Monday, October 5, 2009

Death Knights are people too.

Of course we are. Why wouldn't we be? I would safely bet that at least a full percent of the Death Knights out there are honest, hard-working raiders who run out of the fire and don't die to Void Zones, knowing their optimal rotation and executing it on a regular basis. Hell, I bet most of them even have a 98+% uptime on diseases even on high-movement fights.

So what is it about those 99 other percent playing the class that is giving us decent, upstanding, plague-spreading, bloodboiling gentlewomen (apparently there are male Death Knights too, but they are rather rare, I've found) such a bad name? Sign up for Vault of Archavon (because we all know VoA is srs bznz) and your chances of getting in are slim to none - they already have one Death Knight. God forbid carrying TWO players through Koralon, much worse having TWO melee DPS ignoring the Emalon add getting high on Winterfall Firewater. No, get a survival Hunter instead. Those, at least, you can trust these days. Those and the affliction Warlocks.

Yes, that's right. I said it. Compared to Death Knights, Hunters and Warlocks are held in high regard. As is just right and proper, in my personal opinion - I'm fully with Blizzard on the "Bring the player not the class" page (except on Mimiron phase 4, of course) - but still. Back in TBC, a Hunter trying to get a PuG spot would be more frowned upon than a protection Warrior in less than Sunwell gear offering to tank MgT heroic. And if you WERE a Hunter back then, being survival probably meant a full set of Merciless Gladiator's whatsitcalled gemmed for crit and resilience. Not to mention the cries of "huntard lewt" everytime you rolled on as much as a piece of cloth. To quote the famous Dorothy Gale, "Thassarian, we're not in TBC anymore."

Then again. There are those incidents that make even me go "God damned fucking scrub DK piece of shit wasting my time." Where the "DK" part is a fundamental part of the elsewise rather unoriginal string of character traits. I've more and more started to understand the hatred those 99% playing the class are giving the rest of us, and it's truthfully hurting my soul, both as a hard-working Deatk Knight reroller, but also as a player. Because quite honestly, these people are plain out stupid, they are lazy, they expect to be zerged through content and then get loot. When they die because they don't move from the fire, they blame the healers. When they pull an extra pack of mobs and get pummeled down, the tank can't hold aggro. You know the players I talk about, they're on your server, idling in Dalaran right this instant, signing up for any LFG request for raid DPS they can grab hold of, with their unenchanted Tier 9 from VoA and their Epic achievement carrying them through content.

Over the last week, I've actively been on the lookout for episodes ingame that explain to me why people shun Death Knights so much. I know the general jist of it (see paragraph previous), but what EXACTLY is it that these people do so horribly wrong? Let's take a look.

Example 1: Trade chat.
[Person A] LF1M MgT hc Hawkstrider reserved
[Person B] wtf is mgt, you mean dtk
/who Person B
[Person B] - 80 Human Death Knight, Dalaran
[Person C] There was wow before LK you know
[Person D] dk scrub

Example 2: Whispers in a daily heroic PuG.
[Failknight] how you do 3k dps
[Barricade] Proper rotation and gear setup.
[Failknight] can you tell me
[Barricade] After the instance, I'm kinda busy DPSing.

Wait for it... wait for it...

[Failknight] tell me how to do 3k dps plz
[Barricade] I said after the instance. Focus.
[Failknight] is my spec ok
[Barricade] Let me guess, your alt is a level 56 hunter.
[Failknight] i have 55 hunter in tbc

Example 3: Onyxia's Lair.
[RL] DK tank, you're on the adds by the entrance in phase 2.
[RL] Angrybear is MT

Skip to pull, and...

Angrybear is hit by tail swipe from Onyxia. Casters 1 through 6 are killed by flame breath from Onyxia.

[DK tank] LOLOLOLOL
[DK tank] WIPE LOL

(yeah, he pretty much Death Gripped to show RL he was a better option for MT, while standing behind her in the caster group)

Example 4: Teaching guildies.
[Guildie] Why don't I get to come Ulduar.
[Barricade] Because you're hated with Sons Of Hodir and have 3 expertise
[Guildie] Takes too long, I dont got time for Hodir
[Barricade] That's no excuse not to gem and gear properly.
[Guildie] And besides, I saw that DK* who did 9.8k DPS only had 20 expertise

*He's referring to Paragon's unholy DK with Death & Decay glyph from Anub world first, FYI.

[Barricade] So you're comparing yourself to a world class player with an AoE spec on an AoE fight.
[Guildie] yh xD

As you can see. There is a reason we have such a bad name. There simply are more morons playing Death Knight these days. For every male human retridin with Dragonball Z-hair and Edge of Ruin (do an AV, make a quick count, you'll end up somewhere around 12), there are double that amount moron Death Knights. And for that amount again, there is about a fourth of a decent Death Knight. There really is a reason we're getting left out of PuGs, isn't it?

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Slightly related but most of all braggy endnote: managed 6,3k DPS on ten man XT last night, as 3/53/15 "enhancement" frost. Rather pleased with myself. Also, after all these months of losing to druids and rogues, I have T8 four-piece in place. IT. IS. AWESOME.

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