Teyrocar

I'm having a small bit of trouble with my 51/13/7 Blood rotation.

I leveled as Unholy and got used to using a 2-rune primary attack. Understandably it was a rather significant change when I switched to Blood with a 1-rune primary. In general, I still enjoy the spec more than I did with Unholy, but there are still a few things I need to get sorted.

One problem I'm having is my sequence priority. "Perfect" rotations look great on paper but it's very hard to maintain them in an actual fight once you factor in fight mechanics, lag, and response time.

My issue is this: When do I cast Death Coil? With all the GCDs its nigh impossible to fit EVERYTHING in to a rotation, so I have to make sacrifices at times. Most people say that you never want to let your RP sit at 100 for too long, but even then, it seems to me that my Heart Strikes and Obliterates are doing MUCH more damage than Death Coil. While HS's base damage is comparable, it has higher crit damage through talents AND has a chance to proc Sudden Doom. So it seems to me that even IF I'm sitting at or close to max RP, it would still be more beneficial to use HS and Oblits rather than DC because it's going to give me more damage and more utility. Would this be correct, or am I missing something?

 

Lujaar

Are you hit/expertise capped? I found blood really frustrating to play when my heart strikes could miss, for exactly that reason. It's easier to find spare GCDs when your attacks are missing as unholy or frost.

If you're not missing, you should be able to deathcoil every 6 runes. Also, look for times when you're about to obliterate and one of the runes you need lights up before the other. You can sneak in a deathcoil then.


"Simple" question of my own: has anyone found a reliable way to summon a ghoul in a party with dead people? The spell looks for viable humanoid corpses, and if it finds a player it tries to reanimate them instead of summoning my pet, which is dumb. Has anyone found a workaround with a macro or something?

 

• Lanky

You need to target an NPC corpse to get a Ghoul pet, or yes it will auto-target a dead player. That said, I am finding the value of both Shadow of Death, and Master of Ghouls decreasing sharply in raids. Shadow of Death would be good if Naxxramas didn't zone you out as a ghoul after a wipe, which is a nasty bug. But the Ghoul pets themselves don't really appear to add much to PvE. They get reamed out on every boss with a smidgen of AOE, which is most of them, and contribute minimal DPS unless fully talented and glyphed.

 

lexicant

Just throwing it out there, maybe throw out an acronym chart since not a lot of us have experience with dk's yet, I've been playing like 2 hours and came here to read up on it a bit and am lost. I'm sure I'm not the only one finding it a bit difficult having to look up all the acronyms right now lol.

 

• Lanky

What? Shadow Of Death and Master of Ghouls are Talents in your unholy talent tree. Open it up and look. If the acronyms PvE and DPS are confusing you, this is not the forum you are looking for.

The only reason shadow of death is bad is that there is a bug, explained above, with Naxxramas right now. Otherwise it is a killer investment for 1 talent point. 2% STR and STAM, and more dps to contribute if you die. However, Master of Ghouls does not appear to be worth it for PvE, the Ghoul dies too much and that talent point could be spent on verifiable and reliable DPS.

 

Broseph

You'll find an acronym chart in the VERY FIRST POST of the DPS compendium

DPS Compendium

Read that before posting.

 

Narcyn

The DPS Compedium has what you are looking for.


Edit: Too slow.

 

Redux

Does armor on Trinkets, Rings, and Necks get modified in Frost Presence?

I saw druids get nerfed in this sense, but it doesn't mention death knights unless I'm blind. Or does this nerf affect us too?

 

slant

Completely agree. Forget about raids, my ghoul dies nearly every pull in non-heroic 5mans! It needs the avoidance buff if it's to be at all usable beyond leveling.

 

Alvaeus

Simple question: Does unholy aura affect riding speed, or only run speed?

I'm a big fan of increased movement speed while leveling, which makes On a Pale Horse a good talent - but if Unholy Aura provides most of the benefit, then it doesn't seem worth investing two points in OaPH to effectively gain 5% mounted speed (unless PvPing for the stun/fear resist).

 

slant

It's only run speed but it's run speed for your party, so it should speed up WOTLK vehicles like siege engines and the vendor mammoth also. I expect all clued-in PvE players will drop OAPH at 77, or whenever they get an epic flier.

 

Alvaeus

Agreed with dropping at 77, but that makes it a really nice talent for 15+ levels of grinding. Unholy Aura seems less valuable, although not worthless. Thanks for the quick answer.

 

slant

Unholy aura is one of the best raid talents we get. It's one of very, very few unique buffs in the game, is faster than the speed enchants, and lets the entire raid use superior boot enchants. Mobility in battle is important. Drop OAPH, not unholy aura.

 

Isildien

I'm having this exact same issue. I'm hit capped, actually way over the hit cap, but I still find that I'm sitting at full RP because my Blood/Death Runes are back up and I can't find time to throw in the odd Death Coil. I tried a full 2 minute rotation on a Target Dummy using both Blood and Unholy Presence and Blood was coming out on top even though as Unholy I had no problem using all my Runes and RP. I'm at a loss, I feel my DPS is suffering and I can't seem to fix it.

 

Writhe

Disagree. Getting an epic flyer only increases on a pale horse's static worth. Not the other way around. Furthermore, its relative worth stays exactly the same.

I have only considered dropping it in my pve raiding builds thus far.

Are you [or the above poster] keeping in mind that you can let your runes be off cooldown for ~2 seconds before it matters? (section 4.1)

Who pulled the surger with the core hound?

 

Isildien

I honestly didn't know that. I'll give that a try next raid to see how things go. Thanks.

 

slant

Absolutely correct, but I find that unenhanced epic flight speed is fast enough that it doesn't annoy me, and talent points are precious. Your mileage may, of course, vary. So to speak.

 

Frostx

Yes.

 

fearghaill

This is a DK DPS build I've been playing around with a variant of while levelling, and I think it has potential in terms of both damage output and raid buffs. I was hoping to get some feeback on if I'm A) crazy B) stupid C) Close, but not quite there, or D) Unoriginal, and late to the party.

the build is here: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The idea is to get as much synergy as possible between Blood and Frost, while picking up both Abomination's Might and Improved Icy Talons for raid buffs. The synergy comes from picking up as many Blood Strike boosting talents from both trees as possible, as well as fueling Frost Strikes with the runic power generating talents from Blood. The tradeoff is that I don't get either tree's 10% damage 5-pointer, and pass on some good Blood talents to go deeper into Frost.

That said, the boosts to Blood Strike are substantial:

Subversion - 9% Crit to BS
Bloody Strikes - 18% BS damage and 60% BS bonus damage
Blood of the North - 15% BS Damage
Chilblains + Glyph of Blood Strike - +20% BS damage
Annihilation - +3% melee special crit
Guile of Gorefiend - +60% BS Crit damage

I don't know how stacked bonuses like that are calculated to do the math, but I plan on putting some time on the training dummies at 80 and WWS parsing the results, because right now it seems like my Blood Strikes are doing as much or slightly more damage on average than my Obliterates or Frost Strikes.

My current rotation while soloing is IT/PS (depending on if it's a ranged pull), BSx2, Oblit, FS. This generates Death Runes that I don't usually use, as BS is doing roughloy the same or better damage than Oblit, for half the runes. I'm running Unholy Presence, as I found I was losing more time to the GCD than I was waiting for runes to come off cooldown with no RP to Frost Strike with. The only time I change it up is if my health starts to get low or my RP fills up, at which point I'll use the Death Runes for a DS or Oblit, to give me GCD space for an extra Frost Strike.

Has anyone else tried a similar build, or can anyone see something glaringly wrong with this? It's a fun build so far, damage seems good, and I do like that it gives both the 10% AP buff and the 20% melee haste buff.

 

Anticor

I've been reading the standard trispec (dual wield frost) build to be 15/37/19 would you see a DPS boost, in raid settings, by shifting to 13/37/21 (losing 2% crit from Dark Conviction and picking up the gargoyle)? I understand that crit is to weapons, spells and abilities but I was under the impression that the damage output of the gargoyle was great enough to warrant picking it up, especially if you're already 19 deep into unholy.

 

Arkasi

Without knowing your specific talents the answer is yes. Tri-specs don't have a significant rp dump like the other builds so picking up gargoyle will result in a great boost in a raid/boss setting. As for soloing or trash setting I'm not sure if the 2% loss is significant.

 

heffroncm

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Thoughts on this build please?

Some information:

I'm setting up to be MT of a guild of RL friends. We're basically keeping things to 1 of each class/specc, so I will be the only unholy DK. This build is put together on the assumption that Necrosis and Blood Caked Blade will not work with Rune Strike, as I vaguely remember that from somewhere and can't find confirmation either way, and that with Butchery and BoS I will be Rune Striking almost every swing.

Please feel free to pick this apart and show me where I'm being stupid.

 

Wynna

As 51/13/7 should I try to let my hit rating stay below the spell hit cap (367,22) or just the special attack hit cap (295,11) ?

 

Zymm

Hello.

I've started leveling my DK (57 now) and I was wondering which Runes I should be using while leveling? And if/when I make it to max level and acquire a nice weapon, should I use Runes or get a good enchanter enchant?

Edit: I should specify that I'm leveling blood right now. So this question could be reworded as "Which weapon runes should blood specced DKs be using?" Sorry if this is obvious to some, but the two I have right now both seem pretty good to me. I haven't played a lot of melee classes!

 

Noraj

Blizz stated somewhere in all the DK propganda that Runecarving should completely replace the DK's need for weapon enchants...That being said, you should tailor your weapon to match your goal.

As Blood for DPS though, Cinderglacier is out since the majority of your damage is physical, and it won't really do much. Lichbane and Razorice are a direct 2% increase to your swings assuming the damage isn't resisted, but Razorice has the benefit of helping increase the damage of your Icy Touch sometimes as well...That being said, it synergizes with a frost build much more than blood.

Spellbreaking and Spellshattering are explicitly for tanking spellcasters, and pvp in my opinion, so those are out too.

Swordbreaking / Shattering again are tanking avoidance, though extra parry keeps you alive longer while soloing.

That leaves Fallen Crusader...far and away your best bet for an overall DPS increase.

In short, go with Lichbane or Razorice until you learn Fallen Crusader then stick with that for damage.

"The question is not how far we are going to take it... the question is, do you possess the constitution to go as far as needed?" - Il Duce