I was thinking a 23/23/25 spec, where you get bloody strikes, glacier rot, and impurity may work. Idea is to use Boil Blood, Icy Touch, 32rp cost Death Coil, and Plague Strike to keep Blood Plague up too. Rotation of IT-PS-IT-BB-BB-DC-DC.
No idea if this is feasible though, depends on how much damage Blood Boil does post patch.
gives bloody vengeance and veterans. the most basics in frost. and the goodies in unholy. I skipped out on BCB merely becuase of its 3cd proc, which probably hits more on MH than OH. so I went with the increase in plague strike, I dont remember if bloody vengeage helps plague strike since its a phyiscal strike/melee and with the added bonus of outbreak it should hit for more. All in all, this seems like the spec I plan on using depending on how the things go in the PTR.
I would go with a rotation of:
IT>PS>BB>BB>UB
IT>IT>PS> DC>DC>BB> BB> UB
Using some of the same glyphs mentioned above, like the DC rp reduction. and I may even go through and use the DC sigil rather than IT sigil, since it was nerfed to 111 damage instead of 209? or whatever.
I probably still work with a fast/fast build too, even though a slow/fast would benefit more due to necrosis procs. and the damage the plague strike will do. but I think in the end i may even out with a fast/fast compared to slow/fast
I always loved DW and I will continue to use DW until Blizzard removed this ability from the game. I think many of us who went with a hybrid build like 32/39 uses IT and HB as the main focus of our builds. If these changes go through, we could still DW but change our focus. As soon as I can get on the PTR I will test this. In theory here is how it works.
Frost -
I went down the frost tree until I can get Annihilation (Tier 3) and Icy Talons (Tier 3)
Unholy -
Vicious Strike (Tier 1) - Increase the crit strike chance by 6% and crit damage by 30% of your Plague Strike, Death Strike and Scourge Strike.
Outbreak (Tier 3) - Increase the damage of Plague Strike by 45% and Scourge Strike by 30%.
Desecration (Tier 7) now causes all Plague Strikes to cause the desecrated ground effect. Targets in the area are slowed by 10/20/30/40/50% by the grasping arms of the dead while you cause 1/2/3/4/5% additional damage while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 12 sec.
Unholy Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Unholy Presence and changed to: While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 8/15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 5/10% faster in Unholy Presence.
Bone Shield (Tier 8) +2% more damage.
Epon Plague (Tier 9) - +13% damage taken
Rage of Rivendare (Tier 10) spell and abilities deal 10% more damage
Blood Presence - Strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 4% of damage dealt. Only damage dealt to targets that grant experience or honor can trigger this heal. Only one Presence may be active at a time.
With Imp UA I gain the +15% damage bonus from Blood Presence and I retain the movement speed bonus from Unholy Presence.
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The focus of my dps will be Plague Strike and Obliterate. I replaced Icy Touch with Plague Strike and Howling Blast with Obliterate. Same rotation as 32/39 really just different spells. Unholy Blight and Blood Boil will be my aoe dps ability.
Plague Strike now deals 50% weapon damage plus 189 and infects the target with Blood Plague.
Obliterate deals 100% weapon damage plus 292, and an additional 146 bonus damage per disease, but consumes the diseases.
Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage.
Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its radius has been decreased.
Plague Strike will do (+60%(Glyph) +50%(Plague Strike) +45%(Outbreak) +15%(Blood Presence) +13%(Epon) +10(RoR) +5%(Desecration) +2% (Bone Shield)) = 200% weapon damage +189. In theory PS will hit with a big punch.
Obliterate will do (+100%(OB) +20%(Glyph) +15%(Blood Presence) +13%(Epon) +10(RoR) +5%(Desecration) +2%(Bone Shield)) = 165% weapon damage +292 +438(146x3 disease)
Weapons: Slow/Fast - Duel Rune of the Fallen Crusader
Depending on your weapons, I calculate Plague Strike and Obliterate could hit for around 2k+ base and 5.4k+ crit.
Add in:
Sigil of Awareness
Equip: Increases the damage dealt by your Scourge Strike and Obliterate abilities by 420.
OR
Deadly Gladiator's Sigil of Strife
Equip: Your Plague Strike ability also grants you 120 attack power for 6 sec.
Hateful Gladiator's Sigil of Strife
Equip: Your Plague Strike ability also grants you 106 attack power for 6 sec.
Also makes the T7 2piece and 4piece bonus worth having.
(2) Set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Obliterate and Scourge Strike abilities by 5%.
(4) Set: Your Obliterate and Scourge Strike generate an additional 10 Runic Power when used.
This may actually be a very good build. I have 4 pc t7, I do not have a sigil of awareness, nor glyph of PS or Obl on the PTR. I used glyph of IT instead of DC (only 2 DCs in the rotation with keeping UB up, so you get more RP with IT). Using the nerfed Sigil of Frozen Concience. 3075 dps on the dummy. Screenshot will follow soon.
I am wondering though, whether it would be worth the investment to drop points from annhilation, pick up 2 points in Killing Machine and drop the 3rd onto Scourge Strike and use that instead of obliterate. Then you could glyph Ghoul instead of Oblit. I think this would work nicely with the improved Scourge Strike and talents buffing it.
edit: i did this, and the difference seems to be quite good, ~200 dps on average. Although, I have the ghoul glyph and not the oblit glyph, so this may even out with the glyphs. This is the revised talent tree: 0/17/54
In response to Shalymar (and people posting 0/51/20 builds):
They look good, but you have to ask yourself "Why am I still using DW then?" I know people have said it before and we answer with "I like the pace better" or whatever, but from what I've seen of the forums here people don't accommodate aesthetics, it's about raid contribution/dps/etc. The build Shalymar posted and 0/51/20 don't really seem to have any talents to favor using DW over a 2hander aside from the 3 points in Nerves of Cold Steel, and you could just as soon put them somewhere else. And in particular with the deep unholy build, your rotation is based off of weapon damage, so aren't you even gimping yourself more than you would be with the exact same build and a 2 hander? IT does the same damage no matter what you use, DC does, and your Oblits and PSes would go up with a 2 hander, no? BCB's internal cooldown and the way its damage is figured will probably even it out no matter what you use, and necrosis procs with 2handers no? Proportional to delay indirectly?
I know it sucks, I've been enjoying 31/40 a ton myself. :/ But as I try to come up with new builds I keep having to ask myself: why is this build any better than the same build with a 2hander?
This may actually be a very good build. I have 4 pc t7, I do not have a sigil of awareness, nor glyph of PS or Obl on the PTR. I used glyph of IT instead of DC (only 2 DCs in the rotation with keeping UB up, so you get more RP with IT). Using the nerfed Sigil of Frozen Concience. 3075 dps on the dummy. Screenshot will follow soon.
I am wondering though, whether it would be worth the investment to drop points from annhilation, pick up 2 points in Killing Machine and drop the 3rd onto Scourge Strike and use that instead of obliterate. Then you could glyph Ghoul instead of Oblit. I think this would work nicely with the improved Scourge Strike and talents buffing it.
edit: i did this, and the difference seems to be quite good, ~200 dps on average. Although, I have the ghoul glyph and not the oblit glyph, so this may even out with the glyphs. This is the revised talent tree: 0/17/54
Going for scourge strike may not be a bad idea right now. It got crazy buffed. Not only should the core ability scale better now, but it also benefits from Black Ice and Outbreak now. I'd almost be surprised if it stayed anywhere near as powerful as it is now for long. Theres also the fact that, if your going for a SS build you may as well just use a 2h. Even using PS and Oblit, you would quite possibly be better off with a 2h. That is my biggest problem right now. They may not have broken DW builds entirely, but a lot of the things that benefitted DW builds were killed, now were left with a bunch of builds that could work, but in general aren't "dw builds" so much as "a build I choose to dw with when 2h would quite possibly be equal to or greater than dw."
Same rotation except replace obliterate with scourge strike
Blood presence.
and to aisuken above: there are still talents that favor dual wield over 2H. Blizzard seems to want us to go deep into a tree and do comparable dps to 2Hs. So, deep dual wield builds may emerge as the winners here for those of us who enjoy that play style.
I know it sucks, I've been enjoying 31/40 a ton myself. :/ But as I try to come up with new builds I keep having to ask myself: why is this build any better than the same build with a 2hander?
That's right. In this current incarnation, there doesn't seem to be a variant that allows DW to remain competitive, let alone in any way superior, to a 2H build. The changes are very obviously deliberate and systematic, so for all Blizzard's earlier saying they want DW to remain an option, it really looks like DK is going to become a purely 2H class.
I suppose there's always an option of going back to our rogues
It's a pretty sad situation for all DW DKs alike, everyone is desperately trying to find out a decent DW spec that can compete with the new buffed Unholy and Blood. But looking at the templates I have made and have ready for testing like 0/45/26 and 0/51/20 It's just like why am I wasting 3 talents points in dual wield spec when I could get a 2H and do more damage with PS, BS and FS. There is really no reason to be DW anymore unless you want to look cool
. There is really no reason to be DW anymore unless you want to look cool
As the current ptr build stands , that is pretty much the statement all of us will be getting use to. I tryed myself to make a few dw builds but in the end I couldn't justify putting points in certain places.
It's probably worth stating that the white damage from dual-wielding exceeds the white damage from two-handed. Maybe Blizzard is thinking that if they strip out every advantage of yellow damage from dual-wield, it'll even out the total damage between the two.
In response to Shalymar (and people posting 0/51/20 builds):
They look good, but you have to ask yourself "Why am I still using DW then?" I know people have said it before and we answer with "I like the pace better" or whatever, but from what I've seen of the forums here people don't accommodate aesthetics, it's about raid contribution/dps/etc. The build Shalymar posted and 0/51/20 don't really seem to have any talents to favor using DW over a 2hander aside from the 3 points in Nerves of Cold Steel, and you could just as soon put them somewhere else. And in particular with the deep unholy build, your rotation is based off of weapon damage, so aren't you even gimping yourself more than you would be with the exact same build and a 2 hander? IT does the same damage no matter what you use, DC does, and your Oblits and PSes would go up with a 2 hander, no? BCB's internal cooldown and the way its damage is figured will probably even it out no matter what you use, and necrosis procs with 2handers no? Proportional to delay indirectly?
I know it sucks, I've been enjoying 31/40 a ton myself. :/ But as I try to come up with new builds I keep having to ask myself: why is this build any better than the same build with a 2hander?
Edit: grammar fix
Michaera to answer your question, I like the fact of being able to DW in plate and not having to be a warrior. We are the only other classes which has this ability. I also like the fast swings of my weapons. I hate waiting for a 2h to swing on a target. We are a dps class, are we not? Why does a build always have to benefit the raid more than it does how I play? I don’t just raid, I pvp a lot too.
I enjoy DW and I enjoy dps’ing the target with 2 weapons. My main focus in the raid is to dps. I try to maximize that as best I can and if I can benefit the raid while doing this, it is only a bonus. The build I posted was only to give others an idea of what I was thinking might work. I am sure the build will need to be tweaked and some players will take talents I probably wouldn’t. it all comes down to play style.
For those of us who enjoy DW, if I can still produce the same dps output with all these screwed up changes as I did with a 0/32/39 build then I believe I have met my obligation to a raid. In the end I just don’t want to be another 2h wielding cookie cutter DK out there because the damage I do is the same whether I use 2 weapons or 1. I will continue to use two 1h weapons until it is no longer viable to do so and still help the raid kill bosses.
Michaera to answer your question, I like the fact of being able to DW in plate and not having to be a warrior. We are the only other classes which has this ability. I also like the fast swings of my weapons. I hate waiting for a 2h to swing on a target. We are a dps class, are we not? Why does a build always have to benefit the raid more than it does how I play? I don’t just raid, I pvp a lot too.
I enjoy DW and I enjoy dps’ing the target with 2 weapons. My main focus in the raid is to dps. I try to maximize that as best I can and if I can benefit the raid while doing this, it is only a bonus. The build I posted was only to give others an idea of what I was thinking might work. I am sure the build will need to be tweaked and some players will take talents I probably wouldn’t. it all comes down to play style.
For those of us who enjoy DW, if I can still produce the same dps output with all these screwed up changes as I did with a 0/32/39 build then I believe I have met my obligation to a raid. In the end I just don’t want to be another 2h wielding cookie cutter DK out there because the damage I do is the same whether I use 2 weapons or 1. I will continue to use two 1h weapons until it is no longer viable to do so and still help the raid kill bosses.
That's just it. Your purpose in raids isn't to just do some dps. Helping the raid > doing more dps, not to mention there really aren't many builds that are going to favor using 2 weps as opposed to a 2h. lalalal it looks cool, whatever, that kind of thinking won't get you particularly far in Ulduar.
For those of us who enjoy DW, if I can still produce the same dps output with all these screwed up changes as I did with a 0/32/39 build then I believe I have met my obligation to a raid. In the end I just don’t want to be another 2h wielding cookie cutter DK out there because the damage I do is the same whether I use 2 weapons or 1. I will continue to use two 1h weapons until it is no longer viable to do so and still help the raid kill bosses.
I'm with you on this, and I by no means meant to put your build down or anything, I'm just a little disenfranchised myself about it. I will continue to hunt for a way to DW and keep it viable, but if I have to cripple my performance too badly just to swing two swords, I'm probably going to wind up going 2H. The optimistic side of me hopes Blizz holds true though and opens up some more options for us to keep DW dps up!
How about something like this? 14/41/16, it gets some of the crit bonus from blood, deep enough in unholy to get the permaghoul, and gets you a lot of the nice frost talents including Unbreakable Armor, which could be like the new boneshield. The shortcoming I see is that there's no good HB/Oblit equivalent, but with a rotation based around landing IT as hard as you can, blood striking to get death runes, and using PS only to keep the extra disease up, maybe HB isn't necessary? RP dump would have to be Death Coil. Again, I have to ask myself "Hey wouldn't this work just as well with a 2hander?" but for the sake of trying, here it is...
That's just it. Your purpose in raids isn't to just do some dps. Helping the raid > doing more dps, not to mention there really aren't many builds that are going to favor using 2 weps as opposed to a 2h. lalalal it looks cool, whatever, that kind of thinking won't get you particularly far in Ulduar.
What else do I need to do to help the raid? I help the raid by DPS’ing. I help kill the bosses faster. They surely don’t bring me to heal or buff. I don’t throw down food tables, summon other players, range dps… I am sure I could tank but I don’t prefer that play style. If you read my post I never said I liked it because “It was cool” and why do other people always try to tell others how to play. I just don’t get it. If you prefer to use a 2h, then go right ahead, that doesn’t mean I have to follow you off a cliff and do the same just because.
I ran into the same comments when I first started to use my DW spec. Many people said I was brave for even considering it. That DW wouldn’t do the damage a 2h build would. Well look were we are now. The same old discussion, the same comments, well I can tell you, those of us who enjoy the play style will find a build that works and enjoy it and just like before some people will eat their words.
What else do I need to do to help the raid? I help the raid by DPS’ing. I help kill the bosses faster. They surely don’t bring me to heal or buff. I don’t throw down food tables, summon other players, range dps… I am sure I could tank but I don’t prefer that play style. If you read my post I never said I liked it because “It was cool” and why do other people always try to tell others how to play. I just don’t get it. If you prefer to use a 2h, then go right ahead, that doesn’t mean I have to follow you off a cliff and do the same just because.
I ran into the same comments when I first started to use my DW spec. Many people said I was brave for even considering it. That DW wouldn’t do the damage a 2h build would. Well look were we are now. The same old discussion, the same comments, well I can tell you, those of us who enjoy the play style will find a build that works and enjoy it and just like before some people will eat their words.
Oh, rofl at you. I dual wield on my dk too, that's irrelevant as fuck. Point is that you can't go into a raid thinking you need to do nothing except dps. proactivity is proactivity for a reason. learn it, live by it.
What else do I need to do to help the raid? I help the raid by DPS’ing. I help kill the bosses faster. They surely don’t bring me to heal or buff. I don’t throw down food tables, summon other players, range dps… I am sure I could tank but I don’t prefer that play style. If you read my post I never said I liked it because “It was cool” and why do other people always try to tell others how to play. I just don’t get it. If you prefer to use a 2h, then go right ahead, that doesn’t mean I have to follow you off a cliff and do the same just because.
I ran into the same comments when I first started to use my DW spec. Many people said I was brave for even considering it. That DW wouldn’t do the damage a 2h build would. Well look were we are now. The same old discussion, the same comments, well I can tell you, those of us who enjoy the play style will find a build that works and enjoy it and just like before some people will eat their words.
This is really it. I am glad a lot of people are freaking out, these are the same people who said 32/39 would die in 3.0.8. Instead, those of us who truly enjoy it, and know its capabilities, went ahead and tried to find ways to keep it viable. Why not use a 2H? Why not use 2 1Hs, imo. The question, I think blizzard wants us to believe, is faulty. Neither is better than the other, it is simply a playstyle. Creating builds that go deep into a tree, whether dual wield or 2H, can satisfy this paradigm. So, I believe strongly this is where dual wielding will lead us in the future. If you look a few posts up, we are already exploring some very viable dual wield specs that go deep into trees, and, barring the ability to test on a raid boss as of yet, the seem just fine. Calm down, look at things rationally, and then go from there.
And to those of you who say that DW does not bring raid utility, it does and I don't understand where you are getting this from. It always had, and in 3.1 it will again, especially with some deep builds possibly emerging.
Yes, you can try and find a way to make DW work. However, at this juncture, there's no build where you aren't better off using a 2Her, and the only possible way to design one that favors DW is going to gimp your DPS beyond competitive levels. Every talent favors 2H. No talent gives any benefit to DW. This isn't a whine, it's just how it is. Blizzard will either rebuff DW over the course of PTR testing, or you'll have to grab a 2H or gimp your raid. You can choose to gimp your raid for your aesthetics, but this isn't the forum for that.
Yes, you can try and find a way to make DW work. However, at this juncture, there's no build where you aren't better off using a 2Her, and the only possible way to design one that favors DW is going to gimp your DPS beyond competitive levels. Every talent favors 2H. No talent gives any benefit to DW. This isn't a whine, it's just how it is. Blizzard will either rebuff DW over the course of PTR testing, or you'll have to grab a 2H or gimp your raid. You can choose to gimp your raid for your aesthetics, but this isn't the forum for that.
I am going to refrain from taking the low road on this one.
You are jumping to conclusions. We need to get into naxx and ulduar with these builds to see how they fair. Yes, necrosis and BCB do not favour DW as much as they used to. But they still do, and they still work well. Impurity still works well, nerves of cold steel still works well, and i can go on and on. From a min/max perspective, of course we will be looking to 2H if it vastly outweighs DW. But, without the tools to test it in the proper context, it is faulty to jump to such conclusions. And, all of the preliminary tests I have seen and others have shown in this and other threads seems to suggest that DW can and most likely will be competitive with 2H specs, just in a different way then we are used to. You freak out because of something you don't understand, I suggest you wait and see.
I am going to refrain from taking the low road on this one.
You are jumping to conclusions. We need to get into naxx and ulduar with these builds to see how they fair. Yes, necrosis and BCB do not favour DW as much as they used to. But they still do, and they still work well. Impurity still works well, nerves of cold steel still works well, and i can go on and on. From a min/max perspective, of course we will be looking to 2H if it vastly outweighs DW. But, without the tools to test it in the proper context, it is faulty to jump to such conclusions. And, all of the preliminary tests I have seen and others have shown in this and other threads seems to suggest that DW can and most likely will be competitive with 2H specs, just in a different way then we are used to. You freak out because of something you don't understand, I suggest you wait and see.
Necrosis actually benefits 2h more than DW now. It only procs on main hand, so a main hand with 150 dps is strictly inferior than a 2h with 200 dps no matter what.
BCB is also better for 2h now, no 1h weapon has a swing time of over 3 seconds. So statistically speaking, any weapon with a speed of lower than 3 seconds will do less damage with BCB. That basically means 2h will benefit BCB more than any 1h weapons.
It's not jumping to conclusions, if the patch remains this way, DW will NOT be viable.
Yes, necrosis and BCB do not favour DW as much as they used to. But they still do
This is quite simply not true, at least for necrosis. I don't have the statistical skill to be able to do the BCB math quickly, but DW loses about 36.5% of its necrosis damage while 2h loses none. On patch last week, I did about 50k necrosis damage as 32/39 and the 17/0/54 DK did about 42k. So if this change (in a vacuum) had been live, I would only have done less than 32k necrosis damage while he still would have done 42k. Adding in my 183k white damage and his 170k (and ignoring BCB), DW has lost nearly all damage advantage from white swings as his higher necrosis damage almost makes up for his lower swing damage.
I'm not trying to predict gloom and doom, but as people have said, the current build does not appear to favor dual-wielding even for a spell-heavy build.
First and formost, this is the elitist jerks forums. As the name implies, this is about doing your best with what you have. This isn't about doing the best you can with an aesthetic limitation just because you "like dual wielding". If you want to reduce your dps so you can enjoy your playstyle, that's dandy, but go hang out with melee hunters/warlocks, staff warriors ect. People come to these forums to discuss being competetive.
That said, I'm going to mention some factors that could tip the scales towards DW, but they're far fetched, and don't bring me much hope. First we can walk back to my previous arguements about how a spec can do it's best to amplify the damage scaling of dual wield: white damage. The reason they nerfed blood caked blades is due to the normalization...besides if it's a 30% chance you won't be doing it more often than every 3 seconds unless you break 1 second attack speed (give or take). All they did was remove it's advantage from faster weapons, you wouldn't really notice a differance with slower ones.
Beyond that, there are fairly large base damage bonuses to some of the strikes that may help even it all out. Blood Boil numbers havn't come out yet (tho I'm really peeved they reduced the range...I liked having a 30 yd ranged rotation option).
The hard facts stand though. Right now plague strike goes from 50% base to 72.5% talented to 116% glyphed, bonus totalling 438. It's ludicrous. This all by itself pretty much declares 2H king on the pts right now because it's all that for one measly unholy rune. There's no way Bliz is going to leave it THAT strong.
I also doubt howling blast is going to stay as weak as it is, as slow as it is, and/or expensive as it is...I mean just moving it down the tree robbed if of roughly 1/5 of it's damage without impurity, and removing 50% of the bonus damage is another 1/4. It's garbage and will be fixed or dual wield will die with it, and only people who will settle for poor dps will be dual wielding.
Here's your ray of hope: It's likely blizzard is prepairing for the scaling issue of new gear. It's possible that, once you gear up, dual wield's white scaling will suddenly overtake 2H with the botched talents. This is only based on the assumption that bliz has any plans for DW being competetive. It may also have something to do with the 'Potency' rating rumors going around, of merging haste with ArP, which would also scale VERY well with DW.
The math on BCB has been done a few times already in this thread I'm pretty sure, it's based on weapon damage and has a 3 sec internal. Seems pretty obvious to me.
I am not trying to advocate staying DW just because I "like it". In fact I said, I will min/max like the rest of my raiding guild, as will any serious raider. If 2H>DW, we will swallow it and follow. But, it is too early to tell, we have gotten no opportunity to test these changes, even if the theorycrafting is damning. I say, before you doom the spec, give it a chance to be tested properly.
02/24/09, 3:23 PM
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