The Trail of Dead: A Dual-Boxers Guide to the Death Knight

The Trail of Dead: A Dual-Boxers Guide to the Death Knight

I'm writing this to keep share and keep track of my progress with this new mixed team, I think there will be a few things here of benefit to those curious about using a mixed team or adding a Death Knight in general to a boxing setup.

In the beginning... The RAF Syndrome
I did a lot of messing around, building up various team comps with RAF and plain experimentation I decided to narrow my goal down to having 2 teams of 5. One, my Paladin and 4 Shaman team which I've only been playing for a couple of months. And now, my new Wrath Team. When I started boxing in WoW, I initially was messing with a mixed team. 2 Shamans, a Mage, a Druid. And then I drumped the Mage and Druid. I decided to level up the Shamans and make the group I've been playing with. Last night however, with the release of WoTLK I decided to try out the Death Knight class in my mixed team, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

Team Composition: SRS Business
http://srsbusiness.org/sigs/srsbusiness.gif

Khaas - Orc / Death Knight [ Enchanter / Jewelcrafter ] - Talents
Mirwai - Blood Elf / Mage [ Tailor / Mining ] - Talents
Sumatra - Blood Elf / Warlock [ Tailor / Engineering ] - Talents
Caerroil - Tauren / Druid [ Leatherworking / Skinning ] - Talents
Hergrom - Orc / Shaman [ Alchemy / Herbalism ] - Talents

Initial Impressions
The Death Knight works well in a mixed group such as this, the DK DOES work well with a full Shaman group, however it is not in my opinion as optimized as a Paladin in that type of group. Here however, the DK shines. Your loss of various totems isn't such a big deal since the DK replicates some of those abilities. Similarly, other classes such as the Druid offer buffs that take place of totems such as Strength of Earth (but with even more stats).

The big hit of course, you lose the mana regen of having all those Mana Spring Totems and Blessing of Wisdom, however with the dedicated healer and his talents/glyphs it's not a big deal. Even less considering the Druid has a macro to innervate the healer in case of emergencies. Infact the Mage, Lock, and Druid all have the ability to quickly generate mana for themselves. If you play it right, you can set a button ex. F7 to cast Life Tap on your Warlock, and have the same button set to target the lock and cast Lesser Healing Wave or your heal of choice on the lock.

Death Knight Preparation
He's going to be a tank, if you're boxing a DK there's not much else you can really do with him. Unlike the Paladin the DK takes a bit of attention, you can't set him on a mob and switch to your healer as easily. You need to be able to track changes in your runic power and rune refreshes, watch your pets health (if he's offtanking) etc. In short, there's more to keep up with, so you'll want the lion's share of your attention focused on the DK.

Your newbie quests will net you a full compliment of blue gear, including trinkets, jewelry armor and a 2 handed sword or axe. Note however, these are not the only weapon types you can use, there are quite a few Polearms and 1 handed weapons that make fine DK weapons. Such as the Hellreaver from Hellfire Ramparts.

Talents
For a boxing group, I highly recomend going Unholy. Especially if you are accustomed to boxing with a Paladin. Unholy compliments the group well, offering Anti Magic Zone in lieu of spammed Grounding Totems.

Cookie Cutter Specs courtesy of Tankspot.com
In Depth Look at Specs and Rotations for DKs can be found here:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/4...rotations.html

Unholy
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhxZfgoI00ogeVocsut

Frost
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMZGxxthcdRhR0ssx0g

Blood
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jcEMqG0IsbMtzAZhxZcx

Note: My final spec for Unholy differs with the cookie cutter spec listed from Tankspot. I'm doing a little bit of PVPing with this guy, and I've found that having a perma ghoul is pretty handy for PVE and PVP, additionally you can have the Ghoul use his Leap ability to jump someone ... and then use Corpse Explosion on the Ghoul while they're stunned for a BIG burst of damage. After that it's time to have your way with them.

More coming soon ... reserved

your mage and warlock spec is the same link.

Doh, thanks fixing it now.

I'm very curious to possible DK tanking macro's you'll be making.

Wow, I'd forgotten about this thread. I've since switched the DK out of the mixed group for my Paladin, and put the DK with my Shamans. But yeah, I'll be putting together something with Macros and such eventually, right now I'm just having too much fun playing :D

There are a couple of people (me included) on this forum that have level 80 DKs that we use as tanks for our team (in both cases I think at this point its a team of 4 shamans - me and Niley).

I've been running normal instances with my team for awhile but haven't done any Heroics yet. Will be trying some in the next day or two and will probably write up a DK tanking guide after that. I already have a good rotation for tanking I've been using for awhile so I will make sure that is still good for Heroics and then make a post. I actually have 2 rotations, one for bosses and one for trash. I use the one for bosses for non-instance content as well as it doesn't do any AoE threat really at all.

Cool Hachoo, I've been wondering how it's working for you.

I am not exactly sure how you could put this in a multiboxing macro but DnD>IT>PS>PeS>HB=Unstoppable aggro in decent gear.

Edit: For you non-frost tanks, BBx2(x3 with heavy AoE group aka blood tap) is comparable aggro

I'm still getting my mixed group through the outlands, but I tried some different tanking rotations outside of instances in order to track threat. I'm still looking into the details, but it seems like the right rotations make you unstoppable (as has been pointed out). More to come, and I'm looking forward to see what others have to say about it.