Hi everyone,

Been spending more time on my deathknight than my mage. Anyway, I just wanted to start a discussion and invite some comments on a spec. I am not sure if its a noob spec or anything. But its worked out ok so far (though I am only lv 62).

The spec involves going 44 points into frost, enough to get Frost Strike and 3/3 guile of Gorefiend. Then, the rest of the 27 points are all going into blood. The objective is to eventually be able to put points into Abomination's might, veteran of the third war, and bloody strikes.

The idea of the spec is that the talents it takes boosts the abilities it uses the most often. Namely, obliterate, howling blast, frost strike, blood strike and icy touch. In particular, with the glyph of blood stirke plus all the talents boosting BS, this spec's blood stirkes are going to hit very hard.

It leaves out any talents boosting plague strike. (Its hard to boost an attack that is already very weak to begin with).

Rotations would be IT to pull, PS, then double BS, then obliterate, frost strike.

Does this spec scale well? Looking at the modifiers, it seems to be scale well. Its a frost spec that has +8% strength from talents, and can boost both armour and AP with its talents as well. It also has a very high crit for IT, Obliterate, and blood strikes (all boosted by talents), which it will use all the time.

Right now, I use howling blast over obliterate because the damage is actually higher, but once I get high lv enough to get a higher DPS weapon, obliterate should pull ahead because it scales better.

So, am I being a noob going this spec? Are the deep specs the only choice? Am I giving up too much by not going into Tundra Stalker and Hungering cold?

A link to the spec at 80 would help a lot, not much we can work off of without that.

Because of firewalls, I can't access some websites like Blizzard's.

The spec would be something like this:

Frost:

3/3 Improved Icy Touch
2/2 Glacier Rot
5/5 TOughness
5/5 Black Ice
1/1 Lichbourne
5/5 Icy Talons
3/3 Annihilation
1/1 Runic Power Mastery
2/2 Chill of the grave
1/1 Deathchill
3/3 Rime
1/1 Improved Icy Talons
2/2 Mercilous combat
1/1 Howling blast
1/1 unbreakable armour
4/5 blood of the north
3/3 Guile of Gorefiend
1/1 Frost Strike

Blood
3/3 Subversion
2/2 Butchery
5/5 Blade Barrier
2/2 two hand weapon spec
1/1 rune tap
5/5 Dark Conviction
2/2 spell deflection
2/3 Veteran of the 3rd war
3/3 Bloody strikes
2/2 Abomination's might

I'd like to see some numbers on the DPS contribution from bloodworms. Solo-wise, it's one of the best talents we have. I've had 0 trouble taking down elites between that and death strike. Which is funny because as frost-tank spec I can't do it. The healing makes a world of difference soloing.


Additionally, does anyone have some WWS logs from naxx 10 man raids as frost and blood DPS?

Well what kind of spec is this meant to be? Because you seem to have a mix of Prot and DPS talents. I think it would be wiser to specialize in one. For example: Spell deflection will rarely proc when questing because of low parry chance. It may help with the various AE damage you receive during boss fights but honestly with things like rune tap, death pact and death strike a DK doesn't need much healing to begin with.
One thing is for sure and that you will have massive RP generation but no effective RP dump. After you use runes you will typically 2-3 GCD to use up as much RP as possible. However I haven't played with Frost Strike yet so maybe the damage will be worth it, and you will have plenty of RP left over for panic buttons.

I like the unorthodox approach but I think this exact spec would best suit pvp if nothing else

I took most of the main dps talents I could reach within the spec.

Talents like toughness boost talents like bladed armour, so its ok. Otherwise, for just 2 talent points, I get lichbourne and unbreakable armour. There really isn't any other place I could put them which would result in such a huge DPS gain that its worth losing two such good protective talents.

These are the panic buttons I can use if I get swamped or if I chewed off more than I should have.

Same for the 2 points in spell deflection. There wasn't really anywhere else I could place that would have increased DPS that significantly. So, I took it as it was an interesting talent.

Does DRM and Blood of the North really make sense in the same spec? Isn't the goal usually to turn the runes you don't normally use into Deathrunes? If you are just randomly turning everything into a Deathrune it seems an inefficient use of talent points.

Probably, looking at it again, I'd switch the DRM points into something else. Improved Rune Tap for instance.

This is kind of a crappy place to post this, but I cant make my own threads yet.

Wanted to talk about DRW a little bit. Some of the mechanics are a little confusing. Just wanted to get some things straight.

What it does:
Cast every spell or attack that you do. (including Ghoul, D&D, and DG)
Auto attacks
Can gain buffs (Bloody Vengeance)


Here is the confusing part, is DRW JUST your weapon? Or is it modified by your AP and talents? It getting its own bloody vengeance charges kind of scares me that its just your weapon. Can DRW use Rune Striike? Like if you parry and do it, is it allowed to do it too? Because it didn't actually parry. Also, how does it work with diseases? It can cast IT and PS but do those debuffs get on the target seperatly from yours? And when it does HS does it get bonus dmg for your diseases or from its own (if it can cast its own)? Also, can it be targeted, hit with aoe, or anything like that? I don't want the dam thing to get feared or nova'd.

Being that everyone (including myself) is busy leveling and the fact that this ability last for 20 sec on a 3 min cd, makes it hard to test. But any info would be great.

Death Knight: Simple Questions/Simple Answers has extensive discussion on DRW (The search function is pretty good, you know)

Maybe I'm blind, but so far the only DRW discussion I see is: "Gargoyle is better, although its uncertain how DRW might scale (possibly passing it at high gear levels)".

If you found a specific post or thread that actually answered some of the questions I had, that would be great.