This week I did something different in World of Warcraft, I finally leveled my Death Knight to 80. It had been a couple years since I leveled my mage to 70 and then at least a year since I leveled him to 80. How the leveling process changed…
Back in the old days (last year) I am pretty sure it took me at least a week to level my Mage from 79 to 80. This time around the process was so much easier. For one thing you receive more experience for kills and quests. I even managed to level my Death Knight with entirely rested experience (I also had some heirloom items which gave him 20% more experience, plus heirloom flying so he could fly in Northrend at level 71.). On top of all of this you can now get experience by doing battlegrounds. I also like to think I understand the game better which means I know which quests to avoid.
The end result was that I leveled from 78 to 80 in a weekend and I managed to do it without any wife aggro. It helped that it was a holiday week in the AV battleground, so I pretty much BG’d through 79. The end result was I had a level 80 Death Knight without even venturing into parts of Northend. I was impressed, not so much with myself but with Blizzard for making the leveling process so much more flexible.
The bad thing about leveling so quickly through BGs is I reached 80 in lousy gear, meaning I wasn’t geared enough to do heroics. Luckily I have a well-off main character who was able to “loan” my Death Knight some cash so I could buy some basic epic armor. My Death Knight is now bouncing around in heroics frantically hoping to get better gear.
My ultimate goal with my Death Knight is to make him a tank. Right now I am simply trying to get used to playing a melee plate wearer. On one hand having plate armor is awesome, on the other you need that plate because you are getting up close and personal with the mobs. It’s a new experience for me. I am used to a well-geared mage who stands back and blasts away and does critical hits for 24K damage, my goal to do as much damage as I can while not running out of mana. Now I have a barely geared Death Knight who actually needs to pursue his targets. Once he hits ‘em I see really small numbers for damage. I sigh but then I remember a year or so ago when my Mage hit for those same small numbers. Plus side, there is no mana involved in my Death Knight. In fact as a Death Knight with ruins I need to be as active as possible to generate the runic power. There certainly is a learning curve and hopefully someday I will be as comfortable up close as I am far away.
One interesting note: a cool thing about being a Death Knight is that even when alone we aren’t alone. I was farming some minerals in Outland to raise my mining skill, I didn’t think anything of it. Next thing I knew there were two level 65 Horde players standing next to me, a priest and a rogue. I still didn’t think anything of it. Suddenly the two players attack me. I had gotten flagged without realizing it. I guess the two horde players thought two 65’s are greater than one 80. Problem for them was that Death Knights are never alone, especially unholy ones. My ghoul was out and instantly raced to my defense. For fun I summoned Army of the Dead. The two Horde players took off with my ghouls in hot pursuit. I then summoned my gargoyle. I continued on with mining as the ghouls took care of business. Sure, taking on two silly level 65 Horde isn’t a big accomplishment, still it made me think, “Yep a guy can get used to this.”