Phase 1: Got this down to a science by the end of the night.

Transition Phase 1: Also went well. Watching people get flung off by Ice Spheres during one of our wipes cracked me up, though.

Phase 2: Well, we’ve got the next few weeks to work on this. Our raid lockout is being extended until the Lich King is dead. Don’t expect much interesting out of me in the meantime.

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Defile is the opposite of love

I’ve been trying for it for a while now, but I just had a feeling, you know? I was in the pit, pummelin’ some warbears, and it suddenly popped into my head: today’s the day. And lo and behold, I got the bear. Huzzah! And yes, that’s the handle of a Cryptmaker peeking over my shoulder there. She’s a beaut, ain’t she? Doesn’t clip my cape horribly, either, like the other two weapons I own. Seriously, Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling looks like it’s stuck halfway into my back, though this might just be a problem with some dwarf models (it does the same thing when I’m in an iron dwarf disguise, but not when I’m in a dark iron dwarf disguise).

As for the other pic mentioned in the title -

It was a good weekend on the auction house, too. Just need nine more Primordial Saronites and Festergut’s Acidic Blood and I, too, can get harassed by Arthas whenever I like. It’ll be like old times – I haven’t had ol’ Lichy baby whisperin’ in my ear since I left Acherus.

Oh, and about that video. Got an email from Lionsface Entertainment announcing a WoW hip-hop single and video, "Fail," by Blood Type. Ordinarily I’m not very impressed by these (there’s only so many times I can take blood elves bragging about their epeen, though there are a few standouts, and I’ll admit to having a few on my iPod), but the production value on this one is above par, and the two vocalists can… you know… actually rap.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the vid:

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Two pics and a video

That, I found, is Blizzard’s official terminology for it in the activity log: Valithria Dreamwalker rescues. Good to know, we’d been wondering what to call it. Wiped out all of Lower Spire + Plagueworks (including one-shotting Putricide) in the first 90 minutes last night, then went over and 2-shot Valithria, a fight we hadn’t seen before (in no small part thanks to the druid on the right there walking us through it – he’s Dantesparda, one of our many many new people; we suddenly have a full and lively guild at almost all times, it’s so awesome), then went over and pummeled the Princes into the pavement despite the entire East Coast suddenly disconnecting and taking a big chunk of our guild with it – and leaving the ones that could get back on with enormous lag. I think whatever happened, it was even affecting the Midwest – you can see my latency is at 516ms there. It jumped from 96 to 516 at some point prior to Valithria and stayed there last night, and was still there this morning in fact.

Also, another Fine Moment in Caffeine Raiding™, brought to you by Aelrict.

I love these folks.

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Enormous dragons rescued: 1/1 (Quest Complete)

I love this job sometimes.

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The downside to raiding with bloggers…

First up, one of my favorite sights in WoW: a dead Rotface. As of last night, Caffeine has officially put him on farm status.

Before leaving Kael’thas, I did finally (finally) get my last book for Higher Learning. I’ve since ran into at least four people doing some, uh, adult RPing in the Archmage’s room.

I also went and sat on the throne in Blackrock Depths. Think that’s enough to declare myself king?

This is how I get psyched to fight Deathbringer Saurfang.

Noticed while leveling my baby warrior: is it just me, or does that tower in the distance kinda look like…? Naaaah, couldn’t be.

Truthfully I don’t know why I took this one. I think it’s because it was raining in Stratholme? Either way. It might make a good blog header, if I cropped it a bit…

Or perhaps I should edit it to showcase King Ymiron’s taste in art.

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I have my orders

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.

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We were all boneheads once

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?)

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Where is Stratholme? Really?

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.)

Upon opening Kahorie’s DK Simulator (which I’m just going to call "the DK Simulator" from now on because I’m already tired of typing out the whole thing), you’ll be greeted with this slightly intimidating window full of dropdowns and options (as always, click to embiggen):

None of this is too difficult once you’ve done it a time or two, but I’ll walk you through the basic steps.

Character

This is the first dropdown; a few pre-built characters come with the DK Simulator, usually representing ‘ideal’ DKs at a given point in raiding progress. Usually I like to create one of these as a sandbox representing my current stats, then a second to test potential gear changes. Since my character is somewhere between T9 10-man and T10 10-man at the moment, I’ve chosen "2h ToC Blood.xml" from the dropdown list, and clicked Edit to get to the character editor. Here’s what that screen looks like:

This is pretty straightforward: essentially it’s your statistics, trinkets, procs (the DK Simulator models several trinkets, procs, and profession enchant procs), and set bonuses, as well as racial bonuses. Obviously I can see that some of these differ from the ‘stock’ character to my own death knight. For instance, Rajaat would gain a small main hand expertise bonus for being human, and his stats are definitely different from the ones shown. Unfortunately, the DK simulator doesn’t have a way to directly import toons from the Armory yet, so you’ll have to do the copying by hand.

A couple things might be confusing for first-timers.

• Attack Power (the green part): If you mouse over your AP in the Armory (or, I believe, in-game), you’ll see your attack power written as something like: Melee Attack Power 4333 (3738 + 595). The only part you put in this blank is the portion in green (here, 595), not the total (here, 4333). This will lead to wildly inflated max possible DPS, if you do, and it’ll leave you wondering exactly why you’re underperforming.
• Haste Rating: On the armory, this can be found by mousing over your melee speed.
• Armor Penetration Rating: Similarly, this can be found by mousing over your melee hit rating.
• Expertise: This is really confusing on the Armory. For instance, on Rajaat, I see Expertise: 24. If I mouse over it, I see Expertise 124, but expertise rating 24. I’ll be 100% honest with you: I usually add this up by hand. 124 is what’s on my gear, so 124 is what I put here.
• Racial: If you’re an orc, turn on the "Blood Fury + Pet damage" checkbox, and put in 5 for your expertise on the appropriate hand if you’re using an axe in that hand. (For two-handed weapon wielders, just use the main hand expertise box.) Dwarves put a 5 into the expertise box if they’re wielding a mace; humans put a 3 if they’re using a sword or a mace. Trolls and blood elves check the appropriate box for Berserking or Arcane Torrent, respectively. Everyone else, sorry, your racial talents aren’t relevant to your DPS.
• Misc: 3% crit damage is from, I believe, meta gems – either old and busted or the new hotness. Tailor Enchant is referring to Swordguard Embroidery. The rest are fairly explanatory.

The rest should be fairly self-explanatory – choose your trinkets, choose your weapon proc if you’re wielding one of the Onyxia one-handers or the new weapons from Icecrown with a proc (right now that’s Bryntroll and the two one-handers from Onyxia; you can bet on Shadowmourne being added once it’s available), and pick any set bonuses you happen to have. One note, if you happen to not have any set bonuses – which could happen as you’re mixing and matching gear – there’s no blank option. Just delete the entry in those dropdowns with the Backspace or Delete key.

Once you’ve gotten all these finished, click Save As (or Save if you’re saving an already-modified character), type in a filename, and hit enter. Choose your new file from the dropdown next to character, then it’s on to the next step. This is important – saving the new file will not pick it from the dropdown for you. I’ve gotten incorrect tests many times because I was looking at the wrong character.

Template

This is just a fancy way of saying "talents and glyphs." The most common builds for the current patch are included, and I can probably go with the stock "Blood 51-00-20-01-GoD.xml," but let’s see what the edit screen looks like, in case you’ve got a non-standard build or glyph setup. If you need to edit a template, or want to make sure the stock ones are the same as what you’ve got, pick a template from the dropdown and click Edit.

That’s pretty much it. If you’ve ever used a talent calculator before – whether on the Armory, on Wowhead or MMO-Champion, or even in-game – you’ve seen this. It only gets a little weird when PTRs are out and the functioning of a glyph is changing – for instance, prior to 3.3, the DK Simulator included IcyTouch and IcyTouchII – the former representing how it used to work (extra runic power), as opposed to how it works now.

Oh, and the StartTalentDpsValue button will figure out how much DPS a given talent point is worth – so for instance, if you got down to having enough talent points to maximize Blood-Caked Blade or Necrosis, but not both, this button would help you figure out which one you wanted to max out to eke out that last itty bitty pesky point of DPS.

A caveat, this will let you put in illegal talent builds like 71/71/71, so, uh, double-check before you save, yeah? Save. Now back to the main screen. Pick your template from the dropdown, and it’s on to the next step.

Intro

This just lets you model an introductory round to your rotation. Some builds, such as the blood/Glyph of Disease spec, use this – the first round of a DPS rotation will be radically different from the others. You can also choose NoIntro.xml, which models no special introductory round. If you do choose to make and edit an intro, you’ll be using the rotation editor, which I’ll cover below. Skip down to rotation editing if you want to edit your priority.

Priority and Rotation

A lot of noise is made about the different between priority and rotation. Most builds can be defined as either, and honestly it’s up to your individual playstyle to decide how you define your priority or rotation. Some builds even switch – for example, in my build, my introduction is a flat rotation (PS > IT > DS > HS > Pest > RP dump), while after that it becomes a priority system (Keep diseases up > Heart Strike > Death Strike > Death Coil). You may find that a straight-up rotation works fine for you – a lot of Unholy players use one, for instance. It’s really a matter of preference – so, pick the one you prefer.

Now, one of the two boxes – priority or rotation – will be greyed out, and the one you chose can be selected from. Choose, then edit, because I guarantee most of the time it’s not going to match what you’re actually doing in play. (You want to, if at all possible, not save over these base rotations – they’re usually examples of cookie cutter rotations, and it’s possible they’re better than what you’re doing, but I digress).

Both priority and rotation editing (and intro editing) use the Rotation Editor tab. Here’s what that looks like.

Oh, hey, this looks familiar. What this says is that Frost Fever is a higher priority than Blood Plague (only because it won’t let you set them equal…), then Heart Strikes, then Death Strikes, then lastly Death Coil. Essentially the list on the right represents both abilities and combinations of abilities to work into your priority or rotation. Use the arrows on the items on the left column to move them up, down, or out of your rotation/priority; use the arrows on the items in the right column to move them into your rotation/priority. A few of them might be unfamiliar, because a lot of them apply to Frost:

• KMFrostStrike, KMHowlingBlast, KMRime: These Frost-specific abilities represent waiting until you have a Killing Machine proc, then using Frost Strike or Howling Blast. KMRime actually represents having both Killing Machine and Rime procs up simultaneously.
• FrostStrikeMaxRp, DeathCoilMaxRp: These represent dumping RP abilities because you are close to, or at, maximum RP, and generating any more would be a waste.
• SaveRpForRuneStrike: Self-explanatory, I figure.
• CinderDisease: For those of you still using Rune of Cinderglacier, Cinderglacier increases your disease damage but does not consume the proc.
• DRMObliterate, DRMDeathStrike: Being honest, I’m a little shaky on the meaning of these. I presume it means waiting until you have two Death Runes from Death Rune Mastery to fire off one of these abilities. None of the current rotations uses them, so I suspect they might represent things that have fallen out of favor in the current DK DPS landscape.
• FadeRime: This represents casting Howling Blast when your Rime buff is just about to fade, whether you got a Killing Machine proc or not. No sense wasting it!

Cooldowns are not represented here (like the gargoyle, dancing rune weapon, etc.) because they are not part of a standard rotation or priority system. Now, if you are editing a rotation instead of a priority (or if you’re editing an intro – intro segments are, by definition, rotations), you’ll notice an additional checkbox:

All the retry/wait checkbox does is ask you if you want to try something, or wait for it to be available again, if you missed it. As you can see, in this intro, I’ll retry anything out of PS > IT > DS > BS > Pest if it misses or I have to move, because that’s the only way I can get my priority system running – but I won’t wait on Death Coils, mostly because if you miss, you don’t get that runic power back, so I could be waiting a long time…

As usual, once finished, Save or Save As, return to the main screen, and choose your new saved intro/rotation/priority from the dropdown.

Presence, Sigil, Main Hand, and Off Hand

Fairly self-explanatory: the presence you’re running in for DPS (almost universally Blood these days), the Sigil you’re using, your main hand weapon’s runeforge, and your off-hand weapon’s runeforge (if any). Two-hand wielders, leave your off-hand runeforge blank.

Other Settings

Some of these settings you’ll need to touch; some you won’t. Here’s the most important ones to look at, in my opinion, and you can investigate the rest if you wish:

• Latency in ms: VERY IMPORTANT! Latency plays a huge part in your DPS (just ask any Australian playing on US servers), and setting this to your average latency will generate much more reliable results.
• Number of enemies: Choosing 1 enemy gets you something like a Patchwerk fight; choosing multiples can represent any kind of fight where your DK is fighting multiple enemies at once, and whether or not you want to keep diseases up on all of them at once.
• Use Bone Shield/UA: This just chooses when you want to re-apply Bone Shield or Unbreakable Armor when they fall off. Your choices are kind of limited: apply them after a Blood Strike/Blood Boil, or apply them instead of a Blood Strike/Blood Boil.
• Wait for FC proc for GG/DRW: This will stop Gargoyle/Dancing rune weapon from being used until your Fallen Crusader runeforge procs. I’m not entirely sure, but if you’re not using Fallen Crusader at all (I’m not sure why… but maybe you’re running some crazy Unholy build with Cinderglacier on a two-hander or something), you may want to uncheck this or it may never use the GG or DRW.
• Generate Combat Log: If your DPS seems very low in the report – or very high – you should check this on and see what is going on in the generated combat log. Sometimes priorities (especially priorities) can be very difficult to model correctly. I once accidentally somehow made a build that prioritized blood taps and keeping Bone Shield and Horn of Winter up higher than everything else.
• Show Procs/Non-Damaging Spells: Useful, but probably not necessary. Useful for seeing how often your procs were up during a given fight.
• Report Name: Good if you’re doing multiple reports in a row.

Buffs

There’s a buffs tab along the top that we haven’t, as of yet, touched. It’s very important to edit this. By default, every single buff is on, and let me tell you, this is how you get some vastly inflated numbers. You’ll probably want to pare down the selection to get the buffs that you’re more likely to have in your raid. To get your "test dummy" DPS, get rid of everything except Str/Agi.

Let’s Go!

Now, there’s two big buttons at the bottom: Start Simulator, and Start EP. Start Simulator is pretty straightforward: a progress bar pops up, and it will run a raid boss simulation with the parameters you’ve put in, generating an output that looks something like this (try not to laugh too hard):

A very precise breakdown of what you used, when you used it, what hit, what missed, what critted, so on and so forth. Those numbers are actually fairly consistent with what I’ve seen recently, too – and higher than what I’ve seen in 5-mans, which I suppose can be accounted for by raid buffs.

The other button, Start EP, is more useful to help you figure out what you want to look for on new loot to get an upgrade…at least, this is how it was explained to me. EP is, if I remember correctly, "equivalency points," or something along those lines – essentially, a guide to what stats are more valuable to you on new gear, and what ones are less valuable. There are options on the EP Options and Stat Scaling tabs that you can fiddle with; honestly, the defaults have always seemed reasonable to me (though I do add trinkets and stats I know I need more of, like armor penetration). This will take much longer to run (and will also put a crapton of progress bars on your screen that you can’t minimize and that are always on top of everything… annoying), but once it’s finished, you’ll get something that looks like this (I turned on a bunch of additional options):

The nice part is, you can plug these directly into Wowhead’s loot filters, or LootRank, or really anything of that kind – and get customized lists of loot for you. Neat, eh? (Looks like I could do with a little less Expertise and a little more Armor Pen and Strength… oh, and a Greatness card… and should stick with 4P T9 until I can get at least 2P T10, since those two are nearly equivalent.)

Any questions? Ask in the comments and I’ll answer them as best as I can.

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Kahorie’s DK Simulator

Then Pea and I decided to do the new Icecrown instances; it’s not random, but we still wanted to see it. Picked up Nighthawque and, well, there’s our DPS.   Tank and a healer joined in (the healer, amusingly, was the only one not from our server – and he was from Alexstrasza, where I once had a toon, once upon a time). We completed the Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron, and while I’m sure I’ll be sick of them eventually, I absolutely loved them. They were different, they were actually challenging since none of us knew any of the mechanics, and Bronjahm is a treat to fight. Sadly we didn’t make it past the Halls of Reflection; we wiped on Falric when he had virtually no health, and never managed to do that well again (it was about 2:30AM server time, so I’m going to blame it on that).

UI redesign: I spent a couple hours last night redoing parts of my UI from the ground up. Several of my addons were unnecessary or could be rolled into smaller, more efficient versions. Just for comparison, here’s what my UI looked like prior to yesterday (click to embiggen):

Several new addons later, I got something I like. I’m still fiddling with the precise layout, but at least I know I like all of the addons themselves – except maybe Magic Runes. I may switch back to SimpleRune or its successor. And I’m not a big fan of TidyPlates – I find that in groups of enemies they tend to completely overlap, making targeting an enormous pain in the ass. Here’s what it looked like, from the beginning of the evening until near the end (again, click to embiggen):

Since I know someone’s going to ask – the thin white circle you see around me in several of the combat pics is from Power Auras (specifically, that one’s letting me know that Unbreakable Armor is ready for use).

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Random dungeons and UI redesign

I’m sure this has nothing to do with a guildie whose Scion had $500 $2800 worth of damage done to its bumper by hitting a raccoon… only to be informed he needed to get his car def capped if it couldn’t even tank a raccoon.

The Sidhe Devils Night Crew is a bit wacky.

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Because BBB asked for it