Dual Wield dps!

**Praxis** · 2009-12-01, 08:59 PM

Currently, I'm pretty sure UA is not mandatory. When it was a 25% strength bonus, of course you'd have to be stupid not to get it. But now, it's really not that amazing. I may end up dropping a point in KM to pick it up now that my unbuffed strength is nearing 1800 - and my crit is high enough to make up for the reduction in KM procs. However, I don't think it's really necessary.

And yes, I do think 4/5 KM 3/3 BCB is the optimal choice if you want to pick up UA. 2/3 BCB does hurt on single target DPS. (Also, side note: Was the ICD on BCB removed? I've been getting procs back-to-back...)

**McSuk** · 2009-12-01, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by mhp

Lets consider a lesser geared DK, say, 1.5k strength, and 14k armor. 5/5 BA gives him ~390 AP, 4/5 BA gives 311, ~79 AP loss. UA gives 150 str (= 300 AP), it being up 1/3 of the time that's 100 AP. That's 21 AP gained in the long run, from the strength part of UA only. If we consider the 25% armor increase, that's 388 AP while UA is up, or 129 AP overall (resulting in ~440 AP from bladed armor average).

Those are rough estimates, but if you add it all up, you'll see that dropping one point from bladed armor, and getting UA will grant you a noticable attack power increase over 5/5 BA.

Granted, you'll do one less blood strike every minute. Boo-hoo. Not a big loss, compared to the gains.

And btw, you can pop UA & BT within a single GCD, so instead of a blood strike, you do UA & BT. Only one GCD wasted, not two.

Good to know about the GCD's, but are you 100% sure that Bladed Armor works with Unbreakable Armor?

**Praxis** · 2009-12-01, 10:02 PM

Originally Posted by McSuk

Good to know about the GCD's, but are you 100% sure that Bladed Armor works with Unbreakable Armor?

Unbreakable Armor
Bladed Armor

Yep

EDIT: Forgot to note, there's no good reason why, as DPS, you'd HAVE both of those talents. But they do stack.

**mhp** · 2009-12-01, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by Praxis

Currently, I'm pretty sure UA is not mandatory. When it was a 25% strength bonus, of course you'd have to be stupid not to get it. But now, it's really not that amazing. I may end up dropping a point in KM to pick it up now that my unbuffed strength is nearing 1800 - and my crit is high enough to make up for the reduction in KM procs. However, I don't think it's really necessary.

And yes, I do think 4/5 KM 3/3 BCB is the optimal choice if you want to pick up UA. 2/3 BCB does hurt on single target DPS. (Also, side note: Was the ICD on BCB removed? I've been getting procs back-to-back...)

I'd say it is better than the alternatives. BcB should still have an ICD, at least I haven't read anything to the contrary - but I haven't really looked at logs either, been DPSing as unholy for a while now (due to frost not being up to the task on Anub'arak), and I don't have BcB in tank spec

You are correct, though, 4/5 KM 3/3 BcB is probably the better choice. Seeing as there's a lot of KMs proc more often than Rime, and while an FS+KM is nice, it's not nearly as nice as HB+KM

Bloodlust + UA + Haste or STR pot is quite a nice DPS boost for those burst down scenarios too.

**chronomasakari** · 2009-12-01, 10:37 PM

I believe the current DW frost spec is 3/51/17 for not IIT spec'd builds, which is the best for personal DPS, which does not include UA, or BA.

the only way to spec into BA and UA requires you to do something like a 10/51/10 build, where you forgo getting Necrosis and BCB entirely, I'm not sure whether the 400 AP from bladed armor (assuming around 14-15k armor) is enough to make up for the Necrosis and BCB, even though they are small amounts of your damage it's still typically somewhere between a 5-10% increase of your dps, and I frankly can't see 400 AP amounting to that much, especially if you consider the fact that Necrosis and BCB scale better with buffs because it's not a straight attack power increase. I haven't done number crunching on it, but the fact that the current DW Frost EJ builds don't include BA or UA, I assume they have, and unfortunately I'll believe them over anyone here.

If you spec into IIT, I believe you do go BCB, and your build is something like 53/18 and you forgo getting subversion. Obviously a big personal DPS loss at a lower crit rating on obliterate, but you do get IIT.

I'm not a huge fan of getting IIT for two reasons, one is the buff is easily provided for with an enhance shammy, I suppose you could grab it if your guild doesn't raid with one, however if you want raid utility there's more to be found in another spec. That brings me to the secodn reason why I don't like grabbing IIT, if you want raid utility, nothing beats the 13% damage debuff from unholy. DW Unholy is currently an acceptable build, and unlike IIT it's a debuff only unholy DKs can provide. Heroics and pugs, the IIT will hardly matter because you can never tell for sure if it's useful, for progression content your guild will more then likely be better off with with the the ebon plaguebringer anyway.

For UA, the 10% strength for 20 seconds isn't a huge buff because you end up losing an obliterate out of your rotation. For 20 seconds, a 300 AP increase doesn't seem like it'll make up for the loss of an obliterate which is probably a loss off 125 DPS assuming your obliterate hits for 7500. 7500 is an arbitrary number I made up based on my experience in my frost build, that's the average between my norm obliterates and crit obliterates, since my obliterate had a 50% crit chance saying that it's a 125DPS loss on average is about accurate for my old build and gear.

**Praxis** · 2009-12-01, 10:53 PM

Originally Posted by chronomasakari

I believe the current DW frost spec is 3/51/17 for not IIT spec'd builds, which is the best for personal DPS, which does not include UA, or BA.

the only way to spec into BA and UA requires you to do something like a 10/51/10 build, where you forgo getting Necrosis and BCB entirely, I'm not sure whether the 400 AP from bladed armor (assuming around 14-15k armor) is enough to make up for the Necrosis and BCB, even though they are small amounts of your damage it's still typically somewhere between a 5-10% increase of your dps, and I frankly can't see 400 AP amounting to that much, especially if you consider the fact that Necrosis and BCB scale better with buffs because it's not a straight attack power increase. I haven't done number crunching on it, but the fact that the current DW Frost EJ builds don't include BA or UA, I assume they have, and unfortunately I'll believe them over anyone here.

If you spec into IIT, I believe you do go BCB, and your build is something like 53/18 and you forgo getting subversion. Obviously a big personal DPS loss at a lower crit rating on obliterate, but you do get IIT.

I'm not a huge fan of getting IIT for two reasons, one is the buff is easily provided for with an enhance shammy, I suppose you could grab it if your guild doesn't raid with one, however if you want raid utility there's more to be found in another spec. That brings me to the secodn reason why I don't like grabbing IIT, if you want raid utility, nothing beats the 13% damage debuff from unholy. DW Unholy is currently an acceptable build, and unlike IIT it's a debuff only unholy DKs can provide. Heroics and pugs, the IIT will hardly matter because you can never tell for sure if it's useful, for progression content your guild will more then likely be better off with with the the ebon plaguebringer anyway.

For UA, the 10% strength for 20 seconds isn't a huge buff because you end up losing an obliterate out of your rotation. For 20 seconds, a 300 AP increase doesn't seem like it'll make up for the loss of an obliterate which is probably a loss off 125 DPS assuming your obliterate hits for 7500. 7500 is an arbitrary number I made up based on my experience in my frost build, that's the average between my norm obliterates and crit obliterates, since my obliterate had a 50% crit chance saying that it's a 125DPS loss on average is about accurate for my old build and gear.

A few things: One, 20% haste is quite good. Far from being "hard to tell" if it's useful. My guild currently has only one enhancement shaman who misses many of the raids, and I'm one of three DKs. The other two are Blood, so my choice is clear.

Two, 13% magic damage is provided by moonkin through Earth and Moon, and warlocks through Curse of the Elements. The main strength of Ebon Plaguebringer is its prerequisite, Crypt Fever, which increases disease damage by 30%. THAT is a unique buff.

Three, if you use UA, you lose a Blood Strike rather than an Obliterate because you should be syncing BT with it, as you would with Bone Shield.

You were correct in saying that the loss of Necrosis and BCB is not compensated for by the AP gain from Bladed Armor. It would be a decent gain for AoE, but a significant single-target loss. It's still irrelevant though, because as I said before, no DW Frost DKs should have Bladed Armor. Blood is just a sub-par subspec for Frost right now.

**chronomasakari** · 2009-12-01, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by Praxis

A few things: One, 20% haste is quite good. Far from being "hard to tell" if it's useful. My guild currently has only one enhancement shaman who misses many of the raids, and I'm one of three DKs. The other two are Blood, so my choice is clear.

Two, 13% magic damage is provided by moonkin through Earth and Moon, and warlocks through Curse of the Elements. The main strength of Ebon Plaguebringer is its prerequisite, Crypt Fever, which increases disease damage by 30%. THAT is a unique buff.

Three, if you use UA, you lose a Blood Strike rather than an Obliterate because you should be syncing BT with it, as you would with Bone Shield.

You were correct in saying that the loss of Necrosis and BCB is not compensated for by the AP gain from Bladed Armor. It would be a decent gain for AoE, but a significant single-target loss. It's still irrelevant though, because as I said before, no DW Frost DKs should have Bladed Armor. Blood is just a sub-par subspec for Frost right now.

I should clarify, IIT is easily provided for by an ENH shammie because he has to do nothing different then what he currently does to pop it down, obviously if you don't have access to one, spec'ing into IIT becomes an option. If there is a warlock or boom to provide the debuff with no enhance shammy, obviously you're right, spec into IIT to provide the raid buff.

Also it's not that the 13% debuff is not provided for by another class I had a poor choice of words, it's the ease of how it's applied by unholy DKs. Warlocks get a personal DPS increase for not having to use curse of elements, and while a boomkin can easily get a single target debuff up from their regular rotation, they aren't able to apply that to multiple adds easily at all. Unholy DKs however have to do absolutely nothing different to get the debuff spread within a 15 yard radius. Current content benefits greatly from being able to apply the debuff to multiple targets, making one unholy dk for the debuff and increased aoe damage more desirable then a frost IIT spec'd dk in togc's.

Oh, and the hard to tell comment was about pugging and heroics because of the randomness of who you could be grouped with, making it useful or much less useful depending if there is an enhancement shammy, heroics it hardly matters obviously due to the difficulty, but for pug raids it's quite common to run into buff clashes with an ENH shammy. I wasn't actually debating the usefulness of the actual ability, merely whether or not having it is wasted due to the class setup in a pug.

**chronomasakari** · 2009-12-02, 12:07 AM

This should've occured to me earlier to mention, but with the Op's current gear, he might benefit a lot more being unholy. Ignoring all aspects of raid utility and gearing otherwise, dual 1.5 weapons is a huge crutch for current frost setup due to low Obliterate damage, but the slow speeds won't effect Unholy abilities since they don't rely on any of the weapon damage skills.

That is, until 3.3 hits. Once 3.3 hits competitive DPS won't really be possible with fast one-handers for a DK to my knowledge. I suppose given that 3.3 could be a week away, any spec changing now might be a bit unecessary.

**Coldbringer** · 2009-12-02, 12:33 AM

ok people ub is not bad. you just gotta use blood tap with so u dont miss an obliterate that is all. thats basically why blood tap and ub have 1min cds so they can be used together. so people that are saying that ub will fuck up rotation, ill say that it wont if u know wat blood tap is

**Praxis** · 2009-12-02, 02:26 AM

Originally Posted by chronomasakari

...

Ahh okay, I'm sorry I misunderstood your wording. <3 Thank you for clarifying, and I do completely agree.

**Boomsmack** · 2009-12-02, 05:06 AM

I haven't read through the entire post, but for a DW DK, Str. gems are the way to go. Yea?

**Coldbringer** · 2009-12-02, 05:40 AM

yes. haste and agility rings and necklace isn't bad for u either

**SalcN** · 2009-12-02, 05:44 AM

Originally Posted by smartAXE

^^(up2 posts) that guy beat me to it, the reason is cause with fast weps, your OB and FS will hit for next to nothing