[Deathknight] PvP Thread - Page 2

• frmorrison · 11/26/08, 1:36 PM

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 · 11/26/08, 3:48 PM

Originally Posted by imabearlol

(30% slow from Frost Fever) It's arguably more useful than Desecration which any competent PvPer will move out of.

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 · 11/26/08, 4:49 PM

Originally Posted by Cronjob

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

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 · 11/26/08, 5:28 PM

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 · 11/26/08, 8:39 PM

Originally Posted by Lazak

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.

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 · 11/27/08, 2:17 AM

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 · 11/27/08, 4:08 AM

Originally Posted by Lazak

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.

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 · 11/28/08, 7:31 AM

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 · 11/28/08, 8:32 AM

Originally Posted by 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 ...

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.

Mild Confusion · 11/29/08, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

While I agree with you on the bladed armor synergy argument, I personally pick up toughness for the 30% snare reduction. The armor and ap are just a bonus.

Pallypoeper · 11/29/08, 2:30 PM

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Depending on wether I like AMS & descecrating grounds or not,, i'll switch those points around a bit..

rhodin · 11/30/08, 12:32 AM

remember that you get immune to polymorph when using lichborne aswell, although i don't know if you can get shackled?

diospadre · 11/30/08, 11:50 AM

I don't understand how people are still asking that question.

salviastria · 11/30/08, 2:34 PM

Just a couple things that I've noticed/thought about since my experiences with beta...

As Unholy, you have some of the best survivability, some good damage, but you are (along with Blood) pretty easy to kite. This is why I prefer Frost these days for PvP...even if you manage to kite me, I can still set up diseases and nuke from 30 yards.

However, I do not feel that Toughness or Chillblains are 'worth it' for PvP. Any self-respecting PvP build needs Runetap, so thats 18 points at least deep in Blood that you have to take. This leaves you with an insufficient amount of points to get everything you would like to take in frost. In beta I was keen on taking both Killing Machine and Toughness, and after switching I have found that I much prefer to take 2/3 Runic Power and all 6 points into Improved Icy Talons.

Beta Build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Current Build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000