Teams with druids, you have to focus the druid but pestilence diseases to their DPS. Pet must be on him at all times. As long as you keep diseases up on both targets, the druid must use additional mana to HOT their DPS up and it keeps him on the defensive hotting, instead of on the offensive casting DOTs on you. You basically have to force an innervate then OOM the druid before innervate is up again, while keeping him in combat with your ghoul so he can't drink. Smart druids will root you/cyclone you and toss moonfire/IS on your ghoul to wear it down and kill it, and will try and LOS you around pillars as far from your partner as possible while their DPS keeps your partner snared or CCed in some way.

Ret/DK really doesn't work well against such teams as if they can survive your burst you can't kill them while they can just slowly wear you down. Druid/rogue, druid/warrior and druid/warlock are common comps that all work very well. You're a burst team without MS and people in my guild who arena a lot more than I do (I just started messing around with arena recently) seldom see Ret/DK anywhere above 1600. Your ret should go prot heal spec, you'll go a lot further. (my 2s team broke 1600 MMR with me in full PVE gear and my partner in ilevel 200 junk.)

I have just started PVP with the aim of 2000+ arena rating and to start I had a variety of PVP gear from Hateful to Deadly so a 2000+ rating looked doubtful. Due to an excess of badges and nothing better to do I purchased the Furious gear and have noticed a drastic change to my performance and especially my survivability. As I am slowing gearing myself I would like to ask the community if there is any proirities inregards to statistics, should I focus on Hit, Strength or Resilience as I am completely new to this the advice would be appreciated.

I know this is late in the thread yet I believe one of the best spec's is 0/17/54 Unholy build including the use of Gargoyle with Endless Winter in the frost tree. Most PVP DK's do state that the use of Gargoyle is a loss, however I find it vital in which to beat a Resto Druid or Resto Shaman. Desecration is also vital in my opinion including the Endless Winter talent which is a nice add with Mind Freeze having no Runic cost. As for arena teams I can not see much going wrong with a Resto Shaman, Holy Paladin or Resto Druid partner in 2 v 2 or a combination of those with a Rogue or Mage in 3 v 3. As for 5 v 5 I would not be able to comment as I am still very much so a novice.

Hey, im just wondering if anyone here knows a good specc i should try out for arena. currently im playing 2s with a holy paladin, and 3s with a holy paladin/Warlock.
my current specc is unholy -> 0/19/52

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

i havent rly been into arena to much as a Dk, so im still newbish kinda >.<
if anyone has some advices it would be much appreciated thx.

For 2s DK/prot pally healing is one of the best comps. DKs have some huge weaknesses, one of them being inability to dispel anything on themselves (outside fear once every few minutes via lichborne). Paladins having a flexible friendly dispel and HoF make them ideal healers for a DK who gets easily kited. A paladin specced prot with holy gear will seldom go OOM and also gets a daze/silence which can be chained with HoJ, gnaw and strangulate to finish someone off if the other team makes a mistake or their healer is approaching the end of their mana.

I have tried with druids before and found their healing throughput to be good, but being perpetually snared with no way out made it very hard to keep pressure on the opposing team. A druid can keep you alive a bit better than a pally, but you really need to be paired with an IS resto druid for it to work effectively.

Gargoyle is a great talent. You -can- death pact it in an emergency if your ghoul is down (the ghoul is consumed first if both are up), it spams your focus target and acts as fire and forget. Handy when being snared against a double DPS team.

(I play this on my pally, so this point of view is pretty biased to that, rather than the DK)
The pressure is really on your Pally, not you. He needs to be aware of any cc landing on either of you to cleanse/sacrifice/divine sacrifice it, he needs to be able to recognise when he can play offensively, when he should play defensively and when he should heal, needs to be able to use the correct heal in the correct circumstance, plea when there is less pressure, needs to move sacred shield around depending on the other teams target choice, and, since he is the one with the cc, needs to call most of the plays as well.

The basic kill/opener is repentance -> hammer -> strangulate on a healer while dps'ing the dps, but there are many situations in which this won't work, and, of course, you have to wait at least a minute in between these attempts (pally should call the strang most of the time, it's wasted if it won't guarantee the kil). This is most likely to work on a shaman healer, less likely to work on a paladin (especially if you catch them in the middle of a heal with a little momentum, or with no ES/SS on your dps target), can work on a priest if you start the combo just before the pennance comes off cooldown and will almost never work on a druid whose dps is pre-hotted.

General rules:
Druid healers - Catch them in a cyclone (can't be repentanced in tree form) to gain enough momentum that they actually have to trinket something and/or switch to a non-hotted target when the druid has no trinket (you can kill the druid in a hoj-strang if there are no hots on him, but his dps will probably have enough cooldowns to survive it unless you catch them off guard). Druids will wreck you if you can't control the game.

Priest healers - Easier to cc, but bring enormous offence to the table, especially given how much ret survivability drops when ss/art of war is dispelled. If you can last to the second hoj/repentance (and they're not playing with a dispeller) you should be able to score a kill there. Going for a priest is generally a waste of time unless you can catch them with no PW:S and no trinket/PS ready, since abolish/no ms completely wrecks your chance of killing them. The real problem with a priest healer is often your Ret going oom due to no mana refunds on shielded targets. The only real advantage you have playing against a priest is that they actually go oom, unlike pallys and druids.

Shaman healers - You have to kill grounding totems for your ret, and cleansing totems for yourself, otherwise you will do very little damage. I often find shamans ES themselves, leading to an enormous amount of damage on their DPS in just the repentance, leading to a repentance trinket, leading to a very easy kill in the hoj-strang on either of them. If you can't pull this off, however, you could be in for a rough time with purgeing of devensive buffs and shaman assist dps. Shamans CAN be oomed, if you have enough luck/pressure, and killing a mana tide goes a long way towards this.

Paladin healers - With no MS, pally healer cooldowns + their dps's cooldowns make it very hard to kill either target. You're probably best off trying for a pally kill, but if their dps is not a dk/doesn't have ss on them, you can blow quite a few defensive cooldowns just in your opener. Remember that focus death grip is an awesome extra interrupt on a pally, especially if he thinks he's safe when the rest of your cooldowns are used and goes for a HL.

Common matches:
Warrior/Druid - If the druid plays well and never leaves tree-form when you have reprentance available, you won't win. Eventually ret healing will fall behind and one of you will die. If you dodge bladestorms well (divine sac/sac/hand of prot/run in opposite directions) it will take that much longer to die, however. Look for an opportunity to kill (usually involves a zero hot switch, which a good druid won't let happen, and a good warrior can peel from). Even a few hots will deny a kill opportunity, and mindlessly training one target the whole game will never work. With no MS, splitting dps is completely futile.

Healer/DK - Generally speaking, DKs should have enough cooldowns (+CoI spam) to survive any cc attempts on their healer, and enough peels to deny some kill attempts. DK teams that get momentum at the start can really wreck you with a strang on your pally + cooldown pops.

Healer/Hunter - Hunters have enough survivability cooldowns to outlast cc (entrapment/frost trap/disengage/deterrence/scatter shot/pin/roar of sacrifice etc) and enough dps to take a third to a half of either of your health every single time they exit melee range (IE every disengage). That couped with mortal strike, cc on your ret and added offence from their healer makes this a next to impossible comp to beat. Make sure your ret knows that until 3.3, he can judge/hammer of wrath through deterrence though.

Priest/Mage - Should be completely unwinnable. Any Deep Freeze, Fear or Poly is a kill opportunity, and you will both spend time out of range on either target, and both targets have multiple cooldowns to keep them alive.

Priest/Rogue - Have your pally kite the rogue to some LoS to avoid priest assist/dispels on the pally. Grip the rogue off whenever your pally gets in danger so he can top himself up. Can go both ways, mostly depending on the opener, but definitely winnable. Teams that go for the pally are the most dangerous, but teams that go for the DK can often outlast you, if the pally is forced to heal too much.

Healer/Warlock - DK on warlock, ret on pet, drag the pet out of LoS and kill it twice. Depends very much on the warlock's spec. If he is destruction, and you can get most immolates dispelled, they will do very little damage to you. That said, if he is destruction and lands a fear/immo/chaos/conflag combo on either of you, you've just about lost the game at that point. If he's affliction, the pressure on both of you will likely eventually result in a kill on either of you

Mage/Rogue - Rush the mage so you both get in combat, if you get sapped, call for a HoP, you really cannot afford to lose momentum against this comp. The kill target is the rogue, and your aim is to prevent a vanish reset. If they get a clean reset off, the mage can easily survive the two of you with kiting/ice block until the rogue is safe to reopen (IE pally cooldowns used/divine shield fades). Can go either way, mostly depending on the opener

Caster/Mage - Blow cooldowns like crazy, kill the target that isn't the mage, abuse LoS if one of you gets CC'd and cannot break it. Immolate/Flame shock dispels crucial.

General 2x dps tips - Don't be afraid to HoP a sap, don't be afraid to lichorne to avoid saps, sacrifice early and run in quickly so your pally can avoid saps, make sure your pally switches sacred shield around correctly depending on the target

A few other tips:
- My DK spends alot of time Death Striking in between Art procs to keep himself up to our next burst attempt, it is a very powerful ability against most teams.
- Communication is completely key. If you split dps, neither of you will kill anything, you need to always be working together. This is especially true when it comes to cc's/cooldowns, your ret needs to know when you need to be cleansed, and you need to know when he isn't in a position to keep you alive, when he needs a peel or when he needs to plea
- Your ret needs HoP/HoS/SS/Flash of light/cleanse macros to target you with
- Momentum can win or lose a game, even against teams you've fought before and beaten/lost to

Final thoughts: While I may sound very negative, this is actually quite a fun comp to play as a ret pally. Luckily, not everyone is a fantastic player, and plays in a perfect manner to counter it . The World of Warcraft Armory is my paladin, we're at the unimpressive rating of 1810 at time of posting. It's worth noting that we've jumped ~150 rating in the last two-three weeks after my DK finally respec'd UH from Frost.

Heavily reliant on what bracket and what team setup you're playing and the playstyle of your teammate(s).

Generally speaking, you absolutely want to make sure you get to 164/165 hit rating (5%) and getting to at least 75 spell pen. If you find yourself up against priests/paladins more often or you're running something like Shadowcleave (DK/Lock/Druid), you'll probably want to push to 135 spell pen. After that it's strength, if you're wearing PvP pieces you'll have plenty of resilience. I know that it is more than possible to run to the 2v2 1800 mark for a PvP weapon running 4 piece T9 and PvP offset pieces everywhere else so it's not a huge deal to focus on resil in 2s.

If you're running a rushdown comp in 3s (probably War/DK/HPal or HPal/Hunter/DK), resilience also doesn't really matter as much. You'll not want to ignore it if you're running a longer comp like Shadowcleave.

For dealing with the ghostwolf issue, have your pally use Judgement of Justice. It limits the targets speed to normal run speed. Even if they are mounted, once judged, they run as slow as not being mounted. It helps tremendously to counter ghostwolf/travel form. However, use it sparingly, as it refunds no mana or health from your attacks.

For a DK all three specs can have some level of viability but it depends on the way you play/comp, etc... Generally the spec that the most dks see success with is a 0/17/54 uh spec. As for presence I've generally found the best results in blood presence when specced into Imp UH presence. 15% increased damage and ms is nice to have. A lot of people will take variations to the spec depending on personal tastes and finding out what works better with your comp. As for the dk/holydin comp strats you'll both have high survivability so generally you wont have to worry that much about using death strikes for personal sustainment, and should be able to use your rp acordingly. Though if your getting pressured feel free to use any death strikes as needed. Time your cds offensively well too. If hes a belf, his silence is weaker than yours and shouldn't be used as part of a kill lockdown since it will diminish strangulate. Similarly the ghoul stun is weaker than HoJ so if hes being given the chance to use it offensively plan accordingly. Teams with mana burns are going to be your biggest issue. Generally stay on locks/disc priests so you can help to control that. Make sure to keep good communication and you should do well.

Actually, if you dont want to give up your ghoul, you can target your gargoyle and use death pact. This will cause the gargoyle to be sacraficed instead. Im not very good with macros, but in theory it should be possible to have one that targets the gargoyle or ghoul depending on holding shift or whatever modifier you want and cast death pact and then switch back to the original target. Can I ask if someone could get a macro for me like this?

To target your gargoyle then use death pact it should be as simple as "/tar Ebon Gargoyle /cast Death Pact" Also if your gargoyle is out and you need to sac a minion you can use the same macro build to target your ghoul. Just go in before the match starts and put your current ghouls name in. Should look something like "/tar Glacierbuster /cast Death Pact"
Just make sure that you go in and put in the current ghouls name before each match and it shouldnt have any issues.

In 2v2s a gargoyle spec has actually helped me (Pre 4.0.1). Being able to put a gargoyle, and sometimes the ghoul, on the healer is really nice. It makes them spend time healing themselves and not the damage class of the pair.