Just because I enjoy watching them means that anyone who frequents the blog should as well, right? I mean, no real way to add aesthetics to an RBG, but if you watch and listen carefully you’ll end up grabbing a little bit of strategy out of it in the end.
Shattered Hand (H) vs Magtheridon (A), uploaded on Dec 22, 2010.
For the full patch notes click here, but copied from that here’s how this patch will affect our class:
Death knights
Thoughts on Frost
In terms of PvP this patch does a lot for us, most notably being the change in Necrotic Strike (which was already in except for the Desecration) and for Frost DK’s the 40% reduction of damage to additional targets hit by Howling Blast. These 2 changes seem to be dominating a lot of the class threads right now and they do have good reason, however I think the most overlooked change is the addition of root to Chains of Ice.
One of the most important roles of Death Knights in PvP whether in Arena or Battlegrounds is as a utility role, and one of the things DK’s do as well as AE damage is to peel targets off of their primary target. With the 1.5-3 second root addition to CoI, the perpetual motion version of CoI that fails to create separation from healers many times due to Hamstring/Desecration-like abilities has changed to something almost guaranteed to get the benefactor out of melee range immediately. As of right now it appears not to suffer from diminishing returns, and if I were a betting man I would say that the ability will be changed again before it is all said and done. DK mobility issues were addressed by this and by the changes to Icebound Fortitude (removes stuns, makes you unstunnable) – and frankly I feel it’s a little much. I actually feel dirty being able to root people right now.
If for some reason you were Unholy sub-spec prior to the patch, the Virulence change in my mind has been a long time coming as I feel like it was originally implemented to provide a way of reaching caps easier for a non-casting class. With the obvious changes to stats and different weights in available gear I think that this talent became worthless and in its implementation now becomes a favorable talent again.
The Unholy sub-spec is a possibility that some are talking about, though I still feel like having Hand of Doom (60 second Strangulate) is more important than Desecration. Strangulate is trinketable now, but in my opinion having that on a 1 minute timer and trinkets being on a 2 you still have a number of effects people will need to trinket out of to where strangulate should still be effective. Hungering Cold, Chains of Ice, Howling Blast and Strangulate should all go together nicely to keep people popping trinkets, just be careful not to have both on someone for a trinket pop.
Glyph of Dark Succor will be a glyph needing to be used by all DK’s. Without the ghetto Lay-on-Hands of Lichborne anymore the ability to regenerate 15% of your maximum health with a frost & blood rune will be a sort of change in methods for DK’s, as regenerating these in a rotation will likely prove more efficient than trying to heal to full after being considerably low. Death Striking twice at the end of the fight is hardly viable to staying alive, but I guess at the same time it could give you that extra chance to Death Pact or may provide time on Anti-Magic Shield…I dunno. I plan to replace the 5-yard Death Grip extension glyph in favor of Succor, though a popular idea has been to replace the 40 runic cost of Hungering Cold on account of frost dk’s always having runic power. I don’t like that but to each his own.
There are 2 new enchants on the Honor vendor in Orgrimmar (obviously Stormwind for you fluffy DK’s), and with them it isn’t out of the realm of possibility of reaching 3800 resilience – you know, essentially rendering you to godmode until everyone catches up in epics. I realize I didn’t copy this part of the patch notes on the blog entry, but consider this an FYI and something you should do right away.
I wanted to start off this post with a really wise war quote, something like from “The Art of War” that I’ve seen elsewhere and could pretend that I’ve read it but I apparently lack that ability or desire to do so today. It’s really a shame too; this entry is going to cover about everything involving my DK existence to this point, largely in part because Snowpocalypse 2011 dumped 2” of ice and my power wavering in and out isn’t all that conducive to grinding arena ratings.
(Though I obviously did later find a Chinese translator and translate “Of The Horde”)
I think it’s nearly universal from the PvP community that this season has been amongst the most balanced that arena play has seen, and while not perfect many factors that have tilted odds one way or the other are the being addressed in the upcoming Patch 4.0.6. In terms of death knights I believe that Necrotic Strike did need an adjustment as its implementation likely led many players to be rated significantly higher than they should have been, though my thoughts on how it is being done (lower absorb, can drop Desecration) will have to wait until the change occurs. A successful silence chain previously could lead to a healer being dealt 40k worth of NS stacks to recoup, and at the rate DK’s could continually deal damage and stack more the ability was simply a royal pain in the ass.
The 2H Frost damage buff coming in the patch is a welcome addition, and while I do harbor that ounce of sympathy for those who spent more for DW I have to call bullshit on your forecasting ability that told you DW would do more damage. When looking at the frost talent tree you have mirror images to choose between MotFW and ToT, and under no pretense did you predict that DW damage would stack on your oblits. Sorry, you went DW because you 1) liked the look/idea or 2) copied off your favorite Arena DK. My idea certainly carried no more research to go 2H, my only thoughts were that if Frost didn’t compare with Unholy in arena that I at least purchased the right weapon to switch. Either way, I’m comfortable with the weapon decision being a choice in the Frost presence and I am even open to the idea that each spec excels in different areas, but in no way should DW outperform 2H consistently in everything.
Anyway, since Cataclysm I have ran a Blood spec for tanking and 2H Frost for PvP and initially could not be more happy with my decision. The Blood spec was a response to the constant need of tanks in end game PvE content, and thinking about every time I thought to myself that I would like to do an encounter (mostly VoA for me) I was cockblocked by several much more shitty DK’s. While not a raider, I rarely was beat out on DPS and even held more than my own earning my Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher – but even getting raids attempting to get my Brynntroll was next to impossible because of the abundance of DK dps. In Cataclysm, I vowed to devote the same amount of time to PvE as I did in Wrath – but the problem is I’m coming up on 2 months past release and I still could care less.
The Blood spec is fun, and while I haven’t tanked on it since mid-December I use it every day running dailies. I wear my full PvP setup (medallion and badge included) in Tol Barad, Deepholm and Uldum, and when Allies attack even 3-on-1 I have come up victorious. If the Blood spec had any Arena function at all I would keep it, but that said I am starting to lean heavily on the side that I want to try out Unholy instead of 2H Frost.
Ahh yes, this debate. Most “pros” will tell you that you need to run Unholy at higher levels and that Frost is the “nub” spec. Nah. Unholy provides constant pressure at all times, and when coordinated well can overwhelm teams with a transformed ghoul and a gargoyle. Frost can give insane damage almost instantly, but the higher I get in Arena I find my burst being peeled much more efficiently than it was at lower levels. My mind isn’t made up on what I am doing and will likely see how Frost performs following the content patch, but in the near future if you are an armory watcher you will likely see a change of some sort.
Speaking of “pros”, other than quickly claiming 1550 achievements across the board in Arenas and an 1800+ rating in 3’s, the highlight of my Cataclysm experience so far was beating this team from Mannoroth. In this scoreboard shot reveals some of the most revered players in the battlegroup, including Lopez, widely considered to be the best DK on the US-Ruin battlegroup (he runs Unholy if you’re wondering). Now in the past I have said that Strand of the Ancients victories should not hold a lot of weight because it is simply an awful battleground, but since our big victory occurred there I take all that back.
Kidding, but it was exciting to pair our guild up (we have a 1750+ achievement requirement for entry) against élite players and come out on top, even if they did let us steamroll to the orb after shutting them out in the first round.
Speaking of the 1750+ achievement, I never had it when I joined my current guild as I was let in without it because of some run-ins in battlegrounds and Wintergrasp with some of the members. I have always considered myself good at PvP, but if you’re reading this far into my post you know that people judge you almost solely upon your highest ratings as often as people mistake your gearscore for skill in a dungeon. It was refreshing to know that I have no difficulty grinding out this rating, though I am starting to understand why people get stuck at certain ratings. There is a noticeable difference in competition at 1800, and I have heard the same at every century interval after that. Now being that I only started season #9 with just over 100 wins, my recent addiction to rated arenas has me in line for the 300 win achievement within the next week or two.
Now with all that rating talk in Arenas, my goal this season was to acquire a ranking higher than 2200 in order to purchase the best weapons and armor. While I feel that I am going to be much better in arenas by the end of this season, I don’t believe that I will grind out a 2200+ rating in one of them. The best way in order to do this in the current implementation though is to via rated battlegrounds. In the above picture alone you see ___ players with a 2200+ ranking, and from all accounts that I have seen it is very difficult to lose points from a battleground, while every win seems to raise you without consequence. Many non-2200+ arena players are in line for the “heroic” Vicious Gladiator gear as of now because of rated battlegrounds, so my guild taking note has begun taking them a bit more serious. Vikt currently sits at 1096 (4 points from the “Scout” title) and is 17-7 so far in those.
Finally, if you already scoffed at the Vengefully Dedicated screenshot for Gladius being out of order with the Blizzard default, I am also in the process of changing my keybinds as well as my UI. So, the screens that you’ve seen for the better part of 2 years are going to change a bit as I’m working towards something a little more user friendly and using keybinds that are easier to manage – you know, now that I know what I actually need to use and how often. Before I was fine with having Empower Rune Weapon as Ctrl+C, however when bursting a target in arena I simply cannot pull this move off in the time, and thus need an easier keybind and then I need to make sure I don’t use it accidentally when I don’t need it…stuff like that.
After finishing my Bloodthirsty Gladiator gear set recently (thanks in part to Blizzard’s terrible decision on how to distribute honor via Tol Barad), the need to prioritize my purchases came to mind. With 2,000 Conquest Points to spend following a 2H weapon, I found myself as that same blank palette that was gearing up on Furious Gladiator pieces in my first real PvP as a Death Knight.
Now like Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm gear comes not only from PvP related activity (arenas & battlegrounds) but also from Baradin Hold – exactly like Vault of Archavon. Last season I knew to always purchase the current season Gladiator gear in a pattern that left the leg and hands slots last because they dropped from VoA. Well, same deal – and if you’re a Death Knight (I actually assume all classes are the same – check here to be sure!), these are the PvP items (& slots) you should probably purchase last as they have the chance of dropping off Argaloth in BH:
You can take this list for what it’s worth as a guide or you can be like many high level players you see now and buy off-set pieces (finger/neck/ring), but if there is a chance that I can score any of these pieces once a week by downing the BH Pit Lord than I’ll fill the non-droppable pieces up first – your pick on how you want to play it.
If you’re one of the new readers that found me via the Tanking post I put out a few days ago, then know that the PvE Gauntlets and Legguards (DPS & Tanking) both drop off of Argaloth as well – so you may want to wait on spending your hard-earned points on those last as well. To provide one last bit of information, here is the Tankspot’s guide to Argaloth:
This is going to be my first in a series of guides in an effort to explain – and rationalize – the PvE spec that I plan to build during Cataclysm. I was an Unholy DPS Death Knight throughout Wrath of the Lich King that accomplished essentially all that I wanted to, but being a PvP player and being DPS makes raiding very hard should you want to do it. Because of that I decided to take a different direction this go, and this post is an attempt to educate my fellow DK’s of how I am doing it. Also, that is completely not me in the above picture.
TALENTS: 33 / 6 / 2
Before Cataclysm there were a few different ways that you could tank as a DK, but following Deathwing’s return Blood talents now represent the dedicated tanking spec. The linked spec above is what I have been running, which is the accepted Elitist Jerks’ endgame tank spec. Note that it is not listed as the ideal Heroic grinding spec, however I will tell you that my tanking to and at 85 have been a breeze using it. To dive into a few talents:
GLYPHS
With tanking glyphs there is the essential list that a lot of trees have, but with the optional glyphs there is very little difference in choosing one over the other.
ROTATION
This is where a lot of you just panned down to find, and I’m sorry – I’m going to tell you the same thing. There is no more set rotation, Cataclysm has went with the dynamic system that requires you to make decisions on the fly, and I hope to help you out in doing so. All that said, it’s really not that hard:
Of note, the catch phrase with Blood tanking so far is “Diseaseless Tanking”. For a quick explanation diseaseless tanking it is essentially what you would assume in not applying disease, but recall Outbreak does not consume runes to be cast. Every minute you can use this, and having IT/PS on a target makes Heart Strike hit even harder. The reason you do not use IT/PS is because it burns a frost and unholy rune, which if you recall from a paragraph ago is the same requirement for Death Strike. Which would you rather have?
For a quick comparison a DK tanking guide on the Official Forums quotes the difference between using Diseases and going Diseaseless as:
Net differences between Diseases and Diseaseless:
– 6.1% less damage dealt
– 5.1% less threat generated
– 1.6% less damage taken
– 21.9% more damage absorbed
– 21.8% more damage healed
…obviously being the result of not using diseases. What that essentially says is that your diseases in blood presence really don’t amount to shit, and you gain 20% more survivability by not burning runes on IT/PS.
I have been known to use Icy Touch on some pulls and then drop a Death and Decay for the pack to run into, Plague Strike, Pestilence and then Blood Boil. After that opener aggro is laughable to maintain, and having 2 snap aggro mechanisms if one does get away ensures your aggro as you switch into your normal DS/HS/RS tanking. Keeping 100% uptime on diseases are a distant third place to keeping aggro and staying alive. I should bold that, maybe just a quote to make it look like someone more qualified is saying it:
Keeping 100% uptime on diseases are a distant third place to keeping aggro and staying alive.
– Some Godly DK
GEMS/ENCHANTS
The debate on Effective Health (if you’re not familiar) is still somewhat theoretical amongst the end game guilds (at least from what I see), so for definitive gemming/enchanting you may want to consult Elitist Jerks or other sites you may use. Do know that the WotLK belief that “Stamina > All” is archaic, despite players still judging the quality of tanks by their total health pool.
My absolute goal so far is to gem/reforge to Mastery, and if that is unobtainable then I will likely gem for Stamina. The hit cap is not as essential as it always has been (taunt effects no longer are based on hit), but getting Expertise to its cap of 6% heroics/6.5% raids comes after these first two. Reforging Dodge/Parry to hit the Expertise cap is not out of the ordinary. Note that no where have I stated to gem for Dodge/Parry.
Your Meta gem will be the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, which I guess also brings up a spot where I should tell you that you need to be swinging a 2-hander. Perhaps you came here wondering about dual-wield tanking and are pissed it has taken this long, but 2H Blood is the way to go. There is proof of this out there that I have seen at Elitist Jerks, and if you really want to question my word the answers are there as their’s is good enough for me.
PROFESSIONS
I’m not going to throw out numbers or even bother to look up the best ones, I am a 525 Blacksmith and a 525 Jewelcrafter. I get 2 extra gem slots where I can put whatever type of Chimera gem I want (extra stats). Leatherworking and Enchanting offer stamina bonuses as well, but I also make a boatload of cash from my 2 professions which allows me to do whatever I want in game almost. Almost.
My next installment of tanking-related posts will be a pre-raid gear list, and this paragraph will be replaced with a link to it when I post it. Feedback is always appreciated.
…is Corgi from Asgard for the ego boost in the “Rate the DK above you” thread on the official WoW forums. If you aren’t in on the discussion wtf go!
I have a lot of things that I want to post, but I guess it goes without saying that I hit level 85 last week and am really yet to post anything regarding the trip to do it. While I normally don’t expound upon such things and would much rather be using the time to farm the crap out of honor gear this weekend, here goes my illustrated journey to level 85 – you know, minus all the things I didn’t take a picture of or it sucked way too bad to post.
This screen actually comes before the Cataclysm, but it was one of the first in my folder and I liked it enough to post it. I love the new Horde dark-iron architecture implemented under Garrosh Hellscream, and while observing the mining camp just north of Orgrimmar you get to see both that and the Horde robbing Night Elves of their environment…how can you not love Garrosh?
This was the first dragon head I saw impaled for everyone’s amusement, and again with the architecture. How much cooler is the new Orgrimmar?
This picture is just me thinking I look badass. While I never upgraded any piece to Sanctified minus my breastplate, I still pumped out more DPS than people with much better gear. This is the last image I have of the T10 PvE armor set alongside crafted legs and boots. Oh, and while I’m on the subject and so I can say I said it before at a later date, Orc boots like these are badass – the wrathful ones that look like slippers? Not so much. If I could have come up with any justification for wearing these boots in PvP over the Wrathful ones, I would have in a heartbeat.
You with me so far? Hmm, wonder what could come out of this…
Ya, I was as surprised as you – though I don’t know about her saying I gave that to her…
I found it humorous that I got to be shark bait for a quest. While I thought the whole line was a general pain in the ass while I was doing it (there were also 8.2 million Alliance in the area as well), the way you work to kill this thing with the crazy sailor was pretty awesome.
Even though I was very adamant about Garrosh becoming the new Warchief, I’ll always have love for Thrall. In The Shattering you get to follow him re-discovering his shamanistic roots and come to realize why he had to leave his position in favor of Garrosh, but it was relatively hard imagining him in only a robe after coming to know him wearing the armor and swinging the weapon of Orgrimm Doomhammer. Nice to see him and Aggra doing something worthy of Thrall’s legend out at the Maelstrom, and if I remember correctly you run across them in the Goblin starting area as well. Ehh, I really don’t play alts, and I don’t play anything but Orcs…we’ll see.
Did I say earlier was the last shot of me in PvE gear? Well, this one I think looks better – but how much better are the quality of my screenshots since getting this new video card 2 weeks ago?
From Vashj’ir I headed to Deepholm and apparently had to snag a shot of the ugliest thing I’ve seen in Warcraft, and from listening to guild chat for the last week apparently I should work that faction a little bit. How awesome were the graphics in Deepholm though?
I couldn’t help but feel like a pervert, but didn’t we already cross this bridge? These perverted shots should go a long way to prove the sexual frustration of Blizzard employees while working the long hours to develop this expansion. Ahh, who am I kidding – I laughed.
How badass was fighting this thing Yogg-Saron style in Twilight Highlands?
Speaking of Thrall, was awful nice of him to resurrect me right…
…into Deathwing. Now perhaps I have a beef with Thrall here, but while I was screenshotting the crap out of this whole ordeal being my first time to see the dragon and all, Thrall turned and yelled at me that the world was – I dunno, going to die and that it was my fault. Was I supposed to put foot to ass right there?
And I guess bringing an end to my PvE days would be me being involved in the first ever Drunk PvP guild heroic in Cataclysm. As I mentioned in a comment on my last post, I hope to put together a post on DK tanking by the end of the weekend, so look forward to that and hold my ass accountable if I don’t deliver.
(death to dial-up internet connections on this post, amirite?)
You have to admit that “Thrall’s Balls!” has to be amongst the greatest ways to express “Holy Shit!” in a video game that you’ve ever heard. Had it not been roughly 5:45 am last Tuesday morning I would have had the presence of mind to snap a screenshot of what was going on, but ya – pay no attention to the dirty blood elf screen I pulled off of Google.
Oh and *EDIT* – I did have my Thrall’s Balls pic:
So a week into the Cataclysm expansion has me weary and sleep-deprived. With one day of vacation left for the year I pulled a 22-hour marathon online that began at 3:40 am Tuesday morning and went to 1:30 am Wednesday. I made well into level 83 the first day and perhaps a bit more realistically grinded out the final 9.2 million experience finally on Thursday night, but I sadly still find reasons to maintain non-sustainable hours.
I decided to tank this expansion for the usual cast that gets mentioned here quite a bit, and the results of that have been pretty favorable. I was initially a tank when I started the game, however since returning I’ve been DPS ever since. Upset without an indispensable role should I want to do PvE content, I decided to tip the scales in my favor and the result has worked like a charm. I am currently sitting as 1 of 2 heroic-capable tanks in my guild, my dungeon queues are instant and the ability to get other guild DPS past the 40-minute waits for dungeons is a decent feeling. I’m sitting at a 335 item level and close to 145k health in five-man dungeons, but I’m sure I’ll post on this some other time cause tonight all that PvE stuff is about to go right to hell.
Tonight Rated Battlegrounds are going live, and despite my lack of desire to PvP much over the past week I am frothing at the mouth for a chance to try out the new battlegrounds. I know, I know – sellout – but switching specs to non-PvP friendly setup has had its effects on me. I don’t PvP as a protection spec (though am sort of thinking maybe…), and rolling on DPS items throughout this first week is basically dick-move. I’ve accumulated a few things in reserve, but essentially my gear is resilience-less and PvE defense – I didn’t have a weapon without a defensive enchant on it…
…until last night.
As I sat and considered the dungeon and reputation grinds I’ve endured throughout the past week, I decided I need to have a head-start entering the battlegrounds. I glanced at the Bloodied Pyrium PvP pieces and with current pricing I would end up spending around 20k to outfit myself. While oddly worth it in my view, I likely made a decision that will benefit me even more in the near future – which was to just spend the 20k leveling my blacksmithing from 450-525.
One of the ways I have found to make gold throughout Wrath of the Lich King is by flipping the same companion pets I mentioned yesterday. While certainly a more time-consuming and perhaps “luckier” type of item to sell, they nonetheless payoff extremely well if treated with patience. If you manage to sell a companion for 1.7k because someone let it go for 800g – does it matter if it took 3 listings to sell?
Over time when I find decent deals here and there I have kept some of these pets – not that I ever summon it – but just because … you know I really don’t know. At any rate I have been extremely close to the 75 non-combat pets achievement for a long time, so when the rumors of extreme awesomesauce that is Lawn of the Dead and the idea of the 75th pet met each other – off to Hillsbrad I went.
Brazie’s Sunflower Seeds couldn’t have been any more fitting to be the one I got the achievement on. It certainly is amongst the coolest, and it actually took some effort to obtain. There are plenty of discussions involving strategy on Wowhead, but instead – try playing it…it’s a really fun questline and learning how to play provides some great moments along the way.
So with a week remaining before Cataclysm is released I am attempting to tie up all loose ends, and one thing I have wanted for months has been this drake. Well, any Proto-Drake for that matter – despite there being 9 available I still didn’t have a single one. I obtained Onyxien the Netherwing Drake on November 8, 2009 and had used him solely since (I tend to get attached to one mount).
Since you just tried to name off the 9 Proto-Drakes, allow me to help:
Anyway, I’ve been revered with the Oracles since May – so I guess just short of 30 eggs or so to get it. Naturally as I was holding onto an egg with a 7-day timer, they changed the hatch to 3-days – which happened to be the exact amount of time I had left on my egg on the day of the patch. Three days later, the drake you see above came to be.
As a bit of advice, be sure to continue to buy these eggs for the companion pet drops, as when the majority of the population moves to the 80-85 bracket there will be a significant drop off in Cobra Hatchings, Proto-Drake Whelps, Tickbird Hatchlings and White Tickbird Hatchlings. On Bleeding Hollow the Proto-Drake goes for a few hundred gold, Cobra around 50g and somewhere in the 20’s for the Tickbirds. The quantities of these are going to become increasingly scarce as people focus on new content, but as long as non-combat pets remain an achievement you’ll have buyers at every listing.
Vikt of Orgrimmar
Kill Count: 74235
Armory Feed
...of the Horde 
