Malphayden

So there aren't going to be any new meta gems?

 

Cabal

The chaotic Skyflare Diamond IS a new metagem, learned in Dalaran.

 

level12wizard

Does anyone know the numerical stance modifiers for presences in a macro (if we use them at all)? I'm trying to make a basic presence swap macro, that will put me in Frost Presence if I'm in Blood, and Blood if I'm in Frost. Something like this:

I would think one is Blood, two is Frost, and three is Unholy, since that's the order you get them.

 

◊ Embar

This is accurate, you get slightly more crit% from the crit rating on the Chaotic as opposed to the Agility on the Relentless.
Meta requirements may or may not be a factor - CSD requires 2 blues, RED requires 1 blue, 1 red, 1 yellow.

On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -- James Nicoll

 

Sylari

I'm incredibly sorry if this is the wrong place to post a question like this, I'm new here and I couldn't find a more appropriate thread...


I'm going to be building myself an Unholy tank and I was wondering if Magic Suppression // AMZ was worth investing the points into for general use and also if Desecration is worth speccing into. (( Especially since I'm probably going to be glyphing Scourge Strike, which de-synergizes with Desecration..))

( Here is my most recent attempt at a build 9/5/57 .. I'm assuming it's pretty bad though...
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I've also heard impurity and gargoyle were fairly bad too ... 'course I've heard that about a lot of talents, even unholy blight.. )

As far as Glyphs I was thinking Bone Shield, Scourge Strike and IBF for majors and.. Horn of Winter , Pestilence and something else for minors..


thanks for any help, and again, very sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this.

edit: Assuming Impurity and Desecration and MS all suck ( I've heard all of these things from different sources, and I'm assuming desecration isn't worth the points since the whole point of Glyph of Scourge Strike is to avoid using Plague strike) .. I've come up with this..
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft I've heard AWFUL things about Corpse Explosion, but I was 1 point short and this talent looked fun.... would it be worth glyphing the minor glyph of CE then?

and one extra question, if I use blood strike with reaping.. does blade barrier proc after I use the blood strikes or after I burn the death runes?
and lastly if I do end up going for CE .. does glyph of corpse explosion's proc count as a corpse explosion, i.e. can it proc off itself?

 

jokeyrhyme

Most of the Unholy tanking builds get Lichborne in Frost. It's nice to have as many panic buttons as possible, as this seems to be one of the strengths of DK tanking.

Doesn't leave you alot of points in Unholy to get everything so you need to prioritise. Gargoyle does not give you threat, so it's not a tanking talent.

I don't think you can fit AMZ into a tanking build really. You'd have to sacrifice too much to get it. To be honest, it's such a massive point investment I doubt it'll see much use. If only Magic Suppression had an additional effect. Raids will never actually need AMZ, but if your leader thinks it'll help out then it would be better for one of the DPS DKs to get it.

I like the look of Desecration. Wish it was just based on Death and Decay though. The Plague Strike trigger, as you've pointed out, hurts Epidemic and the Scourge Strike glyph.

 

Sylari

So it seems like there are alot of unholy talents you end up avoiding in a tanking build... what about impurity, is it even viable? Or am I better off with 5/5 necrosis and then CE or perma ghoul I guess....

 

Shadowalker

I've been reading for quite some time and have gained plenty of information. I've decided on the following spec for leveling: Unholy Leveling

but I'm unsure of a few things. First of all, would Virulence or Unholy Aura be worth getting instead of Outbreak, or is it worth it if I completely remove outbreak all-together and put the points elsewhere? Second, is corpse explosion and/or gargoyle worthwhile for leveling, or would my runic power be too low to make use of them? I read much earlier that gargoyle isn't worth it, but since then they buffed it to 10 seconds + 1 second per 8 runic power, so I wonder if it's worth it.


Next I tried to build an Unholy tanking build, this is what I came to: Unholy Tank

This build is heavily based on DKTankCraftV3.12. I took the build and modified it over a few days, I'm not sure if it ended up different at all though, because I constantly went back to what I had before. A few questions on this spec, is the perma-ghoul worth getting, or would the points be better invested elsewhere? In addition, I've read very conflicting thoughts on Desecration. Is Desecration worth getting, assuming that it centers around the player's feet and not the mob? Lastly, would it be worthwhile to take points from Bladed Armor as well as Desecration or Master of Ghouls/Shadow in order to max AMS/AMZ?


Finally a question about RAF and death knight requirements. Like many in this thread, I plan to use a RAF account to triple my EXP and leave EPL/Hellfire quickly. I will only be buying one account, however, and I wonder if I will be able to create a DK on a non-upgraded account. To clarify, Account A will be WotLK, Account B will be BC, can both accounts make a death knight, assuming 55+ characters exist on both?

 

Sylari

@Shadowalker: Mostly addressing your tanking build

I'm getting huge mixed messages on desecration, if you're Glyphing Scourge Strike it seems like it wouldn't be worth getting since the whole point of SS glyph is to avoid using plague strike.....

My question: Why No Reaping, Wandering Plague, or Outbreak? From what I understood the latter two are great for generating threat on your additional targets and Reaping is huge in your rotation, basically gives you a free Scourge Strike.... Also from what I understand Impurity is kinda fail considering the small AP coefficients you get on your abilities, 25% won't be that spectacular..

Here's the build I was working on:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
CE apparently is going to suck, but it looks fun and I had a loose point there.... and I had no idea where to dump the 2 extra points in order to grab lichborne.


My information is mostly guesswork and what I've garnered from the forums though... just as a warning.

 

jokeyrhyme

Master of Ghouls is definitely not a tanking talent. And those 6 precious talent points are much better spent elsewhere. Blizzard will never require a particular ability from any of the tanks, so we can safely skip AMZ in all but the most experimental builds. AMZ would basically need to be totally imbalanced for it to be juicy enough to take.

Northrend, the 80 level cap, and Death Knights are all features of Wrath, not 3.0. Therefore, only Wrath accounts can make DKs. And RaF will only shortcut you to level 61 at most. I realise people will use that shortcut, but I can't justify the extra expense for just 3 levels, personally.

 

Stoical

You seem to have a lot of questions. I highly recommend you read the first post of the DK DPS Compendium at http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t36303-d...um/#post968938. I know you're looking for a tanking spec, but many of your questions are comparing dps talents, so the comparisons of unholy talents for dps in that post are very relevant.

Impurity does not suck. At the very least, according to the theorycrafting in the post I linked above, it's better than Necrosis and Ravenous Dead, both of which you have maxed out in your spec. It's way better for tanking than Necrosis, given how little of your aggro as Unholy comes from autoattacks; Necrosis will not help you hold aggro on any of your side targets at all, whereas Impurity will be affecting your spread diseases, your D&D, etc. So you would gain quite a bit from switching your 5/5 Necrosis to 5/5 Impurity.

There are a few other similarly mistaken value judgments in your spec that this post can help you correct.

 

Shadowalker

Thanks for the help guys. With the information here, this is my new build: Unholy Tanking

I dropped Impurity and one point in Desecration for Outbreak and Reaping, then I dropped one point in bladed armor and one point in Desecration for Shadow/Ghoul. I see no reason to not get ghoul as a nice thing to have, unless it significantly takes away from my tanking build.

Right now my problem is with Bladed Armor and Desecration. I have a few options:
a) I can take 2 more points out of Bladed armor and put them in Desecration leaving me with 1/5 Bladed, 5/5 Desecration.

b) I can take all 3 point from Desecration and put them in Gargoyle/Unholy Aura giving me 3/5 Bladed, Gargoyle, 2/2 Unholy and 0/5 Desecration

c) I can switch the above leaving 0/5 Bladed and 3/5 Desecration

d) I can drop ghoul and put the point into Desecration/Bladed, and take one out of the lower and give to the higher leaving me with 2/5 in one, and 5/5 in the other.

e) I can take the Bladed points and put them into Wandering Plague, but I tend not to like random chance, and as a tank I doubt my Crit will be above 5-10%.

Since both Desecration and Bladed seem to be TPS-only, it will be a matter of simple testing to determine which to use. I am currently leaning toward option a) and leaving the points in Ghoul because I like pets.

On a side note, is Shadow of Death worthwhile for the 2% stam at a single talent point?

EDIT:
My build was updated to reflect this. Thank you Stoical.

 

Sylari

Thanks I just wanted confirmation on that, I was on another forum before I came here and I was basically told that by speccing Impurity I was the worst world of warcraft player ever born XP, and one of them had a fairly logical sounding argument as to why it wasn't very good, I'll adapt my spec.. looks like I'm actually going back to what my original one was anyways... I probably should have stopped listening to them when I was told Unholy Blight wasnt' worth speccing either though >.>

shadow of death seems completely worthwhile, it's cheap str and stamina really.... and I'd drop desecration entirely in favor of impurity ( which is as good as I was originally thought , not as I was told, sorry for the confusion

here's my most recent revision, which unfortunately is almost identical to my original build >.< ( except my original had gargoyle and only 5 points in frost )
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Anyways I've gotten almost all my questions answered, except for two i have.

1. If I'm talented in Blade Barrier and Reaping, does Blade Barrier activate when I use blood strike or after I consume the death runes?

2. If I'm talented for Corpse Explosion and glyphed for it, I kill a mob with my explosion, so that mob explodes as per the glyph. well if that explosion kills another mob will that one explode as well? In short, can the glyph proc off it's own effect?

 

Pyros

Shortcut to 62 almost, if you gift a level at 59.9. Definitely worth it if you already have a RAF account, not so much without it, and pretty worthless if you don't plan to do it at launch. I did it on my euro server, and I'm the highest DK by about 4levels. Did all of zangarmarsh without seeing any other player, besides lvl 70s watching me play, which makes it much faster than fighting for mobs in wpl/hellfire. You have like one to 2zones over the rest of the DKs for all of outlands. Obviously all this become useless when you hit northrend, but still pretty nice to do 55-68 in 2days.



1. Has been answered many times, yes it procs off deathrunes

2. The glyph specifically says Will not occur more than once every 6seconds. So no it can't chain. I took corpse explo because I hadn't tested it in the lastest builds, and quite honestly it's pretty much worthless. Takes too long to setup, and does too little damage. Maybe if it was back to a RP ability(low cost, like 15 or 20) then it'd be good, but for a unholy rune, it's pretty bad.

 

Aten

I've come up with with this Frost/Blood Tanking specc: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

my questions are, can i really afford to skip Anticipation in favor mark of Blood and Veteran of the 3rd war, and how important will expertize will be for a tanking DK, i still have 2 points in to use and can access thundra stalker.

the thing that worries me the most is losing anticipation, is it really important.

 

Hunglo

Expertise is invaluable (until you hit the cap) for any and all tanks.

 

Daedalix

Why give up max Tundra Stalker (5 expertise) and 10% dmg (read: threat) for a bunch of poor talents and VotTW? Expertise is important and 5% Dodge is absolutely invaluable. Scent of blood is a poor talent, Bladed Armor is much better. I think someone did some proc calculations on it many pages back (RP generation) but it's not worth it in a PvE scenario. It's primarily a pvp talent for RP-starved situations. Let me remind you that we are avoidance tanks. We rely on NOT getting hit. 15% chance for 15 Runic Power is worth far less than 2 RP every 5 seconds and the threat generation afforded by Bladed Armor. Scent of Blood gets worse as your gear gets better. If Scent of Blood scaled differently for each Talent Point (didn't require 3 talent points, or had a higher proc rate) it'd be a great talent.

There has also been some significant discussion dismissing Spell Deflection as a useful sub-tanking talent. Your build also fails to get Guile of Gorefiend which is an absolutely too-good-not-to-get talent deep in Frost. Increasing the duration of Icebound Fortitude is key to our mitigation.

I'm not recommending you get Butchery but it's better than Scent of Blood. VotTW is a great talent but you give up too much in a Frost tanking build to get it. A base 5/8/5 is pretty much necessary until you reach gear levels where you can give up previously "necessary" talents for more play-style based talents.

On another note: now that people are playing their DKs, have you been using a RuneBar addon? Personally I thought I would need one, but I have since just resorted to using OmniCC countdowns on my buttons and a Runic Power indicator with NeedtoKnow disease bars in the middle-bottom of my interface. MagicRunes is a great addon but I never looked at it (or needed to look at it). Yet.

I also find myself clicking, looking at buttons more often rather than regularly knowing which ability I can use. I suppose this will change when I get experience at playing the class but I feel like I am getting tunnel-vision. I suppose this is what people said by "hard to master" since there are so many abilities on different cooldowns (IT, PS, SS, BS, Pestilence, RP dump, Bone Shield). I'm used to playing a healer with 2-3 buttons to press and just using mouseover macros on a raid frame... it's tough early on with all these misses and AoE pulls.

 

tedv

I also tried Corpse Explosion and it's basically been a huge waste. I skipped one point in Necrosis to get it, figuring the total DPS loss would be negligible, and I might use Corpse Explosion on rare occasions. There's two big problems with it though. The first is that you have better things to spend unholy runes on during AoE pulls. You have the initial plague strike, a Death and Decay, and after your runes reset, you'll probably want to Death Strike to heal up. And because most of your AoE damage is from DoTs, not effects that can crit, the monsters tend to die at exactly the same time. This means that everything is already dead by the time you can corpse explode something. Corpse Explosion never sped up anything.

On the subject of Glyphs, I'm trying Scourge Strike + Ghoul. I didn't feel like testing if the Death Strike glyph bug has been fixed, and I honestly think the Scourge Strike glyph will be the optimal choice for Unholy at 80. Refreshing diseases means you can spend more runes on scourge strikes (which perpetuates the cycle). You lose the use of the desecration talent, but I think there's enough other comparable DPS talents to buy. I'll need a simulator to figure out exactly how many scourge strikes the glyph buys. This is because when you're in the 20 second rotation of 4 scourge strike, 2 blood strike, 1 icy touch, 1 plague strike, your disease refresh chance is lower than 5 scourge strike, 2 blood strike. My quick napkin math says the glyph will convert 1 icy touch / plague strike pair to a scourge strike every 30 seconds if you still maintain full disease uptime. You also lose 10 runic power from this.

Glyph of the Ghoul seems to be stronger than I gave it credit for. Just at level 60, it increased my ghoul's white damage by 14 DPS, so I'd estimate it's near 20 DPS after including specials. It's reasonable to think this is a 50 DPS upgrade or more at level 80, making it an extremely competitive glyph. Many classes don't have major glyphs that even come close to that much extra damage.