WoW: Quick & Easy Guide to Playing a Rogue in Heroics

This post is dedicated to Arisal, the most polite saronite slave in the EU.


So you've never played a rogue in World of Warcraft before. You don't really care enough about a character that just runs heroics for badges to bother with the extremely complicated and intimidating ins and outs of min/maxing raiding rogue dps. Maybe you aren't used to playing a melee class.

Well guess what? To do reasonably good dps in heroics, (and be an asset to your group in other ways) you barely have to do anything! No extra research, no spreadsheets, no dps simulators. Just copy this spec, follow a handful of guidelines, and hit just 5 buttons for fun and profit!



Talent Spec:

51/18/2

Mutilate is the easiest to play. Combat requires more buttons and Subtlety sucks, so let's ignore them for now.


Abilities:

OK, I lied. You may need 7 buttons, depending on who is in your group, but you really only have to use 4-5 on 90% of pulls. Those buttons are, in order of importance:

Mutilate
Fan of Knives
Envenom
Hunger for Blood
Tricks of the Trade
Slice and Dice
Garrote or Rupture (to put up a bleed so you can use Hunger for Blood. You can skip this if a dps warrior or feral druid is in your group)



Opening the fight: This is the only remotely complex thing I'm going to ask you to do. Just stay with me, it's worth it. Hit Esc to open your WoW menu. Select "Macros". Hit the button at the bottom to create a new one, and select the question mark icon from the list and name the macro "tricks". Then copy and paste the following text into the macro:

#showtooltip Tricks of the Trade
/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

And drag the macro onto your action bar. Hotkey it so it's easy for you to reach.

At the beginning of every instance, target the tank and type:

/focus

and hit enter. You have now set it so that whenever you hit your tricks hotkey, you will cast Tricks of the Trade on the tank. You just became a major asset to your group because you give the tank a massive threat boost. Use this macro before EVERY PULL.

The only other concern you may have at the opening of the fight is Hunger for Blood. Keeping track of that buff and keeping it up can be annoying. The solution that's almost as effective: don't bother tracking it! Just refresh it every other pull! No complicated monitoring of the buff required.

There are two ways for you to refresh HfB every other pull. One of them is to start the fight from stealth, use Garrote, then HfB. Starting from stealth is preferable because of the Overkill talent. If you aren't starting from stealth, do a single Mutilate, then hit Rupture, then HfB. That's it. Just refresh it every other pull, and stop worrying!


Rotations:

AoE pulls (3+ enemies at once) are easy (and they make up most of today's heroics). Just pick a target in the pull and start autoattacking it. Then hit Fan of Knives over and over. Sure, you could squeeze out a few more dps in other ways, but it really won't matter in a heroic. Just spam FoK.

On single-target trash, you're generally just going to Mutilate until you have 4 or 5 combo points, then Envenom. You only need 4 to make Envenom worth it. If you want to ignore combo points, you can simply Mutilate x2, Envenom, repeat.

On bosses, simply add a single Slice and Dice to the beginning of your rotation. You will usually only need to use it once because the Cut to the Chase talent will keep it refreshed for you. You might need to use it again after a long break from dpsing a boss, like when the lightning guy in HoL splits into sparks or when the last boss in Drak'tharon turns you into a skeleton. Once SnD is up, just keep doing Mutilate x2, then Envenom.


Stats: every melee stat is reasonably good for you; don't sweat it too much. Put on all the agility leather you can get, gem for attack power and hit rating, and make sure you are at least over the 8% melee hit cap (though more hit after that is still good)

Weapons: Daggers. Get whatever the highest ilevel dagger is you can get, but if you have a choice get a slow mainhand (1.8 speed) and a fast offhand (1.3-1.5 speed). A nice starter offhand you can get on the AH for peanuts is Librarian's Paper Cutter.

Poisons: Instant Poison on your mainhand, Deadly Poison on your offhand. Don't forget them, and stay stocked up! You can buy them from a guy in the Dalaran Sewers.

Pictured: not the kind of Rogue this guide is about

Tips:

Stay behind your target when you can.

Don't be an asshole. Being a nice and humble sub-par player is better for your group than being an arrogant ass who happens to be top dps. Take it from the arrogant ass. :)

Be an asset to your group by paying attention to fight mechanics. Stay out of void zones, stop attacking when necessary.

Be nice to your healers and tanks.



I hope this guide makes it easy for new rogues to do reasonable dps without much work or attention. Playing a rogue well can be a blast, so have fun with it!

Is gear doing the carrying? And WoW class guides!

Forgive me father, for I am about to be a complete asshole:

A meme has been making the rounds in reference to the performance deficit between players in random heroics. The argument goes thusly:

"Player 1 thinks he is carrying Player 2 because he does twice as much dps. But in reality, it's just his own gear that is carrying Player 1 himself!"

This is wrong on so many levels. The quickest one to note is that tons of people are wearing full tier 9 now and still sucking.

The largest and most onerous problem with the idea of "gear doing the carrying" is that it completely ignores all the time and effort put into getting that gear and optimally gemming and enchanting it. It even ignores the research that goes into getting the right gear. Yes, the stats on the gear do contribute to the performance of the character. But that person put in the time and effort to get the gear and prep it. You can't just consider the gear in a vacuum. MMO's are about time, effort and skill put in to progress your character almost as much as they are about being a good player. If you want a game where all that's considered is skill, play an online shooter. If you want a game where all that's considered is what a nice person you are, play Facebook.




This is why going in ungemmed is so onerous. Leaving out gems will reduce your damage just as much as having a crappy rotation. So both should be reviled.

If you don't gem, you are saying "I care so little about my performance and helping the group that I'm not willing to spend a few gold on the AH before I Q up. Now please use those gems you paid for to make the run go faster for me while I slow you down. And I'm not slowing you down because I'm new, inexperienced, or simply haven't gotten the gear yet (which would be understandable), but simply because I'm cheap and don't give a crap about other people."


If you do not gem, you are a jerk. Plain and simple. You should not have a good self-image.

And I should not have to bother saying that! How far we as a people have fallen that someone actually has to say "please gem your gear"!

At the same time, I have a lot of sympathy for new players with suboptimal rotations. Finding the right information is not always easy - oh wait, it is, just go to elitistjerks.com, or any of the million WoW sites and blogs that explain to you step-by-step exactly how to play your character!

I even did the work for you: (you'll never guess how I found these...google!)

Death Knight
Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior


You now have no excuse.

Or is there something I'm missing that makes reading things on the internet just too hard to bear?

Champions Online Guide to Not Gimping Your First Hero

Brief tips to help you avoid building a gimped hero right off the bat:

1) Characteristic Focus: This is the most confusing aspect of the stats in CO. Here is a simple analogy:

You know how, in WoW, warriors want strength to increase their damage, while rogues want agility?

Those are their characteristic focii. The only difference is that you get to pick them instead of having them be intrinsic to a character class.

The 2 Characteristic Focus stats you pick are the stats that increase your damage.

This damage increase is in addition to whatever benefit the stat gives you (such as DEX's increased crit chance or END's increase to your endurance pool).

Starter rule of thumb: pick gear that has your Characteristic Focus stats on it.


2) Presence is the healing stat. It is also the threat stat for tanks.

3) Instead of picking a class you pick a framework. It simply refers to the theme of your powers, and not to your character's role, which I will discuss in a moment. The pre-build frameworks come with an endurance-building auto-attack power (you only get one of these per character, ever) and a nuke, as well as a starting stat layout based on a theme, such as "indomitable" (high ego and strength) to "Genius" (high intellect and presence). In most cases the stats you get are the ones that are most helpful to that framework. Though which stats you pick really only matters for your support powers and passives usually.

For instance, all of your attacks will scale with whichever super stat you pick. But your heals scale with Presence, while your passive defensive ability might scale with Constitution or Endurance, depending on framework. You're generally safe just going with the stat outlay tied to your framework, but if you want to change it (as I did with my Telekenesis hero, by switching out Constitution for Endurance) you can do a custom framework using the 2 starter powers from that set, but a different stat pick, and see no ill effects.

The 2 stats you favor at the beginning should be the ones you plan to make into your Characterstic Focus stats.


4) You unlock powers in your framework by picking up more powers in that framework. You also unlock more powers in other frameworks as you go, just at a slightly reduced rate. You can get to the big stuff faster by staying in one framework, and I recommend you do this at first. Make more varied characters and dip into other sets once you get a handle on the game.


5) Pick up talents (stat bonuses) that increase your Characteristic Focus stats. (durrr)

6) Put your Ranks and Advantages points into the attacks you use most often, at least at first.

7) As you play you will unlock Roles. These work a lot like Death Knight Presences or Druid forms. You start in a balanced role, but you'll eventually be able to get an offensive role (that increases damage but reduces defense), a tanking role (higher defense and lower damage), and a support role (improved healing and energy regen). So your powerset framework is more a theme for your character, while the Role defines how you will play in a group. If you want to be a healer, hold on to gear with high presence so you can switch into it when needed (much like putting on your spellpower set in WoW).


There. Now you can get on with the playing and learning while minimizing the risk that you'll gimp your character right out of the gate. Have fun!

Simple guide to the Northrend Beasts in 3.2's new raid

The only boss encounter currently available in WoW's new raid instance is the "Northrend Beasts". It consists of 3 different boss fights chained together (with only a few seconds in between), essentially creating one 3-phase boss. Here's a guide to handling this battle in 10-man normal mode. Bring 2 tanks and 2-3 healers (I'd recommend 3 to start out with).

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler

He's a Magnataur. He throws snobolds at you.

Executive Summary:
Tank him in the middle of the room. Assign two dps to kill Snobolds. Have tanks switch (taunt) at 3 stacks of the debuff. Move (do I really have to say this?) out of the patches of fire.


TL;DR version:
Once you talk to the organizer by the entrance, that wuss runs out and Gormok emerges from the big gate on the other side of the arena. Tank him in the middle of the room, and have the raid spread out behind him. He will drop fire patchs on the ground under random people. Move out of them. Every once in a while he'll pull a little Snobold (little rat-person) out of his pocket (Ed. note: what pocket?!?) and throw it on a raid member, hindering them. Assign two of your dps to remove these snobold hats ASAP. They should make the following macro:

/tar Snobold

Ranged dps are better for this, but melee works fine too.

The boss does an aoe stun in a small radius around himself, so don't stand near him unless you have to.

Every 10 seconds, he will add a stack of an undispellable Impale debuff to the current tank (the icon looks like a spear). Have your other tank taunt the boss once it reaches 3 stacks. 30 seconds later, tank 1's stack will wear off and tank 2 will have 3 stacks, so have tank 1 taunt it back. Repeat until he's dead.

Remind your healers that the debuff still does a large DoT even if the boss is no longer targeting that tank.

Pro tip: Gormok is disarmable. He cannot apply the debuff while disarmed, so you can slow the dot stacking that way.

Phase 2: Acidmaw & Dreadscale (aka Poison One and Bile One)

This is the "not one but two jormungar worms" of internet meme legend. You fight them both at once. At all times, one of them will be half-burrowed (sticking stationary out of the ground) and one will be loose and mobile. They both burrow and switch roles every 30 seconds or so.

Executive Summmary: Have a tank on each Worm, and face both of them away from the raid. The tank should kite the mobile worm backwards around the outer part of the room, a la Grobbulus. Spread the raid out between the two worms. All dps should be on the worm that is mobile. When Acidmaw is loose, anyone in the raid who gets the Burning Bile debuff must run to the tank (avoiding the rest of the raid if possible) to dispel the Parlytic poison from the tank. When Dreadscale is loose, anyone who gets Parlytic poison must run toward the tank who has the Burning Bile ticking on him. The Burning Bile ticks minor aoe damage (2-3k) in a radius around the debuffed player, and ticks of that damage will dispel the Parlytic poison. It can be removed by standing in one of the poison clouds. Make sure that you kill Acidmaw first, but only when Dreadscale is very low on health.


TL;DR version:
At best, you'll get a few ticks of drinking done in between Gormok and these guys.

The burrowed worm acts as an immobile turret, and should be treated a lot like Mimiron's head. Point him away from the raid. My group had a warlock tank this using Searing Pain. I've read of other groups using a traditional tank on the burrowed worm, but I found myself getting knocked back a lot when trying this. Either way probably works. The image to the right is not the same color as either boss, but it's there to give you an idea of what the worms look like when half-burrowed. They will be stationary, but most of their body is still visible.

Whichever worm is not burrowed will be free to move around like a traditional mob. Have your main tank pick it up and face it at an angle away from the raid. The loose worm will drop a poison cloud just like Grobbulus, so the tank will need to back up periodically to move the worm out of these clouds.

The raid should gather loosely in between the two worms. Every time they switch roles, they will burrow underground then re-emerge in random locations, so the raid needs to be alert and figure out where to move on the fly. The worms have a frontal cone and leave the clouds behind them, so make sure all ranged and healers stay behind the burrowed worm and to the side of the loose worm.

The gimmick to this fight is the interaction between Paralytic Bite (applied by Acidmaw) and Burning Bile (applied by Dreadscale). The Paralytic Bite is a one-minute-duration poison that increases in damage-per-tick the longer it is applied (will eventually kill you) and also slows the victim the longer it remains up, immobilizing them completely after about 20 seconds. The Burning Bile is a DoT that damages the victim and anyone within 10 or so yards every time it ticks (for about 2-3k). Getting hit with a tick of this is the only way to dispel Paralytic Bite (aside from Divine Protection for Paladins and Ice Block for mages).

Whichever worm is in turret mode will randomly apply their respective debuff to members of the raid every 20 seconds or so. They target one raider, but the debuff has an aoe application, meaning that if your raiders are too close together, more than one person will get the debuff. So spread out. Meanwhile, whichever worm is mobile will periodically apply its debuff to its current target, i.e. your tank. So you'll either have poisoned raid members who need to get close to a tank who is ticking the Bile, or you have biled raid members who need to dispel the paralysis from the tank.

There are a number of ways to deal with this. What I suspect most raids will do is have any raid member who gets debuffed simply run to the tank, dispel, then run back (making a detour to a poison cloud to dispel Bile if needed). Since we already had two tanks anyway, we took some pressure off our healers by having the offtank taunt the mobile worm whenever the main tank was hit with the debuff. Then the main tank would move toward the raid to dispel/be dispelled. This spread the damage out a bit too, since the original tank was no longer taking melee damage and the new tank didn't have a dot ticking while holding the boss. It also made it a lot easier for raid members slowed by Parlytic Bite to reach the Biled tank.

Also, keep in mind it's beneficial for the group to stack up when Dreadscale is loose, but dangerous to do so when Acidmaw is loose (since random raiders get the aoe Bile). The simplest solution may be to always group up, because it makes it easier to reach a Biled tank while slowed if you aren't spread out, and the Bile dot is small enough that it shouldn't be dangerous, provided your raiders can move out of the group fast enough (see: XT-002).

Since Paralytic Bite cannot be dispelled except by Bile, you must kill Acidmaw first, and make sure all Bites are dispelled before killing Dreadscale. However, once you kill one of them, the remaining worm enrages, so don't finish Acidmaw until Dreadscale is low on health.

Phase 3: Icehowl

Icehowl is a giant Yeti. Fighting him is very simple, but he's a heavy-hitter.

Executive Summary: tank him with your back to the wall and the raid spread out in a half-circle behind him. When he knocks everyone back and stuns them, be ready to immediately strafe sideways if he emotes that he is targeting you or someone near you. Blow cooldowns while he is stunned after running into the wall. If he kills someone and enrages, have your hunter tranq shot it.

Click here for specifics on all the boss abilities, courtesy of MMO-Champion.com.
Because I'm borrowing their picture so you better give them some traffic!

TL;DR version:
Icehowl is only dangerous because he hits hard. The fight is almost entirely a tank and spank.

Your tank should put his/her back to the wall to mitigate Icehowl's knockback. The raid should spread out in a half-circle behind/to the side of him. Melee should stand apart from each other as well. Think Anub'Rekhan in Naxx.

Every 20 seconds or so he'll blow freezing breath toward a random raid member. This is just like the ability of the trash leading up to Hodir. It freezes anyone in the cone it touches (thus the spreading out).

A few times during the fight (I didn't time it, but this first phase lasted about a minute each time) he'll stomp the ground, stunning the entire raid and knocking you all back against the wall behind wherever you happen to be standing. He will emote that he's focusing on one of you, and when the stun wears off you have only about 2 seconds to strafe to the side (you get a speed boost during this time). He'll hop back, then charge right at where you were. He will insta-kill anyone who is still in front of him when he reaches the wall, even if they weren't the intended target, so your raid needs to be aware of who is near them and whether they need to move. If he hits someone, he'll turn red and enrage, and you'll need to immediately dispel this with Tranq Shot or Anesthetic Poison, because your tank probably won't survive this. Since we had two tanks for the other phases anyway, we just had an offtank at the ready in case he did this and killed the main tank. If Icehowl misses, he'll comically hit the wall and stun himself for about 20 seconds, taking double damage the whole time. Use this opportunity to Bloodlust and blow your cooldowns to dps him. Once the stun wears off, the main phase resumes, so get back in position.

Finish him, and collect your ilevel 232 loot that dwarfs anything you could get outside of Uld 25 hard modes!

I'd gauge this encounter as roughly as difficult as Freya normal mode. Go go loot pinata!

Death Knight Guide for Beginners

Death Knights: everyone can roll one at 55 now, and even though the abilities are parceled out pretty slowly as you level, it can still be overwhelming to pile on all those abilities so fast as you rocket through Outlands. Plus, you have all those talents that you don't know what they do. Why not put all 61 points in the blood tree?! Plus, their runic resource system is totally different from that time-tested blue bar you're used to.

It can get pretty confusing. Some abilities cost one rune, but some cost 2 or three of different colors, and some cost runic power, but it's not clear how you get runic power, and some cost a kitten and sixpence, which is way more than a bushel.

By this point, many of you have tried a DK, but most lay abandoned in Hellfire Peninsula after you experienced that completely epic starting area and haphazardly spent all those free talent points in whatever looked cool. Now he or she is sitting in the Thrallmar Inn with a free talent reset and you have some free time between Ulduar raids, so it's time to pick that baby back up!

Hopefully in the future I'll find the time to wax poetic about what a design triumph DKs are as a class. But for now, I'm going to try to boil DK mechanics into the simplest form I possibly can.

First, the basics of how Runes and Runic Power (RP) work.

You have 6 runes: 2 Blood (red), 2 Frost (blue), and 2 Unholy (green). You cannot change this, you will always have two of each. Going forward, I will use B, F, and U as shorthand for the runes. Once you use a rune, it goes on a 10-second cooldown, then you can use it again. This keeps you from spamming the same button over and over.

You also have an RP bar (not to be confused with a place to get a drink and meet people named Drzzzztz or Seferothh with Dark Pasts), which normally goes to 100. When you use a rune, you gain RP. If the ability you used takes 1 rune, you gain 10 RP. If it took 2 runes, you gain 15 RP. Death and Decay, which costs 3 runes, gives you 20 RP. Pretty much any ability that doesn't cost RP generates it. There are other ways to get RP through talents, but let's not complicate things with that just yet.

Since using a rune puts it on cooldown, the sooner you use it the sooner you can use it again. So use rune abilities early and often. You should generally wait to "dump" your RP until either a) all of your runes are on cooldown because you were a good little DK and used them all up just as fast as you could! or b) you are about to cap out RP, which would make any further RP generation go to waste.

Now let's build on that by talking about skills. When you start, the game gives you just enough skills to get by: Icy Touch (F), Plague Strike (U), Blood Strike (B), Death Strike (FU), and Death Coil (40 RP)

Already, you can see something interesting. There are no abilities that costs two of the same color rune, and the only two-rune ability costs FU, and no B.

IT and PS each place a different disease on your target: Frost Fever and Blood Plague, respectively. Your Blood Strike and FU moves (like Death Strike) get stronger if your target already has the two diseases on them. Such is life as a DK: in general, you want to open with IT and PS to get your diseases up at the beginning of every fight. Get used to it. Once diseases are up, unload your runes in Strikes, then use Death Coil when all runes are on cooldown. You could seriously just grind to 80 on single-targe mobs playing this way, if talents didn't have to appear and muck everything up.

At base, your other B rune abilities are Pestilence and Blood Boil. They are both only useful in AoE situations, as is Death and Decay. DnD is a strong aoe spell, and Blood Boil is a weak one, but cheap. BB gets stronger if the target is diseased. Luckily, Pestilence will spread diseases around for you. A very strong aoe attack for any spec is to drop DnD, cast IT and PS on a target, then spread the diseases with Pestilence. See how conveniently that uses up all 6 runes? Now you're thinking with portals!

Since your F and U runes are generally tied up in FU attacks or the disease combo, you'll rarely get another ability that uses just one F or U rune, and if so it will be in the talent tree. Pretty much all of your other rune abilities are from talents. You do get the ability to root using Chains of Ice for 1F, but that's mainly used in PvP.

Meanwhile, your other base options to use Runic Power, aside from the direct Death Coil damage (remember, it's different from Warlock's Death Coil because it has no fear effect), are defensive. If you have some RP, you can use Icebound Fortitude for general defense, an Anti-Magic Shell for magic (duh) defense, or use Brain Freeze (an interrupt like Kick or Counterspell) or Strangulate (a silence effect on a long cooldown). Basically, hit IF if you are in trouble.

You'll also have a few abilities that don't have rune or RP costs. These include your summonable ghoul, Horn of Winter (which should be up all the time and gives "free" RP), Empower Rune Weapon (resets all your runes, best for emergencies where you really need a certain ability RIGHT NOW), and Blood Tap (allows you to turn a B rune into a Death Rune temporarily; a more advanced move to master).

And that brings us to Death Runes. Death Rune can stand in for any of the other rune types. So if you have 2 Ds, you can, for instance, BS x 2, or use an FU strike, or IT+PS. They give you more flexibility and options, but they also define your rotation based on what spec you are in by allowing you to use your best move a bit more often than you can at base. The Death Rune talent in each tree, along with the new RP moves in the tree, give each talent tree it's flavor and differentiate their play styles. Here is a quick rundown of how each spec plays when leveling:

Blood
The Blood tree overall focuses on self-healing. It uses most of its RP on Death Coils, though it can summon a floating blade that copies the DK's attacks occassionally. This tree buffs Death Strike as it's preferred FU move, and replaces Blood Strike with the more powerful version, Heart Strike. HS does more damage and has a built-in aoe "cleave" effect. Many of the talents in the tree buff HS.

Blood differs from the other trees in that it generates Death Runes from it's FU attack. This makes sense when you consider that per rune, Heart Strike is buffed into being the tree's strongest attack. You want to get more B Runes in exchange for fewer F and U runes. When you use Death Strike, those 2 runes will regen as Death Runes, which can then be used for 2 Heart Strikes instead of another Death Strike.

So, after opening a fight with IT and PS, use Death Strike and 2x Heart Strike. Once those runes cooldown, you'll be able to throw out 4x Heart Strike and a Death Strike. After that, just use IT + PS whenever your diseases fall out, spend B and D runes on HS, and spend spare FUs on DS.

Here is a sample leveling Blood spec. Season to taste.

Frost
The best way I can describe the Frost tree for DPS is that it's focused on burst damage. It gives you a number of direct damage abilities, and buffs the hell out of their crit chances and damage. It will use its RP on Frost Strike, which is a supercharged replacement for Death Coil that can only be used from melee range. It also provides an alternative FU move, Howling Blast, for AoE situations, and is the only tree with an AoE CC ability (Hungering Cold, 40 RP).

For Frost, Blood Strikes are weak and really only used to generate Death Runes for your big FU strike, Obliterate. Normally, Oblit removes diseases on the target, but one of the Frost talents prevents this, making the move spammable.

So a Frost rotation would start with PS+IT, Blood Strike x2, Oblit, Frost Strike. Then you'd just spam Oblit x3 once all those rune regenerate (2 normal FUs plus 2 Ds available), FS. Rinse, repeat. No frills, just straight-up big-crit pwnage.

Here is a sample Frost levelling spec. Best served...COLD!!!

Unholy
You want frills? Oh, Unholy's got frills, buddy. It's got a perma-Ghoul (your ghoul becomes a controllable pet rather than the passive companion it is for the other specs), a run speed increase, and a mounted speed increase. It can blow corpses up (thought I recommend you not spec into Corpse Explosion). It can summon a Gargoyle for big burst damage. A lot of your dps (20% ish) comes from your ghoul. You'll use your RP to put up Unholy Blight, an aoe damage aura (which is also better damage on single targets than DC), and then spend extra RP on Death Coils in between. This tree provides some protection in the form of Bone Shield and includes a replacement FU move, called Scourge Strike.

Don't let the low numbers on the SS tooltip fool you: it cuts through armor. SS is your heavy hitter, and you want to spam that bitch! To that end, like Frost, Unholy gives weak-ass Blood Strikes that serve only to generate Death Runes to fuel your SS-happy war machine.

The rotation is exactly like the Frost rotation: IT+PS, 2x Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, RP dump, followed by a hefty 3x Scourge Strike.

Here's a sample Unholy leveling build.

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As you can see, the DK resource system necessitates dps "rotations" where you apply diseases, then generate Death Runes to set up your spec's heavy hitter, whether that be Heart Strike, Obliterate, or Scourge Strike. Unload DCs or FSs between rune cooldowns, and you'll mow down anything in your path.

You can also augment your performance through gear and glyphs. You can see recommended major glyphs for each talent tree by clicking the provided link to the talents. I recommend all levelling specs use Glyphs of Pestilence, Raise Dead, and Horn of Winter as their minor glyphs. As for gear, focus on Strength first, with Attack Power a close second. Hit and Expertise Ratings are excellent until you get around 8% hit or 6% expertise. Haste and Crit ratings are also strong. Armor Pen is OK, but not recommended for Unholy, and Agility takes up the rear, but isn't useless. Though many of your abilities appear to be spells, please note that Spell Power, Intellect, Spirit, and spell-specific buffs have NO effect on your attacks!

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Those are the basics. There is a LOT more to playing a DK well, but this overview should get you off the ground (and out of the Thrallmar inn) and making headway through Outlands.

Enjoy, and Suffer Well, brothers and sisters of the Ebon Blade!

Death Knight Tanking Tips and Tricks for Ulduar

What you have: A DK who wants to tank. If not, then maybe you know a DK that needs a trip to the Academy of Getting Hit in the Face & Sciences.

What you don't have: My extra-special tips 'n' tricks for DK tanking (alas, I cannot find a way to make that "n" backwards). Let's rectify that.

I've been offtanking Ulduar as Frost, with this build and glyphs. High threat, high damage mitigation, and high chance of milk shakes for every 100th customer!

1. In general, Howling Blast followed by Blood Boil can be very strong snap aoe threat. The glyph of HB is great for this, because it puts a disease up on every target, buffing the Bloodboils. In aoe situations, I tend to not bother with Icy Touch, Plague Strike or Pestilence, instead using those runes for an extra HB/Oblit and Blood Boil (or a Death and Decay). I call this "the IcyHot".
   
2. Use the shortest cooldowns early. All else being equal, you should use Anti-Magic Shell first, then Icebound Fortitude, then Unbreakable Armor, then your trinkets one at a time. you can probably weave another AMS in there too, with it's 45-second cooldown.
   
3. When tanking a single target (such as a boss), be careful not to be overzealous with your Frost Strikes (or Death Coils if you aren't Frost). It's more important to alway save RP for a Rune Strike than it is to keep your RP near zero.
4. Get a mod that shows you clearly when you get a Killing Machine proc. Go out of your way to use a Frost Strike with the proc. If you are aoe tanking, use Howling Blast instead, but frankly you should be using Howling Blast every cooldown anyway if you are aoe tanking.
5. You can do pretty decent dps while offtanking. As long as you have some aoe threat, there's no reason you have to always be attacking the things that are hitting you. When Razorscale is chained down, I just let the adds beat on me and help the DPS on the boss. When tanking Pummelers on XT-002, I just use HB and DnD every cooldown, but otherwise I spend the entire fight DPSing XT or his Heart while letting the Pummelers beat ineffectually on my armored ass. Just make sure you keep the adds in front of you to you can dodge/parry.
   
6. Save aoe for the right moments. This is especially important if tanking the arena during Thorim (they invented the word "frantic just so I could use it to describe tanking the Thorim arena. True Story, Webster told me). The first few attempts, I dropped DnD at the start, and it went to waste by hitting only one or two mobs. Instead, watch your rune use and drop DnD when the large group of weak Citizens spawns. On that fight, I tend to save Death Grip for the Runecasters, DnD for the citizens, and Taunt for the Vykrul warriors. Then I just group everything up and spam the IcyHot while dumping RP on the primary kill target.
7. You can damn near solo the adds on Ignis, especially now that the encounter has been nerfed into the ground. When they first spawn, taunt them off the healers and hit them with IT, then smack them with an Oblit or FS as soon as they get in range to solidify aggro. Then, turn and run directly through the fire patch. Watch the add and snare them with Chains of Ice when they are just inside the fire. Then, you can run around the outside of the fire in a circle, casting CoI every few seconds, to keep them in there. Now that it only takes 10 stacks rather than 20 to make them molten, this is extremely easy. When they have 9 stacks, run into the edge of the water (we have the tank move Ignis in a rectangle around the center line so the fire is always near a pool) and Death Grip, then call for a ranged dps to blow up the add while you run to grab the next one. Repeat.
8. Use your ghoul to help the DPS. I tend to pop mine every cooldown on most fights, or specificially when Razorscale is chained down. Try to summon it right after a big aoe, rather than right before.
9. Remember to stay in Frost Presence when tanking. I totally didn't wipe my raid on trash 3 times the other night because I was in Blood Presence. Totally. Didn't.
10. When you need to switch to dps mid-fight, remember that you can switch presences, weapons, and sigils during combat. I have the luxury of having two separate weapons of similar power, so I enchant one with Stoneskin Gargoyle for tanking and one with Fallen Crusader for dps. If I need to switch to pure dps mid-fight, I equip the dps weapon, and Awareness sigil and switch to Blood Presence. Fights where this is useful include Freya and Iron Council.
11. In an emergency when all of your other cooldowns are down, you can use Army of the Dead to mitigate a big hit. The secondary effect of channeling the spell is that your avoidance (dodge/parry) gets converted directly into damage reduction. If a Fusion Punch is incoming and all your defenses are spent, you can pop AotD and mitigate 40-60% of the impact.
    

Next week, I'll make a similar list of tips for Unholy DPS, including an in-depth exploration of how to make effective use of Ghoul Frenzy. Here's a freebie: make sure your ghoul is alive before you use it.

Have a good weekend, I know I will.

OMG 3.1!!!! Emelon Down (and switching mains)

ZOMG 3.1 came out last night! And though server maintenance seemed interminable (every hour we got a new announcement saying they would make an announcement in an hour), the patch was surprisingly stable and low on bugs compared to past patches, especially ones of this magnitude.

My guild is full of realists, so instead of dashing straight into Ulduar, we had reserved this evening for everyone to get their addons squared away, set up their dual specs, and explore the new non-raid content. As it turned out, the patch was so stable that we were ready to raid at one point, so we threw together a quick raid on the Vault of Archavon and the new boss therein, Emelon the Storm Watcher.

But before I get to that, I have some ...news. I'm not sure yet if it's bad or good for you, but I'm pretty happy about it.

I'm switching mains.

Up until now, I've considered myself a proud member of the Rogue community, trying to encourage other rogues to enjoy the class and be proud as well, despite that fact that rogue numbers declined this xpac faster than any other class. However, a confluence of factors compelled me to switch mains. I have a level 80 DK, and I'd really been enjoying playing her lately, more than my rogue. I liked getting back into tanking a bit (as my offspec, when needed), and having that flexibility was such a boon, especially when my guild only has 2 other toons capable of tanking, so if one of them doesn't show we usually have to call a raid or bring alts. Dual spec makes this even better (and didn't help my rogue help the raid).

My 10-man raid is also caster-heavy, so I figured the unholy buff would be better than the rogue buff for our group overall. Though my rogue was in almost full Best in Slot, my DK also has excellent gear and was able to be competitive with my rogue (at least before he got buffed in 3.1) on DPS. The bottom line was, I was having more fun and getting more variety out of my DK (and I gotta say, womping things with a 2-hander was a factor), and it was a win/win for my guild. We didn't even have a DK main until now, which kind of made Malygos more of a bitch than he really had to be.

I also had another major reason to be disappointed with my rogue. Rogues offer the absolute least raid utility of any class. Period, end of story. Rogues bring the fewest buffs to the raid.

Consider this: Rogues are now the ONLY class that can't either offer tanking, healing, or replenishment if needed. They are also the ONLY class besides hunters who do not have an innate ability to buff a raid regardless of spec (Mark of the Wild, Battle Shout, Imp HP buff, etc.), and hunters have the advantage of being one of the more convenient replenishment sources (90% of raiding hunters are specced for it because it's their strongest DPS spec), a stronger misdirect, kiting ability, can bring more buffs from their pets, AND have buffs within their specs that are at least as good as whatever rogues can get. And let's not even get started on Battle Rez or Bloodlust for raid utility.

This isn't a big deal in 25 man raids, since it's pretty easy to get all of the major buffs covered. But in 10-man raids, it's inexcusable. You need to stack buffs, and every player needs to be buffing everyone else.

Before, I brought 4% physical damage to a raid with only 2-3 physical DPS, and a weak misdirect. I couldn't reliably use Tricks to buff someone else's dps because there was usually no one else in melee range with me, and Tricks wouldn't reach the mages or hunter, not to mention threat issues. Now I bring Horn of Winter AND 12% magic damage to a raid with 3-4 magic dps, AND tanking capability. It's no contest.

Rogues need to provide another buff. Preferably at base without it needing to be talented into. I'd recommend they make the 4% physical damage innate to poisons, and replace it in the Combat tree with something else like the bleed debuff (currently the purview of feral druids and arms warriors).

But anyway, yeah, now I play a DK instead of a rogue mainly. The rogue isn't gone, I just won't be playing him as much anymore, nor paying as much attention to min/maxing him.

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And so it was that my Unholy DPS DK took on Emelon the Storm Watcher in a 10-man raid with my guild. We went in totally blind: not even a hint of strategy or research. It was thrilling: the fear and anticipation of not knowing what was going to happen, and trying to be prepared and alert to react. It was a blast! I definitely enjoyed the Tobold style of fun last night. :)

SPOILERS AHEAD!

There's a new branch off to the right of the central, circular room as you approach Archavon. Turn down that branch, and you face a short hallway with just 2 trash mobs. They look like bluer, glowing-er versions of the stone trash you are used to fighting. They appear to be lightning revenants. When they get low on health, they start to quickly stack a buff on themselves that increases their damage heavily. You need to burn them fast right at the end, so they don't go around one-shotting your raid.

After clearing the trash, you face Emalon himself, which looks just like Archavon as far as I could tell. His room looks a bit smaller (thought that could just be my imagination). He's surrounded by 4 adds. Though they look like the lightning trash you just killed, they have different names and much lower HP pools.

As we stood there buffing up and planning, we went with a classic strategy: AoE down the adds, then kill the boss. Simple. Time-tested.

Wrong.

He spawns new adds periodically throughout the fight, and by the time we could kill even one of the originals, a new one had appeared at full health to take it's place. Around this time, one of them started to grow, gaining stacks of the buff to his damage. We kept AoEing. Then suddenly everyone was dead! A quick check of our combat logs revealed that the lightning add had zapped us all, so we decided to just focus on DPSing the boss down and ignoring the adds, and seeing how that went. The trash before the boss had triggered the buff based on HP, so as long as we didn't hit the adds too hard, we were safe, right?

Wrong again. Around the same distance into the fight, we all suddenly died all at once.

But this time, we noticed that the supercharge seemed to be triggered by Emalon himself (he emoted when he did it), rather than by the HP of the add. We also noticed, from all the pain, that Emalon had a Loken-style lightning nova with a long cast time that you had to run away from him to avoid. This is a nice anti-M&S measure to the fight.

When we got back, we decided that we would dps the boss until he supercharged an add, then we would focus DPS down the charged add before he could kill us.

It was a close thing, with the adds reaching 9 charges more often than not. But we did it. On our third attempt, we defeated the new raid-wiping VoA boss after going in blind. It was an awesome experience.

I thought the fight was very well-designed, for a simple WG boss. It had a good reason for using both tanks and it put damage control in the player's hands: run out of the nova, and your healers have less to heal through. In a way, this makes the dps players "heal" themselves, which is great, and forces them to pay attention beyond spamming their rotation.

The best part of the design is that it required quick focus, coordination, and high dps to survive. All the dps had to switch to the add immediately, or wipe the raid, and they had to do enough dps fast enough to beat the stacks. It was a rare instance of placing responsibility on the dps, rather than putting it ALL on the shoulders of the tanks and healers while the dps got to goof off and spam their rotations.

I can't wait for tonight's Ulduar-10. We'll be going in semi-blind this time, with a bit of knowledge of the abilities of the early bosses, but not strategy spoilers. Wish us luck!

Some Talent Specs for Patch 3.1

In case the patch hits tomorrow (I'm still saying next week, but many think we'll be seeing extended maintenance tomorrow), here are my speccing plans. I won't really cover the other rogue specs, except to go over the change to needed weapon speeds due to the change of Wound and Instant poison's proc chances to a proc per minute model. This change essentially equalizes the number of poison procs you get based on your weapon speed, so fast weapons are no longer the end-all-be-all for poison damage. Big bravo to Blizzard for that one, as rogue weapon speed has been a major problem this entire expansion cycle.

I now recommend a slow mainhand for HaT (optimizes poison procs off Evis), and weapon speed no longer matters as much for Mutilate. Mutilate rogues should start using their highest dps weapons, feeling free to mainhand a 1.8 speed weapon. Slower mainhands also become very important for Combat rogues, increasing the rate of poison procs off Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. All rogues still want a fast offhand for Deadly Poison, which was buffed this patch and was NOT converted to ppm, so it begs for a fast weapon.

Combat Rogue

Spec:
15/51/5

If you happen to have 2 swords or maces that are better than your fist/dagger combo, just move those 5 points around to the other specialization.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Sinister Strike
Glyph of Slice and Dice
Glyph of Rupture

(Advanced tip: Adrenaline Rush glyph is OK if you find that you can get a very good rotation going without the SnD glyph. However, NEVER remove the SS or Rupture glyphs)

Rotation:
Xs/5r/Xe
(3s/5r/5e)

What did I just say? In the rotation notation (c wut i did thar?), s stands for Slice And Dice, r for Rupture, and e for Eviscerate. Env would stand for Envenom if I were using it. The number before the letter symbolizes how many combo points you want to have before using the ability. The reason there are X's before s and e is because they vary based on your gear. If you are in all blues, 5s/5r/5e is probably what you should aim for. As your gear gets better, start reducing the number of combo points you put into Slice and Dice, and see how low you can get it without letting SnD drop and still doing a 5r and 5e. You can also be very effective if you drop to a 4e instead, if it allows you to remove a combo point from your SnD. Rules of thumb: NEVER let SnD drop, and don't plan a rotation with less than 5 points per Rupture. Cut combo points from Evis or add them to SnD instead to make your cycle fit your gear level.

If you are going into Ulduar on Tuesday, then you can probably comfortably go with a 3s/5r/5e rotation, occasionally only doing 4e if you get unlucky with energy and combo point procs.

Dual weapon specs (for instance fist/sword) are dead. I recommend the above for Ulduar, though 18/51/2 (Xs/5r/Xenv rotation) and 7/51/13 (drop SnD glyph, 4s/5r rotation) are also viable. The former is a bit unstable without full Relentless Strikes, and the latter requires more time on your target to get the most from Rupture, which won't be ideal based on what I know about Ulduar fights. All of these specs will put out similar DPS if you get the rotation right.


Unholy DPS Death Knight:

Spec:
12/0/59

After your gear improves, you may get better dps from 0/10/61 because Black Ice got buffed to also effect shadow damage. However, keep in mind that you lose the threat reduction from Subversion, so you better have a great tank, or your gonna find your face will be the one tanking. The floor.

Yes, you will be tempted to deviate from my spec and take Dark Conviction because that 5% extra crit looks pretty on your character sheet. However, since many of your abilities don't care about your crit, it turns out that the math shows DC to be inferior to the points spent in Unholy. It may look like a good talent (and it's not bad) but you'll be giving up DPS if you take it.

Use a 2-hander, as the latest patch nerfed dual-wielding hard. Look at DPS first, then speed (slower is better because it increases your Strike damage by a small amount), then stats.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Scourge Strike
Glyph of The Ghoul
Glyph of Dark Death (new!)

Rotation:
IT>PS>BS>BS>SS --rune dump [edit: I meant Runic Power dump, not rune dump]
SS>SS>SS --rune dump

Keep spamming SS (Scourge Strike) until your diseases drop. Hopefully, you get lucky on Glyph of SS procs and don't have to recast IT (Icy Touch) and PS (Plague Strike) very often. Generally, use Blood Runes for BS (Blood Strike). When Bone Shield needs a refresh or the Ghoul needs a heal from Ghoul Frenzy, I tend to Blood Tap one of the Blood runes and use that, because it hurts my rotation the least. For your rune dump, put up UB (Unholy Blight) if it has dropped, otherwise Death Coil.

Keep your Ghoul alive and resummon if he dies, and pop the Gargoyle in time with your trinkets and other temporary buffs, as he takes a "snapshot" of your stats when he is summoned, allowing him to benefit from your trinket buffs for his entire 30-second duration.


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I'm pretty excited to try out these new specs on Live. Combat rogues were just plain buffed, while Unholy DKs still look very strong, and actually gained a bit of fun and an improved talent tree layout with more real, viable choices, in exchange for a few nerfs and the loss of the ability to come back from the dead as a ghoul and/or buff the entire raid group with run speed. I'm not sure if it's an overall buff or not, but it looks like an improvement to the design, so either way I'm pretty happy. Class balance seems to be going so well even as the design team seems to be getting 10- vs. 25-man raiding so wrong.

Death Knights in 3.1: Frost Tanking Guide

Death Knights are simultaneously simple and complicated.

Though these new kids in town have been subject to more changes in the past few months than probably all other classes combined, the experience the dev team brought to class design really showed in this first foray into creating a totally new class since WoW launched all those years ago.

Though sometimes frustrating or broken, the rune and disease system is clever for forcing the player to use a wide variety of abilities instead of simply spamming the strongest one, and for allowing flexibility in resource use without handing the player unlimited resources of every type. The class also does a lot of other things right, despite it's flaws.

But this isn't an essay on the design triumphs of the Death Knight, at least not today. Today, it's about passing on all the factiods I've gleaned from poring over EJ and other websites and doing hands-on research about two specific DK specs, how they work, and how they will change in 3.1.

Unholy DPS:

I fell in love with the Unholy tree in beta, and played it almost exlusively up until a few weeks ago. It remains my favorite dps tree. I will delve into it's intricacies in an upcoming post. I had intended to write it up here, but the Frost tanking discussion ran on waaaaay too long and I needed to get back to my real job.

Frost Tanking:

But when trying to tank in today's aoe-now-ask-questions-later, fights-longer-than-10-seconds-are-for-losers environment, my love affair with Unholy became strained. With so much of my dps relegated to the ghoul and gargoyle, I found my TPS (threat per second) severely lacking as I tried to keep up with the dpsers I was raiding with. I loved Unholy Blight, but its slow and steady nature meant it took too long to build the aggro I needed (or to be more exact, the aggro my mage's tender, easily-bruised faces needed me to have). Sure, through perfect play I could keep up . . . unless there was another Unholy DK in the raid. Then, a bug would cause all but one of us to lose our third disease, thus severely reducing our damage (or in my case, threat). It was the last straw when I raided with 2 Unholy dps DKs, so I decided to try another tree (note: this bug is fixed in 3.1, though Unholy threat can still be a bit hampered in other ways).

I'm not a big fan of Blood as a tanking tree. I know and salute some who love that tree for tanking, but I grew up as a warrior tank in the TBC mold, where heals were coming steadily and your job was to still be alive when those heals landed. Avoidance was less important (since the heal was coming whether you dodged or not, so why waste their mana) and instead the focus was on HP (so you didn't die between heals) and armor (so the healers could slow down their steady stream of heals a bit). This is no longer so strictly true, with avoidance working very well for DKs (especially in tandem with Bone Shield and Rune Strike, our primary threat ability), and spammed heals no longer quite as necessary. I can see how Blood could work for some people. But for me, I would always rather focus on reducing my incoming damage and letting healers worry about filling my green bar. Whenever I think about switching to Blood, I start thinking about using Blood Tap at the wrong time and overwriting a healer's heal, wasting her mana. It's just not in me to use a tanking spec based on self-healing; increasing my own survivability is more my style.

So I settled on Frost. I found out later that it is actually the highest threat tanking spec, and will continue to be so (though by a smaller margin) in 3.1. All of your damage comes from you, with no perma-ghoul, gargoyle, or phantom sword. Talents will cause you to crit a lot more, and Howling Blast is exactly the snap-aggro aoe move you need for today's ridiculous aoe pulls. I tried it and finally managed to hold aggro and even keep up with the other tanks on single-targets. Plus, I was seeing a lot of big honkin' crits! The Frost tree gives a lot of crit from talents, which is nice because my base crit is somewhere around 6% in my tanking gear. I was sold.

Here's my spec pre-3.1: 11/50/10

Using Glyphs of Rune Strike, Icy Touch, and Obliterate. Some DKs prefer Glyph of Frost Strike in place of one of these, but I have tons of avoidance and found that I was using almost all of my Runic Power on Rune Strikes anyway. After 3.1, glyph choices will change a lot.

In the current Live environment, you can pretty safely skip Plague Strike and Blood Plague altogether. Most single-target pulls will start with Blood Tap to convert a Blood Rune to a Death Rune (though some prefer to save this for using Unbreakable Armor without disrupting your rotation). Then open with:

IT>Ob>Ob>BS -rune dump
then
Ob>Ob>Ob -rune dump

Then I fall into a rhythm of refreshing IT whenever Frost Fever drops, using Blood Runes for BS, and otherwise Obliterating. Every once in a while this will leave me with an extra rune. If it's a Death Rune, I'll use it for an extra IT. If an Unholy Rune, I'll usually just wait a few seconds til I can use it on an Oblit, eventually shaking an extra Death Rune free for an IT.

Depending on your gear level and buffs, HB on every cooldown might be better than Ob. Generally, a very high-end weapon and high Expertise will tend to favor Ob (since it's a melee strike), while weaker weapons and more hit rating will favor HB (since it's a spell that doesn't scale with weapon damage).

Generally on aoe pulls I'll drop Death & Decay, then IT>Pest, then wait for my runes to cooldown and HB as soon as I can

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The talent trees will also get quite a re-arranging for the upcoming patch. Here is my post-3.1 Frost tanking spec, with glyphs, and an analysis that only applies to post-3.1:

Spec: 11/51/9

Analysis:

No self-respecting DK tank should miss the first 5 points in each tree: Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. Blade Barrier is being nerfed in 3.1, but is still a powerful and mandatory tanking talent. I'd also highly recommend 3 more points in Frost for Improved Icy Touch. Many DKs only read the "added damage" part and don't think this is a tanking talent, but it also reduces the target's attack speed by another 6% (that's 6% more physical mitigation for 3 points! What a bargain!). The only reason to ever skip this is if you are an expert and KNOW, FOR SURE, that another expert in every one of your raids will be applying the same debuff to your targets (for instance, via a warrior's Thunderclap). If not, you want that mitigation. Otherwise, take it, no matter how much you want other talents.

From there, you have two choices in the Frost tree: either go down the "Improved Icy Talons" line if you know your raid will be relying on your for the Windfury buff, or pick up Killing Machine and one more talent point instead. Deathchill vs. Hungering Cold for that one free point is highly debated. I tend to go for HC because it applies the Frost Fever disease instantly to an enemy group, helping the damage of a Howling Blast alpha strike for quick threat.

For survivability, you want Frigid Dreadplate, Unbreakable Armor, and Improved Frost Presence (which is greatly changed in 3.1). 3.1 removes the avoidance bonus to Lichborne, so skip it. Guile of Gorefiend also lends some survivability by extending Icebound Fortitude, so pick that up. Acclimation may look tempting, but it's very nearly useless on most bosses considering how infrequently they tend to use magic attacks. The points are better spent elsewhere. After that, the choice is obvious about taking the other talents for threat and skipping the PvP and Dual Wield talents. You should be burning RP on Rune Strikes too fast for RP Mastery to be beneficial. I wish I could fit in the range increase on Icy Touch, but it's just too situational to give up the other threat talents. Annihilation (Oblit no longer removes diseases) and Blood of the North (death runes) are key to a strong rotation, while all the other talents I chose pumped the maximum threat.

Where to put your "floater" points in Blood and Unholy is again up to debate. Bladed Armor is the strongest threat choice in Blood for a Frost build, so you can't go wrong with 5 points there. If you have any remaining points to put in Blood, avoid the temptation of Dark Conviction and instead go for 2-Handed Mastery. Again, I chose Virulence in Unholy for the +hit. I wanted to put some points in Morbidity to make Death and Decay more viable, but with Howling Blast being more usable at the beginning of fights, D&D may fall out of favor with Frost, so it may be wiser to put those points in Two-handed Mastery and Bladed Armor once you try out 3.1. One point in epidemic allows for a smoother rotation that I prefer, but there are totally viable rotations that don't use it. I find that with a 20-second disease cycle I can fit in one more Obliterate before needing to Icy Touch again, in most cases.

Speaking of rotation, the new Frost is less reliant on Frost Fever and the value of Plague Strike and Blood Plague has been improved thanks to the change to strike scaling with diseases (strikes now go up by a percentage of your damage rather than a flat value per disease) and the addition of shadow damage to Black Ice. Now your rotation on single-targets should start off like:

PS>IT>Ob>BS>BS -runic dump (Frost Strikes if you have the RP)
then
Ob>Ob>Ob

Then repeat those moves in a priority order. If your diseases are up, hit Oblit if you can. Use Blood Strikes when you have diseases up and nothing but Blood Runes available. If your diseases have faded, re-apply PS and IT (PS first because IT does more damage to diseased targets). You should end up relying quite a bit on Oblit, which should give you a number of Rime procs you can use on free Howling Blasts whenever you have a free global cooldown.

Remember to either macro Rune Strike into all of your moves, or hit it whenever it lights up. Only Frost Strike if you are over 60 Runic Power. Othwerwise save it for RS.

There are also some viable rotations that apply diseases using the new glyphed Pestilence (glyph causes it to refresh diseases on your target) or glyphed HB (causes it to apply Frost Fever). I don't personally like them and don't think they will shake out to be as good as my more "traditional" rotation, so I don't recommend them.

On aoe pulls, your standard is going to be:
PS>IT>Pest>HB>BB (Blood Boil, buffed in 3.1)

If you need LOTS of aoe threat RIGHT NOW on a new pull, hit Hungering Cold then Howling Blast.


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So that's what how to play a Frost Tanking spec, both now and post-3.1. My DK is on my mind lately, so expect more DK posts in the near-future. I'd like to discuss Unholy DPS, DK design, and general DK tanking tips.

How To Run Your Own Awesome Naxx 25 PuG: Part 2: All the Rest

Since top ten lists = most popular thing on the internet, and me = liking the number 10, here are 9 more thingies I think you should do if you want to lead a Naxx 25 pug that is going to mow down the place, clear everything, and give you and your buddies best in slot gear (and inevitably gear up that one guy who keeps getting lucky drops).

This is the completion of my previous article on leading highly-successful 25-man Naxx PuGs. If you are wondering why you should care what I think, go look at the previous article's intro to hear how I've been running pugs for months that clear Naxx 25 in 4 hours, blabbity-blah-blah-blah.

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2. Tag-team leading. It really helps to have two leaders working together (without stepping on each others' toes). Ideally, you have one really "social" person to handle invites, organization, and announcements, and one "mathy" person to handle strategies and the Spreadsheet (more on that later). When doing loot, one person calls for rolls and handles master looting, while the other alt-tabs out to the spreadsheet to track loot.

It helps if these people are reasonably likeable. Having Obnoxious Know-It-All Uptight Nerdy Guy isn't going to work. No one ever thinks of themselves as unlikeable, so you'll have to either guess at your own likeability based on inferences from people around you, or you'll have to find someone who will tell you the truth about your likeability. Or you could build a time machine, and go back and observe yourself to see if you are annoying. But that seems like a lot of effort just to get a Valorous helmet.

3. Have your own vent server. Or teamspeak, whatever. I don't really need to explain why this is good. You want someone who will be present at most raids to have admin privileges in case you need to boot or mute someone.

4. Keep vent "clear" during bosses. This is where you draw the line between success and failure. If you view raiding as a chance to get together and joke on vent and not pay attention or put in any effort to the game at all, that's fine, but this guide isn't for you. We have a ton of fun joking around on vent and mainly in raid and guild chat without disrupting our ability to succeed. Joking around is our second priority, after success. You can have fun and kick ass at the same time! Don't settle for less!

Let people chat during trash, and encourage people to joke around in raid chat. But during boss explanations, everyone needs to shut up, and during the boss, everyone needs to shut up unless what they have to say is vitally important AND is not already being handled by a raid leader. If you take it upon yourself to call polarity shifts on Thaddius while the raid leader is doing it at the same time, you help no one and just cause confusion and annoyance. However, if you notice that someone is, say, standing in a void zone, please shout something out so they can save themselves!

Here's a handy flowchart on whether or not you should speak in vent during a boss, courtesy of I heart bubbles.

At some point in your pugging career, you will encounter aggressive people who will try to assert themselves on vent during bosses, and this will annoy you and other raiders. Do not be afraid to ask in a firm voice for them to "please keep vent clear" if they are being distracting or disruptive.

5. Be fair. The quickest way to drive away good raiders is to screw them over. Under NO circumstances should you screw over a pugger to give loot to a guildie in voilation of whatever loot rules you set up. Announce some rules, and then follow them. If you want to reserve something, such as certain pieces of loot or the Maly key, announce it at the beginning of the raid and offer raiders the opportunity to leave if they disagree.

6. Be open but authoritative. Be open to suggestions on how to do boss fights or other aspects of the raid. But when you tell people what to do, don't be wishy-washy about it. Pretend to yourself that you are in charge and have authority, and you will appear to others to be in charge. It's OK to ask for input, but remember, you and your co-leader are "the Deciders". If you act too consistently ambivalent, someone more assertive will step up and push you out, or things will devolve into chaos and no one will listen to you. Be sure you want to lead before you try leading. And remember, the more successful your raids are, the more people will want to listen to you, and the less effort you'll have to put into looking like you are in charge.

7. Know the strats ahead of time, and have someone who can explain them succinctly. This is key to appearing in charge, keeping the raid quick and successful, and actually killing bosses. Memorize the strats, explain them quickly, make sure you give assignements for tanks and healers and a kill order for dps. Don't be repetitive, don't take forever to explain, and don't make people wait to long between reaching the boss and the pull, or they will disengage, stop paying attention, and care less about the raid.

For instance, when I explain Sapphiron, I go: "This is Sapph, a big dragon. He alternates between two phases. When he's on the ground, melee stand on his side between his front and rear leg, since he can tail swipe and has an aoe cone he shoots in front of him. Everyone will need to watch out for Blizzards/Chill. They do a LOT of damage, so you need to get out of them ASAP when they randomly spawn on you or move toward you. Stay generally spread out during this phase. Odd numbered groups should go to the left side of the room, even numbered groups to the right. When Sapph flies into the air, you need to spread out and run to the wall [there is currently a bug that makes you immune to the frost nova if you are standing on the grates at the side of the room] and stand on the grate, but it's VERY IMPORTANT that you stay spread out while you are moving. He will hit 3 random people with ice blocks, and anyone too close to them will probably die. If you get a healer killed this way, you bring shame upon your ancestors. Also, healers, be aware that everyone in the raid will take 1200 damage from the aura every 3 seconds. Everyone else, if your health gets low, do the healers a favor and healthstone/pot. They may not have time to heal you."

8. Start with a group you know. Your main tank should be a guildie, and some of the healers should be your guildies too. This helps immensely because you know you can trust the main tank and can talk to him/her easily throughout the instance. The MT and healers make up the backbone of the raid. Tanks also have a tendency to be drama queens, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. It also helps if you have a few guildie dps who can impress anyone looking at the meters. :) The stronger your base group is, the more effective the raid is, and the more you attract more good raiders.

9. Don't be afraid to deal with morons and slackers, aka M&S (shout out to Gevlon) It's a popular misconception that you have to be "nice" to everyone. You don't! Though I tend to be nice to most people, I have no qualms about dealing with Morons and Slackers.

If someone is being stupid and loud on vent, they might be told to keep vent clear and not be invited back to future raids. I have told one particularly obnoxious child to "shut up" in vent before (after whispered complaints about the person from over half the raid), and it improved the raid experience overall for everyone. If someone is being outright disruptive, they can be kicked from the raid. If someone is not performing well, don't invite them back. Let the entire raid know that you expect decent performance. You are the steward of the raid, and it's your job to make the experience as good as you can for everyone. Which means you have to bite the bullet and do the dirty job of sometimes not being "nice". Don't leave it off in hopes that someone else will do it.

Don't let people get away with constant AFKs. If people need repairs, drop a bot instead of waiting for them to hearth then get summoned back. And, under no circumstances should you ever allow someone to run back to Dalaran to hand in a tier token they got during your raid. The statistical benefit is never worth the morale and interest loss to the raid overall from having to wait for this person. And even worse, if you let even one person do, it everyone will demand to do it, and you end up having to wait 1/2 hour after every wing for people to go hand in tokens. Then "just take a second" to gem and enchant them, etc.

Dealing with M&S decisively has, like, a bajillion benefits. Such as:

-Good raiders stay around, because they feel like everyone else is up to their standards and they aren't being annoyed by a moron or having to carry a slacker.

-Your raid performs better

-Your raiders see that you don't accept M&S, so they don't slack off or try to take advantage of you.

-Everyone has more fun!


10. Keep track of performance and invite back good players

This is where the excel spreadsheet (or openoffice, or whatever) comes in.

...

...Hey, come back!

Yeah, I know, spreadsheet, yawn. Get over it, spreadsheets are your friend, especially considering how pathetic the community building and social tracking options are in the game itself. Set up 3 tabs in your spreadsheet to start.

The first tab is your "friends contact list". Here, put the names of every pugger who performs well and has a good attitude that you want to invite back. Make notes whenever you can to help you keep track of them. Just put their names in one column, and notes in the next column, stretched out wider. This list will be a godsend when you are trying to set up future raids...

...but not as much of a godsend as a "no fly list" on the second tab. This is the list of puggers who will NOT be invited back. Make sure you note why they aren't invited back.

You'll very quickly build a nice database that makes creating the foundations of your pug a breeze. Every week, your group will get better and better. And the best part is, you've dramatically expanded your list of good players who like grouping with you. It makes trying to do heroics or future pug raids much easier.

This is also very useful because if your pugs are successful, puggers will start asking about joining your guild. Keeping track of these things will help you know what to tell them.

In the third tab of the spreadsheet, track loot. Label this one by date. I just put 3 columns: name, item slot, boss. For example: Supermage/cape/Razuvious. It's not worth it to try to record the item name, instead just say "cape", "belt", "sword", etc. You can always look up what drops from the boss to figure it out later. This way you can, at any time, refer back to the list and tell exactly where and when someone got a drop, in case they try to say they didn't get anything or there are other disputes.

Add another loot tab for every new raid. After I get a few tabs, I tend to "save as copy" to archive the previous weeks, then delete them so the spreadsheet doesn't get too cluttered or take up a lot of memory.

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Whew! So that's it for my neat top 10 list of the habits of highly successful naxx 25 pugs. I hope they work as well for you as they have for me. May your Slots always be Best In!

BONUS 11th tip: bring feasts! This both makes the raid perform a bit better, encourages buffing, and helps create a positive, friendly, giving attitude for the raid as a whole. Plus, they are relatively cheap.