Should I sit on runes/km procs then? I normally don't unless my obliterate is about to come off of a cooldown (If it's under 2 seconds, I'll wait. If it's above (6-7s), then I'll normally frost strike to see if I get lucky with a runic empowerment proc). In any case, I'll be making a bigger conscious effort to not RP dump. Thank you for the response.

You shouldn't really sit on runes. At most I'll wait ~1.5 sec before using OB, what will help you is to make the conscious decision to keep one of each rune permanently on CD, rather than recharging. You should only FS when you have one of each on CD basically, to increase your RE procs (remember that only when you have a rune that's in queue to recharge you can get a RE proc on that rune).

Generally when people have their FS higher than OB damage they prioritise wrongly; they are frost striking when they have have only one rune of each on CD. You know this has happened to you before I'm sure. Also, where we used to "RP dump", this is not optimal with RE in play; say you have 1 Frost rune recharging and you have 1 on CD. The same story with your UH runes. Now imagine you Frost Strike since it's the optimal time to do so and you get a RE proc on your UH rune. Whereas you used to just keep dumping RP with FS in WotLK, you should constantly keep an eye on RE procs now. In this scenario you should OB, before doing another FS.

It can definitely be hard to get used to and the best piece of advice I can give you is to make sure you have a very solid way of keeping track of your runes. In all honesty, the best advice I can ever give to any DK is to hide your actionbars. This might sound weird at first but in one way we have one of the most dynamic resource systems and one that will completely determine how you play. Not only that, but the display on the action bars in many cases is just plain wrong due to death runes. It's beyond me why after 3 years this is still an issue...

Hiding your action bars sounds a little weird at first but think about it, that way you are forced to look at your runes rather than your ability cooldowns and you will get a much better gamesense. Tracking CDs like Pillar can easily be done with some of the many many addons.

Great advice Illundai. I'm defenitely going to put it to use this week. One quick questions in regards to gear. i see that you are using hand of rag, is it actually a dps increase using that over dual wielding two heroic cleavers? i suppose the correct questions is, does the heroic hand of rag actually equate a dps increase even though the OP has 2h frost doing about equal dmg to unholy and less than dual wield in full heroic gear.

It depends what you prefer really, Unholy's raid utility potential is very compelling. AMZ is probably the strongest cooldown in the game and with Heroic Sulfuras it actually is very competitive with DW Frost. I specced 2H Frost for Ragnaros last week, haven't respecced back yet. That said, I did the same damage as I did DW'ing Cleavers as 2H Frost, so it's probably more equal than would seem.

We did get three of them on a single kill, hence why I have one already. I would make sure that your Warriors get one before you, since Cleavers are a good option too. But then again, if you're unlucky as us with Firestones, then maybe not that great of an option. We've had 4 Firestones since we started doing heroic modes ~_~.

Not sure which of the DK forums to post this in because it can be useful for all specs, but it's mostly for DPS.

I've found a sweet little bug with the Butchery talent. It slows down the out of combat runic depletion rate. This means if you spec into this and you pull fast enough you should always have runic at the start of a pull. Where this bug really shines is with the T12 DPS 2-piece bonus, with it and casting Horn of Winter every time it's off CD you gain runic faster than it fades out of combat, essentially you have a runic ever-fount.

Hm I never experienced that. You mean you have to enter combat and kiil lsomething that grants experience and/or honor in order for it to work? Because if I keep casting HoW pre-pull the RP depletion rate is much higher than the amount of RP I can generate. I'm specced 1/2 Butchery.

As far as HoW + 2p, I've also noticed that you get a net gain of RP when not in combat.
Its not much, you get about 2-4 rp per HoW cycle.
HoW: 10 rp/20 sec
2pc: 3rp/5sec
Per 20sec : 22rp. RP seems to deplete at about 1rp per second.

Hmm gonna test that today.

Also, I don't have it so I can't test it, but a guildie claimed that Leyara's Locket keeps you in combat. That may help with HoW pre-pull.

Two simple questions:

1) 2h Skullstealer i378 vs DW Elementium Edged Scalper i365 + Lava Spine i359
Is the OH proc of KM going to make the two 1h'ers a better choice? Does either have a specific advantage on Rag?

2) Chillblains for Moltens
Is Chillblains a good strategy for the molten elementals on Rag? I was thinking of dropping two pioints from Epedemic. I don't want to nerf myself for other fights though.. but I need a rag kill too. I need to keep my 2 points in Endless Winter. I am only running 10 mans.

EDIT: This is the link to my DK

"Dual wielding Frost DKs will use Rune of Razorice on their main hand with Rune of the Fallen Crusader on their offhand."

Why, out of curiosity?

I am having quite a bit of trouble finding current trinket rankings for Unholy. The spec thread lists only the two BiS choices, but surely someone has ranked the major options. Can anyone help?