There's "Retirement" and there's "Retirement".

I'm on a break from Ulu. I log him in once a day to do Jewelcrafting quests and to use his Titansteel cooldown. Once a week, I'll go do Wintergrasp with him to get honor which I can then turn into epic gems. I'm not exactly bored with him, but I'm kinda tired of tanking, having done it for two and a half years now, and whilst it's pretty functional, I find Ret to be fairly unfulfilling as a DPS spec.

I've taken time off from raiding to work on Graysun, my Death Knight. When last we left him, he was an alt tank for Naxx runs and the occasional heroic a guildie wanted to go to after Ulu got saved. Both his specs were Unholy, using a 2-hander and he just felt like Ulu but less in most respects.

That said, I was looking for a DPSer to have fun with, and it was either work on Graysun, or level Wulfsblood. I tried the latter for a couple of days, but I just found it too annoying. Pet management's become too much of a chore in WotLK, and going through the WotLK content for the third time didn't appeal. Besides, Gray was semi-geared, and had a tanking spec to boot, so finding PuGs would be easier.

To get him out of the "he's just like Ulu" funk, I decided to try a 0/53/18 Frost Dual Wield spec. I figured since Smart Casual didn't have any fulltime Rogues, Enhancement Shamans or DW Death Knights, someone should be around to pick up all the one-handers that dropped. And that someone might as well be Gray.

I spent the last fortnight running every heroic and Trial of the Champion I could with him in order to get his gear to a level I'd consider "acceptable". Last night I took him into Ulduar 10, and his DPS aquitted itself nicely against the other, better geared members of the guild, which was good to see. After this week, I'll be in Australia for three weeks, but hopefully after that, I'll be able to use Gray as my main raiding toon.

PuG Justice

Oh hai!

Haven't updated this thing in a while. I've been on a break from raiding since the summer well and truly burned me out. On top of that, playing a Paladin constantly for the last couple of years was starting to bore me, so I decided to focus on my Death Knight, Graysun for a bit.

More on that in another post (maybe). In the process of gearing up Gray, I've been getting my ass in every heroic PuG I can get. Some have been awesome, some have been painful, but none annoyed me as much as one I went on on Saturday night.

It was to Nexus. The group was a Feral Druid tank, a Boomkin, a Shadow Priest, Gray and a Shaman Healer. I figured it would be an easy five badges and best of all, Gray wouldn't have to tank. We kill one mob, and the Shaman leaves the party. No words, just leaves the party and hearths out. That's pretty much the end of that PuG.

The next day, one of our priests asks for a Tank to do the daily heroic. Gray's already saved, so I pull Ulu out of mothballs and everybody's chuffed to see a Tank with 34k health join the party. Then I notice the healer is the same Shaman as bailed on the group last night. I have a quick chat in guild with my Priest buddy and explain the situation. I then confront the Shaman about the pug they bailed on without a word. They're relatively unrepentant, said they had to eat and didn't have time to explain (bullshit, if you've got time to hearth, you've got time to say "sorry, I've got to go now".) I say I don't want to group with them, and we proceed to punt them from the group. Priest buddy offers to heal, but we manage to get another healer from /LFG, so no need and the rest of the run goes without a hitch, despite the Shaman whispering me every couple of minutes with apologies and asking to be allowed back into the group.

Ultimately, the ability to deliver pug justice was worth the run in and of itself. If you have to bail on a group, have the decency to explain yourself. I am a vindictive bastard and I will punish you if I can.

The Dark Side of the Tank

Initially I was going to write a post about Smart Casual's progress in the second week in Ulduar. We downed a further new boss each night, adding Kologarn, Aurianya, and Hodir to our list of kills. I've really enjoyed the fights, it's amazing watching the chaotic early attempts give way to a smooth(ish) takedown.

But instead, I'm going to switch tack and talk about Death Knights. Yep, with Dual Specialization, I decided to give Graysun a tank spec again and see where that led. As it turns out, it led to a Naxxramas raid for Smart Casual's alts.

Currently he's specced 53/8/10 for Blood-Tanking funsies. I've always had a weak spot for Blood Spec, with it's combination of Ret Paladin damage tropes and vampiric healing. And it's great for many things, Gray's base health is awesome, and his single target threat is pretty solid. However, it's kinda let down in the AoE faceroll department. I have to blow about 5-6 global cooldowns to get solid AoE threat. And if you try asking an alt DPSer to wait that long, you might as well ask a Crocodile to help you translate Urdu.

So I'm regrettably I'm considering a switch to something slightly more Unholy, like 10/8/53 to get the best AoE threat abilities. Blood will have to wait until the day Graysun steps into Ulduar. (hey, it could happen!)

Enter Alter Ego!

Imagine a conversation between my plate-clad alter-egos; Ulushnar, a T7-clad Tankadin and Graysun, a freshly-80 Deathnub.

Ulushnar: So Gray, how's tanking working out for you?
Graysun: Not so great as it happens.
Ulushnar: How so?
Graysun: I'm not finding a lot of love in pick-up groups and whenever I try to tank for guildies, well frankly they wish I was you.
Ulushnar: That's fair, I am pretty awesome after all, but honestly, why should it matter in Naxxramas?
Graysun: Y'see, I think that's part of the problem. To the minds of the DPS, it's "just Naxx" so they throw caution to the wind, and splat, we're suddently 8-manning Patchwerk.
Ulushnar: So you were Hateful Strike tanking? I've never done that either and I' probably have f**ked it up as well.
Graysun: Possibly, but burst threat ain't my thing like yours. You might have given the Rogue and Fury Warrior some room to wiggle before they became raspberry jam.
Ulushnar: So that's it, one fight and you're calling it quits?
Graysun: Nah, whilst I accept I'm not an amazingly-geared tank I'm also fairly new on the learning curve Death Knight-wise. They accepted that with Halendir when he started because by the time he was coming into his own, you and Bele were getting bored with heroics, but by now they're purpled-out "pros" and don't like being threat-capped. It's like you always say...
Ulushnar: Gnome girls reach the spots others miss?
Graysun: No, well yes, that too; but what I meant was you've always said "the most important thing for a tank is confidence". I don't have that yet.
Ulushnar: Fair enough, so what now?
Graysun: Well I'm going back to DPS, but probably not Blood. If there's one good thing I picked up from the spec that Halendir gave to me, it's that Unholy's buckets o' fun.
Ulushnar: So you're becoming a Platelock then?
Graysun: Yep, I guess. I specced that way last night. It's pretty sweet, especially with the 2pc Tier 7 I picked up on Sunday. Did a couple of Pugs last night. Occulus was suprisingly decent, we managed to one-shot everything. After that I did Nexus with another group and I had to keep checking I wasn't in Frost Presence, the tank just couldn't keep the mobs off me. The AoE's pretty sick.

Rebranding

Well the old Wulfsblood.net domain finally expired on me. I'll be sorting out a new one in a few days, to reflect the point that I really haven't done much huntering in the last year or so. In the meantime, feel free to point your links at:

http://ulushnar.blogspot.com

Until I can find something better.

I really haven't updated this thing in about three weeks now, so apologies. In the interim, I finally got off my arse and got Graysun, my Death Knight, to 80. Originally I wanted to make him a DPS/PVP character, but the sad realities of getting pugs has forced me to spec him as a tank. I took the advice of our DK tank and specced him Unholy, although now that I've played with him a while, I'm starting to get a better idea of what's required.

I will say though that DPSing/Tanking as a Death Knight has given me a new appreciation of how much easier we have it. The lack of reliable frontloaded aggro is a massive pain when pugging in particular. When I went back to playing Ulu, I almost laughed at how easy it was.

Speaking of Ulu, I've hadd occasion to experiment with him as Retribution in Naxx10-level gear and I really liked the results! I cannot wait for dual speccing in 3.1! Also, Ulu finally got his 4th piece of T7 on Friday past. He now has everything except the crappy helm. I'm looking forward to trying my bubble wall out on something big and nasty before much longer.

The Northrend Vanguard

So last night Ulushnar got Exalted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade and earned the Northrend Vanguard achievement. This basically means he's finished with the Championable factions and can go back to wearing his old guild tabard. It's kind of a shame, since I really liked the championing mechanic, although I wasn't a massive fan of the look of any of the faction tabards (The Argent Crusade one was arguably the best).

Still, Naxxramas 10 on wednesday! Ulu's been ready for weeks now, but I waited until most of the guild was 80 before we went in.

In other news, I got Graysun, my Deathknight to level 65 last night. I'm currently working him through Nagrand, and once I'm done there I figure I'll finish him off in either Blade's Edge Mountains or Shadowmoon Valley before I take him off to Northrend. The transplant can't come fast enough, since the unique "joy" of Outland levelling is the schizophrenic armor designs. He's currently wearing a mix of green, black and purple armor pieces, with a aqua-blue helmet which I've thankfully hidden.

I can't wait until I hit Northrend and get a set of generic Viking Armor in various shades of black, blue, red and dogshit brown! It may be slightly dull that all the armor has the same model, but it helps that that model is badass looking!

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying Blood Spec for levelling. The constant influx of health means there's practically no downtime whilst levelling, and since I intend to use a Blood PVP spec at 80, I'm getting used to the rotations I'll use then.

Death Knight: The first post.

Well, I said I'd do it, so here goes. Yes, I, like almost everyone else in Beta, have started a Death Knight, and I think I like them.

I named him Graysun (using the name of my original Paladin alt from September 2006) and I decided to make him Human. My original idea was to make a Pink-haired Gnome Deathknight, but I quickly realised that joke would get old all too soon. Humans may be bland, but with +5 Expertise with Maces and Swords and +10% Reputation gained from quests, they seemed like the best choice.

Because the Death Knight is a hero class, you start off at level 55. What worried me going in was "am I going to be overwhelmed with the need to spend 46 Talent points and master a few dozen skills straight away?"

Thankfully the answer is "no". You start play with no talent points and about half-a-dozen skills. You're wearing a suit of matched, green-quality armor with no trinkets, relic or weapon. The first quests you do give you your weapon and teach you about Runeforging, which allow you to enchant your weapon with a variety of special effects.

This is Graysun in his starter armor shortly after acquiring his Runeblade:



(I've hidden his helm in those shots, but it looks like a hood covering the upper part of his face in the same style as the rest of his armor. The death knights themselves look like normal examples of their race, with the addition of glowing blue eyes.)

After you've gotten your blade, you're set loose on the Scarlet Crusade! Most of the quests give blue rewards to replace your starter greens, and they too form a matched set of gear.



Also, most of the quests give you some talent points as additional rewards, allowing you to get used to your character and spend your talent points as you go.

After only a cursory look at the talents, I decided to focus on the Blood tree, which seems to focus on 2-handed DPS and life-draining. There's a few talents that remind me strongly of Retribution paladins, which smacks a little of laziness, but I guess they're aiming both trees for the same role: heavy 2-handed DPS with the ability to convert some of the damage done to healing for the group. The healing component of a Blood-spec seems to be higher than that of a Retadin, but I suspect that's to make up for the Death Knight's lack of direct heals.

The Death Knight seems to be everything I wanted the Dark Templar in Age of Conan to be, a tank that does damage and uses that damage to heal himself. I suspect the healing component may even be enough to make up for not using a shield in certain situations. I genuinely tempted to make one as my DPS toon in Wrath live, since I have very little desire to level Wulf these days.

Beta: first thoughts.

So I spent most of Saturday Morning/Afternoon downloading and installing the 2gb WotLK Beta client and about another gig of patches. After that, I had some time running about the new content with Ulushnar as both Protection and Retribution spec. I also started a Death Knight called Graysun, who I levelled to 58 and completed the starting Zone with. My initial findings will be expanded on later, but at the moment:

*Those bastards haven't implemented the "bald Draenei" hairstyle from live, so I had to give Ulu a haircut.
*Northrend looks cool, or at least the Borean Tundra does.
*Protection with the current itemization's ok for soloing, but it's more mana-hungry than ever.
*I haven't tanked any instances yet.
*Retribution is completely OP. Even with mediocre stats (2.3k AP buffed and 23.5% melee crit), I was killing most enemies in 2-3 hits and ending fights with 2-3 enemies at above 80% health and mana.
*Blood-spec Death Knights are similarly OP. I was taking down quests I'd struggled with on Wulf/Ulu without breaking a sweat and similarly ending fights with over 80% health and mana.

I'd have more to report, but the Beta servers are up and down like a yo-yo, and even when they're up, the lag at peak times (froma bout 9 in the morning to 11 at night) makes it nigh-unplayable.

Also, I've been busy on Live as well. Ulu's mining is fast approaching 375 (having a Epic Flying Mount really helped with the last bit!) I've also led an attempt at a ZA Bear run (need to get used to the different route and group set-up), a Kara badge-farming run (for Retribution goodies), and our first successful 25-man in over 2 weeks (a clear of the first three bosses in Moutn Hyjal).