Death Knight T17 encounter specific talent choices and discussion.

[Deleted]

I used to main a Shadow priest and over at the H2P forums we had a thread like this and it proved to be an excellent resource to share ideas and experiences. I think it would be nice to see the DK community coming together to discuss the T17 Encounters.

Kargath Bladefist – Ill personally use mass grip and Defile here, not sure if PL would be better than UB here since Dks are sick for the stands, will have to test it.

The Butcher - Standard single Target, so PL and Defile

Brackenspore - Ill go with UB Defile here nothing major and AMZ to help out a little

Tectus - This one is abit hectic, so im not sure about defile here since there's alot of moving, i MIGHT even test out NP and UB to stack it up quickly

Twin Ogron - PL and Defile for me here, might try out glyph of Outbreak so i can apply dots to the boss tanked out of the raid at certain points, see how that turns out for me.

Ko'ragh - Mass Grip and AMZ 100% here to help out, apart from that, Defile and PL will be the way to go i think

Imperator Mar'gok - again Mass grip AMZ and for Dps choices im torn between PL and UB, might be leaning towards UB though due to add phases, and Defile.


As T17 goes on, i hope we can all get together in here and share what we have learned.

[Tristtiin25]

Just curious, since BB spreads diseases, would UB ever trump it? With BB you're still spreading but also damaging. Just throwing that out there because I'm sure you know the answer. Thanks!

[Deleted]

So i know its still early with only heroic highmaul open but what is your opinion on dks in there so far?

[Kapaya]

Your PS puts up both dots, all you have to do is to use your useless Unholy rune on an add and spam BB. There is no reason at all to get that awfull talent known as UB as Unholy.

[Deleted]

Unholy DKs are one of the top classes on almost every fight (except maybe koragh, very hard to measure that fight)

[HarpuiaBlade]

On tectus our tanks didn't have to move much at all. If your smart with defile then it'll be a no brainer to make it. Also the 10% damage reduction is up so often that it is of great help to your healers who are probably mana starved during 1 shard 4 mote phase.

[Deleted]

On tectus our tanks didn't have to move much at all. If your smart with defile then it'll be a no brainer to make it. Also the 10% damage reduction is up so often that it is of great help to your healers who are probably mana starved during 1 shard 4 mote phase.

Not exactly related to DKs, but how did you deal with Tectus that your tanks didn't have to move much?

[Deleted]

I personally don't understand why you would go with UB over PL on any fight. And glyphed Out break seem like dps loss, atleast for the tactic our guild is running.

The only talents I think I'd switch around with for now is Purgatory and AMZ to help out the raid.

[HarpuiaBlade]

Not exactly related to DKs, but how did you deal with Tectus that your tanks didn't have to move much?

Tanks were very careful to spin the boss and not needlessly move after the splits. It becomes inevitable that they will have to move but our tank gives us a few seconds advance notice when he will move so we can adjust. The gas is predictable and so long as your keep don't stand on the tank thy shouldn't have to move for the mini pillars

[Deleted]

I think we DK's are in a VERY good spot as dps. Was top 5 in my 30man run the other day on pretty much every fight. As to melee and how they're doing in the raid i'd say Blizzard didn't really think the abilities through. Pretty much every fight is very melee unfriendly.

[Deleted]

I personally don't understand why you would go with UB over PL on any fight. And glyphed Out break seem like dps loss, atleast for the tactic our guild is running.

You wouldn't. There is no situation where you would not choose PL. It's not that the other options are bad, but because PL is so much better. Last I checked, glyphed Outbreak was a single target DPS loss and an AOE gain. A thread like this might make sense for mages for example, but for DKs it's pretty pointless when you can cover the entire topic in a couple of short sentences.

[Deleted]

Yea, I agree.

[Maxweii]

Butcher - I personally use Lichborne here over Purgatory. Seeing as most of the damage we take is the initial hit then the tick, we could easily be healed out of purgatory and then tucked down quickly. So I felt having a (all be it small) self healing CD was more useful.

Brackenspore - PL/Defile instead of UB, never really a reason to not use PL. AMZ is great for the infesting spores especially since it can reduce the full duration of the 10 stacks ticks.

Twins - since it's not full aoe wouldn't be worth using glyph of Outbreak. Just save Outbreak for the WW boss and make sure you reapply dots to the other with PS instead.

Mar'Gok - Remourseless Winter can also be really handy here for the super small adds that spawn. Not only will it slow them so that they can technically be kited a bit, but the stun is great as well for em. This does depend on the group comp though, we have here DK's so they both took Gorefiends while I took RW so that we had both types of utility.
PL/Defile again as others have said. Depending on the strat you use too you might have very low add damage anyways (I mean the transition adds where most of the real extra damage comes from). We had myself (Unholy) a ret pally, and I believe an ele shammy on add duty for second transition.

[Raikh]

Breath on all bosses except maybe Tectus and/or if I'm on some AoEing duty on bosses like Ko'ragh or Mar'gok or Kargath.

Played around a lot with breath and its for me outperforming defile in many cases, will play around further and will especially at different results for mythic but that 500k opener breath is tasty.

[Maxweii]

Defile will only be a loss compared to Breath if you aren't using Defile correctly. Using it on CD/getting he fills ticks can be tricky at times but if you time it right it's a gain over Breath easily in aoe/cleave/burst/sustained single target

[Deleted]

PL every fight, every day since the day BB started spreading diseases.

[Raikh]

Defile will only be a loss compared to Breath if you aren't using Defile correctly. Using it on CD/getting he fills ticks can be tricky at times but if you time it right it's a gain over Breath easily in aoe/cleave/burst/sustained single target

According to sims, which don't include intelligent use of breath. Sims list for me ~180k DPE for breath. I get way more out of it. The opener alone comes up to three times the amount.
The more targets the getter gets defile but for 1-2 targets I can't really see breath being inferior if used properly and the fight allows proper usage.

Will do more tests but so far I get way more out of breath. And I was for sure not brain-afk enough to misplace a defile.

Will also try to convert it to a simcraft profile and get some results from that. Btw still gettign vastly lower SRs from unholy in raids than the sims predicts. Sure mastery not somehow double dipping in the sim?

[Maxweii]

Spoony has hand gone through almost very single line of APL's in simcraft, and I think it's fair for me to say I trust his extensive testing if everything more so then one individual sim (or even if you did more).
Also I would certainly expect BoS to have such a high DPE seeing as it's a longer CD/intended to be a replacement runic spender.

[Deleted]

Question regarding Imperator Mar'gok: During the encounter Mar'gok summons Arcane Aberration's and some times i find myself in the position where i don't have full death runes to blood boil so what im wondering is, would you consider it a viable strategy to convert your non death runes all to Death runes early even if it means you have to pre maturely use blood boil on Mar'gok alone 5 or so seconds before the Arcane Aberration spawns? or would this be a overall dps loss?

[Deleted]

Didn't wanna make a new thread for this question but how much of a damage increase is Bloodtap, if any? I see everyone using it but how big of a difference is it compared to runic corruption? Also, is it preferred on single target or AoE fights?