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July 22, 2010  

Cataclysm Rune System Change

I spent a little time last night experimenting with the rune system in Unholy Spec using a two handed weapon. I’m not sure how this is going to work, but my instincts are leaning to having a steady pace on the runes now, firing them off as they come up, in turn.

This is different from the current play style, since it is more important to not waste any Global cool downs and can make a hectic experience. This seems much slower and methodical, which also may make tanking much less stressful.

I think that the waste of a rune or a rune power dump is going to be the new Cardinal Sin for DPS Death Knights, since this seems to fall into a steady pace and almost a rhythm.

July 19, 2010  

Frost Dual Wield Experimentation.

I started playing with a 5/31/0 Dual Wield spec yesterday and thought I would document it. I am not sure that the simplification of the talent trees is going to be as game breaking/making as people make it out to be. (To be honest the mastery bonuses are not in yet so I have no idea if it will get better or worse.) Frost is definitely going to be a spec to be watching, as it has a lot of nice toys for both DW and 2 hand style play.

I had to remember to switch into Frost Presence, since Blood is now the “Hi, Have I made you mad yet? How about Now?” presence. It is interesting, because the self healing aspect of the DK is gone in this build. The bonus healing we got from blood presence is completely absent now, with only Death Strike having healing abilities. I am not sure how this will change leveling, but it does make DKs much more squishy on normal content. I will try to get into an instance and see what happens. (Well that and I want to see how tasty this spec can be in DPS land.)
edited to add: They appear to be still processing it, please have patience!

August 18, 2009  

To Macro or not to macro, ’tis the question…

I have long fought with getting my rotation down so that it happens without too much issue.  Initially, I learned it with muscle memory but that is still too slow when one is looking for something in a clutch moment.  I have too much stuff on buttons, but I can always find what I need, eventually.  I then tried binding to my 1-0 keys and using muscle memory.  It only works so well, as I also get discombobulated when reaching for the mouse and then trying to get all my actions off.

So, I did what any sane person would do.  I did a little research and wrote a macro to do everything off of one button.  I have bound that button to my 1 key and it seems to work well.

I am currently running the following Unholy Spec: o/17/54

My current rotation is as follows:

Plague Strike
Icy Touch
Blood Strike
Blood Strike
Obliterate
Horn of Winter (10 Runic Power to get the extra death coil in)
Death Coil

|
|
V

Obliterate
Death Coil
Obliterate
Death Coil
Obliterate
Death Coil

With my current gear,  I am managing ~2000 DPS at a steady rate.

The Macro goes something like this:

#showtooltip
/castsequence [button:1] reset=6/combat Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Obliterate, Horn of Winter, Death Coil, Obliterate, Death Coil, Obliterate, Death Coil, Obliterate, Death Coil

Having this macro saved me time and bumped my DPS up by ~400 -500.  (I am not sure what I *should* be getting, but it is better than what I was getting.

Anyone out there have macro success stories or tips to improve DPS?  Am I at the point of just needing better gear?

March 16, 2009  

I can see 80 from here.

Sometimes, it feels like levelling just drags by, this weekend was not one of them.  After just not having any time on Friday, Jaramon hit 75 followed by 76 on Sunday, with a minimum of effort.  The new content is incredibly well written and implemented, it flows naturally from one segment to another.  I think waiting until 73/74 to hit Northrend set me up to keep a ton of momentum and blast through Borean Tundra and make a large dent in Dragonblight.

Borean Tundra was all about the dressing up it seems.  I spent time as a Murloc for King Mrglgrgl and as an Orc to help the gnomes at the airstrip.  (Which I must have rode past at least once when I was playing through this area on Horde side, but don’t remember it being there.)

Yesterday’s goal was actually to make it to Dalaran, but the fact that I did not get the flight point in the Dragon Wastes made me have to go back to Stormwind and catch the boat.  I rectified that just as I hit 76.

I think that the players who hit 70 after the expansion dropped are at a huge disadvantage due to the painfully expensive cost to get Epic Flying.  Blizzard might eventually want to look at shifting a portion of this cost to the cold weather skill, or reducing it some.  I haven’t SEEN 5k much less had 5k that wasn’t tied up for training or repairs.

I ran into Thalassian, the Death Knight.  He had a few quests that were similar to the Horde ones in the area, but he had a MUCH nicer trinket reward.  This was the first Death Knight NPC I have seen outside of the Death Knight areas and honestly, it felt good to finally see one and get quests from them.

But yeah, 80 is so close I can taste it.

March 6, 2009  

72- Again!

Well Jaramon dinged 72 last night.  Right in the middle of the fight with an few orcs in the DeathForge.  I realized as I spent my talent point that I am going to have to learn to play the class all over again after 3.1 goes live.  In some ways I can handle that, because it looks like there are going to be some interesting new ways to play Death Knights.

I have been loving the Shadowmoon Valley quests.   Some of the stuff here is where The Burning Crusade actually shines brightest.  Some of the lore goodies like dealing with the Spirit of Gul’Dan and the much missed Wildhammer Dwarves make it worthwhile for long time Blizzard fans.  I also was bowled over by a very silly quest reward, which made me chuckle on a number of levels.  I was a bit alarmed when it appeared that the Skettis were summoning Nylarthotep!

On the guild front, I have finally gotten tired of the crappy interface and lack of actual features on Guild portal (including an easy to remember URL ) even after giving them $30 cash, and Snipps, the Guild Leader has authorized me to check out potential solutions.  I am leaning heavily to lobby for gamerDNA.com for their turnkey solutions plus their typefrag ventrilo offer.   And Free, well free is fantastic for hosting.

March 2, 2009  

What A Weekend-

There was going to be a post on Friday. Honest. But then I realized I was only a little way from getting flying on Jaramon and a mount and it became a geas from which I could not be free. (Much like the level 70 dailies.)

So yeah, I hit 71 last night while grinding cash for my gryphon, and drooling over the other, faster, well armored gryphons or the death knight only mount.

Dailies have been a lot of fun, and I am working on Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley, since I have been to neither before.  (I am also wrapping up Blade’s Edge Mountains.)  I have grandmastered in Inscription, herbalism, and First Aid. (I am soo glad those are done now…) On to fishing and cooking soon.

Sunday turned into the day of doing instance runs for the Guild, with an Orgrimmar run for Ragefire Chasm, and both Razorfens.  We got good gear for a few of the lowbies and we got acheievements, which are cracklike and tasty.

I spent the remainder of the day between supplying Amdusias things to sell on the auction house and collecting money for flying and a mount to go with it.

The Results were.. well look!

I mean how cool is that?  I did of course do the obligatory stay up way too late and fly around Outland for grins thing.  That way I can get back to the work at hand next time I log in.

I went for the snowy white one because the Ebony one looked like crap.  No offense to whoever did the skin, it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

As you can see by the achievements list, I knocked out a few more area explorations just by, well, exploring.  This is what exploring is supposed to be like.

February 25, 2009  

Hrumph. I didnt expect that.

At level 67, I was still using Two Handed weapons.  Why?  The Death Knight just seems so much cooler with them, and I felt that the damage was sufficient (and it is!) for most quests and such.

Until Monday.  Monday I was planning on running our Assassinlings through Stockades to get them some quality loot and felt that my chances of keeping them alive was to dual weild, since one hand weapons attack more frequently.  What I did not expect, however, was once that was done, I went out and tried them on my usual mobs.

I was doing ~300 DPS at two hand, and with dual wield it was averaging around 400DPS.  I don’t get it,   They should roughly be the same, or even within 10% of each other but a 33% increase?  No wonder everyone is running dw right now.

I was floored.  Dual Weilding was yeilding 100 MORE DPS than two hand weapons.

Now I see why Blizzard wants to try to prop up the Two hand using DKs a little. I just cant believe the night and day difference in the two styles.

I would almsot call that a testing fail at Blizzard.

January 6, 2009  

Unicorns and stuff.

A number of other blogs are making posts about their most elusive piece of gear or loot right now and I am kind of at a loss.  I really hadn’t thought about a particular piece of loot that I might want before, since it is all relative.

If I had to pin it down, I would say a flaming two handed sword.  I don’t care which one.  Just something that looks really cool.

Really any weapon with a particle effect will do.  If it makes noises while fighting or has some weird proc, even better.

I think I might be indifferent to *THAT ONE* item.
Weird.

The other thing I would really want is No Queues on Earthen Ring or Shadowsong.  But that will happen in time.

December 23, 2008  

Recruited a friend. Now what?

Actually, while I have been waiting  to move Jaramon to Earthen Ring, I got a friend to play WoW and have been doing the recruit a friend thing.    I think this is pretty cool, leveling with triple experience.  (I have to say,  it makes the rested experience go a lot farther!)  (On the other hand, you quickly out strip your earnings and sometimes have to choose between abilities.)

I started leveling a Hunter on the Alliance side on Shadowsong (in addition to Sinanan on Earthen Ring,) and a Priest on Earthen Ring.   It is fairly interesting to play one of these other classes, especially since I have been paying more attention to the ‘gotchas’ of the classes.  It has helped when I  play my Death Knight as well, in that I learn things like the 100% threat will cause a mob to change targets at melee range, but that it takes 130% from a distance.

When I go back to play the Death Knight it is like a light bulb goes on and then I can adjust my play style for more efficiency and being friendlier to people I group with.

In the coming weeks I will probably ruminate on that some and post my thoughts from Priest and Hunter as it pertains to the playing of the Death Knight.

December 16, 2008  

Welcome to Camp Winterhoof… Enjoy the scenery

Having wrapped up my adventures in southern Howling Fjord, We made our way to where the evergreen forests give way to the snowy mountains. I found the scenery to be breath taking and needed to take a moment as I approached to take in the beauty of Northrend.

With that out of the way I promptly went to Camp Winterhoof and got a burger and some bison jerky more supplies and picked up a few quests, including one that had me gathering ram’s horns so that a particular winterhoof could make a device and then testing said device.

Now this is normally no problem except that the location of the test is a frozen waterfall not far from the camp.   I suspected trickery, but had no idea how low the Winterhoof could sink to get guinea pigs for their products.

I ride to the waterfall, killing several of the elementals there for another quest that I had, and got close.  (Blogger’s note: I really expected some epic event like having the waterfall become a giant elemental or breaking from the sound.  I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of what would transpire next.  I actually took the video because I WAS expecting the waterfall to do something cool.) I pulled the horn out and looked around.  I was relatively sure I was safe, and prepared for the waterfall to try to kill me.

*HOOOOOOONNNNNNK*  went the horn.  2 seconds:  still alive  5 seconds: nothing.  Look around.  Nothing.  By this point I am thoroughly confused and my ghoul is making fun of me.

Wait.

I hear a voice?  I look around.  Nothing.  Maybe it is in the waterfall…  Ill blow the horn again.

Nope.  By this point the Ghoul had become useless and I would need a new one because he had losst all respect for me.

Just as I am about to try the horn for a third time, something approaches from the right and hits me.  HARD.

I turn to see a giant Furry THING.  A Thing that is complaining that I am not a female and didn’t take it out to dinner or something…  He is causing me more than a little pain.  I take several seconds to  do more than hit it halfheartedly.  Finally I get into my rotation and get the ghoul into the action and take him down quickly, with only my pride wounded.  I quickly dispel the old ghoul and get a new one so that word of this NEVER gets out.

Having vanquished the beast, I moved on to greener pastures, swearing to never again blow another individual’s horn of yeti mating.

Click the above video to see it as it actually happened!

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