Zaroua, I've heard you mention a couple times that Epidemic is a massive DPS increase because it extends the life of diseases, particularly for a deep Unholy build. Are you saying that simply because of that dots lasting longer or because of the ability to not be so strict in your rotations?

I ask because you seem to imply in a few of your posts that the DoTs lasting longer directly increases the dmg they do and no one saying anything to the contrary (maybe I missed it in the wave of tanking/dps/spec posts that are flying) All other DoT/HoT mechanics that increase time of a dot extend the length of the dot, keep the overall dmg the same, and therefore the dot does less dmg per tick. That's how Epidemic works, right? I.E. if your Blood Plague would have done 1200 dmg over 12 secs (4 ticks) at 300 per tick, with Epidemic it would do 1200 dmg over 18 secs (6 ticks) at 200 per tick. Or is there some other synergy with Epidemic that makes it that monstrous of a dps talent? Right now it just seems like it gives you leeway in your rotations to keep diseases up.

Is Virulence seemingly necessary for a PvE dps build, not worth the talent points, or something extra to tack on in the event you have extra talent points? Seems like resists could be a huge pain in the butt and eventually make Blood the best dps spec in the long-run.

Anyone using Corpse Explosion or foresee it becoming useful? Haven't seen any mention of a buff to it by Blue.\

Excellent work, Leaflock. Been trying to pin that one down for about 50 pages now!

Dammit, you're making me doubt my numbers! I double-checked, and the rune cooldowns in the Blizz UI don't refresh to a completely empty pie when you're starting in combat. This might be attributable to the 9.8 or 9.5s cooldown you'll get from lag, or it might be just a bug.

But:

1. Leave combat
2. BS, wait three or four seconds, BS again (to prevent potential cross-rune interference)
3. BS again as soon as you can, start the stopwatch built in to your cell phone
4. Stop the stopwatch when that first rune is up again.

This matches my Lua numbers.

Here's the macro version of my cooldown code:

@Daedalix: the real dps benefit of having Epidemic is that it allows you to replace a IT+PS with another FU ability (SS, HB, Oblit, etc) for one more refresh.

I've been told that Acclimation doesn't stack with auras/totems (but does stack with MOTW/Frost Aura), but I havn't confirmed that myself.

As for Frost Aura stacking with itself, that's obviously not intended. They're not going to completely remove same-type-buff stacking just to add a stacking same-exact-buff

This has not been the case for years. Talents like the priest shadowword pain one that extended the length have for a very long time increased the total damage of the DoT.

Last I checked the categories were,

Gear
MotW
Auras/Totems/Shadowprot/Frost Aura
Acclimation

With the one exception to these rules being that Frost Aura stacks with Frost Aura. When I had paladin frost aura thing on me I only gained a bit of resist.

One thing to note on improved IT is that the feral druid TC-type debuff, Infected Wounds, will be kept up even if the druid is in cat form, with no real effort on their part. If your 25 man raid team keeps at least one feral druid in the raid and those druids are taking that talent, you might be able to skip imp IT. Of course, this isn't all that useful to a frost build, and the ability to keep a 20% melee slow up yourself along with Lichborne makes skipping putting those points into frost pretty attractive to unholy and blood DK tanks - but that assumption would allow you to do something along the lines of a 23/4/44 build to get an 8% stam increase, and an 11% strength increase while providing Ebon Plaguebringer.

Still not that great of a build though, annoying as a former warrior tank to see that much potential % stam increase from talents but not be able to really incorporate it into a working spec because it competes with the last points of your primary tanking tree and the first tier tanking talent of the other, and blood just doesn't have worthwhile tanking talents after 23 points making a Blood tanking build not really an option either.

Acclimation is a rather odd buff in how it is applied. I could understand how normal auras and buffs would not stack because of their ease of use or effectiveness when not talented, such as pally aura and MotW. I can see frost aura falling into this also simply because it is raid wide.

Acclimation is self buff only and is not guarenteed to be up 100% of the time unless there is a lot of that type of damage going around (thinking RoS or Vael). Under those conditions, it would be an incredable waste of a talent for it to not stack with other buffs.

Argh, victim of changed spells again.

Acclimation used to be a party buff. I forgot that they switched it to self-only when they changed Frost Aura to spell resistance to the raid (so as not to have two resistance raid buffs).

Mea culpa once again.

I've been trying out a few of the less-used abilities lately, and yeah, Corpse Explosion remains pretty disappointing. I think it caused 400ish AOE damage, generally less than a Blood Boil, and it costs an Unholy Rune which leaves you kind of lopsided on cooldowns. You'd think it'd be stronger for such a situational ability with a relatively annoying cost, but no sign of that at this point.

I also tried out Army of the Dead, wondering if it could be a decent dps ability. I used it on one of the faux-group quests where you take down elites with NPC help, and they seemed to burn down a big mob pretty quickly, so I started to wonder. However, I haven't really found an easy way to test it since they seem to refuse to attack the target dummy. :P You lose dps while channeling it, of course, so it seems destined to remain a gimmicky super-situational ability with an absurdly long cooldown. If I'm wrong on this and someone has found a good use for it, please fill me in. I want to like my magic zombie army.

I'll go over them quickly:

The first build has Scent of Blood and I simply cannot stress how worthless that ability is in PvE. The PvP utility is obvious, but in a PvE tank build you just don't need it and wasting 3 talent points for a maximum or 45RP/minute is just that, a waste. To compare with an IT > PS > Oblit > BS * 2 > Oblit * 3 rotation, you get 75RP/minute with only 2 talent points in Chill of the Grave, not counting Freezing Fog procs. And that RP generation is guaranteed, unlike the Scent of Blood one.
Death Rune Mastery doesn't go with Annihilation for that build - I see them as being mutually exclusive except for a 51/13/7 DPS build or a deep Blood tanking build (ewww) with Heart Strike. As a tank, your rotations won't be able to support the 1 rune spam, so you'll depend a lot more on 2 rune abilities to have smooth rotations. For your particular spec, you'll be spamming Obliterate anyways so you already have an effective FU dump.
Rune Tap/Improved Rune Tap are fairly weak without Vampiric Blood. I think I touched on this earlier in this thread, but for Rune Tap to be useful you need to have the Blood Rune ready (or never use Blood Tap), having the Blood Rune unspent means Blade Barrier downtime, which is counter productive. Other than that, the healing is terrible without Vampiric Blood active.

Overall, Tundra Stalker > Veteran of the Third War and Spell Deflection is borderline worthless (it's on par with the armor bonus from Will of the Necropolis in my opinion). So you're pretty much better off with 50 points in Frost instead of having the extra points in Blood.


For the second spec, your biggest problem is threat. It'll be terrible with such a weak Obliterate. Gargoyle isn't a tanking talent, so that's a wasted point in a pure tanking build, same with Master of Ghouls/Night of the Dead. So your build is basically sacrificing everything to get Unholy Armor which isn't *THAT* good, and certainly not worth having a non functional spec for. Also, picking up Ebon Plaguebringer without spending the rest of the points to get Rage of Rivendare and Unholy Blight feels like a waste. The real power of Ebon Plague is the increase in disease damage to other DKs and the increase in AoE damage.
If you're the only DK in the raid and you're the main tank, then you won't want a low-threat spec to tank with so you'll go with a more conventional Unholy build to get Ebon Plague. If you're not the only DK then either go with a normal Unholy spec or stick with your normal build and have the other DK go deep Unholy. In the end, the spec is sub-par and not worth taking.



For the last build: On a Pale Horse, Gargoyle and Night of the Dead aren't tanking talents, so you'd end up with points in Impurity and maybe even Unholy Aura for the mobility. Not a terrible spec otherwise - and Lichborne is most definitely worth getting for Unholy.


I do have a question though - does maxing out AMS still cause mobs to not cast single targeted binary spells on the DK? If that's the case, then no tanking spec would be able to pick up AMZ or 5/5 AMS because of Kel'Thuzad's Frostbolts and whatever else will have a secondary effect.




And finally for Epidemic: the reason why it's so good is because as a tank, it lets you Pestilence diseases off your main target twice without having to worry about the diseases falling off. It also saves you 1 GCD every 2 rotations from not having to refresh the diseases. It lets you go with 20 second rotations instead of 12 second rotations (IT > PS > Oblit > BS > BS > Oblit > IT > PS > OBlit) which is basically a lot less of a headache overall while tanking - in reality you'll have to refresh your diseases at the start of every rotation while tanking because you'll have to assume that something won't land every 2 rotations, thus completely screwing you and your threat over. And the extra 2 ticks of "free damage" if you don't refresh your diseases also add up very quickly. Finally, you have other DKs in your raid to Pestilence your diseases around for you sometimes, so more "free damage" that you'll lose out on trash when your diseases fall off as the other DK is about to throw them around.


For DPS, it's all about rotations, except for the "free damage" part which is considerable for a 2 point investment. Without Epidemic a DPS rotation has to spend an extra GCD a lot more often than with Epidemic, but the Epidemic GCD will give you more total damage per use and per rune than without. The only DPS spec I could see as being worthwhile without Epidemic would be a 17/50/0 +4 spare talent points spec, focusing on Obliterate spam - but even then you lose out on an Oblit every 2 rotation because you don't have points in Epidemic.

Yes. It absorbs pure direct damage spells (ala arcane missiles), but it Immunes binary spells and debuffs. I'm not sure if that's a function of Magic Suppression or of AMS itself, though. Doesn't AMS make you immune to debuffs anyway for the duration?

I really need to do some PvP testing to see that kind of stuff, but I suck so bad at PvP that it's a real chore

Thanks Zaroua. How come you don't think BS is as good as UA(for single target)?

Unrelated, when you cast pestilence, does the diseases on the target stay the same duration? And do the other targets get diseases of the same duration as well? Or do they get diseases that start over at time 0?

The mechanics change pretty drastically for DKs, and I'm not sure that rumor about it not affecting bosses was ever actually true. Certainly now that they're changing it to 'enemies have a 1/2/3 % chance to miss you', it will apply to bosses.

From what I can tell from the in-game buff timers, the mob that you use pestilence on doesn't get the diseases refreshed, but the mobs that the diseases get spread to start at 0.

In addition from what I've noticed, it spreads all (Death Knight) diseases on the target to any nearby mobs, including ones you didn't cast yourself. The debuffs do each stay owned by the person that originally applied the disease.

For example, let's say we have some Death Knights called Jim and Bob. Jim and Bob both have their diseases up on one mob in the pack. Jim can now cast Pestilence once, and both Jim's and Bob's diseases will be applied to all the mobs in the pack, but the diseases originally applied by Bob stay Bob's diseases for both threat and who the damage gets attributed to, despite the fact that Bob's disease just got spread around the pack by Jim.

I haven't tested whether this works for other diseases not cast by Death Knights, like Devouring Plague for example. It definitely works for a Blood Plague applied by your Dancing Rune Weapon, and for diseases applied by other Death Knights (Regardless of whether they're grouped or even friendly to you).

In other words, you can have someone serve as a Pestilence bitch.

As far as Horde Death Knight tanking race selection is concerned, has anyone seen any hard numbers on the new amount of hp gained from the nerfed Tauren racial? The part I find confusing is how it "scales with gear."

Trying to decide between them, Orcs, and maybe Blood Elves. Leaning toward Orc at the moment.

This still doesn't really change the fact that no one has posted any hard numbers to my knowledge on the exact amount of hp gained by being a Tauren. In level 80 greens your going to have at least 15000hp. So is Tauren racial bonus 750hp?

New version of my tank calculator.

Upgraded talents spec page to allow 3 different saves, right click to save, left click to recover.


Tank Calculator

Frost Tank Build, Questions and Comments

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Rotation:
1.IT-PS-PE-BB/BS-(Deathchill)HB/OB

2a. OB-IT-PE-HB/OB
2b. OB-PE-IT-HB/OB

Assumptions:
1. Pestilence (PE) refreshes dieseases but can miss or be resisted.
2. Runic power gains from untalented two rune abilities are equivalent to two untalented one rune abilities.
3. Abilities that do not use runes are on a different global cooldown than those that do.
4. The first use of a rune has 10 second refresh rate, and then 8 seconds every use there after.
5. Howling Blast hits are calculated individually for each target in range as opposed to one roll for the specfic target.
6. Blood of the North will return a death rune to me regardless of if the attack hits or misses.
7. Acclimation will affect Rune Strike in a later build.
8. I will be using a two hand weapon of some kind, because I will not need to accumulate as much +hit stats to be effective.
9. I am in Frost presence for tanking.

Comments:
1. I use Deathchill in the first rotation basically because of murphy's law. If I save it for when I need it to recover some threat it will assuredly miss. So I use it early to get it on cool down as soon as possible.
2. In combat I start with Rotation 1 then alternate between 2a and 2b for the rest of combat.
3. Acclimation is what currently pushes you above 51 points in frost. If it stays as it is it will still be useful in certain situations but those three talent points might be better spent elsewhere(although I'm not sure where)

Advantages:
1. With Epidemic my dieseases will last two rotations, but with pestilence I keep them refresed every rotation. So if pestilence is missed that rotation I don't need to worry because the next rotation will refresh it.
2. This rotation keeps the same number of FU abilies as others. Most that I have seen perform with 1 in the first and 3 in the second. This keeps 2 and then 2. Dps and threat will be smoother and more predictable.
3. In the 2a and 2b rotations I will always have 1 death rune avaliable. This can be used on any number of abilities for survivability and mitigation without hampering my dps/threat rotation. It will also be up every rotation for me to use easily.
4. Mind Freeze costing no runic power means I can pull with Icy Touch and the freeze the a caster mob. This allows me to use death grip as an emergency button as opposed to a pulling button, but can still be use that way if needed. The same can be said for strangulate, it can be saved for problems as opposed for pulling or such.
5. Hungering Cold is also used as an emergency button. you can save for it with the little bit in Runic Power Mastery, still giving you the ability use Frost Strikes and Rune Strikes and still have it avaliable. I personally have wiped more often too trash and bad pulls than to bosses, so the ability to pause it and refresh the whole situation could be incredibly strong assuming said trash is not immune.
6. Blade Barrier will virtually always be up after the first 6 seconds of continuous combat. If positioning or something forces a break I can easily get it back up in 6 seconds or less.
7. Bladed Armor combined with Frost Presence and Toughness will create be a huge bonus to my damage across the board for my abilities.
8. Improved Icy Touch will cause people to hit me less often, allowing more of my Runic Power to be spent on Frost Strikes or Hungering Cold. This should also make healing easier because it will still be bursty but less often so.
9. Using Icy Touch before Howling Blast allows me to maximize the procs of Rime and ensuring I don't push my use of global cooldowns and runes to far behind.

Questions:
1. I am not currently in the Beta, so I don't have a way to test this build and rotation. If someone could test it I'd be in their debt.
2. I intend to tank. But have not performed in this capacity before so I'm curious if this build would work well. I also imagine I am doing a bit of aoe tanking between Pestilence and Howling Blast.
3. I am not sure how Runic Power generates. I believe those rotations should generate 75 runic power per rotation, if it is different than certain talens would need to be adjusted to compensate.
4. Sources, including this thread, do not seem to agree on the rate at which runes regenerate, a definitive clarification would be incredibly useful for my theorycrafting.

Any Comments, Suggestions, and even "Gosh you're idiot" flames would be useful. Thank you.

First of all, replace death coil with frost strike. Having to use DC is rare as frost and should never be used if you are in range. It's a melee attack so needs less hit and cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried either.

Pretty sure that pest does not refresh the diseases, it only spreads them.

Only use HB if you get a rime proc, killing machine proc, or there are 2 or more mobs in range. Oblit is the superior ability on single targets due to its high crit chance and needing less hit.

If all you are planning to do is 5 mans, then hungering cold is ok, but the large RP cost is a little high for an emergancy button and you would have to plan for it. Just remeber that rune strike will burn a lot of your RP, even if you are not using frost strike and you will have to actively try to use it. It may turn out to not be worth it for you. The mobs can be immune too as well as other players dots breaking it or hitting them. As a tank, you should be worried more about holding multiple mobs than using CC.

The 2 points in endless winter can stay if you want, but remeber that you cannot pull with mind freeze, it is melee range only. You can use strangulate for that, even with a 2 minute cooldown it will still be up for many pulls. You can place those points into merciless combat. A little extra damage/threat never killed anybody.

Definately remove that point from runic power mastery and place it in glacier rot.

Has anyone verified if the dps from an Unholy DK tank's ghoul contributes to the DK's threat or it's own threat? Does Master of Ghouls affect this?

Opps. DC was meant to mean Deathchill not Deathcoil. I'll adjust the post to reflect that.

I do plan to use, oblit over howling blast in a single target situation. Those dashes are meant to reflect that. Same applies to Blood strike versus Blood Boil. The first, oblit and blood strike in single target situation, and Howling Blast and Blood boil for aoe situations.

And I forgot to check the range on mind freeze. That does make me sad and makes Endless Winter a lot less appealing. However I like it better than Merciless combat.

I plan to use these glyphs also.

Glyphs:

Minor:
Blood Tap
Horn of Winter
Pestilence

Major:
Frost Strike
Chains of Ice
Icebound Fortitude

Depending on the AP coefficient attached to Glyph of Chains of Ice it might make Endless Winter a very strong talent to have.