Death Knight: Simple Questions/Simple Answers - Page 13

Alvira · 11/25/08, 10:05 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

I am going with a build that is almost exactly the same! : )

But with slight modifications because I am still leveing. hee. Yeah, the idea is that the blood strikes for this build are going to hit just as hard as if they were heart strikes. And the rest of the frost attacks don't suffer much because the blood talents make up for some of the damage they lost. About the only thing we lose in this build is hungering cold, which is more for pvp and aoeing anyway. I don't see anything wrong with it, and I believe its a great build.

If GCD is really a problem. Maybe you can try testing it in blood presence, but don't use plague strike in the rotation at all. The reason being that plague strike hits for really low, and the buff its gives to the other strikes is actually quite negligable in the scheme of things. This is only if GCD is really such a problem of course.

Right now, I am leveling with this build and things die fast enough even without me using plague strike. I really like this build.

Just my 2 cents.

Naivar · 11/25/08, 11:59 PM

Hey guys,

Just wondering why the DK Dps Com. puts necrosis much lower in terms of added dps than blood-caked blade? My buddy and I tried to do some math around the two, and we came up with the 4% more white dmg dps would yield more dps than maxing blood-caked blade.

if anyone could enlighten us on this we would be more than willing to listen.

Also what about not specing to shadow of death and garg, and using those 2 points to max out bcb? I know Garg is pretty good, but just wondering if maxing bcb would yield more dps in between the CD timer?

Thanks in advance for helping me out guys!

Draom · 11/26/08, 12:21 AM

Sorry for this, what must seem to many, a stupid question, but why are DKs not expected to MT in raids? I'll just leave it at that, since it's often between the lines that they are meant for OT'ing and I wonder why, I have my theories but I see no real red light blinking. Clear it up for me please.

heffroncm · 11/26/08, 12:38 AM

Originally Posted by Draom

Sorry for this, what must seem to many, a stupid question, but why are DKs not expected to MT in raids? I'll just leave it at that, since it's often between the lines that they are meant for OT'ing and I wonder why, I have my theories but I see no real red light blinking. Clear it up for me please.

I'd be interested in this too. They seem like perfectly viable MTs to me, and Blizzard's intent is to get all four tanking classes viable as raid MTs.

Currently, DKs are the best at generating threat while not being hit. This does make them a natural for second threat tank on a fight that needs one. I don't think this is enough to put them in the OT position permanently. I think it is largely just a player perception issue coming off 4 years of Warriors being the best raid tank.

Northerner · 11/26/08, 4:17 AM

Single-target threat is not a large concern at present to say the least and AE threat is handled cheerfully (again at present) by any of the tanking classes. When it comes to mitigation or mitigation and avoidance, tanks are somewhat different however and the present preference from healers is for excellent base mitigation with periodic and well-known tricks. For that role, Warriors are still king by some margin.

DKs excel at tanking through threat, which is largely immaterial right now, and through a number of short-term and often activated 'tricks'. Sadly, flexing a healing routine around short cooldowns is painful and tends to lead to overheal and underheal more than anything. At least that is my impression so far of a young class in a young expansion. We shall see.

Ollin · 11/26/08, 6:31 AM

Originally Posted by heffroncm

I'd be interested in this too. They seem like perfectly viable MTs to me, and Blizzard's intent is to get all four tanking classes viable as raid MTs.

Currently, DKs are the best at generating threat while not being hit. This does make them a natural for second threat tank on a fight that needs one. I don't think this is enough to put them in the OT position permanently. I think it is largely just a player perception issue coming off 4 years of Warriors being the best raid tank.

I agree here that it's largely just a player perception issue. DKs will make damn fine main tanks.

Part of the problem I think is the almost total lack of good tanking gear for DKs until you hit the upper end of the leveling curve (a lot of which is crafted actually).

Add to this the shear amount of people playing DKs who DON'T know what they're doing yet just reinforcing the misconception that DKs can't MT.

Several times so far I've had members of my PUGs tell me that I was the first good DK tank they've run into since Wrath launched.

Add in my own experience: there are some REALLY bad DK tanks out there. Many are being played by people who never bothered to level a tank before and are jumping at the chance to try it out now and skip the 1-58 grind at the same time (really bad tanks).

richard · 11/26/08, 7:15 AM

I've noticed that when there are 2 unholy death knights in a group, only 1 Ebon Plague debuff will be up. Does this mean whichever DK gets it first gets 3 diseases up and the other one just 2? Seems kinda weird to me.

Randyll · 11/26/08, 7:26 AM

Originally Posted by richard

I've noticed that when there are 2 unholy death knights in a group, only 1 Ebon Plague debuff will be up. Does this mean whichever DK gets it first gets 3 diseases up and the other one just 2? Seems kinda weird to me.

As Ebon Plaguebringer doesn't stack, you'll only want one unholy DK in any given group. The second DK cannot benefit from that third disease towards +strike damage since strikes count only your diseases for bonus damage. That said, it will benefit from the magic damage debuff (as is expected).

fearghaill · 11/26/08, 9:47 AM

Originally Posted by Alvira

I am going with a build that is almost exactly the same! : )

But with slight modifications because I am still leveing. hee. Yeah, the idea is that the blood strikes for this build are going to hit just as hard as if they were heart strikes. And the rest of the frost attacks don't suffer much because the blood talents make up for some of the damage they lost. About the only thing we lose in this build is hungering cold, which is more for pvp and aoeing anyway. I don't see anything wrong with it, and I believe its a great build.

If GCD is really a problem. Maybe you can try testing it in blood presence, but don't use plague strike in the rotation at all. The reason being that plague strike hits for really low, and the buff its gives to the other strikes is actually quite negligable in the scheme of things. This is only if GCD is really such a problem of course.

Right now, I am leveling with this build and things die fast enough even without me using plague strike. I really like this build.

Just my 2 cents.

One thing I realized I overlooked - the 20% buff from glyph of BS will be lost on boss fights due to snare immunity.

Kytrarewn · 11/26/08, 11:51 AM

For the first time last night, we attempted to run CoT:Strat with our main DK tank, who has always proven himself to be a very good player.

Group makeup was:
Holy Priest
Assassination Rogue
Non-BM Hunter
Unholy DK
Moonkin Druid.

Our DK kept getting destroyed by the Infinite Adversaries, in a way that I haven't seen in the many times I've run the instance with a Paladin or Warrior tank, for whatever reason. Void Strike was hitting him for over 10k on occasion, which was unhealable for our Priest.

Our Death Knight tank was Mog on Malygos (he seems to be in his DPS gear at present, rather than his tanking gear) here:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Now, Void Strike hits for 125% of weapon damage, ignoring all armor, and obviously hits incredibly hard.

Has anyone had this issue with CoT:Strat? Did you do anything special to resolve it?

We decided to sleep/trap the adversaries, but that wastes time if trying for the timed event, and it was still fairly touch-and-go.

Thanks for your responses.

Calgar · 11/26/08, 1:45 PM

We had the exact same problem in that instance. Our Feral MT got completely wrecked in like 2 seconds by those guys. I've heard of other groups in our guild having similar issues at that point as well. You might wanna try in a less insane instance to start tanking with.

Pyros · 11/26/08, 2:28 PM

I thought I'd have issues too when we ran CoT with me tanking, but didn't really. Maybe was lucky on avoidance, but worked fine. Ran it with 2 feral tanks too, one with like 25k hps was getting destroyed, other with 22k and mostly 70gear tanked it fine, so unsure what's problematic, maybe DPS being too slow.

I did burn unbreakable and icebound fortitude alternatively on each of the pulls though, along with AMS for caster stuff. Also one thing I do often when tanking is simply burn the UF runes on Death Strike instead of the usual Oblit, because I don't need threat(rune strikes and D&D/bloodstrikes take care of it) but the self healing is rarely wasted. Healer was a resto shammy. He was spam healing during that part though.

Kytrarewn · 11/26/08, 3:36 PM

I've got a crackpot idea that I'm 99% sure is incorrect, but it bears asking:

Pyros: Do you use 2H or DW when tanking?

Pyros · 11/26/08, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by Kytrarewn

I've got a crackpot idea that I'm 99% sure is incorrect, but it bears asking:

Pyros: Do you use 2H or DW when tanking?

2H, I use my usual Titansteel destroyer, with a 4% parry runeforge when I tank. However I got some epic tanking 1h from heroic utgarde, and had a blue tanking axe banked from a quest, so might try DW at some point, the issue is the lack of hit% imo. I guess I could use one of my DPS piece with high hit% instead of my tanking if I get the defense off weapons though, so yeah, might end up checking it out at some point.

As for the rest of the gear, def cap, 24k hps, 24k armor, usual frost tanking spec, so nothing fancy. That includes some Tempered Saronite crap to get to def cap. Tanked a few heroics and never had an issue, but in violet Hold, on the shaman bird boss, didn't expect him to hit too hard so I was slacking on cooldowns, and he fucked me up with Stormstrike+2big hits. The try after I simply rotated all my cooldowns, and never dropped under 80%.

Kytrarewn · 11/26/08, 4:04 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

2H, I use my usual Titansteel destroyer, with a 4% parry runeforge when I tank. However I got some epic tanking 1h from heroic utgarde, and had a blue tanking axe banked from a quest, so might try DW at some point, the issue is the lack of hit% imo. I guess I could use one of my DPS piece with high hit% instead of my tanking if I get the defense off weapons though, so yeah, might end up checking it out at some point.

As for the rest of the gear, def cap, 24k hps, 24k armor, usual frost tanking spec, so nothing fancy. That includes some Tempered Saronite crap to get to def cap. Tanked a few heroics and never had an issue, but in violet Hold, on the shaman bird boss, didn't expect him to hit too hard so I was slacking on cooldowns, and he fucked me up with Stormstrike+2big hits. The try after I simply rotated all my cooldowns, and never dropped under 80%.

Pyros: Could you tell me, in your tanking gear, what your damage range is?

Grojin · 11/26/08, 4:14 PM

Does the heart strike anti haste effect prevent parry hasting effect on boss ? If it is, could be an interresting buff for tank survivability.

Pyros · 11/26/08, 4:50 PM

Originally Posted by Kytrarewn

Pyros: Could you tell me, in your tanking gear, what your damage range is?

If you mean tooltip, somewhere around(not tank speced atm) 1600-1900. If you mean actual hits, I RS for like 5-6k crits pretty often, this lvl of damage. I'd say DK tanks are the highest dps tank, which might be useful for some fights, but in heroics not really. Gives you more room for deathstrikes though(which if they full heal still generate good threat).

halfpint · 11/26/08, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Grojin

Does the heart strike anti haste effect prevent parry hasting effect on boss ? If it is, could be an interresting buff for tank survivability.

Parry hasting isn't a haste affect, it gets that name because it is essentially the same as increasing the bosses attack speed by triggering the parry counter attack. Thus it can not be negated.

On a side note, there are reports of parry hasting being turned off currently. It's too early to tell, but early parses have indicated this.

Ollin · 11/26/08, 5:09 PM

Originally Posted by Randyll

As Ebon Plaguebringer doesn't stack, you'll only want one unholy DK in any given group. The second DK cannot benefit from that third disease towards +strike damage since strikes count only your diseases for bonus damage. That said, it will benefit from the magic damage debuff (as is expected).

Ebon Plaguebringer doesn't count as a disease for purposes of how many diseases you have on your target any more. That advantage was removed from unholy in late beta because it pretty much completely broke the spec.

Xelopheris · 11/26/08, 5:16 PM

Originally Posted by Ollin

Ebon Plaguebringer doesn't count as a disease for purposes of how many diseases you have on your target any more. That advantage was removed from unholy in late beta because it pretty much completely broke the spec.

Can an unholy DK please confirm this? IT/PS -> Death Strike should be enough to prove it. All I remember was Unholy Blight being removed as a disease in late beta.

Janraea · 11/26/08, 5:24 PM

Originally Posted by Xelopheris

Can an unholy DK please confirm this? IT/PS -> Death Strike should be enough to prove it. All I remember was Unholy Blight being removed as a disease in late beta.

It does count as a disease, or at least did last week.

Lazare · 11/26/08, 5:54 PM

Originally Posted by Ollin

Ebon Plaguebringer doesn't count as a disease for purposes of how many diseases you have on your target any more. That advantage was removed from unholy in late beta because it pretty much completely broke the spec.

I have no idea why you'd think this, nor any idea how Ebon Plaguebringer counting as a disease could break the spec. Perhaps you were thinking of UB? In any case, if your going to make claims that contradict both common knowledge AND common sense, it might be helpful to post some data.

slant · 11/26/08, 6:51 PM

He's thinking about unholy blight, yes. Unholy can apply 3 diseases.

Gort · 11/26/08, 7:42 PM

Originally Posted by halfpint

Parry hasting isn't a haste affect, it gets that name because it is essentially the same as increasing the bosses attack speed by triggering the parry counter attack. Thus it can not be negated.

On a side note, there are reports of parry hasting being turned off currently. It's too early to tell, but early parses have indicated this.

From the other thread:

Blue says (World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Parry Hasting - Was it removed?):
Originally Posted by Daelo
The reduced swing time for a creature's next swing after it successfully parries an attack still exists in the game, and the vast majority of all creatures in WoW use the mechanic. Note that we have the ability to flag specific creatures to not be affected by this mechanic if we so choose for balance purposes. An example of such a creature would be Patchwerk, a very high melee damage dealing raid boss.
From that I'd assume that most bosses still have parry-haste.

It's still there.

Venkelos · 11/26/08, 8:24 PM

In the unholy tree there are a lot of talents of questionable value. Three talents in particular are Reaping, Desecration, and Anti-Magic Zone.

Reaping can setup a PS, IT, BS, BS, ScS, ScS, ScS but that is a lot of setup for 1 extra scourge strike and you are counting on nothing unexpected happening in the next 10-15 seconds. Your only profit is one global cooldown and whatever damage difference there is between 2 blood strikes and a single scourge strike. Does this talent have any in game value for anything other than pure pve dps death knights?

Desecration increases damage by 5% and slows targets, but it does not sync with epidemic forcing you to designate one unholy rune to keeping this buff up. In addition the radius is so small that when coupled with the rune refresh time this is not a viable cc abilities for pve or pvp in my opinion.

Anti-Magic zone is a very expensive talent which at first looks good because of all the 0's after the 1, but it is little more than a 2min cooldown greater heal that you must pre-cast and stand under. The PvE usefulness seems very similar to Lightwell and unless I am missing something, I can find far better ways to spend 6 talent points in the tree.

I find myself unable to assign these 3 talents appropriate value in either PvE dps, PvE tank, or PvP. My question is, do you guys consider any of these 3 talents essential in any sort of build?