Yes. My post wasn't meant as an insult, I only meant it wasn't a new change--quite literally, it has been that way for as long as I've been playing my DK, a few weeks. Sorry if it came across otherwise. And anyway, the online talent calcs probably aren't good for verifying changes, though wowhead and mmo have gotten better. The WoW website one seems to go back and forth.

Anyway, I noticed an in-game unannounced change-- Death Grip seems to have a secret minimum range now. I get an error message telling me the mob is too close if it's within 8-10 yards or so. It makes an annoying dead zone, like the old hunter, where a mob can CC you and stand outside your melee range, inside your death grip range.

I applaud your first post! The best way to show up to the party is to bring the good stuff. Well done, and the spreadsheet is easy to use as well.

Great job.

By the math I've done, assuming you pick up all the +shadow damage talents Black Ice, Ebon Plague, it'll be equal to or more than 1% damage per 1 talent point as long as your white damage is at least ~37% of your total damage. It's better than Impurity anyway, which is like 0.9% damage per one point in like a best case scenario using heavy spell damage, and since it scales with both melee damage buffs/debuffs and spell damage buffs/debuffs I think Necrosis is still a solid choice.

Anyone have thoughts on the new Bladed Armor, especially for tanking? Doing it for Parry Rating alone seems like a very low Parry% per talent point, does the extra AP make it worth it?

In blues around 160-180 iLvl range, in frost presence with toughness I'm around 20K armor. That's 250 Str, 50 parry rating, which is ~1% parry. The benefit is probably more the strength benefit so AP/Threat will be easier as gear scales up.

The parry gain is minimal, the talent exists almost solely for scaling threat in PvE and for upping your raw damage in PvP, something most melee classes may not expect when they see you hit frost presence. Obviously strength scales far far better with every other Deathknight % strength talent as well, and the talent is now absolutely worth taking in any build that can afford to, most PvP builds currently look like they wont be able to, unfortunately.

Have been doing some research over the net and various forums but cannot find the information regarding ICD on the rune enchants.

Will they go on the normal 1 ppm mechanic or have the ICD been increased due to the higher potency of the DK enchants?

Noone of the theorycrafting threads regarding DK dps seems to take into account the added value of having two weapons with Fallen crusader.

It is making me fairly sceptical as to the relevance of the math

aye, but in a raid setting with the haste benefits added you will be looking at around 40-50% uptime on either hand if you take the 20 points in frost as well with a 1 ppm base

Thats up to 15% added strength for DW

I agree entirely... that being said, the difference of 7.5% str increase does NOT compensate for the difference in strike damage, even if you factor in the added white damage (since dual wielding gets 1.5x as much out of AP). I believe the current layout is 40% white damage and 60% ability damage as a DK, and I just don't see this working as the best option unless they change our mechanics in some radical way.

I do think blizzard is going to look at dual wielding however... currently there is no viable reason for a DK to use it.

I think you got the numbers wrong there

Using DW with a 1 ppm base would result in a rough net gain of 15% str over using a 2hander

DK DW only gain 150% or 157.5% vs 100% of the added AP though since our DW talents are weaker than that of the rogues and warriors.

I just dont know if DW is viable at this stage since there is no information on the Fallen crusader ICD and no theorycrafting(that I have seen) has taken the rune procs into consideration. All the math has been done around the talents and the attack coefficients.

It's a bug, GC confirmed on the US beta forum.

Just another curious thing, I don't know if it's a bug or not but I've reported it using the in-game tool because I don't think anything has ever been mentioned about it. Anyway, Ghouls when you're talented with Master of Ghouls gain some amount of your Haste, I haven't checked to see if this is the case without the talent.

With no Haste:



With Haste:

It's also strange that its dps goes DOWN with the haste.

You've equipped 3 more items, and your AP has gone up, naturally causing your damage to go up. However, poor ol' Casketdrinker has actually lost damage from your gains, as well as gaining some of your haste...

Is black ice going to be required, or nearly so, for any heavy unholy build? I keep wanting to avoid frost, since I'd no longer be using annihilate for obliteration, but black ice does look very tempting.

Septus ~ I've previously crunched some numbers and came out with 2H Specialisation and Dark Conviction giving about the same or slightly more DPS. However that was previous to the latest batch of balancing and I'm thinking it may now be completely different.

Returning to the topic of our little rotting friends, with the Shadow of Death skill, are Death Knights able to access their inventory for potions, bandages or maybe Jumper Cables?

Actually, sorry that's my mistake and I'll fix it. That picture of it without the Haste has Casketdrinker buffed with Horn of Winter, I'll correct it now.

EDIT: Pictures now corrected, Casketdrinker's AP stays the same though DPS clearly increases through the increased Haste.

Let us know if you get any feedback as to whether it is a bug, as it would seem odd to get scaling like that when Hunters don't.

I'm getting jealous of my ghoul's stats, he has double my str, 200 more armour and a bit more base DPS. Also, he gains haste from me being in Unholy Presence:


Also, I'm not sure if this is new or I just haven't noticed, but both Frost feaver and Blood plaugh show in your spellbook and list base damage and how much damaged is gained from AP.

Its not my work though, as Tzenes did the ground work to find out rotation DPS. I just added some things.

I plan on finishing it up prolly sometime this weekend but I am going away till sunday. Also need to update the changes too (Unholy Blight now lasts 20 seconds, and you can actually ad it to the rotation and it be a part of it. Right now it will add its entire 14 second damage to the rotation and factor that into the final dps, i just need to make this 20)

I am a theorycrafting nut and while I dont have a lot of time to play lately, I cant help but squeeze in all these number fun. And DKs are so interesting on the numbers front.

Anyway thanks for the props and I hope to make it so people who arent Unholy can get as accurate of a reading

Oh and...
I dunno about other specs yet, but in an Unholy spec using the spreadsheet I made DW and 2H actually are almost completely even, with DW surpassing 2H after 8 hit. I dont think this would be the case with any other spec, but because in an unholy spec with a frost for the rest most of your damage comes from diseases and your rotations involve spells (Blood Boil mainly). Scourge Strike doesnt suffer from using a 1H as much as you would think.

Frost and Blood would be hurt much more because frost uses Oblit so heavilly, which is almost purely weapon damage (especially once that glyph is in, and that glyph is incredibly useful) And blood obviously is almsot entirely based on Oblit and Blood/Heart strike, which are so weapon based people even talk about forgoing diseases.

But for unholy, DW is actually kind of favorable. It provides no real benefit but it scales much better and damned if it isnt much more entertaining.

What you did for the rotation is better than what I came up with, I"ll try to include it in the next version.

I've made most of the updates from the latest patch (there were surprisingly few).
I've also added white damage for the latest version.

I'm going to add ghoul damage (for unholy) at some point, but I haven't done enough work to make sure it comes out nicely.

At the end of the day I think I'll triple up the spread sheet to show all three specs in comparison (to help people select between them).

Here is the updates for the lastest build:
RapidShare: Easy Filehosting

Also, none of the two rune abilities had there dps increased, despite ghostcrawler suggesting they would.

I don't know if that means they will in the future or not.

She already said the "numbers increase" didn't make this patch and should be in later.

I must have missed that.

With the servers down right now, I'm guessing that patch is being pushed through.


I was wondering if we have a unified list of the different specs?
I know I've seen them scattered through this thread, but most are out of date.

Here are a couple I've been playing with:

Unholy: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...03150013103151
Blood: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Looks like the "number increase" didn't make this patch either, but Veteran of the Third War does give the 6 expertise so I should stop getting mad dodges/parrys =)