I'm thinking about getting back into WoW on a casual basis over the next few weeks, and I'm looking for opinions on Death Knights. If you have one, are you still playing it? If not, why not? (i.e. "because they suck" versus "I rolled one just for fun and it was never going to be my main", etc.)

Basically, does the Death Knight have the staying power of EQ, or are people dropping them like Age of Conan?

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Hope is the new black.

Heh, there's a huge glut of 80 death knights on my server.

I rolled it as a complete reroll from horde to alliance, so I'd get a step up on the 80 game. I figured that most people who rolled one would shelve it and take their mains back out.

I was wrong.

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

Cool.

I don't have time to do any raiding, and I'm allergic to WoW PUGs. So basically... I love my mage, but he's not very durable (or wasn't the last time I played, about a year ago) when compared to some other classes. So I want something that can be super self-reliant but is still fun in small groups when I have the time to run a 5-man or do elite quests with 2 or 3 guildmates.

As a result, whether or not it seems to be a fun class that people are enjoying long-term in a solo / casual / 5-man type world is more important to me than if they are difficult to find raiding spots with. Just to provide the context for my question.

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Hope is the new black.

what level is your mage? If you got it into the 60's you may want to try him out again.

there are so many DK's out, half are good players, half have no clue. So in a pug you get a healer and 4 dk's (talking 60-70). On bored nights, I pop on my shaman and get a pug in a flash and have leveled quite well being all instances n all rested. It's to the point now- anything but a Dk would be nice in a group- like a mage. Granted, you'll still have 3 Dk's with ya, lol.

I used to love mages...but I gave that poor class so many misguided chances and I always found myself disappointed. =(

So now I have a 70 mage just rotting right next to my 70 rogue.

Druid powah!!!

They have the potential to be top tier DPS, or bottom tier DPS, depending on the circumstance. Any tree can DPS. Blood is best for soloing/leveling if single target facepounding is your thing. Unholy will do best at AE grinding. If I could go back and do it again, I would do it as Unholy. Well, at least while the glyph of Death Strike is what it is now. Even after the nerf it will still be viable for leveling. Frost is a bit slower.

They get a bad wrap right now just simply because of so many people playing the class that absolutely sucked at their previous ones.

Stick with a big two hander. People will argue that they are a viable dual wield class, but not until you can gear properly for it. You get much better returns from a hard hitting two hander. Higher top end the better, not necessarily DPS rating.

I did 55-80 with very little help. Maybe 3 quests total that I needed help with and I can only think of two off top of my head. One in Borean Tundra, one in Dragonblight. The rest I destroyed as blood spec with only quested gear. I ran no instances till 80.

Raiding, they can easily be top tier DPS alongside Hunters and Titangrip warriors. Unholy will top the overall meters, Blood will compete for single target boss damage. Unholy offers the best utility aura with its runspeed increase to help bads on Heigan and get people in position faster if they need to move around. The health return on Blood aura is pretty meh but the DPS buffs more than make up for it. "If you don't run with a useless marks hunter that is because their shitty mcshit buff will throw ours off"

Raids will only need 1 unholy DK because the extra disease it provides only counts for the first unholy that applies it. Any extra DKs in the raid get to be either blood, frost, or the tri spec/DW spec flavor.

I stopped playing last November.

The mage is 70 and in mostly Kara and tailored gear with a few blues (375 tailor/chanter). He's my only toon over 30 on Horde side (I switched from Alliance to Horde when Rugen and I joined our current guild), and I need to move him to the new server they all transfered to during free transfers last month. I'm only going to pay to move one character, so anything other than the mage will be a reroll.

From a soloing perspective, he was fun, but not durable. Of course, at the time, he was PvE-Raiding Deep Fire spec and geared as a DPSing glass cannon. Longevity in solo battles was not his strong suit, and questing/farming a pain in the ass.

He'll get 80, without a doubt, and he'll remax tailoring and enchanting, and get a flying carpet. And then he'll probably sit in a city somewhere near suppliers, trainers, a mailbox, and an AH. Busy season for public accounting starts January 7th, for me, which means minimum 55 hour work weeks until the end of March (possibly longer).

With limited playtimes, I won't be grouping much, so I want something that has high soloability, and I'd rather not start back at level 1. Which is why a Death Knight seems like a logical choice. I don't care about PvP, at all. And if I get a 5-man with friends and we're short on damage and CC, I can just pull out the mage.

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Hope is the new black.

If the information I've read is accurate, the ghoul pet is a limited duration, but there is an Unholy talent that makes it last until it dies (like an EQ SK pet)?

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Hope is the new black.

Yes. Unholy gets it as a perma pet. It's not bad DPS. Gets a hefty bonus from your str and stam as well. It's a bit squishy in raids right now. They are going to add in more survivability to it, but they are tacking it on to a completely useless talent.

For leveling and 5 mans, it's fine.

I think DKs are fun to play, you should definitely check it out for their starting area, which is really well done. I don't know how many people will stick with it long term, but there are a ton of DKs atm....literally if you PUG and just shout out "LF1M for instance, DPS class needed", you will get 5 replies in under 10 seconds, and 4 of them will be DKs.

I went Blood spec because I liked the low downtime (they heal for large amounts and it's really easy to get quests done solo), but it will not replace my main (paladin), mainly because I've invested too much time into him and I do not have the will or urge to re-do all the achievement crap I've finished on the pally.

If I was just starting the game from new though, DK would definitely be a class to pick as a "main". It's nice being able to tank and DPS w/o switching out talent specs too much, kind of reminds me of druid feral tanking in that aspect. If I wanted to DPS as a paladin, I would have to respec as Ret.

Although this may all be moot once dual spec goes in (supposedly with patch 3.1)....in which case you may wish you were playing a pally or druid =)

They are kind of strange to me. It's been a while since I've done much in the way of raiding, but I could see them being one of those "great at solo not so great in terms of raid desirability" type of classes. That said I've observed a level 75 DK tank the ring event in ZD without a healer in the group with no issues. I've run both a blood and unholy spec and both seem capable of soloing most anything up to and including 3 person mobs without needing a healer or even using potions for the most part. Soloing has no downtime whatsoever and as blood spec I can enter a fight down 20% or so of my HP total and exit the fight at full health.

I think they are perhaps a bit overpowered and might lead to the initial problem people foresaw of "everyone will want to be a DK", though I personally enjoy playing my rogue more.

We have one raiding Death Knight right now. They really help with Malygos - Death Coil for the sparks is nice and if we are don't have four tanks on we will sometimes put him on caster tanking during Four Horsemen. That DK is geared with a lot of Naxx gear and is moving towards a dual wield spec (which is nice for me sine I raid as Retribution.)

I'm going for the DW thing right now, haven't raided with it yet. Want to try it on Patchwork first to see max dps performance, then on a more mobile fight.

I think the biggest draw of DK's is not having to do 1-55.

No, really.

Personally I feel that outside of the DK all classes (considering you already have a 60+ on the server) should start optionally start at 58. Why make people play through the same shit over and over?

Why not?

Why not the lowbie stuff? I don't know . Impatience?

There are some people who have never played a minute of World of Warcraft, and would probably enjoy the low level zones and journey and be able to experience that content...

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did you not read the fucking discussion?

The point was "I have three level 70+ characters and a level 80, why do I create characters at level 1?"

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

Yeah...I'd like to try something new, but do I really wanna deal with finding Mankrik's Wife for the hundredth time?

heh, that's why I use TourGuide for all of my new characters. I can just go into stupid robot mode and be level 60 in no time.

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

Then those people can solo through it just like everyone else had to. Then they can make level 55 characters like everyone else not not have to suffer through the borefest it is over and over again.

And don't give me any shit about "experiencing dungeon content" because those days have long since past.

If you aren't with the wave when content is introduced then good luck experiencing it to its fullest like people in the past did.

Dunno if I agree with that, exactly. I still had a blast in Stratholme even though it was 'old content'. Likewise with most of the other instances.

On the flip side, I wish everyone making a DK had a questionnaire to fill out first, involving questions like "Are you a douchebag?" or "Have you ever been able to stay in a guild longer than two weeks?" before allowing them to create one.

The questing stuff was boring after about 2 characters, but it's always been boring to level in general. It's already hands down the easiest MMORPG to level in and can be done in about a week or week and a half from 1-80, I honestly don't see why it needs to be made easier. The majority of the game is based around a grind system, I don't see why leveling is somehow massively different and requires a leg up.

Personally I view it as a necessary timesink to retain players. Particularly those types who REALLY want to try the DK, but must first level their character to 70(is that req still in? Not positive on that). I think most people will be excited enough to grind it out to "see what's around the corner over there".

no the only prereq is having a level 55 character on the server.

Isn't it 60? I'm pretty sure it's 60.

No it's 55.

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

I was replying to Intin's post. After re-reading it I realize that he was making the assumption that you have a 60+ character on the server in order to skip 1-55. I do agree that levelling alts up (especially in EQ, which I am familiar with) just takes too long to go through content you already have seen.

And I agree with Givin that if you miss the boat on expansion content when it is first introduced, it is much more difficult to be able to enjoy and experience said content. I took about a 10 month break once DoDH was released, and when I came back I found it very difficult to find even alts that needed to go through the DoDH spell missions. Was very disappointing.

And I did read the thread, I just missed one part of Intin's post. Don't have to be an ass about it, but it seems like 85% of people here like to do that with anything I post... whether it be factual or opinionated, correct or incorrect. I guess if that makes you feel better as a message board poster then /shrug.

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It is indeed. I went back and realized the error of my ways.

DK's are hella fun to play especially since you start at 55, and by the time you do the starting quests you leave 58 with decent gear. The start is a fun scripted quest chain.

Unholy and Blood spec do REALLY nice DPS. Often topping the dmg meters in my constant sadistic pugging. As for tanking, I'd compare them to paladins (as a priest healer) they are a bit spikey. I did finally get a lvl 80 DK who was frost and well geared (DW) who tanked like a warrior/druid. Frost has the extra 2 talents for 40-50% mitigation 10s, which helps. DK tanking is about avoidance and managing your abilities.

I had an unholy DK and loved DPSing, was planning to go to Frost and tanking after lvl 70. Lvl 70+ has the crafted +defense armor sets.
I parked my DK at 67 to work on getting my priest to 80 for naxx.

They need to implement the damn DUAL SPEC. We wouldnt have healer or tank shortages anymore. I could spec holy and disc for pvp. Warriors could spec MS/Fury and Prot. Not saying they'd all be good at their off spec, but it wouldnt create the pug waits for a healer or tank.

I also wish they'd allow folks with a lvl 80 character to start new toons at 60. 60 you can do TBC instances, ramps, BF, up to 70, and then at 70 do Northrend instances. I can grind a new toon to 30-40 easily, I just lose steam from 40-60. In EQ2 you had the sparkly turn-ins, so with some gold you could go from 1-35 in 5 min. I also LOVED the EQ2 chat rooms based on level, ie 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40. Made LFG hunting easier and helped raised the level of conversation as you went up.

WOW needs to go steal the rest of EQ2's good ideas.

There are only a few good ideas left in EQ2 really. Unfortunately for EQ2 the player base is simply not there and the people who have been around for a long time are absolutely elitist jerks. The shinys are really fun though.

I've yet to see a DK tank that does any good at all.

Then again, that's probably just a result of raw probability.

Average pug players + people not knowing how to play DK's yet = Low chance you'll run into a really good DK tank.

I do see them top the DPS charts a lot, but once again...in most pugs I end up topping damage meters as the damn tank, so it's hard to really judge.

(Yes, I do a lot of pugging. I have a hard time stomaching guilds usually.)

AND! Because someone has to say it...



Not sure....how many posts has it made in the Bored Room? /rimshot

I have a pretty good DK tank in my guild atm. You can easily interchange him with any warrior, druid, or pally tank in any given situation and do just fine with any of the raid content right now. Give it time and maybe you'll find one.

To be perfectly honest, being "top on the dps as tank" isn't quite as significant as it was an expansion or two ago. Now every tank relies primarily on damaging abilities to gain agro, where before it was mainly geared towards high threat. That's not to say that an equally geared tank should do more dps than an equally geared dps class, but it's mostly just a gear issue now(or sometimes a skill issue). Not to mention most dps classes need to hold back a bit on their burst potential until agro is established, while the tank can instantly use whatever abilities are available.

Bah, don't make excuses for shitty DPSers. There's no excuse for the absolutely horrible DPS that I see people putting out right now. Maybe people are still trying out new specs/rotations or something.

And threat isn't an issue at all, unless they hit the mob before I've even pulled it, they're not getting that mob off of me.

DK's can tank just fine. My personal feelings however are that I would much rather have a paladin or warrior doing it. They both play better in my experience in the tank role.

Gathering tank gear feels more like a chore with my DK than it did my warrior or paladin. Guess I just miss block.

DPS I like DK better. 0/32/39 DW is prostreet.

Block is ridiculous, agreed. =/

I'm just curious to see what Blizzard has in mind for their plan to make druids scale off something other than armor/agi/sta. They've already said it most likely will not be defense, parry or block. But they have to do something, just giving us inflated stats that don't really scale well won't cut it, and apparently DK's are in the same boat in some ways.

Certainly a large chunk of people don't have an excuse for say, sub-1300 DPS. With proper gear, most classes should be in the range of 2500-3000(either ungrouped or in a 5-man with limited buffs). But I think you have to realize DPS scales WILDLY with WOTLK gear. You can literally go up 400-500 dps with a select few pieces of gear(enchants, gems, etc) using the same rotations and everything. Tanking is going to stay largely the same, unless you invest a large amount in block-type gear etc(which is unlikely anyway because threat isn't much of an issue).

The only time I'm saying threat is an issue is during the initial pull. Classes with high burst dps, like Ret Paladins can still pull it off me after my initial threat rotation(as a warrior) if they get very lucky. And most of the time it simply ends in a quick taunt, one more rotation and I have a solid lead. But, because of that, those classes do hold off a little bit - especially on AOE pack pulls with abilities like Divine Storm and Whirlwind.

You charge in and get your abilities done right off the back. Give it literally ONE second before DPS moves in, or even half a second each and every pull - and that is an eternity for any dps class and really adds up on the charts.

Just to clarify - the majority of people no doubt are not close to perfecting their dps rotations, but the only thing I'm saying is that it's far less of a statement NOW than it was to say "I'm a tank and I outdamaged the whole group". Believe me, I have had that happen to me on many an occasion as a prot warrior and I have barely taken note of it.

Well, again, that might be a class difference issue. There's basically no way to pull off of a druid once they've landed a hit, much less a whole cycle of hits.

I'm your huckleberry.

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

This isn't me bragging about me, sir. This is just how the classes are right now. Other tanks bitch at me for unintentionally pulling off them in raids just from my maul hitting a 2nd target. Druid TPS is just through the roof, even friggin Faerie Fire is almost 2k threat.

They really need to patch. The single target paladin taunt is long overdue. DKs could really use those new Sigils and how fucking hard can it be to get some of the much needed missing recipes on live. Not specifically the new tanking 2 handers, but moreso the missing jewelcrafting and cooking ones.

I understand they already have a huge list for 3.0.8, I guess I'd just like to see some of the smaller things sooner.

It's funny, I keep making new DK's, playing them for a bit because I want to try something new, and then get terribly bored with it before I even hit 56.

Maybe I just need to give it more time, I dunno. It just doesn't seem very exciting at all.

I did have a DK Rune Strike my druid for 10k last night. Blargh.

56? doing the initial quest chain takes you to 58, that's how you get your initial gear and talent pts.

Blood is great single target DPS with heals, but I really liked unholy with AE, and I'm also a fan of Frost with the single burst dmg, and limited AE.

Get 1 level more to 59, then go do some BG's to test drive, your initial gear is quite good and you should get a nice taste of DK. You'll only have 50 talent pts so you wont be able to try any 51 pt talent, but to be honest dancing rune, hungering cold, and unholy blight are fluff.

DRW is definitely not fluff if you have a good weapon.

unholy blight is also really great for AE fights

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

at lvl 58, with only 49 talent pts it's not important for a test drive
Bov can get to 58 as a DK in a couple hrs doing the starter quests

Sounds like Bov just isn't interested in the class. It doesn't interest me in the slightest, either, for what it's worth.

Yeah, I just can't really get into it. Maybe it's beacuse I've played all the other melee classes already and this just feels like more of the same with prettier graphics. I do think it's more of a "feel" issue than anything else, I know a lot of the mechanics and abilties are different, but the feel is just more of the same.

Or sounds like Bov is just bored of the game (leveling chars up)

Nah, I'm thinking of leveling a lock or a shammy, they both sound interesting and I've yet to seriously play either of them. =D

I do agree with Azzi tho. I think you will need more levels to really get into the char. The DK is a lot of fun, and the Frost spec is a blast to play. Unholy is very cool too, but Frost is more my style.

If you had mult 60+ chars on a server, could you move one to another server in order to fire up a dk there?

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Yes, if the server has a 55+, it can have a DK.

in 3.0.8, once you hit 55 you can create a DK anywhere if I read the patch notes right =p

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