Spec review threadFollow

It doesn't make up for it though. With your build IT + PS is going to be about 600 dmg (without the disease dmg, which both builds will get) while an OB will hit for 1500+ and have a much higher chance to crit. That means for a normal 9 second or so rotation the rest of those talents you take in the Unholy tree need to add up to 100 DPS. Do they?

Another advantage to my build is after my first OB when I'm dumping RP (usually with 2 DCs) my diseases are still ticking for damage. Granted I probably only get 2 ticks extra out of them but that's still probably 400-500 dmg. 400-500 dmg over an 18 second rotation is 25 DPS.

So now your extra unholy talents need to add up to 125 DPS. I really don't think they do.

Just thought of this as I was about to post this reply. If I switch up my rotation a little bit I can guarantee 100% Abom's might uptime. With only 1 OB every 2 rune cycles, you can't do that. Granted if you have an enhance shaman in your group this isn't an issue (as they won't stack), but it's something to think about for 10-mans when you may not have that enhance shaman in the group.

Either one works. Neither is a DPS talent so it shouldn't effect your DPS in the long run.

I don't know if any of my talents are prevented from overkilling, so you may be able to test it on a boss level target dummy.

BTW, the boss level target dummies now start out with 733K HP so you should have no problem testing the DPS of any spec on them.

Edited, Oct 15th 2008 7:54pm by Bigdaddyjug

Yes BCB has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds right now. Lowers the actual proc rate to about 16% according to some people's tests.

Blue posts indicate it's a bug and it should be fixed with the release day patch.

Well, IMO, 5 talent points for only 5 % dodge, which doesn't even help against casters is a waste of talent points.
Against melees we already have : unbreakable armor, icebound fortitude, lichborne, not to mention the fact that frost death knights rape warriors and enhancement shamans/feral druids.

Even though our niche was supposed to be anti-caster, in all honesty, we are more vulnerable to caster classes and hunters, as our biggest weakness is kiting.
The first tier of unholy isn't THAT good for frost builds, but i'd rather take vicious strikes (frost still uses plague strike) and morbidity (increased DC dmg helps against kiters, with icy touch + howling blast + deathcoil frost death knights can still pump out respectable damage from range.

Also, it seems to me like runic power mastery would be must have (2 points, not 3.).
Frost strike is one of our biggest hitters, it's unblockable, can't be dodged (i think?) or parry'ed.
It can only be resisted, and goes through armor, yet still scales with weapon damage.
Because of that, I'd say froststrike will become a very powerfull skill in our ******** and one of the best on-command burst skills.

With 2 points in runic powermastery you can build up to 120 runic power, and then when the time is right, you can do 3 froststrikes in 3 seconds (as I'm gonna assume every dk in pvp will use unholy presence)
If we assume every froststrike will hit for about 2-3k (which it probably will, when we start to see more people in better gear then just the blue pvp gear)
That's 6-9k damage done in about 3 secs ( a bit longer, because of latency and all.)
And that's also assuming that none of those crit, which with km procs, deathchill or just a high crit rate isn't going to happen often.

Just explaining why I took these talents

Edit : for a pvp build I'd take On A Pale Horse over the blood talents, so this would be my new pvp build :
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jZGMxzGxdMGoAkstfMGh0b

2nd Edit: Also, I would never ever take rune tap over hungering cold.
An aoe 10 second CC that applies frost fever, doesn't break on disease damage and only has a 1minute cooldown.
A wicked talent for arena's.

Just for the people who don't know, it's probably a keylogger, don't click it!

i see your point. I am looking at an unholy ae tank levelling spec basically and i have a point I am not sure about talentwise. Would I be better off with 2/2 unholy aura and 3/3 wandering plague or 5/5 rage of rivendare or perhaps some combination thereof?

Blood leveling build:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqIcIcf0zzAoZfMhcx0o

Whatchoo think?
Once I dumped everything I wanted into Blood, I had no idea what else to get...

Also looking for a good solid example of blood and unholy raiding builds. I was thinking for blood raiding that picking up the Improved Icy Talons might be a nice touch into the Ice tree instead of some of the leveling goodies.

-T.

OK, I know pvp isn't really your thing, but I thinking of ultimately going with http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j0E0acZ0xZf0GcbfkxxaRcou for 2's with a mage. I threw it together in about 3 minutes just now, so it could use some tweaking. I'd love to hear advice from someone who's actually played the class though.

thanks for the advice! I've made the changes similar to what you've said and Each change makes sense now that someone's spelled it out for me.

1) Yeah, I was using the two necrosis points as filler because those extra 6 seconds just didn't seem all that important at the time. Of course, if I actually had ever played a DK, that might have been more clear.

2) Haven't had much time to play around with this one yet as I haven't figured out which point I will take from to finish this one off. There are a few candidates, but I'll get to that one later.

3) Why? Because I've not yet l2p a DK myself. Seemed like some extra parry would be a good thing to have, I wasn't thinking about the actual match. I know if I went up against a dk-mage comp I'd certainly focus fire on the mage, too. The mage is frost, btw, and a well played one. In fact, that, combined with your comments about the frost spec, I may have to drop this one altogether. The mage would make a decent decoy, and considering how he plays, he can survive long enough for me to take one of the other team out. I've seen frost dish out some big crits. You think that'd be a better combo? Maybe a frost w/ blood tap?

4) I couldn't agree more. I tend to think of each talent as it's max value, so I was seeing it as 5/5 bladed armor would be better than 2/2 and 3/3 of the alternatives. 3/5 and 2/2 works for me!



One question though, does the 13% magic damage on Ebon Plaguebringer affect the mage as well? Part of me says "duh, of course it will" but if it does, that talent seems overly awesome, not that I'll complain.

I think that's a fairly solid frost pvp build, I don't see anything wrong with it really.

Ok so to start off, im looking for some advice from beta testers not other theory crafters.

I made this spec mainly for PVP but will be using it for basic raiding until duel specs come out. how does it look for pvp am i missing any essential pvp talents? if so, what should i take away from to gain the essentials i am missing? also just for the sake of it what PVE essentials am i missing?

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMazZbZfMGI0botcq0ckut

also one more question does the movement speed increase for talenting unholy aura affect the DK as well as party members or just party memebers the description is unclear.

Edited, Oct 31st 2008 5:15pm by psychor

Quick question because it might affect what spec I choose to go. Does Voodoo Shuffle stack additively or multiplicatively with Toughness?