Pyros

They said they're working on it, but afaik no one has tested it on current PTR build, but it didn't work last PTR. Also in this new build, ebon plaguebringer overwrites crypt fever, preventing any stacking and also preventing any usage of 2unholy/DW in the same raid.

 

Juicie

Thanks Pyros. I was catching up on my reading in the DW thread and found that they already covered this in detail. (In that thread)

Edit: NVM my second question. The answer I was looking for was in the DW thread...again.

For reference to people who are only reading here or starting here like I did before catching up in DW thread.

I probably shouldn't cross post, but I always start with the Unholy thread, since the DW thread moves faster.

 

• Zurm

DW is the FOTM right now, between upcoming changes and new gear for T8, I'm sure we'll see some other spec be the new favorite.

2H Unholy, IMO, always has a place in raids. Unholy aura is amazing, and I expect it to be very helpful for many fights in ulduar. Ebon Plaguebringer is also the best of the magic debuffs, as not only can we easily maintain it on a single target, but we can spread it to many targets often, quickly, and easily. Also, if they increase boss armor in Ulduar/T8, I expect we'll see 2H unholy back near/at the top.

 

• Lanky

I absolutely agree, and I'd like to add that while 2H Unholy will not see substantial overall DPS gains from the patch (gargoyle is just too good), it will get some sustained DPS assistance from the improved Necrosis, Night of the Dead, and associated Ghoul Glyphs. The reduction in Unholy Blight's runic power cost will also benefit 2H more than 20/51 DW.

I still think some additional measures are warranted. Glyphed Scourgestrike is our main attack for sustained singlar target DPS. I personally feel that the Glyph functionality of disease refreshing should be baseline in the strike itself, and that the Glyph should provide either additional damage like the obliterate glyph, or an increased chance (up to say 50%, and thus essentially a complete rotation changer) to refresh. If the glyph is to remain as is, then the 60% weapon-damage coefficient of SS needs another look. It hits quite hard at the moment, but it really doesn't compare to Obliterate or Howling Blast in terms of sheer numbers and scaling potential, Glyphed Obliterate uses 120% weapon damage, benefits from all armor reduction, and has a 75%+ crit rate. With a good weapon, frost strike routinely gets into the similar number range as Scourgestrike, and I forsee scaling issues.

Scourgestrike simply is not that good on paper at the moment, despite solid performance in practice.
Other possible solutions to scaling involve buffing blood strike for 2H Unholy, where it remains pitifully weak at the moment, or having a deep tier talent that further buffs deathcoil specifically, similar to Sudden Death for Blood spec, but perhaps instead it buffs DC's crit rate, as well as UB's coefficient.

Some talents need to be squished down as well, especially desecration (single target snare and buff please, 3 talents max), and anti-magic shell.

I feel that these changes would allow 2H Unholy to scale and stay competitive with Frost and Blood, whose 100%+ weapon damage strikes have me eying them as the next spec-to-be for pve dps come Ulduar.

 

BannedDeathreat

I switched over to 2h deep frost (17/54/0) from unholy and am really impressed with the single target DPS. I had fun as unholy always being #1 over all, and in the top 5 or 6 for boss fights; but I think single target DPS is still king for raids, so i went frost this weekend for 10man nax and various other things. Very impressive.

And speaking of FOTM, I'm thinking deep frost with the HB cool down removed will be the next FOTM.

oh, and critting clothies for 9.6k oblits is a lot of fun too.

 

• Zurm

I like this idea. Another option is changing SS to have the bonus disease damage work like BCB... an additional % per disease (say 60% plus 10% per disease), guaranteeing unholy's ability to scale.

While this is a bit OT, since this IS the unholy thread, I did get an almost 15k oblit crit in Unholy Presence on anubrekahn one week. He was sub-35%, both my mirror and greatness card procced, as well as fallen crusader. I haven't been able to get much over 9k on regular boss fights for Scourge strikes, sadly.

 

Zurai

Personally, I think the Obliterate glyph and talents should work for Scourge Strike, just like the Blood Strike glyph and talents work on Heart Strike.

 

Daloron

This is very true. Even with only self buffs (not including hysteria) in my current gear as blood my obliterates on the boss dummies hit for around 2.8k and crit for 7k-7.2k on average. SS on the same dummies hits for around 2.5k and crits for around 6k-6.2k. That disparity between the two will only widen with better gear.

 

Skulli

Noticed that tonight as well, when one of our dks went blood the first time and his oblit was hitting much harder than ss.
Next patch change to the glyph gonna buff it even more.

 

halfpint

Oblit glyph is currently working as intended, they stated that the change was only a tooltip update.

 

Marloc

From past experience, Blood outperforms Unholy as long as it is not a very heavy armored boss, like was mentioned by Zurm, if Ulduar has many high AC bosses Unholy will be back to the top, if it doesn't then Blood or Frost is most likely to be top, I'll put my money on blood

 

Fugazor

I don't see any other 2-hander spec beating unholy at least until 3.1 and T8. But that is months away...
There is also bigger problem at hand: will all serious dps DK players be forced to DW?

 

Nerub

Is there any indication that Ulduar bosses will have higher AC values?

Blizzard stated that they will nerf/buff both specs to be in line with each other DPS wise. My guess is we will see additional changes on the PTR, the current supposed-to-be-DW-nerfs have not done the trick yet.

 

Marloc

Well, the KM change was bugged or something, so expect atleast another PTR build before live, or stealth changes we will see on live ;D

 

• Zurm

My worry here is that they might settle for a "good enough" approach. This post by GC, just the way it's worded, makes me feel like blizzard just doesn't want a MASSIVE disparity between DW and 2H, but are ok with say, a 10% difference in dps. Even though I personally prefer the animations/style of 2H, for a 10%, or even 5% dps boost, I would respec in a heartbeat. My goal is that they tune DW to be VERY close to 2H.

 

Phanex

I agree a lot with Zurm...I've picked up a Widow and an Angry Dread though just in case. Blizzard is really threading a needle here with some of the changes that Unholy in general is getting. I think we all want to see Unholy be a strong tree...the potential of some of these changes to buff DW is just too great. I've been able to resist speccing into it but my confidence in Blizzard changing it is really starting to drop off.

 

Hisstok

Just remember Zurm, the reason DW does so much damage right now is killing machine, with fast weapons and some haste you can push very, very excessive crit values on all abilities. when KM goes to a PPM model these buffs will not significantly effect DW to such an effect to make it overpowered again, the reason DW is so crazy is the sheer number of crits you put out.
Its very likely unholy will have to deal with some nerfs in order to increase scaling, remember we are in the first tier of this expansion

 

Daloron

On the subject of ebon plague and crypt fever stacking problems, I thought it would be interesting if rather than taking the approach of making a great deal of unholy's damage depend on having that third disease for attack disease bonuses to change the mechanic completely. Instead of EP/CF counting as a third disease, keep it doing everything it does now, but include some kind of an increase to all bonus damage from diseases as part of a high tier unholy talent.

What I mean is to make it so that, for instance, an SS on a target with 3 diseases now would do the same as an SS on a target with 2 diseases if the DK has this talent. A similar mechanic already boosts BS and HS bonus damage from diseases in Bloody Strikes, and if they can't fix the problem of only one DK being able to "own" the disease for the purpose of per-disease bonuses, I think this would be an interesting possibility to explore.

 

• Zurm

True, but for any phyiscal dps class (lets put DKs aside for now) that has a choice between DW and 2H, DW always wins due to increased scaling. DW allows you to get added benefit out of AP and haste, and as we've seen it makes proc-based abilities incredibly powerful.

My worry is that the scaling isn't there for 2H. A PPM system will help, but it wont change the increased benefit of necrosis/bcb, or the fact that HB while DW does around the same damage as a 2H strike if you were a 2H spec. Yes, KM is silly right now. But KM isn't the only strength of DW, nor will those other things change how fast our white damage (small now, yes, but what about in T8 or T9?) will scale.

 

Fireflash38

I believe you meant DW has the increased scaling.

 

Hisstok

Good point Zurm
Blizzard has been a fan of getting things under control /now/ and addressing things later, it seems to me like the low coefficients of our abilities will push dk's towards DW unholy or deep blood as times go on.

Also a note for the 3 disease bug for unholy, if you don't spec into ebon plaguebringer, you can have one DK with ebon and one with the standard "+disease damage" disease without ebon, you lose 3% crit so it might be questionable if its worth it, but you don't /have/ to lose your 3rd disease or fight with another DK over it.

 

Skulli

i think hat doesnt work anymore in the next patch,
Crypt fever gets overwritten by Ebon.

 

Fugazor

Has anyone was able to test for sure if EP is fixed (or not) with current PTR build? I have DK on EU-Spanish (less people/lag there) if anyone would like to do it.

 

Marloc

I have tested it, it is NOT fixed.

Only one person benefits from EP as it stands right now, EP also over-writes Crypt Fever so we cant cheese that way either >_>

1 Either specs frost/Blood or you suffer from a massive lack of damage :<

 

Defach

Hello, I've spent a great deal of time musing over the DK talents. I am under geared and nowhere near raid ready, but I wanted to come here and share this idea so someone with a better character could test it out.

I was unable to find a similar build or references to the possibility of this through searching this and the simple questions thread. If I missed something and this was dismissed already, I apologize.

The build is designed around bringing up BS to respectable damage levels, to a point where it might be beneficial to 4-6x BS in a row with death runes, and then dump the extra RP (from 10 per rune instead of 7.5) into death coils or faster gargs. Even if that threshold is not surpassed, the normal 2x BS per rotation will be amped up.

23/0/48 is what I've come up with, and it provides respectable DPS with my DK in 5 mans. I understand we're talking about raid DPS here and that is why I would like someone with access to take a look.

Glyphs: Blood Strike, SS, Ghoul

Variable points could be the 3/3 in RoR for 3/3 VotTW -- but I think that with typical gearing situations and outside of greatness/FC procs that RoR will provide more DPS. It may also be beneficial to swap 3/3 Scent of Blood for 3/3 Death Rune Mastery, and drop an oblit at the end of diseases if they did not refresh. Or, swap SS glyph for oblit glyph and oblit once at the end of the diseases.

You're mainly trading UB and 2 expertise for +30% +20% BS damage, +60% on 3 disease portion of BS, 1% desecration damage, and an extra 1.5-2 death coils.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please contribute with any feedback, and I will be happy to provide additional info or answer questions about my thinking.