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.
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.
Sorry if someone else saw this and said something, but you realise death runes can be used for anything right? Seems like you would want to use them on your powered up blood strikes, you know, like 4 in a row kinda thing? I might have misread this but seems like your saving death runes for stuff you dont get as much damage from.
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:
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.
And see, this is the problem that myself (and many others) have with it. It's that CHANCE thing.
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
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.
Sorry if someone else saw this and said something, but you realise death runes can be used for anything right? Seems like you would want to use them on your powered up blood strikes, you know, like 4 in a row kinda thing? I might have misread this but seems like your saving death runes for stuff you dont get as much damage from.
edit: whooops, didn't read the spec.
Your spec makes me cry.
It's interesting in theory, but Blood Strike just doesn't scale as well as Heart Strike, or really anything else. All of those talents that buff Blood Strike also buff Heart Strike, so it seems strange to work so hard to get it there.
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?
Yeah, but if that's your math, there are another couple seconds before the target's next swing.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
The only issue where you'd have a serious 'decision' to make would be if your diseases had less than 3 seconds remaining. What you'd do is 'pool' runes as your diseases tick down, so that you scourge strike, and can immediately either refresh them manually or scourge strike again. With a 25% chance to refresh them, this should hardly ever be an issue.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
The only issue where you'd have a serious 'decision' to make would be if your diseases had less than 3 seconds remaining. What you'd do is 'pool' runes as your diseases tick down, so that you scourge strike, and can immediately either refresh them manually or scourge strike again. With a 25% chance to refresh them, this should hardly ever be an issue.
Exactly. Just watch your disease timers. SS uses the EXACT same runes as IT + PS, so it's always a decision of one or the other. If your diseases are about to fall off/aren't up, you IT + PS. If not, SS again. Repeat till shit be dead.
And see, this is the problem that myself (and many others) have with it. It's that CHANCE thing.
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
But you don't let chance screw you up. You don't hit a target with no diseases on it hoping that it will proc. Once your diseases are up, you keep using SS, as long as diseases are present on the target, and if it refreshes, great, if not, you hit SS with one second left on the diseases, then don't use it again, and switch to PS/IT afterwards. I think it's a bad idea for any DK to actually use a set rotation, and should instead focus on priority abilities, in which case you have to keep an eye on disease durations anyways while you're dumping runic power etc.
You mean killing machine? I probably would not take killing machine with a 2 hander frost spec, there's just not enough white swings for the return for a 5 point talent.
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
The only issue where you'd have a serious 'decision' to make would be if your diseases had less than 3 seconds remaining. What you'd do is 'pool' runes as your diseases tick down, so that you scourge strike, and can immediately either refresh them manually or scourge strike again. With a 25% chance to refresh them, this should hardly ever be an issue.
Exactly. Just watch your disease timers. SS uses the EXACT same runes as IT + PS, so it's always a decision of one or the other. If your diseases are about to fall off/aren't up, you IT + PS. If not, SS again. Repeat till shit be dead.
Can you recommend a good disease timer? Something that will actually give a warning or at least a numerical countdown timer when the disease is ticking? I dont like the clock thing that the standard UI has. I havnt played since... 2.2 when afflicted was big.
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
The only issue where you'd have a serious 'decision' to make would be if your diseases had less than 3 seconds remaining. What you'd do is 'pool' runes as your diseases tick down, so that you scourge strike, and can immediately either refresh them manually or scourge strike again. With a 25% chance to refresh them, this should hardly ever be an issue.
Exactly. Just watch your disease timers. SS uses the EXACT same runes as IT + PS, so it's always a decision of one or the other. If your diseases are about to fall off/aren't up, you IT + PS. If not, SS again. Repeat till shit be dead.
Can you recommend a good disease timer? Something that will actually give a warning or at least a numerical countdown timer when the disease is ticking? I dont like the clock thing that the standard UI has. I havnt played since... 2.2 when afflicted was big.
Hehe, I use teh default UI, so I'm not the person to ask.
shryke on
0
GrathI'm a much happier person these daysRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited November 2008
Runewatch is awesome
I changed my spec again (yes I had 45g respecs before i hit 80) and I really like it. I fought three players and popped AoD+EG at full runic power and managed to break 3500 dps and kill them all.
Grath on
0
UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
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.
Sorry if someone else saw this and said something, but you realise death runes can be used for anything right? Seems like you would want to use them on your powered up blood strikes, you know, like 4 in a row kinda thing? I might have misread this but seems like your saving death runes for stuff you dont get as much damage from.
edit: whooops, didn't read the spec.
Your spec makes me cry.
It's interesting in theory, but Blood Strike just doesn't scale as well as Heart Strike, or really anything else. All of those talents that buff Blood Strike also buff Heart Strike, so it seems strange to work so hard to get it there.
Also, no Killing Spree =
No they don't. Glyph of Blood Strike (+20%) does not, and neither does Blood of the North (+15%) or Guile of Gorefiend (+60% crit damage). As for BS vs HS, at lv80 the base damage for BS is 50% weapon damage + 191/95.5 per disease, while HS is 60% weapon damage (20% higher) + 220/110.4 per disease (15.62% higher) putting the actual amount that HS beats BS by somewhere in between the two. The 20% from Glyph of Blood Strike covers that and a little bit, and the 15% from Blood of the North puts BS further ahead in this situation. Also, it would be impossible to get HS without giving up Frost Strike .
You seem to be looking at this as a Blood DPS build, when my goal is for more of a Frost build with enough Blood to make the Blood Strikes more than throwaways for the sake of Death Runes to spend on Obliterate. While none of my strikes will be as big as the primary strikes of a build that has specced for it, in theory this should mean that my secondary strikes hit hard enough as well to make up the difference.
As for your suggestion on Death Runes, I am using them, sorry for being unclear. They are Blood runes turned to Death Runes, and my statement was intended to be that I usually still use them as Blood Runes in most cases.
Also, as other people have pointed out, Killing Machine just isn't worth it.
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
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.
Sorry if someone else saw this and said something, but you realise death runes can be used for anything right? Seems like you would want to use them on your powered up blood strikes, you know, like 4 in a row kinda thing? I might have misread this but seems like your saving death runes for stuff you dont get as much damage from.
edit: whooops, didn't read the spec.
Your spec makes me cry.
It's interesting in theory, but Blood Strike just doesn't scale as well as Heart Strike, or really anything else. All of those talents that buff Blood Strike also buff Heart Strike, so it seems strange to work so hard to get it there.
Also, no Killing Spree =
No they don't. Glyph of Blood Strike (+20%) does not, and neither does Blood of the North (+15%) or Guile of Gorefiend (+60% crit damage). As for BS vs HS, at lv80 the base damage for BS is 50% weapon damage + 191/95.5 per disease, while HS is 60% weapon damage (20% higher) + 220/110.4 per disease (15.62% higher) putting the actual amount that HS beats BS by somewhere in between the two. The 20% from Glyph of Blood Strike covers that and a little bit, and the 15% from Blood of the North puts BS further ahead in this situation. Also, it would be impossible to get HS without giving up Frost Strike .
You seem to be looking at this as a Blood DPS build, when my goal is for more of a Frost build with enough Blood to make the Blood Strikes more than throwaways for the sake of Death Runes to spend on Obliterate. While none of my strikes will be as big as the primary strikes of a build that has specced for it, in theory this should mean that my secondary strikes hit hard enough as well to make up the difference.
As for your suggestion on Death Runes, I am using them, sorry for being unclear. They are Blood runes turned to Death Runes, and my statement was intended to be that I usually still use them as Blood Runes in most cases.
Also, as other people have pointed out, Killing Machine just isn't worth it.
Your build looks very promising. I think melee party members would love you to death for both imp icy veins and abom's might.
Give it a try, let us know!
frylocked on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
In raiding / boss fights, bosses will be immune to snares. Therefore you cant count on the 20% boost. (maybe it counts as a snare if you have chillbanes for the glyph even if the boss is immune?)
frylocked on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
In raiding / boss fights, bosses will be immune to snares. Therefore you cant count on the 20% boost. (maybe it counts as a snare if you have chillbanes for the glyph even if the boss is immune?)
Hrm. That's a good point, and one I hadn't considered. That takes 20% from my Blood Strikes right there.
Does anyone know if the Boss training dummies are considered snare-immune?
UnbrokenEva on
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
absolutely 100% sure that heart strike hits 20% harder on snared targets with glyph of blood strike equipped.
also pretty sure that yes, this never works on mobs immune to snares.
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
Get the talent that lets CoI apply Frost Fever and the Glyph that makes it do damage and you can use it instead of IT. Although that's more a PvP thing.
shryke on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Do you know for sure glyph of blood strike does not? It certainly doesn't say in the tooltip, but I could swear I've seen people state with certainty that they've seen it increase their heart strike damage by 20%.
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
Get the talent that lets CoI apply Frost Fever and the Glyph that makes it do damage and you can use it instead of IT. Although that's more a PvP thing.
That'd really limit your options in terms of spec, as endless winter is a 25pt talent and HS is 41pt. You'd have to go fairly deep into Frost with a lot of wasted talent points because you couldn't get Howling Blast or Frost Strike, and even then you'd have to choose between Improved Icy Talons or getting all 3 points in Might of Mograine.
UnbrokenEva on
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
necrosis oddities:
-necrosis damage fully counts rune strike as an autoswing. That is, if you rune strike crit for 5000, your necrosis will hit as though your normal swing just crit for 5000.
-necrosis "double dips" on some damage bonuses. If I swing for 1000, my 2/5 necrosis doesn't hit for 40, it hits for 50-51, because the bonus damage appears to benefit from Blood Gorged's 10% bonus in blood and Blood Presence's 15% base bonus. Not sure why 2 handed weapon specialization doesn't apply to this, maybe because necrosis counts as a "spell" like death coil and isn't a swing like say, scourge strike. ed: I should say the 2h spec thing is extra weird because spells like icy touch and frost fever seem to benefit from the 4% bonus.
-necrosis can't do overkill damage. Curse you, test dummies!
Heres the thing about Icebound Fortitude Glyph. It means you can front load STUN immunity if you know your about to get jumped by a Rogue. Think about that. If the Rogue gets the first strike in, you have no real option to avoid being stun locked in a lot of cases (that is if your alone, having a buddy near by can stop the rogue). But if it costs nothing you can spam it to get it off between stuns and mess up his combo.
Thats the real reason for that glyph. So you don't have to get in combat, and get 2 attacks off in order to cast it. You might not think building RP is hard, but in PVP, vs a rogue who gets a jump on you, its pretty damn hard.
Now, add 25% to each coefficient. No, 0.15 doesnt become .40, it becomes .1875. Lower coefficients, like Pestilence, UB, FF and BP and just about everything else get even less gain. If it was upping the amount of AP gained, like it implies, ya, it would be good. But for what it actually does, it's marginal at best. Maybe Blizz does more with it with full t7/8 gear, but it's not overly good for fresh 80s or even after a few heroics.
edit: while im not a theory master, I'm sure impurity is probably better than other taletns for a pure dps spec at that level and it will scale with gear, so it'll definitely be good at some point. Just hasn't impressed me with my use of it.
A couple of questions with macros, corpse explosion, and my ghoul:
1. Ok, so I set up a macro, if I press the button for it and my ghoul weren't out would I just use the corpse explosion ability as normal?
2. Is corpse explosion based of my ghoul's current hp or total hp? So if I'm fighting and my ghoul is about to die, would that cause massive damage or would it be most beneficial when it's at full health.
For a Frost DPS set for leveling, is it better to dual-wield with Nerves of Cold Steel and Killing Machine or to use two-handed weapons a majority of the time?
With my frost tanking spec in tank gear I just run around with a 2 hander. Any presence I'm in I still kill everything in a few seconds. I'm not sure it matters too much for leveling.
I guess for a dps spec, dual wielding might pull ahead at some point, but I'm not sure on any of the numbers.
I really like too much in Unholy to give it up, but any suggestions on whats good and what sucks???
Also- You can sac your OWN ghoul with corpse explosion?
Whats a macro like that look like?
/target pet
/cast corpse explosion
?
Cause man.....that makes night of the dead look like a pretty good talent now....
And even without that...summon ghoul...wait for cd...KABOOM...resummon..
its like a 5 min cd kickass aoe
I'd look at something a bit closer to this for unholy tanking, it's close to what I'm running with.
The major differences between the builds are my build drops desecration and impurity and the 2/5 necrosis from your build, it also drops the 2h weapon spec as well.
What it picks up over your build is maxed bladed armor, maxed toughness (these two work off eachother), 2/2 butcher (for the extra RP gain, it's actually a pretty solid talent to have, but if you find yourself with an excess of RP all the time anyways, you could put those two points elsewhere).
From the unholy tree I've also maxed out anticipation (that dodge is very important for tanking), dirge (the extra RP means you can cast more unholy blights, rune strikes, and death coils), and 5/5 rage of rivendare (this is important because it basically gives you 10% bonus damage and 5 expertise, that's pretty great). The build also has 2 points in night of the dead and unholy command. These aren't super important abilities, but you need to spend those points somewhere to get to the next tiers, so you basically have a few points to move around.
It also picks up on a pale horse for the convenience, and also the reduced stun and fear duration can have an impact when tanking if you don't have a shaman or priest.
The reason I skipped impurity is that it's 5 points for a very small gain on most spells, not really worth the talent points. I skipped desecration not because it's a bad talent (I had it for a long time), but because when tanking you might not always have time (either from the global cooldown, or from needing to use the unholy rune for something else) to refresh the desecration every 12 seconds (your diseases will be lasting 18 I think with the talent). It's not a bad spell but 5 points are a lot to spend on a talent that might not always be up, and is less useful on bosses that move around a lot. YMMV on that though.
No they don't. Glyph of Blood Strike (+20%) does not, and neither does Blood of the North (+15%) or Guile of Gorefiend (+60% crit damage). As for BS vs HS, at lv80 the base damage for BS is 50% weapon damage + 191/95.5 per disease, while HS is 60% weapon damage (20% higher) + 220/110.4 per disease (15.62% higher) putting the actual amount that HS beats BS by somewhere in between the two. The 20% from Glyph of Blood Strike covers that and a little bit, and the 15% from Blood of the North puts BS further ahead in this situation. Also, it would be impossible to get HS without giving up Frost Strike .
You seem to be looking at this as a Blood DPS build, when my goal is for more of a Frost build with enough Blood to make the Blood Strikes more than throwaways for the sake of Death Runes to spend on Obliterate. While none of my strikes will be as big as the primary strikes of a build that has specced for it, in theory this should mean that my secondary strikes hit hard enough as well to make up the difference.
As for your suggestion on Death Runes, I am using them, sorry for being unclear. They are Blood runes turned to Death Runes, and my statement was intended to be that I usually still use them as Blood Runes in most cases.
Also, as other people have pointed out, Killing Machine just isn't worth it.
Well, I'm really interested to see how this build does in a raid/group situation. Let me know, I find the kinda janky builds interesting.
And uh...I'm running 17/54 frost dps right now, and get plenty of Killing Machine (yay I gets it right!) procs. A lot.
Nothing says loving like a Rime/KM'd Howling Blast.
Ender on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
Alright, I've hit 62.5 last night and I moved into Zangarmarsh (just haven't done any questing there yet). There are still some abilities that I don't think I'm using correctly/in the right situations. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm Unholy specced, haven't delved into anything else in other trees but 2 points in Blood for Butchery.
Pestilence - Am I correct in believing that this ability's primary purpose is to spread the diseases on your current target to others in the vicinity? If so, using it on a single target is worthless, correct?
Death Strike - Ok, the tooltip says that it heals me for a percentage of the damage done by my diseases, but I find the heals from this thing being wildly inconsistent. Many times I'll get healed for ~300-500, other times it'll be 1300 or more, and none of these are crits (can the heals crit?). Are there certain diseases/debuffs I should make sure to have up in order to maximize the heals on this ability, or is this an ability for which I'm at the mercy of the RNG?
Blood Boil - Another "the more diseases you have up, the more effective this is" ability, yet it doesn't seem to be very powerful at all. Am I not using this correctly or is this ability just not that great?
Obliterate - Just got this ability last night, so I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to mess with it, but here's a question: in terms of situational use, should I use it like I do with Scourge Strike (or Plauge Strike, whichever one does the shadow damage, not the desecrate ability - I always get those two mixed up), as in "only when I can't use Death Strike or I'm at full health"?
Pestulence - i only use on multiple mobs. Hit one mob with icy touch and plauge strike. Then use pestulence, and it spreads to all other mobs, then howling wind or whatever is an AOE that does double damage when targets are infected with frost fever. So you do big aoe damage. You could use blood boil if you are blood spec.
Obliterate - this has to do with AP. Right now my howling wind does more damage, but with enough AP this could be pretty evil. It's a single target attack, you need both diseases up on the target to amplify damage, then it takes the diseases AWAY, so you need to re-apply them
Posts
And what would a macro for this look like? <_<
Magic Online - Bertro
Sorry if someone else saw this and said something, but you realise death runes can be used for anything right? Seems like you would want to use them on your powered up blood strikes, you know, like 4 in a row kinda thing? I might have misread this but seems like your saving death runes for stuff you dont get as much damage from.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Inscription
And see, this is the problem that myself (and many others) have with it. It's that CHANCE thing.
The last thing you want in any DK build, other than very specific examples (Rime/Sudden Doom sort of things) is chance. While it's great when it procs, and you can deal when it doesn't, it represents way too many possibilities of diseases dropping off when the shit hits the fan and you're not paying attention. I'd rather build a solid and viable spec around knowing exactly when my diseases are dropping, rather than try to pay attention to yet another thing.
I guess it's more of a personal decision, but there's too great a chance of it doing not much for you, and too great a chance of it pretty much just fucking you over in rotations. I'd rather have a glyph that did something I can count on.
edit: whooops, didn't read the spec.
Your spec makes me cry.
It's interesting in theory, but Blood Strike just doesn't scale as well as Heart Strike, or really anything else. All of those talents that buff Blood Strike also buff Heart Strike, so it seems strange to work so hard to get it there.
Also, no Killing Spree =
Yeah, but if that's your math, there are another couple seconds before the target's next swing.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The only issue where you'd have a serious 'decision' to make would be if your diseases had less than 3 seconds remaining. What you'd do is 'pool' runes as your diseases tick down, so that you scourge strike, and can immediately either refresh them manually or scourge strike again. With a 25% chance to refresh them, this should hardly ever be an issue.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Exactly. Just watch your disease timers. SS uses the EXACT same runes as IT + PS, so it's always a decision of one or the other. If your diseases are about to fall off/aren't up, you IT + PS. If not, SS again. Repeat till shit be dead.
But you don't let chance screw you up. You don't hit a target with no diseases on it hoping that it will proc. Once your diseases are up, you keep using SS, as long as diseases are present on the target, and if it refreshes, great, if not, you hit SS with one second left on the diseases, then don't use it again, and switch to PS/IT afterwards. I think it's a bad idea for any DK to actually use a set rotation, and should instead focus on priority abilities, in which case you have to keep an eye on disease durations anyways while you're dumping runic power etc.
Edit:
You mean killing machine? I probably would not take killing machine with a 2 hander frost spec, there's just not enough white swings for the return for a 5 point talent.
Hows this look for Unholy Tanking?
I really like too much in Unholy to give it up, but any suggestions on whats good and what sucks???
Also- You can sac your OWN ghoul with corpse explosion?
Whats a macro like that look like?
/target pet
/cast corpse explosion
?
Cause man.....that makes night of the dead look like a pretty good talent now....
And even without that...summon ghoul...wait for cd...KABOOM...resummon..
its like a 5 min cd kickass aoe
Can you recommend a good disease timer? Something that will actually give a warning or at least a numerical countdown timer when the disease is ticking? I dont like the clock thing that the standard UI has. I havnt played since... 2.2 when afflicted was big.
I would want toughness and anticipation maxed. Threat isnt so much the issue with DK tanking as is mitigation.
I would also find the points to max rage of rivendare.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Hehe, I use teh default UI, so I'm not the person to ask.
I changed my spec again (yes I had 45g respecs before i hit 80) and I really like it. I fought three players and popped AoD+EG at full runic power and managed to break 3500 dps and kill them all.
No they don't. Glyph of Blood Strike (+20%) does not, and neither does Blood of the North (+15%) or Guile of Gorefiend (+60% crit damage). As for BS vs HS, at lv80 the base damage for BS is 50% weapon damage + 191/95.5 per disease, while HS is 60% weapon damage (20% higher) + 220/110.4 per disease (15.62% higher) putting the actual amount that HS beats BS by somewhere in between the two. The 20% from Glyph of Blood Strike covers that and a little bit, and the 15% from Blood of the North puts BS further ahead in this situation. Also, it would be impossible to get HS without giving up Frost Strike .
You seem to be looking at this as a Blood DPS build, when my goal is for more of a Frost build with enough Blood to make the Blood Strikes more than throwaways for the sake of Death Runes to spend on Obliterate. While none of my strikes will be as big as the primary strikes of a build that has specced for it, in theory this should mean that my secondary strikes hit hard enough as well to make up the difference.
As for your suggestion on Death Runes, I am using them, sorry for being unclear. They are Blood runes turned to Death Runes, and my statement was intended to be that I usually still use them as Blood Runes in most cases.
Also, as other people have pointed out, Killing Machine just isn't worth it.
Your build looks very promising. I think melee party members would love you to death for both imp icy veins and abom's might.
Give it a try, let us know!
Interesting. Only problem is the limited number of snares available to a 41pt blood build. The only option is Chains of Ice, which is another frost rune and another spell in the rotation used to set up damage rather than deal it. The nice thing in this case is that 1pt Chilblains adds a snare to Icy Touch, so it's a free 20% boost to BS.
In raiding / boss fights, bosses will be immune to snares. Therefore you cant count on the 20% boost. (maybe it counts as a snare if you have chillbanes for the glyph even if the boss is immune?)
Hrm. That's a good point, and one I hadn't considered. That takes 20% from my Blood Strikes right there.
Does anyone know if the Boss training dummies are considered snare-immune?
also pretty sure that yes, this never works on mobs immune to snares.
pretty dandy for pvp, though.
Get the talent that lets CoI apply Frost Fever and the Glyph that makes it do damage and you can use it instead of IT. Although that's more a PvP thing.
That'd really limit your options in terms of spec, as endless winter is a 25pt talent and HS is 41pt. You'd have to go fairly deep into Frost with a lot of wasted talent points because you couldn't get Howling Blast or Frost Strike, and even then you'd have to choose between Improved Icy Talons or getting all 3 points in Might of Mograine.
-necrosis damage fully counts rune strike as an autoswing. That is, if you rune strike crit for 5000, your necrosis will hit as though your normal swing just crit for 5000.
-necrosis "double dips" on some damage bonuses. If I swing for 1000, my 2/5 necrosis doesn't hit for 40, it hits for 50-51, because the bonus damage appears to benefit from Blood Gorged's 10% bonus in blood and Blood Presence's 15% base bonus. Not sure why 2 handed weapon specialization doesn't apply to this, maybe because necrosis counts as a "spell" like death coil and isn't a swing like say, scourge strike. ed: I should say the 2h spec thing is extra weird because spells like icy touch and frost fever seem to benefit from the 4% bonus.
-necrosis can't do overkill damage. Curse you, test dummies!
Thats the real reason for that glyph. So you don't have to get in combat, and get 2 attacks off in order to cast it. You might not think building RP is hard, but in PVP, vs a rogue who gets a jump on you, its pretty damn hard.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
The coefficients for each spell are below and it wokrs as such:
The Attack Power coefficient allows Attack Power to act like Spell Power. For example:
Death Coil (Rank 5) causes 443 base damage, plus 15% of attack power.
A Death Knight with 2000 AP will do 443 + (2000 × 0.15) = 743 damage with Death Coil.
Blood Boil _________ 0.04
Blood Plague _______ 0.055
Bloodworms _________ 0.006 *
Corpse Explosion ___ 0.0475 **
Death and Decay ____ 0.0475
Death Coil _________ 0.15
Frost Fever ________ 0.055
Howling Blast ______ 0.1
Summon Gargoyle ____ 0.42 (Gargoyle Strike) ***
Icy Touch __________ 0.1
Pestilence _________ 0.04
Strangulate ________ 0.06
Unholy Blight ______ 0.013
Now, add 25% to each coefficient. No, 0.15 doesnt become .40, it becomes .1875. Lower coefficients, like Pestilence, UB, FF and BP and just about everything else get even less gain. If it was upping the amount of AP gained, like it implies, ya, it would be good. But for what it actually does, it's marginal at best. Maybe Blizz does more with it with full t7/8 gear, but it's not overly good for fresh 80s or even after a few heroics.
edit: while im not a theory master, I'm sure impurity is probably better than other taletns for a pure dps spec at that level and it will scale with gear, so it'll definitely be good at some point. Just hasn't impressed me with my use of it.
For a macro try
/cast [target=pet] Corpse Explosion
Haven't tried it though.
1. Ok, so I set up a macro, if I press the button for it and my ghoul weren't out would I just use the corpse explosion ability as normal?
2. Is corpse explosion based of my ghoul's current hp or total hp? So if I'm fighting and my ghoul is about to die, would that cause massive damage or would it be most beneficial when it's at full health.
Magic Online - Bertro
I guess for a dps spec, dual wielding might pull ahead at some point, but I'm not sure on any of the numbers.
I'd look at something a bit closer to this for unholy tanking, it's close to what I'm running with.
The major differences between the builds are my build drops desecration and impurity and the 2/5 necrosis from your build, it also drops the 2h weapon spec as well.
What it picks up over your build is maxed bladed armor, maxed toughness (these two work off eachother), 2/2 butcher (for the extra RP gain, it's actually a pretty solid talent to have, but if you find yourself with an excess of RP all the time anyways, you could put those two points elsewhere).
From the unholy tree I've also maxed out anticipation (that dodge is very important for tanking), dirge (the extra RP means you can cast more unholy blights, rune strikes, and death coils), and 5/5 rage of rivendare (this is important because it basically gives you 10% bonus damage and 5 expertise, that's pretty great). The build also has 2 points in night of the dead and unholy command. These aren't super important abilities, but you need to spend those points somewhere to get to the next tiers, so you basically have a few points to move around.
It also picks up on a pale horse for the convenience, and also the reduced stun and fear duration can have an impact when tanking if you don't have a shaman or priest.
The reason I skipped impurity is that it's 5 points for a very small gain on most spells, not really worth the talent points. I skipped desecration not because it's a bad talent (I had it for a long time), but because when tanking you might not always have time (either from the global cooldown, or from needing to use the unholy rune for something else) to refresh the desecration every 12 seconds (your diseases will be lasting 18 I think with the talent). It's not a bad spell but 5 points are a lot to spend on a talent that might not always be up, and is less useful on bosses that move around a lot. YMMV on that though.
Well, I'm really interested to see how this build does in a raid/group situation. Let me know, I find the kinda janky builds interesting.
And uh...I'm running 17/54 frost dps right now, and get plenty of Killing Machine (yay I gets it right!) procs. A lot.
Nothing says loving like a Rime/KM'd Howling Blast.
Pestilence - Am I correct in believing that this ability's primary purpose is to spread the diseases on your current target to others in the vicinity? If so, using it on a single target is worthless, correct?
Death Strike - Ok, the tooltip says that it heals me for a percentage of the damage done by my diseases, but I find the heals from this thing being wildly inconsistent. Many times I'll get healed for ~300-500, other times it'll be 1300 or more, and none of these are crits (can the heals crit?). Are there certain diseases/debuffs I should make sure to have up in order to maximize the heals on this ability, or is this an ability for which I'm at the mercy of the RNG?
Blood Boil - Another "the more diseases you have up, the more effective this is" ability, yet it doesn't seem to be very powerful at all. Am I not using this correctly or is this ability just not that great?
Obliterate - Just got this ability last night, so I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to mess with it, but here's a question: in terms of situational use, should I use it like I do with Scourge Strike (or Plauge Strike, whichever one does the shadow damage, not the desecrate ability - I always get those two mixed up), as in "only when I can't use Death Strike or I'm at full health"?
Obliterate - this has to do with AP. Right now my howling wind does more damage, but with enough AP this could be pretty evil. It's a single target attack, you need both diseases up on the target to amplify damage, then it takes the diseases AWAY, so you need to re-apply them
Death Strike is really consistant for me. I use it when i need some health and i know the mob isn't going to destroy me.