I wrote unholy/frost but I meant frost/unholy. I did mention taking unholy down to RoR.

Truthfully, I don't know why so many people are talking about having Ebon Plaguebringer in their DW spec. The points used in Ebon Plaguebringer would be better to use in Unholy Aura (unless you have an unholy DK in the raid) and Bone Shield, for more damage. Yes Ebon Plaguebringer is nice, but there are other things that are more important to the raid, and 1 points in bone shield is probably more effective than one point in Ebon Plaguebringer.

Also, I think for most DW builds, Crypt Fever is a must, because of the extra disease damage, and more damage for BCB and Blood Strike. I guess builds going deeper into frost also have their benefits, but in my opinion, it's just better to have another disease and more damage to your diseases.

Increasing the magic damage of your raid by 13% is clearly useless.

E: More substantively, people are taking it because it's the best expenditure of two points for their raid or personal dps. Sometimes shifting a few points around from these "ideal" specs will provide a greater benefit to your particular raid or playstyle. Go for it. In general, though, if you're that deep in unholy, EP is pretty good.

But his spec had DW spec in it when he was using a two hander. That had to be his PvE spec.

My comments were based on HB with no cooldown. I believe the use of IT as a spamable nuke feels clunky and I think the change to HB was made to avoid that inevitability. Don't get me wrong. Rime is good and getting more procs is very beneficial. I'd just like to see a more reliable rotation come from this (deathrunes to HB fits better and doesn't push back disease ticks).

On a side note: It's possible that builds like 0/44/27 and 10/31/30 (focus on DW and HB) will threaten everything 2H builds stand for. They will more than likely scale better. The only question is at what point they will pass the standard 2H builds and by how much.

Hey guys, This is my first post out of almost a year of reading the EJ forums!! What do you guys think of the 0/32/39 DW Spec?

0/32/39

Im using Glyph of ghoul , Glyph of Bone armor , and not quite sure what else as of yet

The spec focuses on Killing machine and BCB procs with Icy touch and Howling blast as its main dps . Wich is why i use 2 fasts * soon to have hailstorm from 10man mally*

Floggin, unless your rotation has 2 icy touches and 2 plague strikes within 12 seconds (which I doubt it does), Epicdemic is a must have, so your disease last 18 seconds. Also, I would say that unless you already have an unholy deathknight in your raids, Unholy Aura is also a must have for the benefit of your whole raid. I feel that those two are more important that Desecration.

On a side note, why is night of the dead so important? Do the perma-ghouls die that much in raids so you need to lower the cooldown on the raise dead? Also, does Army of the Dead really do that much damage?

Also the army of the dead ghouls taunt , and would most likley cause many problems on most boss fights if im not mistaken.

and as far as the epidemic talent. i havent seen any problems with my diseases falling off in the tests i have been running. altho i have not yet got the spec into a raid situation . so i shall see!!

thanks for the feedback Epicness

From what I've seen, the ghouls go down pretty easily in any fight with a moderate amount of AoE, which currently is just about every fight. With NotD you will have one available pretty much every time one dies. Also, with the changes being made to talent and the addition of the "avoidance" aspect of it, it will be much better in terms of increasing Ghoul up-time and your DPS.

Night of the dead also gives 35%/70% avoidance to AoE damage (spell i believe) to DK pets... now im unsure if this was tested to prove if it helps Gargoyle survivability or not, but it definately helps the ghoul survive longer.

on another note.. IT and PS both do X amount of damage... then tick for X amount of damage over their duration...

what I want to know is if putting 2 points into epidemic increases the during at the same tick value it would be at from the regular 12 second dot... which would be a decent damage increase for the 2 points... or if it instead takes the damage it does over the total duration and splits it up more making each tick for less for the longer period of time...

the reason why I ask this is... if DW specs are constantly casting IT again well before the disease dot fully ticks off... it would be gimping the damage to get epidemic if it deceases each individual tick... sure it'd make PS ticks last longer.. but with all the increased damage we get for IT.. wouldnt it overall be a decease?

anyway, if someone knows id love to find out...

You don't need Virulence because the spell hit cap is about half of the DW hit cap, so you will be spell hit capped anyway. I would also recommend getting rid of Desecration because of the low number of fights in which it is easy to keep up. Unholy Aura and NotD are excellent for the above reasons, and I would like to know the answer to Sevexe's question as well. I will probably test it later today if I remember.

This (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) is my DW spec. I believe most people have agreed to the same thing, give or take Subversion. The Unholy Command is there so I can be lazy on Malygos.

Has anyone done any comparisons for itemization on these DW specs? I would really like to know how haste, crit, and armor pen stack up (I assume haste would have a much higher value than in the 2H DPS Compendium thread)

The only class that benefited from trying to stack hit to the white hit cap was BC combat rogues. If you try this on a DK you'll miss out on a very large portion of diversified itemization. The goal here is to get your spells hit capped, hence virulence makes this easier combined with misery. BCB procs are yellow damage and only need 8% to hit and same for PS. Necrosis is a spell and needs to be at the spell hit cap. Nerves of Cold steel is icing on the cake for hit but does not regulate how much hit you should be stacking up.
You will also need Expertise soft capped at 25 skill so PS and BCB's don't eat a ton of dodge.

If it increases the duration of the diseases then what he was previously stating was is it necessary to get epidemic assuming in the 32/39 build you use IT before it gets its full gain from the extra duration. Which in the rotation I use it is a waste and I do use IT before the full duration can wear off. One of the questions that isn't really answered and may vary is what rotation is he using? A simple calculation of his Rotation would answer his question.

I for one did not take it and see the points better spent in Virulence.

Spell hit cap is 17%

3% from virulence, 3% from priest buff. You need 290ish hit to hit 10% spell hit. Remember your hit% for hit and spell is different from same number of hit rate you have. 290ish hit only gives 8.5% melee hit. So for every 1% more spell hit from 10% you can drop one points off from virulence without going below spell hit cap. IT and HB (DC when not using gargo) being big part of our dmg I wouldn't recommend going under spell hit. Unless my numbers are off which may very well be the case. NoCS and Virulence also allows you to possibly gem a little different.

Of course hit% cap is not terribly hard to get to but can be a problem at first.

I've been playing with a spreadsheet I grabbed from somewhere that does a decent job with dw builds (and KM), and by far the highest dps I've been able to produce from the thing is from the KM/UB build (very similar to one mentioned earlier).

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=121421040605

I thought I would give a little more detail about the virtues of this build, since conversation on the topic has been scattered and is becoming inaccurate with the latest ptr changes.

The rotations are as follows:
Non-gargoyle: PS,IT,BS,IT,DC,IT,UB - PS,BS,IT,IT,DC,IT,DC
Gargoyle: PS,IT,BS,IT,PS,IT,X - PS,BS,IT,IT,PS,IT,UB
(note: the X in above rotation is anything that generates 10+ rp. Summoning a ghoul, HoW, ERW, etc)

You want the ITs spread out to maximize the crit gains from Killing Machine. You CAN use a priority system with this spec, and definitely should on any fight where tight rotations are not possible. (i.e. most fights). Blood presence is assumed, of course.

Another important thing to notice is that 10 out of our 14 attacks in the usual rotation (and a similar number when a priority is used) are spells - their gcd can be reduced by the haste that we can't seem to escape on our gear. My basic t7 set (probably not optimal) gives me 8% haste, which gains me an average of 5.7% gcd haste. Add that to Wrath of Air and you get just enough to take a 14gcd rotation with an assumed 100ms of latency (connection + human slowness) down to 20s (There's a similar effect on the priority system, it's just harder to quantify) If I'm mistaken about dk spells getting gcd reduction, *please* tell me - I don't have the haste gear (or connection) to test it.

IT crits for about 5.6k, assuming the IT sigil ([Sigil of the Frozen Conscience]), which doesn't match the 7k crits mentioned earlier, but I assume he just had more AP and less haste, and probably more desecration. That's at a roughly 73% crit rate with slow/fast; it goes up to around 80% with fast/fast.

Which reminds me: Fast/Fast is significantly higher dps here. I'm not sure about general cases, but for this build, with this level of gear, switching your mainhand from 2.6 to 1.5 speed gains 150 dps (all from Killing Machine).

This build takes an unusually big hit on any fight that's pet unfriendly enough to kill your ghoul and gargoyle very rapidly despite NotD, since the ghoul and gargoyle together are worth about 15% of your dps (400 and 300 dps respectively).

I have never once thought of trying to DW on my DK because the general consensus is DW = fail but I am very interested in trying it for myself. Before I start rolling on 1handers and pissing people off, can someone link me a wws report showing what DW can do? I know I could probably find this if I read through this entire thread but I hope someone won't mind helping me with this.

Search this thread button -> wowwebstats -> first entry:

Wow Web Stats

The biggest on paper hindrance to thinking DW as a DK is viable is the 27% white hit cap. Most people look at that massive number and think, "Damn, no way i can get that much +hit at my raiding teir. 2h is it." But the truth is you don't need it.

Here is what you should do if you're new to DW:
1)Go pick up the MH from Ebon Blade Revered. Put Fallen Crusader on it.
2)Go get the OH from Wyrmrest Revered. Put Razor Ice on it.
3) Spec 32/39 or some DW variant.
4)Make sure you have at least 8% to hit cap and a decent amount of expertise.
5) Use a good rotation.
6) Go hit things. Now compare that experience to what your 2h feels like. Did you like it?

If yes then consider building your gear more towards DW viability and using your DKP for 1h'ders. If not then don't. DW is a playstyle and some people like it and others don't. Play what feels good to you.

Ill be parsing a wws of my Naxx tonight i believe. and ill try and get you a link . of the 0 32 39 spec im using

It's 27% (or supposed to be 28, but testing shows 27). And the spell hit cap (17-3(misery)-3(virulence)-1(dranei)= 10%) is important as a DW DK but as stacking hit is a good idea anyway you can get to the 14% (17-misery) easily.

I know the title of this thread is "Dual Wield Builds", but I had a question about weapons for DW, and I figured here was the best place. I've already decided on a 0/32/39 build with no desecration. Now I rolled an orc partially for the expertise bonus to axes, here comes my dilemma, outside of PvP weapons I have really only found 2 decent axes;[Stalactite Chopper] and [Icy Quick Edge], also I suppose I could use [The Key].

Either way, all of these weapons are easily replaced by Naxx swords or maces. So as DW should I just give up on the idea of taking advantage of my racial expertise bonus, or are there some axes out there somewhere that I am somehow missing?

Nope.
Weapons - Items - World of Warcraft

Heh. The only epic 1h axe you can get without pvp is the tanking one: [Last Laugh]. It has FAR higher weapon dps than any of those other choices, but that doesn't affect most of the attacks used by a DW dk. Honestly, the expertise bonus isn't even that important for DW, since expertise doesn't affect IT, HB, Gargoyle, Ghoul, or DC.. You'll have to use a spreadsheet to figure out weights for a DK with your chosen spec and gear, our weights vary pretty heavily with spec. (I get better numbers out of [Angry Dread] and [Hailstorm])