Fearlezz

Did you 2 even bother to read that DKs can't use daggers?

 

Yergi

Just in case people haven't seen this. Sounds like it's not definite yet, but would be cool if it does happen.

Edit: Ghostcrawler posted this here.

 

Deathwing

Thank you for so callously reminding us. Which, of course, has nothing to do with theoretical discussion as to how daggers would affect Death Knight mechanics.

 

Morgrimm

I would like to discuss Blood-Caked Blade Vs Annihilation Vs Icy Talons.

At the moment my current choice for a level 80 spec would be http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000
I like this spec because of Annihilation and I use the rotation: Icy touch, Plague Strike, Obliterate, Obliterate, Heart Strike, and Heart Strike. And Keeping Rune Weapon and Hysteria up when they are off cool down and using Empower rune weapon every 5 mins. I also throw some death coils in when I’m waiting on cool downs and have a good supply of runic power.
When Rune weapon is up its very nice dps boost and I like the flow of the rotation and the amount of runic power it generates.

But the reason I am making this post is that I have spoken to a few death h knights and some of them prefer this spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000 (or similar)
To get Blood Caked Blade. Its proc rate is nice and it hits for around 1k -2k on average. But you lose your diseases on your target and you can’t get as much damage from your obliterates, you also lose the 3% crit on specials. The Instant hit from blood caked blade is nice but I am not sure if it equals the damage from 2 big obliterates the 3% crit on specials .
Has anyone discovered anything different? Do you feel like you are getting more dps from having blood caked blade?

I have also seen some people going for a spec that uses icy talons, and misses allot of the talents at the end of the blood tree, I am not sure about this spec to be honest it looks a bit weak, is it good?

 

Pyros

Your spec is a bit weird. Let me explain.

First we assume blood is highest DPS, and we want rune weap because it's the highest dmg talent in the tree. I'm not sure it is, but I think it can be considered true. So you want 51 in blood.

Now, you have to find out what to do with your frost and unholy runes. There's 2 ways to go about it. You either oblit, or death strike. Once every other rotation(assuming epidemic), you reapply diseases. If you oblit, you absolutely need Annihilation. You end up with roughly the build you posted, because that's pretty much the only way to get rune weap, annihilation and epidemic. Now the second build, that relies on higher unholy points and less frost works another way. You absolutely need Death Rune Mastery in this build. You actually don't ever need it in an oblit build though(thus my comment up top about your weird spec, you don't want DRM if you oblit). Now how it goes is simply, you death strike to convert the runes into blood, then you heartstrike with them on next rotation. You obviously lose DPS on the rotation, but gain a decent bunch of white damage. Necrosis+BCB.

What is better between the 2 builds would need some rather annoying math, and would probably depend on your gear too. But that's the 2 way to play deep blood DPS specs imo. DRM and Death Strike is how you get a non oblit build to work.

Depending on how they change Scourge Strike, it'll be interesting to see if deep unholy could become a viable dps build too. It's good atm if you can AE, but I think it falls behind to blood specs on single targets. Mostly because of the lack of oblit based talents in unholy.

P.S.: Rotation when using DRM/deathstrike is pretty inneficient. You'll have diseases dropping, heartstrikes with no diseases and so on. It's probably not such a good idea if you look at it from a rotation point of view, so I personally think the oblit build annihilates the death strike one. Pun intended ^^.

 

Morgrimm

That is great advice thank you. What do you think is a good alternative to DRM to use the 3 points? Also what do you think of my rotation? i was thinking about putting 3 points in sudden doom just to get a little free damage? seeing as i dont need DRM. I definitely agree with all the points you made

 

Pyros

Replace DRM with mark of blood, sudden doom or blood aura. Depending on your role/group setup.
As for the rotation, it's not very well worded, but it's the basic blood rotation. Apply diseases, heartstrike/oblit while they're up, that's all there is to it really ^^.

 

Morgrimm

I posted an edit while you were replying sorry about that.
I have changed my rotation a little to Plague strike first to get the full benifit from Glaxier Rot.

 

Mild Confusion

What about a 52/0/19 for a raid dps spec. It would bring utility for a melee group with heals, which is typically useful considering the amount of encounters where melee is getting hit by boss AoE. I think that a blood build would have better synergy with death strike over obliterate in an extended boss fight. While there are talents that sync with obliterate, they also sync with either heart strike and death strike. BRM and DRM would go a long way to increase your dps with more HS and DS, that also syncs with blood caked blade. I'm not sure of the exact mechanics of BCB, but if it works anything like warrior sword spec, it will be a nice chunk of dps, plus the synergy with BRM.

 

Aéquitas

For maximum raiddps I would guess..

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

..would be the best for Bosses. I do wonder though if the blood worms have any chance to survive with typical boss AoE dmg. Also Blood aura is a nice bonus though I think the healing won't be that imba that your raid wants you to put points in it.
Also I was wondering how good is Toughness? I have read it being imba and it not being worth it at all. How much armour from items does a lvl 80 supposedly have?

 

Mild Confusion

Icy Talons is a great talent, but outside of 5 and 10 mans, the odds of not having a windfury or another another DK with that talent seems slim.

 

• Chicken

I think you'd be better off dropping 3 points from Black Ice and putting those into Annihilation. Unless you're not planning to use Obliterate much your points in Epidemic are largely wasted if you don't pick up Annihilation as well; and since we're talking about maximum raid DPS here, you'll be wanting to use Obliterate.

I can't say the points in Vendetta are something I can imagine helping much either, but then again neither would the alternatives. Picking up Rune Tap and Improved Rune Tap would at least give you an emergency healing button on a boss though which is somewhat more functional. Alternatively you could put those points into Death Rune Mastery, but I'm not really a fan of that talent.

The Bloodworms in their current form would die. They have a few hundred health and they get hit by AoE fully.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Aéquitas

I failed at linking I edited someone elses build.

This is the right one:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Just wondering if toughness or the combo of improved icy and glacial rot is better

 

nevinera

Icy talons stacks with the raidwide speed buffs (imp icy talons doesnt).


>Won't daggers severely hamper the damage a death knight does from specials?

yeah, and we can't use them. I just meant 'fast weapons' really. there are swords in the right range already in game.

>For maximum raiddps I would guess.. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

As things stand now, almost certainly yes. i'd move the points out of vendetta to drm probably, maybe one in blood tap.. but yeah.
But you'll have to be in unholy to use all of your runes, so blood aura won't be useful at all.

I just brought up the blood worms with that build because the mental image was so amusing :-)

 

Banda

Edit: Bah, I believed Tom Chilton when he said that they probably weren't going to patch this week. What a liar. I'll try to update this in a couple hours depending on what changes are made this week, so that I didn't completely waste my wall of text.

Edit 2: Well the DR talent in Unholy effects DnD, so I'm deleting the references to Unholy DR rotations since GC said they would be effected by BB and not DnD.

Well this is a bit of theorycraft with some speculation, but the DK seems to be solidifying a bit, so I don't think it's too early. A lot of this discussion is based around intent since we don't have specifics of the up coming changes.

So, it's seems like Blizz is thinking pretty hard about attack rotations based on specs, with and without Annihilation, with and without Epidemic, and with and without Death Rune talents. Especially with all the new changes that GC has been saying/alluding to, each spec is going to have a notably different rotation. So with the 1F1U version of scourge strike, spammable BB using 1B, and an added death rune talent to Unholy. If you have no Annihilation, Epidemic, not DR talent. Then there is a basic 10s cycle for each of the 3 trees. And if you add Epidemic and/or a DR talent you instantly start thinking about 20s rotations. With Frost always wanting Annihilation, and Blood sometimes wanting Annihilation. Rune masteries add a new level of complexity, but those aren't predictable enough to really call it a rotation. More there will be adjustments to make use of them when they come up.

So for each spec the basic rotation seems to be intended to be:

Blood: PS->IT->HS->HS->OB->DC
Frost: PS->IT->BS->BS->OB->FS
Unholy: PS->IT->BS->BS->SS->DC

All the 20sec rotations cause you to lose 1.5 sec every 20 sec due to one one half of the cycle 2 runes are used in one strike and on the other half of the cycle they are used for 2 strikes. Probably best just burn an extra GCD on something, but it still causes a delay on using runes, something to consider when people eventually try to analyze what does the most threat/DPS. There is also a pause inside the rotations at times, so these add extra GCDs to burn on other powers, just going to call these GCDs. Lastly, lag and delay hitting the button every GCD will eat up the extra fractions of a second all over the place. I'll leave it to someone else to theorycraft about that issue.

You add Epidemic they all become the following:

Blood: PS->IT->HS->HS->DS->GCD ->GCD->DS->HS->HS->DS (replace DS with OB, if you have Annihilation)
Frost: PS->IT->BS->BS->OB->GCD ->GCD->OB->BS->BS->OB
Unholy: PS->IT->BS->BS->SS->GCD ->GCD->SS->BS->BS->SS

If you add the relevant DR talent, but no Epidemic, this changes to the following:

Blood: PS->IT->HS->HS->DS->GCD ->PS->IT->HS->HS->HS->HS (no reason to have Annihilation with this)
Frost: PS->IT->BS->BS->OB->GCD ->PS->IT->GCD->OB->OB->GCD

If you add the relevant DR talent and Epidemic, this changes to:

Blood: PS->IT->HS->HS->DS->GCD ->GCD->DS->HS->HS->HS->HS (replace the second DS with OB, if you have Annihilation)
Frost: PS->IT->BS->BS->OB->GCD ->GCD->OB->GCD->OB->OB->GCD


Obviously some off these "ideal" rotations are bad enough that you'd never spec that way. Blood with Epidemic, but no DR talent, and no Annihilation sucks unless you really want a ton of self healing. Blood with Epidemic, and the DR talent, and Annihilation is probably a waste of 3 talent points, since you only OB once every 20sec. Lastly Unholy with the DR talent may or may not suck depending on what the new BB is like.

The real point is that this will likely be natural strike rotation based on these specs. If you don't want to use that rotation you'll want to spec differently.

 

Pyros

One thing I noted when I was checking the DRM rotations with Death Strike and epidemic(the blood/unholy necro/bcb template)

Ok so first, the rotation

IT > PS > DS > HS > HS > Free >> Free > DS > HS > HS > HS > HS

The issue however is, what you do next. At the end of this rotation, you have a "free" GCD before your first rune usage, meaning in next rotation, you'll also have that free GCD early on, and 2 deathrunes coming. BUT, you'll have to use those death runes on icy touch+plague strike to reapply diseases, meaning the deathstrike leading to it was pretty much wasted. That means every rotation pretty much, you use a deathstrike only because you need damage, and deathstrike is terrible for damage. That's quite wasteful, and between this and the fact I'm not sure the HS would outdamage the oblit to begin with, that's a lot of lost DPS. If someone feel adventurous, it would need to be modelled, but I doubt necrosis+BCB could offset the loss here. Might also be issues with the free GCDs stacking but that might be due to my DS placement in the rotation, been drinking a bit so can't really think clearly atm, but the wasted DS is a sure thing.

I was trying to think a way to actually oblit before the diseases drop every now and then, to try to compensate for the wasted deathstrikes, but it seems complicated to be able to oblit and reapply diseases in the same rotation, while keeping the usual DS chains going to get advantage of it. Overall, the annihilation oblit build is much simplier to use. I guess if necro+bcb prove to be more DPS, getting top DPS as a blood DK might be quite interesting(aka complicated ^^). Guess we need to see what comes in next few patches though.

 

Mild Confusion

I was under the impression that windfury and icy talons would not stack. That would deviate from Blizzards stance that no class buff should be needed to the point where only that class/spec is invited, such as thunderclap, frost fever, and that druid disease. So the whole windfury OR icy talons would give more raid/spec versatility.

Does it currently stack now in the beta?


Edit: Do you think it would be worth a delay in the rotation for a free death coil if it procs? And would you want to pop DRW on the second blood rotation for the extra dps?

 

Pyros

He said Icy Talon, not imp icy talon. In other words, he means the self version of icy talons(the 5points one) stack with WF since it's a personal buff, much like SnD or Flurry stack with WF, but imp icy talon, the raid wide part, doesn't stack with WF since they offer the same effect. I think GC actually said it'd work that way, untestable in last patch since icy talon(normal, not the imp one) was broken. Servers down for update now, so once they're up it can be tested I guess. But I assume he's right and the self version will stack either way. Else they'd have to make it so SnD and Flurry and Icy veins and other spells like that don't stack with WF, and I don't think people would be too happy with that.

 

Banda

Well, Pyros, that free GCD space isn't as wasted as it might seem. With 5/5 SD you have a SD proc on average once every 16.66 sec. So you'll likely have a free DC in there somewhere. On top of that, you are generating 20 extra RP every 20 sec. So with 6 GCDs every minute, you get 300 RP to spend on 5 DS and 1 DRW. Either way those DRs are wasted just getting damage out there and using them to reapply PS and IT. Just getting Annihilation alone doesn't seem to solve the problem, since right after you OB you're going to be reapplying PS and IT, so it might not be worth 13 points in frost for a couple points of Crit and 2 ticks of BP and FF and lose access to BCB and Necro.

The whole issue of which of DRM, Annihilation, and Epidemic to get is pretty tricky with deep blood specs. The benefits of DRM alone is pretty straight forward, but then you are starved for GCD with only 1 GCD every 20 sec. if you add in Epidemic also, you get the extra GCD and full use of damage from epidemic, but then you are wasting DR on PS and IT like you were saying. If you get Annihilation too, then you are spending points on 6 points on 2 talents that are based around 1F1U strikes, so you're only getting the benefit from one each cycle. With just Epidemic alone instead, you'll also gain a GCD, but then you are either DSing just for huge amounts of self healing, or you have to get Annihilation and get tons of damage.

Whether Epidemic + Annihilation or DRM + Epidemic + Annihilation or DRM + Epidemic (+ BCB and Necro) or Annihilation alone gets you the most damage will depend on which way the powers end up balancing. IE which direction they turn the dials as GC always says. Some of the other combinations have their pros and cons. But I think these 4 are the ones that are really on the table.

 

Mild Confusion

Ah, thank you for clearing that up.


Aside from max potential dps, it also depends on how useful both the melee party healing and the heart strike debuff is. Situations like that could tip the scale in the favor of blood aura and DS. But that's all subjective.

 

Lapp

The chart I made at the top of page 57 uses an OB in place of that 2nd DS in a DS/DRM rotation (referring to the question you ask in the second paragraph of your post).

However, at 80 that rotation probably has no purpose seeing as 2 OB will be more damage than 2 HS + DS, esp. now with the rebalancing they're doing in tonight's push (no details yet).

Until you can get DRW, Anni, and Epidemic together, though (80), I think All/0/7 works quite well for leveling up, and especially solo-ing elites. You are indeed doing the rotation that the guy you quoted mentions, with two death strikes. This would a better idea than speccing out of Epidemic and into Annihilation, seeing as without 18 second diseases you're only able to fit in an extra Obliterate.

So, to re-iterate, All/0/0 until 67, then go 51/0/7. Continue dumping points into Blood until 80 (or you could somewhere, else, too, I suppose, but not Annihilation), and respec to 51/13/7 at 80 for a Diseases-4HS-3OB 21.5s rotation.

My take on Blood, anyway @_@

 

Zaroua

Some of the changes I noticed from MMO's talent calculator:

Blood/Frost/Unholy Rune Masteries are gone
Blood Aura is 1/2%