Beta blog 3: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

We built this city…
…on terrifying amounts of magic (and rock ‘n roll). Having hidden away in Dalaran behind their uber magic shield for a while, the mages of Dalaran have decided to take the fight to Northrend. It’s situated in the Crystalsong Forest zone, and the (now massive) city floats above the Northrend.

Players are only able to visit it once they’ve reached level 74 and obtain a quest to be teleported up. Mages however, can obtain the Teleport Dalaran spell at level 72, thus sidestepping that level requirement. If you’re a fan of WoW’s environments go check out the massive gaping wound left in Hillsbrad where Dalaran used to be – it’s impressive.

We can at last see what those Dalaran mages have been up to!

In game it functions much like Shattrath, as a sanctuary for Horde and Alliance alike and houses the Kirin Tor (including Rhonin, for lore geeks out there) and the Silver Covenent (represented initially by Vareesa Windrunner). New factions and therefore new reputation grinds are on the horizon, I’ll bet.

Dalaran sure is pretty at least.

All Death Knight, all the time
I mentioned in an earlier blog the joy of typing /who in Hellfire Peninsula and seeing nothing but Death Knights in the zone. As the weeks have passed this state of play has continued for the most part, sometimes you might see a lonely druid or warrior hanging out or levelling a new profession.

Generally speaking though, all the healers are in Northrend in instances using their max rank spells. So what does this mean for up and coming Death Knights in Outland? Well, it means you have all Death Knight Dungeons – and they are FUN. You still need a tank, obviously, and Frost specced DKs do an excellent job with Frost Presence on (+45 per cent threat, +magic resistance and 45 per cent increase armour contribution from items) and in the current build spells such as Howling Blast and Icy Touch do insane amounts of damage and threat.

Still without a healer you will more than likely wipe a couple of times during the instance but it all balances out in the end. The two DPS specs; Blood and Unholy work really well. Unholy puts out a significant amount of damage and Blood is practically unkillable – particularly if you spec heavily into the regenerative abilities like Vendetta and Bloodworms.

Two other big thumbs up go to running five Ghouls in a party along with player characters and the horrifying miasma that is five Death Knights casting Death and Decay in one area. You can’t see anything, but that’s okay. When the mist clears everything will be dead.

Things I miss about earlier Death Knight builds: Raise Ghoul acting like an area effect spell and raising everything in the vicinity. There ain’t no party like a ghoul party, ‘cause a ghoul party’s got rot!