Death Knight: Simple Questions/Simple Answers
 

Welcome to the Death Knight Simple Questions thread. This thread is for all your simple questions which you expect to have simple answers and thus do not require their own thread.

Note that all forum rules still apply: we said simple questions, not stupid questions (which have no place on these forums). You're still expected to make a reasonable effort to find the answer yourself by searching and reading the threads and making use of spreadsheets and any other tools that may be available. If, however, you're fairly confident that your question is not easily answered with available information, but don't think it will generate sufficient discussion to require it's own thread, this is the place to ask.

2 quick questions XD

If I have Blood Barrier and Reaping, after I use BS twice does blood barrier proc? or do I have to wait for the death runes to go down too?


Does Glyphe of Corpse Explosion proc off of itself?

Blood Barrier (the parry proc) only goes up when your blood runes are used up, so having death runes up is okay.

Glyph of Corpse Explosion does not proc off itself, since additional targets are not expressly victims of corpse explosion, but rather a victim of the glyph.

Any target killed by your Corpse Explosion ability will also explode. Only affects targets within range of your Corpse Explosion ability, and cannot happen more than once every 6 seconds.

Last one for now: How much would I lose out if I dual wield with an unholy tanking build vs a two hander? compared to how much I'd gain with a second runeforge.

You lose a lot dual-wielding as anything but tri-spec. Especially with unholy -- scourge strike represents a large part of your damage. You also gain absolutely nothing from runeforges, as you'd use 4% parry on a 2h and 2x 2% parry on 1h's.

*edit*: to clarify on tri-spec.

Trispec is a build which focuses on two things: Howling Blast w/ Killing Machine, and Necrosis/Blood Caked Blades. It's generally used as a DPS build instead of a tanking build, more on that later.

The strength of trispec is in it's lack of weapon-damage dependent damage -- Two blood strikes, a plague strike and an oblit or two every 20 seconds. What it loses in weapon damage, it makes up for in Howling Blast and BCB. Due to the nature of killing machine, a Slow/Fast dual-wield setup will have it constantly, to the point where you'll be surprised when Howling Blast doesn't crit. At the same time, your fast offhand will generate a lot of Blood Caked Blade procs, which associate to the main hand (think rogue swordspec). Necrosis, at the same time, increases your autoattack damage by about 10%.

The reason I said this is a DPS build: Parrygibbing. For trispec to work, you would be using, optimally, 2.6-1.5 MH-OH. This generates 1.05 autoattacks per second before Windfury Totem. On top of this, you have 5 strike attacks every 20 seconds and blood caked blade procs also throwing out. A lot of stuff to parrygib yourself with.

The Ghoul is known to scale with Strength and Stamina. Does it inherit any other stats? Perhaps more importantly, does it inherit the Death Knight's hit rating, like Hunter and Warlock pets now do?

Perhaps I'm just not understanding, but I don't see how that build makes it alright in terms of not getting Parry-Gib'd. Is it just because you aren't doing things nearly as often? And couldn't a Frost Build theoretically do the same thing, with a reliance on Icy Touch?

Feel free to educate me, I've been playing a DK for about 6 hours total.

I think you're just misunderstanding him. Xelo's saying that the DW-3spec is not good for tanking because of parry-gibbing: more attacks -> more parries. (If you don't understand about parry-haste, just disregard the comment and trust him).

Since you wouldn't gain anything from a second runeforge (all you'd gain is the tanking stats on a pair of tanking one-handers), The extra damage from parry-hasting the boss you're tanking is a deal-breaker (not to mention that the strength of the build is in how well it scales with dps stats, which you're a little short on in tanking gear).

Edit: If I'm not understanding your question (which is confusing me a little), please rephrase it a little more clearly - which build is 'this' build?)

I think it is also worth mentioning that any blood runes converted to death runes still count as blood runes for the purpose of procing Blade Barrier.

Okay. I guess a better question from me is: Is there any DW Tanking builds that can stack up, or at least come close, to a 2h one?

Short answer would be a clear NO. To elaborate a bit, you're losing a lot of TPS for no reason, due to most specials being reliant on weapon damage, and due to missing a lot more white attacks, while the stat/enchant gain from wielding two tanking one handers is nowhere near on par with the extra damage you'll be taking from parry haste.

Assuming an unholy tanking build like this, which I'm sure could be improved upon, would you would attempt to use a typical DPS rotation like this?
PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> SS -> UB
SS -> SS -> SS -> DC
Also, assuming 0 protection paladins for BoSanc would you omit the UB and DC portions and be using rune strike on every opportunity?

No. The losses are too many - parry 'gibbing', lower base threat on everything, rune striking's cost goes up (the slower the weapon, the cheaper it is to keep every swing a Rune Strike).

The rotation looks right, and yes, rune strike will be a higher priority than UB/DC (unless you're tanking multiple mobs).