Hey everyone. I recently spec'd to the 51/13/7 build that seems fairly popular. I've been doing some testing on dummies using blood presence and then unholy presence. I'm barely seeing much of a difference in DPS from aura to aura. Which one is preferred ?

It mostly seems to be preference. I'm also 51/13/7 and I prefer Blood Presence over Unholy, mainly because I'm more comfortable with it and to me my numbers seem better while in it. However fights that require a lot of movement I will switch over to Unholy for the move speed bonus.

All in all try them both and see what works best.

I was going to ask what people through about blood vs. unholy presence as 51/13/7.. but it looks like the above two posts have pretty much asked.

I was on the PTR earlier (against the single target skull dummy), and just changing my stance from blood to unholy got me about a 300 DPS gain. With the amount of DC procs I was getting I just couldn't dump my RP fast enough in blood presence. Switching to unholy though gave me a lot more time to shoot off skills between disease drop offs. I went from pulling about 1800 DPS to 2100 DPS. DPSing in unholy presence also gave me a noticeable improvement when I was speced Frost.

I was curious when a good time to spec blood was? I recently got the weapon from H HoL and I'd like to do more DPS for my raid. I'm currently not hit capped, but I'm trying to get there ASAP. When would be the ideal time for me to switch to a 51/13/7 spec?

A lot of these questions have been answered before. There is no magic Gear number or place for someone to come on here and say "Hey, 51/13/7 is better at "x" ". Though a good discussion has been a bout 50/0/21 being a better spec for less geared DKs, then 51/13/7. All in all its more of the play style in which you can do more DPS out of. Which one do you feel more comfortable doing rotation wise?

If you would like to do more DPS then there's no reason not to do be hit capped. I think it took me maybe 1 week of raiding/heroics/farming to get hit capped. Though maybe I was lucky. 51/13/7 does tend to favor better gear especially a weapon but the H-Hol axe isn't that weapon. Again your choice,play style, rotation preference,

I agree with everything Aedon said, but I would like to add that if you have the money for it, or the patience to farm the mats, the Titansteel Destroyer has a lot of hit and you will be hit capped with melee if you got it. Its better itemized for below hit cap DKs than the Skullclad as well.

If you spec 51/13/7, and you do it right then you have a talent called Annilation in the frost tree(would link the ability but can't at work ). It makes your obliterates not consume diseases when used. This talent is the main reason why many Blood Knights spend points in frost.

Greets,

Having been 51/13/7 for the longest time I recently began experimenting with a 51/0/20 build. As of late the only points I've been shuffling around are between Rune Tap, Mark of Blood and Blood Worms for raiding but the core damage talents have remained the same.

While I can't seem to get any luck on the raiding weapon front, the consistency of my weapon [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver] and gear has allowed me to observe some significant damage scaling over anything I was able to achieve from the 51/13/7. I kid not when I tell you I've gone from doing 2.9-3.1k dps on Nax level boss fights to 3.6-4k+ in the same scenarios.

The two keys to this build I found were in taking two more scaling strength % talents in RD and SoD and capping out Virulence which has paid off enormously. RD also buffs the ghouls during DRW/Raise Dead output and BCB and Necrosis adds more "free" damage talents into the mix.

In lieu of OB-disease preservation that I lose in Frost, I use a DS bridge rotation that I believe has been mentioned elsewhere on this forum:

Open with: OB, IT, PS, HSx2 then-
Rotate: HSx4, OB, IT, PS, HSx3, DS, HSx2, OB, IT, PS (repeat)

Essentially, OBs only happen a) right off the bat or b) when I intend to recycle IT/PS anyhow. In the middle of the rotation a DS is ued to keep the diseases up and bridge into an extra 2 HS before flushing with OB. This DS also comes in handy for boss fights that dish periodic damage as I've seen crits upwards of 6.8-7k.

From that basic cycle, for boss fights I incorporate Hysteria, Rune Weap, and Raise Dead as such: Start with the Opening sequence and begin into the Rotation, ONLY casting DC if a free one procs to preserve Rune power. Shortly you'll hit 100 runic. Pop DRW, Raise Dead, Hysteria, and depending on where you are on rune CD, ERW to maximize DRW attacks.

I pretty much stay in Blood stance and use Rune Tap to unplug any rotation holes or throw out an extra timed HS.

Although I've been following this particular thread for some time now- if a build similar to this has already been discussed, my apologies.

Quick use of the search tool would have spared you of all that typing, yes it has been discussed many, many times.

When specced for annihilation is it best to switch your priority to hitting obliterate whenever possible or is it best just to use obl to convert frost and unholy runes to death runes and then spam hs? When using an obliterate priority rotation I am noticing about 1-2 second dead zones in my rotation with no runic power just waiting to cast obliterate or heart strikes again. Also diseases are falling off. My own thoughts are to just use a heart strike priority rotation.

Does the Hit Rating effect the ability for certian skills to proc or is the proc based on another random mystery percentage? And if so, does a higher or lower to Hit Rating increase your chance to proc?

Well from what has been discussed it is much better to spam hs and use obliterate to convert runes. Heres the rotation:
PS -> IT -> HS -> HS -> OB -> DC
OB -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DC

Oh yeah forgot that once you get the sigil from heigan its just as good if not better to replace a couple HS with an OB or to go with like this:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC

I tried this on a training dummy and am averaging like 2100DPS but it varies greatly. With the 2xOB rotation and the 51/13/7 spec I averaged about 2300 dps always.


Am I doing something wrong with the spec / rotation you are talking about or is my gear just making the 2xob rotation better? I am using DC's everytime I have an extra second in the rotation

[Sigil of Awareness]

ive been readin this thread for quiet some time now, finally got a move on to making an account..

...anyways, quick Q about 51/13/7 rotation

ive read of 2:
PS-IS-HS-HS-OB-Dump-OB-HS-HS-HS-HS-Dump (repeat
and
PS-IS-HS-HS-OB-Dump-OB-HS-HS-OB-Dump repeat

which one is the right one? i thought it was the first

This question is answered and discussed numerous places in this thread (on this same page, even); but the first is the optimal one until you get [Sigil of Awareness] from Heigan in Naxx-25...

Were you using your cooldowns (trinkets/hysteria/DRW/etc...)?

One DK spec isn't supposed to blow the other DK spec out of the water. There are a lot of varying factors that could be taken into account for this stuff.

It's not? I thought it was pretty safe to say that 2h unholy spec was out dpsing blood and frost pretty easily no? I thought the only build to outdps an unholy spec would be the DW specs.

Am i just wrong on this?

Nope, I didnt use hysteria, trinket, or DRW during the test.

Blood is pretty dependent on having a high-powered cooldown to keep up, whether it be DRW or Gargoyle (as is Unholy). I think your DPS is probably fine. Next time you test you should use your cooldowns as efficiently as possible to give you a better idea of how your raid DPS will scale.

Pretty much this. Trying to get an accurate representation of your DPS is silly if you aren't using all the tools available to you. How often do you fight Patchwerk or any other boss and not pop your cooldowns?

It's also worth noting that raid buffed, you will probably scale a bit better than he.

The numbers from Unholy DPS threat state that Frost is the spec which scales best with gear.