Can you guys help me understand Plague Leech or atleast give me some tips about it?

[Deleted]

Hello there peeps.

First i want to say that i play my dw frost dk since the begging of MoP as my ... hmm how to say it ... my main alt

I had always used Unholy blight as part of my rotation and i am very used to it and also using roiling blood in adds heavy/cleave fights and never ever used Plague leech in any kind or form, but now as i read the patch notes of 5.4 when was the beta i tought the buff/rework of PL will be super OP for DW frost as it is ofcourse.

So what is my problem right now
first of all i want to say that my main was arcane mage all up from MSV (and even since i play this game) till now and i just recently decided to switch to my DK, because i find it more fun to play with it in SoO than with my mage (even tho arcmage can do some really silly dps in SoO with no sweat :P ). So anyway i switched (rerolled?!?) to my DK, but i continued using my rotation that i use since 1 year and i found it OK for our raid setup.
second - in the beggining of 5.4 my guild decided to switch to 25 man and we started recruiting people and ofcourse a ot of people applyed ... bla bla... long story short - right now we have 4 DKs in total (including me) 1 tank and 3 dps, and ofcourse the competion began.

So of all the unnessary information i wrote above, the main thing is that now im pushing myself to play the spec better, even minmaxing and ofcourse i started to use Plague leech. But then my problem started - i read all the stuff i could possibly found about it and i still can't really understand how to use it.
Here is example what i do i still think it might be not really corect - before PL come off cooldown like lets say 2-3 seconds i try to spend all my unholy and frost runes like spaming plague strike and howling blast (and very situational - obliterate), but when i try to do that i most likely end up 90+ runic power so i try to spend so i don't cap and lost RP, but when i try to spend it ... well lets say it fucks up everything (macroed BT in FS) and when i press Plague leech i get the warning that there isn't enough runes to convert and until i hear or see that warning (in the middle of fight i hardly see wow warning about no runes/no rp because of all the background noises like vents/dbm warnings+timers, etc) and it end up already 5-6+ seconds when the cooldown is off and it goes really wasted.

So any tips/advises etc that people who use it with macroed BT in FS i'll appreciate it.

P.S. i wanna say that i woun't unmacro BT from FS in any way

Armory link - eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/the-maelstrom/Nathanial/advanced

[Deleted]

Don't use PL on CD. Only use it if necessary (i.e. you're completely starved) and/or Blood Plague is about to fall off (1-2 seconds before).

[Shiira]

If you going to insist on macroing blood tap you shouldn't use plague leech.

[shells]

You need to have 2 fully depleted runes for plague leech to work. If you are pushing yourself to play better and min/maxing just stop the blood tap macro. Frost doesn't even need many key binds to execute so there is no reason to have it macroed.

Off topic read this guide entirely:Frost DK 5.4 Going by your armory there are a lot of things you will need to change.

[Kraeth]

What Shiira said. If you macro BT (=won't bank charges) PL is going to be pretty much useless.

[Kronik85]

You need to have 2 fully depleted runes for plague leech to work. If you are pushing yourself to play better and min/maxing just stop the blood tap macro. Frost doesn't even need many key binds to execute so there is no reason to have it macroed.

Off topic read this guide entirely:Frost DK 5.4 Going by your armory there are a lot of things you will need to change.

I use 40 different key binds as Frost so not sure where your pulling that from. More to the point if he wants to macro BT it's fine to do so, math was done in the PTR thread and it makes no difference what so ever. However since your struggling even with it macroed OP then you could always just swap to RE, the difference in out put in BiS is less than .5%......is it really worth the effort for the OP at this stage?

[Deleted]

Macro BT to howling blast, not to FS that way you still bank your charges. Use PL when your bloodplague is below 3 seconds (and you're not overflowing with ressources already) or when you are ressource starved.
That's it, nothing more to it =)

[Raikh]

Having BT macroed doesn't make pl it useless at all, you just have to time it better and know when to apply it. I play with BT macroed and PL and it works pretty well.
Also ran a sim with macroed BT 1k dps loss on 300k sim dps for dw which doesn't matter at all.

As Nedda said don't use it on cd, if you have way enough resources so that you can't use it properly than it is also no dps gain to use it, just 1 lost gcd.
It also gets more difficult to use with more haste or really excessive ams soaking. You have to find out when you drop lower on resources and use at that time.
Additional tip, more obliterates instead of ps = more chances for PL = more dps (if managed intelligent), there are some reasons oblit is still in the prio list.

And yeah banking bloodtap is not always so nice, also not for using PL more often. You runes may come back to bursty wasting actual runereg, making ams soaking less efficient or creating artifical downtimes you wouldn't have otherwise. The gain from doing it right is small, the loss form doing it wrong is bigger.

[Nangz]

Honestly I find this tier that plague leech is a very small increase, much smaller than advertised but tis` the weakness of sims. When you get the CDR trinket, AMS' cooldown becomes so short that as long as there is consistent magic damage to soak, you should never, ever, have to use plague leech.

When I was initially practicing on dummies to learn dw frost I would use plague leech on cooldown because it seemed to make the priority simpler, i've discovered this is not the case. While it can make it simpler, you tend to cap resources easily when you add in AMS. My suggestion is to use it how you use empowered rune weapon. For either burst ( usually aoe) or if you are completely starved of resources.

[Reiasdf]

You have too much haste. You should be prioritizing mastery over crit over haste. That's where PL shines.

[Darkfriend]

If you going to insist on macroing blood tap you shouldn't use plague leech.

I macro BT but manage stacks fine (forcing UH->death) and still use PL. Once I'm better at DW I'll unmacro BT, but for the time being I can't see it being much of a DPS gain to manually do it, with the exception of if you mess up CD usage.

Basically, if you don't have a KM proc, and can't hit HB, you can PL. Make sure to reapply BP w/ an UH rune and not a death rune though.

[Shiira]

Of course you can do it, but when you need to put more than the minimum amount of thought necessary into it why not just use blood tap properly.

[Darkfriend]

Of course you can do it, but when you need to put more than the minimum amount of thought necessary into it why not just use blood tap properly.

Because it isn't an overall DPS gain in most cases, since very minor mistakes will cost far more than you can gain.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the replies guys really appreciated.

But about what shells and Reiasdf typed about i have too much haste... well im not sure about. What i mean is i tried to reforge mastery>crit>haste, but in my opinion that ruined my gameplay and rotations and overall it made me feel uncomfortable with my toon. On the other hand i dont tend to read anymore IcyVeins and co because... well... i dont see much sence in them (really shallow explanations). I prefer to read this forum. People discuss a lot more problems here and there are also good tips here and there
The other thing is that in a lot of places i read that master>crit>haste build is when u have like almost bis gear (or atleast galakras+thok trinks) and also in a lot of places people advise to sim your char and see your personal stats weights an reforge according to them. When i sim myself i actualy see something pretty wierd - my haste weight is higher than mastery and strenght on top. Thats why for the moment i prioritase mastery>haste>strg>crit. I dont know if thats wrong thinking

[Deleted]

Try to see if you can get along with Plague Leech. Once you are completely starved (i.e. no BT charges, runes or RP) it doesn't matter if you macro'd BT or not. If you can't / don't want to, at least take Unholy Blight since Roiling Blood is by far the worst option for FDKs.

[Deleted]

It's your character and at the end of the day its about how you want to play it. There is no correct amount of Haste to have, just as you described, get haste until you are comfortable with it and then switch to piling on more mastery / crit. As DW my comfortable spot is 4 to 4.5k, people who play 2H seem to think 7-8k is the general sweetspot.

This is not just for BIS but keep in mind that glyph of RM / Thokks / Evil eye and PL all heavily affect the amount of haste you'll "feel" you need.

To each his own, play what you want to play and master it, you'll get way more dps out of doing that then out of FOTM speccing or screwing your stats up because it sims .5% higher. Understand the idea behind what the sims tell us and try to be in line with that, but above all master your own toon and get comfortable with it, you're the one playing 4 hours a night on it.

[Rashi]

I thought PL was used to convert a UH rune to a deathrune, Obliterate x2 then PL= deathrunes all over the screen. or am I retarded?

[Darkfriend]

I thought PL was used to convert a UH rune to a deathrune, Obliterate x2 then PL= deathrunes all over the screen. or am I retarded?

You use PL when you can't hit other things (it comes after Horn). IIRC you won't be able to get 6 deaths anyway, since as soon as you hit the first OB that UH rune would start rechargingin, meaning it wouldn't be refunded through PL.

[Pjatton]

You need to have 2 fully depleted runes for plague leech to work. If you are pushing yourself to play better and min/maxing just stop the blood tap macro. Frost doesn't even need many key binds to execute so there is no reason to have it macroed.

This ^^ PL Is so much better now because it restores 2 runes instead of 1 now.

Also, if you are macroing BT....wouldn't it be better to just use RC??

[Darkfriend]

This ^^ PL Is so much better now because it restores 2 runes instead of 1 now.

Also, if you are macroing BT....wouldn't it be better to just use RC??

No. BT gives a death rune instead of simply restoring a rune. That makes up for the ~5% less overall rune regen. Plus even w/ BT macroed you can still control it more than RE.