Quest grinding done, now for... more unholy grinding?

I've finally finished Mount Hyjal, quested all the way through it and gotten to Revered with the Guardians. This means I can buy the tasty Waywatcher's Boots and I've gotten a nice boost toward exalted. I even got the Cataclysm Lolmaster achievement. All quests done! So what now?

I am still doing the Ramkahen dailies and some Dragonmaw Clan dailies (when I can be bothered), and haz Ramkahen tabard for instances. No, what is now needed, is some serious dungeon grinding, for gears and JPs.

To that end, I am dumping my 2 handed Frost leveling spec. Sure, its awesome for soloing and going boom with some kick-ass AOE. But it relies too much on random procs, and I tend to spend all my time pressing the same 3 keys (Obliterate, Frost Strike, Howling Blast). I am switching to 2 handed Unholy DPS for some dungeon work.

The Elitist Jerks Unholy thread is very good, and has a nice spec posted. I am taking this one here, putting left over points into Desecration (for the slows needed in Grim Batol), more Magic Suppression (for the crazy amount of magical damage in the 5 mans) and finally I took Anti-Magic Zone, because it looks useful and damn I want to be like Koltira Deathweaver. Even though the effect looks a bit poor, and a point in Runic Power Mastery might have been better.

I've now finished grinding Dragonmaw, and got some tanking boots, although they are epic and the stats are probably better than my 333 boots, so I may use them in the DPS set as well. 

New Heroics bring... every gear you need

WoW, WoW Insider have a post up which details the gear coming from the new Troll heroics in patch 4.1, and it looks like pretty much every slot has something to grab for. There is no trinkets or relics, but then there is always the Miniature Voodoo Mask which summons voodoo gnomes! That is cool, and will certainly never get old.

The only fly in the ointment is these instances are heroic only, and there is apparently a higher than 329 average item level needed to queue for them. I am not sure what that is, it might be something close to 346 so you have to gear up in normals and heroics first before being able to get in. Plus, I'm sure the instances will not be easy, so those new epics will be hard-won.

Gearing update

I have finally finished Twilight Highlands on the DK, and gotten a nice 333 item level boots reward. Next up is grinding through the Deepholm quests so I can hit revered with Therazane and grab 346 rings, both tanking and Dps.

Ding 85 and now for some gearing

In the Twilight Highlands I dinged Pys the deathknight up to 85. Immediately I thought what gear do I need and what reputations to grind, to gear up for heroics and normal instances. What Cataclysm factions are there and what do they offer?

Luckily Wow Insider have a Death Knight DPS reputation guide and a Death Knight Tank reputation guide. well I say reputation, but those guides cover gear from other sources too.

Faction / tank rep / dps rep
Dragonmaw E R
Hyjal E E
Earthen ring R -
Ramkahen E R
Therazane R R
(If not a scribe, Therazane E E)

On that evidence, Hyjal Exalted then Dragonmaw Revered and Ramkahen Revered and Therazane Revered get a good spread of gear for both specs.

Hyjal can be quested to Revered in Mount Hyjal, but they have no dailies so I would tabard them.

Dragonmaw have 5 dailies, so I intend on doing those when I can. Really Dragonmaw can be dailied to exalted.

Ramkahen have 2 dailies, so those should be done. However, since my aim is revered initially, I will tabard them in preference to Hyjal, to Revered at least. Then it will be between Hyjal and Ramkahen and I think Hyjal have the tank items and Ramkahen have the dps item at exalted.

Therazane can almost be quested to Revered in Deepholm, just 1 or 2 sets of their dailies are needed to hit Revered, so ignore their tabard and grind on dailies to exalted if you need to. My DK is a scribe so I can stop at revered.

Finally ER offer nothing for dps but the head arcanum for tanks. I think a half or quarter of honoured to revered is left once you finish Vashj'ir and Deepholm, but they have no dailies, so this rep should be tabarded to revered. I will likely do ER once Ramkahen and Hyjal are revered.

Gear upgrades

Did Azjol Nerub and UK with a level 73 Paladin tank who had 14k health and 17k armour. I armoried him later and he had some items from questing which look nice:

Tundra Pauldrons reward from The Nexus quest.
Expelling Gauntlets reward from Azjol-Nerub quest.
Boots of the Unbowed Protector reward from The Nexus quest.

Also Gauntlets of the Disturbed Giant reward from The Nexus quest.

Not tank items but lots of armour and stamina:
Vambraces of the Vengeance Bringer reward from UK quest.
Girdle of Forceful Annihilation reward from Dragonblight group quest.

So it seems the quest rewards from The Nexus are better for tanking than those from UK. I need to get into The Nexus with these 3 quests and get completing them.

Level 70 and 77ish Death Knight tanking gear

Ok so after pondering quite how I will get the gear to go tanking the Lich King dungeons, the answer comes to me courtesy of WoWGrrl. That being the Cobalt set as shown here.

The cobalt set runs to 37 cobalt bars or ore and goes a long way to providing crit immunity, and for normal runs should be just peachy. Then there is the Tempered Saronite set which runs to 20 cobalt, 148 saronite ore and 3 crystalized earth, and is rare and seems to provide an upgrade. Things to do, get watching for cheap Cobalt and Saronite ore.

Pre raid tanking gear list

Here is a list of gear obtained by Emblems of Triumph or other grindable items, plus the total cost in Triumph. Not the cost in sanity to grind this number of triumph however. Gear stolen from pwnwear.com forums.

Helm 50 triumph
Neck 19 conquest
Shoulders 30 triumph
Cloak 25 valor (or do Ahune)
Chest 50 triumph
Wrist 60 valor or AH and gold
Hands 30 triumph
Belt 23 conquest
Legs 50 triumph
Feet 40 valor
Ring 1 35 triumph
Ring 2 25 valor
Trinket 1 50 triumph
Trinket 2 40 heroism
2H Sword 25 champion's seals
Sigil 25 triumph

Total is 552 triumph and 25 champion's seals. By spending some gold on the Wrist this comes down to 492 triumph. Total defense rating for all this is 561, 657 including rings etc. The defense skill needed is 540, or 688 rating. However the Rune of the Gargoyle gives 25 defense skill, so some of these items may not be needed.

Now the Titan-forged shoulders are higher item level, but have no defense or parry on them. The Wrathful Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph, Relentless Gladiator's Greaves of Triumph and Relentless Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph have no defense or parry rating on them either. However I may get away with gearing from blues to hit the cap, then farming triumph and stopping once I have the non-honour items, then grab these honour items for threat.

To get started I shall follow this article which shows how to get upto the defense cap, also running daily normal LK dungeons gives 2 Triumph.