DK specs in cata

[Alanar]

Frost DW: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#j0hZh...fzch:cmMqomVMc

Frost 2h: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#jbhZG...bucb:cMmqomVMc

Please rate them and discuss them, Glyph and everything.

nah the 2hand spec sucks, why go for epidemic if u have fetring strike, just go for blood caked blade and scent of blood cus ur using alot more runicpower in frost, and ur glyphs choice sucks aswell..

[Blomgren]

nah the 2hand spec sucks, why go for epidemic if u have fetring strike, just go for blood caked blade and scent of blood cus ur using alot more runicpower in frost, and ur glyphs choice sucks aswell..

Frost doesn't use festering strike. Only unholy does. As for the glyphs there aren't a great deal of flat dps increase glyphs.

The only thing that could be changed would be icy touch for howling blast glyph (45% proc rate off obliterate you will never need to manually reapply frost fever)

Hungering cold glyph could be dropped for anti magic shell for "don't stand in fire" moments. Pillar of frost glyph really depends on cataclysm boss mechanics as to whether it's worthwhile.

[Geomatician]

Blood- http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#jcGRz...Zf0c:0ozaR00Mm

I still can't understand why Bone Shield (a tank cooldown) and Pillar of Frost still cost Runes, while Unholy Frenzy and Vamp Blood (the other tank cooldown) don't.

Interesting build, I would swap the points in Scent of Blood and Blood-Caked Blade for Abominations Might if the buff isnt brought by any other class. If 10% AP is already brought then I would maybe switch the point in Scent of Blood and have a 2/3 Blood-Caked Blade? I just dont like Scent of Blood atm, does it become more useful in Cata? Is Runic Power a more strained resource for tanking? Although Revitalize is being overhauled and doesnt give Runic Power (correct me if I'm wrong) shouldnt Runic Power be easy to gen without Scent of Blood?

And I was expecting Bone Shield to be the same as Vampiric Blood but looks like we'll get 4.0.1 with it costing runes.

[Deleted]

Considering these threads are made with a lot information, all gathered by experienced players and theorycrafters:

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105521-...ysm_take_home/
http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105485-...nking_4_0_1_a/

Have fun.

[_Khasim_]

Here are my current specs (pex oriented).

Blood http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#jfGM0...Zbhc:sR0skmMmc

Don't you think being uncrittable is kinda important in raids?

My tank spec for 4.0.1 will propably be something like this, with only DRW being the mandatory major glyph, the other two will vary depending on the encounter/dungeon. I chose 50% more duration on DnD rather than 10% crit on RS because DnD now costs only 1 unholy rune and will be a great single target threat boost in cases where the gods of RNG are not merciful, also might work as a single-target opener for fights with small movement (BQ, Fester) - I dunno really, I only killed Marrowgar and LDW 10 on the PTR (disconnects, crashes and stuff).
Frost DW (I'm skipping frost 2h since with the same gear I was doing more DPS with Soulbreaker hc + Soulbreaker normal than I was with Bryntroll hc)
Unholy (my personal offspec) With the revamp of presences (no rune cost but they wipe all RP when switched) I will need to test more whether Unholy Presence is competitive to Blood, but I needed points to get lower into the tree and I think that at least the movement speed buff is enough to make this talent worth the points.

[Apellosine]

i absolutely adore glyph of Howling Blast, as HB only costs a single frost rune these days it removes the necessity to ever use icy touch and ensuring that frost fever/chilled to the bone is kept up constantly. GoHB also generates full damage frost fever on aoe targets instead of the gimped version from pestilence. I don't see the advantage of the 2h frost spec as my DW spec never has problems with being RP starved after the first 10 seconds or so and with main obliterates going up to 20k+ at level 80 (admittedly with a lucky streak of procs) and more usually maxing on most fights around the 16-17k mark i prefer dual wield.

[Nyanmaru]

I just dont like Scent of Blood atm, does it become more useful in Cata? Is Runic Power a more strained resource for tanking? Although Revitalize is being overhauled and doesnt give Runic Power (correct me if I'm wrong) shouldnt Runic Power be easy to gen without Scent of Blood?

Now: 5s per rune
Then: 10s per rune

Now: No GCD for Rune Strike
Then: GCD for Rune Strike

So yeah, you will reg less runic power than today unless you gain a nice amount of haste on gear or have "other sources" to generate runic power.

[Wrack]

...

[Geomatician]

Now: 5s per rune
Then: 10s per rune

Now: No GCD for Rune Strike
Then: GCD for Rune Strike

So yeah, you will reg less runic power than today unless you gain a nice amount of haste on gear or have "other sources" to generate runic power.

Very good points and after reading elsewhere I can confirm that Runic Power will be an issue in Cata. Therefore at 85 I will most likely go with this

The healing effect from Blood Parasites is (supposedly according to ptr values) an intelligent heal so may or may not prove to be a very useful tool in Cata end-game raiding.

[Pope]

I'm still very confused by the new Frost.

It looks like there are 4 Prime glyphs for frost, the usual Frost Fever, Obliterate, Frost Strike and Howling Blast.

How well will you perform by skipping Icy Touch completely, with Frost Fever & Howling Blast glyph?
Since Howling Blast hits a lot harder then Icy Touch, and also costs one Frost Rune, do we still have need for Icy Touch?

I tried it in Beta, but enemys in Hyjal die so fast with 10k Frostrike, 10k Obliterate and 10k Howling Blasts

[_Khasim_]

My tests on a dummy indicated that glyph of IT > glyph of HB. Might've been RNG though.

[Pope]

My tests on a dummy indicated that glyph of IT > glyph of HB. Might've been RNG though.

Yeah, but what about glyph of IT + glyph of HB ? I don't want to go back to the days of single-disease-specs, but switching HB for IT like Blood switches Heartstrike for Blood Strike could make sense, eventually.

Especially since I don't know if Glyph of Frost Strike will be worth, since you're nearly always capped on RP with 2H Frost. (Might be because I suck, or numbers aren't tweaked yet, but dropping Glyph of FS could be an option)

[Nyanmaru]

Wouldn't the napkin math be easy to do?
20% of FF + IT vs. HB

at 85:
IT = 780 + 20% AP + Crit
FF = 42.75% AP (67.18% if 3/3 Epidemic)
HB = 1777 + 40% AP + Crit

GoIT would be 20% of 42.75% -> 8.55% AP + IT (20% AP + 780)
GoHB would replace the above with HB (1777 + 40% AP)

Just from this napkin math, HB wins by 997 + 11.45% AP (or 997 + 6.56% AP with 3/3 Epidemic)
Whereas GoIT scales better with Haste (as FF should be more affected as rune generation for HB) the high crit rating is a lot more fun with HB.

Level 80 just lowers the fixed value by some points, so HB is still favored.
and HB is off KM, so more guaranteed crit oblits/FSs


GoFS is 20% more Frost Strikes, so if you miss more than 1:5 possible frost strikes due to GCD issues than obviously you should either drop haste for crit so you are not GCD capped or drop GoFS, dunno which one is more beneficial... (and with lower damage from white hits, haste will lose even more value for frost)

[Deleted]

Boneshield has a CD between how frequently bones can be removed. So if you are tanking a lot of adds, or a fast hitting boss, it's a very useful CD. It reduces damage from all sources as long as one bone is up.

It has a 2 second internal CD, meaning minimum uptime of 4 seconds. Come on. Yes I'm not calculating Avoidance procs into that, too RNG. Not worth the point IMO.

@Wrack Glyph of Death Coil got burned you'll want to review the Glyphs you're applying there.

Interesting build, I would swap the points in Scent of Blood and Blood-Caked Blade for Abominations Might if the buff isnt brought by any other class. If 10% AP is already brought then I would maybe switch the point in Scent of Blood and have a 2/3 Blood-Caked Blade? I just dont like Scent of Blood atm, does it become more useful in Cata? Is Runic Power a more strained resource for tanking? Although Revitalize is being overhauled and doesnt give Runic Power (correct me if I'm wrong) shouldnt Runic Power be easy to gen without Scent of Blood?

And I was expecting Bone Shield to be the same as Vampiric Blood but looks like we'll get 4.0.1 with it costing runes.

Paladins, Hunters, Shamans and DKs can all bring Abom's Might. Save yourself the 2 points.

[Pope]

It has a 2 second internal CD, meaning minimum uptime of 4 seconds. Come on. Yes I'm not calculating Avoidance procs into that, too RNG. Not worth the point IMO.

Still about as good as a barkskin, so for me - worth a talentpoint

Paladins, Hunters, Shamans and DKs can all bring Abom's Might. Save yourself the 2 points.

I think you mean Warriors instead of DKs


I'm kinda puzzled right now about a tank spec,
this was my first try http://wowtal.com/#k=Yff6PDG.a2y.deathknight
looks kinda messed up, but I don't know if Improved Blood Tap is worth. Do you want to use it for refreshing runes to immediately pop Rune Tap or Vamp Blood? the 1min CD of BT and VB always came hand in hand...

Scent of Blood: We'll have to wait if we're always full on RP in cata like we are now.

Blood-Caked-Blade: Pure Threat-Talent, I guess everybody will skip it?

Abomination's Might: should get some Tanking-boost, maybe Stamina? Expertise? I guess everybody will skip it, too.

advices?

[Deleted]

VB is free now, so Blood Tap is exclusively for Threat or Rune Tap.

You don't have the points for Hand of Doom, with the new RP Generation numbers (we find ourselves Runic Power Starved as well as Rune Starved now.....) you'll find 2/3 SoB is mandatory. For the rest.... Well the tree is really, really badly bloated right now so it needs some fixing, hopefully Rune Strike will get the work it needs as well.

I'd say this; http://wowtal.com/#k=YfNdkVcr1.a2y.deathknight but I have no idea if it'll end up being the Cookie-Cutter in the end. I've been slacking on playing Beta hoping that they'll do something to DKs but 4.0.1 is around the corner and all I can preview for them saying about our issues after it hits live is them playing the "Wait until 85 and Cataclysm Gear" Card so we might have to wait 8-10+ months until 4.1 hits to see any serious changes to the Cataclysm DK.

Right now as the tree is so bloated I'd gladly drop Abom's Might, even Scarlet Fever if someone else can provide it. Get points in BCB if you can, but I'd still go for Morbidity first, that extra AoE Threat will be needed at some moments.

And yes I did mean to include Warriors in that statement, thanks for reminding me. Fix: Paladins, Hunters, Shamans, Warriors and DKs can provide Abom's Might, skip it. Warriors, Hunters and I don't remember who else can also provide Scarlet Fever. If you can, drop it.

[Deleted]

nah the 2hand spec sucks, why go for epidemic if u have fetring strike, just go for blood caked blade and scent of blood cus ur using alot more runicpower in frost, and ur glyphs choice sucks aswell..

You cant get BCB as a dps as the talent trees stand since they moved it down a tier.

[Foibles]

WTB old style of raid tiers so there is no need to have Aboms.

[kerwyn]

Yeah, but what about glyph of IT + glyph of HB ? I don't want to go back to the days of single-disease-specs, but switching HB for IT like Blood switches Heartstrike for Blood Strike could make sense, eventually.

You still wont GoFS and GoO. Since the hell win did blood switch between HS and BS?

[Pope]

You still wont GoFS and GoO. Since the hell win did blood switch between HS and BS?

yeah sorry, I meant replace