◊ Boethius

Welcome to the Death Knight Simple Questions thread. This thread is for all your simple questions which you expect to have simple answers and thus do not require their own thread.

Note that all forum rules still apply: we said simple questions, not stupid questions (which have no place on these forums). You're still expected to make a reasonable effort to find the answer yourself by searching and reading the threads and making use of spreadsheets and any other tools that may be available. If, however, you're fairly confident that your question is not easily answered with available information, but don't think it will generate sufficient discussion to require it's own thread, this is the place to ask.

 

Sylari

2 quick questions XD

If I have Blood Barrier and Reaping, after I use BS twice does blood barrier proc? or do I have to wait for the death runes to go down too?


Does Glyphe of Corpse Explosion proc off of itself?

 

• frmorrison

Blood Barrier (the parry proc) only goes up when your blood runes are used up, so having death runes up is okay.

 

Jonny_Monroe

Glyph of Corpse Explosion does not proc off itself, since additional targets are not expressly victims of corpse explosion, but rather a victim of the glyph.

OMNOMNOM.

 

• Chicken

Any target killed by your Corpse Explosion ability will also explode. Only affects targets within range of your Corpse Explosion ability, and cannot happen more than once every 6 seconds.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Sylari

Last one for now: How much would I lose out if I dual wield with an unholy tanking build vs a two hander? compared to how much I'd gain with a second runeforge.

 

Xelopheris

You lose a lot dual-wielding as anything but tri-spec. Especially with unholy -- scourge strike represents a large part of your damage. You also gain absolutely nothing from runeforges, as you'd use 4% parry on a 2h and 2x 2% parry on 1h's.

*edit*: to clarify on tri-spec.

Trispec is a build which focuses on two things: Howling Blast w/ Killing Machine, and Necrosis/Blood Caked Blades. It's generally used as a DPS build instead of a tanking build, more on that later.

The strength of trispec is in it's lack of weapon-damage dependent damage -- Two blood strikes, a plague strike and an oblit or two every 20 seconds. What it loses in weapon damage, it makes up for in Howling Blast and BCB. Due to the nature of killing machine, a Slow/Fast dual-wield setup will have it constantly, to the point where you'll be surprised when Howling Blast doesn't crit. At the same time, your fast offhand will generate a lot of Blood Caked Blade procs, which associate to the main hand (think rogue swordspec). Necrosis, at the same time, increases your autoattack damage by about 10%.

The reason I said this is a DPS build: Parrygibbing. For trispec to work, you would be using, optimally, 2.6-1.5 MH-OH. This generates 1.05 autoattacks per second before Windfury Totem. On top of this, you have 5 strike attacks every 20 seconds and blood caked blade procs also throwing out. A lot of stuff to parrygib yourself with.

 

chrsjxn

The Ghoul is known to scale with Strength and Stamina. Does it inherit any other stats? Perhaps more importantly, does it inherit the Death Knight's hit rating, like Hunter and Warlock pets now do?

 

Quaunaut

Perhaps I'm just not understanding, but I don't see how that build makes it alright in terms of not getting Parry-Gib'd. Is it just because you aren't doing things nearly as often? And couldn't a Frost Build theoretically do the same thing, with a reliance on Icy Touch?

Feel free to educate me, I've been playing a DK for about 6 hours total.

 

Janraea

I think you're just misunderstanding him. Xelo's saying that the DW-3spec is not good for tanking because of parry-gibbing: more attacks -> more parries. (If you don't understand about parry-haste, just disregard the comment and trust him).

Since you wouldn't gain anything from a second runeforge (all you'd gain is the tanking stats on a pair of tanking one-handers), The extra damage from parry-hasting the boss you're tanking is a deal-breaker (not to mention that the strength of the build is in how well it scales with dps stats, which you're a little short on in tanking gear).

Edit: If I'm not understanding your question (which is confusing me a little), please rephrase it a little more clearly - which build is 'this' build?)

 

calisti

I think it is also worth mentioning that any blood runes converted to death runes still count as blood runes for the purpose of procing Blade Barrier.

 

Quaunaut

Okay. I guess a better question from me is: Is there any DW Tanking builds that can stack up, or at least come close, to a 2h one?

 

Enova

Short answer would be a clear NO. To elaborate a bit, you're losing a lot of TPS for no reason, due to most specials being reliant on weapon damage, and due to missing a lot more white attacks, while the stat/enchant gain from wielding two tanking one handers is nowhere near on par with the extra damage you'll be taking from parry haste.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Fatedtolive

Assuming an unholy tanking build like this, which I'm sure could be improved upon, would you would attempt to use a typical DPS rotation like this?
PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> SS -> UB
SS -> SS -> SS -> DC
Also, assuming 0 protection paladins for BoSanc would you omit the UB and DC portions and be using rune strike on every opportunity?

 

Janraea

No. The losses are too many - parry 'gibbing', lower base threat on everything, rune striking's cost goes up (the slower the weapon, the cheaper it is to keep every swing a Rune Strike).

The rotation looks right, and yes, rune strike will be a higher priority than UB/DC (unless you're tanking multiple mobs).

 

Steelshine

Simple question :

Is there any clear victor when it comes to leveling specs?

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...Steelshine.png

 

Janraea

No. They all work quite well, so do whichever sounds the most fun :-)

 

◊ Bryne

If you are just quest/mob grinding (as most people will be), "majoring" in Blood or Unholy would seem to have a bit of an advantage over Frost simply in terms of self-healing or movement speed buffs, especially since it's difficult to "minor" effectively in trees with a limited amount of leveling talent points (like grabbing Imp. Rune Tap).

 

Quaunaut

For these reasons alone I'd say Unholy probably wins out. I know that all the fastest levelers swear by any runspeed talents in the game for the fastest leveling, and also, a shortened Death Grip speeds up actual questing quite a bit.

I'm going as frost still >.>

 

Writhe

Quick question any information on the functionality of the DK glyphs that were bugged decreasing ability damage instead of giving the intended ability bonus?

Who pulled the surger with the core hound?

 

Sylari

is UB worthwhile on a single target type situation ( what I'm assuming this is, since it lacks Pest or BB )

 

Kaniption

I'm probably way late on this, not having been on the beta or having kept up much with the forum.

in a blood dps build, is there a particular reason that PS comes before IT? I'm only level 60 so perhaps it'll make more sense at 80, but currently it seems like IT > PS while using the ps glyph would be the better choice? I'm sure I'm missing something if someone could enlighten me.

 

Pyros

I believe it's more a convention than anything else, most rotations start with PS, so the ones for blood are usually written like that, even though it doesn't make a difference. If you use the glyph, then yeah you'd do IT > PS.

 

Dalinth

Is Frost looking any good as DPS?I'm pretty unsure about DKs, since all the buffs in the DK trees are non-unique (imp windfury is 20% haste like imp icy talons, spriest have the healy spell (forget the name), affli locks get imp CoElements which is just like ebon plaguebringer). So I guess it all comes down to which buffs/debuffs stack and which don't. Also, is 2H Frost just dumb?

 

Aten

I'm no expert, but from what i've read in this forums, Frost DK can put some serious burst damage, also if im not mistaken they benefit more from crit rating than the other 2 trees.

Frost is by no means the best for top DPS but when they start critting its going to hurt alot.

imo, all DK's no matter what tree they choose should go with a 2H.