No Scarlet Fever? No Crimson Scourge to help you apply Scarlet Fever? Vicious Strikes?
Oops! Forgot to remove Viscious Strikes when I pulled morbidity. ONE SECOND.
Edit: updated. Ended up putting the two into Scarlet Fever after all.
Edit 2: Runic Empowerment is more likely to give me a free Blood Boil more often than Crimson Scourge at the rate I proc Rune Strikes these days anyway. The damage buff is nice, but Blood Boil was never designed to be a hard-hitting ability anyway. Maybe if AoE threat ends up being a huge issue.
I just did the same thing. On Live I don't bother with Rune Tap, so when I saw it down there, I didn't grab it. Then I was going through something after reading how Ardent Defender is an activated ability, and re-read Will of the Necropolis. Bah.
So all DKs get the Death Rune making talent for specialization. And the tree's signature strike. I figured Unholy would be Master of Ghouls, though I didn't call Frost's being Icy Talons. Interesting... and all Blood DKs are Vets of the Third War now, heh.
All the tank specs have a passive +stam/expertise now.
I logged on my DK again last night (the servers were unstable as hell) to check out the new talent system. "First pass" is right, because the DPS trees right now are pretty damn lame and there are barely any decisions to be made. I assume the blood tree is similar but I didn't try to make a spec out of it.
Edit 2: Runic Empowerment is more likely to give me a free Blood Boil more often than Crimson Scourge at the rate I proc Rune Strikes these days anyway.
Keep in mind you won't be rune striking nearly as often in Cataclysm with it being on the GCD.
So all DKs get the Death Rune making talent for specialization. And the tree's signature strike. I figured Unholy would be Master of Ghouls, though I didn't call Frost's being Icy Talons. Interesting... and all Blood DKs are Vets of the Third War now, heh.
All the tank specs have a passive +stam/expertise now.
I logged on my DK again last night (the servers were unstable as hell) to check out the new talent system. "First pass" is right, because the DPS trees right now are pretty damn lame and there are barely any decisions to be made. I assume the blood tree is similar but I didn't try to make a spec out of it.
How well is the new rune system working? My desire to use the new frost tree rests pretty heavily on how many free GCDs there are in which to use frost strike from the heavy RP generation.
I only "played" (i.e., beat on a dummy in Acherus) an Unholy Spec. The new rune system is definitely better since you're not wasting damage as long as one of each rune is on cooldown, and it felt like there was a little more downtime. However, it's hard to form very good impressions since a DK is nearly unplayable with the base UI (tiny, plain rune symbols in the top left corner, no good debuff/proc watching), and Unholy felt weird with SS being only a single rune strike. It was hard to figure out how to play it "right" like that, and I'm assuming by retail something about unholy will have changed.
You're definitely less GCD locked now, though, with only one of each rune regenerating at a time. Also, Unholy Presence no longer dropped the GCD to 1-second, which as far as I can tell keeps it being pretty crappy. Maybe it will be viable if you have really low haste since your rune regeneration will still be pretty slow? Dunno.
Another note: My DK is at around 15% haste in the beta, but without timers I couldn't really tell if that was affecting rune cooldown or not yet, like it's supposed to in Cataclysm.
Edit: I wonder how many times after Cataclysm releases that I'll end up in the wrong presence with blood/frost presences switching roles but not bar placement/hotkeys.
I'm vaguely working my DK towards another Frost emblem piece at the moment, so I still run a random a day. But since I have tanked so many fucking randoms, I've been queuing as DPS with my DW Frost spec for a break.
Last night I got H OK, had a lot of fun, just throwing out Howling Blasts, smashing spider-things for 10k+ Obliterates and jumping around, usually going in right at the same time as the tank, which is a *little* tricky since I only have 1/3 Subversion and put out a lot of threat. the warrior tank was pretty good but I pulled things off of him now and then.
Luckily we had a good pally healer, but oh man I nearly died a few times... I think one of the more amusing fights was the last boss' Insanity, where I'd run around and smash party members down with those Obliterates. I know I came out of my version once to see either the mage or warlock being chased down by my evil self, which was rather amusing.
Anyway, I'm really loving DW Frost, it has grown on me majorly. I'm definitely hoping that it comes into Cata as intact as it is now. But I've gotta say... I realize we're hitting less often, but I can't imagine Obliterates hitting *twice* as hard as they are now. Not to mention my Frost Strikes themselves are pretty vicious, especially with Killing Machine auto-crits. And we're going to have more RP and time for those too? Good god...
Eh, final result I guess not, but if you look at the descriptions of Obliterate on Live (80% of weapon damage, plus blah blah) and Obliterate on Cata (160% of weapon damage), it seems that way. But I guess they aren't getting double benefit from AP or anything either, so, that's a fair point.
Dranyth on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited July 2010
"DK unplayable with the base UI."
Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I'd never play my DK without a decent rune addon, that information is too important to make tiny and put in the corner.
I dunno. I never need to know what runes are up. I use a rotation, so the runes that are up are the ones that are supposed to be up.
notmetalenough on
Samael the Radiant Faced-- Official Naming, Going Nuclear, Click on the Quest, Make She Run and Guild Measurements Officer - Clawshrimp & Co, Draenor-US
I'd never play my DK without a decent rune addon, that information is too important to make tiny and put in the corner.
I dunno. I never need to know what runes are up. I use a rotation, so the runes that are up are the ones that are supposed to be up.
You're either not Frost spec then or you do have some sort of proc watching add-on. Either way, "using a rotation" kind of breaks down on fights like Deathwhisper and Dreamwalker.
Oh, and you definitely won't be doing a "rotation" as any spec in Cataclysm since they've all got procs, random rune regeneration, etc. Trust me, you won't want those tiny little runes in the corner in Cataclysm.
I'd never play my DK without a decent rune addon, that information is too important to make tiny and put in the corner.
I dunno. I never need to know what runes are up. I use a rotation, so the runes that are up are the ones that are supposed to be up.
You're either not Frost spec then or you do have some sort of proc watching add-on. Either way, "using a rotation" kind of breaks down on fights like Deathwhisper and Dreamwalker.
Oh, and you definitely won't be doing a "rotation" as any spec in Cataclysm since they've all got procs, random rune regeneration, etc. Trust me, you won't want those tiny little runes in the corner in Cataclysm.
I have Blizzard's default SCT telling me when Rime procs and stuff, but that's about it. Frost is perfectly playable using the standard UI, Blood (my tank and current main spec) even more so.
Whoever was having AoE tanking difficulty, try the death and decay glyph. I replaced my rune strike glyph last night and was holding aggro like a champ, unlike previously where everyone was pulling everything off me.
Also, don't try tanking in unholy pressence with subversion. LoL.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I invite you all to play a DK in Cataclysm without an add-on and perform near where you should be.
I've never used one on live in order to tell me when the runes were coming up.
And consider how far behind they are with the DK class right now. I doubt that any of the current trees/rotations will make it through the month.
It doesn't matter that the trees are far from complete. The new rune system and proc mechanics mean you're not going to be doing Rune Sequence A->Rune Sequence B->repeat anymore. It'll probably be like playing a rogue or feral druid without some sort of add-ons.
I invite you all to play a DK in Cataclysm without an add-on and perform near where you should be.
I know that I could do a pretty good job with my unholy DK, on live servers(and the rune changes should only make it easier, right?) without addons. The rotation is so standard, with sufficient room in the GCDs, that the only real complicating factors are lots of trinket usage and maybe utility abilities like mind freeze etc.
Edit: I'm not exactly worried about looking at the top left of my screen in a 5 man dungeon, and the unfinished unholy tree doesn't seem to be indicating a proc-based playstyle. If the new rune system is supposed to give you the same number of overall runes over a long period of time, but increase flexibility, I'm thinking you will still be able to follow a pretty set rotation.
Frost is the one I'd worry about.
Edit: I take it back, even unholy is partially complicated by runic empowerment.
Septus on
PSN: Kurahoshi1
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited July 2010
I uh, don't use addons on my rogue either?
I never really considered why they'd be of utmost importance.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I guess the difference is I'm talking about progression content (and not being one of the anchors in the raid), not leveling characters and doing 5-mans.
Of course you can play any class satisfactorily in the easy content. Shit, up until 3.2 or whenever it was they changed /castrandom, I tore shit up as a ret paladin just spamming a single macro. Just looking at meters and seeing me perform (with this one macro), no one would have even guessed that I was putting absolutely no thought into my rotation. Even now you can play the cooldown-based melee specs spamming jump and random keys and do well enough. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
I invite you all to play a DK in Cataclysm without an add-on and perform near where you should be.
I know that I could do a pretty good job with my unholy DK, on live servers(and the rune changes should only make it easier, right?)
No, the rune changes alone are going to make the class more dynamic and remove the metronomic, follow-the-keys feel of it. And that's before Runic Empowerment (which you did acknowledge), Sudden Doom, or the longer disease durations come into play.
forty on
Officially the unluckiest CCG player ever.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited July 2010
Come on Forty, you know me better than that. I'm talking about doing the appropriate 'rotations' for the ass backwards spec I chose and whether or not I can maintain it and the dps within a raid setting such that my damage is competitive for my gear.
If you want to look at me while leveling or in five-mans, my DPS is utterly abysmal. Practically a war crime. My 5-man DPS is used to torture inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I invite you all to play a DK in Cataclysm without an add-on and perform near where you should be.
I know that I could do a pretty good job with my unholy DK, on live servers(and the rune changes should only make it easier, right?)
No, the rune changes alone are going to make the class more dynamic and remove the metronomic, follow-the-keys feel of it. And that's before Runic Empowerment (which you did acknowledge), Sudden Doom, or the longer disease durations come into play.
Maybe you can help me understand then. You still refresh two of each rune every 10 seconds, so you still want to use two UF attacks and two blood strikes per ten seconds. The unholy and frost "runes" will still start regenning faster than the blood ones, if you use that strike first, so when the runes are up to 100%, you still use them before the blood runes in the next 10 second cycle. Diseases last longer and you can probably still take advantage of pestilence to keep them going.
So the big difference I see, is you now drop an extra death coil into the rotation, like before a blood strike, because you can afford to let the blood rune go to 120% or something, but it still seems a matter of hitting SS, SS, BS, BS as the rough order, you just get to hammer the death coil key more freely.
I invite you all to play a DK in Cataclysm without an add-on and perform near where you should be.
I know that I could do a pretty good job with my unholy DK, on live servers(and the rune changes should only make it easier, right?)
No, the rune changes alone are going to make the class more dynamic and remove the metronomic, follow-the-keys feel of it. And that's before Runic Empowerment (which you did acknowledge), Sudden Doom, or the longer disease durations come into play.
Maybe you can help me understand then. You still refresh two of each rune every 10 seconds, so you still want to use two UF attacks and two blood strikes per ten seconds. The unholy and frost "runes" will still start regenning faster than the blood ones, if you use that strike first, so when the runes are up to 100%, you still use them before the blood runes in the next 10 second cycle. Diseases last longer and you can probably still take advantage of pestilence to keep them going.
So the big difference I see, is you now drop an extra death coil into the rotation, like before a blood strike, because you can afford to let the blood rune go to 120% or something, but it still seems a matter of hitting SS, SS, BS, BS as the rough order, you just get to hammer the death coil key more freely.
Only one of each rune is refreshing at a time now (Cataclysm "now" obviously). For a simple example, let's say I'm a tank who likes to use two icy touches at the start to get a big threat lead, and 0 haste.
time = 0: Icy Touch, 1 frost rune empty, 1 frost rune ready
time = 1.5: Icy Touch #2, 1 frost rune 1.5 seconds into cooldown, 1 frost rune empty
time = 5: touching myself IRL, 1 frost rune 5 seconds into cooldown, 1 frost rune empty
time = 10: still touching, 1 frost rune just refreshed, 1 frost rune empty
time = 11: Icy Touch #3, 1 frost rune empty, 1 frost rune 1 second into cooldown
So the main change is that you no longer refresh two of every rune every 10 seconds. You refresh one of every rune every 10 seconds before haste, unholy presence, talents, etc. come into play.
In WotLK the basic idea behind optimal play is putting every rune on cooldown ASAP and getting them back on cooldown as fast as you can as soon as they come back up. Those fundamentals change in Cataclysm in that ideally you will want to get one of each rune on cooldown ASAP and then ensure that the other rune of a type is put on cooldown before the first one has refreshed.
Now once you throw in talent procs, longer disease durations + individual rune abilities being more important (i.e., early/late disease refreshing results in a bigger loss of damage than it does now), and haste actually changing your "rotation," DKs will no longer be a "follow the pattern" class if you want to play your best.
Posts
Oops! Forgot to remove Viscious Strikes when I pulled morbidity. ONE SECOND.
Edit: updated. Ended up putting the two into Scarlet Fever after all.
Edit 2: Runic Empowerment is more likely to give me a free Blood Boil more often than Crimson Scourge at the rate I proc Rune Strikes these days anyway. The damage buff is nice, but Blood Boil was never designed to be a hard-hitting ability anyway. Maybe if AoE threat ends up being a huge issue.
Oh fuck, they changed the way it worked.
Well.
...
Fuck, I shouldn't try and read this late at night.
Nice.
I logged on my DK again last night (the servers were unstable as hell) to check out the new talent system. "First pass" is right, because the DPS trees right now are pretty damn lame and there are barely any decisions to be made. I assume the blood tree is similar but I didn't try to make a spec out of it.
How well is the new rune system working? My desire to use the new frost tree rests pretty heavily on how many free GCDs there are in which to use frost strike from the heavy RP generation.
You're definitely less GCD locked now, though, with only one of each rune regenerating at a time. Also, Unholy Presence no longer dropped the GCD to 1-second, which as far as I can tell keeps it being pretty crappy. Maybe it will be viable if you have really low haste since your rune regeneration will still be pretty slow? Dunno.
Another note: My DK is at around 15% haste in the beta, but without timers I couldn't really tell if that was affecting rune cooldown or not yet, like it's supposed to in Cataclysm.
Edit: I wonder how many times after Cataclysm releases that I'll end up in the wrong presence with blood/frost presences switching roles but not bar placement/hotkeys.
Last night I got H OK, had a lot of fun, just throwing out Howling Blasts, smashing spider-things for 10k+ Obliterates and jumping around, usually going in right at the same time as the tank, which is a *little* tricky since I only have 1/3 Subversion and put out a lot of threat. the warrior tank was pretty good but I pulled things off of him now and then.
Luckily we had a good pally healer, but oh man I nearly died a few times... I think one of the more amusing fights was the last boss' Insanity, where I'd run around and smash party members down with those Obliterates. I know I came out of my version once to see either the mage or warlock being chased down by my evil self, which was rather amusing.
Anyway, I'm really loving DW Frost, it has grown on me majorly. I'm definitely hoping that it comes into Cata as intact as it is now. But I've gotta say... I realize we're hitting less often, but I can't imagine Obliterates hitting *twice* as hard as they are now. Not to mention my Frost Strikes themselves are pretty vicious, especially with Killing Machine auto-crits. And we're going to have more RP and time for those too? Good god...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA
I dunno. I never need to know what runes are up. I use a rotation, so the runes that are up are the ones that are supposed to be up.
Oh, and you definitely won't be doing a "rotation" as any spec in Cataclysm since they've all got procs, random rune regeneration, etc. Trust me, you won't want those tiny little runes in the corner in Cataclysm.
I have Blizzard's default SCT telling me when Rime procs and stuff, but that's about it. Frost is perfectly playable using the standard UI, Blood (my tank and current main spec) even more so.
Also, don't try tanking in unholy pressence with subversion. LoL.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
I've never used one on live in order to tell me when the runes were coming up.
And consider how far behind they are with the DK class right now. I doubt that any of the current trees/rotations will make it through the month.
Until you get 2p T10.
Looking up at the upper left corner of your screen is really effective in progression content too!
Thanks, but I'd rather have someone who optimizes and can focus more attention on the environment if I'm going to be doing difficult content.
I know that I could do a pretty good job with my unholy DK, on live servers(and the rune changes should only make it easier, right?) without addons. The rotation is so standard, with sufficient room in the GCDs, that the only real complicating factors are lots of trinket usage and maybe utility abilities like mind freeze etc.
Edit: I'm not exactly worried about looking at the top left of my screen in a 5 man dungeon, and the unfinished unholy tree doesn't seem to be indicating a proc-based playstyle. If the new rune system is supposed to give you the same number of overall runes over a long period of time, but increase flexibility, I'm thinking you will still be able to follow a pretty set rotation.
Frost is the one I'd worry about.
Edit: I take it back, even unholy is partially complicated by runic empowerment.
I never really considered why they'd be of utmost importance.
Of course you can play any class satisfactorily in the easy content. Shit, up until 3.2 or whenever it was they changed /castrandom, I tore shit up as a ret paladin just spamming a single macro. Just looking at meters and seeing me perform (with this one macro), no one would have even guessed that I was putting absolutely no thought into my rotation. Even now you can play the cooldown-based melee specs spamming jump and random keys and do well enough. But that's not really what I'm talking about.
If you want to look at me while leveling or in five-mans, my DPS is utterly abysmal. Practically a war crime. My 5-man DPS is used to torture inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
Maybe you can help me understand then. You still refresh two of each rune every 10 seconds, so you still want to use two UF attacks and two blood strikes per ten seconds. The unholy and frost "runes" will still start regenning faster than the blood ones, if you use that strike first, so when the runes are up to 100%, you still use them before the blood runes in the next 10 second cycle. Diseases last longer and you can probably still take advantage of pestilence to keep them going.
So the big difference I see, is you now drop an extra death coil into the rotation, like before a blood strike, because you can afford to let the blood rune go to 120% or something, but it still seems a matter of hitting SS, SS, BS, BS as the rough order, you just get to hammer the death coil key more freely.
time = 0: Icy Touch, 1 frost rune empty, 1 frost rune ready
time = 1.5: Icy Touch #2, 1 frost rune 1.5 seconds into cooldown, 1 frost rune empty
time = 5: touching myself IRL, 1 frost rune 5 seconds into cooldown, 1 frost rune empty
time = 10: still touching, 1 frost rune just refreshed, 1 frost rune empty
time = 11: Icy Touch #3, 1 frost rune empty, 1 frost rune 1 second into cooldown
So the main change is that you no longer refresh two of every rune every 10 seconds. You refresh one of every rune every 10 seconds before haste, unholy presence, talents, etc. come into play.
In WotLK the basic idea behind optimal play is putting every rune on cooldown ASAP and getting them back on cooldown as fast as you can as soon as they come back up. Those fundamentals change in Cataclysm in that ideally you will want to get one of each rune on cooldown ASAP and then ensure that the other rune of a type is put on cooldown before the first one has refreshed.
Now once you throw in talent procs, longer disease durations + individual rune abilities being more important (i.e., early/late disease refreshing results in a bigger loss of damage than it does now), and haste actually changing your "rotation," DKs will no longer be a "follow the pattern" class if you want to play your best.
Long time for that (considering it never drops).
But I think I'd *still* keep the DnD glyph after that for even more hilarious DnD damage/threat.
That was the greatest thing EVER.