I ran naxx-10 last night again, and I feel I've perfected my unholy raiding spec. It doesn't have icy talons, but I don't need it because I will *always* have an enhancement shaman in raids. And before you knock lichborne, let me just say that it's actually quite handy to be able to heal yourself with death coil on fights like sapphiron when healing is tight. Butchery is also great on fights where there's a lot of downtime... like heigan.
One thing I have noticed about raiding is that the ghoul really doesn't stand a chance most fights. There are a few where it does great, like patchwerk. But most it just gets annihilated because it isn't smart enough to use LOS. As such, I have just started saving it to use to party members should they die early on a fight and no battle res is available.
You lose a good bit of damage by using IT before PS. If you change the rotation to PS > IT > SS ... you will actually get a good 3-400 more damage out of your IT every time you use it (thanks to ebon plague).
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
I ran naxx-10 last night again, and I feel I've perfected my unholy raiding spec. It doesn't have icy talons, but I don't need it because I will *always* have an enhancement shaman in raids. And before you knock lichborne, let me just say that it's actually quite handy to be able to heal yourself with death coil on fights like sapphiron when healing is tight. Butchery is also great on fights where there's a lot of downtime... like heigan.
One thing I have noticed about raiding is that the ghoul really doesn't stand a chance most fights. There are a few where it does great, like patchwerk. But most it just gets annihilated because it isn't smart enough to use LOS. As such, I have just started saving it to use to party members should they die early on a fight and no battle res is available.
You lose a good bit of damage by using IT before PS. If you change the rotation to PS > IT > SS ... you will actually get a good 3-400 more damage out of your IT every time you use it (thanks to ebon plague).
Your spec is good if you are pushing threat but i doubt the 4% from 2h spec would equal as much as putting points into Wandering plague. Again I'm going on math alone.
Hm, that's a good point. I suppose I could take 2 from 2H spec and 1 from Gargoyle (not that it's bad, I just never use it mostly out of sheer forgetfulness and/or GCD lockout) and max that out. Thanks!
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Was the base damage completely removed on Blood Plague and Frost Fever? Wowhead reads it as being purely from AP @ 5.5% and zero for the base damage. Link
I doubt it, mine were ticking for low 500's (up to 600 in a few small cases). Take it before the 60% and 13%, and you get 283... divide that by 0.055 and you get 5254 AP, which I guarantee I didn't have. I actually had around 2.3k before pulls, but UR added on to that too afterwords as well as RotFC procs.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Still wondering, after reading through the forums a bit. Unholy is the most viable PVE dps build for a DK? I understand that the three builds should be viable for different things that you can use for an example unholy for tanking. But is it still true that Unholy is the way to go and not, for an example, Blood?
I admit I played on Beta only a short time, I am EU player and the beta seemed to be lagging a bit too much to be very enjoyable. I might try tonight again, though my DK is only level 60, so testing out different things would be a bit lame.
I was thinking about speccing mainly frost for tanking and then blood for dps. But if Blood is not a viable and competitive DPS spec, should I stick to Unholy instead at the moment? And as Unholy, should I get more haste gear (Because of BCB, etc)?
And as Unholy, should I get more haste gear (Because of BCB, etc)?
While your first few questions are dangerous to answer due to the volatility of the ability and talent changes (for the record, I've always been partial to unholy), I just wanted to point out my experience with Blood Caked Blade has been less than positive, and it just seems like a lackluster talent in general. Haste isn't a stat I'd imagine any DK would want to look for actively; while its not a bad stat, per se, for the same ilvl points you could do much better (such as AP, crit, hit/exp). It's important to keep in mind that at higher levels white damage is a fairly small part of our DPS, and since haste now only affects one of our active abilities in any way (rune strike), its not that great. If it somehow affected our primary strikes or altered rune cooldowns, that would be another story.
Last edited by Zurm : 10/02/08 at 10:46 AM.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Yeah, I never meant to toss Haste above expertise and hit, of course not, nor really infront of STR either. But wouldn't haste work pretty decently with BCB/Necrosis/Killing Machine? At least haste works pretty decent with the Seal of Blood for retribution paladins.
I really need to get to play the beta better and test out instances etc. I only tested Blood tree with my DK, as it seemed to give pretty damn nice grinding possibility (and questing) as it really has a lot of survivability. Felt almost like I was a warrior getting hots/heals all the time!
While I feel PvE specs at 80 are debateable, I can't find an arguement that would put anything above deep unholy for leveling. Faster run speed, faster mount speed (never underestimate the power of faster movement when attempting to level as quickly as possible), AOE damage, a persistent and powerful pet, and powerful dots just make it amazing for grinding. I had no trouble soloing quest mobs for 2-3 person group quests at any time except the Arugal chain in grizzly hills (which SHOULD be a 5 person quest). And that was before all the recent buffs and fixes to death coil, scourge strike, and icy touch, until I was level 77.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
And about soloing. What kind of quests are DK's able to solo in the end? I have heard some nasty stories that they can solo all the TBC quests as well, but I have no clue how a DK can solo the Nagrand elite quests (the demons, the gronn, etc)? What group quests you had to skip when levelling?
And on another matter, I will test out the unholy DK thing tonight. I didn't even really test it out so I can't say anything much about it.
It may be worth mentioning that Frost's "IT spam build" I was talking about recently does overshadow unholy and blood in every combination I've tried to calculate but only if you have another DK in the raid for Crypt fever.
It seems That all three specs (deeps specs) level out in the non-perfect scenarios with slight differences. If things stay the way they are however there may only be one unholy DK and the rest would be frost in any given 25 raid.
I have noticed that scaling will become an issue for unholy in the end-endgame. I don't believe the slight nerf to SS was justified when assuming armor will be penetrated more and more as gear upgrades. This being said, I will still be unholy for the perks and AoE potential. Again, this is all Math.
Edit: I would be totally in love with blizzard (more so) if Plague strike got a damage buff.
I've tried all three specs as I've leveled, sticking mostly with Unholy because every time it's proven to be the best. I'm level 76 now and just tried Frost again after the 9014 patch. While the DPS was on par with Unholy (just a bit below it), the utility and synergy of Unholy just brings it to the top. All the reasons Zurm mentioned are the reasons I prefer Unholy for leveling. Persistent pet, faster movement speed, longer lasting and more powerful diseases. It's really hard to ignore that with either Frost or Blood.
As for soloing elites... I solo'd everything through TBC up to the Nagrand elites. I didn't even bother with those as I hit 68 about the same time I got to those quests, so I just left for Northrend. In Northrend, there has been very few elite quests that I have not been able to solo. And if I couldn't solo it, coming back one level later usually allowed me to finish it off.
(To answer your question directly, Kharnator, I didn't skip any group quests through TBC up to the Nagrand elites, which I bypassed altogether.)
When WotLK goes live I'll be levelling my DK alongside my friend's prot paladin. We're gonna be looking at AoE pulls as much as possible so I think i'll be going deep unholy and skipping some of the single target talents (Gargoyle, necrosis). He'll be tanking for the most part so I'm focusing on AoE damage. What i'm wondering is the value of Master of Ghouls... with 2/2 Night of the Dead it seems like I would have a high uptime on my ghoul, and for AoE I plan to be exploding my ghoul fairly often regardless.
Playing at level 62 with that build (well, aproaching it) on the beta so far has yielded some impressive AoE strength, but not having some tank tallents has hurt (although as I said, the prot paly would be tanking the pulls).
I have looked through the last 10-15 pages of posts searching for any analysis on Death Knight mitigation, health totals, dps while tanking, and dps while spec'd for tanking but doing DPS (if someone else is MT for a fight).
Has anyone seen recent analysis or worked up some numbers?
The tankadins are spending a lot of time crunching numbers to see how far off they are from warrior mitigation, health totals and DPS while tanking or not tanking, and I'm looking forward to finding something like that for Death Knights.
I would love some DK-player, who has experienced Naxx raids, to tell their points of views about tanking in raids/heroics/instances. Can a DK do maintanking? With what spec? Or do we have to stick to aoe tanking as Unholy? Some insight, thank you.
I was able to solo all the elites of the nessingwary chain (both nagrand and sholazar) and pretty much every group quest in northrend except for one in Zul'drak and one in Grizzly hills, but I am 100% sure I could not have solo'd Durn (the massive gronn) at the time. I had trouble with my 70 ret pally in sunwell gear when fighting him on live.
Regarding tanking, I just want to point out that 10 man naxx is a joke. A DK could easily tank all of it, and that would say nothing about how they compare to a warrior or bear at the moment. With recent changes to frost, howling blast should be powerful enough to cover the AoE tanking, though I haven't done it myself. I know I was easily able to tank patchwerk's hatefuls in pure DPS gear for the 10 man without the healers having any problems at all (we had a priest and pally, and beacon of light is overpowered for a fight like patchwerk so this may be biased).
That being said even with the recent change to rune strike I feel our single target threat generation is still spotty if we get unlucky. We don't have an ability to just dump when we get unlucky (warriors/druids have heroic/maul, for example) by burning excess runic power, as we don't generate runic power or mana by taking damage like the other tanks. A blue poster actually summed up the current state of DK tanking very well:
We felt like we had to implement an ability like Rune Strike, or death knights would never be able to tank bosses. Their dps was very high from the back of a mob and very low from the front. That's just not going to work. The three other tanking classes did very good dps and threat from the front of the mob.
The problem is almost certainly that A) DKs suffer a lot from missing key attacks in their rotation. I have compared it a little to a rogue tank who keeps missing his finishing moves or can't get enough combo points, and B) DKs do not have a rage mechanic, or the mana return that Protadins get, and can't spam an ability to burn off excess resources. A warrior can miss a Shield Slam but then turn around and queue up Heroic Strikes all day to make up for it.
Not having rage is a nice benefit for the death knight -- they can do awesome dps without having to be hit on. But in this sense it's a liability as well.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Yes, I heard that Zurm as well. But after that I heard that Runic Strike was added (or maybe even earlier) and also am I too off, if I say that they talked something about Frost Strike not being dodgeable? Or something along those lines. Maybe I was dreaming.
While your first few questions are dangerous to answer due to the volatility of the ability and talent changes (for the record, I've always been partial to unholy), I just wanted to point out my experience with Blood Caked Blade has been less than positive, and it just seems like a lackluster talent in general. Haste isn't a stat I'd imagine any DK would want to look for actively; while its not a bad stat, per se, for the same ilvl points you could do much better (such as AP, crit, hit/exp). It's important to keep in mind that at higher levels white damage is a fairly small part of our DPS, and since haste now only affects one of our active abilities in any way (rune strike), its not that great. If it somehow affected our primary strikes or altered rune cooldowns, that would be another story.
I wouldn't call runestrike an 'active ability' - any 2h build ought to get the best return by just keeping it held down.
How long does the frigid dreadplate debuff last? (or is it purely a buff to your chance to be missed?) I could swear it used to say 6 seconds, but now it doesn't.
It may be worth mentioning that Frost's "IT spam build" I was talking about recently does overshadow unholy and blood in every combination I've tried to calculate but only if you have another DK in the raid for Crypt fever.
It seems That all three specs (deeps specs) level out in the non-perfect scenarios with slight differences. If things stay the way they are however there may only be one unholy DK and the rest would be frost in any given 25 raid.
I have noticed that scaling will become an issue for unholy in the end-endgame. I don't believe the slight nerf to SS was justified when assuming armor will be penetrated more and more as gear upgrades. This being said, I will still be unholy for the perks and AoE potential. Again, this is all Math.
Edit: I would be totally in love with blizzard (more so) if Plague strike got a damage buff.
It seems to me like unholy scales better than the rest simply because of diseases. They scale like mad in that build.
Diseases also scale pretty well with the other specs if there is an unholy DK around putting up the 60% crypt fever.
As for scaling I'd say with the latest build its Frost>Unholy>Blood in a perfect raid. I have been wrong before though.
On a side note: One real sleeper of a talent is Impurity. The better your gear the more valuable it is. In full raid buffs and T7 level gear it is obscenely powerful and makes up for a lot of unholy's shortcomings.
I've been leveling on the test server. My dk is 64 I think - about halfway through Zangar - nothing special there. I've been leveling exclusively as frost. Until yesterday, frost felt just good. I plowed through missions and had some downtime but not any more downtime than I am used to playing a warrior main. Then the frost buff came. Yesterday, I just hit icy touch on everything. The only reason I would bloodstrike was to get deathrunes to icy touch. Then, runic power dump into frost strike which can't be dodged/parried/blocked. The increase in killing power took the build from feeling "good" to ludicrous. Sadly, though, it definitely has that imbalanced feel. I'm critting icy touch for 2k+ regularly (2600 high) in quest blues/greens at level 63/64 and soloing 2 man yellow missions with just pure damage. I don't deathstrike. I don't plague strike unless I'm just staring at a mob waiting on frost runes. Having icey touch hit harder than obliterate removes all of the strategy to playing the class. Unholy might be the uber leveling spec, but it probably encourages you to mix it up to keep your diseases up. Frost, right now, doesn't. I'll be happy when they shave some damage off icey touch and put it on obliterate/howling blast.
I dont know if anyone has done it yet (couldnt find anything other then talking about Ghoul haste when I searched the thread) I also noticed that tzenes doesnt have it finished in his spreadsheet. But i wanted to find out the stats of ghouls so i spec'd out of everything (except for Shadow of Death since its needed) that gave stats buffs and started adding/removing gear. The AP from Strength is easy enough Strength * 2 - 20, but the actually AP of the ghoul scales rather awkward.
DK Str
Ghoul Str
Str from DK
Percentage
Ghoul AP
AP from Str
Base AP??
151
269
105
69.5364
692
518
174
202
305
141
69.8020
728
590
138
242
333
169
69.8347
756
646
110
273
355
191
69.9634
778
690
88
311
381
217
69.7749
804
742
62
332
396
232
69.8795
819
772
47
382
431
267
69.8953
854
842
12
406
448
284
69.9507
871
876
-5
423
460
296
69.9764
883
900
-17
447
476
312
69.7987
899
932
-33
475
496
332
69.8947
919
972
-53
It looks like the Ghoul gets 70% of the Death Knight's Strength, rounded down.
If I'm interpreting your numbers correctly (I haven't done any beta work recently so I can't confirm), the Ghoul has a base Strength of 164. However, with that base Strength, it only has a base AP of 308. It then gains 2 AP per point of Strength it gets from the Death Knight.
10/02/08, 9:24 AM
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