So the Cross Realm Dungeon Finder has been out, what, 3 weeks now? Since then, I've relearned fights that I had forgotten, cleared dungeons that I hadn't been able to in the past (Occulus, ugh), and earned enough badges to pick up 3 pieces of Tier 9.
However, the introduction of this tool has also brought a rather unsavory side effect: running the same dungeon at least 3 times a day. When the daily heroics were present, we had seen Utgarde Pinnacle so many times within a month period that we literally banned it from our weekly dungeon crawls unless someone desperately needed a piece of gear from it or wanted to try an achievement.
Since 3.3 and the Cross Realm Dungeon Finder has come out, a lot of players are seeing the same instances coming up time after time while seeing other heroics left out completely. I've seen Halls of Stone, Utgarde Keep and Utgarde Pinnacle until I could scream. They're not hard runs when my typical group consists of T8/9+ geared players who can easily pull in 3k dps and healers that barely need to touch a button. We can usually rip through in about 15-20 minutes. Gundrak and Drak Theron Keep are coming in close too. However, I've only been placed in the 3 new dungeons once or twice. If I want in those, I usually have to specifically queue for them.
According to this article on wow.com, this is becoming a nuisance for a lot of players across all realms, specifically Halls of Stone.
While I appreciate the emblems to no end and these dungeons are all good for at least 4 badges plus the 2 extra from doing it through the tool, mix it up a bit! Placing the dungeons on a weight scale of some kind may help, giving priority to dungeons you haven't been through as often on perhaps a weekly basis and resetting on Maintenance Tuesdays. For example, you start out after the servers come back online Tuesday with zero weighting on any dungeons. After the first dungeon you run, say Nexus, it gets weighted by 10% that you won't have that dungeon again in a given week. This still leave a pretty good chance that you could have it again. Two days later, you have Nexus again. The 10% weighting increases to 20% and so on until there's virtually no chance that you'll see Nexus again in that week.
This would also possibly need to take into consideration the number of random dungeons you run in a week so that if you run 10 dungeons a day, obviously the weighting would need to be adjusted. If you ran every dungeon in the game on one day, the weighting could be reset back to zero after completing the full gauntlet.
Of course this is just my idea, I'm sure Blizzard, after receiving enough complaints about it, will implement something to balance it out.
Questions or comments? Tell me!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Lore Whore - Tirion Fordring and the Scourge
Lore Whore, where lore of the World of Warcraft universe is discussed and speculated upon.
The obvious part of the title here is that Tirion is a great and dangerous enemy to Arthas and the Scourge armies he commands. What the future holds for Tirion is still up to speculation and going with Blizzard's past when it comes to heroes, Tirion may end up taking up the mantle of the Lich King.
Tirion "betrayed" the Alliance when he saved Eitrigg and branded himself an exile. Though he was supposed to be stripped of his powers, he retained them. This says something in that the Light obviously saw something special in him for him to be able to wield the light after Uther removed them.
The Battle for Light's Hope Chapel saw Darion Mograine lead a force of 10,000 wielding the Corrupted Ashbringer. During this, the sword is cleansed when it was put in the possession of Tirion, further proving his unique role as a person whom the Light favors above others.
Putting this on hold for a moment, consider Diablo 2 lore and the leader of the Horadrim, Tal Rasha. Tal Rasha is in general a character similar to Tirion. Tal Rasha was a powerful Horadric mage where as Tirion was a powerful paladin. Tal Rasha made a sacrifice to wrestle with the soul of Baal. Tirion sacrificed his life as a paladin, husband and father to save the life of Eitrigg.
Coming back to Warcraft lore, Uther revealed that the Lich King is too powerful and holds all control over the Scourge. Should the Lich King be killed and no one take up the mantle, the Scourge would be turned loose and would run amok in Azeroth. Someone of great power would need to take up the mantle to hold the power in check. One may think, due to hints offered in Ulduar and through data mining of 3.3 patch data, that Bolvar Fordragon may take up the mantle at the Lich King's demise. While Bolvar is indeed powerful and has stood against the Lich King's torture since the events at the Wrathgate, he may not be powerful enough to hold the Lich King's power in check.
Tirion, however, may be able to do this. Tirion was able to cleanse the Ashbringer by merely touching it. It is possible that, though Tirion will not confront Arthas on holy ground, he will be able to call on the Light to assist him in the defeat of Arthas. It is also possible, that since someone will need to take up the mantle, Tirion is the person to do so. A person of great significance within the Light to sacrifice himself to hold the powers of darkness in check and keep the Scourge from running amok through Azeroth.
Blizzard is no stranger to taking noble characters and making them sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They did this in Diablo with The Wanderer, Diablo 2 continued this story as well as brought up the sacrifice of Tal Rasha, and then in Starcraft with the sacrifice of Tassadar in the destruction of the Overmind.
What ultimately happens won't be revealed for several months as Blizzard has stated a staggered release of the Icecrown Citadel raid wings. Whatever happens, will be amazing and very likely to be unexpected.
Leave questions and comments below!
The obvious part of the title here is that Tirion is a great and dangerous enemy to Arthas and the Scourge armies he commands. What the future holds for Tirion is still up to speculation and going with Blizzard's past when it comes to heroes, Tirion may end up taking up the mantle of the Lich King.
Tirion "betrayed" the Alliance when he saved Eitrigg and branded himself an exile. Though he was supposed to be stripped of his powers, he retained them. This says something in that the Light obviously saw something special in him for him to be able to wield the light after Uther removed them.
The Battle for Light's Hope Chapel saw Darion Mograine lead a force of 10,000 wielding the Corrupted Ashbringer. During this, the sword is cleansed when it was put in the possession of Tirion, further proving his unique role as a person whom the Light favors above others.
Putting this on hold for a moment, consider Diablo 2 lore and the leader of the Horadrim, Tal Rasha. Tal Rasha is in general a character similar to Tirion. Tal Rasha was a powerful Horadric mage where as Tirion was a powerful paladin. Tal Rasha made a sacrifice to wrestle with the soul of Baal. Tirion sacrificed his life as a paladin, husband and father to save the life of Eitrigg.
Coming back to Warcraft lore, Uther revealed that the Lich King is too powerful and holds all control over the Scourge. Should the Lich King be killed and no one take up the mantle, the Scourge would be turned loose and would run amok in Azeroth. Someone of great power would need to take up the mantle to hold the power in check. One may think, due to hints offered in Ulduar and through data mining of 3.3 patch data, that Bolvar Fordragon may take up the mantle at the Lich King's demise. While Bolvar is indeed powerful and has stood against the Lich King's torture since the events at the Wrathgate, he may not be powerful enough to hold the Lich King's power in check.
Tirion, however, may be able to do this. Tirion was able to cleanse the Ashbringer by merely touching it. It is possible that, though Tirion will not confront Arthas on holy ground, he will be able to call on the Light to assist him in the defeat of Arthas. It is also possible, that since someone will need to take up the mantle, Tirion is the person to do so. A person of great significance within the Light to sacrifice himself to hold the powers of darkness in check and keep the Scourge from running amok through Azeroth.
Blizzard is no stranger to taking noble characters and making them sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They did this in Diablo with The Wanderer, Diablo 2 continued this story as well as brought up the sacrifice of Tal Rasha, and then in Starcraft with the sacrifice of Tassadar in the destruction of the Overmind.
What ultimately happens won't be revealed for several months as Blizzard has stated a staggered release of the Icecrown Citadel raid wings. Whatever happens, will be amazing and very likely to be unexpected.
Leave questions and comments below!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Know your limits
Last night, we were short a healer for some random 5mans. We had helped a guild member who is currently leveling her DK and needed some help with the Amphitheater of Anguish and Gundrak on normal mode. We queued up and ran through DTK (again, ugh) with the help of a nicely geared Paladin. He left after the run and our shaman was griping that he wasn't getting any upgrades lately so we went in for a Forge of Souls run. We pulled in a Priest, which I love. For some reason, Priests are usually my favorite healers while tanking. Not any real reason why.
Immediately after joining up with us, he told us he was somewhat apprehensive about running Forge of Souls because he had never healed it and didn't know if he would be able to do it but wanted the chance anyway. We pulled through the trash up to the first boss and before engaging, he told us that he was going to drop group as he was having trouble keeping up with healing. We thanked him and found someone else and after wiping a few times on the first boss and once on the second, we were able to clear.
Knowing your limits is greatly important for anyone involved with a support role. Tanks should always know their limits as should healers. This particular Priest was confident in his abilities and he knew when he was under geared. It impressed us all that he understood that he would not be able to keep up with the healing as we progressed and rather than hold us back, he dropped group to find something more suitable. To us, it was a very classy act on his part.
Too often, it's easier to pass the blame off on someone else, especially in the anonymity of the internet, for your own shortcomings. As the saying goes: If the tank dies, it's the healers fault. If the healer dies, it's the tanks fault. And of course, if the mage dies, it's his own damn fault. I love that line.
In all seriousness though, it's easy to pass off the blame. It's easy to say "OMG you guys are the worst group ever, I hope you all fail even more." However, at least in my experience, someone new comes in and everything goes smoothly. Sometimes, play styles may clash and the group has issues. More often than not it seems, the person who is causing the issue is under geared and/or under skilled. Typically these are the people who complain the loudest when things are going wrong. Case in point...
The last time we fielded enough people to run a 10 man instance, we were short 2 people, the healers. We pugged in 2 healers, a Shaman and a Druid. We decided to go to VOA, just because we had been there before and knew the fights. However, this was shortly after the release of Koralon and we decided to give him a shot. We wiped a couple times and the Druid start yelling "OMG why are we wiping?! This is EASY! Why can't you guys do this!" We ignored him at first and gave it another shot. I was tanking, though I was still rather new to it. I had set my Damage Meter to watch the healing charts. The Druid was below the Shaman. By a lot. After we got together for one more attempt, I inspected his gear. This guy was in quest blues, greens and a couple heroic blues. I called him out on it. He said his gear wasn't important, he knew what he was doing. The Shaman decided he'd had enough and decided to drop group. He thanked us for the run and left. The Druid continued to complain until we booted him from group and broke off to do some 5 mans.
It comes down to knowing your role, knowing your limits and taking responsibility for yourself in a group. You may not be concerned with making it a smooth run but chances are, the other 4 people are.
Feel a need to add your 2 cents? Throw it in below!
Immediately after joining up with us, he told us he was somewhat apprehensive about running Forge of Souls because he had never healed it and didn't know if he would be able to do it but wanted the chance anyway. We pulled through the trash up to the first boss and before engaging, he told us that he was going to drop group as he was having trouble keeping up with healing. We thanked him and found someone else and after wiping a few times on the first boss and once on the second, we were able to clear.
Knowing your limits is greatly important for anyone involved with a support role. Tanks should always know their limits as should healers. This particular Priest was confident in his abilities and he knew when he was under geared. It impressed us all that he understood that he would not be able to keep up with the healing as we progressed and rather than hold us back, he dropped group to find something more suitable. To us, it was a very classy act on his part.
Too often, it's easier to pass the blame off on someone else, especially in the anonymity of the internet, for your own shortcomings. As the saying goes: If the tank dies, it's the healers fault. If the healer dies, it's the tanks fault. And of course, if the mage dies, it's his own damn fault. I love that line.
In all seriousness though, it's easy to pass off the blame. It's easy to say "OMG you guys are the worst group ever, I hope you all fail even more." However, at least in my experience, someone new comes in and everything goes smoothly. Sometimes, play styles may clash and the group has issues. More often than not it seems, the person who is causing the issue is under geared and/or under skilled. Typically these are the people who complain the loudest when things are going wrong. Case in point...
The last time we fielded enough people to run a 10 man instance, we were short 2 people, the healers. We pugged in 2 healers, a Shaman and a Druid. We decided to go to VOA, just because we had been there before and knew the fights. However, this was shortly after the release of Koralon and we decided to give him a shot. We wiped a couple times and the Druid start yelling "OMG why are we wiping?! This is EASY! Why can't you guys do this!" We ignored him at first and gave it another shot. I was tanking, though I was still rather new to it. I had set my Damage Meter to watch the healing charts. The Druid was below the Shaman. By a lot. After we got together for one more attempt, I inspected his gear. This guy was in quest blues, greens and a couple heroic blues. I called him out on it. He said his gear wasn't important, he knew what he was doing. The Shaman decided he'd had enough and decided to drop group. He thanked us for the run and left. The Druid continued to complain until we booted him from group and broke off to do some 5 mans.
It comes down to knowing your role, knowing your limits and taking responsibility for yourself in a group. You may not be concerned with making it a smooth run but chances are, the other 4 people are.
Feel a need to add your 2 cents? Throw it in below!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Cross-realm dungeon finder = awesome
Along with pretty much everyone else who plays World of Warcraft, I am ecstatic with the new Cross-realm dungeon finder tool. Since this tool has went live, I've been doing more dungeons in a day than I used to in a week. With my limited play schedule, it often made it difficult for me to find a group for a dungeon except on Fridays and even then unless we already had a healer, and myself as a tank, we usually spent a good deal of time flying between dungeons, deciding which ones to do, looking for dps/healers, etc.
Now, Friday nights for me can afford usually 4-6 dungeons, 2 Emblems of Frost guaranteed, 3-5 emblems per dungeon, plus the 2 extra emblems for each random done after the first, coming out to 20-42 emblems, depending on the runs.
Myself, I've replaced several pieces of gear and started to bring my level of tanking on par with some of the other well geared and well worn tanks on our server. Being as our guild hasn't been able to do raids as a guild in some time(something I'm trying desperately to change), raiding is still something I enjoy a lot and would love to get back into, if nothing else but to see Arthas fall and who takes over the Lich King's duties.
Others in my guild have seen a surge in gear as well. My supervisor and resident glass howitzer has seen an increase in DPS and recently hit a personal burst DPS record of over 7k. We've been forced to relearn how to do certain fights, such as Prophet Tharon'ja in DTK. It has forced us to be better players and do things differently than we were used to at times.
I have no complaints and hope the tool only gets better, though I'm not sure how this is possible really.
Got something to ask or add? Leave it below!
Now, Friday nights for me can afford usually 4-6 dungeons, 2 Emblems of Frost guaranteed, 3-5 emblems per dungeon, plus the 2 extra emblems for each random done after the first, coming out to 20-42 emblems, depending on the runs.
Myself, I've replaced several pieces of gear and started to bring my level of tanking on par with some of the other well geared and well worn tanks on our server. Being as our guild hasn't been able to do raids as a guild in some time(something I'm trying desperately to change), raiding is still something I enjoy a lot and would love to get back into, if nothing else but to see Arthas fall and who takes over the Lich King's duties.
Others in my guild have seen a surge in gear as well. My supervisor and resident glass howitzer has seen an increase in DPS and recently hit a personal burst DPS record of over 7k. We've been forced to relearn how to do certain fights, such as Prophet Tharon'ja in DTK. It has forced us to be better players and do things differently than we were used to at times.
I have no complaints and hope the tool only gets better, though I'm not sure how this is possible really.
Got something to ask or add? Leave it below!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Specs: What do I do?
A question I have been asked time and time again by non-DKs and my fellow DKs is "What spec should I use?" Usually I ask them a question in return, "What are you wanting to do with your DK?"
This generates one of 2 responses usually: DPS or tank. All 3 Death Knight trees can DPS and tank. Each tree lends itself strengths and weaknesses and those will somewhat determine what play style you go with.
Blood gives the best single target DPS and tanking as well as survivability through talents like Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, and Bloodworms. Each of these talents returns health to the DK in some form or another.
Unholy provides the best AOE of the 3 trees and focuses on spreading around diseases and turns your summoned ghoul minion into a controlable pet, similar to a warlock minion. Unholy also provides the talent Anti Magic Zone which comes in handy for fights such as Argent Confessor Paletress or The Black Knight in Trial of the Champion when a lot of magic effects or damage is presented to an entire group.
Frost takes portions of single target damage and AOE based damage and makes itself into a great all around tanking or DPS tree. Tanks will want talents like Frigid Dreadplate and Toughness while DPS will want Killing Machine, Merciless Combat, and (this blogs namesake) Blood of the North.
While Frost doesn't shine profusely in any one area for tanking, where it does shine is being the only tree that supports dual wielding, be it for tanking or DPS.
As a class lead, I try and determine what a person is looking for from being a Death Knight and making suggestions from there. I, and my guild, don't require a certain spec so I just make suggestions on specs. I've seen the class played well and I've seen them played horribly. So my final answer for "What spec do I choose?" ends up being "What do you like to do?"
Leave some questions/comments below!
This generates one of 2 responses usually: DPS or tank. All 3 Death Knight trees can DPS and tank. Each tree lends itself strengths and weaknesses and those will somewhat determine what play style you go with.
Blood gives the best single target DPS and tanking as well as survivability through talents like Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, and Bloodworms. Each of these talents returns health to the DK in some form or another.
Unholy provides the best AOE of the 3 trees and focuses on spreading around diseases and turns your summoned ghoul minion into a controlable pet, similar to a warlock minion. Unholy also provides the talent Anti Magic Zone which comes in handy for fights such as Argent Confessor Paletress or The Black Knight in Trial of the Champion when a lot of magic effects or damage is presented to an entire group.
Frost takes portions of single target damage and AOE based damage and makes itself into a great all around tanking or DPS tree. Tanks will want talents like Frigid Dreadplate and Toughness while DPS will want Killing Machine, Merciless Combat, and (this blogs namesake) Blood of the North.
While Frost doesn't shine profusely in any one area for tanking, where it does shine is being the only tree that supports dual wielding, be it for tanking or DPS.
As a class lead, I try and determine what a person is looking for from being a Death Knight and making suggestions from there. I, and my guild, don't require a certain spec so I just make suggestions on specs. I've seen the class played well and I've seen them played horribly. So my final answer for "What spec do I choose?" ends up being "What do you like to do?"
Leave some questions/comments below!
Monday, December 21, 2009
My journey into tanking
"How does one become a tank?" you might ask. Some do it by choice, others out of necessity, some just fall into the role. I feel that the last one is where I happened into the role. Perhaps some background on my 5 years in WoW is in order...
I came into Wow during the open beta in the fall of 2005. A friend of mine and I had been talking about it and when open beta enrollments started, we both enrolled and were accepted. The game was buggy, lagged like hell and was just a total headache to play a lot of the time. Comments and complaints flew to Blizzard who seemed to make adjustments nearly everyday. We rolled in as Alliance, myself taking a Dwarf Paladin. I didn't make it very far in the beta, only hitting my mid teens before it ended.
Launch night, I was able to secure a copy and started into the game. We started again as Alliance, myself taking a Dwarf Paladin. We grew bored quickly and decided to delete our characters and roll into Horde on the Stormrage server. I chose an Orc Hunter. I muddled through my hunter, placing talents all over the place and becoming rather frustrated with the class altogether (mind you, this was pre-Hunter easy mode and pre-Patch 1.7 when the hunter talents were redone). We had joined a guild and then the guild disbanded, with ourselves and several other members forming another guild immediately. We grew bored with this server and found that my friend had a couple friends on Mannoroth who wanted us to come over. We dumped our characters and made the reroll on Mannoroth (my original Hunter sits to this day at Shadowprey Village on the coast of Desolace where I left him when we made the jump).
I pondered for a few days on what I should roll, as I was unhappy with the Hunter class. My friend suggested a Priest and told me about the Shadow tree (again, WAY before shadow priests were viable DPS at all). I figured why not and rolled a Forsaken Priest - Morbiun. He rolled a Troll Mage. We more or less leveled together until 60. We had joined a guild, which became rather large on the server but our raiding success was negligible, and we never made it through Molten Core and only getting as close as Sulfuron.
Despite having a large player base in this guild, and a well geared main tank, we found it difficult to clear content. Dissension began to grow nearing the launch of Burning Crusade until right before BC launch, a large portion of the guild quit and joined a newly formed guild. I had started a Warrior, Kamula, but he was relatively low at this point and I had only tanked a couple low level instances, never really wanting to become a regular tank. Also by this point, my friend had started an Orc warrior and had managed to get him to 60 nearing the end of vanilla WoW. The newer guild was in need of a main tank, a role which he filled and did well at until our main tanks from our former guild split to come to the new guild, at which point my friend became a highly skilled DPS Warrior. I had played my Priest into BC until 62, when I grew bored with being squishy, despite Shadow getting a huge overhaul. Naturally, I rolled a Blood Elf Paladin - Solanis. I fell in love with the class as a whole and leveled him to 70 and choosing the Retribution tree as my spec. I caught a ton of flack about this and suffered through the "Retnoob" and "Lolret" names, not always jokingly called. I continued to gear myself up and managed to bring my DPS to decent levels, knowing that I would never be a hugely viable raid DPS.
Enter Patches 2.2 and 2.3. Paladin DPS raises considerably. I become a front runner for raid DPS in our guild, wanted and respected in all of our raids. I built a slight tanking set but was never able to do it effectively. I decided to swear off tanking, never figuring to be good at it. Around April of 2007, I had become very burnt out on the game in general, despite our guild penetrating deeper and deeper into Black Temple with each run and testing the waters of Sunwell. At one point, we were ranking extremely high on Mannoroth among the raiding guilds, depsite the fact that we did not adhere to the usual strict rules that the top raiding guilds typically enforced. In a quick decision, I canceled my account, uninstalled the game and decided I was done. I had lost my main source of income, had a new child on the way and knew that I would be needing the money and the time when she arrived.
Fast forward to November 2007. I had been reading off and on about the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I had also started a new job and several people I knew there played, including one of my supervisors. I was working 2 jobs at the time of launch and was at work the night Wrath dropped. I was able to snag a Collector's Edition and purchased it the next day.
After installing, I made my new Orc Death Knight and started my way back into Mannoroth. I contacted some real life friends as well as some former guild mates, none of whom seemed interested that I had came back. At first I shrugged it off, happy to be back under my own terms. I started playing less and less, while my supervisor at work started prodding me towards transfering to the server he and others at work played on, Zul'jin. Finally, I had enough with Mannoroth. I barely had contact with anyone I used to play with, some friends had left the game, others had left the server. I figured why not and rerolled on Zul'jin, forming myself as a Human Death Knight. I named him Valoren.
At first I had no real desire in tanking at all. I was way excited in just doing massive DPS in Blood spec. I tooled around with different specs and found that I enjoyed Blood the most but did level briefly in Unholy. While I was leveling, my supervisor (an officer in our guild) introduced me to several of the other officers that we worked with, including our Guild Leader. Still, no interest in tanking and had never really thought about it.
One day, my supervisor approached me in our office instant messaging system and asked me what I thought about tanking. I said that I had never given it much thought, as I was happy just being DPS and that tanking was a big responsibility I wasn't sure I was skilled enough for, had the time for, patience for, etc. He explained to me that the guild had just lost our off-tank to another guild. He said he was a Death Knight as well and he knew that we were capable tanks, if not awesome. I agreed with this as I had been reading about our tank capabilities. He asked me if I would consider being our new off-tank for raids.
I thought about it and decided to give it a shot, I didn't have much to lose. If I sucked, I sold off my gear and went along my merry way as a melee DPS. I was getting close to 80 and knew that I could pick up some gear on my way to 80 through quests. I told him that I would give it a shot.
I started gathering up gear as I went along, where ever I could. After hitting 80, my fellow guildies started dragging me through heroics while I continued to quest, building rep with factions that I could get more tank gear through. Within a month or so, I had enough gear that I was able to tank a heroic. My guild members helped me through it, giving me pointers where they could. I started reading a lot about tanking, the basic mechanics of it and the mechanics of Death Knight tanking. Soon I had forged myself into a capable heroic tank and not long after, had been entrusted to off-tank our Naxxramas 10 runs.
Today, I have become the Death Knight class leader and an officer in the guild. I am also the main tank, as our former Paladin main tank had grown burnt out on tanking and wanted to play his warlock or mage before taking a brief hiatus from the game entirely. Unfortunately, our jaunts into Naxx10 or any raids for that matter have stopped. We have begun a rebuilding process, spearheaded by myself and my supervisor. Since Patch 3.3, and the new cross-realm dungeon finder system, I have been able to upgrade several pieces of my gear. I have replaced all blues that I had lingering around in my standard tanking gear and am working actively towards Tier 9 quality gear and with proper buffs, am hitting over 63% avoidance and nearly 40k health.
I couldn't imagine not being a tank now.
As always, questions and comments are welcome!
I came into Wow during the open beta in the fall of 2005. A friend of mine and I had been talking about it and when open beta enrollments started, we both enrolled and were accepted. The game was buggy, lagged like hell and was just a total headache to play a lot of the time. Comments and complaints flew to Blizzard who seemed to make adjustments nearly everyday. We rolled in as Alliance, myself taking a Dwarf Paladin. I didn't make it very far in the beta, only hitting my mid teens before it ended.
Launch night, I was able to secure a copy and started into the game. We started again as Alliance, myself taking a Dwarf Paladin. We grew bored quickly and decided to delete our characters and roll into Horde on the Stormrage server. I chose an Orc Hunter. I muddled through my hunter, placing talents all over the place and becoming rather frustrated with the class altogether (mind you, this was pre-Hunter easy mode and pre-Patch 1.7 when the hunter talents were redone). We had joined a guild and then the guild disbanded, with ourselves and several other members forming another guild immediately. We grew bored with this server and found that my friend had a couple friends on Mannoroth who wanted us to come over. We dumped our characters and made the reroll on Mannoroth (my original Hunter sits to this day at Shadowprey Village on the coast of Desolace where I left him when we made the jump).
I pondered for a few days on what I should roll, as I was unhappy with the Hunter class. My friend suggested a Priest and told me about the Shadow tree (again, WAY before shadow priests were viable DPS at all). I figured why not and rolled a Forsaken Priest - Morbiun. He rolled a Troll Mage. We more or less leveled together until 60. We had joined a guild, which became rather large on the server but our raiding success was negligible, and we never made it through Molten Core and only getting as close as Sulfuron.
Despite having a large player base in this guild, and a well geared main tank, we found it difficult to clear content. Dissension began to grow nearing the launch of Burning Crusade until right before BC launch, a large portion of the guild quit and joined a newly formed guild. I had started a Warrior, Kamula, but he was relatively low at this point and I had only tanked a couple low level instances, never really wanting to become a regular tank. Also by this point, my friend had started an Orc warrior and had managed to get him to 60 nearing the end of vanilla WoW. The newer guild was in need of a main tank, a role which he filled and did well at until our main tanks from our former guild split to come to the new guild, at which point my friend became a highly skilled DPS Warrior. I had played my Priest into BC until 62, when I grew bored with being squishy, despite Shadow getting a huge overhaul. Naturally, I rolled a Blood Elf Paladin - Solanis. I fell in love with the class as a whole and leveled him to 70 and choosing the Retribution tree as my spec. I caught a ton of flack about this and suffered through the "Retnoob" and "Lolret" names, not always jokingly called. I continued to gear myself up and managed to bring my DPS to decent levels, knowing that I would never be a hugely viable raid DPS.
Enter Patches 2.2 and 2.3. Paladin DPS raises considerably. I become a front runner for raid DPS in our guild, wanted and respected in all of our raids. I built a slight tanking set but was never able to do it effectively. I decided to swear off tanking, never figuring to be good at it. Around April of 2007, I had become very burnt out on the game in general, despite our guild penetrating deeper and deeper into Black Temple with each run and testing the waters of Sunwell. At one point, we were ranking extremely high on Mannoroth among the raiding guilds, depsite the fact that we did not adhere to the usual strict rules that the top raiding guilds typically enforced. In a quick decision, I canceled my account, uninstalled the game and decided I was done. I had lost my main source of income, had a new child on the way and knew that I would be needing the money and the time when she arrived.
Fast forward to November 2007. I had been reading off and on about the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I had also started a new job and several people I knew there played, including one of my supervisors. I was working 2 jobs at the time of launch and was at work the night Wrath dropped. I was able to snag a Collector's Edition and purchased it the next day.
After installing, I made my new Orc Death Knight and started my way back into Mannoroth. I contacted some real life friends as well as some former guild mates, none of whom seemed interested that I had came back. At first I shrugged it off, happy to be back under my own terms. I started playing less and less, while my supervisor at work started prodding me towards transfering to the server he and others at work played on, Zul'jin. Finally, I had enough with Mannoroth. I barely had contact with anyone I used to play with, some friends had left the game, others had left the server. I figured why not and rerolled on Zul'jin, forming myself as a Human Death Knight. I named him Valoren.
At first I had no real desire in tanking at all. I was way excited in just doing massive DPS in Blood spec. I tooled around with different specs and found that I enjoyed Blood the most but did level briefly in Unholy. While I was leveling, my supervisor (an officer in our guild) introduced me to several of the other officers that we worked with, including our Guild Leader. Still, no interest in tanking and had never really thought about it.
One day, my supervisor approached me in our office instant messaging system and asked me what I thought about tanking. I said that I had never given it much thought, as I was happy just being DPS and that tanking was a big responsibility I wasn't sure I was skilled enough for, had the time for, patience for, etc. He explained to me that the guild had just lost our off-tank to another guild. He said he was a Death Knight as well and he knew that we were capable tanks, if not awesome. I agreed with this as I had been reading about our tank capabilities. He asked me if I would consider being our new off-tank for raids.
I thought about it and decided to give it a shot, I didn't have much to lose. If I sucked, I sold off my gear and went along my merry way as a melee DPS. I was getting close to 80 and knew that I could pick up some gear on my way to 80 through quests. I told him that I would give it a shot.
I started gathering up gear as I went along, where ever I could. After hitting 80, my fellow guildies started dragging me through heroics while I continued to quest, building rep with factions that I could get more tank gear through. Within a month or so, I had enough gear that I was able to tank a heroic. My guild members helped me through it, giving me pointers where they could. I started reading a lot about tanking, the basic mechanics of it and the mechanics of Death Knight tanking. Soon I had forged myself into a capable heroic tank and not long after, had been entrusted to off-tank our Naxxramas 10 runs.
Today, I have become the Death Knight class leader and an officer in the guild. I am also the main tank, as our former Paladin main tank had grown burnt out on tanking and wanted to play his warlock or mage before taking a brief hiatus from the game entirely. Unfortunately, our jaunts into Naxx10 or any raids for that matter have stopped. We have begun a rebuilding process, spearheaded by myself and my supervisor. Since Patch 3.3, and the new cross-realm dungeon finder system, I have been able to upgrade several pieces of my gear. I have replaced all blues that I had lingering around in my standard tanking gear and am working actively towards Tier 9 quality gear and with proper buffs, am hitting over 63% avoidance and nearly 40k health.
I couldn't imagine not being a tank now.
As always, questions and comments are welcome!
First Post
First post on a new blog dedicated to Death Knights. I suppose I should lay out what I hope to accomplish on this blog.
Writing on here, I'll be covering our class mechanics, our lore, and anything else related to the DK class in World of Warcraft. I'll also probably come to talk about raids, dungeons, new content, guild stuff and other topics relating to World of Warcraft.
I am fully aware of the fact that there are possibly hundreds of blogs out there about Death Knights among the possible thousands covering World of Warcraft itself. I've been an avid reader of Wow.com for sometime now and they've somewhat inspired me to share my knowledge of the class and of the Warcraft universe in general. I've been inspired by the Wow.com Death Knight section, Lichborne and of other quality Death Knight blods that I've read through. These have prompted me to take my writing to the net and add my knowledge to the pool.
In my guild, I am our Death Knight class lead and encourage all of our budding Death Knights to come to me with any questions, concerns or just wanting to BS for a few. I've spent countless hours reading blogs, mulling over talents, comparing gear, etc to become not only a skilled tank but skilled at playing a DK, no matter what spec I'm in. Armed with this knowledge, I encourage anyone under my leadership to be open with me about our class, the guild or the game in general.
I may not delve deeply into theorycrafting on this site as some other blogs may do as I don't feel you have to have an advanced understanding of the numbers game to be effective at playing any class. I do understand many of the formulas associated with Wow in general but I just rather not make my brain hurt trying to figure out the numbers game and explain them to others.
I will, however, provide the most clear and concise information about everything I can and welcome questions, comments and criticism.
Writing on here, I'll be covering our class mechanics, our lore, and anything else related to the DK class in World of Warcraft. I'll also probably come to talk about raids, dungeons, new content, guild stuff and other topics relating to World of Warcraft.
I am fully aware of the fact that there are possibly hundreds of blogs out there about Death Knights among the possible thousands covering World of Warcraft itself. I've been an avid reader of Wow.com for sometime now and they've somewhat inspired me to share my knowledge of the class and of the Warcraft universe in general. I've been inspired by the Wow.com Death Knight section, Lichborne and of other quality Death Knight blods that I've read through. These have prompted me to take my writing to the net and add my knowledge to the pool.
In my guild, I am our Death Knight class lead and encourage all of our budding Death Knights to come to me with any questions, concerns or just wanting to BS for a few. I've spent countless hours reading blogs, mulling over talents, comparing gear, etc to become not only a skilled tank but skilled at playing a DK, no matter what spec I'm in. Armed with this knowledge, I encourage anyone under my leadership to be open with me about our class, the guild or the game in general.
I may not delve deeply into theorycrafting on this site as some other blogs may do as I don't feel you have to have an advanced understanding of the numbers game to be effective at playing any class. I do understand many of the formulas associated with Wow in general but I just rather not make my brain hurt trying to figure out the numbers game and explain them to others.
I will, however, provide the most clear and concise information about everything I can and welcome questions, comments and criticism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)