• Chicken

It used be a pretty good replacement for Plague Strike when Unholy Blight had no cooldown. Then again in an AoE situation you typically would be using Pestilence to ensure your diseases stay up anyway, so that use is slightly questionable.

It was also possible last I tried to repeatedly blow up the same corpse, so you didn't really need a steady supply of corpses as one corpse to use it.

It's certainly worth it for annoying your guild on kill shots though.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Buanna

For me, the value of Corpse Explosions rests entirely upon exploding my ghoul. Sure, it's a 5 minute cooldown, but sometimes I need a 5k AoE.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

Lujaar

Are you doing your tests with the current beta build? Right now Icy Talons is bugged, and does nothing. 20% melee haste would be the biggest incentive to spec Blood-sub-Frost over Blood-sub-Unholy. Well, assuming it's supposed to stack with Imp. Icy Talons / Windfury, which we don't know.

 

Darkrenown

Well that, plus it looks great!

 

Leaflock

Yeah, I guess I kinda blurred two statements together there. I was testing different rotations with a Blood-sub-Unholy build, to see if using diseases + OB or diseases + DS would be better than just doing HS OB. The answer didn't seem to be a big difference at my level, over a longer fight. Smart weaving and use of cooldowns make the most difference. For the upcoming changes, it'll really depend on how those lesser strikes get buffed and how much of an impact the Oblit glyph has, if it stays the way it is in the data files.

The second comment was just that I like unholy low tier talents over the frost ones currently. I didn't test anything with sub Frost yet, partly because I don't have enough talent points at 72 to adequately compare the two subs.

Speaking of Icy Talons, how good do you guys find haste rating in general? White damage is about 35-40% of my damage right now, so I know it's probably not as good as stacking crit, but since so much gear seems to have it, I wondered what kind of value you think it has. Also, am I correct in thinking that at least our spells, and not strikes, have their GCD reduced by it?

 

Sinazeel

While I don't exactly have a spreadsheet, it's not something I would turn down gear for (like the tier armor), but it's not something I would spend gold enchanting or gemming for, personally.

It's probably least useful for Blood specs, as Frost has Killing Machine and Unholy has Necrosis and Blood-caked Blade. You might be able to make a case for slightly increased HoT from Blood Presence keeping you in Blood-Gorged territory, and helping to increase Bloodworm uptime, but I'm not too sure whether that matters.

Though if Ghouls get haste rating, then it wouldn't be too bad. There's also whether runeforge enchants only proc from white hits, but I'm new to the melee world so I'm not an expert on those mechanics.

 

tzenes

With Blood having more RP than it knows what to do with because of the free DC, haste actually is useful for those extra DC.

Quick question.

For something like Blood Presence, it increases your damage by 15%, thus increasing your weapon damage by 15%

As a result, does the damage of something like obliterate get increased by 15% twice? Once for the weapon damage and once for the total damage?

I'm not sure if I worded that right.

 

Thorakk

So yea, no cooldown AMS.

With this build you can have 93% magic damage reduction as long as you have the RP to fuel it.

If nothing changed with AMS from the last build is still prevents all binary effects (Hi sheep, fear, and frost nova).

I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.

 

• Zurm

Logged on this morning, the % modifiers on scourge strike and plague strike have been increased (now 65% SS and 39% PS). The additional damage modifiers don't seem to have changed. Also, some of the runeforge enchants seem to have changed slightly (for the better)... although it's possible I just have a bad memory.

Also, given recent changes, I was curious what some of the more experienced DKs thought would be the superior leveling spec. My guess is still unholy, though blood does look good.

 

bathoz

Reduced AMS time has already been corrected to 3 seconds. (By Blue, at least).

 

Darkrenown

SS has been 65% since the previous patch.

No CD on AMS is a bug, should be -3 secs.

Several people here and on the US beta forum are talking as if haste reduces DK's GCD, which I have not noticed happening. If that new in this patch/not true/alwyas been that way and I haven't noticed?

 

• Zurm

How much haste do you have? Given the speed of GCD and the innaccuracy of a human's ability to tell time, unless you have a SIGNIFICANT amount of haste you're unlikely to notice, especially if you've been adding haste little by little.

To really test this, you'd need probably want 150+ haste rating... take off all your gear and test it out, then put it all back on and see.

 

Darkrenown

I have very little haste, since I've mostly been skipping it - it seemed a poor DK stat. Haste never reduced the melee GCD in live and I've not seen any patch notes say it does now. I only ask because I'm seeing a lot of commented like "With Blood having more RP than it knows what to do with because of the free DC, haste actually is useful for those extra DC."

 

• Zurm

After searching the rogue threads I see no mention of haste affecting melee GCD in WOTLK beta (and they are usually on the ball when it comes to these things, but it's possible I missed it)... while we do know it affect spell GCD, that means at best it only affect some of our abilities... even though we don't have mana I'd imagine abilities such as IT, DC, BB, DnD are considered spells. Which still leaves haste as an OK but not great stat. The point still holds that you can't really notice haste affecting GCDs unless you use a special mod to track it or stack a ton of it.

 

Madrok

I'm a little bit confused (damn beer). The current discussion is about the benefits of this blood / frost- and this blood / unholy-specc, am I right?

 

higel

Rogue GCD is already at 1 second - the minimum to which it can be hasted, as I understand it.

 

Scraps

Looking for changes in today's build (8962):

Dirge
NEW - Your Death Strike, Obliterate, Plague Strike, and Scourge Strike abilities generate an additional 2.5/5 runic power.
OLD - Your Plague Strike, Scourge Strike, Death Strike abilities generate an additional 25%/50% runic power.
I guess this prevents it from scaling with other talents/Glyphs? Also Obliterate added. Order of abilities mentioned is alphabetized.

Ravenous Dead
NEW - Increases your total Strength 1/2/3% and the contribution your Ghouls get from your Strength and Stamina by 20/40/60%
OLD -
Increases the total Strength of you and your ghouls by 1/2/3% and reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 30/60/90 seconds.
Strength buffed from your stats instead of flat 3%, Stamina added.

Ebon Plaguebringer
Your Crypt Fever morphs into Ebon Plague, which increases vulnerability to magic by 13% in addition to increasing the damage done by diseases. Improves your critical strike chance with weapons and spells by 1/2/3% at all times.
Added 3% crit.

Unholy Blight
NEW - A vile swarm of unholy insects surrounds the Death Knight for a 10 yard radius. Enemies caught in the area take 16 Shadow damage per sec and are considered diseased. Lasts 20 sec.
60 Runic Power, Instant
I can't find the exact wording on the old one, it had a 1 minute cooldown though. It caused Blood Plague, the new one does not, as expected from the blue post.

Chill of the Grave
NEW - Your Chains of Ice, Howling Blast, Icy Touch and Obliterate generate 5 additional runic power.
Similar changes to remove percentages and add what they were intending to add. Probably to prevent Glyph bonuses from scaling.

Chilblains
Victims of your Frost Fever disease are Chilled, reducing movement speed by 30% for 10 sec.
Was 6 second duration.

Bladed Armor
Increases your Strength by 5 for every 400 armor value you have.
This helps our Parry, also in line with the Warrior talent given to tier 1 Fury.

Death Rune Mastery
Whenever you hit with Death Strike or Obliterate, there is a 100% chance that the Frost and Unholy Runes will become Death Runes when they activate.
Now includes Obliterate.

All tier 10 talents did get 1/2/3/4/5 Expertise added.

Mark of Blood
Place a Mark of Blood on an enemy. Whenever the marked enemy deals damage to a target, that target is healed for 4% of its maximum health. Lasts for 20 sec.
1 Blood, 30 yd range, Instant, 3 min cooldown
Healing effect doubled, was 2%.

Apologies if I included a change in last week's build.

 

Trimm

I noticed my attacks were still on the very weak side, so I looked around and found this GC post:

Looks like we won't be seeing the damage changes until the next build.

You can't feed a baby onion rings.

 

Scraps

Bloody Strikes - moved deeper, buffed to increase the base damage as well:
Increases the damage by 18% and the bonus damage from diseases by 60% of your Blood Strike and Heart strike.

 

Flamingcloud

Rune Strike is back to 60%, though it still only procs on things that cause diseases. Also icy talons is fixed so it works if you don't have improved icy talons.

 

Leaflock

Death Rune Mastery in the blood tree has always included Obliterate, as least as long as I've been playing my DK.

Also, as part of a change you mentioned, they swapped the tier locations of Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood. Makes runic power generation for non-deep Blood builds easier, which is nice since Bloody Strikes wasn't that desirable at its previous position (for non-Blood builds).

More changes:

Abomination's Might: Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 25/50% chance and your Obliterates have a 50/100% chance to increase the attack power by 10% of raid members within 20 yards for 10 sec. Also increases your total Strength by 1/2%.

 

Scraps

This is the first time I've seen this talent give Obliterate the ability to proc Death Runes. I check every note in every build and MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies doesn't mention the change in any notes from the past month at least. So I guess you are saying you've played your DK for a week or two, tops. :P Edit: This also means I'm probably 2-3 weeks late on the change ><.

wow.com has an older build up, from cross checking with build changes from previous news posts on mmo-champion I think this build is 8885, from around September 5th. This build didn't have this change yet.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

 

Clandestine

Death Rune Mastery has had Obliterate for the past 2 or 3 builds.

 

CombatPancake

Not to be intrusive or anything, but is Necrosis worth it after it was nerfed down to 10% damage as shadow damage?

 

klineshrike

I have been lurking here for info for awhile, but I had to sign up to post about this.

I loved your spreadsheet, and I even got bored and started adding to it myself to get a fuller DPS outlook. Its still far from what I would call complete, especially since I mostly favored my spec (unholy) just to see how it would fare.

However I added a customizable rotation page. You need to follow the base rules involving runes, and it doesnt include Howling Blast because I dont know the stats on it (noone ever wants to test it) but that sucks in rotations anyway. I also added the option for a 2 disease application per 20 sec rotation because even with Epi, 1 disease loses out on 2 seconds of disease dps, so this will change that dps. (which is also to note, I added disease dps to it)

The main addition though is fully customizable Weapon Damage. You plug in Weapon DPS and speed, and either one weapon (obviously a 2hander) or two weapons for DW, and all the stats will update accordingly. Including hit. Also all of the nholy talents affecting white damage are included in the DPS calculated for it (like necrosis, BCB, ect) and haste affects are taken into account as well (I made Icy Talons affect your white dps as if it was up constantly, which it should always be)

Ill try and get this file up I just need to find somewhere to upload it. Its still a work in progress though as I would like to make it work perfectly for all specs and rotations to find your best dps.

Edit: Here it is RapidShare: Easy Filehosting