What is the best build for UH atm? Mastery or crit?

[Nalam the Venom]

Just wondering which stat is the best to go for, as i'm starting to gear myself now.

[Deleted]

Both are equally good ST but in aoe mastery beats the shit out of casti, plus mastery build scales indefinitely whereas casti has diminishing returns on crit

[Vycaus]

Haste to 21%, crit above 13%, else mastery. Verse is fine, just don't aim for it. Run clawing shadows.

[Yhcti]

How do the builds compare to the Frost side of DK btw? I don't think I've EVER seen an Unholy DK however the ones that stream seem to kick ass (Cervantes in PvP and Cerliu (??) in PvE)

[Cerunnir]

How do the builds compare to the Frost side of DK btw? I don't think I've EVER seen an Unholy DK however the ones that stream seem to kick ass (Cervantes in PvP and Cerliu (??) in PvE)

Unholy DK as gotten an undeserved bad reputation for doing poorly. Problem comes from the normal vs the top end damage of frost breath of sindragosa spec. Breath opens up the potential to do VERY high damage if RnG goes your way and you manage to keep breath up for very long times. This is then reflected into the warcraft logs, making frost seem almost overpowered. Im not saying Unholy isn't weaker than frost, but not the gigantic difference people seem to imply. Blizzard has repeatedly said, and I do belive them, that warcraft logs does not represent the actual power of the class.

There is also the fact to consider that the best players will always gravitate to the strongest spec, even if the difference is relativly small. This hugely shift the perception towards frost being MUCH better. If the specs had a 50-50 split of bad and good players and an equal number of parses at all difficulties the percieved difference would be considerably smaller. If the elite football team all use Adidas(Frost) shoes while beating the average team soundly, does not mean the slighly cheaper and worse Nike(Unholy) shoes the average team wear is the primary reason they lost. The elite team is just much better, and churn out more goals because of the skill difference.

[Deleted]

In mythic raids (and its early days) bos frost is top 3, unholy is bottom 3.

[Cerunnir]

In mythic raids (and its early days) bos frost is top 3, unholy is bottom 3.

Unless both specs have an even number of parses and an even number of skilled players playing the spec, the ranking is gonna be way off.

[Deleted]

Unless both specs have an even number of parses and an even number of skilled players playing the spec, the ranking is gonna be way off.

Frost does more damage, period.
Even with bad RNG Frost beats Unholy on all encounters. Having potentially insane damage with good RNG is just the icying on the cake.

There are definitely enough parses out on heroic, so just check those. And 75th percentile is also quite representative. It basically filters all the top RNG parses, since those are usually ranked much higher.

[Noxinator]

Unholy DK as gotten an undeserved bad reputation for doing poorly. Problem comes from the normal vs the top end damage of frost breath of sindragosa spec. Breath opens up the potential to do VERY high damage if RnG goes your way and you manage to keep breath up for very long times. This is then reflected into the warcraft logs, making frost seem almost overpowered. Im not saying Unholy isn't weaker than frost, but not the gigantic difference people seem to imply. Blizzard has repeatedly said, and I do belive them, that warcraft logs does not represent the actual power of the class.

There is also the fact to consider that the best players will always gravitate to the strongest spec, even if the difference is relativly small. This hugely shift the perception towards frost being MUCH better. If the specs had a 50-50 split of bad and good players and an equal number of parses at all difficulties the percieved difference would be considerably smaller. If the elite football team all use Adidas(Frost) shoes while beating the average team soundly, does not mean the slighly cheaper and worse Nike(Unholy) shoes the average team wear is the primary reason they lost. The elite team is just much better, and churn out more goals because of the skill difference.

I made the switch from Unholy to Frost last week. I have 0 legendaries for Frost and I have the belt for Unholy. My Frost weapon is 901, my Unholy is 912. I only have 35 traits in Frost, I have 50 in Unholy. I do around 100k more dps per fight as Frost..

Unholy is bad atm, there is simply no way around it

[Raiz]

Or you just suck at playing Unholy. Ever considered that?

Indeed, 100k dps difference @ 900 ilvl seems huge. Maybe it's entirely possible in a 9 minute fight against a patchwerk style because you only have AotD 1 time while you get 3 HRW...

But seriously, The difference in DPS didn't seem that huge tbh. I don't have any specific spec legendaries (I have Kil'jaeden) and no sets and I'm doing slightly more dps with unholy (read less than 5% dps difference) but that's probably because I'm not playing frost well enough to know its priorities. My patchwerk fights comparing different DPS with each spec were against Epicus Maximus from Brawler's guild. It was a really good test because I still haven't killed him, and you can change talents in the city.
So far I've tried : OBRA, BoS+GS with Killing machine and then Freezing Fog, Castigator, Clawing shadow, all will serve, shadow infusion and Infected Claws.
All will serve + Shadow Infusion + Clawing shadow were doing the best DPS against this boss for me.

Tbh, I'd not be surprised if Frost takes over once I get 2 pieces, but I highly doubt that the difference will be this huge. Thing is I'll probably never know because I almost never Raid.

[dmchellfire]

Indeed, 100k dps difference @ 900 ilvl seems huge. Maybe it's entirely possible in a 9 minute fight against a patchwerk style because you only have AotD 1 time while you get 3 HRW...

But seriously, The difference in DPS didn't seem that huge tbh. I don't have any specific spec legendaries (I have Kil'jaeden) and no sets and I'm doing slightly more dps with unholy (read less than 5% dps difference) but that's probably because I'm not playing frost well enough to know its priorities. My patchwerk fights comparing different DPS with each spec were against Epicus Maximus from Brawler's guild. It was a really good test because I still haven't killed him, and you can change talents in the city.
So far I've tried : OBRA, BoS+GS with Killing machine and then Freezing Fog, Castigator, Clawing shadow, all will serve, shadow infusion and Infected Claws.
All will serve + Shadow Infusion + Clawing shadow were doing the best DPS against this boss for me.

Tbh, I'd not be surprised if Frost takes over once I get 2 pieces, but I highly doubt that the difference will be this huge. Thing is I'll probably never know because I almost never Raid.

If you have 4-piece, with at least an average of ilvl 890+ gear, and 1/2 BiS legendaries for each spec, then you can accurately test and measure the vast difference in DPS between BoS Frost, and CS Unholy. It's massive, even if you play both specs 100% correctly without a rotation fault and the best possible RNG on all procs, Frost is easily 100k dps above UH at bare minimum.

[Yhcti]

Seems t20 (providing they don't change Mich else) is going to be pretty nice for bos build... I've yet to try it properly. I m+ often so was gonna attempt to use bos with frostscythe

[Deleted]

If you have 4-piece, with at least an average of ilvl 890+ gear, and 1/2 BiS legendaries for each spec, then you can accurately test and measure the vast difference in DPS between BoS Frost, and CS Unholy. It's massive, even if you play both specs 100% correctly without a rotation fault and the best possible RNG on all procs, Frost is easily 100k dps above UH at bare minimum.

This maybe possible however I'm finding that they are performing pretty similar if you're someone without BIS legendaries. My DK has a pretty high ilevel despite mainly raiding heroic. I do have the UH belt and 3 utility legendary items and in NH I am more well practised with Unholy. If I kept the 895 draught of souls (I gave it to the warrior) I'm pretty sure my UH DK (54 traits) would do even better. However the way fights like botanist, elisandre and Guldan work, it feels like I can burst cleave a lot more (I now have horn and converge) when playing as frost (48 traits). On ST it'll be interesting to see if I can go above 614k dps (unholy) on a fight like Krosus as frost once I get to trait 54 and now that I have Converge.

[amishjello]

I like clawing shadows more, it feels more...stable. Plus, you can still do some decent dps outside of melee range.

[Deleted]

I did a nighthold HC pug and i noticed a fair few fucking things about it. For instance, we had 3 DKs in the group, me as frost dk (with legendary hat, legendary ring, so i guess BiS and 2p set but otherwise ilvl887) and another frost dk, with legendary bracer and ring 4p and higher ilvl, more 890+ pieces, 912 weapon etc (whereas i had 901ilvl artifact weap) and this random unholy DK with bracers mind you, me and the other frost had about 3m health, whereas the unholy dk had about 2.7m (i checked his average ilvl, it was about mine. I guess in the 885-890 range, it was suprisingly comparable, altough had 4p). We needed about 4-5 tries to kill Skorpion, and he fucking destroyed us on the meters. I rated on skada "total" around 900k dps after 5 tries + the kill, the other frost dk around 815k but the unholy was just sitting there at #1 with his 1.2million dps. beating a firemage, a warlock and a demon hunter, after which i came 5th on that very damage meter.

I know i fucked up my BoS once or twice, and it fucks my dps, but still: WTF.

After that, we 1shotted Anomaly, where we rated exactly the fucking same. I rated 750k and mister unholy rated 750k or so as well. It might have been between 10k diff or so but i just noted it as the same in my personal log.

Than we had 2 tries + a kill on Thrilliax where my eyes widened even more. I rated 490k dps first try, 534k second, 525k third, whereas mister unholy did respectively 381k, 417k and 402k damage per second.

After that we wiped on Krosus 2 times, giving me a dps of 581k on the first and 550k on the second where the unholy man did 478k and 419k on the second.

Conclusively: Unholy is the GOD of all absolutely AOE specs and is "unholy terribly" on single target or what? (the 3th frost left after anomaly i think)

Edit: i mean wtf, if this holds true to this observed extent, why not buff their single target across the board by 30% and nerf their aoe by 30%? Something has to be done for my unholy brothers! If it really is like this, my unholy brothers really have to play their a-game at skorpion for the raidleader to not kick them once there are not aoe heavy fights (and hope RL watches at total and not current skada lol.

[Deleted]

Unless both specs have an even number of parses and an even number of skilled players playing the spec, the ranking is gonna be way off.

I sort of agree it will be off. But top 3 and bottom 3 is a pretty steep chasm even with admittedly iffy data.

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The best legendaries i have are sephuz and boots. In mythics unholy is pretty decent, but lacks frosts stun which can be very handy.

In raids i open extremely strongly but then drop away as the fight drags on.

Unholy feels like a farm spec and the faster bosses die the better we'll seem, for for mythic progression im not sure we're of much use right now. Our aoe can be good on er which fight?