Quick thoughts on Death Knights
Loading ...My Death Knight, Sisuphe, is about 120k XP from 70 right now, and it occurred to me today (since I’m starting Howling Fjord, which is recent enough in my memory from leveling my priest that I can compare) that solo fighting as a Death Knight is different from soloing as any of the other classes I’ve leveled. In particular, because a Death Knight’s cooldowns are generally moderate – not short like a caster’s usually are, and not long like a warrior or rogue’s – and because all of their pulls (aside from body pulling, which I generally don’t like to do, largely, I suspect, because I’m used to playing casters) have dependencies that don’t recharge out of combat, I spend a good deal of each fight setting up the next pull rather than maximizing my DPS.
For example: let’s say I use Death Grip to pull Mob 1. Death Grip has a 35-second cooldown, lowered to 25 seconds by Unholy Command; I can usually finish a fight in about 10-15 seconds. This leaves a gap of 10-15 seconds when I can’t use Death Grip to pull Mob 2. Therefore, I have to keep an eye on my Runic Power; my other pulling ability of note is Death Coil, which requires 40 Runic Power. Ideally, I’ll have plenty of RP left over after a fight – unless I’ve used abilities that consume it to increase my DPS, like, for example, Death Coil. So I have to moderate my DPS in order to save up Runic Power so that I can use Death Coil to pull the next mob I need to fight. (Ideally, in fact, I’ll have 80+ Runic Power, because I keep my ghoul set on Defensive; casting Death Coil causes him to go after the targeted mob, and so I need to throw up a second Death Coil to keep the mob attacking me!) Of course, by the end of the second fight, Death Grip will have cooled down, and I’ll be able to use it to pull Mob 3.
(Naturally, this could all be avoided if I just went and bought a Glyph of Death Grip, which resets the cooldown on Death Grip when I kill a target that yields honor or experience. That would make this a trivial exercise. :)
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Yeah, I just grabbed the Glyph of Death Grip right off the bat– it’s AWESOME, thanks a million for telling me about it. I also got the minor glyph (of Raise Dead) that means you never need reagents of any kind– corpse or Corpse Dust– to summon your ghoul. INSTA-GHOUL. It is the Best.
My pulling rotation so far is Icy Touch to aggro one, Icy Touch to aggro another, Death Grip, and if I need it, maybe one more Icy Touch on a fourth– but right now I’m usually sticking to a maximum cluster of three mobs until I get used to this multi-mobbing deal. Then I’ll slap a Plague Strike on one of the Icy-Touched mobs and hit Pestilence to spread it… I’m still working on a more solid rotation from there, though, so that’s as far as I’ve gotten for anything resembling “routine.”
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