As an undergraduate, I audited Statistics 101. I was also taking Calculus and Economics and deluding myself I wanted to be a business major… Needless to say, none of it stuck and I migrated over to the liberal arts programs… But what did stick from statistics is sampling sizes for any realistic conclusions.

And if you want realistic, actually-proven-in-mathematical fact results, buddy you’re in the wrong place. For non-scientific off-the-cuff observations, welcome home.

Of those that participated in the poll, it appears we like our Death Knights to look good… not cute, but good. Notice the race choices…. It was close between Humans, Night Elves, Blood Elves and Dranei.  Really Hordies?  Blood Elves?  But, I digress….

Everybody’s got their own reasons for choosing a race.  For me, going Human was the most appealing for the following reasons:

• Diplomacy
• Mace Specialization
• Sword Specialization
• Every Man for Himself

Why?

I’m an achievement junky.  Getting reputation 10 percent faster with Diplomacy was “Win!” for me. (Trying to get psyched to go back to Outlands and farm rep… failing so far).

Sword and Mace? I had no idea it mattered at the time honestly.  But now, especially in experimenting with Dual Wield tanking, I’m liking the expertise boost on swords and maces, and Blizzard seems to be stacking the deck with tanking weapons being either swords or maces. Sure, the Dwarf version is better, but only for maces.

But the deal sealer was Every Man for Himself; I love the ability to break out of fear (in PVE and PVP) so this racial was central to my thoughts.

If I were to do it all over, I’d have to seriously debate the Night Elf or the Dranei (at least on Alliance). Quickness has to help at least a bit, and the combination of Heroic Presence and Gift of the Naaru are nothing to be scoffed at. Even so, Artie just fits as a Human and I don’t regret the choice.

Cya when the servers come back online!

Based on some feedback here, I attempted dual wielding again.

The spec I went with was a pretty basic 10 | 54 | 7

As far as my gems / gear, I’m too broke at the moment to stress much about swapping ‘em around. My stats are suffering a bit (hit’s horribly low for example), but I’m not ready to fully commit to dual wield tanking just yet. The biggest dilemma has been weapons – which ones to equip and how to runeforge ‘em.

Weapons

With two hands and two kinds of weapons, I have four possible choices:

1. Two fast tanking weapons
2. Two slow DPS weapons
3. Fast tanking weapon in main hand, slow DPS weapon in off-hand
4. Slow DPS weapon in main hand, fast tanking weapon in off-hand.

Keep in mind, I’ve never raided on Artie, so my toolbox contains crusader seal rewards or heroic instance drops. My best one handed tanking weapons are: Teldrassil Protector (I have two of ‘em purchased back in 3.2), Peacekeeper Blade (only one so far), or the Red Sword of Courage (pretty sure I just need to sell that sucker – not a big fan of it).  My best slow one handed weapons are the Ghoul Slicer and the Hate-Forged Cleaver.

Runeforging

Initially, I thought that the rune choices were a no-brainer…. You had to go with Rune of the Nerubian Carapace (RoNC), right? The thought of tossing a Rune of Razorice on the main hand weapon so that frost vulnerability was in the mix is appealing, but so is a Rune of the Fallen Crusader.  I’ve done neither yet and I’m going with RoNC.

Results

First Run: Thursday

Using Ghoul Slicer in MH and Peacekeeper in OH (option4).   Get Utgarde Pinnacle… Shammy heals and pally / hunter / warlock DPS. DPS was okay (pally was tops was 2.5K, hunter was 3rd with 2.0K and ‘lock brought up the rear with 1.8K). Neither the ‘lock or the hunter had been before and they didn’t know to run away from Skadi’s whirlwind of death (beauty spot to pop an Icebound Fortitude by the way!) so 3 manned Skadi. Bit frustrating after a /readycheck before starting the event and asking if everyone was good to go…. but I digress.

Threat?  No issues.  DPS?  About the same as 2h frost, around 2.1K. Survivability?  Didn’t seem to be an issue. Heal check — no worries, shammy was happy… take that as success.

Second run: Friday

Equip the 2 slow DPS weapons (option 2), Ghoul Slicer and Hate-Forged Axe (RoNC on both).  Get Drak’Theron Keep. Freshly dinged 80 holy priest heals, mage, shammy and warlock DPS.  Shammy was having lag issues and pulled 900 DPS for most of the run. Lock was having AFK issues and pulled 2K.  Mage pulled 2.1k.  I topped DPS charts at 2.3K…. so uh, the slow weapons made a nice DPS change.  With the low DPS, the bosses died slower, but they still died.  Only issue we had was when priest got feared at the end into the 2nd pack of undeads on the way to the Prophet, but we still pulled it out (was a nice test of staying power, actually).

Bottom line, I’m digging looking like a rogue in plate and it doesn’t appear to have gimped me other than my +hit stats…  So I may have to stick with it for a bit!

Thanks to those that encouraged the retry!  If I can get the Rimefang’s Claw or Lucky Old Sun to drop, then I’ll gladly change over… Same thing for the Black Icicle. ‘Till then, I’m kinda digging it!

Here’s my official request Blizzard: eliminate the 15 minute unkickable buff players receive when a random dungeon group forms.

Why?

Predominately, hunters.
Now, now… all you hunters don’t get all pissy on me. I know that just like Death Knight Tanks, not all of you are bad.  I’m a closet hunter, so I can feel the pain. Consider these upstanding examples of the puke green ranged dps class that I have encountered:

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The folks over at Blog Azeroth have something called a ’shared topic’; different bloggers respond to a similar theme.

This week’s theme is:

Have you ever been out and about, minding your own business, having a casual conversation with a friend and fellow WoW player about the latest patch or last night’s dungeon, then some random stranger comes up to you and says something like, “Hey, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear, but do you guys play WoW? I’ve got a level XX [race] [class] on [server]“?

The scene described above hasn’t exactly happened with me, but I still giggle when I remember …

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The overwhelming majority of those that participated in the poll (thanks!) show that hunters were the primary class leveled to 80. I just find this funny — on my hunter I tried to eliminate the scourge of the ‘huntard‘ label. I’m attempting the same on my Death Knight — eliminate the distaste rampant in the world of Azeroth for tanking DKs.

So one of my biggest frustrations with healing tanks on my  priest is spiky damage: one moment tank’s at 95% health, next moment he’s at 30% and it’s still dropping.  In raids, that’s just gonna happen.  In 5m instances, the only time that should happen is when you ate your wheaties and feel invincible…. or you’ve done too many tequila shooters before logging in.

The best defenses are layered: the Death Knight has boosted dodge and our parry is increased by our strength, which help to prevent attacks from missing in the first place. But when they do land, then we need mitigation.
Mitigation

1. to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate.
2. to make less severe

as defined on www.dictionary.com at least

Here goes a summary of the big three DK mitigation talents.

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I’m finally back after unplanned afk… and surprised to actually see traffic on the site.  For those that dropped by, whether you agreed or not, thanks for the feedback.  Even you Orly.

To do list….

1) fix comments so that they post… sorry folks — they was held up in ‘moderation’ view.

2) log into the freakin game.

3) heal (I wish i knew a RL druid / shammy or priest).

Update on 8 March:  items 1 and 2 taken care of… item 3 still an issue.