Nope, that’s not the Headless Horseman mount, that is the Fiery Warhorse off Attumen in Karazhan!  Woot!

ETA: I took my paladin alt over and she won the mount too…

Gemming:
Meta – Austere Shadowspirit Diamond [81 stam/2% armor]
Yellow –  Fractured Amberjewel [40 mastery]
Red –  Fine Ember Topaz [20 parry/20 mastery]
Blue – Puissant Dream Emerald [20 mastery/30 stam]

Enchants:
Helm –  Arcanum of the Earthen Ring – purchased from the Earthen Ring quartermaster in Vashjir
Shoulders –  Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz – purchased from the Therazane Vendor in Deepholm [or the Inscription from the inscription profession if you have that]
Cloak – Protection [250 armor] – materials are Hypnotic dust x8 and Greater Celestial Essence x3
Chest – Greater Stamina [Hypnotic Dust x10, Heavenly Shard x4, Maelstrom Crystal x2] OR Peerless Stats [Heavenly Shard x3, Maelstrom Crystal x3]  Cheap alternates: Mighty Stats [Lesser Celestial Essence x2] or Stamina [Hypnotic Dust x5, Lesser Celestial Essence x1]
Bracers – Superior Dodge [Greater Celestial Essence x5, Volatile Air x1]
Gloves – Greater Mastery [Hypnotic Dust x10, Greater Celestial Essence x5, Maelstrom Crystal x2].  Cheap alternate: Mastery [Hypnotic Dust x1, Lesser Celestial Essence x1]
Pants – Drakehide Leg Armor.  Cheap Alternate: Twilight Leg Armor [still has agility, but this is an alternative if you're just gearing - just remember that agility does nothing for you].
Boots – Mastery [Hypnotic Dust x10, Greater Celestial Essence x3].  Cheap Alternate: Earthen Vitality [Hypnotic Dust x2]

Weapon –  Rune of Swordshattering.  This provides 4% parry as opposed to the 2% stamina of Stoneskin Gargoyle.  Both are options though I typically see the Swordshattering on more geared tanks and the Stoneskin Gargoyle on newer to 85 tanks.  Personally, I’d recommend starting with the Swordshattering.

While the debate still rages in some circles on what death knights should stack, I recommend, as I always have, a balanced approach.  You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket with reference to the important stats.  And the amount you have of each will go up as you gear up.  The stats to focus on [in no particular order] are Mastery, Dodge, Parry.  Hit and Expertise are nice where you can get them but are something you won’t need to touch with gemming or enchanting.

I’m NOT a number cruncher in terms of theorycrafting.  I read ideas and try out what makes sense and approach things with a balanced eye.  I’m a casual raider, not hardcore and I’ve been told by the healers I’ve worked with that I’m solid and not squishy [I chat with my healers occasionally to make sure I'm not making their job difficult].  In terms of what I run in defense stats, I like to keep at least 13% dodge and 20% parry.  I also like what mastery I can get without sacrificing other stats and that goes up probably most markedly in terms of the three as you attain gear.

Please do gem and enchant your gear [even if you use cheap alternatives]!  That can actually make a marked difference.

Thanks for reading

1. Ability to retrieve mail on my ship.  Heck, I have a comm system for incoming daily spacebattles for a reason!  :P  It would seem to be logical that I could retrieve my mail from there!

2. Ship Hearth.  Even if it’s a one day CD like the Fleet Hearth is…  It seems logical that I’d have a way to get back to my ship fast in an emergency!

3. The ability to designate other items as vendor fodder when I send my companion out to sell the grays.

4. A Guild Log!  I’d like to know who invited that new random person and whether to leave them at recruit rank or promote them to full member [as we do with those we know].  Course, I’d still have to ask them about it to know… but at least I’d know WHO to ask .

5. A guild bank of some fashion.  Several guildies are particularly lucky with snagging blue and purple boe pieces they can’t use.  A place to store those for others use would be nice!

6.  Dual spec.  I understand and accept we must choose one Advanced Class, but the ability to spec for both roles would be handy.

7. Same realm LFD of some sort – which is supposedly in the works.  I honestly would rather see how the same server LFD works.  You would still be held accountable for your actions because you ARE likely to run into the people again, which I would hope would control the a-hole factor some.

8. Holiday events!  Yeah, I know… I’m a sucker.  But I love that stuff in WoW and I think SWTOR has the great potential to make some really cute and unique things happen with it.

I’m quite sure there are other things I’d like to see  But these are a few off the top of my head.

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Aulao – my gnome mage, currently fire.  I pulled her out and dusted her off and did a few HoT randoms and got enough gear to hit LFR quite quickly.  I wasn’t top of the meter by any stretch of the imagination but I was middle of the pack.  Typically, since BC I have not enjoyed playing caster dps toons.  I love healers, but not big on caster dps, so I was surprised to find myself enjoying it very quickly.  She still needs a bit of gear [she's sitting there in transmogged Tier 1 from Molten Core].

So now, I’m wondering what toon I might discover I enjoy once again.  Will it be one of my forlorn forgotten disc priests?  Or rediscover that feral kitty is teh awesome?  Or will I finish leveling my druid healer and give that a whirl?  Or head back to Star Wars and ding another level in the forties on my Jedi Knight?  We shall see.  I’ll go where my notions take meh.

1. If you can lead, DO.  Hubby and I have commented to each other more than once that a halfway decent raid leader can probably pull an average group through the first 7 bosses with minimal wipes.  There is the small issue of “human errors” and true “bads” [bads here being defined as people intentionally causing problems via malice, not through ignorance].

2. If someone else can lead, don’t be afraid to let them.  Don’t need to lead so badly that you can’t let someone else bear the burden.  An epeen war of the raid leading variety can be epicly nasty.

3. Give directions.  Don’t just tell people “don’t fail”.    Yes, I agree that everyone should read up on the fights in advance, but I’d rather give a five second explanation than spend 5-10 minutes wiping and running back.

3a. Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Don’t try to get into lengthy boss explanations.  In LFR as it stands, healers really don’t need much instruction on most fights.  Whisper tanking instructions to the tanks if they don’t know the fights.  Keep directions to dps in raid very simple.  For example, on Ultraxion “Stack, hit button when Hour of Twilight comes”.

3b. There will always be griefers and people intentionally causing issues or people who refuse to listen.  In LFR there is enough leeway on most fights to either heal through the problem [And I have healed in LFR so I know how annoying that is], or to just let them die.  Most people don’t care to be dead for most of the fight, so they may learn through repetition.

4. Controlling the tanking seems to lend itself to an easy raid, and I don’t mean being controlling of random tanks.  If you can supply your own tanks, who know how to do their job, it will lend itself to a smoother raid [adding a couple of healers in there wouldn't be amiss either... and some powerhouse dps never hurt - just sayin'].  Tanking the LFR may not be particularly complex, but a bad tank can mean much bigger problems than a poor healer or a low dps.

5. If someone is being obviously problematic, ask in raid for a kick.  We got kicks for a couple of AFK people and a blood dps dk in full pvp gear, in blood presence, griefing the raid.  [Psychic drain on the whole raid because of a taunt = bad].  You don’t have to be particularly mean about asking either.  ”Please kick Arthasdklol for being AFK”.

6. There’s really no need to heckle people.  If dps is too low, as kindly as possible point out that those below the tank or below a particular threshold need to up their game for future encounters.  Many times people in that category will step it up or bow out, without the need of name calling and shaming [I would do that on any alt that fell into that category].  Perhaps they thought they would be fine or would do better than they are… perhaps they are simply out of practice.  Who knows?  If they won’t and are particularly problematic [ie doing nothing or doing 2k or something], ask for a kick.

7. Do YOUR best.  Don’t go in and AFK constantly or only move when a boss fight is going on, or ignore mechanics and raid calls.  Nothing is more annoying than a leech.  Life does happen and if you need to AFK just say something like “AFK just a moment, I’ll be right back”.  You can give a reason or not.  They may read it or not but by that notice you’ve done your due diligence in terms of that [barring emergencies - RL does take precedence of course].  Don’t nerdrage over loot, and don’t let yourself be bothered if someone else does.  If they’re harrassing you, put them on ignore.  In other words, all the common sense stuff.

LFR requires a measure of patience to complete and frankly, probably always will.  Keep in mind that this was designed for those who don’t or cannot raid, not for hardcore or even necessarily the casual raider [who can also benefit from it].

For some people this could even be their first experience with raiding, so the mild amount of encounter training will only ease the frustration of the LFR.  Imagine if they learn and pay that forward, and so on… it might even feed back into a more pleasant LFR for you down the line.

All this said, if you can’t handle patience – don’t queue, or if you reach your limit, leave.  It’s not worth sacrificing your sanity for the 250 valor that can easily be attained in 3 HoT randoms.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

A bunch of old faces are around – Inq, Kanrad, Mikhaill and Khaella – all of whom follow this blog and most have commented before.  Of course, hubby and I are playing.  We’ve also picked up some of Kanrad’s real life co-workers.  We’re in a guild called “The Nerf Herders”.  I know, it’s probably one of the more overused guild names… we’ve seen at least 2 other variations on our server already.  But we settled on it and we like it  We’re on Shadow Hand – one of the more popular PVE servers, apparently.  For the last couple of nights we’ve had to wait in 30 minute queue times to get in.  So we start up the game early and either play WoW, or do something else while it sits in queue.

We hit level 10 that first night, got to 12 the second evening and have been steadily working and we’re now sitting at level 18, with our own starships already  I’ve got a couple of alts in the level 10-11ish range [getting to level 10 is easy once you know the basics... past that is more time consuming.  The altoholic I am, I already have one of each class rolled on our server, though most are still in the level 1-3 range.

But here is my main on SWTOR - Askevar, the Jedi Knight.  She did take the guardian tree [the one capable of tanking].  The most frustrating part at the moment is learning to keep threat…  it’s like starting all over again.  The main problem is that at low levels you have very little in the way of a method of keeping threat.  I did finally get a “presence” and a taunt… so it’s getting better.  We’ve done a couple flashpoints with guildies and some heroic 2s and 4s… so it’s just going to take time there.

On a further note, we are still not planning to quit WoW.  We did buy the access pass and such and are still raiding on our mains.  We’ll just have to see how multi-gaming works for us.

Zone in – Halls of Origination.  The tank’s first words are “OMG I HATE THIS PLACE”, followed by “brb phone” and then he suddenly had to go.  I actually feel sorry for the people that actually happens to because I’ve seen that song and dance too much to actually believe it, but what the hey… we requeue and get a pally tank to replace him about five minutes later.  Not bad… until neither the tank nor the dps knew how to do the first boss… we managed it.  Me doing 25k didn’t hurt I suppose… and killing the snakes and hitting a lever… etc.  The tank naturally drops after that.

Well… I’m feeling okay at this point, so eh, I respec and requeue as tank.  We pick up a dps dk and continue.  We pull the next couple packs and get to the next boss room… where the healer is going  ”WHO IS THE TANK?!?!?!?!”.  Okay, well maybe addons are screwed up or something.  I indicate I’m the tank now.

So we tackle the boss room with little issue and then come to the boss.  He does a decent aoe as he comes in that destroys all the troggs but also damages the party.  I give the healer, who has had a lot of mana trouble thus far, a moment to put it right and get their mana back [I sit and eat as well].  The healer then jumps on me about how now I need to be pulling the boss and gogogo!  He’s at half mana… which is not nearly enough… but okay.

I pull… he dies in the first set of alpha beams.  I rez him and get snarky comments about “threat fail”.  I’ve had the boss the entire fight… solidly… no moment of the boss running off right at the start or nothing.  But yeah, he dies again to the alpha beams and naturally that’s my fault.

I manage to finish the fight… through a very creative series of CD uses and Death Strike [how I loves that ability!].  Everyone else survives and the boomkin [doing a very decent 12k] drops party.  Okay, regroup and I attempt to vote kick the healer whose healing is subpar, but he’s become abusive.  Vote kick fails.  Fine.  I take the group to the last boss…  cue the 4k dps dk having a fit.  Not ASKING mind you for us to tackle the other bosses.

After all this, heck if I’m staying one second longer than I have to…  I’ve got an abusive healer who dies to bad and blames me for “threat fail” when the boss isn’t even near him or on him…  I’ve got a 4k dps dk who doesn’t have a clue and is becoming abusive…  And the hunter was decent, but nothing to write home about either.

Well the new person dies on the first inferno leap on Rajh… easiest VP they ever got.  The other dk either can’t be bothered to rez them or doesn’t know to and mine is already on CD from popping the healer back up.

Guys, seriously… if you want a full boss run, I’m one of the more accomodating people you’ll find.  But when I’m already feeling sick, waited a dps queue to tank and on top of that, am getting abusive language from the party for things that are beyond my control?  Yeah, not staying for that mess.  Good luck finding a tank who will.  The only reason I stayed as long as I did was because the rest of the party was happy for Rajh.

Maybe I’ll just stick to running instances with hubby from now on like he suggested…  At least I’ll have one ally then.