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.

Death Knight Frost DPS leveling build and how to

Having taken the Frost 2H leveling spec for the trip from 80 to 85, it occurs to me that nowhere could I find a guide about how to play such a spec. Sure the places I read about it vaguely mention what you're meant to do, but having played it a bit I thought it would be useful to write down what to do.

Presence
You play this in Unholy Presence, to decrease the GCD so you can mash spells faster, and increase rune regeneration so those abilities come off cooldown faster. Now if you face an AOE situation, you can use Frost Presence for more actual damage while spamming Blood Boil and Howling Blast.

Priority
For single target:
First off is Howling Blast which uses a Frost rune. With the Glyph of HB the target gets Frost Fever, so you've damaged them and diseased them in one hit. I tend to only use Howling Blast (when it consumes a Frost rune) once a fight for a single mob.

Next use Obliterate. This uses one Unholy and one Frost rune. With the Glyph of Obliterate, it does 20% more damage.

Next if nothing else is up, use those Blood runes on 2 Blood Strikes. The talent Blood of the North which you get for speccing Frost, makes Blood runes come back as Death runes, which you can use for Obliterate when they refresh.

Finally you can burn the extra Unholy rune on Plague strike, or if you have it, use Blood Tap to get a Death rune, then Obliterate using the Death and Unholy rune.

All these abilities are generating Runic Power thanks to Chill of the Grave, Might of the Frozen Wastes and Improved Frost Presence. Which you use on Frost Strike generally when there is nothing else to press.

Once the runes regenerate, you continue to hit Obliterate to use the Frost and Unholy or Death runes, filling with Blood Strikes to use the Blood runes.

However, this spec seems to be all about watching for procs from Killing Machine and Rime.

Killing Machine makes your next Obliterate or Frost Strike a crit, and will highlight the spells on the toolbar and put two curved frost graphics around your toon (if you have spell alerts on). This should be used asap on Obliterate, or Frost Strike if Obliterate is not up.

Rime causes Obliterate to give a 45% chance that you get the Freezing Fog buff, which makes Howling Blast free. When Rime procs, HB will be highlighted and a curved frost graphic will appear above your toon. Mash Howling Blast when this happens! Of course, Rime can trigger from a Killing Machined Obliterate.

Sometimes Killing Machine and Rime come up at the same time, in which case I tend to use the Rime effect on a Howling Blast if I cannot Obliterate, then either Obliterate or Frost Strike if Obliterate is still not up. If I can Obliterate straight away, I use Obliterate then HB.

In practice I seem to attack with Howling Blast, Obliterate, Frost Strike and then either Rime or Killing Machine are highlighting a spell which needs pressing, then by the time I've done that, Obliterate is ready again or I have too much Runic power and need to use Frost Strike. Sometimes I can use a Blood rune or two with Blood Strike.

AOE:
For AOE, not that I have done this much, but I suspect its Howling Blast to damage a lot of targets, and put Frost Fever on them, then Blood Boil for the AOE then Death and Decay. Use the other unholy rune on Plague strike. Watch for Rime to do a free HB.

These priorities work fine for soloing, for actual instances, check out EJ for more details of what to do when for optimal DPS.

Healing
If low on health, you can use Lichborne to turn yourself undead, then self-target and spam Death Coil for some self-heals.

You can also use Death Strike in place of Obliterate to self-heal.

Given the massive amount of Runic Power this spec generates, you can summon a Ghoul then sacrifice it with Death Pact for a 25% health heal.

Escape
Hungering Cold will trap enemies in 10 yards in ice, allowing you to make your escape.

Conclusion
Frost leveling is a lot of fun. Sure I miss the days of Blood tank spec being both big damage and lots of self-heals, but the sheer speed that things die in Frost means its very good. I plan on keeping the spec for grinding dailies as well!

Rurikhan DK blood guide

Rurikhan again delivers the goods with this video on Blood DKs. Check the big one out there, or on his website.

I am still working through Vashj'ir on my DK. I have DPSed Throne of the Tides but not tanked anything until I get some better gear.

Rurikhan DK blood tank video

Rurikhan has posted a video about the Death Knight blood tank which runs though specs and shows him tanking a heroic. It is very informative and well worth checking out.

Links for Cataclysm

If you haven't seen this yet, Pwnwear.com have a post with links to loads of 4.0.3 threads, with such useful information as a Tanking 101, starter tank gear list (for Cataclysm) and a cookie-cutter tank spec. Which is very much like the one I have, because pwnwear.com is where I got it from :)

I have been meaning to take a look at the gear available from quests etc, but given my leveling plan, I intend on doing probably Vash'jir -> Deepholm -> Uldum -> Twilight Highlands, with some instances along the way. The gear list posted on pwnwear is excellent and will really help me spot which gear to keep along the way.

It goes without saying that the best quest rewards are in Twilight Highlands, so I will be hitting that as soon as I can so I can finish all the quests and get some great gear.

The Shattering and a strange sort of leveling plan

Not much time left to go until the Shattering hits European servers, in fact tonight is the last play night. The big news from my DK is that Jessica Sellers won't be trading Ink of the Seas any more, so I need to hit Dalaran tonight and get my stocks of glyphs made up. Several gold blog posters are expecting another Glyphmas like 4.0.1 so I shall ensure I am prepared.

Meanwhile I shall be trying to flog a lot of Netherweave bags once 4.0.3a hits, as I suspect people will be rolling level 1 alts either to see the new quests, or try the new race/class combos out, or both. I hope this means an increase in demand for bags and also heirloom enchants, I am ready to go on both of these.

The DK is also just level 79 and one quarter, so I have a little over 2 weeks to get to 80 if I am to have any chance of playing with friends in Cataclysm. Unfortunately this does mean my plans to have a crack at tanking at level 80 will have to wait.

In fact, I have a strange sort of leveling plan, which is to do the quests with the DK and gain gear that way, maybe playing with friends in instances when they are around. On the other hand, I am toying with the idea of just grinding the Dungeon Finder hard on my Druid tank with guildies, trying to gear up and level up from dungeon XP and drops alone. Doing a whole lot of instances should make me very familiar with the pulls and bosses for level 85, but may be boring. Whereas questing to 85 will make me utterly unfamiliar and unpracticed with tanking the instances, but is likely to be more interesting.

I am somewhat concerned over the equation that you need gear to tank instances, but to get gear you need to run instances, or be lucky with quest rewards. The Dungeon Finder also puts you in an appropriate instance for your level, so with every ding you are getting pushed into harder instances, even though your gear may not have improved enough to actually tank them.

Without just picking quests to get good tanking rewards I can see randomly doing quests and instances will result in my death through not being geared enough. However, grinding instances may result in my death through boredom. So I am really hoping those Hyjal and Vashir quests give a good reward that I can use to try tanking up some normal mode instances with.

Cold Weather Flying!

Amazingly in 4.0.1 Cold Weather Flying is trainable for a mere 1000g, BUT at level 74 and likely lower. Now my questing in Northrend will get a big speed boost.

In other news there has been a lot of posts at pwnwear.com about DK tanking in 4.0.1, Satorri's guide is good reading.