Season 10 PvP Sets Released

Season 10 Male Death Knight Set

Okay, so I'm a bit late to this party, since the announcement of the new PvP sets was made on MMO Champion just over a week ago, but here it is anyways for your viewing pleasure.  The male (above) and female (below) previews of the Season 10 sets.  It looks like a similar gating system to last time - in that we've got the blue-ish set which will presumably be available for honour points, the red-ish set which will be purchased via conquest points, and finally the purple-ish set which will have the same stats as the red, but only be available after 2200 raking, essentially denoting the fact that its wearer is a badass. 

Female Season 10 Set

Do I like the new sets?  Absolutely, they're completely fantastic.  I am a little concerned that the colour difference is much more noticeable this time, so that if you're running around in half conquest half honour gear, you're at a serious risk of looking like a bit of a clown.  I've had this problem with the current Season 9 gear, as well.  I suppose that's just incentive for me to get into the Conquest gear as fast as I can, though!

Season 10 Delayed
Along with the shiny new PvP sets came an announcement by Zarhym over at the US Official forums, that Season 10 will not be coming with Patch 4.1.  To quote the blue post:

"The conversion from Valor to Justice Points, as well as the release of the next Arena season, won't happen until the release of 4.2."

 In other words, if you're in full Conquest gear, or close to it, and just working on getting 2200 for the weapon (once it is released) and the shiny new gear, you may as well go for it.  Don't worry about stockpiling points before the next major patch, because 4.1 will see us in the same gear we're in now.  Although it will open up some new PvE content, it's probable that 4.1 will be similar to 4.0.6., in that the only real change it brings for PvP is balance changes to classes.

What does this mean for us?
Not much, really.  It's basically still business as usual.  Keep grinding ranking in Rated BGs, keep working on those PvP titles, keep running arenas for Conquest points, etc. etc.  You certainly shouldn't stop playing because you don't get any shiny gear with the next patch.  Just keep doing what you're doing, and rejoice in the fact that we don't have to start over grinding our new PvP sets for another full patch.

Besides, I think it's safe to say that gear that badass is absolutely worth waiting for.

Anyways, this concludes my massive catch-up weekend of posts.  We now return to your regularly-scheduled programming.

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Death Knights Don't Heal

I guess I would be amiss as a DK blogger to not talk about the change to our class that has driven a surprising portion of the community into an uproar. In patch 4.1, one of our least-used spells “Raise Ally” has been re-designed as a battle-rez. To quote the latest patch notes:

“Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.”

This little change to the way we can use ghouls certainly did not go unnoticed throughout the community. Moodyloner over at Death Grip My Heart wrote a post about DK utility wherein she said: 

“I just can’t get my head around gaining the ability to bring others back to life.”

And across the WoW DK community, be it in or out of game, there have been comments on the change to the class basically amounting to the fact that Death Knights are a class focused on dealing damage, spreading disease and being basically the polar opposite of healers for all intents and purposes. The concept of giving us a battle rez, seems just wrong.

The keyword is “Death”

I disagree with these sentiments wholeheartedly. Death Knights are all about Death, sure, and healing is definitely wrong for us (I'm not counting self-heals here, I mean full-out raid healing etc.). BUT, this change doesn't make us healers. It makes us ressurectors (no – it's not a word. Go with it).

Death Knights will have the ability to quickly bring back a dead player as a ghoul. Is this a big deal? No. In fact – I think this is how the ability should always have worked. Resurrecting a player as a ghoul gimps a lot of their utility in raids, and makes them much less useful than they were alive, so the move still acts as a last-ditch effort, and the other standard b-rezes are definitely superior.

But what's wrong with grabbing a little bit of extra dps out of a corpse once the druid has popped rebirth? We're masters of Death. Reanimating someone as a ghoul doesn't seem to be all that big a stretch to me.

PvP Usefulness?

In keeping with the theme of this blog... does the change really even impact PvP at all? Not really. I could see a few very niche situations where it might be worthwhile to make a dead ally a ghoul instead of having them wait to rez. For instance, in a BG like AB or BfG, you could bring back a corpse as a ghoul to give yourself that teeny extra bit of dps to hold the flag while you wait for re-enforcements.

But, all in all this is a change to the raiding universe. It doesn't grossly impact my life when it comes to melting face and taking names. But it is certainly a very interesting change.

Conclusion

I think I've more or less made my point already. The ability to resurrect someone as a ghoul does not contradict our class foundations. It's a completely natural evolution of the ability. After all, we can already reach into the ground and conveniently find a skeleton to make into a ghoulish minion anywhere in the world with Raise Dead, and Army of the Dead pulls out even more. Unholy DKs can summon a GARGOYLE, and I don't see people complaining that we brought the gargoyle to life for 30 seconds so it goes against the class' design.

Making your dead buddy a ghoul is a completely reasonable thing, and let's be fair, it's all kinds of awesome to boot. Even if it doesn't last all that long, who could resist the ability to make their GM their minion for a little while? It seems like a blast to me.

So. Death Knights of the world. Do not despair. Blizzard is not taking away the basis of your class. You're not going to be called upon to heal that stupid rogue who's standing in the fire again. You will not have to anti-kill the main tank while you dps. But if the stupid rogue dies for the thousandth time, why not put his body to good use?

After all – he's not a whole lot of use dead.

That's it for today folks, count on the rest of my catching up tomorrow morning, then a return to your regular programming.

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

4.0.6. 2h Unholy Spec Update

With the latest patch, my previous 2h UH spec is out of date, so I thought I'd take a moment and update it for 4.0.6. There aren't a huge amount of changes, but there's enough that it's probably worth going over here. The main changes, however, aren't to the spec but to the way we play UH. I'll try to go over some changes in mentality as well as updating the spec in general for PvP.

The Spec

So, first and foremost, the spec can be found here. It's almost identical to the previous, however, as you can see, two points have been taken out of Improve Unholy Presence and put into Death's Advance. DA is a new talent found in 4.0.6 which prevents UH DKs from being significantly slowed while both their Unholy runs are up.

It's absolutely worth speccing into however, unfortunately, in order to keep all the utility in the frost tree that we basically need for self-heals and a free Mind Freeze (both bread and butter in PvP), a dps talent had to go out of the UH tree. I took IUP because I felt it was probably the smallest decrease to dps, however I could be off – I'm not much of a theory-crafter, so if someone out there can runs the numbers and finds that it is not, I'm happy to update the spec once again.

Glyphs

Glyphs remain the same as in my previous post, however they should now include Glyph of Dark Succor, a new glyph implemented in the latest patch, which makes Death Strike (only when used out of blood presence, this isn't a buff to Blood DKs, sadly) heal a minimum of 15% of your health when used.

This means that on top of Lichborne/Death Coil self-healing, and Death's Pact (in a pinch – losing your ghoul can hurt UH a lot), we can now use DS to heal ourselves quite a bit. While this is a reduction to dps numbers when used in place of SS, it keeps you alive, which is a major plus in my book.

A New Unholy

That's it for changes to the previous spec. Now let me try to explain how these affect our play-style. First, you should realize that UH was nerfed big time in the last patch, so if you haven't already noted this yourself, you're going to be doing much smaller numbers than you would have in 4.0.3. This doesn't necessarily mean you should play differently, but it means you should be aware that you won't be able to faceroll what might have once been an easy class for you to kill.

The biggest change to our play, though, comes with Death's Advance. This keeps us at 100% speed, even when we should normally be slowed (although this is a 15% drop from the 115% we get in UH Presence) when both our UH pairs are up. So what does this mean for us? It means that when we need to book it out of somewhere, popping ERW can save your skin. The free refresh of all your runes will mean that as long as you don't use an UH rune, you'll run at normal speed.

As another bonus, if you Chains of Ice the person you are running away from, you'll generally be able to escape more or less unscathed, since they'll be stuck in your slow. It's worth noting here that you won't be immune to stuns and fears, however AMS and IBF will both make you immune to stuns (IBF) and fears (AMS) if you're trying to escape a class capable of those forms of CC.

Dark Succor makes a change to the rotation as well, where if you are low on health, or cognisant of the fact that you will be soon, you can use DS in place of SS in your rotation to top yourself up on HP before returning to your full dps cycle. This works well when you have your Abomination or Gargoyle (or both!) up as they can make up for some of the dps lost to heal yourself.

Conclusion

There are no earth-shattering changes to UH, besides the fact that we've been nerfed quite a bit. But it's worth taking note of them, since taking advantage of them can definitely give you a major advantage.

That's it for me! Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Maintenance Day Musings - What are Death Knights?

The first of many of my Tuesday editorials is here, and I'm starting the habit of this blogging schedule, plan, theory, thing, with a look back at my roots.

Recently, on a random, somewhat nostalgic whim, and hopped over to a random server where I had parked some cute level 1-6 alts, and rolled a Death Knight. This was born largely out of a desire to see the starting zone again. Back in Wrath, when everyone and their uncle was rolling a Death Knight, there was a good reason for it. The starting zone. At the time, it was the best questing zone in the game (don't try and tell me Northrend was better – it wasn't. At least not in my opinion).

Although a lot of time has gone by, and Cataclysm has been released (with it, all-new starting zones, which are all excellent as well), this zone still stands up. I'll always have a special place in my heart for that starting zone, the place where everything began. I fondly remember when I finally got my druid to 55. I immediately ran up and started a Death Knight (Theloral, my current main). And I was transported to a sort of immersion I'd never really experienced in WoW before – especially having never played anything past Old World (remember, my druid had only just hit 55).

“A hero, that's what you once were.” Those words started me off on one of the coolest quest chains in the history of WoW, or certainly in the time I've been playing (basically since late BC – early Wrath). It was epic, engaging, and one hell of a good time. Playing through as a slave to the Lich King, eventually breaking free... it was everything I'd hoped for the from the zone, and then some. And that zone is, really, what initially hooked me on the class.

The Not-So Humble Beginnings

Back in the day, when DKs were first released, there was a huge uproar in the community. The introduction of a “Hero Class” had totally unbalanced the game. A massive stream of newly created Death Knights flooded the realms, basking in complete, and utterly overpowered facerolling. New DKs didn't have to be “good” at the their class. They had to know how to mash buttons, and how to pwn. The result was that the class got an extremely bad reputation.

The Hero Class didn't mean veteran players were taking in the rewards of all their toils. It didn't mean the best players from BC had converted (though presumably, plenty did). It meant that anyone with the time to level to 55 (yours truly included) could hop into the game, and be almost indestructible.

Blizzard quickly learnt the lesson that WoW's first Hero Class had been, to put it gently – a mistake. It wasn't fair to set one class apart from the others, in terms of in-game power, and making Death Knights stronger than everybody else, was just plain dumb. Soon, DKs were nerfed into the ground (it was sad, but it needed to be done), and those early pioneers of the class were left playing just a normal class, like everyone else. In fact, since that initial wave of being completely OP, Death Knights as a whole have been on the lower end of the spectrum.

Even when I finally hit 80, during the end of Ulduar, I frequently got told by players “Wow, you play a DK. They're OP. You're a noob.” It was a ridiculous statement because, by that point certainly, DKs really weren't OP anymore. I would generally gently point to the paladins sitting in a corner, cackling madly while they facerolled everything and everyone, but that's really a story for another time.

Without our status as a “Hero Class” (the name remained yes, but for all intents and purpose, DKs became just a normal class), many players wondered back their old mains, and the DK populations diminished. They became just as common as any other class, and the die-hard DKs that stuck around may have felt a little bit confused, as to the identity of their class.

Class Identity

Since the dawn of fantasy gaming, there have always been certain understood principles. The big warrior guy in heavy armour protects the little gnome wizard shooting fireballs at the baddies from behind his back. The cleric/priest/whatever heals the big, armoured guy, and keeps everyone alive. Behind the baddie, there's also probably a rogue knifing him in the back, and maybe a couple other general groups of character standing around hitting the bad guy as well. It's a standard concept, and it's always worked in the past. The priest heals, the warrior tanks, the rogue knifes people in the back.

Having an idea of what your class is is extremely important to a game like WoW. Players want to feel unique. They want to be able to do something really cool, that no one else can do, and to stand proudly back and say “Yeah, bitch, I just dropped a totem on your ass. Cause I'm a shaman. Suck it.” They want to be able to turn into bears, cats, and demented sea lions and then rub in the faces of the other lowly non-druids who are always stuck looking the same. They want to be able to stand in the middle of the line of fire of some giant's fist, and take because they're warriors. You get the picture.

Necromancer type classes have been common in fantasy RPGs since the beginning, and most people were thrilled to see them coming to WoW. But after the initial nerf bat hit the class, many players questioned what exactly they were supposed to be doing. What exactly was the point of Death Knights.

The Point

Death Knights might not be the most overpowered class in the game, anymore. We might just be average schmucks off the street, but despite the lack of pure power, DKs are still unique. Sure, popping army of the dead won't wipe a raid of the opposite faction's players. And yeah, maybe the sky doesn't rupture every time we swing our axes.

But, we're still the only class in the game who can reanimate players. We're still the only class in the game who get to bust out ghouls. We're still the only glass in the game to get to use swirling bones as shields. Nobody else can pull a hunter across the map to themselves, then pin him to the ground with some ice, and proceed to beat his face in. And, last time I checked, no one else can summon an undead army just for kicks.

Death Knights are tanks. We're melee dps. We're PvPers, and we're badass. Can lots of other classes say that? Yes, and especially so in a world where class homogenization is becoming more and more part of the game. But no one else can say it the same way we can.

We're Death Knights. We control zombies, and we smash face. We take hits, and wear a lot of skulls as fashion statements. And can mister tree-hugging druid over there say the same thing?

I don't think so.

The Complete 2h Unholy Tool Kit

Season 9 is here, and with it serious PvP is back in style.  I won't say I don't miss the lax attitude of the last couple months, but the fact of the matter is, if you want to seriously PvP in this season, now is the time to work at getting geared and ready to go.  The best time to get into PvP is at the start of a season, when the gear playing field is level.

With that in my, I'm taking a bit of a break from my informal Cataclysm leveling guide to walk you through pretty much ever current viable PvP spec, so that you can choose how you'd like to be playing this season.  I'm starting this off with 2 handed Unholy, because it has slightly higher dps than the other DK specs, and also has the most general utility.  Although frost and blood as a LOT more viable than they were last season, at least for the time being, Unholy is back to being the "it" spec.  A bit a shame?  Maybe, but that's just how it is.

The Spec

The basic spec, packing the best combination of dps and PvP utility (more or less, I haven't gone miles into the theorycrafting) is 0/8/33.  You aren't give a whole lot of choice with your Unholy talents, and in the frost tree there is absolutely no choice at all, because you need to pick up Lichborne, and Endless Winter.

So now you've seen the basic talent rundown, but what exactly is this spec packing?  Well dps rotation aside (we'll talk about that in a sec), it's got the standard Strangulate silence (which isn't a talent, so every DK spec features), a free mind freeze every 10 seconds and the additional ghoul stun.  This means, that if you need to lock down a caster, you can interrupt a cast with DG, chains of ice, strangulate, mind freeze, ghoul stun, mind freeze again, then drop dark simulacrum.  They won't know what hit them.

The spec is also packing Lichborne, one of my favourite frost talents, which makes you immune to those pesky stuns and gives you the ability to heal yourself with Death Coil.  The macro for that is:   

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast !Lichborne;
/cast [target=player] Death Coil 

(Courtesy of arena junkies).

Let's talk glyphs

You don't have a ton of choice when it comes to your prime and major glyphs.  This list comes from Elitist Jerks, for optimal dps, and I'd say it's pretty solid for PvP as well.

Prime:
[Glyph of the Ghoul] 
(as a side note, the mouseover for this won't work properly.  Please ignore wowhead's lack of a glyph of the ghoul atm, and just go with the name.  I'll fix that soon as I can.)
[Glyph of Scourge Strike] | [Glyph of Death and Decay], for AoE/DW (Yes I know thsi post doesn't discuss DW.  More on that in a future post).
[Glyph of Death Coil] | [Glyph of Icy Touch], for AoE.

Major
[Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell]
[Glyph of Pestilence]
[Glyph of Blood Boil]

The minor glyphs in EJ are left up to your personal choice, and I'd agree with that.  They aren't going to affect your dps too much, so I wouldn't worry overly about it, take whatever floats your boat.

The Rotation

Okay.  So as I've already stated in a few past posts, the days of set DK rotations are behind us, in their place is a world of priority systems.  Now if you've PvPed before, you're probably already familiar with the concept.  PvP has never really had a set rotation, it's all about reaction to your situation.  Sure, if a friendly rogue has your target stunlocked, you may as well open up your pure dps rotation, but that's not gonna happen very often.

But, for purely academic purposes, and so that you have a rough understanding of the raid rotation, here's the priority system, once again courtesy of EJ:

Diseases > Dark Transformation > DnD*/SS if both Unholy and/or all Death runes are up > FeS if both pairs of Blood and Frost runes are up >
DC if SD, 100 RP, will overcap RP with anything else or if RC isn’t up > DnD/SS > FeS > DC > HoW.

HOWEVER, this is the raid priority system.  Yours will have to be different because of PvP.  Therefore, with that in mind, I've altered the system a little bit to account for PvP.

Diseases>Dark Transformation>INTERRUPTS*>Dark Simulacrum (vs. casters only)>DnD/SS if both UH and/or Death runes are up>FeS if both pairs of blood and frost are up>Necrotic Strike if one unholy or death rune is up>DC if Sudden Doom procs, or if you're at 130 RP, or about to ovecap>DnD/SS>FeS>DC>HoW.

 *Interrupts take precedence over everything if you are fighting a caster, especially a healer, and they're casting a spell.

Okay, so that probably seems really complicated.  Let me make it much simpler.  This PvP rotation is basically the same as the raid one with a few things in mind.

First, when a caster is casting, if you CAN, you SHOULD interrupt them.  Always.

Second, when you have your diseases up and have one unholy rune up, or one death rune, you should always necrotic strike as much as possible, unless it is impossible for that target to be healed.  In most cases, they'll have self-heals or the possibility of a healer jumping in to save them, so stacking necrotic strike as much as you can just makes sense.

Besides that, the dpsPvP is all about rolling with the punches and being ready for anything.  The benefit to knowing the rotation is just understanding how to dps.

 

Conclusion, and some thoughts on Ghoul Control

So, before I wrap this up, I want to run through a few basics EVERY Unholy DK should be aware of.  First, your ghoul is important, if it's dead and your raise dead is off CD, you should be bringing it back.  Second, you should have leap and gnaw keybound, not set automatically.  Got an ally running away?  Leap and stun.  Need an on-the-fly interrupt for that big heal, but have mind freeze and strangulate on CD?  Gnaw it up!  

Don't let the computer decide when to interrupt!  That's your job as the player.  I only leave Claw on automatic (since he should be using it every CD), and turn of huddle entirely, it's a complete waste of a GCD, when aggrro is meaningless in PvP.  Learning to use your ghoul effectively is one of the best things you can do as an Unholy PvPer.

Anyways, to wrap this up, Unholy is a very strong spec in the early days of Season 9.  2h UH packs the most utility, and according to most theorycrafters, the most dps.  If you're into min-maxing, this is probably the spec for you.  If you don't like unholy, never fear.  There's two other trees, and even a DW variation on UH and frost to come, so don't fret.  The difference between specs isn't too enormous, so you've definitely got options.

Until next time, Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Onike's Triumphant Return

I'm back.  Yes, you can all cheer wild praises of joy at the prospect.  It's been an interesting week and a half - I never realized how dependant I was on having regular access to a computer until I was without one.  My laptop has officially bit the bullet, and it was replaced with a shiny new i5 acer aspire desktop which I got on sale, along with a beautiful 24" monitor which I also got on sale.  Very exciting stuff.  I'm still not really sure what to do with all that screen space.

I am currently remembering why I hate switching computers - a full install of WoW takes forever.  I'm about halfway after leaving my computer on all night.  It's very upsetting.  So I haven't been able to actually hop into the game for a proper look around at the game, or a chance to really mess around with any new DK specs, etc. etc., YET.  That stuff will be coming as soon as I get everything up to speed.

Since I'm sort of unable to blog about anything directly related with the live version of the game (and since I never got into the beta), I'm going to talk about something else, which just happens to be the only piece of DK news that I became aware of on my forced break from the game.

Tier 11.

Wow.

That is seriously probably some of the coolest armor I've ever seen in WoW.  I'm SERIOUSLY stoked about this new set.  Like to the point that I'm almost certainly going to raid in Cataclysm, if ONLY to pick up tier 11.  I still maintain that our Season 9 set looks okay, but tier 11 is just so much more awesome.

But looking at the amount of effort that has clearly gone into our newest raid set, I have to question just how it can look so amazingly detailed, while our PvP set seems like an afterthought.  Not to say I'm not stoked for our Season 9 gear, because it looks AWESOME.  It's better than any other PvP set we've had through Wrath, in my opinion.  But look at that raid set.

Now I know that the vast majority of players raid.  It's probably the biggest chunk of the endgame for a lot of people.  And even people that don't consider themselves 'raiders' probably consider PvE to be their main source of killing stuff.  The percentage of the player base that PvPs and doesn't raid on top of that is comparatively small.  But I'd really like to see Blizzard put the time and effort that they put into their raids and their raid sets into PvP, and our gear.

I'm not the first player to complain about this, I'm sure.  And forgive me if you think I'm being deliberately inflammatory by blogging about something like this while I can't talk about much else.  But it's been bugging me for a while, and I felt the need to rant about it.

/rant off

Death Knights are looking better than ever moving into Cataclysm.  With more stable spec designs, a whole whack of epic looking armor on both sides of the divide, and a probably a whole lot more awesome to come with December 7th, everyone in the class right now, whether they kill bosses or players, has something to be seriously pumped about.

That's going to do it for me for now.  I can't wait to be back in the thick of it soon!  Look for some more DK-oriented posts coming up early next week.  Then after that... it's pretty much the release of Cataclysm!

Very exciting time all around,

Practice safe Death!

~Onike

Death Grip: Fun toy, or life-saving purple-y beam of doom?

Although DKs are sadly underrepresented in the blogging community as a whole, the few blogs that are written to our credit have covered one ability perhaps more than any other.  It has been one of the most controversial DK abilities, as well as one that caused more forums complaints that any other (besides perhaps miss-use of Army of the Dead in a raid).  You all know what I'm talking about:  Death Grip.

While this ability remains something of a niche tool for tanking in raid content (used only to pull casting mobs and such), it is absolutely invaluable in PvP.  As a Death Knight, Death Grip should ALWAYS be on your action bars, and if you aren't using it, I invite you to bust out your purple beam of doom loving self, and give it a whirl.  Just please, practice safe Death.

The don'ts.

While Death Grip may seem like a safe bet at any point in a PvP encounter, there are some major don'ts that you should keep in mind when using it.  First, keep in mind DG has a 30 second cooldown.  While not a tremendous number, that's 30 seconds that you will be without arguably the best peeling move in the game.  So, keep these things in mind when DGing it up.

1.  Is my enemy a healer, or a damage-dealer?  If the answer is damage-dealer, look around and make sure there are no healers nearby.  While pulling that annoying boomkin might seem tempting, killing that sneaky priest behind him is infinitely more valuable for your team.

2.  Is my enemy fairly close to me?  If so- don't DG.  Just chains of ice him, then run up and take his head off.  Simple, beautiful, and elegant. 

3.  Is my enemy extremely far away?  While chasing after that elusive rogue sprinting away may be tempting, I wouldn't recommend it.  If the enemy is out of range of DG, and just ignore them.  Running into the enemy team at random to pull them towards you will only end one way- and it won't be pretty.

4.  Is my enemy running towards me anyways?  This might seem obvious, but seriously- I've seen it done.  And done it myself before.  Sometimes that shiny DG button is just too big a temptation.  But let me state here and now, that if you enemy is a melee class, and running towards your team ANYWAYS, you should NEVER DG him.  He'll reach you in a few seconds anyways.  Don't waste that precious CD.

5.  Is my enemy over-geared, or tough to bring down?  The main purpose of DG is to pull dangerous, ranged enemies towards your team.  Especially when two groups of players are standing off against each-other, that one key squishy being dragged towards your side against his/her will can be a huge moral boost to your side.  Your team will probably instinctively focus on the DGed enemy, even if you're in a worst-case, random PuG scenario.  If you pull someone that has either A) a ton of AoE damage potential, or B) is just tough to kill, you're actually working against your team.  You'll either be significantly weakened, and easy prey for the remaining Alliance (or Horde if you took the wrong side), or you'll spend so much time trying to kill that freakin' paladin, that your team will find itself overrun with enemies.

The Dos

Most of the things that can go WRONG with DG in a PvP situation are pretty self-explanatory.  But, there's a subtle difference between not using DG wrong, and using it oh-so right.  So, let me list some of the best times to launch your enemies to their own demise.

1.  The interrupt.  It may be a little-known fact among DKs that haven't spent much time PvPing, but DG actually acts as an interrupt.  If you see a healer, within range of DG, casting a big heal, pulling them towards you will not only bring said healer within range of your vast array of weaponry, but also stop the heal they were casting, leaving anything short of a very good healer disoriented, and easy picking.  This is possibly the best, and most general use of DG in PvP.

2.  The mob factor.  When you're in a situation in one of the larger BGs or just in a big showdown in WPvP, where you find yourself in a face-off with the other side, DGing ANY enemy usually spells certain doom for them, since no one can take 10+ players single-handedly.  Sometimes, when the healers (which even in this situation should be your main target) are out of reach, just picking off the enemies one by one with DG can be a good strategy.  Also, in Alterac Valley, this method can be applied to your boss' room, before too many of your towers have been capped.  DGing a baddie into the throne room with you will sick the NPCs on them, and you probably won't even have to lift a finger.

3.  The CC.  While DG on its own is not a direct CC, it can turn into one.  In situations where slowing an enemy is the best thing for your team, combining DG with Chains of Ice, can give your team the boost they need to succeed.  Some of the big times this is especially worthwhile:  On the enemy flag carrier in WSG, or on that obnoxious melee chasing your destroyers in Strand.  CoIing your opponents after a DG is just good practice in general, but sometimes the precious seconds it buys make the difference between victory and bitter defeat.

4.  The chain.  Probably one of the more niche-y tactics that work with DG, this is actually a cool enough idea that I will probably discuss it in a future post.  But, let me say that it basically boils down to have DKs line up, and use DG one after the other, essentially pulling a bad-guy much further than DG normally should.

The conclusion?

DG is more than a cute toy, it's one of the most deadly abilities in the PvP DK's arsenal.  But like all weapons, it can be misused, or abused.  Just try to keep common sense in mind when applying it to your game, and you'll find it slowly seeping into the core of your DK.  Eventually, you'll probably come up with plenty of epic ways to employ it that I've never even dreamed of, and when you do, I'd love to hear about them.

But for the time being, keep your head about yourself and try to practice safe Death.

Season 9 Models Revealed

Earlier today, MMO Champion revealed the new models for the Season 9 armour sets.  For those of you living on a proverbial PvP rock, Season 9 will be the first PvP season of Cataclysm, bringing with it all the beauty of a new arena season, and, for the first time ever, rated Battlegrounds.

All kinds of awesome

I was complaining earlier this week to a guildy about how, although DKs have a history of getting some of the coolest PvE tier gear EVER (tier 8 and 10 are both absolutely amazing in my opinion), our PvP gear has been somewhat lacking throughout Wrath.

But no more, this new DK tier set looks absolutely badass, and I think I'll actually feel like a hardcore harbinger of doom running around in this, unlike my somewhat plain armour from season 8 (and don't even get me started on the helms we've seen lately... our relentless helm looks like a fish on the undead model).

Warlock?

It also hasn't escaped my notice (and, I'm sure, the notice of other DKs around the world), that this new set looks almost... warlock-ish.  The horns on the helm, especially, seem like they belong on a warlock to me).  But the skull with the chest plate certainly looks like it belong on a Death Knight.

Regardless, this is just one more thing to look forwards to with Cataclysm.  I can't wait to get my paws on this stuff, and to put it to the test.

4.0.1 Death Knight Round Up - The Dawn of Frost

This is not my first kick at the can.

What you're looking at right now, staring imperiously at your from across the internet and the little pixels on your computer screen, is the result of more failed blog attempts than I can count. It's been almost a full year that I've been kicking around the concept of making a blog about WoW, but everytime I start, I never seem to get far.

Why?

Because I get bored with it.  See, I've been writing under the weird impression that if I don't write about "accepted" topics- raiding, theorycrafting... whatever all those "real" bloggers do, I won't get any readers.  But A) it's ridiculous to write a blog because you want readers, you should do it because you enjoy it, and B) there are a lot more topics that I had originally considered.

See, I'm not a raider.   I never have been, and unless it changes significantly from the way it is now, I probably never will be.  Oh, sure, I've raided.  I even have a druid dedicated pretty much exclusively to PvE.  I'll probably raid once cataclysm comes out too, but that's not the reason I play the game.

I play the game for PvP.  For epic campaigns spread out across my server (The Venture Co. US happens to have one of the best WPvP communities around, since the act of fighting outside of combat zones is almost dead elsewhere).  For pitched battles in the battlegrounds, for skirmishes in the arenas, for facerolling alliance in Wintergrasp... I play the game for PvP.

So I'm going to write a blog about it.

Patch 4.0.1

That's where the latest patch comes in.  See, not only do I PvP, but I do so with a Death Knight.  And I've noticed that there is a sad amount of Death Knight bloggery going on in the WoW blogging community.  I'm not sure why exactly, since we're arguably a lot better than everyone else.  But, there it is.  There are not enough DK bloggers.  And, as far as I know, none of the few DK bloggers out there, write mostly about PvP.  So I'm filling a niche which, to my knowledge, has not yet been filled.

So.  With fun little intros out of the way, let me hop right into the meat of the blog.  Content.  Information.  All that jazz.

Please note, that this post is NOT about specific talents.  It's about my feeling for the class in general, since the patch.  It's been out long enough now, that I'm assuming anyone reading this blog has already had a chance to go through all their own talents, so I'm not going through everything new talent by new talent.

Unholy = Disease 'n Stuff

UH remains a powerhouse of a spec, with damage focused even more on disease than before.  Although I haven't had a chance to play around with this too much (frost has taken most of my time since the patch), with transforming ghouls, undead minions, and disease, what more could our necromancy-happy friends want?  I'll post a more in-depth look at the tree once I've experimented a little bit more.

This spec remains very viable for PvP, BUT (as I'm about to discuss), at least until cataclysm, frost may have actually become the "it" spec, something we haven't seen ever, throughout the whole expansion, in the world of PvP.

Frost = OMGBBQ (But in a cold way)

Some wizened, veteran DKs may remember when WotLK was just a beta,  and DKs hadn't been released on live realms yet.  The talk of the whole town, with the coming expansion- was DKs.  How will they play?  What will the mechanics be like?  Et cetera, et cetera.  In those early days of the class, frost was originally meant to be the tanking spec, with frost presence providing the tanking bonuses, and a lot of defensive abilities tied to the spec.  Blizzard eventually denounced the idea, decided that "any spec can tank", but the idea sort of stuck.  Frost has been largely outshone by it's ghouly counterpart throughout wrath.

No longer.  Frost has come into it's own in a big way since 4.0.1.  Yes, it is pretty much ridiculously overpowered with Wrath's low health pools, and since I'm not in the beta, I can't comment on how things are going to play out come cata.  But, for the time being, I'm enjoying being OP for a change.

Frost PvP has actually been simplified in some ways, it's still a LOT about proc watching, but it's also about a new mechanic for DKs.  The concept of always wanting runes on CD for the RP generation boost.  As a result, while priority based, it almost seems a little spammy to me.  The spec/rotation I'm currently using, uses a very dumbed-down version of our old rotation.  You no longer need Obliterate, and even our new and shiny Festering Strike, doesn't get any use either.  The basic idea, is to specialize in Howling Blast as much as possible, then make use of it.  It basically goes:  HB x2, PS x2, BS x2, and then HB x4.  Mix in frost strikes for Killing Machine procs, and Runic Empowerment if you get to the end and everything in sight isn't dead.

Sound simple?  It is.  Like  I said, frost is very OP right now.  I  can't wait to see if we remain competitive throughout cataclysm.  It would be nice to have an option to play something beyond ONE UH spec for serious PvP.

Blood = Tanks

Blood is now our dedicated tanking tree, if you didn't already know.  Frost presence now includes a damage boost, and blood is the new frost.  All our defensive cooldownsPvP in their tanking trees with a lot of success (because they're damn near impossible to kill), But I don't know if that's the case for blood, I really haven't touched it since 4.0 dropped.  Once I've figured out UH, I'll get back to you on blood in PvP.

The Conclusion?

We're at a good place right now.  Frost is OP, but Blizz has stated numerous times that we are now balanced for level 85, not level 80.  Who knows what the PvP game is gonna look like come Cataclysm.  I know one thing for sure, though.

I can't wait.