Simplified Unholy for struggling player?

[Rockford]

Hey hey guys,

After maining Shaman & Hunter for some time, I've decided to focus on the DK for a change. Absolutely loving the shiz out of Blood spec with it's easy to pick up (tough to master) game-play, and currently playing around with a simplified DW Frost OS where I've been using Plague Strike/Death & Decay instead of Obliterate.

The reason for needing to keep it simple? Though I do enjoy the game, I haven't been well and know that my hand dexterity/speed/accuracy (among a bunch of other things) is only going to get worse. Experienced some Mythic and know that I'll never dish out top notch DPS and now only look at <Heroics.

With that in mind, I'm looking to switch my Frost for Unholy. I struggle with the pacing on Unholy compared to the wonderful simplicity of Blood and wondering if there are any work around's, adjustments, macros or general advice I could keep in mind?

Thanks <3

[InDecisive]

If you have some sort of hand impairment, like it sounds, then I'd say just don't bother with Unholy, it has several buttons to be pressing and a 1 second GCD.

[dkdk]

I'd stick with frost if I were you, UH is quite a bit more button pressing.

For Frost, if you run necrotic plague, you really only need 3 buttons in your main rotation, Oblit, Frost Strike and Howling blast (focusing on oblit if 2h, and FS if DW) add in Soul Reaper below 35% if you can. Macro Pillar of Frost into at least one of those moves and you are good to go.

If you are going for the least buttons to press, for talents you can run Plaguebearer and runic corruption as well. Neither are optimal, but thew would be the best bet if you don't want to have to click the extra buttons.

[Rockford]

Thanks for the heads up guys. Appreciated.
Gave it a bash and still quite fiddly compared to the other specs. I might have to stick to Blood/Frost until Blizz massacre Unholy

Note: Yea, the hand impairment (and speech over VoIP) just affects my WoW play, but follow through to the rest of my body. Spino Cerebellar Ataxia sucks, but doing my best to enjoy the simple things

[DeusX]

Thanks for the heads up guys. Appreciated.
Gave it a bash and still quite fiddly compared to the other specs. I might have to stick to Blood/Frost until Blizz massacre Unholy

Note: Yea, the hand impairment (and speech over VoIP) just affects my WoW play, but follow through to the rest of my body. Spino Cerebellar Ataxia sucks, but doing my best to enjoy the simple things

There is nothing complicated with playing UH either, don't get intimidated. You do not have to play the talent combination the top DK's are playing, probably your gear is not favoring those talents anyway.

To have a fairly simple rotation, I would go with Unholy Blight, Runic Corruption, Necrotic Plague. Rest of talents are situational and you can pick whichever you like, they don't influence your rotation. I recommend you go with Purgatory, Death Advance, Death Pact and Remorsless Winter (for 5 man).

(Indeed, if you play with Plague Leech, Blood Tab and Breath of Sindragosa, you have a lot more to control and buttons to press.)

Then you only have 2 CD's: Gargoyle and Dark Transformation. For the last one you get huge aura on screen when to use it, so just follow that. Preparing for Dark Transformation is done automatically trough usage of Death Coils so don't think too much into it.

Spending abilities is quite simple:
- UH & Death runes are spent on Scourge Strikes
- Pairs of Blood and Frost runes are spent on Festering Strikes. These pairs spent like this will regenerate into Death runes, which you will spend, like specified, on Scourge Strikes
- this 2 points above turn into a nice cycle.
- if you are needing AoE damage (3+ targets I guess), use the Death Runes to drop a Death and Decai or spam Blood Boil. The beauty of Blood Boil is that it return the used runes to be Death Runes, which can be consumed again on Blood Boils.
- below 45% target hp, you will prioritize Soul Reaper above everything (for single target). This has the same game play as on Frost (or even Blood? haven't played much blood since Sould Reaper was introduced in the game).
- Necrotic Plague (which replaces the standard 2 deaseases) is applied with Outbreak or Unholy Blight, whichever is not on cooldown. if none is available, you just use on of the abilities which applies a deases (Plague strike for exaomple). This should not happen often.

That's really not that much to it. You don't need specil control of your pet, just make sure he's alive and not completely passive.

[Stacie]

Frost is defiantly the way to go in terms of ease. But i would not rule unholy out. Yes it has a few more buttons but you may be able to get some aids to help you with the rotation. Things such as a USB foot key (you can bind them to buttons and play wow with just your feet if you wanted they cost literally penny's), another option might be an mmo mouse such as the naga if this at all is possible and within budget.

If your not after total optimal dps you could perhaps macro a few things together also to cut the button load down a little.

[Rockford]

Thanks mate, much appreciated. It is very much a combination of the clunkyness and bloat compared to the other 2 specs which seem to have been stripped down in 6.0 (not something I would wish upon a spec), but I have been switching back and forth, created some macros to ease the bloat and getting to grips with single target priorities. AoE and the inclusion on BB is still a pain, but just been using it to spread diseases instead.

Edit: The Footkey isn't a great deal of help (but an awesome idea) as my legs are even more out of sinc than my hands. There's also the idea of voice command, but that's going balls up too

I'll persist on DK and maybe check out DH as an alt as I have plans to shelve my hunter (for storage) over to alliance

[RuneDK]

I severed my tendons and nerves a year and a half ago at work. My advice to still play at a decent level is firstly getting a razer naga mouse. Even with less dexterity to play I'm still putting out close to 95% of what I was capable of and only have to use my left hand for wasd, although it's an altered style(use my ring finger as my main finger to move). Once you get used to the button layout, it's a god send for dexterity issues. PM me if you want since I am a fellow player with hand issues.

[Piz813]

Hey hey guys,

After maining Shaman & Hunter for some time, I've decided to focus on the DK for a change. Absolutely loving the shiz out of Blood spec with it's easy to pick up (tough to master) game-play, and currently playing around with a simplified DW Frost OS where I've been using Plague Strike/Death & Decay instead of Obliterate.

The reason for needing to keep it simple? Though I do enjoy the game, I haven't been well and know that my hand dexterity/speed/accuracy (among a bunch of other things) is only going to get worse. Experienced some Mythic and know that I'll never dish out top notch DPS and now only look at <Heroics.

With that in mind, I'm looking to switch my Frost for Unholy. I struggle with the pacing on Unholy compared to the wonderful simplicity of Blood and wondering if there are any work around's, adjustments, macros or general advice I could keep in mind?

Thanks <3

Get DKrot add on to help learn the DPS spec then turn it off once you are comfortable. I'll probably get shit for this buy w/e... it helped me a lot at the start

[dexx]

When geared around 670 ilvl (no 2pc or 4pc tier), is there much difference in dps between unholy and frost 2H?