So Love is in the Air is over and done with, and once again I’m left with a smattering of the achievements finished but not all of them. If you checked Zulfon’s world events achievements, you’d find they all tell pretty much the same story - 8/12 done in Winter Veil, 7/11 done in the Lunar Festival. 5/12 for Love is in the Air is a new low. I have bits and pieces of others done, but still… Sheesh. Zulfon the Love Fool I’m not, apparently.

I managed to get the ones any dope can do - Sweet Tooth, Nearest and Dearest, Nation of Adoration, Flirt with Disaster - but as for the rest, I simply had astoundingly bad luck.

Don’t get me wrong. I like achievements - they give me a reason to even participate in the world events, something I only did marginally up til this point. But even with taking one day out of this event (I spent Saturday with my girlfriend, completely away from WoW), I never got enough Love Rockets to complete The Rocket’s Pink Glare, I never received anywhere near enough bracelets to finish Heartmender, no one I know got a picnic, and as for me? I didn’t see a single bag of candy for Be Mine.

None.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

This is disheartening. For an event this short, most of the people who could legitimately complete it fell into one of two groups:

1. People who got astoundingly lucky.

2. People who spent all weekend playing WoW, thus avoiding the real-life holiday it commemorates. Ironic, no?

I don’t even know what the point is here, it’s just… it’s sort of depressing to get screwed by the random number generator like this. Most of the other achievements I’ve missed for reasons I can chalk up to myself - I had no wish to repeatedly run back to Dalaran to get the gnome disguise for With a Little Helper From My Friends, and I hadn’t opened Ogri’la’s questlines; as for the Lunar Festival, I just got tired of running into dungeons I didn’t need. Maybe the titles aren’t just motivation enough. Maybe it’s the fact that no matter what I do, even if I completed everything, I wouldn’t see the violet drake until October 2010 because none of my characters have the Brew of the Month.

It’s just - in general, I feel that achievements should reward the time invested (and, in some cases, putting up with the horrible luck - like six cases of Heartbreak in a row in Undercity), and for the most part, the titles aren’t worth it. The mount’s not worth it. Holidays just aren’t worth it. I understand this probably marks me as a QQer, but you know what? This is my blog, and I’m going to QQ about what I feel is an unfair and arbitrary block from getting admittedly silly titles and achievements - random chance.

Guys, the has .

I just thought you should know. For your up-to-date Ice Stone info, be sure and check out http://hastheicestonemelted.com/.

P.S. If you’ve left a legitimate comment here since last Friday, on any post, and it hasn’t been approved, please leave it again. I’ve been hit with waves of spambots and haven’t been analyzing the things that Akismet assumes are spam.

In case you missed me on it - or in case you were waiting on it? - the Twisted Nether Blogcast had a roundtable last Friday night, and I was one of the guests (the quietest one, too…). If you want to check it out, it’s now available! Go! Download! Listen!

It also features Vonya of Egotistical Priest, Ratshag of Need More Rage (who I kinda sound like, if you’re not listening closely), Kestrel of Kestrel’s Aerie, John “Big Bear Butt” Patricelli of the Big Bear Butt Blogger, and of course our hosts, Bre and Fim.

It was a blast, especially with the live portion (the chat room was almost as lively as the actual roundtable!), and it was well worth staying up for. Thanks again, Fim and Bre, and to everyone else - go listen!

Warning: the info in this post was posted prior to patch 3.1, and as such, while there may be some relevant information in it, large parts of it may be outdated or irrelevant. You have been warned.

Warning: The following is not only my opinion, it’s how I did it.

I’ve had a few people now ask about a good spec for leveling a Blood-spec Death Knight. There are a few talents in the tree that are well-suited for leveling but you probably wouldn’t want in other situations. I’ll walk you through what I did as best as I can, and hopefully you’ll get to 80 in no time flat.

Now, a little background on Blood. Whereas Unholy deals with AOEs, DOTs, and “fun toys,” and Frost has lots of mitigation and burst damage, Blood is all about physical damage, passive and crit buffs, and self-healing. The self-healing is what makes it especially suited for leveling.

Level 58: Here’s where it all begins. You’re fresh out of the Death Knight starting area. What now? Here’s where I put my talents to start leveling as Blood.

Mousing over these should be fairly self-explanatory as soon as I remind myself how image maps work. Where do you go from here? Well, for a couple more levels, you’ll be filling out the tree:

• 59, 60, 61, and 62: Finish filling out Blood-Gorged.

• 63: Dancing Rune Weapon. This is your emergency weapon. You’ll probably use this on elites and when you’re soloing group quests. (You can do that, you know.)

Now you’re at 54/0/0. You have a variety of self-buffs that happens on crit, you’re doing fantastic physical damage, and you’re pretty much healing yourself constantly. Where to from here? Follow me, friends - to the Frost tree!

This little sojourn is for one reason and one reason only: to pick up Annihilation. Note: you would help yourself a lot by adding a Glyph of Obliterate. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to put the talents into this tree: you can figure it out (since there’s only 5 talent points spent per line). Most of this just raises your damage in various matters, especially your frost damage. Obliterate, however, will be doing a bunch of damage, and having it not eat your diseases just adds to that.

Now you’re 54/13/0, sitting at level 76, ready for that last dash.

It’s a really short trip. You’re just tossing a couple points in here to round out bonuses to various strikes and spells.

That’s it! That’s you at 80. Now find you a spec better-suited for what you want to do for now, and have fun!

Blizzard’s said they want more DKs to spec blood or frost. Blizzard’s also said they balance encounters around Replenishment, even in 10-man (please note this means they’re balancing raid encounters around an ability that three [soon four] specs have - that’s three [soon four] out of thirty that will become more-or-less mandatory. Take the player, not the class - yeah right).

So, with that, here’s my idea. I’d put this in the Blood tree, 3 points, on the same row as Spell Deflection - no one takes that anyway, not even lolblood tanks, because there’s not enough directly-targeted spells to justify it.

Blood Spray: Your Blood Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate critical strikes cause the target to bleed for X plus X% of weapon damage, and have a 33%/66%/99% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.25% of their maximum mana per second. Lasts for 15 sec.

Thoughts?

Thanks to Arrens for popping out to where I was for the laughs!

Sorry, for those of you looking for an in-depth guide to death knight tanking - this ain’t it. This is, however, maybe a short gathering spot for any tips and pointers I’ve picked up from across the web, and I’d appreciate it if others could contribute what they know. Because, yes, I’m going to be tanking… or at least off-tanking… pretty soon. The gear’s all organized, now I just need to learn the finer art of Making Things Hit Me In The Face Instead Of The Healersâ„¢.

• The pic above demonstrates the foundation of every DK tank build I’ve seen so far: 5/5 Blade Barrier, 5/5 Toughness, and 5/5 Anticipation. You can go just about anywhere you like from here, but this gets you the lowest-level avoidance talents out of every tree.

• Tankspot is home to the most civil, open-minded, straightforward discussion of tank specs and rotations that I’ve seen thus far (barring the guy on page two who comes in and says “ur unholy spec is fail lololol” [more or less]). There’s another discussion on Elitist Jerks (you knew there would be). Here’s a bit on dual-wielding tank builds, as well. (I, for one, am not a fan of the dual-wielding death knight - but I know a lot of you are, so there you go!)

• Contrary to when DPSing, the gargoyle, ghoul, and dancing rune weapon are mostly unwelcome guests when tanking. Why? Because they don’t directly cause threat for you.

• Frost is not “the tank tree.” Frost is the burst damage tree. Yes, Frost has a seemingly high amount of the mitigation talents, but Frost is not the only way to tank.

• Unholy used to be “the other tank tree” but even with the nerfing of Bone Shield I’m not noticing any fewer Unholy tanks. (Unholy would feel a bit like tanking with a plate-wearing warlock, in my opinion.)

• While it’s still sometimes pretty squishy, Blood can supposedly tank now due to the overhauled Vampiric Blood, the passive upgrades to Frost Presence, and apparently even the new Will of the Necropolis. Given my on-again/off-again love affair with Blood-spec I will probably be trying this one first for tanking. (I’m in it again for DPSing and have not noticed a drop in DPS from when I was unholy; yes, I’m managing to make up for myself and the now-absent ghoul. It’s a very gear-dependent spec, and mine’s just good enough again to make it worthwhile.)

• Despite all the ways Blizzard tries to make Death Knights parry, dodge will still be better for a while, in my opinion, because it suffers less from diminishing returns per point than parry. (That is, you need fewer points of overall dodge rating as opposed to overall parry rating to get a higher percent of dodge.)

Alright gang - give me your tips for Intro to Tanking 101, whether it’s Death Knight-specific or not. Bonus points if it is, of course!

I decided it’d be a fun interlude from my usual cycle of heroics, raids, and blacksmithing to take a break and do a little achievement whoring participation in the current world event going on, the Lunar Festival. And, to spice things up, I decided to participate in Llanion’s Tour de Tuxedo: wherein you visit all the elders wearing simple cosmetic gear (like pirate costumes, tuxedos, festival outfits, dresses, etc.) and unarmed (though apparently I could’ve been armed, but it’s more fun this way).

(3:00:07 PM) worldofmatticus: quick
(3:00:09 PM) worldofmatticus: whats the name of the big dog
(3:00:12 PM) worldofmatticus: in BWL?
(3:00:12 PM) StoppableForce1: Clifford?
(3:00:14 PM) StoppableForce1: oh
(3:00:18 PM) jedi soLusaR: hahah
(3:00:20 PM) StoppableForce1: lol
(3:00:40 PM) StoppableForce1: Chromaggus