[Compilation] DK Questions and Answers

[Mendenbarr]

Glad you like the work!

DnD updates dynamically, best time to use it is on CD, but if a feather procs and the CD is up, you get the most damage by using it at 10 seconds into the feather proc.

Yes, it's worth reapplying, and you get the most gain reapplying with 10% or more AP then your current diseases. Check out DKDoTs or DKDiseases, both great addons just for that purpose.

Let's say diseases naturally last for about 60 seconds, and shadopan has an ICD of 75 seconds. To extend it an extra 18 seconds would "cost" 6 SSs, and you'd gain 3 FeS as well.
79295 x3 FeS =237885
94020 x6 SS = 564120
That's a cost of 326235 in 541 gear. How much damage would you gain? Shadopan gives about 9k str, *1.05*1.05*1.10*1.15*2.2~ 27.5k AP. Diseases scale with 0.158 AP (*2*.5mastery) = 0.449 AP, So diseases would hit for about 12.3k more per tick. 18 seconds is 6 ticks, so you'd gain 74k damage from diseases. We also save one reapplication though, and therefore one SS at the cost of one PS. That's another 55k, putting the total at 129k (extending diseases) vs. 326k (not extending diseases)

So no, not worth it. It is worth reapplying when shadopan comes up.

Too early to tell. Blizzard might nerf feather, but there past treatment with trinkets that are too good to replace (darkmoon card greatness anyone?), and GC's recent tweet leads me to believe that they don't have a huge problem with trinkets lasting more than a tier. That being said, if every other class is upgrading to a more powerful trinket, and we are not, there will be small power creep.
Death knights are in a pretty good spot right now, and losing the advantage of feather will not make us "need" a buff. We won't be constantly topping charts, but nor should we be rock bottom. I don't expect any major buffs or nerfs for dks in 5.4, we have already gotten quite a few QoL changes (that are awesome BTW), and we should be very middle of the pack in 5.4
And there is nothing wrong with that.

[Deleted]

Nope, mistake.

[Milocow]

1 : Does AskMrRobot account for Dodge/Parry ratio balancing or the reforging is just random?

2 : Aside from Soul Barrier, what other good trinkets are there on a physical-damaging fight? (Ji-kun, Delicate Vial of Sanguine Blood, Fortitude of the Zandalari, the Spark(lightning shield icon thing), Lao-chin, etc)

3 : Do you get more Scent of Blood procs if you stack haste? Or is Scent of Blood capped at a certain proc-per-minute?

[Mendenbarr]

1. Not sure, you'll have to ask the team that made AMR. When I set dodge/parry to the highest value stats, it seemed to prefer parry over dodge. Not sure how effective the ratio was though.

2. Fortitude of the Zandalari and Soul Barrier would be my choice trinkets; ji-kun's heal is very weak, delicate vial is very unreliable, and spark's haste hurts DS timing (and has strength as it's proc). Lao-chin is a nice runner up.

3. Yes, haste does boost scent of blood procs. Using a 2-hand weapon, blood should get one proc per melee swing, so the shorter your melee swing timer, the more procs you get.

[pkm]

Is the frost spec easy to get into but hard to master?

[Mendenbarr]

2-hand frost is easy to get into... and pretty easy to master as well. Even the more advanced and finer points, few as they may be, are pretty easy.
Bare in mind this is just my opinion, and spec difficultly is very subjective.

[pkm]

I cant seem to find a frost DK guide here. Is this sticky it?

[Mendenbarr]

MMOC does not have an up-to-date guide at this time.
You can, however, find frost guides on:
Elitest Jerks
Icy Veins
Noxxic
Battle.net

I suggest the EJ or IV veins guide, but I'm a little biased, being author of one and consultant for the other. I have not personally read the noxxic or battle.net one.

[Deleted]

Hey Mendenbarr, an other quick question. Does The second tick from SR update dynamically or is its power based on the moment the first one hit? Say on Jinrok, if i time it so i enter the puddle after applying it, or the opposite, getting out of the puddle before it ticks out, how will the second tick be affected? (extreme example, but i'm more interested in how proccs affect each portion, say i click SR at 10 stacks on feather, does the second tick blow up?) Thanks!

[Mendenbarr]

Q: Is soul Reaper static or dynamic? The dot, is it static, in the form when you apply the dot, will it will do damage from the procs you had when you applied it or will it benefit from your procs at time in which it deals damage?
A: It updates dynamically.

So if you apply SR and run into a pool, you do get the dmg boost.

[Deleted]

Thanks ^.
An other question, stemming from your guide over at EJ about UH runes for DW frost rotation.

You will only be using Death and Decay and Obliterate to make sure one Unholy rune is recharging so that Runic Empowerment is returning Frost and Death runes as often as possible.

This has been reworded since last time i read it, but am i correct in assuming it means that when you get stuck with an unholy rune, that you cant get rid of with a D&D, and next rune isn't coming up for a couple seconds, its better to sit on it? Here are specific cases
If all runes are recharging, except 1 UH, D&D is on CD, and hitting PS would apply a less potent disease => sit on it til a rune comes up?
-> The rune that comes up is a death rune, use obliterate to get rid of the unholy or HB and sit on it until...
-> The rune that comes up is a frost rune, and D&D is still on CD and diseases don't need refreshing then obviously, hit Oblit, correct? or still HB and sit on it, so its ready as soon as i need to PS / D&D? (i believe the rotation described in the guide makes this one clear, oblit)

Lately i've just been PS'ing to get rid of it, as long as the disease was stronger, would waiting yield better results?

Using SimC, throwing in a PS at the bottom of the priority list (at work, cant tell you exactly where) resulted in a small dps gain, but i'm not sure how accurate that is, or if it translates into real life scenarios.
Here's a Jinrohk parse, if anything wrong stands out worldoflogs.com/reports/by3rpwjttnydq9ys/sum/damageDone/?s=352&e=538

Thanks again!

[Mendenbarr]

Firstly, leaving 1 unholy rune recharging is only necessary with RE, and it's for that very reason that I suggest BT.

Next, if your heart is set on using RE (which is fine, it's about personal preference anyway), in both of the cases you describe you would wait for the rune and use obliterate.

For a more in-depth look at dealing with unholy runes:
http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t131138-...g_unholy_runes

For a more in-depth look at dealing with disease reapplication as frost:
http://destinysoftworks.blogspot.com...se-gaming.html


The simC result you got is interesting, I'll see if I can replicate it. Good for you trying out a change in simC yourself as well!

[Mendenbarr]

SR is only 50% extra rune regen for 5 seconds. With a generously low rune regen of 7.5 seconds, that shaves 2.5 seconds off the rune regen time for 5 seconds. In that 5 seconds, you generate 3 runes, but would normally generate 2 runes (5/7.5 *3). So the net gain is 1 rune, and you spent 1 rune to cast SR in the first place (and 1 GCD).

The haste buff is more of a consolation prize if the enemy happens to die early, but you should try to avoid it whenever possible and cast it on the enemy that will actually live to take the shadow damage.

[Deleted]

Was wondering and what boss's would you suggest using Rolling Blood over UnholyBlight.

Cuurently I'm only using Rb for Horridon and Tortos (we dont kill bats). but was wondering if it's worth using on council or twins.

[Mendenbarr]

More often then not, it comes down to personal preference. I always run with PL personally (long live frost!), but here is the advice the unholy members of #acherus gave me when posed your question.


"I don't use RB on durumu/Leishen"
"i used it for Meagara progression"
"I used RB for megaera"
"plague 1 add and blood boil spam goooo"
"for me based on raid strat, RB on horridon, council, tortos, megaera, durumu, primo, Iron Qon, and lei shen"
"def UB for twins, i noticed"
"it really is dependent on some factors like lei shen for example"
"is your raid group slow at killing ball lightnings etc"
"RB might not be as good"
"I use RB for twins"
"phase 2 aoe adds goooo"
"for leishen in phase 3 I pest and blood boil spam without RB to help kill the adds"




RB is slightly weighted towards long term adds, or constant adds, while UB is weighted towards adds that show up in 1.5 min intervals. They are very VERY close though, and it's hard to say one is definitively better than the other on any particular fight.
Try them both out on fights you are not sure about, and pick the one that feels better.

[Keosen]

What's the optimal spec for 85-90?

[Mendenbarr]

I went DW frost in my 410 gear from DS, and then swapped over to blood when pulling 10 mobs started to kill me (round early townlong). Every spec is viable for leveling, and whatever spec you happen to enjoy the most will make the leveling grind that much less boring. I don't believe anyone has done any real analysis on the most "optimal" spec for leveling.

[Keosen]

Ok ill go frost since i'll go blood at 90.

Is a rune addon needed at all?

[bals]

just make sure you get the dark succor glyph and use the free death strikes as much as you can.
don't need any kind of a rune addon

[RedFlame]

DW is probably good if you can get those arch ilvl 463 1handers, from mantid archeology, assuming you have a main with arch, of course. otherwise, theres a few 450s around in dread wastes that could also be used, though there lvl86. refer to the "Is another mans treasure" achievement, for "The Relic Hunter" title, on wowhead for information on where they appear. If you plan on raiding on the DK, a rune add-on might help, even if its just to reposition the runes to a place where you can pay attention to them better. best to play around with a few before you hit max, to see if you need one/which works best for you.