Death Knight Dungeoneering

Something strange and unexpected happened about a week ago: my death knight hit level eighty. I never thought I'd actually get there, considering my what I thought was a very deep-seated dislike for the class, but I really managed to warm up to my little undead lady over the past couple of months. Giving her a tanking dual spec halfway through Outland helped a lot, and from then on I slowly but surely progressed through the levels, mostly by tanking one instance at a time, but also doing the occasional quest or battleground. I also didn't feel that the patch changed blood tanking all that much, which made my death knight at least one character where I didn't feel like the patch put a huge dent in things for me.

When I hit eighty I found myself at a bit of a crossroads, as I wanted to keep gearing her up as a tank but had no particular desire to be that tank in blues that helplessly bumbles after the ICC-geared damage dealers that burn everything down within seconds, whether they have aggro or not. In the end I opted for the "gearing up through dps" path, even though all my attempts at playing melee dps had been rather unsuccessful and unfun so far.

That's when another strange and unexpected thing happened, because I actually ended up enjoying myself as two-handed frost dps. I'm still not entirely sure why, but I think there's a combination of factors that are simply coming together just right for me with this class and spec. For example the increased movement speed from unholy presence and the fact that some of my attacks have range have been incredibly helpful when it came to avoiding the problems with positioning that I've had in the past, finding myself perpetually out of range of my targets. If I pull aggro I can also survive a few hits, what with being clad in plate and all, but generally I've seen enough really bad death knights over the past two years to have a good idea of what not to do.

Also, the playstyle is just strangely fun. I've never played anything that fought with a two-hander at such a high attack speed, and it's simply a joy to watch my little death knight lady spin and whirl around like a spiky wrecking ball. The actual dps "rotation" seems to be pretty forgiving to me - or at least I seem to be doing quite well without having much of a clue of what I'm doing - and while this may sound silly, it has a certain whack-a-mole quality about it that kind of reminds me of healing: just that instead of hitting whichever bar is lowest, I hit whichever ability lights up first as available due to rune cooldowns. It's not complicated but still engaging.

So I've been running heroic after heroic after heroic, the justice points keep streaming in and I just want to run more... it's almost addictive. I was surprised by how many other people who were still gearing up ended up in my groups, though I don't know whether that was due to the dungeon finder's gear matching capabilities or if this is simply a reflection of the type of people who queue up these days - mostly alts. Either way I was quite pleased to note that even though some tanks still seemed very keen on getting through the instance as quickly as possible, there was a lot less overall negativity and considerably fewer "I hate this, I just want to get my emblems from the end boss" vibes than I've seen in the past year. Since it's all justice points now, people are a lot more willing to do full clears again, and I got all the optional bosses in heroic Old Kingdom, Gundrak and Halls of Stone done without even having to ask.

Also, while I did observe the occasional case of douchebaggery, I met a lot more really nice people and found myself regretting more than once that I could not add them to my friends list. To give some examples...

I had just tanked a normal Forge of Souls run and wanted to continue to Pit of Saron, but the druid healer was the only one who followed me through the portal; all the dps dropped group. We queued for new ones but couldn't even see one little sword pop up on the progress screen. After a few minutes we started tackling the trash with just the two of us. Just before we got to Garfrost I noted that we had two damage dealers queued up and wished that we could pull them in already just to speed things up. Then the last trash mob fell over and both sword icons were greyed out again. Woe.

"I don't think we can take the boss with just the two of us," I said cautiously, but when the druid suggested that we should at least give it a try, I was up for it. Surprisingly, we downed him without too much trouble. We then continued that way until the ramp after Ick and Krick, where the druid accidentally pulled a second group of trash mobs by popping Starfall (he had switched to balance spec since I didn't need that much healing according to him) and we wiped. At this point I coaxed a guildie into helping us finish since I wasn't sure whether we'd be able to two-man the bottom two caster pulls that we had tried to skip before, though the druid insisted afterwards that he was convinced that we could have done it on our own as well. I really would have loved to add that guy to my friends list, such a fun experience!

In heroic Culling of Stratholme I had a fun run with another death knight who was tanking in frost presence initially, which then led to a friendly and amusing exchange about how the purposes of blood and frost presence have been changed and how the developers love changing things around just to confuse us. People laughed when I joked at the town hall that Arthas had rerolled mage since he has a habit of suddenly "blinking" inside the room without actually walking since the patch. In short, we were having a blast, but about three pulls later I suddenly got disconnected. I quickly logged back in just to find myself back at the instance entrance, along with everyone else. Our group had been disbanded, we were unable to reinvite each other and were getting threatened with a popup saying that we were in the wrong instance and would be booted out soon. We wailed a little at each other in /say and said brief goodbyes, disappointed that our fun had so cruelly been cut short by an instance server crash.

I was slightly anxious when I found myself thrust into heroic Halls of Reflection, considering how many blues I was still wearing, and that feeling intensified when I saw that one other dps, an enhancement shaman, was similarly geared. Still, much to my own surprise, we ended up burning through the place without any problems, popping cooldowns at the appropriate times, and even got the quick escape achievement. Our healer got very bouncy and excited at the end, praising us for a job well done and saying that Arthas "had nothing on us". It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

On the bad side I only had an extremely lazy healer in heroic Pit of Saron who let people die all the time and then had the nerve to bitch at the tank for all kinds of stupid things (like daring to actually kill trash instead of trying to skip it), which eventually led to the group falling apart; an annoying druid who really wanted to get Intense Cold in the Nexus but seemed to be unable to understand how it works no matter how many times we patiently explained it to him; and a 55k-hitpoint tank in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle who rolled need on everything he could, snatching potential upgrades away from me with the argument that he needed them for his off-spec. Dude, I'm not stupid, your tanking gear has more dps stats than those blues. You're just being a greedy jerk.

It's strange to find myself with a renewed urge to run the same old heroics again so shortly before the expansion, but the overall feeling I got from those runs was just so positive! Really gives me hope for Cataclysm pugs, even if the dungeons will be harder then.

Scary statistics

After following a link somewhere else and then browsing another blog's archives I stumbled upon this post at Bubblespec today, in which the writer talks about how she thinks that she ran way too many dungeons this expansion. To illustrate her point, she included a screenshot of an armoury statistics page that shows that two of her characters combined killed Cyanigosa an impressive sixty-nine times.

"Oh, that's neat," I thought, "I never thought of looking at all of my level eighties like that. I wonder how many instances I've run in WOTLK." So I looked at my statistics page. And, um. I almost wish I hadn't, because it was slightly scary.

Now, I know for a fact that a lot of the numbers on the statistics page are wonky at best. For example it claims that my paladin never killed the Black Knight on normal mode, even though she wore the Black Heart for a long time, or that my night elf priest has acquired less emblems of triumph than she already spent on gear. I still think that they have at least some basis in reality though; I guess at worst some of them need a little rounding up. Which is not really good thing when you have huge numbers to begin with, but there you go.

So, according to my armoury statistics page, I've entered 1456 WOTLK five-mans across my seven level eighties (yikes), but only completed 885 of them. Now, this is another number that I have a lot of trouble believing, because no way did I abandon 571 instance runs halfway through. Maybe it counts twice if you leave and re-enter an instance in progress while alive. I don't know. Still, close to nine hundred full dungeon runs is still a pretty damn impressive number. A lot of them were pugs too.

Curious as I was, I wasn't satisfied with those numbers however, and wanted to know which instances I did the most often. Somewhat to my surprise, the clear winner turned out to be Drak'tharon Keep, with a whopping 197 Prophet Tharon'ja kills (151 of them on heroic). To be fair, it does seem to come up as a random dungeon fairly often for me, and I also remember intentionally running it every day for a while early in the expansion, because it was considered one of the easiest heroics; and coming fresh from the Burning Crusade, we didn't dare to jump into something as scary as, say, heroic Utgarde Pinnacle right away.

In second place but already very far behind is Azjol-Nerub with 106 Anub'arak kills (seventy-three on heroic). Again I was slightly surprised at first, but then realised that this matched my habit of running this instance on multiple characters a day if it came up as the daily heroic pre dungeon finder.

My third most-visited dungeon of this expansion turned out to be the Violet Hold with one hundred Cyanigosa kills (eighty on heroic). I don't remember ever making a point of running this one more frequently, but it does seem to come up as my random reasonabily often.

Fourth place goes to the Culling of Stratholme and Mal'Ganis, whose butt I helped kick eighty-five times (seventy-five on heroic). I remember running this instance a lot early in the expansion while we were trying to make it to the Infinite Curroptor in time. (Yes, kids, once upon a time that was actually a difficult feat to achieve.) I never really got tired of it either, and stubbornly stuck it out even when pug members dropped group right at the start because they couldn't stand all the talking (before you could skip the dialogue, obviously).

Fifth place goes to the Black Knight, which, again, I found somewhat surprising considering that Trial of the Champion was released fairly late in the expansion. I didn't assist that many people with Black Heart farming either. I did run the instance on normal mode a lot with those of my characters that hit eighty after its release though, as it's a great way of getting geared up quickly. My paladin spent a lot of time in heroic mode as well, farming for the Peacekeeper Blade for a fairly long time.

Now, I'm not going to continue listing the numbers for every single boss. Let it just be said that the average for most of them seems to be around seventy.

The ones that I visited the least often are also interesting, however. For example I only escaped the Lich King in Halls of Reflection thirty-nine times (thirty-one on heroic). I suppose this is in part because the instance is one of the newest ones, in part because it has a high gear requirement on the dungeon finder, and in part because the few times that I went there intentionally for a gear drop, I got it almost immediately.

The other Icecrown five-mans are well within the normal average, presumably because even though they were released late, I ran them a stupid amount of times for gear drops for my alts.

My second least-visited dungeon is, not entirely unsurprisingly, the Oculus with forty-two completions (thirty-seven on heroic). I may have overcome my dislike for it now, but the fact that I avoided it like the plague for the first half of the expansion left a visible mark on the numbers.

Slightly above it with fifty-four kills is Sjonnir the Ironshaper from Halls of Stone (forty on heroic). Just goes to show that even though it feels like I get that instance all the time on some days, I really don't.

That's a crazy number of dungeon runs either way. Unlike Enlynn from Bubblespec I don't really regret them though. I mean, there is of course a vague sense of having wasted a lot of time on WoW, but as far as activities within WoW go, instance-running is still one of my favourites so there aren't many things that I'd prefer to have done instead anyway.

A Culling of Stratholme story

So... Culling of Stratholme. I mentioned before that my opinion of that instance has changed over time, but as it is now I dare say that it's one of my favourite WOTLK heroics. I don't even mind all the talking at the start, which a lot of people seem to hate. For me it's just a good opportunity to inspect the other group members' gear (out of curiosity, not that it changes how I treat them) and fetch a drink.

As a result I felt pleasantly surprised when my shaman's last random dungeon on normal mode before she hit eighty turned out to be Culling. Hurrah! We had a death knight tank, a rogue, a warlock and a druid for dps.

So, as usual I go off to set everything in motion all by myself. On a side note, what is it with that? I mean, I can kind of forgive it on normal mode because maybe people are new to the instance and genuinely don't know what to do, but why does nobody ever help with revealing the plagued grain crates on heroic either? Does everyone honestly think that Arthas will show up on his own if only they stand around picking their noses for long enough? Giving people the benefit of the doubt and assuming ignorance instead of laziness, let me tell you: Arthas' appearance is not tied to a timer! You have to get an Arcane Disruptor from Chromie at the start of the instance, regardless of whether you've done the quest or not, reveal the five plagued grain crates, and then talk to Chromie again in front of Stratholme. Only after she (he?) says something along the lines of "here comes Uther now", the introductory event starts. Not that difficult, is it?

Anyway, that was just a tangent really... so I had this group, and we were all set up to go, just waiting for Arthas to do his thing, and about thirty seconds before the first wave spawns our tank suddenly says "brb". The dps mostly decide to ignore this of course, and the rogue and the warlock charge in and get splatted.

"Where is the healer?!" one of them demands to know.
"At the back, with the tank," I reply, "he said brb."
"Oh," they reply, get ressed/run back, and we wait.

We wait for a couple of minutes, then the warlock demonstrates an amazing lack of short-term memory by asking: "What are we waiting for?" I explain again that we're waiting for the tank, and he goes "oh".

Eventually the tank disconnects and a vote to kick him gets initiated and passes. The dps druid decides to leave as well at this point, but we get both a replacement tank and dps (a hunter) pretty quickly.

"Hello there," I greet them enthusiastically.
Tank has left the group.
/sigh

Meanwhile, wave one of Mal'Ganis' Scourge minions must have completed their third round of the city, admiring the scenery and possible chewing on some flowers.

Several of us ported out to do a couple of dailies while we waited for the LFG tool to find us another tank, as it couldn't even give us an estimated wait time. After about fifteen minutes a warrior tank finally joined us, and we quickly ported back into the instance and hurried back to Stratholme. I eagerly kept an eye on the position of our tank on the map but he just stood at the entrance for several minutes, until eventually he asked someone to come back because he didn't know the way. I facepalmed.

Once we actually managed to get him towards the mobs he managed to do some tanking, but only sort of. He seemed to have never done the instance before as he kept running after random zombies all over the place, forcing the rest of us to gently coax him towards the next wave of elites every time, which would then proceed to beat people up left and right and make my job as a healer very un-fun.

Somehow we managed to make it through to Meathook, and it really made me realise how spoiled I've become by all the faceroll heroics. Every wave felt as if it took ages to die compared to the way people AoE them down in heroic mode, and uh, Meathook himself? He's that guy that dies in twenty seconds or so, right? Well, when he's level eighty-two and your tank isn't even eighty, things start to look slightly different. I tried to stay close to the boss to avoid his chains, but still got hit by them eventually and the tank died during the duration of the stun. Good times.

I got a chiding for this as expected, defended myself by saying that the tank died while I was stunned, and we moved on without further comment. I guess the tank didn't really care for my explanation but decided to graciously forgive me this once. On our next try I didn't get stunned by the chains once and we managed to down him, which then enabled us to stumble through a few more waves of trash (with tanking still being very sloppy).

"I hate zombies," the hunter commented after a while. "Yeah, they look like my mother-in-law," was the warlock's response. And no, I'm not making this up. I tried to screenshot it but for some reason I currently can't seem to take screenshots in WoW. Anyway, by this point I was laughing so hard that my boyfriend asked me what was going on.

Maybe the laughter made me lose my focus or what, I don't know, either way one of the next waves contained an abomination that hit the tank pretty hard (though in fairness not so hard that he should have died), other mobs were all over again and I frantically failed to target things correctly, so we wiped again. Under different circumstances I might have apologised, but considering the tank's overall performance so far, I didn't feel like doing any public self-flagellating over one mistake from my side. The tank left without another word anyway.

My boyfriend had been looking over my shoulder for a few minutes by this point, and offered to tank the rest of the instance for me on his paladin. Getting a bit tired of waiting for yet another failtank, I agreed. So we got an uber raid tank and sailed through the rest of the instance without a hitch (if a bit slowly still due to rather low dps).

Until we came to Market Row... and realised that we had lost Arthas somewhere on the way. He hadn't died or anything, it's just that nobody had talked to him after we reached the gauntlet and he was still standing where we left him, twiddling his thumbs.

So me and the hunter ran back, my boyfriend stayed where he was, I don't know what the other two dps did... all I know is that I ended up feeling very foolish soon afterwards, since a rogue from our guild who had once made a similar experience had actually warned me that this would happen - in short, we talked to Arthas to get him going and the entire gauntlet respawned at once, while our party was spread out over the whole area. Needless to say that we went splat very quickly and very painfully, as not even our overgeared paladin tank managed to survive the onslaught of the entire gauntlet at once without a healer.

We did finish the instance in the end, but I guess it was a good lesson in some ways: no matter how silly you think your fellow puggers are acting, that doesn't mean that you can't still top their foolishness.

Also, after that experience I ended up getting Culling about three times in a row as my random heroic. I still enjoy it, but now it also makes me twitch slightly.