Greetings everyone! Today, I will be covering Anubarak (25man HM) for dps. Guilds have been struggling on this guy, doing over 100 attempts on this guy. This encounter is by far one of the most hardest blizzard has came up with. People will say Yogg or Algalon are the hardest. I think the only reason Algalon is hard due to the fact that its only one hour a week. Yogg with the keepers up is easy once you get things done. I will admit though Yogg with 0 keepers is pretty hard. What I am writing about today is some tips and tricks to playing a Dk during this encounter. I am not saying I have the best tips or the best, but it works. Also I am gonna outline the fight for ya.

Basic Information

When you get to the boss, he is chilling in his UFC ring waiting. Its important to Flask/food up and make sure you switch to your AoE spec/w glyphs. I used this spec with glyphs. Unholy really rocks in this fight. The Death and Decay damage is nice.  Anubarak is pretty much a AoE fight with some single target DPS. The single target DPS comes from when you get adds down quick and have about 5-8 secs of just DPSing the boss. Make sure your ghoul spell doesn’t get locked out either. A couple of times I couldnt summon my ghoul from falling down into the water and had to leave the instance to be able to summon.

The Fight: Part I

Pretty much when the tank starts, the boss comes to him around middlefield. 6 Permafrost spawn and I always brought the first one down, followed by another DK bringing his down. I used a macro on this. /tar Frost Sphere. Just a simple macro, nothing fancy. The main reason why I dont put a Deathgrip command in is, I want to line up the Frost Sphere with my tank. Positioning is important. I always stand right on his back right leg and then bring it down for the raid. It’s important to have other people help out by dpsing the sphere. A time here or a time there when you bring it down, it might not be in melee range. It will then float away and might not be in a great position. Anyways, once I deathgrip it I like using Icy Touch on it first to throw some kind of Dot on it. I always found even in not in melee range, that I only have about 10% of its health remaining and then Deathcoil it. I know there is other ways but I like my way. So, the second DK bring his frost sphere down and then the adds will come out shortly after. The MT gets the boss in a position and the add tanks puts the addons on the perma frost. The offtanks can’t let the adds stack or let them burrow in the ground. This stuff causes wipes. All the tanks grab aggro on the adds and you pretty much AoE everything until Anubarak burrows in the ground.

The Fight: Part II

When you goes into the ground, bugs will start spawning and you need to kill them fast. Reason why is that they stack some nasty poisons on your raid members. Very Bad! Alright, when he goes into the ground, he will choose someone in the raid and go after them. Let’s say he targets me. I run to the web where you came in at and wait for a paladin to Blessing of Protection me when Anubarak gets to me. I then run into the perma frost and he gets stuck in it. Now, one of the most important things about this part is WATCH THE CORNERS! Let’s say I took him to the perma frost on the left(west perma frost). He chooses a warlock in your guild, only one problem your warlock is to the right on the right perma frost(east perma frost). Anubarak has a chance to start chasing him and crash into the other perma frost. Now he get a 3rd member who has to kite him around for like 30 secs. It’s alot of confusion. We are gonna say the warlock does him job right and brings Anubarak to the perma frost. He will choose a 3rd target. Important part to this is the 3rd target only has him for like 15 secs which is just another run to the web. During this time, I am breaking off from killing bugs to bring down the first perma frost. *Important you do this, due to the fact the perma frost does roam around alot. You might not have a chance to bring it in a good spot if you wait until the last second. My GM always makes our members come to him where he is at the way left side(if your looking at the web) away from me. The boss pops up and the other DK brings down the other frost sphere. Part I begins again.

The Fight: Part III

After part I of the fight is over, it goes to part II. Only difference is your kiting him to the UFC ring and bringing down the frost sphere there.  Part I of the fight begins. Around 33% I or DBM clicks off my Fort buffs and then at 30% Anubarak does his main move: Leeching Swarm. Pretty much is leeches a % of your current health, which is way you remove your fort buff. During this phase its important to pop a Frost Potion to help out the healers. One other debuff he puts on you is Penetrating Cold. It deals frost damage to your every 3 secs and thats alot considering you dont get healed very much during this phase. Just AoE the adds and try to stay alive by popping CDs.

Tips and Tricks

1. Make sure you keep your disease up at times.

2. Make sure you Death and Decay on the adds as soon as possible.

3. Remember, Glyphs are Ghoul, Dark Death and Death and Decay.

4. Pop CDs during Phase III of the fight to help out.

5. Pop Gargoyle during Phase I and after 30%.

6. Make sure you put your perma frost in a great position to AoE all adds.

7. Make sure your death and decay hits all adds.

Hope this little guide helps out. Good luck with the boss. Until next time, Tomorrow is another day.

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So you want to Frost Strike?

Cataclysm Alpha testing begins!

Blizzard recently released a bit of a shocker to the raiding community the return of a Sunwell Radiance-esque type of effect with the raid-wide debuff Chill of the Throne.

To summarize for those who weren’t around in BC, or were around but weren’t party of the “Royalty” guilds of the time, a raid effect called Sunwell Radiance was introduced in the last raid of the expansion to shift focus away from avoidance and introduce more steady streams  of damage. (Gravity wrote about the change over at pwnwear.com and has the blue posts embedded if you missed them.)

Lucky us, history has decided to repeat itself in the form of a 20% dodge reduction Chill of the Throne (which, interestingly enough, was originally planned as a raid-wide constant damage aura). Though dodge was the only possible stat to reduce due to being the common avoidance stat among tanks, this severely gimps already dwindling Druid tanks as that’s their only form of avoidance, whereas DKs and those other two tank classes can still parry. Some interesting discussion regarding the further impact of this change can be found on the original forum post, as well as Gravity’s site.

This opens up an interesting window into Blizzard’s design philosophies though. From Ghostcrawler’s responses on the subject, its clear that having multiple tiers of gear available from heroics and hardmodes was not in the original plan. Blizzard claims that this is the cause of the problem for the avoidance scaling getting so out of hand, but even without all the tiers of gear popping up in Wrath, this was bound to happen again eventually. Conveniently, it sounds like Blizzard already has a change coming in Cataclsym to stamp out this problem once and for all, with the possible introduction of  boss expertise. This will change tanking so that at higher levels of gear, you’ll still be taking the same amount of hits from the end boss of each raid. Some solid discussion also at Tankspot.

Sounds like a plan to me, and makes sense. It’s easy to compensate for high dps on a boss, just give it more health, but high tanking stats cause some wonky problems.

Here’s hoping they get it right and working properly. Interesting they announce this now, after testing has already occurred, as all the previously collected boss data is now completely worthless, aside from health pools.

Tiki is a moderator of the DPS forums here on DeathKnight.info, as well as a contributor to the Tanking section of old. He’s been around the site since its conception back before release, and continues to spread his diseases to anyone within range. His profile, including an armory link and a bit more about him, can be found here. He’s an avid gamer on WoW, Xbox, and flash games when he’s supposed to be paying attention in class. Tiki is also a big fan of writing in the third person about himself, and is considered by many impartial interviewees to be super attractive. Like, really.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen so much on the PTR.

We’ve also had Ulduar bosses on scheduled tests, and… they were beaten. So in one evening or less, the bosses died.

As an outcome, World of Raids now have an Ulduar guide including loot and abilitites which is great content.

This is the new raid Blizzard had hoped would be challenging. Certainly, boss tuning is not completed – that is the point of testing in the first place – but it does raise questions. From launch in November until now we’ve had exactly four months and for some guilds the only remaining challenge is Sarth3D. I’m in a fairly casual guild and we’re now trying Sarth1D, having done all the ‘normal mode’ 25-man raids.

Ulduar will have 10-man and 25-man versions, and hard-mode ‘achievement’ styles for each too. So how long before all the 25-man bosses are killed on live? Surely at most two weeks from 3.1 going live, since on PTR one new boss could be killed in an evening.

Or will Blizzard impress us by ratcheting up the difficulty with their many levers, and make the Live experience really quite challenging?

Kenzi’s been crit for 9000 by work but survived like this DK tank. He’ll be back to blogging soon.

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Patch 3.3.5 released

DKosphere…you heard that here first! So WotLK has been live for several days now. We’ve had several DKs hit 80, so now is time for the feedback and activity around the DK world!

• Jayde has started posting some live feedback on Death Knight PvP, here is some shots of his WSG run and some video to boot:

Also something interesting to note: If you click off your Shadow of Death ghouls bug when you die and come back as a ghoul, it doesn’t count as a ‘death’ in BGs. Probably just a bug.

• Aurdon over at ISheepThings.com (yeah…a Mage blog, we’re converting them all!) has a nice guide going for those interested in gear upgrades through Outlands. Check it out!

• Speaking of guides, Jame’s posted a summary of his Death Knight leveling guide that was posted here a few days ago. Check out his post, see his results, try his guide!

• Did someone say guides? KillerGuides.com has come on board as another sponsor on the site. For those of you wanting to maximize your Death Knight leveling experience, I’d say give them a try! Also keep an eye out on the site for a chance to win a copy of their DK guide! (more info coming soon).

DKinfo CONTESTS! I have two contests in the works. Some of the prizes will include free guides from our two sponsors KillerGuides and Zug Gaming as well as a 60 day game card. Keep an eye out for the announcement for those two contests!

(hint: they involve designing a T-shirt, see below, and designing a disease portion of a certain DKinfo rune mod!)

click the picture already!

Got an email this morning pointing me to a picture from ElitestJerks.com.  The picture shows a realm first level 80 Death Knight and could very well be the world first as well. The picture shows him taking 2 days, 9 hours, 37 minutes, 57 seconds and did it on 11/15/2008 at 23:25:42. I’m trying to find out more info on the picture, but here it is until then.

So Dessembrae (Giskler) is the first Death Knight to go public with his feat of hitting 80 first. Is it possible that someone else did it first? Absolutely, but there is no denying the greatness of his accomplishment. Until we see other wise, I’m gonna dub Dessembrae (Giskler) as our world first! (Makes sense to me that if someone else was gunning for the feat, and I’m sure there was plenty, we would have already heard from them.)

I took the time to get some words from Dessembrae (Giskler) on how this came to be:

DKinfo: So, how much sleep have you got the past couple days?

Dessembrae: I have slept 7 hours since Wednesday.

DKinfo: Where you in beta? Was being the world first DK a goal or something that just happened?

Dessembrae: I was in the beta and I leveled a DK to 80 there. Being first to 80 wasn’t really a goal, I wanted to get the leveling out of the way fast and I just seemed to be on a roll.

DKinfo: What was your route to 80? Did you Quest, grind, instance? You can just give a brief summary.

Dessembrae: I had a lot of stuff farmed before the expansion launched (quest items that aren’t bop etc) so after the starter zone I went around and handed in quests in Blasted Lands, Lights Hope and cloth donations in every city.

I entered Outland at 60 and ran through Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terokkar and half of Nagrand and went to Borean Tundra when I got to 68. In Northrend I did Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Zul’Drak, Sholazar Basin, Dragonblight and Storm Peaks last.

I did every single quest I came across in every zone and ended with Storm Peaks at 91/100. I did only one instance run in The Nexus.

DKinfo: Did you have help along the way? Was it a special powerleveling session?

Dessembrae: I had help with some of the more difficult group quests like Ring of Blood and Amphitheatre of Anguish. I had planned a powerleveling session for months in order to get the leveling done with so it wouldn’t conflict with my studies.

DKinfo: Will your new DK be your main or do you plan to go back to another character now?

Dessembrae: The DK will be my main, I have no plans of going back to my old characters as I love the DK class.

DKinfo: What are your goals now? Professions, Achievements, End Game?

Dessembrae: First of all I’ll be maxing out my professions and then start doing raids with my guild. The long term plan is to go back and do all the old content for achievements.

DKinfo: Most importantly how long have you been visiting DK.info? :)

Dessembrae: I’ve been visiting the site for several months (just reading until now).

DKinfo: Anything You would like to add? Give thanks? Say hi?

Dessembrae: I’d like to give thanks to everyone who helped me out when I needed it during the leveling craze, you know who you are.

So there you have it, our first level 80 Death Knight. Dessembrae is on a EU server, so of course it would only be fair to be on the look out for the first US level 80…

This is a hard thing to call, as I’m sure many are close. When I sent out the call looking for the first level 80 Death Knight many have been emailing me with their progress. Until now. Gisker has not only hit level 80 with his Death Knight, he also posted a screenshot to prove it. As you can see in the SS below, his time showed 1900:26 November 15th on EU server Mazrigos. So his he the world first? More info as we find out.

I just posted looking for the world first 80, but thought it would be more fun to see where the rest of the community is. So, how well have you done these first couple of days? I’ve hit 60, almost 61, but I’m in no hurry. I’m 51 points into Unholy and seriously thinking about going through as many of the old world dungeons as I can solo to get achievements.

Okay I lied about the last post thing. MMO-Champion just unveiled their new talent calculator redesign and I have to admit, it’s awesome! Not only does it look better, Boubouille also added the ability to show what Glyphs you’ll be using! Check it out over at MMOC. It’s still gonna suck for IE6 users and it has a few minor bugs, but it definitely rocks!

Also, for you EU folks that are already in Northrend (or installing), there is a Death Knight creation bug that might cause some confusion for you. If for some reason it won’t allow you to create one you should:

Xemafir
This is a known issue. Please try creating a new level 1 character on the realm first, and then a Death Knight.

Netheara also posted another tip that might save some frustration:

Netheara
To ensure a smooth transition to Wrath of the Lich King, we recommend that players who have newly upgraded their accounts, log into the game and log out completely for a short period of time in order for their account to fully update.

I guess I’m getting ansy. I called my local Gamestop (gave up on a midnight release) just to see if maybe they would be going early (what was I thinking). Dude literally chuckled. G#$D#$3 why can’t all gamestor…er convenient stores be like 7-11?!?!

I guess it’s back to waiting…Anyone in the Tennessee area or more specific Murfreesboro, I’ll be at the Mall waiting…see you in line :(

The fruition of our 15 month wait it upon us. The site has had it’s ups and downs, but for the most part has continued to grow and develop into, what I feel, the number 1 spot for Death Knight Information. Our forums are closing in fast on 4,000 members. That is a staggering number considering this is a class fan site for a class that (technically) isn’t released yet. I’m proud of what WE have made this site into, I’m excited about where it is headed, and look forward to seeing us all hit 80 with our new Death Knights!

Here are a few important links and blue posts that might help your transition into WotLk a little smoother.

Bornakk posted today a WotLK Launch Help Center it is loaded with useful links and information and what do do should you encounter a problem or need guidance. Some of the topics covered are:

• Where to go or what to experience first?
• Technical Support
• Billing Support
• In-Game Support

Netheara also posted earlier that the official forums where once again changed to read only.

Netheara
All forums on the official World of Warcraft forums will be temporarily switched over to read-only mode. While we would like to make every effort to ensure the forums allow the community to interact with each other, the current situation does not allow for this, or allow Blizzard to relay information to the community. Thus, all forums will be available as read-only to allow us to share information with the public. We hope that we can keep the limitation of access to a minimum and revert the forums to full functionality as soon as possible.

Also remember your photos!

Here is a video of an interview with the most vocal blue poster we saw during the alpha and beta stage, Ghostcrawler: (thanks Mathias!) via buffed.de