My first Naxx and hit/expertise capFollow

Now you have to understand that I have never even seen the inside of naxx before. My guild pre-bc was a ZG/MC guild and that was about it, and I never went there during BC pugs. My experience was just WOW though. I loved it. HUGE instance. TONS of bosses. Boss mechanics you cannot find anywhere else (a boss where you MC a minion and have them tank? come on! cool!). That said I must stress the need to be hit capped and expertise capped BEFORE you raid, at least those of you DKs that are planning on dpsing.

We need to be at the specials hit cap, which is 9% or 295 rating, and expertise cap, which is 6.5% (I'm told) or 26 expertise. I'm personally a little over on expertise, but I can't help it right now.

As far as actual dps, I compared myself to a guild rogue as he would be in the same situation I am, having to move out of melee range, or stand by and watch whirlwinding mobs and dps pretty much the same thing I was. In most situations I was very last on dps. The only time I really ever beat anyone was on this boss that had a living side and a dead side. The rogue was top dps, I was second, and then everyone else was below me. I pull an average of 1500 dps in greens and blues, while our other raiders (granted, they were mostly in T6 raiding gear) were pulling 1800-2000.

I'm fine with that though, I so enjoy death knight to where I don't really care where I am on the charts, the class is just fun. Plus having a DK on this boss where you had to pull an add next to the boss before killing it, that mechanic was made silly easy with a DK. Sit there dpsing until it's time to pull the mob over, deathgrip, dps, and win.

Which bosses? the ones that I got to actually stand there and dps, or the bosses where I spent half the fight running away from a mechanic and not dpsing lol. Why would they let me in there with blues and greens? And I'm supposed to get epics... where? Yes I am getting rep to get those, but I just hit 80 a week ago, and I do have IRL stuff to do too, I can only get so much rep a day =p My guildies were in T6 epics mainly because the stuff while leveling wasn't better than their 70 epics, but the leveling gear was better than what I had, so what does that tell you.

No, I didn't spend weeks grinding mats pre-expansion so I could have BS max level before I hit 80, no I didn't have anyone else make stuff for me, I'm going on completely what I've gotten from quests and out of 80 instances so far. I've run a couple heroics, but honestly 10 man naxx has some stuff that is easier than heroics.

As to making a gear list... I made one of those over on the paladin forums for BC (pre-kara holy guide), but honestly kara took a lot more to be ready to run it right at the start of BC, whereas there were guilds that cleared naxx without ANY level 80 gear, or barely any anyway. That means you do NOT need to spend weeks gearing and reping up before you can raid (stupid catering to casuals) so you don't NEED a guide. Beyond that, I don't have a problem writing a guide, it's just a pain int the rear to update it with every single patch that comes out. Nah, I'm pretty sure I won't bother.

Massengil's the main DK in our guild.

And more what I meant, Dilbrt, is that it would be nice to have a sticky with the level 80 values for the following:

Hit cap, expertise cap, defense cap with variations for taking talents in each tree.

I'm personally new to tanking mechanics (as I assume a lot of DKs are), and while I'm notorious for doing my research, it would be nice to have that kind of resource in one place.

I wasn't trying to be down on you, but I was more curious how someone putting up 1500 DPS would get into a Naxx run. My guild though, was in SWP, so I guess that may be the difference (we got our first full clear of Naxx a few nights ago).

And you get epics from Heroics, obviously. Now that you're 80 you don't have much to do but run Heroics while you wait for raids and do dailies.

Elitist Jerks has a pretty good article on DK dps...nothing for tanking yet though.