gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

The Midsummer Fire Festival started over the weekend, so it is time for any and all who want a Violet Proto-Drake to once again run all over the old continents for a few hours.

For some older characters, those who saved their rewards from last year, this is an easy holiday. One guy I know only needed to do two achievements, which took him about 5 minutes, to complete the holiday. Of course for us death knights we get to start from scratch. However, there are some tricks we can enjoy along the way.

One of the hardest elements of the holiday is the fire juggling. We have no secret weapon to beat not being able to chase a shadow accurately on the ground, but we do have more margin for error. If you don’t have Improved Unholy Presence already then switch to Unholy Presence for this quest or daily. The 15% run speed boost helps a lot with a last second direction change. Just be careful about overshooting your target, that can happen if you aren’t use to running at that speed regularly.

For the fire jugging achievement you can solo that easily. You’ll want to have 15-20 [Juggling Torch]. You’ll get 5 from completing the initial juggling quest. I logged on an alt, did the quest again and the fire tossing quest, then bought more [Juggling Torch] with my quest rewards. That gave me 20 to work with. You can also share and trade with friends. Once you have enough just find a quiet spot in Dalaran (I did it near Violent Hold), put the torches on a hot key, and spam throw them at your feet. I’d also suggest tracking the achievement, so you can see your progress vs time left.

With honoring and extinguishing the fires you’ll spend most of your time running around Azeroth, so ground mount only. If you don’t have the talent already respec to get On a Pale Horse. The speed boost is worth it. Don’t worry about expense, I made over 600 gold just doing the fires which will more than cover respec costs. And it’ll help with the faster Outland fires and Northrend fires (the later aren’t for achievements but you still get gold and holiday currency).

The riding speed boost is doubly nice for getting away from the other faction after extinguishing their fire, which flags you for PvP. I also used a mounting trick, especially if a lot of Horde were waiting for me at their fire. I’d ride up and click on the fire, which dismounts me. With the quest open but not completed I would then remount, then once mounted I would complete the quest. That would flag me for PvP only after I had mounted, so I could make a get away even if pulled into combat.

I spent the entire weekend in PvP gear and spec. There were a lot of opportunities to take on solo Horde at my fires, or riding around. It also kept me prepared in case I got ganked myself. Given most Horde just wanted to hit the fire and get out our Chains of Ice and Death Grip really made life difficult for them, but amusing for me. I was even able to survive 2.5 of the Horde capital city fires.

Orgrimmar tore me to shreds. I rode in fast and hit the fire, and then looked up to see dozens of Horde players turn to face me. Eep.

Undercity was my “half survived” fire. I made it to the fire and some Horde stopped me from making a quick escape. I engaged, took out two and scared off a third, and made it out of the city. However a warlock’s DoTs did me in just outside.

Thunder Bluff was easier than it should of been. The fire was unguarded. Shaman with their push ability should just camp that spot, send Alliance over the cliff. I made it out with a near death jump off the side of the city, mostly because I had a lot of guard NPCs after me.

Silvermoon City was just fun. I blew in the front door and made it to the fire unchallenged. Several Horde were around, but seemed to ignore me. I got jumped by some guard NPCs and was almost done with them when the Horde decided to take notice. They only came at me one at a time, so I just finished them off as they came. A low level rogue had taken a couple of pot shots at me, but turned and ran when I took down the last level 80. For his efforts he got a Death Grip + Scourge Strike to the face combo.

For those who like the PvP element of this holiday it is also a good time to work on your City Defender achievement. Just hang out at a fire and kill any enemy that come on by. They tend to be solo and they usually just want to hit the fire and try to run out. Even when I took on three Horde at once in Ironforge they were all so concerned about running that I could deal with them one on one. One should really turn to face a melee opponent