One, my DPS was consistently about 20-40 DPS higher when running Unholy presence with a fast/fast setup. This was using 2/3 RPM so there were times when I was fitting 3 DCs in a single set of runes. Every time I ran even a Rimeless setup in Blood presence I was still tight on GCDs, which is going to be made worse with Rime procs.
Unholy Presence is competitive with Blood Presence when you run rotations designed for Unholy Presence in Blood Presence. To use Blood Presence properly you need to be selective on ability usage and use RP abilities where there are available GCD gaps. Generally speaking, if you are going to run a [Rune set](>RPdump) rotation and chuck your Rime procs "ad lib" in Blood Presence, you are better off running a priority system instead and let it do the trimming/gapseeking for you.
The extra KM procs in Unholy Presence make just under ~1% difference for the average damage of IT/HB if the IT/HB immediately follows a KM-munching ability, but with any kind of KM-muncher spacing, the difference drops to almost nothing. The Ghoul makes a bigger difference, but right now the numbers simply don't add up in Unholy Presence's favor if you either run a good Blood Presence rotation or a good priority system.
Essentially, you can generate more resources in 20 sec than you can use in 20 sec. You can either run Unholy Presence and use all the resources you can generate, or you can trim off the less dense portions and take an extra 15% on what you keep. Right now, if you are trimming properly, there isn't enough leftover to put Unholy Presence over the top, but three upcoming changes (no CD on HB, new IT glyph, and new FS glyph) will each significantly increase the amount of "leftover" for Unholy Presence.
FS rotations like these...
PS>HB>IT>BS>IT(>RPdump)
PS>HB>IT>IT>BS(>RPdump)
...with Rime procs "whenever" will finally have enough "leftover" to make Unholy Presence good and lend viability to the blunt [Rune set](>RPdump) style rotations.
Originally Posted by Broseph
As far as I know, haste does not affect the GCD for "melee" classes like us. Its only advantage is to provide more autoattacks and related talents + procs.
Spell Haste affects Death Knight spell GCD. If you watch for it during Bloodlust/Heroism, the GCD reduction is clearly visible even without an addon to detect it.
After some tests, it appears that, with ~10% Haste on gear plus Wrath of Air for leeway, a 1-strike-per-Rune-set rotation safely fits 7 GCDs into 10 sec. This allows you to fit most of the "leftover" traditionally reserved for Unholy Presence into a tight Blood Presence rotation, thus (ab)using two of the three changes (presumably) designed to make Unholy Presence "more usable" while not in Unholy Presence.
Consider this "Movement" 0/32/39 build for pure spellchucking.
You sacrifice a small amount of "stationary" DPS for advantages in "movement" fights.
You can switch to this rotation...
HB>dc>HB>IT>BB(>HB)(>dc)
HB>dc>HB>BB>IT(>HB)>dc
...during the fight from a rotation leading with PS seamlessly and be able to keep your Rune set in synch indefinitely up to 30 yards away from the target (obviously you won't have melee damage or KM procs while out of melee range, but your Rune set will stay synched).
This essentially overcomes the traditional weakness of using a rotation instead of a priority system while keeping the rotation's superior pre-plotted KM-muncher spacing (going from back-to-back to 1 non-KM-muncher in between increases the average damage of IT/HB by almost 10%).
For those who haven't used Blood Boil much, note that Blood Boil does not actually do what its tooltip says. The spell works like a PBAoE ability and causes diseases within 30 yards of you to painfully erupt, not within 30 yards of your target, and with the talent it does pretty close to Blood Strike damage for fast-fast.
Still need a rotation for 0/44/27 which I am currently specced. [With Rime]
At the moment I am using...
IT - PS - HB - BS - BS - DC
HB - IT - IT - HB - DC
I weave DC.s into the rotation whenever I have to wait for 2+ seconds for rune refresh.
in blood presence since my recount on boss dummy showed a 250 DPS increase over unholy. I still find the rotation a bit flaky due to the wait for runes to come off CD [2-3 seconds]. Coming from a perfect Blood rotation in 51/13/7 [do not have to wait more than 1 second for CDs], it seems like the my current rotation for 0/44/27 is broken [not really broken but you know what I mean =p]. Please advise if I am doing this correctly or if I'm totally off the rocker on this one =)
So aznG, I have a question. Using your rotation, is there alot of downtime between HB's because of the six second CD? It seems like there would be, but I just want to clarifly.
Are the DW builds in 2.0.8 still likely to omit 3/3 Subversion? I can build 3/31/37 to get 3/3 Subversion, Howling Blast, and 2/2 Night of the Dead for the ghoul's AoE avoidance.
I'd like to see why I should not, or perhaps should build this way. My concern in omitting Subversion is with fights with an aggro reset and also with fights where there is a lot of movement, and thus the tank may not be 100% focused on building threat (such as Heigan, and Four Horsemen.) Also, any boss encounter with an AoE component, such as Noth, I would imagine that Subversion would help.
I welcome any arguments against, as I would love to be able to spec more into pure DPS for soloing and trash.
Are the DW builds in 2.0.8 still likely to omit 3/3 Subversion? I can build 3/31/37 to get 3/3 Subversion, Howling Blast, and 2/2 Night of the Dead for the ghoul's AoE avoidance.
I'd like to see why I should not, or perhaps should build this way. My concern in omitting Subversion is with fights with an aggro reset and also with fights where there is a lot of movement, and thus the tank may not be 100% focused on building threat (such as Heigan, and Four Horsemen.) Also, any boss encounter with an AoE component, such as Noth, I would imagine that Subversion would help.
I welcome any arguments against, as I would love to be able to spec more into pure DPS for soloing and trash.
Not speccing into Crypt Fever when you're that deep into Unholy is crazy, you don't need all that threat reduction with Blood/Unholy already having a 20% threat reduction and much of your DPS coming from pets.
@ Epicness -
The problem lies in the second part of the rotation with HB - IT - IT - HB and the beginning of rotation of IT - PS - HB. There is a 2-3 second wait for runes to refresh for HB and IT, when in combat it seems like an eternity for it to refresh. I have tried to cut it down to...
IT - PS - HB - BS - BS - DC
IT - IT - HB - DC
... however, it affects my dps by a margin of 250, and it does not quite solve the IT rune CD either. Is there no accepted rotation for 0/44/27? If so I will respec to 0/31/40 or 0/32/39.
Whoop! Seems ive become somewhat famous here since i last checked in on these forums hehe.
Its been great to see so many ppl discuss my specc and i learned alot from it. But i just had to smile at all the speculation since i have made a couple of posts in this very thread about my specc already, was awile ago though, page 6 =P I first got my eyes on a specc like this when spending a couple of hours on target dummies in the beta, right after i dinged 80.
Originally Posted by moghed
A couple things about Gothya's WWS since I've seen a lot of speculation on it the last couple days.
He has ~11.0% hit judging from his melee miss rate, and his lack of missing spells.
The other DK in the raid is an unholy tank, and though it would seem to make sense for the tank to pick up EP, I'd bet that gothya did for the extra crit.
That said, it seems that the only spec that makes sense is this. Possibly with 4/5 desecration and 0/2 unholy aura. The spec of the tank backs up Gothya having EP and Unholy Aura though. After the patch, I'd be willing to bet that taking a point out of wandering plague and into unholy blight would be well worth it for several of reasons. The ability to use the icy touch glyph, the reduced cost of unholy blight, and the (probable) removal of the bug that lets EP and crypt fever stack.
He has razorice on his off hand and fallen crusader on his main hand. You can see this by browsing through the logs.
As for glyphs, I'm sure that post patch, he'll be glyphing for IT, though now, that would obviously be counter productive, as he's getting so much of his damage FROM icy touch. I'd imagine that he has the ghoul glyphs, other than that though, I can't see too many glyphs that would be that useful for his spec. His crit rate on Plague Strike is almost identical to Blood Strike, so it's doubtful he has that glyph, though they both are ~10% higher than his auto attack crit rate, so it's possible blood strike was just abnormally high, and PS abnormally low. He may have blood strike or bone shield also.
I have been deep unholy (50+) dw since we started raiding in wrath. Our only other dk was a bit slow lvling to 80 and have only been unholy for a week or two so i have always included unholy aura and ep in my builds(and the 3% personal crit aint bad at all). I have tried to switch around a few talent points for raids, much thanks to the fact that ive been trying different pvp builds between raids. The reason i didnt have UB on our last patchwerk kill was couse i wanted to try out wandering plague, but i will defenetly include it after the patch.
As far as major glyphs go there are two that ive found works good for this specc. The ghoul glyph ofc but also Glyph of Plague Strike, it increases ps damage with 20% if there is a disease on the target. I still need to do some thinking on how the IT glyph will affect things after the patch. but it will defenetly replace the random pvp glyph i have in the 3rd slot atm. Ive been using a "priority system" as was mentioned earlier in this thread. For stationary fights like patchwerk it dosnt give many advanteges, but on other fights it makes it much easier and i saw my dps increase alot on those fights using a priority system.
Now im gonna go a bit offtopic again. But i think its quite funny that all of this started when a mage from my guild qq:ed in the frost dk dps thread that "frost dks dont need a buff". Guess i did the right choice to reroll :P
I don't have any wws to show or anything really, but I just did a 25 man 3 wing clear of naxx and I did 18 million damage total and out of all of that plague strike did 1.1%... WTF am I even wasting my time casting it? Does it really increase my dps on bcs enough?
I don't have any wws to show or anything really, but I just did a 25 man 3 wing clear of naxx and I did 18 million damage total and out of all of that plague strike did 1.1%... WTF am I even wasting my time casting it? Does it really increase my dps on bcs enough?
You should be counting any damage dealt by Blood Plague towards Plague Strike. Also, you'll want to run your damage meter on a heroic test dummy to get a feel for how much extra damage your Blood Strike and Obliterate do with Blood Plague up.
All of this damage must then be counted up to see what the approximate effective contribution of Plague Strike is.
And, of course, you can try spending 5 or 10 minutes doing a rotation with Plague Strike on the heroic dummy, and then do the same without and compare the effective DPS from each. I have found that a good meter for doing these sorts of ability/rotation tests is Recap, though I use Recount as well sometimes for the pie charts.
I think you should do the tests yourself instead of taking other people's word for it too, if only so you have a better feel for why you are doing what you end up deciding to do.
Yeah, the total damage of blood plague and bcb actually made up about 15% of my total damage so I was being retarded. That and I wasn't glyphed so that didn't help hehe.
So I'm pretty sure two of Avool's Sword of Jin would be the best option for DW to start raiding with, but is there something better? As far as I can tell, it should be the second best weapon in game right now, if you don't count PvP offhand weapons.
Once again, I welcome contradiction on this, I'm here to learn.
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.
Regarding 1)
It's been said several times in here that fast/fast is the way to go due to normalization from Blood Caked Blade, and increased procs from Killing Machine.
It's been said several times in here that fast/fast is the way to go due to normalization from Blood Caked Blade, and increased procs from Killing Machine.
Is this no longer considered general knowledge?
His instructions are designed to pick up a DW viable set of equipment very quickly (Hence the rep acquired weapons) to get a feel for the spec, not a how-to build an optimal raiding set.
It's been said several times in here that fast/fast is the way to go due to normalization from Blood Caked Blade, and increased procs from Killing Machine.
Is this no longer considered general knowledge?
It is probably the better option for most of the DW builds yes. Deep frost (GoG and RS) would still want Slow/Fast.
Well Dev93L, I actually got two fang of truth yesterday. However, I am only level 78 with bad gear so I only ended up doing about 1300 dps in utgarde pinnacle today. However, it seemed to do about 150 dps more than slow/fast combo, with the onehander from the amphitheater quests that does 111dps as my slow weapon. Numbers do pop up alot more faster, but it won't really be determined until I hit level 80 and get higher than 1750 attack power
P.S. Even as level 78, I did do about 100 more dps than a level 80 blood deathknight with all blue gear. I think this shows that DW is superior to twohander at low gear levels ( and I am not sure, but I am hoping its the same way in higher gear levels). However, this may not be a true fact, just what I witnessed, so no one flame at me for it :P
Well Dev93L, I actually got two fang of truth yesterday. However, I am only level 78 with bad gear so I only ended up doing about 1300 dps in utgarde pinnacle today. However, it seemed to do about 150 dps more than slow/fast combo, with the onehander from the amphitheater quests that does 111dps as my slow weapon. Numbers do pop up alot more faster, but it won't really be determined until I hit level 80 and get higher than 1750 attack power
P.S. Even as level 78, I did do about 100 more dps than a level 80 blood deathknight with all blue gear. I think this shows that DW is superior to twohander at low gear levels ( and I am not sure, but I am hoping its the same way in higher gear levels). However, this may not be a true fact, just what I witnessed, so no one flame at me for it :P
More than likely the level 80 DK just sucked. I tank and I was pulling over 1k single target DPS before I started heroics.
You have to keep in mind that DKs are the new hunters. A lot of people play them and few play them well. In my guild we have an unholy DK (2h) who only spent 2 days gearing up and managed to pull about 2500 DPS on a few boss fights in naxx 10 without any raid gear. And yet I don't recall grouping with any non-guild DKs who can break 1500 (overall, including all the the aoe trash) in heroics.
On the PTR in my crafted/heroic gear I've managed to max out at 2100 DPS on the boss dummy as deep unholy DW - and that's with necrossis and bcb doing crap damage because of the 1 HP issue. I pull about 1800 as deep frost. The pets are a large amount of DPS... if you can keep a ghoul alive all through a raid post-patch it'll be hard to justify anything but deep unholy for DW.
I think it might be beneficial to rework the thread. Most of the DK threads are cluttered with proposed builds varying by one or two points, 10+ pages of (re-asked) questions that have been answered weeks ago, and dps e-peening with no explanation; this thread is especially terrible. Since the OP doesn't really contribute much anymore, and the think tank's information is ancient, I think a more precise thread may be the best option. By now, we have generally accepted 'best practices', a variety of specs, and a decent grasp on itemization changes between them.
Objectives:
Create a more consolidated list of FAQ's
Provide a faster reference guide for general knowledge and links to evaluation tools
Keep an updated list of recent/future changes relative to dual wield specs
I am willing to oversee this, but if a more veteran member would like to take charge I am able to contribute. I have begun collecting information but could use help including everything. If you have relevant information you would like to include, please refer me to the post, or create a short write up and send a PM. All credit will be given to the original authors.
Here is the million dollar question... how does Deep Frost DW compare to Unholy DW? Is 0/4x/2x comparable with the current 0/3x/3x builds?
I'm a Frost fanatic. I've specced deep frost for both 2h and DW. I want to love DW more... but I'm having trouble keeping my damage up with the 2h variant I'm running. I personally can't stand deep unholy or deep blood. It just doesn't fit my play style.
Just to confirm. The entire purpose of the Dual Wield DK is to supplement the high amount of white damage with synergies of Necrosis and Blood Caked Blades, with the Killing Machine Proc (which makes +Crit more of a desirable stat) to enhance both Icy Touch and Howling Blast.
What I still don't understand is how deep Unholy affects the Frost Abilities (Icy Touch and Howling Blast) more so than the talents from the Deep Frost abilities can. Was it proved or disproved that Guile of Gorefiend is better for the Critical Strike Damage Bonus for Howling Blast provided substantially more DPS than Crypt Fever did for Blood Caked Blades? I understand that Unholy focuses more on the spell aspect of the DK's arsenal, but does it truly outweigh the deeper choices in Frost?
Plus, is the perma-ghoul really that important? I hardly remember to bring him out (non-perma-ghoul). I never liked playing a hunter for the very same mechanic. Is there a way to, as a Dual Wielding Death Knight, get around the obvious DPS loss of not having the perma ghoul? It just seems to be getting a lot of hype and fandom, almost too much for my blood (but there wouldn't be hype if it weren't at least decently good)
Last edited by Oathof Chaos : 12/27/08 at 4:08 AM.
1. I'm trying out DW and I love it, especially the 0/32/39 build. But I can't keep track of the Rime and killing machine-procs. Is there a good addon out there that plays a sound or something when these stuff proc?
2. Also, I have three weapons. Hailstorm, Grasscutter and Titansteel bonecrusher. Which of these should I drop? I'm thinking Hailstorm + Grasscutter are the better choice since people keep saying that you should go with fast/fast instead of s/f.
3. I saw that wws-log from Gothya where he breaks 6k dps. I heard he's using some bug or glitch that makes crypt fever and ebon plague stack. How exactly does that work? I read that you need two DKs, one that goes Ebon Plaguebringer and one that stops at crypt fever. But who gets the bonus damage, the one with crypt fever or ebon plage?
4. And lastly, my guild masters and officers say I won't get Last Laugh until all the tanks have it. Personally, I think that's stupid. What are your oppinions? Is Last Laugh just as good a dps-weapon as it is a tank-weapon?
Unholy offers another disease to boost bcb as well as 5% more dmg with desecration for stationary fights and bone armor for 2% more dmg. In addition crypt fever boost your own diseases' dmg by 30% fully talented. You also have the option of moving 2points out of crypt fever for notd for more ghoul uptime on fights where the ghoul has low survivability.
As for the ghoul...it is a very important source of dmg for this spec. It usually accounts for 10-13% of your dmg, so it's imperative to have it up at all times.
Yes, permaghoul and pet management are essential aspects of the 32/39 and 44/27 specs. Since those seem to be the top two DW specs (with the possible exception of a very deep unholy build), you are forced to manage both ghoul and gargoyle if you are concerned with maxing your DPS and choose to DW.
Unfortunately, I really think this will make 32/39 a stronger spec by far because of NotD. 44/27 may outstrip 32/39 for single target boss fights and aoe trash packs (read: the e-peen fights). But because the ghoul will contribute so much to either spec, protecting him and making him usable on the more technical boss fights is probably much more important than maxing your patchwerk dps.
That said, dual-speccing 32/39 with 44/27 is immensely appealing to me...
Is reaching the hit/expertise caps important compared to stacking Strength out the ass to buff your spells? It seems to me you'd get a better return that way, and while I'm very close to the special hit cap(without gemming for it) reaching the expertise dodge cap, especially without Rage of Rivendare/Tundra Stalker/racial bonuses, seems daunting and unnecessary. I'm currently sporting 8 gems with expertise in some amount and I'm rocking a meager 10 expertise.
Two other simple questions, since I just recently hopped on the DW bandwagon:
-Cinderglacier or Fallen Crusader mainhand?
-It is worth leaving Crypt Fever with a lonely single point for 2/2 NotD?
12/25/08, 7:30 AM
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