Blog Archives
Patch 5.4 – Blood Death Knight Tanking
I was surprised at how often I’ve done Blood Death Knight tanking in the past while running quests, or soloing content for that matter. I never had the gear for it, and still managed to survive quite well. Things took longer to die, but so did I. This is what is known as a Good Thing. Outliving things you’re trying to stab to death is always a better result than the other way around.
Preach discusses the Blood DK for patch 5.4, and you’d do well to listen to him. So listen! Also, watch!
Your Mom Is A Blood Death Knight
I hope you bought her flowers.
Some things are just a given. For example, in the animal kingdom, most of us know that it would be twelve shades of stupid to get between a mother and its spawn. Sure that little bear cub wandering around the camp ground looks cute, but if Mama catches you anywhere near that cub you won’t have to “play” dead.
The only way out of the tent is through the bear’s butt after it eats you and poops you out.
Human mothers are less, uh, savage, but still very protective of their children. They protect their kids from strangers, the evils on television, and even their father after Junior decided it would be a great idea to scribble all over the walls in permanent marker. I think we’ve all been there – we do something stupid and Mom is there to protect us, make us feel safe, tell us it’s going to be okay and to just ignore your Father’s shouting and Oh Bill stop it you’re over reacting we were going to repaper the walls anyway he didn’t know any better he’s been eating the paste again.
Uh, we’ve all been there… right? Right?
*tap tap* Is this thing on?
Bringing this around to World of Warcraft and Death Knights, your Mom protected you. Kept you safe. Just like a tank in World of Warcraft. Your Mom tanked your Dad, and all the other things in the World. Tanked them just like a Blood Death Knight.
You might be thinking that this was a bit of a stretch, some pandering for the Mother’s Day holiday. To that I say shut up and go thank your Mother for bringing you into the World in the first place. And if you’re reading this and you’re a Mom… ‘sup.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Killing In The Name Of…
The most electrifying Tauren currently hanging out in Borean Tundra.
Seeing as how I’m on my WoW days off (stupid rural piss-poor internet that makes my eyes bleed) I’ve been doing some reading. Reading, as it turns out, is a good thing. When you read, you learn things. Things such as the stealth nerf to Death Strike. On the one hand, I’m glad to find out about this. I’ve been dying because I keep expecting DS to slap a bunch of health back on me, but that bar barely moved after 3.1 which had me concerned. Now on the other hand, Blizzard nerfed DS. Oh well, one less ability I have to worry about. Let me tell you, when you’ve got multiple mobs pummelling you, getting back 5-15% really isn’t going to do much more than let the mob hit you just one more time before they pry your chest cavity open and see what makes you tick.
For the record, The Rokk runs on a delicate balance of Awesome and Win.
Oh, and I once again missed the memo where our talent points were refunded. Again.
So. Spec hunting. Oh yeah, and of course all the listed specs are for T7, level 80 raiders. Good times.
Searching, searching. Oh what the Hell. This one looks good. I found it over here.
A build that works similar to 50/0/21, but adds the ghoul permanently to your mix. It sacrifices the 10% damage and 10% ArP from Blood Gorged for filled talents in Unholy, and a permanent buffed ghoul. This build is very easy to manage and intuitive to play, showing similar numbers to the other specs in dps tests. There is debate as to it’s scaling potential, as a Ghoul automatically means increased scaling from all your stats (as they would apply to yourself and the ghoul). The extra point can be placed in a 1pt talent in Blood (Vampric Blood, Rune Tap, Mark of Blood), or used to finish out Epidemic. Always renew Unholy Blight before using DC if it’s about to/already has run out.
Rotation:
DS-IT-PS-HS-HS
HS-HS-DS-HS-HSDS can be used before applying diseases due to its independence from disease multipliers. This also immediately gets your 10% AP buff up from Abomination’s Might. The position of disease application in this rotation is why only one point of Epidemic is needed.
I decided to build the Blood tree first. Of course, being on the poor interweb access means I have to wait until Friday to see how this pans out in a pre-80 build.
Blood In, Blood Out
Thanks to Skeleton Jack’s blog, I found a good outline for a DK Blood Spec and decided to give it a try when Rokk dinged 66. He did, respecced, and have been killed twice by Gutripper while I managed to kill the other two Nesingwary elites as a 65 Unholy DK. The second time I dropped, he was almost dead himself. Not sure if that means anything, or if it was just a run of bad luck. I’m half-temped to spec back to Unholy and try the bird one more time.
After getting Blacksmithing close to 300, spending hundreds of gold in the process, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have gone with Engineering instead. Maybe Rukgut will have to switch from Leatherworking.
Guess I’ll have to sleep on it for now.
Rokk Talk 