I also really like that spec, as I am primarily comfortable with the unholy tree.

My only question is, wouldn't you prefer "Dirge" over "On a Pale Horse"? With that spec I wouldn't plan on using Oblit very often, since I'd have a 40% chance of losing any diseases, if I applied them, and I have Scourge Strike to work with. That being said, Dirge would offer extra runic power. Even though DK's aren't as starved for RP during gargoyle as we were previously, extra runic power still provides the extra utility to potentially throw one more DC, for example, without jeopardizing the gargoyle.

On the other hand, you could drop pale horse and pick up 2/2 Improved Unholy Presence...15% speed boost vs 20, but it works all the time instead of just while mounted.

I don't oblit at all with the spec, the points in annihilation are purely for the 2% more crit to my melee abilities. SS hits damn hard for me (8k crits against high resil targets), and you definitely don't want to wipe your diseases off the target.

Imp unholy pres isn't needed. Between chains of ice, desecration, and death grip, no one should be kiting you. And if he *is* kiting you, that means he isn't doing much else - just jump from blood pres to unholy and chase him down until you can chains him and blow him up some more.

Dirge: I've not found RP generation to be a problem at all. I've always got a hard hitting button to push.

Also: Someone mentioned ghoul bomb... I find that keeping ghoul frenzy up is worth much more than blowing the ghoul. Mine hits for 500 (1k crits), and against lesser geared teams I've literally had the ghoul solo down the dpser while I pressured the healer. It was pretty hilarious. Are you finding ghoul bomb to be that effective? With the cast time and the very mobile nature of fights, I'm not even sure I'd be able to hit my target with it most of the time.

Lastly: Rotation? Uh.. Activate ghoul frenzy just before the fight starts, mount up and charge in) IT from range, PS up close, BS, BS, Then I wait a second so that I can string the next bit all together (shaman frogs the healer):

SS, SS, SS (pop blood frenzy / trinkets / etc), Gargoyle (shaman bloodlusts), ERW, SS, SS, BS, BS At this point the goal is just to keep the pressure on. Spread diseases whenever your enemy is close to his partner, keep ghoul frenzy up at all times, refresh diseases if they fall off, otherwise just SS like a madman, DS if you get near half health (15% healing is quite nice, with death runes up, you'll be back to full in 3 GCDs).

That being said, if there's a rogue, or if it's a double dps team, you should spend the first bit of the fight making sure they can't gang up on your healer by using chains on one, and then when he get's close, deathgrip and chains his partner. With this team combo, your healer is always going to be kiting his butt off, and you're almost always going to be chasing down the enemy. If the dps stops and tries to kill you while your healer is kiting far away, 9 times out of 10 you'll still win solo, so don't fret ranging your healer too much.

I have the hardest time with priest / rogue, priest / dk, and mage / rogue teams. The good priests will be mana draining your shaman while you bang on the rogue or dk, and the mage rogue just does too much damage too fast. I've had to blow ERW just to get more frost runes to chain the rogue again in order to keep my healer up. Typically now, I just go for the mage, and if I can kill him before my healer dies, I have a solid chance 1v1 against the rogue. Sad but true.

Tree Druids aren't too bad for me (UH/Paladin). Just maintain diseases and switch targets constantly, Druids have to spend alot of wasted time/mana hotting someone up.

Well, what I like in IRT, is that it's a nice button to push when you are kited. DS needs a target and use U and F runes, while IRT uses a Blood rune that you don't really need in frost spec, and can be used at range of your targe. But I'll give UH a try.

As for trees, (and I have nearly the same problem with good priests) well we have to be a bit lucky on our burst during the strangulate + paladin stun. But I expect that, if we succeed to attain a higher level of arena rating, It won't be enough to be lucky.

I've found there is one rule this season... Go Unholy unless you have [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart]. 10.5k Frost Strikes are fun :V.

Hey guys, I just wanted to get some opinions on what y'all thought of my arena/bg spec here. I've never been a gladiator and this is my first time trying to be competitive in wow arenas so I'm by no means a guru. However, I have pvped since 97 in mmos, so I'm not a complete noob.

Here it is: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9868


For some odd reason mmo-champ doesn't have the Heart Strike Glyph which is a 50% snare for 10 seconds every time you heart strike. I use this like desecration to snare off my healer, and I replaced IT with CoI since it now applies the disease and gives me more time to beat face.

My Arena comp is 2v2 and it's me DK + Resto Drood.

Any suggestions are welcome!

The ghoul bomb has won us a few games, primarily letting us push out enough damage to finish a high resilience healer during a stun/silence. It's very situational, to the point that I've run about 50 games without it this week, and maybe wished I had it twice. For only one point, I'd just call it personal preference.

I do, however, think IUP is a must-have. The faster rune cooldown puts damage in UP very close to what it would be in blood, plus the extra utility from being able to throw out a CoI or whatever faster, and you still get the benefit of the (huge) 1 sec GCD in unholy. I can't imagine trying to PvP in blood. Dirge isn't critical, but I've found it to be worthwhile as well. I guess it largely depends on comp also - I don't mix in any PvE gear since I run without a healer, and so my crit rate is fairly craptastic. The end result is that I feel like dirge helps more than wandering plague would, but YMMV.

I have never seen a Death Knight using any variations of blood in arenas. Blood performs rather horribly with PvP gear, and there are much more efficient ways of peeling stuff off your healers than a Heart Strike Glyph. A frost PvP build spec'd into Chillblains can snare multiple targets with IT/CoI + Pestilence.

I went with 0/17/54..and had some questions

I know there is no rotation but what are my primary attacks? Scoruge strike doesnt seem to be that effective at only 54% weapon damage, maybe I am missing something. Right now I got bloodstrike, scourge, plauge, icy touch and DC all out on my bars primarily.

anything i should look out for or be using?

Would you use 2*T7.5 over 4*glad pieces? The runic power generation sounds pretty damn neat.

So far season 6 seems pretty solid! Last season I rode it out as Shadowfrost, so easy! :'( RIP! Last season I did 3s with Feral druid/resto shaman we only worked up to 1900ish... this season the drood hopped on his warrior and so far we are doing great! I started as blood for heart strike + blade storm/ww fun... this week I went 0/18/53 with great results. Only up to 1930 but we have yet to face a 3s team that we lose to that we can not come back and beat (unlike last season, felt like half the groups we fought were counter comps). I'm sure it will happen, but so far, we have had a lot of success. I'm putting out very solid dmg as Unholy; SS is hitting OMG hard! One thing I am noticing is that I am not able to fill out my rp bar as fast as I would like, to put out solid pressure early, I may switch out Unholy presence for Dirge as suggested by Kahdrick, I may also try out Ghoul Frenzy.

Best part about this set up is, we have been steam rolling PMR.... feels so good to take that combo down! The good ones will make us sweat but nothing too bad yet.

**edited because of "Infraction" for saying "Hey all" wow... didnt mean to mud up the forums. Not just a clever guild name**

Best way to do this is to BS early, then use Chains of Ice and some deathcoils to fake pressure, get a mod that tells you when you get free COIs, wait for a proc so that you have 2x U, 2x F up, Plus 2 Death runes from BS, then chain a stun, SS1, SS2, Silence, SS3, DC, SS4.

First post evar...please be gentle :p

My own variation of 17/54....a 13/58 build. What do you guys think? Have I totally effed this up, or does it look viable to you?

Note that, Wintergrasp excluded, I have little PVP experience as a DK.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Couple things I was iffy on...

Leaving out Gargoyle: Wasn't sure if its limitations (basically the cooldown + needing fullish RP to make it worth it) outweighed the benefits.

Improved DG: Even with the shorter cooldown it is still a longish CD...still worth taking?

AM Zone: Seems situational...but at the same time if some frost mage roots me or something being able to pop that could make a world of differance?

I am sorry sir, but just because it is a first post, does not mean you are exempt from the forum rules; spelling grammar, and reading before you post. There is also a rule against hand holding.

That said I'll answer your questions and hopefully you read this before getting your temporary ban.

1. Improved DG is very good, think of it as a talent similar to improved intercept. More peels are always good.
2, Gargoyle is good, and I find it hilarious that you don't have it.
3. Most Unholy DKs in PvP get 17 frost for 10% more frost and shadow damage, Lichborne, and Endless winter. Think about it.
4. Enjoy your stay.

Sorry if my post violated any rules; the opening line of said post was an apparantly failed attempt to be ironic/mildly amusing, and I saw plenty of "opinions on spec" posts, so I didn't think that was hand-holding. I'll be more careful in the future.

Anyway, thanks for answering my questions. Yeah, now that I put more thought into it, I can see why Endless Winter would be great. I'm rethinking my spec to see where the best place to yank the 4 points for EW and Garg is. Maybe anti magic zone for 1 point...

Zone is really only good in Threes, and in that bracket you are far more useful as a deep Frost build for Hungering Cold. Catching even 2 people in a ten second aoe blind every minute can single handedly win or turn around fights that you were losing, and it is invaluable against RMP to make them blow cooldowns when they really did not want to. Having it be utterly free and come up again one minute later is icing on the cake. Given how badly rogues get reamed out by frost strike it seems like a no-brainer choice to me.

Aside from the enormous amount of blues and greens, and the hand-holding you are asking for ("whats going wrong and what i need to change in order to succeed", grammatical [mis-]usage and all), I noticed the following:

1. Your spec is (somewhat) viable for PvE. Not so much for PvP. The two aren't interchangeable. My PvE spec is very similar.
2. Reconsider your glyph selection.
3. Reconsider your armor selection. Ancient Aqir Artifact? A level 70 tank piece on a level 80 DPS character. Let's think about this one for a moment. You're saying that in all of Northrend leveling from 70 to 80, you couldn't find an appropriate DPS trinket better than this level 70 trinket?

I'm not a pvp guru by any means, but if you're getting your butt handed to you, the above listed reasons are definitely a factor.

I joined my friend's (ret pally) arena team today and we decided to try out a couple of games. We shot through the lower levels really fast until we go to the halfway decent rogue/priest teams. Any priest that knows what he's doing negates a lot of my damage output with his constant dispels. We have beat a couple of the teams that weren't sure what they were doing through repentance -> hoj -> ghoul stun on the priest and burn him before the rogue gets to one of us, then just kill the rogue. However, if this initial rotation for some reason does not work, it is very likely that we're going to lose the match. My question is, is there a certain strategy you guys follow to counter this team make up? I've read a couple of people saying to burn the rogue, but i don't know how that's going to happen with the priest spamming heals on him. Note that I usually PvE more and just picked up PvP for fun, but I can learn quickly so any constructive criticism would help.

Here is a trick I found in 2's with frost DK and Disc Priest.

Simple combo: If you want to get the most out of your hungering Cold, we time our priest fear to get both players (melee teams make this easy) they always trinket if they think they can get on the priest and finish him. When that happens they come back together and you drop Hungering Cold. Just like that you have both opponents trapped with a good probability that they can't trinket out.

Done this one about 15 + times successfully in 2's. Works best against close fighting dps/ healer or double melee.

So, I'm looking for some strategy help. I have read all the posts here in the PvP thread, but I haven't found any posts about good versus bad match ups for us (like on Battlegrounds) It seems I can do just fine against a warrior, feral, priest and hunter. I stalemate with tree druids, paladins, resto shaman and get my tail kicked by warlocks, rogues and mages. Are we just not a good match up for these last three classes? As a blood-elf, I have Mind Freeze, Strangulate and Arcane Torrent; altogether 11 sec of silence/interupts; yet I can't seem to bring them down before they get me.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

I'm having issues with healers, mostly druids and disc priests. It seems that I just cant do enough burst to get them down, due to all the instant spells/shields. Is there any trick to burning these guys down? I'm UH spec with a Resto druid as my partner. I have excellent gear as well, Worldcarver, ArP gear mostly(used for blood raiding, will switch when i get full 213+ pvp gear). I'm noticing alot of resists in Arena as well, very very annoying when your 2min silence is resisted, and powerless to stop any instant heals (no MS/wound on my team)

Thanks!

Anyone have a decent addon that can tell me when my gloves bonus procs? Tired of having to stare at my runes to see if I'll get an extra SS or not.