And now, the blue post(s), with commentary. Follow along after the jump, ‘cos this is a big ol’ wall of text. As you may have guessed, there’s the occasional bit of foul language in this post.

New Death Knight Abilities
Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

It was cleared up in a Q&A (which is reprinted below) that Outbreak is one of those new "free" actions that we’re going to be applying now that we’re not pressing a button every single second of the day. Assuming there’s some way to lower the cooldown on this (and, well, let’s face it, a minute isn’t that long, it’s still every few rotations), Glyph of Disease just got obsoleted. I, for one, would welcome the ability to get the GoD’s effect without giving up a more useful glyph for what is essentially a "quality of life" glyph, but this seems sort of… well, underwhelming.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike — the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

A PvP ability? Bestill my beating heart. (Actually I figure this’ll be something more like Mortal Strike for Arms warriors – its primary utility is in PvP, but PvE still hits it because it’s a button that does damage.) Still, this is unimpressive, in my opinion. I’m sure some hardcore PvPers will disagree with me.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent’s next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can’t reflect an ability, you won’t be able to copy it either.

Okay, that’s kinda cool. Assuming it does what it says on the tin, it’s a nice little addition to our arsenal, even if it is just a copy of Spell Reflection wherein we get hit (and wherein we put a debuff on the enemy instead of a buff on ourselves). My one issue with it is that it’s only going to work in melee range, but that’s really a minor gripe.

Rune System Changes
While we’re satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we’re making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here’s the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

* In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they’re unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.

Rogue comparisons are something they seem really keen on making. I’m a little displeased; if I wanted something that played like a rogue but wasn’t a rogue, I’d finally give in and roll a druid.

* A death knight’s runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn’t have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can’t grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it’s impossible to save resources for when they’re most useful.

* Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight’s attacks are weak. The death knight’s rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player’s timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren’t able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.

These two points are simply matter of fact. Anything that requires split-second non-stop button pressing is of course affected by latency; getting a rotation even slightly off can result in a ridiculous loss of DPS. This is the main reason why simulator and dummy DPS is often leagues higher for us. Oddly, though, I’ve never really felt like I wasn’t making much impact with my individual attacks, except when I’m doing something like PvPing in all tank gear.

* The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

Oh good, a use for haste besides speeding up white swings. This seems usable, at least. Off the top of my head this seems like it will slow down most rotations, especially on the second pass. Initial rotations will probably be unchanged but once our diseases are up and ticking, and we dump some RP, it looks like we’re going to be waiting a bit longer between each strike, which is probably where new free abilities like Outbreak will come in. I’m very wary about this – yes, our current DPS rotations are so tight that if we needed to add something new we’d have to use Unholy Presence, but fundamentally changing the way the system works?

* As this is a major change to the death knight’s mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class’s current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Meaningful is probably just developer slang for "hits a little harder." Try and make a Blood Strike meaningful for anyone but deep Unholy.

Going to divert from the notes here to insert Ghostcrawler’s answer to rune system questions. I feel it clears up a few things.

I’ll take a stab at explaining the rune mechanic. Once you see it in action, it’s pretty easy to understand.

Just focus on Blood Runes for the moment. The big change is that rune #2 will never start filling up until rune #1 is full. They always fill 1 then 2. Today 1 and 2 can both fill at the same time.

In Cataclysm, when you’re killing things, you use rune 1. Then any extra "red" in rune 2 will fill rune 1 back up again. If both of them are full, you can use 2 Blood Runes immediately. But after that, rune 1 will fill up first and then rune 2. If it helps, imagine rune 2 is the extra tank.

I’m still not sure he’s phrasing this right – I suspect it’s a flawed analogy – and if he is, then what the hell? This sounds like if I use one rune, the second rune will start "draining" into the first one. That can’t be right, because then rune 2 has to fill up, and I’ve essentially blown two runes by using one.

This sounds like it will slow down DK attacks, and it will to a point. That’s part of what we’re trying to accomplish. We can then fill those extra GCDs with things like free abilities or runic power abilities or we have room to add talents that make runes fill faster. Remember, slow attacks can hit harder though. Instead of DKs hitting fast like a rogue, they’ll hit slower and harder, like a warrior, which fits a lot of player’s image of a DK anyway. Dual wield will hit faster of course.

However, I’d rather not be standing around doing fuck-all while auto-attacking. Frankly, there’d better be a lot of these free or runic power abilities that are interesting enough to punch in combat, because this sounds like an enormous slowdown.

I’ll try another comparison. Imagine that all rogue abilities cost 100 energy. They have to wait until they get 100 energy, and then immediately use an attack so that they aren’t wasting future energy. That’s how DKs play now, except they have 6 runes to watch. Now imagine the same rogue except all his abilities cost 50 energy. If he hits an attack when he has 60 energy, then 50 is consumed but he has 10 energy still left and a head start on the next attack. That’s the way we want DKs to play.

If that still doesn’t make sense, then focus on what the experience will be, which is that you’ll have more breathing room in your rotation and won’t have to hit a button every single GCD. If you don’t use a strike the second it’s available, that’s more okay because the extra tank will store extra rune resources rather than just wasting it. You’ll still be hitting a lot of buttons though. We’re keeping double rune strikes and Death Runes and disease multipliers and all of that. We’ll have to make some changes in some abilities to accommodate the resource change, but it won’t be unrecognizable to you.

This is the part that actually makes sense, because his analogy of an "extra tank" is kind of flawed. Let me try another one: we’re like rogues, except with three energy bars instead of one, and each one’s broken in two halves. If I use a Blood Strike, I now have tank 1 at 0% and tank 2 at 100%. Now tank 1 starts filling up: 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%… but if I hit Blood Strike again, tank 1 is still filling up 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, but tank 2 is now empty, and tank 2 just sits there until tank 1 hits 100%. Then tank 2 fills up. Like I said: for initial rotations, this isn’t going to matter, but we’re going to find ourselves with breathing room in the second half of our rotation.

If there’s enough Fun New Buttons™ to punch, Frost may actually have to start running in Unholy Presence again – as you’ll see below, being primarily in Frost gives you melee haste, and assuming there’s no difference between haste and melee haste, their runes are going to fill up faster than everyone else’s and they’ll probably want to look into UP if they need to punch more keys. That reminds me of the old glory days of Frost, when it just had so many buttons to push that the GCD was an enormous constraint.

We’re not sure DKs even need Rune Strike any longer. If it survives, we’ll turn it into an instant swing. But if we turn it into an instant swing, then it really isn’t that different from existing strikes so it’s possible we can just make a tanking rotation without it.

Then just make it work like Revenge, or get rid of it. /shrug.  It’ll make all my macros shorter, at least. And frankly with Vengeance (see below) making everything hit harder basically all the time, I don’t think Rune Strike – primarily a single target threat buff – is necessary anymore for us.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled preview notes, already in progress.

Talent Changes
Next we’ll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we’re planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we’re intending each death knight spec to perform.

One of the biggest changes we’re making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it’s less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn’t as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We’d rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood’s niche was self-healing — fitting for a tank — as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

Well, thanks for not telling us a damned new thing. This is the content of the "Blood bomb" a few days ago, only summarized. The only solid change mentioned was that Bone Shield will jump over from Unholy. I’m okay with that. I still have a huge concern, though, and that is Blood’s AOE threat. Blood AOE threat, unless you talent specifically for it and thus gimp yourself somewhere else like single-target threat or survivability or utility, is in the shitter. There’s only so many Icy Dickpunches I can throw around.

Additionally, I’m not sure how dual-specialization makes having a single tanking tree necessary. In fact, if anything, I’d say it was the only thing that made multiple tank setups worked – back when I was still actively tanking 5-mans, I had to carry two tank specs – one to throw around massive AOE for you half-retarded douchebags in random heroics who attach your AOE attack of choice to every key on the keyboard and slam your face into it, and the other for when I’m tanking raids with actual skilled WoW players. The anti-douchebag spec did, at least, have the wiggle room to let me take Anti-Magic Zone. I love that big pink fucking bubble.

Whoops, off-topic. Moving on.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Nothing too surprising, really.

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you’ll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

I haz a bubble! Seriously, though, that’s kind of cool, and moves Death Strikes up in our priority, unless they’re planning to make more than one move self-heal in Blood. Well, and Rune Tap. They could change it, but right now, Bloodworm and Mark of Blood heals aren’t considered self-heals (Bloodworm heals come from the worms themselves, while Mark of Blood heals – according to my combat logs, anyway – come from whoever you put the Mark on.)

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Another statement they keep throwing around without justifying it. Does this mean Frost is going to get something to do with all that RP besides spam Frost Strike?

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree’s play style.

Unholy DKs: now even more like warlocks in plate.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won’t see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

Vengeance is probably the one change I actually got excited about, but I read it in the warrior changes, so it really kind of wore off by the time I got to the DK changes. I did some napkin math on this, and assuming "unbuffed health" means "unbuffed health with all our armor on," let’s take Icecrown as an example – most bosses hit for somewhere in the 16k range, so I’d be gaining 800 AP (roughly) per hit, up to a max of around 3100. That’s pretty impressive. Shouldn’t have a problem holding onto a single target pretty much ever, and this will make doing dailies or questing in tank spec a lot more fun.

Again, though, the majority of what this amps up is single target threat. Still no answers as to how we’re going to handle AOE threat. Maybe we’ll finally get a damage shield, since we’re the only tanks without one unless some druid is kind enough to give us thorns.

Bonus round! DJ Zarhym on the ones and twos:

Here are a few points of clarification:

We want to provide a 2-handed style for Frost since we recognize that pets are an acquired taste. We think we have the design space to do that now that we don’t need to support Frost tanking. We’re definitely committed to making Frost work as a dual-wield tree though — that isn’t going away.

Welcome back, 2H Frost, my old friend. We missed you. Also, it’s not in our Q&A, but it was confirmed somewhere else that there will be Strength-based one-handed DPS weapons available again, for dual-wielding Frost death knights and Fury warriors using the new Single-Minded Fury talent. Huzzah!

Outbreak is free with a 1-minute cooldown. It’s not supposed to completely replace Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

I mentioned this above.

We’re not sure how we’re going to handle presences yet. We recognize the oddness of Blood death knights playing in Frost Presence and Frost death knights not playing in Frost Presences. We might rename the presences or take some other action.

Cosmetic, but it does seem backasswards that Frost DPS uses Blood Presence and Blood tanking uses Frost Presence. I worry about what "take some other action" might mean.

And now back to Mr. Greg "TO THE GROUND" "Ghostcrawler" Street.

Quote:
GC, does this mean that important cooldowns won’t require runes? Instead we’ll see things like Strangulate, Bone Shield, Ghoul Frenzy, UA and stuff cost runic power or just be free? They would be incredibly frustrating to use with such long rune cooldowns.

I don’t think we can make them all cost runes. That would be too hard to manage. If I had to guess, some will be runic power and some will just be free. If we did move Bone Shield to Blood, then that one might be okay as a rune since it’s something you do pre-emptively, but we have some more talent tree work to do first before we can really answer that.

This is the one scenario where I’d fully support the removal of Rune Strike – moving survival tools onto RP.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Death Knight Cataclysm preview, much like everyone else

I was up way too late last night chatting with our heal lead while knocking out explorer achievements and turning in Darkmoon Decks and he mentioned it as being "growing pains." And I suppose, in a way, he’s right. We’ve gone from overpowered to horribly broken to doing okay to where we are now. It was a neat idea – having a class that can do either of its roles in any of its trees – but in the end, every tree ended up being best at something anyway, and now that I’ve been in all 3 for an extended period of time (even rocking two tank specs at once for a while), I have to finally ‘fess up that I agree with the decision because blood has been the most capable tree for quite some time now. And yes, I really did respec to blood.

However, I still have a wishlist of new toys. Game balance be damned, likeliness be damned, these are the things I would just like to see.

• Equivalents of Demoralizing Shout and HAMMERRRRR OF THE RIGHTEOUS. We already know the Demo Shout equivalent is on its way – that was part of the initial post – but as a tanking talent, Dancing Rune Weapon is really only good if you need a threat boost, which no one does anymore thanks to Icy Dickpunch. On the other hand, Blood’s AOE threat generation – at least for now – absolutely blows, unless you’re willing to sacrifice talent points and a glyph slot to increase damage and reduce cooldown on Death and Decay and/or talent into glyphed Corpse Explosion (which I will freely admit is fun, there’s just a lot of sacrifices I don’t like making in order to get it in blood). Suggestion for Blizzard: Bloodbolt Whirl. (Only, you know, not doing tens of thousands of damage.)
• I assume Rune Strike is going away thanks to the recent move away from on-next-swing abilities, but I could be wrong. I wouldn’t mind seeing it stay; one of the things I liked most about my warrior was punching that Revenge button when it lit up (and I hear you guys got a buff to it or something). Plus, well, Rune Strike is the one chance I have as a tank to see big ol’ crits. (You can take the DK out of the DPS, but you can’t take the DPS out of the DK.) Alternately, some kind of reflective damage on parry or dodge would be handy.
• While it’s great as an oh-shit button or on fights where you need a lot of healing pronto, Vampiric Blood is not the kind of thing you would blow on trash. In Frost, I gleefully use Unbreakable Armor on trash and everything else. Some kind of equivalent like that for tanking would be fun, whether for survivability or threat. I have absolutely no idea what it would be. Heck, maybe it’s just Unbreakable Armor.
• Some kind of party utility. I think we can assume that Abomination’s Might and Hysteria have about an equal chance at this point of staying in blood or going to unholy. I for one wouldn’t mind some kind of unique buff, just deep enough in the Blood tree that DPSers won’t regularly take it, that provides some kind of survival or threat benefit to our fellow raid members or to us. Think Blessing of Sanctuary or Vigilance, though obviously not those same effects. Maybe a blood link – Blood already does a lot of self-healing, so maybe the ability to pop a buff on the highest DPS in our raid and let their damage heal us, too. Nothing more than what Blood Presence provides naturally, but just enough to be something cool we can do.
• An actual, real, true, honest-to-God stun. I mean, we’re the only tanks without any stuns whatsoever at this point, assuming I’m counting my tank stuns correctly (Concussion Blow, Shockwave, Bash, Hammer of Justice, probably a few more – you get the idea). This doesn’t even have to be something new – I’d be perfectly happy making Mind Freeze a baseline or talented stun.

I guess we’ll have to see what they have in mind for us, but the more I think about the possibilities that a dedicated tanking tree offers, the happier I am. In the meantime, there’s some discussion taking place in the Pwnwear forums on the upcoming changes, and Blizzard will be offering a more fleshed-out preview soon, so it’s pretty much a "wait and see" (or "wait and gleefully anticipate") situation.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Witty blood pun here

Patch 3.3.3 for DK tanks

And yes, no matter what Gravity tries to tell you, it’s 3.3.3, not 3.33.

Blood tanks: our plan B is now plan-B-ier. It’s also even easier to understand: Damage that would take you below 34-35% health or taken while you are at 34-35% health is reduced by (4-5/9-10/14-15)%. Voila. Will of the Necropolis is now better, but still sort of a worst-case scenario. Frankly, I just want to know when it kicks in – does WotN put something in the combat logs? Does anyone know?

Frost tanks: If you’re specced into Improved Icy Talons, it (1) now double-dips to give you more melee haste and (2) should now be taken whether you have an enhancement shaman along or not for basically that reason… if you’re dual-wielding. DW got more boosts, in the form of more off-hand damage. (That also kind of makes me want to look into frost DPS again, but I’ve not been keeping up with the latest math wankery on whether frost DPS is competitive again. Plus I need new weapons.) Two-handed frost tanks… please stand by.

Unholy tanks: … sorry, I got nothin’.

Shamananananing

My shaman has been receiving a bulk of my attention lately. I like shamans! It took a while for the totem mechanic to grow on me, and I can still see a number of fights that my DK is doing now where totems would be more or less very awkward to use, but it doesn’t make me like it any less. I’ve been leveling elemental, and doing a few Outland dungeons as elemental so I can get used to it in groups. It’s a real culture shock, after being a death knight solely for so long – what do you mean, I have to not use up all my mana? Bloody hell, I’m an aggro machine! And so on.

I also got unexpectedly pressed into resto’ing (as elemental) in Underbog when our healer decided to plop his fat dwarven butt on the ground prior to the naga section and, y’know, not tell anyone, nearly causing a wipe. Once he got punted, I was asked to heal until we could find a healer, and so I swapped over to Earthliving, put my 3 heals on my bars, and along I went. I … liked that too! I sense 1000g is coming up in Kallech’s future to make him dual-spec ele/resto. Y’know, right after the combined 6000g for epic and cold-weather flying.

Money

Finally makin’ it. Thanks Jewelcrafting! And thanks primarily to Hydra and Rip for the advice.   I won’t be hitting the gold cap anytime soon, but my total grows little by little and I’m no longer scraping the bottom of my empty change purse to try and pay for repairs or raid consumables, and that’s an improvement in my book.

WoW is like Pokemon

No, seriously. At a very high level, there’s a lot of unusual similarities, especially in playstyles.

First, you’ve got the people who play for the leveling, or for the story, or both. These people might do things that seem strange to some of us, but they like what they’re doing, and sometimes they’re 9 years old, and who can fault them for that?

Then you’ve got the people who get really, really srs bzns about it. These people crunch math, look at stats, find advantages, and in the end they boil the ‘acceptable’ standards down to certain combinations of stats and maneuvers in tiers. For WoW, these might be hardcore raiders or arena folks; in the world of Pokemon, these are competitive battlers. Hell, both games even have simulators that allow you to engage in full-on math wankery in an idealized version of the game environment.

Oh, and altoholics? Come on, that one’s easy: gotta catch level ‘em all.

Pokemon even has its own version of Elitist Jerks: it’s called Smogon.

No wonder I’m such a fan of both games.

Caffeine is still recruiting

Especially healers. Seriously. Join us. Joinnnnnn ussssss. Now 7/12 in ICC-10, after a decisive Orb-Whisperer-included victory over Team Edward The Blood Princes.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

Bits and pieces

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?

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

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.

Thanks for reading this post from: The Stoppable Force.

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