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 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 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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by DANIEL WHITCOMB

As a reminder, defense skill is not the same as defense rating. Rather, you need defense rating to get defense skill. Specifically, you will need approximately 690 defense rating to gain the 540 defense skill you need to gain critical strike immunity against level 83 mobs.

Helm

Questing in Storm Peaks, you should stumble upon the Crown of the Hyldnir in the middle of the massive quest line started by They Took Our Men at K3. While 37 defense rating seems a little low, the helm does have a handy yellow gem slot, perfect for a Thick Autumn’s Glow or a Thick Sun Crystal, bumping up that defense rating by a handy amount. 

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by ZACH YONZON

With blue, or rare, gear easily attainable through several sources, it should be extremely easy to gear up in preparation for ten- or even twenty-five man raids. 

Of course, before we get all our gear, we have to have a clear idea of what we want from them considering Blizzard has seen fit to load some Plate with Haste and others with Crit. Protection Paladins have no problem because as soon as you see a Defense value, we’ll know it’s meant for us. Holy and Retribution don’t have it as easy, and must often choose between Crit and Haste. Don’t worry about Tier 7 and other raid epics — they’re loaded with both. There are benefits to both, so we’ll examine those are after the break.
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by AMANDA MILLER

There are faction recipes and dropped recipes, as well as highlights from your trainer that you won’t want to miss. Here is a quick summary:

• New and improved exclusive spellthreads for enchanting your pants.
• A 20-slot bag and a 22-slot bag.
• A slow flying carpet mount as well as an epic one.
• Specialty cloth for epic gear.
• Frost resistance gear.
• An 8-piece PvP pseudo-set.
• Exclusive cloak enchants.
• Special threads that you can sell for a profit.
• Soul shard and enchanting bags with 32 slots.

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by DANIEL WHITCOMB

I’d like to take a look this week at some of the heroic 5-man loot. If there’s one thing I personally noticed right away when researching said loot, it’s that there’s a marked lack of hit rating. In recognition of that, I have often included some choices for each slot that are technically slightly worse than others except for a good amount of hit rating. In the end, to get to that magic 9% hit rating cap for raid bosses (Although some claim the new cap is somewhere around 8.1%), you’ll need about 296 hit rating. To do that, you may end up needing to take both some of the loot from here and from last week’s normal dungeon guide, and top it off with some choiceenchantments and gems, but it’s certainly doable.

But now, without further ado, let’s see what heroics get you in Wrath of the Lich King.

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by CHASE CHRISTIAN

After a few all-nighters in a row and a lot of showing up to work very tired, I finally reached level 80 this weekend. After a few victory laps in Dalaran to celebrate my victory over experience points and blue bubbles and Hemet Nesingwary (not for long, I’m sure); the looming realization of level-cap responsibilities started to enter my mind. Reputations, heroics, arena points, and honor – I had a lot of work to do. 

So, I took my own advice and decided to start some heroics, but not before spec’ing into my PvP mutilate build. I thought about trying out the truly insane DPS of Honor Amongst Thieves builds, but decided to postpone that until I’ve got some more gear to give it a real trial. Read on to see what I discovered on the way to my first Emblem of Heroism.

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by ALLISON ROBERT

A quick word about the quartermasters; you won’t have early access to the Ebon Blade or Sons of Hodir quartermasters for the purpose of browsing the merchandise. The Sons will be hostile to you until after you’ve done a long (but very entertaining) quest chain to get them to neutral, and the Ebon Blade quartermaster will only be “phased” into existence after you complete a quest chain that gives the Knights control of the Shadow Vault. The Argent Crusade quartermaster is available if you can get to their base camp in Icecrown, but don’t bother rushing; the earliest you can use any of the gear they offer is level 78.

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