My thoughts about the DK Frost Spec

or: With a corn cob pipe, a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal.

I won't lie, I have really enjoyed playing the Death Knight class. I have to add that there is just something really cool about watching a Tauren use a 2 handed weapon to beat down an enemy.

Melee with Berthold has been up front and in your face, which is a switch from the ranged Hunter and stealthy Druid Kitty classes I leveled before.

The blatent OP of the class has been a fun way of quickly moving through the Burning Crusade content...yet again. Solo'ing the group quests in Nagrand was a lot of fun, and gave me an idea of how an extended PvE fight will go.

Leveling Bert has been fast with the new streamlined system. I completed 98% of the Hellfire Penninsula quests and when I was done I was level 64. This time around I gave Zangarmarsh and Terrokar Forest a miss and went straight into Nagrand. My plan is to skip Blades Edge, do a nice chunk of Netherstorm and then level halfway through 70 in Shadowmoon Valley.

I would like to do this to get some good quest reward armor to take into Northrend, and it never hurts to be half at least half a level ahead of any new zone you are starting.

I started out in the Unholy Tree from 58 - 61, then switched to Blood until level 66. Now I am test driving the Frost spec and find it solid for play. I like being able to have my diseases up throughout the entire fight, and the added armor from Frost Presence adequately covers the lack of self healing.

Here is my current spec.

Current spell/attack rotation is:
Plague Strike ->Icy Touch->Blood Strike->Blood Strike->Obliterate->Frost Strike

I got this rotation from Nicolai on Elitist Jerks, along with the dps spec.

The rotation starts by getting up two DoT spells and then uses strikes that create Death Runes and give a bonus for each disease you have ticking on the mob. By the time you hit Obliterate all your Runes are on cooldown, and this is easily covered with Frost Strike which uses the Runic Power that your melee had built up.

Other notable skills that I will use situational:
Unbreakable Armor, Howling Blast, Lichborne, Death Chill, Death Strike

Lichborne and Unbreakable Armor are buffs to armor and help to resist movement impairing spells.

Death Chill will force your next Icy Touch, Obliterate, or Frost Strike to crit. I personally like to use it with Obliterate.

In all it seems all three Talent Trees are well designed, and from what I have read each is viable to tank with. Blood was enjoyable, I liked all the self healing; Frost is going well, but I had the most fun with Unholy I think.

When I hit 69 I think I will swap back to the Unholy Tree to see if I still like it best and then make my decision about my Talent spec just prior to hopping the Zeppelin to Northrend.

Its like learning a whole new class!

Or: Holy Crap!!! This isn't your average whack-a-mole scenario!

One of my goals is to be able to heal with my druid Fin. I have several reasons for this, the current top three are:

• My guild needs a healer
• I'd like to experience the game from all three class perspectives
  
• I'd like to see the endgame content and it is the most needed class in the game

My big hope is that Blizz will eventually implement the Dual Spec ability allowing Hybrid classes to swap between healing and either dps or tanking without having to go through the trip back to our trainers.

Being a Bear Tank is a lot of fun, but with the mass of Death Knights moving into the endgame I believe that the number of tanks in the game will be increased quite a bit.

So in anticipation of a new healing spec I have been reading up on a few Resto-Blogs, namely Resto4Life, 4 Healz, and Casual WoW.

Holy Crap!!!! If you think BRK throws you a lot of mind bending math and tips you need to read up on HoT Druids.... It is enough to send me back to Vik and Kaylee never to return.

One post did start to get things going for me though, and ironically it was written by Byaghro from Casual WoW as a guest post on 4 Healz.

You can read the full article here.

It is actually an article about the changes to Nourish and Regrowth in WotLK, but there were a few jewels that helped me immensely.

Basically the info that I needed (this is for any other Bear Tanks wanting to try healing) boils down to this lovely paragraph:

The tank is the only person really taking any damage (minor splash damage on the melee dps). Lifebloom is being kept on the tank, as is Rejuvenation. For healing the melee, since it is manageable damage being taken for this scenario, Wild Growth fits the bill perfectly. But wait, the tank is still taking pretty massive damage, and you need to keep some other, strong, direct heal in the mix to make sure they don't get too low.

Ahhhh! A starting point to work from.
That little beauty can be put on a post it and stuck to my screen while I learn how to heal 5 man instances.

Thank you Byahgro, you saved my brain!

Fin's First Bling!

Finegas got his first gem-able item this morning. I picked up a Band of the Victor from Battlecryer Blackeye, the Thrallmar pvp reward vendor.

This rare level ring is very easy to come by even at level 60. All you need to do is complete the daily pvp quest Hellfire Fortifications five times.

The quest has you capture the Stadium, Broken Hill, and The Overlook all of which are in the center of Hellfire Peninsula. Each time you complete the quest you will receive 3 Marks of Thrallmar, and the ring will cost you 15 marks.

It is very easy to complete these while doing your normal quests in this zone. Basically you enable your pvp flag and stand inside the structure until your faction's flag appears.

If you get lucky and have some successful pvp encounters while doing this quest you will get your ring even faster.

As a hopeful tanking bear I chose the ring which gives the bonus to my critical strikes and attack power, there is an equivalent ring for casters and healers.

I chose to use a Shifting Nightseye as a gem. This purple gem fits in any blue or red gem slot and splits my bonus to Stamina (for added health), and Agility (+4 for armor, crit rating, attack power, and health). The gem itself set me back 35 gold, but now that Fin is transmuting Arcanite Bars and selling raid level potions I'm not sweating it too much.

Kaylee's Current Raid Spec

I've been playing a bit with different specs for both myself and Kaylee. My hope was to have 3 pets up and running for different raid types but that hasn't materialized yet.

Since I tamed Mal I have been working on leveling him up. He is now at 62, too small for instances yet; and I have been filling the holes in my pet taming spell book so I've had to keep an open slot in the stable for trash pets.

I am starting to try the heroics daily quests as well; I need the Badges of Justice for some armor upgrades. Since Kaylee may be tanking when not running Kara I might be adjusting things a little to keep her survivability up. I'll sacrifice a bit of DPS until I have all the Badges I need, but that wasn't unexpected.

This is the Pet Spec that I am currently taking into Karazahn:
Growl rank 8
Cower rank 7
Claw rank 7
Dash rank 3
Natural Armor rank 8
Avoidance rank 2
Cobra Reflexes rank 1
Arcane Resistance rank 3
Fire Resistance rank 3
Shadow Resistance rank 3
Greater Stamina rank 1

Until I can get Mal up and into instances I just might back off on the Dash and Stamina so I can get some nature resistance and max out Natural Armor.

My issue is currently less about money given that it only costs 10 silver to respec a pet, and more about time. With no pet trainers in the Outlands I just don't want to get caught with shadow resists when an invite comes in for Steam Vaults. Updates as they happen.