Daacacia walks into Naxx 25...

This weekend, I had the opportunity to run 25 Naxx on my DK, Daacacia. While I have dps'ed some raids as Arms on Bura, Daacacia has and always will be dps spec. He's currently using the cookie-cutter 51/13/7 Blood spec. While I had to afk during trash (party riding ftw, homework ftl), I was there for all boss fights.

It was fun, gettting the valorous head, Crude Discolored Battlegrips and Legplates of Double Strikes. But I definitely learned that dps'ing as a DK is harder and more intricate than any other class I've had dealings with.

One of the major reasons is the rune system. If I hit the wrong button on Bura, I lose a little bit of rage and a GCD. If I hit the wrong button on Daac, I put a rune (or two or three) on cooldown, severely hampering my rotation. I either have to wait for the rune to come off cooldown, augment my rotation or burn Empower Rune Weapon to reset my self. It was hard to handle, especially on fights with movement or stuff to avoid.

Another is the rotation itself. It's quite a bit to handle for someone used to either the proc nature of Arms or the three buttons of Fury. In contrast, the optimal dps rotation of Blood is quite convoluted and precise. Again, on fights like Patchwerk, it wasn't so bad since I could stare at my bar and be very careful. But on fights like Grobbulus, I had to rely more on my HUD, which I'm still getting used to and keeping myself alive.

And the final thing I noticed was how Bloodlust wasn't that useful for DK's. Sure, the faster swing timer is nice, but the faster GCD does nothing when my runes are on CD. I still have to wait for them to come back up, and I can only Death Coil so often before I'm just auto swinging. Maybe if Bloodlust affected rune CD's, it'd be better, but as it is, it's not that great for the class in my opinion.

So, how'd I do? Let's just say I'll stick to tanking, I'm never the greatest DPSer. The only time I did well on meters was in BT before Arms was nerfed. And that was a result of Blizzard not balancing. But who knows, perhaps with a few more learning experiences, I may be tearing up the meters soon enough.

At the very least, it's a nice change of pace from the normal tanking scenarios.