Archive for February, 2009

17
Feb

Number 1 Blood Spec in 3.0.8 and 3.0.9: Blood Disease-less Spec

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Rotations, Specs

Heya guys!!  So it’s finally that time for the best Blood spec available.  At the moment there are 2 specs proven to sustain over 7000 dps on Patchwerk.  And this is one of them!!  You guys ready to rock out with your…  You know.  :P

This is the infamous disease-less spec for Death Knights that even has Blizzard’s knickers in a twist.  There is no Icy Touch.  There is no Plague Strike.  Those lil bad boys are out!!  Frost Fever and Blood Plague do not exist to you in this world.  Be prepared!!

There is a lot of debate as to whether this spec will survive the 3.1 patch release, but atm I think it very likely will.  We’ll see how that develops, and get back to ya!!  ;)  

51/0/20

Now you have some options with this spec.  It is not 100% set in stone.  But I do highly recommend the talent point allocation that I list in the 51/0/20 spec.  If however you wish to see what options are available…

  • Rune Tap and Imp Rune Tap instead of Death Rune Mastery:  DRM is not needed for a boss really.  The main purpose is to generate Death Runes so that you can HS more often in AoE situations.  And when you consider that a RT could save your life on a boss encounter, it is a solid choice.  However I personally love to pwn face in AoE packs.  If your healers are spot on, you can really skip RT for added dps on Adds and Trash mobs. 
  • Anticipation instead of Viscious Strikes:  You will basically never get any advantage out of VS excepting if you lay some diseases’s down for healing with Death Strike.  But you will also never get any advantage from Anticipation either (if you are doing your job right and keeping under on threat) since you should never be dodging anything.  You can spend these however you like.  It just doesn’t matter. 
  • Bloodworms instead of Blood Aura:  Bloodworms capped out 3/3 is equal to 1% of your overall DPS on average.  1% of 5000 DPS is 50 DPS.  Inorite?!!?  Or, you could help out with keeping the raid topped out on health with Blood Aura.  Especially with toons like Shadow Priests, Blood Death Knights, or Warlocks who will damage themselves to do more damage.
  • Virulence instead of Corpse Explosion:  Technically you should get Virulence if you’re not spell hit capped in a raid.  But it’s CORPSE EXPLOSION!!!!  HELLO!??!  I don’t know about you guys, but blowing up !@#$ is just PURE WIN!!!  It’s only 1 point.  And totally worth it for fun factor, I’m sorry.  Especially when your friends die…  BOOM!!!  Muahahahahaha!!!

  

Rotation

OB -> HS -> DC -> OB -> HS -> DC

Yup, that simple.  Now sometimes, depending on latency and the Rune CD thingymabob (where if you activate a Rune just after it came off of CD and it’ll start it’s CD at 8 or 9 seconds if used within 1-2 seconds of coming back) you can work in a 3rd DC at the end as well.  YMMV.

You will end up hitting 100 RP at various points and be unable to dump all of it.  That’s just a part of the spec.  Get used to it.  Always break up the HS/DC’s to take advantage of Sudden Doom procs.  Making sure the HS’s are broken up so that no procs are over written by a new one is invaluable for your DPS.  The very first rotation will not be able to fire off the first DC if you did not get a SD proc, but that’s fine.  Just skip it.  It’ll be there for the next one.  Losing one DC to ensure that every single SD proc is used instead of wasted will net a DPS gain for you.

  

AoE

This is where that Death Rune Mastery comes into play.  Always lead off with a Death and Decay like normal.  Now the “sweet spot” for DnD is where things get tricky.  Generally speaking, if there are 5+ mobs you always want to DnD over anything else possible.  But if you have 3-4 mobs, your gear becomes the determining factor.  My personal suggestion is to use Recount and see how you do on trash mobs.  Compare your HS’s against your DnD, and remember to multiply the DnD damage by the number of ticks (1 per second for 10 seconds) and to also account for crit % rate.  Not crit damage only, but the % chance as well.

Generally speaking you will want to be spamming HS as much as possible.  1 HS on 2 mobs = WIN.  Remeber that.  Now as far as what to do when you start getting to 6+ mobs?  That is when I do suggest pulling out the diseases.  Icy Touch and Plague Strike a mob up, then fire off a Pestilence.  Once you get to 2 groups at a time, or some of the big spider packs, nothing will beat out a group of Pest’d diseases.  But that is not the common rule of thumb.

A standard AoE run is generally:

DnD -> HS -> OB -> DC

HS -> OB -> HSx3 -> DC

Work in Corpse Explosion any time there are 2+ mobs if you have no runes available.  If there are 3+ mobs, use CE every CD there is a corpse available.

 

Necessities

These are the basics you’re going for here:

  

Personal Notes

Now, as much fun as this spec can be…I just don’t think it’s me.  I did ok with it, and I can live with that.  Considering I only spent about a week running it (aka not a lot of practice or experience), I am content in a lot of the numbers I was able to sustain.  I stayed in the 5k+ bracket at Patchwerk even though I totally borked up the fight, and managed to pull 4k+ on Sartharion 3 Drake and some other very very solid numbers.

But in the end…I just don’t fancy this spec that much.  While I hate dealing with diseases in PvP (Cleanse anyone?  /sigh), in PvE I pretty much hate living without them.  It makes me sad in the pants.  :(   I am going to be trying out DW spec next, just need to go back and do some reading on it.  Maybe I’ll like that one more?  Dunno.  But I still find myself wanting to go back to old school Unholy.  It may not destroy like DW or Disease-less, but I likes it!!

That being said however, the big time winners for this spec are as follows:

  • Heart Strike – Who doesn’t love free auto cleaves?!?!
  • Corpse Explosion – BOOM!!!  Nuff said.
  • 10k+ Obliterates – Ohhhhhhh!!  /drool
  • Hysteria – 13k+ Obliterates…  Ohhhhhh!!!  /swoon
  • 7k+ potential DPS – WoW!!!

  

Current Bugs or Problems

Dancing Rune Weapon is borked on Thaddius.  Do NOT use it if you are trying for the Shocking! or Heroic: Shocking! Achievement.  It will pick up a charge and then blast the ever living hell out of everyone.  I am sure this will be fixed in the future.  But as of 3.0.9 this is a problem.

Blizzard posted earlier the following:

“We’re okay with ignoring diseases on very easy targets but you should never feel like you can build a valid spec or rotation around ignoring Icy Touch or Plague Strike. Some of the 3.1 changes should support this a bit more.”  (Source)

Now they also made bellowing noises about how they were going to nerf DW to the ground.  And look now.  DW is a 7k+ DPS spec.  So I am not really 100% convinced that this spec will be changed significantly in any way come 3.1 release.  However as it looks like the majority of the DW nerfs will actually unleash in 3.1, it is possible this spec will become moot in a few months.  We will see.

  

Finale!!

So yeah, that’s it!!  Enjoy!!  ;)

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

47 Comments
17
Feb

Stuff!!

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in /rl

Heya guys!!  So I don’t have time to sit down and write out a real post for you guys.  Today was errand day.  Groceries, gas, pet store, clipping Shadow’s nails (she HATED IT!!!  lol), cleaning, laundry, etc…  Barely had time to eat before raid time.  After we finished our raiding tonight, my friend finally called me.  The one from WoW whose daughter has cancer.  We finalized some details, and I had to tell her everything she needed to square away for the thingymabob I’m setting up for them.  But don’t worry.  This upcoming two weeks will be a special time, filled with joyous posts of numbers, details, rotations, etc…  But for now, I still have to get crap done before bed time.  So peace out!!  I’ll get something up tomorrow (Tuesday) after I get off of work.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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3 Comments
16
Feb

Coming Soon? Mebbe? Please?!!? OMFG POST SOMETHING ALREADY!!!!

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Coming Soon

Heya guys!!  Heh.  All right, so I’ve REALLY dropped the ball on finishing off BISI posts.  So I’ll be rolling out at least 2-3 of those this upcoming week.  You have my promise.  Also we’re going to be finishing up Naxx25 on Monday evening.  Tomorrow or tonight, depending on when you’re reading this.  I will be coming back in as Blood Disease-less and give you my final opinion on this spec, the rotations, the style…everything.

I can tell you this one thing up front however.  Speaking as someone who likes to both PWNFACE and also have a good time…  I’m not sure I’m really a massive fan of Disease-less spec.  So I guess I really am looking forward for ways to make other specs/rotations more attractive in 3.1 because this one doesn’t really do it for me.  The huge OB’s are cool.  And auto-cleaving on all HS’s is AWESOME!!!  HS is hella fun.  But then…that’s about it.  Nothing else WoW’s me!!  (see what I did there?!?! :P )

Unholy you got like pets, and you jump around with UNHOLY MIGHT!!! RAWWRRRRR!!!  It’s FUN!!  Frost…meh.  Fix HB and I’ll come back.  I swear!!  But as long as HB has a stupid 5 sec CD, it can suck my left you know what.  I hates it.  Though I should probably try it out at least one more time…considering my FS/HB were untrained before…  >.<  Not that that would have any kind of an impact or anything…  I mean…  Uhhh….  Damn.

So yeah, we’ve got some details and notes on 6min 25Maly and 25Naxx Blood Disease-less after tomorrow evening.  We’re gonna rock out some Disease-less info for you guys.  Holla!!  :P   And I think after we get that fun stuff tied up, we’re gonna move on to testing out some DW loving.  Yes, you heard me.  DW lovin’s!!  Finish off some BISI, and then.  And then!!  We’re going to finally get to Questions and Answers!!

Yes, that’s right!!  I’ve been hiding.  If you had nearly 100 unanswered E-mails and a few hundred unanswered comments on your site, you’d be fricking hiding too!!  You take one little sabatical, and you come back to orbital bombardment man!!  Sheesh!!  ;)

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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3 Comments
14
Feb

Preliminary Notes on DW and Disease-less Specs

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Specs

Heya guys!!  So I’ve been doing some much needed back logged research and re-thinking my approaches and thought processes.  It’s been interesting.  Of note I thought it worthwhile to mention that 2 specs have been able to maintain a 7k+ dps presence in current 3.0.9 release WoW.  Blood Disease-less and DW.

The interesting point on both of these fights is that they are cramming in the most possible damage availble within less than 2 minutes.  Which, in and of itself, invalidates the results.  For those who don’t understand why, the reason is quite simple.  Go down to a test dummy and use Recount.  Front load all of the possible dps you can into the dummy and then exit combat.  Then go back and hit it consistently for over a minute.  The likelihood is that your dps will drop off from the initial high numbers.  The more CD’s and special abilities you can allocate to the least amount of time possible, the higher your dps will appear.  Make sense?

The 2 fights in WoW that are now being considered the baseline for comparison in WoW are Patchwerk and Sartharion + 3 Drakes.  And the reasoning is very elegant and quite well imagined.  PW is the sample “tank and spank” encounter.  You get to stand in one spot and just unload everything you’ve got.  There are no distractions, no AoE damage to be concerned with, no movement, etc…  Sarth + 3 Drake on the other hand encompases almost every other quality within the various boss encounters of WoW.  Movement (dodging flame waves, void zones, etc), ST dps (straight up damage on Sarth and Drakes), and AoE dps (welps/elementals).  Combined with a longer duration (usually over 6 minutes for a boss kill), this encounter results in the Yin to the Yang of PW.

I’ve done some testing, but not as much as I’d like, on Disease-less.  And nowhere near enough on DW yet.  But it’s coming guys.  It just takes time.  My gear is done now outside of one Darkmoon card for my personal “ideal” Unholy set.  Which makes it slightly off for other specs, but in the top selections still for all other specs except possibly for DW.  I’m not sure if I have enough haste yet for DW, but we’ll see soon enough.

But for now, I have to do dishes!!  Yeah, yeah…dishes.  Roomie is out with his girl for V-Day, and they should be back relatively soon.  I promised to make the place a bit more “presentable” for when they get back for their “quality time”.  o.O

So I’m off for now.  And will be back later!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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6 Comments
14
Feb

Heya guys!!

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Fun

Heya guys!!  o.O  Repetition!!  Heh.

So, I’ve got Nightmare Before Christmas playing right now, and not much gets me in a WoW SJ mood like that movie does.  ;)   I’m going to be sitting down for at least 2-3 hours to get in some work, so stayed tuned!!  This evening we have toys and presents for all!! ;)   Shadow says hi!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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1 Comment
13
Feb

Soloing UK…why?

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Coming Soon, Fun

A little taste of what is to come.  Salivating yet?  ;)

Get in your best tank gear and throw that Frost Presence on.  After you do that, go and find your best in game friend who does killer dps.  And prepare for a fun challenge.  I suggest throwing together a tanky spec, either Frost for CC or Blood for healing.  And then dive on in to that first boss on non-heroic.  Want that bouquet of flowers for the achievement?  Can’t seem to get them?  This is your answer. 

Less people rolling, more chances at loot, and you can keep reseting the instance.  In under 15 min me and my roomie Garroc got ourselves the last 2 bouquets we needed.  And we were just fooling around while I was using a tanky/dps Blood spec to solo ZG bosses earlier to farm mounts.

Could I have solo’d it?  Quite possibly.  If my tank gear didn’t still include one or two DPS pieces and some blues, then I know I could for a fact.

Salivating now?  ;)

Details later.  Now?  Sleep!!!  :D

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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5 Comments
12
Feb

Short Update!! :P

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in /rl, Coming Soon

Heya guys!!  I’m not feeling 100%.  I had meant to get a great night’s sleep last night, but Shadow (my kitten) had other ideas of her own involving attacking my legs and feet all night long.  /sigh

I’m going to be updating you guys soon about my friend’s kid.  Turns out they even have a Blog and stuff to keep friends and family updated as to their kid’s progress.  But the fact is, this is a private family matter.  So until I get the go ahead, I’m holding off on revealing details as you may have noticed.  I’ve also already looked into setting up a PayPal account for donations.

I am also looking into possibly, and very likely, setting up a raffle if a certain donation amount is met.  What will the raffle be for?  Atm, I’m thinking about the Grand Prize being 10,000g.  Giving money away for charity doesn’t break the EULA, and it’s a nice incentive I think for people to chip in.  If you guys have other ideas, outside of rl $$ as I am not wealthy in rl, let me know.  If you have ideas as well about how to spread the word to get people involved, or what the minimum should be, etc…  Help!!  Details will be incoming soon, as I’m waiting on their family to discuss things still.

As to Blood Disease-less spec.  Blizzard has finally noticed it and mentioned ways to fix “this problem” in 3.1 release.  Normally I’d be like, “WoW this is gonna get nerfed!!” (see what I did there?!?! :P )  But considering the fact that their previous attempts to nerf DW failed miserably, I’m not really holding my breath this time around.

But don’t worry, I’ve got some details incoming soon on this spec.  We called our Naxx25 early last night due to serious lag issues.  We actually had 5 people DC on 4 Horsemen, and 2 of them tanks.  Everyone rocked the house though, and no one died.  People picked things up so well, it was awesome!!  As we’re working on gaining The Immortal Achievement, that is why we’re waiting till Monday when instance lag will be at it’s lowest.

To compensate however I have also been doing some Heroics, which I have not done in over a month easy.  I’ve been getting practice in, and experience, so I can give you the full details.  All of that is coming soon.  Also you will get to hear about my “magical” Heroic experiece where WoW bent over and said, “Here!!  Take me!!”  No lie.  O.O

And some words on solo’ing Thekal and Bloodlord in ZG.  Want an “epic” mount to sport that no one else does?  You’re willing to even do the legwork?  I’ll tell you how I did it, what to do, and the liklihood of success.  ;)   All that and more!!

But all of that needs to come later.  I feel ready to collapse.  Time for some sofa/TV time.  Catch you guys tomorrow!! ;)

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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4 Comments
11
Feb

For those “old schoolers” out there!! Super Mario Bros Style!!

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Fun

This made me lol so hard!!  OMFG!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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8 Comments
11
Feb

3.1 Patch, PL’ing, Blood Disease-less, and Sarth 3 Drakes anyone?! No kitchen sink. :P

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in /rl, Coming Soon, Raids

Heya guys!!  SO!!  How are you doing?  ;)   Heh.  Life is…twitchy.  Yeah, sounds weird right?  I know!  Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.  And sometimes it serves it to you straight up.  But when you were expecting a curve ball, and got it straight.  Sometimes it’s worse than getting the curve ball.  Because then you really WERE expecting something else.  Ha!

In my life I have a million things that I want to get done.  My head is racing a million times a minute!!  And of course I don’t have nearly enough time to tackle everything.  Same for you guys too I’m sure!!  So that is part of why I backed off of blogging some.  Simply put, never enough time to ever do everything I want to do.  It’s weird.  I didn’t used to be like this.  I used to always have TONS of time.  But life through me a straight pitch.  And now I’ve got a million things that I want to get done.

 

Sarth 3 Drake

Yeah, that’s right!!  PIMP SLAPPED THAT HO!!!  Heroic: The Twilight Zone!!  Finally!!  Been like 4 weeks now or more that SK has been doing this fight and I finally stopped missing it!!  Woot!!

2 out of 3 of those items are now mine!!!  Bwahahaha!!!  Yeeahhh Booiiii!!!!

Picked up the 22 slot Dragon Hide Bag with an epic roll of 26!!  That’s right!!  Epic rolling skills!!  Heh, it did help that almost all of the guild have previously beaten me who knows how many times, and like only 5 other people rolled.  >.<  But shhhh…

I also picked up my T7.5 Gloves tonight as well.  That only leaves 2 items left to complete my set.  Darkmoon Card: Greatness and Valorous Scourgeborne Battleplate.  Then I’ll basically have the last of my “wishlist” for T7 content.

 

Power Leveling

So the other night we were in Deadmines and just…I like this picture!!  :D

Good times, lol!!  It got interesting later on when we went into SM, rofl.  So my friend got tied up doing a corpse run.  I missed some mobs, and she got agro…  >.<  Whoops!!  Well I decided it’s be a bright idea to go pull the entire zone of SM Undead.  And I literally mean, *ALL* of it!!

WoW told me to “F” off!!  OMFG, lol!!  When I got them all back to the entrance where my friend was waiting I dropped DnD and was about to Pest out a disease…  ROFL, no shot!!  My screen locked up, and stayed locked up.  I have no idea how many mobs were there, but OMFG it was ludicrous!!  So yeah, don’t try to pull an entire zone.  WoW will DC you, causing you to die, rofl.  I probably would have lived through them all, had the game not kicked me, lmao.

 

Blood Disease-less Spec

Right…so people have been going nuts over this spec, bugging me online, etc.  Keep your pants on people!! :P

I took this into Sarth25 man 3 Drake tonight to try to get an initial feel for it.  I did ok with it.  Considering I have not been to a Sarth 3 Drake in over a month, and it was my first time with the spec ever, I was happy.  Did about 4100 DPS, when the highest was 4500 I think for my guild on that run.  Did like number 7?  I kept on firing off PS/IT out of pure habit though…  >.<  And made a few mistakes.  I know I could have done more actually.  But I got in some “air” time.  Which was good.

I’ll be rolling this one in Naxx25 tonight.  Get some practice in, etc.  And once that is done, I’ll get a post up for you guys with more info on this spec.

 

3.0.9 / 3.1 Patch

It’s hard for me to keep track sometimes with whom I tell what.  I forget when I’ve told a story or factoid to someone.  I try not to be as bad as some of my friends who will tell the same damn story 10 different times, but overall I do tend to repeat myself from time to time.  Ah well…

I told someone that basicaly if 3.0.9 patch released at all it would be a minor patch and barely even see the light of day on PTR.  And as the prophecy skills of SJ dictated, so it was!!  :P   Hehe.  3.1 is going to be hitting PTR soon guys.  These guys were already working on this before they ever started working on 3.0.8 release.  3.1 is Uludar.  The art, concept, encounter design, etc…was all already prepped to go.  They’ve more or less been doing tweaking and/or balancing while finishing itemization with the data that has been collected from all current raid encounters. 

But otherwise most of the work was well done before.  Now it’s balace time, final design, and class balance.  I would expect to see 3.1 hit PTR within a month from this day.  Possibly in as little as 2 weeks.  It’s now more of a question of when Blizzard decides they’re ready to let people test things, which is more likely going to be dependent on the Uludar encounter design team.  So expect movement soon!!

 

Friends in Need!!

If you missed my post on the 10th…

Coming Soon!! Yeah, yeah…I’m gonna post the Blood Disease-less details already!!

Some of you guys have left some nice comments there, on THAT post, about wishing my friend’s kid well.  I thank you.  Tons.  You have no idea.  In fact if you keep leaving comments THERE on THAT post, I plan on telling them to check it later on to see the wished you guys have given.

I’ve been thinking on this one for a while.  I’ve never put up ads, asked for money, etc…  But I’m *really* thinking about it this time.  You may see me relatively soon be putting up a donation link to PayPal or something for donations to help my friend out.

If you didn’t read that post, my friend’s kid has cancer and isn’t doing that great.  Even in the best of care, they don’t even have a 50% chance success rate of remission for their kid.  So don’t be surprised to see something up on my site relatively soon about this.

I don’t expect anyone to contribute.  I’d never expect or assume that of my readers.  But, if you decide to.  Even if it’s only a few bucks.  It’d be nice.

If you have ANY idea about who this person is, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.  And I mean it.

If you have ANY idea if there’d be any kind of complications with setting up a Pay Pal account to just send them money, due to tax reasons, etc, gimme a shout out please.  Don’t need to get my arse in trouble with the IRS.

Skeleton.Jack@hotmail.com

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters

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6 Comments
10
Feb

Coming Soon!! Yeah, yeah…I’m gonna post the Blood Disease-less details already!!

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack    in Coming Soon

Heya guys!!  So several people have been tearing at the bit now for info on this spec.  Don’t worry, it’s incoming already!!  Sheesh!!  I’ve been helping out a friend, pl’ing her RAF accounts on BB, and just having a good time.  I will also be likely to try out the Disease-less Blood spec myself this week.  Though as I’m new to it I’m not counting on doing 6800 DPS myself.  :P

I need to get back to my roots, aka a BISI post.  That needs to get done.  And I need to get back to some DW info for you guys too.  I’ll get it done, just my pace is a tad bit slower now.  Heh.  I did get some rather interesting screen shots recently though.  I look forward to sharing them with you.

On a sad note, I found out a friend of mine’s child has cancer, and isn’t doing well.  Whether you pray, don’t care, donate to things, or just randomly give $1 to homeless people…if you wouldn’t mind sending your thoughts out for them, it’d be appreciated.

So yeah, stuff inc.  :P

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

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