Buckets of Asshats

Tankbucket and Dotbucket, both from Black Dragonflight server are asshats and need to figure out that normal Nexus is not ICC25. both promptly dropped group because 1) tank wasnt at full health for most of the first boss fight (the mage that does the split) and probably 2) cos dotfucktard didnt get her wand, or something. no i bet it was probably more like the tank got annoyed at something and decided to drop group. i'll never really know. but dropping group after the first boss is asshatterily annoying. the warlock would rebut by mentioning his dps. but you know what? i did much higher than 2k dps on my own warlock at that level. warlocks with seed of corruption? come on. thats the cheap way to high dps. no one cares about that.

people like that need to be shot. funny, they're in a guild called "Just the Two of Us." probably since no one wants to run with them anyway. that shoulda been my first clue. oh well. fuckers. wasted a Lay on Hands on the tank too cos he pulled too many mobs in the halls of stasis. but he probably didnt notice since his eyes were probably covered with so much of his own awesome tanking ego already. srsly. hope to never party with anyone from "just the two of us" ever again.

wtb enjoyable ppl to party with. normal nexus should not be stressing like ICCanything.

peace.

Friday Musings

Hey guys, just wanted to ramble on a bit this friday about things that are planned.
I have a blog entry ready to roll but will need screenshots. This is for my druid and priest, as it relates to an addon used for healing.

If you guys are interested, please tell me (via text) when you can join me this weekend. I already have plans to be on Ravenholdt tonight with my good friend Moz to run some instances with his mage. Hopefully i can get him to pull aggro a few times for me to get some screenshots of him pulling aggro. Also, maybe he can get cursed or poisoned so i can get screenies of that.

What i also plan to do is write a short demi-guide on making macros. of course, it will be about the macros i use regularly, so it will not be a comprehensive list on macros. but it will indeed be useful to someone out there.

I also mentioned before that i want to do a few guides on how to properly dps as a DK, or better yet, how to actually play one well. i've seen some really good DKs out there, i've seen some average ones and then i've seen the really bad ones. i know a bad dk when i see it. now the DK is a tricky class. they're given these spells and abilities that form the core of their attacks throughout the first two hours of play. little do they know, these attacks remain the core of their offensive abilities only as supporting roles. the real power lies within the other specialized attachs, as well as the attacks which need to be talented. The initial attacks, namely icy touch and plague strike becomes the backbone of all their other spells and abilities. but this is missed by many and icy touch and plague strike becomes the forerunner in their DK damage. this saddens me to a great deal. i wish, for every DK i find playing their DK wrong, that i can send them a standard email with the basics of DPS, or tanking, or any kind of output that doesnt constitute DnD damage and Icy touch only. only.

Okay, mini rant out of the way. i just wanted to mention that Devynity is almost at 300 fishing. with a +20 fishing pole, a +5 fishing hat and a +100 fishing lure, he can easily fish in outland and northrend with few junk catches. still, he does catch a bit of junk, but not as much as before. and if he sees pools, there's no junk in there. there are some trunks and junk boxes that carry items. but that's about it. i did get the turtle mount when fishing for the ghostfish. its awesome! he's also doing the fishing dailies in outland and northrend. for outland, he's already had to fish for shrimp, blackfin darter, and some fish found only in the polluted waters of shadowmoon valley. in northrend, he's only gotten the ghostfish one, bloodfrenzies, and the terrorfish in wg. sounds like fishing can keep me busy for a while... all while waiting on instance queues.

i really do not want to do quests just yet. questing is so last month. i still need to eventually finish out all my outland instances and get exalted with every group. hopefully it doesnt take too long. too long being a year. i gained honored with keepers of time last night because a group i found wanted to get their elixir mastery done and needed essence of inifity from the dragons in black morass. We ended up running it twice actually. each time without a good drop for me, and i know they do make decent drops for a level 70 that can be used well into northrend, to be replaced after DTK even. so that's a long ways away, especially gemmed, the only stat it might not have an edge on is "armor" but im dps. who needs armor? lol. i would even go mail gear if it was better, or leather even. =]

What i also want to do, which requires a bit of a partnership from my Herbalist friend Manders, is level my Inscription. i am actually unsure of the value of this profession, as i've looked at many glyphs in the market and have decided that the common, vendor-bought recipes are going for cheap since every scribe has access to it, but the ones found only through discovery from books are more expensive. more expensive to the point of quadrupling mats costs, or more. Anyway, manders is getting me herbs, enough herbs to level inscription from 75 to 450. hopefully she can do this soon. i am thinking of a flat rate for the whole thing. not sure how much yet, but it seem to take a lot of effort. i might just pay 15g a stack and multiply it by the total stacks of herbs i get, no matter the type. that would encourage her to pick just the cheap ones for me, but save the expensive-er herbs for the AH. this does make good business sense, but i dont think gold actually matters to her that much.

So i think i will basically scroll over each type of herb to see what the going price is from my auctioneer, and then do some multiplications and additions, then round up to the nearest thousand. or the nearest five hundredth and call it a day. she's basically working for gold. but in this case, she has a specific buyer. i think this works out well. i can also think of this as a business venture as well. to sell a whole set for something for leveling. it's not as complicated with herbs, since the inscriptionist will have to mill the inks and pigments themselves, and will have to purchase the recipes themselves. i may just provide the parchments too. that would rock. maybe we can talk about this later, k manda?? lol we'll split the profits! I just cant imagine how difficult it would be for something like alchemy or JC. although i did level JC pretty quickly, it did require items that i did not want to ever mine (tin, iron? ugh). we'll see.

last thought... i do want to level my dk from 75-78 this weekend. i am not sure if i will have the time to do so though. i do want him to finally hit 80 and be able to do heroics to get some of the cuts for his JC. although everyone and their mother has JC, i do believe i can do something with that horrible market. at least ride the waves and see if i can profit from the large population of people taking breaks from the game. this is the season of the lulls. everything is slowing down and we basically have several more months before cataclysm will finally hit the shelves. until then, i will consider JC a dying profession.

Durrrr....

Went and did Escape from Durnhold. or Durnholde. or something. I dont know why there's that "e" at the end of the word, or why i put it there sometimes. it's just that i've seen many names in wow that has the e at the end, but if the word were spelled without it, it would phonetically be the same. phonetic, as in sounding the same. phonics is not about phonetics. sorry, random thoughts.

Anyway, manders and i went to durnhold and kicked butt (although baby aggro was kicking my butt for some of the instance), and actually did the quest to progress through the story. glad i did because right after, i went to see the dragon disguised as a kid (do you even know why they choose to take on humanoid forms?) and he gave me another quest to enter the black morass. a lot of dark butt jokes can be made from that. but anyway, got the quest and for the rest of the night, we basically goofed off. i queued for a random outland heroic, but was short a tank/healer for most of the night. at about the 1 hour queue mark, i dropped queue and called it a night.

I really think the old LFG tool should be added for those who want to do instances within our realms that the LFD tool isnt going to allow us to do. what do i mean from this is that after a certain level, i am unable to queue for certain instances. or at least, i dont know how to queue for them yet. but i did get a random level 80 warlock added to a scholomance group. so how did that happen? what i wanted to do is to just be, say level 75, and be able to group up to run through keepers of time instances to get rep. i just hit "friendly" and will not be getting anywhere close to honored any time soon. this is mainly due to the lack of people doing black morass. although there may be a few who actually do the starting quest to do durrrrn, i find that its almost impossible to do it in offtimes. also, i've never been in an outland heroic yet. this is due to no tanks or healers queueing for them. sometimes i wish i can tank. but i've resolved to level as DPS this time. i do have vuhdo (like grid/healbot) set up to cleanse/purify/taunt and flash of light heal.

So here's why i like using vuhdo. i love using it on Diinky, which is my druid healer. but that's not the reason why i like using it. its a mix of healbot and clique in a nice little interface. what it allows me to do is use any mouseover commands i have when i mouseover their healthbars. also, i am able to healing/dispell while clicking, or scrolling.

So this is how i use my spells with vuhdo on my ret paladin.
Right click - Righteous Defense (taunt. honestly, i'd rather take the hits than the healer, or clothie. at least i'll have a better chance to live plus it gives the tank a little more time to pull the mobs back.
Left click - Flash of Light. now i try to use this only when i have everything else on cooldown and my Art of War has procced. otherwise, i dont use this.
Mouse Scroll up - Purify.
Mouse Scroll down - Cleanse.

That's it for the ret. as far as purify and cleanse go, they cost the same amount of mana, one cleans poisons too. that's it, i believe. why this isnt one spell is beyond me. but there you have it. for dispells, i get a notice on vudo showing my green healthbars are now purple, or blue, or whatevers. this means they need a purify or cleanse. i go ahead and mouseover their healthbar and scroll up. done.

as for taunts, i will know who has aggro when their healthbar gets a red outline. its not a red glow or anything. their names also turn red and they have >> and << around their names on their health bar. so red outline, red name, red lessthan/greatherthan signs, and i will certainly know who specifically has aggro. if its a mess and i see aggro on the healer, i simply mouseover their name, and rightclick. thats it. never seen a cleanse happy dps have you? nope. and in instances, i usually dont see too many cleansing/dispelling healers either. not until i ask, of course. lol.


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Update on Rep.
Now im trying to get rep with Keepers of Time. Im friendly, but would like to at least get honored to unlock heroics. as of right now, i can do hellfire heroics, auchindoun heroics, coilfang heroics and tempest keep heroics. the last set is the caverns of time heroics, which is just durnholde and black morass. and im sure at 80, i can solo these even in heroics. but i do not want to. actually, i want to do it now. not because i am lazy, but because i am level 71 and am ready to keep doing these instances. i do not want to do them at 80. i seriously do not want to. the challenge isnt as great, although soloing it can be challenging, its not as fun as destroying the instance with four other people. since things have been nerfed to oblivion, why cant we just do these instances, even the heroic versions, at 68 instead? this may help change the face of a dying series of instances. i cant actually uninstall wrath so my experience locks at 70. but for me who wants to do these instances at around 70, it becomes a bit frustrating when i have to limit my leveling in order to actually do these instances before i cant do them anymore. meaning, once i hit a magical level, i will not be able to queue for normal outland instances. once i hit another level, i wont be able to queue for heroic outland instances. and there's some recipes that i'd like to purchase. i really want these stupid, but somewhat useful enchanting recipes, like threat to gloves or dodge to cloak. who uses that anymore? but i wantsss it!!

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Last thought for today, i think.... lol

my girlfriend just got a new laptop. so i might start playing with her. things may get interesting soon. but i'll have to teach her how to play and things. i wont teach her everything i know and i definitely will not show her how to play like i play. some things should be left to be discovered and i think its best to be discovered on your own. although she is more of a social rather than a hardcore player, it will be interesting to at least do a few things with her in-game. she'll definitely be using the dressing room feature a lot, and im sure her pick of clothes and gear will be based a lot on looks. but that's fine. gear design is there for a reason. hopefully, she'll want to play as horde. lol. we'll see.

Fishing is a Lot More Fun... Now.

Well, fishing isnt as fun as many other things in WoW. but as it stands, its a lot more fun than it was before. The only reason i say this is because i am able to at least attempt daily fishing quests and fish in higher level pools. Sure, i cant stand there and recast for eternity, but running or flying up and down a river just to hunt out pools is not as bad as it seems. and at a low level fishing, if i wanted to fish in outland or northrend, well pools are my best resource. I can fish in open water, but that usually leads to a bag full of junk. i just cant imagine how polluted our waters are. i mean i look at the coast and i see beautiful pristine waters. but when i fish, half of it is junk. but other than the illusion of cleanliness in the water, fishing is probably one of the cleanest and most tranquil forms of gathering i have ever gone through. not only do i see the same scenery for hours, i also notice the waves, the sounds of ocean clashing, the sway of the plants in the ocean and the paths of some of the larger creatures under the surface.

At level 70 i ventured into sholazar to find the ghostfish. and found it i did! but this was only after several attacks from nearby crocs that took about 5 minutes to kill each time. though there are spots where i can stand that will not aggro these creatures, i ended up moving a lot just to find a perfect fishing spot. i never really found the perfect spot though. and so the hunt will go on for a more perfect spot. i do like the rivers in sholazar. this is actually the first time i've actually stopped and looked at the detail. its quite amazing how they made the wetlands so real, if only someone would stop for a few minutes to look.

Dragonfin is hard to find. I run up and down the river that separates dragonblight from grizzly hills and can find very little in terms of dragonfin. the dragonfin make really good buff foods for hit rating, which i do believe i will use. although i do see that i can make some gold out of this (and its really the gold im after, amirite?) so maybe i shouldnt really have to worry about hit rating all that much, especially while leveling. besides, i've gotten so many pygmy suckerfish that i just would rather have it made into guru elixirs.

Speaking of Guru elixirs, my awesome xmute alchemist friend happily makes my elixirs and transmutes. for those items with procs, my tip is usually the procs. so i ask her to keep all the procs. just leave me with what i have. so far, its been arcanite bars. i am not sure if primal mights are xmutes with xmute procs as well, but if it is, i might be looking out for some cheap primals. i was looking all weekend for primal mights and the only thing i've found were the recipe to make it, but there were no primal mights to be found on the AH. either they're snatched up really quickly (which means demand>supply) or no one is selling them (which means there is no supply). i wish my warlock was on this server now. i can DoT up practically all the elementals at the elemental plateau in outland without skipping a beat, then collect loot. it would be insanely fun. maybe i can do that on my old server just for kicks.

Anyhow, my point was that fishing is a lot more fun than before. although there's not much else you can do for a pretty boring profession, at least its got some perks (pets, mounts, recipes, contests, etc) to encourage those less enthused about watching water flow. lol

Monday Report

Ah... the Monday "TPS" reports! it is that time of the week again where i have to update a few things and make sure all of my customers are paying, or at least, have a reason to not pay on time. Now this often interferes with what i really want to do, which was to recap the weekend (which i briefly did in the previous post) and reflect on a few points of discoveries for this week. I think that having some form of contemplation is good, even if its very little or if it results in absolutely nothing.

DPS is leveling out. I remember pretty well the few days of blogging about 200 dps and i do remember my first venture into RFC, where my dps was a whopping 17. 17 dps. that was crazy cool since everyone else was doing 8 dps. But it slowly got better. in fact, it kept jumping every few levels. but now it seemed to have leveled out as i find myself sitting at 1k-1.3k dps since 66. I remember 66 vaguely because this is when i got my awesome hammer from the hydra boss inside underbog. i added some STR gems to it and it made a gigantic jump in dps, so much more than the hellreaver. also with the gloves, chest and boots having a bunch of slots, i gemmed them with bold bloodstones and perfect bold bloodstones. those are cheap and are way more than i really need at my level. so since then, my dps hasnt really changed much. i did have a lot of fun with holy wrath on demons and dead/undead things as well as timing my divine storm and consecration right. all those add to the awesome aoe dps. there are many times where i did pull aggro but it wasnt too hard to finish off the mob before it killed me. i did venture into UK once and got my ass handed to me for pulling aggro, so my hypothesis was correct. i can "safely" pull trash mobs from the tank in outland, but not in northrend. although this had led to a bunch of butthurt tanks who, instead of try to be better TPS, decide to hold a pity party at our expense and either afk out or leave. TPS is threat per second. come on guys, im hitting the same mob you're hitting and im pulling them off of you. maybe you should learn to tank?

So my analysis is this. DPS stops at around 1k around level 66 and stays that way until 73, when most people get their gear "up to par" with the dungeons up north. this gear i speak of has stats that go well with the new system of play, or new stat priority, or new damage formulas Wrath brought on in patch 3.0. Once we are able to do Violet hold and Drak Theron Keep, we should have gear to decently outdo 1k dps. Please note this is also my theory. It is by no means what happens normally, as there are many classes and many ways to buff your dps. i mean give a warlock seed of corruption and there you have it, 4k dps at level 75. but this analysis is based on my own ret paladin with his own playstyle. also, i speak of overall dps, and not just single target dps since most of what matters in instances is the AoE dps anyway. When raiding happens, i guess we'll have to fine tune things. but for now, no boss is really on some kinda "enrage" timer where we can wipe if we take too long. so the limiting factor is really, or should ideally be, the healer's mana.

So going back to the topic, i feel that this stagnation in dps can be a good and bad thing. one, it can help me focus on fine tuning my play without really worrying too much about dps. in UK, i was top dps at 1k dps overall, but had a 500dps on prince keliseth, mainly due to running back and forth killing the frost tombs, and getting frost tombed three times with the first time not being freed until i yelled "HELP". I figured i'd be a little higher than that. we'll see how things pan out tho. but keliseth really drops my dps more than anything in utgarde keep. but fine-tune i will do.

i do notice some abilities that i will never use and one is repentance. oh why dont they just give me that ability at 80 instead of sacred shield? i'd sooooo love a trade. i'd run and SS myself all day if i could. it would make things a lot more interesting than a silly CC that i'll never use (not just because everyone is AoE crazy, but also because, well, there is no real spot for me to use it besides MGT. really, i've only used repentance at magisters terrace. and the tank didnt even notice. nope. he went and pulled a second group and left the CC'ed mob standing, only to get out of it and blast a hole in me. thanks stupid tank. oh and at the five super friends right before Keal, i asked which mob should i CC, but by the time i finished asking the question, the tank already charged in. needless to say, no one survived. no one knew how to fight that fight. everyone thought the naga chick was tank and spank. but there's gotta be a reason why all five of them are standing there right? i mean its pretty close to a perfect group and killing the healers first would have been nice. i mean stupid tank should at least ask about the fight. anyway, that group dropped and i was stuck trying to figure out how people can be so bad when it comes to thinking. i mean yes, tank and spank requires little thinking, but when it comes to fighting groups or bosses where there's more thought involved, people seem to get anneurisms and die, and politely drop group asap so we dont have to waste a /kick.

OK these reflections are turning out to be rantfests. but maybe that's what they're supposed to be. i havent had a deep thought in the past several posts. its been very... dull to just hear me mention stupidity. and it angers me tho, to see this kind of dumbness and see people, instead of wanting to figure out what happened and fixing it, to just dropping group and thinking that the current wipe was due to just "bad luck" or " bad group composition" or because the tank just sucked. sure. it could be one of those things, or all of those things. but how will you overcome these things if you're just gonna drop group each time a wall pops up. these instances are supposed to be hard. they're supposed to be challenging. they're supposed to involve a kind of synergy in a group where everyone works together to try to accomplish something a single character would be unable to do. instead, i feel that the mentality is one where people want to progress through. and progressing means they level up. no, it does not mean beating a boss. it does not mean learning your CC's or utility spells. it doesnt even mean decursing. i was cursed several times throughout many runs before and i wasnt dispelled until i actually had to ask for it in party. what? seriously. isnt 200 mana for a dispell worth it to the group?

anyway, my point is this: Progression means to level up and not to accomplish a goal.

This really shouldnt be the way to play. otherwise, any monkey can play this game and progress. i wanted to down the bosses and get the achev for accomplishing the instance. sure i can leave, level up to 72 and do the instance again. but why do that? i can do it perfectly fine at 70. i dont see why we cant all make the corpse run, talk about the wipe, and then kick the boss' butt. no, im stuck with people thinking its not worth the effort because leveling was so easy in comparison (then why did you q for a friggin instance then?!!!??!?!????). why deal with this "harder" bs when the easy stuff will lead to the same thing... and that's to gain experience points? why deal with having to move out of the fire? why deal with lowering my already low dps so i can CC someone? because it keeps everyone alive dumbass. it allows us to move on to the next group of mobs or bosses. this is not always an aoe fest where the tank grabs everything and we all hope the healer can heal through all of that while we dps everything down. maybe part of the game is to play using all of our tricks. maybe that makes the game actually fun??? If you dont want to deal with it, dont queue up for dungeons. if you want easy, go do a quest and leave the instance queues for those who actually want to do this. /facedesk

But alas, through 70 levels we were forcefed one way of playing, the easy way of playing. so why not take the easy way when it comes to leveling? finish off your quest while waiting for another instance queue. and hope that you dont get the same hard instance, or that if you do get the same hard instance, mechanarlol, that there will be a great healer, or great tank, or a great dps that will carry everyone through so you dont have to learn anything yourself, so you stay unchallenged, so you can continue pressing your usual three buttons.

So ok, since i have ADD and cant hold a constant thought for a paragraph, im going to just post this rant and call it a week. Have a great one everyone. i hope to type about happy things later on.

Last week's goals

From Last Week:
This weekend's goal:
Get Devynity honored with Lower City
Get Devynity honored with Sha'tar
Get Devynity honored with Cenarion Expedition
Get Devynity friendly with Keepers of time
Get Devynity friendly with a drunk elf
Get key for Shadow Lab
Get key for Tempest Keep Get to 70 (so i can equip most of the gear that will drop in the level 70 dungeons)
Level Krakken, who is currently 75, to at least be 78 (which should be easy considering he's got so much rested exp and im pretty familiar with northrend content.

So i got honored with Lower City. That was quite easy as i've already done a few Crypt/Sethekk halls runs. I only had to do several quests and was done with that. For the Cenarions, i had to do the quests in HFP and then three in Zanga.

I am currently friendly with the Sha'tar and Keepers of Time. Hopefully I can get a durnholde run once in a very logn while.
I am close to honored with the Sha'tar, but half of my Mech/Bot/Alca runs keep turning into wipe fests. Im pretty sure i would have better gear too, but yea.

I found the key for shadow labyrinth by accident. after killing talon king ikiss, i picked up two spirit shards. figuring that i may have missed two from the first boss, i ran back. then i read that someone in my party picked up the shadow labs key. omg omg. so i ran back to the dead talon king and found the chest in the back of his chamber. it was huge. why didnt i see it before? lol.

I leveled Krakken NADA this weekend. he did get one emblem run on friday, and that was all the action he got over the weekend. instead, i took Devynity to Bay of Storms and fished lobsters while waiting for instance queues. yep. got him to Jouneyman and went over to Sholazar to do the daily fishing. So much fun... almost dying. level 70 in a 75 zone isnt too great. maybe it will be better when i hit 72. but anyway. got the ghostfish sucker and yea. psychadelic... in black and white!

one thing about the lobsters is that its used as an easy 5 points from 295 to 300 cooking. Otherwise, someone's going to have to do DM runs for the Tuber recipe (and then find tubers). The darkclaw recipe isnt BOP, so you can find that in the AH. Greater mightfish and sunscale salmon are the other two fish that will get you to 300 easy. I am thinking i will sell each lobster for 5g each. 25g for the last five points to reach 300 cooking skill. that's not too much to pay for. i think i'll be making a few hundred gold, although not all at once. this is one of those slow selling items.

On a good note, i've been making about 210g profit for each Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Agility i post. They never come back unsold. and they always sell for 300g. that's 50% more than what auctioneer saw before. i am aparently the only one selling this stuff now. =]

I say 210 profit because the essence of airs are 60g to buy (though i can buy them for 10g each on certain days), and the shards total about 30g. so that's 90g invested. although i only buy the shards and i "farm for free" the airs. i can farm about 40 airs in about an hour, so that's 600g worth of stuff in one hour. now that 600g isnt going to come instantly. im investing for the long term returns.

2h Agility isnt selling as well though. i'd say the demand for that is 1/4 that of the agility enchant. the only class that will use the 1hander agility is druids. rogues dont have two handers. death knights have their runeforges, and paladins and warriors prefer strength. at least i think that's true. now i know agi increases physical crit, armor and dodge. so these can also be great pvp enchants for any melee class. i do see it selling slowly though. im selling it for only 500g anyway. it may be steep. but look at the rogue that coughed up 600g on a pair of agi for his daggers. the 2hand wielders are getting a 100g break!

In general, things are slowing down. Instances are taking a little longer to start (i imagine a lot of people do not want to do Botanica, mechanar, or Arcatraz. I'd rather do those than go through UK/Nexus again for the 1000th time. What i didnt get at level 69, which was really really dumb on blizzard's part, is i couldnt queue for normal outland randoms. i could not at all. i had to pick them individually. when i hit 70, i could only queue for random outland heroics. now i understand heroics is a 70s thing, but that about mechanar/botanica/arcatraz? shadow labyrinth? shattered halls? in normal? those are level 70 instances!! and at 69 i couldnt queue for ANYTHING in outlands. and at 70 i could only queue for outlands heroics. this is pretty broken if you ask me. even at 70, there's still some folks who would like to join a random for outlands. they beat Utgarde Keep in so many ways really.

And on that note, i'll have to pause and get back to RL work. i'll continue with my analysis shortly, if i have time to spare.

Dinged 70

After a hard fight in Shattered Halls (died twice bc bear tank couldnt hold aggro), i was able to down Kargath Bladefist and grabbed his hand to turn in.

Hello Wings!!

One Hour til the Weekend

My guild had some interest in doing Outland Heroics and Raids. I think i'll sign up and join them. I have been inside Botanica and Mechanar or something, but that was as a level 70 being run through by a level 80 DK because, well, he wanted to acheivement for Outland Dungeon Master. He did get it, and i did get to see the inside of a crystal spaceship. It's a pretty awesome sight inside the walls of one of those spaceships. I would never be able to live inside one of those things, considering everything looks like its made of stone. But add some sofas and lounge chairs and you can make any one of those crystalline-walled rooms look comfortable and cozy... in space.

That's essentially where we were. Since Draenor has been shattered into pieces, i am sure most of the planet has been destroyed and the zones we see now are but a fraction of what the planet used to be. Of course, all of the seas are gone so its not too far to assume that most of the atmosphere is gone as well. flying up that far would bring me close enough to be shot out into outter space with a cannon. im pretty sure of it.

What else, the old city of auchindon is just as cold a place, possibly because they were both created by the draenei. Running through mana tombs, sethekk halls and crypt showed me a large underground city filled with stone walls and empty space. it is almost as if the draenei had dwarven tendentcies to build cities underground. but not really. only part of their city was underground. the rest was probably pretty awesome to look at before the explosion that left us with the bone wastes. What amazes me is how the archetecture is completely different from all the other races in draenor and azeroth. I mean not just that its different from them, but that all the others are unique in its own right (which also leads me to wonder why gnomes need such big doors in gnomeregan).

So im a little bit excited about doing the higher leveled outland instances that i went ahead and got the shattered halls key made, complete with killing the voidwalker (i did this by aggroing the voidwalker when he's passing thrallmar to the east, and then making a beeline towards the mages standing outside. Once i died, it only took the mages about a minute to kill the thing. once it dies, i have until it despawns to forge my key. and forge my key i did!). i am also trying to figure out how to get the shadow labyrinth key as well as tempest keep. i do not remember a requirement to enter steamvaults. i did escape from durnholde but forgot to accept the escort quest. so i'll have to do it again. but thats fine. i like that instance, i really do. and eventually, hyjal! So the raids will open up as well. Kara, SSC, TK, BT, Hyjal, Zul Aman, Sunwell. I think that covers it. MGT will be awesome too. Magister's Terrace. Even at 80, we cannot be lazy about this instance. Im sure Gruul's, Mag's and that last one in sunwell will be great.

What i am concerned about is the organization. I would love to just do a 10man of these. Perhaps there will need to have 15-25 of us in the raid. i dont mind. the more the easier. i just hope i do not ever have to heal, or tank. as a ret paladin, as you've read the other day, i do not want to do anything else besides dps. its pretty fun in 5-mans so 10-mans shouldnt be much of a difference. i know its a bit harder to tank and heal, as i've done both in 5-mans. i can attest that dps is a lot less stress. my responsibility is to dps and move. that's basically it. i have no responsibility to others really. but if i have to, i will taunt a mob off the healer, or even the warlock who's trying to out dps me. the difference between me and the warlock is that i do not die after two hits, maybe after five, but not after two hits. so its much better the mobs pound on me than on the warlock, and only until the tank grabs the stray mob's attention again.

In any case, about organization. I've been in guilds where we've attempted some runs here and there. some were successful, some werent. some took forever and some were pretty quick. what all of these had in common was that a bunch of us ended up really liking raiding, and wanted to do more while the rest of the guild wanted to level, or quest, or do 5mans and then end up leaving because they want to raid. and other times the raid leader just did the raid for fun with no intention of doing more later. there was a guild that i was in where the guild leader took a break and left it to one of his officers to lead. lead we were not and the guild ended up breaking apart about a month later. the lame duck guild leader decided to give the leadership to others after the fallout, although he was given plenty of opportunity to turn the guild around during the month. he was just benefitting from someone else's hard work, and the butt kissing and ass licking helped him gain the position but it didnt help him keep it. ok rant aside, i just hope things dont fall apart after a while. to finally be in a raiding and active guild would actually help a lot. it may change my playing habits a bit.

Anyway, i am hoping our first steps would be in outland heroics. Im already honored with Thrallmar to get their heroic key, but im friendly with lower city... and thats it. meaning, i need to improve my standing with lower city to do heroics in auchindon, then figure out a quick way to get my rep up with the sha'tar for tempest keep instances. lastly, honored with the cenarions in order to do heroic coilfang instances. i think keepers of time will come... in time. and maybe i can start doing netherdrake quests. that does mean i will have to buy epic flying. i did break 5k gold two days ago. it is pretty slow but i've found that enchants sell pretty well, although a bit slow. i do get some competition with fiery enchants but i have zero competition with the agi to weapons. although, honestly, there's no competition because theres practically no customers. in any case, i did gain my last 3k gold from enchanting mainly, and a few AH flips. i have been buying frostweave cloths for about 10g/stack and reselling it for 15g-20g a stack. netherweave as well. and i've also been selling some raw gems because practically every character and their mom is a JCer. so yes, the future looks difficult due to the slow economy. but that doesnt mean there's no gold to be made. what i need to concentrate on right now is rep (cenarion, lower city, shatar and keepers of time). i guess i can also buy some of that intro-pvp gear they started handing out some patches ago for the level 70s wanting to enter the pvp game.

So there is your critical-hit wall-o-text. I am just writing because i am at work and none of my bosses are back yet. also, because i can actually edit posts right now. its a good thing to do to keep busy and plan for the weekend. i do have this urge to level all the way to 80 but i think maybe i should just stick it out and wait at 70-72 and do everything outland has to offer with my guild. I can level my DK instead. that works. level Krakken to 80 so he can actually get some decent JC cuts. yay. sounds like a plan.

This weekend's goal:
Get Devynity honored with Lower City
Get Devynity honored with Sha'tar
Get Devynity honored with Cenarion Expedition
Get Devynity friendly with Keepers of time
Get Devynity friendly with a drunk elf
Get key for Shadow Lab
Key key for Tempest Keep
Get to 70 (so i can equip most of the gear that will drop in the level 70 dungeons)
Level Krakken, who is currently 75, to at least be 78 (which should be easy considering he's got so much rested exp and im pretty familiar with northrend content.

Update: Where to now?

I'd like to say that I am now 20% away from 68 and hitting northrend soon. Although it will be sad to leave outland, I feel that northrend is just as stale, being that I've gone through all of the zones already. I've gone through several areas with my first 80, then switched it a little on my DK, then a little on my paladin, then a little more on my druid. actually my second druid, the healer, went through as little of northrend as possible. she chose to pvp and run instances most of the way through. she pvp'ed in pve gear and at 80, was able to gear up both fairly quickly. she was first to buy dual talent specialization as well as use the game's gear set changer. later on, my dk received a similar treatment as she went to dual spec as dps once her tanking gear basically maxed out, from emblems of course.

Now that I've leveled a paladin from 1 to 67, I do not want to give him dual talent specialization because he is ret. he will always be ret. he's grown up as ret and should never stray away from the light. he's learned to swing his manner one way and one way only. besides, wearing a shield is just not him. he sucks using a shield. he's tried it. never liked it. his arms ached for massive damage.

So I will keep my paladin as ret. for now at least. hopefully my guild will have several tanks that will run heroics with me to get gear. I will not need to spec into prot unless we're doing raids and someone needs an offspec tank to cover for the night. they are thinking of doing some outland raids so I feel that maybe this guild is for me. at least for now. I still do not like the constant "grats" on everything, and the stupid addons that tell you when a guildie gains a level. No really, I just hate leveling now. every time I ding, I see "diamond star skullGrats Devynity on [level]!!skull star diamond xD" from an addon someone has. and half the time, it’s the guild leader. i can live with it, but im just not used to it. but then again its better than having no guild interaction, no guild chat, or even guild events. at least we have a raffle and some guild events. that's a plus. im pretty happy about that. maybe im just jaded with leveling life. who knows.

So with level 68 coming, I really do not know if I want to actually go to BT or HF to do any quests there. it’s the same quests on both sides. maybe I'll run off to help the Tuskars save their homes. I will still go do pugs as much as possible. those emblems are juicy and the random gear would be great to get, even though DE-ing them would make me… 1gold/DE. I think I'll try to save up the shards to buy recipes. doing quests would probably get me lots of gear to DE. but I don’t even know if I want to do that.

I started off with a tauren druid when I ventured into northrend. she was feral, and I was slow at leveling. I went through BT, then did parts of HF, then helped the Tuskar and Taunkas on both ends of the map. Then went through Dragonblight and finally went to grizzly hills before I was able to buy cold weather flying. once I got cold weather flying, I went off immediately to storm peaks and opened up the sons of hodir. then I went to icecrown and opened up the shadow vault. I ended up doing levels 78-80 in icecrown. it was pretty fun, and being under 80 meant I had to watch my distance most of the time. I think I ding'ed 80 somewhere by the fleshworks or by the scarlet island west of icecrown.

My second character to hit 80 was my DK. she spent most of her time going through the same thing my druid first went through. she didn’t veer much off that path, but she did venture a little further into zul drak. she actually did some of the quests from the argent stand and did quests for trapped spirit animals in the snowy areas.

My third 80 was my second druid. she did BG and Instances only. she did a few quests but that’s all. nothing much. she doesn’t have much rep with anyone besides northrend because she would wear tabards and such. that's about it.

My fourth 80 was my paladin. she leveled as prot from 60 to 80. she was a blast to level because it was so hard for her to die. the only problem is, in order to get any mana back, she had to group four mobs together at once to fight. otherwise, blessing of the sanctuary would be inefficient. I started in BT and HF, like usual. I skipped grizzly hills and most of dragonblight. since I was a tank, I had better success with instance queues and got a lot of exp through it. I ended up skipping most Dragonblight and Grizzlyhills and went straight to Zul Drak. I did the scourge side of zuldrak and went to sholazar. yep, new zone, and ended up leveling to 79 there. then she went to icecrown and opened up shadowvault to get the tabard. and that's it.

Between those four 80s, I've logged a billion northrend instances and know much of the zone. the only other thing I can really do is get on an ally and level through their zone. lol. but I wont. not yet at least.

So there, I don’t know where to go. maybe I should just level in SMV and Netherstorm. lol. I feel like skipping to dragonblight and doing the wrathgate event, then, since im a paladin, I will run off to zul drak to help the argent dawn/crusade there. it will be fun. then I can go back and do some baron rivendare farming for his mount. that should get me to exalted with the dawn. The Argent Champion is really all I want. =P tho… the title, The Light of the Dawn is very very enticing. =]

Stop asking for Might

Here is the problem. I zone into an instance with a warrior tank, shaman healer, hunter and mage. I bless everyone with Kings. EVERYONE.

Then the hunter asks for might. i tell him no. he gets a hissy fit. the mage is good, he knows kings is best with this comp (composition), so he doesnt speak up and ask for silly Wisdom.

I know reagents are cheap, and once the warrior does his battle shout, the hunter will lose his "might". so i will end up having to buff him with kings again after a few pulls. waste of two symbol of kings.

Stop asking for Might. im the paladin with the blessings. i know what im doing. they're my blessings to give and i know whats best for you. trust me. besides, i dont have improved might, so deal with it.

Then the hunter goes off asking why it's not improved. i tell him once his dps outdoes me, then i'll put points into it to try to stay competitive, but as long as he's pulling 500 dps, and im doing 1,100 dps, its not gonna happen. This happened in Auchinai Crypts, we were both level 66.

Also, to all the priests, mages, and casting druids out there, i will not buff you with wisdom if there's a shaman in the group with mana spring totem.

And just to drill it into you guys, even without a warrior or shaman in the group, you're still getting kings. learn to love it.

Daddy's got a new... 45

Actually its a 51. a 51 point talent called... Divine Storm. It should really be called Hammer Storm, or Storm of Hammers because that's basically what i see when i use it, a bunch of yellow hammers swirling around me (supposedly hitting things within range).

And i've used it ever since hitting 60 and am loving it in groups. Its pretty much an attack for groups, but like seal of command, it still attacks single mobs as well. Althought i will not use divine storm until i've exhausted all other options when fighting one on one, i will use it as it does cause damage. Some say its a waste of mana. but who cares. i get mana back all the time. this shouldnt be a problem.

So with this new ability, i went into instances and, throughout several instances, got the hang of this ability really quick. with multiple mobs, this spell comes out right after my judgement of wisdom. sometimes i put consecrate down but for the "snap" effect on me, especially when im running after mobs who are after the healer, divine storm grabs them pretty quick. this annoys the tanks tho, since they were planning on pulling mobs off the healer, yet i figured its much better that i get hit instead of the healers anyway.

Some tanks just cant hold aggro and i have to wait a few seconds before i begin my onslaught. but still, seeing that the tank grab a group or two only invites constant AoE damage everywhere. the mage knows it, the warlock knows it. the other dk knows it as well as the hunter. they all know to use blizzard, rain of fire, dnd or volley when the tank stops. that's all i see. and i add to the madness with divine storm, seal of command and consecrate. its crazy awesome dps really.

divine storm works with my seals. so i tried seal of righteousness. it was ok. my dps dropped significantly so i will go back to seal of command even though divine storm does not work with seal of command. i mean it works. it just doesnt "work" as in, i dont get seal of command procs from three mobs at once, just one. this works fine, and my dps is pretty good. low on mana? go to seal of wisdom, hit divine storm and my mana bar will increase about 40%. then switch back to seal of command to recommence the ass-kicking.

I can see why some tanks get upset at me when i dps. its really really fun and yet it takes a bit of patience to start the mayhem. however, there are tanks who are really good and are able to keep the mobs on them better than others. i love running with these tanks because i am able to just run amuck and have a blast. they make running dungeons really fun. whenever i do grab a mob, if i find that i can handle/kill them before they kill me, i will usually stay on the mob and attack it. I know this is bad come northrend instances but for now, its fun so lets keep it that way. i still keep judgement of wisdom on cooldown along with divine storm*. crusader strike is in there but it is not so bad if i prioritize it after everything else. yes, its dead last on my priority list.

Here's a list of my priorities now:
1. Judgement of Wisdom
2. Divine Storm/Consecrate
3. AoW-Exo
4. Hammer of Wrath
5. Crusader Strike

Since my consecrate is glyphed, i will use DS/Consecrate in tandem, one after the other.
If the mobs have ample health and i can do an instant Exorcism, i will. if they are nearing death, i will use Hammer of Wrath and save the insta-exo for the next mob.
I will then use crusader strike if everything else is not available, which is still quite often. For example: After running into a group and hitting judgement of Wis on a mob, DS/Consecrate, i watch for AoW. if its not there and the mob's not at 20% health yet, i will hit CS. nothing else to hit really. so CS it is!

Im still running with retribution aura, but with fire resist at the last boss of BF and ramps.
Having DS is so much fun now. and with the ret resource management system ingrained in me since level 1, i am able to best use this ability with my other seals. i must admit tho, if i did get this spell at lower levels, like level 10, or 20 or 40, i would be misusing it as a dps only spell. but its much more than that. plus if i glyph it, which i might, it will heal me. i wont be using this yet tho, since the only reason i would get this glyph is to counter seal of corruption's drain on my health. i dont have that seal yet, so no point using it.

Final thought before i end the post today, it appears that some paladins use other seals with divine storm constantly instead of seal of command. i do not find these seals usefully on all the time. they should be situational. but i do see some paladins with seal of wisdom on always, or seal of justice for the stun, or seal of light for the heals. but really, i'd rather just use seal of command for the damage and will consider another seal+DS for its bonus effect when i need it (and i really only ever use it for mana regen using seal of wisdom).

Though i am thinking the only competitive seal to use instead of command would be seal of corruption, as it will add a DoT/bleed on the target. and this stacks. but a 10-second cooldown on DS will mean the debuff must tick for more than 10 seconds (which i believe it does) and the mobs must stay up for more than 30 seconds for the SoCor to even be marginally more useful than SoCom. 30 seconds is three applications of Corruption/Vengence. dont forget that 30 seconds does not include the time the tank started the fight to the time i actually hit my first mob with DS. So with groups dying so fast, SoCor may not be at all that high of DPS. at 40 seconds, i should have my 5th application of DS, which will push all mobs to 5 stacks of Corruption, which will do more dps than SoCom. but that's 40 seconds.

At zero seconds, i will have 1 stack of SoCorruption.
At 10 seconds, i will have 2 stacks of SoCor.
At 20 seconds, i will have 3 stacks of SoCor.
At 30 seconds, i will have 4 stacks of SoCor (I believe this is when SoCor>SoCom, however, not cumulatively, but starting at this point).
At 40 seconds, i will have 5 stacks of SoCor, which is max.

(Just to clarify, the above scenario shows stacks of Corruption on my peripheral targets. They do not show stacks on my main target, since most of my attacks will be on my main target, the stacks of Corruption will add up much faster. If i have SoCor on, the only multi-target attack i have that can apply Corruption will be Divine Storm, and that attack is on a 10 second cooldown. My main target will be at 5 stacks of Corruption in a few seconds. Judgement, Autoattack, DS, CS, Autoattack (about 4 seconds) will put my main target at 5 stacks Corruption.)

So SoCor will work well in heroics and raids where the groups consist of 3 or more mobs, all lasting longer than 40 seconds to kill. all. That means, ideally, they die at the same time. if one dies with two left, SoCor becomes a little less effective, and switching to SoCom may be a good choice midfight.

So i've actually tried some experiments with SoCor and it only procs/applies from physical hits, so no divine storm. This makes the choice very easy now. SoCor on bosses, and SoCom on everything else.

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Talent conundrums: Now that i have basically what i need from the Ret tree, i need to go to the other trees to round out my paladin. currently at 5/5 divine streath from the prot tree. so where to now? I can complete Judgements of the Wise, but 2/3 is all i really need. i've gone so many levels with it at 2/3 and have zero problems. im not saying i dont stop to drink every now and then. i do. but with it at 2/3, i really dont have to stop constantly to drink. and by just switching to Seal of Wisdom and hitting DS, i can get back a crapton of mana.

What i dont like is Seals of the pure, which increases damage from my seals. This looks like a boss fight talent, as it does not include seal of command, but instead, includes seal of righteousness and corruption. this sucks for me as i dont really need to maximize corruption. with what i've stated earlier about SoCor, i dont think i will be using it too much. and i will experiment with it when i do get it later on, but until i see actual hard numbers on my recount stating that SoCor>SoCom, i will not be using it. So no Seals of the Pure just yet.

I also do not like Divinity, that ret talent that increases my heals and my healing received. sure, AoW-FoL, or Art of War procced Flash of Light, will indeed heal me for a little more, but i am not really in danger of dying often. and when i do, the extra healing probably wont cut it. Besides, that's a GCD i could be using to finish off a mob.

There's three talent points in the Ret tree that i need to fill in, but are basically useless to me. One adds 1% to my haste. wow. one whole percent. i think its called swift retribution. i have 2/3 talented, so 1 left and i dont really need it atm, will finish it out later. anyway... and the other increases my hammer of wrath crit chance by 50%, PLUS does something special to my avenging wrath, which i dont get for another 5 levels. the hammer of wrath buff is good if i were fighting raid bosses, where the boss' health will be below 20% for quite a long time. but for outland instances, even northrend instances, even heroics, bosses that drop down to 20% stay alive long enough for me to toss out 1 or maybe 2 hammer of wraths at the most. so two talent points in that is not worth it.

What i do want to get is another tanking talent then. Anticipation. yes, for soloing. less healing; more killing. that's the motto. lets do that. 5/5 deflection, 5/5 anticipation. then i can finish out my ret tree until level 74. this is where i will have to decide once again, where to spend my talent points (Divine Sacrifice/Guardian maybe?). There's not a lot more going on. once i hit 80, i'll definitely respec and take out deflection as well as anticipation (dodge/parry) and put it somewhere else. i'll have to analyze where the talents all go at 80, but it will remain pretty much the same. just remember im leveling and some survivability is preferred over mana-savings, which is quickly countered by my seals/judgements/procs.

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* When i mentioned having Judgement of Wisdom and Divine Storm "on cooldown". this is what i mean. When i use an ability that has a cooldown of say, 10 seconds. that 10 seconds is the time it's "on cooldown". For my friends, many of you are DK's, so one ability with a long cooldown is Army of the Dead. once used, the ability is "on cooldown" for 10 minutes or so. i think its less now. but that's still a long time. for Rogues, Vanish has a cooldown, and when you use it, for the 2 minutes following where you cant use it anymore, that spell is considered to be "on cooldown".

so when i say i try to keep Divine Storm on cooldown, i mean i will use it as quickly as i can, then use it immediately when it becomes available, thus putting it into its cooldown state. this keeps the spell "on cooldown" whenever i glance at it. if you take snapshots of my screen every second, 10 out of every 12 seconds, ideally, you should see Divine Storm "on cooldown". i think everyone understands me now. basically use the spell immediately as it becomes available- this will keep the spell "on cooldown".

Horribad DK

I know lots of people have experienced bad hunters, dks, paladins, etc. i'd like to contribute to the community with this useless post. So here. check out the lowest on dps. she was level 60 at the time. im not even gonna armory her. dont wanna know.

This was my first or second trip to Ramps, so i was level 59 for sure. But even at that level on my DK, i was doing 500+ dps.

So lets take a look at this DK's figures and see where she may have gone wrong.


1. Melee attacks (basically auto attack) make up the largest proportion of his damage at 37.8%. This is usually in line with that others do, although a little less, about 30% is good. Auto attack is one of my top three damage components, so seeing auto attack at the top is pretty common.

2. Second on this list is Death and Decay at 34.5%. DnD being the second highest amount of damage isnt all too bad, considering there are many AoE packs/groups in ramps, i can see the use of DnD being high. However, looking at her other attacks, heart strike in this case, i can tell she's a blood spec dk, meaning she should not have talents to improve DnD cooldown time. This means that DnD should not be, for the blood spec dk, the priority when it comes to AE/AoE damage.

3. Third on the list is Icy Touch, hit 23 times for 7.7% of the damage. While i dont see any problem with this by itself, i have a problem with it being third in damage (it should be much lower) and that it was used twice as much as plague strike (which is its partner in crime, and should be used in pairs, almost always, especially as blood spec). on any recount totals, i will know that a DK knows what they're doing by looking at the amount of times they hit these two keys. They should be, idealy, the same. If i see 23 icy touches, i should see 23 plague strikes, not 12. this girl had 12 plague strikes.

4. Frost Fever DoT makes up 5.8% of the total damage. Frost Fever and Blood Plague should always be below the top three or four attacks. Always. In this case, frost fever was fourth. blood plague was sixth. It should be Fourth and Fifth. And i think Frost Fever is 5th because of all of the Icy Touches that were used.

5. Fifth highest damage maker is Heart Strike. This is the bread and butter of blood spec, and its 5th in this case. sadness. this spell should be one of the top three. it hits TWO mobs, and its damage is increased if Frost Fever and Blood Plague are on the mob.


I dont want to break it down any more. but here's the basic idea of playing a Blood Spec DK in patch 3.3.3. bear with me as its not as simple as using icy touch over and over again. i swear, if it werent for the rune cooldowns, im sure many many people will be using icy touch over and over and over again, even though it does crap damage.

So here's the basic rule of thumb when playing a DK. Please understand that when you do play a dk, you're starting at level 55, and the main assumption here is that you've played the game before and have some high level character, so you understand the concept of the game and are able to read tooltips and can decide how best to use a spell based on what the tooltip says.

1. Icy Touch and Plague Strikes do crap damage. So why are they there? They're there to inflict Frost Fever and Blood Plague. That's it. use them for this and onlyt his. The idea is to keep Frost Fever and Blood Plague up constantly, or close to 100% of the time. Needless to say, using Icy touch again before Frost Fever falls off is a waste of an Icy Touch. same for Plague Strike/Blood Plague.

2. Special attacks do damage based on Frost Fever and Blood Plauge. let me rephrase that...
Special attacks do crap damage alone. Better damage with frost fever on the target. and much better damage wtih frost fever and blood plague. For those who have no idea what these "special" attacks are, let me list what i can remember: Heart Strike, Frost Strike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate and and Death Strike.

3. There are talents in every tree that will cause certain runes to change to Death Runes. These runes can be used as any type rune (frost, blood, or unholy runes) and should be utilized to use your "special" attacks more often. prioritize this please.

4. Every tree has a runic dump ability. Blood has deathcoil. The above dk did not use this, ever. Unholy has deathcoil as well. Frost DKs should use frost strike. Tanks will prioritize using Rune Strike, and dps should also consider using dancing rune weapon and gargoyle. Use your runic dumps please. its there for dps. its there for you to use when you're waiting on cooldowns, or when you're planning on using your extra special abilities, if you spec into them.

So basically, there's three things to watch for. Diseases, deathrunes, and runic power. thats really it. there isnt much else to keep your eye on besides your diseases, your runes and your runic power. Let me just lay out the main idea of a typical fight just so, if someone should happen to read this and also make a dk, would know what to do.

1. enter the fight using an icy touch and plague strike (and use Icy Touch and Plague Strike again only when Frost Fever and Blood Plague runs out). this puts a DEBUFF on the mob called Frost fever and Blood Plague. as long as these two debuffs are on, you will use your "special" attacks. Blood DKs use Heart Strikes. Frost DKs use Obliterate. Unholy DKs use Scourge stike. please. thats it. use those. nothing else.

2. Make yourself death runes during the fight. How? Blood DKs use Death Strike. Frost and Unholy DKs use Blood Strike. This changes runes to death runes. For blood dk's death runes will allow you to use frost/unholy runes for Heart Strikes. For frost Dks, this allows you to use blood runes for Obliterates and howling blasts. For unholy dk's this allows you to use blood runes for Scourge Strikes. its not really that complicated when you think about it. its complicated typing it out because there's three friggin specs to talk about all at once (its annoying. i should just make a guide for each spec, instead of one guide for all three specs).

3. When you start building runic power, dump it during rune cooldowns. or weave it into your rotations so you wont have to dump all 100 runic power at once (this is important for the frost dks with 130 runic power maximum and the glyph to lower runic power cost of your frost trike) (see how annoying it is trying to cater to three specs at once?).

4. are your diseases (Frost Fever/Blood Plague) gone? well reapply it with icy touch and plague strike. i know these two attacks do craptacular damage, but it makes everything else better. so use it now. yes, you should have this drilled in your head please. icy touch does crap damage. plague strike does crap damage. they're only useful for the dot/debuff on the targets. thats it. please think of it that way and you will definitely go on to doing much better damage.

5. What about Pestilence? Blood Boil? DnD? Yes. use them. but these spells are basically useless without the understanding that ICY TOUCH DOES CRAPTASTIC DAMAGE.


Thanks for listening.




So with all that said, what should the girl above be doing? *coughgrindingcough*
Sorry... had to say it.

So the girl in the example above should be doing several things differently. She should be running into the fight with the following spell choice: icy touch, plague strike, pestilence.
Then she should be using death strike. then two heart strikes. wait for her frost/unholy runes to activate again and do a death strike. while waiting, she should be using deathcoil. If there are four or more mobs in the group, she should be using blood boil instead of heart strike. if there are 1-3 mobs in the group, she should be using heart strikes. reapply diseases as necessary.

She can also weave in Death and Decay for groups. But since we were running with a warrior, i would wait until the warrior does his shockwave ability before dropping the high dps Death and Decay.

The Dk's top three attacks should be: Melee, Death and Decay and Heart Strike.
Her next three attacks should be: Blood Boil, death strike, and her diseases.
Icy touch and plague strike should be at the very bottom of the list.


In the next week i want to put up a DK guide for dps. I want to start with what i know best, frost dps, then move on to unholy and blood. I dont know if its worth doing a quick guide for blood, however, since blood will be changed into THE tanking spec come cataclysm. but until then, it will remain the boring spec we currently know it as, boring both in regards to tanking and dps. Please stay tuned as i go through a few major concepts in frost/blood/unholy dps. i may venture into tanking in those three specs, but again, come cata, these will be useless and we'll all have to tank in blood spec frost presence. So stay tuned for "something" if anything.

Updates pre-weekend.

I wanted to mention that Devynity has reached level 58 and will be questing in HFP shortly. He made the trip there last night and learned Grand Master Enchanting. He will have to make his way on foot (horse) to Falcon Watch to learn First Aid. Enchanting is doing well. I gained Honored with Timbermaw Hold and picked up both agility enchants. I also stopped by the frozen lake in Winterspring last week and, on my second kill, got Enchant Weapon - Icy Chill. second mob. awesome. Finally, in terms of enchants, I picked up crusader from the Scarelet mages right outside Hearthglen in WPL. I cleared the tower once. no enchant. I returned to the tower about five minutes later and killed all the mages on the bottom floor. the last mage on the bottom floor had the enchanting recipe on him still. yay! so there. now all I need is to buy crusader orbs and I should be able to make a few of these.

1. Fiery is selling slowly. 80g a pop sells but not too fast. so maybe two a day if im lucky. sometimes 1. sometimes 0, especially when I get undercut. but for the most part, I am the only seller (or at least, that's what I see when I check the AH).

2. Icy Chill enchant hasn’t even been made due to the various materials I need to buy (and I don’t quite have all the mats in the AH). I'll have to stock pile them up when I can. I want to sell 10 and see how much I can make. 10 is a decent number to get a basic idea to how well these things may sell.

3. Crusader will most likely be my money maker. It sells for almost 200g in my other realm, so it should sell decently here as well, especially for the alts with heirloom weapons, this would be a nice enchant to have (Fiery is probably the cheapman's version of Crusader).

4. Agility. I posted agility to weapon for 200g. and agility to 2h weapon for 400g. will see how that fare. Auctioneer has seen a few and priced it for 180g/350g, respectively.

update: Fiery sells. Agility sells. Agility sells so well i increased the price by 100g and they still sell. for me. not you. dont try to copy me if you're on another server. just understand your market first.

As I go through Outland, I will be disenchanting a lot of items. Hopefully I can disenchant enough to level my profession towards 375 as soon as possible. The reason being is that echanting post 375 is a lot easier due to many saronite shufflers (although it’s a lot less than before) and the greed/DE feature. Enchanting using Infinite Dust would be a breeze. And with prices of shards so low (about 4g each), I can basically buy all of the higher level trainable recipes from the vendor in Dalaran. all good stuff. hopefully the market there isnt as saturated (relatively speaking, ofc) as the gem market. Otherwise, I guess I may just sell novelty enchants like Crusader, Fiery, Agility, and various other Pre-60 enchants for the levelers and twinks.

Also, cooking's at a standstill since I am totally unable to find anyone selling Greater Mightfish, Darkclaw Lobsters or Whitescale Salmon to level my cooking past 300. I can take a trip to Azhara and try to fish it myself (which leads me to wonder how the Azhara fishing zone will change in Cata). So my cooking is stuck below 300. Fishing is just too much of a pain to level right now. perhaps when I reach 80 I'll have enough time to just relax and fish. fishing should be relaxing right??

Also, what's a fish without eyes?

a fsh.

One last update: Dinged 58 before the weekend started. leveled through HFP and instances only to 64 by Sunday. will be trying to hit 65 by the end of the night. peace.

CSDS Blue(s)

So now that I've recovered from the weekend, lets get straight to business. Crusader Strike. it sucks. no really. it has very little bang for each buck. although I do get some cool spinjump animation, it doesn’t do too much damage. perhaps, I need to get better at landing those spinjump swings. it takes practice to get it right, you know. maybe in a few levels I'll finally find my sweetspot and deal crits galore with it.

Last week I did an experiment at level 46 or so using seal of command. my dps on ogres of tanaris was 150. at 53, just six levels later, and with sheath of light and crusader strike, im up to almost 300. just look at the breakdown. but I think this number is just a little inflated, as I realized that my exo was critting 100%, due to its auto-crit mechanic on undeads. this is great in WPL and EPL. im loving it and holy wrath. but it does increase my dps artificially. I will not complain. there's scholo and strath coming up, and they're full of undeads. hopefully I can get there soon, say, at 55, because at 58 I want to be outta there and into outlands. I think if we're given the choice to do ramps at 58, we should be given the option to do strath/scholo a little earlier. just like at 68, where we can bypass all the cool level 70 instances (there's all the tempest keep instances, plus shattered halls, shadow labs, and steamvault), I think it would be good to lower the level requirement for some of these instances so people wouldn’t always be stuck with Black Rock Depths. yea. I've seen that loading screen way more times than I like to see. and you know how I think about instances these days. super easy. no skill required. leave your brain at the door.

So with me dinging 50, I was able to choose between two very decent talents. one was going to increase my holy damage by using my strength (actually attack power, but AP comes from STR anyway), and putting it into a formula and spitting it out as larger numbers. sure I thought. all my attacks will deal more damage. not +30% as I might haf thought, but more like +30% on the spell power portion of each attack. and for those attacks without spellpower in it, well there's other talents for that. but this one beats them all out. so my conundrum is this, do I pick crusader strike now then add to my spell power damage later on, or add 10% more holy damage, then 20%, then 30% then crusader strike at 53? I figured three levels isnt going to matter much, so I picked the talent that would improve my gameplay. I mean, help me get out of this auto-attack-induced coma.

So I picked crusader strike instead of shealth of light at 50. believe you me, it makes almost no difference at 50, or 51, but maybe at 52 and 53. why? because crusader strike does almost no damage its negligible at 50. sounds like 10% increased holy damage? kinda. but one is a baseline buff, the other is an attack I can do once ever six seconds (and I forget to use it… often). so the real benefit to picking crusader strike at 50 is to bring it into my rotation so I can get familiar with a new attack in my rotation. and it did take three levels to actually get it pounded in as part of my attacks. I still forget it at times. which is better? who knows. I don’t care. they both add some damage, and at this point in time, it doesn’t matter. no really, no one cares about maxing damage at 50. no one. just do well. that's all that matters right now. look at the damage charts if you dont believe me. I hit crusader strike 35 times for 7% of the total damage (also look at the first chart, its worse). its a brand new attack but my god, at least be "cool" about it.

now getting crusader strike is a whole lot different from getting art of war. this is not because I got it in my level 30's, which gives me more time to learn it, but it was because of the active play it produces. I must watch for the procs. and after I see the proc, I must decide which is better to use, exo or FoL, or neither. it also forces me to evaluate my situation and plan out my spells. honestly, I love how I can simply hammer of wrath one mob to death, then tab over to the next mob and exo him to death as well. but I have to decide, should I use my exo to finish off this one mob, or save it for the next guy hitting me but isnt under 20% health yet? it would make sense to use hammer of wrath on the one just about to die, then use insta-exo on the second mob, with the chance to use hammer of wrath almost immediately after that. im giddy. so now im learning to weave in CS into my rotation, mostly after a judgement. and then throughtout the fight, im hitting both cs and judgement. and I am only using CS because there's nothing else for me to do while I auto-attack things to death and wait on my AoW procs. but with all the different attacks and the silly CS CD vs. Judgement CD, it really makes things kinda fun, albiet headache-inducing fun.

my attack rotation at level 50 is now changed to this:

1. enter fight with judgement of wisdom.

2. crusader strike.

3. AoW-Exo, or auto attack

4. crusader strike.

5. judgement of wisdom

6a. crusader strike (if necessary)

6b. hammer of wrath

7. start next fight with AoW-exo if on, otherwise, use Judgement of Wisdom.

Art of War almost always procs. sometimes it doesn’t and I wait around, but it does proc more often than not. also, there have been many times where AoW proc right after I use it up. its kinda flakey at times when I need it to proc, but it's not life-threatening when RNG hates me. so its not so bad. I just think of it as a clearcasting proc, or a killing machine proc.

Now with the rotation above, it's pretty fun and involving to play a paladin now. but its even more fun in groups as I get to toss in a consecrate due to the way all groups play. they grab at least two groups of mobs, then proceed to AoE everything down. so consecrate really helps with that. I've read somewhere that there is no damage cap for consecrate, so the more mobs that gets packed into the area of effect, the better. watch as my damage outdoes everyone in this case. I've only been out-dps'ed by one other mage once, and that was it. for most instances, im usually top dps. this is quite a change from when I first entered BRD, at around level 50. I was the lowest in dps and couldn’t really keep up with even the tank. the screenie explains it all.

but since getting sheath of light maxed and crusader strike (plus adding four levels helps with the glancing/absorb hits), my dps basically doubled. ok, so most of it came from consecration, but that extra 30% attack=spellpower conversion really boosted consecrate's damage, as well as most of my other attacks. except crusader strike. Here's a screenie of my dps at level 52 inside an instance. notice the "high" dps is due to consecrate.

notice also how often I used crusader strike. notice how craptastic its damage is. yea, it sucks. but what else is there to do between attacks? CS. yep, that’s it. that said, I cant wait to add divine storm to my rotation. level 60… hurry up!

One thing I need to figure out with Divine Storm is whether I will need SoCom any more. DS will do what socom has always been doing, but will use the effect of the seal im using instead of just doing damage to nearby mobs. what does this mean? it means if I am using seal of light, I will be healed from all of the mobs DS hits. If I am using seal of wisdom, I will regain mana from all of the mobs (not directly, but you know what I mean) DS hits. it will be pretty juicy, too bad it doesn’t proc off seal of command, I don’t think. that will be 3x hits x the number of mobs per swing… which can be huge. I may have to explain that some more if people don’t understand whats going on. but DS+socom would be way too overpowered. so im pretty sure they do not work together.

How I believe DS works: So normally, when attacking a mob, I would judge a mob. the mob will then have a judgement debuff that will "do what the seal says it does". so if I use seal of light, judging a mob will give me extra health back. so the light seal says give pala health. wisdom seal says, give pala mana. corruption seal says, add stacking debuff to mob so everyone can do more damage. seal of righteousness says give pala an extra hit of holy damage randomly plus add a base amount of spell power damage. you get it? different seals do different things. and when I judge with a seal up, they also do different things. it works with every seal except for seal of command since seal of command works a little differently from most of the other seals. I am not sure if it works for seal of corruption/vengeance either. but lets say I have seal of light up. seal of light will return a certain amount of health back to me. but since DS can hit multiple mobs, and say, I have four mobs on me, I will get healed from all four mobs since I will be hitting all four at once with DS. there. its pretty simple.

So I really cant wait to have DS as part of my rotation especially since CS pretty much suck donkey nuts. maybe it will get better. maybe there will be a better reason for it. I will find out soon enough.

But even with the auto-attack-fest that is ret leveling, I really do enjoy the "slow" style of learning this class. it is totally not a DK style of play at all, with everything instant, with all spells based on runic power or rune stone activation. with DK's we attack first, then wait, then weave things in and out. but with paladins, we start off with the same types of spells. but those spells are only what is seen with the eyes, the physical attacks, but the meat and core of the spells lies within the seals, the judgement types, and the use of all our conditional spells ("hand" spells, mainly bubble, but also freedom and salvation). all of this adds a different style of play to the class that makes the paladin class pretty unique in its own right. there is no other class like it really. there is really no other class as versatile as the paladin. you can argue hunter's aspecs, or warrior's stances, or druid's forms. but auras, seals, and judgements… they all add a different layer to the paladin's play, and each layer does a different thing. ok im done trying to analogize.

I am looking ahead to outland, to divine storm and "wings" and more talent and gear choices. and im going to love trying out le ret on outland mobs. it will be fun. cant wait to get out of the scourge-infested WPL/EPL, and out of BRD.

*and i left my character name on there just to let you know and armory me if you want. Devynity on Ysondre. no sense in keeping it hidden anyway. *

Summing up the weekend.

I started the weekend off late 40's, at around level 48 and ended up at level 53 Sunday night. There was a lot going on throughout the weekend, but i really dont know what to say about it. actually, i dont know anything meaningful to speak about regarding leveling from 48 to 53. These five levels are actually pretty packed with change, but i dont seem to know how to adress the changes. it could be the case of the mondays. but more likely than not, its just burnout.

But any which way, i am going to try to attempt to write something because i really really want to mention the addition of 3 points of Sheath of Light and 1 point of Crusader Strike. That, and i also have this itching to write at work, since, for some odd reason, Websense is actually letting me blog from work. Score!

So here is how my weekend started. after having ran around tanaris in a big circle and doing all of the ZF quests, i mozied off to Swamp of sorrows for some really easy green quests. i basically killed an alliance guy who thought the forsaken was going to betray the horde. i think it was the group that sided with Varimathras instead of Sylvanas. I am still uncertain of some details in that uprising. no spoilers if you havent already done it.

anyway. killed the human, then went off and did some quests to help the orcs there. killed a bunch of murlocs for an orc that seems pretty angry at the ocean, or ocean creatures in general, and then wondered why we dont see too much of the sea on the eastern coast of lordaeron and the eastern kingdoms. The only coastal contact i've had with this part of the sea was at the following: Briefly in eversong, Hinterlands, briefly in EPL and only during the DK starting area, then there's this gigantic void until you reach swamp of sorrows and then STV. Then i thought about the western coast of kalimdor and thought, the coastal contact i have with that side of the world seems remote, yet tranquil and lush. Lets start with Feralas, a lush green area with a coast and a large island. then desolace wasnt too awesome, but it did have some diving quests, and lots of nagas to kill. further up the coast is the shores of the zoram strand with an instance, as there is no meaningful coastal contact along stontalon mtns. Then, further up is the nightelf level 10-20 area. then, going over the waters, there's Teldressil, Azuremyst, and Bloody myst isle.

What i can take from this is this sheer fact that there's a lot more interaction between the player and the coastal environment on the western side of kalimdor than there is on the eastern side of the eastern kingdoms (Lordaeron, for short). Apart from two quests that has me swimming to small islands in Hinterlands (and short short quests as it is), and one to in STV to kill three captains, there isnt a whole lot going on on the eastern seaboard. i dont know why that should be the case. But what i do know is that this has lead me to view the eastern sea as a large mysterious body of water, a large, mysterious and somehow dead body of water. sure, it has fish, turtles, waves, and the occassional sea monster, but i somehow find it very easy to believe that these sea monsters would rather be in the other oceans. so would i.

i went to swamp of sorrows because, like stv, i've never quested there. but i quickly realized that i really wasnt missing much. i had to collect 10 crab legs that basically took the whole of three passes to complete. that's 10 crablegs from 15 monsterious crabs. and so i cleared them all. once, twice, then three times. thats about 40 crabs killed in order to loot 10 legs. and shadow panther hearts? i killed them all twice over. to get five. yes five hearts. lets not talk about the crocodile claws and crocodile flanks. omg. and just to drive a final nail in the coffin of "omg worst zone ever" there's a giant instance in the middle of the zone, complete with a maze... before you get to the instance itself. thank goodness for LFD, at least you can skip the maze, that's until you realize there's a maze inside the instance, and the isntance is as big as the whole zone, and that if you die... good luck finding the entrance (for me, i've done this instance many times before, so corpse runs arent a problem. but do you feel the pain im feeling? anyone?). and finally, adding a vanity nail into the coffin... i decided to help out a human who was captured by some broken draenei halfbreeds. well you would expect the captive to run AWAY from his captors, correct? well being human, he wasnt too bright, so he walked me right through their camp. what a dumbass. he died about five seconds have he aggro'ed 4 of them. then i died. i really dont know whats dumber: this quest, the escortee, or the designers who actually thought it was a good idea to have the captive path back through the village. /rant

finally, upon outleveling the zone, i decided to move to my favorite zone in the map (and this time with two quests from STV, one to kill 20 trolls and put their skulls on a spike, and another to gather some bottles of rum, plus one quest i got from UC to burn some documents that careless high elves will leave lying around). i ran to Raventusk village and picked up all of the quests. i had to drop some quests, including the dumb failed escort quest mentioned earlier. but i was really glad to have dropped it. anyway, i went up the coast, killed the turtles and found lard's lunch, then went back to turn it in. then i went inland and made a big gigantic circle around the map, and completed every single quest there. i dinged 50 somewhere at around the same time i was killing vile priestess hexx, then went to turn in all the quests and got super close to dinging again. flew to UC and turned in my quest there, took the zep to grom gol and turned in the quest there. flew to booty bay and turned in the quest there. ding. 51. really quick and easy. i went to tanaris to do something else and finish wastewater justice quest. then called it a night as i was super tired. it was saturday night by then. =]

i got a bit lost after hinterlands tho. since i figured hinterlands was probably my favorite zone ever, due to the trees, the hills and many little pockets of camps and things all thoughtfully melting together in one gooey place. gooey goodness, of course. not to mention it has mageweave, mithril nodes, sungrass and purple lotuses galore. so my next option is to enter WPL and do the quests there. as far as it seems, level 58 isnt too far away. im 53, so 5 levels of questing and im out of Azeroth. although STV was a pretty refreshing, there isnt really much to say about content in the "old world". its just one of those things everyone has to go through and try to escape as quickly as possible. sometimes people dont make it through and end up with a level 35 alt somewhere.

as far as instances go, i really havent gotten much of a chance to do any of them to any extent, mainly because they have broken the later ones into artificial pieces that many people decide they should skip straight to the end boss for that "instance". really though, orange mara, purple mara, and pristine waters mara. you cant skip much in orange or purple, but with pristine waters, you can basically skip the goblin, the rock boss and head straight for the farting princess. and after the princess, no one wants to jump down and kill the giant gator. no one. then, upon hitting 51 or 52, i kept getting BRD, and we only had to go into the cave to the right and kill that one "fear" happy boss. there are some groups that ventured further. but seriously, at 52 most of us seemed capable of taking out the whole instance. the content is way too easy. seeing how, at my level, i am only given credit for the first boss in BRD, when we went as far as getting the key to the instance (i think its called the shadowforge key, about 7 bosses in). it feels like whoever divided the level requirements up forgot that all the instances underwent several NERFS. halfassed job blizz. srsly. when i first entered brd at around 51, i was blowing things away. and i was still forgetting to use my new attack, crusader strike. we ended the instance with me using that ability maybe five times. i really think, come cata, that the difficulty be put back to "Normal" with some heroic modes for all of us 85's who would really like to go through old content again. and yes, break up the larger instances. but dont break it up but give us the ability to wander into the next parts of the instances. just break it up and attune it for 85. then for heroic 85, or whatever you want hardmode to be called. orange mara should be a separate instance. BRD should be three different instances. with portals at the beginning for us to select. let us work.

yes, let us work. this is why im ranting about the instances and how they're planned out. actually how they've resulted through series of nerfs. what happened is that, level appropriate four years ago is not level appropriate today. this leads to sloppy play by everyone. i dont even care if i pull aggro any more. i just do. even with vigilence, i pull, and i dont care because i can take the 10 hits before the mob dies (consider outlands and northrend, where 5 hits would have been overkill and i'd be dead, but here, nope) and i still have enough health to "tank" another mob. all the warlocks cast rain of fire. all the mages cast blizzard. all the hunters cast volley and do explosive traps. all the paladins cast consecrate. all the warriors are tanks and do amazing damage. there are no DKs but when there are, im sure i'll see a million square feet of death and decays before its all over. tanks would pull three groups at once. healers never run out of mana, even with the three groups and an accidental fourth group. honestly. a boss fight isnt really a boss fight. its just another mob with a little more health and maybe does a little more damage. that's basically it. everything's really just a laughfest right now. its so sad. that's how its been since ragefire chasm. none of the instances i've been to actually challeged us. everything was a quick jog through to level up. i really didnt get to learn my class as much as i figured i would. i actually learn my class a lot more through "easy" solo content. aparently the status quo has changed, and in order to really learn your class, you have to go solo. this wasnt the case three years ago when i started playing. it shouldnt be the case now, especially when playing solo requires the ability to tap two buttons and knowing which mob is a questmob. really. how dumb can we go? but im sure there's a reason for that. i'll have to theorize on this a little later, as it is just about time to wrap up.

and finally, i've ventured into WPL and did the first two quests there at 53. hopefully, the next five levels will pass by quickly. hopefully, come outlands, i wont be steamrolling through instances like i did before.

for my next post, im gonna talk about the transition from my level 1-49 attack sequence to my new level 50 attack sequence, which includes Crusader strike. its a lolstrike actually, doing pretty crap damage, but its still something "new" to the level 50 paladin.

also up in the near future will be my thoughts on how leveling through instances has been trivialized, and how its creating a lot of bad players. etc, things like that. also will update on enchanting, jc and that little bit of inscription, not to mention cooking, first aid and fishing.... on my pala.

all good stuffs compared to today's drivel. drivel you say? yes. just a bunch of garbage spit out at ya. feel free to reply with comparable garbage in the comments. =]