Our theorycrafting is early in its life, to be sure. But keep in mind the disparity you noticed might be due to preference or even habit (since most people spent the majority of their time as unholy). To be fair, it could also be that your results are 100% accurate and on the ball.

My point is that we've had fairly reliable data go every way with every spec at this point. What we DO see is that they all seem to be hitting the same, approximate ballpark. Until we can prove without a doubt otherwise, it is fair to say that all DPS specs (five that I could count: 51/13/7, 50/0/21, 17/54/0, 17/0/54, and 15/37/19 DW) are CLOSE. Close enough that differences in gear/skill/preference/practice matters in determining which is superior. In my opinion, we are a long way off from telling everyone to spec x/y/z and use Rotation X. And my hope is that blizzard really did design this class well enough that we never see that happen.

For example, your experience with your gear has put unholy ahead. My personal experience put frost at the top while raiding, and unholy at the top while hitting a target dummy. I've seen people from top raiding guilds on beta swear they did their best DPS with blood.

While your experience with test dummies may show a certain set of results, a full array of buffs/debuffs + raid DPS contribution cannot be discounted. Lacking armor debuffs alone will be a strong shift from blood to unholy, lack of BoM/BS will hurt as well, and so forth.

Is what I can come up with right now, anything I forgot or could be consolidated some more? I got Zurm offering to help/write the Specs portion, but obviously all the input possible is welcome.

I think the above would cover most things if not everything.

Any thread you make in the next two weeks will bloat again. I don't want to discourage anyone, it just will happen . New class, new addon, and so on. I'd wait two weeks for constructive threads.

Of course, but the ultimate goal is to create a TTT article (imo) and a thread will just be a first step towards that. That said, even if a new thread bloats, the current thread (this one) is just way too massive right now.

That looks like a great start Illundai. I've been keeping up with this thread quite a bit latley and I can say that it's about time for this to happen. With as complicated as this thread is it's hard to keep up sometimes with everything thats going on. Sure the new thread will probably bloat up but at least this way tanking and DPS information will be seperate.

I do have a suggestion though. You have specs and information for all three trees, but what about a tri-spec. I know it hasn't been as throughly looked into as the other specs but maybe it deserves a spot in the front page?

The point per point stat values for DK should not really have agility very high at all. Crit rating and Agility should be de-linked, because crit rating gives us spell and melee crit and is far better budgeted than agility. Also, it should be Hit to 9%, and then expertise to 6%, and then Str / Crit. Despite their deceptively simple DPS mechanics,

Deathknight itemization is actually fairly complex and involves a great deal of individual choice and spec differentials. For example, Attack power is far better valued under an Unholy spec due to Impurity being maxed than it is as Frost, simple, but always worth a reassessment of the tables.

Good catch, forgot that one. I'll add it to the list.

Yeah, I'll delink Crit and Agility. I was planning on splitting Hit into Spell & Melee hit sections, explaining how they are important (or not) in their own way. I didn't actually add the stats choices in a specific order, just in the order they popped up in my mind. Perhaps they should be ordened from most important to least important?

The ghoul and gargoyle would do well with their own chapter or as an appendix. Some miscellaneous stuff, a sort of 'good to know' part, for example how to CC in instances using Death Grip + Chains of Ice, even though that's not the focus of the reference or guide you'd be writing. There's so much to cover though, it's an arduous task. Is anyone working on a theorycrafting think tank entry?

As to dr_ALLCOM3, I don't think it's too early to make a thread like that. When useful bits are consolidated into one thread it'll greatly help reduce the number of confused people. Like others have stated, trying to find useful information from this thread is a big mess. You can't really skim it, because you'll miss out on useful information, but whenever you encounter such information you don't know whether it's outdated or not. Hence even on day one a thread with the most useful pointers for the class, with tanking and DPS separated, is anything but futile.

I tried to send a PM but it didn't seem to go through properly, so I'll post it here:

Some stuff that might be useful to include in the first post:

Professions
Macros (though I can't think of any PvE dps oriented right now)
Ghoul, Gargoyle, and DRW details
Glyphs

Maybe we should start with a DK Compendium thread and a DK Talk thread.

Absolutely, Right now if I was to list for a single DPS spec, (Unholy 54, 17 Blood), which is the easiest to model based on the data we have, it would go roughly like this:

• 1. Hit Rating - To 9% Total from Gear
• 2. Expertise Rating - To 6% Total from Gear
• 3. Strength - or highest budget value for attack power per slot
• 4. Crit Rating - to a paperdoll final of around 27%
• 5. Agility
• 6. Armor Penetration
• 7. Haste Rating

Obviously 5-7 basically suck for us, Deathknights want to deeply focus on crit and attack power after they have PVE capped hit and expertise.

Index

• Other Prominent Death Knight discussions
• Common Abbreviations
• Benefits of bringing a Death Knight to a raid
• Death Knight Resource mechanics
  • Runes: How They Work
    • Death Runes
  • Runic Power
• Itemizing as a Death Knight
  • Stats choices
    • Hit Rating
    • Expertise Rating
    • Attack Power / Strength
    • Crit Rating
    • Agility
    • Armor Penetration Rating
    • Haste Rating
    • Spell Power
  • Dual Wield vs Two-Handed
  • Trinkets
  • Enchants and Gems
  • What about our ranged slot?
  • Consumables
  • Glyphs
• Death Knight Pets: Ghoul, Summon Gargoyle and Dancing Rune Weapon
• Specs
  • Unholy
    • Benefits brought by Unholy specs
    • Talent Choices
    • Rotation
    • DPS Increase per Talent point breakdown
  • Blood
    • Benefits brought by Blood specs
    • Talent Choices
    • Rotation
    • DPS Increase per Talent point breakdown
  • Frost
    • Benefits brought by Unholy spec
    • Talent Choices
    • Rotation
    • DPS Increase per Talent point breakdown
  • Tri-Spec
    • Benefits brought by a Tri-Spec
    • Talent Choices
    • Rotation
    • DPS Increase per Talent point breakdown
• Useful Links and Addons
• Useful Macro's
• Professions
• Miscellaneous
• Notes for Raid Leaders

I think that's plenty now - we can keep adding more and more but the idea is to have a consolidated thread, so I'd think we should keep it to this.

Fantastic. Feel free to farm some of this out. I certainly don't mind covering the itemization sections and overview, its easy, I don't need beta access to do it, and it is vital to proper play for the class.

Looks like you're off to a good start, Illundai. Is it worth discussing using abilities based upon priority as opposed to a strict rotation? I suspect it will be difficult to stick with a rotation 100% of the time when you aren't expertise and hit capped. For example, if you miss with blood strike during the first part of an unholy DPS rotation, you won't have enough death runes to perform multiple scourge strikes in the second part of the rotation. I wasn't in the beta, so I can only assume that something like this will have a significant impact on DPS over the course of a long fight.

Here's something else you may want to include in your article. I'd actually appreciate a concise and practical explanation of the pros and cons of each race, since the first basic (and irreversible) choice for every new DK is race.

For example, I'd love to know roughly how much more DPS will an orc DK do in a raid boss fight, compared to a belf DK with similar gear, build and player skill. As far as DPS racials go, Orcs have Blood Fury, +5% to pet damage, +5 expertise with axes, shorter stun and fear durations. Blood Elves have good looks. Now appearance is important, but if an orc DK deals say ±5% more potential damage than a belf DK, then I will be pretty much forced to choose Orc as my race, because I anticipate huge competition for raid DPS spots in my guild. Surely many more people would do the same, so this topic may have its place your compendium.

Please please separate the dps and tank threads. If that means compendium, talk, and tank compendium so be it.

First of all, I just want to thank all of the DK beta folks who are offering some incredibly valuable and constructive information here. I have a quick question about a couple of the talents. All the complicated stuff has been very thorougly discussed, but there are a couple simple questions I couldn't find answers to.

First, blade barrier. Seems like an undervalued talent, but if I understand it correctly, if you were to utilize a blood rune every 10 seconds, you would be granted a 10% bonus to parry? Or is it only if both blood runes are on cooldown? If I'm not understanding the mechanics properly, could someone please shed some light on how this talent actually functions?

Second, with the wandering plague talent, the disease ticks for AOE damage. Does this also spread the disease to the targets affected by the AOE damage, or is it simply an AOE damage tick?

Thanks for your help, sorry for the rudimentary questions, but all the complex stuff has been well handled, so this is all I've got for now.

Would it be helpful to have a 'Known/Confirmed Bugs and Issues' section? Perhaps another short section that details things that were once part of the Death Knight spec/arsenal/spells that have been removed?

Wandering plague does not spread the damage, it is the ticks damage dealt to all targets in range a second time, with something like a 1 second internal cooldown.

Blade barrier is undervalued? It is one of the best tanking talents in the entire game. It triggers anytime you have 0 blood runes available. So if you go from 1 available to 0 it triggers, or if you go from 2 available to 0 it triggers(lets say your two blood runes were death runes and you obliterated).

It would be good if the crit rating section explained which of our spells and abilities can crit, which ones use melee or spell critical chance, and how wandering plague works. If you think this section would grow too large, you could make it a separate section.

Notes:

- Expertise needed from gear should take into account talented Expertise in each tree. (11/5/5 respectively.) If that already did, neeeevermind.

@Zolak: Blade Barrier will, upon using your second blood rune, give you a 10s duration buff granting +10% parry. This buff, as of the last time I saw it, will refresh each time you put all your runes on cooldown, that is, "empty your rune bar", so to speak. If it drops, however, the only way to get it back is use both blood runes. It's pretty good.