A digression: This is not about anything new. This is just me being mildly nostalgic.

Though my current account says December ‘07, I actually started playing WoW in the fall of ‘05. Specifically, sometime around Patch 1.8.0 or its successors - I know it was just prior to the opening of the gates. I had graduated from college, and got in touch with a friend of mine who’d moved out west to pursue a graduate degree at the Colorado School of Mines. We were chatting about various things we’d done together in college (memorable D&D games, etc.) and she told me that she’d recently started playing World of Warcraft at the urging of her new boyfriend and really loved it, and that I should totally check it out. I don’t remember my excuse for putting it off, but I had one, and I managed to stick to it until one day in Best Buy, when I walked by and saw that World of Warcraft really wasn’t all that expensive. Huh, I thought. Maybe this’ll give me something to do. (I was in kind of a console game - and MMO - slump at the time, having burnt out on Final Fantasy XI.) So I picked it up, took it home, installed it on my creaky little Mac Mini G4, and dived headfirst into World of Warcraft.

I don’t remember my first character’s name or the ones immediately following him, and I kind of regret that, but from day 1, I played Horde. My very first character was an undead rogue on Feathermoon, and I didn’t let my friend know about him - just yet. After all, I wasn’t sure I was gonna stick to this game or not. I remember falling in love with the areas around Deathknell and Brill, and how cool it was that I could jump (veterans of FFXI and Guild Wars may understand my amazement as well). I gleefully remember stealthing up to that little camp of Scarlets and stabbity-stabbing them to death, and I probably got my rogue to level 5 or 6 before deciding to try a second class.

My friend, Cassie, was a tauren druid. So I figured, why not? I rolled a tauren druid. Mulgore totally has a different flavor, and by now the variety had gotten me hooked. Cassie hooked me up with some leather gear and other generic piles of mats so I could level my own leatherworking, as well as some low-level greens, and I plowed through early quests in Mulgore and found my way into the Barrens. I remember using my newfound jumping skills (shut up) to get around to the guys above Wailing Caverns, before I had ever realized what an instance was (or that Wailing Caverns was an instance). I also remember that I had the pattern for a Deviate Scale Belt (I believe Cassie or her now-husband had blendered that instance for me so I could do some quests), and that I really, really wanted to make myself a Deviate Scale Belt - all by my lonesome. Self-sufficiency was the name of the game.

Have you spotted the problem yet? This was a long time before Patch 2.4, which would turn all the elites outside instance into non-elites… and no one had ever explained to me what that little gold circle meant. (I just thought it meant they had better loot.) So here I am, a little bitty druid around 15 or so, with what I’m sure was an absolutely moronic selection of gear (I didn’t know yet how utterly useless Spirit was), trying to solo elites - sometimes 2 and 3 at a time. However, I never gave up, at least until I did. I concluded that I sucked at this game, and wasn’t any good at it, and that’s the story of how a Deviate Scale Belt made me quit WoW.

At least until December 2007. I’d built a new rig earlier in the year - a fairly powerful one, to replace my stolen MacBook and underwhelming desktop - and had Gamestop gift cards, and that 19.99 Classic + TBC battlechest called my name…

How did you get started playing WoW? What kind of boneheaded mistakes did you make as a newbie? We were all there once, after all. :)

So that’s been making the rounds, so there you go. I love it, especially Illidan’s little cameo, and - oh God - is Archimonde humping the World Tree? What has been seen cannot be unseen.

After finishing up my Fool for Love requirements, I finally took the jump yesterday and made my second spec a tank spec. My primary spec for raiding, at least for the last two weeks, has been a variant of Gravity’s single-target raid blood spec - somewhat adjusted for AOE, by moving 3 out of Spell Deflection and into Morbidity, like so. I may just end up copying Gravity entirely, though; I just informed my raid that my AOE would suck, and they adjusted accordingly. Second tank was a bear, and the two of us took it up to the plague wing, so I’d call it at least a moderate success. Also through Sister Svalna and, for a change, took a poke at Valithria Dreamwalker. I can also DPS in this spec if I absolutely have to, like last night when we 7-manned (or 8-manned, my memory’s fuzzy) XT for the weekly (just under the wire).

My other spec is now a pretty stock 2H Frost with IIT build. This one is explicitly for five mans; it ends up with about 1000 less health than the blood build, and in my opinion feels moderately squishier, but in heroics that hardly matters - it’s just being able to build snap AOE threat, and that’s one thing this build excels at (barring, of course, stupid DPS - like the fury warrior I ran DTK with yesterday who insisted on, if I paused for a second to get HB or DnD, pulling himself with Heroic Throw > Charge > Whirlwind. I should’ve let him tank, by which I mean tank the floor, more often than I already did).

I guess that’s that, then. No real progress to speak of, a few new shinies on my equipment list but I still can’t get rid of those damned blue boots. It’s starting to get a little ridiculous. At this point I’d put just about anything in that spot. Wish me boot mojo!

Okay, look, I get that a lot of you might need some help death knighting. It can be a confusing experience to be thrown headlong 55 levels into a class that only starts with a whopping 3 more abilities than your average level 1 new toon. I get it. It’s cool. You and I, we understand each other. That’s why lots of those searches lead here.

What I don’t get are people asking me - and judging from the searches that somehow refer readers to this blog, a lot of you would like to ask me - where Stratholme is.

How can you not find Stratholme on a damned map? Here’s a quiz: look at a map of the Eastern Plaguelands. Where is Stratholme?

It’s right here.

It’s right here.

IT IS RIGHT THE HELL HERE.

LEARN TO READ A MAP.

P.S. Technically, it is also right here:

… but if you can’t even find the front door, you’ve got no business going in the back.

(See what I did there?)

Just nothing to post here, really.

Got unexpectedly pulled in to tank in ICC-10 when a spot opened up and I was on standby. I probably should’ve passed to the other person who could’ve tanked and was also on standby, because holy shit I am not ready for that place yet. Especially Deathbringer Saurfang. After several valiant attempts, including two glorious screwups by me (one of which involved Heimdall tanking Saurfang solo for about 3 minutes straight while I chewed on the pile of bones that was accumulating at our feet), we wandered over to ToC-10 instead so that I could work on gear and Malak - the aforementioned other tank - could work on tanking experience (along with me apologizing copiously for not being ready yet).

Apparently ToC-10 is more my speed! Definitely felt less like I was flailing like a roper at my keyboard. Gormok is a decent way to learn at least the tank portion of the fight - obviously it doesn’t compare on the DPS end, but the coordination of switching off at X time is pretty similar, but less of an emergency. Malak and I seem to be able to out-threat each other when we have to when switching, as well, which is nice. Made it to Faction Champions before a variety of non-fight-related issues (sleepiness, weird lag issues, etc.) knocked us out for the night.

So yeah. It was a learning experience! This weekend, since SNOWPOCALYPSE 2010 is supposedly on its way, I’ll be taking the opportunity to do things I want to do that don’t include raiding, including grinding mass numbers of badges, trying to pug a VoA or something of that nature, possibly transferring and leveling my shaman or warrior, or … other things. I dunno.

Oh! Before I forget: does anyone know how to get Skada to show threat? I switched from Recount to Skada since Recount seems to be all over the boards sometimes, and while I was able to get it to show DPS, Skada has never once shown me anything except a blank window when I’m looking at threat. I suspect I may have a setting switched on that is causing it to get ignored or somesuch, so if anyone has a good intro to using Skada, I’d appreciate it.

After chatting with Miss Hydra for three or four hours about my financial woes (my own economic stimulus bootstrapping plan is now underway), it was time to go home and - yes - raid. Wait, what? Well, yes, a few of you may have noticed my DK’s unexpected name change from Rajaat to Ambassador (that’s Ambassador Ambassador to you) and server move to Khaz Modan, where he is in a 30-day trial run to join the team at Caffeine. Last night was my first step into Icecrown, where I began immediately sucking up the plate loot like a $30 hooker, good-naturedly picking on the raid leader for dying to a cleave (and trying to get me cleaved in the process), and – oh yeah – I also I died to Icecrown Frogger, because with two new two-handed weapons, a pair of plate boots, and an Ashen Verdict ring to tide me over until the Strength one, I couldn’t run out of the way of those pesky steam vents. Whoops! One well-steamed loot whore, coming right up.

In other words, it was a great experience. I did feel a little bad soaking up that much loot on day 1, but there was only one piece that anyone else even rolled on - Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling - and as a ret pally, he was kind enough to defer it to me so that I could gear up my … wait for it … tank set.

That’s right, yours truly is working on tanking. I’ve had a long history of DPSing. I originally intended to roll my death knight to tank all along, but once he hit 80, my first raiding guild found that they already had enough tanks (a pally, a warrior, another DK, and maybe even a bear?) and so I was shuffled into DPS. And thus my DPS set grew leaps and bounds ahead of my tank set, while I still soaked up pieces from 10-man Naxx as well as the stuff no one else wanted. In every other guild I joined, the story was the same: I was needed for my DPS, because there were sufficient tanks. And so it continued: my DPS set continued to get constant upgrades, while my tank set suffered for it. For a while I didn’t even like tanking, or so I told myself, but the random heroics have changed all that. They reminded me of the times in Naxx, in OS, even the few off-tanking opportunities I had in Ulduar. But the intention and the skill (and the learning from Gravity) don’t mean much if you don’t have the gear to support it…

…but hey, you can always buy, craft, or farm new gear. :)

It’s no secret that for the finer things in WoW, cash is involved. Nothing puts a strain on your pocket like raiding repair bills, trying to gem and enchant the upgrades you do get, trying to buy things to buff up sets (why the hell are most of the good plate tanking pieces in three slots only craftable?), and trying to complete time-and-money-sink achievements that you can’t afford to put money into anymore… argh!

A while ago, in a post on my new UI, I posted this screenshot, which includes a little peek into my wallet. See 353 gold shown in that bar in Fortress? That’s basically what I have on my toon at all times.

Let that sink in, because as far as I can tell, no one really understands that. “Oh, well you can just pick up blahblahblah for cheap.” No I fucking can’t, pardon my French.

I’m in a near-permanent state where single epic gems are expensive, some enchants are unbuyable, the craftables from Crusader’s Orbs are out of reach even after getting emblems to get the orbs (and even one piece of Primal Saronite is way beyond my budget). Darkmoon Cards are unpurchasable. Essentially I manage to keep enough to repair after raids or astoundingly bad heroics, stock up on consumables again, and then that’s it.

I have neither the patience nor the intelligence to play the Auction House. I’ve tried it - I’ve followed the advice of Arthas-damned Auctioneer geniuses and I lose money, every single time. I don’t know what to farm because I have no idea what I should be farming. I can’t fund myself entirely through dailies like I used to in TBC (this is not a new problem, in case it wasn’t obvious - I had to borrow 500g to even get epic flying for my DK, and that was the most gold I’d ever had, at any one point, ever.)

Essentially, readers, despite how good I am at everything else, I am an abysmal failure at making money in WoW and I don’t know how to improve that.

I need your help. Badly. Leave comments below.

I was chatting with some people on Vent the other night when it came up with one guy was having a problem: both SimulationCraft and Rawr (fine tools in their own right, don’t get me wrong!) seemed to be low-balling his death knight’s DPS - by at least 1000 dps in some cases! So when I mentioned Kahorie’s DK Simulator, I was a little surprised when I was met with first dead air, then “huh? What’s that?”

Well, I smell a post. Let’s get started with a quick tour of Kahorie’s fine, fine tool!

Caveat: I use Windows. I am not a Mac person anymore, though not by choice. Anyway - these instructions should work fine on a Mac if you use BootCamp or some sort of tool that lets you use Windows apps on OS X - Parallels and VMware Fusion both being popular choices. It’s not a terribly complex app, and if you can run .NET apps, you can run this sim.

First things first, you need to download the simulator. On the downloads tab, you’ll see a big list of downloads - but the only one you need to worry about is the very first one, Kahorie’s DK Simulator.zip, because it always points to the newest version. Unzip it, and place the folder inside somewhere convenient - your desktop, a downloads folder. There’s no installer to run - open up this folder, and look for this icon, then double-click it. Kahorie’s DK Simulator runs right out of the box. (Yours probably won’t have a little green checkmark on it - mine does, because I keep my simulator stored in my Dropbox, which is a whole ‘nother story altogether.)

How many of you have alts that you actively play on multiple servers?

How do you do it?

Right now, I have what I guess you’d consider two “mains:” my DK on Kael’thas, temporarily a human (seriously, the only redeeming feature of the entire race is the reputation boost), and my warlock on Feathermoon, who is now an orc under a different main. I also have a smattering of other alts here and there - a draenei shaman, a dwarf rogue, a human priest who I regret transferring, a gnome mage, a gnome warrior who I also regret transferring, and a dwarf paladin on Kael’thas, a blood elf hunter on Feathermoon, DKs scattered across different servers, and so on and so forth.

Each of the ones who’s actively played also has other people associated with it, and various… well, “responsibilities” is as good a good word as anything for it. My death knight is “responsible” for going insane right now. My warlock, I’m determined to get him to 80 before Cataclysm, but Cataclysm is virtually upon us and my warlock mojo comes and goes, plus he’s supposed to at least be chatting with the lovely Anarkali, so I guess that’s his “responsibility.” My blood elf hunter is still in my old Horde guild on Feathermoon, unless they booted her anyway (the armory doesn’t say so, but it’s been a while since I logged into her). There’s another “responsibility:” I left them suddenly like a thief in the night, which wasn’t really fair to them. Especially since they weren’t the ones I was getting away from.

And then there’s my usual alt-itis. I’ve recently had the itch to roll a druid, despite all the other things I quote-unquote “need” to do in game. My shaman is making puppy eyes and asking to be leveled, and saying hey, maybe you’d like to go back to trying enhancement? And I’m pretty sure my warrior is going to get nuked and rerolled when Cataclysm rolls around, as will my hunter; I’ll need some worgen and goblin classes to level, after all.

I’m just really bad at making balances, I think. And there are many people on each server I have an alt on who’ve basically been asking “where are you?” so I feel guilty for spending time on one server or another. I think I’m starting to realize why I used to keep all my alt-eggs in one server-basket, and sometimes I just want to commit WoW amnesty: just start a new alt on a new server and just start all over. Sometimes I seriously think about mailing all my heirlooms and gold to a single toon and just nuking everyone and starting all over. (sheesh, I sound like Brigwyn and his alt deletions).

What advice do those of you who maintain multiple alts across multiple realms have for me?

I’ve seen this come up a lot lately, usually in response to trying to figure out what to do with death knights during the Lady Deathwhisper fight, and so I thought maybe it’d be helpful (following up on my resolution to be more useful) to provide a guide to which of our powers do magic damage and which ones are all physical. Yes, much like enhancement shamans, we’re a delightful mix of both. The ratio of physical to magical varies by spec, though, as you’ll see.

What does this really mean, though? It means that most of the time, putting a DK on a physical immune or magical immune enemy is going to gimp their damage somewhat - some specs worse than others! You may be better off leaving them on the boss and leaving your more ‘pure’-type DPS to take care of the adds, in this case.

Common to all or multiple specs

• Physical

  • Plague Strike

  • Blood Strike

  • White attacks

  • Blood-Caked Blade (talent)

  • Ghouls (whether from Raise Dead or Army of the Dead)

  • Rune Strike

• Shadow

  • Necrosis (talent)

  • Blood Plague (disease, applied by Plague Strike)

  • Blood Boil

  • Death and Decay

  • Death Coil

• Frost

  • Frost Fever (disease, applied by Icy Touch)

  • Icy Touch

• Other

  • Pestilence: Non-damaging, but it is considered magical (and, fun fact, it can miss)

These are the spells you can look to see most DKs using in some capacity or another. All specs depend on Plague Strike and Icy Touch to at least apply the initial diseases; however, Icy Touch is considered magic, so magic-immune or frost-immune enemies can’t be hit with it, thus preventing them from getting Frost Fever. Rune Strike is most commonly only seen being used by tanks or solo DKs, but it could be useful knowledge, so it’s on the list. Necrosis and BCB can show up in a few different specs, so I included them here; they’re passive, though.

Blood spec

• Physical

  • Death Strike

  • Heart Strike

  • Bloodworms

• Shadow

  • Sudden Doom (talent)

• Other

  • Dancing Rune Weapon: it does the same damage as you do.

Blood is, in my opinion, the spec least likely to be bothered by a magic-immune enemy. Their damage will still be slightly gimped: Heart Strike will be doing less due to the lack of diseases - immunity to Icy Touch means no Frost Ever, after all - but at least Death Strike will be hitting at full power. Since the DK won’t be hitting with Death Coils, anyone rocking the Glyph of Death Strike (which I believe is standard for blood spec these days) should be hitting for max damage with that strike most of the time. If you have to put a death knight on magic-immune mobs (say, due to a low number of raiders to choose from), I’d choose a blood-spec DK over the others.

Frost spec

• Physical

  • Obliterate

• Frost

  • Frost Strike

  • Howling Blast

  • Hungering Cold (non-damaging)

Frost takes a pretty big hit if it runs up against a magic-immune enemy. No Icy Touch means no Icy Talons or Improved Icy Talons, a weaker Obliterate, and weaker Blood Strikes (because that attack really needed to be weaker…). No Frost damage at all means no Howling Blast and probably no Frost Strike. Don’t put Frost death knights on magic-immune enemies.

Unholy spec

• Shadow

  • Corpse Explosion (yeah, it’s extremely uncommon, but I figured it was worth noting in case one of your DKs is an odd duck)

  • Unholy Blight (talent)

• Nature (yeah, you read that right)

  • Summon Gargoyle (technically, the Gargoyle can melee, but usually when this happens it’s a mistake - not something you want to happen)

• Physical & Shadow

  • Scourge Strike: This is an odd cat as of 3.3; Scourge Strike’s initial damage is physical, but it follows immediately with shadow damage. It’s more physical damage than shadow, though.

• Other

  • Ebon Plague: Ebon Plague, since it doesn’t do damage… I’m not sure. It’s classified in the Shadow school, however, so it seems probable that it’s Shadow. As it’s a disease, though, and not magic, Plague Strike will probably apply it – not that it’ll do a lot of good for that magic boost.

Unholy is probably second-worst-off behind Frost. Scourge Strike will be operating at half-efficiency, the Gargoyle will be useless unless you can maneuver it close enough to melee (which it’s really not that great at), and Unholy Blight depends on being able to hit with a Death Coil (which magic immunity guarantees won’t happen). I’m still not too sure about Ebon Plague, to be honest, but in the end it wouldn’t be too great even if it did get applied - it would only boost disease damage to a magic-immune enemy.

Reader advice

ik posted this below in the comments, and I think it pretty much sums up what I was trying to get at, but throws in some good advice as well.

When you say that Frost maybe takes the biggest hit from magic immune mobs, that might be true if you were using a normal rotation. But you won’t.

The obliterates and blood strikes hit for 25% less for Frost.
Scourge Strikes will hit for 75% less, and that’s without double dipping. Blood Strike hit for 37,5% less for Unholy
And that’s really all the spells you use on the magic immune mobs.

Unholy death knights might even want to change to using obliterate on the mobs (as there’s no diseases to remove), due to the massive damage reduction of Scourge Strike. But frost h ave talents/glyph that increases Obliterates damage, which makes it hit a lot harder for them, and Frost use dual wield, achieving more auto attack damage. And as far of “not being able to get Icy Talons”, targeting another mob, hitting Icy Touch from a distance every 20 seconds isn’t that a big problem. And a windfury totem can replace it.

Tho ghouls help, but you don’t need to hit the same target as them. I guess a /petattack targetX macro, would work wonders. But assigning an Unholy Death Knight to kill magic immune mobs, is like taking away half their damage and all the utility of an unholy dk.

As far as what the Unholy Death Knight can do. If you want to help killing the adds, get a blood dps off spec, or even blood tanking spec would be better. Or just tell the raid leader that you simply won’t be on adds. And if he disagrees… well, then you can just equip Piccolo’s flaming flute, you’re not gonna be of much help anyways.
-ik

Unrelated note: how many times did I type “reoslutions” instead of resolutions? If you guessed 3, you’re a winner.

So the holiday lull is over and the new year begins. My real life resolutions for 2010 aren’t anything impressive, and I’ve been cheating on WoW with consoles so I could really use some goal setting… so let’s take a look at what I intend to get done in WoW this year.

• Finish Insane in the Membrane before Cataclysm - or at least the goblin and Shen’drelar portions. Ideally I’d like to have all of this done by the expansion, so I can march into Deepholm and prove that I really am insane - see, it says so right above my head… Barring that, I’d like to at least finish the Steamwheedle Cartel and Shen’drelar reputations. Feralas is marked for some pretty heavy changes, and as it’s the easiest source for both of those (or at least the best for this title), I’d like to get done with that place while I can. Goblin I can do - Shen’drelar will be hell on the pocketbook… I suck at making money. This also has a sub-resolution:

• Get my rogue to 60+. This is the only way I’m going to be able to pickpocket all those Heavy Junkboxes unless a miracle occurs. The problem is, I really don’t like playing my rogue, so I need to use my remaining month of recruit-a-friend time and power-level her.

• Finish The Loremaster on my warlock. This is the title I originally wanted for him back when he was a little Forsaken warlock. Then he was a gnome warlock on Kael’thas and I’m sorry, I just can’t play gnomes. Now he’s an orc warlock back on Feathermoon and is only a few levels higher than he was at the end of Wrath. He’s halfway done with basically all of Loremaster, barring Northrend, so I guess I should also add:

• Finally (FINALLY) finish Higher Learning. Do you know how close I am to this? I need one book. One. It is never there. I have seen its joke replacements for the last four months. I WILL FINISH THIS ACHIEVEMENT THIS YEAR. Finished on January 18, 2010.

• Get my warlock to 80 before Cataclysm. That way I can ignore him until it’s almost time for the expansion after that. Ha ha, I kid.

• Get my Violet Proto-Drake. As it stands, I’ll get this during the Midsummer Fire Festival - assuming I don’t get boned by the RNG again during Valentine’s Day. The Midsummer Fire Festival is the only event I’m not at least 33-50% done with, because it was the only holiday that passed during the time that I quit playing WoW. I’ve been cleaning up so far, and I’ve got no reason to stop. Hot Pink Drake of Speed, here I come!

• Level a druid, paladin, or shaman to 80. Really, just level anything to 80. I’m pretty sure I’m the last remaining person in World of Warcraft with one level 80 character. And I’ve really had the urge to level a kitty druid lately… and I do have the leather heirlooms for it… I’ve just been trying to hold off on it until I finish leveling my rogue, and I was also kind of waiting until troll and worgen druids were available. However, I’m bad at not giving in to temptation.

So yeah, that’s it. There’s my list. It’s a short list of resolutions (spoiler: I typed “reoslutions” again), but it should be enough to keep me occupied.

Especially Insane in the Membrane, which some days feels so overwhelming that I start to think maybe Battlemaster would’ve been a better idea.

Oh wait! I forgot one!

• Post informative stuff about Death Knights again. The death knight blogosphere shrank about as fast as it grew, didn’t it? And my old guides could really use a good revamp. So yeah, I figure 2010 is a good time for me to get back into posting about the art of death knighting again.

So what are your goals for the year?