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. 

Death Knight 4.1 tanking specs

4.1 is here and it is time to talk about tanking specs. Given not many of the Death Knight talents changed, they are basically the same as for 4.0.6, discussed in this post here. One thing of note that I read on pwnwear.com is that because interrupts are now unmissable, expect to see encounters relying on interrupts a lot more in the future. Which means for 5 mans, the spec with Endless Winter is likely to be very useful, and I shall definitely be using that one.

One other thing is don't forget you have a combat res now! Raise Ally was redesigned to be a combat res, costing 50 RP. If someone goes down and you have the time, pop it on them. It is an instant, so could even be cast while tanking. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to glyph it to return the player with 100% health, unlike the Druid combat res which has precisely such a glyph. Even Warlocks, who also get a combat res in 4.1, get a glyph which increases the ressed player's health to 70%. By comparison, ours only gives the player 20% health, which is poor. Please to be giving a glyph kthxbai!

It's all true! 75 silver cut common gems

In a shock move, the data mined information that cut common Cataclysm gems would sell for 75 silver, instead of 9 gold, turns out to be true!

Most shocking is that the data was true, but also the end of the Ore shuffle is in sight! Well, okay, maybe not, but those useless Alicites I used to vendor will now need to be converted into something else, maybe some dust via the Alicite Pendant.

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.

DK tank builds 4.0.6

WoW Insider have a post up with a Death Knight tanking 101, freshly updated for 4.0.6. On there they have a DK tank build which is this one I call the Lichborne build. This is because it includes the Lichborne talent, which turns you undead and thus you can heal yourself with Deathcoil. This is meant to be used as a tanking cooldown for some self-healing when trouble arises, and can be made easier using the following macro:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne;
/cast [@player] Death Coil 

This will activate Lichbourne, then cast Death Coil at yourself, even if you have another mob targetted. It can be used instead of the actual Lichbourne spell on a toolbar, and spammed to use all runic power in self heals.

Now some people don't like this style of play, and so don't want the Lichborne spell in their arsenal. The build Blood tanking in the sidebar does not have Lichborne, instead pics up Virulence and Morbidity with the hope of some more AOE threat, with diseases doing more damage and threat and DnD having more damage and threat. This removes your Lichborne spell.

Finally, there is a variant of the Lichborne build I called Blood Lichborne tanking 2 build on the site. This one takes a point out of Scent of Blood and one out of Epidemic, to put points into making Mind Freeze cost no runic power. I've read 2/3 Scent of Blood is optimal anyway, so no worries there. Taking 1 point out of Epidemic means diseases will need refreshing sooner, but the bonus is you get to interrupt every 10 seconds even if you are dry on runic power.

Now for 5 mans I think this will be useful because some of the encounters need multiple interrupts, and I have had to do interrupting myself as tank sometimes. For normal mode raids, it may not be so useful because you can have DPS doing the interrupts, or reserve some runic power, but then again if you find yourself having to do interrupts a lot, this spec may be good. In 4.1 the interrupts will always hit, so getting a tank to do them will be more viable than now, where you run the risk of missing.

I am undecided which build to take, I may try the Blood Lichborne tanking 2 build so I can interrupt in 5 mans, at the moment AOEing stuff down is not really done, so single target threat is probably more useful and I can live without more threaty DnD and diseases.

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.