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Unholy DPS 5.2 | Thunderstruck
Updated: 4/16/2013, Content Current for Mists of Pandaria 5.2.x
[top]Introduction[top]Abbreviations and Keywords
[top]New in Patch 5.2Unholy Related Notes (aka "Confetti Time!")
Important Note: Some tooltips and item links are still being updated in the Wowhead database from PTR. As such, names and numerical values are appearing incorrectly for many entries. For Glyphs and Gems, I decided to include their links despite some anomolies since they're either minor or simple to correct. [top]Previous Changes of NoteWhat changed for Death Knights between Cataclycsm and Mists of Pandaria? If you're a returning player, this should help get you up to speed.  ← Click Here[top]TalentsThe following talent tables include a description of each option and the uses they are most suited to. At the end of each tier, I will make a final analysis to help explain the pros, cons, and key differences between your options. There is no set spec anymore; ultimately, you may pick your current talent lineup based on available information, your personal preference, and the fight at hand. [top]Level 56
Final Analysis: If you're undaunted by, or actually enjoy, micromanaging the timers required to Plague Leech correctly, it has a slight benefit over Unholy Blight. Otherwise, Unholy Blight is plenty useful in dungeons and has repairing effects on play errors if Boss battles get messy. Roiling Blood can be taken when improved, staggered AoE is demanded. [top]Level 57
Final Analysis: Anti-Magic Zone carries the most universal benefit when spell damage is prevalent and you're providing enhanced survivability for someone besides yourself. Purgatory can be a great choice during risky progression fights or when a gear check causes personal survival issues. Lichborne isn't forgotten, but there are few occassions where you'll be inclined to take it. [top]Level 58
Final Analysis: Death's Advance, all day long. [top]Level 60
Final Analysis: Death Pact offers us the most healing for the least opportunity cost to DPS. [top]Level 75
Final Analysis: Choose where you want your regen shot administered. "Would you like this shot in the bum, shoulder, or 'surprise me'?" They're simulating very closely with one another (all within <2% range). Blood Tap is testing highest and provides an elective window to use the proc which places the reward or blame on you. If you're more dependent on Death Runes (for Death Siphon or perhaps Necrotic Strike), then Blood Tap provides that specific gain you're looking for too. Runic Empowerment can also be manipulated to a small degree (i.e. 'gaming') by purposely avoiding the full depletion of a rune. Runic Corruption suffers some due to the inverse haste scaling, but its mechanic is still interesting to a number of players. [top]Level 90
Final Analysis: None of these talents impart directly damaging effects, so your decision will revolve around the dungeons or raids at hand. Speaking generally, Gorefiend's Grasp and Remorseless Winter will have the widest appeal since they impart added mob control on a 1 minute timer. Desecrated Ground, on the other hand, is so specific that it will be a deliberate substitute for certain fights. [top]Glyphs[top]MajorThe most important caveat about Major Glyphs is to avoid the Glyph of Outbreak. It's proving difficult enough to generate RP and it's not worth paying that much for it when we don't need it on a whim anyways. Here are a few good choices to consider:
[top]MinorThese tend to very small impact on gameplay, but I see a few of particular interest to us:
[top]Priority & PlayThere are two "schools" of Unholy play being discussed right now at the onset of 5.2: standard and "Festerblight". In case you haven't perused the other threads in the EJ DK forum, let's talk about Festerblight for a moment. /Pops in 1980's instructional VHS The principle of Festerblight is rather simple: you use all your trinkets and buffs then apply your diseases with Unholy Blight. For the duration of the fight, you use Festering Strike more often to keep these original diseases applied. Not too complicated, right? Mendenbarr has a thread that covers the details of Festerblight if you'd like to dig in and give it a try: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t131138-...blight/#Unholy What dictates whether Festerblight outperforms a standard rotation?
And now, back to our regularly scheduled style... [top]PresenceUnholy [top]RuneforgeRune of the Fallen Crusader [top]Single Target Priority
Soul Reaper Whether it's a boss or a lesser-type jerk, you want to take advantage of the direct damage and/or the haste bonus. Prepare yourself for the execute phase in of two ways: For lower HP creatures, execute them as a source for the haste bonus; use Soul Reaper just before their life is gone. For significant monsters and bosses, the slower decay of the health pool will obviously afford you multiple damaging uses. If you are feeling confident, you can be 'predictive' with your cast of Soul Reaper. For instance, if your target is =>35% but you feel, with a high amount of certainty, that it will dip below 35% within 5 seconds (or 45% if you have the T15 4 piece bonus), you can pre-cast Soul Reaper to increase the number of potential uses you will get. Every 6 seconds recast Soul Reaper until the target's death is imminent. Retain the necessary runes to make sure you can Soul Reaper without delay. Diseases From the start of combat, you can cast Outbreak or Unholy Blight (if you chose it as the lvl 56 talent option) to apply your diseases quickly. If Outbreak and Unholy Blight are unavailable for whatever reason, you will have re-apply diseases manually. Ah, but here's some good news! Plague Strike (via Ebon Plaguebringer) now applies Frost Fever for us. So, what was once an awkward tickle fight is now a gentlemanly subtitution of Plague Strike for Scourge Strike. Runes are left in a smoother order and that allows you to keep your rhythm which, I think, ultimately makes the spec more fun to play. If you've spec'd into Plague Leech, you will want to consume your diseases with less than 3 seconds remaining and reapply them ASAP afterwards. Ebon Plaguebringer was reworked so that Blood Plague applies a physical vulnerability and for each disease you apply to a target, your Scourge Strike will deal an additional 25% of the physical damage (up from 18%) done as shadow damage. Diseases should never be neglected anyways, so this is just one more good reminder. Dark Transformation Your Death Coils, aside from damaging your target, will apply a Shadow Infusion buff on your Ghoul which is capable of stacking up to 5 times. The player can consume the 5 charges of Shadow Infusions on the Ghoul to transform it into a powerful undead monstrosity for 30 seconds. A huge factor in your overall DPS is maximizing Dark Transformation's uptime (see the Mods section in this guide for suggestions about monitoring DT and Shadow Infusion). It is key that you super-size Timmy as often and as quickly as you can. One can reserve Runic Power during an active Dark Transformation for quick reapplication of Shadow Infusion stacks the moment Timmy returns to normal. As a general rule, you will want to 'throttle' your non-Sudden Doom Death Coil usage so that you approach the RP cap just as DT fades. Scourge Strike/Death and Decay* Scourge Strike hits harder than Death and Decay by a margin so in a true single target scenario, you will only be using that attack. *Death and Decay can be used instead if there's a second target that would take multiple ticks of the spell. Festering Strike In the continued philosophy of utilizing our runes and managing cooldowns, supplement your priority with Festering Strike. With Reaping (from our Unholy specialization), the runes consumed by Festering Strike (as well as Pestilence and Blood Boil) will become death runes when they reactivate. Also, Festering Strike serves the very important purpose of adding 6 seconds to your diseases. Mechanics allowing, our diseases are sustainable. It’s like watering a plant of doom. Death Coil Similar to efficient rune expenditure, we want to capitalize on Sudden Doom procs. Death Coil may be done freely to make use of Sudden Doom procs, to build Shadow Infusion stacks quickly (as prioritized above in Dark Transformation), to proc our level 75 talent of choice, and to avoid the RP cap. Scourge Strike/Death and Decay* and Festering Strike This is your ‘rinse and repeat’ in order when you have runes (and the cooldown) available. Again, only use Death and Decay if there's some amount of collateral. Horn of Winter When all else fails, you can toot your horn for RP and to maintain its uptime for yourself and cohorts. It’s a step above twiddling your thumbs during a GCD. [top]AoE Target Priority
Firstly, you will no longer change presences for AoE since Frost's effects have been altered. Secondly, our AoE rotation works best when we're prepared and have planned our runes out ahead of time. The ideal way to enter AoE combat is with 4 Death Runes (DD|DD|UU). This allows us to spam Blood Boil ad nauseum. 2 Festering Strikes are an obvious way to fully deplete Blood and Frost Runes so that they come back as Death Runes. Diseases For staggered AoE situations, players with Roiling Blood can spread their diseases immediately from one infected target to others through Blood Boil (which saves a GCD). Players with Unholy Blight can of course use this ability to infect everything within 10 yards. If neither option is available, and the mobs will live more than a few seconds, then Pestilence is in order. Pestilence would also help to convert any remaining Blood Runes into Death Runes. One caveat on this: do not Pestilence if it will pull an adjoining group or if there is a CC nearby. This is particularly noteworthy if you are glyphed for extended range on Pestilence. Mages get really frustrated when their sheep spasms with cooties and comes to cough in their face. Dark Transformation Transforming Timmy when he's ready to hulk out is still very important. Death and Decay/Scourge Strike (if on CD) Drop Death and Decay to begin the cooldown and have a sustained AoE while you Blood Boil. Scourge Strike whenever your Death Runes are refilling and DnD is on cooldown. Blood Boil Blood Boil is now a part of Reaping for Unholy DKs which means that anytime we use it, those runes will become Death Runes when they activate. Fire at will! Death Coil Same as with single target priority. [top]GhoulTimmy is still some of your best damage so it’s wise to learn how to use him properly. For extra control, bind his Attack/Follow/Stay & Huddle commands to keys/buttons you can access quickly (I use Shift + letters, but whatever works for you). For the most part, Timmy is a resilient pet. He has an unspoken 90% AoE damage reduction and can be healed by your Death Coil (discounted healing with Glyph of Death’s Embrace). Rather than putting your pet on cruise control, it's far better to have an awareness of him and his actions (particularly given the AI's observable hiccups). It will greatly help survivability, group tactics, and your DPS. [top]Survival and UtilityTo quote Ghostcrawler, "Dungeons are hard." Raise Ally Raise Ally is instant cast, costs 30 Runic Power (down from 50), and has a 10-minute cooldown. The requisite Runic Power means you must be in the midst of combat activity and temporarily forgo your personal DPS for the benefit of returning others to the field. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with other players, so like our Druid and Warlock rezzers, communication with the raid before and during an encounter is required. Only one manner of resurrection is allowed in a 10-man and three within a 25-man fight (excluding self-resurrections) so there is stressed value in using it wisely. Also be aware that Death Knight resurrection brings the player back with 60% health (up from 20%) and 20% mana. Resurrections have raid saving potential so don't waste it by selecting the wrong person or watching someone accept prematurely. Often people are so eager to be rezzed that they will immediately take their resurrection and get killed again. Macros or Ventrilo are both fine ways to warn the recipient to take their rez with discretion. Control Undead Just like the tooltip says, we can dominate an undead creature. While controlled, the time between the undead minion's attacks is increased by 30% and its casting speed is slowed by 20%. The effect lasts up to 5 min. It won't work on bosses, hostile player ghouls, or hostile player's with Lichborne active. Mobs it does work on will follow you around like a spooky puppy until the spell wears off or you cross a loading transition (instances, portals, hearth, logging, etc.). The downside is that Control Undead counts as your one and only pet. You can't control an NPC and your ghoul so its reward must be weighed against the crucial benefit of Timmy's DPS and delightful banter. Anti-Magic Shell Using Anti-Magic Shell intelligently is one of the key aspects that separates the 'good' Death Knights from the 'great' ones. AMS provides a two-fold benefit and understanding it well will optimize your play. Firstly, AMS is a powerful defensive ability that absorbs 75% (or 100% if glyphed) of the damage dealt by harmful spells up to 50% of your total health and prevents the application of harmful magical effects. In heavy damage situations, this is a lifesaver and aids on healing resources. Secondly, and often underutilized, is AMS's DPS boon. Damage absorption will cause you to generate a substantial amount of Runic Power. When you can anticipate AMS a few seconds ahead of time, make sure to have very low RP so that you do not cap while under the effect. The caveats associated with AMS is not to use it when you a required to get a magical debuff (which can be a gimmick in certain fights) and to not use it with AMZ expecting it to stack (Shell will override AMZ). Other Resources Don't forget that you have interrupts, Icebound Fortitude, Death Pact/Lichborne/Death Siphon, and Army of the Dead (aggro fodder if left unglyphed). [top]CooldownsUnholy Frenzy & Gargoyle Unholy Frenzy is essentially the same spell as before, however, it's not being treated as an enrage anymore (at least for the purposes of buff types). This removes whatever preferential treatment that Fury Warriors were getting previously. Hah! Take that, other class! Unholy Frenzy and Heroism/Time Warp/Bloodlust do not stack, hence the former should be saved until the latter has worn off. The easiest test for determining when/if you want to use Unholy Frenzy on yourself is whether you become GCD locked, simple as that. Gary the Gargoyle has received quite a lot of love recently. Did those dance lessons pay off? Maybe it's Maybelline? Actually, it's probably because his cast no longer costs Runic Power AND his Gargoyle Strike now deals Shadow Damage in addition to Nature Damage. The removal of the Runic Power cost clears any doubt or reservation we may have had before about casting him. Call up Gary; that guy knows how to party! Empower Rune Weapon A potent reset button to activate all your runes and generate 25 runic power. With a 5 minute cooldown this will generally equate to a 1/boss fight use. Army of the Dead This is a long channel so it's best to cast either just before the pull, during a phase change, or when things go south. Army Ghouls will taunt adds and normal mobs unless you are glyphed so have that in mind before using. You might be screaming "No, no, no!" and all they hear is "Who wants cake? Who wants cake!?". Let me tell you something: They all do. They all want cake. [top]ConsumablesSpeaking of cake, consumables can add a significant bonus to your primary DPS stat. These are must haves for optimum performance.
[top]Character Optimization[top]RaceThere are immediate and undeniable PVE performance benefits to what race you select. Each race also brings unique aesthetics and story that is a totally separate matter of opinion. [top]Alliance
Verdict: More crit and movement increasing effects are stellar for any melee DPS class. Alliance Death Knights looking to optimize will therefore find Worgen of the most interest. 
Verdict: 1% hit will reduce the cap and allow for some more creative reforging. The free heal is also significant. 
Verdict: The added expertise is beneficial if you conveniently happen to equip such a weapon. Asides from that potential, the ability to simulatanously run away and still be well liked gets an impressed nod. Humans will fare the best through reputation grinds. 
Verdict: Dwarves also have a potential addition to expertise and a nice ability to counteract common status effects. Stoneform is a bit less desirable than Every Man for Himself on the basis that mobility is still preferred. 
Verdict: As another form of movement restoration, Escape Artist has plenty of great PVE uses. The rest of their racials unfortunately fall short in terms of use for a Death Knight. 
Verdict: Being a Night Elf provides no tangible benefit for Death Knights, but hide-and-go-seek with Darion Mograine will have acceptable results. [top]Horde
Verdict: Given that Orcs have both pet damage and attack power and extra expertise, they make really good Death Knights. 
Verdict: Goblin racials are rather amazing for melee DPS like Death Knights. 
Verdict: A short haste bonus and a snare reduction isn't bad, but it's a downgrade in comparison to Orcs and Goblins. 
Verdict: Touch of the Grave's damage/heal scales with mastery and is more optimized than what Belfs and the moo cows have to offer. 
Verdict: The silence can be helpful when Mind Freeze is down or when you just want an ounce of free RP to Death Coil. Asides from that, you're basically joining this race for the hair: the superbly immaculate hair. 
Verdict: Tauren are on par with Night Elves in regards to lacking useful PVE racials. "The cow goes 'boooooo'." [top]ProfessionsWhen it comes to professions, the biggest question is, "Which ones give the most strength?". Leatherworking provides a flat 330 strength benefit via its improved wrist enhancement - 10 more than its other competitors. Alchemy, Enchanting, Blacksmithing, Inscription, and Engineering are all on par by conveying 320 strength and are excellent choices as well. Engineering, as has been the case for a long while, provides us that strength via the Synapse Springs (Mark II) which can be used for 10s every 60s. It's slightly inferior if only for requiring people to remember to activate the springs, but there are some other convenience perks that makes Engineering appealing. In terms of long term benefits, any of the aforementioned six tradeskills are great options. If you're looking to absolutely maximize your Death Knight's strength gains, you can relegate gathering to another character so that you have 640 bonus strength from crafting professions.
[top]Gear Optimization[top]Stat WeightsLevel 90 Weights:
Note: These preliminary values are based on test profiles and normalized to Strength. [top]Stat PriorityGearing, like your play choices, is also based upon a priority system. Included below is the order of most beneficial to least beneficial stats to help you make informed decisions about gear.
Hit Hit to cap is extremely important. Not only does it determine your melee hit, but it's now relied on for your spell hit too. If you miss a lot, that’s 0 damage on a frequent basis. Meters can't discriminate whether your damage suffered because of low hit rating or because you were too busy watching Fresh Prince reruns to pay attention to the boss (the latter is slightly more acceptable). Also keep in mind that your Ghoul inherits your stats (with hit rating no longer rounding down). At level 90, it takes 2550 hit rating to become hit capped for a raid boss (2210 for Draenei). There is a certain leniency for being slightly over or slightly under, but you want to negotiate this very carefully. When in doubt, test yourself on a target dummy for extended lengths of time or run your character’s paper doll through simulations for a very general idea of how it will affect your real performance. Expertise As stated at the beginning of the guide, expertise will negate dodge AND spell miss, then parry. Therefore whatever value you have for expertise will combine with hit to determine your spell hit. Expertise, as such, has become incredibly valuable for us. At level 90, it takes 2550 expertise rating to become expertise capped for a raid boss (2210 for races with 1% added expertise). Haste Your GCD is affected by various factors such as expertise, Heroism/Bloodlust effects, your connection speed and so forth. The best way to approach haste itemization is whether or not you personally experience GCD locks. If you have no trouble expending resources, haste remains highly favored, simple as that. Crit Naturally, the fixes applied to minion stat inheritance has modified our stat priority selection. Mastery Mastery boosts our shadow damage via Dreadblade and has a bit less parity than before. [top]ReforgingIn regards to reforging your gear, start with the hit and expertise cap and manage your DPS stat priority as above. I’d recommend taking a look at Wow Reforge to help you make your reforging decisions outside of the game. When using Wow Reforge's site for Unholy, you will need to specify your hit & expertise caps for 'close to' 2550 or 2210 (if you have a +1% racial). By choosing 'close to', the calculator attempts to reforge your gear to the specified hit cap number but it also considers reforges in a tight threshold around the cap. It weighs the various configurations by the stats they provide and ranks them from highest to lowest in EP value. It may be that your optimum reforge puts you exactly at cap or it could put you a point over or under because the DPS is rated better. It will simply depend on your race and assortment of gear. Reforge calculators require a lot of complicated math so always double check your results for accuracy. Report any anomalies to the site owner to improve the reliability of the tool. Tips for Reforging:
[top]Gems[top]Standard
You will defer to the red gem unless the socket bonus would provide more strength or enough of an important secondary stat. By applying our stat weights to the stats offered between gem choices and socket bonuses, it lets you determine if an upgrade exists. Never gem expressly for hit, even if you are under the cap. Given the stat priority discussed earlier, it is a greater DPS sin to miss out on potential strength. Reforging is the best and most flexible method to negotiate the proper hit rating. [top]Meta[Reverberating Primal Diamond] (+216 strength/3% crit effect) or if you've completed the quest for Wrathion [Capacitive Primal Diamond] (+324 Crit Rating and chance on melee or ranged hit to gain Capacitance. At 5 stacks, fires a Lightning Strike.) [top]Chimera[Bold Serpent's Eye] (+320 strength) Note that JCs can have 2 Chimeras active at a time, not 3. [top]Enchants
[top]Level 90 Best in Slot Big thanks to Magdalena of Whisperwind-US for assembling the BiS lists for everyone. This was an amazing effort and is greatly appreciated. As a reward, I'm giving him 2 x Frostmournes. WARNING: DO NOT ACTUALLY DUAL WIELD UNLESS YOU ARE A MAGICAL, THEORYCRAFTING DOGGIE WITH FROSTMOURNES. BiS - No Restrictions
BiS - Excludes Heroic Lei Shen or Ra-den
Important notes from Mags (with some references to the original Wowhead profiles):
[top]T15 Set Bonuses
[top]T14 Set BonusesAt the end of 5.1, the 2 piece set bonus has been reduced to 4% (was 10%).
[top]Trinkets ExplainedTrinket evaluation, in the most basic form, is done by calculating the estimated DPS value. Uptime will be deteriminate on an assumed internal cooldown for Proc-variety trinkets or the listed cooldown for Use-variety trinkets.
Assumptions Regarding Trinkets
[top]ModsSome people are content with the out-of-the-box game experience, but others feel like they can play and monitor their character better with additional tools. [top]DK-SpecificDKDiseases (link) DK Diseases will track your diseases on your target. It provides both a numeric and color-coded indicator of the disease strength. The indicators help you to know when you should re-apply your diseases to increase your damage. Doc's Debug Runes (link)  A combined rune, runic power, disease, proc, Dark Transformation, Runic Empowerment, Runic Corruption, Blood Shield and Death Strike heal display. Visually simple but very effective, DDR uses short bars to display runes, diseases, power and specific procs. I am hoping that the remaining LUA errors will be fixed soon. The original author has apparently stopped playing, but I think someone will adopt the project again. Magic Runes (link)  If you want a more aesthetic minded rune watch, Magic Runes also provides a really nice view of your runes with several chart type variations. It's very straightforward and graphically clean. It does not show your procs or special cooldowns (for better or worse), so you will need to set up other mods if you prefer having those features. RuneHUD (link) RuneHUD is a simple addon that moves the runes of your DK to make them a HUD (Heads Up Display). The runes are click through which means they don't intercept mouse clicks. RuneHUD has OmniCC support, will be hidden when in a vehicle and the individual runes will fade when on cooldown. CLCDK (link)  CLCDK is a class HUD featuring disease durations, GCD timer, ability timers, runic power, runes, and an optional suggestion box. What this mod should do is show you Runic Power, special cooldowns (Gargoyle/Army), Runes, and disease timers in 1 add on. What this mod should NOT do is replace your brain. Blindly mimicking its suggestions will produce ignorant, lazy play. After all, we’re trying to break the negative stereotype of our class, not reinforce it. Used properly, the suggestion box can serve as a friendly reminder for when diseases reach low time or a cooldown is ready. That’s a fine and reasonable use of a tool, just don’t confuse what it says you CAN do with what you actually SHOULD. You can also completely turn off the suggestion box if you don't like it or if you'd prefer more space. DKOne (link) Similar in nature to CLCDK, DKOne shows a Rune Display with additional information on runic power and dot timers. One important difference is that CLC does not show Soul Reaper, but DKOne does. It also shows the next two recommended actions and the next two cooldowns that will be up. It dynamically switches between melee, AOE and ranged priorities and whenever you change specs. It tracks the current number of AOE targets and estimates how long until the current target will die. There are up to 8 additional small buttons that you can set to track things like Blood Tap charges and Sudden Doom procs. (Thanks Kirkvader of Turalyon for this recommendation!) [top]Non-SpecificNeedtoKnow (link)  NeedToKnow lets you monitor specific buffs, debuffs, and totems as timer bars that always appear in a consistent place on your screen. You can track yourself, others, your target, your pet, and much more. This mod is fantastic to let you watch your Shadow Infusion stacks, Dark Transformation timers, Anti-Magic Shell, and Runic Corruption uptime. You can set colors, scaling, and different groups of bars. Very customizable and user friendly. Quartz (link) The core of Quartz is a lightweight implementation of the standard casting bar with configurable size, text and icon positioning, and colors. Similar to Need to Know, Quartz will allow you to display custom timers on the mirror bars as well. Proc displays can likewise be added with the Quartz Procs Module. (Thanks to Kopex of Argent Dawn-EU for this recommendation!) OmniCC (link) OmniCC is an addon that adds text to items, spell and abilities that are on cooldown to indicate when they will be ready to use. In other words: it turns all the standard analogue cooldowns into digital ones. Deadly Boss Mods (link)  Deadly Boss Mods is a boss alert mod. It consists of many individual "boss modules", mini addons that are designed to trigger alert messages and timer bars for one specific raid boss each. Instance modules will be loaded and enabled when you enter the corresponding instance. If you don’t already have this, get it yesterday. I have glowing recommendations for all its included features. Recount (link)  Recount is a graphical combat log meter complete with damage, healing, and more. This is the ‘How’s My Driving?’ equivalent of your DPS performance. Everyone has a job and ours is to put up big numbers. Hold yourself accountable by knowing your output and surpassing the expectations of others. I consider Recount, or Skada (as below), a 'must have' for a good DPS setup. Skada Damage Meter (link) Skada is a modular damage meter with various viewing modes. It is inspired mainly by Assessment, but also by Recount. Skada sports segmented fights and detailed views, while being highly efficient with memory. This is accomplished by aggregating data on fight segments. If you're looking for a supremely lightweight meter, definitely check this one out! (Thanks to Kopex of Argent Dawn-EU for this recommendation!) ReforgeSaver (link) ReforgeSaver allows you to save and restore reforging profiles for your equipped items. Equip the items you want and reforge them as desired. When you're done, click the "Save" button on top of the Reforging frame and choose a name for your profile. You can restore your profile at any time by selecting it from the dropdown menu and clicking "Reforge". It will display how much gold the total reforge will cost and begin reforging once you confirm. This is extremely helpful if you frequently switch between specs and/or different sets of gear. Power Auras (link) This addon was created to provide visual cues (auras) when you gain buffs, debuffs and many more. Very useful for shorts buffs or debuffs, it allows you to draw in the center of the screen, or around your character, very customizable visual effects, rather than having to look at or mouseover buff/debuff icons/actionbars. Weak Auras (link) WeakAuras is a flexible framework that allows you to display customizable graphics on your screen to indicate buffs, debuffs, and a whole host of similar types of information. It was originally meant to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras, but it now incorporates many features that Power Auras does not. [top]MacrosMacros expand your ability to customize and automate certain actions via sequences of slash commands. If you are unfamiliar with how to make macros, I recommend reading WoWWiki’s ‘Making a Macro’ guide. Don’t let the involvement of code deter you from macros. They’re generally very simple to write or, even better, just copy and paste ones that have already been created (as below). Revised Attacks Macro If you lack the runes to use an ability, this mod will clear the red error text on the top of your screen and your auto-attack will still begin. I use this macro for each of my major melee abilties where ‘Name’ is the spell/ability. Code:
#showtooltip By using modifier keys, you can toggle between a self-heal, pet heal, or damage a target as normal. Code:
#showtooltip Code:
#showtooltip Code:
#showtooltip Sometimes addons will interfere with abilities you receive during encounters (think: Heroic Will on Ultraxion) so it's nice to have a hard-set button that can achieve the same effect. Code:
/click ExtraActionButton1This isn't so much of a macro as it is a one-time slash command. The following script will increase the allowable threshold of your camera's distance. This is wonderful for fights like Al'Akir where there are large scale effects and far away enemies. Just type the script into your chat window and scroll your wheel to experience the amazing new birds-eye view. (source: Arena Junkies) Code:
/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",30)[top]Raid StrategiesMists of Pandaria raid information is welcomed via PM. 5.1 strats have been relegated to a 'Legacy' section. [top]Legacy ← Click Here[top]Other ResourcesTo further your individual research about the class, play, and so forth, I also have a list of online resources to recommend:
[top]Appendix[top]Corrections and UpdatesIf you find any inaccurate, incomplete or omitted material, I would very much appreciate a PM so that I can make the necessary corrections. It's entirely possible for me to mistype or forget to include something. It would never be my intention to knowingly confuse or misinform people. I appreciate suggestions and hope this can be a springboard for better play, comprehension, and discussion. [top]Special ThanksThe information in this guide is gathered from a multitude of sources: personal experience (both the good & laughable), my wonderful and insightful DK friends in #Acherus, private messages, posts on the WoW forums, past threads and discussion there at EJ, Twitter connections, and other community sites. I have cited these helpful sources where specifics are lended.
[top]Change Log8/27/2012- Thread created. 9/23/2012- Thread updated for MoP release. 9/28/2012- BiS and T14 set bonuses added. 10/3/2012- Raid strategies added. 10/15/2012- Raid strategies and a correction to professions added. 10/29/2012- Added mod recommendation 11/2/2012- Added mod recommendations 11/28/2012- Raid strategies added for Heart of Fear. 1/23/2013- Fixed BiS (thanks Mags!). 3/4/2013- Received little sleep, updated for 5.2. 4/16/2013- BiS Update, Mod Update |
Here's some relevant 5.0 changes that the guide doesn't mention, but that are quite relevant to Death Knights. Keep in mind that the majority of these will be more obvious at Level 90 than at Level 85:
*Disease damage has been increased significantly compared to Cataclysm levels. Their AP coefficients and scaling are higher than before, thus making them a larger portion of Unholy's single target and AoE damage. *Gary the Gargoyle now scales exclusively with Spell Haste. This means that he'll continue to scale with any Haste from gear, but will no longer scale with Melee/Ranged Haste effects. As of the last Beta build, he still appeared to be having issues with target switching, whereby he would refuse to switch targets if his original target died. His casts also had stutters, making his Haste scaling quite iffy. *Army of the Dead received a substantial numbers buff. The fact that its rune cost and channel did not change does still mean that it is best used before the pull or during a transition phase. Having said this, it does deal damage more fitting to a cooldown of its length compared to its Cataclysm numbers. Furthermore, it can be glyphed to remove the Taunt element of the ghouls. Depending on the situation, this may or may not be a good thing for your raid, but is likely to be very useful in 5 man or add-heavy scenarios for DPS DKs. Best of all Blizzard's stated intent is to have cooldowns of Army's length benefit from a new technology that ensures they are up and available for use with each fresh boss pull. *Both Army and Gary no longer snapshot the summoning DK's stats at the time of the cast. This has both good and bad implications. On the plus side, there's no longer any need to "hold back" casting either cooldown for the sake of better proc alignment- they will scale to match constantly. On the downside, this also means that our days of "rolling" very powerful minions that benefit from all procs present at the time of their summoning for the length of their duration are over. All in all, I feel it's a positive change that will ensure RNG doesn't play too heavy a role with how much damage we're able to get out of these cooldowns per pull. |
What happened with the raise dead Glyph? was it removed? now our pet will have less hp and Strength?
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The Stamina loss seems to have been mostly compensated by some fixes to pet scaling from Beta. Some other points for for us to note: *Army of the Dead is dealing more damage than we'd even anticipated. 3 weeks ago on Beta, it dealt roughly 500k damage at Level 90 with procs/buffs. However, on last night's 25 heroic Ultraxion kill, it dealt well over 700k damage for me. I've also gotten reports of it dealing up nearly 1 million damage in some cases. Unfortunately, this also comes with a downside: Although Warlocks have reported their 5/10 minute cool downs benefitting from Blizzard's implemented "cooldown reset" technology, the same cannot be said for Death Knights. Hopefully this is a bug. *While Rune Regen talents can certainly be said to be a choice at Level 90, the Tier 13 four set bonus makes for a clear winner at the time of this writing. Runic Corruption yield the highest uptime (due to increased proc chance) for the four set, and should thus be defaulted to by pretty much all DPS DK specs. Blood Tap has its value further diminished by not interacting with the four set in any way, as well as our toolkit at 85 lacking Soul Reaper (the uptime of which is where Blood Tap truly shines). |
Unholy Blight has some value in prolonged diseases rolling. Normally if your diseases drop 10s before a creche proc then you just get no benefit. With Unholy Blight, you can refresh with Outbreak and then reapply when whatever awesome proc activates.
I was pretty easily able to manage right at 90% uptime on creche procced diseases on a dummy. I feel like this is something that isn't being represented in sims. |
Unholy Blight also has the added benefit of currently counting as melee attacks for the purposes of proccing Gurthalak. Thus, using it in a large pack (say, Yor'sahj adds) can result in some rather beefy procs.
I'm also currently experimenting with Blood Boil/Roiling Blood also fulfilling Gurthalak's "melee attack" requirement. When I soloed Onyxia as Blood last night, it worked ridiculously well on whelps and procced a large number of tentacles within a few seconds. Unfortunately, I can't tell if it's isolated to Blood Boil, requires Roiling Blood or even requires Scarlet Fever. |
Seems there's a bug with Festering Strike. It's adding more than 6 seconds to diseases. I noticed this because when using Festering Strike in the unholy rotation, Ebon Plaguebringer was ending up farther and farther below my remaining disease durations, despite starting less than 1 second below them.
After some testing, Ebon Plaguebringer is getting exactly 6 seconds added to it's duration. The diseases, however, seem to be getting 6 seconds plus the remaining time before the next tick added to them. If you use Festering Strike right before a tick, you get almost exactly 6 seconds. If you use it right after a tick, you get close to 9 seconds added to the diseases. For example, when I cast Outbreak (10 ticks remaining), then cast 4 Festering Strikes willy-nilly, I got 19 ticks (18 expected). However, when I cast Outbreak then 6 Festering Strikes (I got overzealous), specifically cast them right after a tick interval, I got 26 ticks (22 expected), which is consistent with gaining 1.51-2.49 seconds additional per use (so 7.51 to 8.49 seconds per use). I'll try to get some combat log data later tonight when I have time. |
Some disappointing news concerning Army of the Dead and Empower Rune Weapon's cooldowns: Ghostcrawler has confirmed that them not resetting with every pull is intended.
Edit: Very pleased to report that the above report about Army, ERW and similar cooldowns has just been invalidated by Ghost's latest post. We can look forward to them being appropriately reset with every boss pull now! |
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Edit: Also something that I have noticed but never seen posted anywhere. Say (since we are unholy) you have ready to use DD DD UU runes. Using them gets interesting, due to the order they get used. When you use an ability, it will use first the spots that would normally be used, regardless of death rune status (so say you use FS again, it will then use the first and third death runes, or the first slot for blood and frost). But when you spam scourge strike, cause you know you want to, it will use converted bloods first, then the converted frost. Which could lead to a rotation flux if you are trying to maximize FS to keep your diseases rolling without needing a refresh. |
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So, something of note is a nerf to Blood Boil that MMO-Champion didn't datamine. The nerf was prompted by Blood AoE (which was becoming a little ridiculous), but has ramifications for us as well.
The base damage on Blood Boil is up to 3855 roughly, while the AP coefficient is now around 12.48%. Blood Boil thus seems to have been nerfed by about 40% for Unholy DKs. |
Ghostcrawler took the time to respond to a post of mine asking about Blood Boil's seeming nerf. Here is what he had to say on the matter: Beta Class Balance Analysis Pt. II - Forums - World of Warcraft
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Hello all, I have noticed something while simming with SimulationCraft. When I add DnD into my priority list (it's not in default), my dps dropped by about 15% (single target, non moving). Is it a problem with the sim or should I not DnD while single targeting?
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Your 15% number sounds off though. The damage difference between the two is far less- literally 1-3%, if we're to believe Euliat's numbers. For comparison's sake, anything involving 2 or more targets, movement away from a stationary boss or a situation where you might not have time to Scourge Strike makes DnD very much worth using. |
Has anyone done any testing on AoE regarding using 2xBB and dumping the orphan frost runes with IT compared to hitting FSx2 and waiting for 4xBB and running them continuously?
What kind of uptime do adds/group mobs have to have before it becomes worthwhile waiting for the set of death runes? |
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