Run! Forest! Run!

I had my first come back to my death knight character last night, after a long break doing other things, and there is no place like Icecrown Citadel to have you wake up call. My first Rotface (tankspot vid) encounter was a fun experience, particularly since our MT was a warrior, thus falling on me to kite the oozes.

Usually when you’re the less experienced in the bunch, you tend to be given the safe assignments, but mine was pleasantly enjoyable.

For those of you who do not know the encounter, essentially the idea is that while the MT tanks the boss in the middle of the room, the OT stays on the room’s edges. The reason for this is that periodically the boss will drop Mutated Infection on a random person. When it is removed, it drops a small ooze, which cannot be tanked or taunted.

The idea is to get two removed at the same spot, so that in close proximity, they unite into one big ooze. This ooze is tauntable, which is the OT’s job. It will one shot you dead if it catches you, so you need to move and keep kiting it around the room. More small oozes will drop and they must be dragged in front of the big ooze, so it will swallow them and eventually, after five small ones, explode.

It required a few takes, but eventually, we got it and was just, simply a whole lot of fun.

The challenge is basically just the fact that a) quarter of the room is constantly flooded with slime that slows you down and b) towards the end of the fight, smaller oozes will show up at an accelerated rate. We had an extra big ooze on the floor total of three times. It can be bad, since the OT needs to then out run them both, but if you can get them to collide, one of them will instantly explode, since they still act like smaller oozes.

Welcome back to Azeroth Durithim :)

Guilds and Specs

A week's worth of raiding in my new guild is behind me and it is time to look back for a bit. Those of you who regularly read this blog had, without a doubt noticed the guild change. Suffice to say, I was not as happy in my previous guild, as I would have preferred. Differences in views, between me and many other, especially senior members drove me to decide to leave.

Instead, I now find myself in a finnish guild, as per my own national and so far the experience has been superb. I have always had a theory about one-national guilds, that they have to, by their nature do and manage better than a multi-national guild; simply because they have a smaller pool of people to recruit from, thus, have to by average for better.

The summer of course means that there are fewer of us online and available for raids, which makes it ideal for me, giving me a lot of raid time, with the past week having easily passed by exploring Ulduar for the first time. Aye, was the first time I ever went beyond Flame Leviathan, shocking to some people I know but the simply reason was, I had rather spent my time first gearing and clearing raids like OS and Naxxramas. For my take on Ulduar, have a read at my earlier post, Ulduar Breakdown.

The biggest change, since my guild shift, was the redesign of my dps spec. I had been testing an unholy dual-wield spec for my death knight and it did not quite seem up to par in my new guild. Of course, being a raiding guild, opinions were quite frank and straight forward, so to lay the issue at rest, I have thus put my experiment on hold.

I now play a 53/18 blood spec. It uses a two-hander weapon, fresh from Ulduar, Relentless Edge and is all about producing very high damage through Obliterate and Heart Strike, in that order. Dancing Rune Weapon and Hysteria providing valuable cooldowns, and with Blood Tap and Empower Rune Weapon, provide as many hits with obliterate as possible.

I also found another build, a 51/2/18 blood spec. Naturally, a two-hander build but because it lacks Annihilation, it uses Death Strike in its rotation. This produces less damage per hit than obliterate but compensates with extra output from diseases and auto attacks. I had no chance to test test this one but having looked at it, and the fact that it is one of main specs that Ensidia death knights use, I have no doubt it is a very good option in the right hands.

Just remember to arm yourself with the proper glyphs, respectively.

Glyph of Dark Death

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon

Glyph of Obliterate

Glyph of Death Strike

Durithim of Ironforge

Seems blogging is kicking in within our guild, here at Retribution of Blade's Edge (EU), as another of our members has just started out his WoW blog. Naturally, since I don't want to be a second best, I'll follow on his footsteps and post a picture of my main character. For fair competition however, you can find Milas's blog my list as well.

I have to say I am pleased with this dwarf's progress; being my first max level character with relatively good Naxxramas level gear. Now just have to wait and help rest of my new guildies to gear up and we can all get to enjoy the perks of raiding.

But without further introductions, meet Durithim of Ironforge on his favorite place, overlooking the most fabled city in the world; Dalaran from high above Hero's Welcome.