The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Wrath Week 1 Thoughts
by Hannelore
I have been busy, my lovelies, but not so busy that I’ve forgotten about your desperate need to be educated and enlightened by the fruits of my hand. This week has been enlightening for me, as well, as some things have been made clear to me that they aren’t exactly sharing in Silvermoon. So much for that ‘promised land’ thing they’ve been spouting. Prince whatshisname apparently messed up somewhere along the lines and isn’t quite the hero we’ve been led to believe.
Oh well, I’ll spare you my shattered rosey glasses view on Outland. Instead, lets discuss our new friends, recently turned traitor again. See, they turned traitor by joining the Scourge and getting all these nifty powers. Then they turned traitor again by giving the Scourge the finger and coming back to us. I’m sure they will be very trustworthy from here on…
Anyway.
I have a hypothesis.(That means “i c wut u did thar”)
I believe every rouge, loladin, fury warrior, and those enhancement shamans and mages that were always ticked off whenever a warlock beat them on the meters, all got together and rolled death knights.
In the spirit of continuing to differentiate between those people and the ones that have evolved beyond slime mold into a player that learns about the class and is willing to work in a group situation, we shall now be calling them DoucheKnights.
DoucheKnights can tank, no matter what tree the majority of their talent points are invested in. From experience, I can tell you that it doesn’t matter if the points are mostly in ice, blood, or undead – they can tank. Just as the druids’ feral tree is not ‘just’ cat, or ‘just’ bear, it depends on where the points are placed within that tree; so too are the trees of the new hero class.
The problem is how LONG they can tank.
DK’s are inherently squishier than warriors or bears or paladins. In their defense, they have a lot of abilities that heal themselves through damage. In a regular, non-spike fight, a DK could get by with no external healing. It is possible, as was called out many times in general chat across Hellfire Peninsula, that a group of 5 DKs could do fine through an instance. No healer needed, no healer wanted. Who wants someone in your party that can’t take hits when everyone else is focused on one target? Who wants to wait for mana after that last battle knocked everyone down to about 20% health? And no one wants to hear some blood elf priestess in the back going “Will you f-ers decide which one of you is going to f-ing tank?!”
“lawl were all tanks”
I don’t know much about the names of DK titles. Most of the DKs I worked with were not the communicating type. There was a lot of whining about needing a better weapon, but otherwise the conversations revolved around arguments about which tree was ‘good for tanking’ (see above). Otherwise, they were telling me not to worry about it when I told them to wait for mana. I imagine this allegory to my situation.
“Excuse me, sir, but your horse just stepped on my head.”
“Oh don’t worry about it, he is fine!”
Whatever the names of the spells, I could easily tell which groups held one or more DoucheKnights. They were the ones making liberal use of what I came to call “Yank and Spank”. This is some bizarre purple beam which shoots out, grabs the monster by the face, and yanks them through the air towards the knight for spankies. This is a wonderful spell to force a caster into melee range. This is a terrible spell when used by the knight who just woke up from a coma, standing beside me, and yanks a monster away from the group being beaten by the tank far ahead of us. Suddenly I have two tanks. Now another one does the same trick, and I have three tanks.
There are now three knights, spread out from each other, fighting one or two monsters. When called on it?
“I was helping CC that mob. I saw DK#1 taking damage. Geeze, it’s fine.”
Fine indeed. Rofl, good sir, rofl.
Another fine ability is the “I’m bored, lets make some friends” ability. It comes in the shape of a gargoyle. Every time this ability is used, some friendly gargoyle comes out of nowhere and proceeds to hover above us and shoot things. It is fairly epic, and I’m sure it is very fun for the knight who wields such power. Inevitably, however, things die. The gargoyle, lonely and looking for something else to play with, lazily wafts away on the breeze.
I have watched this thing go through walls, ceilings, and all-girl school dorms overseen by massive women with more testosterone than Grom Hellscream. These are things that would be impenetrable by mere mortals. Not only do these gargoyles easily slip through these barriers, but they find friends, then tell them where to find me and my party.
And then there is death. Always, death. In the form of nearly every monster in the dungeon, piled up on top of each other, and charging around the corner as though Jaina Proudmoore had just announced her debut strip tease right behind us. It is an ugly sight. I have seen it in my sleep…
Anyway.
DoucheKnights – all the people that cried when they weren’t top of the damage meter, and were tired of having to constantly wait for a tank, and were irritated by a pushy healer, now have all the tools available that allow them to completely ignore any of the things previously holding them back. If the tank is taking too long, bam, now DoucheKnight gets to tank! Healer is up to 30% mana, that should be enough, BAM, DoucheKnight is tanking. Oh no, you’re number 2 in the dps meter! BAM, bring in more mobs so your AOE racks up the points!
And then when BAM everyone is dead, all four DoucheKnights have to go do something else while the priestess runs her ghostly tush off to get back to the dungeon.
“rez plz”
/stab
Yes, well. At any rate. DeathKnights! Woo. At least some of you backstabbing, weak hearted, scourge-loving miscreants are useful for something. I’ve reached level 66 in the past week by being the one NON scourge-lover in the party. Questing is useless, because nothing out there survives long enough for me to get credit for the kill, because eight doucheknights just jumped on it. So all the dungeons got to see my pretty face, twisted in rage and impotent hate at the back of my party members. At least the guards in Orgrimmar have apples to throw. I should have joined the beer of the month club, just so I’d have a bottle every once in a while…
Alright alright, not all DeathKnights are DoucheKnights. Some made healing a joy, and it was a cinch even through places I’d never visited before. I’d get agro, and before I had a chance to fade, the thing would get yank-an-spanked. I still had to fade a lot, simply because of the nature of how squishy they are, and the amount of big heals I kept having to throw. Prayer of Healing always gets a workout when everyone else is a DK.
So. Quick recap.
Things I learned this week:
There are way too many doucheknights.
Healing in dungeons is fun again.
All three DK trees can be used for tanking.
DKs are squishy tanks.
I hate proximity bombs and the people that run over them after a fight.
Leveling up tailoring really really sucks when you’re starting from scratch.
Leveling up herbalism is very relaxing, which is a nice counter.
There are way too many doucheknights.
Your Questions!
Khol asks: I bring you an offering of burnt grain!
– I accept.
Weta wonders: Why do people still want 20 slot bags?
– Because they, and the larger ones, are still blasted expensive, and will be for months. Big bags hold MORE STUFF and MORE STUFF is always better than less.
Tomo ponders the worth of the discipline tree.
– I have the stamina and mana to survive in a pug, even when things are nuts. My favorite part is the completely worthless spell at the very end. Didn’t a spell by this name use to do something useful? Like stun or interrupt a target? What the crap is this weak channeled orc poo spell doing in my discipline tree?
Axethrower is still curious about BRD.
– About 3 hours. It’s a hellacious dungeon that, according to legend, was once going to have wings like the Monastery. Then the dwarves got lazy and it’s one big, long, slogfest of dwarf killing. Don’t wipe.
Phaedor asks: Why are some people so poor?
– Some people are poor and fat, and walking is good for them. The rest of us require speed to go with our svelte appearance, and hot girls on fast rides are better than scrubs walking from The Great Lift to Gadgetzan. If you feel bad, start a fund for ugly girls who walk too much. Or something. Sheesh, what kinds of questions were these?!
November 17th, 2008
The euphamism for the new meta class is quite fitting. Your relating of your experience is priceless and humorous. Just to make sure we understand the situation:
There were 4 Deathdouches.
4 of the same class in an instance group.
4 people who had less than a weeks experience in their current role.
4 people wearing so many spikes on their armor as to make you wonder what they do in private.
4 people with some psychological issues involving warlocks.
You went into a dungeon instance with them.
You must owe someone alotta money or something.
November 17th, 2008
“I hate proximity bombs and the people that run over them after a fight.”
lol
November 17th, 2008
@Vendric
Have you SEEN Outland lately? Wall to wall Doucheknights as far as the eye can see, with seldom the other odd class between them. I’m surprised she was able to find a group with a slot for her at all.
@Hanners (your snarkiness has won me over enough to not deliberately antagonise you…much)
Point the First: you asked for questions, not GOOD questions.
Point the Second: DeathKiniggets who are serious about tanking will be rocking the frost tree. This is where the majority of the survival talents are located. While all three trees are “viable” for tanking, frost is the serious tanking tree. Oh, and it’s shloads of fun (that’s a larger measurement than the usual sh!tload that is commonly referenced.)
November 17th, 2008
As a mage in Blood Furnace, I used to cast Mage Armor and Ice Barrier and run over proximity mines just to irritate my healer… It eventually became a race to see if I could bandage the little damage I took before he healed me. If he pre-HoTted, I’d avoid the mine and say, “Why are you wasting your mana?”
I do have a desperate need to be educated and enlightened!
November 17th, 2008
It’s an interesting point you make, although laden with sarcasm (which does not go unappreciated, I might add). I honestly don’t know if there is a fat toon one could create. I wouldn’t go as far as to call Tauren fat, although they could be called ‘big-boned’ (no unnecessary innuendoes please). Gnomes are short and a bit squat, but not overly rotund. Now Blood Elves, sheesh. Blood Elves are certainly svelte, almost to the point of needing to be force fed a Talbuk steak.
Ugly? Yeah, you can definitely make an ugly toon. Blizz certainly covered the full range of ugly with some of the races. I won’t name names here, in the spirit of political correctness, but if your toon is the color of spinach, or if it has parts missing from its face, you might have an ugly toon.
No, I think I must stick with my original point that some people just don’t really have the WoW economy figured out yet. Not sure a fund for ugly girls who walk would be required, but it’s a fun thought. I wonder how many would contribute to that fund?
With all the fire shooting from your eyes for DeathDouches, maybe Warlocks have a chance of getting back into your good graces.
November 17th, 2008
Hey! Whodat making fun of disc. I happen to be crazy about disc pve healing. So there, nyah, now make fun of me behind my back, spit on my blog, but leave me and my uber bubbles alone tyvm.
http://penancepriest.blogspot.com/
November 17th, 2008
Yeeeeah. Okay, I can admit I’m a little bit jealous of Death Knights. Mind you, not the mindless, blathering r-tards I saw -everywhere- for a couple of days… but holycrapomgsquee! have you seen this thing they do. With the stuff!
No, really.
It’s this HYYYYUUUUUGE! runic circle done in red, with something that looks like lava or boiling blood in the middle. I don’t know what it does… (these guys were using it on level 30 mobs outside SM…) but I am f’ing jealous. Where’s the Warlock love? I don’t want MOAR POWAH! I just… I just want… more awesome LOOKING power.
Where’s my super sweet blood colored summoning circle of doom? Why am I stuck with neon purples and greens, exactly? Bah.
And I swear. When Blizzard gets around to tweaking some of these guys (or, you know, they hit the real content that is meant to challenge them) and they go begging for healing? I think you should have a list of those you turn down. Like those guys in General who were going on about healers-ftl and such.
Srsly.
“Oh hai. U said heelurz suck. lolz, guud luck wit dat run.”
So speaketh Ceiling Cat?
…I need to stop snorting my soulshards this early in the morning. (Hah, early. Almost noon.)
November 17th, 2008
@Paolo
Wut?
I wasn’t making fun of discipline. Just that final spell in the tree. It’s a weak, channeled HoT, and a weaker, channeled, DoT. I don’t understand the point of it, and I’ll be respeccing to invest my points elsewhere as soon as I can.
I’m staying discipline, though, for those uber bubbles.
@Vendric
A lot of money. And I need to level. At least in an instance, those four doucheknights are killing things FOR me. Out trying to quest, dozens of doucheknights are trying to kill things BEFORE me.
@Phaedor
Good warlocks are mah friend. Always have been. Did you know a warlock is my idol? You should see her. *sigh* But she’s confused sometimes. I will show her the light!
*shifty glance*
November 17th, 2008
I have a DEATH Knight. Not one of the “Douche-Knights”. Prolly cause I’ve seen first hand how fast a DK group CAN AND WILL fall apart with poor planning. 1 tank is nice. 2 is iffy. 3 or more is kinda pushing it to insanity. Heck, everyone thinks they know how to tank, when all of a sudden I see ghouls popping up that used to have been party members. @_@
After some fun, I switched back to my usual Hunter, and ran through Ramparts 2nd time. Was pretty nice, better run than the initial one, except in the midst of everything having their own separate monster to play with, someone forgot to keep on the ones that tend to cower out and run away when low on health….and my cute little wolf happened to follow…into the pack…with the first boss. If I feign death with like 20+ red angry elites running (and whacking) me, I’m doin it based upon the #1 rule of the human being: When faced with immense odds and adversity, every (%#*$ing man for himself (lol racial skill).
November 17th, 2008
I use Penance all the time. It’s an awesome spell. Maybe it has like an insane spell power coefficient, but it seems to heal almost as much as my greater heal, and it seems to crit more often. Plus it’s channeled which makes a third of the healing instant — great in a bind. I even use penance while soloing; it generally hits harder than my smite.
November 17th, 2008
So I just logged on to check the numbers for my spells (these are the numbers for my spells, a little of the haste from disc tree is added in):
Healing – Penance hits for 800-900 every tick for 3 ticks and lasts for 1.79 seconds with my little bit of haste. That’s 2400-2700 healing over 1.79 seconds! My greater heal hits for about 2400-2800 and takes almost 3 seconds to cast.
Damage – Not quite as useful as it is for healing, but it still hits pretty hard. It does 235 damage every tick, so that’s about 705 damage in 1.79 seconds for me. Smite does 557-624 damage and takes 2.15 seconds to cast.
Added bonus – Penance is pretty! Rainbow sparkles! Not only is it delightful while grouping, but I can also make monsters feel my glittery wrath!
So yeah, Penance is not a useless spell by any means. I use it, and I use it a LOT. It’s one of the staples of a deep disc build and is great for both healing AND soloing.
November 17th, 2008
Correction – my Greater Heal only takes 2.6 seconds to cast. But that’s still almost a second slower than Penance, and it doesn’t have the partial, immediate heal
November 17th, 2008
Glittery wrath? Is that like squirrelly wrath?
November 17th, 2008
I just love how Penance jolts the target. This is no gentle healing spell, it’s more like ‘Bam have some f’in healing!’
Not that I have healer rage issues (like some belf priestess who shall remain nameless) or anything. . .
Vess
November 17th, 2008
@Evadine, Vesserion
Alright, fine, the numbers are great, I guess.
But I’m keeping the spell, now, just so I can make a macro that says
“BAM! Have some f-ing healing!”
November 17th, 2008
“I wasn’t making fun of discipline. Just that final spell in the tree. It’s a weak, channeled HoT, and a weaker, channeled, DoT. I don’t understand the point of it, and I’ll be respeccing to invest my points elsewhere as soon as I can.”
Penance is the best healing spell for deep disc. With twin disciples and mental agility alone it will costs less, heal more, heal more efficiently, and heal faster than GHeal*. It can give a full application of Grace. It has 3 chances to crit, which is 3 chances for Inspiration and Divine Aegis. Penance and Divine Aegis both benefits from Rapture, so if they heal/absorb the full amount it becomes even more efficient.
Its drawback, and the drawback of deep Disc is the lack of AOE. You cant chaincast penance on an entire group of Doucheknights. Thats what renew, PoM, PoH, FHeal, and PWS are for.
*at lvl 60, 70 and 80 anyway, a recently trained version of GHeal may trump Penance in the short run for small amounts, but at trained levels penance is king.
November 17th, 2008
Lol. My bear-tank friend was talking to me the other day about the “BAM! Have some f-ing healing!” effect.
Yeah, Disc talents make Penance an even better spell than it already is.
November 17th, 2008
Let the Douche Knight die, it is more mana efficient to just rez them afterward. I thought you would have learned that with rogues and mages way back in the beginning!
Sheesh. Haven’t I taught you people anything!
November 17th, 2008
@Hildi
But he was (one of) the tank(s)!
November 17th, 2008
@Hanners
You had three more!
November 17th, 2008
Yeah, I completely understand where you are coming from.
I won’t be able to install the xpac for another month (I *own* it… walked into the store and paid hard cash for a CE). Knowing I would be faced with a month of “rofl I haz Death Knight” players, I leveled a druid to 58 over the last month.
Now he’s 66, has barely done any quests past Hellfire, and gets invites to heal Death Knight instance runs WHILE INSIDE ANOTHER instance. Only bad thing is… he’s going to hit 70 ALOT faster than I thought. And when all the DKs hit 71 still looking for heals, I’ll be stuck in Outland.
November 17th, 2008
I personally enjoy zapping people with angry heals (that’ll teach them to make me have to heal!), but my favorite is scaring a tank by pretending to be AFK… then throwing Guardian Spirit as they almost hit 0.
I know, sadistic, but still hilarious~
November 17th, 2008
“There are way too many doucheknights.
Healing in dungeons is fun again.
All three DK trees can be used for tanking.
DKs are squishy tanks.
I hate proximity bombs and the people that run over them after a fight.”
Yes
Yes – plenty of people wanting a healer these days for just about anything. In fact having trouble finding time to quest.
Yes, kind of.
Yes a bit squishy.
LOL! Yes. The worst are the pets running over the proximity bombs in the middle of the fight. In fact just about the only thing that stops the 4DK+healer machine are the ghouls running over the mines all the time!
PS fun post.
November 17th, 2008
Except, of course, when the Douche Knight dies (it will take a bit), but where that mob is going? Yeah. It’ll be time to tapdance on the healer’s face again.
By the way, the reason they seem so squishy Hanners is quite simply because they are doing it wrong. They’re poorly geared, improperly specced, and not using their abilities correctly. They’re yank ‘n’ spankin’. This is bad. They are pulling using their ONLY taunt ability, and it is on a 35 second cooldown (25 seconds, after talents). Anyone who plays regularly as a tank can understand why that would be a bad idea, particularly when there are better, less flashy options, that will give them higher DPS AND better threat AND a longer lifespan (Icy Touch). “Yankpulling” is the first sign a DK has no clue how to tank as a DK.
They are squishy because they lack the know-how. The people who play a tank usually play just 1. There simply is no reason to tank on 2 different toons, particularly on the same server. I guarantee that if there is a difference between an appropriately geared and played DK and any other class in terms of survivability, its marginal overall. They will take more damage than a warrior or paladin in melee
November 18th, 2008
I ran a group of 4 DKs through Ramparts the other day. Yes, they seem to like taking damage. Oh, and did I mention that two of them were tanking? And that another one was taking almost as much damage as them at some times? The last part was still the best.
Me:”Oh look, a dragon, neat.”
DKs: “Rawr! Smash!”
Me: *heal heal* “Wait, what’d that guy say? Did the rider die?”
Dragon: “Healer! Om Nom Nom!”
Me: *bubble, renew* “Please remove this thing from my face.”
DKs: “K LAWL”
Me: *continues to tank dragon until he dies*
And I didn’t even really do much healing (if any) after the bubble.
Moar threat plz
On a side note, don’t let DKs with a blood build tank, they have talents to reduce threat like enhance shammys. This was was apparent when I ran around questing with Taiga’s DK and could have a mob stuck to me after only one or two attacks. (He would do his DK thing and I would just holyfire, mind blast, and smite for the sake of getting things dead faster) It was never anything that hurt a lot or stayed alive long enough to hurt anyway, so it wasn’t an issue at the time.
@ Ygg
On the earlier note about Death Grip being a taunt, well it is kinda, but not exactly. Sure it makes things come to you, but it makes no threat. However, if the DK was smart enough he could do something like yank, frost chain (immobilize), and then spank to build threat back up. So while it’s not completely a taunt, it’s pretty much close enough I suppose, and yes, they probably should be saving it for when they really could/should use it.
@ Avaryse
It’s called Death & Decay, like that the quillboars in RFD have. It’s an AoE DoT that also generates higher threat so DeathTanks can use it like consecrate to help tank larger groups. (besides just using it for the damage by other DKs)
November 18th, 2008
*rereads Ygg’s post*
Was Icy Touch the name of that frost chain move? I forget. If it is then I just said the exact same thing he did a 2nd time…. oh well.
November 18th, 2008
On the subject of DoucheKnights, a fellow priest and I were in Hellfire the other night which was overrun with DKs. I bet her that we would get whispered by someone to heal an instance during the 30 minutes we stuck it out trying to get our mobs. She took the bet. I had assumed the DKs would be running dungeons and in desperate need of healers. And, true enough, the general and trade channels were full of people looking for healers for groups. What I had not counted on was that none of the DKs would have the brainpower to actually check and see who was in the zone and if any of the healing players present wanted to heal their sorry… well… you know. Judging from your story, maybe it’s just as well I lost.
November 18th, 2008
Duffknights. Gotta love them. GET OFF MY MOBS!!! Nagrand is a sea of dead beasties and hopping Deafknights. Grrrr.
November 18th, 2008
I hit 60 in HFP last night, hopped on the taxi to Shattrath to go train and before I had moved 100 yards I was whispered by 3 different people to heal ramparts! They’re some desperate DKs out there.
November 21st, 2008
I was hoping to level my Retadin through Outland in the first week of the expansion pack while the rush at Northrend calmed down, but I couldn’t stomach seeing anymore doucheknights. So I went back to my Warlock (but I’m a GOOD warlock)
I rolled a DK. I didn’t see the appeal.
November 29th, 2008
[...] you didn’t catch it the first time, the relevant post is here. Go. Read. I’ll [...]
December 3rd, 2008
Haha, doucheknights…I like it. I have a level 80 DK myself. I stumbled upon your blog when I was browsing the Matticus blog.
I have to say in response to some of the comments here that a lot of people do not know how a DK works (including a lot of starter DKs
) but keep in mind that a HFR/BF group of DKs are running their first instance as a DK and have have approximately 2 levels of play experience (55-58 doesn’t count since it does not encourage a player to get to know class mechanics).
A sensible player – in my mind – is one who isn’t running any outland instances since the starter gear will last till about 67 easily (quest gear + ring of blood is enough to last till the early 70s), rep does not matter and its much faster to quest and level.
I almost quit playing wow after a day or two of levelling in Northrend due to the obnoxious kill stealing, mob tagging and general chat crap that was flying around. Now that I am 80 and raiding, life’s a lot better
January 16th, 2009
[...] For a while, we as a class will be better off because all the EZ Mode kids will be off on their DoucheKnights playing Yoink and [...]
May 11th, 2009
[...] There are days that I feel, with the utmost of my being, at one with Hannelore. [...]