{ Death Knight } Q & A

[krunksmash]

Video is delayed Untill I can get some PC issues cleared up, Sry about that, ill still answer questions in here to the best of my ablity. just use the format below.
DISCLAIMER: If your looking for the min/max sims version of information then there are a dozen threads with that information. information in this thread that I offer will be my personal data and opinions. use this in combination with information in the min/max threads to find what works for you as a player
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KrunkSmash

Blood

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[Spadewar]

Spadewar

Blood

Hey, what's your guys opinion on Death Knight tanks as they stand right now vs other tank classes? I know we haven't seen raids yet, but DK's are parsing a substantial level below Paladins and Warriors, as well as having less survivability.

On a just Death Knight question, how do you make the decision to use Rune Tap vs Blood Boil for your Blood Runes? I just picked up my Dk tank this expansion after Warrior/Druid/Monk tanking for the last ten years and I'm having some trouble getting it all learned.

[krunksmash]

Dk tanks are actually one of the best tanks in regards to being able to flex to any encounter but the part people are having trouble with is that out Blood Shield got nerfed to near uselessness. Having said that once you get use to using our CD's wisely DK's are IMHO the best tanks, but like I said they take more learning now.

as for rune tap vs. BB I make the call based on 2 main factors my HP at the time and the bosses Damage out put pattern. also if I know a big attack in coming ill save a rune for RT rather then waste it on BB.

This was a good question and I will bring it up in the Blood Q & A so we can get the others input on it.

[PandaMango141]

Butterknight

Unholy PvP

What are your tactics for Unholy PvP? So far I seem to be having a great time with Necrotic Plague, when it's reaching to about 11 stacks is when my dark transformation is available, and I tend to blow all my CD's and Lichborne for big pressure as the dot is ticking for big numbers and the pet is going mental.

Using this tactic it is hilariously easy to fend off 2-4 characters under level 100, and usually beat most people in a flat out 1 v 1, but I seem to be having problems against healers despite using glyph of icy touch to dispel a heap of shit. I've tried timing my Offensive CD's with a mind freeze and an Asphyxiate for a 9 second world of hurt, but it doesn't quite seem to be enough. Any advice?

[krunksmash]

Butterknight

Unholy PvP

What are your tactics for Unholy PvP? So far I seem to be having a great time with Necrotic Plague, when it's reaching to about 11 stacks is when my dark transformation is available, and I tend to blow all my CD's and Lichborne for big pressure as the dot is ticking for big numbers and the pet is going mental.

Using this tactic it is hilariously easy to fend off 2-4 characters under level 100, and usually beat most people in a flat out 1 v 1, but I seem to be having problems against healers despite using glyph of icy touch to dispel a heap of shit. I've tried timing my Offensive CD's with a mind freeze and an Asphyxiate for a 9 second world of hurt, but it doesn't quite seem to be enough. Any advice?

I don't play Unholy much but IMHO the issue is more with how Unholy does damage Vs Frost, Single target Unholy does good stable damage but it really lacks the Burst needed to power through healers. I will have to do some research for ya but I think until you get a full set of the 675 pvp gear pushing through their heals will be a bit hard. one sure way is to not try and solo but rather run with a partner and tag team. Sorry I can't be much more help. but again Ill do some research and see if anyone else has a solution for this.

[PandaMango141]

Indeed the lack of burst is an issue, but it tends to be similar for all classes atm. I am fully 675 geared (hence being able to take so many lowbies at once) and I am experimenting in TSG (Unholy, Glad X Healer) (alternating healer between Shaman and Paladin) to great effect, our sustained damage output is enormous and is really causing some very grinding matches where we whittle away our opponents, and have lots of CC and freedom's available to us to keep the pressure on. With some good coordination we can down anybody between the two of us, but it'll take a lot of practice to perfect, just need to know how to be able to handle it solo.

[Nangz]

Would love some more information as to who these reviewers are. Is there a youtube channel or some forums or something?

[krunksmash]

Would love some more information as to who these reviewers are. Is there a youtube channel or some forums or something?

Until now it was just me but I will be uploading them to a new youtube channel, once everything is up ill link to the channel, Introductions will be there , will just take some time, I'm trying to do this while catching up on school work in my CSS classes.

[Deleted]

Lolwhowtf
Blood (Actually play Unholy but whatever)
Does dancing rune weapon stack with multistrike?

[krunksmash]

Lolwhowtf
Blood (Actually play Unholy but whatever)
Does dancing rune weapon stack with multistrike?

First DRW only last 8 seconds, now on to the question, yes sort of, DRW does not lock out you ability to multi strike, now weather DRW can multi-strike, Personally I have not seen it do so but I think it is able to. Ill track it over the next few days and see if it is infact does multi-striking.

[Maxweii]

Would love some more information as to who these reviewers are. Is there a youtube channel or some forums or something?

I was thinking the same thing, opened it thinking it was an Acherus thing and got confused lol

[krunksmash]

I'll ask the other two if they will drop into this post and say hi.

[Deleted]

Could we get some information on who you guys are? Guilds? World Rankings? Previous Theorycrafting work?

Just something to give validity to what you're saying. I'm not knocking your attempts at providing knowledge, but I'm sure people would like to know that the information is coming from a reputable source.

[Skul]

Im a little skeptical seeing as how he has not been able to answer Unholy questions or dance rune weapon questions so far... two things you would think a teacher would know.

[krunksmash]

Im a little skeptical seeing as how he has not been able to answer Unholy questions or dance rune weapon questions so far... two things you would think a teacher would know.

Admittedly I don't play Unholy much, as for the DRW question its a matter of me finding time to run the logs and see if DRW does MS, Recount does not track MS atm and its short duration makes visually tracking its hard. Now as I said when DRW is active you can still MS with your attacks. I'm just not sure if DRW's copy benefits from MS stat or not.

I never claim to know everything and I don't try to. If you have a question I don't know Ill add it to the research list and get back to you when I find out. I am doing all this while trying to gear my own toon and my guildies as well as stay current on my CSS class work. so I may be a lil slow to get you the answers you need. bear with me tho I am trying tho so sry if It take me a bit to give you a complete answer.

- - - Updated - - -

Could we get some information on who you guys are? Guilds? World Rankings? Previous Theorycrafting work?

Just something to give validity to what you're saying. I'm not knocking your attempts at providing knowledge, but I'm sure people would like to know that the information is coming from a reputable source.

I Wont Speak for the guild as a whole, but I will try and get the Gm in here to answer that part for you, as for my self.

I have been playing wow for 10 years, Have raided pretty much every raid released, didn't finish sunwell when it was progression and did not kill heroic LK during progression, I played a Hunter in classic, for BC I rolled both Hunter and shaman, in Wrath I picked up the Death knight and never looked back, I still played the hunter and shammy casually tho. I'n wrath I played a frost DPS DK and when needed DW tanked as frost. once the 4.0 DK over haul droped I was pushed into Blood tanking and stayed that way untill about 5 months before WoD droped, when I took a break from blood tanking full time to go back Frost DPS. Now that we are in WoD I dual role as 2-hand Frost and Blood Tank. I didn't get a lot of solid progress in the first 2 tiers of MoP due to Rl issues and ingame drama.

I've been in many guilds over the years, most resent was Tempestfury before going Horde, then I joined Timeless on horde and worked on ToT with my shammy left for a few months due to college, came back timeless are no longer raiding so i joined The Iron Cross on my DK and cleared SoO on heroic ( Old Normal ). other then that the only thing of note is that my achievement list was jacked up when blizz launched the account wide system causing some to get the dates to get changed or just deleted all together. that was annoying as hell.

and yes before yall say it I was Failliance up untill ToT. No one is perfect and I eventually saw the light and joined the dark side. I tryed to keep this post compact, if I detailed 10 years of wow I'd be writing a small book. that don't include trying to remember all the actually raid encounters.

[Cavax]

Cavax

Unholy

I have some hopefully easy and straight forward questions:

1: Is blood tap the best talent right now or is RC viable?
2: Do I use Plague Leech on every cooldown and just immediately refresh with Plague Strike, or do I only use it when Outbreak is off CD?
3: And thirdly (this might be a stupid one) but, what is currently the best stat priority? I'm thinking haste/multi would be top2, but after that I'm not too sure. Would like some clarification.

[krunksmash]

1) Blood tap is the most controlled, you know exactly when it will be ready; however, its limited to 1 rune per use, the fact that you know exactly when it will be ready is useful and when managed correctly does make it the best option. On the other hand Runic corruption is very uncontrolled you don't know when it will proc; however, when it does proc it speeds up all your runes this can allow doe some nasty burst, the fact that its proc is random puts this below Blood tap in a perfect world but if you are happy with how your rotation feels with out Blood tap Runic Corruption is an excellent passive option. Between the two RC wins over BT in all the sims and reports I have read, also in my personal test BT proved to be a bit annoying but to its catch 22 of refreshing a random rune.

TL/DR version, BT is the good because you know exactly when it will be able usable and RC is a good option if you don't want to micro manage BT for your runes. In the end all sims point to RC as pulling ahead of BT for Unholy

2) this one is a hard question to answer for any spec. personally the way I use it in is as an oh $#%* button a way to get 2 runes when I need them now or as a way to fill in dead time in my rotation, TBH I can't really help you here, it vastly depends on the situation. if you can spare a glyph slot get the glyph of outbreak and you can use it when ever you want and only need to spend 30 RP to get your dots back, and TBH thats my best suggestion, use Glyph of Outbreak and just pop Plague Leech when ever you feel you need it and have the 30 RP to spare.

3) this is an easy one, your top 2 in order are multistrike and mastery, multistrike has X% chance to grand 2 extra attacks for 30% damage, that makes it slightly better then crit and its stat scaling seems to be much nicer then that of crit, additionally it synergies well with your mastery that increases all your shadow damage. after that there is some varied views on whats best but I'd say that haste = crit = versitility, for your 3rd secondary just pick the one that fits your play style best.

EDIT NOTE: forgot to say that Multistrike also takes #1 due to Nacrosis.

[Cavax]

2) this one is a hard question to answer for any spec. personally the way I use it in is as an oh $#%* button a way to get 2 runes when I need them now or as a way to fill in dead time in my rotation, TBH I can't really help you here, it vastly depends on the situation. if you can spare a glyph slot get the glyph of outbreak and you can use it when ever you want and only need to spend 30 RP to get your dots back, and TBH thats my best suggestion, use Glyph of Outbreak and just pop Plague Leech when ever you feel you need it and have the 30 RP to spare.

Thanks alot for the answers! Just to be clear, when you say "when ever you feel you need it" do you mean only use it for stuff like get a rune back to use soul reaper in time or do you also mean when I'm completely out of runes and just want 2 extra Scourge Strikes? Cause it feels like it would be a dps improvement to always use it on cooldown, obviously first dumping my current runes before using it.

[krunksmash]

Thanks alot for the answers! Just to be clear, when you say "when ever you feel you need it" do you mean only use it for stuff like get a rune back to use soul reaper in time or do you also mean when I'm completely out of runes and just want 2 extra Scourge Strikes? Cause it feels like it would be a dps improvement to always use it on cooldown, obviously first dumping my current runes before using it.

Both are an option but remember if you blow it just to get 2 extra SS, watch what runes are refreshing and how long till they are up. In theory using it on every CD is a DPS gain, but its hard to say cause situations are rarely perfect. If you want to use it on ever CD pop it when your frost and blood runes are down and you have 1 unholy rune ready and one refreshing that way it is forced to pop the down frost and blood rune. this strat will maximize the number of SS's you get out of it but you must have the two runs you want to pop fully depleted if they are refreshing it won't work.

NOTE: Make sure the frost and blood runes are infact frost and blood other wise you just wasted PL to refresh 2 death runes.

[Maxweii]

2) this one is a hard question to answer for any spec. personally the way I use it in is as an oh $#%* button a way to get 2 runes when I need them now or as a way to fill in dead time in my rotation, TBH I can't really help you here, it vastly depends on the situation. if you can spare a glyph slot get the glyph of outbreak and you can use it when ever you want and only need to spend 30 RP to get your dots back, and TBH thats my best suggestion, use Glyph of Outbreak and just pop Plague Leech when ever you feel you need it and have the 30 RP to spare.

3) this is an easy one, your top 2 in order are multistrike and mastery, multistrike has X% chance to grand 2 extra attacks for 30% damage, that makes it slightly better then crit and its stat scaling seems to be much nicer then that of crit, additionally it synergies well with your mastery that increases all your shadow damage. after that there is some varied views on whats best but I'd say that haste = crit = versitility, for your 3rd secondary just pick the one that fits your play style best.

EDIT NOTE: forgot to say that Multistrike also takes #1 due to Nacrosis.

Not trying to poke fun or anything, but if this is going to be a Q&A (especially when a lot of the questions being asked are answered in other threads on here) I would at least like to make sure things are accurately said in here.

2. Glyph of Outbreak is a loss single target, and a slight gain in dps in aoe situations. That being said PL is used to plug empty holes in your rotation, so sometimes you might use it right off CD and sometimes you might have an overflow of runes/downtime on boss where you should be using it anyways. Pretty much from my experience it gets used either right away, or within 10-15 seconds after coming off CD. That also depends on the fight at hand and given any adds or such, as well as what your runes/runic is at.

3. The stats for Unholy right now are MS>Mastery>Crit~=Versatility>Haste. This has been posted and shown a lot in the DK simcraft thread here. To put in perspective how saying Haste = Crit = Versatility is so off, Haste is only slightly above half the weight of MS, while Crit/Versatility are about 75%.