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Old 11/18/08, 2:18 PM   #151
kurokaze
Piston Honda
 
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Goblin Warrior
 
Daggerspine
I'm having some trouble filling out the last few points of my 80 spec. I'm planning this around tanking 5-10 mans, as my schedule does not currently mesh with my guild's raid schedule well. I'd like some input and discussion from intelligent people on the relative benefits of several talents.

Starting from here: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It's a pretty standard frost tank spec, with the Icy Talons line since lower-size instances aren't as likely to have an enhancement shaman, and if they do, they can probably drop WoA or something of that nature and not run into other buffs that don't stack with those. I did take Icy Reach which I have in my current spec and find invaluable for general pulling and ranged-tanking purposes.

Talents I'm considering for the last 6 points:
- Subversion: Obliterate crit seems good. On the other hand, I'm often using my FUs on HB.

- 2H Spec / Dark Conviction: Decent threat filler if I don't find anything else to drop the points on.

- Rune Tap / 1x Imp Rune Tap: Seems pretty lackluster, but it's another oh crap button.

- Deathchill: Makes Howling Blast give lots of burst threat, but can't be used consistently on every AoE pull, so doesn't really seem too hot to me. I guess it would be an AoE taunt of sorts, which is something I've often felt I lack.

- Blood of the North: Good for single target threat / DPS but for general AoE tanking purposes I'd use Pest/BB or Pest/DnD with my blood runes even if they were death runes, so seems quite skippable.

- Acclimation: Lackluster but it's the only 'mitigation' option which makes it worth considering.

- Hungering Cold: Good effect for those 'oops someone pulled the entire room' situations, but the steep RP cost and the fact that it's likely to just break from random whirlwinds or people AoEing early make it seem really... not good. It does provide a sort of AoE taunt like effect but much less so than Deathchill/HB.

- Morbidity: I very rarely DnD except to gather mobs initially; I find Pest + HB to be a better use of runes in general. So the cooldown reduction doesn't seem great. The benefit of this talent is that with 3/3 you get to spam DnD on every cooldown out of combat and gain net RP so you can start fights out with 100. Gimmicky, but could be useful particularly if I take HC.

- Epidemic: I have this now and I don't like how my diseases fall off if I try to do a second rotation without PS/IT (on single targets). On multi targets I'll be using Pestilence every rotation. So is this really needed at all? I'm definitely leaning towards at least trying a spec without it and seeing how it works out.

I guess I'm leaning towards Subversion, Deathchill, and dropping the last two on Dark Conviction experimentally, moving them to Epidemic if I feel it is necessary.

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Old 11/18/08, 2:28 PM   #152
Soarsha
Glass Joe
 
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Human Death Knight
 
Cho'gall
Thanks guys I was totally putting the emphasis on the wrong word in the tooltip. Looking at it now, it really does say it benefits the benefit. Or what it actually says, the benefit gets a 25% bonus.

Awesome! And I gather it's still a really viable unholy talent then? I'm still probably taking it over Necrosis (I think Impurity is better).

For example. Outbreak 3/3 is a 30% bonus, but with 5/5 Impurity it's actually a 37.5% bonus.

Right?

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Old 11/18/08, 2:39 PM   #153
Septus
Piston Honda
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Ravenholdt
Outbreak just says it's a 30% damage bonus, it's as simple as that. Your AP coefficient is calculated, impurity bonus is added on if you have that, and at the very end, you add 30% more total damage.

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Old 11/18/08, 3:13 PM   #154
Soarsha
Glass Joe
 
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Human Death Knight
 
Cho'gall
Ok cool thanks, it's starting to click now. Since all a DK spell damage is boosted by our AP right?

And DK's should NEVER ever get Spell Power gear?

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Old 11/18/08, 3:26 PM   #155
Janraea
Don Flamenco
 
Tauren Druid
 
Dunemaul
Originally Posted by bologne View Post
1 attack power doesn't equal 1 spell power on spells. Basically, all DK spells scale with attack power instead of spell power. Although I don't have the formula, it basically means that it increases the amount that the spell scales by, by 20%
It might be more intuitive to think of it as increasing your attack power by 25% for the purpose of spell scaling.

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Old 11/18/08, 4:06 PM   #156
Octaviann
Piston Honda
 
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Night Elf Rogue
 
Aggramar
I have a question about Rune Strike macros. Everyone keeps talking about macroing rune strike into their spammed abilities so that they don't ever forget to use it, but I'm not sure whether you're supposed to macro Rune Strike before or after the ability you're macroing it with.

I.e, do I use:
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Heart Strike

or

/cast Heart Strike
/cast Rune Strike
?

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Old 11/18/08, 4:08 PM   #157
Stoical
Piston Honda
 
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Goblin Rogue
 
Black Dragonflight
Does anyone know why the DPS Compendium suggests to use UB as a regular part of your damage rotation? According to the coefficients in that post and my napkin math, below, DC should outperform UB in terms of damage per RP assuming single-target once you pass ~1400 AP.

If my math is accurate, it seems to me that you should only use UB if you are below 1300 AP, AoEing, or you get some resists or misses and so are both GCD-starved and RP-capped, none of which should be the "typical" rotation in a raid.

Assumptions:  DC coefficient = 0.15
UB coefficient = .013
x = AP at which DC damage/RP will equal UB damage/RP

Maths:
(960+.013x)/60=(443+.15x)/40
2*(960+.013x)=3*(443+.15x)
1920+.026x=1329+.45x
1920=1329+.424x
591=.424x
1393.87=x

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Old 11/18/08, 4:20 PM   #158
Morogoth
King Hippo
 
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Khomul
Orc Death Knight
 
No WoW Account
It shouldn't matter. However, if you are planning on tanking at all I would discourage you from making this shortcut- if you are going unholy. Unholy Blight is a key part of our AOE aggro and having a runestrike at the wrong time can really mess things up.

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Old 11/18/08, 4:46 PM   #159
Vain
Piston Honda
 
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Gigashadow
Undead Priest
 
No WoW Account
Does it make sense for a DK to stack a bit of spell penetration for PvP, so that disease and scourge strike damage gets through buffs such as shadow protection, mage armor, and mark of the wild, or does this stat have no effect for DK attacks?

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Old 11/18/08, 8:22 PM   #160
Calidar
Glass Joe
 
Undead Warlock
 
Thorium Brotherhood
How exactly is the damage boost for Two-Handed Weapon Specialization applied? Is it a 4% boost to all damage while wielding a two handed weapon? If not, what does it apply to, white damage, the percentage of weapon damage added in to certain attacks (e.g. Blood Strike), the whole attack? Has anyone parsed this out yet, by chance?

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Old 11/18/08, 10:09 PM   #161
Prinsesa
Bald Bull
 
Blood Elf Paladin
 
Echo Isles
Octaviann: The Rune Strike cast should come first. Rune Strike does not cause a GCD, so you can queue it up and then use a GCD-causing Strike within the same button-press, so long as you follow that order. If you try to use a GCD-causing Strike before the Rune Strike, you'll be in the GCD by the time the Rune Strike line tries to execute, and thus it will fail.

Calidar: Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is a direct increase to your weapon damage. Anything that is based on weapon damage such as auto-attacks and Strikes will therefore gain from THWS. Abilities that have nothing to do with weapon damage, such as DOT damage from Icy Touch and Plague Strike, or Howling Blast, or Death and Decay will not be affected.

This is identical to an Arms Warrior's and Ret Paladin's Two-Handed Weapon Specialization. Auto-attacks, Mortal Strikes, Crusader Strikes, Whirlwinds and Divine Storms are affected, but not such things as Consecration.

Note that this is different from the Protection Paladin's One-Hand Weapon Specialization, which is a 10% increase to ALL damage, as long as a one-hander is equipped.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

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Old 11/18/08, 10:37 PM   #162
Janraea
Don Flamenco
 
Tauren Druid
 
Dunemaul
Originally Posted by Prinsesa View Post
Octaviann: The Rune Strike cast should come first. Rune Strike does not cause a GCD, so you can queue it up and then use a GCD-causing Strike within the same button-press, so long as you follow that order. If you try to use a GCD-causing Strike before the Rune Strike, you'll be in the GCD by the time the Rune Strike line tries to execute, and thus it will fail.

Calidar: Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is a direct increase to your weapon damage. Anything that is based on weapon damage such as auto-attacks and Strikes will therefore gain from THWS. Abilities that have nothing to do with weapon damage, such as DOT damage from Icy Touch and Plague Strike, or Howling Blast, or Death and Decay will not be affected.

This is identical to an Arms Warrior's and Ret Paladin's Two-Handed Weapon Specialization. Auto-attacks, Mortal Strikes, Crusader Strikes, Whirlwinds and Divine Storms are affected, but not such things as Consecration.

Note that this is different from the Protection Paladin's One-Hand Weapon Specialization, which is a 10% increase to ALL damage, as long as a one-hander is equipped.

I think he wants to know if the entire strike is increased by 2% or just the weapon damage portion of it. I'm curious about that also. Heart strike, for example - is it 60% WPD *1.06 + x, or (60% WPD + x) * 1.06?

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Old 11/18/08, 10:54 PM   #163
Prinsesa
Bald Bull
 
Blood Elf Paladin
 
Echo Isles
Only the weapon damage portion of the Strike would be affected. Technically, the formula would still be: (60% WD + base damage + (disease bonus * number of diseases)), since the 6% increase to weapon damage would be factored in beforehand.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

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Old 11/19/08, 4:11 AM   #164
wow
Von Kaiser
 
Blood Elf Rogue
 
Mal'Ganis
What do people think of [Horn of Argent Fury] for DPS? During testing i've done, it seems effected by Desecration as well as Blood Gorged/Rage of Rivendare and crits based on spell crit. Hitting a target dummy for 5 minutes with the normal rotation (specced levelling unholy, blah blah) it made up 7.2% of my total dps, and some of its numbers I couldn't explain (2087 normal hit as highest when I only have 2/5 Rage of Rivendare+Desecration for 9% extra damage, while the max on the item is 1536), so I think it *might* scale slightly with AP, or maybe Impurity, though I need to test more. It also crits for 2x for Death Knights.

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Old 11/19/08, 4:47 AM   #165
Nezmajen
Glass Joe
 
Undead Warlock
 
Ner'zhul (EU)
Originally Posted by faight View Post
As for the Mind Freeze, doing /cast Mind Freeze; Strangulate does not work. I've settled for /cast [target=mouseover, harm] Strangulate; Mind Freeze. Mouseover baddies for Strangulate, if you're mousing over a fellow player/yourself/nothing it'll Mind Freeze your current target. This works pretty good in the half hour I got to test it before the server went down.
That is true. This macro is beeing widely shown on many sites as one the most useful but it does not work: if both spells are available, it will cast both and thus killing the second spell cooldown, which is bad as Strangulate has a 2 minutes CD. I did this macro in order to keep my hotbars clean:

/cast [nomodifier] Mind Freeze; [modifier:alt] Strangulate
So I can use my ranged silence by "alting" my standard silence key.

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