Death Knight spec options and Rotations in Patch 4.+

So i did play a DK early on when they were first released, and well it was the first toon that i actually hit the level cap with, then they were nerfed a bit. But now in patch 4.1 they are quite strong again in both PVP and PVE.

I have found a bit of stuff on them so i thought i would post it here, check it out.

Blood Spec Death Knight

Popular Level 85 Blood Death Knight Talent Builds

Blood 33/0/8
Blood 33/6/2
Blood 33/0/8

Blood DK Spell Rotations

Blood PVP, or Single Target Rotation

1. Diseases
2. Rune Strike
3. Death Strike
4. Scarlet Fever if its up / Plague Strike, Blood Boil
5. Heart Strike
6. Icy Touch

Blood AOE Rotation

1. Death and Decay
2. Diseases
3. Pestilence
4. Scarlet Fever if its up / Plague Strike, Blood Boil
5. Death Strike
6. Blood Boil
7. Heart Strike
8. Rune Strike
9. Icy Touch

Easy AOE Rotation (usually good for trash or low health mobs)

1. Death and Decay
2. Icy Touch
3. Plague Strike
4. Pestilence
5. Blood Boil
6. Death Strike

Frost Spec Death Knight

Popular Level 85 Frost Death Knight Talent Builds

Frost 7/31/3
Frost 8/31/2
Frost 8/31/2

Frost DK Spell Rotations

Frost PVP, or Single Target Rotation

1. Diseases
2. FF apply with Howling Blast
3. Obliterate
4. Blood Strike
5. Frost Strike
6. Rime
7. Horn of Winter

Weapons:
Duel Weild use Frost Presence
2H use Unholy Presence

Frost AOE Rotation

1. Howling Blast
2. Death and Decay
3. Plague Strike
4. Frost Strike
5. Horn of Winter

Presence: Frost

Unholy Spec Death Knight

Popular Level 85 Unholy Death Knight Talent Builds

Death Knight Unholy 6/0/35
Death Knight Unholy 5/3/33
Death Knight Unholy 0/6/35

Unholy DK Spell Rotations

Unholy PVP, or Single Target Rotation

1. Diseases
2. Dark Transformation Active
3. Scourge Strike
4. Festering Strike
5. Death Coil on Sudden Doom proc
6. Horn of Winter

Presence: Unholy Presence

Unholy AOE Rotation

1. Diseases + Pestilence
2. Dark Transformation Active
3. Death and Decay
4. Scourge Strike
5. Blood Boil + Icy Touch if BB and FF runes up
6. Death Coil on Sudden Doom
7. Horn of Winter

Presence: Frost Presence

Spell Priority

You can use this as a guide if you dont want to use the above rotations, shows the actual spell priority you should be using as a unholy DK.

1) Icy Touch & Plague Strike to maintain diseases only!
2) Dark Transformation
3) Scourge Strike 
4) Festering Strike 
5) Death Coil
6) Horn of Winter

Further Reading:
http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/191453-dk-basics/ – DK Basics
http://www.arenajunkies.com/forum/60-death-knight/
http://wowpopular.com/Death+Knight – Death Knight Builds
http://www.maxdps.com/deathknight/unholy.php – MaxDPS Gear and Enchants – Only has the Unholy

Thought these looked pretty awesome, im guessing they finally added the jump skill to GW2? Shows the new classes and their skills.

Guild Wars 2 – Full Teaser Trailer

Guild Wars 2 – Thief Skills

Guild Wars 2 – Elementalist Skills

Necromancer Skills

Guardian Skills

Ranger Skills

Warrior Skills

I dont usually post rogue stuff, but hey this is pretty pwnage. /rolls a rogue. and then spends 2 months getting gear/skills… Check it out, tis a good vid.

Playing with Talbadar (shadow priest) and Mayopompapum (resto druid).

3v3 currently rated over 3000 with a 99% win ratio.

Some games do take 15 minutes but I picked the faster ones this time (don’t worry, good opponents).

1) The White Panda – Stereo Hands
2) W-Unit – Rave Revolution
3) Utah Saints – Something Good (High Contrast Remix)
4) Damage Vault – Passage

Ah remember the good old days…

So I am officially addicted to leveling.

Ive been leveling my hunter the past few days, up to 83 now. Do i really want another 85 character. not really, the gearing, the honor grind, the dailies. I just have to pick one class and stick with it. Eh i will decide when im 85… maybe . I do still have a druid and pally that i may level in the future.

As I also do, i check out the latest in arena geared classes that i want to copy the spec’s and gear etc of. Imitation is the highest form of flattery after all.

Here is the Top Rated Arena Priest at the moment: Wrathful Gladiator Talbadar good to see what the leet players are doing with there chars .

Found a good article on wow riot, its a bit old now. But still quite good showing how to 1v1 with a shadow priest. Its a massive post, but a good read, still kinda relevant.

Here’s an excerpt on how to beat a frostmage with a shadow priest, this could have all changed after the update, but may still be good strategy wize so take it with a grain of salt.

 vs. 

I would put Frost Mages as the third most difficult class/spec to win duels against(pve geared feral/muti rogues own). Some would argue Death Knights are harder, but I have more ‘random’ losses versus mages because of sheer luck where the DK tactics are more refined and less risky.

Gear Choice: I honestly have not tried Satin versus mages, but with a couple of strategies I have Satin would definitely be more ideal than Mooncloth. You need 600-1000 haste against Mages to do well because your globals are going to be really important. The speed of Dispel Magic, SW:D, Fade, and Shield is limited to your globals only so having millions of spell power will not work as good against Mages as it does DKs. If you have access to gear like on TR you will want a Bauble and Corroded key to just outlive any burst attempts.

 

Race: Human

 

Spec Choice: There is one talent choice that will literally win half of your duels and that is Silent Resolve. I have seen some Mages try to spellsteal my shield 10 times and fail while I kill them (Eraseasaurus  xD). Here is the most ideal specs: Satin / Mooncloth

 

The Opener: 

The opener is pretty much not in your favor at all. The best mages prefer the unpreventable opener with IMP CS into a sheep. They will continue to spellsteal all of your buffs and triple sheep while their CS is coming back up in 5 seconds or so after the CC chain is done. The best way to prevent this opener (if you do not want to get sheeped or want to save trinket) is to spam silence at the start. I will usually use devouring plague then dispel magic twice in that time so I have a DoT ticking for 24 seconds with no shield. They will usually reapply ice barrier, though. Starting buffs is important for this duel. I start with Inner Fire, Vampiric Embrace, Fort, Shield, PoM, Levitate,  and Divine Spirit. Having Shadow Prot, Abolish Disease, and Fear Ward can only hurt you if they spellsteal it early on. All of the other buffs have some sort of beneficial idea to wearing them at the start. Fort, Shield, and PoM are basically rush prevention buffs. If they decide to go for some all-in no sheep no spellsteal tactic you want those on at the start. Levitate is just a nice trash buff that does not help them much and Divine Spirit gives you 16 spell power for free. IMPORANT- If they do sheep you at the start you can use a macro to remove all of your buffs. I just made a simple one for myself and did not get too technical with it. /cancelaura Power Word: Fortitude /cancelaura Power Word: Shield /cancelaura Levitate /cancelaura Prayer of Mending /cancelaura Divine Spirit /cancelaura Shadow Weaving /cancelaura Shadow Protection

 

Strategy 1 – Survive the Spam: 

It is one of the most difficult things to survive against a Frost Mage with Icy Veins pumping Frostbolts into your face. Like I mentioned earlier if you have defensive trinkets you will want them for this fight. The biggest problem in this matchup is that Mages have 30% dispel resistance and that can be so frustrating when each resisted dispel is another 5k Frostbolt in your face. Anyway, assuming the Mage did not go for some all in strategy you still have your PvP trinket and he starts casting Frostbolts with IV up from distance with an elemental and his mirrors out. Your best bet is to run away while dispelling yourself and him. I usually Silence or trinket and Silence to stop the initial damage and Winter’s Chill stacks. If you get distance you should be ok (usually cast some instants and a few Holy Novas if this happens). If you are unable to get away this is the most dangerous part of the duel. The Mage may have blinked into you or just caught up while you were snared and you cannot escape. 100% of duels I will use Disarm as a quick interrupt on a Frostbolt. It lasts 1.5 seconds, but it is enough to stop some damage so it’s worth it. Your best bet if they stick on top of you is to get a dispel on his shield and icy veins and start casting mind flays to give him serious pushback. This basically prevents the zerg as it gives them 1.0 second pushback on every frostbolt and they will need to stop casting them.

 

90% of Mages will run at you and then do a Cone of Cold Frost Nova Deep Freeze combo, so if you see a Cone of Cold have Fade ready and prevent as many Deep Freezes as possible. Something else I will do when I have time is offDoT and possibly kill/fear the water elemental as it actually does a bunch of damage and lasts a long time. Similar to the DK duel you will have to heal yourself. Juking the CS is pretty much necessary and if you do get CS’d just spam spells from the other school because you will just get put behind otherwise. If you get locked on Shadow you can try to get distance or just spam heals. This may sound like something trivial and obvious, but many times when I get locked on a heal I end up trying to run away and to no avail where I could have just stood there and spammed damage to pressure him to stop casting bolts. Another important thing to remember is that you have to use dispersion in deep freeze or you get owned. I always save it until their first frostbolt in the deep is about to finish and then use it. I usually come out early unless my mana is going to get wasted. I usually disperse the first one and trinket the second. Once you are able to survive all of the early pressure mages are simple to deal with.

 

Strategy 2 – Playing the Mind Game: 

This is really something that wins nearly all of my duels versus top mages. I always work hard to give the Mage a false sense of what I am trying to do. After my duel series with Eraseasaurus I gave him some insight as to why he lost the series and he actually beat me a few times once he figured out some of the games I was playing. The biggest game I like to play is the Shadowfiend juke. This wins so many duels, heh. As soon as the Mage gets in a comfortable position with spam frostbolts and shields off cooldown, I will always fall behind in healing and do not have too many options to come back. The best way to relieve some pressure is this move. Basically what you do is as soon as you are getting low you use your Shadowfiend. Seems simple and pointless, no? It is more complex than it sounds, though. The reason this is so effective is because every Mage in the world sees a Shadowfiend and they instantly want to stop it. They will Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Deep Freeze, and pet nova it until it goes down 95% of the time. That is exactly what I am looking for them to do when I use it. When I am waiting for my weakened soul to fall off or I am just hoping to live until the second disperse I just use it and hope they do not ignore it. There are some other mind games I like to play and one of them is the DPS race. As soon as the Mage tries to go hard and go for the kill I will just stand there and cast damage into them to try to force them to run. Generally the Spriest will die first in this kind of engagement, but most people tend to want to run away instead of going for the risk of the kill. The best thing about Mages running away is when they go cast Evocate. Evocate is one of the last spells you should be casting as the Mage in this duel. I do not remember the last time a Mage went to go Evocate and has come back to win the duel. The spell is just false hope unless you have your entire second set of cooldowns and mirrors up to finish the Spriest off after. It is very easy to live through a solo mage without any pets so having them go Evocate when you are at 50% health is basically a free win – just cast some heals and you are full. There are a few others I do, but one last one is messing with their opener. Lots of Mages love to juke deaths because they feel good doing it, so to abuse that against new Mages I will just get 3 dots and start flaying them. This usually leaves them at 50% when I am sheeped and that is pretty much a won duel already.

 

Extra Tips for the duel:

1. Find a Pillar

If you have a pillar nearby you will definitely want to be using it. By spamming dispel on yourself around corners you can prevent any quick deep freezes (even avoid imp cs deeps) while your DoTs slowly kill them.

2. Devouring Plague is your Friend

If you are on the move you should really be spamming this spell. It does 2-3k damage on use and causes you to gain ~500-700 health per application when they do not have a shield.

3. Effective Shielding

Mages love spellstealing your shield as much as they love juking deaths and preventing shadowfiends. To abuse this love you want to use your shields as frostbolts are about to hit you. When the frostbolt lands it should absorb the spell completely and leave your shield with 500-1000 absorb left. If they waste time spellstealing it they will not realize that it has almost nothing left and is pretty much free globals for you.

Check out the full article here has a whole bunch of strategies on how to 1v1 pvp shadow priests

Remember robocop? good times

Ah back to the future, ok thats enough caffeine for me.

Related Videos for

Check out this Extreme downhill bike runWatch through the eyes of a crazy Chilean cyclist as he risks life and limb in the VCA race run in Santiago.

And who can go past the awesome dub mix of charlie sheen! lol classic.

So i was posed the question the other day, Is Cataclysm Underwhelming? Well it actually wasn’t worded in that way, more like. Are you getting bored of wow already, asked while i was leveling my mage rather than gearing up my priest that was already 85. Have Blizzard really added enough to cataclysm to make it worthwhile?

I think its a bit harsh to judge so quickly, I mean it was a pretty smooth transition really. I’m sure this is far from a complete list, but here is a few of the massive tasks they had underway:
- massive world events leading up to cataclysm
- redesigning the whole world to accommodate flying mounts
- basically re-designing orgrimar from scratch
- adding archeology skill
- redesign of all classes / gear
- addition of two new races and story lines / home worlds / mounts or travel forms, etc.
- new leveling sections added pretty much one section or world for each level between 80 and 85.

I mean, there is a massive pressure on them to get it just right and you can never really please the masses can you. You are always going to get someone hitting the QQ button about their class or whatever.

If you go by the queue times, the popularity has definitely gone down since launch. No more wait times on my server at all for logging in.

For me i think its at a good medium now, as i don’t really want (or have time to) play hardcore mode wow anymore, and its good i can just login and to an instance run or a few battle grounds or level archeology and its just a bit of fun.

This was sparked by the following post that i found on MMO champion I guess just typical QQ action to see here. I mean there not forcing anyone to play, dont like it? quit.

I will start from the start, listing things that blizzard have done wrong:

1) The much hyped pre launch-world event was poorly conceived and not well thought out at all. Other’s opinions might differ but it failed miserably compared to the BC and wotlk world events.

2) Starting zones were released with multiple bugs and many started quests did not function properly. Few bugs can be ignored but there were bugs even in quests that introduced a player to starter zones. The fact that blizzard allowed these buggy quests to be released without fixing them, was the first stop in knowing that the company has lost it’s touch.

3) LFD tool – It is a great tool but since it was released, many people have complained about the random not being ‘really random’. There has been more than enough time to fix this very small problem. No one likes to run the same place over and over again, if you have my luck and the place happens to be Grim Batol (pops everyday, completed rarely), it is easy to get frustrated. Surely making a random tool, actually random, is not too much to ask?

4) Random BG tool – since the release, all that the random BG tool has ever given me is the two “new” BGs. Both BGs lack any imagination on the part of development team and are a rehash of BGs that already exist. Again, I am still searching for the ‘random’ bit of this tool.

5) Extremely poor content like Tol Barad making it to release- Tol barad testing was a big event. Many who participated gave feedback, the feedback was ignored and as a result a complete new zone does not function properly.

6) Heroic dungeons: While i support the level of difficulty in the Heroic instances, I completely disagree with the amount of trash some places have. Grim batol and SFK are classic examples of where the devs crossed the line between difficult and annoying. having 3 trash packs of 4 mobs each in one small room is in no way fun.

7) Forcing new playstyles on players – As a resto druid, I have grave objections to Nourish spam. I healed in BC when nourish did not exist, healing was tough then but it was fun and along the lines of what you read in your class desciption before creating your character. Trying to make eveyone do everything is not something that has benefitted the game.

Knee-jerk reactions from Devs – I will not touch the Pandora’s box that is the class balance that devs tend to do but the Tol barad “fix” of giving the winner 1800 honor stand out. It was the least thought of and most illogical attempt at fixing the broken state of Tol Barad.

9) Regular server and instance server restarts: In the last 3 weeks, I can only think of two raids where there has’nt been a restart. Some people are comfortable with this but personally, if I bought a new fridge that just turned itself on and off again almost everyday, I would not be very happy. Worst part is that players are given no indication as to what is the purpose behind the said restarts which again points to the lack of care for the players, on part of the company.

10) Extremely buggy encounters: A few bugs is acceptable, a few more can be attributed to the fact that cata was a rushed expansion but the number of bugs this expansion came out with has exceeded BC and wotlk by a huge margin. One would think that years of experience runnign a game would have taught the designers a few lessons but clearly not.

11) Blizzard have delibrately put a lot of things in this expansion which are for lack of better word a ‘time-sink’. There have always been time-sinks but this expansion has gone back to the mistakes of vanilla. other’s opinions might vary but personally, there is nothing worthwhile to do other than raids at end level, of course assuming that the raid server is’nt down again.

12) The blizzard representative’s attitude towrds players on the forums has been disrespectful and downright demeaning at times. Sometimes they have even made negative comments on casual players complaining about difficulty. While I do not subscribe to the typical split between so called casual and hardcore, I do subscribe to the idea that if you do not have something nice to say, just do not say anything, is the best approach at times, especially when dealing with your own consumers.

13) Lack of anything new or imaginative: So far there has’nt been one moment in cataclysm where I have just gone ‘ wow, that is amazing’. The only thing that comes close is the Uldum architecture and that’s not really a lot to shout about. Sure they spent time doing lower zones but let’s face it, most of those zones are just a bit more detailed and you can fly over them ! Blizzard must have known that most players will spend a majority of time in the new zones and yet the new zones give a feeling of having been neglected by the devs.

So i am still leveling my mage at the moment… however its always good to see someone elses point of view when it comes to PVP. Found this one on the wow forums, looks like a two part series should be a good viewing. I have re-arranged the original post source to include the vids, i know it was hard work but hey makes for easier viewing and readage. The following vids and skill all belong to Nighttempest im not trying to claim any of his glory just promoting some good cata mage pvp skills Check it out:

DISCLAIMER: I don’t claim skill! I just happen to know what I’m doing (half the time).

Anyways out of sheer boredom I decided to make a mage guide I managed to get some good clips (all of it was filmed in one day other than the scene on the docks vs the boomkin and warlock which was 3.3.5), so I decided that I should probably put them to use… anyways it’s a 2 part movie just read the description, and it takes a while to load in from youtube since its popup so you can get the full quality.

As long as I don’t waste your time completely, and you guys get at least ONE thing out of it I’ll be happy.

Part 1

• Movement/Kiting
• Lining Up Burst
• Simple Exercises to increase your mage skill

Part 1 is essentially a very slow, very chill movie starts from the very basics of everything, and ends with some silly exercises of me doing stupid crap in IF. Anyways you can at least enjoy the music if nothing else. (WARNING: I was a “bit” drunk for the last bit of part 1 since it was the end of the day so expect some weird screen shaking.)

Part 2

-Class Specifics: Rogue

(Rules: No Water elemental, or mirror images allowed)

Notes: I was going to include warrior, but they are not a complete class until 85 in PvP so they won’t be on here despite the opening list on part 1. This movie is a lot more edited than the first part, and is not really in the “chill” mood.

I’m going to add a voice over (on a separate file that you can listen to while you watch) when I have access to my mic again (100$ mics seem to break down more than the 20$ ones), but till then read this:

Fedxx is a 2750 MMR rogue (ex glad on his UD), and we’ve been duel buddies for a while now, this is the 2nd time since the first day of 4.0 that we dueled so expect to see a learning a curve, and a few mistakes (mostly by me he makes like 3 in the entire movie).

His opener:

-Opens with a garrote without breaking sap so I can’t spin around to face him, into a KS while I’m still blanket silenced by garrote.

To trinket, or to not trinket the stun rules are simple…

-Did he use shadow dance?

Yes: trinket

No: Don’t trinket (derp)

Don’t worry about being blinded it’s better for him to reopen without shadow dance. (Some duels I eat the shadow dance since I don’t want to fraps his reset, so I save trinket for blind.)

-Why are you invising? It’s just going to break.

It gives me 2-3 globals of breathing time, and a possible freecast, but unfortunately I’ve been pro’d and sapped out of invis before >_>. That’s a minor issue though considering how many bleeds sub rogues have.

-Why are you taking so little damage?

I’m facing him as much as possible. The maximum amount of backstabs he gets per duel is 8-9, and max of 3 ambushes.

-Why doesn’t he just turtle for his CDs?

He does some duels, and those are the ones where I lose, but he was nice enough to do burn down duels as well.

-He wouldn’t be able to turtle as much if you used a pet.

I’m aware of that, but mages are such a hard counter to rogues with the pet atm that I found it cheap to use it so I decided to run without it.

-Won’t rogues smokebomb change the game of rogue vs mage?

Not really we can counter it with ring of frost, or just blizzard. Vs good mages smokebomb will mostly be for:

a.) Getting out of combat with blind, and then smokebombing off the pet (assuming pet nova is used). (No other rogue on beta has thought of this yet…. kudos to me?)

b.) Smokebombing as deep freeze goes off.

c.) Recup tick time, and energy regen.

Rogue vs mage has remained essentially the same formula since level 60 even.

Mage plays defensive until Cds are out, mage resets, rogue has jack. Rogue qqs about mages.

Alternatively: Mage plays defensive, but rogue outplays mage, and mage QQs about rogues.

Anyways as I mentioned earlier I hope you guys get at least ONE thing out of this, and I’ll be happy.

Check out the rest of the thread on: WoW Forums

Ok so it cant be a guide beyond Cataclysm, but hey it has a good ring to it… What the opposite of beyond, (checks google) Hmm, well that was no help, and unrelated to this post anyway. So I have been leveling my new mage just lately, and going through all of the changed content and locating all of the new quest hubs etc, and i have to say its pretty cool what blizzard have done to the wow leveling flow in cataclysm. It all flows together nicely and there are a lot more connecting quest chains and they break it up with a few different and fun quests here and there, but if you just feel like grinding through the level you can do that as well. I have just hit 73 on my dranei mage and it has started to get a lot slower, 60 – 70 was a breeze and before that was amazingly quick compared to how long it used to take! Even battle grounds are ok to go in every now and again being alience i tend to win more than on the horde side overall, and wins can get you about 25% of a level in the 30′s and 40′s. not so much in the higher levels, but you can still get about 100k exp from winning an av and thats only about 20-30 minutes of game time, so its pretty comparable.

Now i have posted the following leveling flow diagram before but its so good ill post it again here:

originally posted here…

I was looking for a bit of extra advice on power leveling as well, not the bad powerleveling that you pay for but the stuff that just helps you with general leveling in wow, dont get distracted, and concentrate, try not to get bored i was leveling the other night and watching a movie, that definately slowed down my leveling process probably due to not being able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, might be a male thing.

Anyway here is a few tips on powerleveling that i found:

Five golden rules of powerleveling

Minimize Downtime

Downtime is whenever you are not killing mobs or completing quests. Examples for downtime include regenerating mana or hitpoints, traveling, chatting, attacking other players, reading or dieing.
For obvious reasons downtime directly hinders your goal of leveling as fast as possible. Keeping these activities to a bare minimum is the most important aspect of power leveling.

Maximizing Burst Damage

The second most important thing when powerleveling is how fast you can kill mobs. Both single mobs and groups of mobs. Burst damage is greatly impacted by your spec (think protection versus fury), your gear level and your playstyle. And to a lesser extent by consumables, buffs and reforging/stat choices.

Play alone

To clarify right away: I do not have any math showing how grinding instances with a fleshed out 5 man group compares to leveling by questing. But if 70 – 80 is any judge, leveling by questing will be at least as fast but without the drawbacks of leveling in a group. You set the pace, you decide when to take breaks, you rely on your preparation and expertise instead of the preparation and expertise of other people. The method of power leveling purely in instances is not the focus of this text. Much rather the focus is on leveling by questing and grinding.
Questing in a group of multiple people always has drawbacks that can never outweigh the benefits. While „killing-quests“ are typically (slightly) faster in a group, a lot of drop-specific quests are much slower in groups and you will find yourselves waiting for mob respawns a lot. Not the mention the downtime is increased significantly for a group with multiple players.

Always know your next steps

Use a guide; preferably with an addon that goes hand-in-hand with the guide.
If possible use a second screen to always display the guide so you can read while you travel or grind. Always read at least the next paragraph in the guide so you know what you will be doing after the current task. This is to make sure you don’t travel unnecessarily or separate tasks that should be persued together.

Stay awake

Only read this paragraph if you consider leveling to 85 hardcore.
My personal, most important advice: Do not drink alcohol when trying to stay awake and focused for a long period of time. Alcohol will get you very, very tired very fast.
Most people (including me) will find listening to music while leveling stimulating and keeping you going.
Caffeine is your friend, but you need to use it the right way:
Caffeine works by changing the chemistry of the brain. It blocks the action of a natural brain chemical (adenosine) that is associated with sleep. Adenosine is produced by your daily activity, especially by physical exercise.
To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine. Caffeine, therefore, binds to the adenosine receptors. However, it doesn’t slow down the cell’s activity as adenosine would. The cells cannot sense adenosine anymore because caffeine is taking up all the receptors adenosine binds to. So instead of slowing down because of the adenosine level, the cells speed up. The „problem“ is, that adeonosine keeps building up while caffeine is blocking the adenosine receptors. So as soon as the caffeine loses its effect, you have a lot of adenosine around that will rapidly occupy all the receptors. This happens very fast and you will turn from being totally focused to dead tired in a matter of minutes. Drinking a coffee or an energy drink will flood the brain with caffeine for a short amount of time. It usualy takes 15-30 minutes to feel the effect, which then peaks around 30-60 minutes after consumption.
So once your body decides that you are tired, you would have to drink a coffee around every 2 hours at least to stay focused and you would still feel a lot of „ups“ and „downs“ when the caffeine peaks and declines.
A much better way is to rely on a continuous, controlled flow of caffeine that never peaks or declines but keeps a steady level to prevent you from becoming too tired. You might know the substance that provides just this effect under the name of „Guarana“. Guarana capsules usually work over several hours (typically 5-6), emitting a steady flow of caffeine (the exact same thing that you get when drinking coffee). Designed to keep you awake when feeling tired as opposed to coffee, which is good to „remove“ tiredness when you are rested; which is why coffee is consumed to wake up.
Enough of the medical lessons. You can get guarana capsules prescription free (in most countries?) at your local apothecary. I suggest you learn some more about the effects of guarana or ask your pharmacist about them before trying them out. Just to clarify again: Guarana is NOT a drug. It is identical to the caffeine chemical derived from other sources, such as coffee and it is classifed as GRAS in the United States.

Note: This rule is for crazy gamers! For you health, I suggest that Life first, Game Second! lol!

Take care of yourself

Don’t carry leveling to excess.
Make sure you always feel comfortable or immediately stop playing!

Here a few tipps:

• Always have water or tea on your desk (or any neutral beverage) and don’t forget to drink enough.
• Eat two or three times a day. You will notice you won’t be as hungry as usual simply because your body is burning much less calories. It’s only a couple days, so go all out on pizza, lasagna and what else makes you happy (and can be eaten at your computer ). I would say try to eat some fruits/vegetables too etc, but yeah, **** that.
• Again, no alcohol or drugs apart vom caffeine.
• Care about hygiene. It is much more comfortable to play after a shower.
• Make sure your Monitor is at least 50cm away from your eyes. If your eyes start to hurt, take a break or stop power leveling.
• Maybe stick around in your Teamspeak to keep some company and to motivate eachother. But it can be distracting, especially if people keep asking stuipid questions about where to find quest objectives.
• Turn off your mobile phone and lock the door if you have a toilet & fridge in your room. For a second you thought I was serious here, right? Powerleveling is nice and fun, but don’t do it at the cost of the people around you.

Now just on a small side note about leveling mages, i was arcane for ages while leveling in the low levels and that was doing pretty well for me. I switched out to frost spec at about 40 or so and have been leveling as frost all the way to 73, after reading a bit a lot of people are going fire now for leveling, i might give that a try and see how it goes.

Frost is quite easy though for leveling, Just do a Frost Fire, then ice bolt x2, and ice lance and finish with a fire blast if its still going. Then when you get the freeze spell (cant remember exactly what level thats at) has a 30 sec cd, and then u just freeze the mob and hit them with 3 ice lance crits, gonski! Anyway ill check out a fire pve build and see how that goes, leveling as ice gets a bit same old after about 30-40 levels anyway

I found a pole on mmo champ and the results about leveling mages were, Arcane (9%), Fire (71%), Ice (20%). So it seems fire is the way to level.

My mage has some rather horrid gear for a level 80. I logged onto the PTR last night to mess around with fire, and much to my surprise I pulled 5400 DPS in a fight against one of the new encounters for the pre-Cata event. This was done knowing very little about a fire rotation (Hey, I’ve been Arcane!), and without my normal bindings.

My thoughts on it? Scorch is insane. Quick little spell that you can cast while moving with talents, doing 5K a shot. Oh, and it’s free and freaking FAST. All I did was spam the hell out of it and fire of Pyroblast when it procced. I loved it. Considering the last time I used Fire on my mage (August of 2007), I will definitely have this as one of my specs. It’s just so much fun.

________ __ _

Everyone says ‘go frost,’ so that’s mostly what you see (sheeple). The best spec is the one you have the most fun with. I levelled my mage fire all the way. When dungeoning with groups that outgear you and/or the content, your dps will suffer because of the time factor mentioned above. All things equal, fire does very well. The non-fire spells in combo do very well indeed.

The Sources:
MMO Site
MMO Champ
KruXoR

A few things have changed just lately, and i have found the following to be quite a good guide on mounts in wow, apparently you can now get your flying at 60 and fly around all of the old worlds, but you still have to wait until 68 until you can fly in burning crusade land… and then you can fly in Northrend, but you need to have cold weather training from another character if you want to do that before 80. Argh so much to remember, good thing i have this list below:

Azeroth is a large world and it’s recently become much larger. There are hills to climb, deserts to explore, fjords to ford, and a vast sea separating the continents. And lets not forget that beyond Azeroth proper there lies a whole other shattered world — Outland. Traveling has never been more interesting, and for some, confusing. To help you with getting around, weve compiled a list of some of the more common ways you can see the world, meet new creatures, and (likely) be killed by them.

Mounts: Mounts come in all shapes and sizes, and each race has its own type of mount that becomes available at level 20. Youll need to learn how to ride, of course, and then you’ll need to keep your feet on the ground until level 60 when you can take to the skies — after purchasing the flying skill and a flying mount.

Apprentice Riding
Level 20

Journeyman Riding
Level 40

Expert Riding
Level 60 (Allows for flying in Outland)
The Burning Crusade

Artisan Riding
Level 70

Master Riding
Level 80

Cold Weather Flying
Level 68 (Allows for flying in Northrend)
Wrath of the Lich King

Flight Master’s License
Level 60 (Allows for flying in Azeroth)
Cataclysm

*Tip – Hitchhiking: Some mounts are designed to carry more than one person, so you can always try to catch a ride with a friend.

Flight Masters: For a little pocket change, you can get a lift from a Flight Master. Youll need to find the flight paths (as indicated by the green exclamation (!) point) and learn the route before you can fly to many destinations, but they should be easy to find as you explore. Its important to note that there are flight paths that can be used by Alliance only, Horde only, and by both. These are noted on your map as red for Horde, blue for Alliance, and gold for Neutral (both factions can use.)

Boats: Boats are free to use, and while the crew may look like they have loyalties to the Horde or Alliance (depending on the harbor they make their home), they will never attack their passengers. The residents of the harbor, however, may have other things in mind. Most boats dock in Alliance ports and can be an inconvenient means of transport for the Horde, though Booty Bay in the Eastern Kingdoms runs a neutral port.

Zeppelins: These flying contraptions may look like floating death traps, but they use the best in goblin technology… so yes, they’re probably death traps. You cant beat free airfare, though, which is surprising given the goblins’ greedy nature. Much like the boats, zeppelins are faction-neutral, but perhaps more difficult to use for the Alliance.

Portals:
Portals are magical constructs that allow travel from one location to another.
Mage Portals: They may cost you — either because the mage is charging a fee or youre generously leaving a tip. These portals are created by a mage and allow party members to travel through them. When traveling alone, mages can teleport themselves without opening a portal.

NPC Portals: NPCs can sometimes help you get where you need to go, though their transportation methods are generally attached to a quest or progression path.
Static Portals: Many portals offer travel to a fixed destination. These can be found in a variety of locations.
–Orgrimmar:
The Western Earthshrine – Offers portals to Hyjal, Vashjir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands after you’ve completed the quests that guide you to these new Cataclysm zones.

Tol Barad – Found near the Western Earthshrine, you must be level 85 to enter this world PvP zone.
Blasted Lands – Found in the Valley of Spirits, you must be level 58 to use this portal. It delivers you safely to an outpost just outside The Dark Portal.

–Stormwind:
Blasted Lands – Found in the Wizards Sanctum, you must be level 58 to use this portal. It delivers you safely to an outpost just outside The Dark Portal.
The Eastern Earthshrine – Offers portals to Hyjal, Vashjir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands after you’ve completed the quests that guide you to these new Cataclysm zones.
Tol Barad – Found near the Eastern Earthshrine, you must be level 85 to enter this world PvP zone.

–Outland Portals:
The Stair of Destiny: Offers portals to Orgrimmar and Stormwind on either side of the Dark Portal.

–Neutral Portals:
Shattrath: Within the Terrace of Light, a portal transports those of the appropriate level to the Isle of QuelDanas.
Dalaran: Within the Violet Citadel, a portal is available for travelers heading to the Caverns of Time to defend Azeroths timeline from the machinations of the Infinite Dragonflight.
Within the Sunreavers Sanctuary (Horde) and the Silver Enclave (Alliance), portals are available for Wintergrasp, Strand of the Ancients, Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, and Isle of Conquest. (Note that queuing for Battlegrounds can be done anywhere from within the User Interface.)

Summoning:
When theres no portal available, you can ask your friends for a helping hand. Players can be summoned by using a meeting stone outside of a dungeon (level requirements need to be met) or by utilizing the services of a warlock.

Special:
Many additional means of transportation around the world become accessible via quests, special items, or NPCs, but there are two specialized methods that we just couldnt leave out.
Rocketway Exchange: The goblins have arrived, and with them, a little extra goblin ingenuity. You can find the largest of these Rocketways in Azshara.

Deeprun Tram: Running between Ironforge and Stormwind, players can take this underground train for free and easy transit between the two cities.

Edit – 18.01.2011 :  (i was wondering what the difference was between, artisan riding and master riding) found this excellent table from wowwiki I have added for convenience below:

Skill granted	Proficiency	Riding	Friendly	Honored	Revered	Exalted	Required for	Necessary level
75	Apprentice	4	3 80	3 60	3 40	3 20	Mounted riding (+60% movement speed)	20
150	Journeyman	50	47 50	45	42 50	40	Faster mounted riding (+100%)	40 with Apprentice
225	Expert	250	237 50	225	212 50	200	Mounted flying (+150% in the air)	60 with Journeyman
300	Artisan	5000	4750	4500	4250	4000	Faster mounted flying (+280%)	70
375	Master	5000	4750	4500	4250	4000	Fastest mounted flying (+310%)	80[1]
n/a	Flight Master’s License	250	237 50	225	212 50	200	Allows flying in Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Deepholm	60 with Expert or higher
n/a	Cold Weather Flying	500	475	450	425	400	Allows flying in Northrend	68 with Expert or higher
Total Price		11054	10501 30	9948 6	9395 90	8843 20

This post comes via: Cataclysm Stuff