Outdated DPS guide

[kumduh]

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Disclaimer
None of the information regarding 4.0 is in this guide.
If you're looking for an outstanding guide for Unholy DPS, use http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105521-...rongest_flame/
If you're looking for an outstanding guide for Frost DPS, use http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105701-...y_best_theory/
End Disclaimer

FAQ/General Knowledge
The Rune System & Runic Power (stolen from Alcotraz)
The Death Knight class introduced a unique power system formed by 6 Runes and a Runic Power Bar (much like a Rage Bar). Every Death Knight has two of each different type of rune: Blood, Frost and Unholy. Each rune has a non-dependent 10 second cooldown after use. This cooldown will be reduced to 2 seconds if the ability the rune was spent on has missed, is dodged, or is parried. The way you spend Runes will vary from spec to spec, with different abilities requiring different Runes.

Runic Power is created when the Death Knight uses an ability that requires a rune/s. If the ability requires 1 rune 10 RP is generated, 2 or 3 runes generated 15 RP. There are many talents that allow the Death Knight to generate additional RP by casting a specific ability or avoiding a blow. Anti-Magic Shell also generated RP when it absorbs damage. It goes for rough 1 RP every 100 damage.

The Rune System may seem a bit confusing at the beginning, since you need to track 6 different cooldowns as well as the RP Bar, but its really simple, and even simpler if you learn to follow it. Runic Power abilities cost a fixed amount of Runic Power usually 20, 40 or 60 which can in some cases be modified by Talents and/or Glyphs.

Now I will introduce you to the 4th Rune in the Death Knight Rune System, the Death Rune. Death Runes are wild runes, they can be used as either a Blood, Frost, or Unholy rune. Each tree has different talents for turning Runes into Death Runes and different results. All Death Knights also have the Blood Tap ability that allows them to change one Blood Rune into a Death Rune. Luckily for us Blood Tap is not on the Global Cooldown.

What presence should I be in?
Frost DW DPS: Frost Presence
Frost 2h DPS: Unholy Presence
Unholy 2h DPS: Unholy Presence

What is the Hit/Expertise cap?
The soft melee hit cap is 263, 8%. The soft expertise cap is 26, 6.5%.
The spell hit cap is 446, 17%.
The spell hit cap with Virulence (3% hit) is 368.
The spell hit cap with Virulence (3% hit) + Imp Faerie Fire (3% hit) is 290.
The spell hit cap with Virulence (3% hit) + Imp Faerie Fire (3% hit) + Heroic Presence (1% hit) is 264.

What enchants should I have?
• Head: Arcanum of Torment, 50 AP, 20 Crit Rating
• Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Axe, 40 AP, 15 Crit Rating
• Chest: +10 stats
• Cloak: +23 haste
• Wrist: +50 AP
• Hands: +44 AP (or +20 hit if it helps you get capped)
• Legs: Icescale Leg Armor, 75 AP, 22 Crit Rating
• Boots: Icewalker is probably preferable to +32AP if you can use the hit. Tuskar's Vitality may also be preferable for high movement fights.
Note: Engineering enchants now STACK with the other enchants.

What Runeforge Weapon Enchant should I have?
A: Unholy = Rune of the Fallen Crusader
Frost = Razorice and Fallen Crusader

What consumables should I use?
Flask of Endless Rage
Potion of Speed
Indestructible Potion - can be used 3-5 seconds before a pull for roughly 100 AP if you have Bladed Armor.

What simulators are available?
There are some great simulators, there are some decent simulators, and there are some bad simulators.
Great simulator: Kahorie’s <- Use this one
Bad simulator: RAWR <- DO NOT USE RAWR AS A DK

How do I run a sim using Kahorie’s?
The instructions can be found at the website where you download it


Blood
Is now the tanking spec, go read a tanking thread.

Frost
Playstyle
Frost DKs dual wield one handed weapons and focus on fast auto attacks and a mix of physical and frost damage special attacks. Buffs include Improved Icy Talons and Pillar of Frost The 31 point talent is Howling Blast.

Everything has changed, refer to http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105701-...y_best_theory/ for the time being.

Unholy
Playstyle
Unholy DKs use a 2h as well as a pet and focus on a mix of magical and physical attacks. Unholy has the hardest ticking dots of all the specs and the highest passive aoe potential. Buffs include Ebon Plaguebringer. The 31 point talent is Summon Gargoyle

A lot has changed, refer to http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105521-...rongest_flame/ in the meantime.

How to use Summon Gargoyle
There are 2 major things you can use to increase your gargoyle's damage.

1. Speed buffs (Heroism + Potion of Speed)
2. Procs (Trinkets/Fallen Crusader/T9 2pc)

These must be on you BEFORE you summon your gargoyle. They will stay on your gargoyle for its full duration, whether or not you still have the buff. The best time to summon is generally 5-15 seconds into the fight, when all your trinkets are up.



Tricks of the Trade (no, not the rogue one silly!)
There are quite a few small adjustments you can make to your play that will increase your dps.

Don't be a fool, use your ghoul! (Frost)
Don't write off your little buddy just because you're not Unholy. Using a ghoul at the beginning of the fight, when you have all your procs up, can result in a ghoul that can do 60-70k damage over the course of the minute he's alive. That's over 1k free dps!

Addons
There are a TON of addons out there, so I'm only listing ones that I've heard to be good or tried out myself.

MagicRunes - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...agicrunes.aspx
This addon will change the way your view your runes. Of all the rune addons I've seen, this is my favorite and the one I currently use.

MikScrollingBattleText - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ttle-text.aspx
This addon will change the way you see your damage and healing. If you're playing with the default UI's battle text, and you're tired of seeing your entire screen fill with yellow numbers when you drop DnD, this will save your life.

Power Auras - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...s-classic.aspx
I personally haven't used this one, but people often recommend it and swear that they live by it. The addon tracks a multitude of buffs such as greatness, rune of the fallen crusader, etc...

NeedToKnow - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...d-to-know.aspx
This is an alternative to Power Auras, and one that I personally use. It will track any buff/debuff you tell it to, and you can change the colors of each thing tracked to your preference. The only downside is it might take you a few minutes to input everything you want tracked. I highly recommend this addon for tracking your diseases/trinkets/bone shield/desolation/killing machine/rime/unholy strength/you name it.

ForteXorcist - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...texorcist.aspx
This is another alternative to Power Auras/NeedtoKnow. This does basically the same thing as NeedtoKnow, as well as adds a cooldown bar that will show your internal cooldowns (great for tracking trinkets) and all cooldowns in general. I personally dislike how bulky the spell timers portion is, so I turned that off and use the Cooldowns bar in conjuncture with NeedtoKnow. If you do get this addon I suggest turning off the rune cooldowns, as that will just be redundant with Magic Runes.

Macros
#showtooltip Dancing Rune Weapon
/use 10
/use Potion of Speed
/cast Hysteria
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Dancing Rune Weapon

This will use your Hyperspeed Accelerators (Engineers Only), a Potion of Speed, Cast Hysteria on yourself, cast Blood Fury (Orcs only), and finally cast Dancing Rune Weapon.

#showtooltip Summon Gargoyle
/use 10
/use Potion of Speed
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Summon Gargoyle

Same thing as the DRW macro listed above.

/cancelaura Blood Tap
This will cancel your Blood Tap buff similar to as if you had just right clicked it. This can be very useful when you need to Blood Tap + Bone Shield, or Unbreakable Armor. There are macros that will automate the entire process of casting Blood Tap, casting BS/UA, and canceling the aura, but I find that they often take more than one button push and can often fail due to user error. If you can get them to work, great, if you're like me and macro retarded, just stick with the cancel aura one.

#showtooltip Raise Ally
/cast @mouseover [help,dead] Raise Ally
Useful for raising dead raid members

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Strangulate; Mind Freeze
Will normally cast Mind Freeze. If you hold shift will cast Strangulate.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Chains of ice; Icy touch
Will normally cast Icy Touch. If you hold shift will cast Chains of Ice.

While the next macros have nothing to do with improving your DPS, they will improve your quality of life

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Rusted Proto-Drake; Stormwind Steed
Will normally cast your ground mount. If you hold shift you will cast your flying mount..

/script for bag = 0,4,1 do for slot = 1, GetContainerNumSlots(bag), 1 do local name = GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot); if name and string.find(name,"ff9d9d9d") then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Selling "..name); UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end; end; end

^this macro will vendor all gray items currently in your bags. Just make sure you've got the vendor page open, or it will try to equip the grays.

/run nf="[Flask!]: ";for i=1,GetNumRaidMembers()do for b=1,41 do ufl=UnitAura('raid'..i,b);if ufl then if strfind(ufl,"Flask")then break;end;elseif b==41 then nf=nf..UnitName('raid'..i).." ";end;end;end;print(nf);

^this macro will check everyone in your group/raid for a flask. It will give you a statement that looks like:
[Flask!]: Goodrouge, Pewpewadin, Arthasdklol, Legolass, Davidmiller

[Nangz]

'll pm ya my aotd and frost section in the next day or two.

[Shiira]

15 strength on gloves is usually preferable to 44 ap for unholy.

I would reccomend listing a priority system for every spec to go with the rotations you have already. Rotations fall apart on anything that involves movement or target swapping, priority systems are more flexible.

For unholy on a single target that would pretty much be: refresh blood plague between the penultimate and final ticks > refresh frost fever > blood strike if desolation isn't up > scourge strike > blood strike > death coil > horn of winter.

Unholy should use incribed ametrines in yellow sockets if the socket bonus is three strength or better. The exception to this is if you don't have four piece tier nine, or if you don't have four piece tier ten.

If you are using army of the dead before the pull you can cast death and decay first to proc four piece tier ten, it will drop off before it gets refreshed normally but it's still a dps increase.

Feel free to delete this post if you make use of any of the information in it.

[Zao]

Third! (Sorry, didn't make it for the first post) And please don't do this to all the other people out there, "First!"-posts are bad (so are seconds, third etc).

Great guide, actually learned quite a bit out of the Unholy DPS guide.

[Biged781]

First off, thanks for the topic. A lot of good information summed up into a single thread.

I have a question regarding gems (yes, I saw that part of the guide ). Until recently I have been under the impression that, when faced with a yellow socket and a +4 or greater STR bonus, I should throw an inscribed ametrine in there. However, it seems to be common knowledge that a DK (I am blood BTW, but that does not matter here) should ALWAYS gem for STR. I figured that trading 6 or less STR for 10 crit was a good idea, but apparently I was wrong. I am just looking for an explanation of why it is better to get that 4 STR. Will it really give me more of a dps boon when I stand to lose about 40-50 crit by re-gemming? Thanks for any advice you can offer, here is my wow-heroes link.

http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone...ame=gaphgarion

[Shiira]

At almost every gear level from 245ish or up it's worth using a strength/crit gem as long as the socket bonus is three strength or better. The only exception to this is when you don't have the four piece bonuses from tier nine or tier ten, not having those set bonuses causes the value of crit to drop slightly such that it's only worth gemming strength/crit for four strength socket bonuses.

[kumduh]

That is a very good question!

Yes, you are correct. The FAQ saying we should use Strength gems is just meant to steer people away from Agility/AP/Armor Pen. When gemming yellow sockets you should use an Inscribed Ametrine (10crit/10str) if the socket bonus is 3+ strength.

[Biged781]

Ok, so it seems like I am doing the right thing (darn, I was hoping to squeeze out some more DPS ). Thanks you very much, loving this forum so far.

[DEADCRUEL]

First sorry for English now
My dps is kinda low in 10 mans i can get 5.5 sometimes to 6k but in 25mans im 6kalways and cant break it i am unholy and using build without reaping
This is my rotation PS>IT>BS>SS>BS>(DC>DC) than i usualy pop my trinket and gargoyel and get to 6k SS>BS>SS>BS>DC>DC
Here is my armory http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...cn=Deathminion
And one more thing is that i haven't won an item for like 2weeks last night 3items in icc 25 droped and i rolled 5-19-7 and i always roll that low
So i am looking for some1 to tell me should i go blood or something because i had same dps as this guy http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...&cn=Palindrome he won the finger last night.And Sorry for my English

[Sauerkraud]

well 1st get the best enchants there are.
As an UH the 4 t9 bonus is lovely I only broke the bonus because I got 2 t10
For single target IT PS BS BS SS DC HoW SS DC SS SS DC DC and then repeat
AoE IT PS pesti DnD DC HoW SS BS BB SS DC DC SS pesti rince and repeat
and before the tank pulls the boss pop an army and use a rune thingy forgot the name:P
So you got all your runes to use.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...&cn=Sauerkraud

[DEADCRUEL]

well 1st get the best enchants there are.
As an UH the 4 t9 bonus is lovely I only broke the bonus because I got 2 t10
For single target IT PS BS BS SS DC HoW SS DC SS SS DC DC and then repeat
AoE IT PS pesti DnD DC HoW SS BS BB SS DC DC SS pesti rince and repeat
and before the tank pulls the boss pop an army and use a rune thingy forgot the name:P
So you got all your runes to use.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...&cn=Sauerkraud

Builds with Reaping
PS – IT – BS – BS – SS – DC – HoW
SS – DC – SS – SS – DC – (DC)

Build without Reaping
PS – IT – BS – SS – BS – DC – HoW
SS – BS – SS – BS – DC – DC– (DC) my talents are without reaping

[Svesinieks]

i might be mistaken, but you didnt tell that for DK's its good to drink an armor pot ~3 secs before the pull, cuz it gives extra AP+ it cools down before you use your speed pot (should be like that)

[kumduh]

i might be mistaken, but you didnt tell that for DK's its good to drink an armor pot ~3 secs before the pull, cuz it gives extra AP+ it cools down before you use your speed pot (should be like that)

This is true, I'll add it in somewhere.

[saytar]

You might want to add in there where to use AMS for the free runic that it generates..

[Sauerkraud]

Builds with Reaping
PS – IT – BS – BS – SS – DC – HoW
SS – DC – SS – SS – DC – (DC)

Build without Reaping
PS – IT – BS – SS – BS – DC – HoW
SS – BS – SS – BS – DC – DC– (DC) my talents are without reaping

yeah forgot to say it with reaping my bad

[RebornID]

what two profs wouldbe best for a death knight DPS, dont include JC or ENgi cause i dont want them
tyvm

[kumduh]

what two profs would be best for a death knight DPS, dont include JC or ENgi cause i dont want them
tyvm

Blacksmithing and Enchanting/Inscription/Alchemy

[BoxofRox]

So bone shield will mitigate damage that isn't directly targeted at you, correct? Like constant auras during fights and aoes, ect.

[Nangz]

So bone shield will mitigate damage that isn't directly targeted at you, correct? Like constant auras during fights and aoes, ect.

Boneshield is very interesting.

It DOES remove stacks from aoes but only specific ones

example: bone storm

it won't remove from pungent blight or the ticks of the gash on festerut.

It will remove an auto attack from a boss.

[kumduh]

Thanks for the responses so far. I do plan to add a section for addons, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'd also like to get some more general spec independent information up. The guide is still a work in progress, so feel free to suggest things you'd like to see more of.