Nov 30

I’ve really been enjoying my leveling experience in Wrath. I decided from the beginning that I wouldn’t rush once I got Celidur out of Outland and into Northrend.

Leveling

In the beta, I took my death knight to Outland at 58 and Northrend at 68. I told myself that on live, I’d wait until 60 and 70, respectively, that way I’d do less quests in Northrend while leveling and have more quests to complete for gold.

Well, I managed to hit 60 before Outland, but I went to Northrend at 68. I don’t regret the decision.

In beta, I started with the Borean Tundra and made my way to Dragonblight. This time, I did the Fjord in between. I’ve done every quest I can find, and I’ve easily hit the quest achievements for all three zones. I’ve just finished up Dragonblight and I’m ready to hit the Grizzly Hills. I did take a stop with some guildies in Zul’Drak to do the Amphitheater of Anguish and get my De-Raged Waraxe. During the event, I dinged 76. Just one more level until I can fly, although I don’t have an epic mount, and after zipping around on the druid all Outland, it feels sloooooow.

Instancing

I’m amazed at the number of people who still don’t understand the death knight. When I was 71, I got a group for The Nexus, and I was tanking. Conversation was casual as we all ran around Dalaran finishing up errands, and one of the members says, “Our last tank was Unholy…” to which another member replied “Ouch.” The exchange finishes with an “Yeah, epic fail” from the first member. It got a bit quiet when I said “<– Unholy.” It was quiet a moment, then I added “But I tanked this instance with this spec before, so we should be fine.” “Oh really?”

So, aparrently people have it in their heads that Frost is the tanking tree, Blood is the DPS tree, and Unholy is the AoE tree. And while that is true to an extent (Blood has a lot of single-target DPS talents, frost has a lot of good mitigation talents, and Unholy does have a lot of talents to boost your AoE), you can certainly tank 5-mans in any of the specs, and I feel that at least Frost and Unholy will be very strong heroic and raid tanking trees.

Later that instance:

DPS tank? I wasn’t aware I was a DPS tank.

So, aparrently it’ll take more work that I thought to get the stigma out of people’s minds. Heck, I had a pretty long conversation with a good real-life friend about it, and it took me several minutes to get it into his head. He’s a druid, so I finally got it through with “Imagine you have three feral trees.”

I do have to say, I’m really loving the DPS I can put out when tanking, especially multiple mobs. This group had two warlocks and a mage for DPS, and a pally healer:

Overall, I really love my death knight. We’ll see how things go when I start tanking heroics and raids, but if all goes well, Celidur is definitely gonna be my main.

Related posts:

1. Can I Make It?
2. Preparing for a Death Knight
3. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
5. My Plans for WotLK and Beyond