[WoW non-IC] What happened to Hooff?

This is my first crack at writing a story, but not in first-person point of view. Lately it was difficult for me to have an "exciting" story, told in the past tense, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

"We have news of Hooff" exclaimed Rohan.

"How?" Questioned Hotplate.

Hotplate looked around the room, taking in the strange scene in front of her. The concern in her voice seemed out place on her normally stoic and, understandably cold expression.
While not particularly close, she did deeply respect the old Draenei. When they first met, they were already at odds. Hooff's draenei roots and training with the light gave him an automatic aversion to Hotplate's unholy ways. None of the "family" accepted her easily. She was only allowed to stay in the manor by decree of Bob. While Hooff mistrusted Hotplate a great deal, he trusted in Bob's judgement more. Strange to hear that a Paladin would trust the judgement of a Warlock in regards to a Death Knight, but these are strange times. How Hooff came to judge Bob's judgement so completely, is a story only Bob and Hooff seem to know, and neither are considered "chatty".
Eventually in battle, Hooff came to respect Hotplate. Many times Hotplate would charge in, standing toe to toe against a hulking monster, adeptly dodging and parrying its attacks while simultaneously keeping its attention. Hooff would be behind her, calling upon the healing powers of the Light to mend whatever strikes Hotplate was not able to dodge. They made a good team, eventually developing a deep mutual respect. Hooff came to think of her as younger sister.
In the room was Rohan, the archmage that had cast the spell to send Hooff off, a few other nameless mages, and Waash the night-elf druid. Zoee was understandably absent, her and Waash had had a falling out, and she left the manor shortly after. Even if Hotplate wanted to contact her, it'd be next to impossible. The only thing harder to find than a druid that didn't want to be found, is a Rogue that does't want to be found. A glowing eye wandered around the room on occasion, Hotplate recognized it as Bob's Eye of Kilrogg. The old warlock was rarely ever seen in person. Any time his presence was required someplace, either the Eye or sometimes one of his minions would go in his stead.

"As you all know the teleportation spell I cast worked, too well." explained Rohan.

"Instead of sending Hooff to the future, I sent him to another dimension. The dimensions seem to be linked by the twisting nether. There's still quite a bit about the twisting nether that we know nothing about".

"How did you find him? How's he doing?" Hotplate asked again, with more concern in her voice than she meant to show.

A blink of light and Thantomm ( or Tom as he's called around the manor) appeared next to the Eye. He was Bob's Felguard minion, his Axe still had the blood of whatever he had last killed.
"A felguard mentioned his name to me, in the twisting nether" Tom said.

"How would another felguard know about Hooff" replied Hotplate.

"Apparently, he was summoned by a young Warlock. During an elemental attack, they were saved by a Paladin. The Paladin had a strange accent, and his eyes looked strange", continued Tom.

"None of what you said makes me think that it was Hooff" Hotplate replied, clearly loosing patience.

"The felguard and the warlock were stil very young. The Warlock, Nuiitari is her name, was still just an Apprentice, and thus her connection to the felguard wasn't fully established. Normally an Apprentice Warlock does not have the power to call upon a felguard. Imps and Voidwalkers are considerably less... straining. Nuiitari was losing the connection because of her injuries, the paladin cast the Soul-link spell that kept the connection and allowed Warlock and Felguard to share each other's strength".

"I didn't know paladins had such a spell" remarked Waash.

"They don't." answered Tom.

The Eye of Kilrogg moved and settled nex to Tom.
"An Apprentice Warlock can cast that spell, but only to herself and her minion. To cast the spell to bind another Warlock, to its minion, requires a fairly higher level Warlock. To have a paladin cast the spell is very rare". an eerie voice, seemingly out of nowhere explained. Some of the nameless mages looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. Hotplate and Waash simply listened, they were used to hearing from Bob in this way.

"I've only known a handful of Paladins with enough power to cast the spell, enough knowledge about shadow magic to invoke the spell, and enough familiarity with demons to attempt the spell. Hooff was one of those paladins." Rohan added.

"We've known that Hooff was a powerful paladin, but I never knew he knew so much about shadow and demons". Waash said.

"He learned from me." said the voice.

"Indeed, a side effect of the third-party Soul Link is that the demon has access to the caster's mind, if only bried glimpses" Tom said, continuing his story.

"Within the paladin's mind the felguard so images of a human warlock, a human death knight, a night-elf priest, and twin draenei, a shaman and a hunter. He tracked me down when he saw an image of me in the Paladin's mind"

"Ok, thats more convincing" Hotplate finally said.

"How'd he know it was you? All of you felguards look the same to me" asked Waash.

"We can tell" retorted Tom.

"Well there is a bit of a problem... all this happened in Orgrimmar". Tom added.

"What would Hooff be doing in Orgrimmar, helping a Horde Warlock?" asked Waash.

"The Paladin, was a Blood Elf" Tom said.

State of the WoW

Its time once again to catch everyone ( by everyone I mean me, and my one follower, thanks sweetheart =)), on what I've been doing in the World of Warcraft.

Hotplate, DK Blood Tank/Blood DPS:

Hotplate has 2 pieces of her Tier9 tanking gear. She really only has 2-3 pieces of blue quality gear left. She remains the quickest way into a heroic. Rarely do I have to wait longer than 10-15 seconds before dungeon finder grabs me a group.

With the higher iLevel gear, the DPS have also started to get much higher. Usually this isn't a problem but I've noticed an increase in frequency of dicks. Seems like the better geared the DPS, the more they expect to not have to worry about fundamental ideas like, letting the tank grab some aggro before nuking. Its gotten so bad that I've taken a break from seriously running Heroics with this toon. I'll usually still do the first heroic random for the Frost and Triumph badges, but after that I'll log into another, less stressful toon.

Hooff, Paladin Holy/Ret:

With the burn out associated with tanking, Hooff has got quite a bit of play recently. He also has 2 pieces of Tier9, Holy gear. The wait for healing is quite a bit longer than Tanks, usually in the order of 5-6 minutes. Thats not bad at all considering DPS have to wait around 15 minutes to get into a group.

I've found healing quite a bit less stressful than tanking. There's quite a bit more room for error. As long as I keep the tank up, if a DPS drops cause I missed a heal then its not a huge problem. Plus in general, people seem to be quite a bit nicer to healers. Maybe its a throwback to when healers were much more in demand than tanks or DPS. Or it could be that everyone is just used to having a girl as a healer, and used to being nice to them. Either way, I'm not complaining.

Hooff was also able to get a new weapon, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50210 which is admittedly a caster DPS sword. It was better than Firesoul, his previous weapon, which also was a caster DPS weapon.

Quackingbob, Warlock Destruction:

I've just started trying to get into groups on Bob. With my other two toons, I would usually queue up and wait to get into a group. THe most I would do before getting the invite would be head to the AH and do a quick scan, or possibly straighten out my mail/bags/bank. With Bob, this isn't the case. Usually I will queue up, and then go about my business and let the dungeon finder interrupt what I was doing. Usually this business involves making cloth on my 3-day cooldowns, or scouring the AH for enchanting mats. Since I don't usually do dailies anymore ( the rep I can get with tabards, and the gold I can get from the AH), I don't have an easy filler-activity for bob to do.

Because of the long wait times, and lack of filler. I haven't run bob through heroics near as much as the other two characters. This is really a shame because theoretically Bob has the highest DPS potential of all my toons ( because the others are hybrids, while bob is pure dps).

Even with all this, Bob got his first piece of Tier9 last night. The tier 9 shoulders replaced the shoulders he got from Naxx a few months ago. Also a few days ago, Bob won a new weapon in Pit of Saron. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50227 Its a healing dagger, but it was better than the Spectral Kris that Bob had before. Yes, Bob got a healing weapon for DPS caster, while Hooff got a DPS caster weapon for healing. RNG can be a cruel mistress.

Future:

I would really like to get a new 2hander for Hotplate. She isn't having too much trouble keeping threat in 5-mans, mainly because of Rune Strike being macro'd to her Heart Strike and Death Strike abilities, but a higher DPS weapon would really help if I ever get into raids, or even in the harder heroics ( Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection). It I'm lucky enough, I might get her Quel'Delar, if I can find a Battered Hilt that isn't going for 15k+. Honestly I'd love to be able to get Quel'Delar for all 3 of my toons.

DK Update ( level 77 )

Hotplate hit 77 this wekeend. A lot has happened to the intrepid Death

Knight in the past few days. When she hit 75 ( or was it 76? ) I got

her dual-spec to celebrate. Since then I have spruced up her tanking

gear and she now sits at 430 defense rating.

Tanking:

I spec'd her as Blood Tank. The biggest reason for this was the

similarity in spell rotation for Blood tanking as Blood DPS. The only

major difference I can see is that instead of favoring my Heart Strike

ability I now favor Death Strike ( to recoup some HP), that and hit

Blood Boil more for AOE threat.

My first tanking experience was Violet Hold. I went in at 75, with a

level 80 DPS and some other 76-78's. I might have lucked out because I

most just tank-n-spanked the bosses we got. I held aggro pretty well,

with just the level 80 pulling off me occasionally.

I also recently tanked a 4-man Amphitheatre of Anguish run, with 2

other level 80s and a 76-ish. That went well enough.

I haven't quite decided if Tanking or DPS will be the primary spec of

Hotplate. I already have a well geared Plate DPS character ( Hooff the

Ret Pally ), so having another Plate DPS wouldn't be that new. My only

tank is Waash, but he's stuck at 76 for the forseeable future.

If I do choose to primarily tank with Hotplate, I see myself getting

quite a bit of Titansteel tanking armor crafted. That should get me

most of the way there to be able to tank regular Trial of the Crusader

and with farming that ( and possibly other level 80 regular dungeons)

get me ready to tank Heroics. After that I'll be farming Heroic ToC

and whatever Heroics I can get into for Naxx-level gear.

After getting to that level gear, it's going to be heroic farming for

Tier 8 emblem gear. I would really love to start raiding again, but

that would require finding a guild that can raid during my

schedule. With paddling the way it is, I don't know how much free time

I will have.

Death Knight in Utgarde Keep

Last night I got a chance to run my DK ( Hotplate ) through Utgarde Keep regular. Instancing is quite a bit different than leveling and it took some adjustment.

Spec:

My current spec is actually a spec I googled. Its more of a leveling spec than a max-dps spec. It gives up some of the balls to the wall DPS talents for more health regeneration, for less downtime. In a dungeon, since you have a healer behind you, health regeneration is pretty low priority. I had to shift my rotation from favoring Death Strike, to favoring Heart Strike. Heart Strike is the DK cleave, does great DPS when you have Icy Touch and Plague Strike on the target. I did have to hit Death Strike a few times, mainly cause everything else was on CD.

My DPS was decent, at times topping 1k. For a level 72 ( ending 73 ) I think that's pretty good dps. I was #1 DPS, even out DPSing our 74 pally tank. The rest of the DPS was a 70 ret pally and a 72-ish Rogue, so I did have a bit of a level advantage.

So far I like Blood DPS, it gives a decently simple rotation, and good DPS. I would have liked to have tried Unholy, but it would feel a little too much like my Affliction lock, plus I've had enough of juggling DOTs.

I was thinking of dual-speccing and picking up a tanking off-spec. It would be nice to have another leveling toon that can tank, would certainly ease getting into groups. I guess I should do some more research on DK tanking. I wonder how close to the defense cap I need to get to do regular dungeons?