Welcome to 80!

After hours of headache and several more hours of laziness, I’ve finally hit level 80 with my Death Knight. And with some luck from the Auction House and a ton of questing/dailies, one of the first things I did, naturally, was get Duel Spec.

 

Primary Spec:
Frost Tank
7 /55/9

Major Glyphs:
Icebound Fortitude
Unbreakable Armor
Disease

 

 

Secondary Spec:
Unholy DPS
12/0/59

Major Glyphs:
Ghoul
Scourge Strike
Icy Touch

 

I don’t even want to know how much gold I’ve spent in the past couple of days but it’s so totally worth it. I love playing as my Death Knight, and I love the fun of Duel Spec. My minor glyphs for both are the same: Pestilence, Horn of Winter, Raise Dead. Army of the Dead has been a blast, and has even saved my ass on some boss fights.

After I cleaned the AH out on pre-approved DK tanking gear (Pre-Naxx, list here) the first thing I wanted to do was test it out, whether in a level 80 instance like Pinnacle, or in Heroics. Thankfully, Fear.Win, as well as a few other Guildies, were willing to run with me.

So my first day of level 80 tanking has passed, and I’ve learned a few things.

1) Make sure you’re in Frost Presence!
2) Mages suck at waiting for you to get aggro, so you’d better get on it
3) Death and Decay is pretty amazing
4) Having to only waste one rune to refresh all diseases is pretty awesome. (Some people aren’t in favor of the new glyph, but I’m absolutely loving it.)
5) Running with other DKs is a pain and a blessing. If you fall, they can pick it up for you quickly, but you just know they’re wondering why you suck so badly!

Overall, the runs weren’t too bad. Cumulative repair for H. Nexus and H. UK was less then 20 gold, and I left with off-spec waist/pants, and 8 emblems of Heroism.

What I also noticed, is that you know something wrong when the tank is doing more DPS then most of the DPSers!

Also, I’ve noticed that it’s a pain in the ass to keep aggro away from Fear.Win when he decides to pull out the big spells. At that point.. it quickly becomes a faceroll match in desperation to keep him from dying.

The fruits of the labor weren’t in vain. As well as picking up 2 DPS pieces, I also hit honored with Wyrmrest, which means at least one piece of tanking gear that I can pick up. Huzzah!

 

 

After the tanking fun, I hopped over to Undercity, and began working on my DPS joy. Having snagged the Staggering Legplates and Strategist’s Belt from UK, I popped 2 Bold Bloodstones (+12 Strength) and 1 Rigid Autumn’s Glow (+16 Hit Rating) into those. If I had 50 gold more, another Bloodstone would have been popped into an Eternal Belt Buckle. But alas, not today. I could have chosen another Strength gem in place of the hit, but there’s one thing that I’ve heard quite often that reminds me of priorities:

“Doesn’t do jack shit if you can’t hit it.”

So with that in mind, I popped those into my gear and leapt and bound over to the regular level 80 Training Dummy.

Even though I forgot to hit horn and had to interrupt my DPS to check that, and I forgot to summon a ghoul, AND forgot about Army of the Dead, I was still quickly reaching up to 1400 dps off the bat, and with only three pieces of actual DPS gear! (Cloak, belt, and pants) Considering that the rest of my gear was tank still, I’m actually extremely optimistic for this spec.

Next though, because I’m never one to just stop there, I summoned my ghoul, blew my horn, cracked my knuckles, and attacked the big bad ?? Training dummy. Of course, AFTER I stopped attacking, I realized I had forgotten one thing… Bone Shield, which boosts my damage.

/facepalm

Still, even with that minor setback, I was actually pretty pleased when my DPS reached and actually broke the 1600 mark. (1605 DPS) Which proved a few points to me:

1) Army of the Dead kicks ass
2) Ghouls are good
3) Unholy is amazing.

The rotation for Unholy DPS is something I’m still getting used to.

IT – PS – BS – BS – SS – UB

Summon Gargoyle whenever I’ve got enough Runic Power, and I’m still looking for the right place to pop in Pestilence to just refresh my diseases off the bat. That, or I may just tough it out and keep hitting IT, since PS damage isn’t too bad, and it refreshes the other two on it’s own. And of course, I was in Blood Presence for that added DPS bonus.

Overall, I’m pretty proud that, with that much tanking gear instead of DPS, my DPS still wasn’t too bad for a recently turned 80. Not to mention, this is only my second 80. Excluding the fact that I roped in guildies for Heroics, I still tried to do nearly everything myself. I naturally asked a few questions of the guild, especially my boyfriend (Who has a really awesome tank, Catalysta) but once I was pointed in the right direction, I did the research myself, found the specs (After Fear.Win told me some pretty kickass sites!) and bought my mats myself. Instead of asking guildies to craft a gem for me, I bought it on my own. Same went for the gear. I could have asked the guild blacksmith to craft it. But instead I bought what I could off the AH, and made note of quest rewards that were good, and poked around for anything I could get on my own.

 

So overall, an excellent day for Keira. Poor Telkire has been a bit neglected. After a bit more of work on Keira, I’ll probably pull him back out, since the Argent Tournament has some pretty nice looking gear. That, and I really need to start pugging 25s. I’ve got some guilds who have agreed to put me on their Invite list, and I plan to take them up on any offers that come in in the next 2 weeks while I’m out of commission from work.

My goal, though, is to hopefully be able to pug as a tank for Naxxramas on Keira.

 

End of the day? I’m feeling pretty accomplished. Right now I’m going to head out to do some dailies on Keir, and to check out the Argent Tournament. That, or continue quests to get gold to pick up some new tank equipment.