Death Knight Soloing - The Army of One

On Vacation

2009-11-05T06:44:00.001-08:00

I'll be on vacation for the next week so I won't be able to post.

Outland Dungeon Hero - Hellfire Ramparts cont.

2009-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

I cut off the last post at the point I was going to the final two encounters (three bosses two encounters) so to continue from there...

As I stated in the last post even though the last two encounters are not in any set order Omor the Unscarred is the one that I always consider the second boss. After killing the few adds near him I just walked up and started smashing his face in. No problems here, he summons some fel hounds that I paid no attention to and there were only three of them to clean up at the end. Wish I had more strategy to give you but really I just walked up and killed him. Took a couple minutes but wasn't exciting at all.

The next encounter includes two bosses, Varzuden and his mount Nazan. Not having any issues with the last boss I wasn't expecting much. I killed the guards and Nazan dropped off Varzuden who came after me, I pretty much just DPS'd him and moved around when Nazan would shoot fireballs at me. After I realized that the fire left over from these does not buff me (joking here) I would just move a little and continue to spank his master. When Varzuden is low on health Nazan comes down to the gorund, I had a little DPS still to do on Varzuden when this happened but it didn't cause any worries. It was only after I realized that Nazan appears to be immune to my diseases, something I never paid attention to when I was here with a group but has grave consequences as a soloist DK.

For those that don't know as DK our main healing ability is Death Strike. Death Strike does considerable damage (75% weapon damage plus 222.75 unbuffed) as well as heals us for 5% of our maximum health...per disease. Yup per disease is the key here, therefore no disease no health. Sure I still get the weapon damage but I don't get any health, and I like health it tends to keep me alive. So without my main healing ability I had to rely on a few other abilities, all with cool downs. I thought I was screwed. Once I realized what was happening I popped Army of the Dead so that my ghouls would A) tank for me preventing loss of precious health and B) add more dps to down him quicker. After the casting I had to get off a quick Death Pact to up my health and start the cool down timer. Turns out I didn't need it, although I did use Vampiric Blood and Blood Tap but he wnet down pretty quick all things considered. I guess I was lucky because I had no potions on me to help me if I needed them so things could have been a lot worse. But I consider Heroic Hellfire Ramparts one of the easiest ones yet.

Army of Dead - Cool down reduced

2009-11-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

A quick update thanks to MMO-Champion. Apparently in the next patch the cool down on Army of the Dead will be reduced from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes, however the damage from your summoned ghouls will be reduced by 50%. Not sure how this will affect the soloing DK. AotD is a nice damage mitigation ability, plus it gives you some time to get some quick heals in, but I also used the damage output from the ghouls to help me DPS bosses that I needed to down quickly. Most recently this was used to help me down Nazan (the dragon mount in Hellfire Ramparts). I need the added DPS because Nazan is immune to diseases, thus preventing my Death Strike from healing me. It will be interesting to see how this change affects that.

At this time I'm guessing it will only benefit my soloing attempts but I'll have to wait and find out after the patch.

Outland Dungeon Hero - Hellfire Ramparts

2009-11-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

So I changed my tactics around a little. At first I was going to run all the BC normal mode dungeons, getting my Outland Dungeon Master achievement and then re-run them on heroic mode to get the Outland Dungeon Hero. Well turns out I don't have a ton of time to run these solo instances, to many guild runs for gear (including my own tanking gear), achievements to earn etc. And honestly soloing these instances is a time commitment that I don't always have when I sit down to play. In order to speed up the process a little I decided that I would be running the instances on Heroic mode, thus completing both achievements simultaneously and saving me some time.

So this led me to having some time before football watching on Sunday to do a run. I picked Hellfire Ramparts because it's one of the few BC dungeons that I have run before therefore I knew it already and it's quick. Upon entering the instance I was fairly confident, having soloed this before with my DPS frost spec some time ago, but I never ran it on heroic, not even in a group, before so I was a little cautious. That was before my first pull.

The first pull was a little sketchy, I dropped below 1/2 health and had to struggle a little to regain it but I managed OK by popping Vampiric Blood, rune tap, calling my ghoul and Death Pact. I finished off the mobs and took a minute to figure out where I was going wrong. I decided that I needed to focus on maintaining high health because once I start dropping down, if I get a bad run from RNG (random number generator) I could be toast. As I mentioned I love having the Death Rune Mastery in my spec as it allows form me to use the death runes as blood runes for either HS or any of my other blood abilities like Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, etc. However it also gives me to much leeway in not using Death Strike for healing, seeing as how I only have to use it every other rotation to create those death runes. I think this was my problem, focusing to much on DPS (my main spec and oh how I love those DPS numbers to climb) and not enough on heals.

From then on I re-focused and maintained at least 1 DS per rotation if not both of them. Granted I could have used my other abilities to regenerate health but if I got stuck or missed a clicked..anything I could be screwed. So what if it takes me 5 minutes longer, no big deal it already takes me 30 - 40 minutes to run these instances anyway. That's not to say when I was full health and down to one or two mobs I didn't just start swinging for the fences. I did, can't help it, DPS is in my blood.

So the trash mobs were easy, I had basically three strategies depending on the groups I had to pull. Groups that were all melee (no casters) I would just Death Grip one and start applying my disease, then start to fall back a little as I used pestilence. This allowed me to avoid being hit, for some reason they were just a little slow to come after me (guess I scared them with the power of those first few hits), and allow my runes to come back. Then it was just a spank fest. Beat em up, regenerating health all the while. Wasn't the quickest kills I've had but it was efficient. Now I probably didn't have to do this but I figured if I got used to it that it would only help me out in the higher level instances, so I was practicing how I would be doing it later on (maybe, if it works out the same).

For mobs with casters I would do the same but pull the caster with Death Grip and not back up, cause the caster would just stand there and I'd have to go back anyway (note to self: work on using Strangulate in your rotation for casters). The third strategy was for more then one caster in a group. In this case I would just run up to one of the casters, Death Grip another and start my rotations. The melee would rush in on top of me but anytime I was without a caster near by I would move over to one of the casters to make sure he was within melee range. The reason for this is twofold. One, magic is not a strike so it ignores armor so there for does more damage and two casters go down quick due to all the cloth they wear so I can quickly have less damage being done to me.

Anyway with this strategy I quickly (relatively speaking) made my way to the first boss Watchkeeper Gargolmar. I thought I would be in for a fight with him, I was wrong. Fighting him comes with two healer adds, if you don't kill those first he will call out to them for heals when he gets low. I just ignored him and killed the adds, then moved to downing him. Took a little bit of time (compared to the mobs that is) but it was easy peas. Then I went back to downing the trash. I cleared all the trash in the instance, avoiding no one.

It was pretty much the same throughout, with one exception. After climbing the stairs and dealing with the large group of casters in the hall there is a doorway you come to that leads to the large circular courtyard with adds all around. There is also a patrol that walks around here, my strategy was to take him out first then move into the courtyard and start dealing with the adds. Well I don't know if it was just bad timing on my part but for some reason I didn't just get him and his wolves, I got a whole other group of mobs rushing me as well. So I died, and let me tell you there is very little more frustrating to me then dieing in any Hellfire Citadel instance. Not only is it a long way to run back but I have no idea how to get to each of the stupid instances without a flying mount. I mean really, is it that hard to make it somewhat simple to find the entrance to one of these things? I always end up just above where I want to get in and have to drop down (and sometimes miss like I did this time, causing me to run all the way back) to the entrances.

Well after that 10 minute death due to having to run all over Hellfire Peninsula to get my body I vowed to not die again (and thankfully succeeded). I wasn't able to test out whether it was my timing or something else that caused all the mobs to come since I had killed most of them before my death. This time I just went in and killed all the mob packs one by one.

The mobs down I moved to the second boss Omor the Unscarred, what I consider the second boss anyway since there is no set order to the last two encounters. And seeing as how this post is getting a little long in the tooth I'll go ahead and save the rest for another one.

Goblin Side Bar - Zul'Gurub

2009-11-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

Goblin Side Bar is an idea I had to bring some gold making tips into the blog. While I am not a true Goblin I am at least part Goblin. I love to make gold and I have a nice pile of it already. I Most of this I gained by playing the Auction house game and while I am not as savvy as some of those out there I do pretty good. Could I do better? Of course but I'm pretty happy where I'm at for now and I'm still earning with very little work involved. While I'm not going to let go of all my secrets on how I do this I will give you some tips that work for me. For more tips/tricks/and ideas read some of the blogs I link to in the sidebar.

Just a quick update on Zul'Gurub from the Goblin perspective. There is a decent amount of money to be made here, including but not limited too vendor trash, various "coins" and "bijou's". I made around 16g from vendor trash my last run and that only included clearing trash mobs that I had to clear to get to the boss, since I was in a time constraint.

Also most mobs have the chance of dropping various coins or bijou's. These are used to increase your rep with the Zandalar tribe. My AH scans tell me the sell from 10g -12g for each bijou and 4g-6g for the coins on my server. I can't confirm this because I am a rep (and achievement) whore and use them to increase my rep with the tribe, for no other reason then to get exalted with them. But I do pick up quite a few of these on my Zul'Gurub runs.

Also the bosses each have approximately 26g - 28g on them so there is some money to be made there and Hakkar drops 38g as well. Also DE'ing the purples that drop to create nexus crystals. The only useful thing these crystals are for is Nexus Transformation to create small prismatic shards. On my server transforming 3 small prismatic shards into one large shard is still quite profitable. Also any green items that don't sell well will DE into infinite dust. I use infinite dust for quite a few profitable low level enchants (especially this one).

In addition to these there is also always the chance of getting a Razzashi Hatchling to drop from one of the raptors, sells for around 750g - 1000g on my server.

Again, I don't recommend running these as a great way to make gold as your gold per hour isn't great. But if you like me and want to farm this instance for A) Rep with the Zandalar tribe and B) Want the mounts two of the bosses drop, then you might as well make some profit off it while your there.

Quick Update and Thanks to WoWeconomics

2009-11-02T06:40:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to apologize for the lack of posts work is particularly hectic at the moment but I am going to attempt to get on solo run in each weekend, of something anyway.

I also wanted to give a thank you shout out to WoWeconomics who included this blog in their Loot Council post. This is a great site I've been reading for quite a while now so it's an honor to be mentioned in it. I highly recommend it (along with the other blogs in the side bar) for those of you who are looking to make some gold in the game.

I'll be putting together a few posts for this week but I leave for vacation on Thursday so I won't be playing (or posting) for a bit, since the scheduling option doesn't appear to work for me.

Classic Raider - Zul'Gurub Part 2 cont.

2009-10-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

I left off the last post with Bloodlord Mandokir and the next boss on the map that I needed to tackle was High Priest Thekal (aka the tiger boss). Now this was one boss my last try I just couldn't kill. The healing and resurrecting him and his two adds do was not wearing me down with hits, but with play time. I spent approx 30 minutes non stop fighting him and his cronies and just couldn't kill them all within 10 seconds of each other. Inevitably one of them would be left with enough HP to last and resurrect one of the others, and then the third. This is actually what lead me to respec, not being happy with my DPS output. As I mentioned in my last post I love the respec (adding Death Rune Master in place of Blood Worms) as it not only helps my DPS (more HS) but also allows me to add my healing abilities in easier without having to wait for Blood Runes.

So this time I was ready for Mr. Tiger Boss and his cronies. I took out one set of the mobs around him, just as I walked in I aggro'd a tiger and some other adds came over to help him out. Then just walked right up and started the fight. I fought them right on the stairs. My strategy this time was to DPS each one down individually to about 25% health, without any AOE. This was supposed to include not using pestilence to refresh and spread my diseases, since that would affect the others. Well that didn't work out perfectly and occasionally I did use pestilence but in the end it turned out OK. I didn't get them all down on the first try, I killed two of his adds and couldn't down him quick enough, but the second try I did. After I had each of them low on health I would alternately attack each of them. Mostly HS, so HS one got the next HS him go to the next. HS does do damage to two mobs but it seemed to work out OK. I also used Mind Freeze to stop the healing spells that Zealot Lor'Khan casts. You have two options with this, you can set her as your focus and then watch for the cast bars or, as I did, just watch for her casting and target her then interrupt. The last post I put up on Zul'Gurub there is a great comment by someone names Anonymous that includes a handy macro for this. I have to admit I didn't use it this time as running the instance was kind of a last minute decision but I would like to farm this boss for the mount and I think the macro will make it easier. After the phase 1 he transforms into a half tiger half man thing. From then on I just DPS'd him with no problems. Unfortunately no mount...yet.

The last minor boss after tiger man that I had to kill was High Priestess Arlokk. I can't stress how easy she is to solo. No worries at all, nothing special to do or look for, when she disappeared and panthers started pouring out it took me a few seconds to kill the panthers that were already around me but very shortly I was standing around waiting for the two panther adds to run to me. No issues, easy kill.

With all the High Priests down I moved on to Hakkar. Now last time he kicked my a$$, this time I was back with vengeance on my mind. In my excitement to give Hakkar another go I only cleared one trash mob around his platform. Once on top I started the fight, this time no blood worms came out so now Mind Control and reset. Just to test this as the cause of my previous attempt I called my ghoul at the start of the fight and sure enough Hakkar MC'd me and reset after I killed my own ghoul. So no ghouls or army for this fight. Turns out I didn't need them, at all. The only thing they would have helped me out on was more DPS because it took me literally 20 minutes to kill him, really I checked the clock. I didn't need to pay any attention to how he was attacking me or what abilities he used. All I had to do was stand in one place and grind. And then, Hakkar was dead. A little bit of a let down since I had already gotten the achievement on a run with some guild mates and friends but sweet none the less. I had soloed Zul'Gurub, my first raid complete. But I'll be back, probably not to kill Hakkar but definitely for gaining some rep with the Zandalar Tribe, some easy gold, and the mounts from the raptor and tiger boss.

After killing Hakkar I decided to clean up a little of the trash/bosses that we're left. After all I was already in the instance so I might as well make it worth my while. I proceeded directly to Jin'do the Hexxer clearing some trash along the way. He's a pretty easy fight I killed his shades when I could see them, he would banish me to the dancing skeleton pit (after a few of which I just stayed there and fought him there). Nothing special. I cleared some more of the trash and then left the instance to farm heroics for badges (need to keep improving my tank gear for the higher level instances).

Classic Raider - Zul'Gurub Part 2

2009-10-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Zul'Gurub...soloed. Yup I did it, and it's not hard, once you learn the raid. I didn't have much time to spend on WoW this weekend due to RL stuff but I did manage a few hours logged and decided to take some of that time to attempt Zul'Gurub again. As you may have read in my last post on this raid I didn't have to tough a time until it came to Hakkar and then the High Priest Thekal (aka tiger boss). This time through I knew a little more on the bosses and had a respec as well. This time around I did not spend as much time clearing trash as I did the first time, not because I expected problems doing so, just because I didn't have the time needed to do so. I killed all the High Priest bosses before Hakkar but I did not call Gahz'ranka this time and didn't kill the rest of the bosses except for Bloodlord Mandokir (for the attempt at the mount) and then Jin'do the Hexxer after Hakkar just to kill time and clear the rest of the bosses. I did clear all the bosses the last time so I consider this instance complete as far as soloing goes. I will be running this instance again for farming Zandalar Tribe rep(for no real reason other then to become exalted with them).

Upon entering the instance I pretty much went strait to High Priestess Jeklik (aka the bat boss). I cleared a couple of the groups around her but not all of them. I'm not sure how you traditionally get her down from where she stands but I just stand there and use Death Grip. It doesn't pull her down but it does get her attention and she comes down to fight. I didn't really have to many issues with this boss. Took me a little longer then I wanted to because of her healing ability but then I got into a grove with Mind Freeze and started using that to interrupt her on those. It took me around 10-15 minutes to down her because of this. At no time during the fight was I in real danger of dying, and I have to tell you I am really in love with the change I made to my spec. Basically I took out Blood Worms and added those points to Death Rune Mastery. I didn't take that ability at first because I figured I would be using Death Strike whenever my Frost and Unholy rune were available but with this change it gives me so many more options. If I am good on health I don't use Death Strike, it's not a real powerful attack, instead I use it either for Heart Strike (for the DPS increase) or another of my Blood healing abilities (i.e. Vampiric Blood, Mark of Blood, Rune Tap etc). It gives me so much more flexibility and I think it will retain it's usefulness even in the higher level instances, we'll see. So Bat Girl goes down.

I just followed the instance map around (Thanks Cartagropher) and up next was High Priest Venoxis (aka the snake boss). Pretty much a tank and spank he went down fairly quickly trying to keep away from the poison clouds. Next up on the map was High Priestess Mar'li (aka the spider boss). This one was wicked easy I don't think I cleared any mobs around the boss before taking him on, most of them paid me no mind when I was making my way up to him. Whenever he would call spiders I would drop a DnD and a couple seconds later they were dead. Getting webbed (prevents spell casting) is a bit of a pain but not terrible since most blood attacks are not considered spells but attacks instead, the only problem that arose is when my diseases were about to run out and she webbed me, easily solved by re-applying diseases afterward but still that's two runes used instead of one.

I went next to Bloodlord Mandokir, now this boss isn't really necessary to kill Hakkar (and I think none of them are really...might have to try that too) I wouldn't mind getting the raptor mount that has a (very slim) chance to drop from him. So up till now I had been in my blood spec but with my DPS gear to clear mobs quicker and the first time I took him on he killed me. Not sure what ability he was using but he killed me fairly quickly (overconfidence when will I be rid of you). Switched to may tank gear next try and was still getting lower on health then I felt I should, so instead of attacking Mandokir I switched to DPS his raptor, downed him quickly and went back to Mandokir. After that I didn't have a problem and was able to keep my health above 1/2 the rest of the time with little to no problem. I will be running this fight again and again until I get the mount.

This post is getting a little long so I'll finish up again in another (well that and I don't have much else to write about this week so I'm trying to stretch it out).

Goblin Side Bar - Lower Black Rock Spire

2009-10-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

Goblin Side Bar is an idea I had to bring some gold making tips into the blog. While I am not a true Goblin I am at least part Goblin. I love to make gold and I have a nice pile of it already. I Most of this I gained by playing the Auction house game and while I am not as savvy as some of those out there I do pretty good. Could I do better? Of course but I'm pretty happy where I'm at for now and I'm still earning with very little work involved. While I'm not going to let go of all my secrets on how I do this I will give you some tips that work for me. For more tips/tricks/and ideas read some of the blogs I link to in the sidebar.

So not much gold making to report on while getting my Classic Dungeonmaster achievement, that is except for Lower Black Rock Spire. I collected a surprising amount of loot running this instance. Granted the instance is quite large, but in gold looting alone I netted around 34g. Another 27g in vendor trash and count me impressed for a classic dungeon. Mind you I spent a considerable amount of time in there, mostly due to the fact that I had no idea where I was going and spent most of my time looking for bosses. I think I literally killed every mob in that place during my wanderings. So from a gold per hour perspective I did miserable, but now that I know what I'm doing and I don't much care if I kill the bosses or not I can run in there for a quick profit. The items I looted look promising as well, lots of rune cloth (always sells well on my server) most of which I tuned into bolts to make bag space. Lots of greens that look like they sell well, we'll see about that.

I had a big problem with bag space again, I have all Frostweave bags except for a 22 slot Dragon Hide Bag and I only had about 6 slots filled so I had a ton of empty space. With no vendor in the immediate area I had to turn a lot of the cloth into bolts and still I ditched a lot of stuff. I estimate I lost about 7g - 10g from this. So a nice but not huge profit from this instance. Might have to hit this up for a quick run and some spare gold while I run Motlen Core.

Headless Horseman - Soloed

2009-10-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

As all of you know the time of Hallows End is upon us. It started last Sunday and goes for 2 weeks. Unfortunately for many, myself included, the event also brought terrible lag to our servers. It was so bad for most of the week that I couldn't retrieve my mail, thus my profit margin fell drastically. More importantly I left me in no mood to attempt to solo any instances. On Sunday I spent the day watching football and taking the taxi from location to location to get my Tricks and Treats of Azeroth Achievement, along with the approx 320g that goes along with it.

Another aspect of Hallows End is facing he Headless Horseman in the graveyard at Scarlet Monastery. He drops a few items you need for another Hallows End achievement so most people do him in groups of 5 daily. This time around he is a level 80 elite and at one point summons a few adds. From the first time I encountered him I decided I needed to try and solo him at some point.

Now most people probably won't try this because the whole idea of facing him is to get a chance at some gear and possible some drops that will help you with getting the achievements associated with this holiday. Also he drops a mount (very rarely) so if you go with 4 others and each of you takes a turn calling him you get at least 5 chances to get what you need. I don't much care if I become Hallowed or not (the overall holiday achievement) even though I am a bit of a achievement junkie but the thought of attempting to solo and 80 elite got me excited enough to take him on alone. I have never before even attempted to solo an 80 elite so this was a good test for when I get ready to run lvl 80 instances.

Upon entering the graveyard I cleared as many of the mobs around the HH tomb as I could, not that I was worried about them getting in on the fight, I was more concerned with accidentally targeting them instead of the HH, his head, or his adds. Yes I said his head, for those of you who haven't run HH before the encounter goes down like this. You summon him at one of the tombs in the graveyard. He comes out riding his horse and attacks you, you DPS him down until his health is almost gone at which point his head leaves his body and runs around. You have to then DPS his head until the health runs down at which point it rejoins his body, he gets back on his horse and is once again at full health. You repeat this twice, the third time he summons pumpkin adds which you kill and his head once again leaves his body. This time after draining the health of his head he dies. Not to bad but he is an 80 elite.

When I started the encounter I wasn't very confident feeling my gear wasn't good enough for the encounter and the fight went better then I expected. I did loose health and had my low health alert trigger a few times but I was able to recover using one of the healing options I have available, those would be Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, or Death Pact usually couppled with Vampiric Blood. One nice part of the fight is that when his head leaves his body it doesn't appear to directly attack you, giving me time use bandages, potions, etc. I'm not sure if it's on a timer also or if you could use the time to regain cooldowns, at some point it appeared that I didn't get his head's health down low enough yet it still rejoined the rest of him. The one sticky point came when he called his adds, I used a DnD to DPS all of them at the same time and came up to a point where I was quite low on health with his three adds and him attacking me. I popped Vampiric Blood and rune tap and then a potion and called Army of the Dead. Nice part about Army is it does give you a damage reduction while channeling. The extra DPS from my army helped and I used a Death Pack near the end of their summoning time, not sure if I really needed it because he died shortly after but better safe then sorry after all.

I feel good that I accomplished this but I still think it's an easier encounter then the instances so I'll take my win with a grain of salt. Still makes me think I'll be able to work through the Northrend instances when I get to that point (with gear upgrades of course).

Classic Raider - Molten Core....FAIL

2009-10-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

OK so I completed my Classic Dungeonmaster achievement and my intent was to move on to Classic Raider from there. I've already posted about my first attempt at Zul'Gurub and I have some ideas on what went wrong and would like to try them out. Between running heroics with some fresh 80 guild members to help them gear up and to help me replace my tanking gear and finishing my Classic Dungeonmaster I didn't have a whole lot of time to run a raid. With the amount of time I would need to complete Zul'Gurub I decided to postpone that and try Molten Core.

I first wanted to get attuned to Molten Core, that way I wouldn't have to run through BRD every time I want to get in there. For those that don't know once you are attuned to Molten Core you can just speak to the NPC near the entrance of BRD and he will port you directly into the raid. Much easier than trying to find your way through BRD each time, unfortunately to become attuned you have to complete a quick quest given to you by this NPC and that quest requires you to run through BRD to the entrance to Molten Core. And if your anything like me you have only run through BRD once or twice (once to help out some guild mates and once for the solo run) and can't find your way around there to save your life.

So after about an hour of running around in circles through BRD I made my way to Lord Incendius, in the interest of full disclosure I Googled how to get into Molten core after about 45 minutes of searching and found this neat way in, where he is located you can jump down onto a piece of land in the lava below and make your way to the Molten Core entrance. Just don't do what I did and jump into the lava thinking you'll find a piece of land to stand on and look for where you supposed to go. I managed to survive it but it was close.

Right outside the entrance to Molten core is the core fragment you need to turn in that quest. I picked up the fragment and instead of running back to the NPC just went ahead and entered the instance. At the start of the instance are two giants that I had little problems dealing with. Pretty much a slam dunk and feeling confident I crossed the bridge in front of me to take on the next group.

Remember that problem I have with overconfidence, seems like I still haven't learned my lesson. The next group consisted of two more giants and a Firelord, not having had a problem with the last two I wasn't expecting any issues with these three. Yes I pulled all three, because I just ran right up to them to kick their a$$. Well it turns out the Firelord was a bit harder to handle then these giants, sure the giants would boot me like a football but I'd just run back up and start DPSing them. The problem is the Firelord has an ability Summon Lava Spawn that brings out this cute little miniature fire guy. Whats a little guy like that going to do to a big bad DK like me. Apparently it's going to kick my a$$ because it did. These little lava spawns end up splitting into two and then splitting and then splitting, you get the idea. Well before I knew it I had a whole team of cute little lava spawns all around me, plus the Firelord, plus the giants and I just couldn't keep up with them. So first try, FAIL.

I release and start to run back and I realize, it's a long freaking way to run. Dying here sucks just because of the long run back. And then I realize I have to get back to the start of the instance in order to get my body back, thinking I had to once again find the entrance to Molten Core, which means running around like crazy trying to find it in BRD. Well thankfully just entering BRD was enough to get my body, so good news there. Then I turned in the atonement quest to the NPC and had him port me back to Molten Core (nice feature, definitely do the quest if you plan on running this). So I chalk the first time up to lack of AoE and try to take on the same group again...FAIL.

Dead, run back, get into BRD, run out, talk to NPC, back in Molten Core. OK this time I Death Grip the Firelord and thankfully manage to pull only him, not the other two. Thinking this was the answer to my success when the lava spawns come I lay down DnD and continue to DPS the Firelord...FAIL. Repeat this whole process....FAIL.

Damn this is harder then it looks. At that point I gave up for the night and since have done a little research and have two ideas I'm going to try. One is to re-spec to gain Death Rune Mastery I am not happy with how long it takes me to down some mobs and since I don't always need to use Death Strike to heal I would like the option of having more Heart Strikes, I'm hoping this will give me the DPS I need to take out the Firelord. Also after doing a little reading I think it's the lava spawns that may be the answer, if I can take them out when it's just one I think I might be OK, still probably need to beef up my DPS with the re-spec though.

So the first attempt was a FAIL but I'm ready to go back, still impressed with the survivability of Blood, I just have to get over this overconfidence issue and learn the instances.

Goblin Sidebar - How I make money running instances

2009-10-21T07:13:00.001-07:00

Goblin Side Bar is an idea I had to bring some gold making tips into the blog. While I am not a true Goblin I am at least part Goblin. I love to make gold and I have a nice pile of it already. I'm not anywhere near the gold cap but I could easily buy the Tundra Mammoth or the chopper and still have plenty left over. Most of this I gained by playing the Auction house game and while I am not as savvy as some of those out there I do pretty good. Could I do better? Of course but I'm pretty happy where I'm at for now and I'm still earning with very little work involved. While I'm not going to let go of all my secrets on how I do this I will give you some tips that work for me. For more tips/tricks/and ideas read some of the blogs I link to in the sidebar.

So I mentioned that one of the reasons I took tailoring is to save space in my bags, while this is not the main reason it is one that helps me out. I save this bag space by turning the cloth into bolts of cloth and use these later on to create items to DE. Now I don't turn all the cloth into bolts because cloth typically sells very well on the AH on my server (especially mageweave and rune cloth). Why do I need all this bag space? Because I loot everything, yes everything. Every time I run a dungeon I empty my bags as much as possible keeping only my enchanting rod, some food for emergencies (usually not needed but I've needed it and didn't have it before), and a few items I may need along with what I can't fit into my bank. All this space is usually filled by the items I loot. All the soulbound items I DE, unless the mats are worth less then the items vendor for, and all the grays get sold to a vendor. Occasionally I still run out of bag space, in those cases if there is a vendor close by (like Zul'Farrak) I make a run to the vendor to sell off the vendor-trash. I make a non-insignificant amount of gold by doing this and highly encourage everyone to practice this, it usually at the least pays for my repairs and more often then not a profit as well.

While this won't make you rich any time soon, any gold is good gold and let's face it, repair costs can escalate quickly. Especially with what I am planning on attempting. Also as I progress through the content I'm sure the gold gained in this fashion will increase.

Now let me make one thing clear, as all you Goblins out there are already thinking this may not be an efficient way to make gold, that is you could make more gold per hour doing something else but, since my goal is to solo these instances and will have to progress through them anyway I may as well make some gold in the process. Also I just enjoy running these instances, and do it sometimes not to just make some gold but because it's fun, or for other things like the mount(s) in Stratholme or Zul'Gurub. So I am not recommending you do this a gold making strategy but if you enjoy running these, run these as you level up with groups, or just want to see some of the content you've been missing you'll be able to get an idea of how much you can make while doing it. Additionally you can occasionally get paid to run lower level players through this content, this could show you how much they can expect to gain if they get all the loot and give you a ball park of what to charge in order to run them. Be sure to factor in you time spent as well.

Outland Dungreon Hero - Underbog

2009-10-19T20:02:00.001-07:00

I originally thought I would continue on a logical path with my solo attempts and with my Classic Dungeonmaster achievement behind me I would need to start on the Classic Raider achievement. However time will not permit me to follow such a linear path as the Raids seem to take much more time to complete then the dungeons. I will do my best to follow the linear path but work generally gets in the way of raiding on weekdays (haven't even been able to attend a guild raid in a while). On top of that once I trained in dual spec and selected my solo Blood spec I was anxious to test it out. At that point the idea for this blog was non-existent so I ran out to solo my first Heroic instance. No, it wasn't a lvl 80 heroic but a BC heroic, more specifically Underbog.

Once I learned my new spec and trained at Ebon Hold I was anxious to try it out, just how much surviving could I expect from this blood tree I wondered. Knowing I wasn't nearly ready for a lvl 80 heroic (or even non-heroic) I went back to an instance I had tried to run in the past on regular difficulty with my frost spec, tried and failed. I am going to assume that those of you reading this blog (is there anyone reading this blog? lol) know what Underbog is, if not I suggest your find out all about it on one of my favorite websites Wowhead. You can find it here.

From the start of entering the instance I have to admit I had a little adrenaline flowing, I was excited and anxious to see if I had what it took to even start on this little adventure of mine. I had a new spec, with a new rotation that I never even tried out before this and some rather old tank gear, granted much higher gear then I would have had if I were trying this before WotLK came out, not that I would have been able to try it then since DK's did not exist before that either, but I digress.

From the first trash pull up to the first boss Hungarfen was no problem, I was very impressed with the self healing the blood tree provided me, my rotation was IT>PS>Pest>DS>HS, DS>DS>HS>HS (repeat with the occasional Pestilence to refresh diseases). I almost never had lower then a few hundred HP's lost so there was absolutely no issue with surviving.

Feeling very confident I made my way up the ramp to take on Hungarfen thinking this guy had no chance against me, I was going to take him down and laugh at how easy it was. Well I was wrong. I was paying attention to my runes, my runic power, everything but my health. "I don't have to worry about that I have a new blood spec, these measly mushrooms and this Bog Giant thing don't stand a chance against this slightly geared 80 Death Knight." I thougt. Turns out that even with the self healing powers of blood and being 8 or so levels higher then the bosses they still can hurt you, especially if your not paying attention at all.

So I made my way back into the instance to recover my body, sat down to eat some vendor food to replenish my health and made my way back up the ramp. Coldly staring down Hungarfen I thoguht to myself "You may have won the last battle but this time your mine.". I then proceeded to attack this time paying attention to my runes, my runic power, and my health. I kited him away from the spawning mushrooms, backed up when he used his Foul Spores and even had to kick in my "Oh Crap" sequence when my health started to get low. My "Oh Crap" sequence is a series of abilities, spells, potions, etc. that I use when my health gets low and I think there might be a chance of dying.

In this case, and with this blood spec, my "Oh Crap" sequence is this cast Vampiric Blood which grants me extra health and more importantly 35% increased health generated from spells and effects for 10 seconds (plus 5 seconds for the glyph) - cost 1 blood rune, place Mark of Blood on the hardest hitting NPC (in this case the boss) - cost 1 blood rune, hit blood tap to activate a blood rune and turn it into a death rune - no cost with glyph, then cast rune tap - cost 1 blood rune (which at this point should be the death rune created by blood tap) . If After this sequence I will continue to generate 35% extra health from the damage I am doing and having improved blood presence (maintain 4% of heath generated while in frost presence). This sequence was more than adequate for this level boss to bring back to almost full health, but if it wasn't I would continue the sequence with raise dead - no cost, then death pact - cost 40 runic power. Additionally I could then pop a healing potion and if all else seems not to be working cast Army of the Dead (AoD). AoD would allow me to take less damage and bring xtra DPS into the, also depending on when it was cast might also allow me to take advantage of another Death Pact.

This boost in health allowed me to finish of Hungarfen and have no down time before starting in on the next set of trash. Interestingly enough after this boss fight I had no problems finishing the dungeon, not even needing to go to my "Oh Crap" sequence on the remaining bosses. I slowly worked my way towards Ghaz'an disposed of him in a timely manner, moved on to Swamploard Musel'ek, then The Black Stalker. All of these went down under my crushing blows from my Titansteel Destroyer and my unwillingness to die due to blood health regeneration.

So I am impressed with the Blood talents and the spec I choose to start with, I still have some learning to do and I realize now I won't be able to just proceed on automatic pilot but may actually have to pay attention to what I'm doing as I progress through the content. I think a few tweaks might help out, one I am considering is not going into frost presence but instead stay in Blood presence. I loose the extra armor and damage reduction that frost provides but I gain a great deal of healing power and damage from blood presence. Keeping in mind I don't need to worry about the loss of threat from being in blood presence since I am soloing the instance. Another thing I may look at is wearing my DPS armor, I wasn't very happy with the damage I was doing in my tank armor and it took longer then I thought it should to bring down both the trash and the bosses. I'll play around with it a little and let you know how I go.

Classic Dungeonmaster - Completed

2009-10-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend finishing the achievements for Classic Dungeonmaster. Nothing exciting to report they were all very easy and would be for any lvl 80 toon. I finished the achievement with completing Lower Black Rock Spire and at the same time I decided to solo the achievement Leeeeeeeeroy! in Upper Black Rock Spire. Surprising to me that the Upper Black Rock Spire achievement is not necessary for Classic Dungeonmaster but I will go back and complete that sometime soon.

Classic Raider - Zul'Gurub Part 1

2009-10-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

First I have to say wow, great job WOW. This instance was a blast, of course I am a big fan of Zul'Farrak which I used to run quite often for the fun of it and a little gold making. This instance is the first Raid level instance I am attempting to solo, and just the second time I've been in the instance. Yes I have run this one before, but it was with a group of guild mates and they had already cleared much of the instance before I go there, so I was completely lost in this large and crazy instance and while I did get the achievement the first time I did not down all the bosses nor see most of the content. What I did get to do the first time was get the quest to obtain the Mudskunk Lure used to summon Gahz'ranka. So I entered the quest ready to gain one of two achievements Deadliest Catch, seeing as how I already acquired Zul'Gurub on my previous run. Much to my surprise there were two more achievements I could potentially get on my run, the Swift Razzashi Raptor and Swift Zulian Tiger achievements for the two mounts that have the potential to drop from two of the bosses inside. So with fingers crossed I entered the portal ready for anything I might have to face...or so I thought.

The first time I entered Zul'Gurub alone had nothing to do with running it Solo, it was simply to try and get the Deadliest Catch achievement after my goup finished the instance. At that time I was a cocky young Death Knight thinking that since I was 80 I could take on anything. I proceeded to run through the instance aggro'ing mobs and ignoring them. I could just handle them all at once when I got to where I was going, or so I thought. Thus was my first lesson, and not my last, in how to much confidence can cause you to die. Yup I got my a$$ kicked by all those mobs and realized I wasn't as tough as I thought I was. But it was a good lesson learned the hard way and due to be learned again.

So this time I was more prepared. I had completed Heroic Underbog, become more familiar with the new rotation that came along with my blood spec and I had already learned a harsh lesson from this instance. I also decided to try using my DPS gear instead of my tank gear in hopes that I would be able to down the bosses quicker and the armor I lost wouldn't matter to much in the lower level instances. I was good to go. I entered the portal to the instance and started on my first group of trash. Dead, dead, dead, first group down on to the next, and again, and again. I kept grinding away feeling overpowerful and full of blood lust. These poor fools didn't stand a chance. And then I came across my first boss encounter, feeling confident but still remembering my overconfidence caused problems for me before I approached High Priest Venoxis cautiously followed my rotation kept an eye on my health and finished him off easily.

Then the next boss, and the next, I was a machine I was careful on my mob pulls but every so often I pulled more then intended, with no problem. I never went below half my health on trash, and rarely below 3/4 health. If I went below half I would put my Oh Crap sequence to use and quickly jump back up to full health. I summoned Ghaz'ranka, completed the achievement, mowed him down, moved on. I was a little worried when I arrived upon High Priestess Arlokk but I handled her with no problems at all. I continued through the raid running what I thought was all the content, remember I had only been here once before and then with a group that had cleared most of the content already.

Finally I arrived at Hakkar, having had no issues before I was confident I would clean him up easily as well. I started the fight, which at the begining of he has this little speech he gives, for some reason I still don't know if it was bugged but after a short time into the figth Hakkar would reset, regain all his health, and start his speech over again. Not that it made much difference, his reset that is, because I was getting my ass kicked. I'm not sure which ability he was using but I was assuming mind control (although I read some posts that state he doesn't use that when your alone) because he would take control of me and start randomly casting spells/abilities, one post I read stated that this cause him to come out of combat with Hakkar and reset him. I was alone in the instance so I didn't think this would matter but I'm wondering if it was because I still had someone in my raid group, not in the instance but still showing up on the raid info page. Either way he made short work of me and so I went to do some research to figure out how to beat him. During my research, which is my way of saying I went to Wowhead and read up on the instance and the bosses, I found out that I didn't kill all the High Priests and this give Hakkar more abilities and health. Now my goal is to run these instances like any group would, that is progress through the trash, clear the bosses, and then finish off the last boss so I was intent on going back through and finishing the rest.

I had two other High Priests to kill in order to tackle Hakkar again. The first one was the bat one (can’t remember their names anymore) and then the tiger. The bat one was easy but again, I was over confident, took on to many trash mobs at once and died. No big deal, I should be able to handle all these guys at once but I’ll chalk to up to little experience and skill with this spec as well as no tank gear. After the wipe I went back, cleared the trash killed the boss. No problem, on to the tiger boss.

After spending some time trying to figure out where he was I entered his area, cleared trash and got ready to take him on. Now I hadn’t read up on this fight before hand but I noticed that he had two adds present with him. I figured no problem I would ignore them and just down the boss. So I pulled the boss and started the fight. After a short while I noticed that after getting the boss lower and lower in hp he suddenly would jump up again. I realized one of the adds with him must be a healer, so after paying a little closer attention to them I figured out which one it as and decided to kill them first. I targeted the healer, killed him and went back to the boss. Much to my surprise a short time later the healer was resurrected. Damn I thought, have to kill the other add first. So I went back to killing the healer, switched over to the other add to kill him and wasn’t able to kill him fast enough before the resurrection. OK I thought I’ll kill the add that keeps resurrecting the healer then the healer then the boss. Well that doesn’t work either. I kill the second add, move on to the healer who then resurrects the previous add. So at this point I run out of his area and go to Wowhead to read up on how to kill this guy. Turns out you have to kill all three within a tight timeframe (I believe about 15 seconds). OK I think no problem I’ll just get all of them low and then finish them off. So I go back and start again this time intent on killing them all quickly. End result was I spent 30 minutes trying to kill these three guys. No matter what I did I just could not get them down quick enough. I will say I am very impressed with the spec I am using, for 30 minutes I never had a time where I was seriously worried about dying. Just kept grinding away trying to get these guys to fall down together. After spending so much time on them I ran out of their area again and called it a night.

When I go back again I have a new strategy. This time I will focus on one of the three, not spread my diseases around so they don’t get killed by my DoT’s and get each one real low on health. Then it’s all out DoT’s and mass killing. I also think I figured out my problem with Hakkar, thanks to a friendly poster at Wowhead. Turns out it is probably my blood worms that are causing it to reset, I’m going to respect, getting rid of bloodworms and probably taking Death Rune Mastery. I didn’t take that before because I didn’t expect to have a need for the death runes, figured I would be using death strikes more often than not. However after a few runs I realize there are times I want more DPS then health regen and those death runes could be used for more Heart Strikes. I’ll try it out and let you know how I fare.

Begin at the Begining - Step 1: Classic Dungeonmaster

2009-10-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Before I start increasing the difficulty level of soloing instances I want to finish all the low level instances that I have not completed yet. There are a few that I run a lot, including Stratholme (for the mount), Zul'Farrak, Scarlet Monastery, Stockades, all of these I run for enchanting mats, cloth, and AH sales. I do fairly well on the AH with these runs but they only account for a small percentage of my overall profit. As I continue to advance in instance difficulty I hope to increase this percentage and increase my profit. But first comes the task of completing the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement. Here is the list of dungeons for the achievement, the ones I completed will be in bold:

Deadmines
Wailing Caverns
Blackfathom Deeps
Gnomeregan
Razorfen Downs
Uldaman
Maraudon
Blackrock Depths
King of Dire Maul
Stratholme
Ragefire Chasm
Shadowfang Keep
Stormwind Stockade
Razorfen Kraul
Scarlet Monastery
Zul'Farrak
Sunken Temple
Blackrock Spire
Scholomance

I plan on finishing these up by the end of this weekend and put this achievement to rest.

Army of One - The Rules

2009-10-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

As I've stated in my first post, my goal here is see how far I can progress on my DK soloing dungeon and raid content. I hope to eventually get to the Heroic lvl 80 dungeons and to successfully solo those. I wanted to lay down some ground rules to give you an idea of how I will attempt to go about this.

Content will be cleared in a way that a group of players would proceed if they were within the level requirements for that instance. That is I will proceed through trash, hit each boss, and end with the final boss. At no time will I just proceed to the final boss to finish him off and consider it a successful run.
I will attempt to clear each instance without beforehand doing research to find strategies for that instance. Now admittedly some of these instances I ran before so I am already familiar with them, most of those are Northend instances though, I have never been much of a dungeon/raid runner. If I fail in my attempt I will start to research strategies on how to succeed.
I will attempt to progress through the content in order as best as possible. If I can manage it I will progress through the content starting with Classic WOW, then Burning Crusade, and finally Wrath of the Lich King. One thing that my hold me up is the raids, since they are more time consuming I may not be able to progress through them quickly enough to meet any kind of schedule. Therefore it is more likely that I will progress through dungeons and raids on separate schedules. That is all classic dungeons, BC dungeons, BC heroic dungeons etc. while at the same time attempting classic rads, then BC raids, etc. I have already run some instances but I will attempt to keep to the order now.
Once in the instance anything goes, I can use potions, spells, buffs etc. However I will note when/if I do use any of these.

So there you have it, nothing special just some simple rules I will adhere to as I make my attempts.

Please allow me to introduce myself - My Gear

2009-10-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

Ok so my tank gear currently stinks. I have a couple of epic items (helm and chest) and the rest are blues. I'm not to worried about having the best tank gear at first, for some of the lower level raids and heriocs I think my DPS set will be better. The extra strength I have will allow me to plow down the trash faster and give me more heals with my blood spec. But as I progress I'm going to need better tanking gear which means grinding more heroics for emblems and possibly buying them off the AH. I'll list my relevant (what I think is relevant anyway) stats for each set below.

My DPS Gear:

Health: 20841
Strength : 1313
Stamina: 1217
Armor: 13788
Power: 3280
Hit Rating: 317 (9.67%)
Armor Pen: 178 (12.72%)
Crit Chance: 22.82%
Expertise: 9 2.25%
Defense: 400
Dodge: 6.27% (0%)
Parry: 11.53% (7.25$)

My Tank Gear:

Health: 24071
Strength: 982
Stamina: 1613
Armor: 21196
Power: 2184
Hit Rating: 5.79%
Armor Pen: 0
Crit Chance: 5.29%
Expertise: 16
Defense: 539
Dodge: 12.79% (2.45%)
Parry: 18.13% (11.07%)

As I go through my soloing experiment I realize I will need to upgrade my tank gear as I get higher into the content level. By no means do I think my current gear will allow me to solo WotLK dungeons let alone heroic dungeons. To do this I will have to grind heroics for emblems, run ToC, daily dungeon, etc. Also I've read that patch 3.3 will once again upgrade the emblems dropped in Heroic instances so that should make getting better gear much easier for me as well.

Please allow me to introduce myself - My Death Knight

2009-10-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

So I feel like I may be a little out of order here, my intent was to talk about my gear next but I realized I should introduce my My Death Knight, probably should have done that before the post about my spec but hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. So on to my Death Knight:

LargeRichard is a gnome and he resides on the Shadowsong server. He belongs to the High Order guild and can be quite mischievous. He has been known to show up for raids wearing nothing but a Lovely Black Dress, throw snowballs at Loken during Halls of Lightning runs (to be honest that idea wasn't mine nor was I the first one to throw the snowball, but it was entertaining when he jumped up and looked around after I hit him. Made the rest of the party think the pull had already started) and just tries to keep the mood light and fun.

He is maxed out in Enchanting and is 430 in tailoring, he had 450 in mining but I recently dropped that for tailoring. I know, tailoring is kind of unusual for a Death Knight but I really kind of loathed farming for nodes which is really the only way to make gold from mining, and I really like to make gold. So I picked up tailoring, not the biggest money maker (that would probably be inscription or jewel crafting) but it does make some gold, allows me easy access to enchanting mats, and last but certainly not least it saves me bag space and makes me more gold during dungeon runs, I'll go over this in another post.

So that's my toon, feel free to say hi when I'm on or ask for an invite to our guild.

Please allow me to introduce myself - My Solo Blood Spec

2009-10-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

So as I stated before my main spec is Frost DPS. I love the spec, love the damage output and am pretty OK at the rotation (still need some work but I'm never satisfied). But for soloing raids, high level instances, and heroics I don't think it will cut it, just not enough self healing going on. So enter my new blood spec. I took the basic tanking blood spec and tried to add in as much self healing as I could. I don't know a whole lot about blood spec so I did read up on a couple of forums including Wowhead and Elitist Jerks. I had some recommendations from a few folks on wowhead and made some changes from my original spec. I'll start with the one I have and as I progress if I feel the need to change anything I will.

All in all I'm pretty happy with my spec, I would have liked to put some points in Necrosis (added DPS) and maybe Lichborne (to use Death coil as a self heal) but I couldn't fit the points in to get low enough in their respective trees. I hear a lot of people say that Blood Worms aren't worth it, but my thinking is that when soloing, any extra healing is worth it. Vendetta is another I was considering, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. If it turns out that killing mobs/bosses in high level instances counts as "targets that yield experience or honor" I may take the points out of blood worms and put it there.

My glyphs are a little out of the norm as well. Since my main attack is Death Strike (for the healing) and I usually have over or very close to 25 runic power when I use it this glyph seems worth it to me. I may need to consider switching to the Rune Strike glyph for the extra damage there (+10%). I'm not quite sure at this point which would be better. Glyph of Vampiric Blood I choose for the increase to healing done for an extended period of time. This is one ability cool down I will be using as my "Oh *$&#" button and 5 more seconds of +35% healing might be worth it. As I move along through the difficulty level I may need to reexamine this one as well.

None of this is set in stone, I may decide to change my spec or glyphs at anytime and possibly even instance by instance if need be. So please feel free to leave a comment and lend me your suggestions on both.

Army of One - The begining of a Journey

2009-10-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

I've always run low level instances on my high level characters for some quick cash, but those instances have been just been vanilla WOW ones, and one or two runs throw Ramparts to see if it was profitable. There is good money to be made running the lower instances and I am still trying to get my mount from Stratholme. Most of this money for me comes from rare drops, cloth, and enchanting mats, the mats I use for both scrolls and selling on the AH. But recently I heard of some Death Knights (here on known as DK's), Hunters, and Palladins soloing BC Raids and WoTLK heroic instances. Now this was something I had to try, I had to know how far I could go with it and I thought I would blog about my experience.

Currently I have a lvl 80 DK and a lvl 75 Hunter. To start the experiment I will be using my DK, as my hunter comes along I will try the same with him. I started playing WOW shortly after Burning Crusades came out and leveled my hunter to 58 in a few weeks. I burnt out and quit the game. I came back to WOW shortly after Wrath of the Lich King and almost exclusively to try out the Death Knight class. I quickly fell in love with this class and leveled him up to 80 very quickly.

Before the start of this experiment I was exclusively a frost DPS spec. I did not have dual spec and had no interest in becoming a tank, I tried it while initially leveling and got tired of all the people complaining I had no idea what I was doing (which was partly true), getting blamed for all the wipes (some were my fault most were not) etc, all things I'm sure most tanks encounter at first. DPS I excelled at, I usually beat out most of the DK's I group with and hold my own very well with the best DPS classes. I need to work on my skills a little more since the 3.2 patch and the change to dual wield for Frost but I am still no slouch. For this experiment though my DPS spec and DPS gear would not cut it...for long. Sure I can get through all the Vanilla instnaces, maybe a vanilla raid (haven't tried it) but don't think I'd get much farther then that. So I bought Dual Spec and selected a new blood tank spec with emphasis on healing myself. I had some tank gear I had held on to and won on greed rolls while playing DPS and I am going to work on getting better gear there as well. In the next post I'll go over my new spec and then my gear.