Fix My DK DPS v1 - Thread broken, see v2 in the stickies

[luizofoca]

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...leticus/simple
Spec:2H frost
World of Logs: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...-done&source=5 (last night kill on fallen protectors heroic)
Question (BE VERY SPECIFIC): WE are doing heroic SOO and my dps is low compared to my 560 ilvl gear. i would ike advice on what i should be doing different or any changes in my gear. I know dual wield is better but i dont have 2 good one handed weapons

[Sunnydee]

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...leticus/simple
Spec:2H frost
World of Logs: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...-done&source=5 (last night kill on fallen protectors heroic)
Question (BE VERY SPECIFIC): WE are doing heroic SOO and my dps is low compared to my 560 ilvl gear. i would ike advice on what i should be doing different or any changes in my gear. I know dual wield is better but i dont have 2 good one handed weapons

Gemming pure str is bad, you're losing to much secondaries
not a single soul reaper entire fight
55% uptime on blood plague
AMS was used 7 times during a 8.47m long fight. should be used on CD on protectors basically.
1 army could prob squish in a second since u got Evil eye heroic ( i got flex and mines at 7.3m cd)
pillar of frost used 6 times during a 8.47m long fight when it has 40sec cd with evil eye hc iirc.
no prepot nor any pot further into the fight. aka no 4k bonus str for 50 sec out of 8.47m
ERW used once.

[Maxweii]

Gemming pure str is bad, you're losing to much secondaries
not a single soul reaper entire fight
55% uptime on blood plague
AMS was used 7 times during a 8.47m long fight. should be used on CD on protectors basically.
1 army could prob squish in a second since u got Evil eye heroic ( i got flex and mines at 7.3m cd)
pillar of frost used 6 times during a 8.47m long fight when it has 40sec cd with evil eye hc iirc.
no prepot nor any pot further into the fight. aka no 4k bonus str for 50 sec out of 8.47m
ERW used once.

Army is like 6 mins exactly (cant remember off top of my head 100%) with a HWF galk's eye so with a heroic galks eye it should be under 7 mins. So yeah coulda put in another

[luizofoca]

Gemming pure str is bad, you're losing to much secondaries
not a single soul reaper entire fight
55% uptime on blood plague
AMS was used 7 times during a 8.47m long fight. should be used on CD on protectors basically.
1 army could prob squish in a second since u got Evil eye heroic ( i got flex and mines at 7.3m cd)
pillar of frost used 6 times during a 8.47m long fight when it has 40sec cd with evil eye hc iirc.
no prepot nor any pot further into the fight. aka no 4k bonus str for 50 sec out of 8.47m
ERW used once.

Thanks for the tips, ill change my pure str to continue balancing crit/haste.
i died in the second sun because of a combo garrote, rook spinning kick and calamity, before the soul reaper time
about pre-pot ill have to pay more attention. Im used to tank more than dps. ill start to use more the pre-pot pull
today we will have galakras and shaman hc ill put the results of the tips later.

[Sunnydee]

Thanks for the tips, ill change my pure str to continue balancing crit/haste.
i died in the second sun because of a combo garrote, rook spinning kick and calamity, before the soul reaper time
about pre-pot ill have to pay more attention. Im used to tank more than dps. ill start to use more the pre-pot pull
today we will have galakras and shaman hc ill put the results of the tips later.

There is also loads of adds in protectors fight where you can use soulreaper to gain the bonus haste, also i tend to glyph soul reaper on that fight. not rly a huge difference but gets me to point A to point B 0.7seconds faster.

and i dont think you need more haste, eventhough its "personal" i feel you got almost to much. not everyone agrees with this statement but "if you feel you need more haste you arent soaking enough with AMS"

[luizofoca]

There is also loads of adds in protectors fight where you can use soulreaper to gain the bonus haste, also i tend to glyph soul reaper on that fight. not rly a huge difference but gets me to point A to point B 0.7seconds faster.

and i dont think you need more haste, eventhough its "personal" i feel you got almost to much. not everyone agrees with this statement but "if you feel you need more haste you arent soaking enough with AMS"

i ran a simcraft after the raid yesterday.
and the refortge plot of crit/haste says that i can have like 500 more haste.
probably will gem only crit and get this haste from reforge.
ill remember to ams more often i normally use ams for protection not for dps.

[steelram]

Armory: not allowed to post due to less then 10post i guess.. my ilvl now is 529. char name Indazer
Spec: DW frost
World of Logs: not sure how to use it LoL
Question (BE VERY SPECIFIC): hi guys, I did a test on raider dummy and the burst damage i get was about 180k and after that it dropped to 120k.. I am not sure if my rotation was wrong or it due to my weapon problem. What I did was I put the both Dot spell, then i OB to gain rp and hoping to proc rime to use howling blast and try my best to have runic power for frost strike when KM pop. However if my KM proc and I have no rp i will just use it on OB.. am I doing correctly? please guide me thanks!

[Trubo]

Armory: not allowed to post due to less then 10post i guess.. my ilvl now is 529. char name Indazer
Spec: DW frost
World of Logs: not sure how to use it LoL
Question (BE VERY SPECIFIC): hi guys, I did a test on raider dummy and the burst damage i get was about 180k and after that it dropped to 120k.. I am not sure if my rotation was wrong or it due to my weapon problem. What I did was I put the both Dot spell, then i OB to gain rp and hoping to proc rime to use howling blast and try my best to have runic power for frost strike when KM pop. However if my KM proc and I have no rp i will just use it on OB.. am I doing correctly? please guide me thanks!

Others are more familiar than I am with DW Frost but I think the biggest issue is that you're prioritizing Obliterate over Howling Blast as your primary Frost Rune ability. Obliterate is physical damage only; as such it does not benefit from Frost Mastery. The biggest reason 2H Frost favors Obliterate is that weapon damage has a much greater weight in the ability than DW does (believe it's based off of Main Hand damage).

All in all that damage doesn't seem too terrible when I think back to ToT gear but probably a bit lower than expected if you have SoO stuff and accounting for the 5.4 changes.

[Markulino]

Armory:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Badaq/advanced
Spec: DW Frost
Question: Well, I have some questions that would help me a lot...

First, Am I gemming right for DW?
Second, Is it worth to follow every gem slot to get the bonus?
Third, is there a haste cap of some sort that I should aim?
Fourth, What is better? Gemming expertise to reforge for mastery or Reforge expertise so I can gem mastery?

[DarkStarUndead]

Hey guys!
I'm a blood DK, but for Thok our guild is doing the one tank strat, so I get to dps. I was DW Frost, but for some reason I can never get the rotation, and my dps is generally shitty. I switched to unholy and I am able to get higher numbers, but still not what they should be at (DW in logs I think I was around 180k, and unholy I think around 250k). I have HWF/H Xifengs (and non heroic tier helm, gloves (should have heroic gloves for tier bonuses any time now), and shoulders), but I'm not able to execute frost very well, I think. If you can help me with my dps for this fight, I would be so happy.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...leron/advanced
Spec: Unholy (currently)/DW Frost/2H Frost (optional)
World of Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...dv/details/17/
Question: Should I be switching to DW Frost? Can you help me with my rotation/ability priority/mistakes.

Try 15 through 18 I switched back to DW Frost, but got benched until the last pull (returned to tank normal). Try 19 was a fluke, please ignore.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Keleron

[Axphyxiate]

Hey Keleron, firstly it looks like you're full crit ATM , I'm not sure if that's your unholy gear but if you're playing dual wield frost you want to get as much mastery as possible (mastery > crit > haste), get mastery/strength gems in red sockets, pure mastery gems in yellow sockets and for blue sockets either ignore the socket bonus and put a yellow gem in or use hit/mastery gems. Alternatively you could play 2Hand from which uses crit > mastery > haste.

Looking at your logs you aren't using howling blast at all :P Swap icy touch on your bars for howling blast. You want to use all of your runes on howling blast (except unholy runes) and keep them on cooldown as much as possible. For unholy runes use plague strike and death and decay to keep them on cooldown. I'm not sure what talents you're using but plague leech is best, use it when you don't have runes, you get 2 free runes and just pop outbreak on the boss to reapply diseases (shouldn't need outbreak other than here). Additionally obliterate isn't worth casting at all, I don't even have it on my bars ATM. Also I'm assuming you know how to use blood tap but make sure you are using those blood tap stacks for rune regen even if you macro it into frost strike.

Potting will also give you a big dps boost, pre-pot at the start and after the first blood frenzy, and make sure you try to have as many buffs up as possible when you pop pillar of frost (trinket procs, fallen crusader proc, synapse springs etc).

If you have any more questions just post below or PM me and I'll try get back to you! I'm sure I've missed something :P

[DarkStarUndead]

Axphyxiate,
Thanks for the response! I am geared for unholy again. For what ever reason I'm able to get my dps closer to that of my sims in unholy, but bomb in frost. Attempts 1-14 I was unholy, then switched to DW Frostfor the next four attempts (regemmed and reforged for mastery), got benched to bring in another ranged and went back to unholy.

When I switched that night to Frost it was on our raids 10 min break, I must have forgot to put HB on my bars. And I think my biggest problem in DWF is sitting on unholy runes, i try to use Death and Decay as much as possible, but I didn't realize that they should just be kept on CD with Plague Strike.

I do try to keep Plague Leech on CD too, using outbreak or try to game a proc of Rime to get my plagues back up. And I am using Blood Tap.

Is Oblit really not worth it at all? I had recently read something about spamming Plague Strike for unholy runes, and that it's a slight dps loss compared to the correct rotation. That might be my problem, I realized I end up sitting on unholy runes a lot of the time, or casting more Oblits.

With those changes, would DW Frost be better to go with than Unholy?

Thanks,
Kel

[Axphyxiate]

As far as I'm aware the absolute min max rotation uses plague strike/death and decay/obliterate situationally and knowing when to use what is relatively complex for the extra couple k dps it provides in a perfect environment. It's not much of a dps loss to use plague strike/DND and ignore oblit. I think the main benefit to playing frost is the fact that howling blast is a ranged attack, when he's in blood frenzy you can follow him along attacking, when he goes to re-fixate back off a bit and keep spamming those howling blasts then go back in with max runic power, spam frost strike and regen runes and continue.

Alternatively if DW isn't working for you, you could try 2H frost using the same gem/gear as UH. Use runes on obliterate, frost strike when high runic power, only howling blast when you have a rime proc or you need to attack from range, don't worry about killing machine procs but ideally they want to be used on oblit over FS.

[Maxweii]

First off Axphyxiate you already got a thread closed for your video's (which I will watch and send some feedback when I get the time! Been very busy this weekend) so no need to advertise here, as the mod said, we have a thread for that!

So Keleron I will leave you with Axphyxiate for the Frost stuff. I don't like the spec and play it very very very rarely so he would be able to help you more then I could. He defiantly is spot on with saying use Howling Blast instead of Icy Touch though, that alone will give you a huge boost since HB hits for a lot more. As far as having Obliterate in your rotation or not, to me it works out on rune cost, and you have to add up the damage that two obliterates, plus one howling blast would do, and compare it to four howling blasts. That way you would see the equal rune cost of four each comparison and then you also add in the 45% chance to have a free howling blast added in, so it makes it for a good comparison (this is a very very watered down way to do it but it's the simplest easiest way).

As for Unholy, first thing i'll say is your stats are a bit off for it. For Unholy we want a balanced mix of our stats. Basically what you want to do is get to a point where you are comphy with your rune regen (I sit at 5475 atm), and then from there you go for a balance of Crit and Mastery (mine sit at 17287 crit and 13190 mastery, which balance out when you add in the mastery buff in raids). That might help you push your numbers a bit and get the most out of what you have atm.
For glyphs, you want to switch from having Glyph of AMS to having Glyph of Regen Magic. This helps you make up for having "low" haste, as you will be able to use AMS to gain Runic a lot more and therefor have more runes to use, to get more runic, ect ect.
I compared your logs and mine for Thok (I will link the log I was looking at of myself below) and you seem pretty spot on with what you're doing ability wise. Just make sure in sub 35% range you are using Soul Reaper as much as possible, and you should be golden.
Overall Unholy is actually doing better then Frost is, imo if you are already versed in Unholy just stay that spec. You'll do better that way.

This was the log I was using of myself as it's my most recent one:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=10006&e=10401

[DarkStarUndead]

He defiantly is spot on with saying use Howling Blast instead of Icy Touch though, that alone will give you a huge boost since HB hits for a lot more

Yeah, I switched back to DW Frost on our ten minute break and was scrambling to get everything set up, and forgot to put HB on my bars.

As for Unholy, first thing i'll say is your stats are a bit off for it. For Unholy we want a balanced mix of our stats. Basically what you want to do is get to a point where you are comphy with your rune regen (I sit at 5475 atm), and then from there you go for a balance of Crit and Mastery (mine sit at 17287 crit and 13190 mastery, which balance out when you add in the mastery buff in raids). That might help you push your numbers a bit and get the most out of what you have atm.

I had run a sim on my DK in unholy, the normalized values I got were:
Crit: 0.56
Haste: 0.52
Mastery: 0.52

I'm not 100% positive on how to read these, I'm guessing right now, haste and mastery should be equal, but just below crit. Pretty much what you said, and haste can be whatever I'm comfortable with.

I compared your logs and mine for Thok (I will link the log I was looking at of myself below) and you seem pretty spot on with what you're doing ability wise. Just make sure in sub 35% range you are using Soul Reaper as much as possible, and you should be golden.
Overall Unholy is actually doing better then Frost is, imo if you are already versed in Unholy just stay that spec. You'll do better that way.

We have only made it to exexute phase once or twice on thok, but yeah I know in Unholy its a big damage increase to be using soul reaper.

Thanks both Asphyxiate and Maxweii for the input, I'm going to try some things out and I'll get back if I need more help 8)

[Maxweii]

I had run a sim on my DK in unholy, the normalized values I got were:
Crit: 0.56
Haste: 0.52
Mastery: 0.52

I'm not 100% positive on how to read these, I'm guessing right now, haste and mastery should be equal, but just below crit. Pretty much what you said, and haste can be whatever I'm comfortable with.

Since Sims are bugger all worth anything for showing real raid soaking you can pretty much ignore the Haste levels. Just best bet (especially because you are of a rather high ilvl) is go for balancing Mastery/Crit with Haste wherever you like it. Good luck killing Thok!

[Deleted]

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ntenora/simple
Spec: Unholy
World of Logs: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/985k79c6uqejqz67/ (The raid leader hasn't uploaded this weeks log, This is last weeks)

Question (BE VERY SPECIFIC):
I recently transitioned from a 10 man heroic guild to a guild starting 25 Heroic. I was originally Blood in the 10 man guild but this new guild wants me to DPS due to having enough tanks already. My DPS completely sucks, I have no clue where I'm going wrong or what I could do to improve. I would love some help, appreciated a lot.

I understand the 4p is bad and can be replaced by warforged but my luck hasn't been that special in 10 or 25. My sim said I should be doing around 270k DPS but I'm doing around 220.

Am I not using AMS to it's full potential?
Is my rotation wrong?
Am I wasting my cooldowns?

[Traxion]

Hey DK masters and experts,

I run a 14/14H guild and our DK is starting to fall behind the guild in terms of DPS. I feel like he should be able to do more dps at his gear level but don't know what to look at as far as logs go. The characters name is Milz. If you could take a look at past Thursday and Monday's garrosh attempts that would be much appreciated. He says he does not have viable 1H's to go dual wield but he does have a heroic WF 2H currently.

Swarm on Thrall
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/4984/

[Ripkit]

Personally, I haven't done heroic garrosh, so don't put too much stock in my words. BUT, after looking over the warcraftlogs for frost DKs on 10-man heroic garrosh, they are literally ALL DW frost, not 2h. Since this fight has lots of adds, I could see the extra cleave damage providing huge advantage (since DW spams howling blast, whereas 2H prioritizes obliterate). On more single-target fights, I believe that the two play styles are much more comparable. However, on second skimming of some of these meters, it looks like DW is the dominantly used play style among top DPS DKs by and large. At max gear levels, they may pull farther apart.

So I'd suggest trying to get the guy some 1-handers. He's probably low even for 2H, but DW is easier to play anyway--if it's a player error issue, it should become even smaller as DW.

[Sinzaram]

Yeah for heroic progression, I would agree Dual Wield Frost or Unholy is the way to go, because they both have very high passive cleaving potential.

Looking at the meters, the first thing I noticed is he might be able to use Pillar of Frost more often than he is using it, I see a 8 minute long wipe where he only used Pillar 7 times. Pillar has a 1 minute base cooldown so he should be able to use it more often, he should also get a cooldown reduction trinket, that drops it even lower to 30-40 seconds, which would allow much higher uptime on being effectively 20% stronger.

The second thing I noticed is trinkets, I notice him gaining Cruelty buffs from the Skeer's Bloodsoaked Talisman trinket. This is the worst trinket this tier, a Thok's Tail amp trinket or Galakras cooldown reduction trinket is miles and miles better than a simple strength and crit chance proc trinket.
Crit might be our best stat for 2-handed Frost or Unholy, but crit on proc is miles worse than reducing Pillar and Gargoyle Cooldowns or boosting haste mastery and crit strike damage bonus.