(Gargoyle and Corpse explosion are occasionally handy while questing)
I have tried Gargoyle and just found most times I never got full use out of the duration to make it worth the talent point, I have not tried Corpse explosion, I could see that might be useful I'll give it a try.
Just curious here....seeing as there are over 100 pages on here, what is probably shaping up to be the best leveling build & rotation to get to 80, and then at 80, what would be the best raid tanking build & rotation?
Unholy is the best bar-none leveling build, even if perma-Ghoul was removed.
Your 80 build depends on what you run with (for example, if you have no Affliction Lock or Balance Druid, you need to be Unholy) and your tanking build depends on your preference, I prefer Frost, but any spec does fine at tanking pre-heroic/raids.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
For glyph as unholly, i guess you have some choice between :
Glyph of Plague Strike
Glyph of Scourge Strike
Glyph of BloodStrike
Glyph of the ghoul
Glyph of icy touch seems mandatory for blood and unholly specc, 40% decrease damage on ice touch you will have a Death Coil ready which have a 5% better AP scale than Icy Touch and twice more base damage.
Unholy is the best bar-none leveling build, even if perma-Ghoul was removed.
Your 80 build depends on what you run with (for example, if you have no Affliction Lock or Balance Druid, you need to be Unholy) and your tanking build depends on your preference, I prefer Frost, but any spec does fine at tanking pre-heroic/raids.
Actually, when I get to 80, I am specing Frost to fill that new tanking niche that Death Knights are designed for from what I read. Still not letting Blizz dev's scare me though and am going to start off dual wield tanking and see how that goes. It's amazing though that almost all builds and spec's I have seen are all revolving around heavy blood, heavy unholy, or a combo of the two.,....very few Frost tank builds listed, and even then they are questionable at best.
Actually, when I get to 80, I am specing Frost to fill that new tanking niche that Death Knights are designed for from what I read. Still not letting Blizz dev's scare me though and am going to start off dual wield tanking and see how that goes. It's amazing though that almost all builds and spec's I have seen are all revolving around heavy blood, heavy unholy, or a combo of the two.,....very few Frost tank builds listed, and even then they are questionable at best.
See I'm thinking blood will be the redheaded step child for tanks. Most DKs I run across are Unholy then Frost. Even with dps blood seems to trail behind.
I'm still trying to figure out what I want to run with, have really liked each spec I've tried.
Something else I wanted to mention, now that I thought about it. I noticed a lot of unholy specs without points in unholy aura. From my experience as a ret paladin, I remember modeling pursuit of justice and being amazed at how much dps it added on certain fights. A raid-wide version of that for 2 points is amazing... in fact when thinking about total raid dps for a pure PVE spec on most naxx fights those points might be the single greatest DPS increase in the entire tree.
Just something to keep in mind from a purely RDPS point of view.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
There is an amazing amount of information in this thread and I have tried to read through as much of it as possible. I am trying to figure out if there has been any spreadsheets developed that can compare DPS stats to each other. For example somehting like 100 ap = 50 armor pen or 60 crit rating = 30 hit.
Just trying to figure out a way to determine what gear is better than others.
I have tried Gargoyle and just found most times I never got full use out of the duration to make it worth the talent point, I have not tried Corpse explosion, I could see that might be useful I'll give it a try.
Well, I didn't mean to imply that either of them was any use while grinding - they both suck for that. But questing is a much larger portion of our net xp than it has been in the past, and gargoyle is very handy for quests that have you killing someone that's hard to kill (there are a lot of those in level 65-70 especially. I don't know about post-70 yet). Corpse Explosion is just in there because it's really amazing for aoe grinding with another aoe class. You can leave it out if you like, it's certainly not important :-)
There is an amazing amount of information in this thread and I have tried to read through as much of it as possible. I am trying to figure out if there has been any spreadsheets developed that can compare DPS stats to each other. For example somehting like 100 ap = 50 armor pen or 60 crit rating = 30 hit.
Just trying to figure out a way to determine what gear is better than others.
If this has been answered before sorry!
-Fistt
The Rawr module I'm working on will able to do this. I don't *think* any spreadsheets do this yet, but the Rawr module will have gear, stat, talent, and possibly rotation comparisons. It's probably another 1-2 weeks away though.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Awesome thanks Zurm. Is there also a listing anywhere that consolidates stat caps at 80, like 9% shander hit cap at 294 +Hit, Spell hit cap at 556 etc? Is there a Haste cap?
Well, I didn't mean to imply that either of them was any use while grinding - they both suck for that. But questing is a much larger portion of our net xp than it has been in the past, and gargoyle is very handy for quests that have you killing someone that's hard to kill (there are a lot of those in level 65-70 especially. I don't know about post-70 yet). Corpse Explosion is just in there because it's really amazing for aoe grinding with another aoe class. You can leave it out if you like, it's certainly not important :-)
Ahh Alright that makes much more sense then, all my experience so far with DKs is pre-70 and I even when I was soloing most of the group quests the mods died to fast to make the gargoyle worth it. Yeah I really like the idea of CE based on my play style, I find its much faster to AE farm stuff on the quests that just require you to kill things.
Something else I wanted to mention, now that I thought about it. I noticed a lot of unholy specs without points in unholy aura. From my experience as a ret paladin, I remember modeling pursuit of justice and being amazed at how much dps it added on certain fights. A raid-wide version of that for 2 points is amazing... in fact when thinking about total raid dps for a pure PVE spec on most naxx fights those points might be the single greatest DPS increase in the entire tree.
Just something to keep in mind from a purely RDPS point of view.
I would very much agree, I know our ret pally loved that talent and most of our dps swore by the minor run speed boot enchants, the 15% aura might be an extremely valuable buff that DK's can bring to raids and is there any other class / spec that can bring that to the raid? The only thing that comes to mind for me is hunters and the whole daze business seems to make that much less appealing.
Actually, when I get to 80, I am specing Frost to fill that new tanking niche that Death Knights are designed for from what I read. Still not letting Blizz dev's scare me though and am going to start off dual wield tanking and see how that goes. It's amazing though that almost all builds and spec's I have seen are all revolving around heavy blood, heavy unholy, or a combo of the two.,....very few Frost tank builds listed, and even then they are questionable at best.
From what I have read on many sites, Death Knights little specialty is tanking magic users. And I have also read that the best way for a Frost spec Death Knight to tank was to dual wield, but Blizz also said if EVERYONE went dual wielding, that they would do somethign to "fix" it so not everyone did it that way.
Problem is, if they don't want to start nerfing things right off the bat, don't make an ability so that it benefits from somethign you originally may not have intended to begin with.
Just seems like the dev's are doing that all over the place with a lot of classes right now. But as far as 2 hand tanking or dual wield tanking...its kind of a split camp. Many say you should tank with a 2 hander just for the Runeforging ability, other say dual wield is best to tank because of the armor reducing and attack speed debuffing you will be doing. Ultimately it will initially come down to personal choice....and if push comes to shove, the dev's will end up making the choice for us. I'll test out both to give it a fair trial and make my own decision at that point.
From what I have read on many sites, Death Knights little specialty is tanking magic users.
That used to be true, but it isn't really any more (and even if it was, Unholy is MUCH better as an anti-caster tank). DKs real "niche", if you want to call it that, is as the avoidance tank. Except we don't have to sacrifice much mitigation to get to really high avoidance levels, thanks to 18% non-diminishing avoidance from talents (Blade Barrier + Anticipation + Frigid Dreadplate).
I wonder, assuming you run a rotation in BP, with strikes and 2 spells, that mean you go for 6*1.5 secondes = 9 secondes rotation, and 1 seconde waste.
Well now consider you have 11.34% haste, it mean you can do one more spell : allow a rotation based on 4 strikes and 3 spell and not any seconde waste.
GCD = 1.5 secondes
Spell GCD = 1.33
I was thinking about something like that :
--0--1.5-2.83-4.33---------------5.66-7.16-8.49-9.99
PS---IT---BS---DC(or pause)---SS---UB---BS--
15---35---45---0 ( or 45 )--------65---05---15--
--0--1.5-2.83--4.33-5.66-7.16-8.66-9.99
PS---IT---BS---DC---BS---SS---DC--
30---50---60----20----30---50---10-- + 8 RP from butchery
You will often have a slot at the first rotation for throw one more DC saving 33 RP per cycle.
That's really sad butchery only give 2 RP/5 secondes, it would be very nicer at 2.5 RP/5 secondes, allow much more possibility.
You can try my spreadsheet posted a few pages back. Lots of talents aren't modeled, most notably Unholy Blight, but it does have stat comparisons that you can use as a rough guideline.
I'm not really working on it much at the moment so it likely won't get any better (unless someone else steps up) before the Rawr module renders it irrelevant, but if you want an idea now it's probably your best bet. Particularly if you're tough enough to add some of the missing models yourself.
Finally, the abilities and spec's are NOT predefined (only the rotation length), so you should be able to compare anything. This is specifically why I created the custom sheet to compare any arbitrary spec with the three "standard" dps specs, so that small changes would become more apparent. I have added in numbers for them, but they all use identical code, so they are interchangeable (and if they're not that's a bug).
I am very interested in the setup for your 7k HB crit, so I can find the flaw in my formula's though and I know I don't have the apc for HB. I do know the Blood Boil damage is still off as well.
Thank you very much for your work i DO appreciate it even if looking back on my post it seemed a little bit hostile it was not intended to be so.
The way i ended up fixing HB even without APC was just to take into account the fact that it does double damage all the time vs targets affected with frost fever. i messed around with it some and at 3000AP to get the damage numbers right on max crit i had about 5% or so APC.
I understand that the technical limits of creating a rotation is painful but not all rotations are the same length even though it seems intuitive that they should be similar due to rune cooldowns and what not. Personally i have been using a rotation that clips the back end of my diseases and it turned out to do more damage per second than my other rotations. So if it would be at all possible to setup a rotation and then have the spreadsheet automatically assume you are starting over right there and thus calculate DPS at that point, that would be awsome.
As for my rotations i came up with the following
20 second rotation with extended disease duration
IT PS OB BS BS FS FS OB OB FS OB (FS if available RP)
total abilities used per 20 seconds
IT 1
PS 1
OB 4
BS 2
FS 3.5
Disease uptime 92%
40 second rotation with no extended diseases, no clip
IT PS OB BS BS FS FS OB IT PS BS BS FS OB FS OB IT PS FS OB FS OB FS
total abilities used per 20 seconds
IT 1.5
PS 1.5
OB 3
BS 2
FS 3.5
Disease uptime 90%
18 second rotation with no extended diseases, clipping diseases
IT PS OB BS BS FS OB IT PS OB FS FS
total abilities used per 20 seconds
IT 2.222222222
PS 2.222222222
OB 3.333333333
BS 2.222222222
FS 3.333333333
Disease uptime 98%
/edit just looked at your updated one few errors
crit mod for frost strike, obliterate and what are pointing to the wrong talent
crit rate for obliterate is affected by rime and t1 blood talent as well as annihilation
Probably more to it but thats just a first glance
Just seems like the dev's are doing that all over the place with a lot of classes right now. But as far as 2 hand tanking or dual wield tanking...its kind of a split camp. Many say you should tank with a 2 hander just for the Runeforging ability, other say dual wield is best to tank because of the armor reducing and attack speed debuffing you will be doing. Ultimately it will initially come down to personal choice....and if push comes to shove, the dev's will end up making the choice for us. I'll test out both to give it a fair trial and make my own decision at that point.
Zurai answered the niche question.
As for DW tanking...who's saying that? You should look into a bit more than just accepting what other people say. You would know then that common runeforging tanks use for 2H(4% parry) is available on 1H weapons as well in the form of 2% parry. As for the bit you said about armor reducing and attack speed debuffing...that made no sense. DK's don't have any armor reducing abilities, and I don't see how either of those would benefit DW over 2H in a tank situation.
Here, DW vs 2H is cut and dry:
DW gets to wield two fast tank weapons, there are no 2H tank weapons in the expac. However, DW also gets reduced damage on specials(which might be moot from the DW/2H dps talk recently in this thread). But more importantly, DW will parry haste the enemy much more than a 2H will.
The Rawr module I'm working on will able to do this. I don't *think* any spreadsheets do this yet, but the Rawr module will have gear, stat, talent, and possibly rotation comparisons. It's probably another 1-2 weeks away though.
The one I've been working on does have the capacity do exactly that, but right now I don't have the code to compute the direct conversions. You can however do it by hand.
From what I've found (playing around with it), WE and Hit, in and off themselves, aren't vital stats, provided they don't screw up your rotation.
Now modeling what effect they have on the rotation isn't as hard a problem as you might imagine, provided you stick to casting the same spell a second time. The dps loss under these conditions is = the dot loss (as you are extending your rotation) + the time loss. Now if we assume no dot loss (10 second rotation with 2 points in epidemic) we only have a 1.5 second dps loss (15% of our dps assuming no free gcd and 1 second glyph cd on miss) * the probability of loss (1-hit)+(1-dodge) under a 1 roll system. Now if you're hit capped then you can see how 1% dodge is a 1.5% dps loss, and all of a sudden WE and Hit become VERY important stats as essentially its the probability you're sitting around with your thumb up your butt.
Now, this is reflected in the numbers on my spreadsheets by modifying the "average damage" number by this percentage (which you have to do per ability because spells use a 2 roll system).
This was my solution to the problem at any rate, you might be able to find a better one.
Simulation might be a good result if someone wants to look into it.
This includes not only first rotations, but all rotations.
Simple modification for abilities using Both a Frost and Unholy Rune is -(F-U)- . A example rotation using two FU abilities is :A
(F-U)-B-B-(F-U)-R
Not sure what a good notation for Death Runes that preserves what type of rune has been changed. I believe that DX would be sufficient where X is the abbreviation for the type of rune being changed. Ex. Blood rune coverted to a Death Rune would be DB. An full Ex. is:
1.F-U-DB-DB-F-U-R
2.DF-DU-B-B-DF-DU-R
All abilities can be abbreviated to two capitilized letters: IT=Icy Touch, SS=Scourge Strike, OB=Obliterate. There are a few abilities that have similar abbreviations, Deathchill and Death Coil, they can be abbreviated as Dc and DC respectively, and Blood Strike and Bone Shield, abbreviated BS and Bs respectively. These can be added after the runes used. Examples
I don't know if they changed anything about this since your comment, but I see very different results right now. My observations are:
#1 - If you get into combat, all your runes will go 10sec cd from their very first use.
#2 - If you stay in combat, and use the rune immediately when it's up, it again will go 10sec
#3 - If you stay in combat, but don't use the rune immediately, the cd will decrease by exactly the time you waited to use it again (or a maximum about 1.5-2 sec)
#4 - If you get out of combat, the first rule applies when you get into combat again
In fact, this mechanic makes a lot of sense, and helps us with those nasty "21.5 sec rotations", the ones where you use the same 2 runes for 1-1 rune skills and then a doublerune skill: when you use (for example) the Scourge Strike after the initial PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-RP rotation, the F rune will go 10 seconds (rule #2), but the U rune will only go 8.5 seconds (rule #3), so you can start over the whole rotation just in time, making it a 20sec rotation without having us to mess it up (you know, that SS-PS-IT-SS-(RP)-SS-BS-BS-SS-(RP) rotation, which is kindof sensitive on parries and dodges).
Pretty close to the way it was explained to me. Runes overcharge by 2.5 seconds after they are used the first time. If you use it just as it recharges it will come back in 10 seconds. If you use it 2.5 seconds after it recharges it will come back in an additional 7.5 seconds (10 seconds after it recharged before). Using it anytime longer than 2.5 seconds after it recharges results in the same 7.5 second recharge.
A mechanic put in to prevent DPS loss when playing with latency. I personally like the small flexibility it allows in rotations.
Pardon me for showing up 118 pages later but I haven't seen anything that makes frost spec a must have over unholy spec for raid tanking. Am I wrong? It seems both serve their purpose with success. I was starting to look deeply into frost and now I am moving towards unholy because the tree seems more interesting.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would like to hear input from people, that are in beta now, about the success(threat generation, survivability, etc...)of the two tanking specs in raid situations(both boss and trash encounters). I dont think they are going to change the death knight much before xpac comes out so the posts that follow may define which way a death knight tank may spec for raiding.
Pardon me for showing up 118 pages later but I haven't seen anything that makes frost spec a must have over unholy spec for raid tanking. Am I wrong? It seems both serve their purpose with success. I was starting to look deeply into frost and now I am moving towards unholy because the tree seems more interesting.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would like to hear input from people, that are in beta now, about the success(threat generation, survivability, etc...)of the two tanking specs in raid situations(both boss and trash encounters). I dont think they are going to change the death knight much before xpac comes out so the posts that follow may define which way a death knight tank may spec for raiding.
An extra 6 seconds on IBF.
Other than that, its about the same.
UA is twice as long, but half as good.
You get some extra expertise, but that's not really a good reason.
It is nice to be able to Icy, Plague, Pestilence, Death Chill, Howling Blast for aggro, but I doubt its better than Blight + Wandering Plague.
Frigid Dread plate is nice, but you can spec into that and unholy if you really want it (same with Lichbourn).
I like it, but I could easily see you tanking in Unholy if you spec'd right.
Pretty close to the way it was explained to me. Runes overcharge by 2.5 seconds after they are used the first time. If you use it just as it recharges it will come back in 10 seconds. If you use it 2.5 seconds after it recharges it will come back in an additional 7.5 seconds (10 seconds after it recharged before). Using it anytime longer than 2.5 seconds after it recharges results in the same 7.5 second recharge.
A mechanic put in to prevent DPS loss when playing with latency. I personally like the small flexibility it allows in rotations.
I don't think it is working like this to help with the lag in the first place, I think it's primary purpose is to make the PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-(RP)-SS-SS-SS-(RP) type rotations work (as in making them 20 sec, instead of 21.5 sec rotations). Although a couple of ppl mentioned that they experience different results, and I'd like to ask them now: have you tried measuring it recently? I had the same 8sec cooldowns like a week ago no matter what I did, and all the sudden it works now for a few days, and I can't reproduce 8 sec cooldowns (without waiting that 2 seconds after recharge ofc), even in laggy conditions.
10/15/08, 2:57 PM
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