Sunday afternoon. Now that I’ve beaten all the tamers, what is there to do? Well, Van still didn’t get the last 40 rep he needs to get revered with Shado-Pan and get a helmet that has a meta slot, and Kerick is still 8 ilevel short of getting into LFR … oh, or Van could hit up LFR so I won’t go into the last half of Heart of Fear this week without having seen the fights. Or … hmm, maybe I can find something good on Hulu. Wait! I know. Let’s level an alt …
For someone who finished Cata with 11 max level toons, I have certainly taken my time so far with alt leveling in MoP. I just wasn’t ready to add playtime on another one to my plate. I still don’t *really* have extra playtime. But one can only do so many dailies (or pet battles) before they need a change of pace. And that is one of the truly great things about this game. There is ALWAYS something else you can do that isn’t the same thing you’ve been doing. So I logged on Kaly, had a visit with Varian, and flew to Pandaria. (Yes, I know Roz is already 86 and it would have made sense to continue leveling the toon I started on already but .. meh. I wasn’t feeling it.)
I wasn’t sure at first what it would be like. I remembered the jump from Wrath to Mt. Hyjal on toons that weren’t in current raid gear as being somewhat painful. Kaly was wearing a mix of 346 and 359 gear. He’d tanked a little bit of BoT and BWD and then been shelved, so his gear was pretty far behind. It didn’t take long though to figure out/remember how to play him. Grab as many things as possible, disease one, spread it around, keep up the blood shield, win. I initially had taken the Unholy Blight talent … I missed it from way back when DKs first came into existence. However, it quickly became apparent that with the cooldown, it would not be as helpful as Rolling Blood. The way Rolling Blood fits into my rotation is quite elegant, and makes it very easy to disease everything around me. And the blood shield … omg. Get enough things hitting me to stack that baby up and I feel invincible! This was the best I could do yesterday …
yeah, that’s 138k absorption. Sunday on one pull I managed to get it up to 186k …my actual total health at the time was only 177k so … yeah. That’s some pretty strong mitigation.
You know those annoying people who aoe aggro all the goats for Fatty Goatsteak? I kinda understand that a litte better now, because .. I think I’ve become one of them.
What? You want me to kill this elite Hozen chief? Ok, fine. *rides straight through the camp to the leader, aggroing everything on the way and tanking it ALL*
Gather 5 stolen turnips from this vermin den? Ok. *runs right to the middle of the cave and aggros all of them*
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. And nothing can touch me. As long as I keep up my shield I CANNOT BE HURT.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my paladins, and I feel pretty non-squishy on them, given the self-heals and kiting ability. But they are a completely different playstyle. They go into places like the Kunzen camp, say the soup quest for example, and when the soupmaster comes out they will repentence him, drag the other adds away, and kill them first. I can already see Kaly running in yelling CHAAAAAAAAAARGE and clearing the whole platform without breaking a sweat. Hell, I’m looking forward to it, actually.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I better at least read some strat and watch some Fatboss before facing new bosses tonight. ^.^
Tags: alts, Blood DKs are OP, Death Knight, Screenshots, Tanking all teh things, WoW
Reputation Grind 
January 15, 2013 at 11:47 am
And I thought I was a slacker! 40 rep?!?! That is less than one daily missy!
Nice to know that about the DKs. I might actually level mine up just so he can have all the JC patterns.
January 15, 2013 at 11:49 am
Ugh. Don’t get me started on the JC patterns. I have no bag space because of those damn things! LOL!! I might have to make a trip back to Stormwind just to dump them in his bank.
January 15, 2013 at 1:34 pm
OMG so that was you in the middle of all those goats!
January 15, 2013 at 7:04 pm
The Blood spec DK is one of the absolute best classes for multi-mob grinding/reps. All the aggro generation of the old-school paladin, with the damage output of a warrior. I love doing it, and think that anytime I’m grinding and have less than 3-5 monsters on me I’m slacking.
Perhaps not quite as powerful as the Paladins in Burning Crusade, who could use a “drinking water bird” on the keyboard to hit Consecrate and then go AFK, but close.
January 15, 2013 at 11:54 pm
haha that made me giggle picturing one of those … and I got my first taste of end-game activites learning heroics in BC with a paladin as my group’s tank, so I do know what you mean. (I was a huntard back then, in every sense of the word.)
Hmm .. I probably should have clarified that my paladins are ret/holy and not prot. If only I could have three specs … I’m just not good at leading though, so playing a tank in a group setting is stressful … unless I can be OT in a raid and just play sidekick to the MT .. THAT I am very good at.
January 16, 2013 at 6:43 am
I was planning to level my DK through Pandaland the other day, and upon selecting a DPS spec (unholy because I’ve never done that) I noticed the huge amount of abilities all of a sudden.
I can’t remember DPS DKs having this many buttons to press. Was it always like this? Back when I was young and mentally capable of incredible things I played a dual wielding Frost DK, and I’m pretty sure that I just spammed Frost stuff on things. (I never said I was good at being a DK).
Has DK changed much in Pandaland? Or is Unholy the melee Hunter of the pack?
January 16, 2013 at 9:08 am
I haven’t played unholy since Wrath, but I believe it’s a little more complicated, what with having a pet to manage and all.
We used to joke about frost being the 2 button spec … you mostly do just spam howling blast, frost strike, and obliterate. Of course, once you’re actually trying to do good dps and add cooldowns in there, it’s a bit more involved.
I probably do it all wrong, too, because I don’t look at my rune bar at all. (yes, you may all call me death noob now)
January 16, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Both the DK dps specs now have a priority system that needs more than 4-5 buttons to do well, but you can get by with about 4-5 buttons in a typical normal mode level 90 dungeon. The actual rotations are almost the same as Wrath days.
Themes have not changed – spread diseases to your target(s), then use the best strike first, then remaining strike (you typically have two) to fill in. If a proc happens use it, or a situational ability like soul reaper when the creature is below 35% health.
Frost 2H on AoE damage is very simple, basically a two button mash if you want to be lazy, but even that can benefit from some extra setup and awareness. 🙂
Last night I was doing 250k on large trash packs, and really loving it.
January 17, 2013 at 4:06 pm
And here I wasted all this time leveling my squishy rogue when I should have been working on my DK. How do you play a DK again? 😀
January 17, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Bo you hit the buttons as they light up 😀