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Lichborne: Pros and cons of boosting a death knight to level 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So you want to play a death knight. You've looked at the class, you've read our descriptions, and figured, yeah. That's something I'd be into. Or maybe you already have a max level death knight but want a second one for fooling around or trying new specs without giving up your carefully crafted setups on your main. Whichever one it is, I say welcome to the club. That said, at this point in time, you have a unique choice to make, one you wouldn't have had to make it the past. Do you just start up your death knight alt, or do you wait a few weeks and use a level 90 boost instead? Today, we're going to look at the pros and cons of buying a level 90 boost vs. simply leveling your death knight from scratch.
Daniel Whitcomb02.25.2014
Lichborne: Dungeon and LFR group Etiquette for DPS death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. At this point in the game, max level 5-man dungeons may feel a bit superfluous. Even most newbies and third or fourth alts at this point are running them primarily for VP, having gotten most of their real item upgrades on Timeless Isle already. That said, this has lead to a bit of chaos. I know some of my tank friends are getting those end-of-expansion blues, in which they find that DPS are so over geared and so lazy that they are constantly stealing aggro, running ahead, and otherwise making the tank's job difficult. As a tank class ourselves, we have no excuse for doing this, if only as a courtesy for our brother and sister death knight tanks. This week, we're going to go over some basic dungeon etiquette for a death knight tank, designed to make your healer and tank not completely hate your guts. If you're not running dungeons now, you may want to keep it in mind for Warlords of Draenor.
Daniel Whitcomb02.18.2014
Lichborne: More death knight depictions in pop culture
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. In the comments of last week's article, commentors came up with other pop culture sources of death knight inspiration. A lot of them are great suggestions, some of which I didn't write about mainly because I haven't played them lately, others because they weren't technically games. Still a lot of the suggestions were fun enough that it feels like a good idea to take another week and look at another set of death knights and death knight precursors in games, books, and other pop culture sources. Thanks to all of last weeks commentors for their suggestions and thoughts.
Daniel Whitcomb02.11.2014
Lichborne: The death knight in non-WoW games
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So we're kind of officially in the lull between expansions. A lot of guilds have Garrosh on farm. By now, maybe you've at least defeated him in raid finder once or twice, and maybe you have full Timeless Isle gear for every one of your alts. So maybe it's time to dust off the console or the hard drives and spend a little bit of time getting into other games. But with Hearthstone still tragically lacking a death knight hero, how do you get your death knight fix? Death knights aren't completely unique to WoW, but they're not common either, at least not in the general concept of necromantic knights trying to break free of their dark past to good with their evil powers. Here's a few ideas, both mechanically and thematically, for playing death knight style in other games. Skyrim: To be a dragonborn dark knight Yes, I am playing Skyrim right now, so it's kind of fresh in my mind, but I'd argue, at the very least, that Skyrim's relatively flexible spec system allows you to play something similar to a death knight. For example, right now my Dragonborn is using heavy plate armor and dual ebony swords I have enchanted with frost and fire and renamed Lichborne and Hellmouth. While he mostly beats people (and dragons, giants, and bears) up with the swords, he also has a decent amount of work in conjuration tree, summoning and/or resurrecting undead minions. Once I get to level 100 in that skill, I can even get me a perma-ghoul if I want.
Daniel Whitcomb02.04.2014
Lichborne: 5 Abilities death knights could lose in Warlords of Draenor
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. On Twitter a few days ago, Technical Game Designer Celestalon asked on twitter what abilities people would hate to see cut in the great button bloat purge. Interestingly enough, when I saw the tweet, the first thing that come to my head was abilities I would LOVE to cut. Still, the tweet was inspirational enough that today I figure we can talk a bit about some abilities. What active, button pressing abilities could death knights stand to lose? What abilities would we like to see stick around even if they seem perfect for chopping? Here's 5 skills I think the devs may be taking a hard look at. Feel free to add any you think I missed in the comments.
Daniel Whitcomb01.28.2014
Lichborne: Hotfixes and Twitter news for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. We've got a pretty good set of death knight news to cover this week. While we're still definitely in the pre-expansion lull, Blizzard's been releasing little tidbits of information, mostly on twitter, and a few of the latest live server hotfixes have specifically focused on death knights. Today, we'll root through some of this new info and see how it relates to death knights, now and in the future. DPS buffs for all Rygarius January 6 Classes Death Knight Frost Icy Talons now increases melee attack speed by 45% (up from 30%). Unholy Unholy Might now increases Strength by 35% (up from 25%). source
Daniel Whitcomb01.14.2014
Lichborne: Looking back at major 2013 news for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Welcome to 2014. With this, the first Lichborne column of the new year, we're going to examine some of the biggest death knight related new stories of the past year. What were the big things that plagued us, and how were they resolved? Patch 5.2 and the rise of unholy 2013 began with patch 5.2 on the PTR. This is the patch that gave us some long-needed updates to the unholy tree. Unholy had become a very unpopular tree. While some of this was due to the fact that it just didn't do as much damage as frost DPS, it was also in large part due to its unique rotation and rune-spending scheme, which left some ungainly gaps if you didn't apply diseases just so or pre-load death runes for your AoE rotation. Blizzard finally responded to these complaints in late December of 2012 by adding some changes to the patch 5.2 PTR, including Plague Strike adding both diseases for unholy and Reaping working for Blood Boil and Icy Touch, designed to ease the complaints. Just as a bonus, Patch 5.2 bought us what I still think were some of the most fun and flavorful set bonuses of the expansion, as well as some tweaks to make Conversion and Soul Siphon as enticing as Death Pact.
Daniel Whitcomb01.07.2014
Lichborne: Learning to live with 3 weird death knight quirks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With the end of the year coming up, it's a good time to sit back and reflect. This week, my reflections on the death knight class have tended towards those little quirks, those mechanics that come up week after week in discussions, pet peeves to some people, things they may want changed, or things that are just a bit weird. This week, we'll look at three of these in particular, why they're sources of such controversy and frustration, and speculate on whether or not Blizzard might consider changing them in the upcoming patch 6.0.
Daniel Whitcomb12.24.2013
Lichborne: Things to do until Warlords of Draenor drops
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. While some of us are still trying to kill Garrosh or grinding rep on Timeless Isle, it's probably safe to say that the expansion is winding down. With that in mind, how do you spend that time, especially if you're already tired of the latest raid? You can always dig into all those games you bought during the last Steam Sale, of course, but if you're planning to stick to WoW, this week we'll cover some stuff you can do to bide your time until you get that Warlords of Draenor beta invite.
Daniel Whitcomb12.17.2013
Lichborne: The pitfalls of class balance arguments
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. By the time this column is published, it will be official. Greg Tiberus Street, the man formerly known as Ghostcrawler, will no longer be Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft. For many years now, even if his job encompassed so much more, he was pretty much the target for class-based arguments. The most passionate, angry arguments for class changes were directed at him. In his final days as Ghostcrawler, I noticed he did a lot of tweeting about some of the aspects of his job and how the dev team saw class feedback from the community. With that in mind, I want to take a look at the forms of class feedback and some terms that come up again and again as discussed by Ghostcrawler, not just as a tribute to Ghostcrawler, but as a way to hone our toolkit for when the Warlords of Draenor beta test drops and it's time for us all to give our feedback on the future of the death knight class.
Daniel Whitcomb12.10.2013
Lichborne: Warlords of Draenor Q&A for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Last week, we covered the basic class changes of Warlords of Draenor. This week, we're taking a few common questions about those changes and combining them with new information. We'll be discussing the new secondary stats and how they affect tanks, examine the possible return of dual wield tanking, and consider death knight lore in the new expansion. Without further ado, let's get started. Q: Could dual wield tanking come back with Warlords of Draenor? After all, your weapons hit more now that hit and expertise are gone. No. Ghostcrawler clarified recently that the miss chance for dual wield weapons isn't going away. You will still miss with "white" hits, it's just that your special hits will never miss (at least, not because of your gear). This will be exacerbated by the fact that blood death knight special attacks will not hit with the off-hand. The reason dual wielding works for frost is that Threat of Thassarian exists. It does not exist for blood death knights, therefore blood death knight dual wielding is still inferior and likely will stay inferior in Warlords of Draenor. The only real advantage dual wield tanking has is that you might get more Bloodworms, but that is not enough to offset the losses.
Daniel Whitcomb11.26.2013
Lichborne: BlizzCon 2013 news for Death Knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. BlizzCon 2013 bought with it a new expansion, Warlords of Draenor, and while we did learn a lot about upcoming changes, very few of it was actually class-specific. Mostly what we got in class specific news was the level 100 talents, which, while awesome, will likely change pretty significantly even between now and the beta, to say nothing of when Warlords of Draenor goes live. That said, there were still a lot of very interesting system changes that herald great things for death knights, and we'll go over those today as well. New Talents and Skills The level 100 talents continue the storied tradition of level 90 talents in that they very obviously take their cue from the prime death knight, Arthas himself, the Lich King. They also address something we've talked about before, ability bloat. Instead of adding new skills, 2 of them simply replace existing things.
Daniel Whitcomb11.19.2013Lichborne: Switching to tanking at expansion's end
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. I've been doing tanking of some sort of most of my WoW life. Almost as soon as feral druids were viable tanks, I've been tanking dungeons, including a long stint as the main tank of one of my guild's old school 10-man runs. When I became a death knight, you can bet I kept up on my tanking gear and my tanking skills, and not just to write this column. Still, for the past couple of years, I've been solidly DPS for most of my playtime. Still, looking at the end of an expansion with the knowledge we've seen the last announced content patch and have yet to see another expansion announcement, my thoughts turn to tuning up my tank gear and doing a few more tank runs than I'd normally do. Maybe you're in the same situation. Maybe you want to try tanking as a new experience now that we're in the last part of the expansion. Maybe you need to replace a raid tank who quit until next expansion. Maybe you're a new level 90 death knight who wants to dive into actually dungeon tanking. With that mind, this week we're going to do some quick tips for getting together a tanking spec and gear and trying this out. Note that this isn't meant to be a full guide, rather a quick crash course for dipping your toe into basic end game tanking.
Daniel Whitcomb10.29.2013
Lichborne: Common death knight questions in patch 5.4
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With patch 5.4 well underway, we're to the point where we can make some solid observations on the state of the class and take a look at what matters to death knights in this raiding tier. This week's column will attempt to answer some basic questions I've seen floating around the web from death knights about some of the basic realities of patch 5.4. How are death knights in PvE? Death knights, simply put, are doing pretty well. We're upper-middle of the pack DPS wise, which is a solidly comfortable place to be, and so far, there haven't been any hot fixes to change that. Frost is still edging out unholy on DPS for most fights, but unholy is close enough that you should be able to spec into it without being too much of a drain on your raid. Death knight tanks are doing well, especially with a fix that allows Purgatory to "stack" with the legendary tank cloak proc. Assuming you have adequate stamina, mastery is still our best stat for survival, but Riposte ensures that if you need more threat, you can add some avoidance and get good DPS without sacrificing as much survivability as you otherwise would.
Daniel Whitcomb10.22.2013
Lichborne: Death knight tricks for surviving the Timeless Isle
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. The first time you set foot on the Timeless Isle can be pretty intimidating. All of these massive, giant elite mobs. How's a death knight supposed to solo these? I'm here to tell you it's possible. There's both general tips and class specific tips you can take to hear that will help you survive and thrive on the island, whether your goal is to unlock the weekly Epoch Stones quests, track down a rare for a specific fun or useful drop, or anything else. Back to the basics Before you do your class specific tricks, it always helps to have the non-class-specific basics down first. And make no mistake, the mobs on Timeless Isle are a lot easier if you have the basics down. In this case, a little bit of gear optimization hurts. For example, if you don't have your hit and expertise to 7.5% each yet, try to get them there. The rares and higher level elites get easier if you're actually hitting them every time. In addition, once you start getting some of that timeless gear especially, consider springing for enchantments and gems for an extra edge.
Daniel Whitcomb10.15.2013
Lichborne: Downfall raid loot and patch 5.4 world boss loot for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. This week brings us to the end of our patch 5.4 raid gear guide as we take on Garrosh and the bosses guarding him. In addition, we'll take a quick look at what the world bosses of this patch have to offer a death knight. The disclaimers from previous weeks still apply, so keep those in mind. Read on for the breakdown.
Daniel Whitcomb10.08.2013
Lichborne: The Underhold raid loot for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. The Underhold is the third section of the Siege of Orgrimmar, and will be opening up for Flex raiders this week. With that in mind, today we'll look at the loot that drops for the 3 bosses contained within. As before, the same disclaimers from the last two weeks apply. While "Best in Slot" is all well and good, "Best in Slot" also assumes you are playing at the top of your game, using very specific rotations, talents, and glyphs, and using cooldowns at the proper times, and that the gear you're picking up is mostly heroic or heroic warforged gear. Also, upgrades are upgrades, so if you're wielding Raid Finder gear from Throne of Thunder, even non-optimal flex gear from Siege of Orgrimmar is probably going to be an upgrade. Keep that in mind when grabbing gear as well.
Daniel Whitcomb10.01.2013
Lichborne: Gates of Retribution raid loot for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. The second tier of Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar, Gates of Retribution, brings us to the Horde capital itself. There are four bosses to kill and much death knight loot to plunder. The disclaimers from last week's loot guide still apply. While best-in-slot guides are all well and good, keep in mind that what is "best" for you will change based on your skill level, talent choices, and your current gear, and that new gear at a higher item level, even if not optimal, may still be an upgrade over what you had before. With that in mind, let's dig in.
Daniel Whitcomb09.24.2013
Lichborne: Vale of Eternal Sorrows raid loot for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With normal and flex modes in full swing, and Raid Finder due in the coming days, it felt like a good time to start looking at what gear we can pull out of patch 5.4's new raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar. Today, we'll look at the first wing, the Vale of Eternal Sorrows. When gearing up, there are a few things to remember. Note that the item weights described in most guides assume best in slot gear with maximum level play. For example, haste has dropped to the bottom of the 3 major stats for all 3 death knight DPS specs. While some of this is due to bug fixes and changes in itemization, some of it is also a result of gameplay. These sims that returned haste as a low level stat also assumed their user was dressed in heroic warforged gear and using Plague Leech to get 2 death runes every 25-30 seconds and Anti-Magic Shell to gain extra runic power every 45 seconds without fail. If you aren't really in those categories, don't assume a piece of gear is trash for you without the sims to back it up. In a similar vein, that new item level 540 flexible drop is probably going to replace your item level 502 raid finder drop even if it's not optimally itemized for your spec. Also, while the "haste for tanks" craze is still going on in some quarters, I still am not a huge fan of it, especially now that Riposte lets you get at least some threat off of avoidance. I will link normal gear choices, but most of these choices will drop in all 4 difficulties, with the possibility of warforged drops in normal and heroic difficulties.
Daniel Whitcomb09.17.2013
Lichborne: Death knights in Hearthstone
It looks like patch 5.4 is more or less solidified for death knights. There was an expected nerf to Howling Blast, but it's pretty much universally seen as a good thing, as it prevented the ability from becoming so strong it made using Obliterate practically worthless. There was another buff to Soul Reaper as well, which should make it strong enough to justify using for patch 5.4. Overall, while patch 5.4's death knight class fixes have very obviously been band aids, quick and dirty adjustments to the usual suspects, they work from what they need to do and should leave us viable until the inevitable patch 6.0 overhauls. With that in mind, I thought we'd take a break from the class analysis this week and talk about something near and dear to my heart, Hearthstone. Death Knight, alas, was one of those classes that did not get their own hero in the base game, so I figured it might be fun to brainstorm what a death knight Hearthstone deck might look like. It could be the perfect thing for an expansion, anyway.
Daniel Whitcomb09.03.2013