I guess AP contribution is normalized. No 1H weapon has more than 2.6 in epic Wotlk stuff, and max dps is 156.7. Normalized for 1H is 2.4. I use annihilation (+3% crit), i haven't see a spec without it.
FS damage : ((156.7 dps*2.6 wspeed + 4000/14*2.4)*0.6 + 150)*(1+0.33*1.45)*1.3 BI * 1.1 GR = 1703.8 (*1.1 if Tundra stalker = )
DC damage : (443+4000*0.15)*1.15*1.3 = 1559.3 (*1.1 if Tundra stalker = 1715.2)
DC damage with Impurity (443+4000*1.25*0.15)*1.15*1.3 = 1783.5 (*1.02 if you put the last point in TS = 1819.2)

With the same weapon and 6000 ap, 30% crit, DC with morb and no TS is equal to FS. But AP and weapon are linked. You don't wear green stuff with naxx-25 weapon.

If you go to GoG and BCB, you have 0/43/18 + 10. You need 7 point to go to Tundra stalker, and to go to Impurity (and 3 point in Subversion is maybe mandatory, i don't know.) One will use FS, the other DC. But we need to know which spec is better.
Eventually, i don't take in account KM, but you use it with FS. HB has a 6s CD, so it's make a long time to use KM.

I have been looking at the DK dps threads here for awhile. I am currently blood spec 50/0/21 and I do quite good dps, but my gear is getting better and better so I want to try DW dps. This is the spec I have been thinking of: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

1/1 Shadow of Death and 2/5 Blood of the North I wasn't so sure about. Possibly another 20% chance for a death rune outweighs 2% more strength? I guessed not.

My main questions which I have been scanning the forums for but have not found a decisive answer to are:
-Fast or slow mainhand/offhand?
-Rune of the Fallen Crusader and which one? Razorice or Cinderglacier? also RotFC mainhand other one offhand?

Any insight you guys can offer me would be much appreciated ^^

So after reading the wiki on weapon normalization I realized that the AP contribution is normalized, but that the base damage still applies based on the weapon damage. This does indeed make slow MH weapons have the edge over fast ones. So to answer the above poster's question - slow MH, fast OH is optimal (OH to generate various procs).

Normalization - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Personnaly, i max Blood of the North or i don't put any point in it. But it's just me. I think 2% str is better than 3% in BS and an other 20% chance.

Slow mainhand : Melee special and BCB are based on the damage of the weapon, so slower mainhand is bigger hit.
Fast offhand, to proc KM and BCB (and faster offhand mean more BCB proc with the slower mainhand)

For your spec, i would put Cinderglacier, because it increase ice AND shadow dommage (you use IT, HB and DC).
Mainhand, offhand, i don't know. I believe both are ppm, so i think it doesn't matter (but i don't have a great experience with weapon enchant)

If I'm Unholy DPS specced, it's usually for the Unholy Aura which should in my opinion always be given in a raid.
Most of the time I'm currently specced Unholy tank though, we're currently doing Sartharion with 3 dragons and I'm tanking there.
The DW spec I had was 14/31/26, I didn't spec Master of Ghouls because my Ghoul used to die in the progress encounters we did back then.
Variations are 13/31/27 including Master of Ghouls, 11/31/29 including Reaping and 10/31/30 including both.

The specs rely on heavily boosting non-weapon-dependant damage which is the only way DW is able to be competitive.

By the way, I really hate that the DK DPS guide shows that horrible 15/37/19 spec as the DW tri-spec. That spec simply is not competitive and wastes valuable points into very weak talents from a DPS perspective.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I am currently DW with a 23/44/0 spec at lvl 76. I'm easily doing 1600 sustainable single target and aoe dps. I was using the trispec build for a while but found that BCB does not proc that often. While using trispec in a Nexus run BCB procced 57 times in the hour I was in that instance. I was using a 2.7MH and 1.7OH with blood presence up. Is there a PPM on BCB that noone is seeing? I would like to hear how often people are seeing BCB proc in raids. I'm not seeing it do the dmg that I have heard lots of people talk about.

With my spec I can maximize my use of BS by turning Blood Runes into Death Runes and using another OB or HB on my next rotation. My current rotation consists of PS->IT->BS->HB->(OB)->BS->FS
HB->PS->IT->OB->FS->HB->OB 30sec rotation
For my last 4 points I plan to get 3/Veteran of the Third War and 1/Abomination's Might. This will allow me to have both raid buffs without gimping my dps at all. This spec relies heavily on burst dmg and and with KM up almost all the time I crit with every HB and most FS.

How much do you value hit after the melee special hit capped ? and after spell hit capped ?
Because if +hit for melee auto attack is not valuable (unlike melee special and spell), Virulence is 3% hit is not needed on your stuff. Yet if the best stuff bring us to spell hit cap, yes it doesn't worth it.


Very little ? So you don't care about AP ? Because this talent is a +25% of AP for spell. So if you have 4000 AP, your spell hits like you have 5000 AP. And spells are what you use the most as DW... Spelldamage doesn't exist for DK, as it doesn't exist for hunter (anymore for them).

OMG.
1) Hit. To cap melee hit you need MUCH more the to cap spells. Even without virulense your spells would be capped.
Special for you - Dual wield hit cap is about 800+.

2) Once again about about Impurity.
No, you are wrong, Read once again my previus post,
Impurity does not convert 25% of your ap to spelldmg.
I am not going to repost the same. Take a pen and calculate.
25% bonus applies to the coefficient, not to the base ap.

And now about spells. DK actually have spells, read dk talents - "spells benefit from " and etc. Actually dk spell do benefit from ap, but we can use a term spelldmg instead of X, where x = ap modified by spell coeff.

I understand that pre80 dps is hard to measure but my main issue was whether or not BCB was really worth it. I'm concerned with its lack of procs and was wondering if maybe it had a ppm on it that noone knows

I was maybe not clear. There are 3 cap for DK : melee special (yellow), spell hit and melee DW auto attack (white) : Melee special hit cap is 9% (or it was before wotlk, see the topic on class mechanics), spell hit cap is 17% and melee DW auto attack hit cap is 28% (19% more miss). Moreover, hit rating doesn't give the same amount of spell hit and of physical hit (26 and 32 for 1%).
With Nerves of Cold Steel, you juste need 6% for melee special and 25% for white attacks. So 6% melee hit is 192 hit, which is the melee special hit cap. It gives you 7,4% spell hit. Since this cap, your melee specials don't need +hit, your auto-attacks need 19% more and spell 9,6% hit. So with each cap, the value of +hit decrease. So maybe i'm wrong, but every class work in this way for melee special and DW.

So if +hit is great before the first cap and second cap, because you won't miss, which breaks rotation, after that, it's just a flat increase of your auto attack. So if you do 99% of your damage with white attack, +hit is still great. But if it's only 1%, it sucks.

So maybe every DW spec must aim at the third hit cap, i don't know because i don't have the percentage of white damage on parses.

OK
So, i will take the example of DC, without crit, whitout talent :
DC damage = 443 + AP*0.15
DC damage with 5/5 Impurity = 443 + (AP*0.15)*1.25

I don't know the word in english, but you can do that with multiplication (x*y)*z = x*y*z = (x*z)*y
DC damage with 5/5 Impurity = 443 + (AP*1.25)*0.15
So let's call AP' = AP*1.25
DC damage = 443 + AP'*015

So if you have AP=4000, AP' = 5000.
So with impurity 5/5 and 4000 AP, your DC hits like a 5000 AP DC...

So yes, it's not 443 + AP*0.15 + AP*0.25, but i don't say that, because 4000 AP would give a DC equivalent to 10666 AP (4000*(0.15+0.25)/0.15)

I'm not pretending you have 5000 AP with this talent, because it's just work for spell, not melee auto ou special attacks.



Yes, you can, but it's disturbing, because DKs don't care about spelldamage.

I've read through the thread a few times, so I apologize if I've missed this. Has there been any discussion on what runes to use on each weapon to increase damage? I'm planning to do some personal testing once I hit 80 and grab two weapons, but I'm not quite there yet.

From what I understand in the tri-spec, or frost/unholy DW builds is that we are trying to rely as little as possible on abilities that rely on weapon damage; as such, the strength wouldn't be as beneficial as +frost damage from Cinderglacier procs, or Razorice. The wording on Cinderglacier, "for the next two attacks that deal frost or shadow damage", makes it sound like the charges could be consumed by Necrosis, but I doubt it.

There was mention in the other Frost DPS thread that Cinderglacier may have an internal cooldown. If so, would the two hands be independent? If not, it may be worth going with Cinderglacier on the MH, and Razorice on the OH. My thinking is that if it has an internal CD anyways, it won't matter that it is on the slower weapon, and having Razorice on the faster weapon will allow it to stack the debuff more easily.

If you could maintain a full stack of the Frost Vulnerability, not only would it increase all ITs and HBs, but would also benefit any Frost Mages in the raid.

Necrosis does not consume Cinderglacier procs. I've done enough testing to state that as a fact.

@Ursu
Impurity increases the AP multiplier by 25%, so to expand on your death coil example -

DC damage = 443 + AP*(0.15*1.25)

So with an imaginary AP of 5000, the AP benefit would be

750 without Impurity
937,5 with Impurity.

Hmmmm, that sounds like good advice. I'll switch to Razorice on the OH and try it out.

Out of curiosity has anyone tried a tri-spec with a garg? Something like: Garg Tri-spec

Assuming you can keep the gargoyle alive on most fights would it be worth more than 1% crit and lichborne?

Edit: I'm not 80 yet nor do I have a couple of 1hrs to test myself or I would.

I skipped Subversion because of a few premises, some of which might be incorrect:

1. Using Gargoyle as your main runic-power dump should cut out a lot of your threat, because the Gargoyle is a summoned creature with its own threat.

2. A ghoul will lay down a non-negligible amount of DPS against those raid bosses who don't wipe it out via AOE.

3. Death knights will probably be undergeared at first, and unable to out-threat the better-geared tanks.

4. Threat in general seems much easier for tanks to stay on top of in LK.

5. Blood Strike damage with a one-handed weapon is essentially garbage. Blood Strikes are in the rotation in order to proc Death Runes to spend on more Icy Touches/Howling Blasts/Unbreakable Armors, so their damage is not too important.

6. Impurity will help damage scale up more than Bladed Armor will.

If more than one or two of these are untrue, though, I would consider taking 1 point from Impurity and pushing it into Subversion. That should hopefully be enough to keep threat under control, unless your tanks are undergeared or ill-talented; if 3/3 Subversion is necessary, the build would have to drop Master of Ghouls, which might be a real PITA.

Ursu is right :>

Cirena, you apply the bonus twice

its just... very simple maths

DC Damage
443 + AP*(0,15*1,25) (would be 443+4000*(0,15*1,25) = 443+4000*(0,1875)=1193 )
443 + AP*0,15*1,25 (would be 443+4000*(0,15*1,25) =1193 )
443 + (AP*1,25)*0,15 (would be 443+(4000*1,25)*0,15 = 443+(5000)*0,15=1193)

Has anyone ever tried running a dps test with a build similair to Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I understand the whole conecpt behind frost being better dps, i was just wondering how this spec would fair under similair conditions. The ap buff + Vengeance just seems like it would provide a significant dps boost, along with Hysteria for a DW Spec.

Edit: Wrong link!

@Lyeth
DW just profits from only 2 Talents in the complete DK Talenttree, otherwise 2Hand is just better.
Killing Machine and Nerves of Cold Steel (second is compared to Two Handed Weapon Specialization worse)
i think every build without Killing Machine would be better using a 2Hand....




i think the Unholy/Frost spec with deeper Unholy would be best
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

As FS does nearly the same damage as DC but i guess DC gets the +12%Spelldamagebuffs in Raid i think DC is better. (its ranged too)

so i cut FS and without it Guile of Gorefiend only really effects Howling Blast (and a bit of the bloodstrike damage)
without fs i also can cut Annihilation cause its only effects bloodstrike and plaguestrike (as Obliterate won't see any use)
Blood of the North is not needed cause auf Reaping

i get bone shield (nice 2% damage)
Desecration (i don't know how much cause of movement, i guess maybe ~3% damage?)
Crypt Fever (gives an extra disease for BCB damage for 62,5% instead of 50% and increases Bloodstrike damage (should be similar to the BS damage loss from frost)
the 2/3 points in Crypt Fever are optional and can also put in Subversion, i don't know how much damage the diseases do in overall, Epidemic shouldn't be necessary

Its all only theorycrafting i can't test it sry.

@Above posters:
Impurity is one of the strongest 5-points-talents in a spell-based build, 25% more scaling from AP is very strong, no matter how you turn it. DW specs are spell-based because your weapon damage is pretty low so it's logically a very strong DW talent.

Gargoyle is the strongest DPS talent besides Howling Blast as DW - not speccing it when you're that deep into Unholy is crazy.

I'm currently speccing 3 points into Virulence for the simple reason that I'm not spell hit capped without it. In my DW build you'll want to go for the spell hit cap, not the autohit cap. Even as DW hit isn't really a good stat when you're spell hit capped. So if you're not speccing Master of Ghouls, Virulence is the superior talent unless you're spellhitcapped without speccing Virulence or gemming/enchanting for hit.

You're also wrong saying that I lose 5% Icy Touch crit, with Killing Machine giving a 100% crit buff, the 5% crit won't apply to most ITs anyway. So another point into that talent wouldn't increase my average IT crit chance from 90% to 95% but rather something like from 90% to 91%. Also all the benefits you listed are worse in a pure DPS scenario than one single point in Gargoyle, two points in Impurity or one point in Master of Ghouls - in my build you're getting Gargoyle, 5 points in Impurity and Master of Ghouls if you want it. The spreadsheet shows my build as hundreds of DPS ahead of that DPS compendium build.

It appears I missed some discussion, but it was pretty unanimously decided in the 2H blood and unholy threads that Fallen Crusader trumped all other weapon enchants by a significant margin. Why, then, would a spec that relies so heavily on white damage use an enchant that doesn't stack and only affects part of their damage over one that fully stacks and affects ALL damage?

@ Hidden
Spreadsheet is actually not a holy bible and and a solid argument. In a real fight situation i find that both ghoul and gargoyle die very often of the AOE component of the boss fight. Any way i do agree that gargoyle and ghoul add a rather solid dps boost but it is just my 5 cents. I do not like to rely on such things. I liked them in a dummy fight and i did not like them in a real boss fight.

About impurity... Taking a standart compendium DPS build as a core build we really can free 5 points ( annihilation, lichborne and deathchill). 1 more minor talent and impurity would be just in the right place =) I just don't like the build with 4 points in a 5 slot talent in any tree.