Frost Tanking Glyphs

I've been experimenting with a few different glyph setups recently to optimize my tanking as a frost death knight.

There are a ton of glyphs out there that could be potentially used with positive results, however I've narrowed down the Major glyph choices to the following three:

1. Glyph of Icy Touch: Your Icy Touch does 10% less damage but generates 10 additional runic power.

This particular glyph is one that I wavered back and forth over for a good while. I was originally using the Death Strike glyph, however noticed that, with the almost constant rune strike procs, I was constantly starved for Runic Power.

The Icy Touch major glyph provides a very noticeable increase in rp generation, with very little damage reduction. Icy Touch still crits for upwards of 2.5k with all of the talents in the frost tree.

2. Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power.

This glyph is an absolute no-brainer, and ties in somewhat to the reasoning for Icy Touch. Unbreakable armor is sometimes difficult to work into a rotation because of the rune requirement. Lichborne, on the other hand, is great, as it has absolutely no requirements to activate.

Icebound fortitude requiring no rp opens up more rune strike procs, more rp for horn of winter and mindfreeze, and is just a good glyph to have.

3. Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 5% parry chance but no longer increases your Strength.

This glyph fine-tunes the effects of Unbreakable Armor by sacrificing the strength bonus for more avoidance in the form of 5% parry. One might say that you still receive parry rating from the strength bonus through forceful deflection, however the amount of parry received is miniscule. You would need to have close to 10,000 strength for the parry rating from forceful deflection to match that granted by this glyph.

Belated Update!

The blog has, admittedly, been neglected over the past two weeks due to WotLK. So, without further ado, time for some updates as to how Woe has been doing:

1. Hit 80, second in the guild.

2. Began tanking regular and heroic instances to gear up before the guild hits Naxxramas.

3. Leveled up both Inscription and Blacksmithing; created the boe epics from smithing.

4. Well over crit immune currently, with only three tanking items remaining to purchase from the badge vendor.

5. Very, very, very quickly replacing all gear with epics again.

That's about it! Depending on leveling, we'll likely be start Naxxramas this coming week once a few healers (finally) finish leveling.

Can't wait. :)

It's alive!

As of 25 minutes ago, Wrath of the Lich King debuted on the live World of Warcraft servers.

To quote a great man:

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.....and then they rolled Death Knights."

Woooooooooooooooooooo.

TankSpot for Death Knights

The well-known tanking site www.tankspot.com, has finally begun to show signs of Death Knight interest in their forums. Over the past few days, several Death Knight-oriented threads have popped up, with some pretty encouraging results.

Much of the Warcraft community still harbors some serious misconceptions about the viability of Death Knight tanks in a raid setting. Here's hoping this kind of thing will change the false assumptions out there.

Some of the threads still hold some inaccuracies, as their authors haven't even stepped foot into beta, let alone played a Death Knight to 80, however the intent is still pure. A few threads of note:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/40409-death-knight-tanking-stats.html

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/40685-death-knight-f-q-questions-answers-right-here.html

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/40694-death-knight-aoe-spec-mt-spec-rotations.html

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/41265-dk-tanking-thoughts.html

58-60 Speed Leveling Information

Dhannek from the Deathknight.info forums has recently published the finalized version of his popular Death Knight Speed Leveling guide.

It provides a guideline for those death knights fresh out of Ebon Hold to take prior to entering Outland. The guide gives walkthrough lists for both Horde and Alliance Death Knights; including the must-have quest and tradeskill items needed to streamline the first few levels before hitting the Burning Crusade content.

If interested, head over to the Deathknight.info forums at the following link:

http://deathknight.info/forum/index.php?topic=3696.0

Racial Woes

Forgive the pun in the title, but it's pretty apropos in this case.

I'm stuck on the race issue again. In spite of my penchant for rolling gnomes, I decided on the human for the race of my death knight. The human was the tank race of choice in the alliance due to their expertise bonuses to maces and swords. The other racial bonuses were nice as well, but the main draw was, again, their expertise. Add in the new "Every Man For Himself" racial which essentially duplicates the effect of the pvp trinket, and it all but locked the choice for me.

And then I made the mistake of reading about the viability of the night elf "Quickness" racial, which increases the death knight's chance to be missed by 2%. This minor trait scales very well with avoidance (the basis behind death knight tanking), and is another form of damage mitigation completely immune to diminishing returns.

As it stands now, the night elf is the race of choice for any min/max'ing tank it seems..... and since I'm rolling the character to do nothing but tank, it would stand to reason this would be the best choice.

But I'd have to play as a night elf, along with the unwashed huntar(d) masses.

Further Homogenization?

Blizzard's new approach to raid composition has been met with mixed feelings across the board. The unique class-specific buffs and abilities brought to a raid by certain talent specs are now shared by more than a few classes. Tanking abilities have been leveled out to allow for a main tank of any flavor. The list goes on and on.

By and large, I haven't had an issue with any of this. In fact, the tanking change is one of the best features to the expansion in my eyes, as it allows me to switch from playing a class I find little to no enjoyment out of in a main tank role, to a class I absolutely adore in the very same role.

The latest change by the powers-that-be, however has left me....irrate.

With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King and the many changes the expansion brings to classes and mechanics, we have decided to rearrange our forums to make it easier for players to hold constructive discussions. To that end, we have created three role-based forums -- Tanking, Damage Dealing, and Healing -- in place of the class forums. Why?

Common ground for common roles. The new structure provides central places for players of diverse classes and specs to discuss their common roles. Until now, there was no one obvious forum for a holy paladin to discuss Arena healing tactics with a restoration shaman, or for a protection warrior to talk tanking mechanics with a feral druid. This often led to splintered, fractured, and redundant discussions. In addition, the original class forum structure never properly took the impact of talents into account, lumping together a shadow priest and a holy priest (for example) when that didn’t necessarily make sense.

Celebrate diversity! While a tank tanks and a healer heals, the specific ways each class and talent build go about these roles are very distinct -- and the addition of new abilities in Wrath of the Lich King will continue to add even more ways to play. The new forum structure will still be a place for a frost mage (for example) to discuss tricks of the trade with other frost mages, while at the same time facilitating an understanding of the unique tools that rogues or other damage-dealers have to perform similar functions.

Help us help you. The new forums will also allow the community team and developers to follow discussions and gather feedback more effectively as the game continues to evolve -- which, ultimately, translates to a better World of Warcraft for you.

The current individual class forums will be active until Thursday, November 6. On that date, we will be removing the individual class forums. You can begin using the new forums immediately at the links below:

Tanking- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=13395580&sid=1

Healing- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=13395582&sid=1

Damage Dealing- http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=13395581&sid=1

Allowing all of the classes and talent specs to function, at least in some capacity, competently in a raid setting is one thing. Attempting to remove any kind of class-specific forum to explore the differences between the various classes is something entirely different. Joking mostly, but hell, let's just condense the current lineup of classes into the tank, healer, and damage dealer. Give them each other's buffs, and be done.

Ah well, good thing no one takes the class forums seriously to begin with. :)

Deathknight.info Community Mod Project

In spite of the countless man-hours spent by Blizzard on the design of the stock Deathknight rune interface, it's very lackluster. In case you haven't been keeping watch, the stock rune interface has gone through more than a few changes since WotLK alpha testing. Some are a bit more utilitarian than others, however by and large, every version but the latest version has been something unique and possessing a distinctly "Death Knight" feel.





The uninspired current incarnation of the unit frame has, however, caused extensive player modification to spring up in order to develop a more efficient rune ui. I've been keeping my eye on a user interface project being worked on over at Deathknight.info, which is a community project. That is, the author of the addon has been receiving requests from the forum goers and is in the final stages of releasing a finished product.

DKIRunes takes many of the elements from various other rune interface addons (RuneHero, RuneWatch, etc) and combines them into a seamless, incredibly customizable package that is independant of other PlayerFrame modifications.

If interested, head on over to the Deathknight.info thread for DKIRunes. A finalized version of the addon is expected by the time WotLK hits the shelves.