kurokaze

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.

 

Soarsha

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?

 

Septus

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.

 

Soarsha

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?

 

Janraea

It might be more intuitive to think of it as increasing your attack power by 25% for the purpose of spell scaling.

 

Octaviann

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
?

 

Stoical

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.

 

Morogoth

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.

 

Vain

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?

 

Calidar

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?

 

Prinsesa

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

 

Janraea

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?

 

Prinsesa

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

 

wow

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.

 

Nezmajen

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:

So I can use my ranged silence by "alting" my standard silence key.

 

Dázdingo

Is there any good reason, why DKs can't change Stance while sitting and eating e.g? Did I miss something?!
Warriors can change stances while sitting...
Anyone knows? :>

 

rimmer

Probably because it requires a rune and therefore is classed as using an ability.

 

Gholl

Question on obliterate:

It states that it deals 'additional damage per disease'. In a raiding or group situation, does anyone know if this stacks for other DK diseases?

Oh and since I haven't played in a while, are some warlock spells such as corruption still classed as disease and would thus contribute to obliterate?

 

Prinsesa

Death Knight Strikes that deal additional damage based on diseases only count diseases that are owned by the DK himself.

Diseases caused by other Death Knights do not count.

Warlock DOTs are Magical or Curse debuffs. The only class besides Death Knights that can cast Diseases are Priests, with Devouring Plague, and those do not count towards extra Strike damage either.

Death Knights can place a minimum of two baseline diseases, Frost Fever and Blood Plague. Unholy-specced DKs can get a third disease, Crypt Fever/Ebon Plaguebringer.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Bryne

Strikes and abilities that gain bonus damage from diseases work with your diseases only.

If you haven't played in a while your first stop should probably be to Wowhead or Thottbot where you can look up spells and check some of that very basic stuff out for yourself.

 

Gothik

Does Glyph of Blood Strike work with Heart Strike?

 

Tabach

I know in the DPS compendium it says DRW scales better with gear than Gargoyle, but how good should my gear actually be before getting DRW over Gargoyle?

Also, doesn't the DPS increase from Annihilation help the 51/13/7 spec over 50/0/21?

 

Nihenna

Small question regarding gemming.
I was reading the DPS compendium thread and it listed the three colours of gem choice.
My question is: it doesn't say what you should prioritize, while on the hit-section it basically says "GOGO get hitcapped", should I just, like a rogue, gem for full hit until I get the cap and then gradually put in more stre/crit-gems the better gear I get?
And regarding enchants, same there, always expertise/hit-enchants until you're capped?

And do gem prioritizing change depending on what you plan to spec? I plan to be frost at least until we've killed all bosses in the tier 6 content and then see how blood works out.

 

◊ Giant

Looking at your numbers you've forgotten that the AP contribution to instants strikes for 2H weapons has been normalised at 3.3 since a pre-BC patch.

2000 AP is also looking like a sizeable understatement for the AP raiding DK's will have. Already at 78 I've over 2.5k AP in a "raid buffed" situation (BoM and Enh Shammy)

As you increase the AP the weapon damage range becomes a smaller component of the strike damage leading to a decreased importance of slow weapons.

As you say to end though I do agree that with differing stats and EP from the weapons its likely that most of this difference will be lost in the noise.

 

Gholl

Is there any way to incorporate something in these macro's to disable those 'You cant do that yet' or 'not enough runic power' error messages you get when Rune Strike isn't up?