Problem - Guilds resident Frost DK DPS

[Valiea]

Ok, so currently our DK got some upgrades, and he's always had some issues pulling higher than 20-23k dps. While that isn't bad, for his gear it should probably be higher.

His Armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kurge/advanced

WoL - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/6...um/damageDone/

Now, since this log has been uploaded, he's gotten more upgrades, but he's unable to pull more than 20k on almost every fight recently. We just got a bunch of firestones, and he was the first to get the 391 weapon upgrades. And the only reason we don't have more recent logs is because our logger had some corrupted files, so they weren't posted. (If you look at the calendar, our guild has 2 raid groups, the one the DK is in I am concerned about is on Saturdays and Mondays, for anyone who wants to check more than the log I posted.)

So I'm wondering, is it possible anyone might know, from the logs, and his armory, what might be wrong with his DPS?

[Jinto]

Glyph of Icy Touch

[Herecius]

What Jinto is saying is that he should use Glyph of Frost Strike, but that won't completely solve his DPS problems. His Blood Plague uptime is absolutely abysmal, for starters. The most important thing for DK DPS is disease uptimes, so when your 5:55 Shannox kill has a Blood Plague uptime of 46.3%, something is wrong. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/j.../?s=862&e=1218

[Lestrang]

I pull alot more than that on my ilvl 370 DK.

He should get glyph of frost stike instead of glyph of icy touch.

I'd say for PvE, IMPROVED frost presence is pretty good, since you are doing in unholy presence, having the bonuses is pretty nice, he can remove chillblains, only fight where it is needed is beth, and considering you have a hunter, it might not or might be needed, but either way he can remove the 2 points in endless winter since its only needed on alystrazor.

More indepth look

He doesn't keep his diseases up, at least not blood plague.
For majordomo he got 98.9% Frost fever uptime, which is ok, but its probably cause glyph of howling blast and rimes that he get or when he use howling blast for adds, but his blood plague uptime is 54.9% which is not THAT good.

He used pillar of frost which is a huge dps boost and should be used on CD (1 minute cd) once per fight, where he should have used it about 7-8 times (tell him to bind his ghoul with the pillar so the ghoul comes out enforced with the increased strength.)

he needs to do some reading, yell at him for being a lazy person who doesn't want to expand knowledge of his class and think pressing whatever proc that flashes is the good thing to do.
Also bad major glyphs, not big issue with dps but still.


Edit: Uptime for horn of winter is low (29.8%), depsite 2 set bonus allowing extra runic power regen while it is up, and you should use it when you dont have runes or runic power, which happens pretty often.

[Breyers]

The few things I can see at first glance of the Armory;

Glyph of Icy Touch is wrong. It should be Glyph of Frost Strike

21/21 Expertise, when he should have 26/26
9.35% Hit Rating when 8.00% is the cap

Neck - He should reforge the Crit not the Expertise into Haste
Shoulders - He shouldn't reforge them at all, as he is over hit-capped
Cloak - He should leave it unforged, because he needs more Expertise
Chest - He should leave it unforged, since he's over hit-capped
Ring #2 - He shouldn't reforge it at all


Strength > 601 Hit Rating > 781 Expertise Rating > Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike

The above is what he needs to follow.

[Projali]

I checked your Baleroc kill.

He needs to use Raise Dead.

He needs to use PoF and his Essence trinket on cooldown. Missing out on those strength buffs is huge and a big reason why his dps is so low. I wouldn't even worry about RE gaming right now. He needs to handle basic stuff that applies to every class and that is using dps cooldowns properly. He has blood plague downtime where he's obliterating which is a dps loss.

First ghoul spawn should be popped after PoF,trinkets and ideally your pre-potion or burn phase potion. He takes a picture of your stats unlike unholy's perma-ghoul when he spawns so you want those buffs up before the summon.

[Shiira]

He has mining which provides no dps benefit.

He is using glyph of icy touch instead of frost strike, and for some reason he is using icy touch. Howling blast completely replaces icy touch when glyphed.

He only used pillar of frost nine times in the entire raid, it's a one minute cooldown. He also only used raise dead seven times, and never used army at all.

I'm mostly going to look at how he did on majordomo and baleroc for obvious reasons.

On majordomo his obliterate damage was under frost strike, this should never happen. Obliterate should always be top.

On baleroc he procced rime 10 times but he used howling blast 29 times, no idea what's going on there. He should only be casting howling blast without rime when he gets screwed by procs and needs to refresh frost fever, but that doesn't happen often.

He let blood plague drop for 20 seconds on baleroc, and he let it drop for more than three minutes on majordomo. It almost looks like he was only applying it with outbreak on majordomo. A frost dk never wants to obliterate without both diseases up.

His obliterate isn't critting as much as it should, he is probably using too many of his killing machine procs for frost strike.

Basically there's just so much wrong with what he's doing that I can't really be bothered to find it all. He could really benefit from some basic knowledge of how to play frost, which can be found on ej and similar websites.

[Valiea]

(tell him to bind his ghoul with the pillar so the ghoul comes out enforced with the increased strength.)

How would he macro this? just /cast pillar of frost /cast raise ghoul or whatever it is? Or is it something special?

Edit - So he takes the 2 points out of chillblains for Imp Frost Presence, what about the 2 points in Endless Winter? If he removes those, what is a good DPS increase? If there's nothing he might just keep it for Alysrazor since he's our only interrupter on one side, so it might save him the RP management.

[Foibles]

Not using cooldowns more than once, bad HoW uptime, Blood Plague uptime could use some work.

[Breyers]

How would he macro this? just /cast pillar of frost /cast raise ghoul or whatever it is? Or is it something special?

Edit - So he takes the 2 points out of chillblains for Imp Frost Presence, what about the 2 points in Endless Winter? If he removes those, what is a good DPS increase? If there's nothing he might just keep it for Alysrazor since he's our only interrupter on one side, so it might save him the RP management.

Not to sound too blunt or 'insulting' towards the Death Knight in question.

But Min-Maxing within his spec, and with fancy macros, is really the least of his worries. He needs to start from the ground-up and work on his basic understanding of how the Class/Spec works, as well as the proper stat and ability priorities.

[Valiea]

I am currently working with him as we are discussing this. I've already got his hit at 8.4% which is still a bit high, but better.. Expertise is at 26, I had him respec from chillblains to ImpFP, had him reglyph his Icy touch, had him REMOVE icy touch from his bars, I'm going to work with him on setting up macros. Then we'll be talking about professions.

[Lestrang]

How would he macro this? just /cast pillar of frost /cast raise ghoul or whatever it is? Or is it something special?

Edit - So he takes the 2 points out of chillblains for Imp Frost Presence, what about the 2 points in Endless Winter? If he removes those, what is a good DPS increase? If there's nothing he might just keep it for Alysrazor since he's our only interrupter on one side, so it might save him the RP management.

Yes, the macro is simple as that

He can take 2 points out of chillblains for imp forost presence, points in endless winter can go to different things, all options are on Elitist Jerks which he should be reading already, Butchery and improved blood tap are good stuff.

And yes he should have endless winter for alystrazor, but thats about it.

[Foibles]

It looks like he is spamming Howling Blast. 11 Rime procs from your bale kill, but HB is used over 25 times. It's not heroic so I assume your DK doesn't have to run out because of Torment.

[Shiira]

I am currently working with him as we are discussing this. I've already got his hit at 8.4% which is still a bit high, but better.. Expertise is at 26, I had him respec from chillblains to ImpFP, had him reglyph his Icy touch, had him REMOVE icy touch from his bars, I'm going to work with him on setting up macros. Then we'll be talking about professions.

All of this is fine and should be done at some point, but for now he needs to be focusing on learning the basics of his spec.

When I look at his damage breakdowns and cooldown usage from that log I feel like I'm looking at someone who just started playing frost that same day.

[Jinto]

Should just tell him to go read the EJ guide. While it is far from perfect it does cover all the basics. I pointed out his glyph as it is an obvious sign that he has the fundamentals wrong.

[Breyers]

I am currently working with him as we are discussing this. I've already got his hit at 8.4% which is still a bit high, but better.. Expertise is at 26, I had him respec from chillblains to ImpFP, had him reglyph his Icy touch, had him REMOVE icy touch from his bars, I'm going to work with him on setting up macros. Then we'll be talking about professions.

Just remember gear wise ( Strength > 601 Hit Rating > 781 Expertise Rating > Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike )

And things to remember

100% Disease time is non-optional

Frost Fever and Blood Plague should be applied on-pull and off-cooldown with Outbreak (When there are 3 or less seconds left on diseases)
The gap between Outbreaks should be bridged by a Plague Strike for Blood Plague when there is less than 3 seconds left on it.
The gap between Outbreaks should be bridged by Howling Blast (with Rime Procs) constantly through-out the fight.

As well, Horn of Winter uptime should be 100%, also non-optional due to the damage increase and Death Knight 2-Piece
(Just use it anytime there aren't enough Runes or Runic Power to use abilities)

[Valiea]

All of this is fine and should be done at some point, but for now he needs to be focusing on learning the basics of his spec.

When I look at his damage breakdowns and cooldown usage from that log I feel like I'm looking at someone who just started playing frost that same day.

He's always been some-what of a mediocre player. He's an amazing person, I love him to death, and thats why I want to do everything in my power to make him a better player. I understand the cooldown usage and uptime of things, but thats why I want to know what other DKs do to make it easier for CDs and abilities. Whether it's macros, quick-reach keybinds, etc. The other things I'm doing are going to be minor DPS increases.

[Shiira]

He's always been some-what of a mediocre player. He's an amazing person, I love him to death, and thats why I want to do everything in my power to make him a better player. I understand the cooldown usage and uptime of things, but thats why I want to know what other DKs do to make it easier for CDs and abilities. Whether it's macros, quick-reach keybinds, etc. The other things I'm doing are going to be minor DPS increases.

Well as far as macros are concerned, the only ones that I would consider non optional are mouseover macros for howling blast, raise ally and death grip.

Dks are fairly good at knockback duty for ragnaros normal because with both of the glyphs death grip has a 35 yard range, no cooldown, no resource cost and is off the global cooldown. But he probably isn't ready to handle stuff like that, so just tell him to get howling blast and raise ally mouseover macros for now.

As for keybinds, they aren't spec relevant. Having all of your stuff bound somewhere that you can reach easily is just part of being a good player.

[Herecius]

He's always been some-what of a mediocre player. He's an amazing person, I love him to death, and thats why I want to do everything in my power to make him a better player. I understand the cooldown usage and uptime of things, but thats why I want to know what other DKs do to make it easier for CDs and abilities. Whether it's macros, quick-reach keybinds, etc. The other things I'm doing are going to be minor DPS increases.

The other thing to be aware of is that macroing raise ghoul with pillar is that raise ghoul is on the GCD, whereas pillar/essence are not. This means that ghoul can sometimes not go off if you hit it between GCDs, just something to be aware of, so tell him to mash it. :P

In any case, he's an orc, so here you go:

#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/use Essence of the Eternal Flame
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Raise Ghoul

[Gra_la]

Ugg why would you give that firestones.
Certainly he couldn't have convinced you his terrible play was his lack of 391 weapons.
If by some crazy chance we would have considered someone like him for weapon upgrades, he woulda been forced to at least purchase bracers first.

Infracted