If you couldn't tell based on the title of this post, I am of the persuasion that the movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons" may be one of the most colossal wastes of time since the invention of the MMO, only without being actually enjoyable.
The movie basically chronicles the life of an orphaned "boy" who is named Benjamin by his adoptive mother, and later finds out that his last name is Buttons, when his father, a button manufacturer (go figure) meets up with him and over the course of the three tedious hours of the movie, reveals to him that he is his real father. It's worth noting at this point that while that may seem like a pivotal plot point in the movie, it's actually not. The truth is, there are no pivotal plot points in the entire movie. It is just one mundane life sequence after another. The only thing that makes this movie different from watching a movie about some average Joe is that he happens to get younger rather than older (which by the way, plays a very small role in the importance of the story). To add insult to injury, not only did the movie lack any sort of climactic events that might accidentally capture the audiences interest, the movie somehow manages to drag on for over three hours, leaving me praying to Zeus that the protagonist would just un-age already and end the movie, along with his life.
There is a minor theme that starts with the movie where Mr. Butthole's grandfather built a clock for Grand Central Station that intentionally runs backwards to symbolize how he wishes wars could be undone or some crap like that, and the last scene of the movie, after the clock has been moved to a basement and replaced, you see the clock one last time moving backwards. The only deeper meaning extracted from this scene was how the clock makes you wish I, like the auspicious clock, could run time backwards and avoid spending the precious hours of my life watching this horrible excuse for entertainment.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Viking Metal
Recently I've been listening to a lot of viking metal, so for your enjoyment I am putting together a list of some awesome band I've been listening to lately. The ones at the top are viking metal, but the other ones are just awesome.
Amon Amarth
Bathory
Ensiferum
Asmegin
Enslaved
Turisas
Insomnium
Kataklysm
Hammerfall
The Haunted
Opeth
The Human Abstract
Lamb of God
Amon Amarth
Bathory
Ensiferum
Asmegin
Enslaved
Turisas
Insomnium
Kataklysm
Hammerfall
The Haunted
Opeth
The Human Abstract
Lamb of God
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Shay Shays Retarded Prot War Guide, Cliffnotes
This is a summary of some key prot war tanking tips I discussed in previous posts.
Spec)
- Decide what is is you are doing and spec accordingly.
- Determine if you need threat generation, damage mitigation, aoe, or some weird balance.
Threat)
- AoE: Use Tclap and Shockwave whenever up. Cleave is good but rips through rage.
- Single target: Heroic Strike and Devastate are bread and butter. When active, always use Revenge and Shield slam too.
Mitigation)
- Tclap and Demo shout always up. Spell reflect and shield bash when needed.
- Shield Block, trinkets, last stand, shield wall in oh-shit moments (enrages, health spikes, etc)
- Shockwave or Concussion blow to spell interrupt or buy time.
Execution)
- Mod Awareness: Watch threat and adjust abilites accordingly. Watch casting bars and buffs on opponants to know when to use what.
- Triage: Be ready to figure out how to get out of bad situations. If you cant do everything, pick what you can do best and where you are least needed. Put yourself where you can do the most good.
- Pulling: DON'T CHARGE IF THERE ARE MOBS AROUND YOU DON'T WANT PULLING.
- Heroic throw is always good, charge if its clear.
- Following up with Tclap is usually a good bet.
Above All, don't be an idiot. Know what your abilities are and when to use them. Experience is the best way to learn this stuff, this is just a rough guide. Get out there and try this stuff, and it should start to fall into place.
Hope this helps! Now get out there and tank!
Spec)
- Decide what is is you are doing and spec accordingly.
- Determine if you need threat generation, damage mitigation, aoe, or some weird balance.
Threat)
- AoE: Use Tclap and Shockwave whenever up. Cleave is good but rips through rage.
- Single target: Heroic Strike and Devastate are bread and butter. When active, always use Revenge and Shield slam too.
Mitigation)
- Tclap and Demo shout always up. Spell reflect and shield bash when needed.
- Shield Block, trinkets, last stand, shield wall in oh-shit moments (enrages, health spikes, etc)
- Shockwave or Concussion blow to spell interrupt or buy time.
Execution)
- Mod Awareness: Watch threat and adjust abilites accordingly. Watch casting bars and buffs on opponants to know when to use what.
- Triage: Be ready to figure out how to get out of bad situations. If you cant do everything, pick what you can do best and where you are least needed. Put yourself where you can do the most good.
- Pulling: DON'T CHARGE IF THERE ARE MOBS AROUND YOU DON'T WANT PULLING.
- Heroic throw is always good, charge if its clear.
- Following up with Tclap is usually a good bet.
Above All, don't be an idiot. Know what your abilities are and when to use them. Experience is the best way to learn this stuff, this is just a rough guide. Get out there and try this stuff, and it should start to fall into place.
Hope this helps! Now get out there and tank!
Shay Shays Retarded Prot War Guide, part 3
Final installment of my zomigorsh awesome tanking guide. Sorry it's in reverse chronological order, but I trust your ability to scroll down and then read up.
This section I am going to deal with tying everything together and how to execute the combination of threat, damage mitigation, gearing, pulling, and dealing with situations that make you almost shit your pants into a section I call...
Execution)
- Situational Awareness:
Each situation is different, and with WotLK, Blizzard did a good job of making sure that happens frequently. Some fights involve a lot of threat, some mitigation, some aoe tanking, some, no tanking at all. The key is to know what mods you are using, what they all mean, how to interpret them. A few key mods are Omen, a good dot timer, and a good unit frames mod (I suggest DoTimer and Perl, respectively). Also you need to have enemy cast bars on, or have a mod like ECastingBar to make sure you can see what spells opponents are using and when. The most important mod you will use however, is Omen. Knowing exactly where you stand in terms of threat defines how you budget your rage. If you got a mage, shadow priest, paladin, and all these other guys riding your threat tail, you need to push out as much threat as you can. Its more important for you to stay alive and have healer heal you more, than for you to lose aggro on a big bad mob, and for the raid to wipe. It should be noted that ranged dps must do 130% of your threat to pull aggro, and meele must do 110%. These are based on the 5 yard meele range. If you have a huge commanding lead in threat to everyone, stick to heavy damage mitigation abilities and keep your healers' from having heart attacks.
Triage:
Sometimes the shit hits the fan and mobs run everywhere, or someone is attacking the wrong target, or you just fucked up and lost aggro, you gotta be ready to taunt or intervene or charge to get the mob back on you. However, even with that, sometimes things are just too out of control for you to get everything back on you. At that point, you need to assess whats going on and figure out what you can get a hold of and what your healer can handle as far as dps on healers or dps. Generally if you lose aggro on a trash mob and cant get in under control, let it run around and smack people while you gather everything else up. Sometimes, thats not feasible of course and you need to get that certain mob back on you. Fortunately, in many situation, blizzard assumes tanks are going to suck and a healer can heal a mob on a dps for a while without any serious consequences. This is in no way a rule of thumb for every encounter, but if shit hits the fan, look around, figure out what you are most able to do and help with, figure out where you are least needed, and put yourself where you can do the most good.
Pulling:
There are tons of ways you can pull, but with the addition of the combat charge and heroic throw, you have potential of having a lot of threat immediately following a pull. BE CAREFUL CHARGING IN! I can't tell you how many tanks think that just because they can charge in defensive stance, they should. If you are really itching to charge, hit the mob with a heroic throw, run back and then turn around and charge when its clear. But even if things are crowded, a heroic throw is usually sufficient, assuming you dont get some stupid mage starting with a pom pyro or something. Generally, a Tclap is a good bet after any pull, but adjust accordingly. Pulling aint hard. Just don't pull adds and you are usually good.
I'm going to add an extra post of summarizing key points because i realize a lot of this is sort of verbose, so see my next post if you want the cliffnotes for all this crap i took the time to write for you.
This section I am going to deal with tying everything together and how to execute the combination of threat, damage mitigation, gearing, pulling, and dealing with situations that make you almost shit your pants into a section I call...
Execution)
- Situational Awareness:
Each situation is different, and with WotLK, Blizzard did a good job of making sure that happens frequently. Some fights involve a lot of threat, some mitigation, some aoe tanking, some, no tanking at all. The key is to know what mods you are using, what they all mean, how to interpret them. A few key mods are Omen, a good dot timer, and a good unit frames mod (I suggest DoTimer and Perl, respectively). Also you need to have enemy cast bars on, or have a mod like ECastingBar to make sure you can see what spells opponents are using and when. The most important mod you will use however, is Omen. Knowing exactly where you stand in terms of threat defines how you budget your rage. If you got a mage, shadow priest, paladin, and all these other guys riding your threat tail, you need to push out as much threat as you can. Its more important for you to stay alive and have healer heal you more, than for you to lose aggro on a big bad mob, and for the raid to wipe. It should be noted that ranged dps must do 130% of your threat to pull aggro, and meele must do 110%. These are based on the 5 yard meele range. If you have a huge commanding lead in threat to everyone, stick to heavy damage mitigation abilities and keep your healers' from having heart attacks.
Triage:
Sometimes the shit hits the fan and mobs run everywhere, or someone is attacking the wrong target, or you just fucked up and lost aggro, you gotta be ready to taunt or intervene or charge to get the mob back on you. However, even with that, sometimes things are just too out of control for you to get everything back on you. At that point, you need to assess whats going on and figure out what you can get a hold of and what your healer can handle as far as dps on healers or dps. Generally if you lose aggro on a trash mob and cant get in under control, let it run around and smack people while you gather everything else up. Sometimes, thats not feasible of course and you need to get that certain mob back on you. Fortunately, in many situation, blizzard assumes tanks are going to suck and a healer can heal a mob on a dps for a while without any serious consequences. This is in no way a rule of thumb for every encounter, but if shit hits the fan, look around, figure out what you are most able to do and help with, figure out where you are least needed, and put yourself where you can do the most good.
Pulling:
There are tons of ways you can pull, but with the addition of the combat charge and heroic throw, you have potential of having a lot of threat immediately following a pull. BE CAREFUL CHARGING IN! I can't tell you how many tanks think that just because they can charge in defensive stance, they should. If you are really itching to charge, hit the mob with a heroic throw, run back and then turn around and charge when its clear. But even if things are crowded, a heroic throw is usually sufficient, assuming you dont get some stupid mage starting with a pom pyro or something. Generally, a Tclap is a good bet after any pull, but adjust accordingly. Pulling aint hard. Just don't pull adds and you are usually good.
I'm going to add an extra post of summarizing key points because i realize a lot of this is sort of verbose, so see my next post if you want the cliffnotes for all this crap i took the time to write for you.
Shay Shays Retarded Prot War Guide, part 2
Part two of my tanking series. This week...
2) Threat generation and damage mitigation.
The big thing in prot war tanking is knowing how to prioritize abilities to put out as much threat as possible while simultaneously not taking more damage than you need to. Ill split it up into two catagories and try to tie them together at then end, but remember that playing a prot war well involves a complex combination of watching buff and debuff lists, threat meters, enemy nameplates, target of target, along with many other features which may or may not be an element of your UI.
Threat)
There are specific threat values for each ability, some are higher than others, and two categories of threat abilities; AOE and single target. In general, AOE threat is much less efficient than single target, and AOE abilities are best used with holding extra mobs on you while you tank a main target. Here are the various threat abilities in approximate order of threat:
AOE)
- Shockwave
- Thunderclap
- Cleave
- Demoralizing Shout
- Buffs
AOE tanking is best to start with thunderclap to begin slowing attack speeds on you, do a decent amount of threat, and most importantly, collect mobs on you in close proximity. Following tclap with a Shockwave generates even more threat, and gives you a moment to situate yourself and let your healer react to any spike damage you may have taken. Follow this with a demo shout, and voila. You are taking minimum damage without using shield block or trinkets. At the same time, you more than enough threat to prevent any mob from getting pulled off by healing aggro or basic aoe abilities. Spamming cleave rather than heroic strike is useful for aoe tanking, as well as using Tclap and Shockwave whenever they are available. Spamming cleave however will burn through your rage very quickly unless you are taking a lot of damage or have blessing of sanctuary on you, so be careful. Where applicable, considering tab-targeting or clicking different targets to apply a few sunders while continuing to use Tclap and Shockwave. If you do these right, you should be able to hold the mobs on you no problem. Make sure you mark a skull and X so people know which order to dps in. While your aoe threat generation should be decent, it wont hold a target you arnt focused on for long, so you want to make sure you know which targets to build threat on.
Single Target)
- Revenge
- Shield Slam
- Heroic Throw
- Concussion Blow
- Devastate
- Heroic Strike
Single target threat generation is fairly simple. Essentially follow the priority list above, but try to be using a threat ability whenever GCD is up, even if it falls lower on the threat list. Most of the time i find myself spamming certain buttons, but if you are able to slow down and watch all your abilities and when they are available, you can generate ridiculous amounts of threat. Devastate and heroic strike are your bread and butter for threat generation, but you also need to realize that shield slam and revenge are going to become active all the time, and should be used whenever they are. Shield slam is one of the highest threat moves in the game, and with Sword and Board, you get it free pretty damn often. Revenge is a pretty good threat ability, and if you have all rage reduction talents, it costs you i think 2 rage. Almost any threat is good at only 2 rage, and revenge is very good threat. Concussion blow and heroic throw are good threat, but not really necessary unless you are scrambling for threat or need to CC something for a bit. tanking in raids is actually easier than heroics imo, because there is less to worry about, you take more damage so you get more rage, and with more range its easier to dump rage into those big threat abilities. The less rage you have, the more tactically you need to ration your abilities, but like I said, stick to a basic priority and you should be fine.
Mitigation)
Damage mitigation is pretty simple. There are a few abilities you need to know about and when to use.
- Tank trinkets: use when you need that extra bit of avoidance, like during enrages or when your healer DCs in the middle of a Kel'Thuzad fight.
- Shield block: Use when you would a trinket and you need to make sure you bump up your avoidance.
-Thunderclap/Demoralizing Should: Always keep up whenever you have any meele mobs on you. No reason you need to take an extra 20% meele dmg plus 400 attack power or so.
-Spell reflect: Awesome if you can time it, but a lot of mobs use spells that go right through it. Play with it on different mobs and see what does what.
- Shield bash: Spell interrupt. Not tied to GCD, so use whenever you can, or when needed on certain fights.
-Shockwave/Concussion blow: Great for getting a few extra seconds for your healers to get you topped off, or for interrupting spells when shield bash is on CD.
Mitigation doesn't need a heirarchy of abilities to use, just make sure you keep up tclap/demo shout, and use the other stuff when its needed. Thats really all there is to it. Try keeping key buttons hotkeyed, like Last Stand or your trinkets and stuff.
Next up... Execution!
2) Threat generation and damage mitigation.
The big thing in prot war tanking is knowing how to prioritize abilities to put out as much threat as possible while simultaneously not taking more damage than you need to. Ill split it up into two catagories and try to tie them together at then end, but remember that playing a prot war well involves a complex combination of watching buff and debuff lists, threat meters, enemy nameplates, target of target, along with many other features which may or may not be an element of your UI.
Threat)
There are specific threat values for each ability, some are higher than others, and two categories of threat abilities; AOE and single target. In general, AOE threat is much less efficient than single target, and AOE abilities are best used with holding extra mobs on you while you tank a main target. Here are the various threat abilities in approximate order of threat:
AOE)
- Shockwave
- Thunderclap
- Cleave
- Demoralizing Shout
- Buffs
AOE tanking is best to start with thunderclap to begin slowing attack speeds on you, do a decent amount of threat, and most importantly, collect mobs on you in close proximity. Following tclap with a Shockwave generates even more threat, and gives you a moment to situate yourself and let your healer react to any spike damage you may have taken. Follow this with a demo shout, and voila. You are taking minimum damage without using shield block or trinkets. At the same time, you more than enough threat to prevent any mob from getting pulled off by healing aggro or basic aoe abilities. Spamming cleave rather than heroic strike is useful for aoe tanking, as well as using Tclap and Shockwave whenever they are available. Spamming cleave however will burn through your rage very quickly unless you are taking a lot of damage or have blessing of sanctuary on you, so be careful. Where applicable, considering tab-targeting or clicking different targets to apply a few sunders while continuing to use Tclap and Shockwave. If you do these right, you should be able to hold the mobs on you no problem. Make sure you mark a skull and X so people know which order to dps in. While your aoe threat generation should be decent, it wont hold a target you arnt focused on for long, so you want to make sure you know which targets to build threat on.
Single Target)
- Revenge
- Shield Slam
- Heroic Throw
- Concussion Blow
- Devastate
- Heroic Strike
Single target threat generation is fairly simple. Essentially follow the priority list above, but try to be using a threat ability whenever GCD is up, even if it falls lower on the threat list. Most of the time i find myself spamming certain buttons, but if you are able to slow down and watch all your abilities and when they are available, you can generate ridiculous amounts of threat. Devastate and heroic strike are your bread and butter for threat generation, but you also need to realize that shield slam and revenge are going to become active all the time, and should be used whenever they are. Shield slam is one of the highest threat moves in the game, and with Sword and Board, you get it free pretty damn often. Revenge is a pretty good threat ability, and if you have all rage reduction talents, it costs you i think 2 rage. Almost any threat is good at only 2 rage, and revenge is very good threat. Concussion blow and heroic throw are good threat, but not really necessary unless you are scrambling for threat or need to CC something for a bit. tanking in raids is actually easier than heroics imo, because there is less to worry about, you take more damage so you get more rage, and with more range its easier to dump rage into those big threat abilities. The less rage you have, the more tactically you need to ration your abilities, but like I said, stick to a basic priority and you should be fine.
Mitigation)
Damage mitigation is pretty simple. There are a few abilities you need to know about and when to use.
- Tank trinkets: use when you need that extra bit of avoidance, like during enrages or when your healer DCs in the middle of a Kel'Thuzad fight.
- Shield block: Use when you would a trinket and you need to make sure you bump up your avoidance.
-Thunderclap/Demoralizing Should: Always keep up whenever you have any meele mobs on you. No reason you need to take an extra 20% meele dmg plus 400 attack power or so.
-Spell reflect: Awesome if you can time it, but a lot of mobs use spells that go right through it. Play with it on different mobs and see what does what.
- Shield bash: Spell interrupt. Not tied to GCD, so use whenever you can, or when needed on certain fights.
-Shockwave/Concussion blow: Great for getting a few extra seconds for your healers to get you topped off, or for interrupting spells when shield bash is on CD.
Mitigation doesn't need a heirarchy of abilities to use, just make sure you keep up tclap/demo shout, and use the other stuff when its needed. Thats really all there is to it. Try keeping key buttons hotkeyed, like Last Stand or your trinkets and stuff.
Next up... Execution!
Shay Shays Retarded Prot War Guide, part 1
I generally don't like to cream my own Twinkie, but I've gotten a lot of feed back that I seem to be a pretty good prot war. I don't claim to know absolutely everything, but I know enough. So since there is a lot to take in, I'm going to split this up into several installments.
1) Spec
First of all, you need to identify what you are going to be doing. The three areas are questing/grinding, 5-mans (heroics/regular instances) and raid Main Tanking. If you are an off-tank, i would recommend a spec either like the main tank so you can be an equivalent tank, or a questing/grinding spec you can contribute dps for those long stretches where you aren't needed. I should also mention at this point, that I don't really like any of the prot spec's on wowwiki right now, but you might. So check the out. Here are some things to bare in mind when determining your spec.
- Your own gear level (Mitigation mainly)
- Your own ability to generate threat (ill cover tips later)
- The situation you plan to use your prot spec
- Questing/Grinding
Make sure to dump points into Cruelty and Armored to the teeth. Everyone likes more crits and attack power for chewing through mobs. I'd also recommend Improved Heroic Strike. That combined with the offensive ability rage reduction talents from prot give you cheap attacks that are fairly powerful. I find that a high damage build like this can still be very viable for tanking, still getting a decent amount of avoidance/mitigation.
- 5-mans/heroics
AOE tanking gets used a lot in these types of instances, so points in improved Thunderclap and Incite are highly recommended. Of course just about any build should have imp Tclap, because otherwise you just take an extra 10% damage when you don't need to be. There are glyphs to reduce rage cost of Tclap and Cleave, plus another one to cause sunder armor (also the one applied by devastate) to hit an additional target. Spamming tclap, cleave and devastate on your main target can easily hold aggro on several mobs, and Shockwave just finishes off your AOE tanking abilities. It should be noted that heroics can often do a lot of damage, so if your gear isnt amazing, you may want to focus more on a damage mitigation build and use some CC, before charging balls first into 10 mobs and hoping your healer doesn't suck.
- Raid Tanking
Warriors specialize at being meele tanks, and most bosses endgame dont have much in the way of spells that can be spell reflected. That in mind, you probably want to go for the most mitigation you possibly can. Test out some stuff and if you are having threat pulled off you, maybe dump some points into things like improved heroic strike, or improved sunder. These can often be skipped though if you like. A nice thing about a build for raid tanking is you can get down to improved demo shout and get Armored to the Teeth and Cruelty along the way, giving you a nice balance of damage/threat output, with the added bonus of imp demo shout. I have not done a lot of endgame WotLK raid tanking so I cant verify specifics of pure mitigation builds, but if you know what you are doing, most of the time you can fudge the figures a little and it will still work fine.
For all specs, remember what it is you plan to do. if you are going to be a meele tank, dont get magic mitigation (unless you have points to dump). If you are having trouble putting out enough threat, get more talents to up your threat output. Honestly, spec is probably the least of your worries about tanking. If you don't know what you are doing, it doesn't matter how finely tuned your build is, you are still going to get people killed. You should bare these tips in mind, but learn the specifics of tanking and then reverse engineer your build based on what you like to do.
Next up... Threat Generation and damage mitigation!
1) Spec
First of all, you need to identify what you are going to be doing. The three areas are questing/grinding, 5-mans (heroics/regular instances) and raid Main Tanking. If you are an off-tank, i would recommend a spec either like the main tank so you can be an equivalent tank, or a questing/grinding spec you can contribute dps for those long stretches where you aren't needed. I should also mention at this point, that I don't really like any of the prot spec's on wowwiki right now, but you might. So check the out. Here are some things to bare in mind when determining your spec.
- Your own gear level (Mitigation mainly)
- Your own ability to generate threat (ill cover tips later)
- The situation you plan to use your prot spec
- Questing/Grinding
Make sure to dump points into Cruelty and Armored to the teeth. Everyone likes more crits and attack power for chewing through mobs. I'd also recommend Improved Heroic Strike. That combined with the offensive ability rage reduction talents from prot give you cheap attacks that are fairly powerful. I find that a high damage build like this can still be very viable for tanking, still getting a decent amount of avoidance/mitigation.
- 5-mans/heroics
AOE tanking gets used a lot in these types of instances, so points in improved Thunderclap and Incite are highly recommended. Of course just about any build should have imp Tclap, because otherwise you just take an extra 10% damage when you don't need to be. There are glyphs to reduce rage cost of Tclap and Cleave, plus another one to cause sunder armor (also the one applied by devastate) to hit an additional target. Spamming tclap, cleave and devastate on your main target can easily hold aggro on several mobs, and Shockwave just finishes off your AOE tanking abilities. It should be noted that heroics can often do a lot of damage, so if your gear isnt amazing, you may want to focus more on a damage mitigation build and use some CC, before charging balls first into 10 mobs and hoping your healer doesn't suck.
- Raid Tanking
Warriors specialize at being meele tanks, and most bosses endgame dont have much in the way of spells that can be spell reflected. That in mind, you probably want to go for the most mitigation you possibly can. Test out some stuff and if you are having threat pulled off you, maybe dump some points into things like improved heroic strike, or improved sunder. These can often be skipped though if you like. A nice thing about a build for raid tanking is you can get down to improved demo shout and get Armored to the Teeth and Cruelty along the way, giving you a nice balance of damage/threat output, with the added bonus of imp demo shout. I have not done a lot of endgame WotLK raid tanking so I cant verify specifics of pure mitigation builds, but if you know what you are doing, most of the time you can fudge the figures a little and it will still work fine.
For all specs, remember what it is you plan to do. if you are going to be a meele tank, dont get magic mitigation (unless you have points to dump). If you are having trouble putting out enough threat, get more talents to up your threat output. Honestly, spec is probably the least of your worries about tanking. If you don't know what you are doing, it doesn't matter how finely tuned your build is, you are still going to get people killed. You should bare these tips in mind, but learn the specifics of tanking and then reverse engineer your build based on what you like to do.
Next up... Threat Generation and damage mitigation!
Shay Shays Stupid DK Guide
I'm completely rewriting my stupid DK guide because now I actually have an 80 DK, and I can say what I actually do. Ill mention a little about leveling, but you could level just about any character with any spec you want. Its just personal preference. I'm going to talk mostly about PVE at 80 as a blood DK.
1) Gear...
You want a 2h. Case closed. You rely on big wtfpwn strikes to hit your targets. Maxing out hit rating to 8% and expertise to i think it's 21, is probably a good idea (and what is what I did). That way no matter where I am I know i'll always hit. Now your runes dont actually go on cooldown if you dont hit, but still, avoiding interrupting your rotation is always beneficial to consistant dps. After that, Attack power (or strength since it scales with Blessing of Kings) is clutch. Right after that, crit is also very nice. Critting on 2 targets with heart strike with diseases on them with half way decent gear is almost 10k damage. So in my experience, heres the breakdown:
1) Hit/Expertise
2) AP/Strength
3) Crit
4) Agility
5) Whatever
2) Rotation
As with most classes, proper spell rotation is where you make or break your dps. The weird thing about death knights is after the initial opening attacks, glyph cooldowns get so untimed that a normal rinse-wash-repeat pattern becomes impossible. So ill show my opening move, then teach you rules for continuing dps.
Opening Moves
-Icy Touch (while you are running in from range)
-Plague Strike (You now have both your diseases ticking)
-Death Strike (gets your death runes cooling down)
-Heart Strike X2 (Now all of your runes will be on cooldown)
-Deathcoil X1 (x2 if you have the RP, but unless you have some leftover from somthing, you can only get in 1)
-Blood Tap -> Heart Strike (Use right after eachother)
-Deathcoil
At this point, a lot of your runes should be cooled down and ready to use. This is where rotations go out the window and you have to start watching your rune bar and dot timers. There is a heirarchy of abilities you want to use, so here's how it works.
1) Make sure you have diseases up. If you are dumping RP through death coil its not essential for the moment since it's not modified by diseases, but for Heart/Death Strikes, always have them up.
2) Whenever you have blood/death runes up, dump them on Heart Strike. The expception to this is if you need to use them to reapply diseases, do so.
3) Death Coil whenever you have about 75-80 RP. This way if you hit a death strike or something you wont be capped out and wasting RP. Generally this should be your 2nd or 3rd most damaging ability in dps.
4) Death Strike should be used when blood runes are on cooldown, but you dont need to refresh diseases yet. It has many benefits, most notably it gives you death runes that you can dump into Heart Strike. It also heals you, has added crit chance from talents, and is modified by current RP pool (if glyphed)
5) Pestilence isn't necessarily something you have to use in every rotation, but if you ever are in the middle of AOE packs, make sure your diseases stay up. You can use a cool trick to reapply diseases to your main target. Pestilance your main target, and it will spread diseases to ihis friends. Then swap targets real fast, hit pestilence again, and it will spread refreshed diseases back to your main target. This uses a blood rune instead of a frost and unholy, so you can conserve your frost/unholy runes for a death strike or something else.
6) Blood Tap again isnt something you will always need, but if you find yourself in a situation where everything is on cooldown, no RP etc, blood tap and Heart Strike. Not only does that keep you from dropping abilites in your rotation, but you then have a nice death rune for the next 20 seconds to spend on whatever you want.
Using this spell priority, I easily put out about 2500 dps, with pretty crappy gear. I'd link you my armory page, but atm I'm tank built. But I basically have an epic weapon, gloves and belt. The rest is crappy blues, some of which are left over from leveling.
In my opinion, blood can rival any dps spec by death knights. On big aoe pulls, howling blast may do higher damage because its aoe, but as we all know, aoe doesn't really count. If it did, we would hold Moonkin and Hunters to a 7000dps standard. Blood is also the most fun in my opinion with its rawrsmash mode type dps. Give it a shot!
More to come
1) Gear...
You want a 2h. Case closed. You rely on big wtfpwn strikes to hit your targets. Maxing out hit rating to 8% and expertise to i think it's 21, is probably a good idea (and what is what I did). That way no matter where I am I know i'll always hit. Now your runes dont actually go on cooldown if you dont hit, but still, avoiding interrupting your rotation is always beneficial to consistant dps. After that, Attack power (or strength since it scales with Blessing of Kings) is clutch. Right after that, crit is also very nice. Critting on 2 targets with heart strike with diseases on them with half way decent gear is almost 10k damage. So in my experience, heres the breakdown:
1) Hit/Expertise
2) AP/Strength
3) Crit
4) Agility
5) Whatever
2) Rotation
As with most classes, proper spell rotation is where you make or break your dps. The weird thing about death knights is after the initial opening attacks, glyph cooldowns get so untimed that a normal rinse-wash-repeat pattern becomes impossible. So ill show my opening move, then teach you rules for continuing dps.
Opening Moves
-Icy Touch (while you are running in from range)
-Plague Strike (You now have both your diseases ticking)
-Death Strike (gets your death runes cooling down)
-Heart Strike X2 (Now all of your runes will be on cooldown)
-Deathcoil X1 (x2 if you have the RP, but unless you have some leftover from somthing, you can only get in 1)
-Blood Tap -> Heart Strike (Use right after eachother)
-Deathcoil
At this point, a lot of your runes should be cooled down and ready to use. This is where rotations go out the window and you have to start watching your rune bar and dot timers. There is a heirarchy of abilities you want to use, so here's how it works.
1) Make sure you have diseases up. If you are dumping RP through death coil its not essential for the moment since it's not modified by diseases, but for Heart/Death Strikes, always have them up.
2) Whenever you have blood/death runes up, dump them on Heart Strike. The expception to this is if you need to use them to reapply diseases, do so.
3) Death Coil whenever you have about 75-80 RP. This way if you hit a death strike or something you wont be capped out and wasting RP. Generally this should be your 2nd or 3rd most damaging ability in dps.
4) Death Strike should be used when blood runes are on cooldown, but you dont need to refresh diseases yet. It has many benefits, most notably it gives you death runes that you can dump into Heart Strike. It also heals you, has added crit chance from talents, and is modified by current RP pool (if glyphed)
5) Pestilence isn't necessarily something you have to use in every rotation, but if you ever are in the middle of AOE packs, make sure your diseases stay up. You can use a cool trick to reapply diseases to your main target. Pestilance your main target, and it will spread diseases to ihis friends. Then swap targets real fast, hit pestilence again, and it will spread refreshed diseases back to your main target. This uses a blood rune instead of a frost and unholy, so you can conserve your frost/unholy runes for a death strike or something else.
6) Blood Tap again isnt something you will always need, but if you find yourself in a situation where everything is on cooldown, no RP etc, blood tap and Heart Strike. Not only does that keep you from dropping abilites in your rotation, but you then have a nice death rune for the next 20 seconds to spend on whatever you want.
Using this spell priority, I easily put out about 2500 dps, with pretty crappy gear. I'd link you my armory page, but atm I'm tank built. But I basically have an epic weapon, gloves and belt. The rest is crappy blues, some of which are left over from leveling.
In my opinion, blood can rival any dps spec by death knights. On big aoe pulls, howling blast may do higher damage because its aoe, but as we all know, aoe doesn't really count. If it did, we would hold Moonkin and Hunters to a 7000dps standard. Blood is also the most fun in my opinion with its rawrsmash mode type dps. Give it a shot!
More to come
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Metal and WoW
For all of those millions of users out there reading my useless blog, I'm going to start yammering about World of Warcraft shit, and metal music, because those two things kick ass. So stay tuned. Also, it's a good bet a lot of my crap will go up on Tuesday... you guys know why.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The sky is falling!
If slapping dirty hippies is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Thus concludes the epic saga that is the blog of the illustrious Shaytan! Bow before me and my socks.
Thus concludes the epic saga that is the blog of the illustrious Shaytan! Bow before me and my socks.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bioshock Rules
Just got Bioshock for PC. Love it. PS, Big Daddies are vulnerable to electricity. Use the flamethrower with electric gel to keep em stunned and gradually burn em down. Hope your clip doesn't run out mid fight!
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