Hellscreams version of Orgrimmar on the background. A confused Death Knight on a ePeen-mount in the foreground. 

Cataclysm Beta
After spending to much time in all the WoW betas to date, i kind of promised myself not to participate in the Cataclysm beta. I wanted, for once, to enjoy the finished product and explore the new zones for the first time on launch day. 

But then it came. The invitation. My editor had once again hooked my up through Blizzard EU PR and wanted me to write an article about the new starting zones for the magazine. Since i am pathetically weak and short of cash i simply could not resist. It´s a dirty job, but someone got to do it. :P

On the bright side, i will get the opportunity to try out the new class changes to help me pick a main character for Cataclysm. Thats right, i am not sure if will continue playing my Death Knight. It´s been a blast, but the changes so far are not making me super excited. The new abilities look a bit underwhelming, the changes to our resource mechanic seems goofy and the loss of flexibility (aka being able to tank with all three talent trees) is a bit disappointing. For now that is. Everything is changing rapidly in the beta.

But i know for sure that i want to continue to be a damage soaking meat shield and only considering to switch to another tanking class. So maybe its time to play my vanilla-old warrior or my neglected paladin-alt for Cataclysm. 

With this said, i will focus on testing and use this space to share my impressions on the trees for protection Warriors/Paladins and blood Death Knights. 

There will be blood
I was preparing a summery of my first impressions on the new blood tanking tree, based on a few runs in the two new 5-man instances (underwater Throne of Tides and rusty Blackrock Caverns) in the Cataclysm beta. But then, like thunder from a clear sky, Blizzard announced that they will totally revamp the trees with a heck load of changes and reduce the amount of talent points to 31. Holy smoke. Thats huge stuff. So, i decided to wait with my impression until the next big beta update that will be deployed in a few weeks. 

July 09, 2010, 7:00pm | Leave a comment: Comments

Bye bye Frost-tanking! 

So the bomb dropped on tanking death knights today. Tri-tank-spec and the flexibility that comes with it will be gone in Cataclysm. Blood will be the new revamped dedicated tanking tree for death knights.

My first reaction: this is just sad! One of the reasons that i picked death knight over other tanking classes was the almost endless flexibility. I really liked that i could mix and match a spec for every tanking occasion there is in the game. Unholy AMZ/AMS on spell damage heavy encounters, Frost for avoidance and duel-wielding madness and Blood for pure survivability. Ever since the duel-spec system was introduced i have been running with two tanking specs and changed depending on raid setup (No enhancement shaman in the group? No problem, i will just switch to Frost for haste-buff etc). Will miss that. /violin

My second reaction: After a walk with the dog, fresh air in my lungs and some undisturbed thinking i came to the conclusion that tanking will probably be more fun after all. With a dedicated tree, Blizzard can focus on giving us more fun tools to play with without worrying about the balance between the trees. And Blood was my “main” tanking tree and the spec i, overall, enjoy most anyway. 

On my wishlist: I am still dreaming of a AoE-taunt like the Templars in Aion. Imagine a death grip that pulls several targets! I would also like the death knight iconic spell army of the dead to be more useful as a tank. I also hope they keep blood worms and make them contribute to the tanking by generating threat for the tank (the real reason: they look damn cool!)

Progress report in ICC10 Heroic:
Pretty good (and fun!) first week. We managed to down the first seven bosses. /clap

✔ Lord Marrowgar
✔ Lady Deathwhisper
✔ Gunship Battle (Lulz!)
✔ Deathbringer Saurfang
✔ Festergut
✔ Rotface

Better late then never. Happy Easter!

April 07, 2010, 5:11am | Leave a comment: Comments

I have been thinking about how focused tanks are on generating more and more threat. We can read awesome threat analyses on each talent/gear choice from theorycrafting guys/girls on EJ and sites like Pwnwear (good job btw!). And its awesome to a certain point, but when is enough?

I mean, during our raids at least, tanks get Tricks of the Trade from our ass kicking rogues pretty much all the time. Even on trash. This puts us over 40-60% a head of the best DPS in terms of TPS. Thats a crazy margin for aggro! The chance of someone taking aggro in that setup is pretty much nonexisten, if they don’t screw up terrible.

So, with this in mind, i will try to gimp some threat abilities in my Blood-spec this raid reset to gain some extra survivability talents; like Spell Deflection (direct spell damage is reduced by 45% and has a chance to occur equal to your parry) and Improved Rune Tap (an extra oh-shit-button/health stone/pot).

Will be trying something like this for blood: 56/8/7

I am also very curious of Acclimation (for my DW Frost-spec) since i saw a raid log (via gravity on twitter) where it had like 88% uptime on Festergut.

January 20, 2010, 5:42am | Leave a comment: Comments