Haven’t played a ret paladin, so they might be even easier, but DKs are easyeasyeasy to play, particularly soloing. Just keep hitting your three main strike buttons and occasionally throw a death coil in and you’ll do okay.
According to the Wowhead DB there are a few Rare Elites that a baby Horde could possibly encounter. Captain Flat Tusk was one I remember fighting… he was “surprising”.
This change is why I picked a Shaman for my new twink. 
Honestly, though, it will IMO screw up the class balance in the 10-19 bracket so badly that I’m not sure they’re going to keep it that way.
Why do you say that? Twinks have actually gotten a solid number of nerfs lately–no more head or shoulder enhancements that they can use, they can’t use anything but medium (for BoP) or heavy (for BoE) armor kits on their legs, a number of other popular chants had level requirements added that made them useless for twinks, the STV fishing tournament boots had a level requirement added… (Characters that already have the enhancements aren’t even grandfathered in anymore–the enhancement will still show up on the item, but it will be in red with the level requirement displayed to show that it isn’t currently an active effect while equipped on that toon.) And in 3.2, twinks will have entirely separate BGs from non-twinked characters.
Not if the alternative were to ride/fly a minute away. Some people would even prefer it to the cost of a repair bot.
“Link Epic achievement.”
AFAIK, you have to leave combat to use a travel form. The bonus is that they’re instant cast–so if you keep mashing the button, hopefully you’ll catch a split-second when you drop, versus a normal mount which (until next patch) has a full three seconds of cast time, which can be interrupted by getting back into combat.
Runic Power is **very **different from Rage. The only ways they’re similar is that you start with zero, there’s a static cap, and they decay out of combat. Most of the mechanics are completely dissimilar. (Rage is built from white attacks and taking damage; RP comes from using special attacks. Rage is spent on almost all abilities; RP is used to power special abilities while normal abilities are powered by Blood/Frost/Unholy/Death Runes.)
Nope, you can drop into druid or shaman ground travel forms while in combat. (Just tested it - my husband has a 80 shaman, I have an 80 druid.) You cannot use druid flight form in combat, though.
Shaman travel form has a cast time, but you can spec a talent to make it insta-cast.
No, Travel Form is, and always has been usable in combat, Fligth Form is not however.
Even though I can kill stuff with a hunter that I wouldn’t even consider trying to solo with a paladin, I think that paladins are much easier to work with. Both hunters and warlocks are fairly complicated classes if you want to play them well and their playstyles may change a fair bit depending on gear, level and what you’re doing while a retribution paladin stay pretty much same level 1-80 and beyond.
As noted, you can use travel form in combat. However, you cannot use it in an indoors environment.
To be honest, a DK plays like a warlock. Think of the runes as mana and not rage. Think of the effects as spells not hits/combinations. See, a DK doesnt have the same use this 4 times to get the red dots to let you use this other whack … one color rune=1 whack. Just like waiting for mana to refill to use a spell. I used to tank when I solod my warlock … target, send pet, cast and use that wand like no tomorrow between spells to save mana or make it stretch longer =)
Guys, are y’all having trouble connecting today?
Also, I have toon (named Quasimodem) over on the server y’all use, (Cannot get to it now, 'cause I cannot log on, Ogdammit) and would LOVE to be a member of Burning Dog (just haven’t been there lately to get an invite).
Also, just an update:
Y’all have heard me mention my friend Amberale from the Legends of Azeroth guild (which I left)?
Well, when I signed on this morning, I had a mail from this wonderful guy asking me to join him (new name: Erdinger;)) in a guild I had PREVIOUSLY formed called (ready?): The EOAD Feebs. I just never pursued that guild (meant for us other EOAD feebs), because no one ever stayed past their 10-day trial.
So I joined him in our guild and got several promotions right away! 
This guy and Shimmy (dammit, I THINK you’re **Flightless Bird **here, but can’t remembet that to save my ass! SORRY) have “hung” with me throughout all my friggups, and never once got pissed off. Frustrated, I bet, but never pissed off at me…
“Erdinger/Amberale”, also reads my blog, so with Burning Dog in the Horde, and EOAD Feebs in Alliance, I am ready to once again kick some ass!
Thanks, kids!
Bill
Yes, the authentication server is having trouble today.
Usually I’ve seen it come back up so you can log in after just a few minutes, but I guess there’s more than the usual trouble with it lately.
It’s an important difference for various reasons. First and foremost is that it’s possible to be immune to stuns. You can’t run into this on your own, but if you paired with a rogue, you might. Multiple stuns in quick succession reduce the duration of followup ones, and after three, the target is completely immune to them. Boss and raid enemies are almost always immune to stun all the time. In both cases, you can still use your Hammer as a spell interrupt even though the stun will do nothing.
The other reason is that it’s possible to escape stuns, through PVP trinkets or certain abilities. The best example is that of a mage. If you just Hammer them at any old time, they can simply cast Blink and it will immediately free them from the stun. However, if you Hammer them while they’re casting an arcane spell (such as Polymorph) then their arcane school of magic will be locked out for 3 seconds in addition to the stun, preventing them from Blinking free for that minimum period of time.
Western Plaguelands is an awful lot of fun for Paladins (attract as many undead as you can, judge, consecrate, holy wrath, rinse and repeat!) though we have run out of quests after one evenings play - two level 50s and we now only have red quests in the log, we tried one (the Hendrix reference) and spent about 10 minutes battling a level 57 undead. He died but it was dull. Any suggestions? We have a couple of orange quests in Felwood but that’s a long way away from WPL.
martu, been to Un’goro yet? As long as you watch out for devilsaurs you shouldn’t have too much trouble there.
It is not possible to “watch out for devilsaurs”. They are scaly ninjas.
Of course you can watch out for them, I never said there would be any time to actually do anything once you see them 
Sort of like encountering Somnus in Swamp of Sorrows - typically when I was at the level to be questing there, I’d see him when his head poked in from the side of the screen and chomped me in two.
My bit o’ news for the day: finally got promoted to being an officer in my current guild. (Would have happened a long time ago if some people didn’t have issues with my “attitude”–i.e., I’m a woman who actually knows what the fuck she’s talking about, so they get bitchy when I say something that would pass without comment coming from a guy. :rolleyes: But anyway, moot point now.)
You know, I should have remembered that, seeing as I’ve PvP’d with and against Druids. :smack: We’ve been talking about flight form in the context of world PvP lately, and my brain apparently decided that the restriction there applied to travel form, too.
I really don’t see where you’re coming from with this. IMO they’re nothing alike. Melee vs. ranged, plate vs. cloth, Runes + RP vs. mana pool… And it sounded like half of what you were saying was about Rogues, not 'Locks.
Yay for good guilds!
DKs are an amalgamation of several different classes, including Warriors, Rogues, Warlocks, and possibly others. They’re melee plate who can dual wield and use two-handed weapons (but no shields), Runic Power is a little like Rage and Energy, Runes are a little like Mana, their primary spells are DoTs, a pet is common…
They’re all over the map, which is intentional. Hero classes (City of Heroes has Epic Archetypes, which are similar) tend to meld the playstyles of several different classes together to create something new which can’t be easily pigeon-holed.
Personally I’m not exactly thrilled with DKs. They feel slapdash, with all their different mechanics, and while I’m sure it’s possible to play them well and know what you’re doing, I don’t get a sense of feedback when I play mine. That is, I can’t easily gauge the effectiveness of a particular ability at the time I use it. I suspect that this is because the early abilities are DoTs and I generally don’t play DoT-heavy classes. But mainly, with DKs I feel like I’m just hitting random buttons until the enemy falls down, and I don’t like that.
They are pretty faceroll autowin.
I feel this too a lot, but reading up on it a bit at Wowhead and other places has helped. The problem is that they are SO overpowered through the first levels. I’m still only at 61 or so and doing things in Hellfire that my Hunter would NEVER have thought of doing. 4 above-level mobs at a time? Sure. 5? Why not.
As far as the Rune/Runic Power mechanic I actually kind of love it. To me its a combination of energy (runes) and rage (runic power). I really like that you don’t have to wait for anything to re-gen if you do your rotation correctly (start with your strikes to consume some runes and build up some RP then dump the RP with Death Coil or Unholy Blight or something while the runes regenerate). If you keep a balanced rotation you rarely have the “resource issues” that annoy me about rage- and energy-based classes.
As far as judging the effectiveness of the spells that’s hard for me mainly because even mobs a few levels higher die so damn fast to a DK. I’m sure at higher levels it becomes much easier.
Oh, and the mounted speed bonus is definitely FTW while leveling! 
I just heard so I thought I would share this bit of news.
Sam Raimi is going to direct the World of Warcraft movie.
With him at the helm I feel better about the project but I am still a bit skeptical about how they’re going to pull it off and which story they are going to do.
About DK’s, I leveled one to 70 and it seems almost too easy because things just die so fast. It is almost boring to play so for now, that I have his jewelcrafting maxed, all I do with him is the jewelcrafting daily. Which I am almost at level 71 just from doing the daily, er, daily.