onsdag 22. april 2009

Something from nothing.

Sometimes you have to look outside of the box to find the present inside. Sometimes you have to break up a few roots to sow anew. Sometimes the best ideas come from the most surprising of places.

Since the arrival of 3.1, I've spent a fair bit of time re-thinking my death knight. Still in the process of actually levelling her up (75 and counting!), I have taken some time to plan ahead for what I want her to be when she peaks the level cap. And what I want her to be, now as when I rolled her, is a dual-wielding, unholy piece of bitch that is able to deal tremendous damage to any fight, be it Patchwerk, be it Malygos or be it Mimiron. The death knight re-balancing, nerf if you will, in patch 3.1, have rendered the idea of dual-wielding death knights to be considered dead and buried by the hardcore community, and looking at the talents (with the death of Nuclear Bomb Icy Touch and tri-spec) as they stand live, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why.

So when browsing the forums and communities, reading everyone's (very professional, if I may say so myself) mathematical QQ on the subject, I stumble across a lone, largely ignored poster, suggesting a build based around Scourge Strike. Hang on there, Scourge Strike for dual-wield? Surely you must be joking. But no, no joke coming. And no Killing Machine? Can you really have dual-wield without Killing Machine? Looking closer at his armoury, I see a player still in quest greens, his raiding experience is limited to OS10 and OS25, both professions are gathering, gear mostly unenchanted and gems of the cheap variety. This is, from the looks of it, not a very good players. Should I really listen to this guy?

The short answer: Yes.

The slightly longer answer: The idea is both creative and interesting - why the hell not?

For the last couple of days, been running around Borean Tundra and Dragonblight questing, with an average overall DPS at a round 800 equipped with quest greens, seldom using more than 5 GCDs downing a mob. The real eye-opener, however, came when doing the group quest Last Rites, when I got to try my rotation in full on a 114k HP elite. Clocking in at 1488 DPS on level 73, with shit for haste and less than 20% crit with both Horn and buff food, it dawned on me what this build might be capable of. I've been in Naxx25-PuGs where less DPS is seen from death knights on Patchwerk, and I'm beating that at 73? Scourge Strikes crits for 3,500, the runic generation for Death Coil-dump is amazing and the general output is overall far higher than expected.

So for the time being, I'm looking forward to ding level 80, get geared and try out a 0/14/57-build of my own design (wot no gargoyle?) in a raid environment. I will, of course, keep you posted on progression.

ENDNOTE: For all of you who miss something about warriors in this post - I might try Arms one of these days, If I do, expect a heavy rant on how terrific/terrible that experience turns out to be.