Oh, I kind of want to avoid doing the Nesingwary quests solo, but I think I should be able to find enough quests otherwise in Terrokar and Nagrand to do so.
I was able to get a full level worth of xp just doing the first round of quests in Nagrand. They conveniently set up the zone so you can start at Garadar and do a large clockwise circle to finish all the quests. I had 17 quests "completed" before I turned them all in, which netted ~170k of xp.
Then factor in all the killing you have to do, and the various quest stages around the zone.. it's easy street. Probably the best zone for experience in the game, except maybe Netherstorm.
I would rate Zangermarsh up there as well. If you know an efficient order to follow in Zanger, you can go out and complete 15-20 quests before doing a turn in pass. Much better than say, Terrokar, where everything is all over the place.
You put up bone shield before going to fight a tough boss.
You use up all the charges on bone shield, you pop Icebound Fortitude.
You reapply bone shield as soon as icebound drops off.
That gives you ~30 seconds of ridiculous mitigation on a boss fight, and puts you about 10 seconds closer getting another application of icebound fortitude off in the meantime.
Bone shield is just awesome like that, allowing you to start a fight with insane mitigation so you can position yourself while your healer stops playing grabass with the DPS and realizes that you've pulled.
Right, I understand all that, and that's how I use it. That said, I still think Unbreakable Armor is going to be better for a low avoidance tank. With low avoidance, Bone Shield is going to get stripped very very fast, you definitely won't get a long duration usage out of it. The higher your avoidance, the larger of a "bridge" it gives you between Icebound's.
You put up bone shield before going to fight a tough boss.
You use up all the charges on bone shield, you pop Icebound Fortitude.
You reapply bone shield as soon as icebound drops off.
That gives you ~30 seconds of ridiculous mitigation on a boss fight, and puts you about 10 seconds closer getting another application of icebound fortitude off in the meantime.
Bone shield is just awesome like that, allowing you to start a fight with insane mitigation so you can position yourself while your healer stops playing grabass with the DPS and realizes that you've pulled.
If you have the glyph of bone sheild it gets another charge too, so it lasts a little bit longer. An all around great spell. If you're fighting something with magic, anti-magic shell or anti-magic zone increase that damage reduction time even more.
You put up bone shield before going to fight a tough boss.
You use up all the charges on bone shield, you pop Icebound Fortitude.
You reapply bone shield as soon as icebound drops off.
That gives you ~30 seconds of ridiculous mitigation on a boss fight, and puts you about 10 seconds closer getting another application of icebound fortitude off in the meantime.
Bone shield is just awesome like that, allowing you to start a fight with insane mitigation so you can position yourself while your healer stops playing grabass with the DPS and realizes that you've pulled.
Right, I understand all that, and that's how I use it. That said, I still think Unbreakable Armor is going to be better for a low avoidance tank. With low avoidance, Bone Shield is going to get stripped very very fast, you definitely won't get a long duration usage out of it. The higher your avoidance, the larger of a "bridge" it gives you between Icebound's.
Yeah, this is true. But in my level 77 gear, spec'd as an unholy tank, I've got 15% dodge, and 25% parry (with blade barrier up). I'm not dripping with avoidance, but that's really not that bad.
UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
Okay, I was playing around with a variant of this build in beta, and I've been trying it as I level and I think it's got potential, both in terms of personal DPS and raid utility.
The idea is to get as much synergy as possible between Blood and Frost, while picking up both Abomination's Might and Improved Icy Talons for raid buffs. The synergy comes from picking up as many Blood Strike boosting talents from both trees as possible, as well as fueling Frost Strikes with the runic power generating talents from Blood. The tradeoff is that I don't get either tree's 10% damage 5-pointer, and pass on some good Blood talents to go deeper into Frost.
That said, the boosts to Blood Strike are substantial:
Subversion - 9% Crit to BS
Bloody Strikes - 18% BS damage and 60% BS bonus damage
Blood of the North - 15% BS Damage
Chilblains + Glyph of Blood Strike - +20% BS damage
Annihilation - +3% melee special crit
Guile of Gorefiend - +60% BS Crit damage
I don't know how stacked bonuses like that are calculated to do the math, but I plan on putting some time on the training dummies at 80 and WWS parsing the results, because right now it seems like my Blood Strikes are doing as much or slightly more damage on average than my Obliterates or Frost Strikes.
My current rotation while soloing is IT/PS (depending on if it's a ranged pull), BSx2, Oblit, FS. This generates Death Runes that I don't usually use, as BS is doing roughloy the same or better damage than Oblit, for half the runes. I'm running Unholy Presence, as I found I was losing more time to the GCD than I was waiting for runes to come off cooldown with no RP to Frost Strike with. The only time I change it up is if my health starts to get low or my RP fills up, at which point I'll use the Death Runes for a DS or Oblit, to give me GCD space for an extra Frost Strike.
Has anyone else tried a similar build, or can anyone see something glaringly wrong with this? It's a fun build so far, damage seems good, and I do like that it gives both the 10% AP buff and the 20% melee haste buff.
UnbrokenEva on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
You put up bone shield before going to fight a tough boss.
You use up all the charges on bone shield, you pop Icebound Fortitude.
You reapply bone shield as soon as icebound drops off.
That gives you ~30 seconds of ridiculous mitigation on a boss fight, and puts you about 10 seconds closer getting another application of icebound fortitude off in the meantime.
Bone shield is just awesome like that, allowing you to start a fight with insane mitigation so you can position yourself while your healer stops playing grabass with the DPS and realizes that you've pulled.
Right, I understand all that, and that's how I use it. That said, I still think Unbreakable Armor is going to be better for a low avoidance tank. With low avoidance, Bone Shield is going to get stripped very very fast, you definitely won't get a long duration usage out of it. The higher your avoidance, the larger of a "bridge" it gives you between Icebound's.
In the basic DK gear, I can hit 25% avoidance pretty easily. Statistically, that means I'm likely to get at least one dodge/parry per bone shield, boosting the duration to 10 seconds-ish without the glyph. It's going to be stripped away at fairly the same rate until you get into really high amounts of avoidance. 25-30% avoidance isn't exactly a laughable amount.
12 seconds (with glyph and the assumption of one avoided attack) of frontloaded mitigation plus 12 seconds of mitigation after icebound fortitude. With that in mind, it's essentially a shield wall that you can frontload.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
You put up bone shield before going to fight a tough boss.
You use up all the charges on bone shield, you pop Icebound Fortitude.
You reapply bone shield as soon as icebound drops off.
That gives you ~30 seconds of ridiculous mitigation on a boss fight, and puts you about 10 seconds closer getting another application of icebound fortitude off in the meantime.
Bone shield is just awesome like that, allowing you to start a fight with insane mitigation so you can position yourself while your healer stops playing grabass with the DPS and realizes that you've pulled.
Right, I understand all that, and that's how I use it. That said, I still think Unbreakable Armor is going to be better for a low avoidance tank. With low avoidance, Bone Shield is going to get stripped very very fast, you definitely won't get a long duration usage out of it. The higher your avoidance, the larger of a "bridge" it gives you between Icebound's.
In the basic DK gear, I can hit 25% avoidance pretty easily. Statistically, that means I'm likely to get at least one dodge/parry per bone shield, boosting the duration to 10 seconds-ish without the glyph. It's going to be stripped away at fairly the same rate until you get into really high amounts of avoidance. 25-30% avoidance isn't exactly a laughable amount.
12 seconds (with glyph and the assumption of one avoided attack) of frontloaded mitigation plus 12 seconds of mitigation after icebound fortitude. With that in mind, it's essentially a shield wall that you can frontload.
Again, not debating how good Bone Shield is. It's an amazing spell. Just saying that I think until you hit ~50% avoidance (which, btw, any raid tank will have. My level 70 warrior in T4/T5 gear has 52%), Unbreakable Armor will probably do more good for you, except in the a fore mentioned front load case, where Bone Shield obviously shines.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited November 2008
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
This build is more about CC utility. Slowing, snaring, freezing the opponents so that my allies can beat them down. The 10 second freeze is amazing, and will force the opponent to either burn their long CDs to break out, or sit there and take it as diseases eat away at them and their allies get gangbanged. I'm leaning toward this build for now, because of the amount of control freezing, chilling, and rooting provides, as well as the 100% free interrupt. The only thing I may change is the points in tier 1 unholy, if I don't use DC at all due to frost strike, then I'll just go all for the dodge.
EDIT: And on second thought, I might want to get the extra wiggle-room from runic mastery so I can burn through rune-strikes and frost-strikes and not have to worry about hungering cold.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Impurity is a shit talent that adds a whopping 2.5% increase to the coefficient for 5 points. If you're pvping in any serious capcitiy, you should grab the speed boost aura for the entire party. Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Ya, the one that does like 5k crits to everyone. It scales with the pets HP, which means it scales with your gear and is a great fuck you bomb if the ghoul / you are dying. Instant make a new ghoul if it's not on cooldown and you can do it again for a quick double aoe bomb or just once and keep the pet on the second go.
Id drop Black Ice and fill out Toughness since you wont be doing much frost dmg to warrant 3 points and less snare time / more armor will be far more useful.
As for Blood Caked Blade, I find it's too low a proc rate for a minimum dmg upgrade to your auto attack. If it could proc off our Strikes, I'd be all for it, but once every 3.5 seconds or so and a 30% chance at that is a bit low for my liking in pvp, but there aren't too many other options I guess. I usually get Outbreak since I use Plague Strike, Pestilence and Blood Boil far more often and more dmg for core skills is something i like.
I can't recommend zangarmarsh enough as a DK. I don't care if the quest rewards suck. Given that we can ride our mounts on water, the zone is like a candy coated XP truffle.
And bone shield is amazing, yes, and it's easy to get enough avoidance to make it last a long time. I'm at ~37% + miss chance (must be what... 5% plus my defense mod of 4ish) without blade barrier, at level 76.
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Edit: After doing some googling, it's true. Wow, I never read that on the tooltip... How long does it take for it to explode? Seems like a pretty nice chunk of damage if you're getting overwhelmed or something.
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Absolutely, it does about half it's health in damage.
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Absolutely, it does about half it's health in damage.
Is that damage modified by anything? Can it crit? Haven't checked lately, but roughly how much health does a Ghoul have?
whoa whoa, so wait hows this work now? i didn't put the point into CE cuz i found it kinda useless not a huge amount of damage, used up rune i could use for something else and i constantly forget its even on my bar. So what do you just target your ghould and tap CE and fucker goes boom?
I've been playing with the talent calculator for a few days now and I can not settle on a 'tank' spec. Anyone at 80 tanking yet? I've never had a tank before and thus I really don't know what I should be looking for in the talents. I read on Elitist Jerks that something like 13/51/7 (I dont recall the exact numbres) is the 'best' until you can get enough avoidance for Bone Shield to stay up. Right now I am looking at a spec that makes the most use out of my 75ish+ blues that I could use to start tanking Heroics and maybe 10 man Naxx almost as soon as I hit 80. I leveled as Frost which I loved but this has lead me to want to try something else that might not be the optimal tanking spec. Which on one hand I am fine with because the game is about enjoyment for me and on the other I don't want my gimp spec to be what hampers my groups into multiple wipes. So here is something that to me, an unknowledgable tank brain, looks decent enough that stays away from deep frost. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2055301032000300000000000003050500133032000321000000000025202030100100000000000000000
I know I am missing many things in this build like Imp 2h just to name one. The main reason I went with something like the above is for the two Stam+ talents which I hope will make up the difference in my gear and allow me to Gem for Defense until I am at the cap. Then again I don't know if it would be worth it to skip going for those two talents and focus more on talents that would give me better TPS or maybe a little more magic avoidance.
Anyway, feel free to tell me everything wrong with that spec
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Absolutely, it does about half it's health in damage.
Is that damage modified by anything? Can it crit? Haven't checked lately, but roughly how much health does a Ghoul have?
The damage is based on the HP of the ghoul, so it can be modified by being a higher level and also things like Ravenous dead.
Hm. Guess I'll do the old "wait next to his platform for someone to happen by". There's definitely no shortage of other DKs running around.
I asked "Who needs to kill Overlord ?" in channel 1 and received four "Me !" responses in about six seconds. Plenty of DK's leveling in Outland, should have no trouble filling up group quests for a while.
I've been playing with the talent calculator for a few days now and I can not settle on a 'tank' spec. Anyone at 80 tanking yet? I've never had a tank before and thus I really don't know what I should be looking for in the talents. I read on Elitist Jerks that something like 13/51/7 (I dont recall the exact numbres) is the 'best' until you can get enough avoidance for Bone Shield to stay up. Right now I am looking at a spec that makes the most use out of my 75ish+ blues that I could use to start tanking Heroics and maybe 10 man Naxx almost as soon as I hit 80. I leveled as Frost which I loved but this has lead me to want to try something else that might not be the optimal tanking spec. Which on one hand I am fine with because the game is about enjoyment for me and on the other I don't want my gimp spec to be what hampers my groups into multiple wipes. So here is something that to me, an unknowledgable tank brain, looks decent enough that stays away from deep frost. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2055301032000300000000000003050500133032000321000000000025202030100100000000000000000
I know I am missing many things in this build like Imp 2h just to name one. The main reason I went with something like the above is for the two Stam+ talents which I hope will make up the difference in my gear and allow me to Gem for Defense until I am at the cap. Then again I don't know if it would be worth it to skip going for those two talents and focus more on talents that would give me better TPS or maybe a little more magic avoidance.
Anyway, feel free to tell me everything wrong with that spec
Well that's a pretty wonky build for a tank to be honest. You're missing a 36 point tanking talent (there's one in each tree), and you've ignored every talent that reduces incoming magic damage. I don't know where to go with this build to fix it, but I can tell you that outbreak in the unholy tree is pretty useless.
Ok, now that i have some experience with my DK, I have made some 80 builds:
Unholy PvP: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Absolutely, it does about half it's health in damage.
Is that damage modified by anything? Can it crit? Haven't checked lately, but roughly how much health does a Ghoul have?
It is based entirely on the HP of the ghoul, which can be increased with your gear and some talents, as well as buffs. My ghoul has like 11k hp unbuffed and it hits for like 3k with teh explode. It's all shadow dmg if I recall, so no armor reductions. It crits for 1.5x damage (sadly, no double dmg like ours). So, it does a significant amount of dmg. I usually stun someone with the ghoul and then blow them up.
First up: Cruel's Intentions. I'm a 61 Unholy DK. Feasible or 'ahahaha no'?
Wait until 62 - ALL group quests are soloable in HFP at 62, though I did do the Demoniac Scryer and The Foot of the Citidel ones at 61. The spell you get at 62 that reduces all damage by half for 12 seconds is enough to win most things in that area - besides the fact you can interrupt his spell casting every time. Of course, I did this as blood spec so ymmv.
In the basic DK gear, I can hit 25% avoidance pretty easily. Statistically, that means I'm likely to get at least one dodge/parry per bone shield, boosting the duration to 10 seconds-ish without the glyph. It's going to be stripped away at fairly the same rate until you get into really high amounts of avoidance. 25-30% avoidance isn't exactly a laughable amount.
12 seconds (with glyph and the assumption of one avoided attack) of frontloaded mitigation plus 12 seconds of mitigation after icebound fortitude. With that in mind, it's essentially a shield wall that you can frontload.
Everyone has 10 seconds of bone shield, without the glyph, no matter what because of the 2 second cooldown on charges being eaten. It just goes up from there.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Edit: After doing some googling, it's true. Wow, I never read that on the tooltip... How long does it take for it to explode? Seems like a pretty nice chunk of damage if you're getting overwhelmed or something.
We've talked about it, and I don't know about pvp, but I think it's pretty crappy for pve. You spend one talent point on explosion which is only useable every 5 minutes(or less, if you invest yet more points into night of the dead), which uses an unholy rune, and two GCDs after getting your ghoul back.
Edit: Whoops, 8 seconds for bone shield, but I just wanted to reiterate the minimum duration part.
So, Glyphs. Unlike alot of classes, our choices can actually be difficult.
For minor glyphs, I'd say Pestilence and Horn of Winter are a must. The extra range on pestilence is SO awesome. Beyond that, I'm unholy so I usually grab Death's Embrace as the 3rd one, to make my healing of my ghoul cheaper.
For Major, I'd say Death Strike is the best by a good margin, for PvE anyway. Just incredible.
I think I'll round it out with D&D glyph and the last one I'm not sure on yet. Depends what I end up doing more of. If it's DPS, Scourge Strike. If it's tanking, Bone Shield. I've been thinking about the Ghoul glyph too.
Also, I finally figured out the purpose of the Scourge Strike glyph. And frankly, this thing should be a HUGE boost to an Unholy DPS DK. The idea is to let you skip your disease re-application that you do every 2 rotations. So you go:
Yeah, I now consider glyph of scourge strike to be far and away the best pve unholy glyph. That's the only one I'm sure about having at 80. I'd love to have death strike still, depending on what I'm doing. In theory, if I was dpsing in instances, I could rely on my healer and bone armor/IBF for survival. For slots two and three it could be any two of Death Strike, Icy Touch, Ghoul, Death and Decay, Bone Armor. It will really depend what the lvl 80 instances are like.
Septus on
PSN: Kurahoshi1
0
FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
Holy Moley I just looked that up. The Glyph of Icebound Fort means that DK's have an instant 50%/12-second damage reduction with a 1-minute cooldown !!?? How did this make it through beta ? It must surely be nerfed some time soon.
Holy Moley I just looked that up. The Glyph of Icebound Fort means that DK's have an instant 50%/12-second damage reduction with a 1-minute cooldown !!?? How did this make it through beta ? It must surely be nerfed some time soon.
What's the Glyph got to do with it?
I mean, really, who's having Runic Power issues?
I suppose the glyph is kinda useful, but I'd rather take other shit since the cost is basically nothing. I was using it for like 4 levels till I realized it actually cost runic power.
Bone Shield + D&D + Death Strike I think for my tanking.
Holy Moley I just looked that up. The Glyph of Icebound Fort means that DK's have an instant 50%/12-second damage reduction with a 1-minute cooldown !!?? How did this make it through beta ? It must surely be nerfed some time soon.
Uh, without the glyph, it's the same thing for a very low cost. DKs get cooldown mitigation abilities because they have relatively underpowered constant mitigation.
Septus on
PSN: Kurahoshi1
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Holy Moley I just looked that up. The Glyph of Icebound Fort means that DK's have an instant 50%/12-second damage reduction with a 1-minute cooldown !!?? How did this make it through beta ? It must surely be nerfed some time soon.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
To be fair, it could last as long as 18 seconds versus 20 for unbreakable, which is worse, and bone shield could last as briefly as 8 seconds.
I still don't think the runic power issue is important anywhere but pvp, and even there, I hesitate to call the ability overpowered yet.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
To be fair, it could last as long as 18 seconds versus 20 for unbreakable, which is worse, and bone shield could last as briefly as 8 seconds.
I still don't think the runic power issue is important anywhere but pvp, and even there, I hesitate to call the ability overpowered yet.
I could see it being useful in PVP. Rogue stuns you, you break with trinket then pop icebound to be immune to stuns for 12 seconds. I guess in most situations like that the rogue would just vanish, but if you had no RP, you'd have to land something before you could hit Ice fort. I'm pretty sure it's off the GCD anyways though, so it's not really all that big of an advantage.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
To be fair, it could last as long as 18 seconds versus 20 for unbreakable, which is worse, and bone shield could last as briefly as 8 seconds.
I still don't think the runic power issue is important anywhere but pvp, and even there, I hesitate to call the ability overpowered yet.
I thought I went over this, but isn't the minimum for bone shield 6 seconds? 4 charges with three intervals of 2 seconds in between you losing them. Doesn't the protection go away immediately when the last charge goes?
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Which means that it's always available, no ? You must be in combat to build up Runic Power, but with the Glyph it becomes an Instant that's always "On". Great stuff.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
To be fair, it could last as long as 18 seconds versus 20 for unbreakable, which is worse, and bone shield could last as briefly as 8 seconds.
I still don't think the runic power issue is important anywhere but pvp, and even there, I hesitate to call the ability overpowered yet.
I thought I went over this, but isn't the minimum for bone shield 6 seconds? 4 charges with three intervals of 2 seconds in between you losing them. Doesn't the protection go away immediately when the last charge goes?
See, this is why I'm not good at maths.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
The point of using Bone Shield as a front loaded mitigation ability is that it lasts 300s unless you are hit. Icebound and Unbreakable last 12 and 20 respectively. Not that it matters much, as the cooldowns are all low, but if you want to pop one before you run in to a boss, Bone Shield seems like the logical choice, just in case your healer is like "No no wait, I forgot to buff" or some other lame reason that you can't run in right as you hit the ability.
This probably only matters to me, as an ex-Warrior, because I have nightmares about all the times I would pop Blood Rage to run in to a fight, only to have someone stop us for ten seconds while they cast a last second buff or some such.
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I would rate Zangermarsh up there as well. If you know an efficient order to follow in Zanger, you can go out and complete 15-20 quests before doing a turn in pass. Much better than say, Terrokar, where everything is all over the place.
Right, I understand all that, and that's how I use it. That said, I still think Unbreakable Armor is going to be better for a low avoidance tank. With low avoidance, Bone Shield is going to get stripped very very fast, you definitely won't get a long duration usage out of it. The higher your avoidance, the larger of a "bridge" it gives you between Icebound's.
If you have the glyph of bone sheild it gets another charge too, so it lasts a little bit longer. An all around great spell. If you're fighting something with magic, anti-magic shell or anti-magic zone increase that damage reduction time even more.
Yeah, this is true. But in my level 77 gear, spec'd as an unholy tank, I've got 15% dodge, and 25% parry (with blade barrier up). I'm not dripping with avoidance, but that's really not that bad.
the build is here: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVGV00G0bZGMxtI0doGoq0s
The idea is to get as much synergy as possible between Blood and Frost, while picking up both Abomination's Might and Improved Icy Talons for raid buffs. The synergy comes from picking up as many Blood Strike boosting talents from both trees as possible, as well as fueling Frost Strikes with the runic power generating talents from Blood. The tradeoff is that I don't get either tree's 10% damage 5-pointer, and pass on some good Blood talents to go deeper into Frost.
That said, the boosts to Blood Strike are substantial:
Subversion - 9% Crit to BS
Bloody Strikes - 18% BS damage and 60% BS bonus damage
Blood of the North - 15% BS Damage
Chilblains + Glyph of Blood Strike - +20% BS damage
Annihilation - +3% melee special crit
Guile of Gorefiend - +60% BS Crit damage
I don't know how stacked bonuses like that are calculated to do the math, but I plan on putting some time on the training dummies at 80 and WWS parsing the results, because right now it seems like my Blood Strikes are doing as much or slightly more damage on average than my Obliterates or Frost Strikes.
My current rotation while soloing is IT/PS (depending on if it's a ranged pull), BSx2, Oblit, FS. This generates Death Runes that I don't usually use, as BS is doing roughloy the same or better damage than Oblit, for half the runes. I'm running Unholy Presence, as I found I was losing more time to the GCD than I was waiting for runes to come off cooldown with no RP to Frost Strike with. The only time I change it up is if my health starts to get low or my RP fills up, at which point I'll use the Death Runes for a DS or Oblit, to give me GCD space for an extra Frost Strike.
Has anyone else tried a similar build, or can anyone see something glaringly wrong with this? It's a fun build so far, damage seems good, and I do like that it gives both the 10% AP buff and the 20% melee haste buff.
In the basic DK gear, I can hit 25% avoidance pretty easily. Statistically, that means I'm likely to get at least one dodge/parry per bone shield, boosting the duration to 10 seconds-ish without the glyph. It's going to be stripped away at fairly the same rate until you get into really high amounts of avoidance. 25-30% avoidance isn't exactly a laughable amount.
12 seconds (with glyph and the assumption of one avoided attack) of frontloaded mitigation plus 12 seconds of mitigation after icebound fortitude. With that in mind, it's essentially a shield wall that you can frontload.
Again, not debating how good Bone Shield is. It's an amazing spell. Just saying that I think until you hit ~50% avoidance (which, btw, any raid tank will have. My level 70 warrior in T4/T5 gear has 52%), Unbreakable Armor will probably do more good for you, except in the a fore mentioned front load case, where Bone Shield obviously shines.
Unholy PvP:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0000000000000000000000000003022300100000000000000000000230232300023114253151003133151&glyph=011709040605
Glyph of SS is there so that I have a chance for diseases in the midst of the chaos and confusion during battle. Anti-magic bubble is there to give a large window of magic invulnerability. DnD one is there for the clutch win, coming out ahead because someone got feared mid-cast. In group PvP, it'll pretty much assure that one person on the other side gets really pissed off.
The strategy is to stay alive, keep my partner(s) alive, and to cause confusion. Anti-magic zone will allow my allies to heal me back up and make any caster in the area want to run the fuck out. Coupled with chains and deathgrip, this should fluster the opponent enough to cause them to make mistakes and give us an easy kill.
Frost PvP:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0100000000000000000000000003022505130032110321235131351032232000000000000000000000000&glyph=010511040605
Same with Anti-Magic Shell. Chains of Ice glyph is there so I can use that over Icy Touch in PvP when I really, really need to (since it will also cause frost fever). The icebound glyph is there so that I can attach it to a PvP trinket macro against rogues. I'll pop out of their CS and watch their KS hit the air, and I root and rape their ass til kingdom come.
This build is more about CC utility. Slowing, snaring, freezing the opponents so that my allies can beat them down. The 10 second freeze is amazing, and will force the opponent to either burn their long CDs to break out, or sit there and take it as diseases eat away at them and their allies get gangbanged. I'm leaning toward this build for now, because of the amount of control freezing, chilling, and rooting provides, as well as the 100% free interrupt. The only thing I may change is the points in tier 1 unholy, if I don't use DC at all due to frost strike, then I'll just go all for the dodge.
EDIT: And on second thought, I might want to get the extra wiggle-room from runic mastery so I can burn through rune-strikes and frost-strikes and not have to worry about hungering cold.
Impurity is a shit talent that adds a whopping 2.5% increase to the coefficient for 5 points. If you're pvping in any serious capcitiy, you should grab the speed boost aura for the entire party. Also, you should get Corpse Explosion and set a macro to blow up your Ghoul pet, which will net you a shitload of aoe damage sicne it causes the ghoul to use the Explode ability, which isnt on the pet bar and causes it to use the same spell you get when you die and res as a ghoul.
Ya, the one that does like 5k crits to everyone. It scales with the pets HP, which means it scales with your gear and is a great fuck you bomb if the ghoul / you are dying. Instant make a new ghoul if it's not on cooldown and you can do it again for a quick double aoe bomb or just once and keep the pet on the second go.
Id drop Black Ice and fill out Toughness since you wont be doing much frost dmg to warrant 3 points and less snare time / more armor will be far more useful.
As for Blood Caked Blade, I find it's too low a proc rate for a minimum dmg upgrade to your auto attack. If it could proc off our Strikes, I'd be all for it, but once every 3.5 seconds or so and a 30% chance at that is a bit low for my liking in pvp, but there aren't too many other options I guess. I usually get Outbreak since I use Plague Strike, Pestilence and Blood Boil far more often and more dmg for core skills is something i like.
And bone shield is amazing, yes, and it's easy to get enough avoidance to make it last a long time. I'm at ~37% + miss chance (must be what... 5% plus my defense mod of 4ish) without blade barrier, at level 76.
Are you kidding? You can sacrifice your ghoul pet with Corpse Explosion? I've never seen that anywhere and it sounds VERY overpowered if true.
Edit: After doing some googling, it's true. Wow, I never read that on the tooltip... How long does it take for it to explode? Seems like a pretty nice chunk of damage if you're getting overwhelmed or something.
Absolutely, it does about half it's health in damage.
Is that damage modified by anything? Can it crit? Haven't checked lately, but roughly how much health does a Ghoul have?
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2055301032000300000000000003050500133032000321000000000025202030100100000000000000000
I know I am missing many things in this build like Imp 2h just to name one. The main reason I went with something like the above is for the two Stam+ talents which I hope will make up the difference in my gear and allow me to Gem for Defense until I am at the cap. Then again I don't know if it would be worth it to skip going for those two talents and focus more on talents that would give me better TPS or maybe a little more magic avoidance.
Anyway, feel free to tell me everything wrong with that spec
Dat was poop !
The damage is based on the HP of the ghoul, so it can be modified by being a higher level and also things like Ravenous dead.
I think it can crit yeah.
Well that's a pretty wonky build for a tank to be honest. You're missing a 36 point tanking talent (there's one in each tree), and you've ignored every talent that reduces incoming magic damage. I don't know where to go with this build to fix it, but I can tell you that outbreak in the unholy tree is pretty useless.
It is based entirely on the HP of the ghoul, which can be increased with your gear and some talents, as well as buffs. My ghoul has like 11k hp unbuffed and it hits for like 3k with teh explode. It's all shadow dmg if I recall, so no armor reductions. It crits for 1.5x damage (sadly, no double dmg like ours). So, it does a significant amount of dmg. I usually stun someone with the ghoul and then blow them up.
Wait until 62 - ALL group quests are soloable in HFP at 62, though I did do the Demoniac Scryer and The Foot of the Citidel ones at 61. The spell you get at 62 that reduces all damage by half for 12 seconds is enough to win most things in that area - besides the fact you can interrupt his spell casting every time. Of course, I did this as blood spec so ymmv.
Did they have the Shredder with them? That dude's tough.
Of course I just tried the Hand again just now and kill him easily. Typical.
Everyone has 10 seconds of bone shield, without the glyph, no matter what because of the 2 second cooldown on charges being eaten. It just goes up from there.
We've talked about it, and I don't know about pvp, but I think it's pretty crappy for pve. You spend one talent point on explosion which is only useable every 5 minutes(or less, if you invest yet more points into night of the dead), which uses an unholy rune, and two GCDs after getting your ghoul back.
Edit: Whoops, 8 seconds for bone shield, but I just wanted to reiterate the minimum duration part.
For minor glyphs, I'd say Pestilence and Horn of Winter are a must. The extra range on pestilence is SO awesome. Beyond that, I'm unholy so I usually grab Death's Embrace as the 3rd one, to make my healing of my ghoul cheaper.
For Major, I'd say Death Strike is the best by a good margin, for PvE anyway. Just incredible.
I think I'll round it out with D&D glyph and the last one I'm not sure on yet. Depends what I end up doing more of. If it's DPS, Scourge Strike. If it's tanking, Bone Shield. I've been thinking about the Ghoul glyph too.
Also, I finally figured out the purpose of the Scourge Strike glyph. And frankly, this thing should be a HUGE boost to an Unholy DPS DK. The idea is to let you skip your disease re-application that you do every 2 rotations. So you go:
IT->PS->SS->BS->BS
SS->SS->SS
And then, if it procs, you can go:
SS->SS->BS->BS
again. And if it procs AGAIN:
SS->SS->SS
again. Which will be a big chunk of extra damage.
What's the Glyph got to do with it?
I mean, really, who's having Runic Power issues?
I suppose the glyph is kinda useful, but I'd rather take other shit since the cost is basically nothing. I was using it for like 4 levels till I realized it actually cost runic power.
Bone Shield + D&D + Death Strike I think for my tanking.
Uh, without the glyph, it's the same thing for a very low cost. DKs get cooldown mitigation abilities because they have relatively underpowered constant mitigation.
That's what it is without the Glyph...with the Glyph it just costs no Runic Power.
Why would you use it out of combat? It's a terrible front loaded mitigation ability, because it only lasts 12s. Use Bone Shield for that, if you are looking to front load mitigation.
To be fair, it could last as long as 18 seconds versus 20 for unbreakable, which is worse, and bone shield could last as briefly as 8 seconds.
I still don't think the runic power issue is important anywhere but pvp, and even there, I hesitate to call the ability overpowered yet.
I could see it being useful in PVP. Rogue stuns you, you break with trinket then pop icebound to be immune to stuns for 12 seconds. I guess in most situations like that the rogue would just vanish, but if you had no RP, you'd have to land something before you could hit Ice fort. I'm pretty sure it's off the GCD anyways though, so it's not really all that big of an advantage.
I thought I went over this, but isn't the minimum for bone shield 6 seconds? 4 charges with three intervals of 2 seconds in between you losing them. Doesn't the protection go away immediately when the last charge goes?
See, this is why I'm not good at maths.
This probably only matters to me, as an ex-Warrior, because I have nightmares about all the times I would pop Blood Rage to run in to a fight, only to have someone stop us for ten seconds while they cast a last second buff or some such.