MMO-ECON :: Economics, Statistics, and Rationality of MMOs

Two evenings and 20 wipes later, I downed Moroes.  His company of four minibosses presented a huge roadblock, having to deal with their special abilities.

The strategy that finally worked was to use army of the dead for the pull along with all of my other cooldowns in sequence over the first 45 seconds.  Downing the healer first is key, interrupting all of her heals.  Her heals come every 8-10 seconds, so you will have one that cannot be interrupted with Mind Freeze (10 second cooldown).  For this, save Death Grip until this heal, backing up just a bit before you use it.  This should buy you enough time to use Mind Freeze again on the next.  If she heals once, you are pretty much wiped. Read the rest of this entry »

24,252 health; 60.5% physical mitigation; 16% dodge chance; 13% parry chance.  Would this be enough for Karazhan? Freshly equipped with my Master’s Key, I began my journey in earnest to see how far a DK can solo into old-world raids.

For preparation, I specced into a 33/0/38 spec for this attempt.  I will not be reading any guides for this solo project, so I may well have made some mistakes in the spec.  These attempts come before the expected buff to Improved Death Strike in patch 3.1.2 which will boost its healing by 50%, and so I’ve created a hybrid build that combines many of the self healing abilities of Blood with the 3rd disease of Unholy, which will also boost the healing of Death Strike by 50%.

Attumen Trash

The trash pulls  leading to Attumen are well designed, each pull is a step harder than the last, starting with a single Spectral Charger, leading to pull of 2 Spectral Chargers and 3 additional humanoids.

The best way to approach these pulls is to Death Grip one of the humanoids and back-peddle as you Icy Touch and Plague Strike him.  This lets you get both up so you can Pestilence before the additional mobs reach you.  Don’t be afraid to use Rune Tap to fill the “Death Strike Gap” you create with using your runes to get the diseases up.

Taking Down Attumen

Time to face down my first real boss attempt.

As I quickly learned, the make-or-break point of this fight is Attumen’s curse: Intangible Presence.  Read the rest of this entry »

To hold with my mission of solo DK progression, I can not simply ask someone else to open the door to Karazhan – I must get the key myself.  For those who never attuned to Kara, or simply forgot what it entails, below is a step-by-step of my attunement process.

Step 1: Initial Quests: Start your attunement by talking with Archmage Alturus standing outside of Kara.  He will send  you on two simple quests in the vicinity, followed by some more lengthy traveling quests.  The slowest part is getting to the Archmage located at the (now ruined) location of Old Dalaran.  PROTIP: Use your Death Gate to get to Acherus, then fly to South Shore/Tarren Mill.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am by no means a stellar WoW player.  But, when it comes to the age-old debate of hardcore gamer vs. softcore gamer, I side consistently with those who want endgame content that is very difficult, perhaps even including some content that is unbeatable without a grand accumulation of the very best gear (I’m thinking AQ 40 when it first came out, for instance).  It’s not that I want hard content because I’m not challenged by the current content; it’s because I like the feeling of a dangerous world where certain bosses are so epic they cannot be beaten.

With my current guild, I find my main character, a rogue, progressing nicely through Ulduar.  However, the limiting factor on our progress is not needing better gear or even needing better execution–it’s mostly just needing to get over the logistics of gathering 25 people on a consistent basis.  Long story short, Ulduar isn’t satisfying my desire for endgame progression.  THAT is where DK Soloing comes in.

I’m a Freshly Dinged Level 70 Raid Group:

I have about the same DPS as a terribly geared group of ten 70s making their first foray into Karazhan, sitting at around 1500 DPS.  I don’t have quite the level of healing 3 level 70 healers would bring, but at the same time, I have much more armor than a level 70 tank.  My [Death Strike] Heals me for between 2400 and 3300 on average every 4 seconds, along with my “big heal” (Rune Tap) every 30 seconds.  All this put together, and I have a fully formed 10 man raid group, ready to progress into Kara. Read the rest of this entry »

I have accepted an offer to go back to school and pursue a PhD in Applied Economics!  Until then, I wanted to take a short breather from anything remarkably analytical and focus on a fun side project in WOW: Death Knight Soloing.

Meet my newest character, Rankled the Death Knight (DK).  Rankle’s sole focus will be to push the limits of what old-world raid instances a DK can complete by himself. Rankled hit level 80 moments before this picture was taken.  Immediately thereafter, he put on a crafted tanking set he bought from the Auction House, and now sports 23,500 health and is defense capped.

Will this be enough to solo Zul Gurub, Molten Core, Karazhan, or Zul Aman?  We’ll find out.