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Monday, August 17, 2009

Notes on Death Knight Farming

Using my Blood DK spec I went farming for Arctic Furs in Storm Peaks. Here are a few (updated for patch 3.2) observations regarding this particular spec and Death Knight gameplay in general.
  • This spec hits like a ton of bricks.

  • I'm really really glad I picked Dancing Rune Weapon over Hysteria. It works very nicely and it's not even glyphed.

  • The new Death Strike, talented and glyphed strikes like another ton of bricks. It often crits for over 5K. Very happy with it.

  • Rotation for these level ~77 mobs is slightly altered: Icy Touch > Plague Strike > (Heart Strike) > Death Strike > dead. Very often I don't even need to Heart Strike, that's how fast they go down.

  • Farming with this spec is very quick due to massive damage.

  • Thanks to the new 1.5 second mount summoning, farming is even quicker. After each mob I will quickly summon my mount and fly to the next mob. When in Death Coil range, I will dismount in mid-air and fire a Death Coil and then start my regular rotation.

  • Due to moving so fast, 3 stacks of Bloody Vengeance are present almost continuously.

  • I love Rune Strike and will continue to use it in my rotation. In fact that's one of the things that I love about it: it's outside of the GCD so I just pop it whenever it activates. It's cheaper to cast than Death Coil (costing only 20 RP) and it hits very hard.

  • AoE is messy. For the mobs. My (patented, heh heh) method is: Death & Decay, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, by this time my RP is almost full and I start Death Coiling and Rune Striking since my runes are on cooldown. As soon as my Heart Strike or Death Strike are up, I will use them, thus regaining my health and smashing those mobs to pulp. As a variation, after laying down D&D, if I have enough RP, I will summon a Dancing Rune Weapon and then continue with my routine as outline above. Works like a charm.

  • Those damn Furs have a retarded drop-rate.
As a side note, I also tried to solo Drak'Tharon and The Nexus with my Death Knight. Needless to say, I walked in like a cocky turkey and came out feet first. Well, that was Drak'Tharon because I had to fight 2 mobs at the same time and I didn't realize they were so powerful. Elites with over 75K HP, ahem... In The Nexus I was luckier as I only had to fight one mob at a time but after 2 mobs and a very close shave with death from which I was only saved by my ghoul, I decided to call it quits. I won't be solo-ing these 2 dungeons with my characters any time soon.

7 comments:

Celebrandil said...

Wow gratz Darth, now you got your own 14 year old fanboi! Probably the same as in your 3.2 return post, I guess you can see his IP. ^^

I remember back when you needed this stupid red winter hat for the World Event achievement (was it Winter's Veil?), my buddy took out his DK and we went into The Nexus and killed the blood elf boss that dropped the hat. I was impressed at how easy it was for him to both tank and do DPS.

Darth Solo said...

@Anonymous thanks for your insightful comment. Make sure to tell your friends about this blog. I'm sure they'll have even better things to say.

@Celebrandil, the 10-yr old fanboi (he doesn't sound 14 yet) must've cared enough to read the article so the joke's on him ;) It might be that a tanking spec will fare better inside these dungeons. I have a good mind to take my Prot Pally in there and see how he does.

Anonymous said...

Hey Darth,

I noticed that Arctic Furs have a much better drop rate in the lower level zones. I'd suggest trying your luck in howling fjord.

Anonymous said...

People can be so rude sometimes. I apologize for their idiocy.

I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Keep 'em coming. My DK took over as my main, and I love it.

Will said...

Hey Darth, fellow wow blogger here, just stumbled on your blog and wanted to say hi.

I'd think you'd need a lot of patience farming artic furs, very sporadic drop rate.

Want to know a great farming spot if you are just going for pure gold?

On my server (Tichondrious) Boar Ribs sell for 3g 95s each, and I can farm 65 of them every 20 minutes in Razorfen Kraul.

That gives 770g/hour.

I have the full route in a video I made if you want to check it out.

Darth Solo said...

@nice Anonymous thanks fellas! I will try the low level areas but in the end it might be more efficient to just buy them off the AH. Unfortunately last night I needed a bunch of them to raise my Leatherworking a bit and they were over 30 gold a piece in the AH. I'll have to wait for them to go down a bit.

@Will are you behind wowconfidential.com? Wow indeed, I'm impressed! Thanks for the tip. 770g/h wowwee!

Darth Solo said...

P.S. I deleted a comment from an Anonymous poster that was just out of line.

Please fellas, if you hate WoW or games in general or even me (though you don't know me), just ignore this blog. I'm sure there are other places where you can vent your frustrations. The internetz are huge after all.