Hidden,
I find your build very appealing, but have a few questions. Keep in mind I'm lvl 75 right now, so have a few levels before I max out.
1. What rotation are you using? I recently tried this spec (switched a few abilities around while I level though), and found myself using IT, HB, PS, and BS...with the occasional Deathcoil when it was up.
2. Blood or Unholy presence?
3. When did you switch to duel wielding? It's proving difficult to find weapons in my quest for 80.
Thanks in advance,
1: Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Howling Blast(if it's off cooldown)/Obliterate, Blood Strike 2x(unless I already have death runes, then I cast another Howling Blast/Obliterate) For Runic Power, you might want to switch to Frost Strike if you have it, it does more damage than Death Coil.
2: Still haven't decided, Blood is good and so is unholy, I would say just try a few mobs while under each presence and decide for yourself.
3: I switched to Dual Wielding at lv 75 and haven't had a single problem damage or equip-wise, you should be fine.
It is an amazing spec for heroics, since most of it consists of aoe-ing packs down, and fairly good with single target dps (I average 2100dps on 10 man naxx bosses so far, mostly with the help of gargoyle being always up).
It relies heavily on rime and killing machine procs for HB crits and fallen crusader/cinderglacer weapon forges to help increase overall damage.
1: Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Howling Blast(if it's off cooldown)/Obliterate, Blood Strike 2x(unless I already have death runes, then I cast another Howling Blast/Obliterate) For Runic Power, you might want to switch to Frost Strike if you have it, it does more damage than Death Coil.
2: Still haven't decided, Blood is good and so is unholy, I would say just try a few mobs while under each presence and decide for yourself.
3: I switched to Dual Wielding at lv 75 and haven't had a single problem damage or equip-wise, you should be fine.
You don't use Obliterate as 14/31/26 or 13/31/27 as it removes your diseases and is in general pretty low damage as DW. You don't have Death Runes either unless you spec 10/31/30 which I was thinking about speccing but not sure currently, you'd use the Death Runes for 2xIT then - IT does the most damage/runes in that build.
The rotation looks like this:
13/31/26(+1): PS, IT, BS, BS, HB, Filler, Filler
10/31/29(+1): PS, IT, BS, BS, HB, Filler, Filler, PS, IT, IT, IT, HB, Filler, Filler
Filler is either Gargoyle or DC when Gargoyle is neither up nor ready.
You use the HB after the 2 BS because you want that HB to benefit from a Killing Machine proc that will likely not be up just after using IT.
The presence I've been using was Blood, mostly because 1/3 of the time you have a Gargoyle up and such no GCD shortage anyway. Especially when using the second spec and the IT glyph it could be worthwhile to use Unholy Presence when no Gargoyle is up though. To switch to Blood simply replace a BS by switching the presence. To switch to Unholy presence you can either replace one of the ITs that use Death Runes or use Rune Tap to convert one of your Blood Runes to a Death Rune to switch.
If you're mostly questing I wouldn't recommend switching to DW though, your Death Strikes will heal for a lot less than as Unholy or Blood using a 2h and you're also missing the survivability of Blood or Unholy that allows you to solo most group quests. It's a pure DPS spec, just like Combat Dagger pre-BC.
@Above:
Sorry but that spec looks horrible to me, it's really missing the synergies you'll want from a DW spec.
Especially as DW both Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade are way better than Virulence per point.
You spec both Impurity and Frost Strike, these talents simply don't benefit each other very well. If you want Frost Strike, go as deep as Tundra Stalker which benefits all your abilities unlike Impurity which doesn't benefit your Frost Strikes. If you want Impurity, you're most likely better off not going that deep into Frost to get Frost Strike but instead either go deeper into Unholy or Blood to get additional talents that increase all your damage. Greatly increasing your Death Coil damage and then speccing a replacement for it just isn't very efficient.
In general:
In "my" tri-specs I try boosting weapon-independant base spells instead of speccing into weapon-dependant deep talented abilities. In my opinion that's what makes the difference between suboptimally playing a 2h build as DW and playing a competitive DW build.
It's Frost/Unholy, 33/38. I'm going off pure theorycraft at this point, but here are my thoughts on the bits that don't make sense immediately:
I am sacrificing the big boost from Guile of Gorefiend, but gaining chunks from desecration, impurity, and bone armor. I am not 100% sure about this. Is 7% constant boost to my damage (+ whatever impurity ends up adding) worth the loss of 45% crit bonus damage on blood strike, obliterate, and howling blast? At first glance, maybe not. But I feel like having that 7% boost constant to everything I do might work out well..though perhaps, as someone mentioned regarding a similar build, not as well as I think.
Dropped one point into crypt fever for enhanced obliterate damage. Worth it? Dunno. Not even sure how much obliterate gets used in this set up...
2 points in Dirge and 2 points in CotG should help support the Gargoyle.
3 points in reaping should be a no-brainer.
I didn't grab virulence because while the bonus hit would be awesome, this is a dual wielding build and I'd be looking for hit on my gear anyways. Grabbing extra hit to make my spells hit will only up my DPS regardless by increasing white damage (thinking haste might be a good stat to have for this build) and BCB procs.
Thoughts? I expect to be fairly lampooned here. GoG is really good and I'm a little iffy about not taking it, but I really love the deeper unholy talents. I am partially debating dropping Gargoyle and Dirge and picking up the ghoul and trying to grab unholy aura for the sake of utility.
I am leveling with a spec similar to yours ( 0/44/27 ) which is dps-focused. There are a few points where I disagree with your talent selection. Frost Strike, in my opinion, is a sub-optimal RP dump if you're using one-handed weapons. Endless Winter is relatively useless in PvE, and Deathchill is more of a PvP thing, too (okay for burst, but doesn't add much to sustained DPS.) Virulence, finally, is effectively useless for a dual-wielder–the spell hit cap is lower than the dual-wield cap, so why bother?
I do think that deep frost DW is more effective than tri-spec, though, because of the more efficient RP dump (Garg) and because Impurity, while generally not great point-for-point, does help with the scaling on Howling Blast and Icy Touch. What I am unsure about is whether or not it is optimal from a DPS perspective to take 5/5 Impurity, Corpse Explosion, Master of Ghouls, and Garg, rather than taking two points of Frost filler, 5/5 Tundra Stalker, and Hungering Cold. Corpse Explosion is garbage, of course, and Master of Ghouls is pretty situational–but then, Tundra Stalker and Hungering Cold don't seem to do much in the way of increasing the DPS of a spec so reliant on auto-attack damage.
I am sacrificing the big boost from Guile of Gorefiend, but gaining chunks from desecration, impurity, and bone armor. I am not 100% sure about this.
One of the many subjects on hand in the Unholy thread is the desecration is currently not worth it. One of the many problems with it is that in a raid enviroment you move around to much for desecration to be effective, except on fights like Patchwerk. Also, it covers the ground and can be a liability during a raid. The one thing I don't like is giving up Merciless Combat. With that in mind I could see the spec ending up something like this..Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
It's Frost/Unholy, 33/38. I'm going off pure theorycraft at this point, but here are my thoughts on the bits that don't make sense immediately:
I am sacrificing the big boost from Guile of Gorefiend, but gaining chunks from desecration, impurity, and bone armor. I am not 100% sure about this. Is 7% constant boost to my damage (+ whatever impurity ends up adding) worth the loss of 45% crit bonus damage on blood strike, obliterate, and howling blast? At first glance, maybe not. But I feel like having that 7% boost constant to everything I do might work out well..though perhaps, as someone mentioned regarding a similar build, not as well as I think.
Anyways, all comments, harsh or not, appreciated.
Keep in mind the unholy dps thread has pretty much deemed desecration less than great (maybe even worthless, at least in relation to other talent options), also with epidemic you don't have 100% uptime. And with encounter specific movement you lose even more uptime.
With the current spec you provided, I would also suggest taking up master of ghouls so it doesn't die so much.
Desecration could be moved into UAu and Virulence.
imho, at least 1 enchant "slot" should be reserved a fallen crusader, the more strength you have the more you benefit from its procs.
So many builds are here and almost no useful info. Mb i'am not right, but the idea is to create a good DPS spec, and currently dual wield tri-spec is rather low on dps.
Enhance shammy with the same level of gear would provide better active buffs ( better bonus from SoE totem, +10% ap, some spellpower and 20% haste at the same moment of time ) and actually better DPS. So there is no point in hybrid DW DK ?
I'am currently trying to create a full unholy DK with minimal talents from frost simply to dual wield, coz dw frost tri-spec does not seem to be a nice dps spec.
P.S.
It's good to see some posts from lvl 70-80 ppl who actually do not raid or even don't make heroic runs, but to be honest - would you group with a crap tank or heal ? So why whould anyone take crap DPS spec in their group ?
I am leveling with a spec similar to yours ( 0/44/27 ) which is dps-focused. There are a few points where I disagree with your talent selection. Frost Strike, in my opinion, is a sub-optimal RP dump if you're using one-handed weapons. Endless Winter is relatively useless in PvE, and Deathchill is more of a PvP thing, too (okay for burst, but doesn't add much to sustained DPS.) Virulence, finally, is effectively useless for a dual-wielder–the spell hit cap is lower than the dual-wield cap, so why bother?
I do think that deep frost DW is more effective than tri-spec, though, because of the more efficient RP dump (Garg) and because Impurity, while generally not great point-for-point, does help with the scaling on Howling Blast and Icy Touch. What I am unsure about is whether or not it is optimal from a DPS perspective to take 5/5 Impurity, Corpse Explosion, Master of Ghouls, and Garg, rather than taking two points of Frost filler, 5/5 Tundra Stalker, and Hungering Cold. Corpse Explosion is garbage, of course, and Master of Ghouls is pretty situational–but then, Tundra Stalker and Hungering Cold don't seem to do much in the way of increasing the DPS of a spec so reliant on auto-attack damage.
Why aren't you getting Subversion in the Blood Tree?
You most likely gonna need the threat reduction.
And I assume Blood Strike will be used in your rotation? So 9% crit will be nice.
I was thinking of useing this build, I'm not quiet 80 yet so I wanted to hear some responses on it.
PS>IT>HB>BS>BS>Filler
IT>IT>IT>HB>PS> RP
Is the rotation I'm currently useing(at 72), unless of aoe.
PS>IT>Pes>HB>BS>RP
IT>IT>HB>IT>PS>RP
in bigger pulls with no cc.
I was wondering if Frost strike was worth the point, or if it would be better spent in butchery? and is Threat really a concern for us in raiding environments? and finally; Is tundra stalker worth the 5 points?
Keep in mind the unholy dps thread has pretty much deemed desecration less than great (maybe even worthless, at least in relation to other talent options), also with epidemic you don't have 100% uptime. And with encounter specific movement you lose even more uptime.
With the current spec you provided, I would also suggest taking up master of ghouls so it doesn't die so much.
Desecration could be moved into UAu and Virulence.
Just my 2c for thought.
Ah. Good points all around. I dropped desecration and picked up master of ghouls, virulence, and unholy aura. I think people in general underestimate the power of run speed increases, especially as fights become more mobile. I don't think it's OMG SUPER BONUS powerful and experimentation might cause me to drop it in favor of runic power mastery (2 points) or potentially night of the dead, but for now I like the speed...I've noticed it helps out significantly in many situation.
Any further thoughts? I feel like Unholy/Frost is really the way to go with Dual Wield, as the sheer number of procs in both trees when spec'd properly is quite high.
Ah. Good points all around. I dropped desecration and picked up master of ghouls, virulence, and unholy aura. I think people in general underestimate the power of run speed increases, especially as fights become more mobile. I don't think it's OMG SUPER BONUS powerful and experimentation might cause me to drop it in favor of runic power mastery (2 points) or potentially night of the dead, but for now I like the speed...I've noticed it helps out significantly in many situation.
Any further thoughts? I feel like Unholy/Frost is really the way to go with Dual Wield, as the sheer number of procs in both trees when spec'd properly is quite high.
As posted before due to the DW hit cap you don't really need to spend points in Virulence. Since you will cap spellhit before DW hit.
Perhaps remove 2 points from Virulence and put them into Subversion for extra crit on your Blood Strikes and Obliterates.
imho, at least 1 enchant "slot" should be reserved a fallen crusader, the more strength you have the more you benefit from its procs.
So many builds are here and almost no useful info. Mb i'am not right, but the idea is to create a good DPS spec, and currently dual wield tri-spec is rather low on dps.
Enhance shammy with the same level of gear would provide better active buffs ( better bonus from SoE totem, +10% ap, some spellpower and 20% haste at the same moment of time ) and actually better DPS. So there is no point in hybrid DW DK ?
I'am currently trying to create a full unholy DK with minimal talents from frost simply to dual wield, coz dw frost tri-spec does not seem to be a nice dps spec.
P.S.
It's good to see some posts from lvl 70-80 ppl who actually do not raid or even don't make heroic runs, but to be honest - would you group with a crap tank or heal ? So why whould anyone take crap DPS spec in their group ?
The purpose of this thread is to discuss viable options for best DUAL WIELD builds, as the thread title indicates. There are other threads for discussing the best 2h builds.
I've been leveling using the 15/37/19 DW build that Illundai posted in his guide. I have been quite happy with it, but I do have some questions:
How highly would you guys value haste rating? I've been taking it third, after +hit and Strength.
The build does not take Virulence because, as others have indicated, the talents you would have to give up outweigh the benefit gained from +3% spell hit. That being said, should I gear for the spell hit cap (+17%), or not bother going that high? Or should I even attempt to gear for autoattack hit cap (+25% w/ Nerves of Cold Steel)?
As posted before due to the DW hit cap you don't really need to spend points in Virulence. Since you will cap spellhit before DW hit.
Perhaps remove 2 points from Virulence and put them into Subversion for extra crit on your Blood Strikes and Obliterates.
Ha, I even mention skipping virulence because of DW in my original post...
I will have to experiment with this build a bit before really deciding where those last two points go. Subversion looks strong, but DW strikes like Blood Strike and Oblit aren't strong to begin with and without GoG those crits aren't going to be as huge on OB anyways. Still it's not something to ignore...except that RPM will increase my gargoyle uptime and I don't want to pass that up! Or hell...wouuld taking crypt fever be worthwhile in this set up? 1 point nets me a third disease and a big flat bonus on my obliterates...
I'm seeing alot of claims FS beats DC but my math keeps showing otherwise.
Assuming 4000 ap and 30% crit and being spell hit capped (which you should be regardless of using DC or FS). Also a 2.7 speed mh with 160 dps. Talents used in calculations are Black Ice, Glacier Rot, Guile of Gorefiend, and Morbidity.
Now the FS calculation does not account for killing machine, but FS using killing machine procs will take away from HB using them, so I think at best you'd break even. Also I am unaware whether FS is normalized so the ap contribution may be only multiplied by 2.5 instead of 2.7. I also did not include Impurity in the DC calculation, so it could be higher. Tundra Stalker would increase both DC and FS by 10% so I didn't use it, but a FS build that uses it compared to a DC build that didn't would be about even. Am I screwing up something here or are claims of FS being hands down better inlflated?
The Rotations aren't really set because a lot of fights have movement so rotations tend to get pooped on a lot, but the good thing about this build is that you hardly ever use 2rune abilities, with the only one ever used being Howling Blast either during rime procs or aoe targets, so that losing a rotation really does not hinder play style at all.
I use a mod called Magic Runes which allows me to sort the runes by the amount of duration time, so I have the runes that will re-activate on the far left and then they sort based on time, then color as they progress.
I always prioritize Icy Touch, and only Plague Strike when all other runes are down and I don't have enough RP to Death Coil. Blood Strikes for Death Runes, ofc, other than that leave them out.
I was really really surprised at how much dps this build does, especially with the gear level I had at the time. Definitely pretty happy with this guild as it should be one of the best scaling builds.
Mb i'am not right, but the idea is to create a good DPS spec, and currently dual wield tri-spec is rather low on dps.
Enhance shammy with the same level of gear would provide better active buffs ( better bonus from SoE totem, +10% ap, some spellpower and 20% haste at the same moment of time ) and actually better DPS. So there is no point in hybrid DW DK ?
I'am currently trying to create a full unholy DK with minimal talents from frost simply to dual wield, coz dw frost tri-spec does not seem to be a nice dps spec.
P.S.
It's good to see some posts from lvl 70-80 ppl who actually do not raid or even don't make heroic runs, but to be honest - would you group with a crap tank or heal ? So why whould anyone take crap DPS spec in their group ?
If you consider doing 3650 DPS against Patchwerk without Ghoul(would've been ~4k with it but I was specced for Malygos) in unenchanted rare Level 80 gear with 2 Naxx10 weapons while also increasing the Mages' damage by 5% bad, you're right. Otherwise I'd call my trispec (see my posts above for details) both competitive and useful and especially in Heroics I haven't been outdamaged yet when I was specced like that.
If you do low DPS as DW, it's your very own fault because you either have the wrong spec or play bad.
If you consider doing 3650 DPS against Patchwerk without Ghoul(would've been ~4k with it but I was specced for Malygos) in unenchanted rare Level 80 gear with 2 Naxx10 weapons while also increasing the Mages' damage by 5% bad, you're right. Otherwise I'd call my trispec (see my posts above for details) both competitive and useful and especially in Heroics I haven't been outdamaged yet when I was specced like that.
If you do low DPS as DW, it's your very own fault because you either have the wrong spec or play bad.
I've tried looking up your profile on the WoW armory and every time I keep showing you as Unholy.
Can you post a link to the exact spec that you're referring to? It seems strange that you never even show up as this tri-spec that you're mentioning currently.
@Turambar
i'm not sure if only the 150 damage from FS counts for Black Ice. I read the skill as all the damage dealt is frost.
FS gets extra damage from Merciless Combat and Razorice
DC gets extra damage from Impurity
I guess DC gets much better Raidbuffs as AP and Spelldamage should work for it (12% damage from Moonkin or Ebon Plague for example)
I have found a great dw spec, which is mostly blood. my spec is Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This spec, unlike many other DW specs, doesn't rely on spell damage. You see, the biggest problem with blood is that aside from DRW you have always had a ton of RP saved up. So, you put on the haste and DW, where your white damage scales great with all the atp/crit you get, and you add 30 extra RP and go to unholy aura. You may think it's weird, but im able to get off DC's fast, and this is the only way i can take advantage of sudden doom procs without screwing up my rotation.
Not only that, but this spec brings nearly every raid utility you can ask for. glyph of rune tap heals party for 10% hp, you get the 20% haste buff, the 10% atp buff, hysteria(which now owns when you put it on yourself with this spec) and mark of blood. the rotation I use is
IT>PS>HS>HS>OB
IT>PS>HS>HS>HS>HS
Because DC is your only real power dump, you use it whenever. Obviously, the second sudden doom procs use it and maybe even use it again, the beauty of this spec is if you mess up somewhere, as long as you hit all your strike and fill in the rest of the time with DC's, you will always be doing something. at lvl 80, in less than naxx 10 gear, i did 1550 dps to the training dummy in ebon hold, and in heroics(if it means anything) i was doing almost 2k dps on bosses. Even bosses where you have to run around a lot i had high numbers because of the 15% run speed from unholy presence.
12/01/08, 2:28 PM
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