Not likely, as hopefully someone else in your raid is already providing the 13% magic damage debuff.

Nerves of Cold Steel increases more than white damage. You also get more Necrosis damage as well. All procs that rely on a hit also are increased. Depending on the spec, that can be a lot of damage. Remember that 20% damage bonus gets bonuses from various talents.

Example: 0/20/51 spec using Blood Presence

A base 1000 damage hit. He has Bone Shield, Desecration, and Ebon Plaguebringer already applied to the mob. That 1000 damage hit becomes 1231 damage. That 1231 damage gets a 20% damage Necrosis added to it. That produces a base Necrosis damage of 246 damage. He gets a 2%, 5%, 10%, 13%, and 15% bonus to his necrosis. A total of 376 damage. A grand total of 1607 damage.

As you can see, modifiers play a big role in determining how much damage Nerves of Cold Steel actually gives you. That same hit with just Blood Presence:

1000 damage hit becomes 1150. Necrosis is 20% of that so 230 damage x 1.15 which is 264. A total of 1414 damage.

So when you value a talent like Nerves of Cold Steel, you need to analyze those modifiers and take them into account.

Do you not have any warlocks or Boomkins either?

That being said, taking those three points will probably be an overall increase in DPS for you and your raid. However, you are probably better off going 20/0/51 and playing 2h unholy than trying to hack it as DW.

Why don't people add in blood tap for an extra IT or HB?

(if in melee range) PS, IT, HB, BS, BS - Garg, PS, IT, IT, IT, HB, Blood Tap, IT.

Was also wondering about Deathchill compared to chill of the grave or runic power mastery? an extra crit is always useful

Then start your rotation over again? Also, if you have a use able trinket set it to the beginning of the fight so you might get to use it again near the end.


Was also wondering if any other guilds are running their WWS and not having pets show up on the the meters?

Last thing, I was wondering if using a the Titansteel 1h would be better than using widow's remorse for MH b.c if the speed and the stats. While using titan steel 1h, i gain an extra 74 AP, and was wondering if that out weighs the 143.6 dps to 153.6 DPS. any thoughts?

1 - Most of the individuals on the board submitting their information to the public take into account that people are able to use ERW and Blood Tap correctly in the first place. It comes down a lot to personal playstyle as well. Personally I pay too much attention to an encounter and what is going on to always check to make sure my blood strike didn't just get dodged / parried and thus I lose a death rune, so I save my blood tap as a means to corrupt an error on my part. ERW I often put to great use (alongside arcane torrent) when gargoyle is up to refresh runes (which grants much more runic power gen) and give a runic power boost to allow me to maintain a standard rotation during gargoyle phase.

2 - Why would you *not* have chill of the grave? This is staple in all builds with enough points to consider taking Deathchill... runic power mastery isn't a necessary talent for any DK playing their rotation correctly (ie, using your runic power before using a move which would put you over the runic power cap). Deathchill is used as a left over point slot (ie most builds are 0/32/38+1 and a lot of people use the build I use and drop their spare point in deathchill).

3 - Getting off your trinket early is very important, its also important, however, that you use your trinket when its best put to use. IE you are at high runic power, crusader is up, and in a lot of DK cases, [Mirror of Truth] or [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] just proc'd, you want to blow your trinket and summon your gargoyle to take advantage of the stacking buffs.

Playing smart and using your cooldowns wisely are what distinguish a good player from a great player.

4 - WWS is currently bugged, AotD / Ghoul won't show up. I would personally advise using WMO (WoW Meter Online - The Best World of Warcraft Combat Log Analyse System!Fully support Wrath of the Lich King!) for uploading combat logs, as it accurately represents your parses.

Starting a new direction in this thread, I've been wondering and working on hybrid DK specs. As someone who often offtanks Naxx but also spends a lot of fights just DPSing, I'm very interested in optomizing my spec to both tank and DPS. As people have said, rightly, splitting my focus means I can't do either as well as a focused spec, but I'm curious to know exactly how much one would have to give up on the tanking side or DPS side in order to include some capability for the other role.

I've been working on DW variants of this, mostly due to the fact that I'm a lazy casual and only recently came into weapons better than a Runeblade of Demonstrable power; I got a RSoC and an Avool's on the same day, so DW it was. You can see my DPS gear and spec at my Armory, and my tank gear is mostly of similar grade; about 28k unbuffed HP (of course def capped).

The other thing I am now looking at is 2h vs DW. Of course, within a week of getting the solid 1hrs, a 2hr finally dropped from Naxx for me; a Wraith Spear. So now I'm looking at 2h alternatives to my current DW tank/DPS spec.

The spec itself... works for most of my needs. My DPS ends up in the 2.4 - 2.5k range on PW. One of the questions I'm working on is how much of the shortfall between my 2.4 - 2.5k and a more robust DPS output is A) gear, B) non-dedicated DPS spec, or C) I fail at DK.

I would use one of the spreadsheets to get the stat weights for your spec and rotation, then go to Loot Rank for WotLK and go from there.

The 3% hit you are referencing comes from Shadow Priests in the form of Misery and Druids from Imp. Faerie Fire.

Also, it should be mentioned that Death Coil is also a spell, further increasing the incentive to reach the hit cap as the DW Death Knight.

hello all,

first off, thank you for doing all this research. after acquiring angry dread, widow's fury, and split greathammer, i've respec'ed to 0/33/38 and i'm loving it very much.

however, i'm uber new to dw'ing. after sifting through at least 25 pages of this thread, i have just 3 questions:

1) what should i get my hit % to for 25man naxx? specifically, if i'm at 9%, am i ok?

2) have we reached any conclusion to the slow/fast, fast/fast debate? from what's recently been written, post-patch, fast/fast is the route to go. but people in-game keep on telling me that slow/fast is really the better route, as procs have been buffed for slower 1h's.

3) post-patch, with a 0/33/38 build, i know i should definitely get the glyph of icy touch, but i'm a little unclear on the rest. do you think a glyph of plague strike and glyph of the ghoul would be the best route to go?

forgive me if all of this has already been spelled out in utter detail in the past. i won't make excuses, but i will guarantee that with these new weapons in tow, i'll be checking out this thread quite regularly from now on.

-nzo

nzo, you realize the answer to one of your questions is answered directly 2 posts above yours, not to mention quoted in the directly previous post. I'll let you sift through that one.

as far as weapon speed, I think fast/fast still wins. post 56 on the following thread is updated numbers on PPM for different weapon speeds. Although he does not include fast/fast for some reason on his new tests, his old test numbers are still good enough to make them better than slow/fast
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Killing machine bugged (GC plz review)

IT/Ghoul are necessary glyphs, rest is up to you.

What do you think is a DPS increase? Using runic power mid-rotation or letting runic power go to waste? By the time you get to the necessary runes on the second half of the rotation the time spent depleting your runic power mid-rotation is disregarded. Of course you should use your runic power if you are about to cap mid-rotataion. Runic abilities are major dps components.