Is this a Timeless Isle rort?

In the Timeless Isle there is the capacity to earn special “bloody coins” currency by adopting the mantle of Ordos and killing others. Get enough coins and there are some nifty non-combat rewards and even a cool mount for 500x of the buggers. On my PvE realm flagging like that is still a dangerous act, as many folk will take the opportunity to fight and the buff takes away a lot of your health. I imagine that on a pvp realm it is one hell of a fast and deadly activity.

I found a group of characters up on the very northern tip of the Isle who appeared to be having their own little Ordos party, where I can only assume they take turns dying and killing each other. A good idea really, but is it a rort?

To be fair they may not have been switching to kill each other for Bloody Coins. Perhaps there was some other RP activity going on, and I’d just found the new tunnel for the DeepRun Tram? I wasn’t invited to join them, and perhaps that was a good thing.

To get there I was riding over the water well beyond where any monsters or quests go, and it was very still and quite. Good on these players for finding a nook to sequester themselves. More power (and blood-coin-thingys) to them.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

Thassarian, you’re doing it wrong man.

Don’t get me wrong, Thassarian is one heavy dude. I have a lot of respect for a fellow Death Knight, especially one who faced up against Arthas. But Thassarian, you’re doing it wrong.

Dual wielding in Blood presence makes no sense, but I’ll forgive him; he’s only level 72 after all. He has a long way to go before getting to 90.

This is one for the original DKs. Found while leveling my lowbie Shaman through Wrath content.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew.

Full Death Knight team raze Heroic DS 25 – Awesome

Here is an odd endeavour – to clear Heroic Dragon Soul raid with a full Death Knight Team. Awesome work gentlemen. It demonstrates just how interesting a challenge can be created. I have no doubt that a full Druid, Paladin, and Monk clear could be performed too. Kudos for the DKs for getting this together. Check out the vids and the banter via the links.

As a keen DK and Wow’er this is entertaining. Players seeking to nudge the edge of what is reasonable and intended in a game should be encouraged, and while we’ll never see an achievement for “Full raid single class” due to the bias against classes that cannot do this – its notable. Just as cool is the soloing of Lich King on Hard mode in a 10 man raid.

The group’s main setup included:

• 4 tank blood DKs
• 17 DPS blood DKs
• 3 DC heal blood DKs (to assist tanks with Deathcoil Glyph)
• 1 DW frost DK (for buff)

The team also called in a druid and priest for the Spine encounter to beat the dispel mechanic.

Now this might garner some “DKs are OP” comments too, and I have two things to say to that: (a) shut it troll, and (b) yes, Death Knights are awesome…

Happy Killing

DK Tank note in MoP beta build 16048

If the title was not janky enough with abbreviations and miscellaneous numbers then read the full patch notes for the recent Beta build dropping soon. I expect the stead series of adjustments to continue for at least a month after MoP release. Just enjoy the variety people, for now is the time to test out all the odd stuff and enjoy the game before we’re meant to be serious again.

We get more tweaks via MMO Champion, for Blood Tanks we have this change:

• Death Strike now does 280% weapon damage, up from 230%. Damage increased by 43%.
• Heart Strike now does 115% weapon damage, down from 170%. Damage reduced by 54%.

What does it mean? Apparently Blood DK damage was too high on multi-target. No effect on base healing effect from DS. I know that this is certainly not what I am seeing in current game, so keep in mind this is level 90 content based feedback (what do you mean you’re spending your time farming for rares and not in beta?… me too).

Warrior Tanks get a few buffs too, which should make them happy. Paladin Tanks I think will still suffer a bit at the moment, although that is an impression based upon rants and wanderings rather than analysis and posts.

Related articles

• No dk updates, harumph! (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• wow Beta Build 16030 for DKs (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• What do I know about other classes and specs? (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• wow build 15961 has DK changes. Yay! (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Tanking as Blood mandatory in expansion

There will be blood.

Looks like the writing is on the wall for Death Knights who are not using a Blood spec to tank. Blood will be the Tank tree in Cataclysm expansion.

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

This is something that I did not think they’d do, but is easy to understand why. The differences between the tank classes were enough that giving them a semblance of parity was hard; and having DKs witk 3 talent trees just makes that harder still.

In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.

Which is why I can accept that something had to be done – but sheesh, it is a big call. Huge call, I expect to see some Death Knights who step away from the class due to this. Could be worth getting as much value from your non-blood tanking now. 🙂

So DKs will probably have a tank, pve, and pvp tree. I can see Unholy being the PvE and Frost as the PvP talent trees.

This is a tad too much of a change from the cool almost-any-tree which they have now; but then it would not be the first time a class has been totally re-worked during an expansion.

Does make me think that with Frost talents having dual wield, will we also see dual-wield as only viable in one spec, or will it be retained as a concept for both Tank and DPS, or even pvp and pve?

We’re just not sure yet on DW Blood tanking or 2H Frost dps. Certainly our main focus will be to make sure 2H Blood tanking and DW Frost dps work, but we’re not likely to crack down on alternate uses of those specs. We’re not sure that a Blood DW style could work without talents that allow for strikes with both weapons, but we’ll see. It should be a fun beta. 🙂

Like most posts this raises more questions for me than answers; and I can’t wait to see more. Can I get a beta key maybe? probably not, but one can wish.

• Where will two weapon be used? I have 2x one hander ilevel 232 tank weapons that I’d like to take for a spin.
• What happens to Frost presence as the Tanking presence?
• Couldn’t the mastery bonus be based upon the presence that the DK uses, rather than the talent tree if they wished to keep 3 viable Tank trees?

Sourced from mmo-champion

Death Knight DPS spec change

A few posts ago I told folks that I’d be going Blood for dps in PvE in 3.1. And after a few runs it is just not fun, not my cup of tea. I find Blood dps messy, too opportunistic, and the rotations are intolerant of lag, and intolerant of interruptions. And that aint good.

I initially chose Blood as it was close to the diseaseless spec that I was using before that, but with or without DRW, UB, or any other combo – it just feels scattered. So my Blood vs Unholy choice comes out a strong Unholy.

My lag sits anywhere from ms 500 to 800, and in 10 and especially 25 man raids that means the UI is chugging to keep up, and my abilities do not fire with a sharp snap. Instead they tend to get queued, and sometimes fire and sometimes just disappear. The paranoid part of my brain says that Blizzard may have changed the way abilities get loaded to be even more optimised for great connections, but I have absolutely no proof of that. It just feels that way.

So now I’ve spec’ed back to Unholy for dps. Its odd, but Unholy dps feels good. I leveled as Unholy and the spec feels somewhat like what I have always expected. Like comming home. Unholy also seems more forgiving of lag, and the kind folks at EJ say that Unholy is also more forgiving of bad gear. Well my gear is good (thank you very much), and Unholy feels solid. Very very solid.

Key to my appreciation of the Unholy tree is:

• the Improved Presence, where I can get the speed buff from Unholy while in Blood Presence. Almost all fights I see now have an advantage to having increased speed. 15% might not be much compared to Cats, but it counts.
• Permanent ghoul, which costs nothing to summon and dismiss with the Glyph. That is a must have, and wonderful for Instance runs. I need to find a mod that tells me when my Ghoul is almost dead, so I can heal it, or wipe it for extar HP. (any ideas folks?)
• Bone Armour gives a dps buff and slight help with inbound damage.
• Disease spreading for AoE is stronger and Pestilance + UB is very strong AoE. Grated it blows a heap of runes really quickly, but thats the point. Unload a lot of AoE attacks early and then ping a target while the runes refresh.

The Death Knight is akin to a plate wearing Warlock, and unholy with perma Ghoul is as close as you get. It means that once again I switch my stats around a bit for more hit and AP rather than Crit (being as spell damage is from AP and spell hit). But hey, what raider does not regularly drop 100g a week in gems, patches, and enchants?

Performance wise I can’t tell you, yet. I think I’ve dropped a small amount of single target dps to gain a shit load of AoE capacity. If I get my rotations rolling and get lucky I don’t have to refresh diseases which means much more dps. If the Gargoyle was out at the same time, I think I’d be smashing mobs left and right.

And I can’t wait to see. Watch this space.

Patch 3.1 spec for Death Knight

Update: As we’re well beyond patch 3.1, this spec advice needs to be reviewed and updated. I recommend jumping on EJ and browsing through their posts on the build you like. IMHO Currently Unholy 2H seems the solid top damage, slightly above Blood 2H.

The jury is still out on the absolute winners, and almost every spec option (1h vs 2h, blood vs frost vs unholy) is viable.

Here comes patch 3.1, and everyone is checking the web for patch notes and spec updates. For me this means choosing two specs for my Death Knight. I will be considering my DPS role to be my primary role, but now will be looking for Tanking opportunities too.

Death Knight specs are all stolen 100% from Skeleton Jack (note: SkelJ has basically stopped posting).

DPS: 50/0/21 which chooses Unholy Blight (UB) over Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW).

DPS notes:

• This is for PvE DPS, not PvP.
• I have not been enjoying the DRW of late, as some fights I don’t think I get the full benefit of it unless you’re standing still just pinging abilities. UB is used more often which I think gives it more versatility. I certainly liked UB when I was Unholy.
• UB is also better for AoE than DRW, and I get frustrated when I get outpaced by Warriors using Whirlwind and all the other AoE heavy classes (Mages, Warlocks, etc). Some fights as DPS you’re standing in the middle of the hell storm of mobs, so UB takes full advantage.
• I love Hysteria and the Improved Blood Aura in my current blood spec, so the choice between Unholy DPS and Blood DPS was easy.
• With the Death Strike glyph, I’ll have to remember to keep 25 Runic Power around as much as possible.

Tank: 12/51/8 which is a pretty standard Frost Tank spec.

Tank notes:

• It makes the most sense to me that Frost would be strong for Tanking, from a roleplaying perspective, and I made the choice of which tree to use basically because of this.
• I could drop 2-H-Weapon in the Blood tree, and grab some other stuff. Acclimation in Frost, Butchery in Blood for the extra RP (I’m a RP whore), or Lichborne for the oh-shit factor. Not sure, but happy to see how this plays initially. But I do like hitting mobs with a huge 2H weapon.

General

• I read almost everything on EJ, Deathknight.info, wowinsider, and the first few pages of Google searches, and could not find any information that was even close to what SJ has put together. Even if he is wrong by a few talent points here and there, its still the best post on DK specs I’ve seen. Kudos.

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!!!

Unholy love for PTR 3.0.8 Notes

Overall I like this patch. Lots of changes, with the highlights that I like the most:

• Death Knights on any Realm – does this mean you have a 55 on one realm, and then you create a 55 on another? If so that’s strange but good for allowing re-balance. Not that I need anothert DK, but its good regardless.
• More graveyards is a good thing, and hopefully we get a few more places to run from in Northrend and Outland too.
• Run speed while dead has been increased, yay.
• Most of the DK changes are great, but a touch of love for the Frosty tanks might have been good. I can see the Unholy changes really helping, and I love the fact that Horn is now no cost and gives RunePower. I can’t see Gargoyle as a real option still, the RP cost is too high compared to chat the Ghoul can do.
• Swipe for Feral cats at 71 is wonderful.
• Tapping a target makes it yours, and any action that Aggros is a tap. Woot.

All the notes after the fold, and yes, I see the improvements while being dead as very worth while. Its part of how I manage Aggro. 🙂