Damned Forever

So yeah, my bold experiment with Frost lasted about a week...

Trying out Frost in heroics, I was pulling about 80% of the DPS I'd normally do as Unholy. Ok, I thought, at least I'm giving some more DPS to the Rogues.

And then I got a Battered Hilt...

I went through the (awesome) Quel'Delar questline, determined to get my hands on a Cunning of the Shadows to be my new main-hander. In the end however, with egging on from my guildies, I decided to get Might of the Faithful and return to my Unholy build.

I can rationalise this as follows: Apart from myself, we usually only have one other meleer in raids, so the Improved Icy Talons buff is really only helping one other person, and maybe the tanks. Meanwhile, the ability to spread Ebon Plague to every mob in Pestilence range will boost our damage in AoE fights. It's also one GCD our Warlocks don't have to use.

And whilst it's true I already had Ramalandi's Blade of Culling, in terms of itemization, the Might of the Faithful is clearly a better Unholy weapon...

Well ok, maybe I am a loot whore...

But still, you have to admit, it's very shiney!

Back to Frost

I don't seem to be able to make my mind up about DPS specs, do I? Then again, the thing I love about Death Knights is the fact that whilst most hybrids have one or two DPS specs to pick from, we have one in each tree, each with it's own feel and each close enough to the others that you're not losing out.

Case in point, after downing Heroic Anub'Arak last night, he dropped two lovely one-handers. The Rogue didn't want them, so rather than see them sharded, I decided to go back to Frost Dual-Wield, that being my original spec when I reactivated Graysun. To be honest, I'd been getting some schtick from the meleers about me not giving them buffs ever since I went to Unholy, so this felt like I was "giving something back" (not that the lazy bastards ever gave me anything!).

I ended up going with a 0/54/17 spec that included Improved Icy Talons for the melee haste buff. I tried it out in heroics afterwards. I miss the big numbers from a 2-hander build (my best crit was something like 5k), I also miss the AP buff from Bladed Armor and the lack of threat reduction from Subtlety means I'll never pug an instance as DPS again, but it should be pretty nice for our meleers. Plus it's always nice to play with new toys!

Anub Down - 4realz!

I'll admit it, we kinda slacked on Trial of the Grand Crusader for the longest time. People were too into trying to complete Glory of the Ulduar Raider and there just weren't enough raiding hours in the week. Recently, I refocussed our efforts there and they finally paid off with us downing Heroic Anub'Arak with 30 attempts left on the count!

He also dropped a couple of nice toys which prompted a respec for Graysun. I'll go into that in another post.

WTB Life, PST!

So yeah, I've done a few pick-up groups since 3.3 came out. I've been working on getting Graysun and Ulushnar both some of the Emblem of Triumph tanking gear. One of our tanks has been AWOL for a few weeks now and I dunno if he'll be back.

Anyway, Graysun tanked an Old Kingdom pug this morning. Just after we killed the last boss, he got an achievement:



Ok, so I've pugged a lot, big deal. Then I checked my mail and found this letter waiting:



Attached was the means to summon this small, yappy-type symbol of my lack of social life:




My shame is now complete

17th December Enbloggenations

So yeah, the first four Bosses in Icecrown: more challenging than the TotC bosses, but by no means impossible. Given the practise last week, and the fact that some of the encounters have been nerfed/fixed, I'm expecting a few one-or-two-shots when we go back in there tonight.

Apart from that, our only goal has been working on Anub'Arak Heroic. Our best attempt had him at about 15%, so I think there'll be a kill before too much longer. We've kinda neglected TotC heroic to focus on the Ulduar achievements for our Drake-hungry members, but folks are starting to accept we need a break from that particular hell-hole. A kill this week would be a nice way to finish the year.

Apart from that, I've just been working on Graysun's tanking gear with Emblems of Triumph. One of our Main Tanks has been flakier than normal recently and we may need a back-up until an appropriate replacement presents him/herself. On top of that, the difference between Dungeon Finder queue times as DPS and Tank are night and day. Gray can wait 5-7 minutes queued as DPS, compared to getting a raid straight after ticking that Tank box.

I'm Ready for my Close-up!

Deathbringer Suarfang down! Ramaldni's Blade of Culling mine!

With the first four bosses of ICC down, it seems more fun and challenging than Trial of the Crusader (not hard) but it's gonna be a long three weeks until we get the rest down!

Into Icecrown Citadel!

I'm going to write a bit about our experiences in Icecrown Citadel, but first I should probably deal with the big hotfix announced to Unholy:

Scourge Strike can now crit only once. The Shadow portion of the damage cannot separately crit. We wanted to keep the double crit mechanic as a way of making Scourge Strike do more than just being an attack that hits for equal part physical and Shadow damage. The change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids. The Shadow portion Scourge Strike will continue to be increased by effects that currently boost Shadow damage. Source

It was fun whilst it lasted, but the change wasn't unexpected at all. I'll see how damage holds up in the next few weeks and if it isn't that great, I might give into the Rogue's whining and go back to Blood. (They're addicted to Abomination's Might)

But anyway, we started Icecrown 10 last night, and despite a few bugs and glitches, we managed to kill three out of the four available bosses.

*Lord Marrowgar: Fairly straightforward fight when you know what you're doing. Bit too aggro sensitive for me though, and ticking diseases on the Bone Storm phases led to me being gibbed a couple of times. I'll get the hang of it eventually.

*Lady Deathwhisper: Pretty straightforward when you know what you're doing. We wiped a couple of times due to sloppy add-handling, but nothing else provided a challenge.

*Gunship Battle: OMFG THIS FIGHT IS SO MUCH FUN!!!! Again, it's just a matter of coordinating people and prioritising targets, but the flavor mechanics behind it make the fight amazing. It's one of the more unique and genuinely fun fights I've participated in for ages!

*Deathbringer Saurfang: We got to this guy late and didn't get too many decent tries on him. Without Typhoon or slowing traps, the Blood Beasts were a pita. Best attempt was 8% before the Blood Beasts started munching the Ranged DPS and he suddenly healed to 20%. Heartbreaking, but I'm confident we'll get him next time.