Funny gank, the state of raiding

So I was farming crystallized life in wg while the horde controlled it, when I got a debuff. I thought, hmmm… These flowers don’t cheapshot!
Being in total PvE mode, it took me a good 10 seconds to realize I had an UD rogue on me.
Being mid-rotation, having just done my second blood strike and a RS, with 2 death runes, 80 RP, and in unholy pres, it took me a good 4 seconds to kill him with 3x SS, one RS, and one death coil.
Moral of the story: Don’t attack a mid-rotation UH DK, low health or not.
On to raiding; if you aren’t in a hardcore raiding guild, and you aren’t a tank, you have two options, at least on my server; VoA for +-10 mins after WG capture, or the occasional half-pug of naxx made by a raiding guild that is short a dps. Full pugs? One a week, at most. OS? Good luck. EoE? No. Almost never, and those just want a keyed person.
-Suffer well, brothers and sisters! (Apologies to skeletonjack.)

Ding. Seriously this time.

Prepare youselves, the bells have tolled!
Shelter your weak, your young and your old!
Each of you shall pay the final sum!
CRY for mercy! THE RECKONING HAS COME!
Yes, I did ding 80. My current spec is possibly the best in existence, ruthlessly poached from Skeletonjack. My dps went from 705 to 1600 (!) in quest blues/greens, crafted bracers, and rep sword/chest. Imagine the possibilities with heroic/naxx gear!
Yes, heroics and naxx are level options for me. A couple groups are okay with anyone hit capped and who puts out 1.5k dps, of which I will fit both criteria <url=soon. I was a little hesitant about the runeblade of demonstrable power, for the distinct lack of strength, but it gave me more dps. If you do not have the vengance bindings and the runeblade pre-raid, keep hitting yourself. The runeblade is the same level as naxx 10 gear, for the price of two repair bills, and the bindings ARE PERFECTLY ITEMIZED FOR DK’s! No haste, no stam, and all for 12 saronite bars (free-2.5 gold each depending on smith) and an eternal fire (why hello, 20-50g on ah or 20 mins of revenant farming!)
-Harken, cur! Tis you I spurn! Now feel… THE BURN!

A further screwup, a further shoutout

In case you were on the edge of your seat with the ‘I’m not done tonight’, my posts were out of order. >.>
Wanted to give a shoutout to Tuffbuff, my pocket shaman who helped me with the Icecrown group quests (We 3manned Banshee’s Revenge, a level 80 RED 5 person group quest! Mad props.). If he’s ever in LFG for your instance, and you need a healer, invite him. He kept a 14k health tank (me) alive with 395 defense :P.
(He kept thinking we were done. I became the Colombo of group quests. Ehhhh… One more quest.)

Screw up, guild shoutouts

Whoops. So I’m not going to run out of quests in icecrown, at 45/140 with 900k into 79. Almost 2k gold, even after getting CWF and normal flying on quest rewards and 1 BoE blue sale. Making some serious bank for not having a maxed out trade skill on ANY character. Slacking, but that’s why I’m in my guild. Amazing people, especially Keidaned, always ready with a friendly competition for motivation; Orsturm, hoping I spelled his name correctly, for being a freaking encyclopedia; Lokee, for starting me on rants about how, when it comes to Norse mythology, Blizzard’s ‘Doin it rong’, I mean, come on, Mmiron? Best you could do?; Johanna, et alts, for being a very nice slave driver forcing me to level- kidding, for encouraging me to enjoy the game; Achilliez, for being probably the most lenient guild master that can keep a guild together, and aiding my quest for the holy gra- a frostweave bag; and the rest of my guildies, for helping me out in ways that escape my goldfish memory.
This went a little long… But I’m not done tonight!
-Did you think we had forgotten?

DING- nah, just practicing.

So, I’m about 900k into 79, and I get invited into a party for VoA. I’m wondering why, and the guy tells me, ‘Just trying to help out a fresh 80.’
I’m thinking… Uhhhh… 79?
And then I realize I fired off my ding macro a leetle early. Whoopsies.
And now, for a NEW CAR! Oh, sorry. I meant new post series. I’m going to be looking at machinima made with WoW, both le creme de le creme… And le
creme de la crap.
My first thing falls under the first category; The world of war: blind,
commonly known as BLIND. You can find it by searching for Warcraft blind, or even just BLIND, on YouTube. It’s put out by Perculacraft, and due to the idiocy of youtoube urls and having no copy/paste (Posting on an iPod) I can’t link it. Suck it up. Then go watch this amazing piece of animations. These are NOT stock WoW animations; blizzard, hire this person! All I’m going to say. Go watch it. Now!

The Home Stretch!

600k Experience left for me in level 78. I’m almost through the leveling process, planning to hit 80 sometime in late March/early April. If you think I have blogoreah now, just wait. I have plans… Eeeevil plans. Ahem.
Though, as I noticed… I’m going to run out of quests. I may have to either do dailys for the final few days, do an instance or three, or (Gulp) go into storm peaks without an epic flying mount.
This is just a bit of advice: Never skip grizzily hills. Loads of quests there, some of my guildies didn’t touch Icecrown or Storm Peaks until 80. And that’s a nice cash injection when you do ding; in Icecrown alone, at 80, you can make nearly 2,000 gold (!) by questing to the achievement, due to the Exp conversion. Never skip stormpeaks, either, unless you have normal flying. Dear lord, the flight times! (Offer on the donations still open fwiw.)
ANYWAY, the original point of this post was not to set my pet textwall on you, although ask me about Norse mythology in game and I’ll be happy to sic him on you- Ahem. My original idea, pre randomness attack, was to outline a post series overview. I.e. Recurring topics, for those who don’t speak bloggerese.
I will be doing the following kinds of posts, after I hit 80. Until then, too focused. (Never seen a focused geek? Pray that you never do. We’re scary.)

Instance strategies for Death Knights. (Some slightly overleveled, gimmick runs possibly.)
Gear suggestions (Useful and otherwise)
Spec ideas (Ditto)
Actual specs (See above)
Looks at new content, either when I make it to my guild’s A team (I.e. Only team, we’re looking to get bigger) or looks from a fresh view
Lore (if you ask nicely… And literately.)
Views of death knights from others PoV (Possibly)
And finally, stories. If something strange, humorus, stupid, annoying, or ironic happens in WoW, and it happens to me or any of the people I play the game with, expect to hear about it.

That’ll do it for now, I will try to keep up with all these, but may have trouble for reasons that I’ll keep to myself right now (And that will surprise you.). But hey, you’re not paying me to do this (Waiiiit a minute…) so be happy with what you get!
UPDATE: I dinged 79 while posting this. Wish me luck!

The Little Things

WARNING! QQ POST AHEAD. SCROLL DOWN TO ANYWAY TO AVOID QQ.
Sure, I know. Things happen, bad things, stupid things, your fault or not. Part of the game. World of Warcraft. But there are these little things that really piss me off. Exhibit 1: Wintergrasp, this morning.
I’m farming revenants, after having won WG. Even without the flying mounts to position you properly, revenants are pretty easy for a level 77 Death Knight. I pull one flame revenant, and two elementals. Disadvantage one: 3 Lv. 80 mobs, one with almost elite health and damage, on a 77 character. Normally, I’d just go, ‘Oops, bad pull’ and shadowmeld or pop a few cooldowns. However, I had just respecced unholy for the first time in ninteen levels. Disadvantage two: Rusty on spec mechanics. I was also at +-80% HP when I pulled. Keeping count? Now, with three knocks against me, what swoops in but an 80 blood elf ret pally. Disadvantages four and five: Facing my counterclass at three levels below. And sure enough, opens with an arcane torrent, silencing me (Somehow). In the one second that I’m helpless, he gets a crit off on me, bringing me to 30% from 50%. I fire off a scourge strike (glyphed), he cleanses and proceeds to kill me.
If you need that many advantages to kill a 77 at 80, then… Wow. Just wow.

ANYWAY

To stop this from becoming a qq post, there’s a few other things that bug me and are slightly less angsty.
First of all, there’s the pet AI problems.
Any BM hunters out there will know what I mean. Your pet will constantly reposition the mob while they have aggro, dragging it away. Poor ratgrinder (I kid you not with the name.) pulled a withered troll into thrym in zul’drak, leading to an ‘Oh shi-‘ shadowmeld by me. For those unaware, Thrym is Fel reaver 3.0 (or Gankasaur 4.0, depends who you ask.), except hitting for 9k on ghouls. Personally, I’m hoping not to find out plate hits.
And thirdly, flying mobs. Went afk on flyer above Gun’drak, came back to the GY under where I died, my corpse floating above me, irretrieveable. Died mid fall.
-Elune be with you!

I’m going to attempt to bring you a guide to gear for level 80 from pre-80 quests. This’ll probably be mainly as guidlines, and mainly from personal experience.
First-ish, stats to avoid like… Well, like the plague.

Spellpower
Mp5
Spellpower
Haste (most of the time)
Intellect
Spellpower
Defense (If not tanking or not for tank set)
Spirit
Block rating (Durr.)
Block value (Means you have old gear)
Did I mention spellpower?

I was praying for the fate of DK’s as a class when I saw ‘DK Lfg H nexus, 2000 SP’
Yes, it affects IT and HB, but we have a skill that turns AP into effective SP.
Now, the good parts. Here’s what you DO want for dpsing, in order (somewhat).

Expertise till softcap
Hit till 9%
Strength
AP
Crit rating
Stamina

The first two are NON-NEGOTIABLE at 80. The other 4 need to be balanced, with strength being prefered over its equivalent in AP. Why? We have talents that boost AP from strength.
That’s it for today. And if I catch anyone with SP on their gear… Pain will ensue.
-We will wipe the living off of Azeroth!

Ding 77, Cold weather flying.

Wow, that was quick. I hit level 77 and hearthed to dalaran to train CWF. Stuck with a normal mount, but that’s my own fault for not saving up (Any donations appreciated, pony up or I’ll send my ghoul after you. >.<) But on the plus side, I’m one level closer to bringing you useful information. Only three levels until 80, so I’d better start gearing up.
Oh, and as my first official piece of advice; as soon as you hit 75, go to zul’drak. A list of pre-80 must-have quested gear is forthcoming, as soon as possible. And btw, the picture isn’t me. I’m on a (Shudder) golden griffon.

In before lock!

I suck at starting to write things, so I’m just going to jump right in. My goal for this blog is to bring an honest, fair opinion on all things Death Knight related. I’m going to do this from the perspective of a semi-casual (Yet incredible */flex*… No? Guess not.) World of Warcraft player.
I play on several characters, with too many alts to name, but the two main ones are my Death Knight Finalhour on Stormrage, and my Druid, Heartofearth.
What I don’t play is

A guild MT
A world class PVP’er
‘a l0t b3773r th4n j00 LOL’

Ugh… Part of me died typing the last one.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m just another guy putting in his 15 bucks a month to have fun, not someone who’s trying to tell you that it’s my way or the highway. The point of this blog is going to be to share my experiences playing, and tips on playing in a simple fashion (I.e. I’ll do/ruthlessly steal the freaky math so you don’t have to).
-For the Lich King! (And a cookie for whoever finds me a better quote!)