Suffer well, friend

I just wanted to give a warm farewell to Skeletonjack, a fellow DK blogger, who has recently quit WoW. So both of my influences (him and BRK) are down and out. Head over to his site and wish him good luck in whatever he does. Also, he has (Or had, not sure) a donation set up to support someone going through a nasty sickness. It’s a great cause, and I’m not sure whether the drawing for the raffle has gone on yet.
I’m going to try to live up to his post quality, but it’s a high bar to hit. Just the same, expect the drought of posts to end.
~Suffer well, brothers and sisters!

3.1… WOAH!

I know i’m a little late to the party on 3.1, but there’s a reason. Two of them. One with a red ribbon logo, and one with lightning bolts… Yes, Rogers cut my internets. Apparently I was overusing bandwidth, but after explaining I had someone stealing bandwidth, they advised that I lock it and activated it again. Then… The storm knocked out our internet again. So I’m back, and starting to raid finally. There are 3 mods that I cannot live without in 3.1 raiding, namely Talented, OPie, and, obviously, Omen3.
Talented is even more amazing in 3.1, with two specs to manage. People on our server were spending 2 hours setting specs, getting them deleted at the drop of a hat, and resetting them on all their characters. Talented SAVES your specs, and you can set them again easily.
OPie puts less used commands of your choice onto ring menus brought up with a keypress, including raid markers. It is a LIFESAVER as a raid leader… For those… iffy… trash pulls in sarth that need marking NOW, to using macros to announce position changes at a keypress for several, it just makes things easier.
Omen3, well… If you don’t know what this does, you shouldn’t be raiding.
Why didn’t I mention DBM and Bigwigs? Simple. No worky. They broke with all the stealth changes in 3.1. Not reliable for a lot of fights. Believe me, I know first-hand. Painful.
~MRGRLRGLRGLRGLRAH!

My First Epics!

Well, 9 hours into being 80, and I have two epics. One hateful gladiators piece, and one T7 tanking piece. There’s a kicker, but I’ll get to that.
I had just done wintergrasp (3 Kbs, 5k honor… And 10 deaths /facepalm) and thought, epics? Sign me up. So I did H VoA, thinking, hey, I do pretty good dps. After putting up with a downright SPASTIC tank who would charge after the leaps (Bear tank, don’t flame me bro! Heh… Flame retardant.), forcing the melee dps to head over to the new location, instead of waiting for the return, I still had a good 1.5k dps, with 50% ToT ( time on target). This placed me 7th of 20 dpsers. No death knight stuff dropped. None.
I think, heh… 1.5k raid buffed dps… I still have the buffs… I head out, and get into a 10 man. We kill him, with a much better tank (/glare) and we loot him. 2 emblems of heroism, per usual, but.. Wait… 2 DK items, one DK i.e. Me. The kicker I mentioned? Both were gloves.
I’m still mad.

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!

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!

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.