Stereolab at Koko

Stereolab take the stage to a ripple of applause, a muted welcome that belies the band's perennial success. It makes me reflect on how many years Stereolab have been creating music and how they are still playing to medium-sized audiences, why they aren't filling a stadium by now. It also makes me wonder why so many people apparently come out to see a band play a gig and spend half the night having loud conversations, as an almost-constant murmur threatens to drown out the quieter passages of music. Despite my pensive mood the audience's reception to Stereolab's songs is completely positive, particularly when some of the older tracks are played.

Being experienced with creating and playing music, and certainly happier to be musicians than stars, Stereolab know how to put together an engaging set. There are plenty of older tracks played amongst a sprinkling of newer songs from their recently released album Chemical Chords and it all sounds fresh and exciting. There is a huge reaction to classics like Lo Boob Oscillator and French Disko, the latter an electrifying performance, and Silver Sands stands out for me from the selection of new songs. It doesn't seem long before Stereolab are leaving the stage and Laetitia Sadier is saying that they are just getting warmed up. She walks off with the promise that they'll see us again in a minute.

A minute later and Stereolab are back in the most obviously announced and best fake encore I've witnessed. Laetitia tells us we are lucky as we get another fifteen minutes of their time, before the band lead in to The Emergency Kisses, one of my favourite Stereolab songs. It would be the highlight of the show for me except they didn't play the refrain, so my highlight is from the earlier playing of the wonderful Double Rocker. But just as the band are getting in to the swing of the performance again they have to leave. And this time they have to leave, for the venue has a strict ten o'clock curfew.

At having to leave the stage so early in the evening, unusual for just about any other venue, Laetitia asks everyone 'What happened to rock 'n' roll?' It's a good question, particularly when the last time I saw Stereolab the band returned for three encores, the last completely unplanned and unexpected by the venue. With another vibrant performance of exciting classics and fresh new songs it is clear the spirit of rock 'n' roll has just left the stage.

Posted in Audio | 3 Comments »
Tags: gig, koko, stereolab

My So-called Life

It is occasionally said that you shouldn't revisit your childhood heroes once you've grown up, because they will never live up to your expectations or dreams. This makes sense, because the world moves on and we all grow in different ways, our experiences shape our perceptions and nostalgia clouds our memories. It is like watching an episode of Batfink now. I used to think that programme was brilliant and remember avidly watching it each day after coming home from school, so I was stunned by its terrible production values and stories that were superficial to the point of not existing. But whilst there are things that should only remain a fond memory there are still reasons to look to the past. My recent watching spree of Mission: Impossible and Columbo didn't disappoint and let me enjoy some classic television.

Both Mission: Impossible and Columbo were both almost classic programmes when I first saw them, though, watching repeats of the series many years after they first aired. That they were repeated, back in the days when satellite or cable TV weren't around, already highlighted the quality of the shows. Thus it was with some trepidation that I bought myself the complete DVD box set of My So-called Life, a show that ran for only one series—and maybe not even a complete series—and as far as I know has not been repeated on terrestrial channels. The series even had an aborted DVD release previously, with only the first disc released before being cancelled, which cannot be a positive sign. I still have that three-episode disc, by the way.

I watched My So-called Life on TV when it was first shown and I remember enjoying it tremendously, even to the point of buying the CD soundtrack to the series, something I rarely do. Despite my good memories I am aware that nostalgia can play tricks and know that I have grown considerably since the series aired, leaving me wondering if it would still be relevant. I sat down and started watching the episodes in order and have been not only pleasantly surprised but quite touched emotionally again by how the series portrays its characters. The clothes and hairstyles may be a little dated, as well as the music to some extent, but the characters' situations still are issues that people deal with, and they are dealt with in the show by flawed but sympathetic people.

I may be somewhat older and, hopefully, wiser now than I was when I first saw My So-called Life, but the show still appeals greatly. A real joy is in realising that I am viewing the programme through more experienced eyes, relating more to the adults and realising how these elements must have passed me by the first time. I cannot directly relate to the high school students but I can still empathise with them, remembering what it is like to be in similar positions, as well as understanding that what must seem like awful conundrums to the teenagers are mostly minor issues that will likely be dwarfed by problems faced when advancing through adulthood. And even though I don't have children I find myself more drawn to the parents' stories, which are just as relevant now as the teenagers' stories were when I was growing up.

I am only half-way through the series at the moment but I can comfortably state that my memories of the programme have not been tainted by nostalgia. Instead, I am enjoying watching My So-called Life all over again.

Posted in Personal, Video | 2 Comments »
Tags: dvd, my so-called life, tv

Melted video card

If only a melted video card were an EVE Online salvaged component, I would be happy to find one and sell it on the market for half-a-million ISK. Sadly, the melted video card is sitting in my computer.

I experienced a game freeze in World of Warcraft when running Gnomesblight through Underbog and was a little concerned but thought little more of it. That was until it happened again. And then it got worse. Whilst I was playing normally an internal fan span up to high speed, making a bit of a racket, and then the video cut out completely to my monitor. This was not good at all. Only a hard reboot got me back my video signal, and only for an hour or so before it happened again. The fan span up to maximum speed followed by the video cutting out. iTunes was still playing in the background so the computer was otherwise functional.

Since I was not able to play because the melted video card, I went to https://www.boostingboss.com/ and get someone that will be boosting my account of League of Legends in the meantime.

I open up the side of the computer and check for excessive dust and cat hair and find that the internals are still quite free from debris, although in shifting the computer slightly to one side I find a small, unexplained stash of kitty biscuits. I check the connections to the video card and my monitor and nothing is amiss. I am fairly sure by this point that my video card is dying from an overheating problem perhaps caused by a related on-board failure.

I call the Apple support line, for my computer is still under warranty, and am given some suggested fixes, including a PRAM and NVRAM reset, although I would be amazed if this fixed the problem. My first plan is to make a full back-up of my hard drive, partly because it is a simply good idea to do so and partly because taking a computer in to a service department, which I suspect I will need to do, can be harmful to user data. Sadly, the video signal doesn't remain stable long enough for the time it takes to boot the OS and load the back-up software, so my plans are scuppered. I try the support line suggestions and, unsurprisingly in this instance, they don't fix the problem, so I call an authorised service centre and book my machine in to be fixed under warranty.

With luck, the 'knackered video card' problem will be easy to reproduce and diagnose and I will have a shiny new video card in the system within a couple of days. In the mean time, I have my notebook to stop me suffering EVE Online and World of Warcraft withdrawal symptoms, even if the smaller screen and slightly cramped keyboard/monitor position reduce my desire to play for extended periods. On a positive note, my Mac Book Pro handles both games quite capably, throwing polygons all over the screen at fifty frames per second on average. If I feel adventurous I might even see if the notebook can drive my desktop monitor well enough to run the games. I think it is supposed to be able to drive the monitor, but whether it can do so whilst running an MMORPG at an acceptable frame rate is another matter.

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Tags: apple, computers, eve online, world of warcraft

Gnomesblight, master swordsmith Death Knight

Having reached a mining skill of 400 with Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, my stock of fel iron ore seems sufficient to get back to an anvil to craft some armour to hone my blacksmithing skills. Carefully selecting the more complicated patterns I have been taught I find that my smithing skills improve steadily to the point where I can learn how to make runes of warding out of adamantite at a skill level of 325. Grabbing and smelting some of my store of adamantite ore in to bars I make a number of runes of warding until I reach that magical blacksmithing skill of 330. I have finally reached a goal of my smithing skills, being able to craft an item that is useful and an upgrade to my current equipment, the Stoneforged Claymore of the master swordsmith. All I need to do now is be taught how to make one.

I speak to the weaponsmith trainer in Shattrath City, who has been overlooking my current progress, and he would be happy to teach me how to make a Stoneforged Claymore except that I need to be a master swordsmith to craft one, not just a weaponsmith. I kind of knew that already, having seen it being a requirement long before I was skilled enough to make one, I just assumed that I would be told how to become a master swordsmith when the time came. After all, I was guided quite thoroughly when it came to choosing between specialising in armour or weapon smithing, even being pointed to the trainers standing not twenty feet away from me at the time.

With the Shattrath City weaponsmith trainer reluctant to help me become a master swordsmith I head back to Ironforge, where my choice to become a weaponsmith was made and all the helpful advice previously was offered. I go to talk to the weaponsmith trainer as well as the general blacksmith trainer, but neither have anything new to tell me even though the weaponsmith trainer also tantalisingly has the plans for the Stoneforged Claymore, if only I were a master swordsmith. This is disappointing, as I really don't have any clues as to how to become a master swordsmith.

I haven't spent all my time mining ore and making useless items of armour just so I can look at a pattern for a decent sword that I cannot make, so I resort to the only option I consider to be left. I look up the blacksmithing profession in WoWWiki, where it helpfully tells me that I need to head to Everlook in Winterspring to talk to a specific trainer. It is breaking immersion and even perhaps arguably cheating to look up this information on the internet but I was otherwise left standing in Ironforge scratching my head about how to learn a pattern I strived so hard to reach.

I don't quite understand why there don't seem to be any clues about where to go to learn to become a master weaponsmith. It doesn't help that I have visited Everlook many times in my varied adventures and encountered the three trainers in passing, but when I have wondered who they are and tried to talk to them as a non-blacksmith they tell me to get lost. They don't give any indication that they are specialist blacksmithing trainers, so that I could remember the information just in case it should become relevant later. The whole path seems particularly perverse considering that the idea of a specialist weaponsmith doesn't seem to exist beyond the Burning Crusade, with the later plans available only requiring the character to be a general weaponsmith. It must be easier just to scrap the idea of sword/axe/hammersmiths at this point.

Despite my obstacles I am grateful for the general community support that is readily available. With the information learnt, I travel to Everlook and talk to the trainer who proclaims me a master swordsmith, thankfully bypassing the quest that is now mostly irrelevant. A quick hearthstone trip back to Shattrath City allows me to learn how to craft the Stoneforged Claymore and, before too long, I have my new, mighty sword equipped. Huzzah!

All that is left now is to mine enough fel iron and adamantite to reach a blacksmithing level of 350 and, I believe, I will be able to make use of the new cobalt plans available in Northrend, perhaps even in synchronicity with my Death Knight reaching 68th level.

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Tags: blacksmithing, death knight, gnomesblight, mining, mmorpg, professions, weaponsmith, world of warcraft

More efficient Death Knight mining

Despite being sick of mining with my Death Knight I still had ore to gather if I wanted to increase my blacksmithing skill so that I could craft my Stoneforged Claymore. I still take time out to enjoy the Death Knight class by questing, but I have a target to reach that I still think is necessary in order to enjoy Northrend more by being able to mine, smith and quest in unison once I get there.

Having past the need for mithril and thorium I now need plenty of fel iron to increase my smithing skills. The obvious place to gather a load of fel iron ore seems to be Hellfire Peninsula, so I head to Honour Hold and start wandering around the vast landscape to mine once more. And once more I quickly get bored with the tedium of mining. At least the mobs that inhabit the region don't completely ignore me and provide a slight challenge for my combat skills when I try to collect the ore, but mining still seems like a chore. After a higher-level character swoops down on his flying mount and gets to some ore a footstep ahead of me I am ready to give up, but instead I decide to head to another zone.

I cross the border from Hellfire Peninsula and enter Zangarmarsh. When adventuring here I have spotted a fair bit of ore dotted around the landscape. Not just fel iron ore either, there is some adamantium around too, which will come in handy later. I start skirting around the zone, looking for ore deposits on the rocky edges. Before long I have completed a couple of laps of Zangarmarsh, have a decent amount of ore in my bags and am not only lacking that feeling of tedium but appear to have settled in to a nice groove.

I realise what has happened. When I was mining mithril my favoured zone was Tanaris. I could run laps around the outskirts of the zone whilst picking up ninety percent or so of the ore from the edges, with only a couple of incursions to investigate rocky outcrops. By the time I had made my way around the map I could repeat the process and the ore would have respawned, albeit in slightly different locations. When mining Thorium I eschewed the irregular landscape of the Eastern Plaguelands and ran laps around the simple rocky edges of Burning Steppes, again with the same results as with Tanaris.

When I decided to go to Hellfire Peninsula it was a recipe for tedium. The vast, sprawling landscape with mineral deposits able to crop up just about anywhere meant no real circuit of the region could be completed. It was a lot of running around with little to show for the effort. By comparison, Zangarmarsh suits my mining style perfectly. It is bounded by rocky edges that suit mineral deposits, with a couple of caves also on the edge of the map that hold some ore, and is perfect for running laps around. By heading in to Zangarmarsh I am finding that not only am I collecting a decent amount of ore but I am also having a fairly good time doing it as the occasional foray in to a cave allows for some combat.

As I already have the Mysteries of the Marsh achievement for completing all the quests in the zone the only problem with spending my time mining in Zangarmarsh is that the permanent dampness is causing my armour to start growing mushrooms. Ah well, I'll have the ore to craft some new armour soon enough.

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Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mining, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Gnomesblight the grand master miner, crappy blacksmith Death Knight

My Death Knight has been mining, mining, mining. I finally kicked the mithril habit, after making many laps around Tanaris collecting ore and crafting a couple of dozen mithril coifs. Finally able to use thorium I withdraw the one hundred and sixty four thorium bars from the bank and continue refining my blacksmithing skills. My optimism for not having to mine mithril is soon dissolved in a sea of disappointment when I realise all those bars of thorium leave me far from the next goal of reaching blacksmithing 300. The one hundred and sixty four bars get me to blacksmithing skill 280 leaving me at least two hundred and forty bars short of becoming a master blacksmith and able to use the fel iron found in Outlands.

I am still surprisingly motivated. This is partly owing to seeing that when I get to be a master swordsmith, with blacksmithing skill 330, I can craft a decent two-handed sword that would be both an improvement over the one I am currently wielding and most suitable for the Death Knight class with the strength boost it imbues. I start running more laps for ore, swapping Tanaris for Burning Steppes to get the thorium I need instead of mithril. It takes more time than I would care to spend but I eventually get all the thorium I need. With some rugged leather from the auction house and a bunch of star rubies I have uncovered, I finally get my blacksmithing skill up to 300! I can smith fel iron at last.

Of course, I don't have enough fel iron to advance my blacksmithing skills far enough to make the sword I desire, and finally to craft something useful after hours of mining and smithing, so I head to Hellfire Peninsula and start hunting more fel iron deposits. As I am mining for the struggle to advance my blacksmithing skill I notice that my mining skill is approaching the limit for a master miner. With only a couple more deposits I have hit the 375 limit. To make best use of my mining skills I head back to the Eastern Kingdoms to catch a ship out to Howling Fjord, my first trip with Gnomesblight to Northrend, and train to be a grand master in mining.

I suppose I should be pleased with my progress, but it is frustrating how my mining skills advance so much more quickly than blacksmithing. It is more frustrating that I have spent so much time mining and crafting without anything useful to show for it yet, particularly when I hardly get the opportunity to enjoy the Death Knight class when mining. Were I levelling up and mining and crafting as a consequence of adventuring in various zones the crafting process would be an interesting distraction. It is always fun to being completing quests only to take a swift diversion as the yellow blob of a mineral deposit grabs my attention. There would be a balance to the combat and crafting. The crafting could also supply a levelling character with the occasional useful item.

As the Death Knight starts at 55th level but has to start professions from zero skill all crafting done is purely to level up the skill. No useful items can be made when the character starts with superior equipment in the first place. At least with alchemy the potions can give minor buffs, but as a Death Knight's weapons are etched with custom runes a blacksmith Death Knight cannot even use the sharpening stones made. Everything is thrown away. If ever there were a sign that an activity is pointless this would be it.

The crafting system doesn't even advance the character in any meaningful way. As a player, I learn nothing from crafting two dozen copper bracers, apart from how tedious it can be to watch a progress bar advance. It doesn't matter to me that my character learns how to mine and smelt copper, then tin, then iron, all the way to thorium, I could understand the necessary progression just as well simply moving from thorium to fel iron.

There seems to be no reason why a Death Knight's profession skill couldn't start at a skill level of 270, just as weapon skills and first aid does. Or, rather, it seems pointless to force a Death Knight to start gathering and crafting from scratch, resulting in pushing these high-level players through beginner zones and wasting hours of time to produce nothing useful. It should be as simple as granting a character a skill level, no recipes would need to be automatically memorised initially. All recipes would be available to buy from the trainers, or auction house, but the player could pick and choose which ones were worth learning.

As it is, I am sick of mining. If I ever want to craft something useful—surely the whole point of any crafting system—I need to spend time away from enjoying the class and concentrate further on collecting ore. And until I can craft something useful the whole gathering and crafting process is as much of a chore as I have encountered in any game. I have come so far and got so close that it would be unfortunate to give up on blacksmithing now, but the thought of loading Gnomesblight just to collect more ore is quite unattractive, which is a real shame considering the huge amounts of fun I have when actually playing the character.

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Tags: blacksmithing, gnomesblight, mining, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Live action super hero!

It has already been established that I am a furry and I have mentioned having made a rudimentary tiger outfit.

When I started playing City of Heroes my natural instinct was to create a super hero catwoman—but not a 'Catwoman' super hero—and Sue Purr was born. My penchant for tiger-style patterns is reflected in the City of Heroes character creation tool. It's not so much that the tiger is my favourite big cat but more that their fur pattern is suitably distinctive that it is immediately recognisable as being that of a tiger, unlike a panther or lion, for example. It is thus no surprise that the City of Heroes character creation tool has a tiger pattern available.

The tiger outfit of Sue Purr is similar to the little tiger outfit I made for myself. They were both created separately, with my outfit inspired by something I saw on the internet and Sue Purr's from the options available in the character creation tool, but it shouldn't be a surprise that one tiger outfit closely matches the other. The only part of my outfit I didn't make myself is the ears, which is actually a hairband bought from London Zoo, although I have a long-standing plan to make my own pair.

As I quite like dressing up occasionally, I thought I'd share how my outfit compares to the City of Heroes character.

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments »
Tags: furry, sue purr, tiger

Gnomesblight visits Underbog

Whilst flying to Ashenvale after failing to find a campfire in Felwood on which to cook my bear flanks I am offered a spot in a group that is looking to conquer Underbog, part of Coilfang Reservoir in Zangarmarsh. Despite normally being shy with new people, as well as the quality of pick-up groups tending to be rather random, I am keen to enter an instance with Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, to see how I fare in a group. I don't mind being there for DPS or to tank, as both options are available to a Death Knight. Having already got a good idea of the kind of damage I can produce from running through solo quests, when the question is raised of who wants to tank I volunteer.

Having already levelled two protection spec warriors to 70th level and run through just about every five-man instance with one or the other I am confident that I know the basic principles of tanking in World of Warcraft, it only remains to be seen how the Death Knight's abilities achieve the same aim. I switch in to frost presence, which buffs my armour and increases my threat generation, but apart from that I am not sure how much more I have to change about my spell rotation. I'll use area of effect spells a little more regularly and cycle through the mobs as we fight, but I don't yet have too many more abilities that seem specific to tanking. I'm not too worried, though.

The party is comprised of myself, two other Death Knights, a Paladin and a Hunter. That's four plate armour wearers. Even if a mob runs astray the damage mitigation we have between us really shouldn't cause a problem. Everyone but myself is 65th level, with me at 64th. Feeling confident, mostly because I am really enjoying being a Death Knight and have slid comfortably in to the role, the early pulls are fluid and assume that everyone is ready, instead of a cautious tip-toe. It pays off, as we plough through group after group of mobs, chain pulling our way through the instance. We don't even bother to mark the mobs, they present little enough trouble for the group.

We barely pause before the bosses too, even when one member of the group goes AFK briefly at the first boss. Two Death Knights and a Hunter wreaking massive amounts of damage and me in frost presence and managing quite well to keep all the mobs focussed on attacking me, yet still hitting hard myself. We find that there is no such thing as a bad pull with our group composition, diseases being spread amongst all the mobs, boiling blood coming from the ground, and anyone trying to get away is pulled back with a death grip.

It is a fast and smooth run, awfully good fun! The only problem through the whole run was my computer locking up, which may be a problem with my graphics card, but a quick hard reset and I was back to continue soon enough. The Death Knight is immense fun for me to play. I doubt I'll get Knifey, my rogue, out for the foreseeable future, because Gnomesblight appears to have comparable, if not better, DPS combined with the survivability of someone who wears plate armour. I just hope that Gnomesblight doesn't also supplant Sapphire, if only because I like the character.

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Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mmorpg, underbog, world of warcraft

The Death Knight cookbook

Death Knights may have good first aid skills when starting out, but just as trained professions start from scratch so does cooking. My initial plan for Gnomesblight was to complete quests as I mined ore for blacksmithing, allowing me to gain faction reputation as well hunt beasts to let me increase my cookery skills. As it turns out, mining can be increased pretty quickly when you are high above the level required for the zones in which the deposits can be found, which is mostly because there is no threat from the wandering mobs. The low-level mobs can be avoided with casual ease and even if they attack when I start to mine they are despatched quickly.

Because mining is so easy the notion of completing quests at the same time becomes more of a chore, an activity that gets in the way of the aim of levelling the gathering and thus crafting profession. Without completing quests, mobs are not defeated as a matter of course and the ingredients for cooking are not gathered incidentally. Just as levelling a Death Knight in the Outlands without being able to gather and use the ore found there can be frustrating, the same is true about the cooking profession. Animals provide meat for recipes that can be bought or are given as quest rewards and without being able to use them the ingredients and recipes either end up taking up room in the bank or are discarded only for them to have to be regathered at a later date when the skill is latterly increased to the appropriate level.

Luckily, it is possible to gather cooking ingredients quite efficiently and somewhat more reliably than mining. The cooking skill can be increased initially by the new trained recipe and ingredients bought from vendors. Running through the still-enjoyable quests in Westfall gathers me enough ingredients to level a little, but the real benefit is in the cluster of crawlers half-way up Longshore. The crawlers drop two types of meat that can be used to gain plenty of skill in cookery and the crawlers respawn at an amazing rate. No sooner have I wiped them all out than new ones appear, even when one-shotting them.

From there, I use the clam meat from the clams dropped from all the murlocs I take too much pleasure in attacking, also on Longshore. There may be some holes in my memory now, but I think I was able to jump from cooking in Westfall straight to the beaches of Southshore. Come to think of it, I nabbed a bunch of raptor eggs from the guild bank and bought a recipe that used them from the waitress in the inn in the Old City of Stormwind, which helps my cooking skills along. Back in Southshore I grab even more clams from murlocs, this time for zesty or tangy clam meat. The added benefit of collecting clam meat in Southshore is that the chef in the inn gives a quest for a turtle meat recipe. Cooking with turtle meat is enough to get me to skill level 225, after which I head to Gadgetzan to see the goblin chef there and complete his quest to gain the next skill mastery in cookery.

After completing the cookery quest I buy the recipe for tender wolf meat and head to Felwood. I start in the south and run north, collecting wolf meat as well as as many bear flanks that I can get my hands on, in preparation for the next stage. In his chronicles, Kinless points to the new recipes available to level cooking up close to 300 available in Felwood that make use of bear flanks, bought from the vendor in the north of Felwood for the Alliance. The tender wolf meat and bear flanks allow me to get cooking up to 290 easily enough. From there to Silithus.

The innkeeper at Silithus asks me to find a recipe for sandworm meat from a nearby hostile camp before getting me to use the recipe to make ten sandworm meals. The drop-rate for sandworm meat is terrible, but it is still probably more enjoyable to collect it than to try fishing for ingredients. Cooking the ten sandworm meals takes my skill level from 290 right up to 300. Job completed! I go back to the Outlands and pick up the skill book to let me learn the next level of cookery. A quick visit to Sporeggar and I have two recipes, one for skill level 300 and one for 310, using ingredients I have been picking up already. Before long my skill level is half-way to the next level.

If only blacksmithing were as easy as cooking.

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Tags: cooking, gnomesblight, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Probing the Death Knight

I have been a bit unsure as to what powers my Death Knight's abilities. Certain talents refer to 'spells', yet they certainly aren't powered by mana, and other abilities are based on melee attacks. I think I'll try experimenting to find out what stats would be best to boost.

I'm not exactly hard-core when it comes to gaming and am happy being able to find out effects with liberal use of tooltips, preferably where they are easy to find. The tooltips for my powers were not overly enlightening, although I have since found that more information is given in the spellbook's tooltip, so I need to find a way to reveal the effects of changing stats. I could try looking it up, as I have no doubt others have done this already, but I like the idea of finding out for myself.

My idea is simple: buy some cheap items from the auction house and make use of the new target dummies in the cities whilst wearing different items. I will wear items that boost only one stat, as much as is possible, use an ability a few times on a 60th level target dummy and note down the damage numbers. To cover my blushes I will be wearing a simple dress as well, which happens only to have spirit-boosting qualities. Mind you, as I normally wear full plate on a female toon my blushes cannot be spared as I run around in what appear to be crotchless trousers, but for this experiment my underwear will not be visible, thank you.

My first stat to try boosting is +spellpower. Death Knights apparently have spells, but does spellpower boost our damage output? I don a few cheap items that increase my spellpower and throw several icy touch spells at the dummy. There is no change between having spellpower and without it, so I suppose I'm casting spells that aren't actually spells. Taking a look at my basic stats and mousing-over each one shows that strength looks like a good candidate for changing damage, which wouldn't be a surprise for melee-based attacks but doesn't directly follow for the ranged spell-like attack of icy touch.

I throw on a bunch of +strength items and start pounding on the dummy again with icy touch. To my surprise the damage from icy touch is increased in relation to my strength. It doesn't really make sense but it is a definite change. I don't have many other items that I can play around with, as I really only started wondering about spellpower, so coming away with the knowledge that I need to boost strength primarily for increased damage and to ignore items with spellpower is a good result.

Later, I search for some death knight theorycraft, to see if I can get any information from people who are more experienced at digging in to the underlying mechanics. I quickly find myself at the Elitist Jerks forum and find that strength and weapon damage are apparently the two most important stats for a DPS-focussed Death Knight. This ties in with my simple experiment as well as the spell powers that key off weapon damage directly. I also delve a little in to spell rotations and am pleased to see that I have already worked out a fairly optimal rotation for heavy damage.

One change I make as a result of my research is to my talent spec. When I first started the Death Knight, which begins at 55th level, the talent points are handed out as quest rewards like sweets and the talent tree fills up pretty quickly. Quickly enough, in fact, that you can assign talents to abilities that you won't be trained in for a few levels, which, unless you are keen and examine all the powers you'll be getting up to 80th level, can make it tricky to work out the relative utility of the respective talents and trees. I liked the sound of the frost tree so worked my way down the tree in a hopefully intuitive way.

I was curious as to what the other trees may offer that I haven't really examined, perhaps putting fifteen or so points in to another tree to gain a significant boost in effectiveness without sacrificing too much frosty goodness. One frost-spec looked appealing from the Elitist Jerks forum, which I modified slightly to suit my own designs. I now have a frost and blood Death Knight talent spec.

The blood talents are essentially to get me bladed armour for the extra attack power from my armour value, which is a splendid boost to damage output. There is a similar talent for the protection warrior. Although the warrior can carry a shield, which is a huge armour gain, the plate-wearing Death Knight still benefits significantly from this talent. The reduced threat generation and extra runic power will help to maintain high DPS whilst not taking away the opportunity to be a tank whilst in frost presence, so having to take those talents to get to bladed armour is not a problem.

In the frost tree I removed icy reach and added annihilation. Increasing the range of attacks is normally useful, but icy reach extends the range from twenty yards out to only thirty yards, where thirty yards has generally been the standard long-range attack that gets extended even further. Being able to cast from thirty yards away is not a change that is worth spending two talents points on.

Annihilation is a talent that I overlooked because I hadn't got the obliterate power by the time I spent most of my points. Because some powers hit for increased damage on a diseased opponent, the diseases themselves are damage-over-time effects, and replacing the diseases would require wasting global cool-downs and resource-limited runes, being able to use obliterate without having to worry about its side-effect of removing diseases allows for a good DPS gains.

By moving some points to the blood tree I am now going without acclimation, which is an excellent talent when dealing with spellcasters, and particularly enemies with continuous auras but it may be too narrow in focus. As my current talent tree is only constructed up to 63rd level there is room for expansion as Gnomeblight gains levels, so I can consider adding it back in later. I will also have to consider what other talents will be useful soon, as my now even-more-efficient Death Knight romps through the Outlands, leaving a swathe of destruction in her wake.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Probing the Death Knight
Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mmorpg, talents, world of warcraft