Solannis, Me, and Death Knight Makes Three

Yesterday our resident death knight, Mordigg, became the third person on the team to finish their training in Northrend. After he finished picking up his new abilities from the trainer, we sat down and put together a new tanking spec for him. It still needs field testing, but in theory it should work fine. Before we could do any sort of testing though, it was time to put together some starter tank gear for him.

Most of the gear we had was stuff I had smithed ahead of time: Tempered Titansteel Helm, Tempered Saronite Bracers, Daunting Handguards, Daunting Legplates, and most important of all, a Titansteel Destroyer. All he needed to do was slap a Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle on that and he was all set... well, except for one small detail. Apparently in all of his running around Outland and Northrend, Mordigg had neglected to go and actually train in the use of maces. He certainly couldn't go off and tank with a weapon skill of 1, but leveling that skill would take ages. A solution to this problem came from a priest friend of mine.

There's an island off the western coast of Icecrown that's crawling with Scarlet Onslaught soldiers. I'm sure most people are aware of how excitable and rather violent those folks are. This combined with the fact that they're quite easy to group up, not to mention seem to carry a fair amount of Frostweave and minor magical items, makes this a prime area to go with someone that has AoE attacks. Solannis went out here for AoE tanking practice with his 9-6-9 rotation, so it would work fine for Mordigg's training.

According to Mordigg, the basic rotation seemed simple enough (once his weapon skill got high enough that he could actually hit something other than air). Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Death and Decay, and Pestilence for the opening rotation with Frost Strike until runes came back up. Howling Blast with the first pair of runes to return, then repeating Death and Decay and Howling Blast whenever possible. When diseases started to fall, redo the opening rotation. Some additional practice will be needed since most of the monsters in dungeons are a bit tougher than your average Scarlet soldier, but this is a good starting point. By the time they wrapped up for the night, Mordigg's defense skill was capped at 400 and his two-handed mace skill was 399. That last point of maces will come soon enough, so now to look at his gear again.

We picked up a few more pieces off the auction house to fill in some holes in Mordigg's gear: Tattered Castle Drape (upgrade even with the worthless block value and only 30g), Crusader's Square Pauldrons (a steal at 40g), and Waistguard of the Risen Knight (very nice piece for 60g). After a couple of quick gem cuts from Sol and a belt buckle from me, he's sitting at 516 defense - 24 short of raid uncrittable.

Now there's still plenty of room for improvement here, even outside of stepping into a dungeon. Neither of Mordigg's rings is tank-oriented. Both of his trinkets are damage-focused and kind of old. His boots are still from his DPS days, though that one's easy enough to replace with a quick trip to Shadow Vault for some reputation gear; there's more useless block value, but for starter boots, they'll do until he gets some dungeon gear or I get enough Titansteel to make him a new pair.

With a few days worth of jewelcrafting dailies, or a chunk out of the team's funds, Mordigg could get a Titanium Earthguard Ring. It would be a significant upgrade that would last quite a while and Sol already has that recipe; it'll just take time or money, neither of which I'm fond of spending when I want him out there working to pay off his epic mount now. For trinkets, he'll pretty much be stuck with what he's got until something drops in an instance, barring picking up a new trade skill (more on that later). I could probably send him off to do a normal Halls of Lightning with what he's got now. Loken doesn't hit all that hard and his Seal of the Pantheon would put a nice dent into the Defense rating Mordigg needs for uncrittable.

That just leaves us with the matter of his trade skills, but I'll save that for the next post. The arguments we came up with for changing his profession(s) ended up being longer than the rest of this post, so for the sake of readability we'll leave it at "To be continued..."