Kaay

Ok. First of apologise for this post if the answer has been given already but I've googled it several times now in a whole variation of wording and nothing has answered my question specificity.

Basically me and a mate decided to come back to WoW (used to be end game raiders, got burnt out you know how the story goes) and now we're back and in the mood for a more PVP based experience. He decided to roll warlock and I decided on DK and that's were the problem arises. I'm unsure on the combination in 2v2, I'm unsure on general tactics (though that can be figured on our own) and unsure on talent specs (this is were I need advice.)

After trauling through the armoury of the top 2v2ers with a DK in the team they were all paired with healers. Not a great start for us...but then again we're not aiming to be haxorleetrapemasters of wow. I'm happy being competent. The build I kept finding with most of the DK's was

The World of Warcraft Armory

Which is all fine and dandy when you got a healer backing you up so I started experimenting with builds with a little more survivability in them (maybe rune tap, lichborne, mark of blood and so on) Though would it be better going for an all out nuke spec as we are going to be 2 DPSers?

First off I came up with this. Sticking with the unholy tree as it seems to be the most PVP orientated tree (imo) and sticking other talents into the other trees for survivability or damage boost.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(25/5/41) I figured with 2 DPS and only having a health stone as a means of healing my self rune tap would be useful and mark of blood might be useful for my warlock friend as I'm assuming he's going to be taking the main brunt of any attack. I'm not sure about Dark Conviction as I figure the resilience is going to cancel out most of the crit anyway.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(18/11/41)

Much the same but gone down the frost tree to lichborn.

Suggestions please.

 

Aezoc

Some random thoughts - I'm not an expert by any means, but I've been running with a rogue partner, so I'm in a similar boat to you, it sounds like. I think 0/17/54 is the way to go, but not the build you've linked. You need impurity, and UB and Magic Suppression/AMZ are largely wasted in 2s, I think. Particularly if your warlock is going to be using seduce for CC, UB will cause headaches.

The only reason I see to spec into blood is survivability from rune tap and possibly MoB, if you give up gargoyle. With a lock/DK comp, you're not going to be the one that gets focused. Rune tap's not worth it then, and MoB is best vs. rogues, but given the number of RP comps, it'll probably be dispelled when you need it most. Even ignoring the risk of dispels, I don't think MoB would be worth sacrificing gargoyle, because it's pretty amazing burst. You'll need as much as you can get, otherwise you guys are going to have a hard time pressuring pally and priest healers.

Also, by going blood, you give up some stuff that your comp will need in frost. Icy Reach will help you peel off your teammate, and Endless Winter will simplify using MF, which is your comp's only short CD interrupt. Additionally, Black Ice is really good for your ERW->SS spam burst.

And for those times that you do get focused, you've got some pretty strong tools anyways - frost presence and bone shield, obviously, but don't overlook 15% heals from DS and the fact that you can sac a ghoul and bring it back out 30s later.

 

Wizardspike

I'm seeing all frost DK's speccing into a variation of 14/54/3 (give or take a point).
Can anyone explain if they really think that not having 10sec off your grip by speccing something along the lines of this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
is beneficial?

All you gain with the heavier blood spec is a bit of dps, while 10sec off grip is usually invaluable in arena.

 

Kahdrick

For double DPS teams I still say 0/17/54 is superior to anything that specs into blood. The claim that RT is your only health regen is completely bogus. Death Strike returns 15% of your maximum health every time you swing it (unholy has 3 diseases, don't forget), and it can crit for more. You can sacrifice your ghoul for 40% health return. Bandage (which is fail - DS is always a better option, but whatever, you can do it).

Frost spec and 2s: You're only putting out pressure once every minute (and not the first time, since HC will be trinketed), for about 10 seconds. Compare that to unholy, which is constant pressure due to very hard dot ticks, more effective snares (desecration) for more overall dps time on the target, and a pet to handle things like totems, other pets, etc. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my dps in arenas doubled when I switched from frost to unholy for pvp. Sure, big frost strike hits are nice, but wouldn't you rather win more games than get a 10k hit once every 5 minutes? Don't forget that as your enemies get more and more resil, those crits will lessen in frequency and potency - if you can't keep up pressure with non-critical attacks, you will not win.

Shamrogue FTW!

 

Joink

You have it backwards. Unholy produces rare high scourgestrike strikes that are unreliable as no talent helps with critting. Frost gives you 5 frost strike crits a min with a crit on demand talent. Wait for killing machine to proc, and cinderglacier. Cast HC then blow up a target with back to back frost strikes for about 15k to 20k damage. Reliable and hard to avoid damage.

 

sivem

I just got my DK to 80 and have started the honor grind. The overwhelming majority of posts here deal with pvp in arena - which is what I eventually will do. But for the moment my time is spent in the BG.

Is there a specc other than 0/17/53 that would be better for BG? I've been UH since I first created this toon, so I'm not sure whether frost or blood speccs would have any advantage in BG.

 

panny

I don't like UH in BGs because with the zergs, by the time you set up your diseases, your target's already dead. When I was still doing BGs alot, I prefered frost. Less reliant on sustained damage and since your set up is on yourself (generating RP) vs on your target (applying diseases) you don't waste time on targets that die about 1s after you hit them.

Fix Spirit Wolves not responding to commands.
DK/Rogue

 

Notaheeler

Not a common poster, but I have searched the last 5 pages for a frost PvP spec and have found only unholy, could someone link a current frost PvP spec or link their armory?

Thanks in advance

Also of note: Icy talons and IIT are these abilities not worth it in terms of PvP? it would seem 25% haste would be nice, I know it is a lot of invested talents though.

 

Vicarius

Replying to both Sivem and Notaheeler:

I can strongly recommend a Blood/Frost spec if you're not fond of Unholy. Something along the likes of Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Whether it's 'better' or not I'll leave up to you, but for my playstyle it was.The reasoning behind the spec is simple: in Arena, most players will team with a healer. In BG's you will generally not have that luxury, but Rune Tap hugely solves that problem. A 20% heal every 30 seconds is not to be underestimated. A well timed Hungering Cold can also turn 1v2 (or even 1v3) situations on it's own.The rest of the talents speak for themselves.

If you don't like the Blood talents and would rather keep your pet Ghoul after playing with Unholy, then maybe the FrostGhoul spec is something for you: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Unholy gives a lot of utility, some people argue that Gnaw cannot be missed for any serious PvPer. Whether is justifies the loss of Tundra Stalker and Howling Blast is, again, up to you.

The best advice is and always will be to try all the specs out for yourself. No matter how good a spec is on paper, if you cannot play with it then you will not get very far. I hope this helps.

 

TooWongFoo

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Idk if anyone has tried it but i like the 45/0/26 spec for PVP. Still able to keep the damage + heal of Death Strike and full time ghoul helps alot !
-screws with casting time for ranged
-has 3 sec stun ( screws up stun lock for rogues )

On a Pale Horse found is very useful and is worth the 2 points. If u like UB for your main dump then thats also something u could switch a point around for but im a DC guy so. Glyph of Heart Strike helps with the kiting so thats why i like it and DC glyph just rocks since DC is my main dumb and works well with Sudden Doom. Glyph of Death Strike doesnt need explaining ..

Any Thoughts ?

 

Kahdrick

I agree completely with vicarius about BG spec.

From my experience, the unholy spec that I prefer for arenas is most effective the fewer people are involved in the fight. 1v1 i almost always win. In arena 2s, I think it's the best DK spec there is. In 3s, frost is very strong as well, as having a teammate to burst with you makes the 10 seconds per minute of high frost burst even better. In 5s, HC is overpowered, and having a second frost DK with HC is even more absurd. Beyond those numbers of people, well, frost just keeps getting better.

In fact, I should probably put a disclaimer on all of my posts "The strategy for unholy spec pvp container herein is for 2v2 arenas only" or something.

For Joink: It's not the burst of unholy (lol what burst) that makes it strong, it's the very high constant flow of damage, the added control of a permaghoul, and the 50% aoe snare on anyone in melee range which combine to overpower other teams. I agree that frost has high burst, but that burst only really works for about 10 seconds out of every minute, which gives the enemy ample time to prepare, counter, and heal through your burst. Unholy, on the other hand, provides a constant stream of damage that gives enemy healers no rest, and gargoyle + ERW can push you over the top when your target gets below 50%. I've tried both frost and unholy in arenas (and blood, and a weird blood/frost hybrid spec) and without a doubt unholy is more effective for me. I have a shaman partner, and that has a lot to do with how effective each spec is, I'm sure.

Shamrogue FTW!

 

raledon

Greetings.
I am PvPing in mainly 2v2 with either my druid healer pal, or a warlock friend(who usually goes as destro).
I have been mostly blood (found a few bad things about the spec i had, but nevermind that) and now I tried frost-pvp. My problem is, I couldn't (well, before reading some of the thread) realy get why is unholy and frost better than blood (well, frost I understand with the hungering cold).
If I understood correctly, frost has hungering cold (and maybe some burst, according to what i read here- I am not that good as to keep track of my procs), while unholy has pet stuns (with totem stamping macros) and stronger dots, while blood got very good damage(i did 1.5times frost damage as blood in a pve situation).
What I don't understand is, why blood considered such a bad spec, compared to the two others? does it realy does less damage? (take into account that instead of defensive cds you got healing cooldowns and one to help your friends (instead of cc))

If you guys will be so kind as to explain this guy what he can do to improve in pvp with his partners as well as why blood is bad compared to frost and unholy, he would appriciate it.

A link to my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
I am aware of the shoulders/ring being tanking gear, but I have yet to get better(I guess I will go toward pvp ones).

edit: I've just did VOA on my dk. I reached 3700 dps on emalon, 3000 dps on archavon with my dk in pve gear in frost spec (as shown in the armory) while I remember I did 3800 dps on sarth0d with him as blood.

 

UrbanOutlaw86

Question about 5v5 spec.

So today me and some guildies decided to mess around in 5s. We're running:

DK (UH)
Warlock (Destro)
Mage (Arcane)
Shaman (Resto)
Priest (Disk

We did pretty good with me as UH, but I was wondering if we'd do better with a Frost spec, and if so, what are some general rules of thumb for strategy as frost? Thanks for any insight! I wanna know the best spec and get used to playing it before we make any serious push for rating.

 

Theldon

5v5 is a difficult bracket to do well in as it is a giant zerg. Your success will be mostly determined by how well you control the oppositions burst versus your own. To answer your question about the best spec, unholy is definitely it as you are running a very caster heavy team, and the damage bonus provided by your Ebon Plaguebringer is a perfect fit.

 

Azmodeon

The main problem with blood spec as I understand it, is that it's 100% physical damage, while both frost and unholy get magic based attacks to bypass oppponent armor ratings. I just switched from frost/blood and unholy/blood (I wanted to keep rune tap since i haven't spent on dual spec and need it on other situations) and my dps shot up in the arena (plus I now have perma pet and the garg).

I haven't tried blood as a main spec in pvp since I started playing my DK again a few weeks ago, and although I liked it previously, given the current set ups it looks to be the weakest (I can't even find a blood spec DK on arenajunkies).

 

raledon

Yes, I can't find any either. Thats what I don't get though, the reason.
It's true that blood is mostly physical damage, but if you go around with some pve gear you have armor pentration (ok, maybe not the best choice...). Question is, though, if overall blood dps<>= unholy/frost in arena, and this is something I havn't managed to find out. I think I will try unholy next time, though I find it lacks burst and survivability compared to the other two.

 

Fellow.Canadian

In theory, the self heals of blood and dps make it seem like pretty attractive qualities for pvp, but I found it played awkwardly. I tried out a 50/0/21 spec for the ghoul stun when 3.1 hit, and I found I didn't have the burst I needed to kill good healers and it lacked the control the other 2 specs enjoy. I was considering a 51/17/3 spec, but after having tried frost and unholy pvp specs, I didn't feel compelled to give blood another chance. The self healing was great in some situations, but with a healing debuff on me I found the self healing just wasn't enough to outlast people.

I found being able to sit on a target was more difficult as blood spec. To keep someone in range, I was blowing more frost runes on COI than I wanted to. I did pick up the HS glyph for the snare, but I found I couldn't always use the runes on HS while I was being focused on because I needed to spam DS to keep my health up. This led to me being kited pretty frequently. Killing good healers was also an issue because it took time to close the distance on a healer, apply diseases, and snare them with HS. Usually your opening rotation doesn't do a lot of burst damage, so hopefully when your runes refresh RNG is in your favor and you do enough damage to kill the healer within a strangulate.

Part of the awkwardness of the spec I found is that I could use COI to snare someone first, but since I didn't have endless winter I needed to blow an extra frost rune to apply FF... this leaves me with an extra unholy rune I can't use in my initial rotation.

Ultimately I think the the other specs do better because they produce more damage in less time and have better control than blood.

Curious why you think that?

 

raledon

AMZ in many cases is worse than mark of blood. ghoul heal is stronger @ blood since they got vampiric blood (though ill have to admit you got more ghouls as unholy) and blood spams death strikes, not including rune tap if you take it. bone shield is being eaten up very fast, so in many cases it's not very useful. Regarding burst, you got ghoul to do some burst and the normal rune refresher. In blood, you got DRW and hysteria, which means you do roughly 170% damage for 15 seconds.

Overall, blood got a lot more active abilities, so in the end the question is if they are enough to put em on par with the other specs.


Regarding the need for COI: I found that I use them mostly when i pull people to me or running after them (and im mostly running after droods and paladins...). Most of the time im on their ass with consta slow with heart strikes. On the other hand im not facerolling the arena yet, so there might be something wrong with what I do.

 

Fellow.Canadian

Just a few notes on some disadvantages of blood:

-Mark of blood can be dispelled.
-Self healing is only good for survivability if you're being focused on. My experience in 2s has been not many arena teams focus on killing the DK first and tend to go after my squishier partner.
-Lack of control: Blood can only snare, while frost can CC and spread snares via FF, and unholy has ghoul stun and desecration.
-The self healing is affected by healing debuffs. With the amount of arms warriors and rogues running around in arenas, you can expect to encounter this often. You don't see many hunters, but they can still get ya too.
-Hysteria no longer breaks CC

Ultimately I think the biggest thing is if you can drop good healers or not blood spec. I am uncertain whether popping hysteria and DRW is enough to kill a disc priest or resto druid within a strangulate. I'm sure any PVP blood DKs with more experience than me can chime in on this one.

Few things on unholy pvp spec:

-Despite what you say, bone shield is worth it. 20% Damage reduction and 2% dmg increase? Yes please. This is worth it for example when a ret paladin or a rogue goes to work on you. It really helps stunt the intial burst they do on you.
-Desecration is an AE 50% snare that procs off your primary nuke SS. Massive help when chasing down a resto druid, they can't pop out of it unlike HS's snare or COI. If you spam SS a few times chasing someone down, you've layed down a pretty big area where anyone who walks into it gets snared.
-A lot of dmg is magic and thus bypasses the armor of some classes.
-COI and desecration can stack (unlike chillbains + COI *shakes fist*).
-Permanent pet to prevent healers from drinking. Ghoul stun is great for setting up kills on healers. Stun, strangulate, and mindfreeze to stop heals and ERW for more SS knock out just about all healers.
-Improved Unholy Presence: The rune refresh is nice, and the run speed is a big help. Using UP you can lay down more damage faster. Also with attacks using a reduced GCD you can build RP faster for either more damage abilities or defensive. I find it's a big help when going after dps to stun them with ghoul and quickly use 2 attacks to pop IBF or AMS when they come out of it.
-If you use the SS glyph, it makes it much harder for teams to continually dispel your diseases, especially with a 3rd disease for them to cleanse.
-Gargoyle lays a pretty good smack down.

 

Bittermourne

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the build I use for my 3s team where I primarily fill the role of CC. I run with a Disc Priest and Ret Paladin.

I avoid getting Howling Blast because it just seems Oblit is more worthwile, especially grabbing up every talent that buffs it, as well as the glyph, and I am able to grab Veteran of the Third War and Mark of Blood as a result of also bypassing Tundra Stalker. Veteran is, hands down, a better PvP talent than Tundra Stalker can ever hope to be.

I PvP in Frost Presence, thought Unhloly seems to be the way everyone leans. What it came down to was Unbreakable Armor. In Frost Presence, with UA glyphed, I shave 1222 damage off the front of every incoming attack for 20 seconds, and since my primary role is CC, the .5 additional seconds between attacks is neglegable. I can still do my job to the best of my ability, while being much harder to kill.

For the most part I avoid nominal DPS increases, like Two-Handed Weap. Spec. for example, as 4% damage is wonderful over the course of an 8 minute boss fight, but not nearly as useful for a 12 second PvP battle. This seems an obvious statement, though I've seen Frost spec'ed PvP DKs with the aforestated talent. I tend to focus on large percentage increases to damage/crit chance/crit damage.

Blade Barrier is the bee's knees.

The thing I have the biggest issue with, it seems, is smoothing out my armor. I honestly just started PvP'ing again, so my armor isn't the best of the best, but I've more questions surrounding gem'ing and enchanting the pieces I have. I've sort of taken to resilience gems in a big way, but after researching top-teams in various brackets, I've come away a bit confused. I've seen top rated DKs with spell-pen gems, I've seen people ignore resil. completely as far as gems and 'chants are concerned in favor of STR 'chants and gems. What follows is a link to my armory page. Any advice would be appreciated!

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Etherealsilk

First I'll answer your question about the gemming and enchanting. The main reason you see most dk's only shoot for around 600 resil is that more often then not we aren't the focus target. Not many teams find it a successful strategy to attack the plate-wearing melee that has at minimum 3-4 defensive cooldowns they can use. On the other hand one of the strong points of frost pvp is being able to through out an aoe blind (hungering cold) and then go to town on someone with frost strike x 4.

This brings me to your spec and some of the suggestions you've made in your post. First is running around in frost presence, unless you are constantly being the target I would suggest unholy simply because your burst damage will be much higher and you can always pop cooldowns and jump into frost when they switch to you. Second is that your main damaging attack that is gonna threaten with kills is Frost Strike, which does 15% more damage with Tundra Stalker. This is the main reason why TS is better then VotW. Another reason you should go full into frost is that having the howling blast glyph gives you a 30yd range aoe snare that can crit for 4k+.

It seems your spec is built for personal survivability but then when I look at your comp I think that the priest is gonna be most teams kill target to start out with. So you dont need all the survival talents you picked up when your more likely gonna be cc'ed and your main job should be peeling and using hungering cold to open up kill opportunities on your teams kill target. Hopefully some of what I've suggested makes sense and you at least consider it, other then that have fun pvp'in.

 

Bittermourne

Everything you said makes perfect sense, and I appreciate your patience. It looks like I was A.) spec'ing for BGs, as I'm not garaunteed the cohesion and performance of an Arena team (read: consistent, devoted heals), and B.) misprioritizing my most important PvP abilities (read: Frost Strike). Living a while is fine, for sure, but at the price I paid? Possibly not. I have been finding it frustrating that I depend on the Paladin to kill our targets, as I should be able to pump out damage to threaten the life of any one of our opponents. My gear, and now I realize my spec., was defeating me in this regard.

I have noticed most everyone ignores me to some degree, and I can pretty much do my own thing outside of the CC that's usually leveled squarely in my direction. I'm going to take your advice, re-gem, get my gear enchanted properly, spec for Frost Strike dominance, and have another go at it.

Thanks a bunch!

Also, and more specifically, what's up with spell-pen? I've seen a lot of top-tier DKs gem for at least 60 spell-pen. What gives?

 

Lyssa

Spell penetration decreases the target's resistance, so if you meet a priest or druid or paladin or any other class with frost (or shadow resistance), you won't get a bunch of partial resists on your main nuke (FS).

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what to do vs mage/rogue as frost dk/resto druid? We just reached 2k last night and manage to beat most comps the second time we meet them, but mage/rogue just doesn't work. Occasionally (in RoV mainly) I manage to open on the mage and not get sapped which buys us a few seconds, but otherwise I'm just sapped and get chain-cc'd for nearly a minute in which time they kill my druid (prehotted in tree with abolish up). Not sure if it's a great counter for us or if we're doing something wrong.

Similarly we're having major issues in my 3v3 that I play with resto druid/warrior vs dk/priest/rogue (yes our rating is low since we just started but we're getting MMR at around 2.2k). The DK and rogue cc's either me or the warrior and nukes down the other and there's really nothing we've been able to do about it. Going full out and popping every avaliable cooldown in the first ten seconds almost got the rogue down a couple times, but it's never enough. We tried going on the DK which is rather pointless with all the cooldowns, and the priest we can't even get in melee range with. This team we lost 5 times to, and this a whooping 8.

 

Vicarius

Unless you're Blood specced, the greater part of your damage will come from magic attacks. Those magic attacks can be partially resisted if your opponents are buffed with a Resistance increasing buff - think of Paladin Auras, totems, MotW. To negate some of that Resistance, people gem for Spell Penetration. I myself have 75 on my DK - 35 from the cloak enchant and 2x20 Stormy Sky Sapphire. I was once told that 70 was sufficient for most specs, and that idea kinda stuck.

About your 25/46 spec: I've seen a similar spec before, but in a totally different setup. It was a Disc/DK/Hunter team that played 'the outlasting game' by draining the opposing team's mana. The DK's goal was to put out as much pressure as he could and use defensive CD's to give his Priest time to Mana Burn the opposing healer.

You are running with a Retradin, essentially in a melee cleave team. As Etherealsilk noted, you are most likely not going to be the opposing team's main focus, so don't go overboard with defensive CD's. Everyone in your team can force trinkets, use that to your advantage by catching people in Hungering Cold with trinkets down and then to punish one of them with a series of Frost Strikes/Obliterates. I believe that will be a much more viable strategy than 'I CC while my Ret kills' - that will most likely not work without someone with MS on your team or with a sick healer on the other team.

 

Bittermourne

Thanks, guys, for all the advice. I respec'ed properly, and the change was noticable immediately. I was also mis-playing with my RP, it seemed, but once I got the hang of storing it up, and then FS'ing someone down, it became a lot more powerful.

I still have to re-gem a bit, and bring my resil. down to properly balance my gems and 'chants, but your advice helped a great deal so far; I imagine I'll only get better. Thanks again!