by Daniel Whitcomb

The Blood Princes

10-Man

The big thing the Battle-Maiden’s Legguards have over Scourgelord Legplates is one extra gem slot and haste instead of critical strike rating. However, the 4-piece bonus makes sure the tier 10 edges out anyway. Just stick with tier 10 and let some the tanks grab this for their off set, I’d say.

In other questions, what are the blood princes doing with legs belonging to a Battle Maiden? Have the Val’kyr been making booty calls? Man, girls and their vampires, I swear.

The big problem with the Thrice Fanged Ring is that haste and critical strike rating aren’t the most glamorous stats for us for DPSing anymore. There’s better than this ring to be found even in 10-mans for Death Knights. It’s not horrible, but there’s better. This will do in a pinch if you can’t find better in a ring though, or if all you can find is +hit or +expertise rings when you’re already capped.

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by Gregg Reece

This week we’re delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they’re kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she’d probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they’d become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I’ve actually seen that one.

The Blood Princes three

Kite the orb of fire, kill the bomb, and let the hunter tank the shadow guy. Wait, didn’t we kill some of these guys already? And did he just use glitter on me? Ack! They’re Twilight vampires! Let’s stake them and see what they bought with their movie deal money.

• Holy
  • Heartsick Mender’s Cape – 10 man – Cloak upgrade time. We’ve got a red socket and it bumps up our haste as well as mp5.
  • Cerise Coiled Ring – 10 man – This ring has a bit more intellect than stamina, which is always good in my opinion. It has a red gem slot and has crit and haste with the lion’s share of the itemization going to crit.
  • Mail of Crimson Coins – 25 man – If you don’t have a resto/elemental shaman in your raid, you could probably swipe this chest piece. It has three gem sockets (red, yellow, and blue)with the equip stats as haste and mana per five. It actually has quite a bit of mp5 if you’re looking for that.
  • Crypt Keeper’s Bracers – 25 man – These are a pair of crit and haste bracers. They’ve also got a yellow gem slot you could toss an intellect gem into.
  • Incarnadine Band of Mending – 25 man – This ring is awaiting a blue gem of your choice (or a completely different gem if you’re so inclined). Its other stats are crit and mp5 with the itemization lean towards mp5.
• Protection
  • Spaulders of the Blood Princes – 10 man – These plate shoulders have a significant amount of health available to them. It’s leaning very very heavily towards stamina over strength at almost two to one ratio. It also has two blue gem sockets on them which you could load up with stamina gems. Other things which aren’t stamina include a bunch of defense rating, some parry, and some hit. However, you get these purely for the health pool bump. Don’t forget to go grab your shoulder enchants from those Hodir boys.
  • Royal Crimson Cloak – 25 man – This is a pretty universal tanking cloak. It has a bunch of stamina, defense and dodge rating in equal parts as well as a little bit of hit. It also has a yellow gem slot as well.
  • Taldaram’s Plated Fists – 25 man – These gauntlets aren’t as heavily stacked towards stamina as other items we’ve been looking at, but stamina is still at an advantage. There are two gem slots colored in red and blue. The defense rating and parry rating seem to be the main stats on here, but it also has a decent amount of dodge rating as well to help you get out of that Icecrown radiance funk.
• Retribution
  • Battle-Maiden’s Legguards – 10 man – This set of legs has three gem slots in them (two red and one yellow). It’s got a lot of haste on it as well as a large chunk of expertise. With the amount of strength you can shove into three gem slots, I’m not complaining.
  • Thrice Fanged Signet – 10 man – This crit and haste ring is fairly decent for ten man. You’ve also got a red gem slot in it for an additional Bold Cardinal Ruby.
  • Landsoul’s Horned Greathelm – 25 man – It’s a pretty simple helm, but includes large chunks of both crit and hit. It has a meta slot as well as an additional yellow gem socket.
  • Cryptmaker – 25 man – While not Bryntoll or Shadowmourne, it is a pretty decent two-handed mace. It’s nice and slow giving you a bit more power in your swings as well as having some hit rating to make sure you actually connect (but you’re already hit capped, right?). The armor penetration isn’t all that important unless you’re getting a lot of procs out of your tier 10 set bonus, but can be handy in that case.

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by Chase Christian

The two boss battles we find in the Crimson Halls are night and day when it comes to how a rogue should approach them. The first, an unconventional ‘council fight’, will have your thief senses tingling as danger comes from every angle while you move about the room. The second, a DPS race of highest order, will have you drooling over the huge numbers that appear on your screen as you assassinate yet another member of royalty: the Queen of the San’layn?

The Blood Prince Council

After you clear up some Team Edward members in the foyer of the Crimson Halls, you’ll find yourself faced against the recently reanimated Blood Prince Council. I promise that will be the last Twilight joke this week, and I want you to know it took some restraint not to make any ‘Half Blood Prince‘ references. We’ve seen these guys already in our tour through Northrend, defeating them each in turn.

Prince Keleseth, the caster of the group, was defeated easily in Utgarde Keep, making him one the first bosses we toppled on our way to 80. Prince Taldaram loves to vanish, bringing back memories of my favorite rogue boss, Moroes! We were able to knock him out in Ahn’Kahet; his giant glowing fire orbs were no match for our daggers. Finally, we kicked Prince Valanar‘s lifeless corpse out of the floating Scourge citadel of Naxxanar while cleansing the Borean Tundra.

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