Team Death Knight - Finally 80 - Comments
Hi Guys,
First of all I should introduce myself, I have been reading these forums over the past couple of months and have found it to be a great source of information. I have played WoW as a mage since release but for Wrath I decided I needed a change so rolled a Death Knight, and just to make it more interesting I decided to roll two of them. After 6 weeks I finally hit level 80 this evening and thought that some of you may like to find out what my experience was. My setup is fairly simple - I have a single PC with two monitors, I run both WoWs full screen (well, window mode that is maximized) and use Keyclone - a very standard setup. Both of my characters are identical specs and have identical gear. Anyway, here are my findings thus far:
55-68
From level 55 to level 68 I found two DKs to literally be a killing machine - nothing come close, absolutely zero down time and the quests are just so easy that Outland is cleared in no time. The biggest ball ache (and this is a re-occurring theme) is that for all of the pick up quests you end up ninjaring mobs from yourself which is very annoying. However, I had no problems from 55 to 68. At 65 I got bored of questing so I found a nice grinding spot near Thunderlord Stronghold and just grinded up to 68 and then off to the new world I went. All very easy and boring up to this point. I did it all as unholy.
68-75
I landed in the Howling Fjord and started questing. This went in no time at all, most of the quests did not involve picking up items from rare spawns or anything annoying like that so it was very very easy. From the Fjord I moved over to Borean Tundra at 70 and knocked a couple of levels out there. At this point I changed to frost and later to blood to play with the specs but more on this later. Again Borean was very easy and just repetitive stuff - all standard and boring. At 72 I moved onto Dragon Blight and started to really hate questing as it was at Dragon Blight where I started to realize that questing was far far far too slow for boxing DKs. However, I plodded on because I wanted to see the cinematic thing at the end but I hated it. I finished this at level 75 with a little bit of grinding thrown in for good measure. I found that the elite guys towards the north of the map near the big snow cave is a VERY good spot for 2 DKs to grind, lots of gold, lots of xp and you can kill them one after the other with almost zero down time.
75-76
It is about this point that questing made me loose the will to live. I dragged some friends to ring of blood to get the good axe and then headed to Grizley Hills to start questing - this was a huge mistake. I found that there are far too many pick up quests where you end up stealing mobs and pickups from yourself and it was just not efficient. About half way through I got so bored of questing that I grinded the rest of the level - I couldn't find a good grinding spot, I was constantly ganked by 80s and I hated every second in Grizley Hills.
77
By this point I had lost the will to quest any more but a friend convinced me to at least try Sholazar Basin and I am glad he did - fantastic place. Very very easy quests, hardly any pick up quests, no alliance, just kill kill kill. Nice. Sadly I finished all the quests about half way through 77.
77.5 - 80
I had now realised that questing is not for me when it comes to boxing, it is just too annoying to see a 'collect 10 of these random things that never drop and then do it all again cos your playing two characters' quests (I have no idea how you 3+ boxers can be bothered to quest but fair play to you). I therefore headed up to Icecrown where there is a FANTASTIC grinding spot, the modbs literally respawn every few seconds, they drop good loot (lots of frostweave) and 25s each time. It is at this point that I realized that two death knights make an AMAZING grinding team. Seriously, absolutely amazing. At 77 I was taking groups of 6 level 80 mobs and clearing them all in about 40 seconds and taking next to no damage - when it does get scary you pop an icebound fortitude and call in a couple of gargoils and a couple of mage royals, hit your rune reset skills and whack a couple of death strikes down and you are back up to full health and the mobs just drop. There is absoultly no down time and I was pulling in about 5-6k xp a minute. I lived in this spot for about 3 days untill the magic 80 finally arrived.
That is how I leveled just incase anyone else out there is thinking about it they may find it usfull, if not thats cool.
Thoughts
I have come to realize that two death knights are AMAZING at grinding, absolutely unstoppable. They can easily take large groups of mobs that are 3 levels higher than themselves, they can quite easily take elites that WoW lists as 3 man (and some 5 man) elite bosses and the damage from the pets in unholy REALLY adds up. When you put two pets on a single target it will drop in no time and your pets will take next to no damage, it is this reason that lead to me going back to unholy. I found frost to be a bit pointless with two DKs because you simply do not need lots of health and survivability as blood and unholy have more than enough. I found blood to be very effective and the dual health leech buff stacking is remarkably good but I found it a little boring to play, I also really missed the pets. Now I am 80 I am litrally a one man (well, two toon) army - I have two death knights walking around, if I want to scare someone I can pop army of the dead and a couple of gargoyles and I am a full on army, it is fantastic. However, now comes the bad bit...
PvP
I am finding PvP to be 'very' hard. I know that playing two mele classes is a challenge as it is, and having two death grips is very good as is having two anti magic bubbles - but the slave is almost completely useless in PvP, I find that I really am not much better off than just playing a single character. I cannot really use rune strike as it never procs on both toons at the same time so scourge strike / obliterate is generally a better choice, so that negates one of the classes best skills. Also, the class is too easy to be croud controlled which almost always leaves one of my DKs running around feared or sheeped or whatever whilst the other one fights on his own, having to manage the second one feels more like a chore than adding an effective second killing machine. I am confident that I will improve as I learn how to play (I openly admit that in x2 DK PvP I suck right now) and having a single button to bring out a couple of pets, a couple of army of the deads and a couple of gargoyles is bloody good, but on the whole I think that to Paladins would be much more effective. However, despite this failing (which is as much on me as it is playing two DKs as Im rubbish) I 'really' enjoy PvPing with two DKs. They are far from the most effective combo to play with, they are very inefficent and they are very frustrating at times - you can almost sense people in battlegrounds going 'CRAP, TWO DKs.... ARGH..... WAIT, WHAT, OMG IM WINNING, HAHAAH THIS GUY SUCKS' but it is that challenge that makes it FUN! I should say that when it all kicks off in a battleground and everyone is fighting in the middle then they are VERY good as you just stand back, pick out your target and your two death grips mean they cant get away, poor mages and locks dont stand a chance when you grip them over, set the pets on them and then unleash, they usually get away and then the second one pulls them straight back and they die, funzies!
Summary
- VERY effective at PvE grinding ($$$$$$$)
- VERY effective when there is a big brawl in PvP
- Great fun
- PvP / Arenas is a big challange, do not roll two DKs if you expect to dominate
- Whilst PvP / Arenas may be a challange and not very effective, it is a bloody good laugh and is good fun
- If you want to be a bit different, give it a try. There are much better combos out there, but it is kinda fun.
So anyway, there you have it. Team Death Knight is finally level 80 and is finally learning to play PvP. I will update you guys with how I get on in the coming months.
Team DK :)
