Unholy DPS help!

[sonshinegreene]

I'm trying to help my wife with her dps on her DK, with her gear she should be pulling WAY more dps, but I know JACK about DK's so I don't know what to tell her to help her. Maybe you guys can offer some advice?

LoG-http://worldoflogs.com/reports/icbws5fxq89hn1pl/analyze/dd/source/?s=3581&e=4045

Armory-http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arygos/Unholysing/simple

Thanks in advance for any help!

[cFortyfive]

Well really not sure there where to begin. After a quick look she definitely has the wrong spec and glyphs - take a look there http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t120315-...0_a/#Base_Spec for the right one. Second thing really coming jumping into my sight is the let's say quite suboptimal trinket choice and the overall gearing but I'll just assume that there are no alternatives available although she'd definitely pick up License to Slay. The uptime on Dark Transformation on the ghoul is ridiculously low - it is around 30% for her and should be around 50% if not more. Furthermore she uses blood strike - just don't do that. Like never. This may also cause her diseases to fall off since she has a couple too many plaguestrikes and icy touches there for my taste so she may like to refer to the elitist jerks article which describes the unholy rotation quite good.The good part though is that the forging/gemming seems ok.

[Taistee]

I'm no expert on unholy, but she isn't using festering strike enough, and melee should NOT be her top damage contributor. She should be applying diseases via outbreak, keeping them up with festering, using DnD on cooldown (even single target), and using scourge strike as a filler. Festering takes Blood and Frost runes, from what I remember, but turns them into death runes. She should be able to keep her diseases up indefinitely with festering strike, but she should also take advantage of the fact that it turns the blood and frost runs into unholy, and use them to fit in extra scourge strikes. Also, using dark transformation on CD.
She's using deathcoil, but not enough from what I see. Maybe she forgets about it and lets herself get RP capped. She shouldn't forget about runic empowerment, though, and should use deathcoil when you have all of if not most of the runes on cooldown (meaning if she has 2 blood, 2 frost, and 1 unholy runes on CD and shes close to capping RP, she should deathcoil to regen the runes. If shes not close to RP capping, use scourge strike then deathcoil).
I'm noticing quite a few times when her DPS literally hits 0. This could be because she's running between 2 targets, but she should really always have DoTs on at least one. She should be DPSing in unholy presence if she isn't already. This is minor, but also I'm not sure its worth gemming 20 str 20 hit in her belt for only a 10 str gain.

To summarize, the only major thing wrong is her lack of ability usage. comparing her to other dks on the same fight with similar length, shes getting off much less death coils, scourge strikes, and festering strikes.

EDIT: I didn't even consider spec, but the post above me pretty much covers that.

[Drknife]

In addition, expertise needs to be capped.

[Deleted]

In addition, expertise needs to be capped.

Except that Unholy dks, like Assa Rogues, favour other stats over Exp cap. So no, exp does not need to be capped.

[Frostbite1]

^^ what he said

[Sealpup]

While not having the expertise cap helps with min/max purposes, no one debates that, it helps immensely to have expertise cap for learning purposes so that there are no missed strikes at early levels of play.

[Taistee]

While not having the expertise cap helps with min/max purposes, no one debates that, it helps immensely to have expertise cap for learning purposes so that there are no missed strikes at early levels of play.

That doesn't even make sense. If my scourge strike got parried, oh look, I can scourge strike again.

[sonshinegreene]

Thanks for the reply's guys, and keep any advice coming! Hoping to get her up to at least 15k before we do FL again next week!

[Leviatharan]

The Log says she has 40 hits of Blood Strike and only 5 of Festering Strike, and the uptime of Blood Plague alone is absurdly low... So you'll want to have her pound the priorities into her head:

Outbreak for Diseases (if you're doing it right, you can avoid PS/IT altogether in single-target rotations thanks to Festering Strike; In the average rotation, you can keep diseases up for ~72 sec at a time, more than enough for Outbreak's CD) > Dark Transformation 'procs' > Scourge Strike/Death and Decay if all 6 runes can be burned as Unholy runes by the end of the next rune-cycle (if you wanna be nitpicky, then DnD is useful even in single-target fights as long as all 11 ticks deal damage to the target, as it scales better with Mastery and isn't as reliant on Expertise as SS is) > Festering Strike if any Blood/Frost runes are currently up > Death Coil if RP is high or Sudden Doom procs > SS/DnD without Death Runes > FeS on Death Runes > DC at low RP > Horn of Winter for RP in empty globals.
It sounds complicated, but when you're playing it's really rather simple. Actually, I find Unholy's much more OCD-friendly than other specs based on the rune management alone.

As the posts above me have already said, her speccing is off. She shouldn't be quite as invested into Frost, she should drop Glyph of Icy Touch for Glyph of Death Coil, she shouldn't *need* Glyph of Chains of Ice if she's not PvPing, and a number of the points in Unholy could be better spent; for example, there's nothing in Unholy Blight- as minor a DPS gain as it is- or Butchery or Bladed Armor. The current spec is 5/0/32 (checking Elitist Jerks will tell you where the points go), leaving 4 points to spend anywhere... I recommend filling out Magic Suppression and dropping a point in RPM, leaving a point to go wherever you like. Adding to Butchery and Magic Suppression would, at the very least, increase Dark Transformation uptime.
And just to cover all the bases, be certain that she's DPSing in Unholy Presence and the ghoul's uptime is as close to 100% as she can manage (although most people will tell you if the ghoul's killed off in under 2 minutes after summoning, you're doing something wrong).

Aside from that, it looks like she's reforging, gemming, and enchanting right. So it's not a gear issue. And no, she doesn't need expertise cap; the combination of the Unholy DK's spells, pets, and diseases is equal to about half of the Unholy DK's damage, and thanks to the more forgiving rune system, having a Scourge Strike get parried or dodged refunds the runes. While the other DK specs should cap expertise just to avoid the frustration of having to cast the same strikes over and over again, spamming Scourge Strike is... kind of the point.

[Deleted]

Ghoul DT uptime is really what she should be focusing on, its way too low. Also as the others mentioned, Festering Strike to keep diseases up untill you can Outbreak again.

[Knuffelbert]

Get CLC_DK or whatever it's called. Pretty much tells you what to press, though in certain situations it'll tell you the wrong thing.

MagicRunes or another rune tracker addon is also way better than the inbuild one.

[SurrealNight]

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t120315-...ck_4_2_0_a/p8/

Unholys ghul is a solid part of the specs dps but doesnt gain anything from expertise (Ghuls "expertise" is determined via the DKs hit rating).
Unholys playstyle has quite "conceivable" free global cooldowns in which you could just "re-use" the strike that was dodged due to low expertise (Runes for dodged strikes arent used). So all you effectively lose are dodged auto-attacks.
Frosts rotation is overall tighter and more random. Dodged strikes can lead to short times where all runes are active (wasting "refreshing time") which is a defacto dps loss.
Also, FS can be dodged (and you do not regain the lost RP, I guess) while DC cannot.

Just swapped to Unholy myself. While I find the 'priority' a bit more complex I noticed my avg DPS has gotten a lot better.

Part of this was probably trying to do Frost with a 2H after 4.2 though.

[trickster0306]

not trying to start a confilict here, but if i were you, i would try frost, it is a much easy spec to play, and it usually tops unholy in dps, but if not then just try http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t120315-...0_a/#Base_Spec