OB vs SS in the current patch

[Renkoku]

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Jul 2010
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Obliterate vs. Scourge Strike Revisited in 3.5

I have been struggling to find a balanced spec for pvp for my 3's team.

I was 1st Unholy and found that I can only pull with sustainable damage with Scourge Strike, Diseases, and Death Coil. The bust is not that great and survivalbility is somewhat low but better than frost.

I then tried to play as the offense is the better defense idea as frost. great burst and damage overall. But all attacks except IT and HB are ranged. Since chiliblains are easily dispelled. If your comp doesn't snare the opponent very well, this spec is weak.

I then tried Blood 2h going for full Death Coil effect procs and heart strikes. Used glyph of Heart Strike to snare my opponent, it acted as a hamstring, and was shocked that pallies can disarm a physical attack movement impair debuff >.>.....what was Blizz thinking. I did incredible damage with full procs and using DRW after empowering rune weapon with full RP. But everyone complains and say I should be Unholy.

Blood and Frost kills healers. Unholy has trouble downing healers. Keep in mind I use all CC's, silence, ghouls stuns (if Unholy), and interrupts.

Therefore after toying around with this on Wowhead.com I came up with this spec but do not know the outcome of Obliterate. While my diseases will do alot of damage. I feel I do see enough big Yellow bursts when hitting Scourge Strike like others speak of. But in Frost I seen plenty of Obliterate Crits.

I was thinking of trying to switch strikes. I need some information, input and help. Positive feedback only please. Positive criticism as well.

---------- Post added 2010-07-20 at 12:51 PM ----------

Blood (0 Points)

None

Frost (19 Points)

Improved Icy Touch - Rank 3/3
Your Icy Touch does an additional 15% damage and your Frost Fever reduces melee and ranged attack speed by an additional 6%.

Runic Power Mastery - Rank 2/2
Increases your maximum Runic Power by 30.

Icy Reach - Rank 2/2
Increases the range of your Icy Touch, Chains of Ice and Howling Blast by 10 yards.

Black Ice - Rank 5/5
Increases your Frost and Shadow damage by 10%.

Annihilation - Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your melee special abilities by 3%. In addition, there is a 100% chance that your Obliterate will do its damage without consuming diseases.

Chill of the Grave - Rank 2/2
Your Chains of Ice, Howling Blast, Icy Touch and Obliterate generate 5 additional runic power.

Endless Winter - Rank 2/2
Your strength is increased by 4% and your Mind Freeze no longer costs runic power.

Unholy (52 Points)

Vicious Strikes - Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance by 6% and critical strike damage bonus by 30% of your Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.

Virulence - Rank 3/3
Increases your chance to hit with your spells by 3% and reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 30%.

Epidemic - Rank 2/2
Increases the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 6 sec.

Morbidity - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage and healing of Death Coil by 15% and reduces the cooldown on Death and Decay by 15 sec.

Ravenous Dead - Rank 3/3
Increases your total Strength by 3% and the contribution your Ghouls get from your Strength and Stamina by 60%

Outbreak - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 30% and Scourge Strike by 20%.

Blood-Caked Blade - Rank 3/3
Your auto attacks have a 30% chance to cause a Blood-Caked Strike, which hits for 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target.

Night of the Dead - Rank 2/2
Reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 90 sec and the cooldown on Army of the Dead by 4 min. Also reduces the damage your pet takes from creature area of effect attacks by 90%.

Unholy Blight - Rank 1/1
Causes the victims of your Death Coil to be surrounded by a vile swarm of unholy insects, taking 10% of the damage done by the Death Coil over 10 sec, and preventing any diseases on the victim from being dispelled.

Impurity - Rank 5/5
Your spells receive an additional 20% benefit from your attack power.

Desecration - Rank 2/2
Your Plague Strikes and Scourge Strikes cause the Desecrated Ground effect. Targets in the area are slowed by 50% by the grasping arms of the dead while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 20 sec.

Reaping - Rank 3/3
Whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence there is a 100% chance that the Blood Rune becomes a Death Rune when it activates. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost or Unholy Rune.

Master of Ghouls - Rank 1/1
Reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 sec, and the Ghoul summoned by your Raise Dead spell is considered a pet under your control. Unlike normal Death Knight Ghouls, your pet does not have a limited duration.

Desolation - Rank 5/5
Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec.

Improved Unholy Presence - Rank 2/2
While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 10% faster in Unholy Presence.

Crypt Fever - Rank 3/3
Your diseases also cause Crypt Fever, which increases disease damage taken by the target by 30%.

Ebon Plaguebringer - Rank 3/3
Your Crypt Fever morphs into Ebon Plague, which increases magic damage taken by 13% in addition to increasing disease damage taken. Improves your critical strike chance with weapons and spells by 3% at all times.

Rage of Rivendare - Rank 5/5
Your spells and abilities deal 10% more damage to targets infected with Blood Plague. Also increases your expertise by 5.

Summon Gargoyle - Rank 1/1
A Gargoyle flies into the area and bombards the target with Nature damage modified by the Death Knight's attack power. Persists for 30 sec.

Glyphs

Glyph of Dark Death (Major Glyph)
Increases the damage or healing done by Death Coil by 15%.

Glyph of the Ghoul (Major Glyph)
Your Ghoul receives an additional 40% of your Strength and 40% of your Stamina.

Glyph of Obliterate (Major Glyph)
Increases the damage of your Obliterate ability by 25%.

Glyph of Horn of Winter (Minor Glyph)
Increases the duration of your Horn of Winter ability by 1 min.

Glyph of Pestilence (Minor Glyph)
Increases the radius of your Pestilence effect by 5 yards.

Glyph of Raise Dead (Minor Glyph)
Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent.

---------- Post added 2010-07-20 at 12:51 PM ----------

I cannot post a link yet, so I apologize for the Tl;DR thread.

[Ahpuch]

Unholy is the only really viable spec for DKs to play in arena... plus DKs haven't been doing massive damage in PvP for a while. In arena at least we're reduced to assistance, generally with a warrior so they can destroy your opponent while you keep their healer busy

[Renkoku]

I can't... New account.

To add, my 2's is stuck in 1200-1300's and my 3's we just started working on is at 1k.

The general idea was to get me and my warrior buddy to 1400 in 2's to get the belt and boots. Then work to 1800 for our weapons. Since so many people are greatly geared or being carried, we can't seem to get there. For our 2's we use a shammy or Holy Pally healing comp with either of us dps.

In our 3's, we had trouble last night due to the fact I was not killing fast enough, me and the warrior comp is either with the resto shammy or Holy Pally.

Note: All of us are over 1k resil not gemmed or enchanted resil.

[Renkoku]

But with the above spec, could I at least provide more damage with obliterate or am I stuck with the crapp SS rare burst?

[theBest]

As per the current state of Death Knights, we are often not the powerhouse class of a 3's team. Our purpose in many comps is to be annoying (keep pestilence up constantly, strang/pet stun healers on kill OPs), keep a kill target locked in place with Chains/Desecration, and burst with our few cooldowns, when necessary. These three attributes are in place of us putting out mass amounts of damage.

Regardless of how many different ways you attempt to play a Death Knight in serious arena, Unholy Scourge Strike spec will always reign superior to the alternative specs. When a kill OP shows itself, we can put out significant damage through a SS/Emp Rune Weapon/SS/SS/DC Spam rotation. The Scourge Strike is necessary in my opinion, due to the fact that the spell portion ignores armor, whereas 100% of OB's damage will be mitigated by armor.

As a side note, make sure you are glyphing Disease, so you can avoid wasting runes on disease refreshes.

[Edit]: As well, be sure to always have pest active, a large portion of our damage will come from constantly refreshing diseases on the opposing team.

[Muraza]

Basically in 3s you are utility. You are there for the interrupts the deathgrips the silences and pressure. Run with a holy paladin and MM hunter and you will be fine. Your burst in unholy will come from being in unholy presence, sigil of vengeful heart sigil and a gargoyle out + enough runic power to rocket out 3 deathcoils. The damage does not come from the strikes, but mainly DC damage is alot more bursty.

As for 2s you just have to do alot of hard switches between your opponents and pressure them, once you have an option to burst one of them down you go for it but you will not do substantial damage to a single person without an MS effect. You literally wear the healers down or force them to make a mistake.

[Renkoku]

You see my thing is here the clear difference is how much does impurity impact the shadow damage from the effect of SS vs the massive physical damage OB provides with diseases and would OB be more effective with having Ebon Plague active?

[Muraza]

I can't... New account.

To add, my 2's is stuck in 1200-1300's and my 3's we just started working on is at 1k.

The general idea was to get me and my warrior buddy to 1400 in 2's to get the belt and boots. Then work to 1800 for our weapons. Since so many people are greatly geared or being carried, we can't seem to get there. For our 2's we use a shammy or Holy Pally healing comp with either of us dps.

In our 3's, we had trouble last night due to the fact I was not killing fast enough, me and the warrior comp is either with the resto shammy or Holy Pally.

Note: All of us are over 1k resil not gemmed or enchanted resil.

PvP pieces you want to replace with PvE gear are the pieces that just have stamina on them, neck 1 ring and weapon should be all PvE if they are 264+.

---------- Post added 2010-07-20 at 06:45 PM ----------

You see my thing is here the clear difference is how much does impurity impact the shadow damage from the effect of SS vs the massive physical damage OB provides with diseases and would OB be more effective with having Ebon Plague active?

Obliterate will be far inferior just because of the mitigation it will suffer. With SS the damage gets boosted by your unholy talents so you will see a 2k physical hit with a 1.2 or so shadow damage hit.

[Renkoku]

That is kind of heartbreaking to see our awesome class reduced to only supportive. But I do see your points. Glyph of disease huh? Would wandering Plague talent be a necessity for this or is it enough with just the diseases alone to provide pressure vs. healing comps.

---------- Post added 2010-07-20 at 01:49 PM ----------

Sadly I don't have a good neck piece other than having a wrathful PvP. I use my PvE ring from the quest giver at the beginning of ICC.

As for the weapon, the best I got is Justicebringer sadly.

[theBest]

I do not spec into Wandering Plague as the damage is fairly insignificant. The main reason for Glyphing Disease is so that you can keep the team DoT'ed up and refreshed, without having to waste Unholy runes on frequently refreshing Blood Plague on your target.

[Renkoku]

I do not spec into Wandering Plague as the damage is fairly insignificant. The main reason for Glyphing Disease is so that you can keep the team DoT'ed up and refreshed, without having to waste Unholy runes on frequently refreshing Blood Plague on your target.

Ty, awesome advice.

[elseagoat]

You see my thing is here the clear difference is how much does impurity impact the shadow damage from the effect of SS vs the massive physical damage OB provides with diseases and would OB be more effective with having Ebon Plague active?

Neither Obliterate nor Scourge Strike are affected by Impurity. No attacks that are Weapon Damage based are affected by Impurity. This includes Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike, Plague Strike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate, and Rune Strike. Since the Shadow damage portion of Scourge Strike is based on the damage done by the physical portion, it too is modified by weapon damage.

Impurity only affects abilities which derive their damage directly from attack power, not weapon damage. Even though Weapon Damage is modified by attack power, the abilities which say "X% of Weapon Damage" in their tooltip are unchanged by this talent because the talent does not modify your paper doll attack power, but rather how much of that attack power is used by the ability. That means the following damaging effects are modified by Impurity: Death Coil, Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Death and Decay, Blood Boil, Frost Fever, and Blood Plague (and possibly Anti-Magic Zone). Secondary damaging effects from talents such as Wandering Plague that increase or in some way add to the damage of these abilities are thus also modified by Impurity.

It is my understanding that as Unholy, Scourge Strike is always a better option over Obliterate due to the lack of talents that support Obliterate and the abundance of talents that support Scourge Strike. Even though Scourge Strike is garbage.

[Muraza]

At some point all classes are used for utility. When the SS was nerfed (don't remember when) we moved to that. But at that time a T9 geared dk with the 2h out of TOC 25 man could hit a person with high resil in a bg or arena for an insane amount of shadow damage with the SS. Think I remember the numbers approaching 20k on none resil targets. That was fun but silly.

SS shadow damage critting...oh the good times.

[Renkoku]

At some point all classes are used for utility. When the SS was nerfed (don't remember when) we moved to that. But at that time a T9 geared dk with the 2h out of TOC 25 man could hit a person with high resil in a bg or arena for an insane amount of shadow damage with the SS. Think I remember the numbers approaching 20k on none resil targets. That was fun but silly.

I can see casters, Hunters (despite their great constant dps), and of course healers being only supportive. But melee....I feel like thats an insult to a melee class :P

That is almost like telling a Warrior "hey, you can't really kill anyone easily, but you can help us kill them", he would think you're absolutely insane.

[theBest]

hey, you can't really kill anyone easily, but you can help us kill them.

This is, unfortunately, exactly the attitude you need to enter arenas with, nowadays.

[Renkoku]

This is, unfortunately, exactly the attitude you need to enter arenas with, nowadays.

Good point.

[Muraza]

Its 2s and 3s for a reason, not in there to solo people even healers play offensively to help kill the opposition.

[Renkoku]

Its 2s and 3s for a reason, not in there to solo people even healers play offensively to help kill the opposition.

No no, I wasn't speaking of solo wise. Just saying it's kinda heart breaking that most classes put out more damage than our class atm. I think things will get better in cataclysm. I think Unholy could be a possible Duel Wielding class in the next X-pac after looking at talents.

[Ahpuch]

I think Unholy could be a possible Duel Wielding class in the next X-pac after looking at talents.

Nope.

[Foibles]

Since so many people are greatly geared or being carried, we can't seem to get there.

Why is it always some external force keeping people down? Maybe you just aren't very good.

Are you using Sigil of Vengeful Heart? Are you coordinating CC? Are you peeling and locking down your opponents?