4.3 Goes Live... Without Any Class Changes For Me

So yeah, 4.3 is going up today.  I thought I had another week.  We didn't get Rags down last night, and I wanted another shot.  Oh well, nothing to stop us from going back.  There aren't a whole lot of Warlock changes, so I'll do a quick aside on Rags.

Is there anything more worthless than an Affliction 'Lock on those adds during the phase change?  That is all.

Hopefully the 4.3 10% buff to Soul Fire will make it instantly get one of those guys to 50% (doubt it).  Then, I may have a chance of killing one on my own.  As it is now, I'm paired up with a bursty melee so he can get it to 50% and then grab another.  I'm the closer.  Kyra Sedgwick is not pleased.

Okay, okay.  Enough whining.  Here are the patchy notes:

Warlocks

• Shadow Bolt has a new spell effect.
• Soul Fire now scales with 72.6% of spell power, up from 62.5%.
• The Voidwalker ability Suffering now works like the hunter pet talent Taunt.
• Talent Specializations
  • Demonology
    • Master Demonologist now grants a base bonus of 20%18.4% and 2.5%2.3% per mastery, up from 16% and 2% per mastery.
    • Impending Doom is now also activated by Soul Fire.
  • Destruction
    • Fire and Brimstone now increases the damage of Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on Immolated targets by 5/10/15%, up from 2/4/6%.
    • Burning Embers now deals damage equal to 25/50% of Soul Fire and Imp's Firebolt, up from 15/30%.
    • Burning Embers damage cap has been raised.
    • Shadowburn now deals Shadowflame damage, instead of Shadow damage.
    • Improved Soul Fire now lasts 20 sec, up from 15sec.
• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed a bug that caused Doomguard and Infernal to benefit dramatically more than intended from Demonology Mastery.

Notice anything?  Or rather, a lack of something.  Where are the Affliction notes?  What, there are none?

I suppose that's okay.  I don't have any major complaints right now.  (Except, of course, for the uselessness on Rag's adds described above.  Mechanics like that just suck and I'm not sure I would want them to fix us for it... it might ruin our identity).  Apart from the soul fire buff, and a shiny new shadowbolt visual, we're not really getting anything here.  There's not much to say. 

How about my DK, any better? Let's look:

Death Knights

• Death Strike now heals the death knight whether or not the attack misses, or is dodged/parried. As a result of this change, Death Strike no longer refunds its rune cost if it fails to hit the target, as the death knight will still receive the healing effect.
• Blood Presence now provides an armor bonus of 55%, up from 30%.
• Death Knight pets now properly inherit their master's crit and spell penetration stats.
• Talent Specializations
  • Blood
    • Blade Barrier has been redesigned. It now passively reduces damage taken.
    • Bone Shield now has 6 charges, up from 4.
    • Veteran of the Third War now reduces the cooldown of Outbreak by 30 seconds.
  • Unholy
    • The gargoyle called by Summon Gargoyle should exclusively use its ranged attack regardless of range to the target.
    • Unholy Might now increases Strength by 25%, up from 20%.

Nope, nothing that's going to really affect my PvP Frost play there  Frost is missing as well.

So boring patch is boring.  At least from a class-I-play standpoint.  I'm looking forward to dorking around with the raid finder, the new five mans, transmogging, void storage, the new faire and those sorts of changes that we knew were coming.  I'll have write more on them when I see how they've actually been implemented though.  Which brings an interesting conflict to light: Skryim or 4.3?  Hmm....

My New Hawtness: 2v2 Arenas

It took me, what, three years? Four? How long have I been playing this game anyway?  Somewhere between those two I think.  I was a TBC kid.  In all that time, I'd never given arenas a try.  Not even once.  Neither had Fuu.

A week ago, that all changed.  We both got our "step into the arena" achievements... and then promptly became addicted.  Our team, named simply Hodor, hovers around .500.  We've not played two dozen matches yet, but are closing fast.  We've capped out our conquest points in two days each week.

We'd been doing BG's a whole lot, and our guild is forming up a rated team.  Thus, we wanted to work on our gear.  Honor is all well and good, but conquest is where it's at, and normal BG's really aren't a good source of CP.

Arenas, however.  Holy fel.  I feel like it's stealing getting that CP.  It falls like a deluge of Mage tears.  It's awesome.

We're doing a 2v2 (of course).  DK (me) with a Healy Priest (Fuu).  I have no idea if the combination is any good.  In the 2's bracket, I understand it's a whole lot of "rock, paper, scissors" going on.  Some rocks fare better than others.

We've fared pretty well so far, going on some streaks both ways.  We win as much as we lose.  Also, we're not usually getting blown out.  They're close, hard fought matches, so the match-making process appears sound, at least in our limited sampling.

And have I mentioned the CP?  After running simply normal BGs forever, it seems to drop super fast.  We'll definitely be in good shape for tonight's guild debut into rated BGs.

The upside of 2v2 for us is that we're in the same room.  Communication is easy.  Scheduling is easy.  You can hop in, spend an hour, and be nearly capped even if you simply split your matches.

The downside is that the rating doesn't work toward the gear upgrades.  2v2 is sort of the "unsupported" slice of arenas.  Also, there's a certain amount of, ahem, marital stress you may have to be willing to endure.  Having raided together forever, it's really not different, but say the wrong thing at the wrong time and you may be sleeping on the couch.  Consider yourself fairly warned.

On the other side, I think teamwork is a great skill to build for couples.  Too often that benefit of gaming together is overlooked.  The couple that plays together, stays together, says I.

Even if you're not a PvP maven, consider the 2v2 bracket.  We did some dabbling in 3v3... a lot more brutal.  A lot more losing.  2v2 seems to be more forgiving.  It's a great place to whet your appetite and get a bit of CP.  If you go into it expecting to lose as much as you win... it's a great time.

Reforging and Stats With Mr. Robot

You may or may not have been following the comments on my previous reforging post, but basically you'd see that I'd been having a bit of back and forth with Mr. Robot himself. I actually am rather impressed with how he/she/it has integrated within the community. Rarely do we see such a level of feedback from a resource site. At least, I don't, and it's nice to see a site that not only apparently trolls the Warlock blogs, but also takes our comments to heart and works to make the tool better for us. Kudos for that.

I think Cynwise would agree here, as I've been roughly following the same conversations on his blogs and some of the tweets floating around. The exciting news is that Cyn basically made a comment along the lines of how it would be nice if we could get the same service for PvP gearing, and Mr. Robot said "we'll get right on it." Awesome stuff, and I look forward to seeing that functionality.

The other good news is that when I'd originally written my spotlight on the resource here at the blog, we got several comments where players basically advised to "take it with a grain of salt." Mr. Robot apparently does not approve of salt usage, for they immediately got to work in tweaking their Simulator values to get as accurate of a weighting as possible. There is a great write up that runs through what they did here. For a math-heavy article, it's very accessible and worth a look if you're curious. It is interesting to note that they're using Drain Life as a filler in their Sim. We discussed this a little in comments, and the basic point is that between DL and SB, the DPS is going to be nearly the same. The question then should be do you use use the Shadow and Flame buff that SB's provide, or would you be better off with the healing from DL? I predominantly use SB's (we use my S&F in my ten man), but will use DL if my health ever becomes an issue or I sense that the healers are struggling.

For my part, this sort of attention to detail has gone a long way toward assuaging any fears I may have had with trusting the weightings. Now, I was probably more trusting to begin with, since I tend to the more casual side of things and, after taking the plunge and following the advice, seeing my DPS shoot up almost 2k. There is no substitute for a great personal experience.

Currently, I've utilized the suggestions of Mr. Robot to optimize my raid gear on my 'lock. I recently attained the tier pants through a BH raid (was the only 'lock in a 25-man, huzzah!), and was extremely happy with how I was able to rework things to make use of the upgrade. Before the addition of reforging, the pants might not have been an upgrade (since I was hit capped already and they come with a healthy chunk of the stuff). Now, hit gear is great even when capped, allowing you to optimize other places with more freedom.

There are a few minor things where I'm running sub-optimally. You see, prior to finding Mr. Robot, I had been following the old, pre-Cata method of gemming and enchanting for hit. I suppose you could say that I simply found the concept of reforging everything a little daunting. I'm not a spreadsheet jockey when I game. I didn't want to be spending a bunch of time on calculations. Having been alleviated of that responsibility, I'm now trying to get rid of all those hit gems I had. For the most part, I've just redone everything and been fine, but there are a few pieces that I know I'm going to replace that I hesitate to redo just because it can be so darned expensive. My old crafted epic pants were one such item, so replacing them was doubly good as it forced me to re-gem appropriately. So, while I'm not a perfectly optimal player, I've certainly gotten a lot closer thanks to the site.

I've even started using it to help me shore up my DK for PvP. Now, I know they're still working out a true PvP stat Sim/weighting, but I've figured out a few things you can do in the mean time. Unfortunately, you can't really add resilience and it's a hard stat to weight anyway. Also, stat capping is a lot different when you're only dealing with other players that are at your level. All of the default caps they have built in assume raiding. So what I do is drop the weight of those stats to the same level as my top stat. Thus, I can still optimize and it won't have me reforge to hit a cap I don't need. That is to say, on my DK, I keep all my Mastery, Hit, and Expertise pretty much as-is. Then I look to see what haste I can dump into one of those stats as needed. Crit is decent, but not as good as Mastery right now, so I may reforge some of that too. At the same time, I like to keep a healthy chunk of crit, since I find it pretty useful in PvP for killing blows. Crit makes it hard for healers to anticipate.

Needless to say, I'm anxiously awaiting the proper PvP solution, though as Cyn has noted, PvP weighting is not nearly as simple as PvE. With the attention that Mr. Robot has given to detail, though, I have high hopes. Any solution promises to be useful, even if it does require me to dust off the old salt shaker. There really aren't many PvP number-crunchers out there that I'm aware of.

(Side Note: There are ways for you, the reader, to be able to help Mr. Robot with their projects. They have a great forum where feedback is strongly encouraged. Think something is off? Give 'em a post. Like I mentioned, they're great with feedback and could especially use some help on the PvP front if you're a number-cruncher in that area.)

Wherein I Refrain from PTR Excitement

If you've been reading around here for a bit, you probably know I have a long standing tradition of trying very hard to completely ignore the PTR. Well, maybe not completely, but I certainly try not to waste a whole lot of e-ink on analyzing what is most certainly going to go through umpteen revisions before hitting live. Not that analyzing the PTR is "bad" or "wrong," just that I don't always see the value in it. At best, you can only get a general idea for where the devs want to go, and sometimes not even that.

Still, there has been a lot of PTR buzz in the last couple of days, and a lot of it is directed at the classes I write about. Thus, I wanted to touch on a few of them and conjecture about where we might end up.

For DK's, the news is simple: we're going to get a b-rez. I'm sure they'll have to hotfix cooldowns and play around with stuff like that before it goes live. There's not really a whole lot to a b-rez as far as scaling though, mostly how long before you can use it again and what other classes it shares a cooldown with. Like the growing family of Heroisms, expect the devs to follow the patterns already set by the Druid b-rez.

For Warlocks, we get a bit more involved, especially for Aff'locks. Rumor still has it that our soulstone is going to join the b-rez family as well. I'm not sure whether or not it's going to happen in the next patch, but it seems to loom ever closer. Expect it to follow the same pattern as the proposed DK rez and druidric rebirthing.

The other scosche of news seems to reaffirm my initial misgivings during the last patching. Namely, I felt nerfed. Now they're talking about giving a substantial buff to Haunt. In addition, our Felpup's Shadowbite might get a boost. Theses are more Affliction oriented changes that should bump our DPS as well as entice us away from the Succubus.

For Warlocks at large, the Doomguard is likely going to get a buff as well. We all knew that they wanted Infernal to be for AoE and DG to be for single target, but they'd fubbed the design along the way. They'll fix that in the next patch I think, and we should see a re-emergence of big red.

It seems to me that they're struggling to make mana an issue for 'locks. They're talking about increasing the effects of Mana Feed, the low hanging fruit of the Demo tree, presumably to entice us to take it for free mana returns. I still don't see where the tipping point is going to be that I'd rather choose a mana talent over a stamina talent. Theoretically, it would mean we'd have to Life Tap less, but I'm not tapping a whole lot as it is. Unless the redesign of Mana Feed eliminates the need to tap altogether, I will likely continue to pass on it.

It's worth noting that the redesign is only planned to include the Felpup and Felguard for now. Thus, Destro 'locks really only have the DG change to look forward to. I think the take home here is that they want each tree to use different pets and are trying to tweak things to keep them even in terms of damage but slightly ahead for each tree... no easy task when you consider it. The DG and Haunt buffs are a lot more straightforward and are likely just a matter of "what percent goes live."

Stay tuned, it seems, as they continue to muck around with stuff. It's been quite some time since we've received so much attention. I supposed I'd grown used to seeing only one or two relatively minor Warlock patch notes. Now I'm starting to feel like a Pally.

Reforging for Dummies

Let me start this by saying that, prior to the last couple of days, I'd never really been a big fan of reforging. I hesitate to use the phrase "dumbing down," but there is such a thing as being "too customizable," in my opinion. And there's nothing the engineer in me hates more than something that is too user friendly.

Back in the day, before the fall of the Lich King, you had to be clever with your itemization, gems, and enchants. There was a rather interesting trade off where you had to decide whether to exist as much as a percentage point over the hit cap, or risk going a few scant points under. Entire posts were written debating the merits of being close to cap against being over cap. Snow fell only on uphill slopes that I, of course, walked on to get everywhere. It was a golden age of snowshoes and tough moral dilemmas.

However, what I call interesting, a lot of other people call blatantly annoying. What's worse than getting the new, awesome, super shiny upgr- Oh it has no hit on it. Damn. Burn it all to fel. Enter reforging. The salve to our irritable bowel syndrome. The panacea to our collective case of conjunctivitis.

Being Catholic, my initial reaction to change was one of intense fear and suspicion. It is something that is bred into me like an overactive sex drive and a love of the "occasional" drink, as well as an affinity for the pleated skirt. What was wrong with the old ways? Doesn't too easy = bad = sin = anger = fear = the dark side? Isn't there some sort of inherent nobility to my suffering? HAS EVERYTHING I'VE EVER DONE BEEN FOR NAUGHT?!

Okay, I'm catastrophizing. But seriously, I'm the type of person that sometimes struggles with change. I had my old system worked out and working for me, and then they had to go and gunk it up. So I did not welcome reforging with open arms.

Yet, now that I'm max level and beginning to to tweak gear for raiding, I'm starting to see it's allure. No longer am I pigeonholed into lesser gear for fear of losing my cap. No longer do I develop a twitch when the new epic trinket awards me with a whole percent of wasted hit points. I simply reforge, and then I'm done. Or unreforge (isn't that just "forge"? IDK).

The beauty of reforging is that it allows you to mess around with numbers to try and hit the cap exactly on the nose. It's still a bit challenging, as you can only get so much from each piece. In fact, it sort of becomes a game within a game as you try to work the puzzle pieces together to fit perfectly (as possible). Right now I have achieved a scant 0.04% overage. I was irrationally excited by it since, after purchasing the scarily hit free Justice Point hand upgrade, I knew full well that the loss of hit from the slightly worse piece it was replacing would be a challenge to make up. In the past, I would have just ignored the upgrade, because no way would I be able to gem/enchant swap enough to make the purchase worthwhile, sinking tons of gold into the process and probably ending off with a worse itemization than when I started.

Now, though... WAHOO REFORGING!

Being still somewhat resistant to change and extreme measures for min/maxing, I wanted to pass along my simple rules for reforging. These rules are supposed to be the "basics" when you're mucking around for hit cap. Sure you could reforge everything to the best stats possible, but I'm not dealing with that right now. I'm deriving these from my current stat progression (found in the guides up there on the left), so they may change over time. I want to try to keep it simple though...

Affliction Warlock Hit Reforging Rules of Thumb

1. If you need more Hit, try to steal it from Mastery. Mastery is the worst.
   
2. If you can't steal Mastery, get it from Crit or Haste (you can get into Haste plateaus if you want, but I'm not worrying about that yet, I'm still switching gear too frequently).
   
3. If you have too much Hit, unreforge or put some back into Crit or Haste. Forget Mastery.
   
4. ???
5. Corrupt things for Profit

Demonology Warlock Hit Reforging Rules of Thumb

1. A clever Demo lock told me we should shoot for 1996 Haste. Meander around this rating if you want.
   
2. Crit and Mastery are about on the same level, so steal from either of these for Hit.
3. Too much hit? Unreforge or metamorphosize some into Haste.
   
4. ???
5. Enslave things for Profit.

Frost Death Knight Hit/Expertise Reforging Rules of Thumb

1. Melee hit cap is 8% and Expertise cap is 25 (check your mouseovers).
2. Steal it from Haste.
3. Pop it back into Mastery. Bwuh? Yeah, Mastery is actually decent here. Or my fave, Crit, is always good.
4. ???
5. Freeze things for Profit.
   

And right now, that's the long and short of it as far as I'm concerned.

The Curious Ebb and Flow of PvP

Now, I consider myself a casual PvPer at best. I've written enough about it that long time readers are probably already familiar with the fact that I PvP on my DK. In Cataclysm, I'm finally at the point on my main toon (the 'lock) that I feel it's time to begin PvP gearing my DK. Basically, this means that I've done all the daily quests I care to to (earned exalted rep with everyone), and am ready to fill that time previously spent on questing with running random BGs.

I don't really do the whole arena thing, and we don't have enough PvPers in my guild to form a "rated" group. Thus, I simply queue up for randoms while mining or whatever, and gear up the hard way (grinding honor). It's fun for me, really, to start out feeling weak sauce and then slowly to get stronger and stronger. I feel like, by gearing this way, you learn some good strategies for survival early that only help you when you begin to out gear people. Generally speaking, I've found that running on average a BG a day will outpace the majority of the players in gearing, as well as how quickly tier patches come through. Thus, with each gear step by the devs, I'll start a bit behind the hardcore folks and then slowly catch up as they top out.

The one thing I've noticed is that the skill/difficulty in BGs varies widely depending on day and time. Like the ebbing tide, it seems that the skilled players flood the fields at certain times. In my experience, this usually means several things.

First, during the week, play is more consistent. You generally don't get as many preforms, and things seem more competitive. I tend to run about 50-50 for wins/losses (and I'm on the Alliance side, fwiw). People generally know what they're doing, though you'll always have the mid-fielders. There isn't as much shit talking.

Compare that with the weekends. Being Alliance, my W/L record plummets to probably 20-80 and I find myself awash in noobology. I mean, I zoned into WSG yesterday to see the strategy proposed: "Me and a healer will go for flag, everyone else fight in the middle." And they were serious! It was not pretty.

Now, the queues are a lot shorter on the weekends, so honor wise it might balance out. You also seem to have more pre-formed groups of guildies playing together. As a pretty much solo-random person, this can get a bit rough. I mean, any good PvP group has a healer, and I, obviously, do not. Pretty much any class vs any class with a healer will lose (unless you out gear them significantly). And shit talking is through the roof.

All this probably makes sense when you take into account that more casual folks will have the chance to play on weekends, including the immature and skilled. It's a simple fact of numbers. I suppose I just wondered what your experiences are? Do you see the same flow to the BGs? When do you think the "best" time to play is?

I enjoy the competition, so I'm a fan of during the week, early evenings. Sometimes things degenerate a bit later. I like it when people are actually trying to play smart, even if they're not the most skilled. I think there's more of that during the week. How about you?

Enchantment List Updated

With great gear comes great responsibility. That responsibility is in the form of gemming and enchanting your gear. Being an enchanter m'self, I've always tried to have the best 'chants on. I may not always grab the exorbitantly priced epic gems, but I will have the good enchants, by the Light. Or Shadow, in my case.

I've made an exact copy of this post as a static page on the left. That is the one I'll keep up to date as I get more information, but I'll point comments back to here.

Affliction Warlock Enchantment List (remember, spirit is useless)

• Head - Arcanum of Hyjal (Hyjal Rep)
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Therazane Rep)
• Chest - Mighty Stats or Peerless Stats (peerless is pretty expensive right now)
• Pants - Master's Spellthread (if you are a Tailor) or Powerful Enchanted Spellthread (from Tailors, more expensive)
• Boots - Precision (can reforge something if you're over cap), (added haste), or Mastery
  
• Bracers - Precision (can reforge something if you're over cap) or Mighty Intellect
• Gloves - Haste
• Ring - Intellect (if you're an Enchanter)
• Cloak - Lightweave Embroidery (if you're a Tailor) or Greater Intellect
• Weapon - Hurricane or Power Torrent
• Off Hand - Superior Intellect
  

DPS Death Knight Enchantment List (Nitro Boosts go on your belt now)

• Head - Arcanum of Wildhammer/Dragonmaw (rep) or the PvP Head Enchant for 2k Honor (can't find the name right now)
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Jagged Stone (Therazane Rep)
• Chest - Mighty Stats or Peerless Stats (peerless is pretty expensive right now)
• Pants - Dragonscale Leg Armor
• Boots - Earthen Vitality, Lavawalker, Mastery, or Precision
• Bracers - Major Strength, Greater Crit, Greater Expertise, or Precision
• Gloves -Greater Expertise, Greater Mastery, Mighty Strength
• Ring - Strength (if you're an enchanter)
• Cloak (can now stack engineering and enchants) - Greater Crit
• Weapon - Rune of Fallen Crusader on one and Rune of Razorice (if you're Frost) on the other

Paladin Tank

I was going to get Fuu to create a similar list, but she informed me that it's already been done better elsewhere. So I'll just pass along the link instead.

Don't forget to grab an Ebonsteel Belt Buckle for your belt as well!

Did I miss any?

DK PvP/DPS Guide Update

As promised, a look at what I'm doing on my DK for a Frost PvP/DPS type spec and playstyle. I'll copy the changes into this post like I've done for my other guides, and post the entire thing as a page linked on the left side. Comments will point to here.

The Spec

With that in mind, I went with a 3/31/7 spec.

It's important to note that my aim is to be able to do two things well with this spec. The first, I'd like to be able to DPS in a PvE environment competitively. The second, I'd like to feel useful in PvP Battlegrounds. Thus, some points are chosen for that sort of utility, even though I know it makes my spec not "the best" raiding spec or "the best" PvP spec. It's a hybrid spec. For instance, my PvP needs are what entice me to spec into Chillblains and use the Glyph of Hungering Cold. You may want to go another route if you're wanting a pure raiding spec.

In the Frost tree, I laid off Icy Reach, Chill of the Grave, and Endless Winter. I may swap the points I spend in Butchery for CotG just to see which generates more RP. I'm happy with Butchery right now though and don't feel RP starved. I ignore the 2H Might of the Frozen Wastes since I'm DW, and also put a point in On a Pale Horse. It's nice to be just a bit faster in BGs.

In the Unholy tree, I extend my disease length and put two points in Unholy Command (mostly in order to get to T2 but it doesn't hurt for PvP). In the second tier I pick up Desecration. My playstyle in PvP revolves around controlling and slowing the opposing players. With the combination of Desecration and Chillblains (Plus Hungering Cold and Chains of Ice thrown in), I've found it pretty effective. Especially when protecting siege vehicles and such.

In the Blood tree I just take Butchery and put my last point in Bladed Armor. I may eventually take points away from Desecration and fill up Bladed Armor (maybe even just one point) if I feel that I'm overdoing the "slowing" approach. For now, though, I like it.

The Glyphs

• Major Glyphs - Pillar of Frost, Chains of Ice, Hungering Cold- Here's where it gets a bit murky. Hungering Cold for free is good stuff in a BG. It works as both an interrupt and a freeze. I find it incredibly useful. After that, I didn't find myself using Pest as much anymore and went with Pillar of Frost instead for an extra escape. I also didn't find myself needing the extra Strangulate seconds (and wondering how many times I actually procced it since I use Mind Freeze as my interrupt), so I went with Icy Chains, which I use all the time. I contemplated Dark Succor for the healing, but, again, I just don't find myself using it enough. Your mileage may vary.

The Rotation

Intro: Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Necrotic Strike > Blood Strike > Obliterate > Frost Strike

Added NS into my "setup" phase. Also added a bit about DS:

You also get Dark Simulacrum, which is a very neat spell to use, especially in PvP. Basically it lets you steal any spell that uses mana and then use it. Cool stuff and the possibilities are endless. Have fun with it and throw it in when you can. I like to steal heals in PvP and heal myself. One little bug I've noticed is that DS doesn't really work inside of a macro. I had to have it on it's own key to get the second spell to work, or it'll just tell me that "I haven't learned that spell." It'll do the original cast of DS well enough, just not the "borrowed" cast. I don't know what it is about being in a macro that messes this up, so I've just put it on it's own key straight from the spellbook.

The Stats

Strength > Hit (until melee cap) >= Expertise (until cap) > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Agility > Hit (to spell cap)

Wrap Up
I've been having a blast with this chica in BG's. Having leveled this later as an alt, I find myself a bit behind the gearing curve of the general PvP public, but I can still hold my own. With the changes in 4.0.6 we retain our ability to eat mages for lunch, and also gained some added protection against stuns (and rogues). Good stuff.

Patch 4.0.6 DK Patch Notes

Here are the Death Knight patch notes for 4.0.6. I'll add my own commentary in italics, but the meat of this post is poached from the full notes that I nabbed from the Zam feed, same as in the Warlock post. There are a lot more notes here but I probably won't comment as much since I don't really min/max on my DK.

Death Knights

• Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
• Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them. - Totally huge for PvP. Rogues beware!
  
• Necrotic Strike's absorption effect is now reduced by the target's resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.
• The spell hit bonus previously given by Virulence (Unholy) has been rolled into the Runic Focus passive effect that all death knights possess.
• Talent Specializations
  • Blood
    • Bone Shield now has 4 charges, up from 3.
    • Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.
    • Heart Strike now deals 175% weapon damage plus 15% per disease, up from 120% plus 10% per disease.
    • Improved Death Strike now increases the damage of Death Strike by 30/60/90%, up from 15/30/45%.
    • If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.
    • Scarlet Fever now applies via Blood Plague, rather than Blood Boil.
    • Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap's cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.
  • Frost
    • Chilblains now also causes Chains of Ice to root the target for 1.5/3 seconds. - Another awesome change for PvP. I'll be posting my spec soon, and it revolves around slowing/rooting type of gameplay, so this is awesome for me.
      
    • Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell. - A bit of a nerf, but honestly I was a bit sick of pulling aggro with this by sneezing on the key.
      
    • Hungering Cold now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
    • Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon. - I DW, so w/e. :-)
      
  • Unholy
    • Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery.
    • Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
    • Death's Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed.
    • Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.
    • The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.
    • Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
    • Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
    • Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
    • Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance.
    • Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.
    • Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage. - I can see a lot of DK's speccing into this now. I'm going to have to see what I'm doing with my points, this might trigger a respec.
      
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.
  • Glyph of Death's Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.
• Runeforging
  • Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%. - I still won't be using these for DPS/bursty PvP.
    
• Death Knight Bug Fixes
  • Blood of the North is no longer incorrectly increasing Blood Strike damage by 10%.
  • The tooltip for Blood Presence was giving an incorrect value and has been corrected.
  • The amount of bonus damage Blood Strike was receiving per disease was inconsistent with its tooltip and has been amended.
  • Crimson Scourge will no longer proc if Blood Plague is not present on the target.
  • Death Grip has a minimum range requirement of 8 yards against players, but this was not stated in the tooltip. The tooltip has been updated.
  • Desecration should stay in place while on the Alliance Gunship in Deepholm.
  • When a character is raised as a ghoul with Raise Ally, there is no longer a considerable pause after losing control of the ghoul before being returned to the corpse or graveyard.
  • The Scourge Strike tooltip is now correctly augmented by Rage of Rivendare.
  • The shadow portion of Scourge Strike was receiving more than 10% increased damage from Frost Presence and has been corrected.
  • The shadow portion of Scourge Strike no longer incorrectly still receives a 13% spell damage increase from Earth and Moon.
  • Glyph Fixes
    • The Chains of Ice tooltip is now correctly augmented by Glyph of Chains of Ice.
    • Glyph of Raise Ally now correctly affects the risen ally's health.
    • The Vampiric Blood tooltip became awkwardly worded after applying Glyph of Vampiric Blood. We made the words less awkward.

The Take Home
Overall, I think Blizzard is still struggling a bit with the design identity of DKs. With Cata, we've just recently been shoehorned into trees, and now we should expect to see a lot of tweaking as a result. Still, I think there was a lot of good news in this patch. Blood tanks should be a bit more hardy, Frost a bit harder to kill in PvP, and Unholy a bit stronger (along with trying to make mastery relevant for this tree). I will probably be tweaking my PvP spec again before sharing it, but like I noted in the commentary, these changes play right into my hands. The fun part for me has always been being able to slow, control large groups with HB and Chillblains, while being the bane of magic casters. These changes only reinforce that while faring me a bit better against melee stunning types (Rogues).

Good stuff, and look for me to squeeze in a PvP spec while I'm updating all my 'lock guides. I don't think I'm going to get back into tanking again (recall my exit with the demise of the DW tanking), so don't expect anything there. Frost is just what I love about my DK. 'Nuff said.

Frost DW DK Update

Slowly but surely I've been leveling Decedereful, my DK, toward 85. Last night she just dinged 84 and I plopped the resultant talent point in it's place. Our guild has unlocked the first tier of increased experience gains, so with that and rested experience, the time I've spent has been quick. The zone path went from Hyjal, to Deepholm, to Uldum. I doubt I'll be able finish Uldum without hitting 85, but it will probably be close.

My second time through, a few things have struck me. First, leveling a gathering profession is infinitely more pleasant than the tailoring/enchanting hell I went through on my main. It was amazing to me that I maxed out mining as earlier as I did. I went from 500 to 525 last night in about an hour by doing large circles of Uldum. Pretty easy compared to how I've had to beg, borrow, and steal cloth and materials for my other professions. Engineering on this toon is still behind the curve, but there are a lot of 5-pointers which make it not so bad.

Apart from professions, I don't feel that my playstyle has evolved all that much. That is, I still feel like I'm doing exactly the same things I was doing at 80. I guess I was a bit spoiled by my warlock. There were significant spells added that you really had to think about, some that should be used extensively. With a Frost DW DK, there really doesn't seem to be anything that affects what I use. Sure there's a new strike that will steal some healing and there's the nice little spell that lets you instantly apply both of your diseases, but neither have really made it into my basic set of Things To Do. I'm still: Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Obliterate > Frost Strike... rinse, repeat. I throw some blood strikes in to keep some death runes active, but otherwise, I'm just using those four abilities as needed.

I guess I find myself sort of disappointed, yet not at the same time. I can see where some of those new abilities will have situational usage, and I look forward to using that healing stealing strike thingy in PvP, but it's sort of same-old, same-old. Really makes me appreciate the care they've taken with Warlocks anew. There were really smart changes to 'locks. DKs seem to largely have been left alone, which seems odd to me given that they basically destroyed several playstyles (i.e. DW and Frost tanking in general). Maybe this is a good thing, I don't know.

Any Frost DK's out there? How do you feel?

And I don't care what anyone says, Uldum is fun the second time around too, even though it is the epitome of a Universal Studios rollercoaster.

4.0.1 Death Knight Frost DW DPS Primer

Everything you want to know about ("casual") Death Knight Frost DW DPS, right here, in one article.  Or something like that.  Hopefully it'll at least get you started.  My goal is a bit different from the standard end-game raiding scene.  Mostly I run BG's with this toon, but it is also my alternate raider when needed.  Thus, my DK is designed to be respectable and fun, not the top dog.  If I want to /flex, I'll go on my 'lock, but that doesn't mean I want to look like noobsauce on this toon.

The Spec
With that in mind, I went with a 2/32/2 spec.

It's important to note that my aim is to be able to do two things well with this spec. The first, I'd like to be able to DPS in a PvE environment competitively. The second, I'd like to feel useful in PvP Battlegrounds. Thus, some points are chosen for that sort of utility, even though I know it makes my spec not "the best" raiding spec or "the best" PvP spec. It's a hybrid spec. For instance, my PvP needs are what entice me to spec into Chillblains and use the Glyph of Hungering Cold.  You may want to go another route if you're wanting a pure raiding spec.

If you checked out my preliminary spec right after the patch dropped, you may notice that I changed up my plans a bit.  Originally, I had taken Improved Icy Talons and Bladed Armor at the expense of the blood and frost talents that cause you to generate more runic power.  My thought had been that I never had a problem generating RP before, how much would these really help?

After mucking around on a dummy for a while, it quickly became apparent to me that without those talents, RP generation is just too slow.  I wasn't firing off nearly as many Frost Strikes as I'd like, and my DPS wasn't where I wanted it to be.  So I respecced, dropping IIT and Bladed armor in favor of RP generation talents.  I plan to get some points back into those talents soon, but for now this is what I believe makes the spec playable. 

The Glyphs
You can see from the link above that I'm going with:

• Prime: Howling Blast - To spread Frost Fever and, thereby, Chillblains. Awesome for keeping melee away from demolishers, etc.  Also great to spread out the deeps.
  
• Prime: Frost Strike - Less cost = More Strikes = Moar Deeps.
  
• Prime: Obliterate - OB tends to be my big finishing move in BG's.  Great idea to buff it.
• Major Glyphs - Pestilence, Strangulate, Hungering Cold- Pest will help in AoE situations to hit more folks.  Strangulate should be good against casters.  Hungering Cold for free is good stuff in a BG.  It works as both an interrupt and a freeze.  I find it incredibly useful.
• Minor Glyphs - Horn of Winter, Path of Frost, Resilient Grip - Minor's are decently useful for DK's.  First, there's nothing like extending your horn. Second, we make our water walking spell a bit more hardy.  Third, we more chances with our MK-Scorpion-like talent.  Not all that exciting, but could be useful. 

The Rotation
As most specs change from less of a rotation to more of a priority system, I want to break down what I do into two ideas: an Intro sequence and then Ongoing Priorities.  To me, DK DPS works best when you think of it as setting up, and then moving into a "maintain" phase, so that's how I'm going to approach it.  I'll start off as if we're just worried about a single target, and then note the changes for multiple targets later.

Intro: Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Blood Strike > Obliterate > Frost Strike

Ongoing Priorities:

1. Keep Diseases Up - With Rime procs and the glyphed HB, you should never have a problem with Frost Fever.  Keep an eye on when you might need to toss in a Plague Strike.
2. When the side auras for Killing Machine show up try to use an Obliterate or Frost Strike.  Obliterate is the better choice, but don't miss a proc waiting for it to show up.
3. When Rime procs, throw a Howling Blast (frost aura above your head)
4. Use FrS to dump your Runic Power whenever it caps or as filler when your runes are on cooldown.
5. Weave in Blood Strikes when your other stuff is on cooldown in order to convert some blood runes to Death Runes.  I like to try to keep one Blood rune as a Death rune at all times.  Just try not to have it where both of one type of rune are sitting unused.    
6. If everything else is good, then you should just be popping OB's every time they're up and dumping RP in between, watching for procs and the priorities above.  That should keep you busy enough.

Since HB costs simply a single Frost Rune now, it basically replaces IT (hence why I dropped the glyph).  You may want to keep IT handy for any situations where some AoE splash is a bad thing, but otherwise HB is the way to go.  If you're Dual Wielding like I am, you want to run in Frost Presence.  Otherwise, I've read where 2H benefit more from being in Unholy, but that's not what I'm doing here.  Check it out on EJ if you're curious, they have a pretty solid article that helped me out a lot. 

I know that in the course of my research, it was tough to figure out what DW weapons to use. So here's the easy answer: you want a slower weapon in each hand in order to maximize the damage of your special spells.  Since they're calculated with respect to your base damage, and your base damage is directly relational to the weapon speed, you want two slow weapons.  Why?  Let's say you have two weapons, each with the same "DPS" but one is fast and the other is slow.  In order to equalize the DPS, the slow weapons has to have more damage per hit.  Since specials are calculated on damage per hit, I think you can see why we say "go slow".

I don't really change up the rotation for AoE situations except to try to use more HBs when I can to maximize my damage.  You still will want to put up and spread your diseases, though with the Pestilence nerf and HB being glyphed, you only want to use Pest for this if you have more than a handful of targets.  Otherwise, you'll just want to PS and then weave HBs and use your normal RP dump (still FrS).  Also, you'll want to use Death and Decay when it's off cooldown, though watch your threat.  Utilize BS to keep Death Runes coming.  More Death Runes means more HB's and that's really the key here.

The Stats
Hit (until melee cap) > Expertise (until cap) > Str > Mastery > Haste > Crit > Agility > Hit (to spell cap)

Ewww numbers: Melee hit cap is 8%.  This governs almost all of our special abilities that are melee in nature (though not "white noise" attacks).  More hit will still help, as our spells can go all the way up to 17% before cap.  Our spells include HB and IT, so after melee cap this stat weight only falls slightly for us, probably being in between Crit and Haste until Spell Capped.  Expertise cap is 23 (Thanks, Stop!). 

It's also good to rune you weapon with Fallen Crusader (MH) and Razorice (OH).

Wrap Up
That's it for my DPS DK.  Pretty short and simple, which is how I do my lone max-level alt.  She's a great change of pace and I love to PvP on her.  I only raid on her if I run into save issues on my 'lock or just to knock out old content with newer raiders. 

I'm sure a lot of you could come up with better pure raid specs, feel free to leave 'em in comments to help others out who stop by.  Also, if you're a frosty DK like me, do you roll with the same rotation?  Same basic set up?  This is one toon where I know I still have stuff to learn.

DK Specs, Fuu's Debut, and 310% Flying Cheap(er)!

The above represents perhaps the most auspicious title I've ever had around here.  I mean, usually I stick with one topic, or go with some form or "Randomness is Random" title.  Here I have three distinct, and pretty much unrelated, writing points.  Could be crazy.  You've been forewarned.

Why am I rambling about the title?  Well, as you may have surmised, the title is generally what draws people in.  Also, it makes for easy search and find via a service like Google.  That's why for information that I want to get out to more than just the regulars, I tend to have a more mundane heading.  People search for things like "4.0.1 class spec", and not "Ful's Cavalcade of Hilarious and Insightful Talent Spending."  Not that I'm in any sort of position to give other burgeoning bloggers advice... it's just something to keep in mind as we go into Cataclysm and are looking to get helpful information in the hands of the people looking for it.

With that said, no one is likely to search for "Fuu's Podcast Debut", so what's that doing in there?  Well, she mentioned it earlier in the week, and it's now up!  For you tanky types out there, I'm sure it's worth a listen.  I haven't even gotten to hear it yet, so I'll be perusing it with the rest of you when I get a chance to hit up the link.  There is a link right?  Yes, I'm sure and I'll pop it in here as soon as someone can get it to me at work (I'm, of course, blocked), or we find it at home tonight.

edit:  There were a few issues with the podcast being available on iTunes. It finally showed up. Here is the link to his website at The Guardian Tank. I believe that it starts working with your main media player (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, etc.) If you would like to download it directly to your iTunes or Zune, you can search for the Program; The Guardian Tank. The Episode is called: Tanking Mastery 3 (Master Tank: Fuubaar). Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, issues finding/ downloading. <3 Fuu

Fuu is the podcast queen.  If there is a podcast, she's probably listened to it.  I, on the other hand, am terrible about listening to podcasts.  It's probably why I've never been invited to one. I've tried, I really have, but I'm just a reader through and through.  I love talking to others, but just listening is like torture to me.  I want to interact!  Moral of the story: direct all podcast questions to Fuu.  I'm just the odd scribe she lets out of the dark cupboard under the stairs every now and then.

If you're here for the prospect of 310% flying at a discounted rate, I have great news.  Commenter "Ben" tipped us off last week that you could potentially get the required training for a much more modest 4k gold at Valiance Keep (for Alliance, Horde I believe is in Warsong Hold or something).  Of course, the discount comes from having an exalted reputation with the folks out there.  I know it's one of the Wrath groups, not sure which one though.  I earned exalted with all of them through the Argent Tournament a while ago.  In any case, there is a trainer right next to the flight point in Valiance Keep that will give you the same training as the dude in Dalaran, only with a 1k discount if you're exalted.  Totally a deal, and got me my 310% perhaps two weeks earlier than I'd thought at the rate I'm going.  Big thanks to Ben for the great tip!  

Finally, if you're here for DK specs, I've been a bit busy with Warlocky stuff and haven't really gotten to spend much time with my alt-DK.  I have, however, worked out some preliminary specs.  I've only used the DPS one in game so far, running around doing some dailies.  I'm rather scared to try out my tanking now that I have to go to a whole new tree.  Plus, I still only have DW weapons and there really isn't a DW tanking option.  I suppose you still can (and I will until I lock down a solid 2H weapon), but it's not nearly as cool or "niche" as it once was.  In any case, I wanted to pass along the links for both of these specs for any interested parties.  I'm definitely looking for feedback and will be updating those guides in the upcoming weeks as well.  Warlockery comes first 'round here, but I don't plan to abandon my PvP toon and alternative tank.

Preliminary 4.0.1 Death Knight Tanking Spec Here.  Some notes:

• Talents were hard for me to pick here, seemed like there was a lot of good stuff.
• I focused on things that would give me survivability (not worried so much about threat right now).
• Blood Boil could be a great AoE spell for us (as opposed to relatively trivial before).
• Epidemic seems important to me to pick up.
• Since I specced for survival, I tried to glyph more for threat.  Seemed to work out best.

Preliminary 4.0.1 Death Knight Frost Dual Wielding DPS Spec Here.  Some notes:

• I've yet to really figure out a rotation, it seems like I'm constantly rune starved.
• I made this spec with PvP (BGs) in mind.  Thus, some of the talent choices reflect that.
• Glyphing seemed easier or this than the tank, just buff your DPS.
• Diseases seem to last a heck of a lot longer, plus we have that new strike that refreshes them.  I've not been able to fit it all together nicely yet, but haven't had a lot of time to spend with it either.  Advice appreciated.

I don't usually get to do nearly as much research for my DK as I do for my 'lock.  It's just the way things go.  Still, I wanted to post up my spec plans with the hope of getting feedback.  At the very least, I think they're good starting points.  Death Knights saw a huge amount of change with the 4.0.1 revamp, so it's going to take me a bit to get my mind around them all.  It just doesn't feel very smooth right now, but that could simply be due to lack of practice as well.  I hate feeling clunky, don't you?

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Did you hear? Apparently there are, like, changes for classes happening in Cataclysm. No. Way. And, like, Blizz is totally announcing them. Get. Out.

Okay, you got me. I'm being sarcastic. And a little bit valley-girl or something. Whatev. It's just that apparently we're in the grips of a slow news... month? As soon as something - anything - hit the interwebz, everyone decided to write about it. Far be it from me to stop the dead horse beatings. As Sar put it: "Unfortunately, the problem with big announcements is every bloody damned blogger out there writes about them." It sounds really angry if you put it in an Australian accent and pout a bit.  I'm with you, Sar.  Yet here I am, writing about it anyways, because wtf else am I going to write about. 

So, at least I'm going to try to just keep it to my personal musings rantings.  Here's the things that popped out at me.  If you want the full report, I'm sure you can find it around. 

Here are my Warlocky Thoughts:

•  The almost had me on this whole Fel Fire thing.  That is, until they said "this is similar to the Mage ability..."  and anything after that was lost in a blind rage.  Blizz, I appreciate the nod towards green fire and even maybe getting a true instant cast spell that could be useful, but for Light's sake stop treating us like Mages.  It's bad enough you gave them pets and us... nothing.  Probably give them "Super Mage Form" next where they become a huge fire elemental and deal extra damage for a set period of time.  
• There was some shit about buffs.  Yeah, we don't do that.  Next.
• They waved around some feeble ideas for soul shard revamps.  I hope it's not like the carrots in Ocarina of Time when you're riding Epona.  If you're a Legend of Zelda fan, you know what I'm talking about.  I can just picture three little soulshards and an annoying "boowip" sounds as they regen automatically out of combat.  I hope they don't go that route.  I still want to be evil and trap people's souls. 
• Along those lines, I'm not sure about the special "combo" abilities they were suggesting.  Like consuming a UA for some instant damage?  I don't know how that would play out.  If it takes us two casts to do it (put on UA, then like consume a soul and something happens?), it could be useful, but it could also just be too slow.  I'm hoping for something to help Affliction Warlocks on quick dying stuff, but I'm not sure this is the answer.  The soul fire thing looked interesting though.  I love that spell on my Demo 'lock.  Instant cast would be awesome.
• I like what they're doing with haste adding on to the end of DoTs.  It was sort of annoying when you'd get to higher levels of haste and have the darned things dropping off so fast.  I'm hoping this means they scale everything correctly so you don't just get super long DoTs either, but that it's just more ticks in the same amount of time.  This would make fiddling with a rotation a lot more precise.
• I guess splitting up the Curses and making some Banes is a good thing.  I don't know though.  I mean what do I do when not on CotE duty?  CoW?  No way. It would be nice to have CotE and CoA (BoA) up though.  I wouldn't have to feel like I'm sacrificing DPS to help others, and we all know Warlocks are all about being selfish.  (See above buff statement).
• It looks like pets might get more interesting.  As long as I get to keep using my Felpup and he synergizes well, I think I'm okay with this.  I really don't want to have to micro-manage though.  Still, set-it-and-forget-it is kind of boring too.  Maybe we can get a healthy medium?
• They mentioned something about Drain Soul refreshing some stuff.  Looks like they're really trying to make this out finishing move.  Quite frankly, I love it.  I wish all the 'locks pulled out DS at the end.  It looks like we're Ghost Buster's and someone's just throw out that trap thingy of theirs.  Don't cross the streams.
• As for the mastery stuff... what the hell is up with Blizz trying to force crit down our throats?  The stat is totally devalued with Affliction 'locks.  Haste is up near SP in terms of damage per point.  Crit is like half that.  Why would Demo's mastery involved haste but not Affliction?  Ugh.  That's so critty of them.

If you are a DK, I really have only two questions:

1. WTF are they going to do about DW tanking?  I have my guess (it might go away), but I don't have to like it.  
2. Why would we tank in Frost presence and spec in the Blood tree?  I really don't understand their choice of Blood as the "tank tree" here.  I can only hope it'll change or however they implement it will make more damn sense than what I'm seeing in the preview.  Sounds like a huge overhaul though.

All in all, it may sound like I'm sort of pissed about a lot of these changes.  I'm not.  I generally don't like change, but I understand what they're trying to do here.  This is also the reason I generally shy away from PTR crap.  Blizz has this annoying habit of giving us half formed ideas and vague summaries until they're actually ready for release.  It makes sense, because they don't want to get burned later, but if you try to take the changes at face value, I think they usually sound like crap.  We'll see how they end up implementing them, and I have some faith that they'll get most of it right.  They usually do.  For now, we can just pick out the general direction in which Blizz seems to want to head.

For 'locks - I think they're finally going to help some of our "up front" damage.  They're looking at ways to give us more instant stuff and ways to cut DoTs short so they damage all at once.  To me this screams "we want you to be better on add fights".  They also want to make pets more integral, more than just set-it-forget-it.  They want to give us more utility in raid situations.  That's probably a good thing.  It also looks like they want to give Demonology some much needed love.  They want to strengthen our finishing power, and, last but not least, they want to fix the shard system using what they've learned from DKs (you know that's their baseline).  Expect all these things to reflect themselves in the final solution.  The bad news is that they're also going to be looking a lot at what works for Mages and try to apply it a bit for us.  Since I guess we are pretty much Mages that decided to be evil (and badass), it makes sense from a lore point of view I suppose.  I just hope we don't lose the "evil" part.

For DKs - They're going to cut down the trees and plant new ones.  Not totally new, but not the smorgasbord they are today.  It's going to be a lot clearer what tree does what.  There will be a "tank" tree.  It will most likely be Blood.  DW tanking will probably go away.  Sad day.  More on DKs still to come, though.

Now that I've got one spell of Green Fire in the works, I think I want Black Ice for my DK too.  I mean, blue ice is so passe.  Just one spell though, Blizz, don't overdo it.  :-)

Stat changes in Cataclysm: Death Knight Style

Today represents the last in our tri-partite look at the Cataclysmic stat changes.  As promised, Death Knights are the topic of today's discussion.  Again, I'd like to make sure to note that like everything else Blizzard does, this is subject to change.  With that in mind, we'll be looking more at the general directions they want to go.

For DPS Death Knights
Being a bi-functional class (tanking and DPS), we have to look at the changes in two ways.  Let's check out the DPS stats changes first.  Here's the old stat priority for Frost DPS:

Hit (until cap) > Str > Expertise (until cap) > Crit > Haste

The only two stats that are going away that we had some moderate use for are Attack Power and Armor Penetration, but as you can see, those weren't really in our top five.  In fact, they will each now convert into one of those or stamina, so it's all good.  As long as you're wearing plate, you should be well itemized.  The non-plate items will be tailored towards other classes, and we will probably see less overlap, making those items not as good for us.  As a plate, melee DPS, we should just be prepared to see more stamina and more strength.  Nothing big here.

They've also said that they want to make Haste more useful for melee classes.  In their words: "Our intention is for Haste to let you “do stuff” more often."  As vague as that is, the key idea here is that we'll have two types of stats.  Several to make things more powerful, but one to be able to do things more often.  This sets the stage for some interesting trade-off discussions and calculations.  Is it better to hit a lot faster or a lot harder?  As always, I'm sure we'll be aiming for some sort of "sweet spot" in the middle.

For Tanking Death Knights
Where the DPS changes are fairly minor, the tanking changes will be pretty major.  Fuu touched on some of them for Pallies yesterday and a lot of what she said applies to us as well.

The big change sounds like it's going to be to Defense.  Before, any class of tank with the exception of Druids had to really pay attention to the Defense stat in order to get to the accepted "cap" that makes you un-critable.  As mentioned, this is all going away.  For Death Knights, it appears that their intention is to have us become un-critable upon entering Frost Presence.  Since we should be in this presence when we're tanking anyways, it will really make life easier. 

Existing Defense will be converted in other useful stats like Dodge, Parry, and Block.  The hairy part here is that we can't really anticipate which pieces will be intended for which class.  As a DK, obviously block means nothing to us, so any pieces that have Defense convert to block are probably not going to be as good.  As far as this goes, there's no choice but to wait and see.  I would imagine that Blizz has already thought this out, and plans to use more generic stats (like Dodge or Stamina) for any pieces that could be used by multiple tank classes.  If a piece already has block on it, then chances are those are the pieces that may get some defense changed to block.

A second, more minor change is going to be made to Parry.  It's interesting that they are talking about making Parry affect two concurrent attacks.  I'm not sure if the percentages will all come out as they posted, but the general direction is that each Dodge, Parry, and Block will provide different (but more similar) forms of mitigation.  Parry might halve two attacks, where dodge is a complete avoidance, and block is a steadier but smaller percentage.   If I had to guess, I'd say they make the simple trade-off for these stats that the higher the percentage of avoidance, the less likely you are to avoid.  So while it might be harder to Dodge, you would miss 100% of that attack.  Parry would be in the middle, with block being the most stable.  Either way, I anticipate them to balance these stats so they can be similarly valued.

A small side note to the Parry change is that the whole Parry-Haste discussion will no longer be valid since parries will no longer reset the swing timers for mobs.  Thus, there really won't be a downside to Parry anymore which is great since we're a Parry heavy tank class.  If anything, this may cause us to want more Parry, though Dodge will still be a big stack for us (and block useless).

For tanks, there really isn't a straight stat priority as it's more about balancing your needs.  Nearly all of what I laid out in my DW tanking primer still holds, so I'd encourage you to look there if you want more information.

Filed Under Misc
Let's take another quick look at Reforging and Mastery.

Again, Reforging is what Blizzard is calling their general directive whereby they'd like to allow players to tweak the "support" stats on gear.  For DKs and tanks especially, the ability to muck around with some stats is a good thing.  I really don't think Blizz is "dumbing down" anything, since this ability alone would make for some very heavy theory-crafting.  Think about it.  I'm sure there will be some trade-off to moving these stats around, and the level of control will allow people to aim for the "perfect" stat combination (if such a thing exists).  Instead of just having to make do with what's out there and create "best in slot" lists, people will need to look more at how stats interact and what sort of balance you really want.  For DK tanks, this will probably be a battle between Dodge and Parry.  For DPS, it'll be about Haste and Strength.

Mastery is rumored to be a new stat that will "allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique."  You can interpret that as well as I can.  For a DK, maybe we'll have an extra loud Horn of Winter or increase the cries of "OP".  Maybe it would be super useful like allowing our spells to hit at the same hit levels as our melee (so there aren't two "caps").  Who knows?  They indicate that it'll be some way tied to talents, so we could see things where you get a simple bonus multiplier based on your "mastery" level.  I would guess this stat might be hard to come by and not malleable like "supporting" stats.

So what should you do now?  
As I said in the Warlock version, we don't know when, exactly, these changes are going to roll out.  They may be in a patch next week (remotely pos-si-ble, but unlikely), they could be several weeks before the expansion (likely, since it would follow the trend set by TBC), or they could be with Cataclysm proper (perhaps equally likely, though I would think to do the tweaking stuff "in preparation for" the expansion).  There is no time line.  When the changes are actually release (and what they are in their final form) definitely dictates how much it affects us.  If there is considerable time stuck at level 80, you will most likely be using "old" gear.  If not, then what to do now matters less. 


With that being said, I want to have in my mind what I should do if the changes are coming sooner rather than later.  The answer there: for DPS there's really nothing; for tanks, try to be aware of any gear that seems intended for Paladins and Warriors.  In other words, avoid block.  Also, for both versions of DKs, we'll have to pay attention to what they do with our weapons, since even now the stats can be a little weird for dual wielders like myself.  I think we should see a bigger separation between what, say, Rogues use for DPS and what DW DKs use.  The days of wanting to roll on mail or leather for the stats is probably over (if you ever did it in the first place).  It's probably a safe assumption that your class's tier gear will be re-itemized with your class in mind, but that is probably the only gear claim you could safely anticipate.  Other pieces may surprise you with who Blizz actually intended them for.

Besides that?  We continue to play the waiting game.

Shadows, Now With More Cunning

The night before last, we finally finished the Quel'Delar quest chain. The hardest part, as expected, what knocking out each of the new heroics. As previously mentioned, they can be difficult enough to still cause a myriad of problems with random PuGs, so a good, preformed group really helps here.  I'm not going to ruin the storyline for anyone who hasn't done it, but I will say that the last two steps after you get out of heroic mode can be solo'ed. Don't let the word "Sunwell" scare you... you aren't going retro-raiding.

After it's all said and done, I was able to pick up a rather amazing 1H weapon for my DW DPS set. You can check out the stats (and my addons) in the following screenshot:

You can see I use both Pawn and Ratings Buster addons.  As with most 1H DPS weapons, this one is devoid of any Strength stat, which is a bummer, but the other goodies more than make up for it.  The best thing?  It's slow.  And by slow, I mean fucking slow.  2.7 swing speed slow.  That's good stuff for a DW DK.  Especially with a 205.6 weapon DPS.  Pop this puppy on your MH and watch your OB numbers skyrocket. 

It had been marginally tough to find good, slow, 1H DPS weapons.  I now have a 2.6 off hand and 2.7 main hand.  Since I've talented so that my special attacks hit with both hands (Threat o' Thass), this means I'm seeing some great numbers now, with the beefy QD netting me awesome crit numbers for a DW.  Yep, this one is going to be a staple for a long, long time.  Not to mention the sweet lore and epic quest chain involved.  I felt bad for Fuu because her priest had to get the mace.  The mace still has great stats, but it's not the Quel'Delar you just saved.  It's more like a simple quest reward and not like you're wielding an epic piece of awesomeness.  Poor priests.

Now, I'm hoping I can get a second hilt to drop so I can get this bad boy for my Warlock.  (Still, having recently acquired Seethe on my lock, it wouldn't not be nearly as big of an upgrade... or used as much since melee 'lock = fail). 

Oh, and did I mention that you get announced in Dalaran?  Yeah, who doesn't like when some hot belf chick is screaming your name?  I'll cop to that one.

Feel free to drop a question about my UI too if you see something you like/don't understand.  Yeah, I use Fortex on my DK too, wanna fight about?  I'll QD all over your face.

We Can Haz Quel'Delar?

Back to work means back regular posting, and while I /groan at the working part, it is nice to have a regular schedule.  Holidays usually get me all out of whack and I'm one of those people that likes to patterns.  I'm a creature of habit.  Sometimes its nice to break the pattern, but other times it feels comfortable to get back into it.  Not that I'm enjoying my early, sleep-deprived mornings any more than I have previously.  I still rebel against the fact that we're a culture that completely ignores one of humanity's basic needs... all in the name of capitalism.  After all, the early bird gets the worm right?  So if you're not an early riser, you must be a lazy, no-good bum. At least that holds true for about 75% of America (I'm not sure about elsewhere). 

In any case, you probably didn't come here today to commiserate about the epic struggle of the alarm clock boss.  There is no good strategy for that anyways.  I personally prefer the "hit snooze and hope for a different spawn" approach, but I can't say that it works reliably.  Only when the instance is really glitched out.  And just ONCE I want to come into work, enter the revolving door, and be spit back out with someone yelling "additional instances cannot be launched".  I would celebrate that one.

No, I'm sure you came here today expecting to read something interesting (or perhaps at least to breeze by on your way to a clear reader).  Well, getting back into the swing of things is rough and I have a full reader too, so I'll keep this short.

Fuu and I both had what must be the luckiest day of our lives two nights ago.  We saw two battered hilts drop, and, what's more, we won the resulting need roll in both instances.  Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that they've adjusted the drop rates for the things, but still, winning both rolls on our first glimpse of the epic quest chain starter is luck indeed.  Of course, this luck found us on our alts, which is less than ideal, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Or in any other part of it's anatomy for that matter.  A mount is a mount, except when it's an epic quest chain and then it's purple and rife with lore.

What the hell am I talking about?  Ah yes, the recently added quest chain for the Quel'Delar.  What's a Quel'Delar?  Why a sword of a course!  A purple, dragonforged, ilvl=awesome sword (unless you're a tank).  The quest chain itself is a recent recipient of a famed "Best of Show" award over at the Pink Pigtailed Inn.  The five part series takes you through all of the new instances, and even back into the old, TBC Sunwell to see it's restoration.  So far, Fuu and I have only done stage one, so I can't really comment about the entire thing, but it's already been quite epic and enjoyable.  Really, who doesn't enjoy a good quest chain?

It does require a fair amount of instance running, which should be cake with the new LFG system.  Unless of course you're me.  Then, you will always draw HoR randomly and when you suggest to the system that you'd like to do Pit of Saron you get Violet Hold because "oh-damn-how'd-that-box-get-checked".  Then when you do run stuff you get six people that want to drop for unexplained reasons and your mom calls on the tele for a chat while you wipe because you apparently forgot what buffs and armor are.  Don't ask me why, I've just all of a sudden lost the ability to do anything "real quick".  I'm stuck in Murphy's Instancing Hell.

So I'm hoping that getting back on my regular schedule also fixes my sudden propensity for group fail.  That, and I think I'm going to badger Miss Medicina into healing for me.  Help me, Miss Medicina, you're my only hope.

Raid Gear Enchantment Lists

A side effect of the success of the new LFG system is the ridiculous amount of emblems that people are having come their way. The new system makes "gearing up" almost a joke. As Miss Medicina pointed out to me on vent the other day: Hitting 80 today, you could gear up to top end raiding in three days if you wanted. Three "normalish" play days. Not a 36 hour session (but not a single hour session either). Gear is just easy to come by.

Well, with great gear comes great responsibility.  That responsibility is in the form of gemming and enchanting your gear.  Being an enchanter m'self, I've always tried to have the best 'chants on.  I may not always grab the exorbitantly priced epic gems, but I will have the good enchants, by the Light.  Or Shadow, in my case.

Since I'm sure everyone else is experiencing the same Maximum Gear Flow that I am, I figured I'd make a handy little list here for reference.  So without further ado...

[Edit: I will update these for level 85 eventually, but for now they mostly hold true at 80 and for leveling]

Affliction Warlock Enchantment List (remember, spirit is useless)

• Head - Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (Kirin Tor rep item)
  
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Storm (Hodir rep item)
• Chest - Powerful Stats  
• Pants - Sanctified Spellthread (if you're a tailor) or Brilliant Spellthread (tailoring item)
• Boots - Icewalker or Tuskarr's Vitality (for the run speed)
  
• Bracers - Superior Spellpower 
• Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower (if you're hit capped) or Precision (if you're not capped)
• Ring - Greater Spellpower (if you're an enchanter)
• Cloak - Lightweave Embroidery (if you're a tailor) or Greater Speed
• Weapon - Mighty Spellpower or Black Magic
  

DPS Death Knight Enchantment List (Nitro Boosts go on your belt now)

• Head - Arcanum of Torment (Ebon Blade rep item)
  
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Axe (Hodir rep item)
• Chest - Powerful Stats  
• Pants - Icescale Leg Armor (leatherworking item)
• Boots - Greater Assault
• Bracers - Expertise (unless capped) or Greater Assault
• Gloves - Precision (if you're not melee capped), Expertise (unless capped), or Crusher
• Ring - Stats (if you're an enchanter)
• Cloak (can now stack engineering and enchants) - Greater Speed
• Weapon - Rune of Fallen Crusader on one and Rune of Razorice (if you're Frost) on the other

Tank DK Enchantment List

• Head - Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Argent Crusade rep item)
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (Hodir rep item)
• Chest - Greater Defense 
• Pants -Frosthide Leg Armor (leatherworking item)
• Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality 
• Bracers - Major Defense (unless capped), Expertise (unless capped) or Major Stamina
• Gloves - Precision (if you're not melee capped), Expertise (unless capped), or Armsman
  
• Ring - Stats (if you're an enchanter)
• Cloak - Titanweave or Mighty Armor
  
• Weapon - Rune of the Nerubian Carapace on both

Did I miss any?

3.3 Dual Wield Death Knight Tanking

This will be the last of my guides for the immediate future. I try to limit myself only to specs that I'm playing, basically just trying to pass along the research I'd do anyways.  Recently, I've been spending a lot of time tanking (wow, is it easy to get into heroics this way or what?) and I know that there was a good amount of interest in my first cut at a DW DK tanking build.  I have various articles scattered around here, so this is my effort to bring them together in one convenient location, plus update for the 3.3 patch.  Anyways, let's get down to business.

First things first: The Spec.
With the new DW friendly talents that Blizz gave us in 3.2, it's very important to be sure you're specced correctly for any sort of dual wielding. This means basically for DW you must get the following two talents: Nerves of Cold Steel and Threat of Thassarian. You can see if you'd like to click that my 8/55/8 spec reflects these. Additionally, I've taken many of the traditional frost tanking talents.

I didn't modify this spec for 3.3; I didn't see the need (edit: I actually did change a few things, see comments below. Still the same basic spec though).  I'm also continuing to go Frost because I love the AoE abilities that the spec gives me.  I don't think I can function without Howling Blast.  Plus, since I'll be DPSing as a Frost, staying similar as a tank helps decrease the retardation of my fingers.  I don't know about you, but when I switch specs, if similar spells aren't in similar places, I'll spend the first few pulls looking like a newb.

In any case, there isn't a whole lot of science or math going into my tank spec.  I just tried to take all the damage reduction abilities available to me.  It was really that simple.  If you, the reader, can see obvious flaws or trade-offs, please let me know in comments because I'd love to fine-tune this spec now that I'm using it more.  As I mentioned in my DPS guide, DK's are still something I feel that I'm learning.

The Glyphs
Secondly, it's important to note that I'm going with the following glyphs:

• Major - Disease, Howling Blast, Unbreakable Armor
• Minor - Horn of Winter, Raise Dead, Pestilence

Disease is a must for AoE pulls.  Love spreading my corruption, even as a DK.  Unbreakable Armor is also very useful as you should be using your tanking cool-downs religiously.  I finally caved and went with Howling Blast.  For AoE pulls, getting the single disease spread quickly is going to be very useful I think.  I'd used both Rune Strike and Obliterate glyphs before for the single target threat, but I don't think ST is going to be an issue.  I'd like to buff my AoE ability and the last major glyph choice does this.  The minors are the same I used for DPS and for the same reason: extending the horn is good, free ghoul is good, and larger disease area is good.  Simple enough, right?

Stats, Gear, and Runes. Oh My!
If you're just starting out, pick up two Teldrassil Protectors from the Argent Tournament, because these are a great place to start for 1H tanking weapons. The fact that they have defense and parry is really good for a DK DW tank. Most 1h weapons may waste some points on block, which is obviously useless for us.

The rest of my gear is your typical DK tanking fare.  You're looking for defense first.  You need to cap at 540 before doing any sort of raid (535 for heroics, but I would suggest even being 540 here, as most randoms will expect at least this).  After cap, defense isn't completely wasted (a la hit), so you shouldn't be afraid of being over cap, but it certainly devalues quite a bit.  At that poing, you'll really want to start looking at your other stats.  Let's list them out in semi-particular order:

• Defense (D) - First priority is to hit cap, then if it comes, it comes.
• Armor (D) - Stick with plate and you should be fine.  Armor should increase as you upgrade.  The point here is just don't go with anything that's not plate.
• Stamina (D) - You need a good amount of health to absorb damage.  I think I'm sitting around 33k right now.  This will vary greatly with buffs, but this is a great stat to gem for.
• Dodge (D) - This is a great avoidance stat since you'll elude 100% of the dodged ability's damage.  It's been said that you want to shoot for between 20-25% before you start experience diminishing returns and think strongly about other stats.  At that point I'd choose Parry over Dodge.  Those yellow gems slots are great for this once you're defense capped.
• Parry (D) - As a DW DK tank, this is a great stat for us.  Our Rune Strike (great threat ability) procs off of parries.  Plus a parry allows us to avoid damage and when we parry, we hit faster (parry/haste mechanic).  So this is a good all around stat.
• Expertise (T) - This will help your melee hits land without being parried or dodged by a boss.  It's not essential that we get capped as a tank, but it will certainly help with threat generation and is good to have.  It will also cut down on the parry/haste mechanic (it works both ways) for bosses.
• Strength (T) - Strength will boost your parry AND help your threat, so it's great to have.  If you're balancing your defensive stats above, this along with hit are probably the only offensive stats you should look for.
• Hit (T) - You don't want to have some of your key abilities miss, so hit is a good thing.  It sucks when a PS or IT misses and you have to waste a second GCD on the ability.  Hitting more will also really help your threat.

I say "semi-particular" because these are listed in a rough priority of what I value.  I also labelled then with either a (D) or (T), indicating "Defensive" or "Threat" stats, respectively.  Tanking is a lot different from DPS, though, as I believe you really have to strive for a stat balance rather than stacking one or two to the exclusion of all else.  You need to be able to withstand a wide variety of attacks, and different attacks will be affected differently by each stat.  Thus, what may be great in one boss encounter may not be all that great in another.  Also, if you go all defense and cause no threat, you're not going to be a very good tank.  So really, you have to evaluate your own performance and stats on a daily basis (or however often you run) and decide what you need to stack now.  This doesn't mean you have to re-gem and re-enchant every five seconds, but it will make you choose different weightings depending on what gear drops when.

You've probably heard about Expertise and Hit capping. For hit, with the Nerves of Cold Steel talent, we only need to gather a paltry 5% hit. "But wait!" you may say, "I thought DW imposed a penalty that means you need a whopping 27% hit in order not to miss." Yea, I say to you, that is indeed the case for white noise hits. That is most certainly NOT the case for melee based special attacks, where we need 8% (minus the 3% from the talent gives us 5%). Now, we do gain some benefit by going higher, since we rely on spells and they don't cap until 17% (minus 3% gives us 14%)... but you really don't see as much of a threat/dps gain from hit after 8% than you do from stacking other important stats. If you can pick up more, fine, just don't sacrifice better stats for it.  For expertise, 21 is our cap with the Tundra Stalker talent, but racials based on weapon type also decrease this.  You shouldn't worry too much about hitting either of these caps (except maybe the 5% hit one), as the other stats are more important.

Finally, you're going to want to head to the runeforge to get your weapons to glow.   I was ecstatic that Blizz introduced Rune of Nerubian Carapace with patch 3.3.  DW tanks were definitely at a disadvantage for lack of a tailor-made tanking rune.  First thing I did was slap one of these on each weapon.  I've got a healthy buffer on my defense cap, but the stam boost is also good and I'll be able to focus on my other stats for a bit.

The Rotation
Just because tanking is more reflexive doesn't mean that we shouldn't go in without a plan.  As usual, our plan must be two fold: one for AoE situations and one for single targets.

Single Target
The very first thing I try to do here is put on diseases.  After that, I'll Obliterate and Frost Strike as I can, keeping the diseases up. I don't want to FS too much so as to leave myself with enough RP to hit Rune Strike whenever the button lights up.  Remember, Rune Strike is proc dependent (on a Parry), which we should be doing a lot of as DW tanks.  Also, it's one of our best threat attacks. You really should be doing a lot of rune strikes, basically hitting it whenever that button lights up.  Since RS is not attached to your GCD and doesn't really have a cooldown, it shouldn't really effect your tanking "rotation".  Just hit it and go about your business.

An easy way to make sure your Rune Strike is always used is to attach the following macro to all of your commonly used spells:

#showtooltip
/cast Normal Spell Name Here
/cast !Rune Strike

The above macro will activate your Rune Strike whenever it's available and allow you to pretty much forget about it, while keeping it active as much as possible and pushing your threat to untold heights!

Since I have the glyph of Disease on my tank but not the Howling Blast glyph, I do have to pay attention to my Icy Talons buff to try to keep that refreshed for the good of the raid.  I'm not as good about this on my tank as I am on my DPS spec, since I have other, more important responsibilities, but it isn't really that bad as you may not want to AoE in single target situations anyways.  Plus if you have RS macro'ed to IT, you're killing two tickbirds with one key button press.

Multiple Targets
For multiple target situations where you have to hold aggro over AoE attacks and for other reasons, different skills will come into play.  It will also make a rotational approach more cumbersome, as you'll run into some cool down issues and such.  I welcome suggestions on how to weave this stuff together better, but I think it's just how it goes when you're trying for high AoE threat.

A big part of any AoE trash-zerg is going to be the initial burst threat.  With the ease of trash and threat generation in this expansion, DPS have been taught to be impatient on pulls and just open up right away.  As a tank, you'll need to be prepared for this and front load your approach accordingly.  Thus, I lead off with a DnD immediately followed by a Howling Blast.  These spells represent a good combo of both burst and non-burst threat generation, giving you a great set up that usually keeps trash locked on you until death with little or no more threat needed.

However, if it's going to be a longer fight, then I'll try to put up diseases and use Pest to spread them. Usually it becomes a bit awkward with runes at this point, but I usually have enough of a lead that I can use some of my RP dumps to pump up threat on a single target.  I might even jump around with a tab target to spread out some FS's.  After that I just try to keep up diseases and throw in a HB whenever I can, not really returning to a DnD cast unless there is a fresh wave of mobs joining in.  DnD is a great spell, it just takes a lot of runes away.

Speaking of waves (thing Gothik in Naxx), the approach there has to be a bit different as well.  When I know I'm going to be getting waves, I'll just save enough runes to try and keep up my DnD/HB combo with each waves, just mixing RP dumps in between or auto-attacking.  Waves usually die fast enough that the initial aggro is enough, but it can be tricky.

In all situations you'll want to spread out your cool-downs as well.  As frost DK's, we have three we want to be aware of: Anit-Magic Shield, Unbreakable Armor, and Icebound Fortitude.  The Anti-Magic shield is great for when your group is getting AoE'ed or attacked by, you guessed it, magic.  The last two are going to decrease incoming damage in general, so are great to stagger to give you healers a break or when you can anticipate a big hit from a baddy.  They have pretty short cool-downs, so should be used more often than you'd think.  Knowing the tough parts on fights is key as a tank, and saving these abilities accordingly can be the difference between success and failure.  Know what they do, and try to figure out when to use them.   Communicate with your healers.

Other than that, it's mostly a priority system more than a rotation: just try to use the right skills at the right time. It's been my experience that a tanking "rotation" is better off being flexible since you have to react a lot more but is also more forgiving since you don't have to be perfect to generate good threat. You just have to do the right things at the right time and stay alive.  

Wrap-Up
That's how I tank, in all it's gory.  I mean glory.  I'm not perfect at it by any means, but I've done it well enough in both raid and heroic situations to enable the group's success.  This is a role I'm still learning how to play and will be for some time to come.  I usually rely on Fuu for gear/stat advice and just try to adapter her Lighter thinking to my shadowy ways.  It's really an unholy combination.  Well frost, but also unholy.  You get what I'm saying.  (Boy, DK puns are fun).
Thanks for reading and suggestions/comments are always welcome.  Feel free to tell me to l2tank, cuz I probably need to.  Above all, you stay classy, WoW tanking community.