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WotLK DeathKnight

Last post 01-07-2009 3:22 PM by Neckface. 35 replies.
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  • 11-11-2008 2:03 AM

    • Shylugh
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    WotLK DeathKnight

    Didn't see a thread with links to great DK theorycraft info. I figured I'd start one up.

    General Info to look at:

    http://deathknight.info/forum/ - some great info on the DK class.

    http://wotlkwiki.info/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=15 - another great forum to scour for DK info

    http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26113-death_knight_wotlk_discussion_-_talents_abilities/ - EJ DK general discussion thread.

    http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/40685-death-knight-f-q-questions-answers-right-here.html - tankspot, a great place to go for general tanking information. mostly prot war discussion but they branched out for pally/druid and look like they are adding content for DK.

    http://dkcourse.blogspot.com/ - This guy spent a lot of time playing DK on beta and seems to know what he is talking about. Has some great info and made quite a few guides the community responds well to. Posts lots of vids to http://hosted.filefront.com/Volfinator. I've watched them all. Very Informative, but about 3 - 4 hours long in total. With the last one (part 4 about talents, stats, etc. taking about 1.5 hours). The videos are of him doing the DK starting quests and discussing the class while doing it.

    DPS Theorycraft:

    http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t36303-death_knight_dps_compendium/ - EJ DK DPS theorycraft thread.

    http://deathknight.info/forum/index.php?topic=4435.0 - DPS Gear List - Raw DPE vs. Total DPE

    Tanking Theorycraft:

    http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t36998-dk_tanking_discussion/ - EJ tanking thread

    http://deathknight.info/forum/index.php?topic=2395.0 - tanking guide 

    http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/41838-death-knight-tanking-gear-list.html - Tank Gear List

    Stat caps:

    Tools to look at:

     

    Glyphs:

    For leveling up

    From what I've read everyone seems to suggest the following so far for leveling

    For Tanking: from http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t36998-dk_tanking_discussion/

    • Major:
      • Glyph of Icy Touch – The increased RP generated from this glyph is very useful. Rune strike, frost strike and death coil are all great abilities, and any extra RP is useful. Many other abilities require RP, including Anti-Magic Shield and Icebound Fortitude.
      • Glyph of Bone Shield – A must for Unholy tanks.
      • Glyph of Dark Command – A must for any tank. Having a taunt miss is obviously problematic and reducing eliminating this chance is essential.
      • Glyph of Obliterate– Obliterate is the bread-and-butter ability for Frost tanking and this glyph buffs it once a certain average weapon swing damage has been reached. The exact number is yet undefined.
      • Glyph of Rune Strike – Increases cost by 25% for a 20% increase in damage. Very useful if you find you have more RP than you know what to do with.
      • Glyph of Death and Decay – Decent glyph for reducing incoming damage while AOE tanking or PvP fun.
      • Glyph of Icebound Fortitude – Making shield wall free is never a bad idea.
      • Glyph of Death Grip – This one is largely a PvP glyph. It has very limited raiding use.
    • Minor:
      • Glyph of Pestilence – This is an amazing glyph for all DK’s. Use this one.
      • Glyph of Horn of Winter – Not a bad glyph. It allows you to Death and Decay the use Horn of winter before entering combat (it is possible without this glyph).
      • Glyph of Corpse Explosion – gives you the chance at an extra explosion for each use of the spell. Not great, but there aren’t a lot of minor tanking glyphs, and I needed to add a third.

    Talent Specs: (for leveling up)

    Taken from http://dkcourse.blogspot.com/2008/11/course-part-2-completed.html

    "Right out of the DK starting area you will be looking at something like this: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jZZfMhILcoxcoMfouL as your talents. As you hit outlands it will be turned into: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jZZfMhILcoxcoMfout to wrap up Azeroth. Finally by the time you are down looking something around these lines: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0sIZZfMhILcoxcoMfout. The reasoning for going unholy instead of blood early on is the ease of AOEing mobs early on. With unholy blight you can be soloing 2-3 mobs at a time EASILY and efficiently."

  • 12-05-2008 5:01 PM In reply to

    • Shylugh
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    Found a great post about Unholy DPS on EJ: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t37087-unholy_dps_discussion/p9/#post992053

    Has an interesting talent build (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVZZfMbhxckgcoMfsut) that directly addresses ghoul survivability since it makes up a large percentage of our dps as Unholy.

  • 12-11-2008 3:38 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    Yay for Unholy nerfs inc and Frost nerfs.  20% more armor buff from Frost Presence will net me a whopping 3-4k more armor.  That doesn't help when Bone Armor's damage mitigation gets cut in half, Icebound fortitude's damage mitigation gets nerfed as well, even with 540 def.  Blood gets Pest cooldown removed, which doesn't do too much at all.  Runic power cost for Hungering Cold, Dancing Rune Weapon, and Unholy blight all lowered to 40 from 60.  Heart strike has cleave built in now instead of the haste debuff, which is pretty awesome.

    Also, I like how they improved Threat gain when that wasn't our problem.  Our problem wasn't threat, it was damage mitigation.  Blood strike's threat got increased and they nerfed/buffed Rune Strike (lower damage, higher threat).  Way to go Blizz.

    They DID however finally get the message that we needed a tanking Weapon Rune along with a tanking Sigil.  Idk why they didn't do that in the beginning, apparently they didn't want us to reach Def cap too easily, which is retarded. 

    Buffing Frost Presence will barely do much if at all.  Buffing our baseline mitigation would have to go way beyond what they're planning on doing.  Essentially, they want us to be cooldown reliant, but then they nerf our cooldowns because they're too powerful, then they don't buff our baseline mitigation enough.  So now we don't have enough mitigation and our abilities are gonna blow.  If you can't buff Frost Presence anymore, and you don't want to buff back the talents, buff back the passive abilities we have (give us better dodge/parry %'s, lower cooldowns, or take some off GCD)

     

  • 12-11-2008 3:53 PM In reply to

    • Shylugh
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    What really sucks is we have the same bonus from rating and DR on dodge and parry but we don't get block at all... gg blizz gg.

    WTB frost Presence granting defense. It's supposed to be a shield replacement presence so why not grant def like shields do?

  • 12-11-2008 4:24 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    That'd be nice, or just a higher bonus from rating on DR and Parry, or give us a higher % bonus back from Str --> Parry.

    Is this same kind of feeling that we're having on the WoW DK forums as well? 

  • 12-16-2008 11:50 AM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    I took my T-7 for tanking and am gonna need to really build up my Argent rep fast for my head enchant.  Besides that, I'm getting slowly closer to 540. 

    Can anyone confirm sometime today if today was patch day?  25 extra defense would help a ton.  And does anyone else find our "tanking" sigil a complete joke?  a CHANCE on Icy touch to increase our defense RATING by 54 for 10 sec.  If this "chance" is 50%, and there's no internal cooldown, then I might find this more attractive, but I doubt it.

    Would blizzard like to rape us a little more please?  I mean cmon, there's OBVIOUS tanking guns in WoW, and there have been for a long time. Why can't we just have a static tanking sigil?  What's so effing difficult about that?

  • 12-16-2008 11:58 AM In reply to

    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    Urduro:
    I took my T-7 for tanking and am gonna need to really build up my Argent rep fast for my head enchant.  Besides that, I'm getting slowly closer to 540. 
     

    Can't you champion Argent Crusade by wearing their tabard?  I've already hit exalted on one faction and have a bunch more on another, and I only dinged 80 6 days ago.

  • 12-16-2008 12:58 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    I did the Knights of the Ebon Blade first.  I'm currently wearing my argent tabard already and am working on it as fast as I can.  I have to do like 27 things and am trying to cram in as much as I possibly can.  After Ebon Blade it's going to be Wyrmrest Accord and then Kirin Tor I think.  Or should I do Kirin Tor then Wyrmrest Accord?

    Also, if anyone has any spare Mithril, that'd be super. EDIT:  Almost done with Mithril, need about 100-150 more bars and I'm set.  Did about 20 points in BS off just mithril gloves.  After Mithril comes Thorium and I have a small amount of Thorium waiting in my bank for me.  I also have about 100 Dense Stones for making the dense grinding stones (helps a bunch in just jumping BS'ing up quick).  The real fun part will be Fel Iron because my warrior was 67 and a miner/bs.  I have about 160 fel iron waiting for me there, so that will help a huge amount.  Also got some eternium and adamantite ore as well.

    Also, I'm almost revered with Argent Dawn now and I'm almost honored with Sons.  Gonna try to get out of work early and to get in on another Naxx today as an offtank.  I know I'm not Def capped, but I'm gettin close.  Stayed up pretty late last night tanking heroic Nexus with Ebonblade and Neck, lol at 3 DK's in an instance, we also had Anal to make it 4 classes with pets.  It was almost a raid XD

  • 12-22-2008 3:14 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    DEF CAPPED FINALLY, now to seriously buff up my DPS gear which won't take long thankfully.

    Also, because I'm curious, wouldn't a geared DK tank make a good choice for tanking Sartharion/3 drake?  Anti Magic Shell > Flame Breath (if you're spec'd for it) if the flame breath doesn't happen more than once every 45 seconds, which I have no idea if it does. 

    Another question I have is with the new patch and certain ability combos.

    Let's take Frost Presence and only look at the 15% magic damage reduction.  Now, if we use Anti Magic Zone, does that stack appropriately?  IE:  90% reduction, or does it add all qwerky?  Actually it'd be 95% because you have to have 5 points in anti magic shell just to get to anti magic zone.

    My next question would be on the mechanics of Anti Magic Zone itself.  If there's an attack of say, 70k, in magic damage and we do have anti magic zone up along with frost presence, does it absorb 75% of damage until it hits its limit and lets the rest through (like PWS)?  I think it does act like PWS, but just can't remember atm (at work, can't test it).  Also, I believe based on the mechanics of it acting like a PWS that it would absorb 75% damage incoming, then the 25% that does come through, 20% of that (read, 20% of 25%, so that's 5%) would be eliminated from Frost Presence and Magic Suppression automatically.  Thus, an attack of 70k I think should hit foorrrrrr....

    AMZ absorbs 10k + 2xAP, so fully buffed it should be around 14-15k.  That's 15k damage absorbed with 3750 getting through, which gets reduced further to 3000.  Then the rest of the 55k goes through at 80% which is 44k damage + the 3k that went through, 47k.

    Ow.

    Now I know Mysty posted the following:

    Mystywake:

    Gurruk:

    Sartharion's Flame Breath = 10938 - 14062 damage.
    Shadron (Power of Shadron) x2, 100% modifier = 21860 - 28124 damage.
    Acolyte of Shadron (Gift of Twilight) x2 x1.5, 50% modifier = 32790 - 42186 damage.
    Acolyte of Vesperon (Twilight Torment) x2 x1.5 x1.75, 75% modifier = 57383 - 73826 damage.

    73826 damage *.84 (defensive stance, 16% less damage) = 62014 top end on the breath when all buffs/debuffs are up.

    This is nuts. If we have 3 priests in the raid we can only stop 3 of these breaths because the CDs on G Spirit and Pain Suppression are unlikely to allow multiple uses in a single fight.  With Guth's health as it was last night, he is healable if he does not have (Twilight Torment) when the breath comes and he has a Power Word Shield on him.

    However, one of the big problems with Power Word: Shield is the 15 second debuff preventing another shield from going on him.  I spent a lot of time watching Guth's buffs last night and I know he took breaths while still having 5 seconds on this debuff, Weakened Soul.  Maybe this is because Sarth starts casting faster when a drake dies so the breaths start coming faster?  I dunno... I recall Gurruk saying that the breaths were more than 15 seconds apart, but this was not what I was observing last night.

    Thus, assuming he doesn't have Twilight Torment then a rotation like PWS > Pain Supression > PWS > Guardian Spirit > PWS > Guardian Spirit > PWS could keep him up for a while.

    If that's the case, Anti Magic Shell being rotated in there might help a bit.  It would give a full immunity to the breath.  If that's the case, you would NOT want to glyph for anti magic shell, as it would be counterproductive.  5 extra seconds of immunity for 15 extra seconds of cooldown wouldn't work as well.  Now, what would the new rotation look like though? 

    EDIT:  Does Pain Suppression stack with Icebound Fortitude?  What about Bone Armor?  I just feel like there's so many variables about reducing damage as a DK tank from that breath.

  • 12-22-2008 7:23 PM In reply to

    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

     Here's a viable tri-spec just for tanking Sartharion for the breaths. 23/11/36 has a single point unallocated that could still go anywhere. Basically, this spec is focused only on mitigating the deadly breaths with 4 cooldowns on the DK -- AMS, AMZ, BS, IF. These cooldowns are to be used separately, and when the DK has no more cooldowns to use (all are already in cooldown), the priest takes over shielding and stuff. Lichborne is used after breaths so that the boss' melee attacks won't hurt that much on the DK.

     

    Also, this spec sucks on the threat department. The DK would only tank Sartharion just for the breaths. After all drakes are dead and everything is cozy, the main tank can take over and taunt Sartharion to tank him normally.

  • 12-22-2008 8:15 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

     The problem with tha (and I encountered this earlier today too) is that I don't believe the breath is a "direct damage" spell.  If that's the case, then Spell Deflection's useless.  

    Also, blood caked blade < Morbidity, and the last point would obviously get put in mark of blood.  Also, there's no good way of using your frost/unholy runes (IE:  Either OB or SS.  There's no SS in that build and OB would wipe out your diseases).  You would in essence just keep icy touching and plague striking.  You could death strike of course, but I'd rather have 3/3 Death Rune Mastery while doing so to get ready for some crazy combo.

    But you're right, this spec would be pretty gimp imo for threat generation.  No UB, no OB, no SS, no HS, XP

     

     

  • 12-22-2008 8:29 PM In reply to

    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

     But doesn't matter because there's no deathknights on atm....

  • 12-23-2008 11:33 AM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    I was baking, :P

    Now you don't get cookies. 

  • 12-31-2008 12:36 PM In reply to

    • Urduro
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    Re: WotLK DeathKnight

    I'd like some help from either Neck or Shy in my DK dps.  I know my gear's still far behind you guys (I picked up tanking gear first), however I'm not sure it's entirely gear that's making me so far behind in my dps.

    I've asked shy already on what the rotation should be and I've mimic'd it to the best of my ability.  IT > PS > BS > BS > OB > .....

    This is for single target dps, such as patchwerk.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to pull out enough dps.  It's as if with my gear, Unholy pulls out more DPS as it involves more spell damage and less damage based on weapon dmg whereas blood seems to concentrate more on weapon damage.  I haven't gotten the 2h axe off of KT yet, so I'm still using the Collosal Skull Cleaver from H HoL.

    Any help here would be appreciated! 

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