Another thing to consider which might mess with numbers is that perma-ghoul will usually be buffed along with the rest of the raid before a boss fight. Power Word: Fortitude, Mark of the Wild, Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings on your ghoul are all pretty great not just for DPS, but for helping the damn thing survive. Getting someone to toss a buff on your pet if you bring it out on the pull, or perhaps after the first AE (as you would if you're trying to maximise uptime) is like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

EDIT: Unless I'm missing the point and you were talking about Night of the Dead rather than Master of Ghouls, in which case I'm an idiot.

I tested 13/31/27 few days ago with simple and easy IT -> PT -> HB -> BS -> BS rotation:
WOW Meter Online - The Best World of Warcraft Combat Log Analyse System!Fully support Wrath of the Lich King!

All I did was swapping [Cryptfiend's Bite] for [Reaper of Dark Souls] and [Fang of Truth]. I tried 0/44/27 but I lacked aggro reduction on trash and didn't liked it. Anyhow there are no results from that really because everything up to patchwerk was dc/lagfest.

Overall I will try to ninja some epic weapons and try again in future because dps was quite nice.

I am still curious as to what rotation is being used as 0/32/39 spec. I know most people are saying
IT-->PS-->BS-->BS-->HB-->DC
or
IT-->PS-->HB-->BS-->BS-->DC
And then whenever rime procs just use an obliterate right after HB. However, this would leave you with several seconds of downtime at the end of the rotation. Does anyone have a suggestion for this? I was thinking about this spec Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft , but that still leaves me with not enough rune power for a second DC. Would taking all three points out of Reaping and putting them into Dirge work? I know I would be losing death runes, but would that give me enough runic power to cast a second DC?

On a side note, should I put 1/5 points in desecration so I could have 2/2 unholy aura?

For the weapons you're using, that's not bad at all. If you're serious about it, maybe you should take a look at getting the BS mace crafted. I also prefer 14/31/26 (close enough to your variation - garg/mog/hb) over 0/44/27. I can see the benefit of having GoG & FS, but it's just not for me.

(PS. tell one of your unholy DKs to respec, they know ebon plague doesn't stack right? :P)

Hi,

Ive been skimming this thread through, and I didnt catch anything on glyphs, if there is a post about glyphs for the DW specc then Im sorry.

I specced the 3/31/37 variant, and I was Unholy 2hd before, so Im just wondering which glyphs I should use for this specc? also, if HB is on CD what do you use your runes for? assuming, ofcourse, that your diseases are up and such. Do you just wait for HB to be off cd or do you IT or something else?

Thanks in advance, and, again, if this has been answered, I apologize =)

So I know this isn't going to add much in terms of numbers and I only have Recount running rather than a proper combat log analysis like WWS, but I tested out an 0/31/40 spec today in Naxxramas (10) without Rime, using the rotation Grigori posted on the last page;
I honestly can't see how people are still using and recommending 1x/31/2x specs.

It took a little getting used to since I've not played with death runes much before and I felt a little clumsy doing AoE on trash without Pestilence, but by the time I got into the swing of things the advantages over PS>IT>HB>BS>BS>dc with OB on Rime procs are phenomenal. Being able to keep up such a high percentage of my damage through Heigan without having to be near him the whole time was amazing. With my frankly shoddy gear (and decent weapons, [Titansteel Bonecrusher] and [Maexxna's Femur]) I pulled a respectable 3.3k dps on Patchwerk when the best I'd managed before that was a little shy of 2.8k. Loving this spec so much right now.

Is there any agreement as to whether or not the new sigil that boosts IT's damage is better than Sigil of Haunted Dreams with the new changes? I'm not too good with the Theorycrafting and I'm curious as to whether or not its worth my time.

I suppose it depends a little bit on playstyle, and how much you like juggling death runes. I've tried most of the specs mentioned in this thread and none of them have fit me more perfectly than 14/31/26. As for actual DPS numbers, it's a little hard to compare because of gear differences, but I can say that it's not abnormal to be hovering around 5.2k for Patchwerk.

I don't think it's fair any one person to come in and say "I can't believe people are still reccomending * spec" or "this spec is outright superior to * spec" - stating those as facts requires a lot more proof and research than has been performed. If you don't feel like backing it up, state it as it is - an opinion.

yeah, i have tried DW dps with 0/32/39 and 15/35/31 and i can say i liked 15/35/31 much more. 0/32/39 relies too much on non-auto attack damage (ghoul, diseases, and spell damage) for me to like it as a DW build. 15/35/31 also does similar damage (i havent tested them both in completely similar conditions yet but they appear to be equal) without having to keep your ghoul alive or juggle death runes.

there are no cookie-cutter death knight dps builds imo, just preference. all of them do similarly good dps.

So as for weapons the verdict is fast/fast is just as good as slow/fast? i've been using RotFC and CG, but i may switch to razorice offhand if our mages stop being awful on the charts.

It probably depends on your rotation, which depends on your spec - you take talents to make death runes or you don't.

1) Build with death runes:
3x IT, 2x BS = 9 IT and 6 BS per minute
IT sigil = 9 * 203 = 30+ dps (plus talents plus spell crit)
badge sigil = 1 PPM so 3.76% / 6 = 0.6% cirt, with 4k dps thats like 24 dps (less in reality as diseases cannot crit, pets don't care about your crit etc.)

2) Build without death runes:
1x IT, 4x BS = 3 IT and 12 BS per minute
IT sigil = 10+ dps (plus talents plus spell crit)
badge sigil = with 4k dps like 48 dps (less in reality as diseases cannot crit, pets don't care about your crit etc.)

Saw someone saying that IT sigil is 150dps so don't trust me 100% :p
IT sigil should be better with 3x IT per rotation for sure.


I think you mean 15/35/21? :p
Also I do not seem any DW spec w/o ghoul viable. Ghoul adds 10-15% total damage in most fights, it is too big to pass. It would be like saying that MM/Surv hunter can dps properly without pet, sure it is not 60% of his damage like BM but not using it is not an option either.

I would say slow/fast. Fast/fast would be rather worse but still ok with x3 IT rotation. Hell slow/slow would work well too probably unless you lack hit and put razorice on OH.

You definitely want Slow/Fast. All of DK strikes rely on weapon damage. Using a fast weapon would be nerfing yourself.

When I finally get my DK to 80 I plan to run Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Those points in OaPH are because my DK is a miner alt, those 2 points could go anywhere else in Unholy to get to Garg.

I plan to use Death runes and rime procs to Icy Touch. The new Icy Touch glyph makes me happy.

Next patch, the Frost Strike Glyph reduces it's runic cost by 8 so you'll have your wish.

I'm just amazed how good Blood Caked Blade can be. With three diseases, you get a 30% chance to deal 64% main-hand damage with either weapon.

I'm looking at a utility build that is magic heavy. I want to bring the raid benefits of both a frost and an unholy deathknight in a DPS model that isn't terrible.

2/26/43

The two points in blood are for threat reduction. You bring Improved Icy Talons and Ebon Plaguebringer. Your Icy Touchs, Death Coils, and Blood Caked Blade do a high amount of damage in this setup.

Begin with a blood tap when the tank starts his pull.

IT -> PS -> BS -> IT -> IT -> DC
IT -> DC -> BS -> IT -> IT -> DC

Note this is designed without the Icy touch glyph and with Chill to the Grave(2) so IT generates 15 runic power.

With a heavy magic rotation, you get less drawbacks from duel-wielding. You get the full benefit from epidemic for the PS and use the minimum number of blood strikes. You also get a ghoul with avoidance (next patch) that can last the whole fight with full buffs.

I really like the design and thought I'd share it with you. It's designed for 10 mans where buffs are a premium and anticipate having a blood DK in the group and no enhance shammy.

I was thinking of a DW setup for 3.0.8 looking like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The way it's set up there's 2 floaters in both Frost and Unholy; right now I have them in Icy Reach (as I think the fact that this build has so much range is a big advantage compared to other melee) and Dirge, but they can easily be moved.

After the patch I don't see Bone Shield or 1/3 Crypt Fever offering as much of a DPS increase as Night of the Dead; bringing the ghoul's uptime to near-100% on AoE fights *and* giving you the ability to RP dump with CE on the ghoul in less dangerous fights is going to be pretty valuable. That variant is Rimeless but you can pick up 2/3 Rime from Icy Reach which may be superior.

FS glyph change will be awesome, with 3/3 runic power mastery you can unload 4 FS in a row.

Now for BCB I am not sure if it worth getting so deep in unholy to increase by a little margin the dmg, Rigth now I think its around 3.8%, increasing it to maybe 4% with the 3rd disease? Actualy more because you no longuer have HB to go skyrocket in my meter.

I will have to try a unholy DWing build to see how it goes, but I think losing HB will hurt alot my DWing dps, but I might be wrong. Pestilence with no CD will be awesome though for AoE, and with Blood of the North i will be able to use Pestilence all the time to generate Death Rune.

Also I have a question, in regular rotation we usualy BS after the first HB but does i really screw my dps when i do it before to spread all my disease on every target on multiple pull or I am actualy doing the right thing and maybe I should do BS right after Pestilence so both my blood rune become death rune at the same time and dont screw my rotation too much?(Rime proc seem to crew it quite well though).

So, I decided to do some dummy testing after our raid tonight with the build I posted above (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft). I found that after about half an hour of messing with the rotation the highest DPS seemed to come from the following:

IT -> PS -> HB -> BS -> BS -> RP dump

HB -> IT -> PS -> IT -> IT -> RP dump


I don't hit PS first on the rotation just because I'll be hitting IT as I move into melee range, and after the first set you will wind up refreshing diseases while they are still up from that point forward (I couldn't find an efficient way to avoid doing so, but this is my first time attempting DW).

I ran the above set a few times over 5-5.5 minute durations, using 2 x Gargoyle per set, and was hitting right at 2.6k on the dummy in my current gear. Given that I've never tried this before, I'm not really sure if that is good or not, but the highest I've ever seen across all specs in that duration was something like 2.8k as Unholy 2H, and I had a pretty long streak of SS glyph RNG favor as it was an outlier from my normal results.

One thing I noticed was that Reaping was not working 100% of the time off Blood Strike even when it connected and put the rune on CD. I'd say about 30% of the time only one of the blood runes was flipping to death when I was hitting the 2xBS part of the rotation. I have not experienced that when playing Unholy 2H, so I'm not sure why this was happening.

Anyone have any input on maybe what I should be doing differently? I tried throwing Rime in this spec (at 2/3) but in my limited testing with it I found it hard to get any DPS gains out of it, probably because all I can really do with the spare unholy rune that comes from it is to Plague Strike which hits like a wet noodle. The IT crit bonus seems very powerful though so maybe I'm not handling the Freezing Fog procs correctly.

Edit - Nevermind on my previous edit. Pulling about 100 more DPS now with the Titansteel Bonecrusher in the MH (2.7k over 310s).

If Freezing Fog isn't helping you, you can always remove the freezing fog effect. It should be possible to macro it into your Icy Touch casts so it never stays up.

I still feel that 3/50/18 is the strongest frost build. All those frost bonuses really up the scaling on all the abilities you use. It lacks the gargoyle and ghoul which I felt at the time were unreliable DPS due to the fact against some bosses, they just splat too quickly.

Blood Presence version:

IT -> PS -> BS -> BS -> HB -> FS
IT -> FS -> IT -> IT -> HB -> FS

This one uses Icy Touch heavily and was designed for the 40 runic power version of Frost Strike. Epidemic meant only one plague strike was needed. As you can see, I didn't want the Icy Touch glyph due to it's heavy usage. It uses only three non-frost abilities (1 PS, 2 BS).

The Unholy Presence model can take advantage of the new Frost Strike Glyph, uses the Icy Touch glyph, but now is able to maintain a rotation indefinitely without Rime. When Rime procs, you use Howling Blast in the place of a plague strike. The rotation naturally generates more runic power than it uses so you can substitute a Frost Strike for one of the Plague Strikes about once per minute depending on Rime Procs.

IT -> PS -> FS -> IT -> BS -> FS -> IT -> PS -> FS
IT -> PS -> FS -> IT -> IT -> FS -> BS -> PS -> FS

It's weakness is the high number of plague strikes. Replacing a Plague Strike with a Frost Strike costs 42 runic power (-32 instead of +10). It uses quantity over quality taking advantage of the fact that many strikes use attack power more effectively than a few strikes. Three 87% efficient strikes are more powerful than two 115% efficient strikes. The extra haste generates more procs from Killing Machine and Blood Caked Blade. It's other main weakness is the inability to use Howling Blast except for Rime procs. This means that quality of GCDs tends to be poorer.

I prefer the Blood Presence model now as it's a better rotation. It doesn't get the 10% IT penalty, doesn't require extra major glyphs, and is easier to use.

However, if you can keep the Ghoul alive and the gargoyle gets to do it's job, those builds deal more damage. It always seemed to me that 10/31/30 was a gambler's spec. Sometimes your pets live and you do nice damage. Sometimes the ghoul lasts 10 secs, the gargoyle goes pop almost instantly, and you revive the ghoul only to see him last another 5 sec and boom, your DPS goes to the toilet. Pet friendly fights are one thing. But unless you go deep unholy (like the utility build I suggested earlier), your pets are dead if the boss has good AoE. Night of the Dead really is necessary to ensure you are getting your pet's proper amount of damage.

Been having great success in BG's + PvP with 1 spec finally. Its been the 0/32/39 spec or close to it. Some of the points I have are to make farming/pvp easier but overall its working just fine in PVE also.

http://img138.imagevenue.com/img.php...122_1183lo.jpg

Urm's recount is incorrect his is overall. Mine is for the boss fight with damage ONLY done to sartharion (i shoulda moused the parse for the screenshot oh well.)
Urm is the competition here, we were both on the boss 100% of the time I believe. Others handled adds. Sarth 10 man with no drakes up, no heroism.

I use priority more than rotation.

Priority system here:
IT > HB > PS > death runes aka BSx2 (death coils when RP > 80)
Takes a little more adapating to , but it seems to be working fine.

For those of you dead set on rotations:
IT > PS > HB > DS > DS > DC
IT > HB > DC > IT > IT > HB > DC

when rime procs I just throw in another IT (but then it messes up rotations to some degree).

I love the spec because damage is mainly magic based + ranged.

Gylphs used:
IBF, Ghoul, Bone shield

Runeforge:
ROTFC main hand, cinderglacier OH (did some tests razor ice ends up being the same roughly here so if you are in a raid with frost mages then i would switch cinder w/ razor)

Hey Relasz, my gear equivalent is roughly the same as yours, i'm still using the Reaper of Dark Souls as my MH, using Hatestrike as my OH...same runeforgings, similar hit rating etc, I'm using a 0/44/27 build currently and manage an average of 3.6k on Patchwerk. I'm interested in trying out your spec but before I spend the gold on it, how are you managing 5.2k? Is that on heroic? If it isn't, did you have a heroism/bloodlust? And as one of the other posters pointed out above me, what rotation do you use?

Edit: Oh, I also noticed you preferred the Meteorite Whetstone over the Mirror of Truth...is it because you don't have the mirror, or you prefer the extra melee hits provided by Necrosis/BCB, therefore haste is better?

Whats your rotation?

For the way I play and for the amount of AoE and movement fights I am encountering, the flexibility of death runes and the increased ghoul uptime from Night of the Dead produces higher damage than a trispec build. Given the amount of fun I was having and the increased amount of damage I was dealing with 0/31/40, I am unsure why other players recommend the trispec.

Is that better worded? I'm not trying to put a stamp on 31/40 proclaiming This Build is 100% Grade A Win™ here, but I am wondering why people are going for the trispec as their preferred build.

I can see the appeal of going for Frost Strike and Guile of Gorefiend with a deep Frost build and I can understand why a player might spend points in Subversion if their tanks are struggling, but I'm drawing a blank on finding advantages for the 1x/3x/2x trispec builds. From what I can see, you're trading more ghoul uptime and increased scaling on spells against increased attack power and 3-5% crit.

Is the scaling attack power from Bladed Armor much better than 5/5 Impurity given how heavily dual wield builds rely on Icy Touch and Howling Blast? Is getting crit from gear so difficult in T7 that the 5% from Dark Conviction is necessary to reach a point where Killing Machine procs for every Icy Touch and Howling Blast?

Even autofiring a /castsequence on a gamepad, Death Knights won't have much time, if at all, between the end of the 6th GCD and the 1st Rune CD. So essentially any GCD used beyond the 6th per Rune set costs an additional GCD instead of the theoretical 0.5 sec for the 7th GCD. However, when running some rotations, there can be "gaps" that may make it look otherwise.

Take, for example, this Rimeless 3xHB rotation:

IT>PS>HB>dc>BS>BS
HB>dc>IT>PS>HB>dc

On a cold start (no RP banked), you will hit a GCD "gap" at the end of the second BS on the first line during with which you can only idle:

IT>PS>HB>dc>BS>BS>[idle GCD]
HB>dc>IT>PS>HB>dc
IT>PS>HB>dc>BS>BS
(repeat line 2+3 with no more gap)

On a warm restart (some RP banked), the [idle GCD] can be replaced with a [dc].

The other Rimeless rotation in my previous post...

PS>IT>HB>dc>BS>BS
...
dc>HB>PS>IT>dc>HB
PS>IT>dc>HB>BS>BS

... has an equivalent 1 GCD idle time (at the first [dc] on line 2) like the simpler rotation at the top of this post, but will have enough RP available thereafter to sustain the rotation.

For both rotations, by the end of line 2, any GCD insertion will create a GCD gap one rotation down the line which will incur a big DPS loss if you do not have the RP reserve to cover it. The gap is the result of all three HBs using aggregated Rune pairs, so even replacing a [dc] corresponding to the other half of the aggregated Rune pair of a "free" HB with an [IT] will incur the same penalty. Add that to the lowered KM effects and Frost Fever tick losses, you generally just want to dump your Freezing Fog when running 3xHB rotations.



Now, fully buffed/debuffed at 38% melee and 32% magic crit running fast-fast:

1 GCD lead on KM: ~55.4% (0/3 Rime), ~61.9% (2/3 Rime), ~65.2% (3/3 Rime)
2 GCD lead on KM: ~70.7% (0/3 Rime), ~75.0% (2/3 Rime), ~77.2% (3/3 Rime)
3 GCD lead on KM: ~80.8% (0/3 Rime), ~83.6% (2/3 Rime), ~85.0% (3/3 Rime)
4 GCD lead on KM: ~87.4% (0/3 Rime), ~89.3% (2/3 Rime), ~90.2% (3/3 Rime)

Unlike in 2xHB+4xIT rotations, 3xHB+2xIT rotations have half the ITs and every one of them has a 2 GCD lead. 2/3 in Rime in the build basically gives ~4.7% crit to ~7% of your total damage which crits at ~70.7%, for a grand total of 0.17% DPS boost. That's right, not a 1.7% boost, a 0.17% boost. That in itself is just not worth an extra 10 yards on your two hardest hitting abilities in practice.

You have to be careful, though, because your rotation needs to be different for best DPS during Gargoyle uptime (where you are not as limited by GCD), and Rime will be more effective there. So depending on how much you want to count on your Gargoyle surviving its full duration, you may still want to pick Rime over Icy Reach even if you plan to run a 3xHB rotation.



I believe it was one of the ones where I fed it...

IT>PS>BS>BS>HB>dc

...and...

IT>PS>BS>HB>BS>dc

...and it gave me the same number, at which point I considered it inadequate for the inflection points I was investigating.

Yeah, most "standard 2RuneCDs rotations" are not too good.

I'd be interested in seeing a screenshot or wws of this 5.2k dps on patchwerk with your gear, Relasz. It seems too good to be true :P