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Launch Night Reminders

With launch looming here in the US, and Wrath now live in Europe, we wanted to provide a few reminders for everyone.  Here's a list of some of the useful resources we've found across the community.

Official Blizzard Resources

Wrath Launch Help Center
Upgrading for Wrath of the Lich King
Realm Status Update
Death Knight Creation F.A.Q.
Updated World of Warcraft System Requirements
Interactive Map of Northrend

Unofficial Resources

Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide: Borean Tundra (70-72)
Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide: Howling Fjord (72-74)
Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide: Dragonblight (74-75)
Jame's Horde Leveling Guide: Howling Fjord (70-72)
Jame's Horde Leveling Guide: Borean Tundra (72-74)
Jame's Horde Leveling Guide: Dragonblight (74-75)

Death Knight Tips

As I've personally leveled a Death Knight multiple times (once in Alpha, twice in Beta), I wanted to offer a few tips for those of you planning to embark on the Hero class immediately upon Wrath's release.  I've seen this posted a lot as a highly sought after weapon, but unless you're extremely rich you probably wasted your gold on Blade of Misfortune, assuming you purchased it, since you can obtain Halaani Claymore from Halaa at level 66.  If you're still on the fence, don't bother -- Greatsword of the Ebon Blade will get you to the level you need to obtain Helboar Carving Blade (Testing the Antidote), which is more than enough to get you to level 66.  The time you save thanks to Blade of Misfortune won't remotely compare to the gold you spent on it.

Talent Spec

Getting out of the Death Knight starter experience, you should be level 57, or possibly 58.  My personal favorite spec at this point is Unholy (2/0/46) for maximized solo leveling efficiency, though other specs will work fine. A few key explanations:

  • Butchery is a great grinding talent, especially for tier 1.  I would suggest this being the very first talent you max out while going through the starting experience.  It'll increase the rate of your Death Coils by a fair bit, which is one of your major sources of damage before having a two rune attack.
  • Epidemic early on is mostly filler, since you won't have Scourge Strike until later in the starting experience, but obviously you'll need to put those points somewhere.  However, once you can work Scourge Strike into your rotation, this is a great talent to have to buy you an extra rotation of multiple Scourge Strikes.
  • On A Pale Horse is a clear winner of a talent for grinding.  This will prove especially useful once you get to Outland and don't have the liberty of being given your flight paths for free.  It will cut down on time spent traveling fairly substantially by the end of your leveling progression.
  • Reaping is a great talent once you have Scourge Strike.  Every other rotation can be an extra Scourge Strike in place of two Blood Strikes.
  • Master of Ghouls will allow you to summon your ghoul and keep him out until he dies, as well as control him like a pet.  That combined with Ravenous Dead will mean your ghoul will contribute decently to your grinding; especially with the Pet Defensive changes.
  • Unholy Aura, much like On A Pale Horse, is another winner of a talent for grinding.  This will increase your run speed by 15%.
  • Bone Shield is a great mitigation talent.  It's one of the better grinding mitigation talents since it doesn't have a brief duration like Unbreakable Armor and Vampiric Blood.
  • Scourge Strike will be a huge source of your damage.  It's shadow damage so it's not mitigated by armor, and it doesn't strip your diseases like its physical counterpart Obliterate, allowing you to avoid the Frost tree entirely if you so choose.
  • Ebon Plaguebringer is an amazing talent.  It has great synergy with your diseases, as well as increasing Scourge Strike's damage by 13%.  Of course, it'll also passively increase your chance to crit as well.

For other builds, you can try Blood (48/0/0), Frost (2/46/0), or a few various hybrid builds.  You'll notice that all three talent builds have Butchery.  This is a great talent assuming you're solo leveling; if you're tap leveling or being powerleveled, it's not so great and you can go 48 deep in Frost/Unholy instead.

AddOns

You'll want to use the typical AddOns you would on any character; Action Bars, UnitFrames, etc.  However, here are a few suggested AddOns for each.

Most AddOns are totally optional, but I've found these assist in making the leveling process, and overall gameplay, much more enjoyable.

For more discussion, head over to the Death Knight forum.  If you want to talk about a specific role for your Death Knight, and compare with other classes within that role, you'll find both the Tanks and Physical DPS forums handy.

WOWDB Update Preview

We have an absolutely major update coming to WOWDB tonight to coincide with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.  The database will begin accepting Wrath of the Lich King data, and we have two new features being introduced: Character Profiles and a Glyph Planner.

Glyph Planner

The Glyph Planner will allow you to plan out certain glyph builds for your characters and then share them with your friends so they can comment on them or use them as a guide.  It will also provide a concise overview of the gains from each Glyph in your current setup, and is very flexible -- allowing you to modify the level of the planner to see potential setups for any character level.

Character Profiles

The character profiles will be in their initial phase, and will include a scoring system using a highly sophisticated algorithm based on your character class, equipment, as well as your talent build.  It will score you based on other characters in the database, with the highest score being 1000, and scaling down from there.  Through this system, you'll truly see who is the best equipped of each class.  Of course, you'll also be able to see all of your pets, mounts, achievements, and everything else you can find on the Armory.  Finally, you'll be able to view your character in full 3D in your profile, as well as see the last 10 items you've obtained for your character.

We have a heck of a lot more coming for character profiles that we're not quite ready to share yet, but it will integrate heavily with the Curse Client and our Curse Profiler system, to bring MMO Character Profiles to a whole new level.

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