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Midsummer Fires & PvP

Dedbitt — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:25:20 +0000

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

My PvP Setup

Dedbitt — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:46:10 +0000

I had the chance last weekend to get a lot of PvP in. I love Wintergrasp so I played it every chance it was up. Alterac Valley was the holiday weekend battleground so the new speed runs in there were actually a bit of fun (i.e. Alliance didn’t totally suck… all the time… ) and quite rewarding. I will admit I miss the older style 2+ hour battles, complete with summons elementals to push forward, but with the honor per hour I got this weekend I can’t complain too much.

I ended up being able to complete my PvP set. In doing so I did some more research into death knight PvP numbers and tendencies, through both Elitist Jerks and checking out the top rated death knights in the Arena Tournament. I ended up changing my gear approach a bit from my last posting, going not so much full defensive in the gear selection.

Let’s start with the numbers. On the Arena Tournament server I got some averages from death knights in the top rated teams. For those who don’t know a feature of the Arena Tournament realms is you start at level 80 and you can get whatever top end PvP or PvE gear, gems, and enchants you want at no cost. Before you jump on this realm you should also know there is an additional service fee (i.e. real money) and restrictions by Blizzard, as the realm is designed for series PvP competition only. The beauty for us here is that these players can have any gear item they want, which gives us a great insight.

The average PvP stat numbers were:

Health: 20,000 to 26,000
Resillence: 560
Attack Power: 3,000
Crit: 20% to 25%
Hit: 5%
Spell Penetration: 130

Their gear was very uniformed as well, with only a few exceptions:

[Valorous Scourgeborne Helmet]
[Bladed Steelboots]
Trinket with Attack Power
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]
Everything else Deadly Gladiator

Now keep in mind these are arena players, which is different from us battleground/Wintergrasp players. Outside of arenas you are more alone even though you have more team mates (how often do you get debuffs removed by others?) and it isn’t one on one so much as just group clashes. Plus I don’t arena, so I’m not going to get all the Deadly Gladiator gear. But the numbers work out close enough between arena and battlegrounds to still make this information useful. So, I redid my own PvP gear setup to be mostly defensive, but with some offensive items thrown in as well.

My PvP Gear

[Titan-forged Plate Helm of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Pendant of Triumph]

[Valorous Scourgeborne Shoulderplates]

[Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Victory]

Enchant Cloak – Spell Piercing

[Titan-forged Breastplate of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph]

Enchant Bracer – Greater Assault

[Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets]

[Titan-forged Girdle of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards] (Vault of Archavon drop I got, Hateful pants are same setup)

[Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Band of Triumph]

[Medallion of the Alliance]

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]

This setup gives me a bit more resilience than the arena death knights have, the average health, the low end of the average attack power (not bad for all solo gear), just a bit below average crit (I made it my weakest stat since it is the least valuable), and of course I’m hit capped and have all the spell penetration I need. Playing my last couple of games with this setup I did note my damage was better while my survivability was about the same, even though I had less health and resilience than before.

I went with Titan-forged over Gladiator gear one, because it gets me the hit cap and two, because I can buy them with ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">[Wintergrasp Mark of Honor] and save the honor for Gladiator gear to fill the other slots.

I stuck with [Medallion of the Alliance] to keep my resilience above 560 and because I can’t count on someone else freeing me from crowd control. Escape Artist only works on roots and snares, not polymorphs, sap, mind control, etc. Humans can dump it for a different trinket since Every Man for Himself covers everything.

My PvP Talent Build

I switch this in for my normal DPS build only if I’m going to be doing heavy PvP for a few days. Otherwise my DPS build does fine for the occasional Wintergrasp game.

Unholy PvP – 0/17/54

The point spread is standard and unholy is reported to work better for most than frost for PvP. However I did move a few points around for my personal preferences. The cookie cutter build is actually this 0/17/54 setup. The Scourge Strike glyph can be swapped out if desired.

There is no rotation with this setup. Rotations don’t work in PvP, players just aren’t as cooperative as mobs. Get your diseases on the target, then just go from there.

PvP Outfit Update

Dedbitt — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:58:27 +0000

The Children’s Week’s achievements lead me to some regular PvP which made me realize I needed to spend some honor points. With the new content patch and arena season I saw the gear selection for us solo PvPers has been changed as well. So as it typical after a content patch I’ve updated my PvP gear wish list from my original PvP gear post.

[Titan-forged Plate Helm of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Pendant of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders]

[Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Triumph]

Enchant Cloak – Spell Piercing

[Titan-forged Breastplate of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph]

Enchant Bracer – Greater Assault

[Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets]

[Titan-forged Girdle of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards]

[Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Band of Triumph]

[Deadly Gladiator's Band of Victory]

[Medallion of the Alliance]

[Battlemaster's Conviction] or [Anvil of Titans]

See the original PvP gear post for a good starter PvP set and details on the reasons behind the stats. In short here are the stats you are looking for.

Hit – 5%
Spell Penetration – 130 to 145
Resilience and Stamina – Top stats but need to be balanced with offensive stats.
Strength – Top damage stat once hit and spell penetration are done.
Crit – Ignore it, other players will have so much resilience stacked it won’t matter much.

PvP Outfit

Dedbitt — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:57:32 +0000

After getting my raid needs in order I started playing in Wintergrasp, the new PvP zone in Northrend. I tried it out during beta testing and enjoyed the mix of game type, vehicles, and buildings. Even though the zone was very buggy at the time I had a lot of fun.

I know PvP isn’t something everyone is into and I’m on a PvE realm for a reason, but I find Wintergrasp is a good PvP tryout for people new to it. You have large groups, so there is less pressure to perform well. It isn’t difficult to get into a turret or vehicle at some point and blowing stuff up with those is always fun. There are daily quests and you can still get most of the rewards even if your side loses. The only downside is the 2.5 hour delay between games, but I think it is a necessary feature to prevent both abuse and burn out. And there’s always Strand of the Ancients, which is a mini-Wintergrasp battleground, if you just can’t wait.

The key to enjoying PvP, IMHO, is survivability. No one has fun if they are dead a lot. The more you are alive the more you get the chance to do the killing, therefore the more fun you should be having. This is where gearing for PvP really makes it an enjoyable experience. I want to go over both starter PvP gear, gear you can get with no PvP, and experienced PvP gear, which is the best possible set (IMO) without having any arena rating. Obviously arena gear is better than some of the things I’ll post here, but if you have arena rating you don’t care because you know what you’re doing.

Starter PvP Gear

Keep it simple, get the crafted gear.

[Savage Saronite Skullshield]
[Savage Saronite Pauldrons]
[Savage Saronite Hauberk]
[Savage Saronite Bracers]
[Savage Saronite Gauntlets]
[Savage Saronite Waistguard]
[Savage Saronite Legplates]
[Savage Saronite Walkers]

You’ll need [Saronite Bar] x102, [Eternal Air] x2, [Eternal Earth] x1, [Eternal Fire] x1, [Eternal Water] x2, [Eternal Shadow] x2. An bit of an up front investment, but if you want to get into PvP with your death knight it is worth it. Don’t worry about enchants, if you stick with PvP you’ll upgrade all of this gear and if you don’t why waste the mats.

It is worth noting that raid epics are good enough to start PvP in as well. You won’t have the PvP specific stats but you should still have decent stamina and certainly good damage.

Better PvP Gear

This is the PvP set I’m aiming for myself. It is the best gear you can get without doing arenas. The arena rewards are better pieces for the most part, but in addition to requiring arena points they also require personal arena rating, so you have to do well to get some of the gear and do very well to get it all. For me PvP is nice for solo play time so I’m just skipping the arena scene for now. That being said I did look at some of the higher arena rated death knights to see what they are doing for gems and enchants.

[Titan-forged Plate Helm of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Victory]

[Savage Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders]

[Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Victory]

Enchant Cloak – Spell Piercing

[Savage Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece]

[Hateful Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph]

Enchant Bracer – Greater Assault

[Savage Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets]

[Hateful Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph]

[Savage Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards]

[Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph]

[Hateful Gladiator's Band of Triumph]

[Medallion of the Alliance]

[Anvil of Titans]

The gear speaks for itself, almost all PvP based gear which can be earned with honor points or Wintergrasp tokens. The Savage Gladiator gear can also be bought with [Emblem of Heroism] if you like. For the second ring I suggest your best DPS ring. For weapon use what you normally use for DPS and same for the sigil. Fallen Crusader is your best bet for your weapon’s rune.

The gear itself is a mix of offensive and defensive stats. Stamina and resilience are the big survival stats for PvP. PvP damage stats are a lot like PvE damage stats. The hit cap is smaller, only 5% (163 rating), and crit isn’t as value because your opponent, in theory, will have resilience to counter your crits. Strength remains the best constant for damage.

For enchants and gems you can go offensive, defensive, or a mix. From what I found in my review of top arena death knights they are going full offense with their gems and enchants. This is for two reasons. One, you need to do burst damage as well as be able to survive burst damage. The gear is weak for damage compared to your PvE gear, so the enchants and gems help. Two, the amount of resilience on gems and enchants is so small compared to how much rating you need for a percent that it just really isn’t worth it. Likewise the gem bonuses on the gear really isn’t worth it. It is either a small bit of crit or resilience, both of which aren’t useful in small numbers. I arranged my Dragon’s Eye gems to get the socket bonuses, but for you non-jewelcrafters you can just put in normal strength and spell penetration gems and skip the bonuses.

That’s right, I said spell penetration. Trust me, coming from a melee DPS class before my death knight that stat never even occurred to me until I saw the arena death knights using it. Spell penetration reduces the target’s resistance to your spells, which should not be confused with hit. It is a PvP stat used to help spell casters get around the resistances of other players, both natural resistance and from buffs. Player resistance can affect our Icy Touch, Chains of Ice, Death Coil, Death and Decay, and the spell talents for both frost and unholy specs. The arena death knights run with 130 to 145 spell penetration. Frost and unholy specced death knights should definitely aim for similar numbers if you want optimal PvP damage.

The Patch Giveth, and the Patch Taketh Away

Dedbitt — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:06:45 +0000

As you’ve no doubt heard patch 3.0.8 is being rolled out. You can all thank me for the roll out, I respected and got some gear enchanted on Monday so now I get to respec again Tuesday and pine over the wasted enchanting mats.

If you’ve kept up with the various changes in this patch you know death knight changes are significant. The changes from the launch of the public test realms to today have also been significant. We’ve been teased with changes only for them to be taken away. Check out Blizzard for the official patch notes (as of this posting they aren’t up, but will be at the link provided). I also love MMO Champion’s coverage of patches, as they cover the notes and the stuff left out of them. I don’t want to do a point by point reposting of death knight changes this patch, but there are certainly plenty of items worth highlighting.

Class Changes

Lots of buffs and nerfs. This patch is a big part of our class balance. Keep in mind that we’re a few years behind the balancing curve so expect us to get what may feel like more than our fair share of changes for a while. You definitely want to go over them all and consider making changes to your talents, skills you use, and maybe even your glyphs. The more notable ones include:

Horn of Winter, which now gives us runic power instead of using it.
Killing Machine, which isn’t as drool worthy for dual wielders as it once was.
Night of the Dead, which gives unholy death knight ghouls a chance to actually survive a boss fight.
Raise Dead, which is now two spells on two cooldowns, ones for your ghoul and one for raising another player as a ghoul.

Item Changes

[Ring of the Kirin Tor] is now available if you have the gold. It is better than any agility based DPS ring but it is weaker than the few strength based DPS epic rings available.
[Spiked Titansteel Helm] is losing some strength but will gain crit and a blue gem slot.
[Sigil of Arthritic Binding], [Sigil of the Wild Buck], and [Sigil of the Frozen Conscience] have been added and are easy to get. All three are an upgrade over the start area sigil.
Enchanting mats for recipes have changed, a lot. Most of our favorite enchants are included in the changes. Be sure to look up the new mats before your next enchant. Overall it should make your enchants cheaper.

Tanking Changes

A lot of the larger changes are specific for tanking. Overall Blizzard is making it easier for the new death knight tank to get geared up for heroics and raids and making our ability to handle damage less spiky (which isn’t as big of a deal for you, but it is for your healer).

Frost Presence has been buffed for better full time damage mitigation. In exchange Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield have been nerfed for lesser short term mitigation.
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, a new rune for our two-handed weapons, grants 25 defense (or 123 defense rating) and 2% increase to our stamina. Some people are thinking the 4% parry rune will still compete as a tank rune, but I doubt it. Stoneskin Gargoyle opens up a lot of gem and enchant options for those heavy in defense with those, and even if you are past that with your gear the defense is still bonus dodge, parry, and miss.
Rune Strike’s damage is getting nerfed but its threat increased. This puts it more in line with its original intent as a backup aggro strike, not a ZOMGWTFBBQ PvP strike.
[Glyph of Death and Decay] is losing its cower feature, which is sad, but it is getting 20% more damage in exchange, which is good for aggro.
[Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight] is good for the new death knight tank desperate for more defense. Personally I’m thinking of getting [Sigil of the Frozen Conscience] for the extra initial aggro.
[Tempered Titansteel Helm] is gaining a meta gem slot and a blue gem slot. To be honest, though, I’m still not sure it would be an upgrade over my [Arcane-Shielded Helm]. I’d be trading a lot of dodge for stamina, some armor, and some defense.
Bonus armor on any item (armor in green text) now no longer get multiplied by any talent or Frost Presence.

PvP Changes

PvP is something I’ve gotten more into as an in game hobby, so look for some postings about it later on.

Vehicles can now be affected by any spell that doesn’t affect speed, so now we can disease up those siege engines before we start smacking them. I bet they make for great Death Strike targets when low on health.
[Titan-forged Plate Helm of Triumph], [Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph], and [Anvil of Titans] are now available as epic PvP gear for ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">[Wintergrasp Mark of Honor]. Unless you are competitive in arenas these are excellent, and fairly easy to get, PvP items. The hit rating really makes the helm and greaves especially a must have pre-arena gear.
Our PvP glove bonus has been changed from a cooldown reduction on Strangulate to chance that your Frost Rune will refresh when you cast Chains of Ice.
Overall a lot of our skill changes were based on PvP balance. This is certainly not the first Blizzard has affected PvE in the name of balancing PvP.

The Taketh Away

Not everything we were once told will be coming to pass.

The new two-handed tanking sword and axe crafted by blacksmiths have been removed and will not come back. In short Blizzard was worried about death knight tanks keeping them through multiple raid tiers and they feel the new tanking rune and sigil will take care of our early defense needs.
Howling Blast still has a cool down. However it has been changed to 5 seconds (from 6 seconds) to better match the 10 second rune refresh cycle.
Howling Blast and Killing Machine changes have really put down the idea of every death knight going dual wield with two fast weapons for max DPS. Further testing after the patch will give more info, but for now it looks like two-handers are still just as viable as dual wielding and frost isn’t necessarily the top DPS tree.

Wanted To Kill – Death Knight, PST

Dedbitt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:22:32 +0000

I was looking over PvP achievements this weekend. I went back into battlegrounds to complete G.N.E.R.D. Rage, part of the Hallow’s End holiday. That’s when I noticed something disturbing for those first PvP death knights.

The basic PvP achievements can be completed with just a few battleground games, except for one. That Takes Class requires a killing blow on each class, including death knights. Right now every PvPers’ achievement looks like the one picture above and will remain so until after expansion. The first death knight spotted in a battleground is going to be oh so popular!

What really makes this bad is that you need to get a killing blow, not just an honorable kill, to complete the achievement. So instead of half of the opposing Warsong Gulch team being satisfied with your first death they are going to keep gunning for you until you’ve died at least 10 times, probably more (I’m sure it’ll be fun killing off the new “hero” class for a while). Now imagine if you’re the only death knight on your team in Alterac Valley.

So however boring doing instances and heroics to build up raid gear might get, maybe we shouldn’t all rush to Lake Wintergrasp until the class profiling has settled down some.