Quick Patch 3.0.8 thoughts

Overall I rate this patch as good. Its going to cost me a small chest full of gold for the respecs while I muck about, but it will be worth it.

• The “Tap” change is wonderful! No more missing out on a tag because your opening affect does no damage. Warlocks (dot), Priests (dot), Druids (faerie fire) will benefit.
• DK changes are not over, and while they’ve up’ed some stuff (Blood HP regen) and down’ed other stuff (general Unholy damage), the changes in the middle for Frost tanking make sense to me the most.
• Especially good for DK Tanks is the new weapon enchant: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, apparently adds Def +25 and Stam by 2% as a Weapon Enchant. That is tank love!
• Having the Summon Ghoul and Raise an Ally as two spells makes sense. Nice change.
• Having the Glyph remove the Corpse Dust cost is an even better change for Unholy. Combined with the 40/70% avoidance means pets don’t insta-gib as much.
• Sigil of Haunting Dreams, now gives a chance to grant 173 crit strike rating for 10 secs on Blood Strike and Heart Strike. Nice, for 15 tokens.
• Blacksmithing has been adjusted so that its harder to level at the 390-415-ish bracket. Basically there was a pattern that made it ultra-cheap to create stuff and get skill points. Its been adjusted so that the mats are more costly. I’d be a bit miffed if I hadn’t already passed 420.
• Shaman have had their Talent points refunded, so why not the Death Knights? Not enough of an adjustment I suppose.

Character Sigs that update automatically?

For Mort’s tag I’ve chosen to use Zetbit.com; till I find one that can auto-update from the Armory data. I really like the DK art they’ve gathered together and maybe the reason that the stats are not what I see in game are due to talents.

Anyone know of a service that creates sigs and tags straight from within the game, and saves them into a LUA?

Figure Prints – Canada and USA only (rant)

Get a Figure Print soon, unless you’re in “the remote rest of the world”, in which case you’re plain out of luck. Basically just the same as the authenticator used to be, and just like the authenticator the company should wake up and let the rest of the world give them money.

C’mon retailers – get with the program.

I like DK dps upgrades

Another good few days and I’ve been helped along with the never ending upgrade path.

This has made a significant difference to my base combat stats, and also the associated damage/dps I can create. Not ultra-cool as yet, but certainly nice if I concentrate. Its plausible that my AP will break 3000 soon and already at over 26% crit. The next major hurdle I need to get over is my use of a rotation and when to use abilities. Training wheels here I come.

The gear was:

• an incredible Ring: Titanium Impact Band, for dps – but I have to put a darn +hit gem into it so that I can reduce miss while the other gear improves. This ring is darn good. Only negative is the Armour Pen, which I don’t rate.
• a nice Ring: Ring of Scarlet Shadows, for dps – which while not as cool as the Titamium Impact is still an upgrade and especially good as it allows a gem within it too. I gemed for +8 hit/stam, so to also get the socket bonus of +8 AP; but will most likely juts drop 8AP bonus and put in a +16 hit gem.
• an OK change of Gloves: Plate Claws of the Daron. Which while sounding godlike, are not awesome but still a very clear improvement on the rubbish quest reward I was using.
• a new Cloak: Cloak of Bloodied Feathers, that is the best in slot for pve before Naxx and badge gear. Worthy of a good AP enchant I’ll be chasing over the weekend.
• and a week ago I grabbed a new Neck: Pendant of the Outcast Hero. Its not perfect, but again so cheap for badges.

Three of the four items were gifts, so my take home message is: be nice to your guild-mates. I owe a few of them pretty big.

(yes, one of those “I gots new loots” posts)

Unholy vs Blood Presence for PvE

Update (3 May 2011): Patch 4.1 has changed Frost Death Knights again, so now the use of Unholy presence is viable and desirable, but the jury is still out on exactly which circumstances require which presence. For now use Unholy for Frost, especially if you have a need for high movement.

Old info (9 March 2011): Cataclysm has totally changed the choice of which presence to use. Please do not use Blood Presence for DPS any more, its a Tank Presence now. I have written an updated post on this topic, but the content is repeated here.

From now onward the choice of DPS presence is between Frost and Unholy. Generally if you are an Unholy DK, then use Unholy Presence especially where fights require a lot of movement. Also if you’re a Frost DK then use Frost presence for dual-weild and Unholy for using a two handed weapon (see links for proof). This is a deliberate change in style so that the spec matches the presence.

So the DPS rule is now: 2h weapon = Unholy, x2 single handed weapons = Frost.

Original post is below.

I ping’ed a question about Unholy vs Blood presence for Death Knights in PvE, to Skeleton Jack. The response left little doubt in my mind of his opinion.

Noted SJ, I won’t ask again. 🙂

heya SJ,

How about this old topic: Unholy vs blood presence, as a blood spec dk

I was doing HoA (? big boss that is a 4 minute dps race), and was told to switch from Blood to Unholy. Could the reason be the fight being very short? The reason I ask is that I thought that blood was better overall, and increased the damage on all abilities.

I’ll have to try some target dummies. And then I remembered you posting something along the lines of “blood always for dps pve” and it got me thinking.

cheers,

Andrew

The response goes:

DO NOT USE UNHOLY PRESENCE TO DO PvE DPS OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL BEAT YOU WITH A STICK!!!

Death Knight Gear and Spec update

This weekend I was able to play for more than a few hours, and it was glorious. Six noteworth changes that brought a smile to my face.

1) New Death Knight spec

After an expensive (because Corpse Dust is 50s each) and frustrating (because I knew I could do better, but was confused) first run in Naxx I decided that Unholy/Blood was not for me in the short term, and re-spec’ed to focus on Blood. 2H Blood seems to be single target dps, and while I know full well it is inferior to Unholy 2Weapon or 2H – it appeals. I’ve gone for 51/13/7, for no other reason than the early Unholy talents are ok, and the later Frost did not seem to add anything significant. I’m not claiming the spec is perfect, but it does work.

Blood with a smattering of Frost and Unholy is more enjoyable to play than heavy Unholy. Its a little simplier, and you feel like you have a much better control of what and where you’re hitting. Unholy AoE is wonderful, but Unholy did AoE even when you didn’t want to, and the Ghoul is a situational pet now, so I don’t feel silly if I don’t use it. Its also great to use when a humaniod drops, as the DK feel is meant for this.

The upcomming patch will alter the class enough for me to review the spec again, but till then I’m happy.

2) New gear, from Guild folks and drops

Past 9 days have been upgrade days.

• New Helm: Spiked Titansteel Helm, gifted from two guildmates (ye-haw! Thanks Rezinar and Littlepal),
• with a DPS meta gem (from AH),
• and the Revered Ebon Blade enchant (recently aquired the rep) = win!
• New Belt: Flame-bathed Steel Girdle, with a Hit and Stam gem, and then a Belt Socket and a Prismatic Gem for stats
• New Sword: Runeblade of Demonstratable Power, from the Ebon Blade rep too
• New Boots: Rift Striders, from Heroic Nexus
• New Chest: Chestplate of the Risen Soldier, from Naxx
• New Bracers: Vengance Bindingse, from a guilmate (thanks Littlepal)

I still need to get the Bracers and Boot enchanted, but thats cheap by comparison to the mats the guild-folk spent for the Helm and Bracers.

3) Death Knight patch changes, in 3.0.8
In their current (updated) form we’re getting nurfed. These are not bad changes, and as wonderful as the experience of DK has been so far, I expected to get adjusted downward. I hope the Death Knight changes will be handled in a professional manner, and we’ll see small micro-changes to follow. If they got it right. If we get lucky.

What I expect to see is thousands of posts about how its not far enough, and other DKs foretelling doom of the class. We will see what they finally equate to when the patch is actually deployed and till then everyone should stop panicking. Save your hissy fit till after its real.

Or go back to whatever class you played before Death Knight, and leave the rest of us alone. Either way, STFU.

4) DeathNoobs, DeathTards, and all the other names.

The question that I ask when folks are griping about DK-noobs is am I one of those. Its a given that most folks think they are not, but its worth asking the question of yourself just in case. Keep yourself honest.

A handy checklist is at The Sourge and a few comments at Skeleton Jack – but face it folks we know the truth: you add a new class to WoW and you’ll see everyone try it. A large proportion will be terrible. Just like every Blood Elf was a fool, and most Jewelcrafters didn’t know their craft at all. Time will sort out the NoobTards from the rest.

The bad players will suck the same no matter what toon they play, and when they play a Hunter, Rogue, or Death Knight they have access to some really irritating abilities. I pug’ed Heroic with a Rogue in better gear than my upgraded set last night, who did not break 850 dps in any fight. That player failed.

5) Mining from 290 to 400, and Blacksmith from 250 to 275.

This takes ages. The weekends efforts in Mining was pleasing, and now I’m at least able to mine the nodes in and around the end quest areas. Getting to 425 Mining is not a huge deal for me, but breaking 400 was very satisfying.

Blacksmith is a prick to level, especially if you want to also do the crafting specialisations.

6) The Rocket Chicken Approves! (silly)

I had not noticed the Rocket Chicken in Booty Bay before, but darn me its odd. Rocket Chicken may well become my stamp for silly posts.

This badboy gets 25 miles per gallon of goblin rocket fuel. No wonder the price of fuel is high.

New mount for Shadow Priests? (silly)

A proud Shadow Priest will always want to let those around them know they’re Shadow.

What should a car look like when its Shadow spec?

Therefore the gear, weapons, and especially mounts should reflect that. So if a Shadow Priest player was looking for a pimped out car, they’d be all over something that had Shadow stamped on it.

The *cough* awesome Shadow Car after the break.

And a warning its no less odd that the Rage car found a while back which has very little to do with Warriors or Druid Bears.

Why is it that my eye catches words like Shadow, Rage, and such and pipes WoW straight into my brain…?

The old days – silly

This was a pretty good reminder of the old days before the Death Knight took my heart away from Paladins.

Some days I miss my Paladin Tank

Tired of lol-speak

I’m tired of the overuse of lol-speak terms, and thankfully I’m not the only one. WarAnvil has the same opinion.

We need a WoW Forum parser that functions like the Blue Tracker, except it drops any posts that have too many lol-speak terms.

I think after that ran I’d be able to read the official forums in under a minute, as two pages is very quick to read.

Want Bind to Guild and Guild Achievements, sign up here…

We have Bind to Account items (BtA predicted), and personal achievements for characters now, and these are really cool features. The attaining of achievements has become more than a “grats” opportunity and many players relish the experience of gathering as many as possible.

Other players view these as distractions, and if you’re such a player then please return later as you’re not going to like what is following.

The next step in evolving and broadening the player experience is making Bind to Guild (BtG) items, and Guild Achievements (GAs) included in the game as well. A Guild is a fundamental choice for a massive selection of the WoW community (my opinion), but we have not seen an advance in treatment of Guilds in the same manner as we have seen in Characters.

Don’t get me wrong, this is no gripe; I just want to push for more.

As a start lets look at the pros and cons:

Cons

• more ass-hattery bragging
• will make us spend more time getting these
• opportunity for betrayal

Pros

• all the against items apply here
• a definitive way to reflect and reward the dedication to a Guild as different from the dedication of a player.
• tangible in-game items, that only your Guild can use
• roleplaying potential is significant

New Year Resolution: Game On

Now that the 2 week hiatus enforced by a trip away over Christmas and New Years is over, I can look forward to a 2009 full of gankage, qq, rofl, and all other things that are the cornerstones of playing World of Warcraft.

My new years resolutions are:
– pay my 500g debt (thanks again Rakk)
– get back in the game
– become a regular raider, by booking in the time in advance. For this some of my real life typical misadventures will have to be rescheduled
– level an Alt in the off times, but remain focused on my Death Knight main. In the short term that means not doing anything like an alt until I have Mining and Blacksmith topped out, and all the greens gear is gone and properly enchanted.

Epic Flying Dead Chicken

The few hours I spent playing over the holidays were not wasted. Thanks to a guildie for the loan – I have an epic speed Undead Chicken for my Death Knight.

Mortigen will enjoy the speed, and imho the only mount a Death Knight should get is the Undead Chicken/Gryphon, till you at least have one of the cool drakes from rep or instances. A regular epic flyer is just not trying.

That makes 4x epics and my first epic flyer in Northrend (and a 500g debit).