Borean Tundra 68-72 (Nexus instance 71-73)

or

Howling Fjorde 68-72 (Utgarde Keep instance 70-72)

I like Howling Fjorde just because it looks cooler.

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Go to MMO Champion and look between the two instances for which would have the most stuff you want would be my suggestion. You'll end up doing them both or coming back for the second for cash later.

I did both of those instances yesterday. They were both fun but challenging as a healer. Much love to Wild Growth. I hope they don't put a cooldown on it.

Got some nice pants with a lot of Spirit on them, made for a very happy resto druid.

I went Howling Fjord, only because I was logged out near Undercity. I really think it's not going to make a huge difference, just pick one.

However, I read somewhere (again, nothing definitive, take it for what it's worth), that it's better for Horde to start in HF and Alliance in BT. I didn't see a reason why, but people felt that was how it was laid out.

Also heard it was better for tank classes to start in BT because of quest and reputation rewards there being better, as well as it being better for death knights. Again, I don't know any of the drops or rewards, so I can't confirm this, and I'm a tank playing in HF and I already found the first item I want (Vengeance landing rep shield reward), so I'm not going to switch to BT just because.

The factions in both HF and BT are the same, regardless. Both quartermasters offer the same gear under the same rep. Hit revered in one area and you will hit it with the other.

It all boils down to your current gear vs quest rewards as far as where you should go, though being a Hunter I think I have found two pices of gear outside of dungeons that were good enough for me to equip. Mind you, my former main Night Elf Hunter would not have equipped any of them, but I rerolled Draenei for the pure win of the racials. So, for me, I've just been where friends are.

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There is no such thing as right or wrong; only pleasure and pain.

I've been doing both BT and HF. Did Utgarde Keep last night, fairly straight forward, and did Nexus twice, that final dragon boss can be a pain for folks learning the first time.

The best part....
/w "what spec"
/w "healer..."

Can heal it fine with a Disc/Holy 51/10 spec. Will spend my remining pts in Holy to a 51/20. I friggin love Penance. Circle of Healing was a lot of aggro and healing on easy. I mostly use Healbot and keep renews up on folks. My renew is healing 3-4k in 4 ticks instead of 5 using a glyph. I also like to keep my -3% dmg and +6% heal talent up by alternating penance with a flash heal to keep the buff active on MT.

I could see how 51/20 wouldn't cut the mustard in end game content, but for the next 9 lvls it will be quests/solo and 5 man's.

I've yet to have a group make it through UK.... due to horrible tanks and folks trying to sneak alts in in like lvl 60 greens.

Last night we had a 51point fury tank, a hunter with a gorilla and a lock in lvl 63 greens.

This morning we had lvl 69 60 point prot warrior who while he could hold agro and whatnot....was squishier than my rogue.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

lol i decided to put 51pts into bm and took my gorilla into UK with some guildies and we cleared it with the pet tanking. Was great )

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UK was super easy. Nexus was rough. The healers were having trouble strafing and healing at same time. Was mainly half pugs. Azjol Nerub is also pretty rough but very short.

Last time we went into Azjol, our characters got stuck in the instance for 2 hours and would not time out.

Also, where is the dumb plate that isn't spell power.

Done UK and Nexus about a half dozen times each. I am super disappointed that there's pretty much ZERO tank plate drops in any of the instances so far. Just about every plate piece has a boat load of stamina but its all dps stats stacking crit/hit, haste, or armor pen. And people wonder why is so hard to get a tank for their groups.

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Not only that, but none of the quest plate rewards have defense on them. I've only done HF and BT so far, but *every* plate reward is either +crit or +spellpower. Not a single piece designed for tanks.

Granted, I wouldn't have replaced any of my current gear, and I probably won't until the lvl 74+ areas, so hopefully it will get better then.

But if you are a new tank, I'm not sure what you are going to have to do for gear, because it certainly doesn't drop in the instances (so far) and you certainly don't get it from quest rewards (one exception, shoulder item quest reward for clearing Nexus).

If you are a DK thinking about tanking or any other new tank....don't lose your tank gear coming out of the Outlands. It's slim pickings in Northrend to start.

If you're after faster advancement: Borean Tundra.
If you're after totally badass lore: Howling Fjord.

Stuff's farther apart in the Fjord, and the rewards that compensate for that seem to come in the form of cooler revelations of lore. Those who don't care about that should start in the Tundra and come to the Fjord when you're 72-3 and can just burn through this nonsense for the points it yields. People more concerned with storyline will like the work they put into the Fjords.

So far I have found little use for defense and just stack stam for DK tanking. These entry level instances are cake and odds are you will just smash them. I could probably do just as well in DPS gear.

All the tank gear seems to come off rep vendors anyway.

How right you are, Givin.

I've tanked all sub-80 instances, and did Halls of Lightning at level 76 last night, only one level 80 in the group (the healer) and we did the entire instance without much problems. AE tanked everything each pull, to boot. The only tiny issue we had was me taking a ton of damage from crits and such with my greens/blues and being so low level. But we still won. Second run through we did it in half the time (we didn't read up on the bosses before we tried it - which, btw, is much more fun).

The instances are all universally more interesting, both visually and from a mechanics standpoint, than TBC - but they are ridiculously easy. There's no way I would be able to tank SL in greens and blues a full 4 levels below 70.

Hell, before HoL last night, I did all of the sub-80 instances as arms, AE tanking all the pulls with no cc.

It's fun, but hopefully it will get more challenging - maybe in heroics, I dunno.

Went to UK/Nexus/AN/AK all at level 70.

Basically just AE'ed the places down and one-shot all the bosses, except for one guy near the end of Ahn'kahet.

I dunno if the tuning is off or what, but it seemed almost pathetically easy, even taking on packs of level 75 mobs with a level 70 group. And it's not like we were super-geared from TBC or anything, I was tanking in mostly blues, using a Braxxis' Staff as my weapon and a couple of Darkmoon cards as my big epix. =D

Holy crap the lore in Dragonblight (well at least the end part) was amazing! Seeing the setup to the "fall" of Arthas and then the assult on Undercity was the best event I have seen in WoW.

Borean Tundra
Howling Fjord
Dragonblight
Grizzley Hills
Zul Drak
Sholazar Basin - I hit 80 1/4 of the way in
Storm Peaks
Icecrown

In that order, do the breadcrumb quests, yields maximum xp and gold.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I am not a huge fan of howling fjord right now. The quest hubs are too spread out and the quests themselves are sort of sparse.

And to those who can't find tanking plate -- All of the instance quests give tanking plate as the reward that I've found. My DK now has a nearly complete set of tank gear (with some useless stats like shield block, but beggars can't be choosers)

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Syuni (un)lives.

Muahahahaha!

Tank gear for warriors is in BT, and there are so many quest and rep rewards for tanking, it's crazy. I'm decked out in blues all from quest rewards and instances. It's not hard to find.

And I'm not sure how you can be disappointed in HF. There are over 130 quests in that zone alone. Spreading them out helped immensely with the crowding.

/shrug

I did every quest in BT and HF, think I hit 74+ at the very least by then with 1-2 runs through a few instances along the way. 76 now and about halfway through dragonblight.

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I went to BT, 70-74 1/2 doing every quest I could find. (4 runs threw nexus included. once to see it, 3 others were for quests) Did the other beginning instance once to see how it was also.

I liked BT, being an engineer- I loved mining the gnomes in the northern part of the zone.

I'm blocked to finishing BT as I don't have epic flight. Anyone got any sooper sekrit areas to get that damn 5000g?

The auction house!

I just plunked down 12000 gold two days ago for Binnie and mine epic flyers for our druid/priest and promptly made another 4k gold so far since then just spending a little time on the AH buying and selling.

We also have netherdrakes on our mage and hunter.

Seriously, don't waste hours farming. Even dailies are largely inefficient. I feel bad for people who say they spend a lot of time farming for gold and/or consumables. =(

Why do you need epic flight to finish BT? You can't use your flyer in Northrend until 77 anyway.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

There's a quest where you are thrown on a dragon's back. I asked why the quest kept saying I was ineligible, and was told you had to have epic flight.

I assume you mean the quest at Amber Ridge? (Or whatever it's called, the place with the big red dragon and the red drakes.)

You don't need epic flying for that quest, it's just very buggy. Make sure you're not mounted when you take the quest from the guy or talk to him, and if it doesn't work, just come back later and try again.

Huh. Every last yokel in the area was telling me I needed Epic. I'll FP back and try it again, thank you.

I was making a ton of cash selling stacks of cobalt bars, (between 150-200G per stack for the first week or so) and stacks of frost cloth (~75g a stack) Paid for my epic flight, cold flight, and epic engineering ROFLcopter and I still have some money left over (and I started WOLK with ~1k G)

I am 6 quests from finishing the achievments for questing in Northrend and I have made 11k, start to finish.

Icecrown and Storm Peaks are some of the best questing experiences I have seen yet in an MMO

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Ric Flair sig go go go.

Actually no, new movie called Black Dynamite, google the redband trailer and be ready to piss yourself with laughter.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

ROFL @ Black Dynomite

"Filmed in Anomorphic Duovision"

and

"Shhhh ladies, you'll wake all the other bitches up" both made my day.