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Death Knight Changes Coming in Warlords of Draenor

Warlords of Draenor, AKA Patch 6.0, is scheduled to be released on Nov 13, 2014. In addition to the ten new levels you will get new talents, at level 100, new glyphs, and, instead of new abilities, you will get perks. In fact, some of your abilities will be removed.

Draenei Death Knight with the starting gear setThis post was last updated on 9/21/14 and is based on the WoD patch notes here.

Unlike the last couple of expansion the changes coming to Death Knights in Warlords of Dreanor aren’t major, but there is a fair amount of poking, prodding, and tweaking going on. The basic talent system is the same and most of your abilities are unchanged, but some abilities will be removed. Generally speaking, the changes are intended to streamline things a bit. Leave a comment if you don’t think that’s the case, or even if you do.

Note that most of the changes shown here are very early and are likely to change as we get closer to that release date of Warlords of Draenor.

Fortunately, the abilities are the only things being tweaked. According to a tweet by a Bliz Dev there are no changes planned to the resource system for Death Knights. So love it or hate it you’ll be keeping it. Probably.

So scroll down or use the menu to jump to various sections:

General DK Changes — Blood — Frost — Unholy — Talents & Glyphs — Perks
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Affliction Warlock PvP in Warlords

 

Affliction Warlock PvP GuideUpdated for Warlords of Draenor

Human Affliction Warlock in Season 11 PvP GearThis is the Affliction Warlock PvP Guide.  Your job is to suck the life out of the enemy and leave their corpses around the battlefield.

Whether Affliction is or is not the Flavor of the Month (FOTM) isn’t the point of this page. The point is to get your ‘lock to a better place in PvP. So let’s do it.

If you’re looking for the raiding or leveling info then see the links just below.

If you like this page how about recommending (“like,” +1, etc.) it and/or commenting?

Affliction PvP Contents

Other Warlock Pages

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Race Changes in the Warlords of Draenor

female gnome approvesAs with everything else in the Warlords of Draenor there are race changes coming. Warlords is removing Hit and Expertise so any racials dealing with those stats are being removed or replaced. Similar things will be happening to various class abilities.

These are the changes as of  4/24/14 and it’s at least 6 months until WoD is released, so changes are quite possible, even likely. All of these changes will have to be poked and prodded in the alpha and beta testing. One might guess that racial changes might be more set in stone than ability and class changes, but we’ll see.

So here they are, as they stand now. The actual changes are marked in bold. The rest of the racials are added just to be able to see the whole picture. Abilities not linked are not (yet) in WoWhead‘s database.
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A Warrior Proving Grounds Guide – Raging to the Gold

Arms and Fury Warriors will both be able to handle the Proving grounds with little, if any, change in techniques or gear. Stats, gems, etc. willbe the same for both specs.

As you may know, one of the requirements for LFR (Looking for Raid) and for random heroics in the Warlords of Draenor expansion will be a Silver Achievement in the Proving Grounds. One might guess that the reason for this is all the complaining about “the bads” in both of those groups. Anothing might be the “insta boost to 90” system that WoW has implemented, which people feel will flood the world with boobs who have not the slightest idea of how to play their characters.

So, with that in mind, I’m putting up a series of guides on how to get that silver achievement (and higher level achievements) in the Proving Grounds. Some classes and specs will find it easier than others, but everyone should be able to do it.

The Proving Grounds have three areas of expertise:

  • DPS/Damage – where you, all by yourself, have to destroy all opposition
  • Healing – where you and your team work together to destroy all opposition. Your team is, ahem, not necessarily highly skilled.
  • Tanking – You tank and burn down all opposition. You will have a healer who you have to keep alive.

After Silver you can go onto the Gold achievment and then Endless. This is where you fight wave after wave until you get bored of the whole thing. Gold has ten waves, ending with a boss type Sha. Silver has eight, with no major boss.
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Fire Mage Going for the Gold in the Proving Grounds

A Silver Achievement will be required to enter Looking for Raid (LFR) and for random heroics in Warlords of Draenor, coming “on or before” Dec 20, 2014. The Warlords of Draenor expansion pre-order has just been announced and along with it comes an “instant 90” token.

Hopefully this page will help you Fire Mages to burn you way to that silver and beyond. (Also see our Fire Mage DPS and Fire PvP pages and our Mage leveling guide if you’re not yet 90.)

How do you get to the Proving Grounds? Just ask your trainer. What are the rewards? Just the achievements and possible bragging rights.

Proving Yourself: Gold Damage AcievementThe big weakness for Fire is getting enough Crit to allow enough Pyro procs to do the damage. It might be helpful to pray to the Fire Gods and offer up sacrifices to be able to get some crit streaks. While this page won’t help with the prayers it will lessen the need for them a bit. Fire can get the Gold and can make headway through at least a few of the Endless Waves. Yes, Frost might be better for the PGs, but where’s the challenge in that? 😉

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Will an Instant Level 90 Devalue Leveling?

Some days back it was discovered that Blizzard would, in fact, be offering an insta-90 boost for $60. This is in addition to the boost that will come with the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Whether it will be available before the expansion is anyone’s guess. Naturally there has been some discussion as to what the value of the boost is, whether it’s “pay to win” and so on.

Goblin with a pile of gold wants to get leveled, now. My view is that it’s cool. People constantly complain about leveling and how long it takes to get to 90 (and soon, 100.) Especially if what they really want to do it get into the end-game stuff. I recently rolled new characters on a new server because that’s where a friend was hanging out. An insta-boost to 90 there would be great, considering that I don’t have a ton of time these days.

$60 will be a barrier for many and it’s likely a bit less than buying a whole new account and all of the expansions. Besides, you save a trip to the store and you get your extra 90s on one account and one server, esp. if you’re nicely set up on that server.

I expect they will get a fair number of takers. Heck, there are people buying multiple accounts already for use with Recruit a Friend or Multi-boxing. I’ve heard of several who multi-boxed ten accounts, and rumors of some who did many more.

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Blood Tanking the Proving Grounds, Going for the Gold

Human Death Knight, ready to be provenOne of the better ways for your Death Knight, or any other tank, to learn tanking skills is through the Proving Grounds, introduced in patch 5.4. It’s a safe place to experiment with rotations, dealing with multiple targets, reforging to get the most out of your gear, and so on. No one will know whether you took one try or 100 (or more) to get your gold achievement.

If you can get at least a silver achievement on your Death Knight (or any other character,) then you’ve probably got a clue.

In fact, Blizzard agrees that the Proving Ground is a good test and it looks like they are at least considering making the Proving Grounds a requirement for random groups in Warlords of Draenor. There were some recent interviews with Blizzard Devs on this topic.
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Top 10 Ways To Get Leveled Faster

I asked the question “How Fast Did You Level?” in a G+ World of Warcraft Community. (Here it is. If you’re on G+ you can join that community here.) I have received some interesting responses, such as getting from 1-90 in 23 hours (or less.) That’s rather mind boggling to me, so I asked and received some details. Here is what I was told:

  • I farm the elixirs of wisdom ( +300% xp ) and I do not use RaF. (These Elixirs are going to take some time to farm.)
  • LvL 1-10 took about 22 minutes with heirlooms and the guild bonus.
  • 10-18 took 20 minutes from soloing RFC.
  • 18-25 took 14 minutes doing Shadowfang Keep + dungeon quests.
  • 25-30 speed leveled through Northern Stranglethorn
  • 30-35 went down to the Cape of Stranglethorn
  • 35-40 went to Western Plaguelands
  • 40-45 still in Western Plaguelands
  • 45-50 went to Badlands

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