Razorice increases your total damage by ~2.5% and the total damage of 1-3 mages by ~4.5%, slightly higher FC uptime can't make up for the loss of that.

Well I've been reading this thread with hopes of trying to comprehend why Blizz gave DK's DW. Everyone seems to be centering around certain abilities and with good reason they have the numbers to back them up. I'm not very good at crunching numbers, but I do like to throw conventional knowledge aside and rethink things so here's what I came up with.

31/21/19

Unholy Presence

IT>PS>BS>IT>PS>BS>DC>DC -Rotation
1s>1s>1s>1s>1s>1s>1s>1s -GCD
25>35>45>70>80>90>50>10 -RP Gain/Loss

So basically what I'm trying to do here is buff the crap out of our baseline abilities and white damage.
In this build you get 11% increase in str, and a 10% ap buff and 9% dmg increase that should always be up and 35% Haste

Glyphs would be Icy Touch, and Plague Strike, and I guess Blood Strike (hopefully you have a tank who TC's)

My guess is that with this build you want to stack stats in this priority Hit>Str>Haste>ArmPen>Crit

Enchants would be FC main hand and CG off hand this is because that 20% increase is never going to be wasted.

I know this doesn't take advantage of any of the more powerful 2 rune abilities but it does take advantage of the copious amounts of hit and haste rating found on dps plate and 1h weapons.

Obvious Weak points
-Lack of AoE
-Lack of non-weapon based skill (out side of DC)
-7 Wasted points (Virulence, Blade Barrier)

Strong Points
-Strong use of normally useless stats (Haste, ArmPen)
-Straight Forward Rotation

So how does this stand up? Can anyone put this in a graph and get some numbers?

I made a DPS sheet thread, in case you want numbers.

cool thanks d/l now.

I hate digging up old posts in a thread (is 1 page "old?") but I was curious as to what the actual numbers were on these specs.

Since Desecration can be a frustrating buff to keep up on some boss fights, what is the actual % increase in damage in the first two builds? Would they still be ahead assuming 50% Desecration uptime instead of 100%?

I'm going to try this build 0/32/39. I couldn't leave out Unholy Aura, it's our best talent.

I trade like 30dps for that aura and the other DKs don't have that aura. I think my tank DK is Unholy with Crypt Fever, so no big deal.
Tank weapons seem to be quite good for us.

Please explain to me how HB, even with a slow epic one hander, along with other stats, does more damage than Obliterate. For example, most slow level 80 dps onehanders have a maximum damage of usually anwhere between 480-510 damage. Added to the 584 extra damage (292 extra damage + 146 damage for each disease), Obliterate should do around 1.1k damage as a noncrit. However, there is bosses armor, which would probably lower to around 700 or somewhat. Even though, it's only 700white damage, as you get more AP and Strength, your damage should increase. With decent gear, this should put Obliterate at a decent amount of damage (probably around 1k), and this is only in mostly epics and blues. So, as more content is release, Obliterate will be doing more damage because it scales with gear. Howling Blast may do alot of damage at the moment, but until I get an opinion from someone in full level 80 epics that say their Howling Blast does more damage than Obliterate, I need proof to show me.

Howling Blast scales with AP too.
Glacial Rot
Black Ice
Killing Machine
Rune of Razor Ice's frost vuln.
Curse of Elements or Earth & Moon

All reasons why HB can out do OB. For a one-hander of course.

Mine is almost a carbon copy, but I don't have unholy aura yet...instead have 3 points into crypt fever. I need to number crunch to see exact what 20% extra disease damage comes out to...as Unholy Aura would probably come into handy in raiding. I might pick up the aura to be a bit more raid friendly....versus upping my dps a tad.

Overall though I love my build. I'm usually surpassing most people of my gear level. The only time I'm being out-dps'd currently is when going up against vastly better geared characters.

I was under the impression we should take our hit all the way to the spell cap of 14% (3% spell from SP). I have recently heard different, should we only cap our special attacks with 9%?

Also I have tried the hybrid frost/unholy specs and I just cant get them to come out with a higher DPS than the basic 15/0/55 +1 deep unholy spec. Have I just not practiced with the hybrid spec enough to come to the same conclusions as some of you or is deep unholy actually a better DW spec? Hoping to do some Patchwerk tonight to see some better numbers ( have been using a two hander untill recently).

Oh wow thanks for clearing that up. I should've known that HB scales with AP. Oh well, I guess I just had one of those dumb moments. Well, now that I know that fact I will be sure to spec my DK into howling blast.

So I've been playing around with frost dps specs since I got to 80, quite along time ago now.

Weighing diffrent skills pros and cons of running 2h or dw. In the end I decided I wanted to go full out with dual wield.
Currently running a 3/44/24 build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Was thinking about dropping fs since it's a base weapon damage skill, and such don't scale too well with a dual wield spec. However having a low spellcrit and killing machine not working with deathcoil made me reconsider that.

Must say I just love killing machine and cinder glacier procs on my howling blasts.

Hey Hidden, I meant to ask in my last post, but I forgot. By any chance could you tell me the rotation you use for the 0/32/39 spec? I've been trying to figure out a good one, but I can't come up with anything good.

I'm thinking of trying this spec out:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It's based around the original tri-spec build in the compendium, but I've moved things around a bit to get MoG. I've only been DW for a couple of days, and I'm still trying to explore all the possibilities, so I'm sure this spec has many problems. Any feedback would be appreciated!

Tried this 0/32/39 spec tonight.

So far, for me at least, Unholy has been my biggest DPS output, in heroics hitting up to 2200, and on the training dummy hitting 1846 as my highest. (my gear isnt the greatest, so no awesomely high numbers.) Usually when I try a duel weild spec I end up doing around 1200-1500 DPS on the training dummy.

However, after reading this thread, seeing the 0/32/39 spec, and picking up more than a few new items with hit rating on them (sitting at 258 right now) I decided to pick up my swords again and go for it.

Five minutes with the training dummy (enough to garg twice) netted me just under 2200 DPS, which I personally am really happy with. This spec brings all the elements of DK that make me play it, I enjoy the mechanics of Bone Shield, and really like how the DW/HB works, so this spec is perfect for me personally Im really excited to get into a heroic run and test this spec out with real world numbers

<3 EJ

i was able to hit 3k dps on raid boss test dummie.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6416/recountck4.jpg

i used hit potion for 40+ hit. i started dps as soon i winterhorned and ended with ob as winterhorn went away so test was for 2min and i did use gargoyle.

using dw spec 13/32/26
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

i did have higher crit rate than my crit rate so i'm assuming i got RNG win procs. i guess i shoulda have done a longer test but i was too lazy

This is pretty much how I feel. I posted about this spec (or pretty damn close too it, I moved a few points for personal reasons) and it was ripped apart. Yet in all my playing and testing it outperformed other DW specs like you say. And most of all its extremely fun.

I still think however Virulence can be replaced by Outbreak, especially once you start rolling in hit, since at least with my rotation PS is used a lot, and due to HB being your primary FU skill and there being no major glyph for this spec, the PS glyph seems like its one of your only real DPS increasing options anyway. So outbreak still seems like a good choice for DPS. I take outbreak however because I plan on doing a lot of 5 mans, and spreading those diseases around occurs often. Also it seems hard to give up Epidemic for AOE situations too, although its obviously unessessary single target. That is unless they take off Howling Blasts CD, which there were slight hints at.

I like the spec. The way I see it if you DW you pretty much start from here Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with Virulence's 3 points moved around a bit, perhaps.

From that point you have the option of pushing for Frost Strike with GoG, doing what you did, or head in to blood. All three work well I think and the differences in DPS are probably not that huge. I'd say your version adds a bit of utility with bone armor and desecration but going that deep with no unholy aura makes me very sad

My only other comment is that the death runes from Reaping add some options (being able to swap into Frost stance in a pinch quicker, allow a D&D, etc.) but for pure single-target DPS I'm not sure those points are better than Dirge. With HB being on a cooldown those death runes don't let you spam a primary strike like HS or SS.

PS: I lied, one more thing. With no points in annihilation what do you do when rime procs? Oblit and just deal with killing your diseases?

Edit/PPS (I don't know when to shut up I guess): If my formulas are right then even if you're using a level 80 blue one hander, but somehow have like 6000 AP Frost Strike still hits harder than death coil even without taking GoG and Merciless Combat nto consideration. Adding impurity changes that at somewhere right around 5k AP but again, that still does not account for GoG/MC which would make FS better still. The trick would be to then figure out if the boost your IT and HB are getting from Impurity out-do FS.

TONS of options....my problem is that my DK is an alt with mining so I always cram OaPH into my specs :p

0/32/39

Since there are so many People who would like to play this Spec, i thought we could do a little Summary:

So,

Spec

Runes:

MH Fallen Crusader
OH Razor Ice

Rotation:

PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> HB -> deathcoil (???)

Stats:

Hit and expertise capped,

Str > Haste > Crit > > > > > > > > > > > > Agi (???)


Am i right in any point...?


(im very sorry for my bad english, im from germany, my first post...)

spell hit cap is 16%
3% from virulence, 3% from priest buff. you ned 280ish hit to hit 10% spell hit. remember your hit% for hit and spell is different from same number of hit rate you have. 280ish 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. as IT and HB (DC when not using gargo) being big part of our dmg i wouldn't recomend going under spell hit.

unless theres something terriblely wrong with what i just said.

WWS Patchwerk

Did patch for the first time as dw (had been unholy til now). I was pleasantly surprised, as my dps was significantly higher. I'm using 14/31/26 as my armory page says, but the gear I use is slightly different from that on the armory. I was at 17 expertise as I had a different belt, hit was at 404, and I was using [Helm of the Unsubmissive] instead of the valor helm. I am way over the 2h melee hitcap, but I can't really avoid it at this point due to gear availability. Additional consumables were a flask of relentless assault and 60ap food.

Rotation I used was PS-IT-HB-BS-BS-dump with minor alterations based on the need to dump rp, the cooldown of hb, and the time left on diseases. I gave priority to hb on this attempt, and was willing to let runes sit a few seconds in order to get an hb off. This was in contrast to using the rune immediately as long as no rp needed dumping.

so far I'm really liking dw, and will probably try some of the other spec's out. It's not as interesting to play as unholy was, but it's still fun.
any suggestions on gear changes for dw spec or rotation adjustments based off the wws?