For Halfus (or similar fights where it's splash-damage rather than true focused AoE that's of benefit), if you have Warlocks and want to apply the 8% magic damage debuff then the best method is likely to be to get one of them to spec into Affliction for Jinx, get them to slap Curse of the Elements on Halfus and away you go. As Affliction is generally the best performing spec anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them.

Maloriak is something of a special case because here you'll probably want your Warlocks to spec Demonology for the obscene damage it deals.

A crude method of determining which option is the least loss is to look up the fight you're interested in on a site like State of DPS and see how much of a loss each option is. At the time of writing on Maloriak for example the median for Aff is 3334 DPS behind that of Demo for Warlocks, and the median for Unholy is 3663 DPS behind that for Frost. We could (therefore) conclude that it's actually the smaller raid DPS loss for one of your Locks to go Affliction than it is for your DK to go Unholy, but they're pretty close so it's most likely that whoever is most comfortable in their "other" spec will be the best option for your raid.

Edit: As pointed out by a guildie of mine, Assassination Rogues with Master Poisoner are also reasonably adept at using Deadly Poison with FoK spam for the purpose of DPS and keeping up the 8% magic debuff. Looking at a recent log of ours a single Assassination Rogue might not be able to keep the debuff up 100% of the time, but perhaps enough that one of your other guys might not need to respec.

Pre 4.1 Orc was pretty much king as PVE raiding race for DKs (UH was dominant with a pet buff, clickable AP buff and Axe Spec). Now with the rise of Frost, have goblins taken their place? Frost doesn't care about the pet buff, so at what point does a passive 1% faster melee speed start being worth more than the orc's clickable AP buff?

For Sinestra in 10man, I've heard a lot of talk about classes reforging their gear specifically for the fight due to the haste buff she gives, but I've not really had a lot of luck finding information about if Death Knights tinker around with their gear for the fight.

As a 2H Frost DK, should I be worried about reforging some of my haste to Mastery specifically for the fight? I currently have just over 2100 Haste rating. Or is it recommended that frost DKs switch to Frost presence for the fight?

My guild just unlocked Sinestra last night so beyond one pull for laughs at the end of the night, we haven't really had a good look at the fight in person yet. As you can imagine it's a bit hard to find good information on this fight since most guilds aren't quite progressed that far.

In the frost DPS thread, stat priorities are given to be Strength > Yellow Hit to Cap > Expertise to Cap > Haste > Mastery > Crit for both DW and 2H specs, however in the Stat Weights area, Expertise is given 1.18 and Haste 1.23 for DW.

Is the Stat Priority incorrect, or the Stat Weight values? Using the given stat weights and my current gear plugged into Mr. Robot (link below) I end up with 19 expertise after reforging. Is this right, or do I need to use different stat weights?

Takhesis @ Kilrogg - Mr. Robot - World of Warcraft

My dumb question: what is "PS/GS", as mentioned in Blood | DK endgame tanking [4.x] ?

My googling didn't shed much light and there are no death knight abilities starting with G (according to Wowhead), and if PS is Plague Strike then I don't see anything in the Wowhead description of Plague Strike that would make it useful as a defensive cooldown.

Pain Suppression/Guardian Spirit

I've been playing with my DK alt lately as 2H Frost. I've read all about it at the very useful Frost thread here, however I have a question regarding possible haste breakpoints. I've read some posts about it here http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t121704-...4/#post1921371 however I didn't come to any conclusions. This is my alt:

Caveirão @ Ursin - Game - World of Warcraft

I'm currently sitting at 7.92s on my runes. My question is: Will I be better off shifting some of that haste to mastery and keeping my runes @ 8s?

thanks in advance

As suggested on multiple forums - I plugged my DK and gear into RAWR and hit optimize. It basically told me to reforge most of my mastery away for avoidance and gem for stamina. I've looked around on the armory at high end tanks and it seems like this is not the advice they take. I attempted to do what RAWR said and it seemed more heal intensive for me to stay up.

Before this, I was gemmed mainly mastery (had over 20+ mastery) and roughly 29% parry/dodge combined with runeforging, etc. Having read though the thread, there was an argument about the usefulness of mastery vs. having a higher health to make the heal/shield more effective. This seems to be what Rawr is asking me to do. What I don't get is, why give up 6+ points in mastery just to gain 7500 health and 4% dodge/parry? Is it really worth it?

The mastery I gave up roughly diminishes my shiled from 122% to only 87% of the heal. If you take 100,000 damage and heal up the 20% death strike gives you, you get 20k health back, plust 122% shield (24,400). Maybe I don't tank enough to see it, but is 4% dodge/parry plus 7k health worth the trade?[/

Hello fellow DK's.

I play a frost DW specc and I'm quite happy with it - however I'd like to hear some opinions on Oblit and Killing Machine proc. If my KM procs I tend to wait up to 3-4 secs if it's not available due to rune CD. I find this to do more dmg in the end - I also use my Blood Tap ability at this point to get the most out of my KM procs.

I'd like to hear if you do this as well or if you just use the KM proc on FS if Oblit isn't available? Furthermore if you, like me, are waiting for Oblit to be ready - for how long time will you wait?

From what I've gathered, 3-4 secs is the optimal, but it's hard to put numbers on. What do you think about this?

In your end example, you have a 20k heal and a 24,400 shield when at 122%. The alternative was a 20k heal, and a 17,400 shield when at 87%. What's the difference between the two mathematically? 7000.

A 4% increase in dodge/parry plus 7500 health that is active at all times versus a situational gain of 7000 in damage reduction? The damage reduction is temporary and will fall off. You'll never get it back. The additional 7500 health however, you CAN get back. Once healed up, you'll have that additional 7500 health buffer over the DK who has more mastery. Top it off, you have more avoidance now also.

EDIT: Also remember, the death strike's effects are only worth 7k because of the rather large hit that you took. If you received a 50k strike, a much more common occurance, you'd only receive a 10k heal and 12.2k shield, versus a 10k heal and an 8.7k shield. That's now a 3.5k difference, and a diminished return on the value of that mastery. When you look at it from that perspective, would you rather have 7500 more health and more avoidance, or the higher mastery?

Or in a worse case scenario, what happens if you take that 100k hit and you only had 98k health? What is the value of deathstrike then?

What the hell people. This is the simple question, simple answer thread.

Simple answer: Rawr is wrong. Gem to stack Mastery while achieving socket bonuses. Reforge threat to mastery, then avoidance to mastery. Enchant for mastery>avoidance>armor>stam.