Beautiful friend, the end.
This is the end. My only friend, the end.
Of our elaborate plans, the end.
Of everything that stands, the end.
No safety or surprise, the end.
I'll never look into your eyes... again.
Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free.
Desperately in need of some... stranger's hand.
In a... desperate land...
It's been a long, tumultuous ride. Hundreds of boss kills, thousands of pieces of loot, players coming and players going, drama that would make most quit, etc etc etc.
Attumen the Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden of Virtue, the Karazhan Opera, The Curator, Shade of Aran, Netherspite, the Chess Event, Prince Malchezaar, Nightbane, High King Maulgar, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Magtheridon, Doom Lord Kazzak, Hydross the Unstable, Fathom-Lord Karathress, Doomwalker, Leotheras the Blind, The Lurker Below, Morogrim Tidewalker, Void Reaver, Al'ar, Lady Vashj, High Astromancer Solarian, Prince Kael'thas, Rage Winterchill, Anetheron, High Warlord Naj'entus, Supremus, Shade of Akama, Kaz'rogal, Nalorakk, Akil'zon, Jan'alai, Halazzi, Hex Lord Malacrass, Zul'jin, Azgalor, Archimonde, Teron Gorefiend, Gurtogg Bloodboil, Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz, the Illidari Council, Illidan Stormrage, Kalecgos, Brutallus, Felmyst, the Eredar Twins, M'uru, Kil'jaeden.
Now, it's time to head north. It's also time to change classes again. Henceforth, you'll get to hear things from the point of view of a (badly played) Death Knight.
Goodbye Outlands. Hello Northrend. See you there!
(Hands up, everyone who thought this was an "I quit" post.)
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Wrath of the Lich King is due out in just under two days, and it's been a long, boner-inducing journey to get here. I managed to con my way into the Alpha back in May via sexual favors and a bet over a game of Chutes & Ladders, and since then I've gotten the chance to see most of what you guys are going to dive into in the very near future. Even so, I can't wait to see all of it again - Northrend is that good.
My PC is so exited to run Wrath that it can't contain itself.
"But Ekera," you're likely asking, "can you lay off the rampant fanboyism for like two minutes?" First, stop talking to your computer. It's embarrassing. Second, sure I can. PvP balance is still a long way off. Raiding and heroics are probably on the easy side. Wintergrasp needs some work to keep it from being Halaa 2.0 (aka: The PvP Zone That Time Forgot). Naturally, there are likely to be bugs still. Through all that though, this is a game that displays more polish in single zones than Burning Crusade had in almost its entire duration. Your mileage may vary, but I'm not concerned with what YOU think. (haha just kidding please don't stop reading :()
Anyhow, all that aside, I promised a Part 2 to this initial look at Death Knights, so that's what I'll deliver today. This time, I'll take a look at what kind of shit you should expect from DKs in groups, and what kind of loot they should (and shouldn't) be taking. This won't be a definitive guide on how to spot a shitty Death Knight, but if you really want a way to do that, just look at their name. Does it involve the words "death," "knight," "black," "dark," or "evil"? If so, do yourself a favor and kick them now.
Last time out, I gave you rundown of the different trees and what, in a basic sense, they were all about. I'd like to note at this point that, regardless of their choice of spec, most Death Knights will be using pretty much the same gear. DK tanks will use tank gear that mixes threat, avoidance, and mitigation, and DPS DKs will want the usual melee stats. One tree might favor, say, critical strike rating a bit more than another, but essentially you could spec to tank or DPS down any given tree and not have to switch gear much at all.
So, what kind of gear and/or stats should Death Knights be looking for?
Strength - A DK's primary threat and damage stat. Strength, and consequently Attack Power, will make everything they do better. DKs like strength probably about as much as Retribution paladins, and should try to snag gear with it at every opportunity.
Parry - Very yes. Helps keep Rune Strike lit up (DK version of the warrior ability Revenge), synergizes well with the Blood talent Spell Deflection, and of course it's a good avoidance stat besides. Tanking with a two-hander means a slow swing speed, and parrying an attack will hasten your next swing, so it's much more useful in that respect than it would be for a warrior or paladin using a 1.5 speed tanking weapon.
Critical Strike - PHAT CRITZ. This should go without saying.
Dodge - Like Parry, a good avoidance stat. Also helps with Rune Strike.
Defense - As good for DKs as it is for any other non-drud tanking class.
Stamina - Hey guess what having a huge health pool is a good thing as a tank derp a derp!
Armor Penetration - Useful to varying degrees depending on spec. Blood DKs will be ok with having this, Frost and Unholy less so as a great deal of their damage is from spells and ignores armor. Either way, a secondary stat - it's useful if it's on an already good item, but not worth going for exclusively.
Hit Rating - Doubly useful in that it helps both DK attacks and spells. Like other tanks, DKs will want to get to the hit cap as soon as possible to make their threat output smooth.
Expertise - See hit. Just like warriors, rogues, and ret paladins, expertise helps DK dps and threat output a ton.
Block/Block Value - NO. DKs do not use shields, so this stat is 100% useless for them.
Spell Power - NO. All, repeat, ALL DK abilities that do damage scale off of Attack Power. If you're an Unholy DK and take the talent Impurity, they'll scale even better. Spell Power does jack shit for a Death Knight. Period. Any DK taking spell damage plate in a group should be kicked immediately for being a dimwit.
Spell Penetration/Mana per 5/Spirit/Ranged Crit - ... are you serious?
So, as you can see, DKs gear much like any other melee class. How much weight one should give a particular stat over another isn't something I'm going to cover. If you're a DK player, you'll learn that over time or through judicious reading of guides/threads on Elitist Jerks made by people with better calculators than you.
As a final note on gearing, Death Knights CAN dual wield. Currently, they can use either one- or two-handed axes, maces, and swords, so if you see a DK rolling against a rogue on an offhand sword he's not an idiot. That said, at least at this early stage, two-handed weapons almost always have an edge over dual wielding - but that's not enough of a reason to brand a DK player as moronic.
Death Knights get to hang out with cooler people than you.
So, now you have a good idea of what loot DKs should be taking when they're in a group with you. On the other hand, what should they be giving? In this next bit, I'll cover some of the group utility that DKs bring to the table, both in the form of buffs and just all-around useful shit that they can do. Here comes... another list!
Horn of Winter
This is the DK version of Battle Shout, but its closest group buff analogue is actually a shaman's Strength of Earth totem. It increases the Strength and Agility of all party/raid members by a static amount, and must be recast every two minutes.
Blood Presence + Blood Aura
Presences are like the Death Knight version of warrior stances or paladin auras. Blood Presence is generally the damage-dealing one, increasing the DK's damage done by 15% and allowing 4% of their damage dealt to heal them. When the DK also has points in the talent Blood Aura, all party/raid members nearby will heal themselves for 2% of the damage they deal.
Frost Presence + Frost Aura
Frost Presence is generally the tanking presence for DKs, as it increases health, armor, and threat generated, and reduces spell damage taken. When combined with the Frost Aura talent, all nearby party members will gain spell resistance equal to the DK's level. So, at level 80, +80 to all resists.
Unholy Presence + Unholy Aura
Unholy Presence is generally the PvP stance, as it allows 15% faster movement speed, 15% melee haste, and reduces the global cooldown on all abilites by 0.5 sec (essentially giving DKs the same GCD as rogues). With Unholy Aura talented, that 15% run speed bonus for DKs will apply to all nearby party members as well.
Abomination's Might
This deep-Blood talent is similar to a shaman's Unleashed Rage, and is mutually exclusive with it. When using some of their most common melee attacks, the DK will provide their group members with a 10% bonus to Attack Power for 10 sec. Assuming they're keeping up their DPS rotations, this will seldom fall off of group members.
Improved Icy Talons
This talent lies partway down the Frost tree, connected to Improved Icy Touch and Icy Talons. The basic Icy Talons essentially makes Icy Touch steal haste - Icy Touch reduces an opponent's attack speed by 20%, and Icy Talons increases the DK's own attack speed by the same. Improved turns this into a group buff, giving all nearby party or raid members 20% melee haste for 20 sec. Does not stack with a shaman's Windfury Totem.
Ebon Plaguebringer
DKs specced deep into the Unholy tree will bring this debuff to the table. Essentially, as long as they keep at least one of their diseases on the target they will also keep this debuff up. It increases magic damage taken by the target by 13%. This does not stack with a warlock's Curse of the Elements or a Balance druid's talented Earth and Moon debuff.
Anti-Magic Zone
Unholy-specced tanks or PvPers (though DPS might pick it up as well, for utility) will have this ability at their disposal. Anti-Magic Zone creates a static bubble about 10 yards in diameter. Any party or raid member standing inside the bubble will take 75% less spell damage temporarily. The bubble lasts either 30 seconds or until it mitigates anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 spell damage in this manner.
Path of Frost
All DKs have this ability. When turned on, it generates an aura that affects all nearby party members, allowing them to walk on water until they take damage. Yes, this even works while mounted, so the DK can turn it on as the group is riding towards a lake, and the entire group will simply ride across the water. Pretty cool, eh?
I believe that covers most of the major abilities you'll run into. There are a few other things DKs can do, such as silence stray casters with Strangulate, potentially heal the group periodically if they have talented and Glyphed Rune Tap, or Death Grip runners back to be dealt with Scorpion-style, but this list encompasses the major group buffs that DKs will have when grouped with you.
That concludes this little primer on Death Knights and You. Hopefully you'll have learned something here, so when the expansion comes out in two short days you're not scratching your head wondering what the fuck. DKs, played right, are just as useful in your groups as any other class. Played wrong, they're just as stupid. Here's wishing you run into... the latter, actually, so you'll invite me to your groups instead. I'm not dumb, promise.
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Again, it's been quite a while since I last updated, but as before, I was avoiding the shit out of the Beta in preparation for the launch of Wrath. As fun as it was to test out the new content, find bugs, experiment with new abilities, and see shiny new shit, I don't especially want to sleepwalk my way through the all the new content because HO HUM I've seen it all already.
That said, one thing I did do a lot of recently was run the Death Knight starting area in preparation for getting out of the gates as fast as possible on the 13th. As cool as Acherus and questing in Havenshire are, I really don't want to be stuck with a million other Death Knight rerollers fighting over Hellfire Peninsula spawns. I'm not gunning to be the first 80 DK on the server, or even among the first dozen; I just want to get ahead of the pack and then cruise comfortably.
Death Knights get lots of toys.
One thing that occured to me this morning as I gulped down coffee, however, was that there are probably quite a few people out there who have no clue about what the deal is with Death Knights. Either they have no interest beyond rolling an alt to play around with, or they've been keeping themselves in the dark about Wrath, or whatever. There's a lot of misinformation (and disinformation) floating around about the class, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to clear the air a bit.
So, this'll be Part 1 of 2 in taking a look at this potentially confusing new class. Not interested? Here's a political discussion thread on the Maelstrom realm forums to keep you entertained.
Ok so, first things first, what are Death Knights exactly? In the simplest terms, they are a melee DPS/tank hybrid, very similar to a warrior. In fact, in terms of basic mechanics and feel, they're probably most similar to a warrior, so if nothing else, consider them as able to fill that gap in your 5-man and PvP groups. Obviously, it's more complicated than this, but like I said, simplest terms.
One major difference between warriors (and, really, all other classes) and death knights is how their talent trees are structured. For warriors, you have Arms, Fury, and Protection. Arms and Fury are both DPS trees - if you spec primarily down either one, you're doing so with the intention of doing damage, either in PvE or PvP. Conversely, if you dump your points into Protection, you're looking to tank.
Not so with Death Knights! Obviously, they have three talent trees as well: Blood, Frost, and Unholy. However, none of them are strictly DPS or tanking trees. Instead, all three trees have a mix of DPS, tanking, utility, and all-purpose talents. Thus, you can't specifically say, "Oh, we need a tank, let's find a Frost DK." You might end up with a Frost DK who's specced for DPS. That means, for all intents and purposes, that you have to at least glance at a DK player's talent choices to see if they're telling the truth about whether they tank or DPS. Actually, that's not all that different from any other class anyway.
With that in mind, let's take a look at the three DK trees. I'll give a short explanation of each tree, and also list off some talents that will generally (not always) give an indication of which of these two roles an individual player is focused on.
Blood
The Blood tree is the most straightforward tree of the three. A Blood-specced DK will rely primarily on doing Physical melee damage, and many talents in the tree give bonuses most will be familiar with, such as bonus damage when wielding a 2-handed weapon or a stacking damage bonus based off of critical strikes. Blood also excels at self-healing, with abilities such Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, and Mark of Blood being particularly noteworthy.
Tank talents to watch for: Blade Barrier, Spell Deflection, Will of the Necropolis
Frost
Frost Death Knights are a bit more like spellcasters. They combine elements of frost mages (SHOCKING) and both shockadins and Ret paladins in varying amounts. As you'd suspect, a great deal of what this spec relies on for damage is Frost-based, which means they'll do more damage against higher armor targets, as they'll be ignoring that armor with abilities like Frost Strike and Howling Blast. In PvP, Frost DKs, like Frost mages, are about control - slows, freezes, shatter combos, etc.
Tank talents to watch for: Toughness, Unbreakable Armor, Frigid Dreadplate, Acclimation
Unholy
An Unholy Death Knight feels like what would happen if old Firestone warlocks weren't stupid and laughable - melee based, with elements of both Demonology and Affliction. Like Frost, they do a great deal of their damage as magic, in this case Shadow. They tend to rely on Diseases much more than the other two, and they're the only spec that uses a Ghoul as a permanent pet, rather than a temporary, uncontrollable minion. They also tend to be very good at AoE, with Unholy Blight and Corpse Explosion providing an added boost to the baseline Bloodboil and Pestilence in that department. They also make the best magic-based tanks of the three specialties.
Tank talents to watch for: Anticipation, Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone
That's all for this entry. In Part 2, which should be posted in a couple days rather than in a MONTH (I'm awesome at this bog thing), I'll cover what you should expect from a DK that you're grouping with - what abilities to watch for and what they mean, what buffs you should be giving them, and why you should be booting the retard that rolls on spell damage plate from your party.
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Haven't had much to update about lately in regards to beta, since I haven't been playing a lot. I've been trying to avoid seeing TOO much stuff before release, because I want some of it to be fresh when it all actually means something. At least, as much as any of this shit can mean. Philosophically? I dunno. Video games are stupid.
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that WAR sucks. I base this not upon any personal experience, playtime, or even research. It just sucks because it isn't WoW. Aren't I a great impartial observer?
Truly though, WAR will probably never be the game for me. I've just never been much of a PvP type. Against all odds, I'm too nice to be a ganker. If someone slaps my alt around, I'll be on my 70 and camping them until they log as fast as anyone, but I don't go out of my way (even a little bit) to kill someone. A game that is based around PvP with (reportedly) shit for PvE content just won't ever hold my interest.
Lake Wintergrasp - I basically know nothing about this shit, so don't ask.
I AM, however, looking forward to Lake Wintergrasp. You'll notice that I've commented exactly not at all on this particular new feature of the expansion, and that's for good reason. As quickly as I tire of PvP shit anymore, I want this place to be fresh and new when I get to 80 and start fucking around there. Five mans and (to an extent) raids I will run repeatedly in beta because I know I'll run them repeatedly on live. I don't get tired of those, so I don't care as much that I see them early. That said, I'm also avoiding the Eye of Eternity and the Obsidian Sanctuary for the same reasons. :>
Sartharion - Onyxia 2.0 except not really.
One thing I have noticed, however, is that I don't seem to get tired of the opening zones. Hellfire Peninsula, at this point, makes me want to shoot myself in the face. Felboars aggroing from 7 miles away, quest objectives halfway across the zone, dodging Fel Reavers, those goddamn slimes at the Pools of Aggonar (you know, the ones that dismount you instantly EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.), running back and forth from the Mag'har village, having to bug people to help you finish Cruel's Intentions or Natural Remedies, the list goes on. Both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra have been fun the several times I've done them (trying out different classes for a level or so in a desperate effort to find out what the fuck I want to play). They're linear (a good thing), quests are easy to chain together in areas, and the content is varied. I can see still enjoying these places a year and a half down the road when I take a new alt through them.
What else? Oh yeah, short rant. Anyone who says that resto shaman have mana troubles (keep in mind, I only refer to PvE) at 80 is fucking retarded. I've seen post after post on the beta forums pleading with Blizzard to address the non-existant efficiency issues the spec has, and it's infuriating. It's a case of people still playing like it's TBC, with the same gear, enchants, and playstyle, not acknowledging even for a second that things might have changed - and they HAVE. The spec is much more reliant on crit now for mana regen. All that haste on Sunwell gear, so useful at the time, is wasted now, as it really WILL make you run out of mana faster. MP5, healing, and crit, in some as-of-yet-unknown optimized combination, is the way to go.
Icecrown - Good one, Arthas, set your walls on fire. That'll help.
That's about it for now. I'll do my best over the next couple days to knock out the remaining 5-man reviews. I've also got a few other things in mind to post over the coming weeks as Wrath draws close to release, so stay tuned.
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Herein I quote myself:
"Let's see if I can sustain Step 3 longer than a week. I'll shoot for two for now."
Well, despite my best hopes, Step 3 lasted about a week. This somewhat coincided with my decision to take an almost complete break from Live WoW, which included discontinuing my raiding schedule. When one creates a blog that is at least in part designed to discuss current and past raiding, and then one quits raiding, it makes it rather difficult to comment on those topics, no?
However, while my break from WoW is not over, my break from this is. I've got a bunch of plans for beta-related content to post in the next few days, stuff that should be interesting and relevant, at least to me. If I'm the only one reading my own blog, well... fuck the rest of you nonexistent people.
On my break in general - I've done the raidleading, guild officering thing for over 2-1/2 years now. I've taken some periodic breaks before, most notably at the end of the old game and the very beginning of The Burning Crusade. Since then, I've been consistently active. I've helped strategize and defeat, by my count, 44 bosses in 10- or 25-man content. I've coordinated resist gear and consumables for dozens of raiders, managed the bank for a couple months, calculated DKP, blah blah blah blah. I did a lot of shit for a long time. Everyone needs a breather, and this is mine.
I can say with complete confidence that I don't miss raiding one bit at the moment. I'm also smart enough to realize that this won't last forever; I'm already itching to run Naxxramas on the beta realms, and am looking forward to the other raids in store. However, current content, mechanics, and ways of doing things are boring, irritating, and generally distasteful at this point. Thus, I choose to distance myself from them and focus on something I think I'm relatively good at - objectively evaluating upcoming content and design. I take this beta shit seriously!
Now, with that little anecdotal blurb out of the way, on to my plans for the immediate future:
1. Reviews for each and every 5-man instances available in Wrath of the Lich King. I'll include a few prettified screenshots for each, and some ratings and discussion about the pros and cons of the instance. I was also planning to have some spoilered stuff that covered the place more in-depth, but Blogspot sucks at that, so you get the very basics until I find a better way to go about that.
2. Assuming those of us KKW folks in beta can get a run going (we had one planned for last night, but the new beta push and resultant server downtime precluded it), I'll have a similar review up for what I can experience of 10-man Naxxramas. Comparisons between old and new Naxx will be tossed in where appropriate.
3. A video tour of Icecrown Glacier, since it's now open and seemingly stable, similar to the one I did of The Storm Peaks. I've already got most of the footage I need recorded, so I just need to finish that up, edit it, and add some music. Expect this in a day or two.
4. Plenty of humorous looks at the beta forum goers. The most recent patch brought a lot of changes to almost every class, and almost universally every class got something "nerfed." I use quotation marks because, for fuck's sake, it's beta, everything's always going to be in a state of flux, so calling changes buffs or nerfs is missing the point. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of instances of people going positively apeshit. I'll do my best to find the cream of the crop.
There are definitely some other ideas germinating as well, so we'll see what else I can dredge out of this brain of mine. In the meantime, hello again, and welcome back to my shitty blog. More content's in store, I PWOMISE.
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Or so they tell us.Welcome to my blog. People who know me will know that I love to hear myself talk - whether it's explaining a strategy for a boss, "yelling" at someone who's fucked up, or simply yammering about some stupid shit that I think is hilarious and everyone else simply humors me for. I was told by someone very near and dear to me that the natural extension of this would be to put together someplace where I can blabber my jaded little heart out. At the same time, while I've got this space reserved anyhow, I can attempt to be informative and opinionated; the latter, I have extensive experience with; the former might take some work.So, who am I? Well, insofar as this blog is concerned, I am Ekera. I've been playing World of Warcraft since approximately January of 2005. I was an officer and raid leader of a small, severely drama-ridden guild on the Silver Hand server for a few months in mid-2005. Once that fell apart, I rerolled on the Maelstrom RP-PvP server as an orc shaman. I joined what would eventually become Kor'kron Warband in Dec. 2005 and started raiding with them soon after. By early April 2006, I was promoted to officer - primarily because, according to the one and only guild leader we've ever had, Xavier, I was the guy who explained the fights in Ventrilo. I've been helping to lead (I use the term very loosely) this misbegotten, raiding-challenged pack of mongrels ever since.Who am I personally? Doesn't really matter. Some personal details about myself might slip out from time to time, but only as they pertain to game shit. To 90% of the people I've met in Warcraft, I am some dude on the Internet who talks a lot. So to anyone reading this blog who doesn't already know me, I'll be roughly the same.How about the purpose of this blog? Well, the blurb at the top sums up what my general aims are, but to go into a bit more detail, this blog will:- Catalogue some of the more interesting/humorous/inane events from my time playing World of Warcraft.- Present my own perspective as an officer of a guild that has, against all odds, persisted for 2-1/2 years.- Explore the term "casual raiding." What does it really mean? Is it really possible? Or are we just kidding ourselves?- Examine changes in the game, both through patches and expansions, that have changed the face of raiding and the game over time.- Allow me to run my stupid fucking mouth about shit that is meaningless and/or of very little tangible benefit to anyone.So, I think that covers most everything. I'm still not sure whether this is a good idea, whether it'll run for a week or a year, and whether it'll be of interest to anyone. However, as the Joker put it so succinctly, "I believe: That which doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger."
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