Janraea

Oh, the talent's fine. It just doesn't have any impact on BV uptime, since that gets refreshed every 3-4 seconds anyway.

 

Gere

Good point about the DW spec. I'm going to try out this spec tonight (as much as I can with the talent points that I have). The only change I'm going to make is moving the point from Deathchill to Unbreakable Armor. Most of the abilities that benefit from Deathchill already have a very high chance to crit and some are covered by Killing Machine which of course is even more effective when dual wielding. I think the +10% STR for 20/60 seconds would be more beneficial not to mention Unbreakable Armor gives you a good tanking CD if the need arises.

I am struggling a bit with my 2nd rotation. I'm not sure if it's more beneficial to use an Obliterate or 2 x IT with the 2 deathrunes from the Blood Strikes in my first rotation.

 

• Zurm

I was talking about a raiding situation in general... a lot of bosses bosses nowadays involve multiple targets. So yea, the aoe application (even without pestilence... just having unholy blight up will apply it on all affected targets).

 

agnos

Hello fellow Death Knights. This is my first post on these forums. I've been reading a lot here and really would like to thank the community in offering such a great resource for theorycrafting. You guys do such a great job!

That said, I'm currently rolling death knight when wotlk goes live. I've been leveling my Death Knight on beta and currently searching for the most optimal talent build for leveling to 80 as quickly as possible. So I took THIS into consideration. I really haven't read any of the spreadsheets or if anyone had these talents calculated with DPS. If you could provide quick links, I'd greatly appreciate that. I think this build looks ok. I'm sure I overlooked a few things, but I feel this might give me the most control with multiple mobs and able to provide protection for myself along the way to northrend. Let me know if any of this needs fine tuning. Thanks

I work all day and very busy leading a progressing raid guild at night so I really can't spend too much time reading into all these details you have graciously provided on these forums. So be gentle.

 

Janraea

You can't skip 2h weapon spec, reaping is kind of important, wandering plague is crappy for leveling unless you intend to aoe-level, and impurity is kind of weak until you hit raid gear. (and if you skip dirge, you'll have trouble keeping unholy blight up).

I prefer deep frost for leveling - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000 for example.

 

LockApologist

Not that I can verify, but GC's comment about it being 'Super Overrevenge' would seem to indication it functions somewhat like warrior's Overpower, and thus triggers on your dodged attacks as well as you dodging. Try removing expertise and seeing if it procs.

Not that it will help the Hateful tank aspect much, as you'll probably be Exp capped, unless you Hateful tank from the front and get a parry...

 

Zurai

"Heroic Overrevenge" breaks down as such:

Heroic: Heroic Strike's on next hit mechanic
Over: Overpower's cannot be dodged or parried mechanic
revenge: Revenge's must follow an avoided attack mechanic

Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. You cannot use Rune Strike after your TARGET avoids YOUR attack, only when YOU avoid your TARGET'S attack.

 

Flamingcloud

Yes this is accurate, and it is indeed awesome for tanking.

 

methods

Can't wait 'till I can say that.

 

◊ forostie

I've found a couple of interesting yet horrible things while PvPing last night.

1) Shadow of Death - When you die as a ghoul in a BG, you take durability. So basically, don't die more than 9 times or you're afk'ing out.

2) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - Something about this build is causing any Ghoul I spawn using Raise Dead to die as soon as summoned.

Any thoughts?

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

Sunstealer

I'm pretty sure Ghouls are still bugged where unless you've got the point in Master of Ghouls your ghoul dies when summoned.

Then again, shadow of death is probably still bugged too. I've rarely turned into a ghoul after dying, save once or twice, over the past day or so. But i'm not unholy at the moment, so idk if something changed from yesterday.

 

◊ forostie

Every time I died yesterday specced with Shadow of Death it worked, but yeah, can't really stay specced into it when you take so much dura.

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

Ghraabthar

Was looking at the trees and some abilities and wondering if any frost DKs could comment on whether they can ever have too much RP. I would assume most tanking builds would take Runic power mastery so you could stockpile the RP for FS spam, but with the other talents that supplement RP generation do you ever have more RP than you know what to do with? Also, was wondering if anyone has had a chance to tank with the new Blessing of Sanctuary. Seems like with that buff and so much avoidance that you could be sitting on a boatload of RP.

I'm guessing if you were an Unholy tank Blessing of Sanctuary would be a huge boon, allowing you to keep up UB a lot of the time and throwing out Rune Strikes with impunity.

 

Ginn

As a frost tank there is so many useful talents in frost tree that you don't really have spare points to put in Runic Power Mastery.
Currently on beta I am tanking with:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Things to consider after testing:
- remove 2 points from Unholy Command
- add 1 point to the Blood of the North
- add 1 point to the Deathchill, as silly as it sounds it might be useful for those aoe packs - Icy Touch -> Pestilence -> (Deathchill) Howling Fog just to see your screen spammed with 5-6k numbers to make that aoe pack stick to you...

Currently not using Obliterate in my rotation, it can be parried/dodged/missed while Icy Touch not, not to mention there isnt huge damage gap between them and Icy Touch can proc Rime.

 

Caggy

You could also completely drop bladed armor, drop dark command and frost aura, and make room for 2h spec and killing machine.
Random free HB crits.
Actually do you really need Merciless Combat? Its great for killing things, but would threat at that stage of a boss be that big of an issue?

 

Kharnator

I haven't seen the new effects of threat system in action very well on Beta, but I assume that generating more threat is always better, so others can nuke even more. And also some bosses do have aggro switches etc, so later in the fight it might be a good idea to help the fight be stable with added threat.

I was testing around with the calculator yesterday and I came up with this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Has the needed avoidance and with the current threat generation (and dps) from Frost, this spec should do the trick! Not sure how good Acclimation is though in action, so might even be tradable for Annihilation if you are tanking stuff like Sapphiron.

EDIT: Any comments? Or is anybody able to test out the spec in beta? I can't as Beta lags too much for me.

 

Minishadow

I have followed this thread from now to then, but I still haven´t seen a post about what stats is most important for deathknights, and since I´m not in the beta I can´t check it out. Read somewhere earlier today that strenght actually is really important for tanking? But I don´t like to guess, so anyone got any answers?

 

klineshrike

So assuming most of the glyphs are finished, I noticed that the Death Strike Glyph seems VERY powerful. Also it would seem it gives you a reason to take runic power mastery. 52% damage bonus to your Death Strike is pretty damn potent.

Also read that the slow from Blood Boil isnt dispellable? Its not much at 30% but thats still significant.

Starting to get some ideas for a PVP build should dal speccing come about and I was searching for what would be possible via glyphs.

 

Koettaren

I'd advice you to take a look at the talent tree aswell as this passive DK skill. That will surely answer your parry question.. Oh and by the way, you don't need beta to reach those two sites.

 

• Zurm

The general consensus seems to be that STR/AP > Crit > Hit/Expertise > haste > Armor Pen... as of now. Given that some recent theorycraft is putting DW slightly above 2h in stats around T7 gear levels, haste may end up being bumped up that list. To be perfectly honest, it's a bit early to tell until blizzard says they are done with the DK trees. The DK module I'm working on for Rawr will have stat/gear/talent comparisons, so that should help clarify some things based on what we know currently.

 

Ginn

Bladed Armor isnt impressing, it's like 125 AP... not sure if 4% > 125 ap...

Killing machine is useless... It works only with white hits, with slow 2hander most of your strikes are turned into yellow Rune Strikes...

I guess you havent played on beta, now dps of the tank is only a bit lower that dps of dd classes, Merciless Combat is really great.

And threat isnt a issue at all, tanks are easily 30% above dd in threat.

Frost Aura isnt very impressing as well, but DK doesnt have much passive magic mitigation so every bit is important.

 

• Zurm

Going to have to disagree with you here. Bladed armor is over 300 AP for me in leveling quest greens/blues at 80... in T7 level gear you're looking at 15k armor which would put it easily over 400 AP. The only way it would give you 125 ap is if you were low level (in which case for that level it's still very good) or wearing a ton of leather gear. Since it scales with armor, and armor scales with item level, it looks like it is going to be a very good investment of points. Plus, the 4% damage on a two hander doesn't affect abilities like death coil, icy touch, diseases, etc... while AP does through our innate spell damage conversion (especially so if you're unholy).

And killing machine isn't USELESS... first off most heavy frost dps specs are probably going to end up dual wielding anyway. Secondly, Rune Strikes are not usuable in a typical raiding situation... since YOU have to dodge or parry a MOB/BOSS's attack, you are probably doing something very wrong (or fighting an unusual boss) if you are using rune strike.

However, he's right about threat. Even mediocre tanks can easily hold aggro now in WOTLK.

 

Illundai

This is something that has been bugging me for a while, everytime the Desecration graphic pops up my FPS drops to about 10 fps. Considering I'm running a Q6600 OC'd at 3 ghz, 4 gigs of DDR2 and 2x8800GT I'm pretty sure it's not because of shitty computer specs. Anyone else have the same issue?

That aside, I'll probably level like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...03150203103151

I prefer the Blood playstyle, but 15% faster movement speed and 20% faster mount speed is just so, so good for levelling.

 

Grymm

Hmm. I'll just chime in on a couple things. My DK is up to 69 on beta playing as deep frost/blood.

1. Runic strike is definitely when you avoid a hit. I switched to a mace when I got to Northrend (1 weapon skill) and had a chain of about 600 straight dodge/parries against mobs. Runic strike was not procced by them.

2. This may not be true of a DW build, but as a 2 hand user my obliterate hits WAY harder than icy touch. IT might crit for 1100 now and I can obliterate for 2500+. Also, as deep frost, I use frost strike a lot. I FS at least once per set of runes.

3. Killing machine is very powerful in combination with howling blast. If you pull 2 mobs and proc killing machine (which is a 30 second buff so you won't ever let it run out before using it), drop a howling blast. Every mob it hits will be a crit. I pulled a pack of shoveltusks and hit 5 of them for 2400+ damage each.

4. Currently, it doesn't look like some of the frost buffs that have been posted by blue are in. I don't get 10 exp out of tundra stalker yet and I don't think my HB/Oblit are hitting 25% harder yet. It's a fun build but I don't use death strike almost at all. I just bandage every once in a while.

 

Benjaimn

That is pretty much the exact build I am using as well, I did however pick up Wandering Plague because I found aoe leveling works very well for my play style.