Nah, you're right, it should be 20 seconds. I'll get it fixed.

It certainly brings them a lot more in line now, I completely missed that change. Summoniing with 100 Runic Power, you'd need to generate 360 over the duration versus the 310 from 10 Runic Power cost version, drop the projected 2 Death coils to 1, or go back to limiting yourself to only Sudden Doom Death Coils. I still think it'll outperform Dancing Rune Weapon, but it should be a lot closer.

mulitple targets vs. single target

I understand that we mainly talk about rotations, value of talents etc. in the light of fighting a single target, because it makes things easier. I value this KISS priority, but especially for unholy there should be a few more words about AoE-damage and the skills and talents which support them. You don´t even show a rotation for multiple targets.
Is it fair to judge Outbreak based on a single target rotation??

I played a DK from 55 to 80 and did a lot of dungeons and heroics, so I understand that things are situational and you have to adapt. But for someone reading your excellent summary who never played a DK we may add some talk about these things.

Most times we will fight multiple mobs inside a dungeon/heroic/raid. Especially for unholy this is a big change to our basic rotation. And what about the value of BB and DnD ? Are these "tank-only" talents? How many targets does it need to make the use of BB and DnD worthwhile in terms of dps...or never? For someone new to this topic it might be interesting to include some math to this points.

I tried a lot of things when running a dungeon/heroic...focused on SS, then on BB or DnD...and was surprised a few times myself how much damage DnD for example came up with. I ended up with something like this for the initial rotation:
5 targets or more = PS-IT-Pestilence(PE)-DnD-UB
3-4 targets = PS-IT-PE-BB-SS-UB

I know that this will give you less Death Runes in the second rotation. I used PE in my first rotation any time on multiple mobs...when the Blood Rune came up again I used it for BB (3+ targets) or BS (1-2 targets). I always had 3/3 Outbreak.

Every 5 minutes you can use ERW and throw two additional BB into the mobs (if your tank is up to it) and move into your SS-focused rotation...thats an awful lot of aoe and makes Outbreak for example a much desired talent in my eyes. And ERW should be used for this every time it´s available...under 4.1.2 it sounds like you should hold back...5 min. is a rather short cd, I would use it as often as possible, otherwise it is just wasted.

I apologize that I can´t provide any hard numbers here, but maybe someone can take a look into this issue and calculate how many targets it will need that the use of BB and DnD would overcome BS.

To sum things up, this are the points I thought about:
- value of the talent Outbreak ? (right now it´s value is calculated when fighting single targets)
- under "5 How to dps..." With a high percentage of fights against multiple targets, there should be some words about that
- usage of BB and DnD for tanks only? How many targets you need to fight to make their usage wothwhile...or never?

Edit: My point is: To play an unholy DK is all about flexibility, adapting etc. You usually start with 3+ mobs and very different priorites then the ones you have at the end of the same fight when only 1 target is left. There is nothing like "a" rotation for an unholy DK...you have an initial rotation based on a single or mutliple target situation. This initial rotation defines our next priorities. And usually starting with multiple mobs gives a very different value to some of our talents and skills as they are shown in the compendium right now. So maybe it is worth to give the Unholy-section a stronger focus about aoe-damage and some summary about how your playstyle differs in these situations.

And one question I have myself and it may be worth added into the compendium for Unholy DK.

2-Handed Weapon Specialization (2HWS)

Most people seem to agree that 17/0/54 is the way to go. But is 2HWS affecting the weapon damage used for SS and BS? Or is it only affecting your auto-attacks (20% of your damage). If it´s the latter, I would rather skip it and use the points somewhere in the Unholy-tree.

I´m sure this question will come up for a new DK, so maybe we should include it somewhere under 8.3.2

We also had the blood talents added into the "8.3.5 DPS breakdown per talent point" in the original thread. These should be added in the compendium too I think.

To the best of my knowledge, virulence gives normal spell hit, which would affect UB and diseases - however, I don't recall any DoT ticks being fully resisted while playing a lock, and I don't know how the UB mechanism works, so how much impact it has on them isn't clear to me. I'd hope the diseases are always applied if IT/PS (or Pestilence) land successfully, as 2 hit checks would be odd. There's also the question of if just gearing for the extra hit you'd get from virulence and spending those talent points elsewhere is a better dps return of course, and that answer may depend on gear level.

Desecration not being linked to blood plague rather than PS itself does seem rather odd, the mechanic of icy talons being triggered by FF rather than just IT could work well here, though there might be issues with triggering multiple patches on the ground from pestilence, etc, that aren't present a simpler haste buff.


Unless 2h weapon spec works differently for DKs, it should be affecting SS and BS, as the warrior version affects MS, etc. The blood talents being added to the Unholy DPS breakdown here would be very useful.


One further note past what's already been commented on picking up master of ghouls - virulence loses all dps value if you pick up enough extra hit, and as dual wielding, you'll cap spell hit long before capping hit for white attacks, so that may be the better option. Moving those points to ravenous dead, and one point in either outbreak or corpse explosion (for trash/boss AoE situations) should be a dps gain at that point, even without master of ghouls.

On the subject of ravenous dead, I believe that the 8.3.5 table leaves out ghoul use - a note to that effect would be nice, as it's not clear on first glance, and could lead people to under-valuing ravenous dead without considering the ghoul side of the equation.


Although (very) situational, would it be worth mentioning in 8.1.1 that warrior and druid tanks, and to a lesser extent DK tanks, would gain a lot of threat generation from hysteria being used on them? Naturally, for this to be a gain, threat has to become an issue again, and the tank needs to not be in danger of dying from the extra damage - could be useful on offtanks in multi-tank aggro reduction fights like VR or Bloodboil though, and might be a raid dps gain if the aggro drops are extreme enough to threat-cap the dps.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization affects your auto-attack damage, and the damage of any ability which includes the phrase "deals x% weapon damage." This includes Frost Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Plague Strike (only affects the damage of the actual attack, does not affect the damage of Blood Plague). It does not include any spells, such as Icy Touch, Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Unholy Blight, Howling Blast, or Death Coil.

One thing that I think should be included in the front page is which weapon types a Death Knight can use, and whether or not they need to be trained. Death Knights start with 1H Swords, 1H Axes, 2H Swords, 2H Axes, and possibly Polearm Weapon Skills (can someone confirm this, I can't recall for sure either way whether or not you start out with Polearms) all starting at 270 upon character creation. Death Knights can learn to use 1H Maces and 2H Maces from the faction appropriate Weapons Master. Death Knights cannot use Daggers, Fist Weapons, or Staves at all.

Might still be worth including Agility. With 45.90 crit rating = 62.5 agility = 1% crit and 1/18 as AP (from Bladed Armor), it should be

1 AGI = 45.9 / 62.5 * "crit stat (rating)" + 1/18 = 0.7344 * "crit stat (rating)" + 0.056

Stat (rating)	Unholy	Blood	Frost
1 AGI	0.8810	0.8967	0.9290

If my math isn't off, it places agility above haste for all specs and above ArP for Unholy and Frost. (Ah, small typo in your list: should read 1ARP, not 1APR.)

You also need to account for crit rating affecting spells whereas agility does not.

D'oh.. I knew I must have missed something (and the values did seem a bit high). I guess it's a bit more complex then, maybe methods could provide the numbers?

UB has a hit-check every time it deals damage, since it works more like thorns or an imp's fire shield than an actual dot (with the small difference that people don't have to hit you to be damaged).

During beta I never had it happen that IT or PS hits and the respective disease is not applied, so I would assume they are linked (or I was just extremely lucky). Once a DoT is applied it can only be partially resisted by magic resistance, it's not being hit-checked again.

It is per tick, DnD does way more damage than 3x bloodboil, bloodboil is pretty bad compared to UB, HB, WP, or DnD.

Edit: Oh and it gets +30% from crypt fever.