Wednesday, July 28, 2010

DK For Dummies - Them Runic Power

So what about them runic powers?

It’s the light blue bar right under your health bar that’s filling up as you hit the mob and as you use your abilities.

You fill up your runic power by:
1. Applying your diseases (IT, PS).
2. Striking your target (BS, HS, SS, OB, DS).
3. Blowing your horn.

You lose runic power by:
1. Not in combat.
2. Using them for abilities listed below.

What they are used for:
Offensive abilities:
-Death Coil
-Frost Strike
-Rune Strike
-Dancing Rune Weapon
-Hungering Cold
-Corpse Explosion

Defensive abilities:
-Ice Bound Fortitude
-Death coil
-Mind Freeze
-Anti Magic Shell
-Death Pact

Since you start with 0 runic power and build up your runic power as you spend your runes, the abilities mentioned above fit after the ‘rotation’ we’ve establish previously.

So now our ‘rotations’ looks somewhat like this:

1. Apply diseases (spending runes, building runic power).
2. Strikes (spending runes, building runic power).
3. Spend runic power. (waiting to spend runes).

And that’s ladies and gents is the universal Death Knight rotation.

Whether you are tanking or damage dealing, in blood, unholy or frost, you will be doing those 3 activities. That is our core class mechanic.

Next post we’ll talk about pairing up abilities to maximize up time and minimize down time.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Quel Delar Delar....

Whatever will be… will beee…

So here’s short report on the Quel’Delar quest line that I’m doing at the moment.

It’s AWESOME!!!

The depth of my knowledge on WoW lore is pretty pathetic. It goes along the line of… Allys are pretty, Hordies are ugly. The end.

But it’s Quel Delar…. The sister blade of Quel Serar…

Epic quest line… Like Ebert’s review of Sex in the City, I’m going to give it 4 star out of 5. Actually that was not accurate, he gave it a thumb down. Complete waste of time that movie was.

This quest line takes you to 3 different dungeons. THREE!!! It is thick with lore and it takes you back in time. It has some NPC interactions, NPC acting, some voice acting and it rewards you with a bad ass epic.

It is the ‘solution’ of providing end game content besides raiding. Give us a story line that we can immerse ourselves in. Let us interact with important lore figures in the game. You can do the quest on your own time and pace.

I truly had fun questing even after I got to level cap. Hopefully they’ll have more of this come Cata.

Note: I’ll post up some of the lore stuff that I’ve learned after completing this quest. It’s really cool.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

DK For Dummies - Abilities & Rotations

Let’s talk about abilities and rotations.

The DK class have 3 types of abilities:

1. Disease(s)
2. Strikes
3. Filler (or some people call it runic power dump)

That’s it. This is true of all 3 of our specs. There might be some little variation and ‘fun’ things from each of the specs but these 3 are the core abilities of our class mechanic. These 3 abilities are intertwined and affect how and when to use them. We'll take a closer look of each tree later to talk about these 'fun' things that make each tree unique.

So let’s try to build us a ‘rotation’ by looking at any of the ability that has the word ‘strike’ in them.

These are Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, Scourge Strike

Depending on the tree that you choose to level/dps/tank with, you’ll probably have some of the above ‘strike’ ability. In either case, they are available as you start the Hellfire Peninsula zone in outland.

Let’s look at the tool tips for these strikes.

Blood Strike:
Instantly strike the enemy, causing 40% weapon damage plus , total damage increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target.

Death Strike:
A deadly attack that deals 75% weapon damage plus 84 and heals the Death Knight for 5% of his/her maximum health for each of his/her diseases on the target.

Heart Strike:
Instantly strike the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus on the primary target, and 25% weapon damage plus on the secondary target. Each target takes 10% additional damage for each of your diseases active on that target.

Scourge Strike:
An unholy strike that deals 70% of weapon damage as Physical damage plus 238. In addition, for each of your diseases on your target, you deal an additional 12% of the Physical damage done as Shadow damage.


See the pattern there?

‘for each of your diseases on the target’ your strikes gets more potent. It will hit harder than if you do not have any disease active on your target.

So just by reading the tool tips we can built a starter DK rotation and it goes something like this:

1. Put diseases on target
2. Strike the target.

Pretty simple right? Yup.

But wait that’s not all. What about that runic power we’re gaining as we start our rotation?

Next we will talk about the dump phase. It’s like taking a dump, but better.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

U and I Must Change

With the UI overhaul in cataclysm, you know the one thing nobody talks about and the one thing that Blizzard really need to change?

The default location of your portrait.

It has vital information. Your health, your runes, your energy, your rage, your mana, your focus, your runic power.

Currently it is on the top left corner of your screen. You know what else should be on the corner of your screen? Your recycle bin. Mine’s on the bottom right corner of my screen.

I like to locate things that I deemed important on the center of my vision.

This might be the reason why I'm such a bad Karate practitioner since punches and kicks that hurt the most typically comes swinging about from my peripheral vision areas.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Subway No Way

Unrelated to WoW, they’re going to put a cap on the unlimited metro card. So instead of ‘unlimited 30 days metro card’ it’s going to be ’90 ride card’.

Assuming that I use the card every day (and I do). One swipe going to and one swipe coming from, that’s 60 guaranteed used up charges. I’d still have 30 more to use. Not a problem for a single transit user like me.

But let’s take a look at somebody that needs some transfer to a bus in addition to subway, that’s 120 charges. Not good.

The thing is, I can definitely see myself being in that group. The 5 NY boroughs do not get complete coverage from the subway system. This change will increase their travel cost by one third.

That’s a lot.

Imagine the cost of fuel went up by 33% for you that drives to and from work.

That’s a lot.

Always Practice Safe DPS

While I was in the subway this morning I got to think of why I play WoW. I can blog about it and it probably be a very boring post. Most blogger already post about it. So I decided it’s a moot point.

But something else was on my mind.

I will let you in on a little secret.

I let stupid DPS die… I let them die multiple times in a run if they don’t learn. And it felt great afterwards.

Yes, I have a healer. Yes, I have healed heroics with no tanks. Yes, I know I can keep you all alive. No, I won’t do it just because it will keep me awake for daily random.

If I practice safe DPS, the why can’t I expect the same from others when I switch to healing or tanking?

On a lighter note, I started the Quel’Delar quest on my druid. I won the hilt’s roll on a HoR run. It’s definitely one of the coolest quest line I’ve seen in the game. I’m hoping the next expansion have more of this.

-----------
Edit: I just found out that healer letting people die is not so uncommon.

Monday, July 19, 2010

DK For Dummies - Resources

In the first post of DK For Dummies series, we’ll take a look at resources that the DK class use. It’s definitely different and unique.

Like all class in the game, the death knight have their resources to fuel their ability. This is like mana for the caster classes, rage for warriors/bear, energy for rogues/cat, etc. Unlike the other class with the exception of rogues and cat druid, death knights have 2 types of resources that fuel their abilities.

One of them is called runes and the other one is called runic power.

RUNES:

All death knights starts with:
(2) frost runes
(2) unholy runes
(2) blood runes

Most guides called them FFUUBB
These are the little balls that are hanging under your character plate on the top left corner.

Some if not most of our abilities spend these runes. Once they are used for an ability, they go through a 10 second cooldown before they can be used again. So here’s an example of how the runes resource is used on a fight:

Start (fresh set of runes)
FFUUBB

Icy Touch
xFUUBB

Plague Strike
xFxUBB

Blood Strike
xFxUxB

10 second later
FFxUxB

11.5 second later
FFUUxB

13 second later
FFUUBB



RUNIC POWER

Runic power works exactly like rage. We gain runic power through the use of runes.

The rest of our abilities that does not use runes as resource will use runic power.


See how that works there?

Think of a backwards rogue or cat druid mechanics.

In short:
-Runes creates runic power that’s used for more abilities while we wait for the runes to finish up their cooldown.
-Our resources have a set of exact timers. It does not matter whether you are in heroic blues or in ICC heroic gear, your runes will refresh in exactly 10 seconds after it is used. This makes the Death Knight mechanics gravitate to a heavy resource management mechanics.

Next up we’ll look at what do we spend these runes and runic power on to maximize our output within the exact 10 seconds of each runes cooldowns.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Bad Apple

Anybody else got turned off by Job’s explanation today?

I did.

After what they said today, I will not buy any Apple product. What an arrogant piece of shit of a company.

You make mistakes, you owned up to it.

It’s a phone FFS. Is it too much to ask for it to work like one?

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

DK For Dummies

I’ll be posting up a DK for dummies series in the next couple of weeks. The purpose of this guide, rather than create a how to guide, is to explain the class mechanic.

This series is not for the expert raiders but geared more towards those who might be curious and want to try the DK class or those who might have abandoned that level 58 DK in Hellfire Peninsula.

I also hope it can educate those who insist that DK can tank in blood presence and insist that to use the talent tree you need to be in their respective presence.

I’ll be covering up some basic stuff about the class and some basic abilities for all 3 talent trees.

Hopefully after we finish the series we’ll know:

-What a DK can do.
-What a DK can’t do.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Last Week's Winners and Losers

Winners

1. Blizzard, for ‘listening’ to the community and retracting what could be the slayer of the dragon slayer himself. They’ve managed to pissed, pleased, and ‘solved’ what could be a cataclysmic event. No pun intended there…

2. Miami, for having the KING to tank all of their heroic raids.
3. Espagna. OLE!!!
4. Me, for making a mean peach upside down cake. YUMM!!!!

Losers

1. GM Bashiok, poor guy who’s rumoured to have supported the his company’s policy and got footed with a big pile of pizza bills.

2. Cleveland, for being tank-less.
3. Holland, for choking on the biggest game of their life.
4. Level 1 forum troll alt, for being a winner but since this is my blog, you get to be a loser.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Not So Secret Trade Secret

This is how I make my gold.

The method has been very good to me. It has not make me a gold millionaire, but it has allow me to not worry about the best enchants and gems.

I don’t think it’s an original one. If I can think it somebody else might have done it already.

Here we go…..

TOOLS:
Use some sort of an auction mod. Scan diligently.
Use lil sparky crafting mod. It will link your auction mod and put a scanned price to each of the glyph you can make.

MATS:
Scan for herbs.
Since I’m lazy, I typically just search for the Northrend ones. Look for the cheapest one.
They sell for about 80 silver each on my server. This might be different on yours.
Before you buy them, read below on setting your price.
Buy them.
Make a macro /mill
Hot key it and press it repeatedly.

SET YOUR PRICE:
Since milling will need a pack of 5, here’s a simple math to set your glyph price.
A pack of 20 herb with 80 silver each will cost you 16 gold.
A pack of 20 herb will get you about 10 pigment after 4 millings.
10 pigments makes 5 ink
5 parchment will cost you 2 gold 25 silver (basing the price on resilient parchment –the most expensive one)
5 inks + 5 parchments makes 5 glyph
Total cost is 16 gold + 2 gold 25 silver = 18 gold 25 silver
Each glyph will cost you 3 gold and 65 silver. (18.25 / 5)


MAKE THEM:
Scan the AH.
Go to Dalaran and stand in between the ink trader and the inscription supplier.
Open up your inscription window and find glyph that are priced above your cost.
Start making them.


SELL THEM:
Send them to your bank alt.
Pay attention as you post them, sometimes the price have change or dropped.
No worries. Just keep the glyph and wait a couple of days until they go back up to profit sales.


I typically try to have about 300-350 glyphs posted and about 100 or so sitting in my bag waiting for the price to go back up again. I only do this about once or twice a week. Not a very exciting thing to do. But it pays the bill.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Something Always Brings Me Back to You

From somebody that has let ‘Killing Dragons’ on the back seat for a while, I’d have to say let the people kill them internet dragons in peace.

The community blew up over this and it got a little too far than I think it should be. I have never seen the word raped, murdered, shot or stalked so many times on my RSS feed.

So many offered up their justification why they should or should not. Some offered examples of ‘what ifs’. I also did.

Maybe I shouldn’t. I’m not playing anymore, why should I care?

I’ll go with Typhoon Andrew’s conspiracy theory on this one, it’s all a publicity stunt.

Think about it. It brought me back to write about the game I left and might even re-subscribe.

I do miss them pixels…

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

real ID ???...lol

I’m not sure if this will make it further in the game but the prospect of being accountable for your online actions is an awesome concept.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

It still won’t let me reach across the internet and smack that stupid head of yours for being rude and stupid. But now you can put a real name to a stupid post.

Now if they’d only ban the word ‘lol’ in chat.

I had enough looking at “???lol”

Or “more heal!!! Lol”

Or “5.5kgs lol”

Please Blizzard, I am begging you. If you want my $15 a month back again, no more “lol”