1. Im glad i could help. :D

    As for people that are asking questions on forums and ingame, again, "Read the Guide multiple times".

    Guide is simply a guide, something to give u basic info about how things work, after which u need to work urself in order to become better, and/or the best DK out there.
    Dont bother urself with minor minmaxing or some other random ****, just read the guide, practice what u got out of it, and play the game as much as u can in order to become better and better.

    I wrote EVERYTHING I KNOW in each one of these guides.
    I also wrote the things other GREAT DKs that i know told me i was missing.
    If u think i made a mistake or if u think i can add something, please do tell, but questions like:
    "I have 4k GS should i gem this or that?"
    "U lose Icy Talons for 1sec if u use Glyph of Disease, should i use something else?"
    "Can u type rotation again (in game wisper)?"
    "I missed more auto attacks than i have hit, is that a bug?"

    ... and so many others, are just getting a bit anoying lately.

    Questions are welcome, dont get me wrong, but if u ask me something cos u didnt read what i alrdy said, or if u are just lazy, that is what makes me a bit mad. :D

    Anyway, hope this guide makes even more great DKs out there, and please do tell if i forgot to write something in it, or made some mistakes...
    THIS GOES FOR ALL 3 GUIDES.
    Best of Luck and Happy Holidays!

    p.s. When i get the time il reread the guides and see if i can update something in them.
    But, again, for the 100th time, u have all the info about DK as a Class in general in them alrdy.
    Read it, Read it again, and AGAIN, if something is unclear.

    "9k+ DPS on a dummy as Frost is a GREAT JOB."
    "8k+ DPS on a dummy as Unholy is a GREAT JOB."
    Those kind of things will be added in the guide to avoid getting spammed with that kind of questions ingame. :D

  2. All 3 guides have been updated a bit.
    I didnt have the time to look trought them completely, so there still might be some minor mistakes in them.
    If u notice them please do inform me about them so i can fix them asap.

    The major updates in them are videos of rotation.
    There is a new section for those, so u can go and check them out...

    I also added alternate talent links in the first comment, since some of u told me that u cant see talents at all.
    U have both Glyphs and Talents in those links all combined.
    In case u cant see any of the talent links i provided, please do inform me so i can try to find another way to post them.

    Anyway i think that there is nothing else i can add to the guide.
    This is basicly everything i know about this class.
    Sure, they can be better written, sure they can be flashy and all, but some of us, while learning to play, didnt even have this much.

    Would like to ask all of u to stop asking trivial questions in game such as:
    "hi,
    I have 4k GS, should i gem Strength or Armor Penetration?"
    "hi,
    U lose Icy Talons for 0.01sec, should i use Glyph of Icy Touch instead of Glyph of Diseases cos of it?"
    "hi,
    Can u please type in the rotation again?
    In wisper yes, i need to see something..."

    U have everything in the guide.
    Just read it. Dont be lazy.
    If something is not in it, i eather think its not important, i eather dont know anything more, or i forgot.

    I dont have anything against good and constructive questions, but when u ask this kind of things, u are just a lazy scrub and im sorry i simply cant deal with those kind of questions anymore...

    Im glad i could help some of u out with ur DK skills.
    For those that i didnt, im sorry, and i hope u find someone who will.

    Best of Luck, have fun bois and grillz!

  3. hey, may i ask a question about dw frost dk.
    Is it normal to miss one of your hit when using frost strike, obli or bloodstrike?
    i have 431 hit rating (13%), 26/26 expertise and sometimes still missing one of my obli, fs and bs (only 1 out of 2 hit)
    Edited: January 21, 2018 Reason: adding few information

  4. you are getting dodged or parried, you need to have 26 expertise

  5. oh sorry, i do have 26/26 expertise
    i tested on dummy and sometimes still missing one yellow dmg when using obli, fs or bs

  6. 1) You aren't missing, you're way above the minimum hit cap. What you're experiencing is either a dodge or a parry, both of which are different from a miss.
    2) He doesn't need 26/26 expertise. Expertise is the worst secondary stat that you could get when gemming (discounting agility and AP for obvious reasons).
    3) The reason as to why you are getting dodged/parried is likely due to how much avoidance boss level targets have. There was an issue with the caps being slightly higher than they should be. This issue might still persist. Alternatively you might be hitting your target from up front which would mean that it has a chance to parry you (parry expertise cap should be 56).
    Edited: January 21, 2018

  7. If u have 8% hit (total from both gear and talents), which is 263 hit without, and 164 with the 3% hit talent u should NOT miss a Special Ability.
    Auto Attacks, those u will miss, since the cap for those is 27%, something u should bever aim to reach.
    Expertise cap for dodge is 26.
    Expertise cap for parry is 56. If u attack the Boss from sides and behind u wont have to worry about parry.

    As for if u should cap expertise or not, its up to u.
    I tryed playing with 17-20 expertise last week and i got ****ed rly hard.
    Its easy to cap stat and there is no reason not to do it.
    DPS gain from not capping it is neglectable, while bad rng and some in a row dodges can hit u hard.
    If u can cap it with 1 or 2 20exp gems or 2-3 10exp10hit gems i would say: do it.

    Both Dodge and Parry dont work on a dummy. U can have 0 exp and never get dodged or parried.

    Also, everything is stated in the guide, section "stats", so pls do read...

  8. I'm about to start my journey in WotlK expansion. Played a lot back in retail, but never on private servers. Read this guide and I must say 10/10 for effort. Although it is a bit too much clutter and some things are made overcomplicated, in Rotation section i.e.

    To make it clear, I have never played DK before in 3.3.5 but I have decided to do it now and researching as much as I can. Even made a custom weak aura to track runes/diseases/CD's/procs to make my gameplay more proactive.


    My 2 cents on this guide:
    - A lot of numbers flying around (hit cap - what is really best for white hits?, armor pen cap, rotation damage wise) and no Data to back it up. Is it anectodal evidence or just target dummy? I know it's hard to calculate this, but it all seems a bit subjective instead of straight objective. I also understand various gear set might change value of stats (similar to how retail wow works, making it even harder and complex to say what stat is best in a certain situation)

    - The "Pro" or "weaving" rotation seems way better by logic. Sure you delay your first set of Oblits, but after that runes will recharge and used instantly so the numbers of hits will be almost exactly the same. On the other side, the usage of KM procs will be a lot more efficient since the 3x oblits rotation will render many KM dormant.

    - I don't see any logic behind using Agi version of the AV ring? Is Crit really valued that high? Can't be while using weaving rotation. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

    - Quoting you here "I consider Black Ice to be a crap talent for Frost DK. If u deal 1milion Frost/Shadow damage, 1/5 will only increase that by 20k, which is nothing". How is 20k nothing? How many % of your total damage is actually contributed from frost+shadow damage?

    - The discussion of Subversion 3/3 vs Blood-caked 3/3 is interesting imo. If the latter contributes to 3% of your total damage, then let's say 1point equals 1%. I am not sure how much Oblits is doing, but lets say 30% of total damage. Then each point (3% crit to Oblit) would yield a 30% x 3 = almost 1%. So they are actually pretty equal? This is not counting 45% crit bonus on oblits, neither blood-cake strikes that can proc trinkets, fallen crusader etc. So why aren't you open for discussion vs this "Vermin" guy I saw mentioned in some post.

    - One thing I have understood while practising for hours on target dummy, is that using BT+UA macro just after using both Blood/death runes seems a lot easier and preferable, since the rune recharge timing isn't affected. And why would you need a cancel Blood Tap macro either way? Not really follow this logic, but many guides I have read recommend it. So there must be something I have yet to grasp.

    - Quoting you again "AoE Rotation: Priority list is: Howling Blast with KM > Obliterate". Wouldn't this priority be more valid: HB (with KM) > HB > Obliterate? Guess it depends on how many targets though.

    - Last question. As I said earlier, made a weak aura myself to handle this spec. Why is there no mention of it? Perfect and almost mandatory for this specc I would argue.


    So this became a wall of text, didn't mean for that :p Again, I want to point out and thank you for the great effort. Perfect starter guide! Those are just some questions and thoughts I have on the matter.

  9. First of all il say this:
    I tested all kind of gear setups, all kind of stat balance, all kind of crap when it comes to itemisation...
    Thruth be told, they are all RNG dependant, and are all almost the same.
    I played this expansion for 8years (on both retail and warmane (molten)), 90% of the time as DK.
    Some of the informations in the guide are subjective and based on my expirience (like Ashen ring choice), some of the stats (like the amount of hit u want as bis - 237) are based on the info Rifokelt provided from his sim runs.
    I found that the itemisation and stat balance from the guide works best for me, if u think something else will work better, try it out.
    The whole point of the guide is to help u save time and coins on useless testing and useless items, something i wish i had... But again, knowing myself, i would probably do whole those tests myself anyway.

    When it comes to rotation, u now have videos, something that can help u understand all those letters better.
    Both rotation videos are exactly the same followup to the: obli > obli > obli > fs > fs > ... thats found in the guide.
    Read, watch, try to understand.
    If it doesnt work, try to make one urself, cos i really did make this one myself without asking anyone and just by reading the spells and talents.

    When it comes to talents and both Black Ice and Subversion, when BiS, most of ur DMG will be physical so BI loses a lot of value, while BcB will always do more DMG than Subversion hands down. Only why would u go for more talents in Subversion and less in BcB is aggro problems.

    As for HB and Obli prio on AoE, its: HB + KM > Obli.
    Obli can proc a free HB, HB without KM is bad cos it has a 10sec CD and its better to wait for KM than to waste HB for nothing.

    As for discussions, i have nothing against arguments.
    However, if i come to u and tell u:
    BcB does 3-4% of ur total dmg done and is not rotation dependant, while Subversion will never be that good.
    And all u do is say: u are wrong BcB sux, i cant do much.

    There is a screenshot from ToC 10m:
    https://m.imgur.com/a/ljx0S
    And dummy screenshots also which u can use to calculatr both Shadow/Frost magic dmg and see how much DMG would 1 point in BI be, and also how much is 6% extra crit on Obli in DMG and copare it to BcB.

    I might have not made a data report on what is what or why is something better, but u have it all in the guide to make those comparisons urself.
    All u have to do is read. :D

    P.S. u cancel BT so u dont use 2nd blood rune first instead of 1st rune, which can sometimes delay some things in the future... and i dont quite understand the last question.

    Edit:
    I know that the english is not great, and that the guide has some editing issues and it could be a bit more flashy, but, some of us didnt even have that, and had to learn and test it all ourselves (as said in the guide). :D
    Edited: January 23, 2018

  10. @Gnimo

    If you have played wotlk for 8 years, you must have used any kind of damage simulator while testing? Must then be pretty easy to determine which of the AV rings that are better?

    You don't need to patronize me, I am fully aware and understand all rotations you have showed. It's no rocket science, just a bit confusing. There are obviously just so many different ways people choose to play, and it can't really be true that there isn't a "cookiecutter" strategy yet for such an old game? I would assume the weaving rotation is that, but what do I know. I'm just assuming as well.

    You say most of damage is physical. So yeah 65% from the screen shot of yours. I'll buy that. I agree that Black Ice is of less impact for your gear.

    But Oblit is close to 40% of damage done.. If you spec into subversion 3/3 you get 9% (!) more crit on that ability. That would increase the damage by roughly 9% without any crit damage modifiers.

    I will simplify the math for you;
    So as an example, Damage meters shows a total of 1M damage. Break down is following;
    Obliterate 40%
    Auto attack 30%
    Everything else 30%

    Out of 1M damage, 40% was from Oblits meaning 400 000 damage.
    Now let's change your talents for Subversion 3/3. This gives you 9% extra crit. First off, assume we are hit capped 8%. Also assume Crits deals 148% extra damage (100% normal crit bonus, 45% from talents, 3% meta). That means those 9% crit will equal roughly 9%*1.48 = 13.3% more damage on Oblits.

    So, if Oblits did 13.3% more damage, then new value would be 400 000 * 1.133 = 453 200 damage. This is 53 200 extra damage.

    New total damage would therefore be 1000000 + 53 200 = 1053200
    For this equation, y stands for increase in damage:
    1000000* y = 1053200
    y = 1.0532
    That is 5.32 %. Alas speccing into 3/3 subversion would yield a 5.32% total damage increase.
    Now your BcB is 4.6% of total damage. See where I'm going with this? I am aware of that this is overview math with approximate numbers, but that shouldn't alter the outcome that much. Only scenario where subversion would be bad is if you are crit capped. Or am I missing something?


    And yeah I see what you mean with HB, didn't realize it got a 10sec CD in wotlk. Makes sense then.

    My last question was about the addon "WeakAuras". I'll link you a screen shot for the one I made so you'll understand:
    https://imgur.com/a/vt251


    AGAIN, I want to underline that I'm not hating or trying to be rude. Just trying to understand the logic behind all this. Tried other forums but hard to dig up info with reliable data.

  11. I didnt use any sim mainly cos i dont belive in them.
    Why? They are endless dummy tests.
    For example, sim will tell u not to cap expertise, while in practice (atleast for me) that is a double edged sword.
    Sure ul get some DPS out of it if lucky, but if unlucky, rip.
    U can unsinc runes, u can miss the chance to use pestilance and lose diseases, or both...
    I rarely count luck to be my ally, so i cap expertise.

    In the SS i linked (didnt even use pot which would increase melee and proly bcb numbers aswell), Obli did 69.4% crit and 30.6% normal hits. Lets remove the RNG and say ALL that extra 6% crit chance (since i had 1/3 subv) will be used and i would crit 75.4% instead of 69.4%. That is 3 more Obliterate crits, total of 20227 dmg. BcB did 38511 dmg there.
    Also, on fight like Lich King, melee in combination with necrosis and bcb will do most dmg, and obli wont do 40% there.
    On top of it all, all u need to do bcb is to have diseases on the target and hit it, while if u dont maximise the usage of Oblis in a fight Subversion is useless (atleast the crit part).
    Sure, u can make math work in favor of everything, but in practice, those things dont work sometimes.
    Thats why i prefer countless in game tests over sims, even tho both can lead u to fault info.

    As for the guide, it has all the info i collected during my playtime, and again, belive me, i did everything u can think of. This, info in the guide, is the top of the mountain. Even if u learn it all, u still need the expiriance to handle all kind of situations and movements that an encounter like LK brings, and that u need to learn urself. :D

    Be objective when u are doing tests and never quit after getting a small sample with bad rng.

    As for "weakauras", idk tbh, i dont use them...
    I use "moveanything" and "needtoknow".
    Edited: January 23, 2018

  12. First off, Sims aren't basing anything on luck. It just runs thousands of iterations to most accurately estimate an outcome. Similar to how controlled randomized studies work in science (best evidence basis). If the simulation is working properly, it will trump all subjective views including your own. You say sim tells you not to cap expertise? That must have a reason, perhaps other stats are just better for raw damage even if you miss a pestilence taking into account that you have to re-apply them. Again, sims are NOT based on luck.

    Also your math is not rational at all. Look at what I proposed to you and try to give me a reply. You can't just say "You can math work in favor of everything". Are we throwing all logic out the window now and resorting to personal opinions? Was expecting an intelligent conversation, guess I came to the wrong place.

    Too bad : /

  13. First off, Sims aren't basing anything on luck. It just runs thousands of iterations to most accurately estimate an outcome. Similar to how controlled randomized studies work in science (best evidence basis). If the simulation is working properly, it will trump all subjective views including your own. You say sim tells you not to cap expertise? That must have a reason, perhaps other stats are just better for raw damage even if you miss a pestilence taking into account that you have to re-apply them. Again, sims are NOT based on luck.

    Also your math is not rational at all. Look at what I proposed to you and try to give me a reply. You can't just say "You can math work in favor of everything". Are we throwing all logic out the window now and resorting to personal opinions? Was expecting an intelligent conversation, guess I came to the wrong place.

    Too bad : /
    Since you seem to be very concerned about primary sources, you might want to check this out. Theres a wealth of sims, logs and parses. Pretty much all guides you can find on Warmane forums will base their information on the data you find in that archive.

    An interesting fact: Subversion sims less than BCB asuming you use 2pT10, according to Kahorie (i.e. the only sim that actually works for death knight dps). In fact it seems to be only half as worth per talent point. This conclusion is repeated again and again through the thread in multiple simulations.

    Seems like Gnimo's experience was right on the money and your math was too generalized to be correct. Yikes!

    But where did it all go so wrong?

    What you were neglecting was the already high crit rate (67%) and crit multiplier (2.5x) of Obliterate. See, even in your "overview math", you cannot raise the damage of all 400k worth of obliterates, but rather only the part that didn't already crit, which would of course be much, much less (33% of swings, 15% of 400k). You on the other hand are adding crits in over crits that already happened, all 400k, so you add the bonus made by this crit over 3 times more attacks than are actually eligible to crit, and two thirds of them already were crits and you're making (9% of) them crit again since you're multiplying the damage value that was already multiplied by the crit modifier. You're also neglecting that the total damage of "Everything else 30%" would go down from the fact you would actually spec OUT of BCB and then you just add your bonus on top of the total damage which was calculated with BCB still in place.

    How do you muster the temerity to talk about math or intelligence?

  14. Now let's change your talents for Subversion 3/3. This gives you 9% extra crit. First off, assume we are hit capped 8%. Also assume Crits deals 148% extra damage (100% normal crit bonus, 45% from talents, 3% meta). That means those 9% crit will equal roughly 9%*1.48 = 13.3% more damage on Oblits.
    Your math is off the mark for reasons Eva explained above. You're applying the averaged-out crit multiplier over the entire 400k worth of Obliterates when realistically, more than half of those would already have been crits. You do get the same increase in absolute crit damage going from say, 61% to 70% that you gain going from 0% to 9%, but as a percentage of the total damage dealt, it's much less when you have 70% crit, as opposed to when you only have 9% crit.

    Mathematically, bcb comes out superior, point for point.

    That said, the threat reduction perk of Subversion shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. As a DK, you produce the highest baseline TPS among all melee DPS specs. This is necessary to appreciate because a lot of DKs have no idea where they stand relative to everyone else when it comes to generating threat, so they don't recognize their threat problems as something inherent to being a FDK and instead ascribe it to the tank being bad or something. You have a 20% threat reduction baked into Blood and Unholy Presence, but that's all you have if you don't pick up Subversion. For almost every other melee class, that figure is closer to 30%. Blood DKs are specced 3/3 Subversion by default and threat is much less of a problem for Unholy DKs because their gargoyles and ghouls, which account for a lot of their damage, exist on separate threat tables. It's little wonder then that non-Subversion specced FDKs are usually the biggest culprits in pulling aggro in circumstances where threat is extremely tight, like on a fresh add spawn (a la Raging Spirits during transition phases on LK). In these situations, apart from preventing wipes because you pulled aggro, Subversion also allows you to keep DPSing for a longer period of time before you have to throttle back your DPS because of aggro issues.

    It should be possible to run some kind of max DPS spec with the full 3 points in bcb, whilst still sparing a point or two in Subversion, which is what I'd advise you try and do.
    Edited: January 24, 2018

  15. I never said sims are luck based.
    I said: "not capping expertise = playing with RNG", and that is what i dont want, cos im more unlucky than lucky.
    On that matter, i wont segest something like that to anyone. But i did say, if u dont care about random dodges, dont cap it.

    When it comes to inteligent conversations, u cant expect that cos u are trying to invent a new wheel.
    U have 8 years of expirience in this guide, that means i tryed both Subversion and BcB, i tryed Strength gems, Arp ones, crit, haste, hit, Unholy Presence, Blood Presence, and that in the guide is whats best out of it all.

    U have Screenshots and videos to see and compare a lot of stuff urself, but u need to be objective, and to use proper math.

    And this exactly is what anoys me the most.
    Im willing to go trough ur questions, test something i alrdy did 100 times, write an normal answer to try and lead u to a good path, and all that u do is: decline it all and write something stupid as "Was expecting an intelligent conversation, guess I came to the wrong place."

    Guess i should answer only:
    "U have it all in the guide, stop beeing lazy."
    from now on...

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