• Zurm

I did modify it, but I have since deleted it since I've been working on my Rawr module. I just linked his original post that I remember, he most likely made more recent modifications to it as well.

 

Aedon

Well I would like for people to post me specs and if you use 2 hand or DW with that spec. Its a headache to go through the 100+ pages and find the better spec. I will admit that everyone's will be different cause people have different opinions. I will update the list as needed. I will test all the specs listed as DPS goes and will take any opinions on tank specs that are listed as well. I'm just trying to compile some of the discussions that have been made into one thread with the specs. Some specs may be very similar between DPS and Tank, thats ok.

Example:
DPS
Blood

51/13/7 - 2 hander - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

44/0/27 Hybrid - 2 hander - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


Unholy

17/0/54 - 2 hander - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Frost
21/50/0 - 2 hander - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

TANK

Blood



Unholy



Frost

 

Janraea

Oh well, I'll add both unholy builds to mine at some point. At least UB is easier to model than DRW :-)

 

Moratia

Tx for the test, my view is, for having the max DPS possible, you surely need to do something every time, meaning a 10 CDU rotation, i am sur you won't be able to reach it even in end game with a second part of rotation SS-SS-SS, you will need about 7*40=280 RP ! And you can't store more than 100 of them.

I start from this for work on my DK rotation/build. Based on your number, if only one BS have a critical, it will be better than you're SS if it not get a critical strike. This situation would happen often since you will have 2 critical roll on BS against only one roll for SS.
You will also generate 5 more RP and the second you will waste from you're second BS will never be used anyway so it not really matter.
The next point is, DK doesn't scale very well on critical stat, only SS does, going for DW, you will more worry about bumping you're haste/hit/expertise and of course AP than critical. That's already a lot of stat to keep high (i am not event mention ArP wich could have an interest if you just not use anymore SS or only 2 of them).

Next point is, if you go for a rotation like PS-IT-SS-BS-BS- RP burn, you will be 100% of the time under desecration, so you're 2 last strike will hit 5% harder and you're white damage/nécrosis/BcB will also hit 5% harder for 8 secondes.

That's why i really don't think you can just make a BS-BS versus SS, you must do a whole dps cycle like PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-UB-(RP burn)-SS-SS-SS-(RP burn) and compare the overall damage with IT-PS-SS-BS-BS-UB-( RP burn )-IT-PS-SS-BS-BS-( RP burn )

The test would be more accurate if they care to fixe BcB before realese and if you can find a fast OffHand but still i guess you can already see if i have find a nice thing or an useless one.

 

Zurai

For the record, 3000 AP is absurdly low for a DPS build. I hit 3k AP with the premade, which is 100% pvp gear, pure stam/resil gems, and wears 7 blues. A Naxx-geared DPS DK will hit 4k AP with no problem and I wouldn't be surprised to see 5-6k by the time Icecrown rolls around.

 

Janraea

Naxx25 gear + buffs puts it at around 5k.

 

Tinweasele

DPS FROST
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Zurai

SS-SS-SS is a bad rotation. The GOOD Reaping rotation is PS-IT-SS-SS ~ BS-BS-SS-SS. Doing 4 Scourge Strikes in a row leaves you waiting for non-paired runes to refresh before you can throw a SS. Using the Blood Strike death runes for your diseases means you can use every rune as it comes up, which decreases dead time and thus increases DPS. This has the side effect of reducing the RP strain of using every global cooldown.

You're still making the comparison between two global cooldowns and one global cooldown. This is a bad comparison. Speaking from experience playing a Death Knight in beta, I only "miss" a GCD about once per minute of straight DPS - and that's without the Icy Touch glyph or the 4 piece T7 bonus. With those two, I'd never miss a GCD.

Finally, how in the world do you draw the conclusion that DK's don't scale well with crit? Especially as Unholy deep enough to grab SS, every attack we have crits at 200% as a minimum (except Unholy Blight, and that may be a bug since it used to crit, and Gargoyle, which is a victim of the pets-have-0%-base-spell-crit-and-no-crit-scaling issue). We're not like pre-WOTLK Affliction locks that got almost no benefit from crit. Every attack we have crits, and every attack we have crits at 200% or higher. Crit is actually one of the best DPS stats for us.

And anyway, your entire stated reason for going DW (not wanting to waste +hit to get to spell hit cap) is, as I already stated, based on faulty logic/math. If you take Virulence and have a Shadow Priest in the raid, you WILL be spell hit capped as long as you're melee hit capped with a 2h weapon.

 

kymara10

i have been testing a few builds and this one seems to stick out more than the rest. it is a hybrid build of both blood and unholy and it is also a 2h weapon dps build.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

if anyone else can test this spec out and give me some feedback i would be very appreciative.

i have also been wondering about DK DW dps or tanking and whether or not it is better than 2h dps/tanking. i have been messing around with a few builds on wowhead but cannot test any DW specs on the beta since i have no 1h weapons at the moment. here is a dw dps spec also if anyone can give me feedback on this as well.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Aedon

Thanks for the input, all are welcome so I can update my post. and we can then rank what we think the best builds are as of now.

 

Moratia

Every thing critical at 200% but SS critic at 230%, this way, more you have SS in the rotation, more you worry about critical wich is an easy stat to bump (ton of it on every piece of stuff).

You plan doing a 20 secondes rotation without epidemic ? or not take 3% increase strengh and 60% increase ghoul strengh and stamina ?
If you wanna both i don't get how you will take virulence in you're template. Even worse you will waste all the hit you'll get from stuff, lowering the scaling.
You only don't like DW, i think we all know now, you love 2 hand, good for you, but i not ask for an opinion on this point, never did i.

You never missed any GCD with Unholly Presence ? That mean you can generate 240 RP by white hit in 7 secondes ?
If you are talking in Blood Presence, then read post before reply.

 

Sunstealer

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, or bash on your even though your english isn't the best but i am having a terrible time understanding what in god's name you're talking about. You would only ever be able to do 5 SS in a row and that would be in a circumstance assuming you 1) have 0 RP to start with and 2) you dont have to use your GCD's for anything else, but you'd still be waiting for rune CD's to finish in order to keep using them. So use DC in the mean time.

Again i'm having a hard time understand what you're actually talking about, but two BS give 20 rp (untalented since you're not blood spec) while one SS gives 20 RP with dirge (5 extra RP from SS and PS), so you get the same RP only over 2 GCDs instead of one. Moves that use 1 rune give 10 RP, moves that use 2 give 15 RP and moves that use 3 runes give 20 RP.

Going back to my last post, i did say that 1 BS crit is NOT as high as a single SS hit. You would have to have both BS crit and the SS never crit for it to be truly better.

Now i never mentioned a thing about crit, i was merely talking in talents. Comparing only Vicious Strikes (6% crit and 30% crit bonus dmg via 2 points for SS and PS) vs Subversion (9% crit for BS, HS and Oblit). That's why BS only gets 3% more crit than SS. You cant split crit up between different abilities when you itemize it, where would you get that idea?

Desecration lasts 12 seconds last i checked.

** Just double checked on the beta, it is accurately lasting 12 seconds.

For starters, you'll want to use your 2 BS before you use your SS so you have your death runes up sooner and can SS once more before having to refresh your diseases.

If you want my opinion on a good rotation, like i said pick up Glyph of Icy Touch (gives 10 more RP from IT, but lowers dmg by 10%. Totally worth it), pop Bone Shield before going in so you get just a tiny bit more RP and do as follows... (For RP purposes and a good build you'll have Butchery which gives 2 RP every 5 seconds while in combat, i'll try my best to include that in here)

Rotation: IT - PS - BS - BS - UB - SS - SS - DC - PS - IT - DC - SS - SS - BS - BS - UB - PS - IT - DC
RP amt: [25] [41] [51] [62] [3] [23] [44] [5] [20] [41] [1] [22] [42] [53] [63] [4] [19] [40] [0]
Seconds: 1.5 - 3 - 4.5 - 6 - 7.5 - 9 - 10.5 - 12 - 13.5 - 15 - 16.5 - 18 - 19.5 - 21 - 22.5 - 24 - 25.5 - 27 - 28.8

Obviously this rotation won't be perfect as you may end up with around 1 second of wait time where you may not have quite enough time or RP to do anything, this is merely a chart showing a rotation with TC, rather than showing you what is actually happening with my toon. I tend to DC back to back and i'm trying to stop doing that so much in order to turn my blood runes back to death runes faster. Works in progress i suppose.

As far as the quick offhand, that effects BCB and Killing machine more than necrosis (although it does still effet necrosis of course). That's something that would improve DPS a bit, as would BCB being fixed.

I hope that helped a bit more, and i hope my rotation chart helps in some way.

@Zurm: Yes, i understand they'll be fixing BCB, taking the hidden cd away etc. This spec wasnt done for myself, as i'll be using a 15/0/56 build if i DW and a 17/0/54 build if i 2h it up.

Two hand build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...03150003133151

DW build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...03150003133151

 

Zurai

Spec. Hits all the DPS talents for an Unholy build except Desecration, which is useless in an awful lot of boss fights for three reasons:

1) Boss is larger than the Desecrate radius, forcing you to move inside the boss's model (and thus be vulnerable to a lot more damage plus risking parries) in order to gain any benefit. Examples: Any dragon, Gluth, maybe Loatheb.
2) The fight is mobile, requiring either you or the boss to move frequently. The Desecration is static, meaning if either you or the boss moves very much you won't be able to use it. Examples: Grobbulus, Noth (blinks), Heigan, Four Horsemen.
3) Scourge Strike glyph allows you to increase your DPS by skipping Plague Strikes and Icy Touches most of the time. Having a talent that's ONLY triggered by PS makes the SS glyph pointless - and yes, the extra SS+GCD is more DPS than the 5% from Desecration+IT+PS.

Yes, I like 2h more than DW. That has no bearing on what I'm saying, though. I'm not giving you opinions; I'm giving you facts. The fact that you're disregarding what I'm saying and choosing to attack me instead just makes me wonder exactly why you're so vehement about all this if all you want to do is max spell hit without wasting itemization points. It seems obvious to me that the hit argument is NOT your real motivation here. It's OK to want to DW just because you want to DW.

As for Unholy Presence: Unholy Presence is the worst presence for Unholy DPS, regardless of whether you're going with DW or 2H. There's no reason to use it over Blood Presence, precisely because it leaves you with too many GCDs. With Blood Presence, you use every GCD and wind up dealing a significant amount more damage than you would using all your runes and all your RP in an Unholy Presence rotation and doing nothing but auto-attacking for 4 seconds out of every 10.

 

Sunstealer

From my experience (and i've tried so many builds over the last month or so) is that unholy wins by a long shot and for one reason: Perma-ghoul.

I've run tests on DW frost vs 2h Unholy vs DW unholy vs 2h Blood in many different variations and all of them have been rather close (between 550-600k dmg over 5 min), but i always left ghoul damage seperate from my damage, trying to figure which is better personal dps.

With my best unholy test i got about 593k damage in the 5 min period. The ghoul did an ADDITIONAL 85k damage for the same duration. Blood was by far the worst damage total, with Gargoyle and bloodworms, i only got a combined total of around 560k, which is the same damage i got with an unholy DW build with out combining the ghoul. Frost kept up quite nicely with the unholy spec, but again without the ghoul there's a bigger difference than i previously realized (lots of late nights i guess...)

@zurai: i never thought about desecration like that. I did the spider wing the other day i wasnt really moving all that often, except on Anub'Rekhan (which still wasnt too terribly often). However you do make a good point, although i still dont agree with the point you put in gargoyle. Not enough RP to make it worthwhile imo.

 

ukator

Been playing around instances with a Blood tanking spec that I've had good luck with...
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

In addition tank specs for Unholy and Frost to get conversation going.

Unholy

Frost

 

Zurai

The point in Gargoyle isn't really "important", although with the way the Gargoyle scales at the moment it should be used every cooldown. It's something like 800 DPS in premade gear while it's up and scales dramatically higher with more AP. 60% of your AP as damage per attack and it gets ~28 attacks per summon if you keep it up for the whole minute. That's almost 1700% AP->damage, not even counting the base damage. With 4000 AP (easily gotten with naxx gear and raid buffs), that's 67200 damage before considering base damage OR ebon plague. With ebon plague, it jumps to 75936 damage. Even if the base was 0, that's 421 DPS averaged over the entire 3 minute cooldown. UB is only about 120 DPS now that it doesn't crit, the extra disease is only in the 20's, and DC is only another 150-200 or so. The Gargoyle is absolutely worth using as a pure DPS unholy spec.

Now, for a tank build, that's different. The Garg's threat is separate from yours, and you won't be able to use Rune Strike with the Garg out, so that's a massive, massive threat loss for you while it's going. Not worthwhile, IMO.

 

Arkasi

Has anyone run the numbers while presence dancing? An example for dps would be using unholy presence for to blow through your runes faster and then dropping to blood presence to use your rp abilities. If I'm not mistaken most posts seem to assume a static presence for the duration.

Also, what are people's opinions on Bone Shield Vs. Unbreakable Armor Vs. Vampiric Blood?

I think vampiric blood is the weakest of the three. It actually requires you to be hurt for maximum benefit, as a tank it won't prevent you from getting destroyed only speeds the recovery from getting almost destroyed. Although, with improved runetap you could recover 30% of of your health, it still seems a bit weak in comparison.

Unbreakable armor seems nice, combined with bladed armor and the strength buff could give a nice ap buff. It seems great from a dps and tank aspect.

Bone shield is also pretty nice. From a dps stand point it could potentially last the whole five minute duration, or at least until it's cooldown is back giving a nice 2% damage buff. From a tank perspective though it entirely depends on how often the mob/boss attacks. Anything faster than every five seconds and it wouldn't last as long as Unbreakable armor.

*Edit*
My frost tank build, take it for what it is.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

 

Zurai

You really can't "stance dance" with presences. They each cost a rune. The only time you should EVER be switching presences mid-fight is if you have to pick up an unexpected mob (MT/OT dies, adds spawn/patrol, etc) and have to switch to Frost Presence, or if you're OTing and your mob dies and you switch away from Frost. Switching back and forth between Blood and Unholy will always be a net DPS loss because you're using up a B and a U for basically nothing.

As for BS vs UBA vs VB, the generally accepted view is that BS > UBA > VB. They each have their high points, but for general purpose use, BS is the best. Unfortunately it's deep in a tree without much else of general purpose tanking use.

 

ukator

Vamp blood is interesting. As you say it doesn't give the automatic response of taking less damage, but I do find it decent. It might however be a great off-tank talent as it can give some secondary healers an easier way to boost you back to 100%.

Most thoughts I've seen rank Bone shield as the best due to the fact that it negates damage for that hit.

 

Janraea

I'd like to add a situation - the 15% run speed increase can sometimes be important for certain mechanics.

And boneshield is by far the best of the three, in terms of net mitigation. It also scales well with avoidance.

 

Arkasi

Hmmm. Good to note. But wouldn't the 30% dps gain from unholy speeding the global cooldown rate, and the 15% dps gain from blood offset the loss. At least from the perspective of a Blood dps rotation?

I thought of something like this blood dps starts in unholy.

Icy touch-Plaguestrike-DeathStrike/Obliterate-HeartStrike-Bloodpresence-RP abilities----Icytouch-HeartstrikeX3-UnholyPresence---Repeat

 

◊ Giant

Why would a blood dps build include bloodworms? Am I missing something as to why you would want to include them?

I guess my question is whether frost is the only viable sub spec for blood dps?

The 51/13/7 spec listed above is good but I'm not sure whether a 51/0/19 (link with 1 floating point would be competitive. The diseases remaining after oblit is somewhat of a moot point as you reapply them immediately or at most miss 1 tick of your first disease.

 

Janraea

No. You can't 'offset the loss' of a third of your resources. You're not just losing two runes, you're losing an obliterate and a heart strike, along with half a deathcoil.

 

Arkasi

1 rune per rotation, so about a sixth of your resources. But yeah you guys are right, it was just food for thought more than anything else. I figure I might as well think of as much as I can to help out.

 

Janraea

I had the same misunderstanding when I first looked at the trees, and got the same set of responses :-)

If it didn't cost runes, stancedancing would unequivocally be the best dps strategy. Probably even if it cost 10 or 20 runepower.