The Death Knight Thread

I know we're only two death knights but its considerably easier discussing theory on a forum than in game, and when you stumble across some new ideas its easier to just post it here than remember to tell the other dk next time you see him so here goes. I'll post some stuff when i get home

Please lock this thread, we all know playing a DK is just rolling your face over the keyboard.

Tepisor wrote:

Please lock this thread, we all know playing a DK is just rolling your face over the keyboard.

DKs are so OP, yesterday one killed me by walking into me.

Whine much guys? Theorycrafting ftw

here is what the cookie cutter 0/32/39 spec can do in action with a
IT>PS>HB>BS>BS>rp dump
IT>PS>HB>IT>IT>rp dump
repeat

rotation.

Respecced to it as well to try it out before they nerf Killing Machine, but im quite surely going for a DW spec after the patch as well. There's alot of talk about a 0/20/51 DW spec that gives me the bonus of both Killing Machine and adding 13% spell dmg to the raid That's definately a spec i will try after 3.0.8. Looks something like this. The most interesting thing about this spec is that you dont take Scourge Strike but instead rely on Icy Touch to deal your damage, while getting decent Plauge Strikes (glyphed and talented). If durandi applies the Icy Talons buff or we run with an Enh shammy this would be very viable for me.

Regarding the killing machine nerf: The proccing of KM appears to scale with haste. This means that you will get more KM procs in unholy pressence than in blood. Whether its worth it i dunno yet. But getting haste on gear is definately not a bad idea now.

Ok i tested my 0/32/39 now and was quite a clear improvement. With a blue main hand, only 397 sword skill and a rookie performance on rotation (havent tried it before) i still managed to beat my prev spec's dps by 30. Next project is to test 0/20/51 in the raid on wednesday. Gib epic mainhand!!!
17/0/54


0/32/39


oh also bear in mind that Necrosis doesnt work on training dummies and only hits for 1 most of the time so losing the damage from that.

Regarding the 0/32/39 spec after the patch tho i think its dead in a raid enviroment sadly. At least as we know it right now. We talked about how to interpret the Crypt/Ebon non-stacking post-patch and found out that after patch it will not be possible to apply Crypt to a target with Ebon on. This effectively means that 32/39 loses the 3rd disease, thereby losing some dmg on blood strike (minor loss) but also 30% dmg on all disease ticks (more severe). Those 3 points should be replaced as a minimum. An alternative is a 0/44/27 spec where you get Master of Ghouls in unholy and Frost Strike and Guile of Gorefiend in frost. This way you lose Desecration and bone shield (7% dmg) but gets 45% crit bonus on IT, BS and HB, as well as 15% more dmg on BS. Dps wise it seems to be well competeable with 32/39, especially with a full undead in the raid. The only major issue with the spec imo is the lose of Night of the Dead which is severe hit to your ghouls's survivability. One might consider dropping perma pet all together and go for 0/50/21 or a 0/45/26 build. I believe Tundra Stalker > Impurity but i have no math to back this up.

I intend to stay 32/39 as the results on ptr's still imply that its still better than 2h specs. Might change the spec to the 44/27, but will have to wait and see, it seems release of 3.0.8 is taking longer than expected.

Just for the record 32/39 rotation of yours is a bit off:
PS-IT-BS-BS-HB-DUMP
PS-IT-IT-IT-HB-DUMP

Not a big difference the major thing to keep in mind is to use km procs on hb, which you will have more chances of proccing in the first rotation, ofc if you get it before the bs, use hb, so that you can get another proc for the first it in next rotation. Same reasoning behind the last part of the rotation, use km procs on hb if possible. Another note, if rime procs remember that you should use another it. That you don't have the rotation quite under your skin yet is also visible in your recount, icy touch should be your second highest source (and hb dmg is a bit low usually around 16%), implying that you have used too many km procs on it.

EDIT: Ah saw now that you glancing blow are tremendously high, because of the 397 skill in swords, glancing blows is only 25% chance on bosses with full weapon skill. But the hb/it dmg is still off because of the above reasons.

Another thing.. remember your garg takes an image of your current ap and uses that as ap for its entire duration, so use it when unholy strength, trinkets and stuff like that procs, therefore i always keep pet dmg in my recount, to see its dps.

Dont know if you're already accounting this, but just to make sure that you now do

A nice source for dw dps tests:

DW blog

MMO-champion thread, some ok insights

Just did a little test as well, just to show what my percentages are (couldn't find a hc training dummy with health, so necrosis again not counted ):

I'm aware of the thing with KM procs wrongly used on IT. It's possible that it happens more with the rotation I used, dunno, but can't be that different from the other roration. Any proc gotten between the first and second HB will always go to IT, cause there's 3 ITs between these, regardless of which rotation is used, and the time between each HB should be the same in both rotations meaning you get the same number of KM procs.

Regarding rime, most theorycrafters suggest actually macroing HB and IT to cancelling the rime proc atm cause it's likely to fuck up your rotation by doing a rune flip (using the wrong runes for the wrong ability when having death runes, making your next rotation screwed). This will change in the patch tho when they remove the HB CD. It's true that using the proc will generate abit more dps, but there's a wide consensus that cancelling it will overall be more benefitial as it leaves you with a lot more time for things that really matters in the given fight, such as moving / interrupting etc. If you're able to do both tho, thats just awesome I'm not, at least not until i get more experience with the rotation. Which i won't get as im going for another spec :p