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Lichborne: A death knight primer for tanking 5-man dungeons
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly death knight column. This week, your host is in a bit of a tanking mood. Those Emblems of Frost don't earn themselves! So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel. Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I've heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy. Now technically, this is how it's almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we've had a taste of true power, I'm sure we're all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank. Whether you're a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column's for you.
Lichborne: Emblem of Triumph Gear for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your look into the issues of the moment for the death knight class. Ah, Emblems of Triumph, the new hotness. Even if you're not running the coliseum, you still have chance to grab them in the heroic daily, and by now, surely most of us have at least had the opportunity to save up enough to buy something. Deciding what to buy, however, is a whole different question. Let's take a look at the badge loot and see what's in it for a death knight.
Horde vs. Alliance Tier 9 Mighty Battle!
The full Tier 9 previews are finally out, courtesy of MMO Champion. Whatever your opinions are on faction-specific armor - there are arguments to be made for and against it - it's reasonable to say that some of the sets look pretty darned good. It's the first time we're seeing faction-specific armor sets in a long time, so we'll actually get to do something we can't do with old armor sets - we'll pit the Horde and Alliance against each other in an armor face-off!In our Tier 9 Mighty Battle, we'll pit one faction's version of the Tier 9 armor against the other and judge them based on the following criteria: Thematic integrity to class - We'll look at how well Blizzard's armor design represents the class. The best kind of class armor should be recognizable as a perfect representation of that class. For example, the Warlock's Tier 5, the Corruptor Raiment, or the Paladin's Tier 2, the Judgement set, both look unmistakably diabolical and righteous, respectively. Thematic integrity to faction - Because these are the first faction-specific PvE sets, we'll also examine how well the armor sets embody each faction and their archetypal - or stereotypical - representation. Overall design - Of course, aside from looking true to the class and faction, an armor set can just be plain badass. Everybody wants to look good, right? Tiebreaker, how each armor class stacks up - Since we're scoring ten classes, we'll avoid a tie by scoring the armor sets based on their armor type, too. Because the armor sets share models across armor class, we'll award points to each faction based which side has better designs overall. Kind of like an electoral college, but without the chads. The Mighty Battle begins after the jump! %Gallery-68283%
Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight class column, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb, who's still wearing mourning black for AE Unholy Blight. And also because black looks awesome.I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes. This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it's not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There's a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one's going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.
