DK Target Calling 3.0

[cerebro]

Introduction:
This a Target Calling Guide meant for Frost Death Knights only.



INDEX:

1. Addons
2. Macros
3. Spec, Talents & Glyphs
4. Stats, Gemming, Runeforging, Professions, and Enchants
5. Kill Order
6. Target Calling
7. Contributors







1. Addons


Battle Ground Targets
This is one of your most important addons, without this addon target calling will be next to impossible. Below is the set up you should have, to maximize the use for this addon.




Duffed UI (TUKUI)
All in one addon, has an insane amount of things included without making your screen feel all cluttered.

Out of Combat UI




In Combat UI




Icicle
If you do not want to use Tukui, this is an alternative to show enemy cooldowns showing on enemy name plates.

Weak Auras
I use this for many abilities, one of the main ones is Soul Reaper here is a quick little guide.
- Type /wa.
- Make sure New is selected so you can create a new custom proc.
- Choose a new Texture and name it in a meaningful way, like Soul Reaper.
- On the Display tab, press Choose to select an alert, I use the first PowerAura Heads-Up called Runed text but it's up to you.
- Select the Trigger tab to customize Trigger 1.
- Select status for Type, it will be health.
- Select target for Unit
- Check Health (%), with Health (%) < 35.
- On the Load tab, just check In Combat and Player class, that would be Death Knight.





2. Macros

Death Pact - This macro summons your ghoul and sacrifices 50% of it's hp

#showtooltip Death Pact
/cast raise dead
/cast death pact


Death Grip - Mouseover grip, if your holding down shift it will grip your focus instead.

#showtooltip Death Grip
/cast [mod:shift, target=focus][target=mouseover, hard, exists][nomod] Death Grip


Strangulate - Strangulate mouseover, if your holding down shift it will grip your focus instead.

#showtooltip Strangulate
/cast [mod:shift, target=focus][target=mouseover, hard, exists][nomod] Strangulate


Chains of Ice - Chains your target, holding down shift chains your focus without dropping your target.

#showtooltip chains of ice
/cast [mod:shift, target=focus][target=target, hard, exists][nomod] chains of ice


Gorefiend's Grasp - Hitting macro aoe grips everyone to your target, holding shift aoe grips everyone to you. Make sure to replace DKNAME to your Dk's name.

#showtooltip Gorefiend's Grasp
/cast [mod:shift, target=DKNAME][target=target, hard, exists][nomod] gorefiend's grasp




3. Spec, Talents & Glyphs



Tier 1
Unholy Blight


Tier 2

Lichborne
Death Knight - LvL 30 Talent
Instant 2 min cooldown
Draw upon unholy energy to become undead for 10 sec. While undead, you are immune to Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects, and Death Coil will heal you.

Tier 3

Chilblains
Death Knight - LvL 45 Talent
Victims of your Frost Fever disease are Chilled, reducing movement speed by 50% for 10 sec, and your Chains of Ice immobilizes targets for 3 sec.

Tier 4


Death Pact
Death Knight - LvL 60 Talent
Instant 2 min cooldown
Drain vitality from an undead minion, healing the Death Knight for 50% of his maximum health and causing the minion to suffer damage equal to 50% of its maximum health.


Tier 5


Runic Empowerment

Death Knight - LvL 75 Talent
When you land a damaging Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike, you have a 45% chance to activate a random fully-depleted rune.

Tier 6


Gorefiend's Grasp
Death Knight - LvL 90 Talent
30 yd range
Instant 60 sec cooldown
Shadowy tendrils coil around all enemies within 20 yards of a target (hostile or friendly), pulling them to the target's location.


Glyphs

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Causes your Anti-Magic Shell to absorb all incoming magical damage, up to the absorption limit.
- Helps makes sure that I give full use of AMS, I don't run without this Glyph

Glyph of Strangulate - Increases the Silence duration of your Strangulate ability by 2 sec when used on a target who is casting a spell.
- If your one of those guys that thinks stragulate is a blanket silence I would not recommend this glyph, as it would be a waste

Glyph of Death Grip - Increases the range of your Death Grip ability by 5 yards.
- While the 5 yards does not seem like much, when you are stopping the caps in EOTS, or gripping people off carts in mines, or trying to beat the enemy DK to the grip, trust me you want this


Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Path of Frost - Your Path of Frost ability allows you to fall from a greater distance without suffering damage.
- Only minor glyph that is of any use



4. Stats, Gemming, Runeforging, Professions, and Enchants

COMING SOON



5. Kill Order

Alright, lets get the obvious out of the way; in RBGS there is no such thing as a kill order. If you try to follow an XYZ kill order I guarantee you right now, you are going to fail miserably and mostly likely get kicked from the group. What I will do is instead go over some classes and give you some advise on what to look for on switches. When you should and should not be on a target, so lets get started.





Druid - One of there strongest abilities they have is displacer beast, its on a 30 second cd. I personally don't even bother with a resto druid because of this ability, it is overpowered and makes them a terrible target.






Hunter - They have 3 defensive abilities and 2 of them are extremely easily countered. 1.Deterrence, call the switch; do not stay on the hunter its a waste since it cannot be dispelled. 2. Disengage, it causes him to leap backwards.. just grip him back or even better chain him before he can use this ability. 3. Feint, lol; kill.






Mage - Another difficult class to land a kill on, the mage is better left cc'd then trained. However there are situations when you should make a hard switch to him and I can only think of two. 1. He stupidly used his iceblock and it is now on CD, grip him and kill him. 2. You managed to stragulate him midcast frostbolt, guess what his is now locked out of his frost school for 6 seconds, no ice block. Otherwise, leave these icey fellows to be cc'd.





Monk - Grip him, he rolls away .
Stun him, 3 Seconds of glorious 100% Parry.
Fear him, into a Chaos Bolt w/ Deep + F/F Bolt? Trinket/Teleport
... Yea, don't go on Monks.






Paladin - They have 1 Major defensive CD and then a couple other cds that can help them, but the one basic one to watch out for is Divine Shield, makes them immune to all damage. However once that sucker is down, for 5 mins that paladin is live bait. Never train a paladin, you will never kill him this way. However well coordinated hard switches to him will land you a kill, you would be surprised how hard paladins fall over.






Priest - Semi decent targets, I prefer to control them rather then train them. When you call a switch to them, the major CD to watch for is Dispersion, follow by Life Swap. Life swap is HUGE, you want him to blow this CD just before you push FC. Keep in mind its on a long cd, 6 minutes. These suckers put out alot of dps, if left unchecked.





Rogue - Generally you will find these guys on either your FC, or your healers. Once there only cd (cloak of shadows) is down call the switch and kill them, they are easy kills and fall over in a heart beat. Do not allow them to sit on your healers or casters unchecked.





Shaman - Arguably the easiest healer to kill out of all the options due to their lack of defensive abilities, so the common sense is to go on the Resto Shaman. Well guess what? Thats the stupidest thing you can do, the enemy team already knows the shaman will be trained, and they are already prepared to heal the shit out of the shaman. If you want to go on the shaman for a couple seconds thats fine, but don't sit on him for longer than 6-7 seconds. He is only there to bait you, while the rest of his team mops the floor with you.





Warlock - Destro/Demo specced warlocks you want to cc. Assign someone with a silence on a short cd, could be a resto shaman or your mage to focus the lock and interrupt his chaos bolts. This is big. For the most part you wont be training the lock, he also has a couple huge cds. Dark Bargain being the biggy, only difference to the paladin bubble is.. instead of sacrificing his damage input all the damage he takes, it gets dished out to him after the bubble wears out. The only time you really want to kill the lock, is if hes afflication. You do not want an affliction casting UA into your raid, this is devastating. Affliction locks HAVE to die.




Warrior - Generally FC, will go into this in another section. However when arms, killing the warrior really depends on what type of comp they are running. The big defensive CD your looking for is the combination of Rallying Cry/ Shield Wall. Once those 2 have been blown, thats when you want to call the switch to the warrior. For the most part it will be your job to keep the warrior controlled and off your healers.





Death Knight - This is your defacto target, and ultimately who you want dead. Switch off him when he pops AMS, and IBF. Whenever your not calling hard switches you should be going back to the enemy DK. Succeeding in killing him, means they just lost there target caller and one of the most valuable assets in there group.






6. Target Calling


Pre - Match

Mark Your FC w/ [Cross], and Yourself w/ [Skull] & your healers with whatever colorful marks they want. People like to give the tank skull, but this should go to you as it is highly visible and easy for your boomy and mage to spot when they are dropping cc on top of you.


Warsong Gulch/Twin Peaks

I will give different the different target calling methods I use in these maps, the one I use depends on mixture of team makeup & really what the raid leader wants to do. For the sake of giving you the correct information I will only tell you what you should do based on your team make up.

If both teams have the same FC use Strategy 1.

If you have a Warrior FC and enemy has a Guardian FC use Strategy 2.

If you have a Guardian FC and Enemy has a Warrior FC use Strategy 3.

* rarely you will find a protection paladin or blood death knight, for the purposes of this guide they will be treated as a protection warrior



Strategy 1

Alright, so at this point you either both have druids stealthing across the map to get each others flags or warriors waiting for the fight to start to break away to get the flag.

With this strategy the first thing you need to do is find the enemy Death Knight. Push in to them with your whole raid have your mage drop a ring of frost on the enemy dk and your boomy a beam. You need to aoe grip, onto the enemy DK. I would recommend opening with a strangulate on the DK this will prevent him from AMS and can help land a fast kill.

Now you have engaged, if your facing a good team more then likely the DK wont be dead. With that intial opener, right now you should still have your Death Grip available. Announce to your team in a moment you will be making a hard swap to one of the healers. Above is a list of my preferences, so if there is a paladin that is what I go with. So here is how I personally do it.

"Alright, get ready go pally in.. 4, 3, 2, (Death Grip) ONE.. GO!!!"

You, won't kill the paladin. It will force the bubble, he will run away. Switch back to the DK, you may land the kill on DK here. In the next 30 Seconds here you should be looking for low hp targets. The paladin is hauling ass and healers are trying to top him off and not so concerned about the mage at 25% hp.

30 seconds have now gone by, announce to the team you will be making a hard switch to the paladin again in a moment.

"Alright, get ready go pally in.. 4, 3, 2, (Death Grip) ONE.. GO!!!"

Dead.

At this point, CC'in one healer and killing the renaming one is your best option.

Proceed, to wipe the rest of the raid. The most important part is to kill the overextended targets, if you see a Lock that is just sitting by your healers Chaos bolting the.. run 40 yds back to your GY and grip the lock even further away from his healers and kill him. Don't get overzealous and continue to dig into their offense. The last place you want to lead your raid to, is their GY.




Strategy 2

Escort FC, shut down the mage so he can't sheep your FC. Then follow Strategy 1.


Strategy 3

If the EFC is by himself you zerg him, if he is with the raid, you follow Strategy 1. However /focus the EFC and keep him chained. Your raids main objective above wiping the raid is not letting the FC peel out of the middle.



EOTS

This is the one map every Raid Leader hates and the one map I recommend you master. I swear to God, I get this damn map 5 times outta 10. I cannot stress how important your role is on this map, besides the hunters ninja capping abilities you alone have the ability to make or break your team. Ok so on to the 3 different strategies you can employ.


IF: Enemy team has Hunter + FC = Strategy 1
( If you feel confident in your ability to survive vs a hunter then go with strategy 2)
IF: Enemy team has no Hunter = Strategy 2