Here is the latest DPS spreadsheet with Spec comparison built into it.

I'll probably have to make a summery page because right now the info is all over the place, but mostly I'm hoping people will catch any mistakes I've made.

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Just to point out something about the Blood spec you listed: 2% spell hit from Virulence is probably a very poor choice when compared to Epidemic.

During a 20 second rotation your rotation will end up being: IT > PS > Oblit > HS HS > Oblit Oblit > HS HS leaves you with about enough RP for 2 Deathcoils (I'm assuming you're using Icebound/AMS to greatly reduce damage taken, also assuming that Oblit Oblit HS HS on the last 10 seconds of the rotation is a DPS gain over HS*8, from being able to throw out an extra Death Coil or two when possible ). That means your 2% spell hit only affects 3 spells which are all a very small part of your overall DPS. Also, your last 3 strikes will not be getting the disease benefit (only the 2 HS with the Oblit Glyph) and you also lose 4 disease ticks per rotation.

Now even if it did even out and the 2%spell hit somehow managed to give a Blood spec an edge through less rune uptime wasted because of Icy Touch misses pushing back your rotation, you'd still end up doing a lot less DPS during a full night of raiding because of how powerful Epidemic is on trash with Pestilence. Spending 1 Blood rune every 20 seconds to keep diseases refreshed on 3-4 targets at once (a lot more on AoE pulls) is a huge DPS gain. And let's not get into the headache of bosses with adds and how much DPS you gain from Epidemic from a smaller rune expenditure compared to having extra spell hit, which doesn't even do much of anything against mobs 1 or 2 levels above you.

My apologies if this question has been answered, but i am wondering about the optimal race (Horde) for a Death Knight.

For tanking it seems pretty obvious that the Tauren reigns supreme, the 5% HP buff and the bigger hitbox (1 yard?) really can't be beaten. But for a DPS DK i'm not very sure which race would be optimal. Given that any DK will probably have to offtank quite a bit, the tauren with the hp buff is still very nice. The Tauren's bigger hitbox is perhaps very good since it requires them to move less in/out of AOE's, which would lead to an increase of DPS. On the other hand, the expertise bonus of Orc is also nice. A friend of mine insisted that Blood Elfs are the supreme choice for a DPS DK due to the increased rune power of Mana Tap. This seems a bit overrated.

Could anyone give me a clear answer concerning this topic and especially the choice of a BF for a DPS DK?

I haven't run any numbers, but I'm quite certain that Orc would be the best race for max dps.

I was trying to figure out the optimal blood spec earlier, but I can't seem to make up my mind. The two different ones I was thinking off were:

Blood/Frost

Blood/Unholy

Both have their ups and downs. If you pick the first spec, you have the upside that you won't have to refresh your diseases when you obliterate.

IT - PS - HS - HS - Obliterate - Obliterate - IT - PS - HS - HS - HS - HS - HS - HS - repeat


With the second spec and Epidemic you have the upside that you will be able to fit in more strikes in the last part of the rotation:

IT - PS - HS - HS - Obliterate - Obliterate (bit wasted here since your diseases are gone) - IT - PS - HS - HS - HS - HS - HS - HS - HS - Obliterate

I'm sure the second rotation can be optimised, but I just can't seem to determine which one of these will do most DPS. I'm just going to presume it boils down to 20% haste vs 10% more autoattack damage + BCB.

Sorry to throw this off track a little, but I have been attempting to write a little big of a spreadsheet myself. I was wondering if anyone has seen any compiled info on DK base stats for every race? I have serached around the web but have been unable to come up with any results yet.

Here you go

Also, not sure if this is a bug or not, but SS is hitting A LOT weaker since this patch. At level 64 it used to hit for 650-700 most times as unholy, now its hitting for less than 400. Also, IT, BB, UB are hitting noticeably harder.

The Scourge Strike change seems to me to probably be a bug-- it's meant to replace Obliterate for deep Unholy, and should hit at least equally hard. I wonder too if they just temporarily nerfed it to get people to test frost spec again for them, to be honest. I've been blood most of the way, but nearly every other DK I ran into was unholy, and I'd guess a lot of them because SS flashes the biggest number.

I can also confirm that IT and BB are hitting harder. At 73, my Imp IT is doing twice what it did before, so in other words, it's not penalizing you anymore for keeping up your diseases. I ran Nexus with a prot pally tank last night, so thanks to Blood's DRM, for group pulls I could IT - PS - Pest - BB - Oblit - BB BB BB BB wheeee. BBs crit as high as 1k (with Black Ice).

Hi there

I am having a hard time putting together a spec for PvP. I'm thinking frost mage will probably be a good 2v2 companion. First of all, do you think the DK's abilities will stack together with the frost mage in a good way? I'm thinking like, for example, will the mage do more damage to targets being pinned down by Hungering Cold?

I'm going frost. Now, the first problem I encounter is how I'm gonna fit in 5/5 toughness here. I will want imp. IT for the talons later on, while 2/2 glacier root gives me a 10% increase to 2 of my key abilties. Basically, if I go 10/10 tier 1 talents I will encounter problems later on.

2nd problem is the tier 3 talents. Talons is very useful, lichborne and annihilation seem like an absolute must-have. I "waste" a lot of talent points here, leaving no room for e.g. Rime later on.

3rd problem. Either I go for the 51p or I stay with 44, so that I can grab epidemic and UH command from unholy + up to imp. RT in blood.

The spec I get is this: 2v2 PvP

I'd love your opinions on this one. Was skipping virulence a mistake? Should I have skipped blood and gone all out for HC in frost?

I love that I'm having a hard time here, it makes me feel like the class has a lot of PvP potential.

Thanks in advance.

Both of these are gone. All characters have the same hitbox radius now, and the Tauren bonus has been altered to (according to Kalgan) a flat bonus that is roughly analogous to the amount that would be 5% hp for a character in greens.

I'm rather torn between making an Orc DK for the expertise and the bonus pet damage (has anyone confirmed this works though?) or a Belf for the -2% spell hit.

I dunno about anyone else, but there are just way way too many abilites / spells for a DK to keep track of.

What im saying is, in time, we well get figured out the perfect cookie cutter spec, for what ever your doing, tank, pvp, pvp vs certain classes, BG. arena;s, 5 man instances, 10 man, 25 man, , questing, leveling, aoe grinding.. ect ect ..

Im glad that a DK is going to be a more complex class to play, but wow, why so many different "strikes " gives me a head ache.

In the end, I can see just having a cast sequence macro made to help alleviate trying to remembering the correct and most effective way to play a dk in attack order.

I am really unsure about that spec, I'll be honest and just say it looks quite bad.
Here's why:

1. You are clearly missing some of the best possible PvP talents within the frost tree itself, apparently to allow you to get runetap, an ability which will never actually save you in PvP, ever. You are missing the 51 point frost talent, one that is really designed with PvP in mind, and one that would absolutely be better than anything in Blood.

2. Blood really doesn't have what it takes for PvP. It is a very Fury-warrior-like style of dps and ability rotations, and really the only decent base talent to take from it is subversion for 9% crit on three solid strikes, especially Oliterate if you are going deep frost.

3. Bladed Armor is an okay trick for Frost PvP, but honestly those points are far better served in unholy, stacking Black Ice and Morbitity to produce some dangerous Deathcoil damage when the target is out of frost strike range.

4. If you want to stay in blood from some of it's stuff, here is what I would reccomend (SPEC)


But frankly, I honestly think that Frost will be almost strictly supar in PvP to something like this..

This assumes Scourge Strike gets fixed or changed back to a HoT eater, either way it is your new obliterate, so you don't need anything in Blood. Stacking Black Ice and Impurity makes your abilities scale insanely well with gear, especially Deathcoil, which in this spec is a fantastic way to put out some serious burst when you need it. IT, SS, SS, Coil, Coil is a ton of damage. This spec pairs best with a priest as far as I am concerned, due to spellpower changes, 13% additional magic damage for both of you, Devouring plague getting a grand total of 73% additional damage, assuming Ebon Plaguebringer works with it, and you get healing backup that is far far better than Rune tap. Your main loss over a mage is obviously damage and polymorph, so it remains to be seen. Main problem is the mage wont be able to keep you alive and any decent 2v2 team will rush you down because you are the only consistent source of damage; mages typically can't murder people when they have to kite.

edit: for reference, I would spec my priest partner something like this.

Why corpse explosion on your unholy subspecc?

No offense, but what you're complaining about is exactly why I want to play a DK. Having "too many abilities" is an indication that most of our abilities are worth using, which is a problem I would bet a lot of other classes wish they had. I'm constantly moving my keybinds around as I figure out what I need quicker access to, and it's a lot of fun. Dps has different buttons depending on the situation (single vs multi-target, short vs long fight), and tanking has a lot of useful reactive tools. If you're hoping for 1-button dps, you should probably look elsewhere.

As for castsequence macros, I don't see many being particularly effective. Sometimes rune use has to be more reactive than rote. Besides that, most rotations go for at least 2 rune cooldowns before they repeat themselves. If blood dps ends up being better with the disease-less Oblit glyph, you might be able to use a HS HS OB OB HS HS HS HS HS HS macro, but then that just seems lazy. On top of that, you probably want to weave in DCs. I honestly think it would be easier not to get thrown off by pushing the buttons separately, but maybe that's just me.

Your rotations don't quite work-- your second Obliterate uses the U F repopping from your initial IT - PS, so the next runes that pop are B B. To refresh your diseases before HSing, you'd have to wait with two Blood runes active and use your two Death runes on IT - PS, which seems pretty inefficient.

With the first spec you list, you'd want to:

IT - PS - HS - HS - OB ... then repeat. You get the benefit of not removing diseases with OB, but your next runes at 10 sec and 11.5 sec will be UF again-- you can either Obliterate again, and not be able to refresh diseases right away, or IT - PS again, and clip off the last ticks of your current diseases.

With the second spec, you can:

IT - PS - HS - HS - OB, then your diseases are gone, so you'd just refresh IT - PS. If you Obliterate again, you'll have 4 HSes next, all without diseases up. This might actually turn out to be optimal dps, but then you have to question why you're taking Epidemic.

Personally, I'm leaning toward the spec with both Annihilation and Epidemic. The number of U F runes you get to use for Heart Strikes and Obliterates instead of refreshing diseases seems pretty significant. It enables you to do your first listed rotation:

PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - OB - HS - HS - HS - HS, and get every disease tick to boot. It seems to me that Annihilation on its own is pretty good, but if you take Epidemic and plan on using Obliterate, you're going to want Annihilation too.

Keep in mind it is very likely, in arenas at least, that all a DK's Frost runes will go towards Chains instead of IT, which makes a number of those Frost talents you grabbed really iffy in value.

Has any testing been done to see if Hysteria stacks with Tricks of the Trade? I have no clue how Blizzard is planning their dungeons in Wrath, however I highly doubt that we won't be faced with gear checks at one point or another.

With a Druid tank you could start the pull with Berserk+Hysteria+Tricks of the Tradex2(assuming 2 rogues...) and you are looking at such a massive threat lead that even the best DPS will never have to drop aggro.

Of course such an example goes out the window should it be shown that they CAN'T be stacked, however I still maintain that 1% Health loss is worth the threat gain of +20%.

Question ... even if you don't plan on tanking, given the effects of Bladed Armor, would it be beneficial to take Toughness as well, if for nothing else than the +str increase you'd get with the added armor now? Granded, you'd have to drop Imp IT and Glacier Rot, or at least take two out of Rot and put it into Anticipation, when working with this build.

Ok, so here is the latest update of the spreadsheet. Its very much unfinished but people keep asking me for it.

RapidShare: Easy Filehosting
and the untested xls version
RapidShare: Easy Filehosting

I've made a large number of changes.

The way rotations are handled is different, I gave you drop down selection based on a twenty second rotation, and then you can see comparison for different specs and raid/alone.

I've added a paper doll to the front page, but its not finished yet.

I've also added sheets for items to be put in, I'll try and get the basic stuff (25 man and 10 man) put in there.



For now just play with the rotations as you see fit. Also if someone would like to suggest better spec's I'm all ears.

I still don't have a model for runic strike dps if anyone has ideas.

This is pretty much what you describe and it works wonders.

Here's what we need to know: with the spec I linked above, is using the Death Runes to HS better than simply using Oblit + Death Coil and have more leeway with a GCD heavy rotation?

And at what point, if any, will haste allow a 51/0/20 spec (Blood/Unholy with Necrosis and BCB) to beat out the other Blood specs?



On another note: we'd need to figure out who benefits the most from Hysteria under specific settings. Stacking it with Death Wish, Avenging Wrath, The Beast Within/Rapid Fire makes for impressive results, but it'd be nice to start seeing some numbers on who it'd be best to give the buff to. It's obviously an amazing tool to use on a tank, too.

If you're entirely not planning on tanking at all, Toughness is pretty weak even with Bladed Armor. It's basically increasing your strength benefit from Bladed Armor by whatever percentage of armor the amount of points you have in it gives, and even with 30000 armor (Which I don't see happening any time soon), that still only comes down to Toughness being worth 7.5 Strength per talent point.

Toughness is a great talent for tanking, and it's a nice benefit that it synergizes with Bladed Armor if you have it, but it's doubtful it'd be worth taking over any other talent for DPS.