Riddle me this, Death Knight......

So I have been playing a Frost specced Death Knight all day. Yowzers! What an AWESOME storyline! All I can say is Fordring must be Ret specced. Anyway, there have been a lot of questions thrown at me especially when I was running around Stormwind. Here are some of my favorites.

Warlock: Where do I go for Death Knight training?
Me: Cathedral District, in the basement.
Warlock: TYVM!!!

Death Knight: Why can't I equip a shield?
Me: Death Knights have to kill Hogger to equip shields.
Death Knight: In Elwynn?
Me: Yup, but you have to get the bait from that guy in Feralas. Then you give it to Hogger and he becomes a level 80 elite. Its the only way.
Me: Ok thanks!

Death Knight: What is the best spec?
Me: Ret, far right tree, needs to be unlocked.
Death Knight: Awesome!

Death Knight: Where can I find the best walkthrough for this new start zone
Me: Try reading your quest log.

Yeah, OK, I can be a bit of a dick. But really, for serious. I can understand some questions, but you should have somewhat of a grasp on this game if your rolling a Death Knight. You need what, a minimum of 55 levels on one character before you can make a Death Knight. If you stop at 60 and make a Death Knight, you might not know every there is to know, but you should know enough that you can manage to work your way through the easiest starting zone ever. At that, what ever happened to figuring things out for yourself, either through experimentation or research?

In general though, I do try and be helpful. Usually I will respond to questions that seem really basic, because we have all been there. I don't really think making a public spectacle of someone in Trade Chat is the most effective way of helping them. Hell, I was chatting with a 64 Pally in Shatt the other day. He was smothered in healing gear, specced with some half ass Ret build, and was looking to tank an instance. So I had a chat with him, turns out he was a nice guy, its just that no one has ever helped him figure out what to do. I went over some basic Pally stuff, advised on how to gear, how to spec etc, and added him to my friends list. I saw him later at level 69, and he looked to be doing much better. Of course he was trying to get in as a tank on a heroic UB without a key, but whatever. I walked him over to the quartermaster and got him setup.

A little feedback on the Death Knight. The starting area is just awesome. Those were some of the best quests I have done yet. If all of Northerend is just like the DK start zone, then leveling will be a lot of fun! The story itself was great. I really recommend taking the time to read everything, even the documents that end up in your inventory. Very interesting stuff, and it really immerses you into the whole Death Knight thing. The best part is walking through Stormwind at the end of the questline. Good stuff!

Actually playing the DK is equally awesome. There is a good bit of thinking that you have to do to get max DPS and there are a lot of tools at your disposal, even at the base level with no talents. It reminds a lot of the my Affliction Warlock in that you have to have as many DoTs up on the target as possible to get max benefit from your other spells and abilities. In this case, there are only two diseases that I have seen available for the DK, so its pretty easy to get those off and then really start laying into them. So it is actually kinda the reverse of the Warlock since you would want Haunt up first, and then apply the rest of your DoTs. For the DK you want your two diseases up first, and then you start using your other abilities.

The Runes and Runic Power system is very fluid too. I was expecting it to be wonky, but its actually very smooth and almost combines Rage and Energy. I am impressed. The other impressive thing is how you can tweak it up through talents. You can increase your max Runic Power from 100 to 130 through talents, and you can get talents to help make your normal Runes into Death Runes, which can be used for either Frost, Unholy, or Blood Runes. It really makes things more flexible if you find that it would be helpful for you.

Currently, I am specced full Frost, and I will probably stay that way as a main spec. I plan and playing with the other ones via the dual spec system, whenever that comes out. It just seems like Frost gives the most control for different situations. It also seems like there is a bunch of good tanking stuff in there compared to the other two trees. However, I understand that all three trees are supposed to be capable of tanking, so I will have to re-examine that statement later.

The last thing I would like to touch on is the look. To say that a DK looks like a badass would be an understatement. You look scary and powerful. Its awesome. You start out looking like an armored Sith lord when you first enter Ebon Hold. Eventually you start to look like a plate armored behemoth. The new set of gear you end up with is all blues and its fairly well itemized to boot. The downside is that I have yet to see a real upgrade from any of the quested stuff in HFP. Most of the plate seems geared toward Paladins. All of the Warrior plate is a downgrade so far as well. Its really not a big deal though since I am in no hurry to lose the look I have now, I would just like some better stats.

Related to the looks is the mount. It really completes the whole "I will kill you" persona that DKs tote around. My brother and I really love the sound that the Charger makes when you summon it. I can see how it would irritate some people, and who knows, it may grow old. But that blood curdling scream just sends a shiver down my spine every time. I can't wait to see what the flying mount looks like!

I am having a lot of fun with the DK. I don't think I will be stopping at 60 like I previously stated. I will probably have Amadis into Northrend before Dradis. I will have to see how it goes from there. Once again, another alt project is getting shelved. My newly minted Level 8 Human Warrior is going to be spending an awfully long time in the Lions Pride Inn. Man I suck at alts. And there is a reason behind this name!

Oh yeah.... I killed Mayor Quimby, it was great!

A Dash of Warrior.....

Well my altaholism strikes again. I could not seem to locate my Warrior (deleted I guess, although I don't remember doing that). So there is only one solution. Roll a new one. Yep, gonna make a level 1 Human Warrior. Professions will be Mining and Herbalism for the stamina boost and HoT respectively. The goal will be dual speccing Protection and Fury or Arms (haven't decided). Leveling spec will be Dual Wield Fury.

Hey, don't look at me like that! No, I am not crazy! And yes I will be rolling a Death Knight, but I really just want to see the story. The DK most likely won't get past 60.

Oh Draedus. She is doing just fine. I need to turn in her current quest log and she will be sitting pretty @ 69. Then its off to Nagrand, which will be thankfully free of lag. And I will be leveling Dradis in Northrend too. Yeah, lots of work, but no one is being ignored. Right now though, it is literally the battle of the main.

I am actually quite happy with how Dradis is playing right now in Ret spec, so its nothing like that. I just don't know where I want to put most of my efforts at the moment. The Warlock is giddy fun. The Paladin is very self sufficient and flexible should the need arise. The Warrior thing.... have you seen the Prot tree? Yeah....

Anyway, just some random thoughts. I am really excited about the expansion and I do hope that things go smooth. Hell, I hope I can login when I get home in a few hours, as the servers were down all day yesterday. Gotta get the first few levels done before I go to bed!

Just a few more hours to WotLK......

Healing As Ret

Yeah I know, I just posted like ten minutes ago. I forgot to comment on Ret Healing. I was reminded when I visited BoK's page to get my daily does of Coriel.It reminded me that whether it was intentional or not, there is combat healing in the game for Paladins. I was doing it earlier yesterday actually in Blasted Lands. Here is the story.

So I was Scourge hunting early Tuesday morning on my own. I was happily clearing Scourge out when I saw a Hunter show up. I asked him if he need to kill the Shades, and indeed he did. So an invite went out to him, he accepted and we cleared out Scourge until the crystal broke. From there, we were trying to come up with a strategy. Now at first he had a level 70 wasp with him. The plan was that I would gain aggro, tank and heal myself and he would pew pew. We managed to get the Shade to 15% before I died. New strategy, have the wasp tank, I heal and dps a little, and he pew pews. I couldn't keep the wasp up though. I needed more mana, and the wasp was taking to big of hits.

The Hunter suggested that he get his level 68 gorilla out and have that tank. Sounded good to me. But the heal situation had me concerned a little. The Hunter said he would be back in 15 minutes, so I stayed and took some time figuring out how to regen mana faster to keep chain spamming FoL and do some DPS so I could keep AoW up as much as possible.

So this is what I came up with:
-Buff with Blessing of Wisdom
-Keep Ret Aura up for the haste and to help with the gorillas threat (or whatever tank you happen to have)
-Keep Seal of Wisdom up
-Judge with Judgement of Wisdom
-Crusader Strike when possible
-Do not stop auto attacking

I think most of you probably see how this would work. If not, here is the gist of it. Blessing of Wisdom is straight regen. You would lose some spell power by not using Blessing of Might, but mana regen is the most important thing here. Ret Aura will speed up your heals and you will be well in range of the tank so he can get the threat from the reflective damage. Seal of Wisdom will proc off of auto-attacks, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. Also, each attack you do has a chance to restore mana if you are Judging Wisdom.

As far as attacks go, you probably want to avoid DS since its so expensive. CS is fairly cheap though, so it is more feasible to use that. The other thing is that you need to crit with CS, DS, or Judgement to get the AoW procs, which is why you want to try and sneak some Crusader Strikes in.

The reason you need to get AoW procs is to help deal with spike damage. Of course, FoL crits will help a bit too since they will put the Sheathe HoT on your target. Relying on crits is obviously not the best healing strategy, a little too RNG based. Standing behind the mob while healing is generally not the best strategy either, but as a Ret Paladin, that is all you have.

Now why, might you ask, is this relevant to anything? Just get a real healer right? There a few places where the ability to heal as a Ret Paladin might be useful. Obviously, healing someone to take down an elite world mob is something that you could do. You would also probably be able to heal a regular instance without to many issues. How many times have you been stuck in group waiting for a healer to join? It happens, and being comfortable with healing in Ret could mean the difference between standing around for another 1 hour or gemming and enchanting your new gear that dropped off the last boss in Utgard Keep. I would think that Heroics and beyond would be out of the question.

Then again, with the advent of the dual spec system, most of this info will be largely irrelevant since a gear and spec swap could have you healing much better. But, for those looking for a "combat healer" there is one. I can guarantee though, not many people will be looking for Ret heals.

One other thing to take away from this useless post is that a slightly modified regen strategy is perfectly viable for Ret DPS. If mana drops to or below 10%, hit Seal of Wisdom and Judgement of Wisdom (if you aren't using that currently), and drop DS out of the rotation. This will skyrocket your mana in no time at the cost of DPS. Once your back to 90% or so, go back to normal rotation and SoComm or SoM/SoB and Judge what you would normally Judge, be it Light or Wisdom or Justice. Personally, I have just been Judging Wisdom all the time for the mana regen.

Few Updates.... Cause I Am Bored Again.....

Well this one week hiatus from blogging is not going well, but I am getting all my extra crap done, so who cares.

Dradis got her 4/4 Tier 2 Look-a-Like set today. Many thanks to Jendreka the Healy Shaman. I know picking flowers would have been more productive for him, but I think smiting undead was probably more fun. I got /spit on too by a Hunter for yanking two Shades of Doom at the same time. Funny thing is, he had more then enough time to aggro one or two of them before I did, he just took too long. If I didn't get them someone else would have. Snooze you lose? I think so. Of course had he communicated with us and asked for an invite, then he would have been able to have access to both of them as well. Not to mention that we could have probably tagged all four of the Shades at the same time and burned them down just as fast with the additional DPS from the Hunter.

Moral of the story, don't complain about people being ninjas if you have more then enough time to communicate with the "ninja" group ahead of time. Pot calling the kettle black? Just a little bit, yeah. Why? Well if group A doesn't want to combine efforts that means they have as much intention of keeping those kills away from group B as they perceive group B to have the same intention of keeping kills from them, if that makes sense. Whatever. I just didn't respond to Mr. Hunter after his verbal bashing and /spit. Of course Jen felt it necessary to laugh at him, but hey, someone had to.

Again, feeling a little better toward Dradis the Paladin. Getting back into the swing of it. Draedus is coming along nicely too. She should be hitting 69 after I turn in all the quests in her log. Then its off to Nagrand and hopefully level 70. Even if she doesn't hit 70 pre-WotLK, its not a big deal since she will be able to quest in Northerend. And hell I may just keep questing in outland with her since it would be pretty empty and pretty easy. I am not even sure I want to buy her regular flying mount though. I won't be able to use it until level 77 in Northerend, and that could be a while since I will probably level Dradis first since there seems to be more of a need for Replenishment and the other Ret Pally buffs then the Warlock utility. At least as far as I can tell. Could be wrong. Team feedback would be helpful in that regard. But in any case, that 1000 gold could be better invested since it won't really provide a lot of use in Northerend.

Also, I am considering leveling Engineering now on Dradis as well as Draedus. There is a lot of neat stuff coming up, and it would be nice to have it available to both toons. The ability to track and extract motes would be a nice money maker too, that is if motes are still needed in WotLK. I guess I could poke around some Beta forums to try and find out. And then there are the mounts. Biker Warlock Babe? As BRK would say, Fo Shizzle!

What else? Working on a bunch of achievements still on Dradis since she is farther along. It makes the most sense to me to have her work on achievements since I have no desire to repeat that on another toon. Don't get me wrong, I love getting achievements, but its not necessary to get them all done twice. Also, Dradis would look sexy riding a White Dragon with the title Argent Crusader, which both require achievements. Draedus, would look awesome riding a motorcycle with the title Hell's Angel. But, the bike does not require an achievement, and the title is not yet available (come on Blizz, you know you need to add that one in). Really there are no good titles for a Warlock that I can see, so that just further solidifies my choice to work on achievements with Dradis, not Draedus.

I should really think of a different naming scheme. Maybe just all D's, but not so damn similar. Maybe I will rename Dradis, it wouldn't be the first time, she used to be named Solenia, but I wanted something more gender neutral. In retrospect, it was actually a cool name and I should have just left it way. Gender neutrality be damned. Draedus I really like though, and it seems somehow fitting for a Warlock, so that's a keeper.

What's in a name though? About $10 dollars, that's what.

Of course, I would still leave comments and do blog posts as Dradis, there is no need to change that. A little separation from my toons would be nice though. Especially since my two mains are both chicks, and I am not. And I only specifically made the Pally a girl, and that was mostly because I thought the female Draenei model looked more balanced then the male model. That seems to be par for the course though. And she has a hot ass. That was a factor, not gonna lie. Did I say that? I meant she had a HoT heal. Yeah, that's what I meant. What? The male Draenei have that too? Huh, the more you know I guess (cue music). But I digress.

The Warlock just ended up that way, I had no say in the matter. Although, she looks more like a caster then a male Human would look like a caster. Mainly because she looks smaller and less intimidating then the Arnold Schwarzenegger model that Blizz choose for the guys. Who knew Mages, Warlocks, and Priests liked to go to Gold's Gym in their off time?

Rambling post is rambling.

And the picture has nothing to with the post, I just like that card.

On Annoying Your Healer.....

Don't do it. Its bad mmmkay. I came to this conclusion after an evening of Scourge hunting with Jendreka the Healy Shaman and our resident Doomkin, Moontree. So I go running along in EPL taking in the scenery. And what do I spot but a gaggle of undead mobs. Meanwhile, Jen is on mute giving orders I cannot hear. If you can't hear them, then its not your fault that you don't follow them. Best course of action when you don't know what to do is to drop DoTs on everything you can see and then start AoEing. This accomplishes two things:

1) If said healer is NOT on mute, then you will continue to hear silence because he will heal you through the damage, its what they do. Damage probably wasn't that serious anyway.

2) If said healer IS on mute, they will realize it very quickly, unmute themselves, and yell at you while making sure you don't die. You were taking a lot of damage. For shame clothie newb cakes. (I can't seem to remove my newb socks when I am grouped. WTB Epic Pwnzor Socks)

Unfortunatly when fighting undead, panic fear bomb is out the question, meaning that if you were too ambitous with your plan to wake up your healer, then you go splat. Soul Stone FTW? I think so.

Got the Argent Dawn Tabard on Draedus though. Woot! I am considering doing some solo gringing for the tabard on Dradis as well. It's not her fault that the devs hate her, so maybe I should lay off the punishment a bit. Actually, maybe I should give the devs more of a chance and just ride it out. I don't know, I am torn a little. I had some big plans for Dradis and things were going pretty well. I do enjoy being the evil Warlock, however. I could do both, but one of them has to be my main. I should consult the guild. Hate being kicked in the teeth though. Hate it. Lots. Curse you Blizzard.

Altaholism is kicking in again. I have been tempted to move Dakkar the Hunter up to 70 as well as Dakhar the Druid. I don't know what purpose that would serve as No Maam has little need for a second Hunter or a third Druid. I am the only Pally though, and the only person the can consistently provide Replenishment, which makes me feel a little selfish for not using her as much. Sigh. I would think that I was raised Catholic as many guilt issues as I have.

Not providing your healer with mana via Replenishment also annoys your healer. As well as your caster DPS. They won't say it, but you can see the betrayal in their eyes. True story.

Anyway, Draedus is moving along nicely, only 20% to 69. I would guess that I would ding 70 before finishing the Nagrand quests. That would be nice! If only Warlocks had Replenishment. Started tailoring today as well. Got up to 65 before I rushed off off to EPL to kill Scourge.

Is Righteous Vengeance bugged? I don't seem to ever see it debuff a mob. Also, there is still no difference between SoComm damage and SoM damage. Did that hotfix go live yet? Oh yeah, SoM questing is a bad thing indeed. Backlash damage from a long string of crits after killing 10 mobs or so puts a big giant dent in an already tiny health pool (relative to Warriors). That reminds me, where is my Warrior alt...... bah seem to have deleted him.

To sum up, feeling a little better about the Paladin. There is a lot of comfort there and some feelings of attachment. But the Warlock..... I have never had so much fun leveling. The feelings of power are fantastic.

And grats Barry Obie on getting High Warlord err..... President.

And yeah lots of free time at work in case your wondering.

Incoherent post is incoherent.

Just a quickie.....

Ok, I had some sparetime at work, and I am tired of reading about Statistics. I just wanted to drop a quick update on some things.

First off, I actually went into a Heroic UB on my Pally today. It was fun, I topped the DPS meter, and my mana didn't go to much below 65% from what I noticed. I was dropping the occaisional Consecrate and doing the standard rotation. I had SoB up for most of the run, and Jendreka the Healy Shaman did notice, but he said it wasn't a big deal. The SoB buff is still coming though so we will see if SoB remains noticable but not a big deal, or if it becomes a liabilty because it starts hurting me too much. I also used my DPS macro button for the first half of the instance. I did not notice any difference between macro DPS and freestyle, however I had more control on freestyle and it was less boring. So the macro is gone since it is less then fun. I got the Cassock of the Loyal out the run, which kinda makes me want to get the rest of the set just for the aesthetics of it.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth with all the Paladin stuff. I can't get into Dradis at this point, even though things seem to be ok. I guess knowing that hotfixes like the Wings nerf and the stealth JoJ nerf just don't make me feel really settled with the class. There is also a bug fix coming down for JoW, which could mean nothing, or it could mean that I will have mana issues after all. Its hard to tell.

I am now getting super owned in PvP too since I have no way to kill someone from the start. Generally, once you are all up in someones grill, they aren't to keen on letting you stay there unless they happen to be melee DPS. In that case, they make sure that you are controlled so you can't finish doing sustained DPS on them. So basically, I am back to being useless in PvP. Not a big deal since I don't PvP much. But it does continue to contribute to the feeling of "WTF Blizz" since a lot these changes are due to PvP issues, and it would seem that the only way to balance PvP is to make Paladins a non-threat. Or at least less of a threat then the Mage or Boomkin on the ridge hell bent on giving you a 10k damage enema.

All is well on the Warlock front, however. Draedus is happily flinging ghost at people and watching them scream in terror while she works on perfecting her Macerena. I worked on my grinding skills at the Firewing area as well, and chain killing Blood Elves for 45 minutes does fantastic things to your XP bar. Not to mention it was fun. I also did a Blood Furnace run earlier in the day and I topped the damage meter.

Comparing Ret DPS to Warlock DPS: Ret DPS is very structered and there is not much room to deviate. Mostly, Ret is about targeting, which I basically have down now, and positioning. I am still working on the last part. Afflock DPS is more about watching about 16 timers at the same time, managing your health, your mana, and your pets mana, and switching targets at the right time to get the right DoT up. I also have to watch for Nightfall procs for those instant Shadowbolts. Glyph of Corruption + Nightfall = A Lot of Instant Cast Shadowbolts. Afflock is a lot more involved I think, and that makes it a lot fun, but it can be hectic. I still haven't hit 70 yet so no Seed of Corruption. I imagine SoC will just add to the madness, but it should be fun.

After playing this Warlock for a while, I have realized that the Paladin Bubble is possibly the worst mechanic in the game. It is the ultimate "Oh Shit" button, but why have that when you can have more useful tools? In the case of the Warlock that tool is having three types of fears that do not cause some inane debuff on me that prevents me from casting another fear. Yeah there is DR, but who cares, that doesnt affect new targets and it certainly doesn't limit your options like a 12 second invicibility on a 5 minute cooldown does. That is a 4% uptime by the way, which is a horrible thing to balanced around.

Most classes have more innovative things that have much more uptime and allow for much greater flexibilty in a lot of situations. I won't make a list because I want this to be a quick post and its getting very long as it is. The point is, the Bubble is not something that should even be available because no one needs to be invincible to be viable and Paladins get to use it so little that losing it would not be that big of a deal if it was replaced with proper abilites.

To sum up, Paladin is too unstable to risk getting excited about again. Warlock is serving hot death in a variety of flavors.

Blogging On A One Week Hold

You won't see the normal daily updates on here for the next week or so. Between two exams, regular homework, election day, helping my bro find a new job, and leveling my Warlock, I am not going to have time for blogging this week. I will try to keep up with the rest of the blogosphere though, so you may see comments from me throughout the week. Read my lips, No New Posts :P