FAQ by clairecakes.

At the risk of crossposting here's the FAQ I whipped up for Blood. I'm still seeing quite a few people wandering into this thread with questions answered in the FAQ. So read it if you're new. Blood pros please comment on it as well. Let me know what I missed as I'm by no means perfect.


Blood DPS : The Specs
51/0/20 DiseaseFree! - The current Blood Spec to beat. Virulence over Epidemic as a missed Icy Touch or Death Trance'd Death Coil can be quite sad.

51/0/20 AlternaBlood! - Depending on your rotation Epidemic COULD be in the cards for you. Makes a tight rotation a little looser.

51/13/7 - The "I have a Betrayer and [Sigil of Awareness] and can double Oblit for win" spec. Can be competitive with 51/0/20 but isn't advisable if you lack the gear. Toughness over Black Ice to buff Bladed Armor. 2 points can sit in either Glacier Rot or Icy Reach. But really if you've got the Sigil pony up for the first spec.

The Gear
Q: I just hit 80 and exalted with Ebon Blade. Can I go Blood now?
A: I really wouldn't recommend it. Blood is fairly gear dependent. You're using a lot of Heart Strikes and Obliterates which need a nice big fancy weapon to do big numbers. Running in with [Runeblade of Demonstrable Power] and expecting to keep up with the similarly geared DW DK is asking for heartache.
Q: So when the heck do I start putting my points into Hysteria so I can cast it on myself and laugh at the rogues and fury warrior?
A: When you have a nice big slow 2-hander. At least something like the [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver]. The harder the hitting the weapon the better your dps.
Q: OMG I just spent my badges on [Sigil of Haunted Dreams] am I going to bring the pain?
A: No. You will not. And when people inspect you they may laugh. Stick with the [Sigil of the Dark Rider] until Heigan stops being rude and hands over his [Sigil of Awareness]. Once acquired clutch it to your bosom and wait for 3.1 and a better Blood sigil.
Q: But what about the cute [Sigil of the Wild Buck]? It sounds sexy.
A: As sexy as it may be death coils just aren't THAT significant a part of most current blood rotations. You're better off with your starter sigil and a prayer.
Q: Seriously? But one's EPIC and the other wasn't acquired at level 55.
A: Okay some have suggested that with a DISEASE FREE rotation [Sigil of the Dark Rider] might not be so hot a choice. However further testing/math revealed that [Sigil of Haunted Dreams] only has a 5% uptime and is thus inferior. This math also showed that [Sigil of the Wild Buck] is still only so so.
Q: In people talk. Until Awareness drops WHAT I DO?!?!?
A: Stay with [Sigil of the Dark Rider].

The Rotation
Note: Depending on your glyph and floater spec points you will be using either Icy Touch or Plague Strike first. Hopefully you've read the tooltips or your glyphs and spec and know which should start things off.

51/0/20 DiseaseFree!
Currently the scuttlebutt is axing diseases = profit/dps for a well geared Blood DK. Pros? Super super easy rotation. Very forgiving rotation and plenty of time for Death Coils. Cons? You need very nice gear to pull it off.

OB>OB>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP
HS>HS>HS>HS>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP

Take diseases off your bars and keep those Death Runes up!

51/0/20 AlternaBlood!
If you're running with diseases you're sitting on a very tight rotation. Error means smaller numbers and a reaming for a raid leader. You scared? I am every time I go into 3d Sarth. Anyways...

OB>IT>PS>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP
HS>HS>HS>HS>OB>RUNE DUMP
IT>PS>HS>HS>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP
HS>HS>OB>IT>PS>RUNE DUMP

Now rinse and repeat. The idea is to use Oblit to refresh death runes and remove diseases. That's it. Death Coil should only be used when everything is on CD or you have a Death Trance! proc.

51/13/7
Congrats. You're trying the former king of the Blood jungle. It isn't quite as good as it used to be and it is largely dependent on churning out Oblits. Personally if you're that Oblit happy I'd say move onto Frost, but you have your reasons. Here's your rotation.

IT/PS>PS/IT>HS>HS>OB>RUNE DUMP
OB>HS>HS>OB>RUNE DUMP

Okay I lied. You have two rotations. The above is better off in Unholy Presence. A 51/13/7 spec is also gonna get a lot of use out of:

OB>IT/PS>PS/IT>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP
OB>HS>HS>HS>HS>RUNE DUMP

Unlike the non-Epidemic 51/0/20 spec you have more leeway with getting your heart strikes out. Enjoy your free time.

The Presence
Q: Blood Presence is a lot of fun and even though I'm spec'd into Blood Aura I like that 15% bonus to damage. Can I stay in Blood?
A: Sure. For the most part choice of presence is a matter of preference. For your pleasure I will now list pros and cons of each presence.

Blood
Pros: 15% damage to all your attacks. You hit like a truck and make mobs cry.
Cons: Blood has a very tight rotation. In a movement heavy fight you may feel penalized. Also due to the limitations of a 1.5 second GCD you can't just fire off death coils when you have the time. The idea is the 15% damage to all your other attacks outweighs the potential extra death coils each cycle.

Unholy
Pros: You can run real fast....no but really, you're not limited by the GCD so in a movement heavy fight you can squeeze in another Heart Strike before your diseases tick off. You can also squeeze in a few more Death Coils.
Cons: You're losing out on 15% extra damage to every attack you make. You're not dual wielding or a rogue but a big hoss with a 2-handed weapon. Not hitting like a truck could make you cry.

Frost
Get out of my FAQ.

AOE
Q: My BFF is spec'd into Howling Blast and/or Wandering Plague and just laughs as he spams stuff and wins. What do I do?
A: Cry. No I'm just joshing ya. Remember we got a CLEAVE. Part of Blood AOE is discretion. Ask yourself a series of questions when coming into an AOE pack. Am I glyphed in DnD? Are these things going to go down in a few seconds? Am I wearing underpants?

Generally when you're pulling a pack of elite mobs it's best to go PS>IT>Pestilence>Heart Strike>Blood Tap>DnD. Then just worry about keeping those diseases up while you cleave for win.

On squishier fare (like the baby drakes on Sarth) you'll go DnD>PS>IT>Pestilence. Then they're dead and you're back on the boss. Remember you're not a Frost or Unholy DK. Use your discretion and glower at them...and the mages...and the warlocks...and that freakish Shadow Priest that tops the meter every dang time. Bastard.

Glyphs
There are two Glyphs you should ALWAYS have. [Glyph of Obliterate] and [Glyph of Blood Strike]. Before you ask, yes Blood Strike works for Heart Strike. After these two glyphs you've got a free slot. Death and Decay, Ghoul and Plague Strike are all great options. If you're just starting into 10/25 mans and raid dps is eh go with Plague Strike. If you do a lot of AOE pulls then consider Death and Decay. If you're killing Patchwerk in under 3 minutes then Ghoul is a great choice.

Itemization and Gems and Professions
Q: I got my T7 helm. What meta should I load into this puppy?
A: [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] is the choice for you. Don't believe me? Read this.
Q: This slot doesn't require a blue or a red or a yellow what do I stick in it?
A: [Bold Scarlet Ruby]
Q: Clearly the above answers my question for red slots as well. But what of yellow or blue slots? That socket bonus is tight yo.
A: Do you REALLY need that socket bonus? Okay. What evs. Might I suggest something from our lovely [Etched Monarch Topaz] or [Inscribed Monarch Topaz] line? What? You need to match a BLUE socket. Very well. Many find our [Sovereign Twilight Opal] to be a fetching shade.
Q: Shut it! I want some attack power or armor penetration or haste. They all seem to be flashier.
A: Flashier maybe, but not for a DK. Especially a Blood DK. Remember you get a ton out of Strength and it counts for about 2 attack power. That's sexy.
Q: Quick! Haste or agility on my cloak?
A: Survey says...haste. Not sure why but I'll follow the pack and the currently flawed Rawr on this one.
Q: Later in this FAQ you make a big fuss about sunders and you're telling me not to gem for Armor pen? You're dumb.
A. No YOU ARE. The armor pen you gain from your gear and debuffs is more then enough.
Q: So haste or armor pen when I choose gear?
A: Armor pen. Haste benefits you melee swing and your death coil. Armor Pen benefits HS, Oblits, and Melee. A lovely fellow did the math to back up the statement here.
Q: I noticed you're an engineer? How's that working out for you?
A: Currently Hyperspeed Accelerators give you 340 haste rating for 10 seconds every 60 seconds. Someone better with arithmetic then myself did the math. It comes out to about 57 haste rating static which just barely beats out 44 attack power. If you were daft like me and went Engineering then enjoy, but they're currently not worth dropping another profession for.
Q: Man I haven't even started leveling professions yet. What do you suggest?
A: Plenty of threads show the pros and cons of each profession. JC/BS is currently the best for an eager little minmaxer.

Things to Remember
Q: What the heck does [Glyph of Blood Strike] work on anyways?
A: [Glyph of Blood Strike] works when the target is snared. That means Frost Nova, Desecration, Chains of Ice, Frostfire Bolt and any other SNARE. Even if the debuff does not necessarily work on the target (like Sarth) the glyph still works. Don't believe me? See here and here.
Q: So does Frost Fever count as a snare?
A: No. No it doesn't. Don't confuse debuffs classified as snares for a Mage's Torment of the Weak with what is classified as a snare for the rest of us. Yes it's a double standard. Get over it.
Q: Halp! I fail on the Boss Dummy and my dps is only so so in raids. WHAT I DO?
A: Um...is sunder up? Look at your damage. More then 50% of it comes from physical attacks which are mitigated by a target's armor. That means your warrior has to sunder or your rogue has to expose armor. It also means you may not do the same damage as an identically geared DK spec'd into Frost of Unholy. They rely on more attacks that are NOT mitigated by armor.
Q: My DPS still fails. Blood is dumb.
A. Blood is like a lot of DPS classes. Stacked cooldowns can make or break your dps. DRW and your Ghoul get their stats and dps from you. If you pop them just whenever you'll do okay DPS. If you pop them when a trinket and Fallen Crusader procs and cast Hysteria on yourself AND blow your other trinket or racial all right as Bloodlust is being popped? Profit.
Q: So I pop my ghoul and DRW at the same time? Right before or right after Bloodlust?
A: Tricky. DRW benefits from Bloodlust if it has just been popped on you. Ghoul, like most other pets beyond your control (mages know what I'm talking about) must already be summoned when Bloodlust goes. Work with your shaman and raid leader. In a former life I raided as a mage and had a VERY annoying DPS macro that indicated my pets and trinkets and other goodies were all being blown. Shamans could notice that and pop BL after they saw it....or at least I like to think that's why they did it.

Kind of sad that there isn't a Blood DPS thread (or Frost DPS thread at the time of this posting) on these forums yet so I'll make it myself.

Blood was the least played spec on beta for me since I only did it for 60-72-ish leveling when Blood Worms and Scent of Blood were very balanced. In any case, I just recently specced Blood DPS and it seems pretty fun so far even though I feel like a 2H Combat Rogue.

I do have a few things I'd like to throw ou there for discussion, though.

First, The Blood DPS Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is pretty much the standard Blood Spec you'll see most people use. There are a few throwaway points here and there (Rune Tap, for example) but for the most part every point is worth something.

The general idea of the rotation goes:

IT-PS-OB-HS-HS-DC

HS-HS-OB-HS-HS-DC-DC

IT-PS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC-OB

I've been playing around with:

IT-PS-HS-HS-OB-DC

HS-HS-HS-HS-OB-DC

IT-PS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC

OB-HS-HS-OB-DC-DC

Repeat the last two ad infinitum.

The only problem with the last rotation is that I'm pretty much constantly sitting at max runic power, especially with Sudden Doom procs. Of course, I'm fairly rusty with Blood spec so I could be doing things totally wrong but hey that's why I'm asking. What is the "ideal" Blood rotation (which will never be achieved in a real raid because of movement/non-damage abilities/etc.) that you have found?

On a side note, Dancing Rune Weapon has learned some tricks since the last time I used it on beta. As you may already know, DRW basically clones your weapon damage stats on creation. This means that you can pop Hysteria/Trinkets during Unholy Strength proc/Bloodlust to get a DRW that does crazy damage. It swings for your white DPS and does all your abilities for half damage. The new thing that I noticed is that DRW actually throws out Icy Touches (with its own Frost Fever) and Death Coils now, which makes it very amusing. On most raid fights DRW ends up being 6% of my damage, which is pretty nice for a 1 point talent.

I'm also very interested in finding out if anyone has had any experience with a Blood/Unholy build on live (e.g.: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ). The goal being to stack the +strength talents as well as autoattack DPS talents. The rotation changes to "Heart Strike when you can and only Oblit right before your diseases are about to expire" aka the Priority Rotation.

I'm rocking a mixture of ilvl200 epics and blues along with two quest greens that have a lot of hit on them and Blood seems to be doing pretty nice DPS, but I'd like to see what actually raid-geared DKs are doing with this spec.

I played up through 80 on live as blood and enjoyed it more than any other spec. The solo ability it provides is bar none. The only difference in my spec was blood worms instead of hysteria and blood aura.

As blood there was not a single "group" quest I actually had to group for, 3 man quests were easily done by just me and I never had to stop and eat once during my entire trip to 80.

In instances, my single target DPS was almost always at top - but due to the new design of EVERYTHING being an AE pull, my overall damage fell short compared to frost or unholy or other serious AE classes. Additionally, when tanking, if people don't assist they pull agro if they're even remotely a decent player. Pest->BB only builds up so much agro.



I spend a lot of time at full RP as well, so much so that I often go on bouts of spamming DC until I'm empty then go back to my cycle. It isn't a waste of DPS in doing so. As a result my general rotation looks like something like:

PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - DC... then if I still have RP I use DC a bit more. Once I'm out of RP if I still have time left on my DoTs I throw in HS until I need to refresh PS and IT and I start over. You can't really have a 100% always set in stone rotation as blood due to the free DC crits we get. The GCD causes our timers to often tick out of synch with our "planned" actions.



Alas, now I'm speced as an unholy tank so that I can gear up for naxx. (too few tanks, too much DPS on my server).



Don't let damage meters in 5 mans fool you. Most of the contribution is from AoE damage. Blood isn't an AE spec. Look at boss fights for more realistic comparisons.

I have a few comments on the subject. I'm not a regular EJ poster, so forgive me if I make any mistakes, but here goes.

My DK is, and has always been, specced for Blood DPS. In your rotation, you are casting IT before PS, and I would recommend going PS before IT, and this is because of the Glacier Rot talent. While it's a small boost, a boost is a boost and it's at zero cost, so might as well use it.

Also, I'm very unhappy with Blood Aura. One of my guild's 10-man needed another DPS for Sapphiron last night, so they took me, and our top DPS hunter for the fight only got healed for 8k from Blood Aura. To me, that is a pretty trivial amount of healing done. I can't help but question if three points in Blood Worms (instead of one in Rune Tap and two in Blood Aura), or even two in Blood Worms and one in Rune Tap, would be a better investment than Blood Aura. I will likely try it until I have hard proof that Blood Aura is useful. This could just be personal opinion and preference though.

The spec I will be trying: 51/13/7

As far as the rotation goes, I use a pretty static one -- PS > IT > HS HS > Oblit > DC (sometimes two) > Oblit > HS HS HS HS > .... at this point, I either dump my RP using as many DCs as I can, pop DRW or cast Horn of Winter. I generally consider this area my RP dump area, so anything goes, then I restart the rotation. It doesn't change much and it's easy to pick back up and start over if you screw up midway through.

Something that wasn't brought up, but I will talk a bit on ... Glyphs!

For major glyphs, I would recommend [Glyph of Obliterate] and [Glyph of Death Strike]. The extra healing from Death Strike, especially at full RP, is quite enormous (a good crit has healed 60% of my health on a couple occasions). As for the third glyph, that's a wild card. [Glyph of Icy Touch] would be useful, but I'm opting for [Glyph of Dark Command], as I will be tanking in 10-mans with a Frost spec, and this glyph is good while Blood specced in 5-mans or heroics where your Tank for whatever reason bites the dust. I'd even go so far as to recommend [Glyph of Rune Strike].

As for minor glyphs. Hah. I don't know. Aside from [Glyph of Horn of Winter], they seem fairly useless for a Blood spec. [Glyph of Pestilence] is OK, but I rarely use it as Bloodknights mainly focus on single target DPS, but it could be useful. Glyph of Raise Dead maybe?

Anyhow, those are my comments on the thread. Hopefully at least a little bit insightful and helpful.

Hello there.

I speced blood for first time yesterday , also 51/13/7 and used dps compendium post as a guideline for what kind of rotation i should do , which was

PS -> IT -> HS -> HS -> OB -> DC
OB -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DC

Now i played trying to do that in naxx and sartharion. The problem i met constantly is that my diseases fall off before i can do 4 HS. So i'd like to find out 'rules' for my self what i should and shouldn't do. And the questions would be:
Do i strictly try keeping up diseases 100% of the time? Do i never HeartStrike if both diseases are not up , or should i do my 4 HS even if diseases fall off? Using Sudden Doom the 2nd it pops? When a disease falls off , i start from begining :P?
So those would be one of those things id like to figure out for myself.

edit:
another thing, is icy touch that much of dps?
what i did, instead of glacier rot and black ice , i got myself Toughness and icy reach.
Icy reach , kindof situational useful and toughness, some little bid of extra ap through blade of armor , and the movement debuff reducation.

You have to realize, your GOING to be sitting at full RP a lot of the time as blood. The spec revolves around physical damage more than anything else, so really you find yourself only deathcoiling when your runes are on CD, at least I do. Your rotation is perfect; It's exactly the rotation you want to be using.

I've been VERY fortunate in raids, and have gotten some amazing upgrades, to the point where I really have very few left. When i'm fully raid buffed, on fights where I can really get into my rotation, just sitting nuking, i'm absolutely dominating the damage meters, and we have some VERY good DPS'ers in my guild. On archavon (lol easiest boss ever), I pulled about 100k more than 2nd place, with the spec and rotation that you linked. DRW, Cooldowns and bloodlust are pretty insane on DPS, especially if you take your ghoul out before the BL hits.

Your rotation and spec are correct, and tbh, though I haven't tested other specs, I really don't see them doing more DPS in a raid environment FOR THE MOMENT. Only time will tell with new gear if unholy will be better, but I really doubt it. Physical damage scales so well with raid buffs and debuffs on the boss, that I really doubt unholy ever coming close on DPS, though it does bring other utilities to the raid that are nice to have as well.

Toughness is 15% more armor.

If you're sitting at 12000 armor, as an example, you'd get 1800 more armor. That gives you 50 more AP through Bladed Armor. This doesn't seem like a very good investment to me.

It has no ICD. The blood DK in my guild said on beta it had 100% uptime. Not sure if he's gotten it on live yet.

Hrm. That makes it more interesting, I suppose. That would put them quite a bit closer, especially as your white damage scales higher.

I agree with you that Blood aura is really kind of an "eeeeh" talent, but TBH, I really don't see blood worms doing much. On some fights where there isn't much raid damage your right (and at this point in the game there are few where melee really has to worry about much), but ANY kind of damage will one shot those worms, and although they are a DPS increase, I really see them just getting owned. Though even 90 damage before they die on a fight is better than blood aura, idk. As for rune tap, its a pretty sweet ability. I know it doesn't heal for much, and its only up once every min, not to mention Death Strike is amazing for keeping myself up (while lowering my DPS), it's still pretty sweet to have that heal when you need it. I wouldn't go so far to say its a semi "wasted" point. TBH the only points that I feel are wasted in the cookie cutter 51/13/7 (blood aura and rune tap), is in fact blood aura. I mean it helps, but most of the time healers aren't taking into consideration the blood aura, and are going to heal you anyway, and I really don't see it ever saving you, or making healers a bit more effient in their mana consumption. I WOULD however try to test out the same spec, but maybe 2/3 worms and 0/2 Blood aura, while keeping a point in rune tap. If I see that blood worms is actually doing something than maybe I'd opt to forget rune tap altogether and go 3/3 Blood worms. I'll post when I have the numbers crunched.

Everything I have read is to not waste badges on Haunted Dreams. /shrug

^ This; Haste is a really crappy, somewhat waste of a stat for us atm According to all creditble sources(at least at this gear level).

Though for some reason its kinda stacked on our T7.

I wouldn't call two pieces having haste on our T7 set as being stacked. (edit: Zurm beat me)

I'm sure at some point, haste will be worthwhile somewhere and somehow, I just don't see it helping us ... the best part about haste ATM is it gives us a bit of breathing room in our rotations since it lowers the GCD a bit.... I think. I could be 100% totally mistaken. I r not smrt with theorycrafting, unfortunately

It does really blow that we only have TWO sigils available to us past our opening quest chain sigil, one of which sucks and the other of which might be difficult to get (depending on RNG and if your group doesn't suck). Seeing as how the other relic users get 5-6 of them, it sure would be nice if we got a little more love in that regard.

So I was reading through the DPS compendium and I couldn't find an answer regarding DRW and Runic Power Mastery. Consider a build such as 51/18/2 for this.

Comparing the spec to the cookie-cutter, you have the following tradeoffs:

8% haste
6sec longer DRW

vs

6sec longer diseases
5% more damage to Deathcoil
30% increased crit damage to Plague Strike.

The trouble comes from not having Epidemic it seems, which really throws the standard rotation. I tried doing some timings for a new one and the first reset point I could find was at 24secs (as opposed to 21secs of the standard), although Im not sure it would be the "optimal" point. Using it however, the second phase of the rotation would change to:

PS -> IT -> HS -> OB -> HS -> (dumpx3)

With a little napkin math, comparing this rotation to the new one, you trade off a lot of Heart Strikes and a couple Obliterates for more RP dumps (and a good number of PS's and IT's). I arrived at 18(PS) + 18(IT) + 30(RPDump) = 60(HS) + 6(OB) for the curious. I most likely screwed up the rotation, but using the standard rotation with the spec is definitely worse.

Even with that rotation, I'm finding it hard to convince myself that trading that many Heart Strikes is too great a cost for the extra DRW uptime and a little bit of haste. Sadly my home computer broke down so I cannot experiment in game for some time, but I was curious if anyone else had played around with the idea.

And to end with a question, from my playing around with rotations, it seems to me that Epidemic is an incredibly core talent regardless of spec just because it allows you to skip almost half of the otherwise-required PS and IT refreshes needed - Is this true?

Glad someone made this thread, I was beginning to think I was one of the only dps DKs running a Blood spec.

One question I do have is that it seems that everyone is running the 51/13/7 spec, I'm using a 50/0/21 spec at the moment and I find that Necrosis and Blood Caked Blade do around 6% of my total damage. Is the consensus at this point that 51/13/7 makes up for this?

Posted this back in Beta on the original DK forums here, Now that wotlk is live, more DKs are about.. I figure I might as well see what you guys think about it

Currently running with
Blood/Unholy
It seems to be pretty good dps so far, as long as you can work around the obvious downside of keeping your pet alive.


Pros: Necrosis and blood caked help to augment your strikes quite a bit
Our skills scale so well with our AP already, that having Impurity is simply an amazing help.
As one of the above posters mentioned blood is definitly not an AoE spec, however having morbidity + impurity + outbreak seems to help me out A LOT on AoE pulls.
Gargoyle, at the end of beta was reportedly putting out ~900 dps, Much higher than that of DRW.

Cons: Giving up Giving up icy talons, black ice, and annihilation and blood gorged.


Unholy really seems to fit well with blood, at least this far down into the tree, giving me the AoE that I wouldn't have as full blood and augmenting my already powerful strikes with shadow damage.

Giving up blood gorged for Master of Ghouls is a HARD decision, as I'm sure you all know the life expectancy of your ghoul in a raid, however, an easy work around to this is the Death's Embrace glyph in one of you almost unused minor spots, and having a priest or druid keep a dot on him when possible. Easy fix, and all of my healers don't seem to really have a problem with it.

Anyway, Just asking thought on it. It is an amazing fun spec if you like complication and having to watch as many things as possible. It also manages to pull out quite a bit of dps, and still be able to offtank when you are needed.

The main reason for Epidemic being so good, as far as I can gather, is that it frees up two cooldowns for use with harder hitting abilities. Let's face it, you can either throw out a PS and an IT (which don't hit very hard), or two heart strikes which hit - and hit hard - or even an Obliterate, which smashes people's faces in.

51/13/7 makes up for it by having more HS in the rotation and DRW will scale way beyond the gargoyle, if it doesn't already.

Blood does have an optimal rotation, but as many have already stated, it's very easily hampered. It's more important to follow the priority system also listed in the DPS Compendium. Doing this will help keep your dps high in the more dynamic situations.

For AoE pulls I honestly don't find it hard to keep up with frost/unholy DKs, or any other class with good AoE other than Feral (bear) druids... yes I just said that. If there's 3 or more mobs always use Pest to keep BOTH diseases up in all mobs, and if there's 4 or more DnD seems to be the best way to go.
Start out with DnD unless tank has very poor aoe threat. Then PS-IT-PEST-DC(DnD if you didn't start with it)-DC(if another is possible)-Priority system

And at the end of the day, I prefer Blood because AoE really doesn't matter. Yes you look cool on the charts with the other people but what really matters is boss encounters. Maximizing your effectiveness against the raid boss is the most important thing in my opinion and not many require AoE DPS. There's a reason everything else is called 'trash'.

It only lowers the GCD on spell casts so it would play a small role in tightening our rotation, but some is better than none. I think in a normal situation we would have slightly less wait time after IT and our DC, probably HoW too. I'm honestly not sure about which of our abilities would be affected so feel free to correct me.

I would have to disagree with you here, I really don't think we have "more than enough" RP generation. Assuming you start a fight with 0 RP, I don't think it's possible to have have more than ~70 RP by the first RP dump unless you have help from abilities like Blessing of Sanc and that's with Glyph of IT. Reaching 100 RP isn't a bad thing, not using as much of it as you can before your runes become active again is bad. You can easily fit in 3 GCD of DCx3 with sudden doom proc or DCx2 + HoW during your RP dump without breaking your rotation when runes are back up.

Besides, there's almost nothing else in the way of other glyphs. Okay there is, but not for maximizing DPS. We still have a net gain of +60% dmg on IT in a 51/13/7 build and the extra RP generation helps with a much more effective source of damage.

Epidemic is pretty much standard for any DK spec since it lets you avoid using Icy Touch and Plague Strike in favour of stronger abilities, as has been mentioned. The RPM + DRW build used to be really good when DRW was on a 1 minute cooldown. So instead 33% uptime you'd end up with 43% uptime of DRW. Of course, it got nerfed because DRW was ridiculously good back then.

It'd be great if there were some enterprising DKs around to test the viability of the 51/0/20 spec that I suggested in the original thread. I know that DRW gains bonus from Necrosis and I'm curious as to whether it can proc BCB as well.

51/0/20 also has the advantage that since you have less GCD usage since you're waiting on diseases to finish ticking before Oblitting to convert to Death Runes, you can actually use your Death Coil hotkey. As well, the Unholy subspec scales slightly better with gear than other specs. Namely with the oft-maligned Haste and Arpen ratings. Haste would boost your autoattack contribution to DPS leading to more Necrosis damage and Arpen would be "better" since autoattack is doing a greater percentage of your DPS. Well, I guess it'd help BCB procs as well.

SO MUCH TESTING TO DO

I agree, I looked at this spec when I first created my deathknight but since there is literally no information about it, I was scared to venture in that direction.
But after looking at the spec right now I'm going to test this out on one of the test dummies in Ebon Hold. Yea it's nothing conclusive but if there's a big enough difference then I'll run with it.

UPDATE: Okay I did some small testing in Ebon Hold. First I had 3x 6 min sessions as the cookie cutter 51/13/7 spec and then the same as 51/0/20. Each session I started with Horn of Winter up and zero Runic Power. These numbers will seem low but keep in my mind gear is still very bad, I had no outside buffs and I used no cooldowns at all.

51/13/7 Averaged 1447.4 DPS with a max of 1516.4
My top 4 sources of damage were always HS>Melee>DC>OB with HS doing 8-10% more dmg than Melee.

51/0/20 Averaged 1453.2 DPS with a max of 1479.1
Again the top 4 sources of damage were HS>Melee>DC>OB with HS doing 9-12% more dmg than Melee.

Necrosis and BCB never did more dmg than either disease. Necrosis consistently does more dmg than both IT and PS while BCB varied greatly from toping Necrosis to below IT and PS.
Also note that while I think 51/13/7 will continue to pull ahead as gear improves, with 51/0/20 it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier to maintain an actual rotation and could very well out perform because of the dynamics in most raid encounters.

After work I played around a little more, and I think the rotation could be improved to only trade one Obliterate for a PS/IT. It lacks the "free" GCD the standard rotation has however, so its less forgiving if you miss any strike.

I did forget to note that DRW has 3min cooldown when I was thinking about this however, so now I'm really sure it won't be worth it. Not as terrible as I thought it was looking like, but still not enough.

For those who don't know yet, DRW clones EVERYTHING you do. This is a signifcant DPS boost if you think a bit creatively.
I have 2 macro's.

/use Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood
/cast Hysteria
/cast Dancing Rune Weapon

and

/cast Empower Rune Weapon
/cast Blood Tap
/cast Raise Dead

I only use these two right after eachother, at a full RP bar and with all my runes on CD.

The events that follow are quite amusing. Your DRW will summon a Ghoul as well, which will be up for the duration of the DRW buff (not to mention it will have increased stats from Hysteria and a clicky trinket if applicable) and if you have the Raise Dead Glyph (the one that gives you 20 RP when you summon a Ghoul) you'll be sitting at 20 + 25 +20 RP (you get double the RP from raise dead, as you summon twice ) and your DPS will skyrocket as you are pretty much going to be spamming at least one obliterate and 3-4 Heart Strikes in a row, followed by some Death Coils. I'm really loving it.


P.S: DRW can use Army of the Dead!

So does infact 51/13/7 outdps 50/0/20+1? I was under the impression that the first spec gave a much tighter cycle with more obliterate damage while the other scaled much better with gear. Or is this a false idea?