Diseaseless Blood arena with some emphasis on Deathcoil?

[Kreuz Kontrol]

I've wondered for a weeks now what spec. I would use for my DK when Season 7 started up.

- Unholy still has some nice utility (AMZ, Perma. Ghoul, 100% AMS, 13% Mag. Dam. Buff, Gargoyle, etc..) but Scourge Strike is horrible now.
- Frost still has Hungering Cold and still has some decent burst, but the nerfs to Frost Strike were kind of painful (less damage, can be parried/dodged).

That and there's the fact that both these specs. rely on diseases. Frost needs atleast Frost Fever on a target, and Unholy needs atleast one disease of some kind on a target. Even spec'd into Virulence, my diseases go bye bye in the blink of an eye as soon as a Shaman tosses out his cleansing totem, and of course Priests/Paladins can simply cleanse them. That leaves us with 2 options. Reapply the diseases constantly which will kill your damage, or attack without diseases which will just be pretty pathetic.

The more I think about it, the more Blood seems to be the best option for PvP. The biggest weakness of the spec. is the reliance on Physical damage in comparison to the magic damage of the other trees.. but it's not as reliant on diseases. I know Blood has always been looked down upon in arena for various seasons in the past, but with the recent nerfs to Frost and Unholy I'm not so sure it can be overlooked anymore.

So anyway.. after deciding I'd probably like to Blood for arena, I was left to toy with the talent calculator to find a proper spec. I've went back and forth with a few here and there. Now traditionally, Blood would go down Frost for the Chains of Ice = Frost Fever talent, but running a diseaseless spec., this wouldn't be necessary. So I worked out a build that, as far as I can tell, would lead to the best "burst" ability from Blood. Obviously you have all the important talents that relate to physical damage from Blood, as well as the Heart Strike and Death Strike glyph. On top of that, though, you dip into Frost for the 10% increased Frost/Shadow damage to buff your Deathcoil, and then dip into Unholy for the 15% increased Deathcoil damage. You also glyph the Glyph of Dark Death for another 15% damage which leads to a total of 40% extra damage for Deathcoil. I've tried a few specs. without Sudden Doom, but it's too good of a talent to pass up. It's free damage. You Heart Strike and there's a potential for (especially with this set up) can be quite the additional damage.

Basically in a fight you would Chains of Ice, Death Strike, and then unload a string of Heart Strikes (with hopefully as many of them as possible giving you some free Deathcoils). At the end you should atleast have enough RP for 2 DCs if not 3, which should be another nice chunk of damage.

I am somewhat torn on one thing, however. Whether or not to use the sigil that boots Frost Strike/Deathcoil damage, or use the 200 STR one (after the change goes live that allows Death Strike to proc it). With the first one your Deathcoils will be even more beastly, but with the 200 STR one all your abilities will hit harder. I'm a bit torn here.

Anyway.. just curious what you guys think. I'd prefer not to be flamed because this isn't an, "I know everything about DKs and this spec will pwn." post. I'm just throwing out a suggestion, looking for some input and perhaps even some advice. I, like many of you, love the DK class. I don't think it should be "overpowered", but the state of Frost/Unholy at the moment with Resto. Shamans running rampant really isn't my idea of balance.



http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10192

The spec shows "Glyph of Blood Boil" instead of "Glyph of Heart Strike" because as far as I can tell the GoHS isn't in the MMO Champion talent calculator and the GoHS was the glyph to replace GoBB. (Read the description.)

Ideally I see this set up working best with a Warrior / Healer (referring to 3's here) as your partner. Perhaps even a Rogue or Hunter. Mortal Strike is pretty much a necessity, and those classes have snares and stuns as well. For the healer I was initially thinking a Disc. Priest, but a Resto. Shaman sounds nice as well. Earthbind totem, Windfury, Herosim.. mmmm. Yum.

Let me know what you guys think.

EDIT: Obviously you can use diseases if you're fighting a class that cannot cleanse or something in a duel so you actually get healed from Death strike, but this build is more about arena than duels.

And also.. since people like to "name" specs they come up with, particular for DKs - I shall call this build "Blackblood".

[Kreuz Kontrol]

Hm,
I like the effort you put into the post, but a few questions for you, haha.

First, Does black Ice increase Damage from Heartstrike/Deathstrike? If not wouldn't it be worthless to pick up? ( I guess besides the extra DC damage)

And to run this build, wouldn't you need alot of PVE gear to start racking up armor pen, and then gem full armor pen?

Like I said.. One of the points of this build is to focus on Deathcoil somewhat since you're running diseaseless. I mean.. the only other things you'd want that you could reach with 20 points is the Strength modifier and Imp. DG from Unholy.

And yes.. with you're going to need armor penetration with any Blood build.

[TwistedPower]

The problem is that if you are going to be serious about any of this you have to play on a 3's or a 5's team. If you dont have all the defensive cooldowns of unholy your just going to die.

When my 3's team fight a cleave team such as DK, warrior, healer We kill the DK, then if both dps switch to our healer we also switch to theirs. The easyest thing in the world is killing a blood dk, even with frost presence on. The dk can never catch out hunter cuase of freedom from our pally and chains of ice from our unholy dk.

We also recently had our dk (who didnt spec it) spec into anti magic zone and got rid of some of his damage talents. This is becuase we were comming up against lock teams that were throwing CC off onto our pally and then along comes an 9k crit choas bolt and with wound psn on him he wasnt getting up from that before the rogue and lock could throw out burst. Now that he has AMZ we roll all lock team becuase he can take the burst. We also beat RMP realy easy too.

Blood is a failed spec becuase you just ripped by certain casters. Also I dont understand why you say scourge strike isnt good now. Our DK has 0 problems with it. He is fully furious geared from last season. Maby you just dont have the gear to do good damage or your gemed/trinketed wrong.

[Retired@3.2]

i hear deathcoil burst as blood in arenas owns lol

[Dragoncross]

why not skip death strike and use obliterate if its diseaseless

[Kreuz Kontrol]

why not skip death strike and use obliterate if its diseaseless

Deathstrike damage isn't based on diseases. Obliterate still is. The only bonus Deathstrike gets from diseases is the heal. That, and Might of Mograine no longer affects Obliterate.

[Gerian]

You might consider a point in Scent of Blood to increase your passive RP generation since you'll be DC spamming a lot.

[Kreuz Kontrol]

You might consider a point in Scent of Blood to increase your passive RP generation since you'll be DC spamming a lot.

I had given that some thought but I am unsure as to where to pull the points from. >.<

[Gerian]

I've pulled a point or two from Bladed Armor with good results still. One point goes a long way on its own.

[Deleted]

if blood is demolished by casters, why not take spell deflection then?

[Gajan]

if blood is demolished by casters, why not take spell deflection then?

Is useless without tank gear on as your parry chance will be very low...

[elcher]

i read the DK, pala and hunter section of arenajunkies ( my 3 80s) daylie, and from what i have read is that deseaseless blood seems to be putting out some serious damage, and if played with a warr a lolstorm + hysteria might be the winner , but i still am a little sceptical, since blood gets easily kited, easily trained (focused ) and dies also quite easily, due to not really having any viable defensive CDs in ist tree...

well, to be honest, idk what to try out as a dk, except the new lol shadowfrost 2.0 faceroll pressure comp. (3s only)

[elseagoat]

Blood is gargbage for PvP. Here is why.

-You have a long Deathgrip Cooldown. If you do not spec into Endless Winter, which would be stupid to not do, for Unholy Talents, you will have terrible snare output as Heart Strike glyph requires you to be in melee range for the snare and you will be Frost Rune starved as you must also be constantly refreshing Frost Fever without Chains of Ice.
-You MUST use diseases as Blood. If you do not, you will not receive heals from Death Strike which is where a huge portion of your survivability comes from and your damage output will be garbage, you wont be able to kill anything in the duration of a CC and you absolutely wont be able to kill anything without CC assistance from a partner.
-You have no Ghoul or Hungering Cold. This means you will not be able to set up CC chains for kills OR keep an enemy healer from drinking effectively as you will be kited into oblivion and thus unable to outlast a druid, paladin, or shaman comp.
-If you go for Unholy talents to buff Deathcoil you lose Endless Winter and Dancing Rune Weapon. DRW got a huge buff in 3.2 by not emptying your entire bar, it therefore cannot be predicted now and countered with kiting as effectively. No more "oh look that DK is saving his Runic Power, get in position to kite because he is gunna drop a DRW." When used properly, your DRW is where your burst will come from, huge mistake to not pick it up. Not having Endless Winter is a huge mistake as well.
-Horrid Runic Power generation. It is very hard to pick up Scent of Blood as a Blood spec and still get everything else you need to actually put out any reasonable damage. As a result, you will be hard pressed to do any damage to a kiting ranged class or kiting healer because you wont be generating hardly any RP for deathcoils and putting up IBF and AMS will be a huge chore, these are core abilities and proper timing of them is the mark of a good DK, these abilities make or break the class in arenas and can let you get kills or keep you from losing, and if you cant get the RP to use them RIGHT when you need them at the best possible moments you are fucked for high rated arenas.
-Horrid Armor Penetration. Almost all of Blood's damage output from physical attacks and Blood has the worst RP dump of the three specs. You have the worst ranged damage of any spec and the worst magic damage of any spec. Expect plate classes to stomp you as Blood when your Heart Strikes are critting for a whopping 2k damage.

Unholy and Frost bring more utility to the table, do more damage, and have uncounterable defenses wheras Blood survivability is easily countered by simply kiting.

If you want to do good, spec the cookie cutter Mage Unholy spec and spam Icy Touch and Deathcoil to victory like every other high rated DK. There is a reason specs are popular/unpopular, and as cool as a spec looks that doesn't mean you can circumvent this popularity with a direct correlation to effectiveness with a weird spec idea.

[Henryhimself]

Blood is not terrible for arenas. It can, in fact, be quite good. But, like pve blood, it won't out perform the other specs until you get ArP.

Arena Junkies - http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthre...=111817&page=2

Read that thread if you're interested in Blood pvp.