Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we venture into new (well, sort of) territory…

While many people are taking a leisurely stroll towards 80, seeing the sights and exploring all the new content, there’s a sizeable contingent of players racing to get to the level cap as soon as possible so the real fun can begin. Many of these are aiming to raid immediately, but there’s a lot of catching up to do before our WotLK endgame knowledge matches the depth of its TBC counterpart.

So if you are planning to raid early on, and are wondering about gear, preparation and whether you should buy that mammoth or not, we’re here to help.
Raid Basics

The four currently available level 80 raid instances are Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, the Vault of Archavon and the Eye of Eternity. Each can be attempted on 10-man or 25-man (”heroic”) difficulty. You can walk right into Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum as a fresh 80, but to face Malygos in the Eye of Eternity you need to have killed Sapphiron for the key. Archavon is linked to victory in Wintergrasp and drops PvP as well as PvE loot.

Naxx is likely your first stop - the earlier bosses are more forgiving and there is a lot more to be gained from an instance with multiple bosses over the three single-boss raids. To enter Naxxramas, fly to where it’s marked on the Dragonblight map and enter the citadel from underneath. There’s nowhere to repair in the instance, but if you die and release you are ported alive to the nearest graveyard (much like Tempest Keep) so you can detour via your faction base or summon a mammoth mount in the graveyard.

The Obsidian Sanctum is underneath Wyrmrest Temple — the only portal with a green swirly. The Eye of Eternity is located in the Nexus, higher up than the 5-man entrance, and the easiest way to get to Archavon is via your faction’s portal to Wintergrasp from Dalaran.

Before you enter: Gear

If you’re already in full Sunwell gear, you might be wondering if you even need to bother finding gear upgrades before venturing into Naxx. To some extent, your lassitude is rewarded - for most classes, Sunwell gear will do pretty well. However, things have changed - you’ll need a lot more hit rating to cause pain to level 83 mobs, for example. Tanks in particular might find they take a particularly hard beating without any WotLK gear, being well below the crit immunity cap. However, there are plenty of items available through crafting, quests and 5-man instances that can complement Outland gear.

Don’t underestimate the value of stat points gained through gems and enchants, too. It’s not worth regemming every single piece of gear you have with Northrend blue gems, but jewelcrafters and enchanters skilling up can effectively give you free (or cheap) stats. Leatherworkers and tailors might have blue patches going spare, though these are likely to be more valuable and probably worth saving for new upgrades.

Specs and Glyphs

Don’t forget your spec. Turning up in your levelling spec might not exactly be optimal for a raid, so read up on your class and decide your PvE route. Dual specs aren’t in yet, so be prepared to fork out the cash if you’ll be doing double duty. If you changed glyphs for levelling, sort those out now as well, and remember you got an extra glyph slot at 80.

Strategies

If you’ve done Naxxramas at 60 or 70, or you were a beta tester, you’re probably pretty familiar with most of the bosses and how to defeat them. If not, there’s plenty of information already out about Wrath’s initial instances. Trying to learn every boss at once on-the-fly is a surefire route to a headache, so do a little bit of homework and know your Patchwerk from your Sapphiron.

None of the strategies involved in Naxx are particularly taxing once you have the hang of them, although mechanics like Heigan’s dance, Thaddius’s polarity switches and Sapphiron’s ice blocks will likely catch those new to the encounter unawares. All three of these are a lot easier to learn by doing than by reading about them, so don’t worry if you make a mistake the first time — but do your best to learn from it!

Consumables

Still got tons of raid consumables left from level 70? If so, you can use them as a base for your brand new level 80 raid bag. Note that you can’t use weapon oils on any weapons you might have picked up post-70, so you can throw them away. Northrend food is easy enough to find; several recipes are purchased with Cooking Awards (tokens gained from the cooking daily) so co-ordinate with other raiders to make sure you don’t all buy the same one first.

Flasks and elixirs are dependent on a friendly alchemist — maybe yourself — skilling up, and frost lotuses, the Northrend version of fel lotus, aren’t too easy to come by just yet. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to walk into your first Wrath raid with a bagful of brand new pots, unless you’re very rich or spend all your time farming herbs; the old stuff should do to start with. Bear in mind, though, that the Shattrath soulbound flasks don’t cover Northrend instances.

Health and mana pots have been limited to one per fight since 3.0.2, but you should have run across a handful of these while levelling (especially if you did the Ampitheater of Anguish) and they’re not too hard to come by otherwise.

Priorities as a new level 80

When you ding that final ding, and no longer have the experience bar as your goal in life, there are a huge range of things you can do. From dailies to raiding and tradeskills, what should you do first?

There’s obviously no clear-cut answer, but there are a few things from a raiding point of view that take precedence. If you’re after server first 25-man achievements, and especially if there’s another guild close on your heels, your priorities are probably to help people level and then to jump into raids at the earliest possible moment. Although I’ve mostly talked about Naxx above, the Obsidian Sanctum is clearable with a newly-80, half-empty raid of people in Sunwell gear — as long as you kill the three drakes around the sides, which will otherwise land during the fight and make your lives a misery.

Your own tradeskills might end up being fairly important, as you can craft immediate gear upgrades that will make things easier in raids. You can also start running 5-mans and heroics with other 80s to get upgrades and reputation. Plus, there are dailies for factions such as the Sons of Hodir — who provide shoulder enchants — that you’ll want to start doing as soon as possible in order to make the most of all the shiny new gear you’ll be getting.

Talking of shiny new things, if yo’re loaded with cash (or have a guild bank sponsoring you), the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth is a good buy for repairing during raids, plus you might want to blow 8k on one of the Dalaran rings, sold in the jewelcrafter’s shop.

Of course, it’s also appealing to fly around, getting the explorer achievement, and then fish in Dalaran sewer for a few hours. You’ve certainly deserved a break, but if you’re pushing to clear content before anyone else on the server, sadly you can’t wait forever.

Good luck in Northrend!

Wrath of the Lich King is finally here, and with it comes a whole load of new lore and stories to discover. I hope you guys are reading your quest text! I imagine all of these new quests will bring up a lot of new questions as well, and to that I say bring it on. For now, though, let’s field some questions from last week.

Rosa asked…

Personally, I’m tired of Outland and demons and fantasy-tech and I’m glad to see Warcraft going gothic again, buuuut there’s one thing that I love about Outland and I’m hoping it’s not gone forever. Ethereals are, like, totally awesome, and my favourite unplayable race in WoW. The question I have is, do we see these guys anywhere in Wrath? And if not, do you think that we’ll see them ever again?

They’re in Wrath but in a very, very limited capacity. It’s not the Consortium either, it’s the Ethereum. I really liked the ethereals too, so I’m kind of sad they didn’t come to Northrend en masse. At least one Ethereal town would’ve been neat. It’s about time the Goblins had some real competition. Cooler, classier, smarter competition. Hell, let’s just trade out the Steamwheedle Cartel for the Consortium. Sounds good to me.

Wolly asked…

Just how much Old God love are we going to see in the expansion? They’ve got to be one of the most compelling forces at work in the WoW universe and it’d be a real treat to see Yogg-Saron manipulating the scenes against the good guys and Arthas.

Yogg-Saron is an everpresent… presence. You feel his influence all over Northrend, and his ties are everywhere. Despite that, he somehow manages to be a little more behind-the-scenes. The Scourge is up in your face and at the top of your mind, but Yogg-Saron’s influence is always right there. Those of you with tradeskills that involve using metals, you’ve been directly exposed to Yogg-Saron. It’s called Saronite for a reason. I imagine he’ll be a more direct threat once he’s actually in-game in whatever raid zone is on the horizon, but right now it’s primarily a “presence” and not an “oh shi-” kind of thing.

I very highly recommend running Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom as soon as you’re high enough level. Not only is it just a beautiful instance, it’s a good look at what the Nerubians were, have become, and at what lies beneath the kingdom. Plus, the last boss is the most awesome 5-man boss I’ve ever seen. Seriously. Go do it.

Sesquame said…

I was working on the exploration achievements when ( came across an island in Hillsbrad named “Purgation Isle” with level 58 elite undead. Any lore on it?

Nope, not really. It’s a neat place so that’s kind of a shame, but there’s really nothing specific about it. It was populated with elites for the quest chain at level 60 that upgraded your dungeon tier set. You just kill the dudes and loot their junk. We can make guesses as to what’s there, but that doesn’t make it canon, you know? Maybe it was a little abbey, or a special little graveyard, or maybe an ice cream parlor.

Javierkaiser said…

What about the duel between Thrall and Garrosh? Why are they fighting?

Thrall is kind of a wuss and is often to slow to act. Garrosh is a jerk and doesn’t think at all before he acts. Garrosh got annoyed with Thrall’s hesitation to send troops to Northrend, Thrall wouldn’t budge on the issue until they thought it over, Garrosh challenges Thrall’s authority and drags him into a duel over it. It’s just the result of the massive mess that is current Orcish society.

aw232 said…

In the Pre-Wrath Event Thrall loses to Garrosh Hellscream in a fight in front of high ranking members of the horde. What does this mean in terms of political standing and succession in the horde? If Garrosh had killed Thrall would Garrosh been the new warchief? How do politics work in the Horde?

Technically Thrall didn’t lose, the duel was interrupted by the Scourge. He probably was going to lose, though. In the New Horde, we can’t really be sure what would happen. In the Old Horde, Garrosh would most probably become the new Warchief. In the New Horde, while Garrosh as Warchief would get a lot of support from a portion of the Orcs, it’d probably cause a civil war or schism in the Horde. People like Saurfang would not tolerate that nonsense, but there are still a lot of Orcs that long for the days of old when they could just slaughter things for a living.

I doubt Sylvanas, the Blood Elves, et cetera would be happy about Garrosh as Warchief, either. Hell, if Garrosh killed Thrall, Saurfang might just Mortal Strike him into a fine mist before he could even try to claim Warchief. We can’t really say for sure. The Horde’s entire society is screwed up right now. Considering Thrall keeps people like Nazgrel around as his advisors, maybe the Horde wouldn’t have blinked at all and welcomed their warlord with open arms.

This installment of All the World’s a Stage is the thirteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.

The Warrior is not merely a well-trained fighter who loves his weapons and armor and takes great care to wield them well — inside each one is a boiling cauldron of rage and passion. By and large, warriors feel at home on the battlefield because it is the one place where they can express themselves, where they can finally let go of all the restraint society imposes on them and unleash all their emotions. Without his raging passion, a person would be much better suited to some calmer form of work — it is this unquenchable fire which sustains a warrior, driving him into action in the midst of mortal peril.

Alliance warriors tend to focus more on training and weapon mastery, sometimes downplaying their rage so much that you hardly even see it. Some warriors like this (even in the Horde sometimes) may be so stoic that even they do not believe that they have any emotions whatsoever, although I doubt anyone who watched them fight could really agree. Something’s got to make you willing to put on all that armor and risk death every day.

But Horde warriors are more likely to display their rage, bloodlust, and other aggressive emotions much more freely. Of course, it’s possible that a Horde warrior could have a collection of stuffed animals, write poetry, and even play hopscotch with children, but their rage lurks deep within, and the essence of their profession is to let it loose.

Orcs

The image of the orc warrior calls to mind the blood-red-eyed growling monstrosity roaring with demonic bloodthirstiness and wielding his great axes with abandon in his single-minded pursuit of nothing but death and destruction. For a time, while under the control of the Burning Legion, many orcish warriors were like this, but now even the wildest of barbarians remembers the need to rein in the anger from time to time. Orc warriors (or, at least many of them) are a civilized people when all is said and done, though you might not know it if you only saw them in battle.

Grom Hellscream is probably the most famous orcish warrior, a blademaster who combined immense skill with unbridled passion for the fight. Durotan, Thrall’s father, was the very image of the restrained warrior who put the reasons for fighting above the passion of battle itself.

Trolls

Trolls are most likely to blend voodoo beliefs and ritual in with their battle. Their religion is savage and primal, and it fuels their fury with beliefs about revenge, death, and the desires of the spirits. They do not have the demon-possessed history of the orcs, but they are sometimes equally viscous. They are well known as berserkers who get more and more dangerous the more wounded and cornered they become.

The most famous troll warriors are Vol’jin, leader of the Darkspear tribe, and Zul’jin, ruler of the Amani trolls in Zul’Aman, although both of them are witch-doctors in addition to being warriors. Vol’jin is by far the more approachable of the two, known for his wisdom and intelligence. Zul’jin on the other hand is well known for his all-consuming hatred of the blood elves and anyone associated with them. Any troll warrior is likely to follow their example of intense cunning, likely with a good mix of voodoo rituals and ruthlessness thrown in too.

Tauren

Regardless of their immense size, and the apparent limitlessness of their battle fury, the tauren are among the least likely to be totally consumed by rage in battle. At all times they are connected to the earth and are intensely aware of practical concerns as well as bloody ones. A tauren warrior’s sense of spirituality and religion is almost diametrically opposed to that of the trolls, and he fights to bring natural order to the chaos, even if outwardly he seems like a giant savage monster to some.

One of the most famous tauren warriors is Tagar, Cairne Bloodhoof’s second in command, who helped guide and command the tauren in times of crisis. Cairne himself could also be considered a warrior, though he may also be a druid or something else instead.

Undead

Many Forsaken warriors remember a lot of what being a human or elven warrior used to be, with all their talk about honor, justice, the glory of Lordaeron and all that. They may have been called Knights or Champions at one point, or they might have just been regular old guards and soldiers, but now all that has faded away for most of them.

Who’s to say what really remains? Do Forsaken warriors feel anger and rage the same way a living person might? Undoubtedly, many are driven by a desire for vengeance against the Scourge and perhaps even humanity as well. But this rage likely does not burn in them the same way that an orc’s might — rather it is cold and calculating. An undead warrior’s rage not unbridled passion or anger so much as it is almost intellectual, so very sharp and chilling that it cuts like a scalpel.

Additional notes

Of course there are blood elf warriors in the Warcraft setting, but for various reasons none of them are player characters, so we won’t touch on them in this article except to suggest that someone who wants to play a warrior-like blood elf choose a paladin, a rogue, or perhaps best of all, a death knight, for a similar type of character archetype.

Also, keep in mind that none of what I say in this or any other article is the one-and-only truth. This is not the one true way to roleplay — rather it is a proposed standard based on lore and common sense, to which you are welcome to contribute your own ideas and or disagreements in the comments below. These are places to begin when you think about how your race and class interact to make your character who he or she is, not limitations I’m trying to impose upon your creativity. Perhaps these articles can help you think of a reason why your character is different from the standard case. In fact, many of the most interesting characters will break these molds even as they to conform to the same lore and common sense they are based upon.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to look the introductory zones of 70 to 75.!

Welcome to Northrend! Ready to take on Arthas? Here is a quick primer on the road to 80. For part 1, we’ll look at an example leveling spec (which isn’t Shadow), early spells, different zones, and some tips.

Spec

My personal spec of choice has always been to go a combination of Holy and Discipline. I can still maintain a decent pace soloing and I can still remain viable in instance healing. Believe me, as a non-Shadow Priest leveling, there will never be a shortage of players looking for healers for an instance.

The one I picked for leveling from 70 is a pseudo-hybrid 31/27/3 build.

Highlights

Power Infusion – Haste every 2 minutes. Keep this up as often as possible.

Surge of Light – Free Smite (or Flash Heal). Watch for the proc and use it according to your situation. Full health? Use it on a Smite. Took some damage? Slap on a Flash Heal.

Spirit Tap – Minimization of downtime. This skill is virtually essential in order to reduce the amount of drinking to do.

DPS Method

Cast your Power Word: Shield up before you open fire. Remember that Holy Fire is a 1.5 second cast when talented. Open up with that spell first, follow up with a combination of Mind Blasts and Smites. Keep doing this until the target you’re hitting reaches ~3000 health. Finish it off with a Smite and an Shadow Word: Death. If it still has health remaining, tap your Holy Nova once or twice to make sure it stays down.

Against multiple mobs, keep your Shield up as often as you can. Focus down one mob at a time. If you notice your health getting lose, use instant spells like Prayer of Mending and Renew to keep yourself up. The goal isn’t to DPS all the mobs down as fast as possible. It’s to go at it slowly and surely while keeping yourself up. You want to try to outlast the mobs as much as you can. If you have Super Mana Potions lying around, don’t hesitate to bust one. Your Shadowfiend’s a great tool as it can help provide a small burst of damage and provide you with more mana.

Preparation

Stock up on some Pugnant Seal Whiskey from the local Inn. About 80 is a good number. This is also a good time to use up any stockpiles of Spell damage food that you might continue to have. Super Mana Potions are nice to have in case you need mana in a pinch. Check out WoW Insider’s guide to preparing for Wrath with consumables.

Zones of Interest

Check the guide to get to Northrend!

Borean Tundra – Accessible via the Stormwind Harbor for Alliance and the zeppelin from Durotar. It’s possible to navigate from Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord without resorting to flying mounts of a continent-wide trek. You get introduced to Malygos. Give Nexus a shot (after you do the various quests in the region to gain access to further Nexus-related quests).

Howling Fjord – Accessible via Menethil Harbor for Alliance and the zeppelin from the Undercity. Utgarde Keep is the first instance you can enter. Don’t forget to check out the walkthrough!

Dragonblight – At around 71 or 72, Dragonblight becomes appealing. Most players I’ve spoken with opted to go to the other introductory zone (Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord depending on which they did first). I suggest diving into Dragonblight as soon as you are almost done the introduction zone. Do the chain quests. Epic cinematic is epic.

Grizzly Hills - Located on the eastern side of Northrend and is a zone above Howling Fjord. You’ll run into the Westfall camp here at some point. If you’ve run Shadowfang Keep before, you’ll encounter an old friend.

Getting to Dalaran

Unlike Shattrath City, players can no longer simply ride into a neutral capital. There’s a an attunement like quest. There’s a variety of NPCs that can port players to Dalaran. You can only get this quest when you’re level 74. On the other hand, you can also pay off a Mage or a Warlock to send you to Dalaran. Alternatively, you can get higher level guildies to queue for a Battleground from Dalaran and then AFK out (which should work at any level).

For Alliance – Magister Dath’omere (Valiance Keep, Borean Tundra), Baron von Stromhearth (Valgarde, Howling Fjord) and Magistrix Haelenai (Amberpine Lodge, Grizzly Hills).

For Horde – Image of Archmage Aethas Sunreaver (Agmar’s Hammer, Dragonblight). There’s undoubtedly similar NPCs in the respective Horde camps in the different zones. I just don’t know the name of them since I’m Alliance (cue chorus of boos).

Skills

At 71, you learn Inner Fire at level 71. It’s the only skill you learn at this level. It’s entirely up to you if you decide to boat back to Stormwind or Ironforge to train it. I strongly suggest no if you’re bent on hitting 80. I trained my skills at every second level. Besides, Holy Fire is the first DPS spell that gains a new rank (at 72).

For 74, you gain new ranks of Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Smite, and Devouring Plague.

General Leveling Tips

If you want to level as fast as humanly possible, you’ll need to streamline your game plan.

• Don’t sightsee. I know it’s Northrend and it’s all new. But if you don’t care about the experience and just want to level to 80, you have to go straight from quest giver to objective.
• Do a bunch of quests at a time. Do all the quests at your local quest hub before going back to the hub. You waste less traveling time going back and forth in order to turn in individual quests.
• Forget professions. Leave those to 80. If you’re a gatherer, you’ll want your Cold Weather Flying training anyway (because it makes it easier). If you’re a crafter, hold off some as raw materials are insanely expensive (a stack of Cobalt Ore is going for 300g. Ridiculous!)

Did you pack well enough for the cold? Allie gave great advice on some basic things we need while we’re in Northrend, like food and other consumables. Depending on your level of progression or gear, your approach to questing or leveling out here will vary quite a bit. For well-geared players, it’ll be a breeze to go through most of the zones as gear of item level 146 and beyond (Tier 6 / Season 3) will last a fair bit past Level 75 or so.

While the bare attributes on those items such as Intellect or Strength will often be superior to most quest rewards, other statistics will begin to fall behind such as Hit, Crit, or even Haste as we level and the ratings we need for those to scale become bigger. Here is where lesser geared players get a bit of a helping hand. The plate greens of Northrend, as well as the occasional blues are loaded with Hit, Haste, and other important stats. If you’re going to Northrend dressed in blues or even item level 120-123 epics, you’ll be able to quickly replace pieces that have scale appropriately with your level. In the end, it will all even out.

The gear you have now, as in right now, that’s all you’ll need to be in Northrend. There’s no need to look for upgrades, no need to spend Badges of Justice or Honor, and no need to even do anything. Just go into Northrend, quest (or get BoE drops), and pick up what comes your way. To help you, here’s are some recommended rewards in the starting zones for players who aren’t very well geared yet.

RETRIBUTION / HASTE
Retribution Paladins looking to gear up through the starter zones should look into Howling Fjord, where there is a good assortment of Haste items. It’s going to be very tempting to stack up on haste, and if you’re merely picking up gear to level, then it isn’t such a bad stat to pursue. If you happen to be Level 68 or a fresh Level 70, the green rewards will be excellent leveling tools for you.

1. Runeplate Helm
If you’re a Horde player, this is a reward from Adding Injury to Insult, which is a mini-quest chain involving the Vrykul in Baleheim. The pre-requisites for the quest are Baleheim Must Burn! and Baleheim Body Count, which awards Scavenged Tirasian Plate. For the Alliance, the helm is a reward from Mission: Eternal Flame, which requires destroying some Plague Tanks around Halgrind.
2. Ramshorn-Inlaid Shoulders
Horde players get this at the end of a short quest chain right at Vengeance Landing. Test At Sea is a boming-type quest that leads from The New Plague, which also awards Antique Reinforced Legguards. Alliance players only get this after a relatively longer quest chain which involves riding a harpoon near Utgarde Keep. The quest It Goes to 11 is the only part of the chain that rewards gear.
3. Scavenged Tirasian Plate
As mentioned, the Horde get this rather easily from Baleheim Body Count. The Alliance, on the other hand, get this from Return to Valgarde, which is part of a longish quest chain and is the only quest from that chain with any gear rewards.
4. Onyx Grips
These melee DPS gloves are a reward from Stop The Ascension!, which is started by a random drop from the mobs in Skorn.
5. Antique Reinforced Legguards
Alliance need to complete a short quest chain for these plate legs. The quest, Anguish of Nifflevar, can actually be completed on the way to It Goes to 11. As mentioned, the Horde get this from The New Plague in Vengeance Landing.
6. Ghoul-Crushing Stompers
These boots are a reward from Bring Down Those Shields, with Alliance and Horde versions. This quest involves taking down crystals along the west coast of Howling Fjord, between the Apothecary Camp and Westguard Keep.
7. Featherweight Claymore
Horde players get this very easily from A Tailor-made Formula, just to the west of New Agamand. This is part of one of the more fun Horde quest chains in the zone. Alliance have the quest The Delicate Sound of Thunder, which is a pet-type exploration quest in the Baelgun Excavation Camp.

1. Mightstone Helm
The Alliance get this helm from a short quest chain from Valiance Keep in the Borean Tundra. The quest, the Hunt Is On, is the third part of a chain that will also give Mightstone Breastplate. The Horde must go through a longer quest chain culminating in Trophies of Gammoth, which should send players back to Warsong Hold after a brief sojourn out East.
2. Chilled Pauldrons
Off to the North of Borean Tundra is Fizzcrank Airstrip, where the Alliance get a quest chain that will reward Chilled Pauldrons midway with a quest called Re-Cursive. Horde players must go to the Taunka’le Village for a short quest to En’kilah called Neutralizing The Cauldrons.
3. Mightstone Breastplate
Horde players get Bury Those Cockroaches after a short quest right at the quarry outside Warsong Hold. As mentioned earlier, this is also one of the first rewards that Alliance players get right when they set foot at Valiance Keep.
4. Girdle of Ripped Space
This nicely named belt is an Alliance-only quest reward from Monitoring the Rift: Winterfin Cavern, the third part of a series. Horde players can take the Amberplate Waistguard from the quest Fallen Necropolis off to the North of Taunka’le Village. Alliance have the same reward from Might As Well Wipe Out the Scourge in the same area.
5. Amberplate Grips
Alliance players at the Fizzcrak Airstrip will have to go through a quest chain that involves looking through poop — Blizzard seems to enjoy making us do that — ending in Give Fizzcrank The News. On the other side of the zone, Horde players will clean up Fizzcrank’s mess with Cleaning Up The Pools from Taunka’le Village.
6. Mightstone Legplates
Just outside of Valiance Keep is a small nod to Westfall where players can get Repurposed Technology, the second part of a two-part series that will reward these fine pants. Horde players do a cool quest called Taken by the Scourge right outside Warsong Hold, a variant of Taken in the Night from Terokkar Forest. Players can sometimes get pretty strong ally NPCs when freeing from the webbing.
7. Moral Sabatons / Chilled Greaves
The Moral Sabatons are a reward from a D.E.H.T.A quest that teaches players the basics of the new vehicle system using a mammoth. If you can’t afford to buy the mammoth mount, then spend some time taking screenshots while doing this quest. Chilled Greaves are a reward from Deploy the Shake-n-Quake! for the Alliance and The Collapse for the Horde. Both quests are the last parts of a four-part quest chain from Fizzcrank Airstrip and Taunka’le Village, respectively.
8. Blubber Grinder
There are several choices of 2-handers from questing in the Borean Tundra (and even the Howling Fjord) that have identical 110.1 DPS, but the Alliance get a sweet mace from The Tides Turn. Horde players will do fine with a 2-handed sword from Cutting Off the Source, part of a quest chain in Warsong Hold.

PROTECTION
The best place for Protection Paladins to get relatively good gear upgrades is from Borean Tundra, where a good number of plate drops have high Stamina. Some of this gear also has crit, which works well with the new DPS-oriented mechanic of tanking. Furthermore, more Stamina on those items works hand-in-hand with Touched by the Light.

1. Amberplate Headguard
The Amberplate items in Borean Tundra have incredibly high Stamina. Take the helm, for example, which has 80 Stamina. Alliance players can get this helm from the quest Back to the Airstrip, from a Gnome East of Fizzcrank’s Airstrip. Around the same area, a Tauren will send Horde players to Return with the Bad News to Taunka’le Village as the last part of a short series.
2. Chilled Shoulderplates
The Chilled Shoulderplates are the the highest Stamina shoulder rewards from the Borean Tundra. Horde players can get this from Stop the Plague, given by the same Tauren with the quest above, and also part of a series. Likewise, the Alliance equivalent is from the Gnome in the same area. The quest is called There’s Something Going On in Those Caves, which is the last part of a four-part chain.
3. Gorge’s Breastplate of Bloodrage
This 80 Stamina breastplate is a Horde-only quest reward from the extremely fun siege-tank quest called The Plains of Nasam. This will be one of players’ first forays into the new siege vehicle system of Wrath of the Lich King. Alliance players will have to make do with the lower Stamina, but higher Strength and Crit Mightstone Breastplate from Enemies of the Light from Valiance Keep.
4. Bogstrok Plate Gloves
A nice piece of armor with expertise, these gloves come from a neutral quest giver King Mrgl-Mrgl, a Night Elf in a Murloc Suit. You know, the one from last year’s BlizzCon. The quest, called Surrender… Not!, will let you experience the thrill of being in a Murloc suit. I mean, you’ve always wanted to wear one, right?
5. Amberplate Waistguard
This belt has a good mix of Stamina and Expertise. Sage Highmesa, the Tauren who gives the quests that reward items 1 and 2, also gives the quest for this belt, called Fallen Necropolis. The Alliance equivalent has the same Gnome for items 1 and 2 giving a quest called Might As Well Wipe Out the Scourge.
6. Amberplate Legguards
Another 80 Stamina item, these legplates are a reward from the Depeche Mode-inspired Master and Servant quest for the Alliance in Fizzcrank’s Airstrip. The Horde get this from Bor’gorok Outpost, where they can perfom the quest Revenge Upon Magmoth.
7. Moral Sabatons
These are rewards from a fun D.E.H.T.A. siege-vehicle introductory quest called Kaw the Mammoth Destroyer where players will ride a mammoth.
8. Rod of Poacher Punishment
While there are a good number of one-hander weapons in Borean Tundra, this one stood out for me in particular because of the speed of the weapon. It’s a 1.6 speed mace with Haste and is on par with all other one-hander weapon rewards in terms of DPS. The fast speed also makes it ideal for the new and improved Reckoning.
9. Plainkeeper Blockade
It’s a toss up between this shield and the similarly Alliance-only Icechill Buckler, but I chose to go with this because we were building up a high Stamina set, anyway. This is a reward from Ned, Lord of Rhinos, a D.E.H.T.A quest that requires you to kill an animal. Those hypocrites. Unfortunately, Horde tanks must settle for a caster shield called The Borean Ward in the zone.

HOLY / CRIT
It’s slim pickings for Holy Paladins over at the Howling Fjord, where most quest reward plate have no Intellect and a smattering of different stats. On the other hand, the plate rewards from Borean Tundra are excellent leveling pieces because of the crit. This is great for Holy Paladins and the newly improved 6-second Holy Shock. Among other things, of course.

1. Seabone Heaume
I didn’t even know there was such as word as heaume, but it’s apparently how Inspector Clouseau would pronounce ‘helm’. Anyway, Horde players can get this quest from Garrosh’s Landing, through the quest called Burn in Effigy. Alliance get this as a reward from a corpse, who gives the quest The Late William Allerton.
2. Sinking Pauldrons
The Night Elf in a murloc suit King Mrgl-Mrgl gives the quest Oh Noes, the Tadpoles! to both factions, which is the start of a series. It’s an awesome quest that involves a lot of cute, baby murlocs.
3. Chestguard of Salved Wounds
Wendy Darren just outside of Valiance Keep will give the quest Take No Chances, which requires players to burn infected grain (the Horde at Vengeance Landing have to burn corpses…). Horde players can get this from a quest chain ending with Vermin Extermination, just East of Warsong Hold.
4. Amberplate Grips
Strangely, there are no spell power plate gloves in the Borean Tundra, but thankfully crit and haste both work for attack and spell power, making these Strength gloves a moderate alternative if you don’t have better. Horde players get this from Cleaning Up the Pools in Taunka’le Village while Alliance players get it from the end of a quest chain, Give Fizzcrank the News.
5. Lost Crusader Waistguard
This crit and spell power plate belt is a reward from a quest called A Visit to the Curator, the last in a short chain from the Kalu’ak.
6. Benign Crusader’s Plate
These Horde-only plate pants are a reward from the very first part of a short series of quests North of Warsong Hold. The quest, Foolish Endeavors, has players fighting alongside Saurfang himself. So let him do all the work. Alliance and Horde players can opt to get the Intellect-laden Plainwatcher Legplates, a reward from the D.E.H.T.A. quest The Culler Cometh.
7. Earthborn Greaves
This is a reward from the Horde-only quest Defeat the Gearmaster, where players will need to kill a Gnome that looks like Astro Boy gone wrong. Alliance players will have to miss out on the crit rating but get a good alternative with Mendicant’s Treads, a reward from It’s Time For Action, the middle quest of a moderately long series by Valiance Keep.
8. Medic’s Morning Star
As with weapon choices, there are several to choose from in Borean Tundra. However, the only other spell power weapon that Paladins can use has Spirit, so it’s probably better to still with the Intellect of Medic’s Morning Star. Horde players get this midway through a short series right at Warsong Hold, Cutting Off the Source. Alliance players also get this early on from a chain by killing Nerubians outside Valiance Keep in The Siege.
9. Borean Ward
The Borean Ward is a decent mix of crit and MP5, albeit not having any spell power whatsoever. This is a reward at the end of a short D.E.H.T.A. quest chain called The Nefarious Clam Master, part of the ‘master’ series of kill quests in Borean Tundra.

Welcome to the first post-Wrath installment of Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column. Join Daniel Whitcomb on the bleeding edge of a new and untried class.

So Wrath is upon us, and we can finally start leveling our Death Knights on the live servers. That’s right, this time it’s for keeps. I’m pretty excited about that. One thing, though, that I haven’t gotten to do yet on live servers is tank a dungeon. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that 98% of the people leveling through Outland right now are Death Knights, so finding a healer is a bit difficult. Still, I did my fair share of tanking on Beta servers, and I played a Druid tank for years, and I’m figuring I’ll do my fair share of tanking again at 80. Thus, I decided that this week is the perfect time to start getting ready to tank, even if Utgarde may be the first instance most Death Knights will get a group for.

Let’s get down to the basics:

Preparing to Tank

First, If you haven’t read Allison’s Open Letter to Death Knight Tanks, you should now. There are some very solid basic rules about pulling and keeping aggro that any serious tank should be familiar with. Once you’re back from that, we’ll continue.

The first thing to wrap your mind around is that every tree can tank, at least to the 5-man Heroic level. Blood, Unholy, and Frost are all viable choices to stand up against a big bad boss or a group of elite mooks. That said, you still need to specialize if you’re serious about tanking. Essentially, each tree has some solid early tree tanking talents, such as Blade Barrier, Anticipation, and Toughness, which almost every build should probably pick up. Then, the tree you specialize in has late tree talents such as Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, and Unbreakable Armor.

The final thing you need to consider is your gear. As awesome as it looks, the newbie Death Knight quest gear is not for tanking. You need stuff with more AC, more Stamina, and maybe a bit of defense before you can get seriously about tanking. Your healers will thank you, and your repair bill will thank you.

You can start gathering tanking greens as early as Hellfire Peninsula, with quest rewards such as Flintlocke’s Piloting Pants and the Underworld Helm. Of course, by the time you’re ready to tank Utgarde, you’ll hopefully have found more solid gear. I myself saved a selection of “Of The Champion” greens from my pre-BC dailies, and there should be a few good solid tanking quest rewards from Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra you can grab, such as the Blacksoul Protector, Amberplate Leggings, the Rigid Tuskring, or the Cragthumper.

And yes, I’m still recommending that you grab a 2-handed weapon for tanking, no matter how tempting it might be to grab a Sword of Heartwrenching Slaughter and a Blade of the Empty Void. Any extra defense or parry skills you pick up will still be negated by the extra attacks the mobs get in when they parry you.

Admittedly, it’s going to be hard to compete for a tank slot against old tank characters who have had time to build up a set of tier 6 tanking armor that breaks 20k health and already have enough defense to make them uncrittable. Still, you should be able to find enough odds and ends that you can pull through a dungeon and not be too much of a pain to heal.

So once you have a good set of high-stamina, high-AC tanking gear, and once you’ve learned how to pull, where do you go from there? Let’s look at Death Knight tanking in action, then check out a few talent builds.

Using your Skills and Talents

So once you’re in a dungeon, how do you handle tanking? First of all, make sure you’re using Frost Presence. Not only is the extra armor helpful, but the threat boost is pretty much required to tank effectively. After all, your only specific “high threat” ability is Death and Decay, and your taunts have relatively restrictive cooldowns. You’ll be putting out the damage to try to stay on top of things, and you’ll need that extra threat.

So as you might expect, your basic damage rotation in tank mode is probably not going to be too different from DPS mode. In the most basic, you’ll be gathering a bunch of trash mobs, throwing out Death and Decay, apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague, and use Pestilence and Blood Boil to spread the damage love around, adding in runic power dumps where needed and finishing things up with an Obliterate or its talented equivalent.

Of course, you’ll want to keep on top of threat, and when a monster gets loose and goes for the healer, be able to make a quick judgment as whether to use Dark Command or Death Grip. While Death Grip is nice in that it will pull the mob to you, it also isn’t a true taunt. Once those 3 seconds are up, the mob will go back to attacking whoever is on the top of its threat list. If that isn’t you, you’re back to square one, threatwise. Dark Command, on the other hand, will put you right back at the top of the mob’s aggro list.

The other thing to manage as a Death Knight skill user is your triggered defensive skills. Every Death Knight will have Icebound Fortitude and Anti-Magic Shell. Frost Death Knights will have Lichborne and Unbreakable Armor, Unholy Death Knights will have Bone Shield, and Blood Death Knights will have Vampiric Blood.

Essentially, you probably aren’t going to get away with spamming the defensive key. That means you have to get a feel for when you’re going to see the damage spikes and learn to save your abilities for those. If you know your target enrages, perhaps save at least one of your triggered skills for an enrage. You should also make yourself familiar with Empower Rune Weapon. If your defensive abilities are on cooldown at a crucial moment, being able to use Empower Rune Weapon to refresh them could save your group a wipe. With Anti-Magic Shell, you’ll need to watch the enemy’s spellbar like a hawk, activating Anti-Magic Shell only just as the spell has finished casting to make sure it’s up to absorb the damage.

Chilton: Hmm… those two would probably be the most surprising! (Laughter) We definitely didn’t anticipate Druids being as strong as they ended up being. In Season 1 they actually weren’t all that strong, it really wasn’t until we changed the way the Lifebloom coefficient worked that they really kind of came into their own, because they could keep people alive by spamming Lifeblooms and running around like mad. Before that, they just didn’t really have the healing throughput without staying still and exposing themselves a lot. So that was pretty surprising.

Then I would say also the Paladin… we wanted the Paladin to be a viable tank, including raid tank. We just didn’t expect it to go quite as well as it did, for them to become dominant tanks. Now we’ve used that as a good example of what tanking should be like, and tried to, in this case, make sure Protection Warriors tank similarly to that, and Druids, Death Knights… so we really want tanking to feel like it’s more fun than it was before. We found that hey, if you can hold aggro reliably, and you can, you know, do a fair amount of damage, then tanking is a lot more fun!

WoW Insider: Right. Balancing tanking with needing to do some work but not being overwhelmed.

Chilton: Yeah, exactly. We kinda felt that… one of our early philosophies for tanking was that threat would be the razor’s edge, and that it would take a really skilled tank to hold aggro and all that, so with the way we tuned things to start with it could feel very hectic as a tank, or sometimes desperate even. You know, trying to keep mobs off of your group, but as it turns out it’s a lot of fun to hold aggro reliably and it still feels like there’s a lot of skill differentiation from one tank to another. So that’s where we are.

WoW Insider: Someone on your team said before that there would be no raid as hard as Sunwell Plateau. The question is, how hard is the hardest Wrath raid compared to raids that we know, what could we compare it to?

Chilton: Well, for the raids that are available right now when Wrath launches, there’s really no comparison. Certainly Naxxramas doesn’t even come close to the difficulty of Sunwell, it’s intended to be an introductory raid zone. Malygos is more difficult than Naxxramas, so we do step up the difficulty a little bit there. I do think that later down the line when you fight Arthas it will definitely be more challenging than Naxxramas.

We are adopting a new kind of philosophy towards raiding which is kind of inspired by the way we did Zul’Aman, which is that we want the raid to be accessible, you know, not just for 10-man groups but also 25. Then kind of have a hard mode built in so that you get rewarded for doing it in a way that’s more difficult. Sort of with Zul’Aman, doing it in a shorter time, rescuing in the prisoners, that sort of thing. So that’s kind of what we have in mind, a hard mode for it. So we’re trying to build that more into the encounters, so that we have that Sunwell challenge without necessarily slamming the door in everybody’s face.

WoW Insider: Alright. There’s been talk about making healing more fun, what avenues are you guys exploring there?

Chilton: Some things that we’re looking at are allowing Healers to predict what they’re going to have to do more effectively. Right now they have to play more reactively, and playing reactively in and of itself… at times it’s interesting and fun, but it needs to be complemented by more kinds of gameplay. So some of the things we’re looking at doing is giving players more control of the situation, so they can anticipate what’s going to happen and, you know, use spells and abilities that help them avert bad situations to begin with. Using them properly, right place and right time, that sort of thing.

As a note, that sort of gameplay might also help them watch the playing field more than just staring at health bars. That’s one of the things we hear a lot.

WoW Insider: Yeah, especially in large raids.

Chilton: Right, looking at bars and you don’t get to appreciate all of the scenery.

WoW Insider: One of our writers is a fan of the Dustwallow Marsh revamp, felt it filled holes in the lore of the area, provided another place for people to quest, all of that good stuff. Any plans to revamp more old world content?

Chilton: Definitely, giving that treatment to more of the old world is something that’s very up there in our minds. I’m sure that’s something we’ll have more to talk about at some point in the future. Right now I don’t have a list of zones for you that we’re going to do but believe me when I say it’s definitely up there in our minds.

I’ve been waiting to do some breakdown analysis of the Wrath world event until it actually ended, and since we’re now swarming over Northrend and exploring Arthas’ domain, I think the time has come to determine a verdict on whether or not Blizzard’s world event delivered.

The short answer? I think it did, but not without a few bumps along the way. This was certainly the most ambitious world event Blizzard has attempted yet, both reusing some of their old techniques (the Scourge invasion), some newer tricks (a special boss with extra loot, which they learned from the Horseman last year), and even some tricks they picked up from players. But there were certain issues — the timing was just plain bad, and the event really fizzled out rather than finished with a bang.

After the break, we run through what Blizzard did right and wrong with the world event, and what we can expect in the future.

What they did right

• Immersion. We’re going to be talking a lot about immersion in Wrath (in fact, stay tuned later today), but that’s one thing this event did exactly right: no matter where you were or what you were doing in the World of Warcraft, the zombie plague came home to you whether you liked it or not. No one could ignore it — even in the far reaches of Outland, Blizzard’s world event showed itself. That’s something you can’t do with NPCs — you can only make a growing, transforming, and ubiquitous world event by involving players, and the decision to do that was brilliant. In fact,
• Mechanics. Taking the Corrupted Blood plague and turning it into something official was the most brilliant thing Blizzard’s done with the game, maybe ever. Here was basically an exploit that players found that ended up being so popular and interesting that scientists studied it, and rather than sweep it under the carpet, Blizzard made it one of their own mechanics, and then tweaked it into something that captured players’ imaginations. Zombies have a rich culture behind them, and so whenever a player transformed for the first time, they didn’t need a tutorial or coaching about what to do or where to go. The goal was clear: eat brains, and that’s what most of us did.
• Diversity. The event started out with something as innocuous as crates in Booty Bay, and eventually steamrolled into a worldwide Scourge Invasion (complete with epic rewards) and a brand new boss in the game’s most popular instance and cities under siege. Blizzard threw everything and the kitchen sink into this event, and there were no shortage of ways to get involved, whether you wanted to fight Scourge, become a zombie, or watch Thrall and Garrosh throw down.

But as awesome as the event was, it obviously wasn’t without problems.
What they did wrong

• Timing. If this event really did unfold the way Blizzard planned it to, then they planned it wrong. The zombie attack ratcheted up at a dizzying pace in just a few days, and then disappeared forever. The Scourge Invasion dragged on, so much so that at the end of it, the Scourge really had taken over Azeroth — no one needed any runes any more so the map was full of purple skulls that no one cared about. On one of our podcasts, BigBearButt said the most insightful complaint I heard about the Zombie event: it wasn’t that casual players didn’t like the zombie event, it was just that they didn’t have a clear indication of when it might end, and the thought of being bothered out of questing for weeks or even a month until Wrath was what caused the most complaining. I don’t disagree — if Blizzard really did have a schedule to follow (and didn’t cave to complaints, as they say) then that scheduling was terrible.
• Lore. Could you tell someone the story of what happened during the world event? “Some crates appeared with strange symbols in Booty Bay, and then Putress was working on a plague cure and then zombies disappeared so I guess he found it, but then more zombies showed up, and then the Herald of the Lich King yelled something and we were in Northrend.” Blizzard whiffed it completely on the lore of this event — who put those crates in Booty Bay? Where was the long questline where we trace the shipments back to someone up North, an old friend of the Lordaeron royal family? What exactly did Putress come up with and how did he distribute it? The Thrall fight was awesome (and it’s funny that he thought of Jaina), but where was the Alliance scene? And where the hell was Arthas — there’s a ton of poetry in the fact that he (or whoever) used plagued grain to turn players into zombies, but all we got were a few strange yells from his herald. He’ll be in Wrath plenty (I just ran into him last night, actually), but if he really did bring all of this about, you’d think he’d personally show up and take credit for it.
• Permanence. This is where Blizzard’s event really fell down — there were a few days of craziness in there, where it seemed the World of Warcraft really had changed, and then, like an old television show, everything went back to normal again. Right now in Warsong Hold, they’re talking about the “razing” of Orgrimmar, but if Arthas thinks he really razed the city, then he needs to look up the definition of razed. Blizzard isn’t afraid to delete content, and we’ve sure got enough to destroy (who really needs Darnassus?), so why didn’t they pull the trigger? There are tons of towns in Northrend that have been destroyed by the Lich King’s forces, but he couldn’t find the power to actually destroy one of our own? The world event was epic, but not epic enough to change the world, and that’s a shame.