thevidon

To start this off - a few questions:

How many of our effects can be dispelled? Bone Armor? Icebound Fortitude? Lichborne? Unbreakable Armor?

Any ideas for partners in the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets?

What does Hungering Cold share diminishing returns with?

If Hungering Cold isn't a 'must have' then I like this build: Frost/Unholy - 45/26

It gives you all of the burst and mitigation from frost (as well as frost fever snare), and adds gargoyle, stun/fear reduction and full time ghoul + ghoul stun from Unholy. There is probably some more optimized version of this build that I'm not seeing, but you get the point here. If you don't take hungering cold it leaves a lot of room to play in unholy with the pvp helpful talents.

 

Faerlun

I would never put gargoyle in a PvP build - it is quite difficult to keep active, even as full unholy, in a raid situation requiring in and out moving. Now in a PvP situation you'll be landing even significantly less attacks, the chances of keeping your gargoyle up is almost nill. In addition, you should be saving runic power for stuff like mind freeze, and gargoyle drains it if it is there - no saving.

 

thevidon

It is not an ability I expect to use with regularity.....but for one point that deep into the tree its worth having situationally for burst. I'm not sure 1 extra point in impurity is worth losing the option to use gargoyle. Just because its not the greatest PvP talent doesn't mean its worthless.

 

imabearlol

For a Frost PvP build without Hungering Cold, I was actually thinking of something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

Pros:

Unholy:
The tier two talents are all pretty good for PvP.
-Death Grip should be used a lot especially in arenas to counter pillar humpers
-Epidemic as DKs are prone to being kited, diseases should last as long as possible to get any Obliterates off without having to reapply.
-30% dispel resist would help also.
I don't believe it's worthwhile to go further to get On A Pale Horse, the other talents are pretty trash.

Frost:
-With Icebound Fortitude glyph, you will get 18 seconds of 50% damage reduction for 0 RP which can be huge.
-Frost Aura might also be useful, providing fairly decent (80) resistance vs casters.

Blood:
-I believe more Oblit crits and AP is more useful than Hungering Cold or going further in Unholy, depending on the bracket and setup. Obviously if the CC is required, then points would probably come out of Blood than any other tree.
-The last 4 points should also probably go in this tree, either in Dark Conviction or Two-Hand Weapon Specialisation, whichever provides more dps.


Cons:
-No Mark of Blood, very useful vs non-dispellers and Rogues.
-No Rune Tap.
-No AMZ.


This spec is fairly bursty as with any Frost spec, but also provides good defense through Icebound Fortitude.

 

Mendit

I like deep unholy for pvp for some reason, something really appeals to me about bone shield. I agree with Faerlun on garg requiring extreme luck and timing to be efficient, and leeching runic power away from other abilities. For that reason I left it out of the spec I am considering. I also chose to couple unholy with blood for it's low/mid tier crit talents. I also considered leaving out scourge strike, as I anticipate replacing that rune usage with death strike for arena. This is the spec I am considering.

Let me know how you feel about it.

 

Frostx

After some world pvp with my frost-tank specced DK, i've found snares to be extremely important for a DK in pvp. My personal opinion is that Unholy is the only viable pvp spec. Frost with hungering cold can definitely fit into niche roles but overall it doesn't have enough ways for you to catch your target - also your main RP dump is melee.

As unholy you have Desecration which, when used with the Blood Boil glyph, gives you a snare on every rune - Chains of Ice, Plague Strike, Blood Boil. Unholy's Reaping is also the only Death Rune talent that converts blood boil into Death Runes. 15% movement speed from Unholy Aura and -20% Fear+Stun duration from On a Pale Horse, together with controllable Ghoul stuns and extremely good anti-burst protection from Icebound Fortitude + Bone Armor really makes the spec shine.

Currently i'm leaning towards this spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=020908040506

 

Amera

I don't actually think anything is dispellable. I checked tonight and even bloody vengeance isn't. Can someone confirm Lichborne?

Edit: Correction, vengeance is, but it is a stack.

 

Lazak

I played a Premade BE Deathknight in the European Beta, where i played 2v2 Arena with a Premade Retribution Paladin.
We got to 1870 and got Deadly Gloves. I would say we were very succesfull with a great or descent chance against all setups we faced. Some were even walkovers.

My final spec was: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Arguments:
Desecration is a must have. You need all the slowing effects you can get, and a mini frost trap with a non-dispellable slow fits the bill.
I took 5/5 Bladed Armour over 4/5 Dark Conviction because some of my abilities scale of AP and not Crit (Dots, Gargoyle, Unholy Blight)
Improved Runetap is too good to give up.
Gargoyle, at least in beta, was something like 1600 dps while it was out. Its insane burst. You dont need the full 1 min duration. You pop it, when you know you are going to burst. Like after a divine shield has gone down.

Debatable:
Unholy aura is there, because i wanted to use Blood Presence for pvp. I did not feel like i needed the 1.0 GCD from uholy presence, but i needed the 15% faster movement.

 

Cronjob

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the build I'm going with. Its very anti-caster and also very anti melee.


Key Points:

Bladed Armor - Is really good especially combined with Frost Aura and Impurity. Basically you get a huge armor boost in Frost Aura which boosts your AP due to Bladed Armor which means your spells hit harder because of Impurity. There seems to be a lot of syngery there.

Toughness - Again combined with Bladed Armor boosts AP

Lichborne - I think this is a must have for PVP, its essentially a 3min CD WOTF on steroids. Not only does it break and then make you immune to fear effects it also is like a Mini Evasion which is nice against melee.

Gargoyle - Really adds a ton of burst dps and in arenas it can be used to finish someone. I've noticed in world PVP that using this CD can make or break a fight sometimes. More often than not it lets me pull off a win that otherwise wouldnt have been. This also helps when someone happens to get a good kite rotation on you, you pop this guy and their mindset changes a bit.

Impurity - As stated before this really works well when combined with other talents.

AMS - From what I've seen this really helps against mages especially who get us at range and against other DK's. Keeping a frost DK in the AMS for its duration really gives me a the upper hand. In most cases I have found that instead of dps'ing me they focus on getting out of it, while I focus on keeping them in and applying pressure.

Boneshield - Really good damage reduction, even better when the CD is up and you can reapply back to back.

Desecration - Our mini frost trap, I took Icy Reach so that if they do get out of my range I can reach out and touch them with chains 10 yards further


Only ones I'm not sure about yet are Anticipation and maybe Blade Barrier. Again I wanted to be both anti caster and anti melee so I took those but might tweak it a bit.

 

Cronjob

Actually I think for snaring Frost is better because of chillblains which makes your Icy Touch a ranged snare unlike Unholy's Plague Strike which is melee range. With Frost it was easier to keep say a hunter in range because as he frost trap kited or concussion shot kited, I could range Icy Touch spam to keep him close until chains or death grip was up. Same with a Druid trying to run, I could IT spam to keep snareing him.

As for Glyphs I found that the blood boil one wasnt really that useful for me. I found that Glyph of Icebound Fortitude to be much more useful. It makes your IBF cost no runic power which means you can preload it or use it anytime. You can ruin a rogues day by trinketing and popping this right away from the start or by preloading it going into a fight against a Ret Pally. They expect to be able to stun you from the start and when they cant it forces them to be defensive.

 

Lazak

Icy Touch and Chains of Ice share the same cost/cooldown: Frost Rune. Or did you mean something else?
Also, When chasing druids, i assume, that by spam, you mean use 2 Icy Touch in a 10 second window?

More relevant to the discussion:
I like Desecration for the undispellable slow. The slow from Frost Fever or the Chains of Ice are both dispellable. Especially against a healing priest, this can lead to long kiting sessions and drawn out fights.

Death Grip -> Plague Strike leads to a priest running at 50% speed that cannot be dispelled.

 

Skytso

If you're going into Unholy I don't see why you wouldn't get Desecration... Just look at the arms reaching out of the ground! It's sure to inspire fear in any arena team!

Any idea if you can drop multiple Desecrations?

 

Cronjob

I'll have to go back and test but basically it seemed that IT was up when Chains weren't. Might of had something to do with my DG/Chains macro I was running before. But if I recall I could alternate and slightly stack the timers when I went IT/Chains rotations. Its been awhile since I was frost though so I'd have to go test it again.

 

imabearlol

With Endless Winter in Frost you can use Chains of Ice to double as both a snare and Frost Fever application. This is extremely helpful as it saves a Frost rune for Obliterate/trinket etc. Icy Touch can still be used against a Melee beating on you. It's arguably more useful than Desecration which any competent PvPer will move out of.

I don't really see a use for Chillblains if you use Chains of Ice in this way. You can always get the glyph if you like the damage aspect. The damage sounds low, but most DK abilities do. I haven't tested it so don't know exactly how much it does with X AP. Would be great to hear some feedback from someone who has.

The main advantages Unholy have over Frost is most attacks bypassing armor. Bone Shield and AMZ are also better defenses than 6 more seconds and UA in Frost. However, I just believe the burst potential is bigger in Frost which in the end is what wins most games.

 

outlivinglife

I'm pretty sure you can cause I was fighting a mob and another mob attacked me while i was finishing the fight up, and the first one died before I could use pestilence so I had to put my diseases up on the second mob and there ended up being two desecrations on the ground. However, it could've just been that the first desecration's graphic was still there while it was fading out, but I don't think so.

Also, the talent in the frost tree, Lichborne, says you become undead. Does this mean you become susceptible to effects such as Shackle Undead (Priest) and Turn Undead (Pally)? I know blizzard made the Druid's Tree of Life susceptible to the Warlock's Banish so it would seem that this would be a factor they might've added in.

 

diospadre

Yes.

 

• frmorrison

In Beta I preferred Frost/Blood for PvP, since I liked Hungering Cold and imp Rune Tap. Something like a 18/53 build.

Towards what can be dispel on from your self buffs, if the tooltip says "Magic" then it can. I don't recall them saying that.

 

Lazak

Desecration leaves a 12 second, non-dispellable debuff that slows for 50%. So their level of competence has nothing to say. My target is slowed and in trouble, and thats how i like my targets

 

Vain

If you do the math, you will see that the toughness/bladed armor synergy is nowhere as useful as people seem to think it is. If you have 11,000 armor, you will get an additional 305 AP from bladed armor, but only a further 45 AP from toughness.

Lazak: Did you really find Unholy Blight that useful in PvP, especially 2v2? You won't have the RP to unstealth rogues with it at the beginning of a match, so I'm wondering what use you found for it.

 

Lazak

Actually, i did not find Unholy Blight that usefull. I mostly use it for when rogues use vanish, during the fight, or if the other team is clumped.

But i wanted 5/5 in Rage of Rivendare for the 10% dmg and the 5 Expertixe.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
and then the choice is
2/2 Night of the dead + Unholy Blight
vs
2 more in Dark Conviction + Mark of Blood.

And i just wanted the ghoul more.

And outside arena, Unholy blight is infinitely more usable.

 

Amera

The problem is that the priest can fear you off very reliably unless your are Frost and undead. And if Lichborne makes you undead, smart ones can CC you. I really think death knights are going to be terrible priest killers in general, and probably other healers as well. I just don't see how we can apply reliable pressure like a warrior without a fear break and MS once people have resilience, especially with disease dispels.

Death knights seem bred for burst teams. Death grip behind a pillar, kill something. Frost has the heaviest hitting attacks that largely ignore armor, so I think it is best for those purposes.

 

Lazak

A couple of points:
Smart use of Anti Magic Shell can save you from that Fear. You can often predict when they will use it. But i will admit that during beta, my biggest problem was in fact getting hit by instacast aoe fear. I feel more skill and practice on my part will diminish this problem.

I do not think that Death Knights are suitable for Burst tactics. We rely to heavily on having our diseases up, before we can burst. Add to that the need for other rune-usage (Chains of Ice, Strangulate or maybe pestilence) you just can't burst when you want it. At least from my experience.

The overall tactic for my Retribution friend and I, was to focus 1 target and interrupt the healer as much as possible.
We both play Blood elf, and in fact this is the reason i choose this race. So we bring an impressive list of interrupts:
Hammer of Justice, Repentence, Arcane Torrent x 2, Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Death Grib, Ghoul stun.

The experience was that if either of us was alone on any healer, the healer would be able to kite us almost indefinately. But he would not or would slowly gain hp. Since his incoming dps from 1 of us, was about equal to his incoming heals from instant effects.
But when both of us was on the same target, we could reliably kill the target.

 

Amera

It's not that DK are great burst by themselves; it is the setup abilities you bring. I honestly don't see how people are going to survive DG in 5v5 in particular. In season 3 and 4 especially, DPS was coordinated enough in the gladiator range to kill almost anyone with the smallest window, and DG is going to just be ridiculous as setup in that bracket.

3v3 should be mostly the same. A mage solo has been sufficient to kill a single person since season 2 with a proper setup window and a locked target (CS healer - >kidney shot ->shatter) and their burst seems better than ever. I just see DK functioning much better in that role than on an outlast team, say a WLD. DK burst isn't jaw dropping, but it isn't terrible. Obliterate doesn't need diseases for burst if it is glyphed, and howling blast/hungering cold and the frost strike glyph are additionally incredibly synergies with frost mages for burst.

The 2v2 you describe is just a cleave, which has obviously had some success in later seasons, but the question is whether a DK is really best in that setup. A rogue offers a lot of comparative advantages over the DK, with a reliable snare, MS, and much better CC options, as well as better survivability on a team with no heals (DK have amazing turtle options like AMS, IF, frost presence, and all that, but those are mostly useful for games where you have a healer to prevent you from being spiked. In a double DPS game, I'd argue that rogue's ability to use cooldowns, reset the fight, and CC is as good or better survivability under those conditions).

I think Ret/DK should be a perfectly fine combo, and might work out well with an Unholy spec, but I'd wager that in general, DKs will find their best niches on burst teams in all brackets, and likely as frost spec. Without the ability to MS or drain mana, I think playing a gradual pressure matrix is just not going to work out well for the class unless you happened to be partnered with someone who can provide those.

 

Promethium

I've some simple questions that more experienced DK players could eventually answer. In fact I'm still leveling my own DK, and the only pvp opportunities I had right now are limited to world pvp and some duels as Unholy.

1/ Concerning the frost talent acclimation, as it's clear frost mages seem to be our "nemisis" (at least mine right now), is this talent worth some points (at least two for example) ? (as being deep frost DK of course) In fact frost aura seems also sexy, because it's a fix and teamwide buff, so no RNG or selfish benefit. But the resistance provided is limited, especially compared to acclimation (150 for acclimation full stack, 80 for frost aura).

2/ Do you consider improved rune tap as an absolutely required talent ?
I know you template depends of your bracket, your setup and so on, but being right now Unholy/blood, I've already tried rune tap and was not so convinced. You recover roughly 20% of life every 30s at a blood rune cost. In case of focus fire or just after a stun lock combo it can be lifesavior. But it prevents you from having strong talents. If you're deep unholy, you'll to choose between licheborne and rune tap (easy choice i think, go rune tap) but if you're deep frost, you'll have to choose between rune tap and the goldly tier2 unholy talents (epidemic, virulence, unholy command), and here the choice is not so evident ...

 

imabearlol

1/ 30% chance is not so hot really. In this sense I believe Frost Aura is superior as it isn't proc dependant. Consider a Mage chaincasting Frostbolts into you for 18 seconds. At a 2.5 second cast thats 7 or so Frostbolts. At a 30% chance only 2 of these will proc Acclimation, which is a 100 resist bonus. Not much better than a groupwide 80 resist which is always active, and that's with a Mage chaincasting (assuming he isn't doing anything else). I can only see it being good if the Aura is specced as well.

That being said, Frost Aura doesn't seem to stack with other resist boosting talents (e.g. Paladin aura, MotW). Not too sure about this as I've read conflicting reports and haven't had time to test this, so I may be wrong.

2/ I wouldn't say it's absolutely required, but it's a god talent in duels. In arena or situations where you have a healer it loses it's value a bit. In duels, the Unholy talents don't matter as much (especially T1) as they do in arena and certainly not worth giving up Rune Tap/Mark of Blood for. It depends what you want to focus on I guess.