestly I forget about Bone Shield unless I’m killing things in bulk, soloing group quests or I want to run around Thrallmar with a bone hula-hoop, but it’s definitely worth the 1 point for sure.)

Tier 9

• 1/3 Wandering Plague – Each time your diseases deal damage to a target, there is a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance that it will deal 33% additional damage to the target and all targets within 8 yards, ignoring any target under any form of crowd control. (I mainly put the 1 point in here to move further down the Unholy tree, but with 2 diseases ticking and a 29% crit chance, this procs often enough to be worth 1 point, especially in AoE pulls. I’ll max this out eventually, but it’ll be a bit.)
• 3/3 Ebon Plaguebringer – Your Crypt Fever now becomes Ebon Plague, causing the target to take 13% more damage from spells by all attackers and increases your critical strike chance on them by 3%. (Yay for more damage and crit.)
• 1/1 Scourge Strike – Deals 40% weapon damage as shadow damage +X (amount depends on rank), and an additional 10% damage per disease on the target. (“The strike” in the Unholy tree. My average crit is around 1800 at 60 so it’s definitely a welcome addition.)

Tier 10

• 5/5 Rage of Rivendare – Your spells and abilities deal 10% more damage to targets effected by Blood Plague and increases your expertise by 5. (Another talent that makes you deal more damage.)

Tier 11

• 1/1 Summon Gargoyle – Summons an uncontrollable Gargoyle to attack your target with nature based damage for 30 seconds. (The cooldown on this sucker will make sure you don’t just pop it every chance you get, but it definitely helps when you solo those doods with the golden dragons around their portrait. It’s also a nice chunk of damage during boss fights while instancing.)

I can already hear you QQ’ing from your QQbicle at work, asking “WHY Abi, WHY didn’t you take Unholy Blight and Corpse Explosion?!“. Before you go dropping tears in to your decaf, I’m picking them both up with my next 2 talent points. I just felt I could go without another button to push and I’m doing just fine without Unholy Blight’s weak DoT on a single target right now. So calm down, office monkey.. it’s coming.

I picked Glyph of Scourge Strike (SS refreshes the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 3 seconds, up to an additional 9 seconds) and Glyph of the Ghoul (ghoul gets more punch from your stats) as my 2 major glyphs but if I find myself doing a bit more AoE killing I’ll swap out Scourge Strike for Death and Decay (+20% more damage). For my minors, I picked up Glyph of Raise Dead (Raise Dead no longer uses corpse dust) and Glyph of Pestilence (Increases the radius of Pestilence by 5 yards) which are both coming in handy so far. I’m not used to playing a class with minor glyphs that don’t suck, so this is a welcome change.

So.. feedback? Does anyone even still PLAY Unholy as a DK? Halp?

Mise à jour du template optimisé pour le Chevalier de la mort DPS spécialisé Sang : 51/0/20. Une ou deux variations sont possibles, notamment au niveau des points attribués à Mort & Décomposition, mais celle-ci représente probablement la plus efficace (les différences de DPS sont marginales quoi qu’il en soit).

Je publierai une page détaillée sur le gameplay du Chevalier de la mort DPS Sang dans les jours qui viennent, dès que j’aurai achevé le levelling de mon second DK (dps et tank) ^^

Bon jeu.

-Cc

The Podcast
Older Podcasts

Well due to someone *glares at Aifel* getting his rear end into the wasteland that is no Interwebs for a prolonged amount of time (unless he sneaks on!) we have not been able to do a podcast in quite some time. Luckily we found a time to do our 9th episode this week, and hope that you all enjoy it!

Topics: More talk of ToC, mostly of our new guild and its “big success” (Except the ones who are dead!) inside of there, as well as how to not be a complete idiot like one of our PuGs. Leveling also pops up, specifically how to escape the hell that is the 50-58 Lvl. range! And of course a few other topics are included.

I think my voice deepened, finally! So hopefully the squeeky noise that is/was my voice is tolerable now.

Thanks for listening!
-El and Aifel

So, when you first ding 80 you gear up for Heroics in regular dungeons/crafted items before running any, right? You plan ahead and have gear waiting for you, and a list of instances to run to fill other slots.

OR … you have an awesome guild and good friends who are willing to carry you. =P

So, the first dungeon Kalyon ran after dinging 80? HToC, which also happened to be the daily. I’m 100 points under the hit cap, wearing a couple of (ungemmed/unenchanted) purples from Direbrew/Headless Horseman. But hey, I can laugh every 30 seconds like the horseman and drive everyone crazy! I think I’m going to macro it to Death Grip so I laugh whenever I yoink someone in a BG.  Pair that with my awesome Lil KT? Priceless!

Anywho … we kill the Champions, and guess what’s in their chest? Edge of Ruin. *drool* Soooooooo sexy. Absolutely perfect for my tank/pvp offspec. Heck, I was even entertaining thoughts of speccing back to 2H frost dps spec once that was in my bag.

Hold up there, not so fast. The instance isn’t over yet. Eadric is up next. Are you ready for this? I hope you’re sitting down. My enhancement shammy 2’s partner had been after this thing FOREVER. Yes, in my very first heroic, I get Aledar’s Battlestar. Pair that with the Tankard O’ Terror I kept in my bank after Direbrew, and there are no weapon upgrades for me until I get to 10 man Yoggy or 10 man ToC.  So I get to DW Frost my little heart out. Hurray!

Now, I just need to replace the heirloom shoulders/chest and greens …

>.>

“No Munch, do not touch that, I have been working on this for…*zap*! [Censored]!!! What in the Hell was that for!?” says our Death Knight Hero with some quite complicated equipment…

Good day students, how goes the journey into Tankhood? Excellent, so now that we have talked about Specs, Gear, Stats, Caps, Rotations, and how to play a Death Knight (basics mind you), you are ready for a bit more personal lesson in Tanking. No, I do not need any tissues, what we are talking about is your User Interface, or UI for short.

Disclaimer

As with Death Knight Tanking, there are many choices to pick through, and each should be carefully chosen.  What may be the best UI since sliced bread to me, may be unethical and down right impossible to work with for others. Is there anything that we can all mutually agree on, possibly, but for the most part mine will look much different from yours even if we have the exact same addons.

That being said, how about we set some ground rules for what a UI should do for you, in my own opinion!

Ground Rules

• List additional information that Blizzard does not already (or does not easily) show in the base UI
• Condenses bars and information into a more viewable space
• Clears the center of the screen to allow a more viewable area of your character (allows you to see fire/aoe/circles of doom/ect.)
• Better Raid Frames
• Changing the look of the Blizzard basic UI

The Basic Blizzard UI is not THAT bad, unless of course you are trying to do something in-game. As a Raider, we need to be able to see how much Threat we are pulling, what is our DPS like, and of course Raid Frames. DPS is downright impossible to calculate without an addon to do so, and Threat is only accountable when you have the boss on top of you without an addon as well. As for Raid Frames, sure you can take the ones that Blizzard provides as a base, but generally we want something that is tailored to our needs, and catches the eye for when we need it.

Another problem I have with the Blizzard basic UI is simply that the Bars are all over the place and are far too big for my eyes, I like a small and condensed space that does not take up most of the middle of my screen. During any Raid, quite af ew bosses will throw down AoEs and the like, we want to be able to see these things easily, so how does one do that? We need the center of our screen free of space is how, so sorry Blizz, it’s workable for pretty much very low levels.

Will the Blizzard UI work for Raiding?
Sure, but for me it is the difference of using a bike with two wheels or a unicycle, you will get to your destination in the end, but one is significantly easier and more sought after than the other. In this case, a custom UI is the Bike, we are not all robots that can suffice with the same UI as everyone else, so we may have to get creative and create our very own UI.

Elnoriah, show us “the money”!
First of all, I based my current UI heavily off of Lore’s from Tankspot.com, but of course with a few more “tweaks” to better suit my wants/needs.

Do note, I am going to tweak the View Ports and such to look much more appealing than just two large black bars. Also, that large black space on the bottom is where Omen should be, and it will pop up when I am Raiding and not just being a Tool in the middle of Dal.

It is efficient, I can see any major mechanics in a boss fight, and it is simple to perform as a Tank. The only time I ever need to look at my action bars is when I am doing something nutty with my Engineering, (Jeeves, Wormhole, Mailbox, Goblin Switch Blade of Rezzness) or mounting up.  To me this is a simple, but pretty UI, I like seeing Elno all punked up and ready to kill on my Unit Frames, and I love the Skinner Addon, it is simply delicious!

Pros

• Because of Skinner, I have a workable UI with widescreen viewing ability. It is a bit of work to set up, but certainly worth it! Think of it as viewing a movie in widescreen, you actually see MORE of the film around you, and the exact same goes for my UI.
• It is easy to Tank with. I can move around and view the rest of my group with ease (look at the top left corner for Grid)
• It is appealing to the eye, which to me is a big factor when going through my UI, I want to be able to have a bit of appeal when I am playing. Hey, I am an artist at heart! (Despite the fact that I’m not good at art)
• My diseases and procs are easily kept track of do to ClassTimer (the addon to the left of Elnoriah). It can keep track of my buffs/procs as well as diseases that are on the target. Although I use Death Knight Info Rune/Diseases for disease tracking, it stands out much more, making it easy for me to glance at the diseases.
• Runes, RP, and HP are easily viewed. I have Death Knight Info Runes above my Player/Target/Target of Target frames, and large frames for Elno to be viewed in. Damn straight that is some kung foo text!
• My buffs are at the top-right of the screen and are exactly how I like mine!

Cons

• It needs something on the top portion of the screen, that black chunk between useless abilities/food and the screen is certainly annoying. I am thinking of putting FuBar on there to list my Gold/Repairs and some other useful bits of out of combat information.

Basically, this bad boy presents everything that I want and need out of an UI, thus making it appealing and kickass for my tastes. It is not completely wrong of you to disagree with my thoughts on a UI, after all it is YOUR game, not MINE.

Addons Used

Each of the addons that I use can be found from the Curse Client, or even Curse.com. Yes, I am a lazy bastard!

Chinchilla Minimap- A simple minimap with a clean feel to it, also has great amounts of customization.
Skinner/View Ports- Changes the basic Blizz UI to whatever your heart desires. View Port comes with Skinner and allows you to change your views of the WoW screen. (For example, my widescreen mode)
Pitbull Unit Frames 4.0- Unit Frames, EXTREMELY customizable. Highly suggested!
Omen Threat Meter- Displays TPS/Total Threat of the Raid/Party members on each individual mob.
Recount- DPS Meter, can view more than just DPS/Damage done though.
MikScrollingBattle Text- Scrolling text that shows how much damage I do, if an ability comes off of C/D, Healing Received, if the Target Avoids the attack,ECT.
Prat 3.0- Easily organizes chat, will show the class color and level of every player chatting.
Quartz- Cast bar and swing timer
SatrinaBuffFrame- Buffs and Debuffs
Dominos- Action bars, comes with 10 regular Action Bar, a Pet Bar, Vehical Bar, Roll Area, and a Cast bar (not used).
DBM- Basicly reminds me of the encounter, yells at you if you are in fire, and warns you of incoming special abilities that bosses use. (DXE and Bigwigs work as well, if you Raid you NEED one of these).
DeathKnight.Info Runes- Runes and Diseases
ClassTimer- Shows a timer of procs/diseases/DOTs/Pet Abilities (Customized to your liking)
Button Fascade- Prettier Buttons
Grid/GridManaBars- A Raid Frame that is HIGHLY customizable, easy to set up and highly recommended.

If there are any other questions about my Addons feel free to leave a comment or drop me an E-mail!

"ENERGY LEGS" Macro caused some win in /2

What does a UI do for Tanking?
In my case, clearing the middle of the screen of useless crap allows me to view the boss fight, as well as Skinner’s View Ports in the sense that my wider screen lets me see much more of the game than the basic settings. Tanks need to be on their feet, we have to see everything that is going on around us, or else we will not be able to react successfully towards it. I also like to view a bit more information than the general Blizzard Frames. It is a bonus for me to get alerted when key abilities are off CD, and when they are currently on me when I am getting wailed on. If I know what is and isn’t available, I can act MUCH quicker and more efficiently than searching my bars for something that is or is not on a C/D.

When I Raid Lead, addons like  Recount can give me a basic idea as to who the problem can be/is in a Raid. Correcting a problem is 1/2 the battle, because let’s face it, not very many people like to “fess up” if they did something wrong, so if I can physically see this out of their DPS/Combat log I can correct it. Omen does a bit of the same thing for me, although more useful as a Tank, I can call out if someone needs to slow down on the aggro for a couple of seconds, rather than not knowing and letting the group burn and crash.

Efficiency and being able to evaluate your raid are key qualities for Tanks and Raid Leaders need to have, Addons just make these qualities easier to use.

Conclusions

Do remember, your choice of addons/UI is yours to make, I will not go all Dictator on your sorry asses if you still use the Blizz UI. If you are extremely comfortable and efficient, that is your choice to make, NOT mine. If you want to critique mine, or want me to critique yours, feel free. This is a relatively new setup for me, so some criticism would be ideal. Either way, go toy around with some addons, class, you can’t judge until you tool around for a bit!

Return around the same time next week for more knowledge of the Death Knight Tank!

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

P.S. If the site blows up within the course of the week it was not because Aifel/I were touching the layout, no sir!
P.S. x 2  Sneak Peak of Aifel’s Avatar!

In all his badassery

Started over at http://dkdeathgoddess.blogspot.com and I was tagged by Arioch over at Clearcasting.

The DPS Meme

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary dps?

Zarii, Shaman, Elemental.  (Before I go further…I’m not dps.  As a matter of fact, before I got tagged I was about to make a post on how much I hate dps’ing…but fear not my posts will be full of fluffy sarcasm and bad language :P)

What is your primary dpsing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) 

I dps’d in a 25man once.  We failed…all because me :p.  (No I don’t have delusions of grandeur.)  I stick with 5 mans. 

What is your favorite dps spell/ability for your class and why?

Chain lightning kicks ass!  If there are a few mobs it makes me look like I almost know what I’m doing.

What dps spell do you use least for your class and why?

Frost shock.  Honestly don’t think I’ve ever used it.  Costs a lot, shares a cool down with my only DoT and has a chance to slow target.  Oh fuck! its gonna be a wipe if I don’t slow the target.  Yeah, I’ll just leave that to someone else.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your dps class and why?

Heroism (bloodlust for you horde types) and Totems!  Specifically the totem of wrath.  (You said my dps class)  When someone says “pop hero” suddenly I feel useful again.  Seriously though, those two things make a shaman almost indespensible in any group setting.  A well played shaman is also far from lacking on the dps.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your dps class and why?

Me?  Ok, I need some work.  I don’t dps often since healers are commonly few.  The biggest weakness though is that there isn’t much versatility as far as what they can do.  Rotations amount to 3 or 4 spells depending on whether you are single point or aoe’ing (Flame Strike>Lava Blast>Lightning Bolt>Chain Lightning (if AoEing)>Lightning Bolt (until Lava Blast off cool down) repeat from beginning when Flame Strike DoT wears off.  We can Cleanse (sometimes) and Hex (but targets are often immune).  Well there is also Purge, which tends to be uber.  But shamans do this so little that its usually not even asked.  Priest/Pallies cleanse, Mages spell steal/sheep.  Thank you.  (wait I can do some of that…ah nevermind.)

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best dps assignment for you?

Not there.  I really have nothing to add here.  If I’m not healing it there really is no point to me being there.

What dps class do you enjoy dpsing with most and why?

Ummm…forgot to answer this.  Druids…battle rez, replenish (which I actually never need..mp5 is through the roof), and just over kick ass dps.  They also rarely pull threat off a tank which is odd…unlike crazy spikes from mages.  As a healer, that always bites.

What tanking class do you enjoy dpsing with least and why? 

Ok, I haven’t played with a DK tank I’ve been exceptionally happy with in a long time.  But I’ve also seen a DK tank kick unbelievable ass.  So it isn’t the class, it is without doubt the player that makes a tank win or fail. 

 What is your worst habit as a dps?

Being spec’d that way.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while dpsing? 

The person who was dumb enough to ask me to dps.  (at least I never have to worry about stealing threat.)

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other dps?

Yes.  When a shaman player knows how to dps they rock the meter and I’m going to get their eventually.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a damage dealer?

Recount.  I leave it up because I’m masochistic.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

Well, the pallies in the guild seem to think that they are more awesome the us…which is a HUGE misconception :p.

I’m not sure.  I think shamans have a place and fit in it nicely.  We are there because of our little bonuses (totems, heroism) and we hold our own the meters.  Everyone knows this and shamans accept it.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new dpsers of your class to learn? 

How to dps apparently.  I still haven’t figured it out…and I watched an ele shaman in healing gear with 100 point lower gear score than I (wow-heroes) completely and totally kick my fucking ass on Recount.  Plus, I haven’t dps’ed enough to answer this question with any kind of depth.  (not that I answer anything with depth)

What dps class do you feel you understand least?

Melee. (any form) I have a DK which I am leveling.  Instead of mana I have to look at a power level of some sort which I gain from using abilities.  What. The. Fuck?  Then I can use that to set off another ability?  I haven’t broken 300 on dps with her yet.  /cry  Give me mana dammit!!

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in dps?

I’m a minimalist here.  I use recount, the spartan ui pack, healbot, omen (ok I don’t have it but I’m supposed to…shhh), and decursive.  I actually need to look into getting a few more of these inthe sad hope that I will one day break 2500 dps.  Like targeting macros.  I have a feeling that things would be more pretty if I could actually switch targets with some sort of ease.

Strength over other stats or balanced stat allocation, and why?

I take it some sort of balls to the wall melee grunt made this questionaire.  Hello?  Magic users dps too…and if I went all out on strength I might be able to win the next Miss Azeroth but my lighting bolt would go plop not pew.  (Not that it doesn’t anyway).  Haste/hit/spell power in some sort of combo that works (not sure yet.)

(edit)  Sometimes I get so interest in making sarcastic replies that I forget they should also be intelligent.  Imagine that?  Anyway the right answer to this is that I dump everything into Intellect.  The rest of my stats are actually pointless.  For melee I think there is a valid argument for being more balanced, but my hubby is all strength all the way.  I cringe every time he gets a new peice of gear because that means for every socket (and he’s a miner) he needs a Bold Cardinal Ruby.  Yay me!  I told a raid leader the other day that if my hubby gets something like the Onyxia Mount that it goes to me….cause he owes me his fucking soul.   LOL. 

Tag!

As far as this goes…per my numbers I should have a whole host of targets.  But I figure I must be everyone’s dirty little secret because no one comments.  -_-  So that being the case I will tag the one other that was nice enough to comment and definite worth the read as far as his blog goes:  smart001 at That is Amazing (WoW)! 

Nine

The number of bosses our Tuesday 10 Man has successfully downed in Ulduar.

Our raid makeup changes slightly each week. This week we had double bear tanks, and pally/disc priest heals, with one of the bears swapping to tree for some fights…like that big meanie Hodir. Despite many wipes in the hallway leading to Hodir, however, we killed him quite easily. Or rather, they did. My game crashed shortly after the fight started, so I came back dead. Boo. But I still got the achievements!

Yeah, lovely shot of the ghoul our DK raised from my corpse there at the end, isn’t it? Hehe!

We also hit Ignis for the first time. We did some ez-mode version where he is tanked in the water and so there was none of the kiting and killing adds like in the videos I watched. It was basically a tank and spank with the crotch pot thrown in for fun. Very disappointing, really. I mean, on the one hand I’m glad we killed him and didn’t have to go through two hours of wipes learning the fight like we did on Freya last week. But at the same time … man, I spent time watching that video over and over and it looked like FUN, dammit! Owell. Downing him netted me the achievement for killing all of the Siege area.

Apparently, you also get an achievement for getting thrown in his Slag Pot. Looks like we also got one on Razorscale last night, too. Geesh, I totally forgot about that one!

• Cheese the Freeze (10 player)Defeat Hodir without any raid member being hit by Flash Freeze in 10-player mode
• I Have the Coolest Friends (10 player)Defeat Hodir without any friendly NPC dying in 10-player mode.
• The Siege of Ulduar (10 player)Defeat the bosses of The Siege area of Ulduar in 10-player mode.
• Hot Pocket (10 player)Survive being thrown into Ignis the Furnace Master’s Slag Pot in 10-player mode.
• A Quick Shave (10 player)Defeat Razorscale without allowing her to fly into the air more than once in 10-player mode.

As for Freya and the two hours we spent on her last week … well, this week we one-shotted her! So, we got 8 bosses down last night and just have IC, Thorim, Mimiron, Vezax and Yogg to go. (Yes, I know the post title says 9, but we have killed IC before.) Heck, we could just hit Freya once a week and I’d never have to pick herbs anywhere else again.

Five

Once Ulduar was complete for the night, I hopped over to Kalyon. Just as I was finishing up his tourney quests, Rossini was looking for a tank for regular DTK. Sure, why not! So I switched specs and headed over there, because it’s always fun hanging out with Trout.

Tharon’ja is one of my favorite fights in all of WoW. We killed him while we were all skellys, too, so of course you know I had to screenshot that!

So, you can see how far the blue xp bar goes there … I went back to questing afterwards to try to finish it off. But, another guildy who just hit 75 wanted help with the Amphitheatre in Zul’Drak, so off I was again. Another guildy who hadn’t done it logged on before we started, so he joined in, and Elgar hopped on to heal. Then just after we finished, a paladin showed up looking for help, so we invited him and ran through it all again. Good times.

Ok, finally back to the quests. Soooo … close. Just need one kill. So I set it up in a place that would make for a really nice screenshot. And … here it is! Max level toon number Five!

I suppose I should insert that little script into my Rune Strike macro so I’m not spammed with “You can’t do that yet!” eh? Oh wells.

Is it sad that I have 5 level 80s but they only encompass a total of 3 classes?