Ding! Nysir!

Last night Nysir, my noble deathknight and loveable frostitroll finally dinged 80!
/cheer



Sorry to the person I leveled with - it was late, I was cranky and just too tired. Will make it up to you, promise!

I have been looking at where I need to go and what factions I need reputation with... there is a really short answer to this: all of them.

So if you need a tank (fresh 80) on Die Todeskrallen (EU) - let me know.

:)

Old content

Many moons ago when I had not a single character that was of the highest level (at the time that was 60) and I made my rounds through Badlands and killed Elementals to farm my first mount (60% mount, I didn't even dream of an Epic landmount then) I promised myself to never do this again - to level like that by grinding.

Well, I did it once more for another char, just because for certain levels it was hard to find quests. It was really early vanilla WoW and well, we didn't know any better. Of course there were quests. But nearly all of them were leading into instances. And of course I hated grouping back then.

I have no clue how I got to 60 (my Tauren hunter) - I do know that I dinged in Silithus, before there was Ahn'Qirai or Cenarion Hold, there were only some NPCs with one lousy questline (who are still standing at the entrance to the zone). There wasn't much to do at 60. You weren't getting extra gold for quests, so why bother? I only grinded reputation after AQ opened in Silithus for some new designs for leatherworking or running Scholomance for people who wanted their epic cloak crafted. I know I bought the design for a lot of gold from the auction house and it got me into a lot of groups for Scholo. :)

And then I leveled my Priest and got into the whole healing thing. I abandoned my hunter and really got into a different kind of game. Molten Core was the thing. I spent months in there. Zul'Gurub was next, and even a short but painful visit to Blackwing Lair. I learned a lot about aggro in there and about getting the last bit out of the gear. Then did my priest epic quest, Benediction/Anathema were nice companions deep into the Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade changed a lot of the game for me. It was simply painful for a Priest to heal heroics. Being one-hitted by trash mobs was not fun. Being always the one to run back all the way through an instance for the x-th time - no fun at all. So I leveled my druid who was stuck in her 50ties forever. Got her up and into Karazhan before I broke away from my guild and was looking for something really different.

The server I played on was (and is) a nightmare for Horde. It is very much an Alliance server and grouping is hell. So I went to look for a different server. And started from scratch. Repeated everything again, including the breaking away from a guild that had occupied my gaming time for most of the time on that server.
The game changed again, it's now capped at 80 levels. It's not hard to level from 1 to 60 anymore. It has become pretty much a joke compared to vanilla WoW. But isn't that something to be glad about?

The old content is still there, you can still roam around Eastern Plaguelands if that is your thing. You can still get frustrated by grinding Argent Dawn reputation - but you can do it in so much less time. Just the focus has shifted. Nowadays you will grind Argent Dawn rep for a title, not for a being able to enchant manareg on bracers or get cheap entry to Naxxramas (40).

Old content is not dead only because people are more interested in raiding Ulduar. Old content is still there and people still play it. I will go back to old content on my Deathknight, he has a lot of things to do. I really want to do that for him. And WoW Wiki is a great source for people who don't know what the Timbermaw are... or do you know who the Shen'dralar were and what you could get there? Yes, enchants for your legs... before leatherworking fixed that.

Nysir, the Noble

Yesterday Nysir, my Frost DK ate too much chocolate eggs, being a purple bunny for most of the day was fun, though and now he has got his first ever titel "the Noble". :)

Finding all the females for Shake Your Bunny-Maker was a bit trying, took a long time to find a Gnome and a Dwarf.
But others in the guild were doing the achievement as well, and so Mílena and I went to Un'Goro together to lay eggs. (*hehe*) And later posed in Dalaran with pink dresses, bunny ears and just very gay - going "omg omg" in g-chat.

If I remember when I get home I'lll post some screenshots. :)

Ramparts - Two Deathknights and a Priest

Last night we did something cool.
Our "group of awesome imbaness" - a 62 Disc Priest, a 61 Blood Deathknight and my 63 Frost Deathknight entered Ramparts and finished it in a moderate timeframe.

The only thing I had a problem with was the dragon mount of the one boss (Nazan) - he resisted almost all of my Frost attacks and kept going after the priest, and killed him when we had him at about half health. We finished him off, but still it bugged me. And as I've just read he has a very high amount of resistance to all magic... so tanking him as a Frost-DK is kind of hard.

But the other stuff was easy and no problem at all. I had not tanked anything in over a year, so this was kind of an experiment / exercise for me. I like my Frostitroll and I think he did pretty well so far. There is of course much room for a more refined approach. The only thing I don't have down is something really essential for a Deathknight: applying diseases.
I pull, I try to do this with Icy Touch so that Frost Fever is already on there, Howling Blast and then go from there. But I don't have the rotation down, because I always miss the point for re-applying diseases. Hmmm. Normally at the point when I get kicked away and panic that the healer gets aggro. And I guess this will be getting better when I just do not panic.

And that's the only reason I think I'll never be a good tank at all, the panic is always there, the insecurity of how the group needs to move through the instance and that I'm not used to calling the shots and making the choices.

We'll see how this will play out. And over a year is a lot time of "not tanking".

I read a lot on Deathknight.info about tanking and rotation, what you can do if you are in a tight spot and so on. But at level 63 I don't even have Dark Command, so I do not have all the tools to play with. I used a spec I found there but put all the points needed in Blood and Unholy first - so I have not all which I need from Frost. But I'm getting there.

Frost (10/54/7) - Tanking and my arsenal link for my current spec.

If you are looking for advise on different tanking specs, just go to Deathknight.info and have a look at this post: Common Tanking Specs.

Death Knight - my new fotm

fotm - Flavor Of The Month

I have now 4 (four!) Death Knights. A female undead, a male troll, a male human and a male undead. Of course spread over two accounts and three servers.

I am crazy, you know. But I wanted to try out different specs and now that you can have a Death Knight wherever you want (only limited to one DK per server per account) - and the starting zone is very cool - I now seem to be in DK heaven.

My male troll DK was to be Blood but the person I want to play him with (a priest) nagged me about my aggro reduce that I finally gave in and skilled completely Frost, which should hold aggro way better. :)

I wonder, though which one will make it to 80. Unholy, Frost or Blood? In the end, however, it will have nothing to do with the spec, rather which race I prefer the most - Undead, Troll or Human?
I think Troll. But we'll see. I do want to play the Troll together with the priest, so it depends on if he wants to level his priest rather than which DK I will continue playing.

The Unholy spec is great, and fun - but Blood has worms and much healing. I think I prefer Blood for leveling alone (which will be the Human), Frost for group-play and Unholy for when I want to do both. Unholy seems to be the one tree as of now which let's you have nice AoE and is not very gear-dependent.
The ghoul is fun, the gargoyle is great. So, my unholy undead girl will maybe be my main test object for the coming weeks. I wonder if I will ever be brave enough to actually tank with a DK.

So stay tuned for more Death Knight goodness, talent specs and all.