raid « pwnwear

My one-night raid guild kills Blood Princes

The guild I’m in, Axis, killed Blood Princes 10 last night. Last week, we got Putricide (I missed that one, had real-life stuff intercept me). We only raid once a [ more...]

Mumble and murmur: voice comms

Blood Legion, on their Lich King kill announcement, said:

We’d like to mention that this kill wouldn’t have been possible without the near-zero latency voice chat of a newly-discovered Ventrillo alternative [ more...]

Boss Notes: useful addon

I have mentioned this great addon once before, Boss Notes (back in Sept 09). Those guilds going up against Putricide you might find it helpful. Saves alt-tabbing to whichever website [ more...]

Frost is intended to dual-wield

Blizzard have given a unequivocal statement that Frost is designed for dual-wielding. That two-handed Frost will not, and is not intended to, give the same DPS (for raiding) as dual-wield [ more...]

Best tank spec in 3.3

For raids, I’d go with blood or frost.

Here are my posts with much more detail.

Patch
Blood
Frost
Unholy

3.3
blood 3.3
Frost 3.3 spec here or dual-wield
Unholy tanking 3.3

Feb 22, 2010 update: Unholy should not be [ more...]

Blood tank spec in 3.3

Blood remains the best single-target raid tank spec.

For blood, nothing changed in 3.3 from 3.22, so you don’t really need to respec. You might go into will of the [ more...]

Tanks just want to tank, plus supply-demand

To close this series of posts on balance, I wanted to use a few diagrams to outline the problem. This will be my last post on this topic for a [ more...]

Number of tanks required, a game design issue

Yesterdays post asking ‘whether DKs are being benched’ appears to have two root causes:

tank class mechanics which make a given tank the preference on certain categories of encounter
encounter design which [ more...]

Are DK tanks being benched?

I hear anecdotal evidence of DK tanks being benched so that our tanking brethren do the business instead. Whilst promoting the rawr:tankDK article in official wow forums, I read a thread [ more...]

Raid classification and losing

I really paused for thought after reading Tobold’s classification of raid encounters.

Looking at the title of his post, ‘raid encounter classification’, you might well think his answers would describe the mechanics [ more...]

Addon: Boss Notes

I like this addon, Boss Notes. Gives you an in-game notebook for each boss.

Comes with dot-point reminders of the key things for Ulduar bosses, for example, and you can enter [ more...]

Cataclysm tanking and healing will be more strategic

Two comments from Ghostcrawler recently are clearly pointing at a design change which means we’ll have a more strategic playstyle for Cataclysm tanks and healers.

In Cataclysm:

relative to the damage input [ more...]

Anub’arak, Koralon and Vezax hard-mode video

Update Sept 7: Paragon have killed Anub’arak in 25-man heroic (ie. ‘hard mode’). Loot and details.

Original post: A greatly respected member of the deathknight.info community, Splug, has published a Tankspot [ more...]

What gear is required for a raid

The reactions to Gevlon’s feat of clearing Ulduar-10 in blues show that many players have fallen into the trap of thinking gear is the only solution to clearing raids. Gevlon [ more...]

Guild income and repairs

The income and expenses of a guild are sometimes not a focus of leadership, but they do represent an organisational factor that should be managed.

Cataclysm will help income significantly by [ more...]

Ulduar cleared in blues, not epics

Wow. Thanks to RJK for highlighting this post on a site I rarely visit, Greedy Goblin. Great for money-making tips, but… raiding?

In short: the goblin’s guild cleared 10-man Ulduar, wearing only blues [ more...]

How to raid fast

I just came across this speed-raiding guide on StratFu, written in February but I’d not seen it before. It’s very comprehensive, and covers in details the points I have just [ more...]

Cross-server PUG dungeons: Blizzcon

One item that got my attention is this, from the wowraid liveblogging in Dungeon & Raid Panel:

1:42

csulok: CROSSREALM PUG DUNGEONS!

1:42

Cartina: Cross-Server LFG being talked about

1:43

csulok: planned for patch 3.3 [ more...]

Crusader’s Coliseum strategy guides

I have compiled the best boss strategies into a handy page here. It includes videos from Tankspot and written guides.

Leadership interview: Spike Flail

The raid leadership interview series

I’m pleased to present the next in my series of interviews with guild leaders on the management of progression guilds, which will be jointly published on wowraid [ more...]

3.2 Death Knight blood tank specs

Verified for 3.22 and 3.3.

See my 3.3 Blood spec page.

There are so many possible and valid variations on a Blood maintank spec, I thought it’d be useful for me [ more...]

Forums at pwnwear (6 comments)
- Gravity: Thanks matey.
- Chev: Launched with typical forethought and planning Grav, and from a very solid base of active...
- Gravity: Thanks guys, and it’s going well so far. Quite fun! Aye Rhidach, I’ve been...

Tanking weapons in 3.3 (40 comments)
- Tarragon: The reason I asked is because I have Ramaladni’s blade and Bryntroll, which are...
- Gravity: I didn’t actually analyse that. Looking at the strike values, you can see that a...
- Tarragon: When do the 25 man weapons become better then the 10 man ones? Or are all the 25 man...

Frost tank spec in 3.3 (61 comments)
- Gravity: yah, never compare your threat to that of a pally. They own threat.
- Instructions: I missed that part! I’m sorry! I think we can totally conclude the following:...
- Vanyana: Thanks for the reply, I don’t really have a problem with threat so I guess I...

Blood tank spec in 3.3 (32 comments)
- Drunknite: Wouldnt GoD be a threat increase? Just thinking about it (haven’t tested) but...

3.3 Death Knight dual-wield tanking (93 comments)
- tiny dk: Im speccing do Frost purely for aoe with main spec blood for raids and was wondering if...

The streamlined newbie experience (6 comments)
- AJ: Much appreciated.
- Gravity: The obvious visuals are from Shadowed Unit Frames plus Dominos, both of which are the...
- AJ: Gravity, this is probably an annoying question, but i have to ask. What UI is that? Now to...

/played (5 comments)
- Instructions: I don’t want to look at this. I think it’d be pathetic to see what...

The end of loser DKs is nigh! (15 comments)
- Wraithwail(caelsetraz): to be quite honest i am tired of nooby people playing the deathknight....

Flask market indicates the beginning of the free epics period (19 comments)
- Gravity: mr robot seems pretty good for deeps, but I managed to crash it the few times I...
- Instructions: Problem 1) Coding in .net = bad Problem 2) Microsoft = bad Sidenote: has anyone...

Warriors from the swiss army, DKs from lego (16 comments)
- xorellion: So many people are caught up with counting their DPS, not realizing that there’s...
- xorellion: Nothing stings worse than a healer saying “Great.. A DK tank” and leaving...