2008/11/27

Tanking


Today I got the chance to tank Azjol-Nerub as
Frost DW, I was very curious because I never
got the chance to visit this Dungeon during Beta.
There were no big problems, the second DK was
Unholy and was keeping up in damage, but at
the end I was the lead.

Healing was done by a Retribution Paladin in
Healgear... sometimes it was a bit close to
0% hp, but THX to Icebound Fortitude and
Antimagic-Shell I managed to hold on.

Was really fun, my Runestrike triggered so often I was even running out of Runicpower.
When pulling a mob group, I parried really often... even 3 or 4 times in a row,
getting no damage.

This will be really interesting at 80 in decent gear, I can imagine to parry / dodge
very often. My gear is improving for now, gathering more and more tank items.
Hopefully I can tank the next Dungeon pretty soon.

Build used: 5/53/7

If you have questions, do not hesitate and go on!

2008/11/25

Nexus Adventure Part II

Today I was feeling a bit better and got a fast chance to get Nexus going again and finish those damn quests... Random group, another DW Frost Tank was our Maintank, interesting thing was that he was not able
to keep up in the damage.




I was just duelling with the Rogue, but at the end of the instance he was not able to keep up with me. It was
really fun, I did some offtanking and protected the
healer when there was an add. There is much
more potential in DualWield, really looking forward to
do more!



And for all of you out there who speak german, I started my DualWield Guide in the official forums:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6986629797&sid=3

2008/11/22

Sick...

Got me a bad flue in the last days... mostly I am in bed, trying to get healthy again.
Sorry for the lack of updates, hopefully I am good to go at the start of the next week.

Do not hesitate and ask me some questions so I have something to do... :-)

2008/11/19

Interface & Questions

To answer some of the questions that I am being asked the most in the last days...
first off the list for my interface:

- XPerl
- Skinner
- ScrollingCombatText
- Recount
- Bartender4
- MagicRunes
- Omen (will be visible in the lower right)
- SimpleMinimap
- ChatMod


And the second one - which songs did I use in the DPS movie? Here you go:

Hervé Feat. Plastic - Little Cheap Thrills (Vocal Club Mix)

Guru Josh Project - Infinity 2008 (Klaas Remix)

From the CD1 of "Ministry of Sound - The Annual [2009]"
Hopefully I could help all of you out there, so maybe we can come back to the DW DK :-)

2008/11/16

Nexus Experience

Today I got the chance to visit Nexus a few times with the DW Frost Specc I am currently using.
The first run was with 5 people, one of those a very good Druid Tank doing some
nice damage as you can see in the small recount window on the lower right.

There were no problems in Nexus, sometimes I pulled aggro but I compensated this with Icebound Fortitude and Lichborne, pulling some nice damage with Howling Blast and Frost Strike. To explain the window for you:

1. Howling Blast
2. Melee
3. Frost Strike
4. Icy Touch
5. Frost Fever
6. Blood Fever

The two following runs were done with only 4 people, the tank and me remaining, plus Shadowpriest and Shaman Healer. We decided to try that because the druid and me
were doing decent damage, and doing it with only 4 will result in some more XP.

And it worked out pretty well, no problems, no wipes, going through it in about 40 minutes:

Showing the same order of the skills, and also a good average DPS of over 1000. I had some decent Howling Blast crits with over 3500, it is a lot of fun using this build!
What also is interesting - Melee Physical Swings always do 25 to 30% of the overall damage!

Specc I am now using:

12/50/0

Reached level 71 tonight, and after 3 times doing Nexus the cool Plate Shoulders dropped,
looking pretty nice on Edu:

Dual Wield DPS movie

I did a short movie to show 2 different builds doing Dual Wield, the first one is the Trispecc and the second one is a DW Frost Specc. No big surprise that Frost is stronger for now, better burst and magic damage which is not related to your weapons.

The Trispecc is really hard to play at 70 with the first equip pieces from quests in Northrend, and so I think I am going to drop this until 80. Frost DW is playing very smooth and the burst is really usefull in most of the situations.

Enough for the talking, have fun with the short clip:

http://files.filefront.com/Death+Knight+Dual+Wield+Test/;12369533;/fileinfo.html

Northend + Triplespecc

Today I reached lvl 70 and got to Northend, finally some new stuff to do there and also time to start using my Triplespecc. So currently I start testing with the following build:

27/18/16

The rotation I now use for this special build is very simple:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - Obliterate - BloodStrike - Death Coil

You can build up to 4 Death Runes, and after regenerating all of them you could pull off:

IT - PS - OB - BS - BS - OB - DC

That means you can get two Obliterates in one rotation, resulting in more damage. And you keep those Death Runes because of using OB (thx to Death Rune Mastery), so you can vary your rotation to 3 or 4 BS in a row for example.

The only thing about such a Trispecc is that it is extremely related to your equipment. And starting in Northend with a fresh 70 DK is not the easiest way to play it, but it is starting to work better as you are increasing in +hit and +expertise.

The Trispecc is meant to get every synergy for physical damage that is possible, boosting strength and the overall damage of the Strikes you are using. This means that more +hit and +expertise relates in more Damage at the mob, which can be boosted by stacking +crit and +str and also +haste at last.

Also, the faster you hit, the more often you trigger Necrosis and Blood-Caked-Blades, delivering some kind of a second and a third hit at once.

And stay tuned, I am doing a short rotation movie for you out there showing a comparison between 2 builds at level 70 with DW!

2008/11/14

Spell Rotation

Since I got asked a few times on mmo-champion.com and in the offical wow-forum, I now give some advice for rotation as DW Frost DK during leveling in Outland.

Thanks to Blood of the North, we can do two different rotations. My simple rotation is like:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - BloodStrike - FrostStrike - HowlingBlast

or just in a different way:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - HowlingBlast - Frost Strike - Blood Strike

But you can also change the rotation, depending on the runic power. I really have enough of it, so most of the fights I can start like:

IT - PS - BS - FS - FS - HB - BS

So, using Blood of the North I charge both Death Runes, and using following rotation at the next mob:

IT - PS - BS - HB - FS- HB - FS

No mob is surviving this, also very nice for groups. A very good t hing about Frost DW is the proccing Killing Machine, it's up most of the time, resulting in nice HB and FS crits :)

2008/11/13


Edurol is doing pretty well, after about 3 hours from the start I reached 59 and got to Outland, gathering all the stuff from the mules to start skilling Blacksmith, and also to get my 2 swords I bought.

Looking pretty fine I think, and the leveling is going really nice. I use Crusader on the Main and Rune of Black Ice on the Offhand for some debuff proccs.

I started with 15 points into blood and the rest into frost, burst damage is good and every mob was down after not even 1 rotation. The "big nerf" is not really as hard as I thought in Beta.

This screenshots shows me after finishing everything on the Hellfire-Peninsula, with my sweet little undead dragon from the CE.

Just love this thing, they really did this one well :)

I easily reached 62 with alle the quests, finding some other guys to finish the group quests. I then headed to the next area, many more quests to do and surely getting 63 in about 2 hours.

For now I reached the 63, and got me my 2 Axes with the same enchantments as the swords. They really look sweet on a Deathknight :)


I changed my talents now, and took 2 points from Blood to get Frost Strike a bit earlier. My current talent build is looking like that:

13/41/0

Doing very well with this one, I have more chances to use my runic power... I had to much of it for now to use, Frost Strike is using it up pretty well. Better than the old costs of 1 Frost Rune.

So, I may finish all quests of this swamp tonight, and then I'll go over to Terokkar to do 64 and maybe 65, to off to Nagrand. Really looking forward to it.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask :)

WotLK Launch


Today, finally... first time I woke up was like 4 am in the morning (german time), I was so nervous ;-) Then I got up at 6 am, and travelled to a store near me, which opened at 7 am. When I got there, I noticed it had opened earlier this morning and oh boy, what a crowd in there.

So many different people there, and this just in a small area of Vienna. Holy crap.
I lined up, and saw some Collectors Editions from the far... and I got there, asked the guy "Are those reserved for someone?" - he looked at me, took one in his hands and reached it to me.

OH MY GOD!!

Everything went fine, no problems during installation, just this strange DK bug... if you cannot do a DK, even if you have a 55+ char, just do a new lvl 1 char, log in, log out, and then - voila, you can do a DK.

And here he is, allmighty Edurol, I have chosen a Nightelve for now because he looks a bit cooler and smoother in my opinion. No problems in the starting area, nearly no none there this morning, and I reached level 59 now in about 3 hours.

2008/11/10

Beta end...

So, it's been a long time since my last posting, sorry for that guys.

I was really busy, and now the Beta ended... so, we have to look forward to the Launch of WotLK in a few days, it seems that my developed Trispecc is still a good choice for DW!

I will start my DK as soon as the servers are up, and I will document every step here in this blog, every experience I make while leveling, and I am also planning on writing a complete guide about DW DK.

Hopefully everything goes as planned... ^^