by DANIEL WHITCOMB

So here you are, a new level 80 Death Knight. You’ve made your triumphant return to Ebon Hold to train your level 80 skills and hearthed back to Dalaran, and now you’re hanging out in front of the bank on your favorite mount. And you have no idea what to do next. No worries, here’s a list of goals that should answer that eternal question (eternal in this case being the time to the next expansion), “I’m level 80. Now What?”


Choose Your Weapon

Once you’ve hit 80, as a 2-handed weapon wielder, there’s 3 major weapons you want to start shooting for. Here’s a look at those three choices and the pros and cons. 

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by MATTHEW ROSSI

The Obsidian Sanctum

Also called Sarth or Sartharion for the boss within, this raid is similar to Gruul or Magtheridon (or Onyxia, if you’ve been raiding that long) in that it is a short raid with a single boss encounter. (Technically, Gruul’s had two, High King Maulgar and his council and then Gruul himself, but it was still a short raid along these lines.) Unlike those pervious raids, however, the Obsidian Sanctum has a built-in ‘hard mode’ of sorts, as the three sub-boss drakes Shadron, Tenebron and Vesperon can be killed before engaging Sartharion himself or left alive and dealt with while engaging him for better loot and a chance at a mount. This also leads to one of the hardest boss fights in the current game being 10 man Sartharion with three drakes up. (I’ve only killed him on normal difficulty with one drake up and that wasn’t easy, so when we get around to leaving all three up I expect to get thrashed fairly often.)

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by CHASE CHRISTIAN

Like many of my siblings of the shadows, I play WoW in both the PvP and PvE environments. As a guild leader, it is my responsibility to organize raid groups and to lead my team to victory (and the associated purple loot). While keeping up Hunger for Blood &Slice and Dice & Rupture up may seem interesting for others; after a while the raid DPS grind wears away at my soul. I was not born to be a number-crunching math machine. I am a Horde assassin at heart: born to taste the blood of my Warchief’s enemies!

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by MATTHEW ROSSI

Utgarde Pinnacle
If you originally ran through Howling Fjord you got the chance to fight King Ymiron’s wife Angerboda, and you probably killed her. As you might expect, he’s not thrilled about it. As a result, you have to go kill him too, and as a result you can collect various knick knacks from his servants and lieutenants (and in one case from a stuffed trophy he has that comes to life and attacks you). What might you sift from the ruins of this fine edifice?

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by ZACH YONZON

So now you know all about the zone, familiarized yourself with the gameplay, and have some sort of idea on the strategies on how to win it, let’s have a look at the daily quests associated with the zone. The cool thing about Wintergrasp dailies is that they are the only source of Stone Keeper’s Shards outside of dungeon bosses and the only way to obtain them whether or not your faction controls Wintergrasp. 

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by ZACH YONZON

The vault is a raid instance accessible only to members of the faction that control Wintergrasp. It is one of the more important reasons why control of Wintergrasp is so important. Archavon the Stone Watcher is an extremely easy raid boss who drops pieces of Tier 7 and Arena gear. In short, he means free epics.

While there are no level restrictions to entering Wintergrasp (though if you can’t fly you’ll either have to take the portal or be summoned), players must be Level 80 and in a raid group in order to enter the Vault of Archavon raid instance. It’s a very short raid with exactly four trash mobs who have special abilities, but are essentially tank and spank and prepare the raid for how the boss will be like. Archavon is a DPS race.


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by CHRISTIAN BELT

Chilly Slobberknocker

Is your Mage still working their way to level 80? If so, this is an easy choice. Once your Mage has reached level 75, you can take them toZul’drak and head directly for the Amphitheater of Anguish. This is the Northrend equivalent of Nagrand’s Ring of Blood questline, in that it’s a series of 5-man boss fights that grants a ridiculous amount of gold, potions, and experience, and ends with a pretty fantastic selection of blue weaponry as a final reward. The Mage choice is the Chilly Slobberknocker, and it it’s a great gift for any mid-level spell-slinger on your list. This will be an instant upgrade for almost any Mage at the level, and there isn’t a valid replacement until you begin to get access to level 80 instance drops. 
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by AMANDA MILLER

Engineering
Engineering in Wrath of the Lich King is very different from what you’ve experienced previously. For example, Engineers used to be weighed down by trinkets, if they ever wanted to be able to use many of their gadgets. This system is slowly being replaced by a special type of “enchant” that allows an Engineer to consolidate.

Engineers are also beginning to focus on designing items that can be sold to other players, which adds another side to the profession. 

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by MATTHEW ROSSI

When coming into a new spec and role, one of the things you find yourself doing at first is making constant small adjustments. Part of this is simply the nature of the beast. You’ve been a PvP arms warrior for most of TBC, for example, but now you’re a raiding Arms DPS warrior and you need different things from your spec, which in addition is pretty significantly changed from what it was at level 70. Or you were a tank for the original endgame, but stepped away for a while and then came back in time to level to 70 just before the expansion, and are now looking at what you need to do to get ready to tank 10 man raids for your small guild, and are realizing that the leveling prot spec you were using isn’t quite up to it.

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