Recently a company by the name of Paizo came out with a new version of 3.5 D20 D&D called Pathfinder.  You can even go to their site and check out most of the core rules at this link:  Pathfinder D20.

As some of you may know I’ve been an avid gamer now for nearly 25 years.  I got hooked playing Gamma World when I was 10 years old before I moved on to other games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, etc…  This is back in the day when people could only play games online on a BBS (Bulletin Board System).  Yeah, if you don’t know what that is it’s because it predates the internet as you know it.  >.<

Moving on, I’m an amateur writer.  Since you’re reading this blog, you could hopefully surmise that fact on your own.    It started with poetry when I was high school and moved on to things more science fiction and fantasy related in the years that followed.

Believe it or not I even wrote a gaming system called Realms of Wonder.  A buddy created it way back (on his own) and asked us to try it out.  Over time it’s short comings became prevalent and I decided to remake it with his input.  I wrote a 2nd and 3rd edition of the system, and I am currently working on a 4th edition.  And yeah, it’s a full rules system.  Not some fly by the pants operation.

So that leads me back  to the original point of this post.  I write junk!!  As a writer, a gamer, a player, a GM, a blogger, and more I’ve come to understand game balance in ways most people don’t.  The fact is that a very minute % of the gaming population truly understands what game balance really is, and I like to think I’m one of those people.

One of the pages on this site is:  D20 Dungeons and Dragons.  In there you will find all of the house rules our gaming group ends up using based upon the rules set and the current GM.  Our previous campaign just ended and we are finally getting to play a full Pathfinder campaign for the first time!!  Hooray!! 

3.5 Pathfinder House Rules is a link to the core house rules changes we’ve implemented.  Character Generation 3.5 Pathfinder: The Realm of Portals is a link to the campaign specific modifications the current GM Robbie (refered to as Mythra by in me other posts per WoW name) is using for his campaign which started Friday 3/19/10.

If you are a D&D fan at all, I HIGHLY recommend using Paizo’s Pathfinder rules.  They are far superior to 3.5 and MASSIVELY superior to 4.0.  That’s *my* opinion.  They sell both PDF versions of their rules and hard copies as well.  You can order it online, or even find it in a bookstore.  I got my copy from Borders.

If you don’t really set/use house rules then you’ll still be just fine using Pathfinder right out of the box.  But if you’d like to try some adjustments, then I’d recommend checking out our 3.5 Pathfinder House Rules. 

As a group we sat down on several occasions and hammered those house rules out.  The intention of them is to simply bring every character design/conception into balance with each other.  If you use it, hope you enjoy.  If not, hope you at least found the read interesting. 

Regardless – CHECK OUT PATHFINDER!!!!  It rocks!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

The best recourse would be for me to make a video, to show you guys in actuality what is possible but I do not have Fraps or a similar program.  I suppose I will see if I can get a copy or something, but if anyone knows of any solid/free video creation software for WoW (that is fricking easy to use please for the love of God!!) give me a heads up.

What is Power Leveling?

That is just about as open ended a question as you could possibly hope for.  And I don’t have the time to answer it fully now.  But for our purposes I am referring to using a higher level character to assist in the accelerated leveling process of a lower level character.

Typically this is done by taking said lower level character into an instance higher level than them while using a higher level character to solo the instance.  While outside of instances you cannot group the 2 and gain exp, this is possible in an instance.

What to look for in an Instance

Some people who attempt power leveling just run out for the nearest instance and start up without really thinking about it.  That is a bad idea.  Many instances can be skipped in the power leveling process.  You can typically ride out one instance for many many levels, and then skip ahead to a different one entirely without every stepping foot into intermediary instances.

So the question becomes, which ones should you go into?  Well here are the factors required in making that decision:

Travel Time (Zone)

How long is it going to take you to get to this instance?  Depending on mount access, summoning capacity, distance from major cities, flight path hubs, etc… you may want to avoid certain instances.

For example, Alliance will find that both Wailing Caverns and Razorfen Kraul are *massively* out of your way.  And unless you like spending your time in Darnassus, so is Black Fathom Depths.

So if you don’t plan on sitting at the comp for 10 hours straight (where travel time is far less of an issue), be very aware of how many times you’re going to have to run to an instance.

Travel Time (Instance)

Most of the old world instances (and even some of the new ones) have considerable travel time to get back out of the instance.  Whether that’s Black Rock Depths or Shadow Labs, if you clear the entire thing you may looking at spending a few minutes on every clear just running back to the zone out.  Make sure you weigh in the required down time (including running back to the zone out) with exp gain time.

High Pat Instances

Some instances have serious Pat issues.  Dead Mines and Shadow Labs are two excellent examples.  DM has pats that will not spawn until you have reached certain locations/triggered events.  I’ll never forget watching lowbies die to the same pat over and over again after I SWORE I had cleared the place.  I did not figure it out until one time I made the newbies run on while I ran back and watch the pat spawn.  Pissed me off!!

And then in Shadow Labs you have stealthed pats you may never see until they come up behind the newbies and kill them while you’re ahead killing.  Sometimes it’s just better to avoid instances likes these.

Trouble Encounters

SL is again a great example here where the 2nd boss mind controls you no matter what.  Yeah, that’s troublesome.  Some bosses are just not worth the headache.  Also, some instances have mobs which are just a *massive* pain.  Sethekk Halls has a mind controlling mob and Auch Crypts is FAR worse on that level (MC).

In the end you basically look for instances following this description: You can get there quickly and easily while spending little downtime running back to the zone in entrance to reset the instance.  No encounter has a mechanic which will result in you or the newby being killed a majority of the time and pats coming around to kill the newbies is not an issue.

Now there can be exceptions where things still work well.  Such as Sethekk Halls.

Sethekk Halls, An Example

The mob in there that does the MC drops a totem which mind controls you.  But it doesn’t drop it right away.  So while I am gathering mobs up I walk backwards and single target dps the Time Controller (which drops the MC totem) and kill it before it drops a totem.  The add on benefit is that while walking backwards I get my avoidance checks and I can be Death Striking the mob for healing while I gather everything.

The end boss periodically does an AoE attack that hits the newbies no matter how far back they are and will teleport to the newbies, meaning bad bad things.  I simple move the newby to the previous room a ways back preventing the teleport.

As to how to survive the AoE attacks, I put on the highest stamina gear I found (for the newby) while power leveling (blue drops from bosses) and have them use defensive abilities to survive.  My DK alt/newb was spec’d into Unholy and had Bone Shield up to survive.

While this instance had trouble encounters, I found ways around them.  Combined with high mob content in a short instance which ends at the zone entrance/exit, and you can perhaps see the gold mind that I found.  I never hit the instance limit once (5 instances per hour last I checked) and I made stupid amounts of exp.

Classes to Use

Death Knights and Paladins make the best power levelers in the game.  Nothing else compares.  As to which is stronger…  The DK will clear content far more easily and faster.  However the Paladin can bubble the newby, bubble himself if he messes up on a pull, and rez the newby if he dies instead of running him back.  Which means less downtime.  While in the end the DK will do it faster, the Paladin is nearly equal.

If you do not have one of these toons to do the power leveling do not fear.  Any class will do before level 60+ instances.  And if you’re good at what you’re doing, even post 60 instances should not be a problem for you.  But that will vary with skill, gear, and class.  However as you get in the the 60+ instances you will slow down significantly more than a DK or Paladin will.

Death Knights Power Leveling

Tank gear, tank gear, tank gear, and let’s see…  Did I mention tank gear?

That is the key to success quite frankly.  While in lower level instances it may not matter much, once you get to the 30+ range it will.  I still wore my biggest dps pieces (about 4-6 at any given time), but for the rest it was nothing but my best tank gear.  While your dps will be a bit slower, you will be able to pull massive groups of mobs and DPS them down with ease.

Now, I personally recommend respec’ing and reglyphing myself.  I did not do that, and in hindsight it was a mistake.  There were tons of times it would have made a difference, and I’d have finished in far less time.  As to which spec, I recommend Unholy.  Why?

• Improved Unholy Presence – 15% move bonus means outpacing mobs for pulling which equals less dmg taken and faster clears
• Desecration – drop a PS/SS and you suddenly have an “ice trap” to kite mobs through for pulling which equals less dmg taken
• Bone Shield – popped on a pull you don’t lose charges on every hit which means less dmg taken
• Wandering Plague – free AoE dmg, do the math
• Spell Damage – multiple talents for improved spell damage and disease damage means AoE capacity drops packs quicker which means faster clears

These things set Unholy apart from Blood and Frost.  Sure, Howling Blast may pwn at lower levels but in all honesty you could just run through packs pulling them and drop a glyphed DnD and murder everything just fine.  1 DnD + 1 Pest’d set of diseases will kill just about anything.  HB is just fluff.  It’s not necessary.

And for all things unholy, STAY IN FROST PRESENCE.  End of Story.  The End.  Thank you and goodbye!!

The key to power leveling is this set of rules:

1. Reduce your incoming damage – use pull patterns and abilities to achieve this.
2. Keep your movement as high as possible – if you move faster you clear faster.
3. Use self healing abilities – Death Strike spam is your friend as is Death Pact.
4. Focus on AoE damage – you want to pull large groups of mobs and kill them quickly.

The Newby

Now if you are doing the power leveling yourself for yourself, it is important to be efficient with keeping this toon in exp range (physical distance).  But the upside is that the exp range is pretty fricking huge actually.  Now you will probably have to do some self testing to see where this range is, but it doesn’t take much time to get a feel for it.

The best solution is to simply feel out the range and park the newby.  Run off and gather your packs of mobs and start killing.  You’ll begin to find a pattern where you move so deep into the instance and then swap to the newby and move it forward to a new “parking spot”.  Then go back to the power leveler, rinse and repeat.  However there is a trick to make life far easier.  Power level someone else as well.

The best solution is to find a friend who wants an Alt leveled and can play often when you’re doing this.  However if that is not an option you have the random PuG newb as well.  Make a macro and just do a random search on people in your newby’s level range.  Send whispers with the macro offering free power leveling.

Don’t bother with people who ask lots of questions and want explanations of what you’re doing.  If 2 whispers doesn’t convey what’s up, move to the next guy.  Someone will get the whisper and be like, “OMFG YES I WANT FREE POWER LEVELING!!!”  Just make sure you word the whisper right and don’t come off like a gold seller.  >.<

Get them into the instance with you and preferably have another “explanation” macro made so you don’t have to type this crap out every time you get someone new.  But basically you tell the PuG newb to do nothing.  NOTHING!!  They stay back, they don’t explore, and they don’t attack anything or heal anything (it gets agro).

They just make sure they keep your newb (who will be on autofollow on the PuG newb) on them.  And they tell you the moment the auto follow gets stuck/broken so you can fix it.  Sounds like a pain?  Not really.  Using macros to make this streamlined speeds it up considerably.  And not having to take the time every few minutes to run your newby up into a new position will save you TONS of time.

This will allow you to be far more efficient at power leveling and any lost exp due to the other person (if any) is more than made up by the increased speed.  Often times I found I got the exact same exp (or more due to group bonuses) when I added someone else to the party.  So not only do you not have to waste time moving the newby anymore, but now you also get bonus exp.  Pure Win!!

Summation

The truth is that this only scratches the surface of power leveling concepts and strategies, but hopefully it should give you an insight in the core decision making processes required to make power leveling both efficient and fun at the same time.

If you have any questions, just give me a shout out here in comments or at my E-mail:

Skeleton.Jack@hotmail.com

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

Why briefly?  Well, I full intend on a massive post about this in depth later.  So let’s just stick to the highlights for now eh?

Level 55-58

You are basically working through the DK specific quest lines here and can spec however you wish, but as you will hear me say throughout this entire post avoid Frost like the plague (pun intended).  Using either Blood or Unholy will suit you fine.  The strong points of each coming later in the post.

Level 58-70

OK, so you actually have a few options here.

1. Random Dungeon Queue as Tank – depending on your Battle Group you will see varying results in this level range.  If you get instant queue times, this will be crazy efficient with the random bonus rewards.
2. Power Level – You can easily 2 box (or run 2 versions of WoW at the same time on your own computer) if you have 2 accounts.  Just go to the BC instances and start burning through them.  You will level stupidly fast.
3. Questing – If you’ve got 20% exp bonus from heirloom items and have an idea as to what you are doing, this might be the fastest way to level in game now.  With the in game quest help it’s hard to ignore this as a viable option.

IMHO power leveling yourself with 20% exp bonus from heirloom items is the fastest system out there.  But depending on play style, questing play style, etc…you may find better results with a different system.

Level 70-80

Power leveling becomes less of an effective direction to take by this point.  While doable, you’d be better served taking the other two options.

1. Random Dungeon Queue as Tank – You will get instant queue times making this crazy efficient exp with the random bonus rewards.  Heirloom items just makes it that much more ridiculous.
2. Questing – If you’ve got 20% exp bonus from heirloom items and know what you are doing this should be the fastest way to level.  It is important to note however that if you spend a lot of travel time and “poking around time” not exp’ing, then Random Dung’s will be far more efficient in the end if you’re a quick tank.

Personal Experience

I leveled up a 2nd DK on my server a few months back.  Her name is Skeleton Jill, and she is a Blood Tank.  I personally was unable to take advantage of Heirloom items as I had to make this on my 2nd account with my old shaman Bigeasy.  Since I only had 1 80 (Skeletonjack) on my primary account, I was boned.  Though from doing enough random dungeons I did get the heirloom shoulders at level 76.

• Lvl55-58 I did the DK quest line.
• Lvl58-70 I did the Power Leveling.  I used Jack (primary account) and pl’d Jill (secondary account) through BC instances.  I also ended up bringing along several guildies and pl’ing them for several levels as well.  I found that Sethek Halls was by far the most efficient dungeon to use after trying a bunch of them.  If you look at that armory link you can see how many times Jill kill x end bosses.  Or even look at Jack considering he never did those instances until Jill.
• Lvl70-80 I did the Random Dung que.  I purchased the mats for a full set of the green BoE Cobalt tank plate pieces (8 total).  From then on all I did was level up in dungeons.  I only ever left to pick up a quest for a dungeon and to get flight paths.  I did one quest at level 70 to get a green LK quality weapon, and that was it.  Pretty sweet when you think about it.  I never even had to quest or grind an area once.

Spec Notations

So the first note is avoid Frost like the plague.  Seriously, do not go there.  Yeah, yeah…you CAN level as Frost just fine.  But a Holy Priest can level just fine as well.  But that doesn’t mean you should fricking do it now does it?  Frost tanks are not gonna be on par with Blood tanks, and Frost dps is inherently subpar leveling due to the extreme lack of hit on leveling gear.

Tanking

If your goal while leveling is to tank, go Blood.  What?!?!  SJ is pushing BLOOD?!!?  NOT UNHOLY!?!?  ZOMG!!  The world is ending!! 

The fact of the matter is I started off tanking as Unholy.  And then after one level of it I swapped to Blood and the difference is night and day in a 5man.  Running Recount I often found myself doing 50% of the total healing of the 5man healer.  Yeah, 50%.  So if he did for example 100,000 healing for the entire run (including healing other people) I would do 50,000 healing on the same run just healing myself.

Often times when the healer dc’d, needed mana, or I just pulled without realizing the healer was AFK I would survive on a full pull so long as I understood my mistake early enough.  Popping CD’s with the massive amount of self healing, comboing in a Death Pact/Raise Dead while Vampiric Blood up, and Death Strike spam usually = win.  Not even talking about AotD when needed.

DPS

Go Unholy.  For the love of God just please listen to me for once and don’t think you know what you’re talking about.  Because you don’t if you think anything levels better than Unholy.  Yes I understand Blood has the least downtime of all of the specs, staying nearly at full health permanently.  That’s good, but it’s not as good as Unholy.

Of note in Unholy are 2 major talents often overlooked.  And when I say “Often” I really mean almost ALWAYS.

On a Pale Horse and Improved Unholy Presence set Unholy far and above well beyond any other leveling spec in game if you are DPS’ing and not staying in dungeons.  It will shave off hours, literally hours (possibly days depending on your play style), from your level time.  Because you ALWAYS get to your destination faster.  You get to the mob to loot it quicker.  You get to the quest turn in faster.  You get to the next zone faster.  You get to the mob faster.  Etc…

The thing you have to remember as Unholy while leveling is to use Death Strike (even though you have the nifty Scourge Strike) and to pull packs of mobs (3-8+) at a time.  The strength of Unholy (besides movement) is massive AoE dmg.  You can literally kill twice as many mobs as Blood can at the same time.  So while you might have a bit more downtime than Blood, the improved AoE killing capacity more than beats it.

Talents

1. On a Pale Horse
2. Improved Unholy Presence
3. Desecration
4. Morbidity
5. Improved Death Strike
6. Bloodworms
7. Heart Strike

In order those are the most important talents (from a leveling perspective only) for a DK.  If you are a tank in dungeons, 1 & 2 don’t count for squat.  So following that list if you take the first 4 it means you will be Unholy spec for DPS.  However if you are a tank (ignoring 1 & 2), you can then see you could just skip 3 and by going Blood get every other talent.

Summary

Per normal I expect to see varying cries of condemnation to these opinions.  But they won’t change one thing.  That I’m right.  *smirk*

If you’re tanking, go Blood.

If you’re dps’ing, go Unholy.

If you go Frost, you’re Wrong.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

So I just went through about 150 comments that needed approving and some others that were pre-approved but I just had not had the time to read yet.

With that said, thank you all very much for the kind words, thoughts, and support that you gave to me.  But to 4 individual people I do want to give a special thanks.

Ryan Pike

Elizabeth Shelby

Angela Bull

Frank Mcelwain

These 4 people donated money to my site when everything happened to me and my life was in the total shitter.  The only time in my life that things were even close to that bad was in the post-Katrina era of my life.  And when real life friends and family did nearly nothing for me, these 4 people did something tangible without having ever met me.

Thank you.  More than you know, understand, or could possibly comprehend…thank you.  Being reminded sometimes that there are people out there who do nice things with no hope of reward is very uplifting.

Update on My Life

I got that dream job I was waiting for.  It’s not the “Ultimate” dream job (working in the gaming industry or writing for a living), but it’s about as good as it gets with my job experience, qualifications, and education.

So yeah, I love this job.  And as to the health, I started working out again.  Sadly I really let myself get out of shape this time.  But already I’ve noticed marked improvements in my health.  Due to both better excercise and better stress levels.

I plan on being physically up to doing the full P90X routine again within the next 2-3 weeks tops.  But atm I’d probably kill myself if I tried getting back into it full steam.

My Website:  SkeletonJack.com

So yesterday I started the first post for “Improving Your Game by SJ”.  It’s my concept for a site overhaul.  Not sure if I’ll have the savy to get the site redone truly…  But at the least I will have multiple new pages with the most important info any gamer playing WoW will need.

The first post is about System Requirements.  It’s going into what the listed requirements are, how to test your system and internet, how to find cheap and solid upgrades if needed, how to change settings in game, and little things to look for (like add on memory usage, etc).

While most gamers may find this first post not too useful, others *WILL* find it invaluable.  And that is in the end what I’m going for with this new section of “permanent posts”.  Things every single reader can go through and find at least one thing that becomes an invaluable piece of information that helps them “Up their game”.

Anyone can tell you what mod to use and give you tips.  I want to instead go a step further and basically list in text the mental checklist of crap I go through over the course of months and years which leads to me being one of the better gamers out there.

As to what to expect:  These posts on “Upping your game” are gonna be long and in depth.  These are not short and simple posts.  They will likely take between 2-5 days of sitting down and working on them to make sure they are where I want them to be.  So don’t be expecting these types of posts to roll out right away.  They will take time.  BUT, they are coming!!

SJ Burnout & Website Direction

When I hit that major burnout point a lot of it was due to just needing to take a break from gaming in general.  There will always be something wrong with games you play.  But I was at a point where it never went away mentally.  It just kept stacking up, making the situation worse.

But that was not all of it.  Part of it was this website.  I started posting for the wrong reasons.  I had both rl friends and in game friends telling me I needed to start making money off of the site.  And even readers too.

People wanted me to change the site, add in donation clickies on each page, offer membership rewards, create purchasable guides, and much much more…  People were suggesting new things for me to write about, change themes, etc…

And in the end it made me hate posting here on SkeletonJack.com…  Really, honestly, hate it.  I dreaded logging into my own site.

And lastly add into that a job I hated, physical health problems, family related issues, and you have a formula for PURE FAIL.  So of course this website took a turn for the worse.

It went from being the number one blog (blog, not something like MMO Champion) for WoW (site hits/views is my measuring system) to being just an ok site.  In August of last year this site did over 800,000 views alone in the month of August at the site’s peak.  I had over 1 million hits in less than 6 months of operation (that’s individual ISP’s, not views).  This place was blowing up.  It was crazy honestly.

And you wanna know why it did that well?  Because I was passionate about writing and playing WoW.  And that’s what I am getting back to.  I don’t really wanna quit WoW.  I’m just waiting for a finalized non-training schedule (training can last 2 months here) so I can figure out what I can and can’t do.

So, I’m here to tell you that for the forseeable future (6months+) I am here to stay.  Well…longer really I guess…  I’m doing Cataclysm. 

The only really sad news is that in the end I may be forced to change servers/guilds if I can’t make any kind of a raiding schedule.  I want to see raiding content and progression.  I’ve been a hardcore raider for years now and if I’m playing I want to stay a part of that.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

So a while back I made this post:  Cataclym, LK, and random thoughts? (<–click it)

I basically said that there would be 2 more raid instances to be released with more than one boss in them.  I got it half right.  *sheepish grin*  They released ICC (more than one boss) and they will be soon releasing the Ruby Sanctum as well.  However RS is going to be a 1 boss instance from what little I’ve heard of it to date…

I knew they’d release another instance after ICC, but I just did not imagine they’d “cheap out” yet again on the raid content after LK to date.  My bad.

I should have seen it coming I suppose?  So, true to form Blizzard has finished their “main plot” of $ sales content release (meaning expansion or game release) and followed it up with one raid instance in the end.  However the new formula for Blizzard seems to be focusing on “casual content” more than “raid content”.  So while there will always be *gems* as far as the potential of raid content (Ulduar, ICC, etc…) you will still likely get the crap such as Coliseum.  Yeah…I said it.  CRAP.

While I may have gotten the boss amount incorrect, everything else is holding true to form.  Seriously, go read Cataclym, LK, and random thoughts?

Personal projected Cataclysm date:
Nov 2010 to Jan 2011

It feels good just writing posts about stuff I wanna write about again.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

My Guild: WoW

Before taking my “break from wow” I joined a guild named Paragon on Bronzebeard.  Like the Sleepless Knights, they were an original vanilla WoW guild that had been a top tier progression guild (on our server anyways) for quite some time.  While joining them was taking a step down as far as the calibur of content capacity, I felt that it was a good move for my personal happiness.

Sometimes it is an eye opener when I find myself hitting content and failing as a raid when I know I shouldn’t be, but even with that the people in Paragon are phenomal individuals.  They have a small hand full of players that would surpise you with their level of skill and knowledge.

But with all of that said, I’ve been enjoying raiding new content and hitting hard modes as well.

My RL: Work

For those who read my previous post before I deleted it you would be aware at this point that I’ve been having a rough go at things.  Bad things happen, even to good people.  And then sometimes GOOD things happen as well. 

I finally got the position with the company I’ve been waiting for.  It’s amazing honestly.  I’ve been in training the past month, and just now starting to do some shifts on my own.  I suppose the training will still go on for at least another month with some shifts each week putting me on my own to see how I do.  But who knows?

But it’s a full paid medical job, vacation time, sweet 401K, etc…  It’s a dream.  And the upside as well is that it has lots of downtime where I can do personal stuff that won’t interfere with work.  Like writing this post, heh. 

What’s the downside?  There are 3 shifts at this job.  Two of them end/start when my guild’s raids end.  And the 3rd puts me in bed so early to where I’d be asleep a minimum of 2 hours before my raids end.  So long story short, I can’t see how I could possibly make the raid schedule as things stand.

There could be a possible change in this when I get a FIRM schedule for the week.  But I’m not holding my breath sadly.

It’s frustrating in a lot of ways mostly due to the fact that I was *really* enjoying raiding again.  Just having fun.  Plus I was likely going to be the 2nd person in my guild to get the Legendary.  How cool would that have been?  *shakes head* *sigh*

I really wanted that more than you know.  Yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard people say that.  But when you’ve been in a guild where you’re getting people Legendary weapons consistently, and been waiting for 5 years to get one.  And then you’re finally put into line to get one and you KNOW you’ll get it…  It’s kind of suck investing so much into this game to have to finally give up on a dream (in a fake world as a hobby of course) due to rl obligations.

The Site: SkeletonJack.com

Now I do not forsee myself quitting WoW altogether for all time.  But then again, who knows?  I rarely log in as it is due to the mind numbing frustration of being reminded I cannot go on to raiding content.  But all that aside, what happens here online?

This site was my baby.  My first real, sorta published (by me online, heh), product.  And I’d like it to still help fellow DK’s out there.

I’m thinking to revamp this site.  While I may leave it in a blog format, I think I’d like to add on pages for easy/quick reference guides for both the newb and the expert DK player.

Sample Ideas:

• Inside Mechanics Concepts/Explanations – the 2SR, hit/expertise, Rune Tap, 2H/1H weapon speed decisions, etc…
• Specs – how to make decisions to edit cookie cutter specs (you can always find one, but not always know how to decide where to deviate)
• How to DPS – real honest to God insider tips by me covering computer changes, UI changes, ways to improve, tricks of the trade, etc…  This is my biggest focus honestly.  While people rarely do what I tell them to, I plan on spelling it all out.  What you can do to make yourself just become a hands down better player.
• Tank tips – I made an alt, Skeletonjill (Blood DK tank), and had been doing raid tanking on her…yes, yes I took the time to learn how to tank and actually picked a spec other than Unholy!

But part of what I wanted to open up here was the option for you guys to ask me questions and give me sample ideas of things to put up.  This will not be an over night process.  It’d probably take about 2-3 months in total.  But the info I plan on putting up is the kind of stuff that should hold up through the test of time 2 years from now.  And I won’t be terribly upset to come back and update things from time to time.

So, if you’ve got a question you want answered or you think there should be some particle of wisdom that needs to be up on the site, tell me!!  And don’t hesitate to ask your friends what to ask either.  And if you know of some good links to other resources or blogs, tell me.  Part of my plan also includes how to properly search out info on the net.  Showing people good links, and how to find others.

Skeleton.Jack@hotmail.com

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

P.S.  For all of the kind thoughts and words, thank you.  You’ve got no idea what it’s meant to me.  But it was a lot.

Life is better now, thanks for the well wishes.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

I found several “BISI” lists (even on EJ) where the Melee Hit and Expertise caps were not even considered with itemization picks.

On top of that, there is the “style” factor.  I personally like having 5 of 5 T10 regardless of someone else’s opinion that by spending 15k gold you could get 30 AP more!!!  ZOMG!!!  Yeah, no thanks…  Never mind the fact that doing so leaves you well below Expertise needs…

For those unfamiliar with Hit/Expertise needs for a DK, or just wouldn’t mind a refresher, please go see my post:  Hit and Expertise Revisited (click it)

T10 Best in Slot (Unholy)

Please note the title says “Skeleton Jack’s”.   I play Unholy.

1. Sanctified Scourgelord Helmet
2. Lana’thel’s Chain of Flagellation
3. Sanctified Scourgelord Shoulderplates
4. Might of the Ocean Serpent
5. Sanctified Scourgelord Battleplate
6. Polar Bear Claw Bracers
7. Sanctified Scourgelord Gauntlets
8. Flesh-Shaper’s Gurney Strap
9. Sanctified Scourgelord Legplates
10. Blood-Soaked Saronite Stompers
11. Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance
12. Might of Blight
13. Deathbringer’s Will
14. Whispering Fanged Skull
15. Shadow’s Edge
16. Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter (if no Shadow’s Edge)

This is not including Heroic tier gear.  If you’re good enough to get that level of gear, you’re smart enough to use this list to get the BISI from there.

This nets you with items/talents 7.27% Hit and 27.18 Expertise.  Slot one Yellow slot with an Rigid King’s Amber (for a final total of 7.88% Hit) and use one Nightmare Tear for your metasocket requirement.  Then slot nothing but Bold Cardinal Rubies and Inscribed Ametrines depending on socket bonuses.  Try to get in a Draenei group if you’re Alliance to mitigate the 0.12% discrepancy, but it’s honestly not a big deal.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

I found this very helpful for preparing for Prof Put in ICC.  Tank Spot always does a top notch job.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.