1 Spec Question/Opinion, Spec Specific Questions

[rap87]

Hey guys,

I guess I'm looking for the opinions of players that consistently rank in the 85 percentile to what they think would be the best spec to play if they had to play 1 spec for all of the fights in this current tier and why?

Secondly, if you switched between 2 specs, say Unholy/2 Hand Frost, I assume because of stat weights being the same, why would you choose Frost over Unholy? Unholy for single target? Frost for cleave? Would Unholy's single target be even worth bothering if it was within 1-3%?

Specific Questions (Unholy)

In reading Festerblight, the concept seems a lot like Warlock's snapshotting big dots (BoDoom) for example to do the most dmg. I get the concept, now do you use every set of Death Runes from FS on FS to keep the dots rolling or is it every other set or? If, say you start the fight and your big boy dots fall off, is it worth it to do Festerblight again with a lesser set of AP buffs or?

How much dmg does say BB do vs HBs and or the passive diseases of Unholy. Is it worth constantly Pest over for Unholy no matter what. Frost Dots aren't that much, I'm wondering if in playing Unholy its like playing an AFF lock, those bad boys matter....

Does the Ghouls Passive Cleave come anywhere close to Frost's Howling Blast? And at what point does BB became worth it over SS? 3 Targets?

Lastly, does anyone have a Weak Aura for when your pet isn't attacking? I have an icon for Frost that pops up when my Ghoul is OFF CD, letting me know to summon him. I'd like to have the same icon in red saying my Pet isn't attacking if Unholy to let me know to get him attacking...can't find a good option in there for this?


Learning How To Fish Questions:

How might I go about answering these questions for myself in the future? I'm thinking if I ran an Unholy Sim from Export AskMrRobot and a Frost it should tell me how much each ability does per and that might give me an idea to the power of these things vs the encounter?

^Also regards to the above how to understand just where a specs dmg really comes from might help in knowing how its going to match up from the encounter...

My personal situation is this, I've been DW Frost for awhile, Loved Unholy back in the day, but it seems the ease at which DW Frost can switch targets and get going is so hard to pass up I'm having a hard time justifying doing anything else, especially since it's a pain the ass Weapon Wise/Stat Wise to play around with the other 2. Would be more feasible if I was 2hand to play with Unholy....

The Sims are saying we're far behind (DW) single target, so wondering if its time to play it regardless....Yet in raid...I'm beating people that sim 145k (2h Frost DK) and others while I sim around (122k), even on single target Fights (1st Boss, Durumu)....that sample is making it hard for me to say hmmn DW sucks or not...seems to be rocking it out, but then I'm also like give me a 2hander would I be blowing it up just that much more.

^I feel like I'll just go with whatever weapon drops first my way, but now just trying to get a big picture of what I should focus my energies towards.

[Deleted]

I have time to answer a few because it's late so here goes with the easy stuff.

Festerblight is all about keeping your DoT's up for the entire fight, the entire playstyle revolves around it. You should at no point let your diseases drop off, to the point where you're just hitting FeS until you have 40+ secs on your diseases at all times (or whatever you're comfortable with)

SimC will tell you about HB vs BB damage, the cleave of HB has been nerfed so I think it would depend on # of targets for that one.

Timmy doesn't have a passive cleave, he has a 3 (iirc) target cleave when he's hulked out.

I can't help with WA but when we were having AI problems with Timmy a while back the standard tactic to fix that was to just macro [pet] claw in to SS so you're constantly forcing him to go for your current target. I don't know how necessary it is these days though.

You're right about SimC telling you the ability numbers although I think there are some issues with the DK modules at the moment, maybe others can give you a better answer on that.

That's all I have time for now, good luck getting answers on the rest.

[RedFlame]

to go a bit more in-depth for festerblight-
you aim to stack as much str as you can when you apply the DoTs, to get as big a tick as possible. then you will burn death runes on FS to keep them up. now, you won't burn every death rune for FS, as you'll end the fight with a minute or more left on your diseases. try to time switching back to burning death runes with SS to coincide with dmg buffs, such as trinket procs and fight mechanics. to maximise the dmg from festerblight, you have to aim to have your stacked DoTs to have ~3 secs left when the boss dies. this is incredibly hard to time, so if can get it to 10 or 20secs left, your doing decent. for AoE BB (from my personal testings) seems to be very close on 3 targets to SS, and passes it on 4+, and DnD is always worth it if it hits 2 targets. also, roiling blood is your friend. you should always have DoTs on every target with it, especially if you glyph pest, and if you're doing festerblight, the other 2 options are completly useless.

for testing damage, you can always go hit dummys in each spec to compare numbers. it'll give you the most accurate number for your gear, at least for ability specific damage.

[rap87]

Gotcha on Festerblight, I meant say accidentally it fell off say on Horridon you got it going on the Boss, and went to some adds and just jacked it up accidentally and it fell off, would you try to re get another one going with some Str Buffs or just go normal at that point. Lastly from you two any opinion on a 1 spec for all encounters, if you can play all of them well?

Dam, do most think then it's not worth, like in pvp, having the pet on passive and always telling him what to attack? In general is it just worth it for him to be by your side all the time in PVE? If so, wouldn't assist work fine?

And wow 3 targets SS would win out over BB, DND SS until 4 then BB...Now Red, Rolling Blood jacks up your festerblight? So I assume you just pest all the time on new adds ?

[Deleted]

Festerblight's awesome on single target encounters or ones where you have 1 or 2 adds, or groups of adds that don't spawn in pestilence range of the boss.

I'm not the greatest unholy player, in fact I've just switched back after a prolonged visit to the land of obliterate... Festerblight's not a massively new thing. DKs have been re-applying buffed diseases for years, the difference is that FB never lets those original buffs drop off as you'll have pretty much all your available buffs, including str potion and trinkets (and possibly engineering proc) occur right at the start of the encounter. If you CAN keep those diseases going then it's awesome.

I love rolling blood for unholy, it makes AOE encounters so smooth and, the risk you face while using rolling blood is the diseases getting re-applied on your original "festerblight" target, hence why it uses unholy blight.

For the majority of encounters, whether or not you use the festerblight playstyle you will see a difference if you use an addon called DKDOTS. For some reason it's relatively unused but I find it to be pretty damn amazing as it gives you an indication as to when re-applying diseases will be a good idea.

And yeah, if you're lucky enough to get fabled feather then that can provide some pretty epic diseases.

[Deleted]

Lastly, does anyone have a Weak Aura for when your pet isn't attacking? I have an icon for Frost that pops up when my Ghoul is OFF CD, letting me know to summon him. I'd like to have the same icon in red saying my Pet isn't attacking if Unholy to let me know to get him attacking...can't find a good option in there for this?

Just put your pet's action bar where you can see it: if the pet is attacking you'll see the GCD rolling on its abilities. Otherwise you can put your pet's UI and check if the energy is moving or it stand still at full bar.


At the moment, for the first 6 bosses in normal, Frost wins easily on 3/6 bosses (jin'rokh, megaera and ji-kun) while UH wins only on 1/6 bosses (council). On tortos they are pretty equal and on horridon frost is just slighly ahead.

[rap87]

Appreciate the replies guys, look forward to any more in depth opinions. Now if you guys agree that Frost is easily winning on more bosses, why are you guys playing Unholy in general? For something different? Or do you disagree that it is really "weaker" on those fights?

Lastly are the two trinkets "needed" to play/make Unholy Competitive Feather/ShadoPan? Without these does it not do as well?

[Deleted]

Appreciate the replies guys, look forward to any more in depth opinions. Now if you guys agree that Frost is easily winning on more bosses, why are you guys playing Unholy in general? For something different? Or do you disagree that it is really "weaker" on those fights?

Lastly are the two trinkets "needed" to play/make Unholy Competitive Feather/ShadoPan? Without these does it not do as well?

Yeah, you need Feather and VP trinket to make FB playable, otherwise the standard playstile should be better but it's not only about trinkets, I think UH scales better with higher ilvl gear.