Pyros

Right, it is still 2s on live, I think they backed off changing it, and added a glyph instead. At high lvl of avoidance, glyphed bone shield is insane for single target tanking, but not very good for AE tanking, I think that's the point on which it's balanced, and making it 3.5secs would have made it too good for AEing.

 

Prinsesa

If the internal cooldown is indeed 2.0 seconds, then that reduces the Glyphed uptime to just 16.67%, for an average of 6.67% damage reduction.

Unglyphed, you're looking at a 13.33% uptime for a 5.3% damage reduction.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Liantha

Just got 70 and now have Unholy Presence and I am wondering as a Blood night should I switch to that or stick with Blood Presence. I am not really clear on the affects of haste, but I do not believe that it speeds up our rune regeneration so it really only affects our white damage correct?

 

dreadai

Frost Presence -> Tanking
Blood Presence -> DPS
Unholy Presence -> PvP

It's been stated in this thread, and the compendium numerous times, go ahead and use the search function if you don't believe me.

 

faight

Is that if you're taking hits for a full minute or not? When grinding I generally have Bone Shield up, run in and grab mobs, AoE, loot, and the shield is back up before I'm ready to move on to the next 5-10 mobs. At 2 seconds a bone that means I'll have 6 seconds of reduction initially if I'm getting hit nonstop, as there is no cooldown on the first bone disappearing, and no benefit after the last one, unless I misunderstood.

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.

Also, another question that popped in my head: Why is it that in all the Frost DPS specs you're told to hold off on your HB if Rime procs? In straight up frost in the DPS Compendium it says to not use Rime procs until the end of your first rotation when you burn RP with FS. In Trispec where you're going to use HB anyways wouldn't it make more sense to toss it out immediately after IT regardless, that way if it's free you're good to go for OB, and if it's not then oh well, you've already used it, and it might possibly be back off of cooldown by the time you get to the "OB" section anyways, and considering melee crits have a 50% chance to make your HB always crit wouldn't 100% crit chance HB > OB?

I apologize, most of my questions are probably stupid rather than simple.

 

bologne

With DW trispec, would it be viable to use unholy presence for 15% faster attack speed, thus gaining 15% more Killing machine procs, and 15% more BCB procs?

 

Xelopheris

You hold off your rime procs until the runes are used, otherwise you'll push back the cooldown of at least a couple runes by 2 seconds. Do this a few times and it adds up. If you do it during your RP-dump period, you don't change anything with your rotation.


*E @ Bologne: 15% more Killing Spree procs is somewhat moot - it's uptime is already incredibly high. As far as 15% more BCB procs, you may get more, but each one is doing less damage. Unholy Presence is not a PVE-DPS presence.

 

klineshrike

From my math, Impurity adds more at 5/5 than bladed armor. Due to the spec being so based on spells (tons of IT, HB, 2 diseases) you get a pretty rediculous bonus to them. And it scales a ton more, as its benefit is extremely high from ATP, which you will be gaining a ton more than armor.

As far as the blood vs unholy presence, when I tested a DW spec much like this one (I chose to go further into unholy for impurity and Desecration/Bone armor) and I actually did more dps in unholy. The 15% haste vs 15% damage is a strong point, but everyone ignores the huge GCD redction in unholy. Maybe once you get the hit to never miss blood will shine, but even when I tested on lower levels the GCD increased my dps a ton. Then again, I chose to use my death runes for IT, due to its fairly high damage with this build, so I had a ton more skills in a short time. I called the build a spammy build as it used a ton of smaller abilities.

I also would use Howling blast regardless and if it was a Rimed HB, I would cast IT and PS again. as with DW those two far out damaged an Oblit, and might give me another rime to do the same with again.

This is the build I plan to use at 80 for PVE. I know its odd, but I had pretty good numbers from my testing compared to other more orthodox builds. I understand the issues with desecration, but this build would be using Plague Strike more than most, so I feel I could keep it active fairly well.

 

Twilightsong

I think some discussion of 2H weapon speed would be useful in the DPS compendium, although it is currently locked (to me anyway). Since DK strikes as 'spammable' attacks benefit more from slower weapons, it would nice to codify the DPS gains from using slower 2H weapons. To that end, I crafted a spreadsheet.

Purely for example, I used the following specifications:

o 2H weapons with the same dps, but varying speeds
o 2000 attack power (14 AP = 1 dps)
o Damage per hit = (weapon DPS + AP DPS) * weapon speed
o A Blood Spec rotation of PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - DC / PS - IT - HS - HS - HS - HS (so that's 9 strikes in 20 seconds)

Notes: PS does 30% weapon dmg (plus modifiers), HS does 60% weapon dmg (plus modifiers), and OB does 100% weapon dmg (plus modifiers).

Let's assume that all of the other stats on the weapons are equal in terms of EP. Ignoring the strike modifiers, we would gain 30% of a slower weapon's increased damage per hit on PS, 60% on HS, and 100% on OB. That means the total damage increase per rotation (TDIpR) column = 2*PS(30% increase) + 6*HS(60% increase) + OB(100% increase)

So given 2000 AP, a gain of 0.1 weapon speed will produce a modest but significant gain in DPS of about 8. The difference between a 3.2 and 3.6 speed weapon, therefore, is typically upwards of 30 DPS. Also, because the speed of the weapon is multiplied by its damage plus attack power, the more attack power you have, the bigger DPS gain you will see from a slower weapon. If I used 4000 AP in the calculation, the DPS gain on a 190 DPS 2H weapon going from 3.2 to 3.6 speed would be about 50 DPS, as compared to a 35 DPS gain at 2000 AP.

It becomes more interesting when we start to compare weapons that have different DPS and different speeds. Let's just take one really simple example (using 2000 AP again):

So after subtracting out the 10 DPS difference (19.01 DPS gain - 10 DPS difference), the lower DPS but slower weapon (120 DPS / 3.6 speed) actually provides a 9 DPS gain.

Of course all of these calculations assume that the EP weights of the stats on the weapons being compared are the same. If they are not, your mileage may vary.

Corrections and criticisms welcome.

 

pfooti

Assuming a general-purpose unholy AoE tanking build, is it worth taking the Icy Touch glyph? The extra 10 RP from IT means you can start with PS > IT > Pest > DnD and gain 60 RP - enough to end with Unholy Blight. Otherwise you're stuck with 50 RP (55 with dirge), which is unsatisfying. 10% less icy touch damage is definitely a trade-off, but more UB uptime is a clear benefit. In later rotations, you'd be better able to afford the occasional rune strike or icebound fortitude as well.

 

kaxfenix

Quick answer is no.

If you're on a flying mount and you cast death grip it will dismount you, but the spell does not go off because you are immediately falling and the spell can't be cast while moving. Same goes for while in air and attempting to death grip people on the ground. Finally if a player is on a mount and you death grip them it does not pull them off their mount.

In beta, I played on the PVP server and the zone in to Naxx ( if you have seen it) could be considered a choke point for a faction to get easy kills for those trying to get into the raid zone since you have to fly up to it. I tried on several failed occasions to death grip a horde off the Naxx platform into mid air and join me in the inevitable fall to my death. The ONLY success I had was to land on one of the bones sticking out of the bottom of Naxx, and Death grip a player to me and have a Druid Typhoon them off said bone.

 

Asari

Are there enough level 80 DKs here yet to start a thread on tanking discussions? We have one for DPS that's very nicely done - but it doesn't help with tanking.

I'm having a hard time deciding not only which tanking talents I should take, but also how much I'll have to gimp by DPS by doing so. For example one frost build I'm going to play around with is:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It'd be nice to know how much Acclimation increases resistances by at 80.

 

Septus

Why would it be too good? Given 2 hits incoming per second at 100 damage each, you're going to mitigate the same number of hits, and reduce the total amount of damage by 250 per cast either way, but with 3.5, the mitigation will be a bit more spread out.

You don't gain the 40% damage reduction on hits that come in between the 2 second period where no charges are being eaten up right?

 

Torvahn

I'm currently looking at 18/0/53 with the slight difference from the dps build of taking the points out of desecration to fill out necrosis and get blood tap. Those two points in necrosis might be better off elsewhere like unholy command.

I really like having 5/5 desecration which is what my leveling build has, but I'm not sure how to fit it in. I know it's less dps per point than necrosis, but it's got some utility with the slow and I don't want to use the scourge strike glyph.

Maybe by dropping Unholy aura and Rune Tap I can go 3/5 necrosis and 5/5 desecration. Am I really hurting a party/raid by dropping UA?

I guess my question is which to choose between 3/5 Nec, 5/5 Des, or 5/5 Nec, 2/2 UA, and RT. I like the survivability RT represents, but I'm not sure whether I'll have a blood rune when I need it. In dire situations I'm usually looking for my unholy rune cooldown anyway so I guess it will make it more likely that a heal will be coming sooner rather than later.

Another question... Should I be using Death and Decay at all during AOE rotations? I can't seem to find space for it. It's normally IT > SS > Pestilence > Blood Boil > Death strike > then BB and DS as cooldowns refresh and RP dumps. D&D is much better damage than Blood Boil but the runic cost is prohibitive. Anyone know how to get effective use out of it when AOEing?

Finally, should I be Rune Striking when it procs (once UB is up and going) or stick to Death Coil? It procs a lot and I'm wondering if it's comparable with DC once morbidity and Impurity are considered. If it is, are those talent points possibly better spent elsewhere?

 

Janraea

You do, in fact.

Runestrike is amazing.. But that looks like a dps build to me. Are we talking soloing? Runestrike procs when *you* dodge or parry, so, you won't be using it much in a raid-dps role. If you do mean to ask about soloing here, use runestrike every time it procs - if your weapon is appropriately slow, it's better than anything else you can cast.

 

Asari

I would say use Rune Strike when you can. I've had mine crit for upwards of 4k and I'm only level 72. As long as you have the power to keep UB up.


I'm not a huge fan of D&D outside of tanking. It does good damage, but the rune cost is too high for me when I'm just leveling. I'd say try it out and see if you end up rune starved, and see if the mobs drop faster for you. One thing I really hate about D&D is when I drop it then someone drags like 4 mobs through it as they run by and I end up getting agro.

 

Asari

Do we know if that's intended? (To get the damage reduction between bone loss) Or is it a bug that we should expect fixed in the future...

 

diospadre

It is intended, read the tooltip.

 

Janraea

They word effects that work the way you're thinking differently. Boneshield would be worded like "This effect cannot happen more than once every 2 seconds", if it were intended to only reduce damage on those attacks that remove bones.

 

Septus

I thought DnD was always worth using for max dps when there's 3(maybe 2?) or more targets being hit with it.

 

Ideal

I have a question about tanking as a DK. I just got into Northrend and I'm looking to start tanking some instances to try it out. Is a DK tanking rotation basically the same as their DPS rotation, except in Frost Presence, or is it a better use of my runes to get down DnD (specifically for single targets)?

 

Xelopheris

DnD is for AoE. It really costs too much and reduces your ability to put out threat on your main target too much. For just keeping shit off your healers, It/Ps/Pestilence-Bloodboil will generate enough aggro and keep dots ticking on extra mobs in order to keep them off your healers. Frost gets the added benefit of Howling Blast helping out, Unholy gets higher disease ticks + Unholy Blight. Blood sucks for aoe tanking.

 

Soarsha

I am really confused by Impurity's talent tooltip. It says that at 5/5 "Your spells recieve an additional 25% benefit from your attack power."

So interpreting that directly, if I had 1000 AP, that is a 250 SP increase on all spells. So why does the DPS compendium state that it's only really worth 1.07% per talent point, for a maximum 5/5 equating to 5.35%.

I tried to look over the compendium but I couldn't find anything explaining this.

Thank you.

 

heffroncm

It increases the benefit by 25% of the benefit, not 25% of the attack power. If you have a spell with a 50% coefficient, 5/5 Impurity increases it to 62.5%. With a 10% coefficient, it is increased to 12.5%.

 

bologne

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%