Blaqknight

Orlgin,

I have been interested in your 0/13/58 spec since you proposed. (Post 28, of this thread) I also noticed you were still leveling in the process, and are still running with the same build. I personally don't know a single other person with this build, although fairly similar to 0/21/50 I was wondering how your finding it post 80.

I've had some good results with it, and really enjoy the rotation itself. I don't want to say too much, for fear of getting a little to anecdotal, but are you still recommending this build, and how are you finding it perform?

You updated the OP with some new data today as well, thanks, but do you also plan on adding any material regarding the 10/10/51 and 0/13/58?

I also was intending on trying 10/10/51 to compare to 0/13/58, but I can't bring myself to respec from this build - it's too damn fun.

 

Darq111

I've seen alot of high dpsing dw dk's with the Blue Str cloak instead of an epic one.
Is the Str Neck from UP hc better than the epic ones? (due to the imbaness of str)

And what is the Expertise cap?


Thx for a great thread

Ps. Put the question here as i'm on 20/51 if that matters for any of the q's...

 

Oxylos

Death Knight Gear Rankings
is a nice quick resource someone in another thread (maybe this one?) posted that helps with that question.

The expertise "cap" (removes dodges, not parries but if you attack from behind they dont matter) is 26 expertise.
That being said as presumably dw unholy, expertise isn't nearly as important to you, especially if you're using (and i assume you are) a 6 IT rotation. even less so if you're using blood boil over blood strike. So I wouldn't prioritize it too much at all since it would only affect your white and plague strikes.
You do however want to be hit capped, but as luck would have it the spell hit cap and melee hit cap line up exactly at 263 hit rating IF you can guarantee being grouped with a Draenei, and having a shadow priest or moonkin in the raid, and you have 3/3 virulence.

 

Orlgin

Well, we're getting a buff in the next patch. Unholy Blight and Gargoyle are switching spots on the talent tree. They are buffing gargoyle and reducing it's cost at the same time. This is a straight DPS boost to deep Unholy specs.

As for the 0/13/58, I really like playing the spec as well. As I am still woefully undergeared, I can't play the spec to it's potential right now. A key to the spec is a lot of Haste. It's one thing to see a spreadsheet result and it's something completely different to have someone actually using it and being successful. It's getting more attention now since Grigori recommends it as an Ebon Plaguebringer vendor. When I see people successfully using it and getting real results, I'll add it to the opening poster.

As for 10/10/51, I need to do more research. If someone who is proficient with the spec wants to write something up, I'll add it to the OP.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Kyruski

Though there's one problem, we don't know how the frost tree will look. They might move the position of Black Ice, IIT, and/or Glacier Rot too far down the tree. And who knows, They might add a Multilate/Stormstrike like talent to one tree. It's too early to tell and not enough info has been released.

 

grumpig

On the 0/13/58 spec:

Honestly, while Desecration is useful, in practical terms I have yet to meet a raid leader who is not irritated by its animation (especially on fights such as Grobbulus; it can be somewhat difficult to see a formed poison cloud behind the boss with a Desecration down). I plan on trying this spec fairly soon, but I was thinking about the possibility of removing the points of Desecration so as to avoid an argument with my raid leader, and placing the points in Subversion and something else (haven't determined what yet). It seems this build would pull a ton of threat on AoE fights without the threat reduction offered by Subversion.

And on the same note, assuming taking all the points out of Desecration and putting 3 into Subversion, what could the other points go into? My natural instinct is to go with Epidemic but it looks like maintaining diseases is not an issue at all with the build.

 

cyrias

I raided Naxx25 last night with the 10/10/51 Build and I was very impressed. On some the fights (Maexxna, Faerlina, Razuvious, Noth, Heigan, Patchwerk, and a few other bosses I was pulling 200-300 more dps than the 32/39 DW DKs in the raid, and topping DPS meters. I play with a priority rotation something in the lines of PS-IT-IT-IT-BB-UB-DC-IT-IT-IT-IT-PS-DC-DC putting IT over DC if the rune is ready. Also UB must be kept up at all times. It is a very nice DPS boost. Haste really is important for this build. ATM I have about 290 haste rating (8.5%) and I really feel the need to get more to increase my dps even more. I was amazed at how easy and fluid this build felt when I raided with it. I have no WWS for the raid but on Patch alone I managed to get 5.5k DPS with Army of Ghouls and Gargoyle usage when FC procced.(Having an elemental Shaman and a Shadow priest in the raid really helped).

1 point in NoTD is all that is needed to make my ghould survive all fights except Saphiron, and one or two more exceptions.

As pointed out earlier this build benefits most from strength and haste after the soft hit cap. Crit is third and everything else after that. The main sources of Damage are Melee and IT. DC and disease ticks were very close to damage dealt but that could be due to my trinket which I absolutely love for this build.

The only problem this build might have in the future is the reworking of the frost tree, and better scaling of Frost Strike + Anihilation with weapons and better equipment, but then again your attack power would increase as well making IT strong as well.

An awesome build, and absolutely loved it, and prolly gonna keep it for some time.

P.S. Check my armory for equipment and Talents.

 

zALDARIs

It's not easy to find correct informations about DW DK.
Haste seems important and I try to get it over expertise, pene, agi and sometimes even crit.
But I don't really know how good it is and if there is a value haste isn't good anymore.
At the moment I'm at 300+ haste, so is there a cap? is crit better ?

 

Orlgin

I suggest you read the opening poster. Once you reach the spell hit cap with Hit Rating, Strength and Haste are the most important stats you can have. While Strength is the best stat, items come with more than just Strength on them. Haste is really good for this type of build because of all the things it does:

1) Improved white damage
2) More Necrosis damage
3) More BCB damage
4) Pets scale with haste
5) A faster GCD means you can execute more spells in the same amount of time.

Just like casters, there are certain levels of Haste where it becomes more valuable. These "sweet spots" depend on your latency and what buffs you receive in a raid. For instance, if you have a resto shaman and a Boomkin in your raid, you are likely receiving 8% spell haste already.

The value of certain talents can be increased if you have enough haste. For instance, Dirge becomes a better talent when you cast faster since you are more likely to be able to cast Death Coils without maxxing out your runic power.

Finding your sweet spot with GCDs where you can use 7 moves consistently in 10 seconds. Then work on Critical and Expertise to round out your character.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Taizu

Haste doesn't improve GCD, the only GCD improve you'll see as DK is being in unholy presence.

 

Ilmatar

The Haste/GCD confusion comes from the Shaman Heroism/Bloodlust. This is the haste buff that will lower the GCD, not +Haste melee items or talents.

 

Stein

Flow of misinformation on the intardweb is amazing:

Casting speed - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Have you guys not been reading the BB vs. BS discussions at all?

 

Crimsonsky

You stop misinformation by informing people. Most people won't go out and look for themselves. The reason haste is so key is that Icy Touch, DC, BB, and D&D are spells, not physical attacks. Meaning that with capped haste your GCD is only a second after any of them.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Even then haste isn't much better. Str/AP/Hit are far more attractive.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Crimsonsky

Truth, I tank, but for 25 man until Ulduaar, I will likely dps. So these threads interest me, but in actual practice I have not seen any of these builds beat the traditional HB 32/39 build and it's variants.

 

Orlgin

As requested, I have put the 0/13/58 build in the opening poster and explained the differences between the two builds. It was designed with the idea of maximizing the effect of spell haste so if you lack enough haste, this build won't put up the DPS that other builds can produce. It does really well for fights like Patchwerk and suffers when the Death Knight is constantly chasing a target. Just remember that if you use it, keep an eye on your threat when you are doing AoE.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

quaizar

I have tried many different specs but find DW to be the most fun for me while still bringing good DPS to raids for my guild. I really enjoy the 0/20/51 build but the problem I am running into is that one of our main tanks is deep unholy spec and he gets Ebon Plaguebringer off before me every time (obviously, he's pulling), so I am wondering where I should put those three points?

I was looking at the spec on the initial page of this thread and wonder if perhaps putting another point in Wandering Plague and Night of the Dead (still have one more point) would be best, or if because I won't have EP anymore if I would be better off using a different DW build?

 

Goetterdaemmerung

Have you considered what effect this EP problem actually has on your performance? (i.e., virtually none)

 

Dimento

Well from what i've seen on my own dps on patch, without EP i lose about 500 dps, i'd say thats quite substantial (can't find the WWS anymore, its a while ago and the tank is now frosty)

 

NeuronRider

That seems fairly improbable. The only thing not having EP count for you should affect in your standard rotation is BcB (unless you've got enough haste to toss BS back in for BB).

If you're doing (an extremely roughly estimated) 1000 DPS from auto attacks, that should result in a:
1000 * 0.3 * 0.125 = 37.5 DPS

If you're using BS, then that's also a loss of approximately:
(95.5 *2)/20 = 9.55 DPS

Excluding crits in the last case. Even if you ran a 100% crit rate on BS (19.1 DPS loss), and did 3000 DPS with auto attacks (112.5 DPS lost), that'd still be only a 131.6 DPS loss. In a situation that's completely favorable and completely impossible.

Unless I'm really overlooking something?

 

cryptus

I had a quick question about the Wandering plague spell. Now I understand that if it gets overwritten constantly, WP won't proc and damage the mobs. So meaning that if it gets constantly overwritten with an Icey touch. It wouldn't be as useful.

But for blood plague, if a DK just constantly refreshes their Icey touch dot, and leave their PS- dot ticking (meaning they have epidemic enabled for longer lasting dots) will this help the wandering plague? PS is only used every now and then. For my rotation any way, I always skip out on desecration merely becuase of the animation that gets on everyones nerves. and most fights that re moving, its annoying trying to keep it up.

WP procs when a disease damages a mob, so leaving PS would only seem like the right idea, or am I wrong? I never really been too far into the Unholy tree. But I would like to try out a heavier unholy spec when comes raid time, but first I just want to get some of the questions out of the ole nogging.

 

Dimento

No you are completely right and i'm the fool lol... When posting i was kinda tired, thus i forgot that when i tested it a couple months ago it was with 17/0/54 2h build where the 3rd disease is a lot more important... My bad :P

 

NeuronRider

Ah, yes, that would make a bit of a difference. Though, again, not as much as you might expect. Using the same basic assumptions but accounting for a 35% crit rate (thereby 44% for BS), even as 17/0/54, assuming that EP is still there and just not "yours", I estimate a total DPS loss of:

4(SS) + 2(BS) + BcB = 25.7 + 13.7 + 37.5 = 76.9 DPS

So, yeah, it's a bigger loss for 2h v. DW, but not much on average.

Consequently, that looks like an average loss of 50.4 DPS (readjusted for lack of Subversion crit on BS), or 37.5 DPS with BB, for DW if your EP/CF is getting overwritten by another DK. That is if auto attack DPS = 1000 and 35% crit are reasonable assumptions.

 

grumpig

I do not have WWS reports since this was awhile ago, but we used to have a second Unholy DK (we both used 2 handers) who pretty much always got an Ebon Plague off on the boss before I did. We had some problems with him, he got gkicked, and from then on I noticed about a 200 DPS increase for myself without him there. This could be due to different raid buffs and the like (again, this happened awhile ago, I'm not sure if those things changed), but it seemed like having that EP helped a lot.

 

Disasto

just a quick question for you guys, i'm playing unholy DW spec atm, 0/13/58. What my question is, is what you all do on trash for dps? I know how to play the spec pretty well, and how everything works, on bosses I end up first or second on dps for our raid, but my dps on trash is terrible. Now i know that trash dps doesnt matter, but I at least like to keep up with other people in the raid. Any help would be appreciated.