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Old 05/25/12, 3:13 PM   #226
Chamois
Glass Joe
 
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Worgen Death Knight
 
Dalaran
Simple question, hopefully a simple answer. I was dw frost with a pair of Treachery's Bites and recently acquired a RF Gurthalak. I presume from reading here and other places that Unholy > Frost dps with a 2hander? I've seemed to be up and down since I changed specs as I found frost had a bit of a flow to it that I have yet to "feel" with Unholy. I recall back in the day certain specs required a particular gear level (or selection) to really shine. I haven't seen that stated in the 4.3 era.

Amory link if it matters.
Vuloth @ Dalaran - Game Guide - World of Warcraft

In short, stick with UH or swap back to Frost?

Vuloth

PS Thanks in advance

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Old 05/25/12, 11:28 PM   #227
Minoan
Von Kaiser
 
Orc Death Knight
 
Ясеневый лес (EU)
Firstly, few steps of correcting your mistakes which may make you to "feel" Unholy.
You must have 8% hit, it may be more, but non the less-that's not for you, but for your pet's expertise. The expertise on your hero, however, should not be capped and should be forged down, you're not frost DK and you're not loosing much around loosing 1 GCD.
Reforge yourself to hit8%>haste>crit,
then read Magdalena's topic about UDK and fix other mistakes, then you may feel the Udk's gameplay.

In short stick-UDK+Gurthalak>Fdk without 1600-1700 haste(well, that were my thoughts when I played frost for 2 patches)

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Old 05/26/12, 4:44 PM   #228
Chamois
Glass Joe
 
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Worgen Death Knight
 
Dalaran
Originally Posted by Minoan View Post
The expertise on your hero, however, should not be capped and should be forged down, you're not frost DK and you're not loosing much around loosing 1 GCD.
Reforge yourself to hit8%>haste>crit,
then read Magdalena's topic about UDK and fix other mistakes, then you may feel the Udk's gameplay.
So I do not want expertise at 26?

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Old 05/26/12, 7:16 PM   #229
Thepiegod
Von Kaiser
 
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Orc Death Knight
 
Magtheridon
No, expertise is next to useless for Unholy.

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Old 05/29/12, 6:38 AM   #230
Panthros
Glass Joe
 
Orc Death Knight
 
Uldum (EU)
Have a doubt in Spine HC. I'm normally Unholy, but I'm thinking into specing Frost for this fight. At this moment, I have a normal Gurthalak, a normal Ataraxis and two lfr Souldrinkers. What should I spec into, two-handed or dual-wielding frost? I know that dual beats two-handed badly but with ilvl weapon diference I get lost. And If I have to go one-handed, it's best for this fight Gurth or Ataraxis?

Thanks.

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Old 05/29/12, 6:58 AM   #231
HellHamsterr
Von Kaiser
 
Human Death Knight
 
Ravencrest (EU)
Gurth always beats Ataraxis for 2h frost, but I'd recommend going dualwield frost with the 2 LFR souldrinkers.

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Old 06/07/12, 12:42 PM   #232
Neliell
Glass Joe
 
Draenei Death Knight
 
Draenor
Okay so this question could be a rather long and complicated one. I've been frost dual wield for many months, with mostly best in slot gear except for some missing tier pieces. Since the heroic Gurth dropped, and with one heroic HoM, I considered switching to unholy. I could keep most of my frost gear for the unholy set, but I was missing the Bone Linked Fetish. With relatively proper reforging, talents, and glyphs, I would expect that I would have the same DPS output as frost dual-wield.

I was wrong.

I have been seeing between 10 and 15% reduction in overall damage, sometimes as much as 20% in Ultraxion fights, as Unholy. Mind you, I am one of the individuals that has to soak damage, so my AMS gets tricky at times. Doesn't this seem wrong?

Does BLF really change the game for Unholy? Am I just not scourge striking enough for procs?

I'd hate to switch back to frost and forsake my heroic weapon... It seems like the better option.

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Old 06/07/12, 6:04 PM   #233
gharnef
Von Kaiser
 
Orc Death Knight
 
<TM>
Zul'Jin
Originally Posted by Neliell View Post
Okay so this question could be a rather long and complicated one. I've been frost dual wield for many months, with mostly best in slot gear except for some missing tier pieces. Since the heroic Gurth dropped, and with one heroic HoM, I considered switching to unholy. I could keep most of my frost gear for the unholy set, but I was missing the Bone Linked Fetish. With relatively proper reforging, talents, and glyphs, I would expect that I would have the same DPS output as frost dual-wield.

I was wrong.

I have been seeing between 10 and 15% reduction in overall damage, sometimes as much as 20% in Ultraxion fights, as Unholy. Mind you, I am one of the individuals that has to soak damage, so my AMS gets tricky at times. Doesn't this seem wrong?

Does BLF really change the game for Unholy? Am I just not scourge striking enough for procs?

I'd hate to switch back to frost and forsake my heroic weapon... It seems like the better option.
Creche is arguably better for unholy than BLF so that cannot be the culprit. If you post some logs or give some more information as to your rotation (don't just say you're doing what the unholy thread says as it tells us nothing) then we can probably help you more.

Also, since unholy has considerably higher single-target DPS this tier than frost you should actually be expecting higher DPS, particularly on fights like Ultraxion and Morchok.

As for soaking on Ultrax, I'd recommend not using AMS for soaking and to use AMZ+IBF instead since that way you can use AMS as a DPS cd pretty much every time it's up to maximize your damage.

If you're looking for some logs to look at to emulate your play after I'd recommend Autopsy from <Exodus> on Cho'gall, not only does he have top parses on just about every fight, his logs are also public (or were about a month ago when I last looked at them) so you can look at multiple weeks to compare your numbers to.

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Old 06/07/12, 10:29 PM   #234
Neliell
Glass Joe
 
Draenei Death Knight
 
Draenor
Originally Posted by gharnef View Post
Creche is arguably better for unholy than BLF so that cannot be the culprit. If you post some logs or give some more information as to your rotation (don't just say you're doing what the unholy thread says as it tells us nothing) then we can probably help you more.

Also, since unholy has considerably higher single-target DPS this tier than frost you should actually be expecting higher DPS, particularly on fights like Ultraxion and Morchok.

As for soaking on Ultrax, I'd recommend not using AMS for soaking and to use AMZ+IBF instead since that way you can use AMS as a DPS cd pretty much every time it's up to maximize your damage.

If you're looking for some logs to look at to emulate your play after I'd recommend Autopsy from <Exodus> on Cho'gall, not only does he have top parses on just about every fight, his logs are also public (or were about a month ago when I last looked at them) so you can look at multiple weeks to compare your numbers to.
Some Logs:
Frost: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Unholy: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
(Most of the logs are in frost, not sure why we stopped posting them)

I generally follow up the openers with D&D and Outbreak, once I have the stacks of buff and before my Synapse has worn off, choosing to DC to keep my runic power down and DT whenever it's up. Otherwise, I take the suggestions of CLC DK. I have lately been trying to scourge strike more, in hopes of proc'ing tentacles, but it probably wastes some runic power when I have close to a full bar.

Thanks for the tip and the advice. I will give Autopsy a look!

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Old 06/08/12, 12:16 PM   #235
gharnef
Von Kaiser
 
Orc Death Knight
 
<TM>
Zul'Jin
Originally Posted by Neliell View Post
Some Logs:
Frost: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Unholy: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
(Most of the logs are in frost, not sure why we stopped posting them)

I generally follow up the openers with D&D and Outbreak, once I have the stacks of buff and before my Synapse has worn off, choosing to DC to keep my runic power down and DT whenever it's up. Otherwise, I take the suggestions of CLC DK. I have lately been trying to scourge strike more, in hopes of proc'ing tentacles, but it probably wastes some runic power when I have close to a full bar.

Thanks for the tip and the advice. I will give Autopsy a look!
I noticed you're specced 7/1/33, I wouldn't really recommend this spec as a base-spec, since I feel that AMZ and a stronger AMS is much more useful on lots of fights. I'd be more inclined to have a spec that lost outbreak in favor of picking up IBT (since there are more fights than don't use pestilence than don't use AMZ and AMS).

Well to start off with, your kill time is fairly quick at 3:40 which is actually a difficult time for DKs since you're not going to be able to get a second Unholy Frenzy or two good gargoyles in that time frame.

To compare to your logs I found a 25H kill with two good DKs (both pulling in the top 200) with a kill time of only 1 second shorter than yours which you can find here: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Lets start off with your cooldown usage:
1 UHF
2 Gargoyles, but the second was cut short
104 RP from AMS
4 uses of Dark Transformation

I also see that you went into Blood Presence - there's no reason to do that, you can soak Hour of Twilight with only AMZ/IBF at 25% nerf. (300 * .75 = 240 * .8 = 192, AMZ is roughly 60k absorb = 132, well below even our unbuffed HP - if you have to soak again before IBF is off (3 minutes) CD ask your raid leader for a pain sup, hand of sac, rallying cry or power word barrier)

With the speed you're killing the boss, you're only going to get 1 UHF, so that's fine. You could find a way to pop out your gargoyle a bit faster, but considering creche is more likely to line up with the first you're probably better off making your first one as good as possible. Remember to wait for an FC proc, a creche proc, and 10 stacks on your trinket, but to still get it out before your pre-pot ends.

104 RP from AMS is extremely low. You can get more RP from AMS in one use (and you almost always will if you use it properly). You also only used it 3 times which is low.

You're generally going to want to be using it 2-3 seconds after every HoT (there's a small delay after every HoT before strikes start again). You will generally try to make that line up with the end of your pet also, since AMS is an easy way to get to 5 stacks again quickly. During AMS you're going to be capping your RP every few seconds (usually for the next 3 hits), so you're generally going to spam DC during that until you get 2 or 3 procs of Runic Corruption, at that point, then you're usually going to end up doing about 3 SS to 1 DC for a next few seconds since avoiding capping runes is more important than avoiding capping RP (SS hits for roughly 1.75 times what DC does).

I already sort of went over this, but you'll probably want to try to get a 5th pet transform in. Usually it will take you around 15 seconds to reload your pet to 5 stacks so you can somewhat line it up with AMS. The first one usually takes the longest if you don't use the 2pc T11 trick, since you're having to use the RP on your gargoyle early on, but you still want to get it out ASAP.

As for the basic rotation, I usually think of it like a pendulum except you're trying to push the pendulum and keep it as close to the middle as possible. The two ends of the pendulum are RP cap and rune cap and since using RP gets you RC procs which give you runes and runes give you RP the two are directly related. I'd definitely recommend not using CLCDK since our priority system is in most cases quite simple anyway. A fairly rough approximation of my rotation is as follows:

If you're at 5 stacks, use Dark Transformation.
If it's off CD use DnD (not on Ultrax though since it doesn't affect him)
If your unholy or death runes are near capping use SS.
If your blood/frost runes are near capping use FS.
If your RP is near capping (20 from the cap), use DC.
Otherwise, SS > DC > FS.

There are a lot of cases in specific encounters that tell me to use things differently, but these are some fairly good basic guidelines until you get more of a feel for the rotation.

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Old 06/14/12, 7:02 PM   #236
S1NNUR
Glass Joe
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Turalyon (EU)
Hello all

I have noticed that quite frequently when I use Blood Tap a fully depleted frost/unholy rune activates at the same time. I was wondering if the BT was causing it, or perhaps causing RE to proc (as it doesn't always happen).

Is this a known issue and if so, will it continue into MoP?

Thank you

Aeronwen

Edit: I have 2/2 improved Blood Tap.

Edit Edit: Seems also to be working on recharging runes.


Scrap that, death rune acting as a blood rune. Sorry for any time wasted.

Last edited by S1NNUR : 06/15/12 at 7:50 AM.

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Old 06/24/12, 6:01 PM   #237
Kapaya
Glass Joe
 
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Orc Death Knight
 
Outland (EU)
Hello is there any cap for haste when you play hastefrost?

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Old 06/25/12, 1:40 AM   #238
gharnef
Von Kaiser
 
Orc Death Knight
 
<TM>
Zul'Jin
Originally Posted by Kapaya View Post
Hello is there any cap for haste when you play hastefrost?
I don't remember one that was realistically reachable in current gear (2600 or so is the number that comes to mind, but I haven't played or seriously researched frost since early in this tier), but discovering if your current gear set has too much haste is quite simple. Just use simC and turn on stat weights, 10000 iterations should suffice. If the mastery weight is higher, drop 50 or so haste for mastery and try again. Repeat until you get haste > mastery in value.

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Old 06/25/12, 10:55 AM   #239
Neliell
Glass Joe
 
Draenei Death Knight
 
Draenor
SimC also can plot dps result for changes in haste vs. Changes in mastery. I don't remember the tab name, but it is two tabs away from the stat weights. Just select mastery and haste, make 500 point range with 50 point iterations and it will make a plot.

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Old 06/27/12, 6:29 PM   #240
Kapaya
Glass Joe
 
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Orc Death Knight
 
Outland (EU)
Hello Agian
Gonna try masterfrost instead of hastefrost so my Question is do the rotation change anything or.? Thx for all help

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