Sooner Than Expected: Battle for Undercity!

Well, it's a little dull by comparison, but at first I thought the coolest thing I'd see today was Rokhan, who you may remember from the Rexxar campaign in Warcraft 3:
To start the Wrath Gate event, you actually have to do a surprisingly small number of quests from Dragonblight. You start with the Taunka escort quest chain in Taunka'le, and from there do every quest chain that starts Agmar's Hammer. You'll have short detours to Venomspite and Wyrmrest Temple, but you do not have to complete the unrelated quests there.
After you resolve all the quest lines in Agmar's Hammer, you'll be sent to the Wrathgate to start the event. After you watch a loregasm-inducing cutscene, you're greeted by none other than Alextrasza and Krassus in their dragon forms:
She asks you to return Saurfang the Younger's battle armor to his father at Warsong Hold. Saurfang tells you Orgrimmar is in a state of martial law, and when you arrive you find the city flooded with Forsaken refugees. Upon arriving in Thrall's chamber, Jaina Proudmoore appears.
Varian Wrynn wrongly blames the entire Horde for the death of Bolivar Fordragon, thus completing his transformation into a stereotypical racist, warmongering, and arrogant Warcraft Human. Thrall teleports you to Undercity, where Vol'jin is leading the siege of the city. You may have to wait around a bit, but eventually Thrall and Sylvanas appear and the battle begins.
Thrall cleanses the poisonous blight in Undercity by calling upon the elements of Air and Water. In the courtyard you are greeted by Varimathras, who currently for some reason has been replaced with a blue and white checkerboard pattern cube (Blizzard working on a new model, perhaps?).
Varmiathras runs away, and sends out several waves of Abominations and Apothecaries. Not that it really matters, but you can do a whole lot of damage on the trash waves as Unholy, because it's a very strong AoE build. After a while The Blight Aberration emerges.
Once you lay the smack-down on him, you descend into Undercity proper. Thrall airlifts you down the elevator, which has been essentially converted into a punji trap. When you reach the entrance to the Royal Quarter, you fight trough another bunch of trash waves, until Khanok the Misnomer emerges, is killed, and you pass right by him.
Varimathras tries to shut you out once more by collapsing the tunnel leading to the Throne Room, but Thrall summons the Earth element to clear the way.
In the throne room you see Varimathras (still a cube), channeling several open Burning Legion portals. At this point it's very apparent that The Legion is as adamant as ever to get into Azeroth.
Before you square off (or should I say CUBE off?) against Varimathras, you have to deal with several more trash waves. Finally, Varmiathras's "Unseen Master" scolds him for his failure. Apparently his plan was to summon this master into Undercity itself. Varimathras comes down to face you, and is handily defeated.
You celebrate a bit before deciding to head off and face Putress.
Before you can leave the throne room, you are stopped by Varian Wrynn, who has already defeated Putress and is now determined to defeat Thrall (as if he could).
I did my best to get in a few shots at Varian (who is unfortunately unkillable) before Jaina intervenes and teleports Varian and company out of Undercity.
Thrall is upset at the prospect of open war with the Alliance, since he actually wants what's best for his people unlike that douchebag Varian. After a short event between Thrall and Saurfang you are sent back to the zeppelin tower in Orgrimmar.

All in all, this event is AMAZING. However, I don't think the long-term implications are very well developed upon. You head back to Northrend and ignore the fact that the Horde and Alliance are practically in open warfare AND the legion is still very active in trying to find a way to enter and destroy Azeroth.

Also, sorry about my fragrant pro-Horde bias, but what can I say, Blizzard did a good job of giving me lots of reasons to hate Varian. I do like how the Horde, who are sometimes perceived as the "evil" group, are actually seeking peace, while Johnny-come-lately Varian Wrynn thinks it's worth catastrophic warfare because his friend died. Taking a running tally of how many of Thrall's friends have died? It's a lot.

Anyway, good job Blizzard!

- Andtaxes

First Encounter With The Lich King In Northrend

So far, Dragonblight is topping Borean Tundra from a lore perspective.

Horde are driven to Dragonblight with a clear sense of direction. The Taunka are abandoning Taunka'le Village because they feel a massive scourge assault is imminent. You escort a Taunka refugee to Icemist, their capital city, only to find it over-run with Nerubians. The few surviving Taunka refugees pledge their loyalty to the Horde. Once you rescue their chieftain from Icemist Village he makes it official, pledging his loyalty to the Horde as their faction leader.

While poking around in Icemist, you find a Flesh-Bound Tome filled with the language of the Scourge. There's only one person in town who understands the language of the Scourge, a former Death Knight you may remember of the starting zone: Koltira Deathweaver.


Rather than being grateful to you for saving his life back in the day, he's actually kind of an asshole. He sends you on a few errands to recharge his rune blade with Blood, Unholy, and Frost power from less evil sources. After you return with the filled gems of power, he goes emo on you, and sends you to the Realm of Shadows to fight his inner demons. It seemed pretty straightforward, but after a few kills I heard the Lich King's voice, and I turn around to see this:

The Lich King sees you in his Realm of Shadows, and stops by to tell you all your efforts are in vain. A surprise visit from the Lich King cements this as an excellent quest line, but I've got a long way to go until I get to see the Wrath Gate event.

- Andtaxes

Instance Time: The Nexus

Before I washed my hands of Borean Tundra I decided it would be a good idea to try out The Nexus, and I have to say I was very pleased with the results.

I went as Unholy Tank spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000000050100000000000000000000000235200331000103253051003133151

I thought about trying Frost tanking, but Unholy's magic mitigation tools (Anti Magic Zone specifically) seemed like something I'd want. Plus, Unholy is more enjoyable and I'm more familiar with it. My gear was all Borean Tundra quest rewards, so I had high stamina and decent armor but almost zero defense or avoidance ratings. It worked out fine though, I got no complaints about threat or damage taken. I think everyone in my group had some BT/Hyjal experience, so we were a reasonably competent bunch and were able to knock out the instance easily.

The Nexus is a pretty short instance with very manageable trash pulls, generally 3-4 elites. Most of the instance was done without any CC, using only one Sap when we could.

The instance has a circular design, so you can choose where you start. However, going left towards Grand Magus Telestra is probably the best bet. Most of her trash is 3 mobs, and you can use a lot of CC because they're humanoids. This is basically a "warm up wing". The Grand Magus herself tosses a lot of spells, but is mostly tank and spank. Anti-Magic Shell and Zone were pretty useful here. At 50% she splits into 3 images that have to be burnt down, and then goes back to tank and spank.

Second you'll enter the Interdimensional Rift room, populated with Blue Dragons fighting against arcane anomalies. This room has several Interdimensional Rift mobs that periodically release non-elite arcane elementals. With strong AoE tanking this room is pretty trivial (hell, probably fairly trivial without, too). After a room of trash clearing you face Anomalus. Periodically Anomalus will become invincible and create an Interdimensional Rift, and just like the others in the instance this rift can release Arcane Elementals. After you kill the rift you go back to Anomalus, and rinse and repeat until he dies.

Finally, you come to the gauntlet that leads to Ormorok the Tree-Shaper. You have the option to start here, but just because it's a gauntlet it might not be a good place to start with a group you may not be familiar with. It's relatively low-pressure, there are some non elite flowers around the gauntlet on maybe a 1 minute respawn timer. There are a few 4 pack patrols of 2 dryads and 2 treants, as well as some large Ancient trees representing the token "large, hard hitting mob" of the instance. Once again, strong AoE tanking prevails here, but a Paladin or DK are far from necessary to succeed. Once you get through the gauntlet you arrive at Ormorok's platform. He's very straightforward, his one trick is periodically shooting out an icy spike wall in all 4 directions that explode after a few seconds. It's easily avoidable.

Once Ormorok dies, the flowers all die and quit respawning, so you can safely make your way back to the front of the instance for the last boss, Keristrasza. You'll want to clear out any pats around her if you haven't already, then activate the three controlling orbs and she'll engage almost immediately. Her big trick is a debuff that stacks only when you're standing still. Obviously it's an annoyance for healers and casters, but as the tank I just back-petaled the boss around her circular room. She'll do frontal cone frost breath with a knock back, so you have to try to keep her positioned safely. Her only other trick is to case a 10 second Chains of Ice root, which will make her debuff stack up if it's not dispelled, so a dispelling class can really help make this fight easy.

All in all, it's a great and short instance. Considering you can get four quests for the zone if you knock out the pre-quests in Coldarra, there's really no reason not to pay it a visit while leveling. I leave you with this obligatory last boss kill shot:


- Andtaxes

The Tundra is Done-dra

I finally finished up Borean Tundra, as evidenced by my fancy new achievement:
I helped the Horde fortify and defend Warsong Hold, I killed Malygos's prime consort, I assassinated Harold Lane, I defeated the scourge at Naxxanar, I fought to save the Taurhe and the Tuskarr, and I helped out a guy in a murloc suit.

You have to do 150 quests for the achievement, but there's really about 155 or so, so you get a little wiggle room. Borean Tundra is (judging by quests required to get achievements) the most quest-packed zone in the game thus far, and I have to say it's been fun.

Dragonblight is next, hopefully in the next couple of days I'll be able to give a good write up on the Wrath Gate / Battle for Undercity events.

- Andtaxes

Seriously... another quest?

There are a lot of quests in Borean Tundra. Seriously... a whole lot.

The quests are mostly good and interesting, but I've done what seems like enough quests to fill an average zone, and according to the achievement I'm about halfway through.

I've noticed a very nice DPS increase after this most recent build. A combination of my new gear and the recent buffs roughly doubled my Scourge Strike damage, I've been scoring up to 2500 crits with it, and my AoE farming continues to be crazily effective. I've found myself better off leaving Death and Decay out of my rotation lately, though. While the damage it does is pretty okay, but the cost of 3 runes is too high.

- Andtaxes

All kinds of new looks

So, the newest build brought a lot of new looks.

First, Death and Decay. A red rune pattern now appears under the traditional wispy red graphic, which itself seems to have gotten a bit brighter and more noticeable.

The new Desecration graphic is a gas cloud. It actually looks kind of stupid, I liked the old one better.

The new DK flying mount skin. It's like if the old model skeletal gryphon model and your Deathcharger's freaky mutant offspring.

And best of all, for me at least, the gear I've picked up in the Borean Tundra is actually a matching set, so I look less like a clown and more like a badass mofo.
- Andtaxes

New Build!

Well, I've been aching to play Northrend more today, but the servers have been down to put up a new build.

Upcoming DK changes:

Blood Strike - Added damage increased.
Will of the Necropolis - Anti-Magic Shell cooldown reduction increased to 4/8/12 seconds.
Heart Strike - Added damage increased.
Strangulate - Cooldown increased to 2 minutes
Icy Touch - Damage increased.
Frost Strike - Weapon damage changed from 30% to 60% and added damage increased.
Rime - Critical effect chance increase now effects Obliterate.
Obliterate - Added damage increased.
Blood of the North - Two more ranks added. Now - Increases Blood Strike damage by 3/6/9/12/15%. In addition, whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence there is a 20/40/60/80/100% chance that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
Improved Icy Talons - Passive attack speed increased from 2% to 5%.
Rune Strike - Weapon damage increased from 60% to 65%.
Plague Strike - Added damage increased.
Death Coil - Damage and Healing increased.
Anti-Magic Shell - Cooldown increased from 15 to 60 seconds.
Death Grip - No longer has a minimum range.
Anti-Magic Zone - Now absorbs additional spell damage equal to your AP times 2.
Scourge Strike - Weapon damage down to 60% from 65%. Added damage increased.
Runic Focus - New trainable ability. Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your spells by 100%.

The Strangulate and Anti-Magic Shell cooldowns are probably too long now. If I had to guess, Strangulate will probably go down to 1 min, and AMS down to 30 seconds.

Hopefully Chains of Ice will end up undispelable. If they halved the duration and made is start at 50% slowing instead of 0% movement speed it would probably be a lot more balanced.

I'll throw in a screenshot of the new DK flying mount if it makes this build.

- Andtaxes

Huh... PvP changes?

I heard there were some PvP changes, and ordinarily I'd list and discuss them, but fuck that. I just got to Northrend.

Increased leveling speed is VERY noticeable. I completed Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, and Terokkar, but then cherry-picked quests in Nagrand and Blade's Edge and easily made it to 68 without even thinking about going to Netherstorm or Shadowmoon Valley.

So I headed out to Borean Tundra because quite frankly Howling Fjord lore seems boring. Vykrul? You mean the race that was fabricated to to make Howling Fjord less boring? /yawn. Anyway, the quests so far are really great. My only complaint is the layout of Warsong Hold, it's really unconventional to the point that it doesn't even seem like a practical building. And since the Nerubians have the surrounding quarry, there's no "town" proper, just the hold itself, which means it's really crowded.

I'll leave you with this little tidbit: Overlord Saurfang loves me.


- Andtaxes

I Got The Blues

Ghostcrawler had some interesting things to say recently.

First, for the tanks:
We think defense was a little too easy to get in BC. Most tanks (warriors anyway) walked in Karazhan almost uncrittable in just heroic and quest reward gear. Those +defense gems might have well not existed. It just felt like defense ought to take a little bit of effort to max out (using the crit barrier as the limit -- I realize it continues paying dividends beyond that point).

Wer'e not sure yet how far we want to push it in the opposite direction though. It could be that the current numbers are too punitive and tanks will explode to Mr. Anub'arak.

I'm not sure where this idea came from: thinking it's bad that your tanks are uncrittable walking into an entry level raid "in just heroic and quest reward gear". Having geared up a Prot Paladin and Prot Warrior, I gotta say it's not exactly "easy" to get uncrittable. You could only have 1-2 pieces without defense rating, and you pretty much had to have a +defense trinket. I'm not to that point yet, but I can definitely see how uncritability would be hard to reach without the defense rating of a weapon and shield. There still seems to be a (theoretical) mitigation gap between tanking classes, but hopefully since raids are currently being tested they'll begin to iron out things like that.

Second, for Unholy DKs such as myself:
I think the ghoul is just doing too much damage.

I have to agree. Ghoul functionality is really unusual right now. You can't really consider the ghoul a "burst" ability, as it's alive for 2 minutes. However, you can't really consider it a classic pet, or Death Knights a "pet class", because only Unholy can get a permanent ghoul and yet lack basic pet functionality such as a reliable pet heal.

Some questions Blizzard needs to answer:
1) Are ghouls budgeted as part of a Death Knight's long term raid DPS? For all specs?
2) Are ghouls supposed to be a major part of an Unholy Death Knight's DPS? If so, won't having reduced personal DPS gimp Unholy threat generation for tanking?
3) Should ghouls receive basic pet functionality such as a pet heal or the "Avoidance" skill, or are they going to suffer the same problems as Shadowfiends (easily killable)? If they remain lacking in basic pet utilities, is it even fair that Unholy is reliant on them?

A few possible fixes for all this I would suggest are:
1) Death Knights become a full fledged pet class for all specs. Ghouls are permanent and keep the same skill set, but also learn the Avoidance passive skill. Death Coil healing is buffed to roughly double its current amount to provide more reliable Ghoul healing, OR a new skill is introduced for healing Ghouls that costs a rune. This is probably the worst of the options, as you would have to lower DK personal DPS and hence threat, which is bad for tanking.
2) Master of Ghouls is removed, and Ghoul duration is nerfed to 30 seconds or so. This way Ghouls are an actual burst damage cooldown. All ghouls would have a pet bar regardless of spec.
3) Ghouls are removed completely. Call it a loss and balance the three specs without them. I'm leaning towards this option.

Well this problem is certainly.... ghoulish... eh eh eh... okay... never mind, that was terrible.

Peace out.
- Andtaxes

Not too much to report, so I guess I'll show off...

Not so much showing off (any DK could do this with the right spec) as showing what a Death Knight is capable of, in the best way I can think of while leveling.

Torgos: downed easily.

The Vengeful Harbinger: downed with ease, after watching the Night Elf DK who just HAD to go first fail the event miserably. This quest is, for some reason, listed as requiring 3 people:

Terokkarantula, downed:
And Hai'Shulud, another 3 person quest:

So, my "Unholy Death Knights rule for leveling" position remains unchanged. I also downed Teribus the Cursed, but I ended up grouping with a fellow who happened to be nearby. So while I can't outright claim I soloed it, I'm quite certain I would have been able to given how little damage I was taking.

- Andtaxes

Why It's (Currently) Crazy To Level As Anything But Unholy

So, in the interest of reporting how it worked out, I respec'd Frost so see how it went. The end result should be obvious given the title of the post. So here's the list of what I miss about Unholy:

1) Master of Ghouls: Ghouls are pretty over-powered, at least at my level. My ghoul's white DPS is higher than mine, and it can occasionally steal aggro from me if I miss a strike early on or something. Being able to have a permanent ghoul takes a load off your mind and is a pretty significant increase in your overall DPS output.

2) Unholy Blight: A permanent 3rd disease is amazing in practice. Death Strike heals for more, and Blood Boil becomes amazing (especially with Outbreak). The damage of Unholy Blight in and of itself isn't amazing by any means, but having that 3rd diseases snowballs into more damage across your entire rotation.

3) Epidemic: that extra 6 seconds makes all the difference. It's an extra round you can go without re-applying Icy Touch and Plague Strike, which means another Scourge Strike / Death Strike every other round.

Frost and Blood can produce more individual DPS, but when you factor in the ghoul and all the great things Unholy has to offer, it's the best leveling spec.
Notice is said "leveling" spec. What's good for leveling isn't always good for raiding, or maybe it won't be as good as my ghoul becomes relatively weaker. Point being, it'll probably be Northrend before I consider another spec.

- Andtaxes

Good quest... and thanks for the clown shoes

I finally stared replacing my gear. I'm glad to upgrade but... I look ridiculous.

Also, soloing elites remains very easy. I hit up the elite Naga bosses in Zangarmarsh, they can be hard to solo depending on your class/spec. The end result was dead nagas, I only took one screen-shot though:


Unholy in its current form is probably the most effective leveling spec in the game. I'd try out Blood or Frost leveling, but Unholy is just too much fun.

- Andtaxes

And the Flavor of the Week is.... Unholy

These are the DK changes that went live today:
- Blood Gorged: When you are above 75% health, you deal 2/4/6/8/10% more deal. Also increases your expertise by 1/2/3/4/5.
- Death and Decay Fear component has been removed
- Death Strike no longer heals the caster when the target was killed
- Blood Presence and Blood Aura now only heals if the target could yield honor or experience when killed
- Will of the Necropolis now reduces the cooldown of your Anti-Magic Shell by 15 seconds instead of increasing your expertise. Armor increase at low-health remains unchanged.
- Unholy Blight no longer afflicts the target with Blood Plague. Duration increased to 20 seconds.
- Rune of Swordshattering and Rune of Swordbreaking now also reduce the duration of disarm effects by 50%.
- Rune of Lichbane now adds 4% extra weapon damage as Fire damage against Undead instead of stunning them.
- Rune of Cinderglacier charges reduced to 2.
- Rune of Spellshattering and Rune of Spellbreaking now also reduce the duration of silence effects by 50%.
- Desecreation duration reduced to 12 seconds.
- Mark of Blood now heals 4% maximum health instead of 2%.
- Bladed Armor now increases your Strength by 1/2/3/4/5 for every 400 armor value you have.
- Improved Rune Tap now increases the health provided by Rune Tap by 33/66/100% instead of 15/30/45%.
- Chill of the Grave: Obliterate added to spells that trigger the effect, but now only generated 2.5/5 runic power instead of 100%.
- Frigid Dreadplate now decreases the chance to get hit by 2/4/6%.
- Dirge now generates 5 additional runic power instead of 50%.
- Rage of Rivendare now also increases your expertise by 1/2/3/4/5.
- Ravenous Dead now longer increases the duration of your Raise Dead, but instead increases the Stamina and Strength contribution by 60%.
- Icy Talons now also grants 2% passive haste.
- Toughness now reduces the duration of movement slowing effects by only 6/12/18/24/30%.
- Tundra Stalker now also increases your expertise by 5.
- Ebon Plaguebringer now also increases critical strike chance with all weapons and spells by 3%.
- Abomination's Might now also increases your total Strength by 1/2%.
- Pestilence now affects all targets within 10 yards.

I gotta say... wowza. I'm 61 now, and spec'd Unholy still. I used my free respec to pick up Master of Ghouls and test it out, and I gotta say I really like it. You can set the ghoul's abilities to auto-cast, so it's fairly self-sufficient. If you pick up Ravenous Dead your ghoul is pretty fierce: 150 or so base DPS and 4700 health at 61 (I have about 53000 health, for comparison). The only problem with the system is that you have to heal your ghoul with either Death Coil or bandages, and Death Coil only heals for ~300.
Here's a shot of me and my new pet:


The change to Unholy Blight has done great things for Unholy spec. It's very easy to keep up three diseases at all times, which means Death Strike becomes insanely effective. Regular Death Strike hits with 3 diseases currently heal me for ~1000, and of course ~2000 if it crits. For those of you keeping track at home, that's about 20% (40% on crits) of my health.

My Death Knight is finally living up to my expectations of over-powered-ness. Single mobs are typically dead by the end of my first rune cycle, so I decided to push it a bit more. I tried AoE grinding, and found that 4-5 mobs at a time was very do-able. I opened with Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, and Pestilence. By the end of the first cycle Unholy Blight is up, at which point it becomes a matter of spamming Death Strike in between refreshing your diseases. Epidemic lets you refresh your diseases every other cycle instead of every cycle, so I highly recommend it.

My success in AoE grinding pushed me a bit further: soloing elites!



Force Commander Gorgax is level 63, I took him down at level 60 with a slight amount of difficulty (I had to drink a potion). Blacktalon the Savage is also level 63, I soloed him at 61 with pretty much no difficulty. Given my experience with other characters I'd say it's not always easy to solo these guys, which goes to show you Death Knights are pretty powerful right now.

- Andtaxes

Upcoming Death Knight Changes and News

First upcoming changes:

DPS changes

– Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased.
– Strikes that scale with diseases changed so that the weapon damage, not just the flat damage, scales with the disease.
– Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike.
– Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed.
– Several attack power coefficients increased.
– Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places.
– Bladed Armor now turns armor into Strength (which then is turned into Parry).
– Master of Ghouls’ Ghoul now lasts until killed or similarly dismissed.
– Ravenous Dead no longer affects Ghoul duration, but grants your rotting little buddy 60% more of your Str and Sta. (Stam goes from 30% of yours to ~50% of yours. Strength goes from 100% to 160%.)

Tanking changes

– Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses.
– Blood Gorged, Rage of Rivendare and Tundra Stalker all grant 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.
– Veteran of the Third War increased to 6/6/6 Str / Sta / Exp to match warriors.
– Will of the Necropolis no longer grants expertise and now lowers Anti-Magic Shell cooldown.
– Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area.
– Death and Decay no longer has a cower component, but a glyph can add that back.
– Frigid Dreadplate now has a 100% chance for 2/4/6% miss but only on the DK.

Rewards for the selfless buffer

– Abom’s Might now grants 2% Strength at all times.
– Improved Icy Talons now grants 2% haste at all times.
– Ebon Plaguebringer now grants 3% crit at all times.

Runeforge changes

– Lichbane now does 2% weapon damage as Fire, and double damage to undead.
– Swordbreaking and Swordshattering add disarm duration reduction.
– Spellbreaking and Spellshattering add silence duration reduction.
– Cinderglacier reduced to 2 charges.

No doubt many awesome small tweaks I am forgetting.

These changes all get my seal of approval. I'm a bit disappointed Unholy Blight won't cause Blood Plague, but the Pestilence change should still allow for easy spreading of diseases.

Changing strikes bonus damage to scale with weapon damage I think is a good change as well. Right now the bonus damage per disease on strikes is almost insignificant: only 33 at 80 on Blood Strike, for example. I understand Blizzard's intention for the class to be that a Death Knight should have Blood Plague and Frost Fever up at all times, and the current paltry bonus of 33 flat damage isn't exactly enticing.

Even though I'm Unholy spec, I've never really been that interested in having my ghoul function as a classic "pet". I'm already button mashing to keep up with my runes, my perception is that a self-controlled ghoul would just be annoying. However, in the interest of giving you the story I'll probably try it out when these changes go live.

And an intersting take on tanking from Ghostcrawler:
Our intent is for you to tank with two-handed dps weapons.

There is a mentality that says tanks should ignore dps and threat and just focus on mitigation. But bosses do have enrage timers. You can find some really smart warrior theorycrafters out there who say you should go for threat on your weapon and mitigation on your armor.

We don’t to itemize DK two-handed tanking weapons for the reasons you mention. I have posted on the druid boards several times that I would love to get away from Feral Attack Power staves too.

Because we want dual-wielding to be viable for DKs, we aren’t going to specifically prohibit you from tanking with two tanking swords. You will have to stack expertise to make up for boss parry attacks, and hit of course, which might mean you lose enough stats right there. I don’t honestly know without doing the math.

Now if we find that all DKs dual-wield to tank, we’ll do something about it, such as make the parry rune enchants only work on two-handers to compensate for the lack of mitigation on two-handed weapons. That’s not meant to be a threat. We just don’t want every DK tank to DW (or every DK dps).

The mathematical reasons for not dual wielding while tanking have always been obvious: more attacks from you means more parrying by the mob, which means more damage on you.
However, given Blizzard's spirit of making every play-style at least somewhat viable I think it's kind of disappointing that they don't really want to facilitate dual wielding in any way.

My suggetion: a 1 point talent in the 3rd tier of Frost, Nerves of Cold Steel as a prerequisite: "Your offhand attacks can no longer be parried."
This, in practice, should have no affect on raid DPS because you're behind your target, it's a sheerly tanking ability that puts your parried rate in line with every other tanking class even while dual wielding. Think about it, Blizzard!

- Andtaxes

Starting in Outland

I had a pretty good perspective on what to expect when hitting Outland. I have 5 70's (I know, I have no life) and a Feral Druid that hit 58 less than a month ago.

The major difference for a Death Knight is that you're already in gear comparable to if not slightly better than your introductory BC greens. So while my Druid had a massive gear turnover, my Death Knight is still in his starting zone blues at 60. The only piece of gear I anticipate replacing in Hellfire Peninsula is my sword. I'm going to try out dual wielding Grunt's Waraxes (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25823) as soon as I hit Honored with Thrallmar.

That is, of course, assuming I can hit Honored via quests since the first bombing run quest is currently broken, locking out a lot of other easy Thrallmar quests for reputation and experience. A whole lot. As in pretty much all the quests that define Hellfire as a zone. Hopefully they'll have that fixed by the time the game goes live. I know old BC quests are probably completely off Blizzard's radar right now, but it's really locking out a lot for early leveling Death Knights.

Grievances aside, now that I've hit 60 and filled out my action bar a bit, Death Knights become extremely enjoyable. Death Grip alone has a huge "wow" factor. I'm still Unholy, so I picked up Unholy Blight. Unholy Blight, Death and Decay, Pestilence, Blood Boil, and Corpse Explosion makes Unholy a pretty good candidate for AoE grinding. Even for a guy who's gone trough BC leveling 5 other times, leveling a Death Knight is still fun.

- Andtaxes

Starting Zone Impressions

Rolling a Death Knight comes with almost an expectation of being over-powered. So when I spawned in the world at level 55, the first thing I noticed was a disappointingly empty action bar. Blood Strike, Icy Touch, Plauge Strike, Death Coil, and Death Grip is all you have .

While the lore is most certainly epic, it takes getting about halfway through the starting zone for the character to actually start to get interesting. Death Strike in particular makes things much better, effectively covering almost all the damage you take in an average fight.

My only grievance is the starting zone is the "dueling" quest. You can take the quest at level 55, and as I said at that point you have all of 4 buttons. Actually dueling is level 55 is therefore pretty pointless. Identical gear, no talents, 4 buttons, I'd rather watch paint dry. So after you spend a while running around the starting area looking for NPCs to duel, you get your one talent point and the sense of accomplishment one might commonly associate with tying your shoes (i.e. none).

Regardless of your class, everyone should experience the Death Knight starting zone, however. The lore there is simply amazing and there's some very fun and new quest mechanics to be enjoyed.

- Andtaxes

Hello world!

What better way to kick things off than with a "hello world"?

My name is Matthew, but you may call me Andtaxes, and I decided to kill some time by hopping on the bandwagon and blogging about my Death Knight experiences. I'll try my best to include some interesting / different information, and hopefully some interesting personal experiences.

You can find me in game on the PvE beta server horde side, yes PvE. I'll try to PvP a bit for the sake of talking about it, but PvE is my preferred play style.

A bit of "about me" and my character, I'm playing a Blood Elf DK. I don't have any particular reason for my race selection other than that for some reason they look cool. On live I'll probably go Tauren, since my ultimate goal for my character is tanking. I'm currently leveling Unholy, though I'll probably change about as the balancing process tends to leave particular specs really overpowered in the short term.

So hello world, enjoy!

- Andtaxes