Miracleknight

The Tri-Spec is being sold as the only viable dual wielding build around with the primary basis for it being DPS Compendium Tri-Spec. One issue I have had, and brought up during Beta is a build solely based on providing the buffs to the raid when there is a lack of anyone else that can do so. IE my guild has never had a reliable enhancement shaman, leaving us without the 10% AP and the 20% haste (Doesn't help that our haste to raid buff is far more efficient per point than the shaman version last I checked). So I was wondering about I guess, an enhancement build such as: Enhancement Tri-Spec. I'm not sure if the points are best spent, but I believe you can grasp the idea from there. The question is; without a reliable enhancement shaman (Now am I forgetting any other class that can bring the 20% haste and the 10% AP buffs) or any other DK to provide the buffs; is the DPS increase to the raid worth the obvious loss in DPS?

In a 10 man, maybe not so much and yes it should be rare that 25 man doesn't have someone to fill these voids without taking this gap but my guild has constantly had that problem. Do you think this could be a viable raid spec? When I originally tried it out I think two months before the expansion hit, I'd say it was about a 400 DPS loss over blood when I was doing about 2,700 DPS in 10 man Naxx. Some abilities have chance, primarily Ice Touch was buffed a lot after I tried this build out but other things may have been hurt.

Though my original build was actually: More Blood Focused and more Heart Strike focused.

But I'd like this thread to also address any other possible tri-spec builds, and if anyone is using a tri-spec build; how is it working out for you.

 

• Zurm

The issue I see with your idea of a Tri-spec is that yes, you are bringing good buffs to the raid. However, with the spec you are talking about you are doing so at a SEVERE nerf to your personal DPS. The reason the Tri-Spec in the compendium works is because all the talents are based around maximizing white and ability damage. You want to use heart strike as a primary attack, which is a bad idea with a one-handed weapon. You want an ability that doesn't rely on weapon damage (such as howling blast) as your primary attack.

 

Miracleknight

Right, I didn't really think the old build I had would work so well I'm just wondering if there is a build where you can get Abom's Strength + Imp Icy Talons where the 20% haste and the 10% AP outweigh the huge hit to your personal DPS, which there is no question there WILL be a hit; but can it be viable? Another build I threw together would be: Frost Emphasis Which doesn't bother with Frost strike since Death Coil will probably be more damage but if it's a high crit build you're probably going to crit more than you're going to death coil I think.

I can't really think of many other build options than the ones I've presented so it may be simply impossible to have a build worth it, nor do I want to take a month or two gearing up to test a build that could be a complete failure which makes things more difficult.

 

Minaeria

So, a few points on this idea (which I think is a good one to discuss, although I personally would never do this).

1) We can't really call this a "tri-spec", since it has absolutely no truck with points in Unholy. You just don't have the points to be able to get all the things in all three trees that make the tri-spec build work. (Also, don't say "tri-spec" when you mean "dual-wielding"; the reason it ends up in all three trees is to prop Dual Wield up enough to make it closer to the standard 2h builds.)

2) If I had to make a build that had both Abom's Might and Imp Icy Talons, I'd make something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, and focus on wielding a 2h instead. That way, you can still rip it up with Heart Strikes without wasting your time on the frost talents that don't do anything.

3) If you've got your heart set on DW, then of course you need to center your build around Howling Blast instead. You might manage something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Frost Strike is still your RP dump, since it owns face all day and dosent afraid of anything. You Howling Blast as much as you can and Obliterate the rest of the time. This build would be seriously lacking in personal DPS, however, since you don't have the Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade damage from Unholy.

Phew. Long post, but there it is.

Edited for bad links - why doesn't my HTML work waah. =(

 

Writhe

Ask yourself how will aboms might beat out gargoyle, necrosis, and blood caked blade - among the other amazing unholy talents you will have to miss out on

Who pulled the surger with the core hound?

 

crimsonsentinel

You dont have enhance shaman, but do you have ANY shaman? Because the only unique thing an enhance shaman brings is 10% AP. Both resto and elemental shaman can provide windfury and soe totems. That being said, you can simply be full blood and you'd have near the full complement of raid buffs (maybe a slightly lower amount of haste on windfury, but not worth screwing up your spec over).

 

Octaviann

Also, if you don't have any shaman whatsoever, then bring 2 deathknights, one blood and one frost, and that way you cover your buffs without gimping your dps.

 

Afabar

Just for your information : The 10% AP can be brought by a MM Hunt.

 

Laqwanda

I was doing a little testing of the tri-spec and was pleasantly surprized with the results.

Here is my spec I was using: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Basically you youself are getting the icy talons(Not raid wide) but you are giving the 10% ap to the raid. On this spec you want to stack str/ap super high. At lvl 78 I was hitting almost 4k attack power in just 5 mans. A couple key points to this build is you get all the dual weild musts. Necrosis, BCB, Bloody Vengance and abominations might. In addition you get Hysteria which on raid bosses is a huge boost in dmg.

Now I was only doing 5 mans but i was hitting upwards of 1700 sustained dps with 74 blue swords and still plenty of greens.

On another note with the tri spec build, I actually find it better dps overall using the unholy presence as opposed to blood. Has anyone else done any research to prove or not prove this? Let me know.

 

tedv

While I appreciate your desire to provide extra information, the results of a 5 man instances while you are below level 80 isn't really relevant to estimating raid DPS. In that situation, an unholy build will do well over 2000 damage at lower levels than 78, just because of all their AoE talents. And that isn't relevant to raiding either. The most useful bit of information is how relative specs fair against a target dummy.

 

Direheart

This is the Tri-spec I am currently using: 10/43/18.

It has the essentials, such HB, Killing Machine and BCB; it gives access to Death Runes and thus rotation flexibility; and it provides the all-important raid buffs. For those fights where Frost Aura is of significant help to the group I would take points out of Bladed Armor for it--gimps my personal DPS somewhat but not horribly so. From what I am seeing thus far, with this build Str/Ap and Haste are the stats to stack (although not ignoring Crit and Hit entirely, of course).

 

• Zurm

That's actually a really interesting tri-spec. I'm just curious if maybe dropping 1 in bladed armor would be worth it for the 2% strength from Shadow of Death.

 

Direheart

I thought about doing that. From the dummy tests I've ran--and from simply looking at my stats--Bladed Armor points are > Shadow of Death, at least at theses gear levels (I am still wearing mostly quest reward and rep blues). It might change a bit further into progression, and I intend to test that out.

That's actually one of the things I really like about this spec--it's open-ended enough that I can easily switch some things without losing the core.

 

Miracleknight

I'm going to just take your stats as is for now Zurm and pretend you don't have talents increasing strength because 943 strength should be completely accessible at some point anyways and try some math.

943 str * .02 = 18.86 = 37.72 AP

Your armor is 13197 so divided by 180 = roughly 73 AP per point into that talent. So I'd say no and it doesn't sound likely that it ever would. Cause if you assume armor is going to scale a bit with gear, it'd nearly require double your strength to match one point in bladed armor.

Edit: and Let's assume you're in Frost so you'd actually have 11800 or so right now, dividing that by 180 gives us 65 AP per point in bladed armor. And we'll include kings and MOTW to get you up to roughly 1200 Str which is a bonus of 48 AP, still a sizeable gap though perhaps the stamina makes up for it.

 

• Zurm

Napkin math prevails, yet again!

I do really like that tri spec though... while it differs from the one I came up with, I can definitely see where the extra points into frost would help with rotations.

That being said, generating death runes for an extra oblit which already does less damage due to using a one-hander instead of a two-hander seems like it could be problematic... the 5% crit in blood that you are giving up could *potentially* be more damage than 15% more blood strike damage and the extra crit damage. It's ironic in a way, you're giving up increased crit chance for increased crit damage. When I finally get the numbers right in the Rawr module, hopefully this question will be answered (to be entirely honest, I haven't worked on it in the least since the day before WOTLK launch... I've been pre-occupied).

 

tedv

Looking at this spec, you are very close to Tundra Stalker. Spending 7 points will get you 5/5 Tundra Stalker, plus 2 other points for other stuff. (Death Chill, Frost Aura, Frost Strike all seem like unexcited but acceptable places to spend them.) You lose a little under 400 attack power from Bladed Armor and gain 10% DPS, plus a negligable two points in either butchery or Subversion. Even if you're only doing 2000 DPS and you ignore the effect of 5 expertise, you're trading 400 attack power and 6% crit on blood strike (used once every 10 seconds) for 200 DPS. How can this be a bad trade?

And as long as we're trimming this much from blood already, what's the purpose of butchery and subversion again? Spend those last 3 points in Unholy to get the Gargoyle. Here's the spec you end up with: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Note that this isn't a tri-spec build anymore. Perhaps we should rename this thread "Dual Wield Builds".

 

ranalin

I agree. I ended up dropping the Blood tree all together as well Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Still relying on HB like the orginal Tri Spec Build and went deeper into Unholy.

 

Othieus

I'm with Zurm on this, that looks like a very interesting spec. I haven't been able to do any testing with it but would the dps increase from Unbreakable Armor be worth it to move 1 point from somewhere else? If this ends up keeping the small blood portion of course.

 

odrewbieo

Why the 4 points in Magic Suppression? I would think Gargoyle and Dirge are much better point investments if you're going that deep into Unholy. I also don't see the real benefit of going deep enough to get Desecration and Bone Shield, which are pretty lack-luster talents.

 

Miracleknight

Well the only thing I would be concerned about with removing subversion is the threat reduction but that could be a total non-issue.

Also thread renamed.

 

MikkiDI

Would 5/5 Impurity be better than 5/5 Tundra Stalker? I came up with this dual wield build earlier: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft The idea would be to HB when it's up, OB if it's not, and Frost Strike as the major RP dump. Gargoyle with Impurity seems to me that it would edge out Frost Strike when it's up.

I got [Torment of the Banished] from 10 man Naxx the other night and [Crypt Lord's Deft Blade] last night, so I was going to try this when I got home from work. I'm currenty Xyrm's unholy spec with [Demise].

I figure with the insane amount of haste plate in 10 man Naxx that a dual wield build would be favorable until I could get my T7 tokens. Last run we were sharding all the haste plate because it's just not a good stat for unholy DKs at all.

 

ahz

I'd think a better investment into Reaping. Convert your bloods to death for more howling blast goodness.

And yes, gargoyle... I think that's an obvious choice.

 

Direheart

To answer some of the comments above...

Zurm, yes, it is entirely possible that putting my points into Blood of the North and Guile of Gorefiend rather than Conviction, even with the added benefit of Death Runes, isn't a worthy trade-off. We are about to start 25 man next week, and so I will have a chance to test both out.

I did consider Frost Strike at the cost of 1 point of Bladed Armor and decided against it for now, mainly because I want to see how my current spec works before I start trying to improve on it.

The purpose of taking Subversion, Tedv, is rather self-explanatory. You well may be correct in that the build you suggest wins in terms of pure DPS but my experience raiding with various melee DPS classes tells me not to underestimate threat reduction. Last thing I want is to be the idiot who dies in the beginning of every boss fight; nor do I want to have to butcher my rotation for fear of pulling aggro. We have zero aggro-dumping abilities after all.

 

Turambar

First, as to the original thread, MM hunters provide the best AP buff as it can be glyphed to 12%.

Apologies for the long post but DW has not seemed to be going in this direction in the past so I feel the need to explain myself in detail. Some folks above do seem to be leaning in this direction now, and if there are 80's out there that can try this it will be nice to see how it comes out in a raid.

First, i see a lot of rotations that have a lot of specials in them. While there is the built in buffer on Rune recharges, there is still the limit on GCD's. In a 20sec rotation you can at most get off 13 specials without clipping your next 20sec rotation. If you have a lot more specials in 20sec than this, Unholy Presence might actually come out ahead. I only see this being the case with DW builds.

The tri-spec build and rotation seems to be violating some basic rules. That is, it doesn't maximise use of your hardest hitting abilities and convert Blood to Death runes to do more of the above. That means speccing into either Reaping or Blood of the North and getting off extra HBs and ITs every other 10secs. This will also produce a lot of rune power to use on more specials. With Rime procs, the power improving talents, and the IT glyph you can easily hit 200+ rune power and 17-18 specials in a 20sec period. This may very well be enough to make up for the 15% hit to special dmg from being in Unholy Presence. In fact, your rune strikes will need to be broken up with runic power abilities or you will cap your runic power.

Possible specs:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=121421050406

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=141221060405

The first spec which i will call the frost spec, uses a single target rotation of;

1st 10sec(pulls) PS->IT->HB->FS->PS->BS->BS->FS's
1st 10sec PS->HB->IT->FS->PS->BS->BS->FS's

2nd 10sec PS->HB->IT->FS->FS->PS->HB->IT->FS's

The FS's section at the end will also include another IT if Rime procced.I tried to stack casts of IT and FS right behind HB and leave gaps of no IT and FS before HB giving time for a Killing Machine proc to occur as it is most effective on HB and less so on IT and FS. Another approach might be to evenly space HB, IT and FS to minimize the chance of missing a Killing Machine proc if you get two in close succession. I'm not sure which is a better stategy.

Use Gargoyle when appropriate. During gargoyle you will mostly only be using rune abilities, so no need for all the extra cooldowns, so it will probably be better to switch to Blood Presence during Gargoyle and back to Unholy after it is over. Uses a couple runes but the 15% damage over a minute (or 36+ rune abilities) will probably offset the loss of
two specials.

The other spec, the Unholy spec, uses the same basic rotation strategy except replacing the FS with DC. The other differences between them are very hard hitting HB from Guile of Gorefiend and Killing Machine synergy, or the overall bonuses of having Desecration and Bone Shield. There are other possibilities too, you could drop Gargoyle from the frost build if its not worth it and pick up more points in Blood like Butchery and Bladed Armor, though Gargoyle seems pretty powerful.


The main choice between the specs depends on how one-handed FS compares to DC. I think DC comes out on top but really big HBs are cool.

 

◊ Eej

[Glyph of Trueshot Aura]. Look again.