BM Hunter For Life

Or at least, until I can afford dual spec.

However, until that day comes (or until I overcome the burnout that has hit Rukgut), he will be The Rokk's sugar daddy. But to do his job well, Ruk needs his spec. Post 3.1, he's going with a 53/11/7 Beast Master spec. Now as far as rotations go, I picked this nugget of knowledge up over at Aspect of the Hare -

The WotLK Hunter Shot Rotation Compendium:
Last Updated: April 21, 2009 - Patch 3.1

Beast Mastery:
The Shot Priority: Serpent Sting - Kill Shot - Arcane Shot - Multishot/Aimed ShotSteady Shot
Pike’s Notes: Not just Steady spam anymore, although I see plenty of non-hunters and even hunters running around who still think this is the case. Heck, I saw BM Hunters on the receiving end of mockery regarding this just today in trade chat. They are, I am pleased to report, quite mistaken. Beast Masters may not have quite so many shots and stings to juggle as the other specs, but they still have plenty to do and when you combine this with a Bestial Wrath glyphed and talented almost down to a minute, and your Kill Command which is on a similar cooldown, you’ve got lots to play around with as well. (optional– can be a mana hog so works best in conjunction with Replenishment) -

This rotation depends largely on Glyph of Steady Shot– Steady is still a large chunk of your damage as a Beast Master and because it is so weak you need to do everything you can to pull it up, and yes, that includes keeping Serpent Sting up.

The rotation is adaptable on the fly to account for mobs that are nearly dead (when the cooldown for refreshing a Serpent Sting would not be worth the extra Steady damage), as well as deciding to put off Serpent Sting if Arcane and Multi are off cooldown, for example.

Marksmanship:
The Shot Priority: Serpent Sting (one time only) - Kill Shot - Chimera Shot - Aimed Shot - Arcane Shot - Steady Shot
Pike’s Notes: One of my favorite attributes of the Marksman spec is that you don’t have to worry about refreshing Serpent Sting– Chimera Shot does it for you. It will spoil you rotten, I promise.

Note that Multishot is typically not in your rotation as a Marksman– it shares a cooldown with Aimed, and Aimed will generally pack a larger punch for you in the case of most current Marksman specs. However, if there is more than one target, and the tank has a good hold of them all, swapping in a Multi for Aimed will in fact result in a DPS increase. (This is the case with all three specs).

Use Readiness wisely, it can be used for great effect to get double Kill Shots after a trinket pop, for example

Survival:
The Shot Priority: Black Arrow - Serpent Sting - Kill Shot - Explosive Shot - Multishot/Aimed Shot (optional) - Steady Shot
Important! When Lock and Load procs: Be sure to squeeze one Steady or Aimed between your two “instant” Explosive Shots– that way you don’t overwrite your own Explosive Shot DoT. (You may also opt to “wait” between Explosives if you don’t have an instant ready– see the comments in this post for details.)
Pike’s Notes: This is me being biased, but with the introduction of Black Arrow and the current encouragement to use Multishot or Aimed, Survival has gotten a lot more fun and interesting for me in 3.1 than it was, well, pre-3.1. The overall “rotation” feels like a weird cross between Beast Mastery and Marksmanship, with a side dish of “random” tossed in, and it might take some getting used to but it’s certainly not boring.

Black Arrow is interesting as it cannot be “refreshed” like Serpent Sting: it has a pretty hefty cooldown even with talents that reduce that cooldown. Still, it’s a not-too-shabby DoT and also a big DPS booster, and also your source of Lock and Load procs, that should be kept up anytime it is available.

Explosive Shot is still your ace in the hole here. You are more encouraged to use Multi/Aimed as Survival than as a Beast Master because you are more mana efficient and can probably afford it. Play around with it and see if it works for you.

Killing In The Name Of...

The most electrifying Tauren currently hanging out in Borean Tundra.

Seeing as how I'm on my WoW days off (stupid rural piss-poor internet that makes my eyes bleed) I've been doing some reading. Reading, as it turns out, is a good thing. When you read, you learn things. Things such as the stealth nerf to Death Strike. On the one hand, I'm glad to find out about this. I've been dying because I keep expecting DS to slap a bunch of health back on me, but that bar barely moved after 3.1 which had me concerned. Now on the other hand, Blizzard nerfed DS. Oh well, one less ability I have to worry about. Let me tell you, when you've got multiple mobs pummelling you, getting back 5-15% really isn't going to do much more than let the mob hit you just one more time before they pry your chest cavity open and see what makes you tick.

For the record, The Rokk runs on a delicate balance of Awesome and Win.

Oh, and I once again missed the memo where our talent points were refunded. Again.

So. Spec hunting. Oh yeah, and of course all the listed specs are for T7, level 80 raiders. Good times.

Searching, searching. Oh what the Hell. This one looks good. I found it over here.

A build that works similar to 50/0/21, but adds the ghoul permanently to your mix. It sacrifices the 10% damage and 10% ArP from Blood Gorged for filled talents in Unholy, and a permanent buffed ghoul. This build is very easy to manage and intuitive to play, showing similar numbers to the other specs in dps tests. There is debate as to it's scaling potential, as a Ghoul automatically means increased scaling from all your stats (as they would apply to yourself and the ghoul). The extra point can be placed in a 1pt talent in Blood (Vampric Blood, Rune Tap, Mark of Blood), or used to finish out Epidemic. Always renew Unholy Blight before using DC if it's about to/already has run out.

Rotation:
DS-IT-PS-HS-HS
HS-HS-DS-HS-HS

DS can be used before applying diseases due to its independence from disease multipliers. This also immediately gets your 10% AP buff up from Abomination's Might. The position of disease application in this rotation is why only one point of Epidemic is needed.

I decided to build the Blood tree first. Of course, being on the poor interweb access means I have to wait until Friday to see how this pans out in a pre-80 build.

One Good Day

The Rokk had, what many people would call, a good day.

During a round of questing, I hooked up with Betray from the guild Ruin. He told me about some gear upgrades through questing, so I backtracked a little and finished the quests I just wanted to blow off.


The end result was twofold:
1) Ding 69!
2) A serious weapon upgrade!



There's probably more to be said, but I'm tired and a little hung over from yesterday.

A Whole New World

Now The Rokk likes a good quest. Okay, maybe it's not the quest so much as the phat loots / gold / universal adoration that comes with it. But after landing at Warsong Hold and grabbing a few of the quests, a few deaths later I'm wondering WTF? Perhaps the Unholy spec I found isn't holding up that well against mobs 68-69. Maybe it's just partial resists due to level disparity. Who knows.

The bottom line is that The Rokk has picked up a few nice pieces already - we're talking chest, legs, and weapon upgrades without ever leaving the Fred Flintstone-like rock quarry that surrounds Warsong Hold.

Oh, and The Rokk says this: Not just anyone can ride a Magic Carpet and still look cool.

Reputations are made by searching for things that can't be done and doing them

- Frank Tyger

3.1 Adjustments

Well, due to the reshuffling of the spec trees, The Rokk had to change his Unholy spec around a little. Luckily, Skeleton Jack came through once again, despite a tweak here and there. More to come on this post once I have a chance to get some sleep and get back to the big city, where I'll have some decent internet connections. At least that way I'll be able to test the spec properly.

I've been hard-pressed to find a DK blog that provides the guidance that Skeleton Jack does. For many of his or Geist's posts on specs, for example, they list not only the spec but how to allocate points at various levels. This is a huge help for those DK's who aren't 80 and wrapped in the sweet embrace of T7 gear. In fact, for one of the most popular classes out there, you're really hard pressed to find a decent site/blog that covers the DK class. SJ has the market in his death clutch (see what I did there?). Hopefully someone steps up at some point and helps out the cause.

Hey, don't look at me - The Rokk has a ways to go yet. Although now that dual spec has gone live, I'm definitely considering grabbing a frost spec too. That's assuming there's gold to throw away.

Until something magical happens, here's a few blogs I googled -

http://www.avengingwrath.com/
http://my.opera.com/dkblogdesign/
http://www.isheepthings.com/blog/death-knight-outland-gear-guide/
http://www.creeptheprophet.com/page/Death-Knight-Resources.aspx
http://www.deathknight.info/
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/dkirunes.aspx

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

- Blaise Pascal

Next Stop - Northrend

The Rokk has hit 68, and immediately booked a flight to Northrend via blimp from Orgrimmar. Rukgut cruised the Howling Fjord on his time through. This go-round, Rokk is setting up camp in Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. The quests seem DK friendly, the layout somewhat familar, but that doesn't mean The Rokk is staying out of Outlands. Oh no, he will be going back there once he reaches 70 and can fly. He will soar through the skies on his skeletal mount, plucking ores as he sees fit, and making some gold in the process.

In other news, Patch 3.1 could very well be dropping tomorrow. People are worried that they're not ready for the patch. How are you not ready? Is your system not updated? Decided not to pre-download the 1.2 GB of patch files already released? Other than that, people should be ready. Nobody knows what will be included in this patch until it goes live. There's functions in the PTR that are included right until the 11th hour, and don't make the cut.

Or things that were never going live, like the blue post said about the wardrobe function. They said it wasn't going live in 3.1, but because people got to play with it in the PTR they assumed it was. Suddenly they're like "OMG WTF" when they find out that it isn't going live. Assumptions make you look stupid, folks. Try not to do it.

So The Rokk says this - relax. It's just a patch. Check out what comes live, then deal with it. People planning their specs and such before 3.1 goes live are asking for disappointment. When they cry, I will bathe in their tears.

Every man dies - Not every man really lives.

- William Ross Wallace

Back to Getting Down With the Sickness

Enough is enough.



The Rokk tried once again to kill that damn elite bird in the face, and once again fell short. So after checking the spec details, he specced back to Unholy. The result?



One dead bird. First time out.




The Rokk is sticking with Unholy. End of story.

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us. And sometimes, they win."

- Stephen King

Faster Than the Speed of Slow

There's much to be said for a good internet connection.

My new job has certain perks - new career path, better pay. The downside is that it takes me out of the big city for three nights of the week. Out in the country, I'm pleased to report that the technology has reached the 21st century in that they have access to what they like to call "high speed internets". Satellite internet. The slowest high speed I've ever seen. I think the entire townsite draws from the same feed. Consequently I've been unable to do much more than log on to check the auction house. Combat is a recipe for disaster.

Rokk hit a bit of a standstill. He's loading up on the rested xp, slowly, but not doing much as far as professions go. You'd think mining would be easy, right? The latency was so bad, the nodes would pop up on his mini-map just as he passed by them. Dipping into the bank once again, Rokk managed to get his smithing up to 309. Not a total loss, but not much progress.

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it."

-Terry Pratchett

Blood In, Blood Out

Thanks to Skeleton Jack's blog, I found a good outline for a DK Blood Spec and decided to give it a try when Rokk dinged 66. He did, respecced, and have been killed twice by Gutripper while I managed to kill the other two Nesingwary elites as a 65 Unholy DK. The second time I dropped, he was almost dead himself. Not sure if that means anything, or if it was just a run of bad luck. I'm half-temped to spec back to Unholy and try the bird one more time.

After getting Blacksmithing close to 300, spending hundreds of gold in the process, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have gone with Engineering instead. Maybe Rukgut will have to switch from Leatherworking.

Guess I'll have to sleep on it for now.

Different but Same

The Rokk has been more of a focus now. Rukgut is grinding rep, running dailies, and leveling up his turtle to be his primary aoe tank once 3.1 hits. But Rokk, he's fun because he's plenty different.

First, he doesn't look like a DK. I've seen so many around Rokk's level who are still wearing their starting gear. Why? Because it looks cool. The stats suck compare to what some of Rokk's gear is, but they are in love with the "Look". I'm in love with "not getting killed."

Taurens don't ride horses. Rokk doesn't ride a horse. He rides an armored bulldozer of death.

Profession-wise, he's working on mining (300+) and Blacksmithing (sub-300). He'll be able to make himself some decent weapons and gear in short order, which is good because he'll need to keep those pesky weapon skills leveled properly.

In other news, Nessingwary needs a kick to the left testicle. "Hey Rokk, go kill 30 birds. Finished? Okay, go kill another 30. Finished that too? Great, say how about you go kill that one big one on the other side of the zone. Oh, and before you go, have a chat with these other fellows who want you to kill a mess of these things as well."

Thirty? Really? It's like those bombing run quests where they want you to kill 100, but they give you a bomb to do it. Ness, he just shrugs and says "you've got the tools." His quests are about as much fun as beating a boar to death with a rolled-up newspaper.