Updated this, wont re-add images, im too lazy for that stuff :D. About me, I used to play DK called Saeryn for a few years, back in the 4.0.6 days and wotlk/some other pserver before that. Now im kind of retired, but still enjoy remembering the good times from time to time :D. Now, just to look cool, i got Vicious ellite back in the day, 2200 rate in 3s and 3150 with a shadow priest up until rank 3, only getting beaten by Feral/Shaman. Meh, hated that comp. Anyway, i know my stuff so you can trust my guide.
Changes to Death Knights:
General:
● Since we are in patch 4.3.4 for quite a while, I don't think the changes part is relevant any longer.
Tips:
● Unholy is always played with a two-handed weapons.
● The main presence is Unholy, but feel free to swap to Blood if you are taking a lot of damage and have no def cooldowns. Back in WotLK days, us Death Knights used to dance between Unholy (or Blood) to Frost presence depending on the situation. Jigslol writes:
● Lichborne prevents:Quote:
I go blood sometimes, but it's only if I see trouble coming well ahead of time. Going blood when you are almost dead is too little too late. If we are playing something like rogue/feral and they are sitting on me all game. Once I cycle through some defensive CD's and know my healer is vulnerable i will go into blood presence and deathstrike for a bit while my CD's get a bit to catch up.Most of the time blood presence is pretty worthless.
- Seduce (Will also break this effect on use);
- Sap;
- Polymorph;
- Hex;
- Any form of fear (Will also break this effect on use);
- Mind Control (Will also break this effect on use);
Note: Don't just use Lichborne like you had 4.0.6 Death Strike. You dont, save it for surviving.
● Plague Strike's Blood Plague ignores Cloak of Shadows. Rogues be hating.
● Death and Decay breaks driking, which is good for Nagrand arena etc.
● You can interrupt with Death Grip if you really need an interrupt.
● Poisons and Nature's Grasp can't be applied through Anti-Magic Shell.
● Gargoyle's casting speed should be affected by Unholy presence, not sure if working.
● Carry a weapon with "Swordshattering" engraved in order to reduce disarms. A simple macro will be useful.
● Mind Freeze removes warrior's Spell Reflection and prot Mass reflection or whatever it was called.
● Death Grip on a bladestorming warrior works, but watch out for your health.
● Glyph of Chains of Ice's damage portion works through hunter's Deterence, but who uses that glyph anyway?
● Using Death Coil to heal your pet with Glyph of Deaths Embrace can allow you to use Dark Transformation for only 80 runic power, but rather use it if you need one more stack of Dark Transformation or something.
● Unholy Frenzy
It's sort of like Avenging Wrath, but not as good looking. Both defensive and offensive cooldown.
-Great to break scatter shot against hunters.
-Great to break blind.
-Great to use against lock to break seduce.
-Great to pop against mage/sham to break poly/hex.
-Great to use against paladin to break repentance.
-Break Druid root.
-Break gouge.
-Break fear.
-Survival hunter Wyvern sting.
Basically, It breaks everything that get removed when you get damaged. You can use it on your partner too!
● Awsome info:
-1 rune ability = 10 runic power;
-2 runes ability = 20 runic power;
-3 runes ability = 30 runic power;
In case you didn't know.
● When kited by a pet class, use his pet to Death Strike. The enemy will probably remove the pet from you after that. You can still Dark Command and make it attack you. Taunting pets on you might also break a cc, but thats rare. Don't let this distract you, use it in case the situation occurs.
● Macro Dark Command on you'r focus target to most of your abilities to prevent casters from getting out of combat. (you put them on focus, you know)
● Always proc Deaths Advance first. Just use a Necro/Scourge Strike after you apply diseases.
● Letting your pet attack enemies at the begining of an arena match will get you in combat. This prevents rogues from Sapping you.
Talents
Builds you're going to use:
Scourge Strike Build:
Rage of Rivendare
● Stronger Festering Strike/Plague Strike/Scourge Strike;
● Scourge Strike gets useful and cool;
● Use in comps that can't burst. Shadowcleave etc;
No Scourge Strike Build:
Blade Barrier
● 6% less damage receved;
● More Sudden Dooms = More Damage and DT = Cool;
● Use for comps that you must pressure. Phdk etc.;
Blade Barrier - Well you don't get many spare points, but usually thats a good choice.
Bladed Armor - It basically increases all of your damage, but I don't think this will help you anyhow.
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg27/...ng&res=landing
Virulence - Better then Epidemic cause diseases deal more dmg for less time instead of same dmg but over longer time as it happens with Epidemic.
Epidemic - Take it only when you want to have Contagion. But why would you want that?
2/2 & 2/3 - Well this won't change stuff, but its cool :D.
1/2 & 3/3 - Best combination, cause of more DT procs and overall more healing... Worth the point.
Necrotic Strike - Our main strike. If you'd faceroll, bind that strike to every key.
Scourge Strike - Scourge strike is basically the more direct damage version of Necrotic. Keep 1 necro for the cast increase and use Scourge if you need to "burst" something, or go for the kill.
Glyphs
Prime
[FONT="Arial"]● Glyph of Death Coil - Cool one, take it.
● Glyph of the Ghoul - Makes your pet great.
● Glyph of Scourge Strike - Use this along Rage of Rivendare to make SS decent.
● Glyph of Icy Touch - Won't really do anything gamebreaking, but increasing the disease damage is the best option you have :D. Use if skipping Rage of Rivendare./FONT]
Major
● Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Great for you'r anti-casting repertoare.
● Glyph of Dark Succor - Well you can use that instead of Death Gtip glyph and have a Victory Rush-like Death Strike.
● Glyph of Strangulate - Increases the silence duration of your Strangulate ability when used on a target who is casting a spell. Great, eh?
● Glyph of Death Grip - That's the best 3rd glyph you can have, really.
Minor
● Glyph of Horn of Winter - Seriously why do you need this when we spam horn during fight?
● Glyph of Resilient Grip - Good one in case you screw up with DG.
● Glyph of Death's Embrace - Good for your pet, but not as good as it used to be as a glyph.
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg59/...pg&res=landing
Stat priority, reforging, runeforging, gemming, enchanting and professions
Stat priority
● Hit rating - Cap it, dont gem it, but really - cap it.Quote:
601 Hit rating -> 195 Spell Penetration -> Resilience/Strength -> Haste -> Crit -> Mastery -> Expertise
● Spell penetration - You have a lot of shadow/frost spell damage so you need spell pen in order to use them to the max.
● Resilience/Strength - Good stats, love em.
● Haste - You;r secondary stat. Reforge to that after you cap hit.
● Crit - Kind of better than mastery if pets inherit it. I dont know if it currently works.
● Mastery[SIZE="2"]- With Gurthalak HC equipped Mastery is our second best stat after Haste. Otherwise third.
● Expertise - The expertise cap in pvp is 20. Dodged/parried runes get a 1.5 sec cooldown anyway, so you don't NEED this stat. Doesnt hurt to have it though.
Reforging
As unholy you reforge all mastery, critical strike and expertise to haste.
Runeforging
Rune of the Fallen Crusader for your main weapon and a Swordshattering alt defensive weapon.
Gems
As far as I know gems got updated for 4.3.4, so I wont really tell you which gems exacly to use, but the main idea is to specialise in resi + str for red and resi for yellow, but depending on your playstyle you can maximise on Str gems. Im more of a high resi dk.
Enchants
Not sure if actual.
● Head: +60 Strength & +35 Resi
● Shoulders: +50 Strength & +25 Resi
● Cloak: +70 Spell Pen
● Chest: +40 Resil
● Bracers: +65 Haste/Major Strength
● Gloves: +50 Strength
● Belt: Eternium Belt Buckle (40 Strength in the bonus gem)
● Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor
● Boots: +50 Haste
Professions
Jewelcrafting/mining for lazy guys, but you can use Engineering for secondary. Or even Blacksmith.
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg59/...pg&res=landing
Basic rotation/priority
Abilities you will not need:
Code:Rune Strike
Obliterate
● You apply diseases and slow, which is Chains + Plague. Plague + Chains if the target is in melee range.
● Immediatly follow with Necro so that Deaths Advance procs.
● Create Death Runes. Usually you cant x2 Festering strike unless you wait, but I think with high haste in Cataclysmic its better to just wait for Festering instead of Blood Striking once.
● After that you're free to do whatever you like. Necro strike, Scourge strike, pestilence, whatever.
● Death Coil should be spammed in between. For example, you use like two Necros and then you Coil, after which you keep on with Necros. The idea is, you don't get 130 runic power and dump it all at once, rather you keep Unholy Blight and DT procs up alongside DC damage.
● Death Strike is not really that op, but heals nontheless. With dark succor becomes a rather good heal.
● Blood Strike is used only on a lone blood rune, but sucks. Really, in warmane the damage of BS is op as fuk, so some people exploit that.
Priority:
Code:● Diseases
● Pestilence
● Dark Transformation
● Chains of Ice
● Festering Strike
● Necrotic Strike
● Death Coil
● Scourge Strike
● Horn of Winter
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg59/...pg&res=landing
Managing pets
Ghoul:
Bind that ugly zombie!
● Attack - I have that bound to mouse wheel up.
● Follow - Thats on Shift + mouse wheel up.
● Huddle - Icebound for your pet, but making it immobile. Also, when in Dark Transformation your undead can fight and have the reduction!
● Claw - Autocast macro it or simply bind it to a key.
You must macro Leap and Gnaw seperately.
Always have your pet on passive and when you can, use Dark Transformation. The ghoul is a major part of your damage.
Another good macro is to heal your it with Death Coil:
Gargoyle:Code:#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast [target=pet] Death Coil
Sadly the Gargoyle doesn't respond to macros here, so there isn't anything you can do to control it.
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg59/...pg&res=landing
Macros for your death knight
● Dark Simulacrum focus macro - Dark Simulacrum regular focus macros does not work. They are a bit different.
● Strangulate focus macro - You cast Dark Simulacrum on your focus target when pressing "shift". Casts Blood Tap if you don't have the rune. Create such maros for Mind Freeze, Death Grip, Chains of Ice (remove Blood Tap line) by simply changing Strangulate to the spell you want.Code:#showtooltip Dark Simulacrum
/target focus
/cast Dark Simulacrum
/targetlasttarget
● Death Pact - Casts Death Pact on your gargoyle instead of ghoul (use when there is like 1 sec. left).Code:#showtooltip Strangulate
/cast Blood Tap
/cast [nomod] Strangulate
/cast [mod:shift, @focus] Strangulate
● Lichborne - Press the macro to activate Lichborne, press it again to cancel it. Lichborne should be canceled when you see a priest/paladin casting anti-undead spells (Turn Evil).Code:#showtooltip Death Pact
/target Ebon Gargoyle
/cast [noharm] Death Pact
/targetlasttarget
● Death Coil selfheal - Use this macro to heal yourself while Lichborne is active. It saves you the whole "target yourself" thing.Code:#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cancelaura Lichborne
● Death Coil - Use it to cast Death Coil. The difference is that it heals your pet when pressing "alt".Code:#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast [@player] Death Coil
● Unholy Frenzy - Casts Unholy Frenzy on you and on your partner with "shift" pressed.Code:#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast [modifier:alt, target=pet] Death Coil
/cast [nomodifier:alt] Death Coil
/startattack
● Dark Command macro - Macro this to all your strikes. It makes you cast Dark Command on your focus target. This prevents them from drinking.Code:#showtooltip Unholy Frenzy
/cast [nomod, @Yourname] Unholy Frenzy
/cast [mod:shift, @Healername] Unholy Frenzy
● Cancelaura macro - Let's say you get Ice Block with Dark Simulacrum and you want to cancel it fast. Here is how to do it:Code:#showtooltip Festering Strike
/cast Festering Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast [@focus] dark command
/startattack
Simply add these 2 lines to some strike you spam. I have them in my Necrotic Strike macro.Code:/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/cancelaura Ice Block
