First off, damage done over a shorter amount of time can and will produce a higher DPS figure. It could be likened to someone DPS'ing target dummy for 10 seconds, getting a lucky string of crits and saying that their DPS is definitively 4500 DPS. However, if they were to extend their DPS time to 3 minutes their DPS would be considerably lower.


AoE is an ability that deals damage to all targets, that are in it's range, simultaneously. So any AoE that the adds would have been subjected to, Ignis himself must also be subjected to it. So as long as there are adds up, and Egokiller positions himself properly, which he obviously does, he's no longer doing single target damage but rather inflating his numbers through AoE. Because the wonderful thing about AoE'ing packs as Unholy is Wandering Plague. Wandering Plague, depending on the number of constructs up, can account for a great deal of extra damage. Considering the amount of DPS and time in combat on the parsed kill, I'd say that it was just a straight burn with few if any constructs being popped.

If you look at the parse of the 2h DK that Syrellia linked, you'll notice that the Tankadin, Ikonic, has a TPS at some points of 12k or more. The only way that I know of for a Paladin to reach that kind of TPS even with Misdirect or ToTT, is to have multiple mobs with threat being recorded additively. Meaning that all available targets were in range to be affected by Wandering Plague and are therefore taking more damage than in a fight where Wandering Plague is hardly even a factor.

If the above assumption is indeed true, then the fight was gimmicked and the numbers are absolutely unreliable. The same, regrettably, can be said about every single one of the parsed 2h DKs that we have DW parses to compare against..


Numbers to support my theory:

Egokiller -
Death and Decay - 592,244 - 23.1%
Unholy Blight - 321,927 - 12.5%
Blood Plague - 273,942 - 10.7%
Frost Fever - 265,750 - 10.3%
Wandering Plague - 158,958 - 6.2%

Obviously a huge amount amount of AoE. Death and Decay doing almost a quarter of his overall damage is absolutely ridiculous.

Fargom -
Blood Plague - 47,935 - 3%
Frost Fever - 42,759 - 3%
Wandering Plague - 22,374 - 2%
Unholy Blight - N/A
Death and Decay - N/A

Do you honestly believe that Ego's numbers are a basis for the assumption of Spec dominance?

I'd like to introduce you to a logical fallacy called "argumentum ad populum." All the data I have seen clearly indicates that DW is at least competitive with 2h specs, when you have the right gear. Assuming best in slot items, it may even pull ahead since the 0/17/54 spec gets to ignore 4pT7 and use all the ilvl 239 plate dps items. I will be very interested in seeing where 0/17/54 stands in 3.2. Only the PTR can say, but I'm definitely hopeful.

@ whatthecrap

You are absolutely correct, Ego and I are actually on the same server, both alliance. He was most likely just having some fun and trying to get his name up on the boards. His guild is further along than mine in progression, and I'm sure doing the Ignis achievement for him is trivial. His DPS numbers, as with all 20 of the "top 20" on WMO for Ignis are AOE parses. I've never seen a legit Ignis parse that has blown my numbers out of the water. Rather, I tend to see people who simply *think* that two handed deathknights must be superior, because most of the parses they see are from two handed dps.

@ Direheart

I'm not sure exactly what your motivation here is, but clearly I've shown that current DW specs can easily compete and or pass two handed specs. I'm nowhere near best in slot for my spec, and many of the top parses you find floating around come from two handed DK's with far more gear than myself. Still, with all these highely geared two handed Dk's, every time I compare my single target numbers with theirs, we come out neck and neck despite them having a much higher overall item level. You can look at 11k AOE parses all you want, but as you said, keep in mind that the sky is infact blue, and these parses mean nothing.


@ Going forward:

Now, my point in posting this wasn't to start a pissing contest. The point is simple here, 0/17/54 is already a competitive build, and is receiving nothing but buffs next patch, one of which is a massive buff, on the scale of 6-7% more damage done. (Unholy blight)

7% of 6300 is 441 dps, that is what this build stands to gain on average from the unholy blight change. This would bring my single target dps to around 6750, in my current gear. If you really think that 6750 single target dps isn't going to be competitive, well then I really don't know what to tell you. 400+ dps gained from one talent point makes the new unholy blight one of the best talents in the game, and 0/17/54 is the only spec that produces this level of Death coil damage.

This thread is getting out of control.

The fact is nobody really knows dick about what the new frost DW build is gonna bring until it gets here. The only thing I can see so far is that strikes are going to be buffed, it's more than likely going to be confined to the frost tree as it's main trunk, and DW will once again be viable regardless of what guild you are in (as long as blizz doesn't screw the pooch with it).

Before we start comparing specs let's wait and see what they have for us on the ptr's. And even over the course of the ptr period you will proably see tons of changes. If I have learned anything in the 4 years I been playing this game, i wouldn't be surprised if the current unholy DW build gets nerfed for the sole reason that when blizz wants us to spec a certain way they don't really care who's toes they step on to make it happen.

So let's calm down and zip our pants back up very slowly as to not get our junk we are so proud of caught in our zippers.

You've obviously missed the entire point of the conversation and have a severe lack of understanding of what Theorycrafting really is.

First, those of us that have been defending DW have been doing so to eliminate the ignorance that even now two-handers are the vastly dominate spec, when the reality is that it is only marginally superior in some cases and in some, inferior.

Secondly , as you say, we don't know anything conclusively until the PTRs are up. However, if we waited until the PTR went up to start thinking about the specs we were going to use based on data that was only released a few hours previous, right now would be wasted time. Especially considering that we've been given tentative Patch Notes before hand to give us an idea of what to expect. We wouldn't be good theorycrafters if we just sat about doing nothing until the PTRs where up, would we?

Thirdly, you state that DW will be a mainly Frost thing. Blizzard has stated as much at least and all evidence we have at the moment seems to support it. But that is precisely why we're Theorycrafting right now. Because we do have a spec that could absolutely be viable to those that would prefer not to play the Frost style that Blizzard has obviously intended with the upcoming changes. If we just discarded the 0/17/54 or 0/18/53 builds out of hand without even considering them due to said statements from Blizzard, we could conceivably miss out on competitive if not dominate builds.

It's true that we cannot test the new changes to the Frost tree, meaning here the talent Threat of Thassarian. All assumptions are based off of only what we know right now. The assumptions for the 0/17/54 and 0/18/53 builds are no different. We have considerably more reliable information at the moment as to what effect the Patch Notes are going to have on the those builds specifically. Using the data we have right now, we can easily predict what Unholy DW DPS will be like in 3.2.

And that's the arguement. We're not trying to make predictions about Frost DW DPS, because we obviously don't know. But what we are saying is that Unholy DPS will continue to be a highly competitive if not, in some cases, dominant spec. All of this is inferred, obviously, and will be tested thoroughly once the PTR hits.

Some calc's on UB, just because I think it can affect a lot of potential builds.

Unholy Gains Shadow of Death (Unholy DPS Discussion now with more 3.2!)

I've specifically mentioned twice, once on this very page that my intentions for posting the parse were to counter the popular notion that "DW can't compete because everything we do is based on weapon damage." Where you got the idea that I was posting to show my "prowess" as you put it, is beyond me. My point has been clearly stated in my above posts. What exactly are you hoping we will get back on track to? The discussions before my post last page were all speculation and or "oh cool, can't wait for frost DW!" posts. We are now turning the discussion to answering the questions we can, and are waiting for more data to answer the questions we can't.

This thread hasn't been active for months, so it seems like a perfectly logical place to discuss the future of DW builds. Clearly we will be making a new thread when the 3.2. changes are final, but in the meantime it makes perfect sense to use our normal theorycrafting process to see how the changes are going to effect current builds. It all boils down to one simple point, whenever we have talent changes you must decide if it is more advantageous to keep your current build, or to try the new flavor. In this case, I am merely showing some data that the current best build is going to be hard to trump.

I'm still not entirely convinced of this... The wording on ToT on the notes makes it read more like Fan of Knives ( i.e. a damage increase ) than Stormstrike ( "strikes with both weapons" ).. I wouldn't be surprised if all ToT did was give you a 1.5x damage multiplier on your strikes, although something stormstrikish would be more interesting.

I will concede that there have been comments from both sides of the argument that are somewhat immature, but on whole I still believe this thread to have retained it's objectivity somewhat.

The only reason that people are linking meters and bringing up parses is to prove that DW is at the very least competitive. It's not in order to show that one person's E-peen is larger than any other person's, it's in order to prove the viability of DW builds that we currently have access to. And even beyond that to prove that said builds could possibly be dominant in patches to come.

It's not a pissing contest as you so naively pointed out, but rather a discussion that required the use of evidence and evidence was given.

It is regretful, however, that some people do need to use immature words or phrases, but it cannot be helped.


I've asked the opinions of many people, mostly Non-DK players, about the wording of the ToT talent. And the general consensus is that the strike will work in such a way that regardless of OH damage, the "OH" hit will only ever be half of what the MH strike originally hit for. This OH strike will not be modifiable in any way other than increasing MH damage. While I cannot contest whether or not they will be separate strikes in the combat log or somehow consolidated, I will say that, in my opinion, OH weapon priority should go to a faster weapon.

The amusing thing is that an army of people making unfounded claims that Frost DW will be "awesome" when the current evidence points otherwise is probably considered "theorycraft", while evidence that DW UH is currently far stronger than Frost 2h on single targets and thus probably stronger than DW Frost will be with the current changes is "epeening".

On the other hand, it's hard to theorycraft the effectivness of a talent that we don't even know the placement of yet, much less have had any time to actually playtest.

@Sylari

That's what I'm afraid of. Which in my mind seems a little lackluster, but still better than what we have. My main question is, and it probably won't be answered until we see the ptr, are we going to be using a heavy magic build again or will it be more physical damage. I am currently blood for the sole reason that I just prefer physical damage from my melée toons. The answer will likely determine which tree we subspec into, blood for physical or unholy for magic.

Also if it works like you theorize, are we gonna see OH gearing going towards a hunter mindset where weapon damage isn't as important as stats?

DW has always been a Magic heavy Spec. By it's very nature it has to be to compete. It's because, obviously, DW could not keep up with the strike damage that 2h was capable of. Blizzard is attempting to correct that with ToT.

Your question has many answers, but the most prominent one that I can think of is that your question has already been answered. Current Unholy DW specs are superior to 2h Frost specs. The introduction of ToT is, as mentioned, an attempt to bring DW strikes up to 2h strikes, so it's reasonable to conclude that DW Frost will do about the same damage as 2h Frost does currently.

Originally, DW weapons, MH and OH, were stat sticks in it's most general sense. Increasing AP, and therefore increasing spell damage done. Variants of the current Unholy builds, namely the 0/13/58 SS build, place greater emphasis on MH top end. Generally, however, weapons are stat sticks for DW DKs.

Given that GC has already said they basicly want frost to be the dw tree, I would think that there will be either additional tweeks further than what has already been shown to frost, or nerfs to the unholy dw build to keep it below frost in performance. Every major patch has brought major overhauls to the dk class so far so I don't see UH DW as being untouchable if they have made their mind up that they want frost to be the DW tree, which it seems that they have.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see both trees sport competitive DW specs to give players an option. And whichever spec ends up the strongest will probably see the most favor among players, but I just don't forsee that happening.

I agree with you that they will most likely make some changes, however, we can't count on the "blizzard said frost will be the DW tree" defense. Both 0/32/39 in the old day, and 0/17/54 currently were almost certainly unexpected builds, I doubt the DK design team "found" these specs before they started gaining popularity. Now, in the case of 32/39 clearly some changes had to be made, with our current DW spec, we might just slip under the net because it isn't clearly out in front as 32/39 was.

@ Shivand007

While I do agree that there is a potential for Blizzard to nerf Unholy DW, I am going to side with Fargom in the respect that it is unlikely. As he stated, the reason the 32/39 build was nerfed is because of it's scalability above and beyond that of it's 2h counterparts. When 32/39 was at it's peak, any serious raiding DK was DW and rightly so. The damage output was incredible.

The damage output of the current DW builds is highly competitive to it's 2h counterparts. The damage isn't grossly skewed either way, and it is for that reason that I also believe that current UH DW will go untouched. If not untouched, then only minor tweaks that will leave the Spec unaffected overall.

That's been what Blizzard, through their own admittance, has been looking for. Equality among the Specs. If UH DW proves to out-pace 2h in every conceivable way, then I'm sure the nerf bat will find the throats of DW DKs once more. But as it stands, that is not the case and we shouldn't assume otherwise.

My concern at this point is DW in 3.2 basically becoming a restylized 2h, except instead of equipping a two hander, you equip a main hander and a stat stick in the offhand.

The offhand looks like it won't matter much, although slower speeds might be slightly more valuable for procs.

Also I'm guessing a 35 point placement for ToT and blizzard hoping, and possibly tweaking around the theory that ToT + 30~ unholy superior than speccing deep unholy

@ RevengeAT

The OH damage based on the wording of the talent is still under speculation at the moment as we have no definitive explanation either way.

Your post suggests that Blood Strike would be the main nuke of a Frost build, but this is simply not true. A deep Frost build will get much more out of Obliterate or Howling Blast being it's main nuke.

Also, in order to get Bloody Strikes, you would have to give up 9% of your total damage from Tundra Stalker. 9% of your total damage is, in my opinion, in no way comparable to a 45% increase to an ability that you would use only twice in a rotation.

While I don't know that I would consider Thunderclap a snare that would affect the BS glyph, the point is irrelevant regardless. I can't think of a single warrior tank that thunderclaps during a boss fight, except to get any adds under control.

If I remember correctly, BS glyph only works for movement slowing effects, it doesn't apply to thunderclap like effects like torment the weak does.

Keep in mind that the UB change will benefit DW significantly more than 2h, because of the difference in RP generation. If the two specs are really balanced now, then DW will be better.

As kind of an aside, the more I think about it, the more I wish Blizzard would just remove/rework the glyph of IT and then buff deep frost and existing DW builds as needed. I'm honestly surprised that glyph lasted past the 4t7 change, and I don't see how they're going to keep things balanced in the long run, as long as the value of RP is so drastically different between specs.

I have to agree, I'm surprised the IT glyph has managed to dodge being nerfed for so long. I'm guessing they haven't changed it due to 2H Frost's reliance on RP (and lack of RP gen compared to some other builds), but if they are really going forward with the "Frost is for DW or tanking" mindset I don't see it lasting much longer. I have my doubts that even with ToT that DW Frost will catch up to DW Unholy - particularly the 17/54 DC spam setup - and at that point the IT glyph will be the first target (with them likely moving that RP gen somewhere where UH doesn't have access to it).

I personally can't wait for some definitive clarification by a blue as to how the offhand will work. I currently have Malice for my MH till I find something more ideal, but I don't know whether to aim for slow or fast for my offhand. I'm our guilds main Blood 2h dps at the moment but I want to give dw frost a try come 3.2.

What I'd like to know is whether or not I should be aiming for Necrosis and BcB at the cost of Subversion/Bladed Armor/Dark Conviction. If it's the former, and offhand speed is irrelevant, I'd assume we'd want slow/slow, if it's the latter then it becomes less important.