And now we get to do it all over again this week. It’s cool, though, we’ve totally got him on farm now. Totally. /cough

A couple tips to my death knight brethren (and a few for anyone) who might, in the course of tanking, end up kiting slimes on Rotface. Especially new tanks, like yours truly. These are all from personal experience, so I’m sure others will have other things to add.

• This is one of the places in Icecrown where Unholy truly shines. Bone Shield will give you a 20% damage reduction while it’s up, meaning you can usually run through the slime pipes (though not the slime from the oozes!) with relative impunity, Magic Suppression (if you’re talented into it) will lessen the damage you take from most things in the fight (though not the Big Ooze’s melee abilities… that thing hurts like a bitch), and Anti-Magic Zone (if you’re talented into that) has a couple uses that maybe aren’t so obvious:
• Making it really obvious where you are. This is a no-brainer, especially if you have someone who gets caught up in the moment and runs totally the wrong way. "Head for the big pink bubble!" works a lot better than "Come to me!" when there’s slime flying everywhere.
• Protecting raiders during the merge. If you manage to get a merge where you can actually stand still – doable if someone merges their slime into the exploding slime, meaning you’ve only got 1 or 2 immediately afterwards – sometimes it can take people a second or two to get started. If the bubble’s popped on top of them while you’re trying to get the Big Ooze’s attention, you might save them a tick or two of radiation.
• Death and Decay is really, really effective for getting threat on Big Oozes – they’re not the fastest creatures in the world, and will soak up several ticks on the run. It’s even more useful later in the fight, when there will almost inevitably be two Big Oozes up at once (especially late in the fight, when he starts pooping oozes out like mad). If you have the tanking 2T10 bonus, this is probably the one place it’s actually useful. (I kid. It’s never useful. It’s downright awful. It’s Glyph of Death and Decay.)
• If for some reason you haven’t already, turn on nameplates. And get really, really good at targeting correctly and taunting on the run – if you need to get an ooze out of the center, the last thing you need is to miss and accidentally have Rotface running at you. (This is really a good tip for all tanks, I guess.)
• Chains of Ice works on the little slimes. Useful to pin them in place before dragging your Big Ooze over them.

And probably the biggest Rotface tip I can give, to anyone of any class on any difficulty:

• Stay calm. I can’t stress this enough. The more that your nerves or anyone else’s get jangled, the more likely someone is to make a boneheaded mistake and cause a wipe. Rotface is, above all else, about flawless execution (or as close to it as you can get). If there are multiple wipes and you can tell things are getting tense, give people a short de-stressing break. If your raid needs to constantly be doing something, and if you haven’t done it yet, we found killing Sister Svalna to be a useful way to get away from Rotface for a little while.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Rotface

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!

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

The World (of Warcraft) Is Just Awesome

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.  

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

A regular Loot Hoover

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.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Kahorie’s DK Simulator

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 have 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

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Physical or magical? DKs vs. magic-immune foes

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?

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Shaking off the dust; WoW resolutions

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

Rajaat, Human Death Knight, with a spec that changes from week to week. Seriously. It settled down a bit in 3.2.2 as I spent a long period of time as frost dual-wield, then one of many cookie-cutter unholy dual-wield specs, then (since I got the Enormous Obsidian-Edged Blade of Sexiness) I’m actually pre-emptively in the 3.3 PTR cookie-cutter unholy build. I’ve found the DPS to be comparable, if not higher, than my dual-wield builds or any current two-hand builds.

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

Pretty much heroics and 10-mans, when they’re scheduled for a time that I’m actually available (rarely, unfortunately: our ‘gearing up’ raids fall on my D&D night, and our ‘new content’ raids fall on the weekends, which I spend outside of WoW. I also do regular Wintergrasps and AVs, mostly because I find accumulating 10k honor to be the quickest way to buy epic gems. Yes, even at 80, I’m still PvPing to boost my PvE.

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

Army of the Dead. I don’t get to bust it out much, but it’s just a super-fun ability to use. Corpse Explosion is a close second, even though I’ve only specced into it once.

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

Army of the Dead. In 5-mans it’s basically a ticket to utter chaos as they all take turns taunting the boss and running him around the room. I do get at least one use a day out of it: I use it when soloing Chillmaw.

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

Versatility. Death knights are very versatile, for a melee class. Two-handed, dual wield, haste buff, strength buff, unparalleled magic debuff, interrupts galore, taunts, grabs, on-demand targetable AOE, even a couple ranged spells. It’s like being a warlock in plate armor, only better.

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

Anything that requires us to move in and out of range frequently. The price for having Death Grip is that we don’t have a charge or a sprint or a ghost wolf or anything of the like. I’m virtually useless on Freya phase 2, for instance (a very extreme example). I end up slinging Icy Touches and Death Coils just to contribute something.

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

Generally my assignments were “sit on the boss and punch it till it stops moving,” and that’s what I do best. I don’t like chasing adds down, as while I can wear them down (with diseases, Death and Decay, and other AOEs), bursting adds down – which is generally what’s called for – works best one at a time. Take Ony, for instance: I’m best if assigned to Onyxia or the single big add, as opposed to the whelps. (On the other hand, the first whelp pack? The one that’s all gathered together? Fantastic opportunity to spread diseases, drop a Death and Decay, and forget.)

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

I won’t lie – my DK is getting a little dull sometimes. This is why I change specs so often – as I’m not expected to provide a given buff, I don’t have the pressure to stay in a certain spec all the time, and if I could get away with having two DPS specs, don’t think I wouldn’t do it. I think part of this is due to being one of the few remaining WoW players with a single level 80, and that’s my death knight. While I still enjoy DPSing with him, and there’s no arguing that I’m good at it, I really enjoy my shaman that I’m still leveling. The problem there is: do I want to go elemental or enhancement? Elemental’s proven to be hella fun for leveling, but enhancement is fun on its own merits.

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

Paladins and priests. I’ve never managed to get a ret paladin higher than the 30s because they bore me to tears. Seriously. Retadins, I salute you, because I have no idea how the hell you do it. (Maybe I should try leveling prot.) And as for priests, it’s mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing – everything has such different durations and cooldowns that I feel like I’m largely punching whatever shows up as available.

What is your worst habit as a dps?

Forgetting to bring consumables with me. Ask me how many times I’ve had to bum a flask. The introduction of fish feasts was the greatest thing ever. Outside of that? Hehe, it’s a good one: accidentally death gripping bosses. When I’m in a raid, and I know I won’t be expected to off-tank anything, I physically remove Death Grip from my bars. (I replace it with my Iron Boot Flask.) I accidentally death gripped Thaddius one too many times and wiped our Naxx raid.

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

People who aren’t bringing 100% of their A-game to the team. If you’re sick or tired or too impaired on various substances to do your job, please, let us know. And if you’re not at your best but you don’t know why, ask. Some of the best players I know have finally just had to say to other people, “look, I’m not sure I’m doing this right. Can you help me?”

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

In my opinion, yeah. There are plenty of other classes that out-do us. Boomkins, for instance… I feel it makes me work a lot harder to stay at or near the top of the charts. A few of the DPS classes could definitely use a boost, though.

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

Pretty much just recount. I used to also use WMO, but as I stopped being a progression raider, that kind of in-depth analysis isn’t as useful to me as it used to be. I also run a lot of simulations – Kahorie’s DK Simulator is in my Dropbox so that I can get it from any computer I use.

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

That we can faceroll our way to infinite DPS and chart-topping victory. The problem is that a lot of people rolling a death knight have this problem too, which leads to the huge quantities of mediocre DKs, which leads to the other misconception, which is that we’re all terrible idiots.

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

Balancing a standard rotation with keeping diseases up and using cooldowns at the right time. I think my background as a warlock (the only class I played to 70 in TBC – seeing a trend?) helped enormously here, as after playing an aff or demo/aff lock for so long, managing cooldowns and diseases and procs felt like second nature.

What dps class do you feel you understand least?

Druids, both kitty druids or boomkeks. I’m hoping to remedy that when Cataclysm drops and I roll my druid at long last.

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

Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text, SimpleRune, and above all else – Power Auras. A lot of the things addons like Bleeding Hearts do, I already have set up in Power Auras. There’s others, of course – I also use MetaHud, as I like it better than the standard frames, and Grid for raid frames. Omen is a must, of course. Recount I mentioned earlier. DeadlyBossMods is my raid boss mod of choice.

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

Hit to 8%, then Strength > everything else. That’s an extreme oversimplification, of course, and right now you’ll notice I’m actually pretty far below hit cap, but the issue is that getting myself up to hit cap with the content available to me would be an overall DPS loss. I already have plans, though, so it’s no big deal. In the end, though, Strength is my guiding light, and Strength is what I stack.

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It’s not a meme, it’s a survey

1) Hold off on that AOE for just a second if you would. Death and Decay is less like a Thunder Clap and more like a Consecration: a pulsing mass of energy on the ground that steadily builds threat. It is not a huge spike of threat, and it will not build threat if an enemy dashes into it and you immediately shoot them, causing them to run back out. Sure, its puny-looking damage is amplified by our talents and AP and whatnot (plus diseases, for Unholy DKs with Ebon Plaguebringer), and it has an enormous threat component when combined with Frost Presence (something ludicrous like 250 Threat per point of damage), but here’s the part a lot of AOE happy boomkeks and volley launchers don’t seem to get: it isn’t going to build any threat if you don’t for Heaven’s sake let me hit it first. Let me put down my D&D and spread my diseases – my other quick method of building constantly ticking threat, and you’ll know when it’s down because you’ll see black lines briefly connect through all the trash – and look at Omen, and then go ahead and unleash your great thundercloud of lightning-y doom.

One thing a lot of people are not aware of is that most of the DK specs are relying entirely on D&D for AOE threat. Unholy tanks used to be able to count on Unholy Blight as well, but our giant cloud of buzzy fleas is now simply a DOT applied when we cast Death Coil. Frost tanks can use Howling Blast, but that’s got its own cooldown on top of our normal rune cooldown; they’ve probably got it easiest. Blood tanks are a lot like warriors using Cleave, only they can’t add an extra target via glyphs – Blood AOE consists of tab, Heart Strike, tab, Heart Strike, tab, Heart Strike. It’s kind of hectic.

In short: if I see one more hunter target an enemy on the other side of D&D and expect a simple run through the red glowy circle to out-threat their shots, or a druid who pops a thundercloud before Death and Decay has ticked once, and then bitches at me because they’re getting their face beaten in, I am going to scream. No lie.

2) If we are silenced, please dispel it. This is something a lot of DKs are not aware of, as well as a lot of people around them – hell, I didn’t figure it out until I started tanking. If we are fighting a mob who is capable of silencing us, and you notice we’re silenced, please do something to get rid of it if we can’t do it ourselves. When silenced, we lose access to:

• Icy Touch
• Howling Blast
• Death Coil
• Death and Decay
• Dark Command
• Blood Boil
• Pestilence
• Icebound Fortitude
• Bone Shield
• Death Grip
• possibly Strangulate
• possibly Mind Freeze
• Anti-Magic Shield
• Anti-Magic Zone
• possibly Rune Tap
• Hungering Cold
• possible Vampiric Blood

The list goes on and on. Essentially any spell-like ability is affected by silence. In short, if a DK is silenced, our list of threat and survivability tools is reduced to Plague Strike, Scourge Strike (unholy only), Blood Strike, Frost Strike (frost only), Obliterate, Death Strike, and Heart Strike (blood only). We lose the ability to lay down an AOE (any of them at all), we lose the ability to taunt, and we lose our biggest source of magical protection and free runic power.

So please, if you see your DK tank get silenced, and it’s a kind of silence you can dispel, please do!

(P.S. Casters with silence and hunters with silencing shot, if you really want to shut a death knight down in PvP, I guess now you know what to do.)

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Two things your DK tank wants to tell you

Then, two attempts later (note to self: install a screenshot addon):

Got that one in just under the wire, eh?

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The last death knight in the US to solo Onyxia

Pic unrelated, but Rav sent it to me just prior to posting, so there you have it. Seriously, is that cat doing The Hustle or what?

Okay, so, I still get a lot of search engine hits, and I thought now would be a good time to address some of the pressing concerns that apparently drive you, the reader, to visit this blog. Let’s hop to it, shall we?

• n52 change keys
  • Just use the program that came with the driver. If you don’t have the disc, you can probably download it. Unless you want to change the physical keys, which I wouldn’t recommend.
• orphan (2009)
  • Don’t bother. Spoiler, she’s not really a kid at all. Bonus points to my roommate for figuring this out entirely based upon a scene in the trailer where she appears to be wearing mascara and eyeshadow. My ending was much better:
• how to attach a blizzard authenticator to my wow account
  • You’re welcome. When my Square-Enix security token arrives, I’ll probably do another one for that one, too. I will become the all-knowing source of attaching one-time use security tokens to accounts, muahahahahahahaha!
• on a related note, what do you do if you lose your blizzard authenticator
  • Call Blizzard’s Accounts department. Prepare to endure the 3rd degree, probably.
• welcome to thunderdome"
  • TWO MEN ENTER
  • ONE MAN LEAVES
  • TWO MEN ENTER
  • ONE MAN LEAVES
• should i stop playing my death knight?
  • Yes.
• end of the world
  • “…war came, no longer from the elemental nor from the star’s rain of fire. The world was again remade, and the glow was as the coming of the sun upon the Earth. The children of the gods were again too few, scattered and divided and among them walked the ancients and those whose thoughts were not as to the towers and the marvels, but to the End and the destruction of the Earth and to the fires from which nothing could escape.” Ethan Haas was right, gang.
• roegadyn
  • So, yeah, I’m not going to do a whole post about it because I know only like 3 people are interested in reading about it, but Square Enix updated the official Final Fantasy XIV site with all the info that’s already been leaked from Weekly Famitsu and Dengeki Playstation. Except, for some reason, for the European one.
• "sergej gorodenskiy"
  • He does fantastic banners. I wonder why I still show up in searches for him, though? Must be cached data, because the current banner, well, I did that myself.
• gelkis and magram clan centaur exalted
  • You can’t.
• death knight ghoul form
  • You can’t, unless a different DK uses Raise Ally on you.
• caravan emblems
  • … I got nothin’ for this one. Are you trying to grind rep with a Dodge Grand Caravan?
• illithid
  • This is showing up here because of a link that was on my sidebar, where someone made an illithid PC race for 4e D&D.  Here it is again, in case it somehow vanishes from WotC’s forums.

Nightmarishly alien refugees from a doomed time, desperately struggling to find a different path to a better future.
Racial Traits
Average Height: 5′ 6"-6′ 2" 
Average Weight: 130-200 lbs.

Ability Scores: +2 Intelligence, +2 Charisma
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 Squares
Vision: Darkvision 

Languages: Deep Speech, telepathy 5, choice of one other. 
Skill Bonuses: +2 Bluff, +2 Dungeoneering 
Aberrant Origin: Your ancestors are alien beings from a future dominated by the Far Realm, so you are considered an aberrant creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin. 
Psionic Nature: You gain a +5 racial bonus to saving throws against charm effects. 
Psychic Resistance: You gain resist psychic 5 + one-half your level. 
Mind Blast: You can use mind blast as an encounter power.

Mind Blast, Illithid Racial Power
In a storm of pure destructive mental power, you unleash a psychic assault on your foes.
Encounter * Psychic
Minor Action . . . . . Close blast 3
Target: All creatures in area
Attack: Intelligence + 2 vs. Will, Wisdom + 2 vs. Will, or Constitution +2 vs. Will
Hit: 1d4 + Wisdom modifier psychic damage. Increase to +4 bonus and 2d4 + Wisdom modifier psychic damage at 11th level, and +6 bonus and 3d4 + Wisdom modifier psychic damage at 21st level.
Special: When you create your character, choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as the ability score you use when making attack rolls with this power.

And that’s it!

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

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