Fire is bad. It hurts a lot and more often than not will kill you. Worse than that, if you fail at it, it pisses off your healers, your raid leader, and your raid members and frankly it can make you pretty mad at yourself.

When I talk about fire, do I really mean literally fire? No. I’m talking about the targeted Area of Effect (AoE) damage which dictates movement in a great deal of boss encounters, raid or otherwise. When a Shadow Fissure erupts and kills you, you should have been able to get out of it and claiming “Lag” will only get you so far.

So now that we know what I’m talking about, what’s the first step to living through these awful nuisances and continuing on your path to success? Seeing them.

The easiest way to know you’re in danger is to be able to watch the ground you’re standing on. Anything completely lethal will give you a heads up before it hits you, and for anything that deals heavy damage while you stand in it, the sooner you see it the sooner you’re out of it. Learning your rotation and training yourself to pry your eyes from your UI so that you can be aware of the world around you is a difficult skill but it can be honed with practice. If you’re wholly concerned with your DPS or your Healing or your Threat, you’re probably at risk of death, and in reality you’re going to do a lot more of any of those if you stay alive.

Of course tricks exist to improve on this scenario to give you a leg up on concentration.

1.) User Interface Add-ons

There’s a couple of tips concerning these, the most obvious to start with is Deadly Boss Mods, there’s a few others like them, I’d put my money on DBM most days of the week however. Often when you are in danger DBM will have a preset sound to warn you verbally.

Another is a tip, not a mod. Don’t clutter your screen, make sure your character’s feet are visible and don’t have a bunch of junk drawing your eyes to the corners of your screen. It’s difficult finding a balance and spending a few hours on this can reward you exponentially.

Having a Raid UI like Grid is another great idea, it will show you who’s near you, if you’re out of range of your healers, who’s alive, about to die and dead and with a little configuration it will tell you who has important debuffs.

The final tip for this section is FOCUS, and while you should be focused, I’m talking about the UI command /focus. Often a boss will target the person it’s about to spit fire at, and this can give you the time needed to completely avoid damage and that earns brownie points with your healers and your raid leader.

2.) Communication

You can’t be everywhere, you can’t know everything. This might come as a shock to some, but it’s true. Organized, successful communication over your Voice over IP (VoIP) software can increase your entire raids survivability. Designating a few people to do the talking is a good idea, because too much chatter and no one’s hearing anything useful. I can attest, however, to the usefulness of the words “Flame Tsunami Left Side.”

Okay so let’s say you’ve put in the effort to improve your concentration and awareness, you’ve got a great dedicated raid team helping on vent and you’re UI is clutter free and streamlined for raiding. You’re almost positive you’ll see that fissure now, but do you have an exit strategy?

How you escape the area where doom awaits is as important as noticing it in the first place.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the first thing on my list is don’t back out of it. I’m going to repeat that. Do not back out. Everyone knows you move slower backing up and it’s never the best way out. Now what may come as a bigger surprise is that this is only one of the poor choices of how to escape the fire.

Because your character moves on your screen and then communicates with Blizzards server to move for everyone else and in reference to the game environment there is indefinitely some measure of lag for the server to actually update that you moved. There is a way of increasing the duration between updates to the server and there is a way to cut down on it.

When your character jumps, you move through the air and it is generally slightly more interesting than running. Unfortunately World of Warcraft is not Die Hard, and that fancy jump maneuver is not very effective. It turns out the server will not update your position until you’ve landed, which means if you’re cutting it close as it is, it will be your corpse landing at your destination instead of you. In contrast; when you strafe (sidestep) the server will update much more quickly than even normal walking. This is by far the safest way to exit any AoE.

This brings me to my last point and that is a very simple one. Never rotate using your keyboard and then run. Ideally you want to turn using your mouse’s right-click function; this will give you split second turn speed and allow for easy strafing without much finger dancing. If you’re against binding your spells to your keyboard and use your mouse to click them, practice staffing effectively with a turning button, rather than wasting precious moments turning on the spot.

Is Blood right for you?

Blood’s a heavy melee damage spec. Icy touch and Death Coil are the only spells you’ll cast regularly. Your Dancing Rune Weapon requires some thought to maximize it’s effectivenes, but deals pretty impressive damage over the course of a fight if used properly. On top of that your heaviest burst hit, Death Strike, will heal you for a percentage of your maximum health when used with diseases. This is the only spec that can easily heal up two or three thousand damage without losing any dps time. Further, blood worms will help keep you topped off from any minor damage, making this spec as heavy on survival as they come.

Spec suggestions

51/0/20

51/2/18

How do you pick one? The points in Night of the Dead will increase your DPS over a longer fight more than the points in Runic Power Mastery(RPM). The main reason for RPM is to increase the duration of your Dancing Rune Weapon(DRW) by an additional 6 seconds, increasing the duration of your burst. So my suggestion is that if you’re still running naxx and your fights are lasting about 2-3 minutes, try out 51/2/18, but if you’re in Ulduar and finding yourself fighting for longer periods of time, go with 51/0/20, the increased survibility of your ghoul will also help greatly in ulduar, as he’s pretty much wormbait the second you summon him on most fights without it. Ulduar hates melee.

Furthermore when choosing your 51 points in blood, Mark of Blood is only one of three approximately equal options depending on your personal preference and situation. You may swap the point in mark of blood for Rune Tap or for Vampiric Blood. Rune Tap is a flexibility option for survivability, VB is wonderful for OTing on occasion and mark of blood has a few situational uses. (Thank you THECames).

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of Death Strike
Glyph of Dark Death
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon

Rotation Suggestion

PS-IT-HS-HS-DS-DCx-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DCx and repeat.

Try to summon your Dancing Rune Weapons at the start of a rotation so they can apply their own diseases.

Using Death and Decay, Horn of winter and any other out of combat RP generation you have to farm up your RP before the boss fight will greatly smooth out your first Dancing Rune Weapon. (Curteosy of THECames)

AoE Rotation

D&D PS-IT-Pest-BT(Blood Tap)-BB

Gearing

It is extremely helpful to have the four piece tier 7 bonus for this spec.

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for any DK. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.

Blood additionally scales the best of any DK tree with armor penetration, it is not your go-to stat, but it certainly should weigh more heavily on your choices.

Is frost right for you?

Frost has very few pauses in the rotation even if you’re in unholy presence. It’s a veritable factory for runic power generation, and with a glyphed frost strike costing a mere 32 RP you’ll be able to use more RP attacks than either of the other trees.

The rotation is a little more complicated looking than unholy’s but I can assure you it is actually easier because you do not have to worry about glyph of scourge strikes 25% chance to renew diseases. Frost’s rotation is about memorization and not about improvisation.

Spec suggestions

12/51/8
0/51/20
17/51/3

How do you pick one? The best bet it to check out your gear level, bladed armor is a pretty hefty DPS boost when you’re gear isnt great. Just hit 80? probably wanna go with bladed armor. It doesn’t scale well however so you’ll end up getting a lot more out of necrosis, blood caked blade and night of the dead at some point in Ulduar.

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of Obliterate
Glyph of Frost Strike
Glyph of Icy Touch

Rotation Suggestion

Using unholy presence should yield better results

PS-IT-OB-BS-BS-FSx-OB-OB-FS-OB-FSx(This is also where you want to use Rime procs)

Creating a blood tap macro with unbreakable armor is an excellent idea for this build, preferably popping the macro once all your runes are burned at the end of the first complete rotation will create as little of an upset in your rotation as possible.

AoE Rotation

PS-IT-Pest-HB-BB

Gearing

It is extremely helpful to have the four piece tier 7 bonus for this spec.

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for any DK. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.

I’d just like to take a minute to remind everyone about the Screenshot Contest we’re having. We’ve gotten some great submissions and I really want to make sure the community takes the time to participate to win a pretty sweet comic. The main contest post can be found here http://blog.plaguechill.com/?p=249 and you have until May 17th to get some funny screenshots sent in to contest@plaguechill.com!

Is unholy right for you?

Unholy is well known as the pet spec, this means that you lose a sizeable chunk of your DPS if your ghoul dies, He’s quite good at surviving now but it’s just one more thing to watch as you mash buttons. Since odds are you already know that much, let’s talk more about how the rotation feels as unholy right now.

As disease duration has gotten a buff, glyph of Scourge strike has become more reliable than ever before, you can expect scourge strike to be as much as 40+% of your damage and depending on luck you can go several minutes without manually refreshing your diseases.

So what does that require of you? You have to watch your disease durations carefully to make sure they don’t fall off while you’re spamming SS. This is a limited button use rotation, and has several free GCDs. If empty space and improvisation turn you off, you may not be interested in this spec.

Spec suggestions
12/0/59
0/10/61

How do you pick which one? The best bet it to check out your gear level, bladed armor is a pretty hefty DPS boost when you’re gear isnt great. Just hit 80? probably wanna go with bladed armor. It doesn’t scale well however so you’ll end up getting a lot more out of 10% unholy and frost damage in the end.

Additional note: IUP (Improved Unholy Presence) may be something you’re interested in, it helps on a handful of fights and some people are fanatical about moving faster. If you’re going to take it, drop two points in necrosis for it.

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of the Ghoul
Glyph of Scourge strike
Glyph of Unholy Blight, or if you still have 4pc t7, Dark Death

You may feel the RP generation is too low, and swap one of those out for glyph of IT, but because of glyph of Scourge strike you can expect you won’t get many IT’s in.

Rotation Suggestion

PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-UB-SS-SS-SS-DC/Garg
After that you want to prioritize Scourge strikes to keep your diseases refreshed. If they are about to run out and you would have to do a portion of your rotation without diseases, then bite the bullet and refresh with your last FU runes, rather than taking the chance. Aside from that keep UB up and DC whenever you have downtime from runes as long as you’re not wasting RP.

Ghoul Maintenance

Our ghoulish friend is much better at surviving than he used to be but he still shouldn’t spend a lot of time standing in the fire. I suggest making a macro for him to follow you and binding it to a mouse key for ease of use. Here’s a great macro for it

/petattack [nomod:shift]
/petpassive [mod:shift]
/petfollow [mod:shift]

Ghoul Frenzy
Using either death runes or FU runes on GF+IT once per 30 seconds is worthwhile and infact once per minute you can hit a blood tap-GF macro while your runes are all down to refresh it for “free”

Gearing

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, this is less important in unholy than in say the old disease-less blood spec which relied entirely on melee attacks, but missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for unholy. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.

Crazy week for Azeroth! Yogg-Saron has been killed in 10 and 25man versions of the instance, many hotfixes had to be pushed through for certain encounters to work, the masses are either thrilled or angry at the latest changes… But, hey what else is new?

There are now 2 Yogg videos available (there may be more out by now but I haven’t seen them yet), one by The Legacy in a healer’s perspective, and another by Epicfabriken as a Ret Paladin. Inner Sanctum has had some world first Hard Modes down already!! Grats to them – hard mode is hard! (seriously. have totally seen the 10man versions of some of them. >.< )

The Blue Boss this week has some things to say about Death Strike, Dual Wield, and Gargoyle~

Can we please get some feedback on the status of buffing a dual wield build for us?

This is one of those categories, like the Conflag nerf, that we feel like you have options. We needed to kill the DW spec where you pretty much ignore weapons and just try and proc big spells. That was not the DW DK style we wanted. We felt like we had a choice between OP DW DKs and no DW DKs and thought the second was a more acceptable risk.

As we have explained, one of our ideas long term is to give Frost a couple of DW talents. It might not take much more than “Your Frost Striks and Oblits now hit with two weapons.” Having 3 tanking and PvP trees is challenging enough. Expanding that matrix by also having DW Blood PvP and DW Unholy tanking gets to the insane level. But having DW Frost PvP, DW Frost PvE and DW Frost tanking (only) may be more manageable. We are not at all sure if this is the approach we will use, but it’s an idea.

DKs were overpowered in a few ways. Fixing that was more important thank keeping DW at equal dps to 2H. That does not mean we have given up on DW for DKs in the same way that we no longer support 2H for Enhancement shamans.

Q u o t e:
I think it’s time to drop the “Let DKs be able to tank/DPS/PvP with any spec” thing. Other classes don’t seem to follow that design, I don’t understand why DKs need to. If each tree had a focus, then it’d be a lot easier to balance DKs.

It would also be a lot less interesting. We don’t like the trees being that narrow for any class. Arms vs. Fury or Arcane vs. Fire or whatever should be a style choice, not what you pick for a certain role in the game. It’s going to take some time to get everything there, but it’s something we want to do.

Q u o t e:
I understand your situation, but please don’t kill Frost 2H. I feel for the dual wielding death knights, but I don’t want my spec killed in the process.

Absolutely. We would not turn Frost into a DW tree. We would just make sure all DW DKs were Frost. And again, this is just an idea. We may reject it for some reason. As I have said many times, we want DKs to be a class that uses 2H or DW. We do not want DW to dominate, as it typically does in classes that have that option.

Q u o t e:
What’s wrong with a spec of DKs that has an emphasis spell damage?

Some spell damage is fine, and an interesting niche for them, but they are designed primarily as a melee class. When you face Arthas, I guarantee he is going to hit you hard with Frostmourne.

Could you please hotfix summon gargoyle? According to the tooltip it’s supposed to last a maximum of 40 seconds, and only lasts 25. It was like that for well over a month on the PTR, and never addressed.

Gargoyle is working as intended. Because of the way it works some of the tooltips are never going to be totally accurate. To be honest. the entire spell is a little complex and I’m not sure we get much from that complexity. We have discussed changing it to something simpler (like no RP over time or something).

Death Strike Healing Nerf Announcement

We hotfixed a change to the amount of healing provided by Death Strike.

Originally, this ability was something you would use only situationally to heal yourself at a cost of damage. Since then we have redesigned the death knight class sufficiently to where Death Strike was a major rotational ability for Blood. Given how much the attack is hitting for, we think the amount of healing it provided was too much.

Healing still scales based on diseases and the damage is unchanged. Blood retains its other tools to heal.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend in Northrend!!

PS:  Funny thread on Blues and how they evade telling their guilds they are blues!

How’s everyone’s experience so far with the patch? Anyone done some Ulduar yet?

Our 25man got Flame Leviathan down, our guild’s other 25man raid group got him down without a Shutdown involved! So they have earned their first achievement. But both groups were unable to down another boss: Ignis seems bugged as he is one shotting tanks & players, The trash to XT seems screwy, and one group got Razorscale to 30% so far.

I’m about to check out the Argent Tournament in a few minutes. My boyfriend is running a 10man Ulduar, so far so good!

One major complaint from me has to be about some bosses being buggy. I understand there was PTR and Internal testing, and I just find it odd for flaws like these to slip through the cracks. (Ignis doesnt appear to be losing a debuff and is causing this to do a lot of damage to the raid) And the trash to Ignis seems a bit overtuned! Maybe I’m wrong but we were having trouble with those Fire Tornados. Without Rune Tap I would have been a goner everytime!!

One thing I’m happy to see though are UI changes, such as the talent spec preview. It wasn’t highly noted – but under Interface -> Display options you can toggle “Preview Talent Changes” to see your points before they are actually spent! I think it is a shame it is turned off by default – but do check it out. Although it didn’t make it into this patch, I am looking forward to the Equipment Manager. The additions of new dailies, and mounts, and pets, are always awesome. I know plenty of people who are casual and even the “hardcore” that enjoy these things. Always welcome additions!

Oh, and if you are not aware ~ WoWMatrix will no longer be working! So please use the Curse client or download your addons manually.

Have you run into something hilarious in this patch? Please share it with us!

May the Light of Elune stabilize your servers. <3

In a moment of what must have been pure brilliance or stupidity I’ve decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and start up a twitter based largely around raiding. It will contain my moments of fail, success, strategy tidbits, and general Lulz. To access this swell feature click on the “Ulduar Raid Twitter” link in the sidebar to the left.
Here’s a preview:

Get your addons, spec choices, flasks and excitement ready – 3.1 is Coming tomorrow, April 14!!

Check out the Ulduar Preview page to check out some of the new features being implemented, as well as the new trailer. Some realms will be having extended maintenance, the list is here, and the same thread holds the truth to 3.1 coming out tomorrow if you are doubtful. This also marks the end of Season 5 of the arenas! For those ready to battleground on the fly – please be aware of any issues you may encounter. Anyone who is an Addon developer – take notice of the implementation of the new Addon Policies in the near future!

If 3.1 is getting you down – please enter the Plaguechill.com  Contest!! Prizes and laughs make for happy times

See you in Ulduar!! <3

Sources:  MMO-Champion & World of Raids

Is 3.1 making you Anxious? Worried? Sad?

Well, wipe those tears away

because Plaguechill is having a contest!!

From today until May 17th you may email your funny screenshots to contest@plaguechill.com!

Tickle our funny bone and you may win! It can be your character someplace weird, wearing a funny outfit, doing a funny scene with a friend ~ get your guild involved and put together something creative! It can have a caption or speech bubbles if it adds to the scene. We are just mainly looking for the most amusing pictures! We will choose the top entries and have the whole community vote on their favorite.

Our fabulous prize is Warcraft: Dragon Hunt published by Tokyopop! This is Volume 1 of The Sunwell Trilogy, authored by Richard Knaak and brought to life by Kim Jae-hwan. These books have some of the best art I have ever seen, and includes many warcraft characters like Kalecgos, Anveena, Dar’khan, and even see some of the Lich King’s dirty work! You may see a preview of this comic over at Tokyopop’s site, it’s the start of the tale surrounding and leading up to the Sunwell and it’s dirty little secrets!

Here are the rules and whatnots:

1. This must be an in game screenshot. This is not a photoshop or art contest! No comics or fancy edits.
2. Humor must be PG13 at most. Don’t be sharing anything you wouldn’t with your mom!
3. This is NOT a photoshop or art contest. If you want to add some text/captions digitally, that is as far as it goes.
4. You must be registered on our forums, please include your forum name when entering. Preferably in the body of the email, just make it clear.
5. Does not need a Death Knight in your picture. Invite your friends of any race/class to participate as well~ Just have fun with it, anything goes!
6. This contest is open internationally. Our community includes players from around the world and it would be unfair to not include them. Please feel free to enter, regardless of where you live.
7. All entries must be emailed by May 17th to contest@plaguechill.com Do NOT post them on the forums or email them elsewhere. IT WILL NOT COUNT.
8. Multiple entries are allowed. But don’t send the same screenshot/idea again and again because you wanted to change something last second. All entries must be finalized, so triple check your screenies before mailing them! Entering the same screenshot more than once will not improve your chance to win.
9. By entering this contest: You are allowing us to mail something to your address. We will NOT use your address for anything else or sell it to anyone. I will email you the status of when it was mailed so you can expect it. If you are underage, please ask your parents permission to enter!! Plaguechill will NOT be responsible for any groundings, punishments, or your account cancellation. If the prize is returned in the mail- you are forfeiting your prize to next in line. We are also not responsible for any customs fees that may occur. You do not need to send in your address when entering, but if you win and go MIA/do not provide an address, you will be disqualified.
10. Depending on contest response, we may need to adjust contest rules in the future. So please keep an eye on the blog/forums, I will be sure to add anything as clear as possible – this may include new rules, adjusted rules, or maybe even add new prizes into the mix! But by entering this contest, you are agreeing to these rules and any rule changes that may happen.

We hope everyone has some fun with this, we can’t wait to see your screenshots!! Free to enter, free to win, spread your disease love NOW!