Onike's Abyss

Season 10 PvP Sets Released

2011-03-14T14:30:00.001-04:00

Season 10 Male Death Knight Set

Okay, so I'm a bit late to this party, since the announcement of the new PvP sets was made on MMO Champion just over a week ago, but here it is anyways for your viewing pleasure. The male (above) and female (below) previews of the Season 10 sets. It looks like a similar gating system to last time - in that we've got the blue-ish set which will presumably be available for honour points, the red-ish set which will be purchased via conquest points, and finally the purple-ish set which will have the same stats as the red, but only be available after 2200 raking, essentially denoting the fact that its wearer is a badass.

Female Season 10 Set

Do I like the new sets? Absolutely, they're completely fantastic. I am a little concerned that the colour difference is much more noticeable this time, so that if you're running around in half conquest half honour gear, you're at a serious risk of looking like a bit of a clown. I've had this problem with the current Season 9 gear, as well. I suppose that's just incentive for me to get into the Conquest gear as fast as I can, though!

Season 10 Delayed
Along with the shiny new PvP sets came an announcement by Zarhym over at the US Official forums, that Season 10 will not be coming with Patch 4.1. To quote the blue post:

"The conversion from Valor to Justice Points, as well as the release of the next Arena season, won't happen until the release of 4.2."

In other words, if you're in full Conquest gear, or close to it, and just working on getting 2200 for the weapon (once it is released) and the shiny new gear, you may as well go for it. Don't worry about stockpiling points before the next major patch, because 4.1 will see us in the same gear we're in now. Although it will open up some new PvE content, it's probable that 4.1 will be similar to 4.0.6., in that the only real change it brings for PvP is balance changes to classes.

What does this mean for us?
Not much, really. It's basically still business as usual. Keep grinding ranking in Rated BGs, keep working on those PvP titles, keep running arenas for Conquest points, etc. etc. You certainly shouldn't stop playing because you don't get any shiny gear with the next patch. Just keep doing what you're doing, and rejoice in the fact that we don't have to start over grinding our new PvP sets for another full patch.

Besides, I think it's safe to say that gear that badass is absolutely worth waiting for.

Anyways, this concludes my massive catch-up weekend of posts. We now return to your regularly-scheduled programming.

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

On Teamwork

2011-03-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

Back in Season 8, there was a distinct division between the Hardcore and the Casual PvPers. The Hardcore spent most of their time in arenas, as the only way to get into the best gear possible was to save up arena points and hit 2200 rating. Of course, at the very end of the season all the Wrathful gear became available for honour points (excluding the 2200 weapons which had to have been earned during the season), but for the duration of competitive PvP, arenas were where it was at.

The Battlegrounds, while certainly played by Hardcore and Casual PvPers alike, were a place of casual, for fun, play. Sure, you earned honour with them, and you could use that to buy epic gems and make a bit of profit, but once you'd gotten all your honour gear, BGs became sort of useless. The lessons they had to offer were learnt only during the very rare premade and even then it was always against PuGs, thus a distinct lack of challenge.

Arenas and PvP

Arenas still offer the best rewards in the PvP world in Season 9, but with one key difference. You can run Rated BGs for the same rewards. Running Rated BGs also gives you access to the old PvP titles, which have been brought back for Rated BGs. Running arenas all the way up to 2200 rating will net you the best weapons, once they come out, but they won't do much more than that, since rating below 2200 doesn't get you anything, except 1500 which gives you extra Conquest Points every week.

But outside of material rewards of arena play, what do they teach the PvPer? Lots about how to take down an opponent 1v1, and how to win in small-scale PvP. But they don't really teach one of the most valuable lessons of large-scale PvP. Teamwork.

Rated Battlegrounds, and Teamwork

Now before all the arena junkies out there gut me, don't get me wrong. Coordinating with your arena partner, or partners, takes teamwork. I am absolutely not belittling that fact. But it doesn't teach the kind of teamwork I'm talking about here, and that's the kind that, to borrow from the other metagame, you learn by raiding.

Raiding requires a pile of coordination. Your RL has to be able to keep 9 other, or 24 other players on track for several hours while you down bosses and battle mechanics. Rated BGs require a similar amount of focus. You have to keep 10 players together, and keep them so together that they co-ordinate better than the other team. It becomes much less a game of gear (although gear does matter, to a certain extent), and one of pure skill.

In a Rated BG, if you don't have tactics, you don't have a strategy, and you don't have micro and macro-management skills you lose. Plain and simple. Because you aren't playing a herd of unorganized PuGs. You aren't fighting a pre-programmed boss. You're playing very real, very smart, human opponents. They've got an organized team, that uses teamwork. You need to have one that has more.

A Shift in the Spectrum

The point I'm trying to get at here, is that the whole landscape of PvP has changed forever. With arenas now, in some ways, a side game played to get Conquest points for gear, Rated Battlegrounds have become the site of hard-core competition. Players are judged on their RBG rating, and the 3k+ players who have already topped the ladders are mini celebrities.

PvP is no longer about your ability to burn down that stupid disc priest and rogue and mage buddies. It's about complex coordination between teams. It's about more than just having the fastest reflexes. It's about strategy and teamwork.

With all that said, it's more important than ever before to work together effectively with your team when you run Rated BGs. If you're your guild's RL in RBGs, then set up some training runs, get your guild used to focus firing, to coordinating crowd control, and working as a team. The season is still relatively young, and Rated BGs are something brand new to the WoW metagame.

In a couple seasons, incredible Battleground coordination will be par for the course. While everything is still being tried and tested, in other words right now, is your best chance to get really good at Rated BGs. And really, you've only got two choices, catch up and learn some serious teamwork fast, or get left in the dust.

Death Knights Don't Heal

2011-03-13T22:18:00.001-04:00

I guess I would be amiss as a DK blogger to not talk about the change to our class that has driven a surprising portion of the community into an uproar. In patch 4.1, one of our least-used spells “Raise Ally” has been re-designed as a battle-rez. To quote the latest patch notes:

“Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.”

This little change to the way we can use ghouls certainly did not go unnoticed throughout the community. Moodyloner over at Death Grip My Heart wrote a post about DK utility wherein she said:

“I just can’t get my head around gaining the ability to bring others back to life.”

And across the WoW DK community, be it in or out of game, there have been comments on the change to the class basically amounting to the fact that Death Knights are a class focused on dealing damage, spreading disease and being basically the polar opposite of healers for all intents and purposes. The concept of giving us a battle rez, seems just wrong.

The keyword is “Death”

I disagree with these sentiments wholeheartedly. Death Knights are all about Death, sure, and healing is definitely wrong for us (I'm not counting self-heals here, I mean full-out raid healing etc.). BUT, this change doesn't make us healers. It makes us ressurectors (no – it's not a word. Go with it).

Death Knights will have the ability to quickly bring back a dead player as a ghoul. Is this a big deal? No. In fact – I think this is how the ability should always have worked. Resurrecting a player as a ghoul gimps a lot of their utility in raids, and makes them much less useful than they were alive, so the move still acts as a last-ditch effort, and the other standard b-rezes are definitely superior.

But what's wrong with grabbing a little bit of extra dps out of a corpse once the druid has popped rebirth? We're masters of Death. Reanimating someone as a ghoul doesn't seem to be all that big a stretch to me.

PvP Usefulness?

In keeping with the theme of this blog... does the change really even impact PvP at all? Not really. I could see a few very niche situations where it might be worthwhile to make a dead ally a ghoul instead of having them wait to rez. For instance, in a BG like AB or BfG, you could bring back a corpse as a ghoul to give yourself that teeny extra bit of dps to hold the flag while you wait for re-enforcements.

But, all in all this is a change to the raiding universe. It doesn't grossly impact my life when it comes to melting face and taking names. But it is certainly a very interesting change.

Conclusion

I think I've more or less made my point already. The ability to resurrect someone as a ghoul does not contradict our class foundations. It's a completely natural evolution of the ability. After all, we can already reach into the ground and conveniently find a skeleton to make into a ghoulish minion anywhere in the world with Raise Dead, and Army of the Dead pulls out even more. Unholy DKs can summon a GARGOYLE, and I don't see people complaining that we brought the gargoyle to life for 30 seconds so it goes against the class' design.

Making your dead buddy a ghoul is a completely reasonable thing, and let's be fair, it's all kinds of awesome to boot. Even if it doesn't last all that long, who could resist the ability to make their GM their minion for a little while? It seems like a blast to me.

So. Death Knights of the world. Do not despair. Blizzard is not taking away the basis of your class. You're not going to be called upon to heal that stupid rogue who's standing in the fire again. You will not have to anti-kill the main tank while you dps. But if the stupid rogue dies for the thousandth time, why not put his body to good use?

After all – he's not a whole lot of use dead.

That's it for today folks, count on the rest of my catching up tomorrow morning, then a return to your regular programming.

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

4.0.6. 2h Unholy Spec Update

2011-03-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

With the latest patch, my previous 2h UH spec is out of date, so I thought I'd take a moment and update it for 4.0.6. There aren't a huge amount of changes, but there's enough that it's probably worth going over here. The main changes, however, aren't to the spec but to the way we play UH. I'll try to go over some changes in mentality as well as updating the spec in general for PvP.

The Spec

So, first and foremost, the spec can be found here. It's almost identical to the previous, however, as you can see, two points have been taken out of Improve Unholy Presence and put into Death's Advance. DA is a new talent found in 4.0.6 which prevents UH DKs from being significantly slowed while both their Unholy runs are up.

It's absolutely worth speccing into however, unfortunately, in order to keep all the utility in the frost tree that we basically need for self-heals and a free Mind Freeze (both bread and butter in PvP), a dps talent had to go out of the UH tree. I took IUP because I felt it was probably the smallest decrease to dps, however I could be off – I'm not much of a theory-crafter, so if someone out there can runs the numbers and finds that it is not, I'm happy to update the spec once again.

Glyphs

Glyphs remain the same as in my previous post, however they should now include Glyph of Dark Succor, a new glyph implemented in the latest patch, which makes Death Strike (only when used out of blood presence, this isn't a buff to Blood DKs, sadly) heal a minimum of 15% of your health when used.

This means that on top of Lichborne/Death Coil self-healing, and Death's Pact (in a pinch – losing your ghoul can hurt UH a lot), we can now use DS to heal ourselves quite a bit. While this is a reduction to dps numbers when used in place of SS, it keeps you alive, which is a major plus in my book.

A New Unholy

That's it for changes to the previous spec. Now let me try to explain how these affect our play-style. First, you should realize that UH was nerfed big time in the last patch, so if you haven't already noted this yourself, you're going to be doing much smaller numbers than you would have in 4.0.3. This doesn't necessarily mean you should play differently, but it means you should be aware that you won't be able to faceroll what might have once been an easy class for you to kill.

The biggest change to our play, though, comes with Death's Advance. This keeps us at 100% speed, even when we should normally be slowed (although this is a 15% drop from the 115% we get in UH Presence) when both our UH pairs are up. So what does this mean for us? It means that when we need to book it out of somewhere, popping ERW can save your skin. The free refresh of all your runes will mean that as long as you don't use an UH rune, you'll run at normal speed.

As another bonus, if you Chains of Ice the person you are running away from, you'll generally be able to escape more or less unscathed, since they'll be stuck in your slow. It's worth noting here that you won't be immune to stuns and fears, however AMS and IBF will both make you immune to stuns (IBF) and fears (AMS) if you're trying to escape a class capable of those forms of CC.

Dark Succor makes a change to the rotation as well, where if you are low on health, or cognisant of the fact that you will be soon, you can use DS in place of SS in your rotation to top yourself up on HP before returning to your full dps cycle. This works well when you have your Abomination or Gargoyle (or both!) up as they can make up for some of the dps lost to heal yourself.

Conclusion

There are no earth-shattering changes to UH, besides the fact that we've been nerfed quite a bit. But it's worth taking note of them, since taking advantage of them can definitely give you a major advantage.

That's it for me! Practice safe Death!

~Onike

A New Strand of the Ancients... again

2011-03-11T10:33:00.001-05:00

I think it's relatively safe to say that in recent times in the World of Warcraft, no BG has gone through quite as many changes as Strand of the Ancients. With Cataclysm, the Battleground was completely redone, but it turned into something of a ridiculous zerg-fest, forcing Blizzard to rework the BG again, into its current incarnation today.

With all the confusion surrounding Strand, I figured now would be a good time to give everyone a quick primer in the ins and the outs of the BG, as well as some solid tactics for keeping on top, and pulling wins out of the fastest battleground.

The Basics

For those of you who aren't already Strand veterans, let me give you a brief introduction. You'll start off randomly put on one of two boats, heading towards shore. This is the time to buff up, as the game starts as soon as you land.

Once you land you'll be on a beach, facing either a green gate or a blue one, with two demolishers at your disposal. The goal is to break down those gates, get to the red, and purple ones behind them and then finally break through a final yellow gate to get into a courtyard and breach a room called “The Relic Chamber.” Once you do that, you'll win the offensive round.

However, there is also a defensive round, (which could actually happen first, it's just RNG), where you play the side holding the demolishers off. This is pretty simple, CC the demos and the bad guys, shoot down the demos, and keep the bad guys from getting into your relic chamber. The team who has offence first sets a time, and the second group to play offense has to beat it. If they do, they win, if they don't, they lose.

Simple enough, right? Now – how do you win?

Offensive Strategies

First of all, it should be noted that in the new patch the demolishers no longer have an extra two seats for ranged dps to park themselves in. The only person who can be in the vehicle is the demolisher. With that in mind, it's more important to have solid CC on the ground than ever before.

The name of the game on both sides of Strand is Crowd Control, and the secret to winning is to successfully CC the defending team enough that your demolishers can get ahead of them. Once the demos break away they opposition will be stuck playing a hopeless game of catch up, and the win will be yours.

There are two main tactics to pulling this off. The first is stacking demolishers. I can't emphasize enough how important this is. The demolishers now move extremely fast, and doors are pretty weak so if you get four (or sometimes, even more) stacked on a door, it'll go down extremely fast. Then you can sprint ahead to the next one, and so on and so forth.

Well-stacked demos lead to an easy win.

The best way to win Strand is to have demos stack on either blue or green, break down that gate, grab the GY behind it, break down the next one, CC the crap out of the other team, get ahead when you get to yellow, and sit back and relax and you faceroll the courtyard to win.

The trick here is both effective CC, and the other main tactic on offence in Strand. Dispelling. You NEED a paladin, or another class capable of purging crowd control from the demolishers because if they get slowed regularly, the other team can and WILL catch up with them, and they'll get burst down.

You need to have a paladin on your team riding ahead with your demolishers on strict dispel duty. Have him mount up, catch up to your demos and STAY WITH THEM. If you can successfully keep the demos at full speed, or close to it, they'll outpace the other team and you will almost always pull a win.

Defensive Strategies

Winning on defence is a little more tricky. Offence is much easier now due to the huge speed of the demolishers. The best way to stop a demo now is with a frost mage, as they can freeze them in place, and keep them rooted pretty well. You'll want to get a frost mage (even in PuGs, most groups have one) on the gate the other team rushes and have him on root duty. If he can hold them long enough it'll give you time to burst the demos down.

Guns are also viable on defence again as they have been buffed significantly. If you get both guns on a gate pounding on the demos attacking they will actually go down, so it's definitely worth it to make use of the guns again.

The secret to winning on defence is to break the initial zerg of demolishers. If you pull a solid offence, you'll make it to the relic chamber with your first batch of demolishers. As a result, if you kill the first group of demos on defence (though it's better if you can stop two waves) the opposition will generally fall behind enough that even if they regroup quickly – they won't have time to get to your relic.

A good way to make sure you're effectively burning the demos down is to have the group leader use raid icons on them. Then call out in BG chat (or vent if we're talking Rated BGs or a premade) “Kill skull, kill cross, kill star,” etc. It's important to ONLY hit the actual players on the other team when all the demolishers are down. If there are demos up on a gate, you should be hitting those, and NOT the players, just CC them until the demos go down. A lot of people get caught up in HK farming and fall behind the wave of demos, which is a sure formula for a failed defensive.

Conclusion

Overall, Strand has changed a lot since its incarnation in the earlier days of Wrath. But I think it's easy to like the changes. It's now the fastest BG, win or lose, which makes it great for farming honour, especially on its holiday weekend. Strand is also a very interesting BG, as unlike focusing on objectives (the flag, territory control etc.) and killing players to do it, Strand focuses almost entirely on non-player goals. Kill demos, kill gates, etc.

The only thing you really want to do is crowd control the opposing players, except when you've got nothing else to do on defence. It makes Strand unique, as it's probably the only BG so focused on NOT killing players. Does that make it good or bad?

That's up to you.

Until next time, practice safe Death!

~Onike

Playing Catch-Up

2011-03-11T09:56:00.000-05:00

So, I did say that the only thing that was likely to prevent me from posting regularly here was RL issues, and I had a mountain of them last week, thus the radio silence from me. HOWEVER! Do not despair, I'm going to get myself all caught up on posts ASAP. That's going to mean a mountain of blogging activity over the weekend, and then the resumption of my normal schedule with my Tuesday post next week.

I apologize for the inconsistency, but I just don't like the idea of being "behind" with my posts, so I'm getting caught up. In other words, you'll be getting at least one, if not two posts a day for the next 2-3 days while I inundate the world with the posts I missed. So, enjoy a little bit of Onike overdose, and happy reading!

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Maintenance Day Musings - What are Death Knights?

2011-03-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

The first of many of my Tuesday editorials is here, and I'm starting the habit of this blogging schedule, plan, theory, thing, with a look back at my roots.

Recently, on a random, somewhat nostalgic whim, and hopped over to a random server where I had parked some cute level 1-6 alts, and rolled a Death Knight. This was born largely out of a desire to see the starting zone again. Back in Wrath, when everyone and their uncle was rolling a Death Knight, there was a good reason for it. The starting zone. At the time, it was the best questing zone in the game (don't try and tell me Northrend was better – it wasn't. At least not in my opinion).

Although a lot of time has gone by, and Cataclysm has been released (with it, all-new starting zones, which are all excellent as well), this zone still stands up. I'll always have a special place in my heart for that starting zone, the place where everything began. I fondly remember when I finally got my druid to 55. I immediately ran up and started a Death Knight (Theloral, my current main). And I was transported to a sort of immersion I'd never really experienced in WoW before – especially having never played anything past Old World (remember, my druid had only just hit 55).

“A hero, that's what you once were.” Those words started me off on one of the coolest quest chains in the history of WoW, or certainly in the time I've been playing (basically since late BC – early Wrath). It was epic, engaging, and one hell of a good time. Playing through as a slave to the Lich King, eventually breaking free... it was everything I'd hoped for the from the zone, and then some. And that zone is, really, what initially hooked me on the class.

The Not-So Humble Beginnings

Back in the day, when DKs were first released, there was a huge uproar in the community. The introduction of a “Hero Class” had totally unbalanced the game. A massive stream of newly created Death Knights flooded the realms, basking in complete, and utterly overpowered facerolling. New DKs didn't have to be “good” at the their class. They had to know how to mash buttons, and how to pwn. The result was that the class got an extremely bad reputation.

The Hero Class didn't mean veteran players were taking in the rewards of all their toils. It didn't mean the best players from BC had converted (though presumably, plenty did). It meant that anyone with the time to level to 55 (yours truly included) could hop into the game, and be almost indestructible.

Blizzard quickly learnt the lesson that WoW's first Hero Class had been, to put it gently – a mistake. It wasn't fair to set one class apart from the others, in terms of in-game power, and making Death Knights stronger than everybody else, was just plain dumb. Soon, DKs were nerfed into the ground (it was sad, but it needed to be done), and those early pioneers of the class were left playing just a normal class, like everyone else. In fact, since that initial wave of being completely OP, Death Knights as a whole have been on the lower end of the spectrum.

Even when I finally hit 80, during the end of Ulduar, I frequently got told by players “Wow, you play a DK. They're OP. You're a noob.” It was a ridiculous statement because, by that point certainly, DKs really weren't OP anymore. I would generally gently point to the paladins sitting in a corner, cackling madly while they facerolled everything and everyone, but that's really a story for another time.

Without our status as a “Hero Class” (the name remained yes, but for all intents and purpose, DKs became just a normal class), many players wondered back their old mains, and the DK populations diminished. They became just as common as any other class, and the die-hard DKs that stuck around may have felt a little bit confused, as to the identity of their class.

Class Identity

Since the dawn of fantasy gaming, there have always been certain understood principles. The big warrior guy in heavy armour protects the little gnome wizard shooting fireballs at the baddies from behind his back. The cleric/priest/whatever heals the big, armoured guy, and keeps everyone alive. Behind the baddie, there's also probably a rogue knifing him in the back, and maybe a couple other general groups of character standing around hitting the bad guy as well. It's a standard concept, and it's always worked in the past. The priest heals, the warrior tanks, the rogue knifes people in the back.

Having an idea of what your class is is extremely important to a game like WoW. Players want to feel unique. They want to be able to do something really cool, that no one else can do, and to stand proudly back and say “Yeah, bitch, I just dropped a totem on your ass. Cause I'm a shaman. Suck it.” They want to be able to turn into bears, cats, and demented sea lions and then rub in the faces of the other lowly non-druids who are always stuck looking the same. They want to be able to stand in the middle of the line of fire of some giant's fist, and take because they're warriors. You get the picture.

Necromancer type classes have been common in fantasy RPGs since the beginning, and most people were thrilled to see them coming to WoW. But after the initial nerf bat hit the class, many players questioned what exactly they were supposed to be doing. What exactly was the point of Death Knights.

The Point

Death Knights might not be the most overpowered class in the game, anymore. We might just be average schmucks off the street, but despite the lack of pure power, DKs are still unique. Sure, popping army of the dead won't wipe a raid of the opposite faction's players. And yeah, maybe the sky doesn't rupture every time we swing our axes.

But, we're still the only class in the game who can reanimate players. We're still the only class in the game who get to bust out ghouls. We're still the only glass in the game to get to use swirling bones as shields. Nobody else can pull a hunter across the map to themselves, then pin him to the ground with some ice, and proceed to beat his face in. And, last time I checked, no one else can summon an undead army just for kicks.

Death Knights are tanks. We're melee dps. We're PvPers, and we're badass. Can lots of other classes say that? Yes, and especially so in a world where class homogenization is becoming more and more part of the game. But no one else can say it the same way we can.

We're Death Knights. We control zombies, and we smash face. We take hits, and wear a lot of skulls as fashion statements. And can mister tree-hugging druid over there say the same thing?

I don't think so.

4.0.6 Updates - While I was gone...

2011-02-27T10:19:00.002-05:00

I'm back. Yes, I realize that that probably comes as a surprise to some of my readers. I left essentially without any prior notice, and didn't upload for over a month. There were no updates, and to be honest, I haven't even been checking site traffic, or reading comments, like a good blogger should. The reason? Life got extremely busy, and I've barely had the time to log into WoW lately, let alone blog about it. I'm not going to mince words here – life is more important than WoW for me, and although I hope I won't make another disappearance, if blogging starts to interfere with my job, or my friends, or whatever, those things are always going to come first. Sorry if that bothers you, but frankly if you have an issue with that, you should probably seek out another blog to follow.

Anyways, to business. A lot has changed since I was more or less forced into a leave, and I'd like to get you all up to date as quick as I can, so I can start getting into the real content again. But before I get into DK related items, I've got a quick list of blog-related housekeeping to get through.

First, I'm imposing a rough schedule on this blog. When it was created, it was with the intention that I would post when I felt like it, about what I felt like posting about. Format, and regular-content be damned. I write several columns in my “real life”, so I get more than enough deadlines without imposing them on a hobby. But, honestly, that clearly isn't working for me. I need a format, and a schedule to keep me writing. Otherwise I get lazy, and this blog is never going to become what I'd like it to be.

Basically, my schedule will be, generally a post Tuesdays (something to tide you over for patch day), Thursdays, and a weekend post. This is going to vary a bit, but at least I can promise 1-2 posts per week with my current schedule outside of this blog. That means no more random absences, if it can at all be helped (if it can't... see above).

Tuesdays will be editorial posts – musings and thoughts about the game, PvP, and the class in general. Thursdays are going to be my PvP-related content days, with posts about battlegrounds, arenas and whatnot. The weekend posts are going to be a mixed bag. For the time being, it'll be class-related posts (specs, rotations, abilities etc. - the works), because those generally take the longest for me to write, and weekends are when I have the most time. But if there's not a whole lot of class news to discuss, weekends may turn into a mix of content. We'll see how it all pans out.

SO – for the time being, Tuesdays = editorials, Thursdays = PvP content, and weekends (Saturday evening, or more likely Sundays) = Class content. Sound alright? Good. Moving on.

What you missed

Alright, so essentially, what you've missed since I took off in January was patch 4.0.6. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed the changes, but let me run through the ones that effect DK PvPers the most, since as I've said before, reliable news on DK PvP is horribly difficult to find these days. First off, DK changes. And there are a lot, so bear with me.

Class Changes - General

“Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.” This obviously is a pretty big nerf to UH, whether you PvP or not. Not a whole lot I can say here, since sadly, it's live and there's really nothing we can do about it.

“Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.” HALELUJAH. It's about time, IBF was extremely situational without this feature, and was really only useful if you knew that a feral or rogue was going to jump you soon. This means we've got another way to get out of stuns (besides trinketing that is) and if you haven't been using this before – you should be now.

“Necrotic Strike's absorption effect is now reduced by the target's resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.” It makes me sad, but stacking necrotic strike was really just too good. A few well-played, co-ordinated Death Knights in a BG could wreak absolute havoc on healers, with NS stacking practically infinitely. Time will tell how good this ability now is, especially with resilience affecting it. This change does seem to contradict blizzard's previous statements that they wanted resilience to be a flat damage reduction, and nothing else, though.

“The spell hit bonus previously given by Virulence (Unholy) has been rolled into the Runic Focus passive effect that all death knights possess.” What can I say? It's a bit of a buff, I guess, easily to hit the spell-pen cap if you aren't running UH, I guess. I'll take it.

Blood

Okay, so good news is that this spec has been buffed in general. Blood PvP is more viable than ever before, and I'll definitely be doing some testing to see how it stacks against other specs in terms of damage output (obviously it is much harder to kill, though). I'll skip the obvious buffs, since anyone can check the patch notes and see what got simply increased, and try to explain the more complicated changes.

“Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.” Obvious question – is this a buff or a nerf? That's really hard to say. I'll have to run some numbers to sort that out, I'll keep you posted.

“If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.” This means moar absorbs. Pretty easy to understand. Basically, you can DS with basic impunity in blood spec, and it should be a main part of your rotation, if it wasn't already.

“Scarlet Fever now applies via Blood Plague, rather than Blood Boil.” This appears to be a move by blizzard towards more single-target oriented dps? Again, I'll have to test this out.

“Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap's cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.” This isn't really a buff or a nerf. It could mean more Blood Tap, but it doesn't seem to really be a position to change the number of times Rune Tap is available all that much.

Frost

There weren't many changes to frost, essentially we got a root tacked onto our Chains of Ice, which is awesome. Before you jump for joy, do realize that it's nothing like the CoI of old, it just means a slight improvement over a pure slow. At the same time though, don't underestimate this change, a root is a root, and I love it. It gives CoI some great applications it hasn't really had since it became a slow, which I'll talk about in a future post. All in all, though, no really major changes to frost. It's still as viable as ever before.

“Chilblains now also causes Chains of Ice to root the target for 1.5/3 seconds." See above.

“Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.” A nerf to HB's AoE capabilities, probably made to prevent a return of the Frost AoE Spec of Doom. Not a huge deal, just means less AoE output. I can live with it.

“Hungering Cold now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.” THANK YOU BLIZZARD. It was absolutely not fair that HC lasted so much less time than fear, entangling roots and other PvP CC staples. It wasn't much, and yes HC is an amazing CC. But it needed to be standardized, and I like the change, especially since in terms of “real” CC, HC is basically all frost has.

“Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.” Making 2h frost more viable. I'd say 1h will probably still come out on top, but since I run a 2h (at least till I have conquest to burn on the 1 handers), I won't scoff at a buff to my dps.

Unholy

Sadly, the previous it spec of the season has been nerfed significantly. This is probably a change meant to make other specs more viable, but it's always sad when a major spec gets hit so hard. I won't go over all the flat nerfs (and most of the changes to the spec are just that), since you've probably read the patch notes anyways, and if you haven't noticed the lower numbers, the patch notes are available here.

“Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery.” To be honest this change confuses me a bit. It is a buff to mastery for UH DKs and also a move towards less AoE-oriented dps. But what at first seemed to me a desire to make Mastery as important as haste to the UH DK didn't really pan out that way at all. Haste is still the stat to stack for UH DKs and there isn't really much reason to go out of your way to pick up mastery, except for when it's already included on gear, since haste is pretty much universally better.

“Death's Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 50/75% of normal movement speed.” This is a great new talent, and is definitely worth speccing into (I'll have a new UH spec including a change to DA as soon as I can manage it). But the change from the originally planned 100% possible bonus, is saddening. Your UH runes won't both be up very often, but popping Empower Rune Weapon definitely has the potential to make you a bit harder to catch. Time will tell how useful this talent proves to be.
EDIT: I missread this, the talent actually got changed back to 75/100%, meaning although you can still be rooted, you can't be slowed below normal run speed with you both your UH runes up. ERW definitely has the potential to make UH DKs much more mobile. /cheer for awesome talent!

“Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.” Although Necrotic Strike itself was nerfed, this is still nice, as you once your diseases are up, you should still be using NS against healers as much as possible.

“Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.” This seems to be a nerf, since overwriting the buff obviously makes it last longer than adding 3 seconds.

“Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance.” I'm not 100% whether this means more Sudden Doom or not right now. In keeping with the general theme of UH though, it appears to mean less – another nerf..

“Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage.” This is because of the packaging of the old effect of this talent into Runic Focus (see above). It's probably meant to make up for the removal of disease damage from our mastery.

Glyphs

“Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.” This give us another significant heal to use in Frost and UH, making both those specs a little more durable in PvP. Although DS costs the same as OB or SS, it's still worth using when short on health, despite the obvious reduction in damage by using it to replace your main big hit.

“Glyph of Death's Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.” This means self-healing with Lichborne won't heal you as much as it used to (exact number escapes my mind at the moment, sadly). I think the addition of Dark Succor makes up for this, but I'm not sure if it will mean more or less healing overall, yet.

PvP Changes

The pretty enormous list of DK class changes aside, there were also some changes to PvP that I want to quickly run through.

First – “PvP trinkets will now clear disarm and silence effects.” This is a pretty big change. It means that not matter what is wrong with your character, basically, the trinket is a way out of it. Disarm especially will probably notice a serious reduction is effectiveness (Yeah, warriors, I'm laughing all the way to the Conquest Vendor). What this means is that you should adjust your attitude regarding when to pop your trinket. It shouldn't just be to get out of slows, take into account the possibility of silences and disarms as well.

Also, in our case, this means strangulate can be stopped with a trinket pop. This means that when hitting a healer, especially, you should consider that they'll probably pop their trinket to get out of strangulate, especially if it was used at a crucial time. Be ready with a quick mind-freeze, though, or ghoul stun (if you're running UH) if they do trinket, and all will be well. Forcing the enemy player to trinket is never a bad thing.

“Bloodlust, Heroism, Time Warp and Ancient Hysteria can no longer be cast while in Arenas.” Thank you, again, blizzard. This was not consistent with the theory by blizzard that big spells (read: Army of the Dead, etc.) should not be castable in arenas, and it makes classes with access to these buffs more balanced in arenas. Of course – none of these were my buffs, so I'm not likely to complain, am I?

Also, in Gilneas - “The time it takes to capture a flag has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 8.” This means faster capture times, and potentially more grabbing by enemy players (already a potent strategy in Gilneas). For the hundredth time, people, fight on the bloody flag.

Strand of the Ancients was also reworked to account for the ridiculous zerg-fest it had become since Cataclysm dropped. I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but it seems much more reasonable.

First and foremost, the demolishers no longer have two extra seats. This means only the driver can be in the vehicle, and that the days of having CCers calmly slow every defender into oblivion from inside the demo are finally, mercifully gone. Also, damage from the cannons has been increased 200%, along with a 50% increase to their speed, making the cannons viable in Strand once again. Teleporters have also been reworked, so that they essentially put you where you need to be (by the gate that needs defending), rather than simply dropping you behind the gate. It could take a bit of getting used you, but the battleground should be much more balanced now.

Finally, Blizzard has made an effort to fix Tol Barad, which up until this patch had been hideously broken. Attackers will get a 200% bonus capture rate on their last cap to win, and defenders will get a 200% capture rate when holding all 3 bases, making it harder to take the initial base. This does make it a little easier for attackers to win, and although I haven't had a chance to get into Tol Barad since the patch, it should make it much more reasonable. Again, I'll keep you posted.

Conclusion

Well, this has been one ridiculously long mega-post, but that essentially catches you all up on what you missed while I was gone. Expect some relatively stable scheduling for posts in the future, and some more consistent content. Also, expect copious amounts of awesome. Anyways, that does it for me for now.

Until next time,

Practice Safe Death!

~Onike

2h Frost PvP - Keeping it Cool

2011-01-16T08:05:00.004-05:00

Lame, clichéd title? Yes, but I just didn't have the creativity today for something wittier. Before I dive into content here, I also want to apologize for the lack of posts lately. The holidays have been pretty busy on my end, and an additional mountain of RL insanity has taken me out of the game for the better part of three weeks. But I'm back, and with me comes the next installment of my comprehensive DK spec list for PvP.

Unlike the pre-cataclysm mini season, we're now into a much more stable, complete Rated PvP Season, namely Season 9. This means gone are the days when spamming Howling Blast was a viable way to play frost. We're back to a proper rotation, and seriously thinking about what you're doing. With that in mind, let me help you re-learn frost.

The Spec

The basic spec is something along the lines of 7/32/2 which combines the raw dps spec, courtesy of Elitist Jerks. You lose On a Pale Horse, which while being a nice talent for mobility just can't be squeezed in with the mandatory PvP talents: Lichborne, Endless Winter, and Chillblains.

I've also dropped Chill of the Grave, in order to have some points left to put into the Unholy tree. This change is debatable. You could probably drop another raw dps talent for CotG, but personally I feel like RP generation is less important than raw dps in PvP where you'll be switching targets all the time, and probably not standing still and nuking as much as in PvE. Also, now that you'll be using OB instead of FS again for Killing Machine procs (more on that below), RP is not as important a res source as it was before Season 9.

As with the 2h UH spec, you'll get the free interrupt with mind freeze, and the potential self heal with Lichborne.

Glyphs

Elitsist Jerks, in their frost dps section recommend the use of:

Prime

[Glyph of Frost Strike]
[Glyph of Howling Blast]
[Glyph of Obliterate] | [Glyph of Icy Touch], for AoE.

Major

[Individual's Choice]
[Individual's Choice]
[Individual’s Choice]

Minor

I agree with these glyphs, since their benifits all apply to PvP as well. However, I'd also recommend using [Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell] for one of your major glyphs, as the AMS makes you essentially immune to many of the major threats in PvP, and extending it is pretty much a must in this case.

The "Rotation"

As I said in my 2h UH write up, there isn't really a rotation anymore. Everything we do in terms of damage is based on a mildly complicated priority rotation. But once you've got it figured out, it's really not all that complicated. Don't worry too much about memorizing the exact details of this, as it only applies to situations where you're able to deal the maximum dps.

The priority system from EJ, slightly modified to account for interrupts and the like in PvP is as follows:

Diseases >INTERRUPTS*> Ob if both Frost/Unholy pairs and/or both Death runes are up, or if KM is procced > Dark Simulacrum (vs. casters only)>
BS if both Blood Runes are up > FS if RP capped > Rime > Ob > BS > FS > HoW.
*Interrupts take precedence over pretty much everything in PvP, if someone is casting a big spell that is either gonna do a lot of healing (in the case of healers) or a lot of damage, interrupt it as often as you can!

It should also be noted that in the case of 2h frost, you'll be using UH presence, not frost presence. If you're into detailed explanations and whatnot, it's because of Might of the Frozen Wastes, a talent which means that making faster attacks in UP is much more valuable than it would ordinarily be.

Basically, the system here is actually much simpler than it's UH counterpart (one of the reasons I like this spec... I'm lazy!). Get your diseases up, Frost Strike when you've got lots of RP (especially when you're capped... duh), Obliterate when you've got two Death Runes, or both Frost/Unholy up, and blood strike if blood runes are up. Besides that just follow the procs (KM= OB, and Rime = HB). Simple enough, really.

Conclusion and the joys of Hungering Cold

In general, frost is a much more viable spec than it has been in the past for PvP. Although still slightly in the shadow of its UH counterpart, frost is absolutely a viable spec. I've done a write up for the 2h spec first, because many DKs will already be running the "best" spec, 2h UH, and this does not require a new set of weapons. However, it's probably worth noting that technically DW frost does better damage than 2h. Not an extreme amount, but enough to make it worth grabbing 1 handers, if you're planning to go frost for your main spec, and still haven't picked up that sexy Conquest Weapon yet.

Now, it's no secret that frost is my favourite spec. I adore frost, so admittedly, some of my constant assurances of it's overall viability might be attributed to that. BUT, it is also way more practical to play frost now than it was in Season 8, and plenty of us die-hardsDKs I know that continually run frost) love to PvP frost is largely it's cornerstone ability, Hungering Cold.

Hungering Cold is a godsend, it's one of the best all-around CCs in the game, capable of totally freezing a huge group of people in place. Although that silly mage hungering cold knock-off might freeze people in blocs of ice, it also creates a giant rune on the ground before activating, giving people plenty of warning to move. HC has no such downside, it can come from anywhere, at any time, and can be used in almost any situation. Learning to use HC to your maximum advantage is one of things that will make frost that much better, and isn't something I can really teach in a little conclusion here.

At any rate, I've rambled long enough. There is your one-stop-shop for everything 2h Frost. Still to come, DW Frost, Blood and DW UH. Stay tuned, and until next time,

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

The Complete 2h Unholy Tool Kit

2010-12-22T09:11:00.002-05:00

Season 9 is here, and with it serious PvP is back in style. I won't say I don't miss the lax attitude of the last couple months, but the fact of the matter is, if you want to seriously PvP in this season, now is the time to work at getting geared and ready to go. The best time to get into PvP is at the start of a season, when the gear playing field is level.

With that in my, I'm taking a bit of a break from my informal Cataclysm leveling guide to walk you through pretty much ever current viable PvP spec, so that you can choose how you'd like to be playing this season. I'm starting this off with 2 handed Unholy, because it has slightly higher dps than the other DK specs, and also has the most general utility. Although frost and blood as a LOT more viable than they were last season, at least for the time being, Unholy is back to being the "it" spec. A bit a shame? Maybe, but that's just how it is.

The Spec

The basic spec, packing the best combination of dps and PvP utility (more or less, I haven't gone miles into the theorycrafting) is 0/8/33. You aren't give a whole lot of choice with your Unholy talents, and in the frost tree there is absolutely no choice at all, because you need to pick up Lichborne, and Endless Winter.

So now you've seen the basic talent rundown, but what exactly is this spec packing? Well dps rotation aside (we'll talk about that in a sec), it's got the standard Strangulate silence (which isn't a talent, so every DK spec features), a free mind freeze every 10 seconds and the additional ghoul stun. This means, that if you need to lock down a caster, you can interrupt a cast with DG, chains of ice, strangulate, mind freeze, ghoul stun, mind freeze again, then drop dark simulacrum. They won't know what hit them.

The spec is also packing Lichborne, one of my favourite frost talents, which makes you immune to those pesky stuns and gives you the ability to heal yourself with Death Coil. The macro for that is:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast !Lichborne;
/cast [target=player] Death Coil

(Courtesy of arena junkies).

Let's talk glyphs

You don't have a ton of choice when it comes to your prime and major glyphs. This list comes from Elitist Jerks, for optimal dps, and I'd say it's pretty solid for PvP as well.

Prime:
[Glyph of the Ghoul]
(as a side note, the mouseover for this won't work properly. Please ignore wowhead's lack of a glyph of the ghoul atm, and just go with the name. I'll fix that soon as I can.)
[Glyph of Scourge Strike] | [Glyph of Death and Decay], for AoE/DW (Yes I know thsi post doesn't discuss DW. More on that in a future post).
[Glyph of Death Coil] | [Glyph of Icy Touch], for AoE.

Major
[Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell]
[Glyph of Pestilence]
[Glyph of Blood Boil]

The minor glyphs in EJ are left up to your personal choice, and I'd agree with that. They aren't going to affect your dps too much, so I wouldn't worry overly about it, take whatever floats your boat.

The Rotation

Okay. So as I've already stated in a few past posts, the days of set DK rotations are behind us, in their place is a world of priority systems. Now if you've PvPed before, you're probably already familiar with the concept. PvP has never really had a set rotation, it's all about reaction to your situation. Sure, if a friendly rogue has your target stunlocked, you may as well open up your pure dps rotation, but that's not gonna happen very often.

But, for purely academic purposes, and so that you have a rough understanding of the raid rotation, here's the priority system, once again courtesy of EJ:

Diseases > Dark Transformation > DnD*/SS if both Unholy and/or all Death runes are up > FeS if both pairs of Blood and Frost runes are up >
DC if SD, 100 RP, will overcap RP with anything else or if RC isn’t up > DnD/SS > FeS > DC > HoW.

HOWEVER, this is the raid priority system. Yours will have to be different because of PvP. Therefore, with that in mind, I've altered the system a little bit to account for PvP.

Diseases>Dark Transformation>INTERRUPTS*>Dark Simulacrum (vs. casters only)>DnD/SS if both UH and/or Death runes are up>FeS if both pairs of blood and frost are up>Necrotic Strike if one unholy or death rune is up>DC if Sudden Doom procs, or if you're at 130 RP, or about to ovecap>DnD/SS>FeS>DC>HoW.

*Interrupts take precedence over everything if you are fighting a caster, especially a healer, and they're casting a spell.

Okay, so that probably seems really complicated. Let me make it much simpler. This PvP rotation is basically the same as the raid one with a few things in mind.

First, when a caster is casting, if you CAN, you SHOULD interrupt them. Always.

Second, when you have your diseases up and have one unholy rune up, or one death rune, you should always necrotic strike as much as possible, unless it is impossible for that target to be healed. In most cases, they'll have self-heals or the possibility of a healer jumping in to save them, so stacking necrotic strike as much as you can just makes sense.

Besides that, the dpsPvP is all about rolling with the punches and being ready for anything. The benefit to knowing the rotation is just understanding how to dps.

Conclusion, and some thoughts on Ghoul Control

So, before I wrap this up, I want to run through a few basics EVERY Unholy DK should be aware of. First, your ghoul is important, if it's dead and your raise dead is off CD, you should be bringing it back. Second, you should have leap and gnaw keybound, not set automatically. Got an ally running away? Leap and stun. Need an on-the-fly interrupt for that big heal, but have mind freeze and strangulate on CD? Gnaw it up!

Don't let the computer decide when to interrupt! That's your job as the player. I only leave Claw on automatic (since he should be using it every CD), and turn of huddle entirely, it's a complete waste of a GCD, when aggrro is meaningless in PvP. Learning to use your ghoul effectively is one of the best things you can do as an Unholy PvPer.

Anyways, to wrap this up, Unholy is a very strong spec in the early days of Season 9. 2h UH packs the most utility, and according to most theorycrafters, the most dps. If you're into min-maxing, this is probably the spec for you. If you don't like unholy, never fear. There's two other trees, and even a DW variation on UH and frost to come, so don't fret. The difference between specs isn't too enormous, so you've definitely got options.

Until next time, Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Cataclysm Leveling: Deepholm (82-83)

2010-12-14T16:46:00.000-05:00

My informal leveling guide/review returns with the next installment of brilliance. Today I'm going to be going over the second zone I leveled through in Cataclysm- Deepholm.

Deepholm, unlike Vash'jir cannot be separated into a series of smaller zones, it's one, big zone. It can, however, be broken up into the pieces of the plot which the zone takes you through.

The Elements are Angry

You're called to the zone by Thrall, who wants Alliance and Horde to work together to heal the world, which was damaged when Deathwing busted out of Deepholm. That's right, this zone takes you right into the Earth Plane. Deepholm is the area where Deathwing hid out while he was licking his wounds.

The main plot of the zone focuses around the need to heal the World Pillar, which is exactly what it sounds like: a giant pillar in Deepholm which supports the entire world. It's been broken into three pieces, which, as you can imagine is a bit of a problem for... the world.

The Earthen Ring tasks you with the fairly clear job of reassembling the shattered World Pillar, which takes you all across Deepholm, and through another one of Cataclysm's great zones.

The First Two Pieces


When the Elementals say "oops"

The first piece of the World Pillar takes you up against the raging Elementals of the area, and follows a pretty clear storyline. You fight off the bad Elementals, save the piece of the Pillar, and do some quests. Now I'm not saying this part of the zone is "bad" at all. It's as good as any of the leveling we've seen in Cataclysm so far. It's just lacking interesting twists and story which made Vash'jir so good.

However, it's during your quest for the second piece where things really start to get interesting. In a surprising twist of fate, it turns out the Elementals aren't the bad guys here. The Twilight Cultists are. Now we knew the Twilight Cult was bad, but we didn't know they were in Deepholm. Turns out, they're the ones that got Deathwing ready for his big, dramatic return. And the reason the Elementals are attacking the Earthen Ring people, is because they've been pissed off by the Cult.

From there, fairly obviously, your job is to work out a somewhat diplomatic solution with the Elementals while looking for the second piece, which is with the Earthmother, the Elemental in charge. You work for the Lords (their official name escapes me for some reason... Stone Lords, or something like that), in order to prove yourself to the Earthmother. It's not the most original plot ever devised, but it's interesting and engaging and just as fun as Vash'jir was. In other words- awesome.

Deepholm

I never thought I'd say this, but I love this dwarf. A lot.

The thing that makes leveling in Cataclysm is the little bits of awesome thrown in between the main plot points. While hunting around for the second piece, you're sent to investigate an alliance airship, which reportedly attacked the Horde (unless you play alliance. I have no idea what happens if you play alliance... sorry). Turns out the Twilight Cult poisoned the supply of food and water on the ship, which killed of the crew. While there, you meet the dwarf featured in the image above.

And it is a TON of fun. During your somewhat predictable journey through the ship looking for the Cultist in charge, you eventually capture the bad guy by grabbing him with a GRYPHON. No, that bird is not just for show. The dwarf dangles the ogre in charge over a spinning propeller to get her information, it's a random piece of badassery that you just don't except. I was predicting the ogre to fling himself overboard rather then give us what we want... or something. But no, this dwarf chick basically beats the information out him. Which wasn't expected at ALL. But was really awesome.

My point? Blizzard can throw in some wild cards that really makes their world seem alive. Expect the unexpected. The only guarantee in Cataclysm seems to be an awesome game.

The Third Piece


The World Pillar, reformed.

The third piece of the World Pillar is found with the Twilight Cult, and some very nasty dragons. The result is a battle of epic proportions between the Earthen Ring allied with the Elementals and the Twilight Cult. Your job during the war is essentially to take out the main figures of the Cult, which is actually very interesting. Each "boss" is an elite, but is soloable. They aren't tough because they hit so hard, or have so much health, that a player alone could never take them out. They're difficult because of unique mechanics.

Although Blizzard probably could have made these "Solo Bosses" a little bit tougher and gotten away with it, what they've succeeded in doing here is challenging players with solo content. In other words, encounters designs based around one player, instead of a group or raid. This is something we haven't seen a lot of before, and was good fun, and certainly lived up to my now high expectations of Cataclysm.

Epic? Yes.

Deepholm was a great zone, all in all. It didn't surprise me in the way Vash'jir did, because I expected awesome, and I got awesome. But it was amazing. I won't spoil the ending for you, but the battle with the Twilight Cult is a whole lot of fun, and continues to impress upon me how fantastic Cataclysm really is, in terms of leveling content. Will the endgame be as epic? Only time will tell, but based on what we've seen....

Yes. It will.

Cataclysm Leveling: Vash'jir (80-82)

2010-12-08T18:27:00.000-05:00

So there I was. At the release of Cataclysm. Wetting my little gamer pants at the prospect of the fantastic wonders in store for me. Now, because I wasn't in the beta, I actually made a serious effort to avoid all spoilers related to Cataclysm. As a result, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when the expansion popped.

I did have a rough inkling that I wanted to head to Mount Hyjal, because I wasn't huge on the idea of a zone totally underwater. After all, who wants to swim everywhere? That's just silly. However, after being unable to find "The Big Board" in Orgrimmar which a guildy kindly informed me was the path to Hyjal, I decided to go to the other way, after all a conveniently timed vision of Thrall as I entered Orgrimmar directed me to Vash'jir. And there would be less people there. So why not give it a shot?

Onike's Disclaimer: This is NOT a "real" leveling guide. It's just a rough outline of the zone, and my initial thoughts on Cataclysm questing. If you want a step-by-step for the 80-85 zones, look elsewhere.

Vash'jir

Vash'jir is actually really easy to find your way into. Just get into Orgrimmar, and after witnessing Thrall's message to you from the Maelstrom (more on that later), you receive a quest which will lead you to a member of the Earthen Ring, who sends you off to a boat bound for Vash'jir.

Before you leave...

Train your professions! This is really important. Don't be like me, and forget that to get to 525 skill, you actually need to visit a trainer. Especially if you're packing mining, which is now worth experience (presumably herbalism is as well... but I don't have an herbalist, so I can't be 100% sure). That way as you're travelling around, you don't have to worry about getting skill ups for your effort. First Aid is also handy to carry around, especially if your class is lacking in self-heals.

Level 80s, bound for Vash'jir

Kelp'thar Forest

After an exceedingly awesome cut scene, you'll find yourself at the bottom of the ocean. Now this is the part where I want to stress something. You know those old quests that would have you swim to the bottom of lakes and kill mobs, etc. etc.? And how boring they were? Vash'jir is nothing like this. You get a zone wide buff which allows you to breathe under water, and swim faster, and about halfway through the first zone, you're given a seahorse mount to swim around on. The seahorse increases your swim speed by a ridiculous 450% while in Vash'jir, and it makes it so that you often forget you're actually under water.

A wake-up call

If you're like me, and used to being all epic-ed out at level 80, running about 2-shotting mobs on your dailies, you're in for a wake-up call. Mobs hit hard now. Really hard. You'll find yourself frequently stopping to rest, and actually blowing cooldowns on pulls of more than one mob. In fact, I'd advise against pulling more than one mob, if you can avoid it. They've got around twice as much health as Northrend mobs, and a few fights with even the entry-level 80s, will take you down pretty low on health.

Also, a friendly warning. If you use a lot of AoE spells (read: Howling Blast) regularly in your rotation, make sure you're not in range of other mobs, which it's all too easy to accidentally pull. In Vash'jir, there are a huge number of non-agressive wildlife mobs, which hit as hard as the aggressive ones, and it's easy to pull them by mistake, turning a simple fight into a very difficult one.

Release the Kraken.

Quest Progression

It's not a term you're probably used to hearing. But the way zones in Cataclysm are structured, it really feels as though you're progressing through a story. Vash'jir has a plot, and so do all the zones which follow. I HIGHLY recommend reading quest text, at the very least for the main quests. You'll feel like you're really a part of the story, and it makes leveling way less of a drag than it has been in years past.

Anyways, after pushing your way through the Kelp'thar forest you'll eventually be told (literally- there's a lot less guess work in terms of where to go next than we're used to), to go to the Shimmering Expanse.

The Shimmering Expanse

Not quite Atlantis. But close.

The Shimmering Expanse is the second zone in Vash'jir, and a lot more fun than the Kelp'thar forest. If you felt like you were getting bored in Kelp'thar, of the same-old quests, Shimmering Expanse really pushes the story along. This was especially true for me, since I was dealing with huge crowds in Kelp'thar and having to compete for every inch of questing. Shimmering Expanse introduces a lot more phasing to cut population problems down.

In general, this zone is GOOD. Not amazing, but a lonnnggg way from the grind that vanilla content was. I think it was about halfway through this zone that I stopped counting the experience points until I leveled and finally started really enjoying the process.

The Abyssal Depths

When a goblin says "surface", he means it. Now where's my parachute?

This zone is awesome. It's a lot of fun. About a quarter of the way through the zone, I dinged 82, which means I could have easily dropped out of Vash'jir and headed off to Deepholm. My friends who were in the thick of their Realm First <Class> achievements races, while I was poking around in Vash'jirVash'jir out to the very end, baring dungeon quests, since I didn't want to tank and couldn't stomach the 30 minute dps queue.

Trust me, if you stick it out to The Abyssal Depths, if you aren't already in love with the zone, you will be.

Final Thoughts on Vash'jir

Although a lot of people will probably go into Vash'jir just because it's less crowded, if they actually allow themselves to get caught up in the story, like I did, I guarantee it's worth what some min-maxers are already dubbing "the long way from 80-82". It's absolutely, 100% worth it. So grab a bathing suit, and go swimming. You'll have a blast.

Vash'jir aside, leveling in Cataclysm is a whole 'nother animal than vanilla, BC, or even Wrath content. If you though leveling in Wrath was fun (and I honestly didn't- I found it got old very quickly), you will LOVE Cataclysm content. And if you hated leveling in Wrath... you'll LOVE Cataclysm content. It's amazing all around, and from what I've been told by my min-maxing friends, the content only gets better from here.

It's kind of like being a little kid at Christmas. You want to play with everything at once, take it all in in a few seconds. But don't worry, those quests aren't going anywhere. So enjoy the ride. Trust me, it's not hard.

Missing Out?

2010-11-29T21:03:00.000-05:00

So before jumping into this post, I want to apologize. I realize this is a DK PvP blog, and very little of my content lately has been class, or even PvP information. But with the expansion so close, there just really isn't much in the way of news, on either front. However, let me explain how things are going to work following the expansion's release. First, there's gonna be a ton of DK content, while I'm leveling/thinking about specs, and then you can count on some serious PvP info once Season 9 goes live, and I have a chance to jump in there. *Real* content is coming. Just let me ask you to sit through a few more editorials while we wait for Cataclysm to go live.

Anyways, random preface aside, let me get into the meat of this post.

The New World

If the above image or Orgrimmar doesn't mean anything to you, then I'd suggest you're either playing the wrong side (*cough* I mean the other side *coughs*), or you've been out of the game for a very long time. The world is very, very new, as everyone is now acutely aware.

But with Cataclysm coming, a lot of people are beginning to drop the whole "Wow, a new world, this is really cool" routine, and just focus on the good old min-max we're all so familiar with. A good in-game friend of mine told me today that she had a group of players she'll be leveling with in Cata. Their plan is to band together, take time off work, then shoot for the Realm First: <class> to 85 achievements.

Sure, this is a completely valid idea, and should be lots of fun. After all, it's a group of them, and they'll have fun leveling together. But I can't help but question how much of the world they'll be missing out on by doing that.

Lore

I know, I know. You're all gonna tell me the same thing. "But Onike! No one reads that silly quest text. It's a waste of time. You could already be halfway through the quest." True. And in the old game of "Go get me 10 boar tusks", this made a lot of sense. The lore behind fetching 10 boar tusks doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things. But it hasn't taken long for me to find that this simply isn't the same game it used to be.

If you haven't go roll a new character of your favourite race. You'll find all the old quests that used to bore you totally gone. Better than that, the content has done more than just change.

It got good.

I've found myself actually fully enjoying the process of leveling, which is something I used to HATE with a passion. Leveling was a boring, pointless grind, just serving the purpose of taking me to the endgame, where I could play the real game. That is just not the case any more. The content they're putting in with Cataclysm is a whole lot more interesting.

Remember how awesome Wrathgate was? Remember thinking "Man, if only Blizzard could do this with all the quests." And how everyone just thought, well then it wouldn't be special? Well think again. I won't say every quest has an epic cut scene, but there's a lot of them. Zones have some serious continuity. There's more than just level to level, ding to ding, happening here. There's a story. And it`s good.

The New, New World

So, if Blizzard has content that good from levels 1-10, simply designed to grab attention of new players, imagine what's in store for the primary content of the expansion? You can count on the content being beyond good. Which brings me to the point.

Do you want to miss out on all that?

Sure, if you power-level you'll have a chance to see the cutscenes. They won't go away. But they'll be nuisances, distracting you from the real goal of filling that experience bar. And without the understanding of 'why' you're sneaking into a worgen meeting, seeing two of them argue, then kill a Forsaken spy wouldn't make much sense would it? You'd only really have a chance to say "Oh. Cool." Then on with the next quest.

Now I'm sure you can take an alt through later, and experience all that content at a nice, slow pace. Read that silly quest text and everything. After all, that Realm First achievement only goes out once. But you know what? Powering through the content is going to spoil it, at least for me. The new zones will only be really new once. And racing for that Realm First, which will only really be impressive for a few weeks of your life, is not worth wasting some of the best leveling content to date.

I think we're all too focused on constant achievements. Maybe, if some of these gogogogogonow player types took some time and smelt the roses, they'd find themselves enjoying the game a whole lot more.

As for me? I'm not in any rush. I'm going to level at my own pace. I'm going to read the quest text, and I'm going to really enjoy the game. After all, in my opinion, that's the point.

Season 9 Begins December 14th

2010-11-25T20:25:00.001-05:00

This doesn't seem like a piece of news that has been a big deal throughout the blog-o-sphere, and the WoW community in general, but today while I was staring longingly at those blank Conquest tabs on my PvP screen, I saw that a little message had been added to the foot of them.

Season 9 will begin December 14th 2010. This means, for those of you not near a calendar, or not being particularly endowed mathematically, it goes live exactly one day after Cataclysm goes live. Also, by no coincidence, I'm sure, both these events take place on a Tuesday, just in time for maintenance.

What does this mean?

Besides the obvious, it means Blizzard is intending to make competitive arenas and Battlegrounds available almost immediately after Cataclysm goes live. If leveling in Wrath was any example (which despite the increase in level being cut in half, I think is a fairly good estimate), then we can expect very few people to be 85 in less than a week. Sure, some people will have played the beta and already figured leveling out 100%, and then take time off work and ding in a few very short days. But I'm assuming most of you don't fall into that category.

Personally, I'm estimating at least two weeks (probably more) to get from 80-85. This means That by the time the average player hits max level again, they'll be able to delve right into serious PvP.

But this also means, that if you haven't started thinking about putting a PvP team together already, you should be. We now know the next PvP Season is going to be live in less than three weeks. If you want to catch the first wave of PvPers, you want to be ready with some kind of a team by the time you're at 85. In terms of arenas, this may mean simply grabbing a few friends who are already max level too. But rated BGs may require you to wait for slower levelers, like yours truly, due to the larger size.

Get Ready to Rumble

Sounds cheesy, right? I agree, it is. But the fact of the matter is that if you're a PvPers, there is no reason for you to stay out of the ring longer than you have to. Season 8 has been over for almost a month now, and I don't know about you guys, but beyond the amazing new questing content, I'm pretty excited about getting a chance to sink my teeth into some major PvP again.

So, gear up, get those leveling boots ready, and don't hang up your sword just yet. Things are about to get really interesting all over again.

Until then, practice safe Death!

~Onike

The Shattering, and the Eve of Cataclysm

2010-11-24T21:56:00.001-05:00

Well, it's here. The moment everyone has been waiting for since Cataclysm was first announced over a year ago. Besides the actual release of the expansion, this is by far the most exciting cataclysm-related change we've seen to date. Elementals? Cool. Doomsday cult? Also cool. Blizzard has done a great job, though, of leading up to what is beyond a doubt the most exciting, world-breaking, jaw-dropping event predating the launch of Cataclysm.

Org got quite a facelift.

The Shattering.

Unless you've been living under a rock... actually wait. If you've been living under a rock you're probably dead because said rock is now a few hundred feet underwater, or it melted, or it's now underneath a volcano... etc., etc. Let's just say I'm assuming you know what the Shattering is.

And it's pretty freakin' amazing.

I have a couple regrets, sure. I'm a little sad I never saw Azshara before the Shattering. It was on my list to-explore before my computer died, and now I'm back online, it seems that I missed out. But those regrets are minor. The coolest thing is that the world as we knew it will never be the same. And if that means the Plaguelands from which my blog got their header get a little greener... I'm okay with that.

Due to a combination of lag and installing WoW troubles, I haven't seen much of the new content. Just Orgrimmar, Durotar, and the Northern Barrens (yes, if you didn't know the barrens is now TWO zones, not one). But I intend to begin exploring the new world as soon as time permits. It's an extremely exciting prospect.

I guess Thrall finally got tired of talking.

What now?

With the biggest pre-cata experience now behind us, the question is now- what do we do with ourselves? We've got two weeks to kill before we can really jump into content and start leveling to the new endgame, but the endgame as we know it now is basically at a standstill. Sure, I'll run around and do my Pilgrim's Bounty meta (because I'm cheap and don't want to pay for 310% flying), and yeah, I'll probably run some dailies and a few random BGs... but that's about it.

So, what can a player do? The answer is, really, not much. You can raid, of course. Instances are still open. But most titles and achievements worth chasing have been removed. You're probably not too concerned with gear now, either. After all, it won't matter in 13 very short days. And unless you really like that content, I don't see raiding, or much PvP, on the horizon right now.

But if the endgame is stale, there's something calling to you that isn't. The world. Of Warcraft. Remember it?

My recommendation? Explore. Take some time and smell the roses. Roll a new alt, experience some of the early content. Or, if you're like me and HATE leveling with a passion (I'll check out the new quests... just very slowly, and in my own time)- just run around. Your level 80 might not be able to fly in the Old World for a fortnight, but you've still got that land mount. Take a look around.

When I first logged in after 4.0.3 dropped, I saw someone ask something in trade chat which was oddly insightful. "Does anyone else feel like a noob again?" And I realized that was exactly what I felt like. And you know what? I liked it.

The Magic is Back.

The fact is, people have been saying for a long time that Cataclysm is make or break time for Blizzard. They have an MMO that has outlived all life-expectancies normally tied into such a game. WoW was slowly fading. The only way to stop this trend was to create something so amazing, it made players at home again.

And by making me feel like a noob again, that's exactly what they did.

Don't misunderstand me here. That's not a bad thing, in my opinion. In fact, it's a very, very good thing. Sure, what got me 'hooked' on WoW was the people. What kept me coming back was the incredible end-game Blizzard has to offer. But what was the coolest thing about the game? That magical feeling where you discover something for the first time.

Nuking the world has brought that back for me. I can go somewhere, and have absolutely no idea what to expect. In a way, I feel kinda sorry for people in the beat. Because they've already seen all this, and some of that magic won't be there for them.

There's a whole world waiting out there, guys. Go grab it.

Water in Durotar. Yeah. Didn't see that one coming.

Conclusion?

Well, what was meant to be a quick little update regarding my thoughts on the Shattering has turned into something pretty huge. I guess in retrospect, it is a pretty huge topic. But let me wrap this one up for you guys.

We're in a weird period of transition. People have been blogging about it really for several months now, often saying things like "This is the twilight of Wrath" (no reference to vampires intended. I'm actually talking about time of day). But if we've been in the twilight of the current expansion for months, I think it's safe to say we've left twilight behind and we're into the dawn of a new day. It's still dark out, but you can just barely see the sun starting to poke its head over the horizon. And somehow you just know.

It's going to be a good day.

Onike's Triumphant Return

2010-11-19T08:48:00.003-05:00

I'm back. Yes, you can all cheer wild praises of joy at the prospect. It's been an interesting week and a half - I never realized how dependant I was on having regular access to a computer until I was without one. My laptop has officially bit the bullet, and it was replaced with a shiny new i5 acer aspire desktop which I got on sale, along with a beautiful 24" monitor which I also got on sale. Very exciting stuff. I'm still not really sure what to do with all that screen space.

I am currently remembering why I hate switching computers - a full install of WoW takes forever. I'm about halfway after leaving my computer on all night. It's very upsetting. So I haven't been able to actually hop into the game for a proper look around at the game, or a chance to really mess around with any new DK specs, etc. etc., YET. That stuff will be coming as soon as I get everything up to speed.

Since I'm sort of unable to blog about anything directly related with the live version of the game (and since I never got into the beta), I'm going to talk about something else, which just happens to be the only piece of DK news that I became aware of on my forced break from the game.

Tier 11.

Wow.

That is seriously probably some of the coolest armor I've ever seen in WoW. I'm SERIOUSLY stoked about this new set. Like to the point that I'm almost certainly going to raid in Cataclysm, if ONLY to pick up tier 11. I still maintain that our Season 9 set looks okay, but tier 11 is just so much more awesome.

But looking at the amount of effort that has clearly gone into our newest raid set, I have to question just how it can look so amazingly detailed, while our PvP set seems like an afterthought. Not to say I'm not stoked for our Season 9 gear, because it looks AWESOME. It's better than any other PvP set we've had through Wrath, in my opinion. But look at that raid set.

Now I know that the vast majority of players raid. It's probably the biggest chunk of the endgame for a lot of people. And even people that don't consider themselves 'raiders' probably consider PvE to be their main source of killing stuff. The percentage of the player base that PvPs and doesn't raid on top of that is comparatively small. But I'd really like to see Blizzard put the time and effort that they put into their raids and their raid sets into PvP, and our gear.

I'm not the first player to complain about this, I'm sure. And forgive me if you think I'm being deliberately inflammatory by blogging about something like this while I can't talk about much else. But it's been bugging me for a while, and I felt the need to rant about it.

/rant off

Death Knights are looking better than ever moving into Cataclysm. With more stable spec designs, a whole whack of epic looking armor on both sides of the divide, and a probably a whole lot more awesome to come with December 7th, everyone in the class right now, whether they kill bosses or players, has something to be seriously pumped about.

That's going to do it for me for now. I can't wait to be back in the thick of it soon! Look for some more DK-oriented posts coming up early next week. Then after that... it's pretty much the release of Cataclysm!

Very exciting time all around,

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Radio Silence

2010-11-13T14:37:00.001-05:00

Ironically, just a few days after I wrote a lengthy post about the importance of hardware to your PvP, my computer decided to die. It's in the shop being fixed (or at least to be given a time of death) right now, the general consensus seems to be a fried hard drive. Which basically means a new computer for me.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've been running WoW on a fairly small laptop, so if I invest in a newer, better computer my performance should go way up. This is, however, a lot of money to have to drop, so needless to say I'm not thrilled about my predicament.

Basically, I've just managed to grab a public computer to post this, and I'm just checking in, to make sure that everything is still in one piece in the blog-o-sphere. What me having no computer essentially means for you, my readers, is that I will be more or less unable to post until the situation is resolved.

So I'm asking you to please put up with a little bit of radio silence over the next little while. I'm going to be largely absent without a computer, but once I get back, I assure you all, I will make it known.

Looks like this has been a month of new hardware all around for me. Let's hope that doesn't happen again for a long while.

Until next time!

Practice safe Death,

~Onike

Hardware: The Hidden Basis of PvP?

2010-11-09T09:26:00.000-05:00

I recently had the misfortune of losing what is, to many gamers, a very important piece of equipment. My mouse. It was a wirless mouse with two extra buttons alone the side (which I had bound to FS and HB), and I was sorry to see it go. But this put me in an interesting place.

See, I run WoW on a laptop. Which means, technically speaking, I have a trackpad, which is a built-in mouse. I'm actually extremely comfortable with the laptop's built-in mouse, so I figured I'd take a crack at playing WoW using just this.

Bad idea.

I'd always had a vague notion that in the world of PvP, 'keyboard turning' was a major faux pas. You don't want to ever tell another PvPer that you *gasp* keyboard turn, because that immediately puts you at the very bottom of a long ladder of PvPers. It seems like the PvP community believes there is a special circle of Hell reserved for keyboard turners.

I'd always largely considered this a bit of an exaggeration. I have a friend who keyboard turns (granted, she plays a warlock, which is a casting class. Melee classes like the DK move a whole lot more than they do), and she does fine. What's the big deal about keyboard turning? I'll just keep one hand on the arrow keys, and one had on my keybindings, and I'll tear it up? Right?

Wrong.

I think I ran a total of three Battlegrounds keyboard turning my little DK around, and it was more than enough to last me a lifetime. If I never find myself without a mouse again, it'll be too soon. Maybe in less movement-intensive raid fights you can keyboard turn. Maybe. And maybe casters can sometimes get away with it. But PvPing a melee class, I simply can not. Which meant one thing.

It was time to go shopping.

The Mouse

Everyone has heard of crazy mice such as the legendary Razer Naga, which has an additional 12 buttons, just down the side, let alone everything else packed in. But I needed a mouse right away, and didn't want to wait for it to be shipped in (no store within many miles of my house would ever carry specific gaming gear like that). I've also heard mixed things about the Naga, people saying it's too cramped et cetera, et cetera. So I went to a local Staples, and perused their selection of mice.

Eventually, I settled on the Logitech Marathon M705, in part because it was on sale, and in part because it is a very comfortable mouse to hold (which is important when you use it as often as we WoWers do). As it turns out, the mouse actually has a lot more features than my old one, with two buttons down the side (as before), but with also a left and right wheel button (triggered by pushing the wheel left or right) and a hidden button beneath the padded side (below the two standard ones).

What this means is that I've been able to bind a lot more of my abilities to my mouse, and this has (not surprisingly) seriously increased my performance. Muscle memory hasn't quite set in yet, but a lot of my cooldowns and defensive OMG buttons are now a quick movement of my thumb away. Where I used to have to clumsily hold CTR + A for my Chains of Ice (sure, I could have bound it to something else), I now simply twitch my thumb. Where Army used to require a complex bending of my keyboard, I now flick my middle finger (taking flipping the bird to a whole 'nother level, if you ask me). It's a lot more intuitive, especially for PvPers, where quick timing is everything.

Beyond the Game

This whole situation, of course, got me thinking about hardware in general. How much of a difference does it make? Does buying a fancy keyboard, or a really nice mouse greatly improve you game? Will I take some rogue apart the next time I PvP because my mouse is better than his?

No, obviously not. PvP is largely about skill, and simply understanding your class well-enough to kill other classes with it. Does my mouse define my skill as a player? Absolutely not. But it does make a difference. And maybe at some point I'll duel somebody and beat them with 100 health left. And then I'll be talking to that person and learn they have a standard mouse, with a left and right click and a wheel in the middle, no extra features packed in. And I'll be glad I've got my Marathon M705, because in that case it probably mattered.

Does a gamer's hardware define their play-experience? Obviously your computer does. Another notable DK in my guild runs WoW on a largely custom-built gaming rig. She pulls a remarkable 50 fps while idling, with every setting turned up to Ultra. Apparently the lowest she ever sees her fps is 30, and only in high stress raiding/PvP.

Whereas my Inspiron, with a built in chip-set for its graphics card, and a fairly small amount of RAM pulls an average of 8 fps, with every setting turned down as low as it goes.

Does THAT make a difference? Well... yeah. It's a huge difference. But not everyone can drop the kind of money that computer cost. So it boils down to the little things. Your mouse, your keyboard. And sometimes, hardware can matter.

That's not to say a hardcore arena player could not sweetly kick my ass into the next millennium, regardless of mice or hardware. I'm a horrible 1v1er, and the first to admit it. But I've got a mouse that does everything I want it to. And I've gotten a little bit better as a result.

So what can you take away from all this? Maybe nothing. But maybe the next time you let loose that SHIFT + CTR + ALT Q super-combo spell, you can consider how easy it would be with a mouse button. And the next time you see a sweet mouse on sale, you might just pick it up.

Understanding Battlegrounds: Premades and Group Make-Up

2010-11-07T09:01:00.003-05:00

With Cataclysm fast approaching, one of the highest priorities on this list of many PvPers is how everything will play out with the implementation of Rated Battlegrounds. These will act as arenas have in the past, yielding a rating which will increase with every win, and allowing the purchase of high-end PvP gear with Conquest Points (which will be earned though arenas and rated BGs). Since Season 9 is scheduled to go live a couple weeks after the release of Cataclysm on December 7th, by the time you've got a team of players up to level 85, you will most likely be able to jump right into competitive PvP.

What does this mean for us now?

It's in your best interest right now, to familiarize yourself with premades and group make-up for PvP. Especially if you've not had a competitive PvP experience in terms of BGs through the duration of Wrath, or even BC and vanilla. You should start thinking about putting your premade group for Cataclysm together now, not after the release.

That's not to say that if you can't find a team now, you won't be able to run Rated BGs come Cata. You'll absolutely be able to fine one after the expansion releases, in fact it will probably be easier after the 7th. Why? Because lots of teams will be recruiting. But you'll be missing out on one of the most important things you can gain between now and Cataclysm.

I'm not talking about gear, or character progression. And I'm not talking about the bragging rights to say you tore it up in one of the most broken periods of PvP history. I'm talking about one, last, valuable thing you can gain before Cataclysm.

Experience

Yes, it matters. If you get a team together NOW, and you practice with them NOW, you'll have a leg up on everyone who's still trying to figure Rated BGs out after the expansion goes live. You'll have a chance to really get used to working with your group,and what each individual player can accomplish, as well as what you can pull together as a group. So, with that in mind, I'm going to be posting a series of posts running you through some strategies to try to consider once Cataclysm drops. And today I'll talk about group make-up.

The Team

The size of your premade group depends entirely on how many PvPers you can get together. Maybe your raid group already wants to PvP and you'll be able to jump right into Alterac Valley (which is going to be a 25 man come Cata). Maybe you're smaller, and you'll be running only 10 mans, and PuGing five players to run 15s. Or maybe you'll be creating more than one BG team, because you have so many players.

As Cynwise pointed out a while back in his post on Rated BGs, it's probably a good idea to shoot for AROUND 15 players. That way you can always run 15 mans, or 10s if everyone doesn't show. Or you can run an Alerac Valley with a few PuGs if you get extra.

But once you've decided on a rough number, a lot of the decisions about how you want your team to function is up to you.

Ask yourself this question: "How do I want my team to work?"

Do you want a super-aggressive, all-out beserker team? Do you want a team that will capture objectives, then turtle them effectively? Or do you want a balanced, all around team that you'll adapt on the fly.

With those questions in mind, let me introduce you to the four kind of players I'm grouping PvPers into.

1. The Melee dps

Melee dps is your front line in a Battleground scenario. While other kinds of players will hang back and attack from behind, melee dps rushes right in (or maybe sneaks in if we're talking ferals or rogues). They're very important to the group as a whole, because as long as there's a bunch of crazies breathing down your throat, an unorganized team won't have the smarts to take a minute, and focus down your healers (more on that later.) Melee dps also often has a lot of interrupts available (especially if we're talking DKs) and can be a huge asset in bringing down the opponent's healers.

The Melee's biggest weakness is that it tends to die. A lot. Before casters go down, and sometimes before even the healers go down, it's not uncommon for a group to just go after whatever's right in front of them. And in almost every situation, that's going to to be your melee dps. Losing this front line means your squishier players are vulnerable, so if the other group takes the bait and goes for your melee, it's important for healers to keep them alive.

2. The Ranged dps

Ranged enough.

The ranged dps essentially performs the same tasks as the melee. They do damage. Lots of it. But unlike the melee who need to be right beside a target to blow it up, ranged dps can nuke those baddies from behind your melee. They can also be positioned more strategically, like little turrets, standing up on higher ground, or in other clever places, out of reach of the enemy melee dps.

The ranged dps also suffers from the unfortunate weakness of generally being fairly squishy. A warlock is, as a general rule, easier to kill than a paladin. Sure, there are some specs, like frost mages, that have more defensive cooldowns

3. The Healer

Possible one of the most important roles in a BG, the healer is that guy that keeps everyone alive. Once we've had a chance to get our feet wet with premade vs. premade Battlegrounds, I suspect one the main points in team-building will be the number of healers to bring vs. the number of dps. A healer doing their job can make or break an encounter.

With this in mind, it's EXTREMELY important to do your part (assuming you aren't healing) and keep your healers alive. Keep those pesky dps CCed and off your heals as often as possible. A poor-playing PuG (which is what a premade will probably streamroll a lot of before Cataclysm) might not target your healers, but count on other premades focusing yours down in the blink of an eye. Healers are what makes Crowd Control in larger-scale PvP just as important as it was in places like the arenas. Heals make or break a group.

4. The Off-Healer or the Secret Healer

This is one of the sneakier things you can do with a premade group. When your team breaks up into little groups to capture certain objectives, you can cleverly plant a player that can heal, but doesn't. This means you have a character who is specced to heal, and geared and experienced enough to do the job, but have them dps, or pretend that they are. See, in most cases (with the possible exception of a Holy Paladin, which has a much greater mana pool than any other pally spec), it's almost impossible to distinguish a healer from another member of your group. Lets use the example of a priest.

What you would do with said priest, is have them specced for healing (let's say disc), but cast a lot of shadow spells. Now a group that's got their wits about them will notice the priest isn't in shadow form. But they're probably not going to be looking too closely at that, they'll be going after the paladin a few feet away that's healing like crazy.

Until the group's ordinary healer starts having trouble, you have this closet healer just pretend to dps. Keep them off the enemy's radar. THEN, once your main heals starts having trouble, they switch gears and start healing up a storm. If the other group took the bait, and hasn't been attacking that first healer, this will almost certainly wipe the other group. However, expect it to only really work once, after you've tricked the other team, they probably wont' fall for it again, and your secret healing player will be up at the top of the hit list with the rest of your heals.

Trees before 4.0.1: The ninjas of the healing family.

Making the Group

Now, once you've got a rough idea of how you're planning to use each kind of character, you'll have to think about how exactly you're going to put them together. Working with your team mates, and gaining some serious team synergy, is one of the greatest challenges you'll face as a Battleground group. But if you take some time now, and practice, you'll find you've left this expansion with something lasting and important, that will carry you well into Cataclysm.

Experience

3/31/2 - Frost AoE PvP

2010-11-02T20:33:00.002-04:00

Since my last post that discussed specific spec/rotations really left a whole lot more questions than answers, I decided to throw up a more in-depth run-through of the spec I've been playing basically since 4.0.1 dropped. No credit goes to me for creating this spec, or this rotation- I heard about it from Felandis (Also on The Venture Co. US), but I'm not sure he invented it either. At any rate- let me dive right in.

The spec, done out nice and clearly in the WoWhead talent calculator is this. Glyphs aren't a huge deal, the same standards apply to this spec as to any other frost DK spec. If there's any confusion about what glyphs work for Frost PvP, I may discuss that in a future post. For the time being, allow me to explain a little bit.

Howling Blast

It's your new best friend. This spec takes advantage of the new mastery system, introduced with the patch- which essentially gives you an extra 2% frost damage for every point of mastery rating you can get (Note: mastery RATING, and you overall mastery are different things. For example, my master is around 140, but my Mastery Rating is 14, giving me a 28% increase to all frost damage). I'd recommend reforging crit on all your gear to mastery (since if you're in PvP gear, crit is really the only thing you can drop), since the bonus from mastery is better than pure crit.

What all this means, is that basically ALL your frost abilities are going to be hitting a lot harder. And for the purpose of WPvP and BGs (which is really the only kind of PvP you can do until cata drops, since the arena season is done), being able to hit a LOT of enemies, really hard is a very nice thing indeed. Howling blast with reforged mastery and my wrathful 1800 weapon hits for around 3.5-4k ish, (not including crits, obviously- those are exponentially higher) on every target. This means assuming healing support, it's not impossible for you to AoE down an entire pack of allies (or horde, if you're on THAT side) with this spec.

The Rotation

I discussed this a little bit in my first post, but managed to confuse more people than I helped, so let me lay it down right here, very simply. First, this spec does not use obliterate. The reason being that obliterate ties up a frost rune, which eliminates one howling blast each time you use it. One very important thing to keep in mind is that this is an AoE build. Obviously in 1v1 situations, using the normal frost rotation makes a lot more sense (more on that later).
So with all that in mind, the way the rotation for AoE basically works is you start off with HB/HB then while your frost are on CD hit a couple PS (to get up another disease) then two BS. As soon as your frost are off cooldown use HB x4 (since you should now have two death runes), then ERW, and rinse and repeat. When Killing Machine procs, use FS (since OB ties up that sneaky frost rune). Eventually you'll either be bursted down, or everything in sight will be dead.
Let's shoot for the later.
Single Target? I know the question is going to be asked, so let me explain right here- that rotation makes less sense for single target dps. Single target frost is a whole other animal. It's a priority-based system which boils down to this: 1. Get diseases up2. Obliterate if both frost and unholy runes are all up (Or if both Death runes are up, OR if Killing Machine procs).3. Blood Strike (if you've got two blood runes up)4. Frost Strike5. Rime (= HB)6. Obliterate7. Blood Strike (if only one rune is up)8. Horn of Winter (a buff is better than doing absolutely nothing- and this should be kept up as much as you can). This chart is a priority chart (for those who haven't seen one before), tier 1 is more important than tier 2 which is > than tier 3 etc. etc. Conclusion: AoE>Single Target Here's the thing though, in a Battleground or in WPvP, 1 on 1 combat is pretty rare. So, you're not going to find yourself single-target dpsing very often. With that in mind, this spec really focuses more on AoE, and contributing a lot of dps to a lot of targets at once. If you're totally new to frost dps post 4.0.1, and are planning to PvP extensively, I'd recommend learning to understand the standard AoE rotation before you worry about learning single-target dps (which is what you're going to have to understand if you raid a lot, obviously). Anyways, that basically covers AoE frost PvP. Expect to top out damage frequently, but probably not get as many killing blows as other classes/specs might, since they go after one character at a time. Used properly though, you can be a huge asset to your team with this tactic. Bombing all the enemies down makes picking them off much easier for the rest of your dps. That's it for today folks! Practice safe death! ~Onike

Death Grip: Fun toy, or life-saving purple-y beam of doom?

2010-11-01T20:00:00.002-04:00

Although DKs are sadly underrepresented in the blogging community as a whole, the few blogs that are written to our credit have covered one ability perhaps more than any other. It has been one of the most controversial DK abilities, as well as one that caused more forums complaints that any other (besides perhaps miss-use of Army of the Dead in a raid). You all know what I'm talking about: Death Grip.

While this ability remains something of a niche tool for tanking in raid content (used only to pull casting mobs and such), it is absolutely invaluable in PvP. As a Death Knight, Death Grip should ALWAYS be on your action bars, and if you aren't using it, I invite you to bust out your purple beam of doom loving self, and give it a whirl. Just please, practice safe Death.

The don'ts.

While Death Grip may seem like a safe bet at any point in a PvP encounter, there are some major don'ts that you should keep in mind when using it. First, keep in mind DG has a 30 second cooldown. While not a tremendous number, that's 30 seconds that you will be without arguably the best peeling move in the game. So, keep these things in mind when DGing it up.

1. Is my enemy a healer, or a damage-dealer? If the answer is damage-dealer, look around and make sure there are no healers nearby. While pulling that annoying boomkin might seem tempting, killing that sneaky priest behind him is infinitely more valuable for your team.

2. Is my enemy fairly close to me? If so- don't DG. Just chains of ice him, then run up and take his head off. Simple, beautiful, and elegant.

3. Is my enemy extremely far away? While chasing after that elusive rogue sprinting away may be tempting, I wouldn't recommend it. If the enemy is out of range of DG, and just ignore them. Running into the enemy team at random to pull them towards you will only end one way- and it won't be pretty.

4. Is my enemy running towards me anyways? This might seem obvious, but seriously- I've seen it done. And done it myself before. Sometimes that shiny DG button is just too big a temptation. But let me state here and now, that if you enemy is a melee class, and running towards your team ANYWAYS, you should NEVER DG him. He'll reach you in a few seconds anyways. Don't waste that precious CD.

5. Is my enemy over-geared, or tough to bring down? The main purpose of DG is to pull dangerous, ranged enemies towards your team. Especially when two groups of players are standing off against each-other, that one key squishy being dragged towards your side against his/her will can be a huge moral boost to your side. Your team will probably instinctively focus on the DGed enemy, even if you're in a worst-case, random PuG scenario. If you pull someone that has either A) a ton of AoE damage potential, or B) is just tough to kill, you're actually working against your team. You'll either be significantly weakened, and easy prey for the remaining Alliance (or Horde if you took the wrong side), or you'll spend so much time trying to kill that freakin' paladin, that your team will find itself overrun with enemies.

The Dos

Most of the things that can go WRONG with DG in a PvP situation are pretty self-explanatory. But, there's a subtle difference between not using DG wrong, and using it oh-so right. So, let me list some of the best times to launch your enemies to their own demise.

1. The interrupt. It may be a little-known fact among DKs that haven't spent much time PvPing, but DG actually acts as an interrupt. If you see a healer, within range of DG, casting a big heal, pulling them towards you will not only bring said healer within range of your vast array of weaponry, but also stop the heal they were casting, leaving anything short of a very good healer disoriented, and easy picking. This is possibly the best, and most general use of DG in PvP.

2. The mob factor. When you're in a situation in one of the larger BGs or just in a big showdown in WPvP, where you find yourself in a face-off with the other side, DGing ANY enemy usually spells certain doom for them, since no one can take 10+ players single-handedly. Sometimes, when the healers (which even in this situation should be your main target) are out of reach, just picking off the enemies one by one with DG can be a good strategy. Also, in Alterac Valley, this method can be applied to your boss' room, before too many of your towers have been capped. DGing a baddie into the throne room with you will sick the NPCs on them, and you probably won't even have to lift a finger.

3. The CC. While DG on its own is not a direct CC, it can turn into one. In situations where slowing an enemy is the best thing for your team, combining DG with Chains of Ice, can give your team the boost they need to succeed. Some of the big times this is especially worthwhile: On the enemy flag carrier in WSG, or on that obnoxious melee chasing your destroyers in Strand. CoIing your opponents after a DG is just good practice in general, but sometimes the precious seconds it buys make the difference between victory and bitter defeat.

4. The chain. Probably one of the more niche-y tactics that work with DG, this is actually a cool enough idea that I will probably discuss it in a future post. But, let me say that it basically boils down to have DKs line up, and use DG one after the other, essentially pulling a bad-guy much further than DG normally should.

The conclusion?

DG is more than a cute toy, it's one of the most deadly abilities in the PvP DK's arsenal. But like all weapons, it can be misused, or abused. Just try to keep common sense in mind when applying it to your game, and you'll find it slowly seeping into the core of your DK. Eventually, you'll probably come up with plenty of epic ways to employ it that I've never even dreamed of, and when you do, I'd love to hear about them.

But for the time being, keep your head about yourself and try to practice safe Death.

Season 9 Models Revealed

2010-10-31T14:56:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, MMO Champion revealed the new models for the Season 9 armour sets. For those of you living on a proverbial PvP rock, Season 9 will be the first PvP season of Cataclysm, bringing with it all the beauty of a new arena season, and, for the first time ever, rated Battlegrounds.

All kinds of awesome

I was complaining earlier this week to a guildy about how, although DKs have a history of getting some of the coolest PvE tier gear EVER (tier 8 and 10 are both absolutely amazing in my opinion), our PvP gear has been somewhat lacking throughout Wrath.

But no more, this new DK tier set looks absolutely badass, and I think I'll actually feel like a hardcore harbinger of doom running around in this, unlike my somewhat plain armour from season 8 (and don't even get me started on the helms we've seen lately... our relentless helm looks like a fish on the undead model).

Warlock?

It also hasn't escaped my notice (and, I'm sure, the notice of other DKs around the world), that this new set looks almost... warlock-ish. The horns on the helm, especially, seem like they belong on a warlock to me). But the skull with the chest plate certainly looks like it belong on a Death Knight.

Regardless, this is just one more thing to look forwards to with Cataclysm. I can't wait to get my paws on this stuff, and to put it to the test.

4.0.1 Death Knight Round Up - The Dawn of Frost

2010-10-31T11:41:00.001-04:00

This is not my first kick at the can.

What you're looking at right now, staring imperiously at your from across the internet and the little pixels on your computer screen, is the result of more failed blog attempts than I can count. It's been almost a full year that I've been kicking around the concept of making a blog about WoW, but everytime I start, I never seem to get far.

Why?

Because I get bored with it. See, I've been writing under the weird impression that if I don't write about "accepted" topics- raiding, theorycrafting... whatever all those "real" bloggers do, I won't get any readers. But A) it's ridiculous to write a blog because you want readers, you should do it because you enjoy it, and B) there are a lot more topics that I had originally considered.

See, I'm not a raider. I never have been, and unless it changes significantly from the way it is now, I probably never will be. Oh, sure, I've raided. I even have a druid dedicated pretty much exclusively to PvE. I'll probably raid once cataclysm comes out too, but that's not the reason I play the game.

I play the game for PvP. For epic campaigns spread out across my server (The Venture Co. US happens to have one of the best WPvP communities around, since the act of fighting outside of combat zones is almost dead elsewhere). For pitched battles in the battlegrounds, for skirmishes in the arenas, for facerolling alliance in Wintergrasp... I play the game for PvP.

So I'm going to write a blog about it.

Patch 4.0.1

That's where the latest patch comes in. See, not only do I PvP, but I do so with a Death Knight. And I've noticed that there is a sad amount of Death Knight bloggery going on in the WoW blogging community. I'm not sure why exactly, since we're arguably a lot better than everyone else. But, there it is. There are not enough DK bloggers. And, as far as I know, none of the few DK bloggers out there, write mostly about PvP. So I'm filling a niche which, to my knowledge, has not yet been filled.

So. With fun little intros out of the way, let me hop right into the meat of the blog. Content. Information. All that jazz.

Please note, that this post is NOT about specific talents. It's about my feeling for the class in general, since the patch. It's been out long enough now, that I'm assuming anyone reading this blog has already had a chance to go through all their own talents, so I'm not going through everything new talent by new talent.

Unholy = Disease 'n Stuff

UH remains a powerhouse of a spec, with damage focused even more on disease than before. Although I haven't had a chance to play around with this too much (frost has taken most of my time since the patch), with transforming ghouls, undead minions, and disease, what more could our necromancy-happy friends want? I'll post a more in-depth look at the tree once I've experimented a little bit more.

This spec remains very viable for PvP, BUT (as I'm about to discuss), at least until cataclysm, frost may have actually become the "it" spec, something we haven't seen ever, throughout the whole expansion, in the world of PvP.

Frost = OMGBBQ (But in a cold way)

Some wizened, veteran DKs may remember when WotLK was just a beta, and DKs hadn't been released on live realms yet. The talk of the whole town, with the coming expansion- was DKs. How will they play? What will the mechanics be like? Et cetera, et cetera. In those early days of the class, frost was originally meant to be the tanking spec, with frost presence providing the tanking bonuses, and a lot of defensive abilities tied to the spec. Blizzard eventually denounced the idea, decided that "any spec can tank", but the idea sort of stuck. Frost has been largely outshone by it's ghouly counterpart throughout wrath.

No longer. Frost has come into it's own in a big way since 4.0.1. Yes, it is pretty much ridiculously overpowered with Wrath's low health pools, and since I'm not in the beta, I can't comment on how things are going to play out come cata. But, for the time being, I'm enjoying being OP for a change.

Frost PvP has actually been simplified in some ways, it's still a LOT about proc watching, but it's also about a new mechanic for DKs. The concept of always wanting runes on CD for the RP generation boost. As a result, while priority based, it almost seems a little spammy to me. The spec/rotation I'm currently using, uses a very dumbed-down version of our old rotation. You no longer need Obliterate, and even our new and shiny Festering Strike, doesn't get any use either. The basic idea, is to specialize in Howling Blast as much as possible, then make use of it. It basically goes: HB x2, PS x2, BS x2, and then HB x4. Mix in frost strikes for Killing Machine procs, and Runic Empowerment if you get to the end and everything in sight isn't dead.

Sound simple? It is. Like I said, frost is very OP right now. I can't wait to see if we remain competitive throughout cataclysm. It would be nice to have an option to play something beyond ONE UH spec for serious PvP.

Blood = Tanks

Blood is now our dedicated tanking tree, if you didn't already know. Frost presence now includes a damage boost, and blood is the new frost. All our defensive cooldownsPvP in their tanking trees with a lot of success (because they're damn near impossible to kill), But I don't know if that's the case for blood, I really haven't touched it since 4.0 dropped. Once I've figured out UH, I'll get back to you on blood in PvP.

The Conclusion?

We're at a good place right now. Frost is OP, but Blizz has stated numerous times that we are now balanced for level 85, not level 80. Who knows what the PvP game is gonna look like come Cataclysm. I know one thing for sure, though.

I can't wait.