Mastery and Shadow Damage

Hi folks,
Just thought I'd throw out a question for some help. Currently, Im 3/8 Heroic raiding on my DK and Ive noticed my damage stagnating at a place Im not happy with. I've done plenty of pouring over my own parses and those of the bottom-end rankers in this class. I guess what it boils down to is this.
Yes, EJ gives stat priority of Haste>Mastery with Gurth for us. But to what degree am I losing damage by not giving Mastery its own priority?
Currently Im at 2619 (20.45%) Haste but only 1108 (14.18) Mastery.
Any help would be much appreciated.
My understanding is mastery has it's own priority...It's just low.

TMK the stat weights of an Unholy DK don't have any synergy like that of an elemental shaman (The more haste we have the more chances our mastery can proc, the more mastery we have the stronger having haste becomes). Therefore it's going to boil down to a lot of straightforward math. Which stat gives the best DPS? Stat X? Ok, stack it. What gives the least amount of DPS? Stat Y? Ok, avoid it like the plague then. If you sacrifice stat X for stat Y you have less of X which gives more dps than Y.

The only time I could imagine sacrificing haste for mastery is if you wanted to stay at a haste breakpoint, and even then I'd imagine having faster rune regeneration to outweigh that, although I could be wrong about that. In my light reading of Unholy it sounds like there are 2 breakpoints that exist with UF and your ghoul/Gargoyle.

I could be wrong since I'm just dipping my toes into Unholy now (Was frost until I got gurth), and I don't play this DK much.
Make sure to empty all your RP and pop AMS during magic heavy sections. this will allow you to spam DC for a short amount of time. Best of all the runic corruption's buff time stacks.

should i stack stam

ok so i have a 394 il 195 hp unbuffed my shields are at 200% 300 when my trinket proc should i now or at any point start going for stam gems rather than mastery gems

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azgalor/Lanexx/simple
Only reason I've found a good use for more stam other than whats on gear is H Yor, but that's just switching to 2 stam trinkets instead of 1 stam, 1 mastery.
reg mode ds is a joke to tank but i noticed the times i was hit on heroic morchok had a few oh !@#$ moments is why i was asking
If you have no problems living until your next DS, you don't need more stamina. If you do, then you need more stamina.

The amount of stamina required varies severely from player-to-player.
oh ok well i have alot of oh !@#$ moments so i might just do that
Might want to have a look at your rotation and priority then if you have a lot of those.

Does your guild log your raids?

Frost VP choices...

CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT
CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT

...

Awesome. My ret pally loves it, and my DK wants to shoot myself. Not to mention all the new dungeon loot seems to be riddled with crit too. I CAN'T MAKE IT GO AWAY

/sigh
Could you be anymore annoying?
WALL OF CRIT TEXT CRITS MORE THAN REGULAR WALL OF TEXT!

wtf...wheres my faceroll button?

Sup. I mainly pve'd on this toon when cata launched as blood, then tried a little pvp as frost before shelving him for my priest/rogue/warrior a few months back.

i lvld to 85 blood and never even had an UH spec till today. Im likeing the control of uh with focus silence/pet stun and want to pickup this character again, but im kind of lost on the ramp up to dark transform/erw burst.

im specd into RoR cuz i remember seeing something from Reinhart awhile ago saying this was the best dps choice for pvp. so im building rp with plauge/IT/dnd, etc but it seems like it takes entirely too long to setup a kill.

im figuring wait for transform @ full rp with runes up, DT, necro x2, gargoyle, erw, necro x2, dc to dump rp

idk...i feel like im doing it terribly wrong.

renamed cuz no replys.
Negative, mi amigo. You don't want to build RP with Plague Strike or Icy Touch, in fact you shouldn't really bother to use Icy Touch in PvP at all, since Chains of Ice applies Frost Fever. Use CoI and Plague Strike to apply diseases, that's it. Use Death Coil as soon as you have the RP in order to proc Runic Corruption -> get runes faster = get RP faster. If diseases are already up, try to use your Blood & Frost runes on Festering Strike to proc Reaping. Once you've lined up some Death runes and your two UH runes, you can stack Necrotic Strike. Once you've used 5 DCs, Dark Transformation will pop. Continue stacking Necrotics, pop your Gargoyle, Mind Freeze a heal, Strangulate your target, use your ghoul-stun on them, stack some more Necrotics, wave goodbye.

The RoR build works just fine, all it means is you will use Scourge Strike more often for the up-front damage when a) the enemy healer is incapacitated or b) there is no healer.

Unholy's damage has a big ramp-up time, you don't burst the way Frost does. You do, however, have the ability to put out sustained, consistent damage/pressure that builds over time, and you "burst" when you pop DT and your Gargoyle.
Gotcha...it was kind of an awakening coming off frosts faceroll rotation and the on-demand type of burst im used to with rogue/priest/warrior.

do i glyph ss? How is my uh spec/glyph setup?
It was an awakening.. O:? Lol.

I played as Unholy for months before switching back to Frost. You may feel pretty
cool for having a slightly harder "rotation" and doing the same dps, I guess
that's up to you.

I love Death Knights.

They're really good at this game.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/burning-blade/Vynlorastus/simple
Let's make a thread about one bad Death Knight and make it seem like all Death Knights are like him.

0/10
Rather defensive there buddy.
I love hunters.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldaman/Purplelady/simple
Man, that gear is AMAZING
xD
Wish I still had a Carrot on a Stick. Man, I'm jealous.
This thread is now about the math behind π.

(π > cake) = (cake < π)

cheesecake ≈ π

cake =/= cheesecake

Therefore,

cheesecake > cake

Any questions?

PS: Yes, I am hungry.
A decent DK is a diamond in the ruff..

A great DK is the needle in the Hay.Everyone has a Dk..
Diamond in the ruff? o_o
He means canine.
RUFF RYDERZ! WHERE MAH DAWGZ AT?!
I thought the forum community collectively stopped linking other people's characters before Wrath launched.

This is like a trip through a time capsule.

Need Heroic Blackhorn (Specific Advice)

I switch back to frost for heroic blackhorn 25. This is the only fight that I am dpsing so i want specific advice on what i can do to improve my burst on twilight drakes, while still cleaving slayer/dreadblade if possible. Would it be more beneficial to have a bit more mastery like I do now, get even more mastery, or reforge into haste? Again, this is the only fight that I'm dpsing, so if it would benefit me to change my spec/reforges around, I'm okay with it. Thanks!
More mastery is just going to help with your cleaves really. Getting more mastery and less haste probably wont help burst on the drakes. Unless your masterfrost, in which case more mastery is always better and will raise your singe target dps on the drakes. I like around 2k-2100 haste and the rest into mastery for that fight following the standard haste frost rotation.

What was your dk in life?

being a writer of science fiction and the like it is only natural for me to supercede the parameters of the game and wonder what my toon might have been before becoming a dk. of course, unholy would be either a warlock or hunter, but in this case i'm a 2h frost so i think of my guy as actually a ret pally underneath, and he had another name, like lionheart or braveheart, or something less corny, thast died with him when he died and was changed into a dk. i suppose generically they were probably all warriors of one spec or another. i figure dw would obviously be fury warrior, or a rogue type.
For the brief amount of time I flirted with RP, my DK had been a Sunwalker/Paladin in his previous life (I changed his race to Orc when I quit RP for the significantly better racial benefits, he was originally a Tauren). I felt that the Lich King would have enjoyed the cruel twist of irony by turning him into his polar opposite - from a Sunwalker into an Unholy Death Knight - thereby converting his prowess in powers of Holiness and the Light into prowess in powers of Unholiness and Shadow. Despite the official lore behind Death Knights, I felt that Warlocks were simply too close to the darkness in the first place, and that turning them into DKs wouldn't be a huge difference for them, relatively speaking. On the other hand, turning a Paladin into a Death Knight would be the ultimate irony and the ultimate display of the Lich King's power, as it would show just how deeply the Lich King could mutilate and mold one's spirit, thereby causing the formerly-Holy being the most spiritual and psychological suffering and torment. Just my two cents.
I was never born, I was never reborn... I just was.
The guy behind a New York newspaper stand. How i ended up in Azeroth is mind boggling even to me.
A tax accountant
i come up with the back story with my friends dwarf paladin. we were brothers of the alliance (both paladins) fighting to help in each great war but during the attack of the scourge (pre lk) my dwarf was killed and brought back by arthas. now from death regaining my last shred of humanity i regain control and once again fight by the side of my brother.
I was a Warrior, and a Knight in the Stormwind Army. I saw battles from the Siege of Blackrock to the Opening of the Dark Portal and the retaking of the Sunwell. I led counter-offensive against the Undead during the Scourge Invasion, and fell to a legion of abominations and carrion champions. Then, reborn, I wrought the will of the Lich King, and led his machinations in Undeath.
being the half brother to Legendwolf and Viciouswolf I was always the outcast, shunned by my family. after the Battle of Gilneas where I watched not in horror as Legendwolf did as his parents were murdered I was the one who killed them. if not for Viciouswolf I would have also killed Legendwolf. in life as in death I was and still am cold and heartless filled with rage for my half brothers.
I was that level 1 warrior who danced on the mailbox until a For the Horde raid swept through town.


:(
rofl wow
Leuts here was one of those hunters up int the Grizzly Hills prior to her death.
War mage.
I maintained a notice board filled with pictures of cats with silly bits of dialogue written on them.
In life Haavik was a brutal mercenary who slaughtered anything and everything for a price. He didnt really care about the money however, the act of severing limbs and claiming the sternums of his still screaming foes was reward enough. Wherever he went, life ended, farms were burned and the land salted, children were force fed to livestock, men were beaten to death with the corpses of thier own wives and the valleys became seas of blood with roads acting as river channels for the sanguine remnants of the innocent. Agent of the Scourge was simply another job with irreversable fringe benefits and The Lich King was just another client whos debt came due. Now released from the Lich King's control, Haavik is free once again to pick up where his life left off; arm deep in the viscera of anyone he can get his claws on.

"The living exist to die and I am here to ensure they do just that. What on earth would the denizens of Azeroth do in my absence? Laugh? Sing? Grow old? NOT ON MY WATCH!"
"I'm a Doctor, Jim...not a miracle worker!!!"
The name Soferius is just a cover to keep the Alliance leadership off my back in Life I was Lord Aiden Perenolde of Alterac, it was I who betrayed the Alliance to the Horde back in the second war, my body was preserved by my children until it was found by the Scourge when they came to Alterac to kidnap Anveena Teague, it was not long after that my body was brought to Acherus and Revived as one of the Lich King's Death Knight's since then I have gone by the name of Soferius Iceveins Avatar of Frost.
Life Knight.






Duh.
She was a cheap !@#$ that spread diseases all over the place.

Not much has changed.......

I was that level 1 warrior who danced on the mailbox until a For the Horde raid swept through town.


:(

lololol this wins

Did you keep your starter gear?

Deleted by Spekle
doesnt matter anymore if you banked it or not as you can rebuy the set from a vendor at acherus.
i personally change my transmog depending on my mood so someday i might pick one of the two. probably green starting set though

unholy or frost for arenas

hi i have been testing but cant seem to find what is better frost 2h frost duel wield or unholy for arenas or 1v1
its a preference thing. frost is for rbgs and arenas, and unholy is strictly arenas for the most part.

there is no clear cut better spec. depends on what playstyle you like and the comp youre running.

Trinket Setup for Heroic Warmaster

I've got a slew of trinkets (no Pride though). Any ideas what's best? I end up tanking 4 of the 6 melee while the warrior runs around helping with soaks so do take that into consideration. :) Thanks
The jawbone of a saint. A priest blessing your computer wouldn't hurt. Re-roll a shield tank for optimum performance.

Oh, you mean for your character. Stam trinks I think. P2 hurts but it's not awful, problem is you can't absorb what's going to kill you. Then again I don't heal.

SPriest/UHDK/HPal

Hey everyone, a Shadow Priest joined my guild recently so we decided to try a Shadow Priest/Holy Pally/Unholy DK (me) Shadowcleave-ish set up in 3v3. We started off pretty shaky and ran a number of losses at first, but we finally got into a groove of sorts and started winning the majority of the matches by the end of the night.

I enjoyed the comp, and I was wondering if anyone else has any experience with this set up. If so, do you have any strategies/tactics/suggestions? As the Unholy DK, I tend to have the most success just jumping on the enemy healer and taking them out as quickly as possible (with the SPriest Mana Burning them when he can). Some comps make that very difficult - especially when they CC/Stun the Pally (and Unholy Frenzy is on CD OR UF is unable to break the CC/Stun/etc. in question) and focus the SPriest - and despite how much I love Death Grip and Chains of Ice, they aren't always enough to successfully peel off of him. Sometimes I get incapacitated while the enemy goes to town on the Priest and Pally. Maybe the Pally isn't using his Hands of ___ or other abilities enough?

We haven't had too many problems with comps like RLS, RMP, and RLP (losses to those comps tended to be the result of stupid mistakes on our part), our biggest problems seemed to be with TSG-style comps, as well as 2x Frost Mage/Healer comps. Should we try and keep the healer shut down while we work on the DPS, as opposed to trying to down the healer first? Should we start out on the DPS and hard swap to the healer? Do any UHDK/SPriest/HPally abilities "synergize" particularly well? Any and all ideas and suggestions would be much appreciated, thank you.

Side note: the Ruthless gear I have on in my armory right now isn't the gear I run Arenas with, it's just a back up set I use when I want to run Frost in Battlegrounds so I don't have to reforge all my Cata gear. Just wanted to explain that it's not my gear that's holding us back.
Don't know much about how specific comps work but I did some reading on it when I tried it once last season. UHDK/spriest/X is called unholyplay, btw, in case you wanted to read up on it yourself. From what I could see you're basically supposed to utilize grip to get as many fearbombs as possible. I tried it once last season, but not for very long because my priest kept getting owned and there was nothing I could do about it.
Bump, want to hear more about this myself.
I ran unholyplay to 2k and it was probably the most fun i had running anything in 3s ever.

It's very strong comp, and very rare to find. and it is definitely not easy to run.

When it comes down to it, you hardly ever go for the healer. as you move on higher in rating, they will start cc'ing both your priest and your pally, and you will end up being the kill target since you HAVE to connect to catch your target. Kiteable target = easy kill and no damage being put out by the one being kited.

So yes, you guys need to be on a dps for the most part. if their healer decides to be a hero and run in for cc, its a great time to do one of two things: grip into fearbomb, or grip into a hard switch.

and if you have not had trouble with RMP and RLS, then you havent faced the good ones yet. Good rmp's and rls's will target you and cc the crap out of your pally and priest. especially RLS since its a huge counter to unholyplay. for melee cleaves, TSG shouldnt be a huge problem considering you have bop from the paladin and you as the unholy dk putting out soooo much pressure.

So if you do face TSG, the dk is the kill target if hes frost. if hes unholy, kill the warrior. there have been countless times where my shadow priest demolished a warrior with a fully orbed mind blast with archangel combined with shadow word death. remember to grip when a warrior charges to give your priest time to run. you have freedom from the pally so your priest can run and the TSG has no offensive dispels whatsoever. im assuming you have tons of desecration on the ground so the warrior and dk cant move very well.

give the priest time to cast, use your cc chain...i normally did hoj, into priest silence, into grip fear bomb and that does it. strangulate is a last resort cc since it has such a long cooldown.

This comp is very strong, but it requires a lot of skill to run properly past 2k.

TL;DR -

just work down a dps, and cc the healer. your comp out lasts those melee cleaves, but it wont outlast a shadowplay or lock/sham team.
Thank you for all of your replies, especially you, Lolnecrospam.

Yeah, I guess some of the RMP/RLS teams we beat weren't the greatest and made some pretty stupid mistakes. When I face RLS (or most teams with a Lock, for that matter) I tend to skip the healer and go straight for the Lock, otherwise the match quickly turns into a nightmare. Same with Mages, depends on the comp.

We haven't had a chance to get more matches in yet since we were running DS last night, but hopefully we'll be at it again today - I'll be sure to let you guys know how it goes and what worked/what didn't work. Thanks again for the advice.

Hows my setup

so im 2hd frost ive been using this setup for awhile and in random bgs i pull top dps and kbs but keep getting told to change my spec so i did no bladed armor and put those points on my virulence but i was dying alot quicker and didnt seem like there was a damage increase cause they cleanse them any way so is bladed armor worth it i like it i seem to last alot longer so i can do more damage and also my macro is hb ps the oblit x2 then fs x3 thats just a quick spam and my oblit does insane dmg at 83 ive got over 20k crits with it even against plate and i use necrotic alot the macro is just for a start attack grind so if you all wouldnt care check my talent tree and glyphs and let me know what you think im not worried about armor or that just my set up so ty and hopefully no trolls me or says im stupid
also when km procs i use fs most of the time unless there low on health or a non plate but i like my oblite it pulls the win for me most of the time
spec and glyphs are fine

Critique me

Blood dk... How do I look so far?
JMO..but

Lose the dps shoulders

Enchant your:
bracers
cloak
head
shoulders

I would trade Glyph of Death Strike for Glyph of Death and Decay (unless you really need +dps for some reason)

and Glyph of Dark Succor for something useful like Glyph of Blood Boil or Glyph of Death Grip

I would also try to work Glyph of Blood Tap into a minor slot.
Continue running dungeons/LFR, there are some more upgrades you can obtain. If you need any help optimizing your character, askmrrobot is a nice website to assist you.

Improved Frost Presence ???

Since Obliterate is so situational would it be more beneficial to take 2 points out of Annihilation and put them in Improved Frost Presence?

Thanks in advance

Since Obliterate is so situational would it be more beneficial to take 2 points out of Annihilation and put them in Improved Frost Presence?

Thanks in advance

might as well take all of them out and remove the glyph and give up using oblit entirely if you are going to do that
Would it be viable? I haven't PVP'd enough or done any arena's yet. I've only read how situational Obliterate is but, to be honest I've used it maybe only a handful of times in BG's and I can't remember a time when it was crucial to me achieving a kill or anything substantial. On the other hand I've used it quite alot in PVE but, PVP is my goal.

Thanks
Well, Improved Frost Presence is just as, if not more, useless in most cases. All it's going to do is give you a few more points of Runic Power per ability, which will only really help you when kiting, since Frost doesn't have any issue generating Runic Power to begin with.

However! If you find that you do spend Runic Power rather rapidly, then it would be worth it (I suppose). Personally, Obliterate may be only effective in certain situations, but it's nice to make sure it's effective in those situations.
Alright thanks for your responses. I think I might try it out for a day or two.
Keep obliterate as 2hd frost, it is not as useless as it would seem (but still extremely situational)

As DW, however, I pick up improved frost pres because DW needs all the RP it can get, and completely avoids obliterate.
Even in PvP, Obliterate still has its uses. The massive spike of damage you can get off a killing machine proc can punch through that last little bit of HP. I usually drop about 3 necrotic strike on a target and once I'm sure they're not healing/casting I smack them upside the head with my juiced up Obliterate - tends to ruin most people.

Sad Panda DK

After seeing the Female Pandaren....I'm rather sad the option to race change to one isn't available for DKs. :(

Ah well. At least I'll have my monk.
Yeah, I know, everyone on Moonguard is just in tears over the lack of panda DKs.

Does Mastery for Frost have cap or DR?

Is there a cap or any Diminishing effect for mastery on frost DK? Seems like I get to about 31% bonus frost damage in tooltip of mastery but does not seem that is increasing as quickly as it use too.
I dont THINK so?
No.

Needing some help with dps

So aside from the fact that I'm frost and have bad trinkets could I get some advice on where I can improve? Here is a sample log from the other night on H Ultra:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-v7b0hm4pashw1u3d/details/6/

Also note that we did have Abominations Might but no MOTW, so that gimped everyone a bit. I'm more interested in what I should be doing rather than the dps overall. Any constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks for your help.

Trip DPS 3s

It is most likely situational... but in general for comps like ret/dk/rogue do you target the healer or a dps first?
Depends on the healer/DPS. The only healer you're probably not going to be training into the ground is a Holy Paladin, at which point you throw out CC on it and blow up something else, though Holy Paladins are counters to triple DPS.

Updated Scourgelord Helmet

Howdy folks! I am going to get straight to the point; a friend of mine pointed out something that would make the Scourgelord T10 set for Death Knights look much more uber cool! (Beside the fact that there needs to be boots and a belt for the sanctified [blue] set.) We noticed Sanctified Scourgelord Helmet would look even more insanely epic if you could give it the same eye effect as seen in Heroes' Scourgeborne Helmet. If I am not mistaken, the Scourgelord armor is supposed to be a somewhat morphed version of the Lich King's armor, seeing as how the detail on the armor is very similar. Adding this small detail in a time where model's are being redone would be epic! Not to mention it would look more Lich King like. Just something to think about.

Have thoughts or comments? Please post them below! I would love to hear your ideas.
First off I want to say that I love WOTLK styling for death knight armor. I'm working on getting a set of T9 and T10 myself.

However, I think the chances of them making this improvement is pretty slim unless they reused the old model (Which I doubt they will do). There's also so much I'd like blizzard to do with the death knights to make them feel more "relevent" in Cataclysm and MOP lore. I was really hoping to see blizzard give the Ebon Blade a presence in Cataclysm...
Id love to see t10.blue get matching boots. green/purple and the christmas set both have boots and belts that match.

Need advice and help [ DW FROST weapon]

Basicly i have 2 LFR souldrinker in my bank

Currently using 2x Normal Hand of morchok

However there's some people on my server that claims that the 2 LFR souldrinker would be better then the 2 Normal Hand of morchok , Is this true or am i being trolled?

I thought more weapon damage = better , and we have free mastery stat on it along with a gem socket , and the soul drinker proc is useless as a DPS unless certain situations , but still.

I could understand 2 Normal souldrinker over 2 normal hand of morchok but i don't understand why would 2 LFR souldrinker would outbeat the normal HoM.

Thanks
Nope, your being trolled
2 normal hand of morchok > 2 LFR souldrinker
/thread
thanks

DK + RShaman arena comp?

Hey guys, my friend is gearing his resto shaman right now, and we're thinking about playing some 3s. I'll be playing a Frost/UH DK.
I know that almost any comp works at lower ratings but, which one would be the best one to start? Rshaman/DK/?

Thanks :)
shadowcleave, Restoshaman / afflic lock / unholy dk

i know that spriest / unh dk / rsham works too, but it's not as good

i'm also pretty sure resto shaman / sub rogue / frost dk is a good comp too.

Interesting happening

I cancelled months ago and in the interim my account was reactivated and hacked. They respeced my DK Vizjunii. I got all my items back and everything restored except for the respecing. I loved being a Blood DK and really only focused on that, but I was wondering if the frost build that the hacker did was any good if so i might keep it for an off spec. Any one out there care to rate? I admit I know next to nothing about frost.
It's not a cookie cutter PVE or PVP spec for Frost. Change it.

Scourge Strike lacking?

Anyone feel this ability should do "More?" No, not necessarily damage wise. But something to make it seem worth pressing besides doing more dps. I don't expect big numbers being as the physical and shadow damage are separate. But I festering strike and my diseases are up longer AND I get shiny death runes. I death coil and it puts a helpful magical debuff for my shadow damage, I death coil and get an extra dot as well as a dispel protection and a power charge for my ghoul, I necrotic strike and do damage, absorb some heals, and put a casting debuff on someone! Scourge Strike just seems lacking when all our other abilities do cool things!

Great! More dps from blowing these death runes and more RP for death coils to supercharge Timmy! Maybe Scourge strike, being Scourge, (not the undead legions) could actually affect diseases. Every time you use scourge strike it increases disease damage by x% stacking to x% or, deviating away from the scourge/disease thing, reduces the cost of your next death coil by XX. Just something else to make it seem cooler to press!

PVP Frost Weapon Question

Howdy fellow DKs

I have two questions:

1. Is Duel-Wield Frost PVP Viable?

2. How good is Souldrinker (Normal) in PVP? How good is the proc chance?

I have a Souldrinker in my bag and when comparing it to tier1 arena 1H weapon Souldrinker has better damage stats and procs. And if using Souldrinker is viable would it be better to get a 2nd Souldrinker for Offhand or should i get tier1 arena 1H so atleast i wouldn't be loosing 2 weapon slots worth of Resilience?

xoxo
Preta
If you have enough resil to make up for using pve weapons, 403 weapons like Souldrinker and Garthahowdoyouspellak are better than the normal 397 Cata weapons.

Straight DW is generally frowned upon because of less RP gen and weaker Necrotics. In the long run, 2H is probably your best bet. Ah-hem, unless you want to be cool like me and do both. i liek et

Is Frost really better than Unholy?

Well, if you can't tell by my terrible gear I haven't been on in a while. Anyhow, during an instance I make it aware to my group I'm not going to do the greatest dps (only around 15-16k boss) and the guy wouldn't stop telling me to 'go frost'. I do know that some people have been saying frost is better and now that I'm finally playing my DK again I want to know if that's actually true. I've searched the forums and I haven't really found much good information, so I'm making my own post. Is frost a better DPS spec than Unholy for DPSing raids? Is it significant? Why is one better than the other? Thanks!
In an optimal situation they're pretty even though gear and fights will vary which is better. Unholy has an advantage in some fights and frost in others. A single target fight with the right gear can put Unholy ahead. Fights with a lot of add swapping and or burst aoe will be in Frost's corner. Since more fights are about swapping and burst it tends to mean frost has the advantage more overall. So you will be told by most to be frost. But if you did manage to get your hands on Gurth from Madness of Deathwing then you'd probably want to look at being Unholy.

Either way both Unholy and Frost are very close while getting leads over each other due to things like random number generators helping one and or fight mechanics and raid strats favoring a particular spec. Also can depend on what classes and specs you're grouping with. A raid that does not have the Windfury/Icy Talons buff will also be asking you to be Frost. Also a group without Curse of Elements/Earth & Moon and other forms of the Spell Damage taken debuff may ask you to be Unholy for the greater good.

2 points in endless winter question

i only do interupts in 5 mans on bosses cuz i like to rely on myself other than puggers,but i dont run 5 mans much anymore just raid...and i have lots of people in the raid that can interupt i trust..so my question is..is it wise to take those 2 points out and use somewhere else and if so where would you recomend?
I'd drop the points for dragon soul. There is nothing of importance to interrupt within the instance, and so it is not needed.

Blood DK B.I.S. 4.3 Normal Mode

I am just wondering what the 4.3 BIS consists of.

More though, what valor gear should I pick up because there aren't any better raid drops?

Do you guys agree with my assessment?

Weapon: Experimental Specimen Slicer
Relic: Stoutheart Talisman
Neck: Guardspike Choker
Wrist: Graveheart Bracers
Waist: Forgesmelter Waistplate
Back: Indefatigable Greatcloak
Feet: Stillheart Warboots
Fingers: Hardheart Ring
Signet of the Resolute
(possibly ring of torn flesh?)
Trinkets: Soulshifter Vortex
Fire of the Deep
Head, Shoulders, Chest, Hands, and Legs: Tier Gear
Which would mean I should buy the valor necklace, belt, cloak, ring, relic, and trinket. AMIRITE?
Trinkets can be ambiguous, because different people prefer different trinkets (usually depending upon personal and healer input). However, fire of the deep sounds OP. Everything else I agree with.
fire of the deep is definately OP, probably the first thing im going to get, a real upgrade.
I kinda thought the shoulders that dropped of the first boss in ds would be better than our tier shoulders.

Hit and expertise, while not bad, have become nothing more than pure dps stats to us.The hot-fix to Aggro awhile back made it so we don't really need hit or expertise to hold Aggro at all. And after 4.3's change to ds, it no longer effects our survivability in any way.

Two pieces in our tier have hit or expertise: the shoulders and the gloves.Fortunately, we don't need both to complete our tier bonuses. Since there is no tanking gloves without either hit or expertise, it makes sense to go with the aforementioned shoulders that do have pure tank stats and complete our 4p bonus with the gloves. Maybe, until you have all the other tier pieces, the tier shoulders will be better, but it should be pretty simple to complete these bonuses with the lfr dropping the tier aswell.
trust me that aggro is still an issue we have to worry about with the numbers dps put out right now. the air ship, spine, hagara, all require snap aggro. and we may not need expertise or hit but other tanks still have some, and that means theyll be single tanking bosses if were cant keep threat

also due to lack of mastery, if mastery build is the route you go, the offset piece, which is not even a huge concern, is the head as neither piece looks tasteful for us. sure the expertise is dull but the lack of mastery just does not work for the DS offset

now if you are in fact a mitigation kinda guy, tossing out those shoulder for the offset piece may just be what you should do, gloves also lack mitigation stats outside of mastery and are also another option here
Trinket: Soulshifter Vortex

neck; Firebound GorgetFirebound Gorget (391)
- it might have a little less stam but the mastery makes up for any stam loss by a mile.


Cape: [Dreadfire D@**#] 391 as well. less stam and has agi but the difference in mastery is insane.

other than that looks good.


ps; this is imo. some people may like the higher ilvl over the stam but if you do the maths they work out a bit better.
Maximizing mastery at the expense of anything else is not the best gearing strategy. Just because something isn't your best stat doesn't mean you should avoid it entirely.
My intent tier-wise is Head, chest, legs, hands. Hands and shoulders both have threat stats we don't need, and there aren't any real alternatives for the gloves, so I'm going for the aforementioned shoulders off the first boss (they dropped last night, and of course I was late to the raid and missed the first boss).

And like Euliat said, hoarding mastery for the sake of it isn't necessarily (or even likely) the best choice. Avoidance and mastery are both good; as long as the majority of your pieces have mastery as a base stat, you'll be fine.
gogo #1 google seach for bis blood dk 4.3, Ill update for my newer thoughts on BIS, the blacksmithing bracers are really insane
for wrist...
http://www.wowhead.com/item=72016#teaches-recipe
imo

and cape
http://www.wowhead.com/item=71270
lower ilvl but got dodge and mastery

and cape
http://www.wowhead.com/item=71270
lower ilvl but got dodge and mastery

I would of with the ice ward cape off the first boss in hour of twilight. Though i really need to look What the stats would be on the valor cloak after Reforging away that dps stat again.
has anyone looked into Master Pit Fighter and a trinket at all

http://www.wowhead.com/item=74035
Trinkets are situational, you will find yourself switching out trinkets for different fights. Saying that, my standard setup is Fire of the Deep and Soulshifter Vortex. I think I carry every tank trinket from 4.2 onwards in my bags, the flexibility is nice.

Above posts about tier 4pc and shoulders are also correct. I have both pieces and switch them out for more mastery or avoidance, depending on the fight.

Currently working on H Blackhorn and I'm liking my mastery setup with the two trinkets noted above,

has anyone looked into Master Pit Fighter and a trinket at all

http://www.wowhead.com/item=74035

Not really that great. It's a weaker version of SSV.

and cape
http://www.wowhead.com/item=71270
lower ilvl but got dodge and mastery

I would of with the ice ward cape off the first boss in hour of twilight. Though i really need to look What the stats would be on the valor cloak after Reforging away that dps stat again.

Nope nope nope. The Parry/Exp cape has more mastery when you reforge and put in a Mastery gem.

Blood/Frost DK for pvp

Just hit 85... really wanted to go blood but idk if its worth it in arena and idk the spells seeing as i didnt play blood much...
Blood is not a pvp spec. It is used in bgs only for FCing.

Gemming question: haste or strength?

Quick question: I have just about enough VP for the gutripper shard and I already have Quick lightstone (+50 haste) in the bank. I also am pretty flush w/ gold atm if that matters. Based on my current stats do you think I'd be ok socketing the lightstone in the relic or ponying-up the gold for a +40 or +50 strength gem as the guttripper shard is apparently a BIS item? TY for any help.
for any dps you should stick pure str, int or agil in prismatic and reds slots and any blue and yellow ones with !@#$t bonuses
Int. and agil? Are you kidding? Perhaps I'm not understanding your response as intended.
He means that for any Intellect user, you always want to gem for int, Agility users always gem for agi and Strength users, like us DKs, always gem for strength. There is no situation where any other stat can be better than strength for a PVE DPS DK, so a +40 Strength gem would be better than a +50 Haste gem.

The rule of thumb I go off of is 1 strength=2 favourable secondary stats, if that helps you at all.
It's a prismatic slot.. sink the highest str gem you can it(specially since it is a piece of gear you will never replace). If your Talking about the Relic.
Ok, strength it is...and thanks for the clarification Spud.
class does not matter, all dps increased attack power or spell power is better than equal amount of secondary stats. so the answer to this question for ANY classes is str, int or agil
so the answer right now is 40 str > 50 haste, if you make a mage in the future the answer will be 40 int > 50 haste, and should you ever make a rogue 40 agil > 50 haste
TY Abaddon, sorry for thinking you were spouting crazy :).
40/50 str over 40/50 haste. now if there is a +20 str or greater bonus with a yellow socket, throw an orange gem in there. Like on your boots or the legs.
Strength > 8% Melee Hit > Expertise (26) > Haste > Mastery > Crit

Deleted

I figured it out >.<
what?
Your eyeball is pink.

Something I was pondering..

Just for the hell of it, is it entirely possible to level to 85 without handing in the letter to the king?

I know, I know, it's not a good idea, but just thinking. I was thinking of a few things I'd be missing out on:
- Auction house / bank facilities in SW
- Silenced in SW
- Quests from SW
- Since the Acherus forge is phased ( the abominations are still there if I don't hand in the letter) I can't access that. My alternative will be from Ebon Hold once I finish those quests.
- JP / VP / Honor Vendors - I won't be using them till 85, though.

However, I realise I can take the flying training directly from Honor Hold, the mount from it, and I do have a main so the banking / auctions aren't so painful. I've been wondering about the post-80 quests, though - is it possible to access them without handing in the letter?
I would've thought everyone faction-wide would hate you, not just your faction's capital.
I actually believe you can, many of them just don't like you is all, however you're neutral with them. Obvious case, means you can attack them or such. It's a problem some Death Knights cause. Attacking their own city, destroying their own quest givers. To my knowledge, and from what I've heard, you can still access them.

Worst case scenario is you go there and don't turn it in and give it a try.
You should get the same armor set the guards wear and stand next to them while they're calling you names.

Death knights and presence

So this is a personal idea i have for deathknights and its on the basis of like a shadow priest in shadow form as everyone knows death knights have 3 presences and my idea was that a frost dk which i mainly play at the moment would glow blue around the armor and such and blood would glow red and unholy glow green. I think this would be a fantastic thing to add into the deathknight look and also just because we are death knights and we are the leet hero class. PLEASE do this blizz its GOLDEN
That would be pretty cool to have. As long as it was a feint glow and not something overwhelming like some weapon enchants.

I just hope we get some awesome armor in MoP.
Perhaps a glyph instead. I''m sure that there are people that wouldn't want to glow the entire time, me being one of them.

transitioning from pvp to tanking question

I've really only frost pvp'd on this character (and not even much of that) and didn't really save any pve gear. I'd like to give tanking a go, but don't want to be a total liability to the group. What are my options for getting a pve set up to speed?

Best I've come up with is reforging/gemming/enchanting my pvp gear for tanking stats and running 333 dungeons to get pieces until I can get a full set and working my way up the ladder. Is this the best way or is there something more efficient?
Nah, don't screw with 333 crap. Cata regs won't even get you valor. At the very least, be running heroics, preferably HoTs. You may find your pugs more accepting of a pvp-geared dpser than a tank, so if I were you, I'd turn the current pvp gear (assuming 377) into pve dps and use the justice and valor you get dpsing HoTs to buy tank pieces. You may often find tanks running HoTs don't necessarily need that 378 tanking gear that drops, so they'll probably let you need for offspec too.

Outbreak festering strike question

when i reach level 85 i plan to raid, so this question im asking will be directed towards raiding.

would outbreak replace the usage of plague strike and icy touch when tanking once epidemic is at 3/3?

does a tank need to use festering strike at all?
In blood the CD for outbreak is 30 sec, the same duration as your diseases. You may still find yourself manually applying diseases when moving through pulls quickly, but most of the time, outbreak has you covered.

No festering strike

In blood the CD for outbreak is 30 sec, the same duration as your diseases. You may still find yourself manually applying diseases when moving through pulls quickly, but most of the time, outbreak has you covered.

No festering strike

thanks :)

Is it just me...under 10k Scourage Strike?

Is it just me or are there more people with less than 10k Scourage Strike not to mention my Festering Strike hits for less than 15k. But on the other hand I'm getting hit for 40k Scourage Strike and Festering Strike. I don't think my gear is all that bad, but if I can't dish out the same DPS as the other DK is doing, I must be doing something wrong.
hax or you arent telling us something.
scourge strike just doesnt hit all that hard on plate classes and nowhere near what you are claiming it can
I have been hit by that much, that's why I'm wondering if its just me or is everyone hitting that high with both SS and FS since I can't barely get above 10k with SS on a crit and 15k on FS with crit. I know SS is both melee and spell damages, maybe my spell damage is too low or I might need more mastery.
k im chocking this up as a troll post. it is not physically possible without some retarded attack power buffs for a dk with over 5k resilience to be getting hit by another dk for those kinds of numbers

scourge strike damage gets gimped by to many factors
the physical portion is affected by resilience and armor which directly affects the shadow portion of scourge strike which is also again hit by resilience.

festering doesnt hit nearly as hard as you are claiming eiether.

Bags

These may seem like dumb questions but I recently came back to WoW and would like to ask the Death Knight community a question regarding bags.

Now that I have taken up Mining and Jewlcrafting as professions, I find myself running out of bag space. What is the highest slot bag in the game? What is the most practical bag to get, that has the most slots possible? With those questions answered could I please receive a brief instruction on how to acquire them? Thanks a bunch!
This isn't a DK question and has absolutely nothing to do with DK's, this is a profession question.You could however, have saved yourself a bit of time by using that wonderful search engine we call Google and come up with this as your first link: http://www.wowwiki.com/Bag
Let me help you op

http://tinyurl.com/7g2e4eh

Should answer all of your questions

Let me help you op

http://tinyurl.com/7g2e4eh

Should answer all of your questions

Teach us how Google works.
These are not the forums you should be asking Professions forums i believe would be the appropriate place

The illusionary Bag is a 26 slot bag (so far largest all purpose bag) Made through tailoring

The Luxurious Silk Gem Bag 36 slot gem bag Made through tailoring also

The Triple-Reinforced Mining Bag 36 slot mining bag made by leather working

Gear Advice

Hey All,

So I was tanking BH and noticed that my outbreak was missing a lot. I realized that my hit was at 0.00 so I have reforged to mend the problem partially.

However I have some valor points to spend and noticed that nothing has Mastery on it. Its all dodge and parry. No matter how hard I try to forge out of parry its ungodly high compared to my dodge.

As well any new pieces of valor I see to buy are major downgrades in terms of my mastery stats.

So the question is, .. how much mastery is too much? my blood shield before I reforged hit was like 174% and now its down to 169% (3434). If I purchase valor pieces for tanking its going to go down fast.

So what is a good sized amount of mastery to try to get? have I gone too far over and left my other stats badly in the dust?

cheers for help on the gear audit.

I am JC and BS so have extra slots and JC gems to take advantage of.

Thanks again
Tewk

Solo Onyxia?

Can a Blood DK solo Onyxia?

Thinking of trying for the mount.

Thanks!

Can a Blood DK solo Onyxia?

Thinking of trying for the mount.

Thanks!

Maybe. the air phase would be the tough part though.
I think it would take forever. you would only really be able to use outbreak to dps her in the air phase

Deleted by Murdos
tried it and failed. she couldnt kill me but i had a problem with the whelps. the amount that come at you is so random sometimes 5 sometimes 20 so those are hard to take down and by the time u do take them down more are coming lol so i wasnt able to do it without someone else. i soloed lich king easier
I think they changed it w/ the Ony revival such that ya can't melee her anymore in p2. I'll have to re-check that though. W/o being able to melee, p2 would last so long I doubt its worth the time investment; adds pile up way too fast, etc..
You can't melee the boss NOW in p2.You have to do this with full dps gear.Crimson scourge is very helpful for the fight.Killing the whelps fast is the key to survive p2.Keep Frost fever on boss .Use all outbreaks on boss.DC boss whenever you can in p2.Have to be very patient.P2 will last for about 20 mins.
P1 and P3 easy mode.No tips for those phase.
Not very hard fight.just boring.
Just did it, yeah can't melee her in p2 anymore :/

Glyph of pest/BB is ur friend here, as is MoBI. I ignored the whelps since they seemed to have a fixed max # of spawns that just gets refreshed if you kill them (and they are nice Pest bots and DS fodder anyways). They'll die and repop to the incidental dnd (that flying Ony does get hit by), diseases, HSs, and BBs naturally. Big adds do have to die before they pile up, though.

I haven't used Pest so many times in one fight rofl. Glyph allows ya to spread em to Ony from the ground. Just keep her tracked w/ a focus target and follow under her best ya can while not exposing ur back to the adds.

Pretty much as prev stated- not hard, but p2 is like pulling teeth..
She can be soloed as blood and has been several times. The fight is long as your only means of damaging her in the air are diseases, icy touch, and death coil.

But yes, it is doable, just lengthy and boring.
would it be do-able in frost spec?

frost would handle the adds quite easily & has much better ranged dps than blood.

would it be do-able in frost spec?

frost would handle the adds quite easily & has much better ranged dps than blood.

No. Nothing more to say really but no. Maybe in 5.0.
its "doable."

Ragewyn did it a while back, but I think the kill took him like 25 minutes or something like that, maybe longer but I don't really remember. The thing is, in the air phase the only way you can attack the boss is with DnD, IT, OB, and DC. So it just ends up taking a really long time to burn her down.

its "doable."

Ragewyn did it a while back, but I think the kill took him like 25 minutes or something like that, maybe longer but I don't really remember. The thing is, in the air phase the only way you can attack the boss is with DnD, IT, OB, and DC. So it just ends up taking a really long time to burn her down.

Ragewyn's my hero lol
I solo'd it in blood spec. Air phase just takes a while because you can't melee her.

Just slowly bring her health down with diseases/death coils.

I solo'd it in blood spec. Air phase just takes a while because you can't melee her.

Just slowly bring her health down with diseases/death coils.

Yup just soloed her.

I suggest standing under her while you tank adds, and spread diseases with pestilance.

Phase 1 is retard easy.

Phase 2 is annoying, rotate CD's. Kill the big add right away, keep spreading diseases and drop D&D.

Phase 3, kill the adds right away. Then just stay close to Ony for when she fears.

I solo'd it in blood spec. Air phase just takes a while because you can't melee her.

Just slowly bring her health down with diseases/death coils.

Yup just soloed her.

I suggest standing under her while you tank adds, and spread diseases with pestilance.

Phase 1 is retard easy.

Phase 2 is annoying, rotate CD's. Kill the big add right away, keep spreading diseases and drop D&D.

Phase 3, kill the adds right away. Then just stay close to Ony for when she fears.

Do you even have to hide from her breath anymore?

Do you even have to hide from her breath anymore?

Not really. Don't get me wrong I didn't go out of my way to be hit by the breath.

The only reason I say to stand under her is to spread diseases to her with Pestilence. You can pop AMS and easily nearly negate what little damage it does (like 2 or 3 ticks of 7k damage).

You can easily sidestep away if you do not have AMS up, or just eat the damage if you feel confident enough to take the extra damage.

Just get right back under her and keep on using pestilence, drop D&D ( pretty sure she takes damage from it too).

It was roughly a 25 minute fight, I know I was able to pop army 3 times, twice in air phase and once at the beginning of the ground phase (phase 3).

Phase 1 took about 2 minutes, phase 2 took about 20ish min, phase 3 was the rest of it, about 2 or 3 min.
Like others have said, it can be done but it sucks. Just bring 1-2 friends with you. Probably 1 at your level. I do it with me and two other 80 players; a healer and a DPS.
Done on a warrior! /SMILE /WINK
Bumping threads from over 4 months ago? That must make you cool? I think not.

Frost

Just curious, when setting my stats for my frost dk, what are the main things i should be aiming towards? Crit, hit, mastery, etc.... I am sure they are completely different from a pally or a warrior.
str>hit/exp to cap>haste/mastery>crit

The hit cap for dw through reforging is 5% since they get Nerves of Cold Steel.

The whole haste/mastery thing depends on what kind of frost you play. Masterfrost is where you spec for mastery over haste and the usual dw frost is where you spec for haste over mastery. Don't spec out of mastery if you can. If something has haste and mastery on it, leave it alone.

Gemming wise, strength gems for all sockets except if the socket bonus is +20 str or more. Then use a purple or orange gem.

That's all I can think of.
Hey mate, check my channel :D
Going to be bringing out a Frost guide shortly :D.
Would really appreciate a Sub too guys!
thanks
http://www.youtube.com/user/CryptonLive/videos

2380exp Unh and Frost Dk btw
Great. It's spread to wow too. People leaving comments about them asking people to visit their channel on youtube, that is.
Sorry, didnt mean to spam, just thought it would help thats all.

Hey mate, check my channel :D
Going to be bringing out a Frost guide shortly :D.
Would really appreciate a Sub too guys!
thanks

Spamming threads on the WoW forums doesn't make people really want to watch your videos and subscribe. Infact. it lead me to go out of my way to dislike your videos.

As for frost DK stats, I think Conser summed it up pretty well.
Thanks for the advise. Only thing else I have to ask is about the blood spec. I have noticed that there is almost never a dk tank once you get to 85. If they work so good before you lvl out, why don't you see any after? I would put my blood dk up next to my pally as far as holding aggro, and as far as damage/dps, I am top of the meter. Just wondering why no 85 tanks?
I tank at 85... Lfr no problems, HoT's, a few bosses in 10 man DS. 226k hp buffed, with 160% absorb shield from mastery ( still working on gear)... and I end up doing damn good dps usually 17-21k as a tank.
My offspec is tank and I see DK tanks a bit. Especially in LFR. I'm not sure why you don't run into them much but I see them often.

P.S. Here are the weights for Haste/Frost standard from EJ

First non racial based hit and expertise caps

601 - Melee Hit
748 - Expertise

Now combat weights for reforging

3.14 - Hit until capped
2.48 - Expertise until capped
1.92 - Haste
1.90 - Mastery
1.68 - Crit

3.49 - Strength

Note strength's weight for geming

So here is for example how things can change in weight

There is a yellow socket with a 10 strength socket bonus

You can ignore the socket and just gem the bold. So for this case we'll use non epic gems

40 Strength vs geming for the socket bonus so 30 strength & 20 haste.

40*3.49 = 139.6
30*3.49 + 20*1.92 = 143.1

While not a large improvement it shows how a weight can change things. Like 20 haste being stronger than 10 strength on a spreadsheet.
next question: from what I have seen so far, the frost dk is extremely weak due to the fact that it doesn't seem to have any kind of heal or stun. Is unholy a more well rounded dps/pvp spec. you get everything you need with blood, just tired of playin the tank. and though I am doing great damage with frost, basically one on one sucks because of the no heal and stun.
Frost is more the glass cannon. You can try Unholy just keep in mind many that will counter you as Frost will still be rough for you as Unholy. Unholy does get a stun through Timmy's stun CD and is far stronger at countering some Casters. Frost is far more burst at the cost of defense/healing which is why it's referred to as a glass cannon. Basically you would have to take out the opponent before they could kill you. Very hard to do thanks to Resil. Meanwhile in a RBG if you get enough people in a pack and can get away with spamming howling blast at them? That makes you very dangerous. Apples to oranges. You will get more survival as Unholy though. Not a lot of survival but more of it.

What am I doing wrong?

As Unholy, (IL 399) I can hardly do 40k single target in raids, and on the dummy maybe 25k.

I am specced right, gemmed enchanted, etc.

Gurthalak

Ok 3 questions:

1. Is this weapon a legit DK tank weapon, despite its lack of mastery or any stat to reforge into mastery?

2. If yes, does the tank role bonus apply to it in LFR? Because it seems like only dps would

3. If no, what's the current best tank choice in weapon from DS for tanking?

I used to be a DW tank in the very early days of cata (hate all you want but I was damn good at it) and decided that the performance boost of 2h tanking wouldn't hurt, but looking at the Souldrinker sword, I'm kinda liking the idea of DW again...
It's not a tanking weapon. DK Tanks should be using Experimental Specimen Slicer, or a weapon from Firelands (Hand of Rag or Skullstealer) if they're wanting a tanking weapon.
Should Blood use it to push higher DPS on fights where their survivability doesn't matter as much? If your healers can handle it, you put out enough DSs and know how to use your cooldown, do so at your own risk.
Ah, I completely overlooked the axe from You'sajh, thanks. I thought Blizz had neglected Blood DK's as far as weapons go in this patch. :D

Still a shame we don't get a weapon with an awesome proc like everyone else, but oh well...
An option until you come across the Experimental Specimen Slicer is the http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/72844 unless you Raid Firelands.. it's the best you can get til you get the Specimen Slicer.

Reforge the Pit Lord, Exp to Dodge.. best choice imo till then.

An option until you come across the Experimental Specimen Slicer is the http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/72844 unless you Raid Firelands.. it's the best you can get til you get the Specimen Slicer.

Reforge the Pit Lord, Exp to Dodge.. best choice imo till then.

Heroic Skullstealer (hell, normal Skullstealer) and Normal Hand of Rag are both better for DK tanking than Pit Lord, and post-nerf the fights (especially normal Shannox) are jokes. But if you don't have the people to raid or the organizational skill to set up a pug, Pit Lord is a viable alternative.
Aye,. I was saying such since he hadn't hit Firelands like myself :))

I was Gone on the update on Oct 2010 :// returned some 5 months ago. But agreed there are options in Firelands.

I just haven't been in a guild to allow for the option for Firelands since my return(& my playtime).. my old guild transfered alliance to some other server.. geerrrrrr /


edit: & Im not comfortable pugging Firelands atm.. my own fault there.. I need to research the fights more on tankspot or wowhead. .. but atm ,yea :// My own fault there. /nods
idk about DK tanking weapon, but it is GREAT for warrior dpsing, literally doubled my dps from using that old http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/72844
No. Best choice is something from Firelands or the Pit Lord's Destroyer if you're new to DS, otherwise it's Experimental Specimen Slicer.

Frost DK DW weapon question

So with my current 397/378 weapon combo, how much DPS am I losing compared to double souldrinkers or double hand of Morchok?

Also does weapon speed matter for DW frost like it does for a rogue?
For your first question which weapons including lfr or reg versions do you have available to you? Your question is a bit vague.

As for weapon speed, yes it does matter. Though I do believe all current strength 1H weapons are the same speed.
My equipped weaps are my only two at this moment in time.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Normalization
From what I know double normal souldrinkers (403 versions) are BiS until you can get your hands on Heroic Hand of Morchok's. The proc on souldrinker sadly doesn't help us as much as gurth's or some other weapons but they are nice to have.

You should be fine with those until you can grab something better. Hand of Morchok is fine until you can get your hands on double souldrinkers.
Hello,
Have a question re 2H or DW for Frost PvP. I'm still gearing so only at the 378 stage. I could use the PvP 2H or the 1H PvP and Dragonshrine Scepter. What would be better for BGs. I know the DW would not be great for Necrotics, but besides that...?

Also, if I do DW, is it best for Razorice / Fallen Crusader?

Thank you.
Olord....

It's really up to you and what you like to play, with that said I am in the process of getting my 2 1h's on my dk so I can see if I see a diffrence in the 2 (I have had the 2h pvp weapon forever), I am doing this b/c I have always liked/played DW before this season but w/ the way necrotics work I ended up going for the 2h 1st this season and it was cheaper overall.

But now that I have my full cata set, I am getting the 2 1h's just for kicks and to do a lil testing on my own with both. I think overall you will do more damage w. the 2 1h's b/c of razorice applycations, but the 2h will give the necrotics a bit more umph and maybe a lil more spike damage on FS. But in all honesty I think its gunna be about the same b/c of razorice.

So all in all I've helped 0 amount at this time. Next week i'll have my 2nd 1h and i'll try and post some results and maybe put this issue to bed b/c I see these kind of post alot...

But IMO play what you like, it's a game, if you want to be a min/max kind of person there's definitely people that can provide you thoes #'s for you. I think you can make anything work you just have to develop a style that works for you.

last ? yes for DW it's razorice/fallen b/c you want the stacks of razorice up fast for the debuff, and with the built in miss rate of 15% on your off hand (OH) there's a chance that it wont be up as fast as you want it if you have it on your OH. Now the proc per min on crusader is on a bit longer cooldown, whith that being said, b/c of this proc time it wont really be affected by your OH miss rate. Your MH doesen't miss like your OH (aka built in 15% miss rate on OH). So in conclusion the applycations of razorice will/should always be there and so will the crusader, if you run RI/CRU.

Hope that helps...

first death knight

Considering a female tauren or female undead. Any considerations for those two? How are the animations? Does either one look better in plate? Don't care much about racials.

It would be mainly for PvE.

Thank you for any insight into your class!
Female Undead have some really fun combat animations, they flip in the air when attacking. Female Tauren are just hideous. Although for tanking they are not bad because you get that bit of extra stamina and the stun. I would go with a Male Tauren just because of how bad the females look.

Considering a female tauren or female undead. Any considerations for those two? How are the animations? Does either one look better in plate? Don't care much about racials.

It would be mainly for PvE.

Thank you for any insight into your class!

Do you plan on being a tank or dps?

Tauren for tanking, can't really recommend undead for anything (from a metagaming standpoint).

I would say troll or orc for dps.

Female Tauren are just hideous.

/gasp Are NOT!
<---- is Hideous.... but I take that as a compliment as a DK :)
I love my femtaur DK
Yeah I prefer femtaur......they don't seem as slow and clunky to me as the males. They still have the large weapons and stature though and plate looks good on them.

Finally sustained 40k dps on ultrax! /happy

Just wanted to share with my fellow dks'. I know that's not a lot, but all I have is LFR and VP gear, so I'm pleased :)

Wish I'd WoL'ed it. Screenshots will have to do :P
Grats, I don't see why a forum post is needed for this though.
18x LFR
0x normal

a quality player doing quality dps
Oh get over yourselves already. Give they guy (girl?) his/her moment. Like you weren't psyched the day you first equipped over 4k strength in Wrath......(I know I was.)

Offhand?!

Treachery's Bite is my offhand. Would Morningstar of Heroic Will be better? With a 40 strength gem
No, the strength loss won't be mad up for in the extra secondary stats and increased dps; the disparity between no str and 174 is too great.
Okay! Thanks! Just wanted to make sure

LF help with weapons DW Frost spec

i have my lvl 84 frost DW dk, i am having trouble finding any good one handed weapons that have strength and stam/ anything else like crit and so forth. Should i just go ahead and utilize the agility/stamina weapons for now till i can get the ones i need?

DK solo video guides

(HORRIBLE timing of this, considering everyone is only interested in the MoP beta, lol)
Hi, I am starting a new youtube channel with a bunch of guides for anyone who wants to get into the solo'ing aspect of death knights, it's extremely fun AND profitable. I am fairly new at making video's so hopefully as time goes on the video's will get better and better quality wise. I finished recording Naxx and Ulduar, currently in the process of encoding/uploading Ulduar.

Keep in mind that I have completed hard content, I am just in the process of recording every single encounter (be it normal or heroic) as to cover everything. Not everyone is as good as Raegwyn and Mionee (maybe some day superlich? one can dream), some people might have difficulties with the easier bosses. Hopefully I can help them.

http://www.youtube.com/mrsuperlich

I would really appreciate it if ya'll could give me any sort of idea's to make these video's a lot better. Like I said, I am still learning so any help would be appreciated.
Also, if you enjoy what you see please do not forget to subscribe
Thanks all.
I am NO pro by any means. I mean this is my first 85 (just leveled it last week) and i have never made a youtube video but I am still going to put in my little advise lol. First off good videos, i like commentary over music (most of the time). There is one thing i would change though. The headings on your videos are kind of complicated. I mean when i search dk solo yours does not come up. I would put Death Knight soloing in front of the raid or dungeon name whichever it might be so people don't have to search something so specific. Good video though just trying to get you more views.

For OH HoM or LFR Souldrinker?

just got h morchok so im pretty torn on which one for OH? not sure if proc from SD outweighs normal morchok weapon damage
LFR Souldrinker in OH.
Regular HoM has more strength, more stats and more weapon damage. The proc from LFR Souldrinker isn't that great and scales poorly. I'd say use your H HoM in main hand & HoM in your offhand. Souldrinker's procs is not exactly stellar. In a 5 minute fight you may see 150k if it's regular souldrinker and not LFR. So that is say an estimated 500 dps increase assuming it's a more patchwerk like fight. You can't discount the extra mastery and stats in morchok the like 43 (minimum) more strength in Regular Hand of Morchok and it's 140 more top end? It's a wash at best and in many fights that mastery would pull ahead for any fights that favor Howling Blast.

Personally I'd say use the 397 Morchok over 390 Souldrinker. But that is me.

how to combine my goals attacks with mine

How would i write a macro that would combine my goals attacks when ever i hit an attack.Know you could do this a while ago just forgot
You playing FIFA?
It's a sad day when people start Macro'n Soccer.

P.S. The macro you may actually be asking about is to have your Ghoul use an ability to help make sure he consumes his energy. I believe it looks like this

#showtooltip Scourge Strike
/cast [target=pettarget,harm,nodead][] Claw
/cast Scourge StrikeThis is also in the Unholy PvE Guide if you bothered to read it. This only works for unholy though. The rest of us have no control of our ghouls.

Unholy and Mastery

I know the order of Stats for Unholy is Strength, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise...

lately, I've been doing more testing on reforging, trying to squeeze that lil' bit extra from my dps.
If I use Wowreforge, The tool has me taking away either Haste of Crit on some gear for Mastery.
If I use the standard protocol, such as makiing sure I'm hit capped, Then gear that has no haste, reforge the Lowest Priority stat to add haste, etc..
With Mastery, Unholy get the "Dreadblade" effect with increases our Shadow dmg. Meanwhile, the benefit from crit mainly relies on our pet's attack...
The point, I was seeing bigger numbers on the meters with more mastery due to shadow dmg compared to the dmg I see from timmy, Even after he transforms and crit increases..
The most I've been able to squeeze out of the unholy spec is around 47K..But I average 32K..
I love the play style compared to Frost, But would expect better numbers from the build.
If you have a moment, take a look at my gear, Perhaps I'm overlooking something.
Also, What are your thoughts on Mastery for Unholy DK's?
with gurth from madness mastery's value tends to shoot up quite a bit as the tentacles mind flay scales quite well with your mastery.
from the quick look i just gave you, you have too much crit, reforge crit to mast/haste where you can. with gurth mastery is slightly better than crit, not leaps and bounds but better for the proc. weights add up to around 2.19 for mastery and 2.11 for crit so not crazy awesome sauce but better. sometimes you take from a certain stat in places and add to it in others to get a better overall result, that is how wowreforge usually works for me, you can see on my gear i've taken mastery off some places for better stats and reforged to it in most other places.
Yeah, I'm aware that at times, Wowreforge will take a stat from one piece of gear and add it to another to better optimize.
And I can understand Mastery benefiting Mind Flays when gurth procs.
What has me puzzled:
1) Gurth does not seem to proc very often. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.
2) When Timmy Transforms, My Crit ratings are over 30%. Seems Timmy should be getting more crit hits. But looking at meters, That is not the case.
When I use Wowreforge, I normally set Cap #1 as Hit, Exactly to 961, then I use Cap #2 for Haste, Close to 2000, Cap #3, I normally set Crit with no value.
What stats do you feel I should use to get a better Optimization from my gear?
when i use wowreforge, or my ingame tool that is quite helpful reforgelite, i only set hit to ~961, a little over is no problem to me, i think im at 8.03 right now. using the current stat weights on wowreforge for an unholy dk, though lower than what they should be still works. i unchecked and deselected exp and optimized and left everything else and use at least 961 for hit. i feel like that gives me a little more leeway with my stats instead of trying to hard hit 8. the weights are lower but using myself as a test on the lower weights still yeilded exactly the same reforges that i have now when i initially used the higher weights that can be found on the unholy page here or elitist jerks.

here's what i got for you:
http://wowreforge.com/US/Lightning%27s%20Blade/Scarzo

as for gurth not procing often thats just rng being rng. sometimes it can be positioning, like ultraxion, if you dont stand close enough to the dragon tenetacles won't hit and there goes a portion of your damage. the way i look at it is unholy is about sustained dps not bursty/critty dps so even with 30% crit you won't see large numbers all that often from you or your ghoul.
Agree, Positioning is everything..
One thing I did notice on the link you posted from Wowreforge.
It suggest adding more crit.
Currently, My crit score is 1787. after reforging with the weigth's you had, the crit score added another 148 with a total of 1935.
While it did add more for my haste, It took over 500 away from mastery. Lowering my mastery score to 1030, down from 1571.
I may check out reforgelite, see what kind of results I get. I've used reforgenator in the past, and found that it can give crappy results, such as Mr.Robot.
wowreforge was doing what it's supposed to. If you have it set to it's default it will have crit ahead of mastery. That is why you lost so much and it was moved in crit. You'd have to adjust the stat weights manually to make it work. So for example for DW Frost it still defaults to the stat weights from Firelands. So I have to type in the numbers to update it when I want to correct it. Also as was mentioned having to remove the expertise one cause it will want to cap you regardless not knowing how unimportant expertise is for unholy. But as a tool to help get the most out of the stats on your gear? It's a good one. It can even at times get your hit right on the button and find ways to increase your stats that you wouldn't have found even experimenting on your own.

H spine dps

Does UH with reg gurth or H ESS have enough burst for heroic 10m spine?

We just started work on spine this week so I respecced back to DW frost with H HoM and reg souldrinker and reforged off all my exp since the tendons can't dodge or parry.

This is all fine and dandy except when it comes next week when it's time to reclear the other 6 HMs and I would go UH for Zon. With going back to a DW frost spec for spine i'm sure my dps and survival will go down a lot.

So go back to UH or stick with frost?

Just looking for opinions.
I'd think that if your goal is controlled burst that H ESS would probably better fit that role for Unholy since not only can you not control when the Tentacles spawn but also it's not easy to control what they'll attack. So for example while you are on the Tendon they maybe fight a blood or a corruption. DW Frost is considered more bursty so it maybe favored on Spine either way. But back to the weapons? I'd still think H ESS is stronger than Gurth for that exact fight.
Your survival isn't going to go down appreciably. Frost AMS will get you through anything in spine no problem. I suppose raid survivability might go down some without AMZ but if that's substantially helping your group there are larger problems at play.

Your dps should be going up as DW. You can create burst with unholy, but if played well it shouldn't be near as good or reliable as frost burst.

In the end it comes down to your raid group's dps. Are you able to consistently get the tendons down (not just the first one, at least the second) with time to spare? Then it won't hurt to go unholy, might even help by adding AMZ. But if it's close, if your getting it down with seconds to spare, stay frost.

Frost DK PVP self-healing?

Is the only thing we can use to heal ourselves when fighting Raise Dead + Death Pact or would we use like death strike in certain situations? Or is there a move that i should be using to heal that i just don't know I am supposed to use?
Lichborne and spam Deathcoils on your self. It's easiest just to make a macro and spam it with full runic power.
can u tell me the macro command?
Nvm i found it thx for the help, if any1 else wants to know the macro here it is:

#showtooltip
#show
/cast Lichborne
/target player
/cast Death Coil
/targetlasttarget
There is alot better macro then that jumble Blackjai.

The correct one is..

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cast [@player] Death Coil
A minor detail:

#showtooltip
/cast !Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil

You want that "!" before Lichborne so that if Lichborne is already up, it won't try to cast it again, causing an error. I'm not positive if it's crucial or not, but it's never failed me.

My gear + mastery = 6 million damage?

Well

I normally play frost pvp, but for something new i went into a bg as unholy(didnt bother to reforge my gear) with a 2200 boomkin (shyfthappens) druid from my server, and we did a random bg.

I was amazed that i was pulling more damage then him. At the end he barely beat me out but we both had 6 million damage. I was stacking necrotics and ds spam. I only used festering strike to use blood runes and stacked necrotics.

I have been always told that haste/crit/mastery, and if i was serious about uh i would normally just reforge haste.

Has anyone else noticed that mastery was that effective for unholy? Is it just for the trinkets // 2her off dw that makes it viable?

*I do have 2 dragon soul trinkets + the tentecle weapon*
as unholy you still want to do haste most then crit/exp to mastery if you can't go to haste. there is a good unholy pvp guide floating around the forums i would check out. i found using bone link fetish in pvp to be pretty good extra dps when fights around the flags get heavy
I've read some theories regarding stacking Mastery for Unholy PvP. The basic theory is that since you generally don't have 100% up-time on your target the way you do in PvE single-target fights, Haste isn't quite as beneficial in PvP. Mastery, on the other hand, provides a consistent increase to your Shadow damage, benefiting you every time you use a Shadow damage-based attack. Since Death Coil is generally one of our top 3 sources of damage (frequently it's #1), Mastery provides a nice, consistent boost to our overall damage. Unfortunately, another big source of Shadow damage for UH DKs is the Shadow damage-portion of our Scourge Strikes. Since Necrotic Strike generally takes the place of Scourge Strike in PvP, this reduces the benefit that we get from Mastery in PvP. Regardless, Haste is still considered the king of secondary stats for UH in both PvP and PvE.

On the other hand, I would be very interested to see the results of some experimental PvP builds that go in a different direction from the standard Haste build. Perhaps gemming for Resilience so that you could get away with using some PvE gear for the 2 or 4pc tier set bonuses and then stacking Mastery? Who knows......it will be very interesting to see if the changes brought by MoP will actually foster more diversity and creativity as far as spec builds go.

Death Coil Glyph

does it refund the RP if used on self?
no
It use to, but they broke it since it was "op".
It was OP.

Like the others have said, it doesn't refund when used on yourself. Also, as a note, the glyph only refunds healing if it actually does some effective healing, too, so if the coil fully overheals on your ghoul, you won't get a refund (but you're frost anyway).

Firebound Gorget (Heroic) v Guardspike Choker

I still cannot decide which one it better for a mastery loving DK. Opinions?

195 str
384 sta
256 mastery
78 expertise
52 dodge

271 str
406 sta
191 dodge
163 mastery
93 Mastery (0.52)
78 Expertise (2.6)

vs

22 Sta
76 Str
139 Dodge (0.79%)

Unless you're specifically wanting Expertise, 93 Mastery is not worth the loss of all the other stats on the choker.
Guardspike.

Firebound gives you (195*1.05*.27+256+.4*130) = 363 useful secondary stats. Guardspike gives you 431. Although mastery may be your best stat, it's not that much higher than avoidance stats.

Stamina difference isn't really a big deal. An extra 400 HP raid buffed.

Only reason I would take Firebound is if I really wanted expertise.

My Gear

Hello. I was wondering if someone could look over my gear and see if I have the correct gems. I'm kind of new to WoW and so it's still a learning process. :) I've also noticed I've not been able to obtain 25k+ DPS according to recount after an entire HOT encounter. Would you think it's related to my gear, gems or perhaps my rotation.

Thanks.
.07 under hit. As an Unholy DK, you do not need expertise. So reforge out of any exp you have.

Unless you have Gurthalak, reforge into haste after the 8% hit cap.
You'd want to prioritize reforging into Haste regardless of whether or not you have Gurthalak. Since you aren't using Gurthalak, Haste > Crit > Mastery. You want to get your Hit to 8% and get rid of all of that Expertise.

Get rid of Glyph of Icy Touch and replace it with Glyph of Death Coil. Death Coil is generally always in the top 3 on my Recount's list of my damaging attacks, and +15% DC damage is WAY better than the bonus to Frost Fever. I'd also suggest using the Anti-Magic Shell glyph, as that adds 2 seconds to your RP-soak. Get rid of all of your Minor Glyphs except the Blood Tap glyph, and replace them with Death's Embrace and Horn of Winter (unless you need Resilient Grip for some reason). Personally, I talent into Improved Blood Tap instead of Contagion. I find that having Blood Tap on a 30 second cool down is a bigger improvement to my DPS than the bonus to the damage of diseases spread via Pestilence.

Then again, maybe gear isn't your issue. Perhaps you're not utilizing Reaping as much as you should?

PvP - 390 2H or PvP 378 2H?

Extra damage or extra resilience? I have the weapon off Deathwing, and I'm debating whether I should use that or a 378 PvP weapon.
Extra damage imo, more resil or not we are still pretty squishy. So might as well do more damage.
Well, Gurthalaks proc is pretty awesome. Even more so if you're Unholy because your mastery will directly affect its proc because that tentacle is shadow damage.

Profs

Whats the best Profs for a dk. blood pve frost pvp.
rly o.o
jc/bs

Progression Trinkets

I have Heroic Bone-Link Fetish, Heroic Creche, and regular Eye of Unmaking. For frost is it better to use both heroic trinkets until Heroic Eye of Unmaking drops? As of now I am only dpsing Heroic Hagara/Ultraxion(sometimes)/Blackhorn, not sure if that sways it in any direction. All input is appreciated. The reason that I'm curious, is because Eye of Unmaking has a bit of ramp-up time, and can drop... during Heroic Blackhorn I notice from my tellmewhen that my Eye of Unmaking stacks fall off rather often, and I am forced to ob/fs rather than howling blast cleave at times. Thanks for input.
Regular eye and H bone-link imo. Crit is a frost DK's worst stat and stacking that over pure strength doesn't seem like it would be a viable option. And for the falling off issue, most of your dps comes from instant attacks so, your stacks will build up relatively fast for when the next add spawns.
Bah gemme the BLF: Eye and BLF on everything only on H ultrax you should consider H Creche

You should be able to keep eye up near the entire fight on H Black and when it does drop the ramp up is rather quick
But you're in Silly Hats Only, Teeptrip, maybe you're trying to guide me improperly to keep your progression ahead of my guild... *ponders*
Also may i add with the BLF and eye there are no wasted "procs". If the creche procs right before the add dies it's wasted. Losing the eye stacks is nowhere as bad as wasting a proc (that has your worst stat) with a huge ICD of ~100 seconds. Also since there is more than one add there may be a chance your BLF hits them.
I chose to go with a masterfrost build and used EoU and BLF. Worked like a charm. I reforged out of expertise as much as possible, and into master as much as possible. Ended up with about 2620 mastery rating and mary mother of a carpenter it went rather well. 38k dps on the kill, I'm satisfied :)

max dps in blood

so, got sick of and bored of sitting in queue, thought I would start working on my OS (blood)

getting so many mixed recommendations on my tree build and reforging. mrrobot is specking me for mastery, but I want to work on a heavy defense, but also good DPS.

have looked a little online for some sample blood trees with DPS in mind, any suggestions?
a few times, I've done dungeons and seen DKs tank and STILL hitting solid 30-35k, at the time I didn't pay close enough attention or note their trees, but did see a lot of mastery gems on their gear...
I got sick of sitting in DPS ques so i que as Tank with full PvP gear. I get no complaints and
a free Satchel every dungeon. I think I hit around 26-30k dps in PvP gear so just
using any type of PvE gear should put you close to what you're aiming for.
what about tree layout?
You COULD copy mine, I mean as long as you have all the necessary talents then it doesnt
matter where you put the rest. Things like IBF, Blood worms, Improved Blood presence
all that stuff. Mainly preference. Avoid the PvP talents, like Hand of Doom. You
Could probably just dump ALL your points into blood spec if you wanted.

tl'dr: I'd say copy mine, but take the points out of Hand of Doom,Icy Reach. Then put those
three points in Epidemic. Just my opinion though.
Hi,

Hit the back button once....
Scroll up...
Click on the DK tanking post that has been sticky'ed!

Also, I'd like to point out that master is the main stat in blood. If your looking for a non cookie cutter blood spec, your going to have to start experimenting (thinking for yourself)

=p
I have a question about the common DK tank spec, I see almost all Blood tanks taking “Lichborn”
Is this really that useful in the current endgame content? I can see putting the points in the extra runic power but that only amounts to one extra rune strike if you were sitting on a full RP bar. Is there a fight on heroic where fear or charm are an issue? I put my points in more damage orientated areas. And can’t recall where a few extra yards on icy touch (witch I have only used if for some reason outbreak misses) . on fights like H Yor’saj (10-man) I think the extra damage on the adds is far more useful.
Lichborne is a survival talent for tanks - you pop it so you can death coil heal yourself.
i used to be all about mastery, now i'm loving avoidance with dodge/parry. our healers say i'm much easier to heal this way. i know we're not a very progression minded guild but we make do.

i find litchborne/selfcoil healing myself to be one of those things where it's better to have it and not need it than it is to need it and not have it, and anything i could gain by giving it up, like abom might, we have other people bringing to the table. for most encounters i rarely need to use it once we actually get a specific fight down, but it's great to be able to heal myself to full when the healers are strugglin.

i don't know anything about heroic modes though, i r casual raider...

Fragmented & my Channel

Im a decent frost DK, and i enjoy editing videos. If you wanna check them out, http://www.youtube.com/user/Reallysmellyeggs?feature=mhee

Pet Control

So I recently started getting more into death knight PvP, but I've been having some trouble with my Ghoul. See I need to maintain at least 30 energy so I can pet stun when I want to, but most of the time my pet auto attacks with claw all the way down to 0 energy and then I can't use gnaw when I really need to.
I like to have claw on just for the damage, but is there any way to make sure my Ghoul's energy never goes below 30?
You have to turn off the auto-attacking with claw. Only way to try and make sure energy stays above 30 for the more essential abilities.
ROFL dk's cant control their pets, who do u think u are arthas?? gl controlling a ghoul AHAHAHAH learn to play.
I would HIGHLY recommend using macros to control your ghoul. Here is a macro to toggle Claw auto-cast on and off:

/petautocasttoggle Claw

Hit it once, turns Claw on, hit it again, turns Claw off, etc.

I would definitely recommend combining Gnaw and Leap into one macro. The way this macro works is by Leaping to your target if it isn't in melee range and then Gnawing it, or simply Gnawing it if your target is in melee range:

#showtooltip
/petautocastoff Claw
/cast [target=target] !Leap
/cast [target=target] !Gnaw

I put in a line before the Leap command that turns Claw's auto-cast off, just in case you forget to turn it off yourself. Those are just some basic macros, do some google searches and you'll find plenty of ghoul-macros to work with.
Thanks, I was looking for a macro like this.

PVP question

So i have been pve all the way from 70 to 85. I was dw frost pking at the lower levels and did ok. I want to start gearing in pvp. (i know my gear sucks but have to start somewhere) Anyway my question is; do I need to spec my off spec to 2h frost or unholy? It is blood due to me questing a lot to level to 85 but do not like pking as blood. Anything helps, thanks! Also i have never played unholy at all so that maybe taken into consideration. I want to do battlegrounds as well, not so much arena though i will be doing that some.
do research on each. test them out and play what you like. frost and unholy are both fairly competitive when played well, and all 3 specs perform fine in pug bgs.
Of course, Kusari is right. You may want to try them all, but 2 handed frost seems the easiest and most forgiving in pvp and pve for newer dks. Unholy takes a bit of time to get the dps really rolling. If you are doing 5 mans, you will find trash going down so quickly, your true unholy dps will be cut short. You may find a similar situation in pug bgs. You and/or your opponents will not live long enough to really see your damage matter. Arena, rbgs, and raids are places where unholy really shines.

It seems 2 handed frost has a bit more RP regeneration than dual frost, which is helpful starting out. You won't have the survivability unholy has, but this shouldn't matter dpsing 5 mans, and I do well in reg bgs. Frost has a few buttons to spam and is very bursty. Regardless of your choice, you will die a lot in pvp starting out until you get your gear and res. Accept that fact and stay near groups and heals.

DW or 2H?

So I'm going to leave this guy at level 70 until MoP comes out and maybe do a little 70 pvp, so I was wondering. Which is better, 2h frost or DW frost?
It's largely a preference thing unless you intend to PvP.

DW does better DPS overall.

2h has stronger Necrotic Strikes and more resource control.
I don't get necrotic strike until level 81 i think, if not it's 83. And I'm talking about level 70 pvp, so I'm not so sure if DW or 2H is better
2H, easier to Find a decent weapon & you only need 1 weapon.

Most advocate while lvling Frost to go as 2H. Since you can pick up On a Pale Horse with little to know dps loss compared to DW talent choices.

While lvling to 80.. way back in the day I lvled as 2H Frost & Blood (for tanking & hard heathy mobs)as my other spec.

Did also the same from 80 to 85 when I came back a while back.edit: Since you will be staying at lvl 70 & all:)
2h is better - dps doesnt matter in pvp its damage done, and 2h weapons hit harder, and when you consider that most pvp encounters aren't very long thats a good thing.

The 2h weapon that drops off Death Wing is insane in pvp.
at ur level there aren't many one handed str dps weapons. Honestly the only one handers i can think of are tank weapons. Prolly make more sense to go 2h.

Dark Simulacrum not trolling

Do you have to push the button again to use whatever spell you stole? I swear I only pvp and haven't noticed me using any of the spells I've stolen.

Thanks
Yes, When you steal a spell the DC icon will turn into that spell then you press that key again to use the ability you stole (but it has to be used within 20 seconds of being stolen)
Thanks for your quick response.

Did they buff Kael'thas?

I've been working for moths to kill this bastard, finally last week I nailed it.

This week, after 2 gear upgrades, I can't even get past phase 3. The advisors have 2x the hp and toy remote goes off every 5 seconds.

Is it me or did Blizz do something....
toy remote is random...

and no they didnt

its all the same

I've been working for moths to kill this bastard, finally last week I nailed it.

This week, after 2 gear upgrades, I can't even get past phase 3. The advisors have 2x the hp and toy remote goes off every 5 seconds.

Is it me or did Blizz do something....

Sounds more like you lost some skillz in the last 2 weeks.
There is a lot of RNG in that fight. Lots of bad luck will happen.

MoP glyph ideas

Well looking at the list on Wowhead of what Blizz has put in so far, is there any cosmetic glyphs my fellow knights would like to see? (Besides the obvious want for different ghoul choices) There certainly is a lot for Paladins so far and quite a few for warriors. Personally "Glyph of Murder of Crows: Your Execute critical strikes summon a flock of carrion birds." just screams it should instead be made for us.
This is such a small stupid thing, but I'd love to get a glyph that makes my Death and Decay green, or restores the purple smoke we had in the Wrath beta. Or one that makes our blood shield a visible effect. Or that brings back our 4.0 Blood Boil animation.

:(
I know, I loved that blood boil animation... and then they gave us the same one that pally's have for something else!

As for glyphs? This isn't cosmetic, but I want our freaking instant cast hungering cold back!! Cuz guess who they gave it to? Thats right, pallys... (level 87 Pally talent: Blinding Light)

/ends grumpy anti-paladin rant.

Otherwise, a glyph to turn your bone gryphon into something that didn't completely suck would be nice... ooh! or I know! a glyph to make the death charger a flying mount like the headless horseman one! hahaha that would be awesome. (don't know how realistic that would be to ask for... but it would be awesome nonetheless).
Glyph of the Necromancer
The Death Knight sacrifices some of his melee abilities and defenses for the ability to deal damage at ranged! The following abilities are gained: Unholy Intellect- The Death Knight gains Spell Power based on his Attack Power. Deathly Haste: The Death knight gains spell haste equal to his melee haste. The following abilities are changed:

Festering Strike becomes Festering Blast, with the same effect as before but now with a 30 yard range. Damage is now based on Spell and Attack power rather than Weapon Damage.

Death Strike becomes Leeching Blast, which deals damage based on Spell and Attack power at 30 yard range, and instead of a flat healing now heals the Death Knight for 10% his health over the next 5 seconds. This effect does stack.

Scourge Strike becomes Scourge Blast, which deals the same effect now at 30 yard range with damage based off of Spell and Attack power.

The following abilities are lost- Icebound Fortitude. Death's Advance.

This would let Unholy DKs become casters in the same way the Warlock glyph lets Demo locks become Melee. Now for some minor ones I would like-

Glyph of Death Grip: Your Death Grip is replaces with Death Pull, which pulls you to your target.

For when charging is more beneficial than gripping.

Glyph of Path of Frost
You can no longer die from falling when Path of Frost is active.

BASE JUMPING

Alternatively-
Glyph of Falling Snow
Your now Slowfall while under the effects of Path of Frost

Alternatively-
Glyph of Unbroken Ice
Your Path of Frost no longer breaks on damage.

Because seriously, that !@#$ is annoying.

Glyph of Red Defeat
When you die, you erupt in a brilliant shower of blood and bone. All enemies around you take X damage and are slowed by 50%.

Because I have always wanted to piss people off one last time, even when I die.

Glyph of Undying Resolve
Will of the Necropolis is changed. Now, when you die while under its effects you rise again for 1 minute, but take 10% your health in damage every 10 seconds.

Second chance when tanking, if you die and a boss is almost dead this could save the raid.

That's all for now.

Moar AB (WoW 85 Frost DK PvP 4.3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTBGqiSZ6_M&context=C4aa4db7ADvjVQa1PpcFMPisynGdQ4-pRAphyIRDRDyJmZMgyWCaA=
dear god man.

Faceroll + horrible noise (rap)

Not a good day for DK's

Masterfrost, am I doing it right?

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-94t3g0ro0w477gj4/sum/damageDone/?s=3293&e=3710

Is the only log that I have of myself while playing masterfrost. I decided to reforge out of expertise and into mastery as much as possible, with haste as my next stat. My general rotation was to OB when 2 uh runes up, frost strike if over 100 RP, Rime, frost strike if over 70 RP, Howling Blast if under 50 RP. Mind you this is during blackhorn so the only time I could consistently keep this going was on phase 2. My reasoning for dropping expertise seems rather obvious, I have the opportunity to attack the back of everything except for the twilight drakes on this fight. Having extra mastery makes my howling blast hit like a truck, so it compensates for missed hits anyways. I'm curious for any input on my gear, WoL, or rotation. Cheers!
I would really love some accurate data on a comparison between the standard Frost rotation and the Masterfrost rotation.

Whilst obviously I can't make great use of it, from what I've seen, read and heard, the extra dps you may get from the playstyle isn't nearly worth the punishment you'll face for screwing it up.

But how much "extra" dps - if any - are we actually talking, here?
It looks to me like you are playing "Shadowfrost" not masterfrost.

Shadowfrost - A dps rotation in which, you use both Frost & Death runes for HB, and rotate between PS, DND & OB (while keeping up 1 unholy rune so RE gives more HB's)

Masterfrost - The Same exact thing as normal frost, except played with less haste. This spec will sometimes, when faced with bad RNG use a set of runes on Howling blast, to keep Resources up and avoid a large dead-zone time where you have no resources. Good RNG permitting, however, it is played the exact same as normal frost. The key here is if you manage resources well enough, the extra mastery will out-damage the loss of haste.

With that said :

No. you are not doing it right. You only obliterated 13 times that fight. You generated enough runic power to frost strike over 100 times, but only frost striked 56.
You should not drop expertise for masterfrost. The only fight dropping expertise is advised is spine of deathwing. This is because the tendon you attack cannot dodge/parry, and you need a large amount of burst (in heroic) on the tendon to successfully complete the fight.
Thanks for your input, Turleb. I kind of took on the masterfrost idea about an hour before raid, just thinking that cleaving more at times would lead to extra dps. I'll do what I can to get my stats where they should be. I think it's weird that how I played the fight worked for me, but that's just probably due to almost constant aoe damage.
http://www.simulationcraft.org/430/Death_Knight_T13H_stylecomparison.html

comparison of the 2h unholy and top 3 ways to play dw frost
Thanks for that, sumregis, it's nice to see it compared :)

http://www.simulationcraft.org/430/Death_Knight_T13H_stylecomparison.html

comparison of the 2h unholy and top 3 ways to play dw frost

Thanks for this. Just basing off the Sims alone makes the playstyle completely unworthy for me.