25 Man Woe's, UFC talk

What is so difficult about 25 mans?

This is not a rhetorical question. What REALLY is harder about 25 mans?

Personal responsibility is less. That should make it easier though, Right? I mean 1 person dieing is proportionally less dps or healing than losing someone in a 10 man instance. If a tank goes down you are more likely to have a back up tank available to pick the boss up in a 25 man.

I guess the gear requirement or dps threshold is a bit higher, But I have found that most of the increased dps needed on the 25 man raids comes from having so many more buffs(not to mention access to 25 man gear if you are running 25 man raids). Its not as if the dps gap needed for a 10 man and a 25 man is so great that you need to have a whole new rotation or be ultra precise with your current one. You just have a few more buffs, possibly a bit better gear, and pound out your rotation as usual.

Is it the strategies? Doubtful. With a few minor differences that all come down to gimmick, the fights are the same in 25 man.
Is it the caliber of player we take? In the 10 mans, everyone seems motivated on their own. They rebuff, they run back, they don't afk.
It really comes down to the fact that it is much harder to get 25 qualified people online and ready to go than it is to get 10.


Guild Woe's

As you may have gathered from my rant, our guild has been very FAIL with the 25 man raids these days. It honestly saps my desire to play. As officers collectivity we are tired of having to pug people into our runs. Its a burden and ALWAYS leads to the raid starting late. It prevents us from getting loot into the hands of those that need it. Pugs are also not welcome in progression raiding. They either won't know the fight/Can't preform said fight, OR they will leave early and frustrated that we couldn't down it. We have come to the conclusion that if there is not 25 guildies on to run the raid, we will break down into two 10 man groups.

Holy S%#7

I have been working on my priest a bit lately. You really start to notice the lack of re-playability on the quests. I am not one for leveling in the first place, but when you have to do the exact same quests it makes it even worse. Once again, I don't think I could have done it(can do it?) without Jame.

As the header sort of implys, I plan on taking my priest down the healer path(although I will likely go the disc route). I did a lot of arenas as disc at level 70 so I am familar with the bag of tricks I will have. At this point I can't wait to get rid of my shadow spec and start healing peoples faces off (or back on I guess).

UFC Undisputed 2009

This game is the mad notes. I was a bit skeptical at first considering how bad the old ufc games were, but this game hit it right on. I am not going to say the game is perfect. There are some minor things that could be done here and there to tighten up the single player. The AI is ridiculously hard to submit. I was really upset that submissions were not an realistic way to win. Turns out though, in multiplayer they seem pretty balanced. As a ufc fan I give this game a 9.5. As a general video game fan I would give it a solid 8 or 8.5. The controlls are pretty much spot on and it really captures the feel of the ufc.

...Speaking of UFC. UFC 98 tommarow night. Evans v. Machida! Battle of the unbeatens. THE GREATEST FIGHT IN UFC HISTORY! (arn't they all? I'm pretty sure that claim is made before every single ppv.)

My breakdown goes like this. Machida will win if the fight goes to decision. He will also win if Evans falls into the trap of chasing him around the ring. He could also finish the fight via submission or ground and pound. I see Evans winning the fight if he sucssesfully imposes his will against Machida. If Evans is able to utilize his explosiveness and power, he could get the KO. I don't really see evans winning the fight via GnP, but I guess its possible.

All in all I'm giving the fight to Machida. His elusiveness will be to much for Evans. Unless Evans manages the KO shot I don't see him winning the fight in any other way.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Blood Break Up, Progression

Dear Blood,
I hate to see our days together come to an end. To repeat an over used cliche "It's not you, It's me." I will miss that thing you did with my stamina (6%). Your ability to take the big hits and keep on ticking still brings back fond memories. I still think of the times we went into Ulduar and took our shots from Razorscale and Ignis. You are, and probably will be forever the best at taking on two at a time. You haven't changed. I just want different things from a spec these days. Things are not hitting as hard as they used to.

Sometimes I enjoy tanking a big pack of adds. Sometimes I want an easy rotation that doesn't take so much maintenance to get the threat I so desperately need. You (well, your rotation) don't leave much room for anything else. I crave the freedom that only a spare global cooldown can provide. I may be rambling on here, but extra healing doesn't always make up for the fact that you take more damage. I don't want you to change a bit. Maybe one day things will change and my needs and your abilities will once again mesh in a beautiful chorus of the angels of tanking.
Stay Classy,
MannyFresh

Progression
I am in an interesting situation with raiding ulduar in that all I do is progression. I have been on our guilds first kill on 7 of the 9 bosses we have killed. I have been on 0 second kills.
my raid days consist of learning new bosses. I have been spending upwards of 300g on raid days. You don't realize how much you miss the gold from the farm content! (to say nothing of the purple shinnies) I would be lying if said it didn't bother me a bit. I am putting in the hard hours with out getting to go through the easy ones.
I have been going into the raids every week getting one or 2 badges for 4 hours of work and crazy high repair bills.

I try to not let it affect me but the other day tier legs dropped and I got them without even checking if they were an upgrade (of course they were not) Luckily a gm was able to later transfer the tier token to a mage who could make far more use of it than myself. I think the weeks of wipes, consumables and repair bills made me want to get at least something for my effort and I jumped at the first thing that dropped.

I feel shame.

Death Knight Spec Reviews

3.1 Death Knight Spec Reviews
Now that I have gotten a bit of raid time in with the new content I am here to share with you my impressions of the specs I have tried.

Unholy dps

I have been enjoying this spec! At first I was not at all interested in having a permanent ghoul to rely on for dps, However with all the unholy talents buffing him, he stays up rather well. The short cooldown on army of the dead also really helps use it for multiple boss attempts. I think this spec is working well for my ilevel 200 gear and should only get better as I get more dps gear. I have not really been having any aggro issues (which is the reason some people prefer 12/0/59).

Tanking Specs & Ulduar

I must say I had high hopes for Frost tanking in 3.1. I knew it was getting a nerf but I thought it still looked strong. Well turns out the nerf really killed the playability of frost for me. This is the spec I took into Ulduar for our first attempts. We downed FL no problem and moved on to Ignis. If you haven't yet been, the trash before Ignis is harder than any boss in Naxx (imho). The bosses trashmobs were hitting me for 12k+ (in a 10 man!) All the extra avoidance and mitigation of frost didn't help me at all. When I had a bad string of avoidance I WOULD go down. In addition to this, my threat was not where it used to be. Maybe its the new rotation. I will admit I don't have the new frost rotation down nearly as well as I had the old one. Still, the whole time I felt fragile AND had aggro problems for the first time this expansion. On a positive note, Acclimation did stay stacked pretty much any time I needed it. The extra resists cause you to basically have 250+ resist in standard tank gear. I was resisting nearly 30% of all magic attacks. That's a big chunk of damage! We never did get any quality attempts at Ignis as things kept falling apart quickly. After probably 7 wipes we decide to move on. The real nail in this specs coffin for me came at Razorscale.

Razorscale as a fight is pretty much all about controlling the adds and avoiding raid damage. During the air phase adds continuously spawn from 3 locations (on the 10 man). So I have 2 spawn points to cover. Frost failed me here with the long cooldown on HB and the longer cooldown on DnD. It really made it hard to hold all the mobs I needed to while still picking up the new ones that spawned. We wiped quite a few times without ever getting Razorscale to the permanently grounded phase. When we finally get him grounded for good. I took a massive breath (and maybe stood in some fire...) and died.

We called the raid here and made another trip later in the week.

For our second trip into Ulduar I went with the blood tanking spec I had talked about. This seemed to work out much better. While I did seem to be taking more overall damage, It was all pretty steady and I did not seem to have as many OH S#%* moments as I did with frost. Blood also impressed me with the ability it has to aoe. It is no Unholy but I felt like a stronger aoe tank as blood than I did as Frost. Heart strike makes tanking two mobs just as easy as tanking one. Don't even have to change your rotation!. Also the blood spec isn't as talent bloated as frost and that allowed me to have the lowest cooldown possible on DnD. I don't know if it was the spec or what. but it only took 1 wipe to down him this time.

(on a somewhat related note: 47khp, thanks cooldowns!)


We moved on to the XT-002 Deconstructor. This so far has been my favorite fight in Ulduar. It really felt finely tuned. we had a few attempts wipe at very low percentage. When we finally killed him it felt like everyone really had to be on their game and work together perfectly.

Podcast!?!?

I have recently gotten into listining to WoW Podcasts (and podcasts in general). There are a few quality wow podcasts (Rawrcast, Warcraft Outsiders), But I really felt with the amount of poeple who play wow there is room for more. TheDoctor and I have been tossing around the idea of making a wtfspaghetti podcast! Is this something that would interest our readers? What type of topics would you most be interested in hearing about? Let us know in the comments section If you have any suggestions on topics or even if you think think its the worst idea you have ever heard of. Let us know!

3.1 Death Knight Tank Spec

With the weekend quickly approaching I can only hope that blizzard fixes the instances servers to give me a chance to check out my tank specs prior to the big show. While it has been fun blowing things up it looks like I will still be needed to tank things.

Last time I gave you my version of a 3.1 Death Knight Dps spec and now I deliver the goods on tanking specs. When designing these specs I really tried to keep in mind what I have read about Ulduar boss fights. So far the consensus seems to be hard hitting bosses with lots of aoe. Magic damage seems to be pretty constant as well. With that in mind I give you 3.1 Tanking specs.

The first spec I give you is frost. I was a frost tank pre-patch and I really liked it. Frost is a bit more of a talent point sink than it used to be and it feels like I don't get points in everything I want. However frost as a spec does offer the most mitigation and avoidance with an extra 2% damage reduction (from all sources) 3% avoidance, and Acclamation for magic resist. A lot of the fights I have read about have periodic sources of magic damage or magic attacks from bosses that should keep this stacked pretty well at all times. If Acclimation doesnt turn out to be very usefull it will be dropped for points in bladed armor or to fill out morbidity. This is my first choice of spec and I think I will only be using blood of the bosses hit so hard in Ulduar that I absolutely need the 6% stam.

The blood spec I have here basically trades the goodies I listed above for 6% str and stam, the ability to parry direct damage spell attacks, and a 15% damage reduction to hits that take you below 35% once every 2 minutes. I have one floating point in the blood spec that could be used in a few different spots depending on the utility you want. Could take Hysteria for some increased dps (or tps if you use it on yourself). Rune Tap works for another healing pot every minute. My personal choice would probably be Mark of blood as it has a variety of cool uses and can heal the entire raid. (at least it used to heal my entire 5 man groups when I used it as leveling.)

Hopefully I get a chance to run Ulduar this weekend so I can give a description of these specs in action!

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - 3.1 DK Spec, Glyphs, Rotation

3.1 is upon us!

I'm having an identity crisis! I am feeling the need to put up big numbers and try and top damage meters. Maybe I am growing gun shy from to many hits to the face while tanking. (You try it without a shield!) Whatever the reason is I have been dieing to try out dps.

Unholy Dps Spec

With dual spec and a new raid instance on the way, I figure maybe some of you aspiring death knights would like to know a decent talent specialization for PvE Dps. Well look no further, after much research and a bit of personal insight I give you my dps spec of choice. Pretty standard really. I do forgo improved unholy presence in favor of filling out necrosis.

Rotation

Rotation for this spec is pretty simple really. You apply your diseases and use Blood Strike x2 and Scourge Strike.
Your next rotation you can fire off Scourge Strike x3. Then you hope that your glyph of Scourge strike procs your diseases. Ideally you end up coming up with a rotation that looks a lot like Scourge Strike, Blood Strike x2, Scourge Strike. The next time your runes come off cooldown we are back to Scourge Strike x3. Whenever your scourge strike glyph does not keep diseases refreshed you have to reapply your diseases. This whole time you are dumping runic power so that it does not cap.

A priority list for the rotation would look something like this:

1. Keep Diseases up.
2. Do Not cap runic power. (If unholy blight is up, deathcoil)
3. Scourge Strike
4. Bloodstrike

Another important bit of knowledge to have is that you will want to use your gargoyle cooldown as often as possible for max dps. At the same time, It is best to pop Gargoyle when you have as many buffs as possible. (pro tip: Use it AFTER bloodlust, while you still have the actuall buff)

Glyphs

As you can see I went with Glyph of the Ghoul, Dark Death, and Scourge Strike.
If you do not have 4 piece t7 then you may want to use the Unholy Blight glyph instead of Dark Death.


Well, Blizzard said they would provide an update 15 minutes ago. Time to check that out!

Friday's Food for Thought - Naxx Haikus , Ideal Raider

to update the blog
random thoughts exist, friday
abe freed the slaves

This may seem a little stream-of-thought. No prose written out and meticulosly edited. (only half -assed editing goes on here at wtf!) I want to discuss a lot of different subjects today. I'll start with WoW as that is why most everyone who comes here, comes here. (you like that??!?!)

Naxx Fights in Haiku form:

Anub' Rekhan: Kill the adds quickly
Tank kite, Heals avoid silence
kill more adds, loot boss

Grand Widow: Stop enrage,kill adds
What makes this Widow so grand?
take pity on her spouse

Maexxna: Big spider scares me
kill spiders, web wrap, web spray
I always die here


Noth: Tank adds, D P S
decurse, decurse, decurse, NOW!
why have we wiped here?

Heigan: Dance if we want to
You died? Feel shame. We finish
Leave your friends behind

Loatheb: Timing your heals here
wait for it! wait for it! NOW!
get spore, d p s


I will try to do the rest of them some time next week. That is assuming that 3.1 is not out, because we all know that our blogging is often related inversely to the amount we play. If 3.1 comes out I expect to be off dpsing somewhere or trying out new tanking specs. But hey, maybe then you will get actual information out of my ramblings (wishful thinking).

On the Raiding/Guild front: I finally got a chance to try Maly! It was a fun fight. We spent a few hours in there wiping and never actually cleared him, But it was good to experience a new fight (Naxx is getting WAY boring). Our troubles, as with most groups, came about in phase 3. We got pretty close one time but people started dieing and letting stacks drop. I am confident that I will be able to kill him within the next week. I sure hope we do because I would really like to get Champion of the Frozen wastes before 3.1.

I am very happy with the progress of our guild. It seems to me that 80% (number pulled directly from my ass) of running a raiding guild is in finding the right people. When you get a solid core of people everything seems to go smooth. The most important thing you can do is have a vision for what you want the guild to become, and recruit those who fit the mold.

Fish over at Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron had a post that says there are two types of raiders, that while flawed did hold a lot of truth. He basically said that one type of player is constantly looking to improve there toon through any means possible and the second type of player is basically a social player who goes to raids because they enjoy the people they raid with. He calls the first type of player a gear whore and claims he wouldn't want to be in a guild with them.

The main issue I take here is the connection he draws between improvement and gear. While obviously an important factor when talking about character progression or improvement, gear is not the end all be all of improvement. Take for example a hunter in our guild. Over the course of a month, with minimal gear upgrades, went from doing sub-par dps to topping the charts. Huge improvement. very little of it gear related.

I think the issue I take with people not in his group is that if their performance is bad or even average, they will often blame it on gear.
"If only I had more epics I would do more dps" Instead of trying to improve their rotation, cooldown usage, or even spec.


Fish has since updated his thoughts to a two variables of raiders (which I like much more)
The ideal raider has high motivation to improve, AND enjoys the company of their fellow raiders.

Real Life

With the economy in the toilet, I have been of the mind that it is a great time to be broke. If you do not own any stocks, or have a 401k. Then a lot of this mess doesn't directly affect you (me). Now though I am feeling a bit of the heat. My job is cutting hours. Voluntarily at first, and then possibly involuntarily. While this might give me more time for WoW, This is NOT a good thing. The writing is on the wall and I really don't want to have to find a new job during this economic downturn.

It is OK though. For I have the answer! Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
Would give a whole new meaning to the term "green jobs"

Well at least the economy isn't as messed up as our judicial system! Sexting
teenagers with naked pictures of classmates possibly charged with child porn. The girls who took the pictures of themselves getting charged with distributing child porn.

My only question, Where were these girls when I was a teen?

DK Tanking Nerfs, 3.1 Spec

QQ Time.

I try to make sure my posts are constructive. I try to keep an objective eye towards balance when considering my class and WoW at large. BUT sometimes you see those patch notes and the sheer volume of the nerfs overwhelms. The DK class is getting a major design overhaul. Not a single one of the changes is a buff. Tanking is getting hit especially hard. Getting hit even harder is Frost tanking...

I'll give you one guess as to what my role and spec are on my DK.

So i have spent the last week and a half or so going through the 5 Stages of Nerfs (based on the Kübler-Ross model for 5 Stages of Grief)

1. Denial: "They aren't going to nerf tanks. Everyone likes tanks! Its those DPS DK's that are the problem, no wait its those darn PvPer's"

2. Anger: " Why me?!?! Were the warlock nerfs of Vanilla and TBC not enough?!?! First my warlock, then my priest, now my DK?!?! Blizzard is out to get me. Those damn warrior tanks at tankspot are responsible!"

3. Bargaining: "Just let me keep my cooldowns! No? Ok, how bout my avoidance? No again? Ok, how bout my threat? that too? Bloodsuckers..."

4. Depression: "I'm going to quit. I am going to re-roll. ok maybe just respec..."

5. Acceptance: "Ok so maybe tanking KT and the adds at the same time is a bit OP. Maybe I shouldn't be able to hold aggro over an OT on a secondary target"

But by god it was fun while it lasted.

Really though I do believe the nerfs are going to have to be tuned down or DK's will be quite underpowered compared to the other tanks.

As it stands in live we take more damage than other tanks when our cooldowns are not up, and much less when they are active. So they are removing one of the cooldowns, nerfing the effect of one and doubling the cooldown on the remaining abilities. They are giving us nothing to make this up. Net result= we take more damage than other tanks.

In live our avoidance from talents is 15% percent 18% if frost. thats 8% above what other classes get (except druids who we are 5% above) On test they have removed 10% parry from talents. If the idea was to balance the avoidance all tanks get from talents, how come DK's are now behind the curve?

I'm rambling a bit here but what is the deal with howling blast? Blizzard obviously has no clue what they want to do with this spell. 10 second cooldown? No cooldown. 5 second cooldown. Back to 10 second cooldown. Double damage to diseased targets? 50% damage to diseased enemy's? no extra damage to diseased targets? Causes disease on targets?

I logged on to the PTR yesterday and Howling blast was on a 10 second cooldown and according to the tool tip it did full damage to targets regardless of diseases. In practice the ability still did more damage when the targets were diseased but it wasn't the huge disparity that we have on live. It also crits for far less than in live. Not to mention the cooldown was doubled.
Frost isn't looking very strong...



Unholy the way to go?

With the nerf to Frost's primary AOE and tanking cooldowns coming in 3.1 it looks like I will be changing over to a different tanking spec. While blood has gotten many improvements I still feel it lacks in aoe and damage mitigation/avoidance. Unholy was always a solid tanking spec that was only short in the single target threat department.

I had gotten the impression that blizzard wanted less unholy DK's, but with the frost nerfs I feel I am being pigeonholed into Unholy as an all around tanking spec. This may turn out to be a good thing! I have had the feeling that my avoidance is reaching levels where Boneshield will start to have some nice up time. On top of that i hardly use Unbreakable Armor as it is and I see the new version as a sheild block that doesn't block as much damage and is only up for 15 seconds every two minutes. I'll Pass.

As I said before Unholy's single target threat was the only shortcoming of the unholy tanking spec. As of now on the PTR scourge strike is hitting quite a bit harder than it is on live. Buffing the unholy tree's main single target attack should help with single target threat right?

Blood does still hold some attraction for tanking. If blizzard buffs death strike to be comparative with obliterate damage, then I could see giving it a shot. The self healing portion of death strike can really add to aoe aggro (the spec's main weakness) as long as the healing isn't being wasted. I really liked the play style of blood, to me it flowed so much better than unholy. The lack of aoe threat is a big turn off for me though. I enjoy having everything beating on me during aoe pulls!

I am sure there are a lot more changes to come on the PTR and we won't really know more until closer to patch day. I for one am hoping that they re-think some of these changes.

Screenshot, New Guild, Pandora

After reading about these challenges and seeing everyone's nice screen shots, I decided I would go ahead and see what my 6th screen shot is.

There you have it! I couldn't for the life of me remember why I took this screen shot. In fact most of the stuff in my screen shots folder is pure junk. I have a lot of old BG scoreboards (what can I say I like to stroke the e-peen once and a while). I can only assume I took this screen shot to blackmail Priestkush. Whatever the reason, I got a good chuckle out of it.

And, Yes. That is a Troll Priest. ( I miss good ole Hydropawnics sometimes)


New Guild

As I am sure you read, The good doctor and I have started a "casual raiding guild". This is a new experience for us and let me tell you. It is a lot of work. If we didn't already know that, we would have been in for a rude awakening. So far things are going well. Explicit's first guild raid is this weekend. I am cautiously optimistic that we will not have to pug anyone. I am also aiming for a first raid clear of the first four wings of naxx 10. Am I setting my sights to high? The Elitist in me says "no way, if I can join a random pug and clear to KT then we should be roflstomping this place." We seem to be getting a good core of people, Our unique raid times (8am server time, on the weekends no less!) have allowed us to gather a group of people that seem to all be seeking the same thing, progression in a relaxed atmosphere of players that strive to improve. I want our raids to start on time and our raid group to be a smooth, well oiled machine. It can only come from organization, and that starts at the top. This first raid will give us the opportunity to set the tone for all the guild raids to come.

Its interesting to see how the officers do things differently. Some times I think I am a bit to on the elitist side but the doctor balances that out pretty well with his personality. Other times though, Its the exact opposite. I am really looking forward to how the raids come together. I am sure you will get an update from the doctor on how things went.

Pandora

In parting I leave you with Pandora. Its internet radio that only plays songs you like! I have tried some of the other things out there that have a "if you like this, try this" function and was never very impressed. With this though, It was almost like listening to my music collection on my computer but with some new twists thrown in, definitely worth a look. Also has an app for Iphone and can be used with Windows mobile.

What Makes a Player Good? Most Fail Pug Ever.

Earlier this month a discussion raged across the blogosphere (who coined this term? is it patented?) about what makes a WoW player good. I enjoyed reading everyone's opinion on the matter and I thought I would chime in (better late than never!).

There are 2 "stats" that all wow players have to one degree or another. Lets call them Knowledge and Execution.

Knowledge: skills acquired by a person through experience or education.

Execution: the act of performing; of doing something successfully; using knowledge as distinguished from merely possessing it.

So we have Know How and Can Do. One of these "stats" alone does not a good player make. (help you, I will)

Player A and B both stood in the fire and died. Player A stood in the fire because he did not know standing in the fire was bad. Yikes! Player B died because although he knew standing in the fire was bad, somehow he just couldn't make it out of the fire. Player A failed due to a lack of knowledge, Player B failed due to lack of execution. Having the knowledge but no ability to perform get us no where and vice versa. So a good player is going to both know what they need to do, and be able to do it.

My idea extends to raids as well. Raids fail because people either didn't know what to do or, they knew but were not able to accomplish their goal. The hard part is figuring out which side of the equation is lacking. Repeated wipes on a boss need to be analyzed as to why it happened. Does the raid need to change its approach or strategy? Knowledge issue. No point in attempting the boss until you realize what needs to be done differently. Everyone know the fight and their responsibilities? Execution issue, Wipe away.


Most Fail Pug Ever.

Since our guild is to small for anything other than 10 mans I try to make sure I join Pug 25 man groups every week for my emblems of heroism and chance at better loot. Normally all goes well. This week however, I had the misfortune of joining The Most Fail Pug Ever (which will now be referred to as MFPE). So I join the MFPE for 25 man OS and right away I see signs of trouble. The raid leader can't seem to decide if I should tank or dps. I don't particularly care but after switching gear sets 3 or 4 times ( I do not have outfitter) I start to get a bit annoyed. I make my way to Wyrmcrest and as soon as I get there a raid warning pops up saying I am the offtank. This is all well and good except for the fact that last he told me I was going to be dpsing, So I had none of my gear with me. Once we finally get started it turns out that I probably could have stayed in as dps because every pull there are 4 tanks fighting over the mobs. /facepalm.

We stumble through the rest of the instance. People are dieing every pull but we managed without a wipe. Great! Sarth down, time for loots!

MFPE loot "rules": Main spec before offspec

* First item looted. Resto sham item. "accidentally" master looted to enhance sham.

* Second Item looted. T7 set piece. awarded to a guy who "won" the roll with a /roll 100-100

* Third item looted. T7 set piece. awarded to ^^That guy^^ who is not even the right class for it.

* Bag of spoils given to someone who didn't even roll.

My first thought of course was that these guys are all in the same guild. Nope, apparently total strangers and the master looter just made a mistake. several mistakes. IN A ROW. The sad part is I BELIEVE him. I think rather than being some part of a loot conspiracy, this guy was just a total dipshit (short on execution). At least I got my emblems. Lesson learned. I will be running my own pugs from now on and master looting them. Anyone know a good site to find established raid compositions?

Till next time

"pimpin ain't dead, ho's need bread"

Upgradeitis

Upgradeitis: The condition of a WoW player after a length of time with no upgrades to their gear set, Can Result in loss of desire to play WoW

I had been suffering a bit of this disease lately. My tanking gear had not improved in 3 weeks, I was being asked to DPS things instead of tanking them. I didn't feel like my normal sexy tank self. So I took a page out of my Fiance's book. SHOPPING SPREE!!!!!

I always try and save the different currencies in WoW until I start feeling the effects of a mild case of Upgradeitis, That way I have the cure ready and waiting for that rainy day. This week I have been pretty busy with RL stuff, so my WoW playtime naturally is suffering. When you only have an hour to play you really cannot get all that much done. No heroic daily, No heroics period. So I have been logging on to spend my various currencys.

Over the course of a day or two I bought:
an epic ring with honor
an epic trinket with Wintergrasp marks
an epic tanking ring with Emblams of Valor
and depending on how the bids go, a sweet epic tanking cloak at quite a discount below market price from the AH
I also got the tanking legs from 25 man vault.

Guess its time to grind some more gold for enchants and gems.

Another case of Upgradeitis averted. I should be so fresh and so clean for my boss crotch session in Naxx this weekend.

Achievements, Rotation, UFC 94

Shared Topic: Your Thoughts on Achievements
courtsey of Blog Azeroth
When achievements were first announced, My first thought was "What a waste of time".

I put this out there not because I still feel that way, but because it helps to know where I am coming from. I am not one of the people going out and collecting 50 mounts (looking at you Orissa). I'm not going to complete all of the Holiday events ( or any of them, although "the Hallowed" is a pretty cool title)

I like the titles that show you have done something.

The Dungeon master achievements are a great example of this and are some of the only ones i have actively pursed. First came the regular edition, complete all instances on normal difficulty. Check. Next was Dungeon Hero. Check. Now pretty easily I can see that i have at least done all the 5 mans in this expansion. Working on the Naxx achievements as we speak.

I dislike the achievements that want you to go do something pointless.

Basiclly I use achievements as more of a measuring stick with how far i have gotten in the game rather then use them as a neat side game to complete.

Tanking and DPS Rotation

The other day I am invited into a heroic Azjol run. It started off on a bit of a bad foot due to the fact that his way of inviting me was to ask "hp/def?". I am back and forth on how annoying this is.
When I first hit 80 and was just at the def cap, sitting in LFG for 2 regular instances and a single heroic the question didnt bother me at all.
Now when I am sitting in LFG for 25 man naxx and 25 man OS with MT/OT in my comment, also qued for a single heroic, The question annoys the shit out of me. Would I really be looking to tank two 25 man raids If I didnt have acceptable HP and defense for a heroic? I digress...

I responded to his "Hp/def?" question with a "what is your AP and crit?" After a bit of back and forth I decide to join his group as it was the last Heroic I needed for Duengon Hero. As it turns out the group had an excellent healer and was looking to have a quick run. Hence the interogation as to my tanking ability. Since this group is so l33t I throw out a "If I out dps you as the tank you are getting the boot" (after they pass lead for marking purposes). What can I say, I can be an ass sometimes.

The run is going rather smoothly, and even though I am doing more dps than the other DK "DPS" I don't make an issue of it. I do point it out at the end of the run in a friendly manner. (we had bonded by the end of the quick wipeless pug).

We get into a friendly conversation where I lay out the three major problems DK's will face trying to dps (or generate threat in my case)

1. Rotation
2. Spec
3. Gear

This Deathtard had a cookie cutter DPS spec. Gear was alright, but it comes in time and can always improve. Niether of these things were what was holding his dps back.

When asked about his rotation; " I just kind of hit whatever is available or comes off cooldown"

Thats not good. (what a long segue into my personal rotation=)

The rotation I have come to know and love is the single disease frost rotation found somewhere in the bowels of EJ Forums
In order for this rotation to work you need to start with one of your blood runes already turned into a death rune, this is easily acomplished useing bloodtap and just to make sure to try and finish pulls with a death rune.
Icey Touch -> Obliterate -> Obliterate -> Bloodstrike
That is the basic rotation I try to use all the time. Of course rotations are bound to get messed up but this one is really easy to get back to and puts out great dps as frost spec. Howling blast and pestilence are substitued for aoe pulls.
I noticed a 200 dps increase when i stopped mashing buttons and started trying to stick to my rotation. Make sure your rotation is Tight, like a tiger.

UFC 94

I cannot wait for this Saturdays UFC. Two of my favorite fighters are squaring off, BJ Penn and GSP. These two guys are basiclly living legends in the sport. Last time they fought GSP edged out a split decision in a 3 round brawl. Looking at their faces after the fight though, you would never have guessed that GSP was the winner, his face was battered and BJ Penn didn't even appear to be breathing hard.

I gotta go with my gut here and pick Penn. For some reason I got a man crush on this guy and I think he is pretty pissed off he lost the decision last time. Penn by gogoplata in the 4th!

Real Life Ramblings

So I got engaged to my longtime girlfriend and turned 25 in the same week. Talk about making a guy feel old. Almost 30! HaHa. Feeling old Is interesting because it's really just a matter of perspective. I work with people who would laugh at me saying I feel old. I play wow with some people who probably think I am Ancient. I got a tell from a "wow friend" the other day saying he had just turned 17 and was excited. I had been raiding with this guy since MC days! Having a Fiance or paying bills I am sure are the furthest things from his mind.

Life's a garden, dig it?

3.0.8 Tanking Spec

3.0.8 Is finally here!

I can say with full confidence that this patch has been nothing but a buff to me. I have more defense, armor, and health than I did before. I am also putting out 1-200 more DPS (and correspondingly Threat) than I was pre-patch due to the changes in Killing Machines functionality. I know they were trying to nerf it for DW and buff it for tanking but they may have gone to far. It seems to proc once per rotation and cause a frost strike or icey touch crit. One crit every 5 attacks is a lot more than my 5 % to crit would indicate =) I had to give up a few things from my previous build, but I think my new spec has similar mitigation/avoidance and greater threat.

I am a bit upset with the treatment that Howling Blast got. I understand that they added the cooldown back shortly before the patch went live, but that is no excuse for the way it was implemented. Howling blast tooltip says nothing about a cooldown. When you use the skill, no cooldown timer is started and the ability is not greyed out. However you get the "that ability is not ready yet" message when trying to cast it a second time in succession. Don't get me wrong, the cooldown is shorter and I use the ability twice as much as i used it before, I just think that it hurts the polish of the game to not show the cooldown. It seems such a small thing that could have been fixed before the patch was pushed. Its kind of like the bug that happens when you use a cooldown ability on a deathknight and instead of counting down the actual time left on the cooldown, it counts down the time until those runes are ready again. So your UI may show that the ability has one second left on cooldown, when in reality the ability still has a minute left and the runes it uses are about to come off cooldown. Once your aware of it, its not a big deal, but it is annoying and hurts the smoothness of the game.

Raid Tanking

I missed out on our guild's naxx run due to being out of town. I was pretty disapointed by that because I had done a lot to improve my gear from the last run and wanted to see if it made anything easier. Once I got back from Kansas I made up for my missed time rather quickly. In quick succession I tanked 25 man Arch for the first time, Tanked 25 man Sarth for the first time, and got the heroic daily done over the course of 2 hours. I have been reading a lot about Sarth +1 and really want to give it a shot next time we do OS. It may be asking to much of my small casual guild but I think we can do It.

I talked a bit to thedoctor about him and I setting up and running some PUG naxx 25. I think once we/I have more experiance in the 10 man version It shouldn't be to hard to get some pugs going. Pug raids are very active on our server and we could get the people easily.


PUGS

I got a lot of feedback on my article about pugging, some agreeing with me, some disagreeing. I still plan on rolling on anything I need against strangers in pugs, but I have decided to make sure my intentions are known before we start.

On another, related note. I have pretty much all the tanking gear I can get with heroic badges. I am holding off on buying the tier Chest piece for a few reasons:
1. 80 Badges is a lot of heroics.
2. They may release new badge gear with the next content patch.
3. I gotta want something out of naxx right?!?!

My DPS/PVP gear is also coming along rather well (thanks to running heroics that drop my needed dps pieces) I now have the 2 piece tier bonus (gloves/chest)! Just need to scrounge up some gems and enchants now and I will be melting face with the best of them. Have any of you run into this problem? Overabundance of hit on gear. I have almost 11% to hit in dps gear and I really want to drop it (as it is above the cap) and get more Strength, Crit, Expertise on my gear. Every time I replace a level 75 item with an 80 item i get more and more hit! With all that Hit i contemplated dual wielding as dps, but it doesn't really appeal to me. I like hitting things with my big hammer!

Until next time.

Pug Tanking, Deathknights, and You

I have been in the process of getting my DK Tank raid ready. It is going rather well and I am full of anticipation for 3.0.8 to come out.

About the only way I have of getting my toon raid ready is through the running of pugs...repeatedly.

I have also been reading a lot of blogs about pugging and decided to chime in with my thoughts.

I pug a lot, and thus I get the full spectrum of groups. Usually you can tell before the first boss is down what kind of group it is going to be. If I can tell from the beginning that a pug is destined to fail I bail quickly and have no second thoughts.

The worst groups are the ones that seem to be going smoothly, maybe even down a boss or two before you realize that the group is full of fail. Today I had a couple of these. How a decently geared group can wipe in UK is beyond me. The last boss managed to kill me twice... both times I went upwards of 12 seconds with no heals at all. The Paladin healer claimed "my heals were on global cooldown" Wtf that is supposed to mean, I have no idea.

After we down the boss, the real drama starts. Plate DPS legs drop. "FUCK YEA MY PANTS DROPPED" shouts the other plate wearer. I tell him I have to roll on the pants. I win the roll and all hell breaks loose.

"YOUR A NINJA"
"IF I KNEW YOU WOULD ROLL ON DPS GEAR I WOULDN'T HAVE INVITED YOU!"

to which I respond "If I knew I wasn't allowed to roll on these pants from the beginning, I wouldn't have joined the group, In fact the only thing that drops in this instance I can use is those pants"

The argument rolls over into trade chat and of course people fall in on
on either side of the argument.

Don't get me wrong, I see his point. I tanked the run, then rolled on DPS gear. If it were a guild run or a raid I surely would have passed. But it wasn't. It was a pug heroic.

People have rolled against me for tank gear on pug heroics, and I said not a word. If I am forming the group, I do not include people who would want the same gear as me. If that's not possible? I accept the fact that I may lose a roll. It happens. Get over it.

This guy of course would not get over it. 2 hours later and I am still getting random whispers of congratulations and of ninja hate.

What do you people think? I think its pretty clear where I stand =)

Meanwhile I will be enjoying Staggering Legplates every time I PvP or DPS.



There are good pugs out there. All my gear aside from my shoulders are from pug heroics.
You know the runs where half way through everyone is asking about running more heroics? It seems rare that I am not out dpsing at least one of the "dpsers". When it happens though it is sweeeeeet.

God Loves Good Healers.

Peace.


@ thedoctor

"You stole my fucking cloudsong!"

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - DK tanking...the In's and the Out's

It's that time again! While we all anxiously await the servers coming up, I sit here contemplating my Death Knight:

I Finally hit the defense soft cap thanks to the Waistguard of Living Iron. Time to start tanking heroics. I need 3 more defense rating to be un-critable during a raid. That should be easily accomplished once the servers come back up and I get the tanking runeforge. My next major gearing concern will be stacking stamina. A lot of stamina should come from replacing my high defense blues with something a bit more rounded (Read: Epics).

I am more undecided than ever on what to spec for tanking. Unholy is losing some of its luster with the heavily nerfed bone shield. Blood gets a boost but will it be enough? Frost was a solid tanking spec pre-patch and is getting better aoe threat with the removal of howling blast cooldown.

My only concern with frost tanking is the fact that i have already ran across a few mobs in instances that a frost immune. Nothing to get your party killed faster than mobs that are immune to 3/4 of your damage and abilities. I am also not sold on frost tanking cooldowns. UNbreakable armor is UNderwhelming, sure it seems nice on paper until you realize that it only works against physical damage, and even then 25% more armor is not a very high mitigation increase.

Compared to bone shield giving you a flat 20% mitigation against ALL damage. Not to mention the fact that bonesheild can last longer at high avoidance levels.

Blood comes in as the dark horse. Vampiric Blood is very strong and lasts longer than either of the other tanking cooldowns. However, it doesnt actually mitigate or avoid anything. With Vampiric Blood you are heavily reliant on the healers to take advantage of the buff. If your healers are stunned, silenced, or otherwise incapacitated your fancy tanking cooldown just did nothing to prevent what could be a wipe. Even after your healer dies you can pop bonesheild or Unbreakable armor to try and whittle away the last of a mobs hitpoints, With Vamp blood you have nothing.


The current plan is 12/51/8 It came down to 1 simple thing, Economics. I am already glyiphed for frost and the gold reserves are to low to be going out and re-glyiphing.

Blood Talents:
Blade Turning- A must have tanking talent. 10% parry that is up almost all the time.
Bladed Armor- Looks to be pretty good for threat, as a Tank I expect to have a lot of armor =)
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization- Another threat boost 4% may not seem like much but that is to every swing/attack.

Frost Talents:
Toughness- A must have tanking talent.
Imp. Icy Touch, Icy Talons, and Imp. Icey talons- Reduces enemy attack speed (avoidance/mitigation) and increases my attack speed (threat). The point in Imp. Icy Talons is because as a tank I KNOW I will be grouping, and a boost to the dps on my run means a faster run for everyone.
Black Ice- More damage/threat. Yes Please
Annihilation- Obliterate is the Frost/Unholy attack you use on single targets as frost. We can't have that taking our disease off!
Lich Borne- I really didn't want to put a point here, but hey tanking cooldowns are tanking cooldowns and I needed a point to move further up the tree.
Frigid Dreadplate- 3% avoidance active all the time (even while stunned) I'm Sold.
Chill of the Grave- Need that runic power to fire off your Frost strikes
Deathchill- Another one that I didn't really want to spend the point in, But a crit howling blast for 5k+ on all enemies is a great way to start an aoe pull.
Rime- Extra crit and resource free aoe damage. nuff said.
Howling Blast- The Frost AOE. It is getting its cooldown removed in 3.0.8. It already does 20% of my damage in a typical instance run...
Blood of the North- Who cares about blood strike damage? Needed for frost rotations ( 2 frost runes just isn't enough =)
Unbreakable Armor- Tanking cooldown, sub-par in my mind, But hey we are down here anyway.
Frost Strike- Frost RP dump, hits like a truck.
Guile of the Gorefiend- I'll take bigger crits and extra time on cooldown you use almost every pull.
Tundra Stalker- The requisite flat damage increase of the tree.
Hungering Cold- After getting the goodies I wanted from blood and unholy I had a point left over. Seems more useful than one point spent in the other options. Very situational. Arguably very cool as well!

Unholy Talents:
Anticipation- Another must have tanking talent.
Morbidity- The one thing i missed the most when I had 0 points in Unholy. Waiting for DND to cooldown is annoying, and can cause problems when you need to group up waves of enemies.


If you see flaws in my reasoning or something glaringly wrong with this build please let me know.

Song of the Day
Bang Bang
Dispatch
Bang Bang [Bomber]

P.S: I just got an Iphone. The thing is amazing, I have some nice WoW apps on there but if you have any favorite apps drop me a line so I can check them out!

Level 80! Ding!

8 Hours into 80 and I know that this expansion is different.

8 hours into level 70 what were you doing? Probably not much of anything, doing a few regular instances, maybe grind some bg's, or work on some bop crafted gear. Possibly working on getting your gear "raid ready" (read: HITCAP). You were not doing heroics. You were not raiding unless you had a hardcore guild outfitted in full t3. Revered was a bit of a grind even for the hardcore. Moving the rep requirement to honored made things a bit easier, but even honored was not automatic with all factions.

I am 8 hours into level 80 and I have a solid epic weapon: Titansteel Destoyer That was crafted BOE none the less. I was already hit capped for raiding when I hit 80 thanks to some decent blue drops. I have already cleared some heroics.(With probably the worst other 2 dps ever. 3 of 4 bosses ended with myself, the tank, and healer dropping the last 100k+ health) Cleared a 25 man raid boss. Speaking of that raid boss, Archevon is EASY, outfitted in my blues and new found titansteel destroyer I easily surpassed the 1600 personal dps needed to beat the enrage timer. My luck with rolls continues to be above average and I am now proud owner of Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece. WARNING INCOMING VANILLA WOW ANECDOTE:

Getting that chest on my first run in a raid instance reminds of my first run of Scholomance at level 59. first time killing Ras Frostwhisper a super rare epic chest piece drops and I win the roll, saving me months of raiding or grinding mats for robe of the void.

There we have it, 8 hours into 80 and I already have 2 gear pieces that should last for months. My gear is ready to go for dpsing heroics or raids. That is pretty good compared to TBC.

My tank gear has not been going as well as my dps gear, I am still almost 50 defense below the uncritable mark so I have yet to tank a heroic. I am working on a few rep grinds to round out my tanking gear. The new + defense sigal, and rune forge enchant will go a long way into getting me into that tanking role.

I also plan on starting arena's this week with either the doctor or a resto druid that I used to arena with. So expect a Death Knight centered pvp article in the coming week(s)


In response to the Doctor's Random thoughts on everything 80...

I am feeling a bit of what the Doctor and Potts are. Overwhelmed may be the right word. So much to do once you hit 80. For the first half hour I kind of just wandered around aimlessly in the looking for group channel. Did I want to run heroics? Start the pvp grind? Quest for rep? Farm mats for crafted gear? I think for gearing up most efficiently you will want to do a bit of everything. I know that after seeing what a loot pinata the Wintergrasp boss is I will be doing that as often as I can. I would also love to get into a Naxx group or two. Even an extra 20 hours of playtime a week doesn't seem like it would be enough to do EVERYTHING in WotLK. I think one thing leading to this feeling is the fact that blizzard has opened up the game so much more for everyone. When I hit level 70, I knew immediately to start on the pvp grind. I did not play enough to see much more than Karhzan (and that was WAY after it became farm status) So wasting my play time trying to get my gear on par for raiding seemed like a waste. I wasn't going to spend hours grinding rep to make it into a heroic. The path I was going to take out was pretty much laid out for me before I even hit 70. With the way blizzard has made the game accessible to everyone it gives us way more options to choose from. No longer is there a huge starting barrier to 3/4's of the content at 80. As soon as you hit 80 you have a plethora of options and it can leave everyone feeling like they need more time to play.

Have a SAFE and happy new year!

Christmas Update

This is dedication folks. Taking time out from opening gifts and chugging eggnog to reach out and wish my fellow blog lovers a Merry Christmas.

Actually, what happened was the good Doctor locked me in his elf-run sweatshop on Christmas Eve. He promised me I would get to see my family; as long as the blog was updated and gets at least 2 comments. So I need your help people!

I hope your holidays are going well. My girlfriend and I bought a 37 inch LCD HDTV for each other as our main gift. It is a ridiculous upgrade. Our old TV was between 19 and 21 inches. That's greens to purples folks!

Unfortunately I am still level 79. At this point I have pretty much stopped quest grinding and started to run instances for the last half a level of experience. I figure I want to be at or very near the Defense Cap at 80 so I can start tanking heroics ASAP.The only thing holding me back is the holiday rep grind with the in-law faction!

My gear has steadily improved and I now have an almost full tank set, only 3 items do not have defense on them. The new tanking rune should go a long way into making me uncritable. 25 defense is worth roughly 130 defense rating, not to mention the 2% Stam bonus.

I am really looking forward to gearing up and becoming an unkillable wall of death and metal.

That's it for today folks, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Do you remember CC?

As another group barreled its way through a WotLK dungeon like a bull in a china shop, a fond remembrance of days past crept into my head.

LFM DPS/CC would ring through the worldwide looking for group channel.

Disodium (my retired warlock) earned his place on runs by being the CC master. Sure a Mage was a bit more reliable with his sheep, However could a Mage keep 3 things cc'd at once? Maybe even more than that for a limited time. Seduce one, fear one, howl of terror one. Juggle more than one mob with fear and curse of exhaustion. The ability to flawlessly CC made my warlock more desirable than a less skilled lock on an instance run.

The toughness of individual pulls was measured by how many mobs you had to pull. A CC class was mandatory. Now and days it is pretty much assumed you are just going to waltz through the instance burning down however many mobs you can pull at once, If the tank dies its the healers fault or the tank is under-geared.

Now I am not 80 yet, but I think its safe to assume we will not be doing these mass pulls in heroics or raids. Are the regular instances teaching us all to play like noobs? When is the last time you saw a Hunter Ice Trap? That to me was always the measure of a skilled hunter, how well they could cc via traps. Now it is hard to get a quick read on the skill of your group, because it doesn't take much skill to spam blizzard or volly.

I enjoy the casual approach and it is quick and easy to just roflstomp groups of mobs at a time, but it might take away some of the fun. I know it's not as fun to spam seed of corruption as it was to micro-manage my various CC abilities. Maybe this is why we don't see as many warlocks as we used to.

What do you think? Any of you Mages miss your sheep spell?

Blood Tanking

This question was posed to me in the comments section of my last article:
"What other neat/essential tanking talents are you giving up in order to but at least 36 talent points into blood?"

The short answer; Almost nothing.

The truth of the matter is that every essential tanking talent, aside from your cooldowns, come in the first tier of every tree. With just 5 points invested into each tree you come away with 10% to parry while your blood runes are on cooldown, 15% more armor from items, and 5% to dodge. After those first 15 points each tree has its own 1 minute cooldown tanking ability. Blood has Vampiric Blood (which I discussed in my last article). Frost has Unbreakable Armor, Unholy has Bone Shield. As of right now, Unbreakable armor gives you 25% more armor, 10% more strength, and 5% more parry all for 20 seconds of every minute. Bone Shield gives you 5 (when glyiphed) bones that swirl around you offering 40% damage reduction as long as a bone is still active, and each hit makes you lose a bone. Bonesheild lasts a minimum of 12 seconds and can last a pretty good chunk of time depending on how many attacks you can dodge and parry. All of these seem pretty equal right now, maybe even vamp blood is on the low end of usefulness.

That should all change with 3.0.8.


I also have some nice links for all you aspiring Death Knights.

Elitist Jerks Forums - Death Knights class mechanics forum. Home of great theorycrafters and math geeks that do the dirty work to tell us what works best.

Over at Lichborne (wow insiders DK blog) they have a great article about the different reputations of WotLK and what you will want to grind to gear up your Death Knight. As well as another supremly helpful guide for basic defense gearing of your DK.

For you PvP Death Knights (and any pvp nut in general) we have Arena Junkies. As with all arena junkies forums the DK forum has a lot of crap to wade through, but you can really find some gems of great pvpers sounding off on their thoughts about DK pvp.

I think it would be negligent of me to post links without including the only other wow blog aside from WTFspaghetti that I read daily. World of Ming is what you would get if you took the wow general forums and combined them with TMZ and the Jerry Springer show. Non-stop E-drama concerning "wow arena celebritys" mixed with QQ and even some occasional quality insight into wow pvp. Best (or maybe just most) trolls on the web. Even if the article sucks the sideshow that is the comments section is always worth a chuckle. All run by the "Rogue Hero" Ming. With a lisp, heavy asian accent, and an imaginary wife the comedy practily writes itself.

Thats it for now, I am level 78 pushing to 80. Gotta get started on the gear grind...

Is Vampric Blood the best tanking cooldown?

With the upcoming nerfs to bonesheild and to a lesser extent ice bound fortitude AND the buff to Vampiric blood (last stand effect added as well as 10 second increased duration via glyph) I think that VB is now the strongest tanking cooldown.

VB has higher up-time than boneshield on all but the most geared avoidance tanks. I'm not sure how the math works out but +50% to incoming heals for 30 seconds of every minute seems like it would be compare favorably to 20% damage reduction for a minimum of 15 seconds ( more if you have good avoidance)

This is also not taking into account the + 20% max health during those 30 seconds which of course gives your healers a buffer for overheal as well as a health buffer to prevent gibs.

The 20% max health synergies well with a talented and glyphed rune tap for some massive OH S*** buttons. I have read some anecdotal evidence that is showing rune tap hitting for almost 9k fully talented and glyphed on a geared MT with Vampiric Blood going.

What do you guys think?

Death Knight to 70

When WotLK first came out I was not too excited by the expansion. The prospect of leveling my Priest and Warlock another 10 levels seemed daunting. Going through the honor grind for an umpteenth time was weighing on my mind. "Do I really feel like spending money to go through 10 more levels of the same BS?" I would ask myself. I was truly getting tired of The Outlands and Azeroth has long been dead.

Unlike many, I did not rush out and buy WotLK the first day. (I did log on and gank some death knights.) The first thing I did after installing the monstrosity (how many gigs?!?!) was log on to my priest and go to the new lands. Everything looked very nice, the quests seemed to be lain out well, but it was still slow going. A quarter of the way into the first level of my new grind I gave up. I do not have high hopes for priests or warlocks with this expansion and my desire to level them was waning with every re-hashed collection quest.

I logged off in disgust, dreading the coming grind. Later that day I decide to give it another chance and after some urging from Dr. Wang I made my Death Knight "Just to check out the starting area" From the first quest I was hooked on my new DK. No longer would I be the squishy clothie, I was now the biggest baddest killing machine this side of the dark portal. The DK starting areas definitely gave you the feeling that your death knight was something special. A character with something a bit more epic behind them then starting at level 1 and working your way up.

The starting DK area was definitely one of the best quest chains I have done. Great story line. Unique quests. I particularly liked how Blizzard included talent points and gear upgrade from greens to blues in the starting area. Had a great feeling of progression even though it only took a couple of hours. They also did a good job of balancing the gear you start with. I felt my death knight was just as strong in Hellfire as my Warlock was coming from MC and BWL epics during The Burning Crusade. By the time I hit HFP I was on a mission to make my Death Knight my main. This would require that I put a bit more dedication into my leveling. With TBC I had cruised to 70 very slowly, ran a lot of instances and was very inefficient on the whole. A couple of things helped change that...


The most helpful thing I have done this time around is my research. I am the type of person that wants to know what he is doing. When I raided in vanilla wow, I knew the strats, I optimized my gear and spec. I read forums, theory-crafting, I competed. With level 70 arenas I researched the winning specs, group compositions and strategy's. With leveling I have always taken the opposite approach, no approach. I would wander from quest point to quest point and do instances with no direction or goal. This all changed when I made my DK my main. Not only did I have to level to 80. I would need to catch up with everyone and level to 70!

The first thing that helped me was Jame's Horde Leveling Guide
This is a great guide that will take you from level 1 to level 80. I used this from level 60 on. It gives great detail about the order you should do quests and where the locations of mobs, drops and quest items are. The thing I like most about this guide is how it sets up all your quests so that you can go out and get as many done as possible in one trip. Turning certain quests in and getting their follow-ups when the guide calls for it really helps prevent you having to go back to location X multiple times for different quests.

The last thing that helped me was Quest Helper
I had avoided using any mods as I leveled so far, partially to avoid having to re-do my ui once i hit 80 and partially due to laziness. At level 65 I thought I was moving a long pretty fast, Following my leveling guide and getting things done. However, I see my buddy log on and he is already 68, and he started a day after me! I asked him what he was doing differently than me and he pointed me in the direction of this mod. What this mod does is put all the locations of your quest items, mobs, quest turn-ins, quest drops and general information on your mini map and on you display. This one will also make up quest circuits for you to follow, but I liked the quest circuits from the leveling guide better. One of my favorite features of this mod is when you mouse over a target it tells you if it is something you have to kill for a quest or for a quest drop! The best part though is putting all the quest objectives on your mini map, makes everything that much easier to find. (Warning: This mod is a resource hog.)

My Death Knight is 70 now and I am pushing hard for 80. I am really looking forward to tanking some instances, It should give some new perspective. I DPS'ed in Vanilla WoW, Healed in TBC, and I will be tanking my undead Tauren ass off in WotLK.

Happy Thanksgiving!