Introductionnot my best banner ever, but sister's kids are frustrating me so I gave up
Many of the guides here are out of date, invalid images, or info, or whatever. To pay respect to those guides, I will quote them at times, as I'm not trying to say mine is better, just more up-to-date.
Talents
This talent, requires 1 mandatory point.
-All of the red icons, are optional talents. I personally, have never seen a high rated DK with blade barrier, but I have heard of it. And I have seen middle tier DK's with it. So I won't recommend it, but it's there, for completeness.
-The 1 point in Rage of Rivendare (RoR) can become a 2nd point into Sudden Doom (SD) if you prefer. However, it's personal preference. I prefer RoR. SD is rng based on autoattacks and I feel better having a slightly harder hitting Scourge Strike (SS) when it comes to the execute phase or vs opponents that do not heal enough for Necrotic Strike (NS) to be worth it.
-RoR is only worth points if you have a T2 Cata weapon (or equal+ damage PvE weapon).
-Generally speaking, the 2 remaining points tend to go into either RoR or Bladed Armor.
-Technically, the Improved Mind Freeze talent is considered optional but I would never opt out of it. I don't even consider it optional, but still.
-I have never done Rated Battlegrounds (RBG) as an Unholy DK, but I've been told Epidemic and Contagion are good in RBG, or perhaps normal battlegrounds (BG). I still run my default arena spec in BG's though. Again, I cannot vouch for this, but it's inserted for completeness. There will be players who say no, and who say yes, I would not believe any of them myself. So many self proclaimed know-it-alls who truthfully don't know sh*t about anything, regardless of their rating. If someone produces the results of a good test, then you can believe them. If I'm curious, I'll test things myself, but I'm not, not about this anyway. I have played with Contagion before, but it was for lawls, I wasn't paying attention to anything to determine anything. Also I was not reforged into mastery for harder hitting shadow damage. Which is likely what you should do if you're playing around with contagion.
Glyphs
Stat Priority
5% hit (601 hit rating) > Spell penetration*>Strength>BLAHBLAHBLAH*
Spell Penetration - People will tell you to get spell penetration, generally 195 to negate priest shadow protection buff or Paladin's Aura. But this is not necessarily true on Warmane, especially since 2's is the go-to bracket here. Depending on what comps you fight in a ballpark range of your rating, will determine how much spell penetration you need. I am currently running 195 myself though.
BLAHBLAHBLAH - Assuming a perfect world, where EJ didn't completely fk up their theory crafting for DK's this time around, Haste would be king. But, it's not a perfect world, and EJ did fk up on so many things for DK's that no one really knows the answers. Crit has been shown to beat haste when you have limited uptime and a lot of target swapping. But I don't know (sorry) if crit is properly affecting pets here. Mastery is said to be better then crit if you have Gurth since tentacles scale with mastery. The 'safest' bet would likely be Haste>Crit>Mastery without Gurth, and either one with it (I do games without a single tentacle proc so I would not personally prioritize Mastery just for having Gurth). However, if you have the time, I'd recommend you personally testing out Crit>Haste>Mastery for yourself [not in an actual arena match where you're aiming for rating, just in case it's inferior], with taking approximate uptime, swapping, multi-disease management into account. I multiclass, so I likely won't ever get around to testing such things.
To get the best stats available, use the addon ReforgeLite. Input values. exact numbers aren't important, just that priority ones are higher, and hit is the lowest but still greater then 0. Example: Hit-10, Haste-100, Crit-50, Mastery-30, Expertise-20. With the Hit dragdown bar option set to: Hit | At least | 601 | 0. From then on, just click calculate, show, reforge.
Playstyle
-You'll be switching between Unholy and Blood presence. Though mostly in Unholy Presence. VS some comps you will spend more time in blood then others. VS Rogue teams, or other heavy opening damage comps, you may want to start the fight in Blood even.
To further elaborate on this, instead of explaining it myself, let's allow good ole Reinhardt to do it :D
Runic Power (RP) and Rune management
You will apply your initial diseases with Chains of Ice and Scourge Strike, order depending on if you can make it to your target without being slowed or not for the most part. That is your rotation. And your rotation ends, right there lol.
Instead we have priorities, or objectives. Such as, keeping diseases on your target(s).
Do we prefer Festering strike, or Blood Strike/Chains of Ice? Short answer is: Both. Make sure both festering strike and blood strike is keybound. When I first started playing cata, I figured I could replace blood strike with festering, but that's not good. Neither is using only blood strike.
Do not spam death coil unless the target can die from it. I can't remember off the top of my head but I believe it's somewhere between 3-5 seconds before we're "allowed" to use another coil unless RP Capped.
More tips and advice need to be added, but it's getting late, so I'll edit later. So instead, here's some additional resources:
Ceiron's Guide
Evolocity's Guide
Turbolqk's Guide
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0v...'s Channel
Addons
Gladius
MoveAnything
OmniCC
Quartz
Gladiatorlossa
Raeli's Spell Alerter
ummm.. so many more.. Doom CD Pulse, umm.. Bartender/Dominos [I use default UI personally].. there's a lot of great addons, I can't cover them all lol. Many people in battlegrounds have been asking about my bg healer announcement add-on, that's BGSpy.
Macros
Spoiler:Show
List of variety of macro commands - Via WoWwiki
More Macro Info - Via B.Net
Okay so I'm done for now. Needs work, but not tonight :P
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Member
Unholy Death Knight PvP Guide 4.3.4
Edited: February 17, 2016
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Forum Veteran
You dont need any points in ROR... none.
Since Blood Strike hits for a **** ton, you are better off using that as standard over Scourge Strike.. So Necro + Blood Strike. Also using BS gives you 100% uptime of death runes from Reaping. Also why we take 3/3 in Epidemic for the increased dot time, to save the runes from using Festering to be used on more Necros/BS.
And thus you dont need Scourge Strike glyph either.
Also a note about Ebon Plaguebringer... since our damaging attacks are maining going to be physical the increase in magic damage from 2/2 isn't totally worth it unless you play with another magic using class like a Spriest or Warlock. So you can happily take 1/2, throwing the spare point wherever you wish (like making 3/3 Sudden Doom)
So you spec should look like:
Hit (5%/601 Rating) > Spell Pen (200) > Strength > Haste > Mastery = Crit
Haste will always scale better, and since we are dropping ROR the Mastery isn't as much higher priority over crit unless you have Gurth.
Haste = Rune Regen / Auto Attack / Pet Auto Attack / Gargoyle Cast
Only sit in Blood Presence during high damage times, i.e CDs from enemies. Other times it's not worth the GCD and Rune Regeneration loss.Edited: February 18, 2016
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Member
Where is this info coming from? You often appear bias in a lot of your commentary. I'm bias too on some things but I try not to be in the guides. I played retail, although not as a DK, but there were just as many high rated DK's using 1-3 in RoR then not. I can also find as many 2500+ via google that use RoR as you can that don't, guaranteed. I'm not 100% certain as to why some chose 1 in RoR, or 1 more in SD, but I also know why some did. For myself, I prefer a guaranteed harder hitting scourge strike when trying to finish off an opponent then rng death coils. I did [short time frame but eh] 3x 20 minute tests of auto attacking with 1/3,2/3,3/3 sudden doom. It's possible I might have missed a proc since I was also Skyping [not gunna lie lol], but I don't think I did. Anyhow, the results were highest with 3/3 as it should be. but 2/3 was lower. Of course that's just bad rng, but that's precisely why I [and probably a few others but can't honestly say otherwise since I haven't asked them lol] elect not to go for 2 or 3 points into it.
Also, where do you get the idea that blood strike hits for a sh*t ton when it's my lowest [non DoT] attack? Seriously? Even combining Icy touch and Blood Strike damage was less then Festering Strike.
100 strikes each, average damage. [with dots up, self buffed]
Blood Strike - 6.6k
Scourge Strike - 7.4k
Scourge Strike [shadow portion] - 6.6k
Plague Strike - 7.1k
Festering Strike - 11.1k
Icy Touch - 4.4k
I think, you're confused. I'm not sure, perhaps I just don't understand a few things. Like.. of course blood strike gives you death runes, but festering does too, and festering is the only way to turn frost runes into death runes. But why do you say use Blood Strike > Scourge Strike? With Blood runes, of course you would use blood [or festering], but with death runes [and of course unholy runes] your only 2 logical uses would be necrotic or scourge, definitely not blood strike lawl. Even with 0/3 RoR and no Scourge Strike glyph, there would be more damage from Scourge Strike then Blood Strike. The ONLY reason we even touch Blood Strike, is because of Chains of Ice. We need to use Chains of Ice.. be it for the slow, or because it gives the most runic power, and now we have a spare blood rune that we want to get turning into a Death Rune asap.. no other reason to use blood strike then that unless I'm missing something? Perhaps you're mixing up an expansion or something, I'm not sure, I know you're a smart lady though :P I'll be sure though to incorporate how limited the usage of scourge strike is, if i didn't already, such as thinking you can get the kill, enemy not having heals [ex: double mage].
As for your priority.. that's bias. Spell Penetration is indeed based on most common comps, and more people went 195 [2x stormy, 1x vivid, cloak enchant] then anything else until epic gems were introduced, then they went to 196 [2x epic stormy, cloak enchant]. Resistances are: 195 from auras, 45 for mage, 97 from buff, I think that's all? So spell pen caps for 2's would be: 45, 97, 142, 195, 240, 292.. and for 3's, max would be 337. You can safely go with just cloak enchant in 2's if you roll with a dispeller to negate mage armor, since devotion aura will reduce more damage then resistance one -70 [cloak enchant], and people automatically assume spell penetration anyway. Otherwise you will want 195+ for comps such as feral/disc. Since spell resists only affect damage here and not cc, it's even less important. The spell pen was namely for strangulate and such.
And how do you know haste will always scale better? EJ was proven wrong. Crit outshined haste in many situations, mostly involving multiple targets, but not necessarily always [I truthfully haven't found sufficient evidence of single target crit taking over]. Almost everything related to stats, is taken from EJ theory crafters, but the DK guy was proven wrong on so many things that no one knows what's true. I'm not saying haste isn't king.. I run haste, but I'm not naive enough to deny the possibility that it could in fact be wrong.
As for blood presence, aye.. I didn't go into much detail about it, but that'll be corrected later.Edited: February 18, 2016
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Member
this is wrong in so many waysYou dont need any points in ROR... none.
Since Blood Strike hits for a **** ton, you are better off using that as standard over Scourge Strike.. So Necro + Blood Strike. Also using BS gives you 100% uptime of death runes from Reaping. Also why we take 3/3 in Epidemic for the increased dot time, to save the runes from using Festering to be used on more Necros/BS.
And thus you dont need Scourge Strike glyph either.
Also a note about Ebon Plaguebringer... since our damaging attacks are maining going to be physical the increase in magic damage from 2/2 isn't totally worth it unless you play with another magic using class like a Spriest or Warlock. So you can happily take 1/2, throwing the spare point wherever you wish (like making 3/3 Sudden Doom)
So you spec should look like:
Hit (5%/601 Rating) > Spell Pen (200) > Strength > Haste > Mastery = Crit
Haste will always scale better, and since we are dropping ROR the Mastery isn't as much higher priority over crit unless you have Gurth.
Haste = Rune Regen / Auto Attack / Pet Auto Attack / Gargoyle Cast
Only sit in Blood Presence during high damage times, i.e CDs from enemies. Other times it's not worth the GCD and Rune Regeneration loss.
remove blood strike from your bar, period
you get your death runes from festering, resulting in epidemic beeing a useless ability. blood strike isnt bugged anymore so have fun with 2k blood rune.
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Forum Veteran
Bias?
How about 4 years playing Unholy DK, both here and retail through 4 expansions...
Blood Strike here on Warmane, was and unless it was patched within the last 3 months, is more optimal within your rotation than Scourge Strike.
Scourge Strike also has the issue of the shadow portion is/was bugged, in which it would not be applied if your scourge strike was absorbed in any form.
Also, nice little notice.. Blood Strike has a higher chance of proccing Gurth... many times (too many to count) I've had 2-3 tentacles up at once in an arena. Oh which is a substantial DPS increase... Even then when I was running with my Ruthless weapon still got to 2.2k with ease.
Regarding Frost Runes, you use 1x festing to proc Reaping and from then Chains of Ice to keep as much uptime on your target as possible.
Spell Pen should always be at 200, since there is far to much which pushes you to that point, Priests, Shamans, Paladins, Druids, Mages, Warlocks....
It's better to be safe than sorry. Yes we have no active resist mechanic on Warmane, however it is still a DPS increase if said team has anything to counter it.
Haste will always be better for Unholy, it's wiser to rely on static increases to your attack speed/rune regen/pet attack/Gargoyle over a RNG stat... Also necrotic strike absorb cannot crit, which in this stage against the healing late cata is of importance.
Should I remind you too that Haste scaled with Gurth just as much as Mastery does? More attacks = More proc chance. We've already done extensive testing on this.
I didn't spend the last 2.5 years here on Warmane/Molten Catalysm twiddling my thumbs, as you can tell by my other guides, I make it my passion to find out what is best. What works the best and to then share that information on.
I have tested literally everything there is to test. Why do you think I come out with **** like 0/3 in ROR and to use Blood Strike... I don't say it on a whim I've tested it, it's been my spec since about july 2014. I've taken it out there with my crappy ruthless gear and I have completely shat on my competition.
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Member
for those exchangable talents you (op) are totally right, they are chosable. depending on what comb you play. bloodtalents are both okay but dont change that much in your playstyle. i myself haven't played with RoR in pvp for ages, my scourge strike is not on my bar anymore :P
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Member
about the stat priority kemi is right, 195 spell pen is a must followed by hit and then strength then haste.
about proccs from gurth, if you let the weapon be a lead in your damage rotation there is something wrong with your playstyle. the weapon is not needed to be a good dk, i often change to cata weapon with rune of swordshattering on it.
blood strike.... is bad
you shouldn't use it. don't do it. you want to get out 2 festering strikes as soon as possible. like that you can use 6 necros in a row, if you erw you can even use 12 necros in a row leading to a RLY big stack. using blood strike will just leave you with a frost rune that can only be used on chains which is mostly not needed cuz you have dececrated ground everywhere anyway.
to the guide, you dont have anything about pet control. pet leap in normal form still doesn't work, stun has a great delay.
awareness of whats going on is also rly good for dk playstyle, for nice dark sim copies.
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Forum Veteran
You also forget Blood Strike also helps with rune DeSync which is caused by a bug where runes are not spent correctly on Warmane.
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Member
so wronggggggg. to anyone reading, DO NOT remove blood strike from your bar. that's what i did originally too when starting cata, and shamefully admittedly, did so for far longer then i should have. u use blood strike under 1 circumstance. u have at least 1 blood rune available, and no frost/death/uh runes, and ur not rp capped. sure, it's limited use, but if u want to be effective, it should remain :P oh, i'm wrong.. another circumstance [sure, i could delete my previous text and not be wrong at all but fk ittttttttttt].. if u need the extra rp desperately from coi/bs combo, it does happen. there could be other circumstances that i have not thought about in this 1 min. of typing, sue me lol. but yes, on warmane u can still go far completely removing blood strike lol.
yes.. bias. i know it sounds harsh, and i apologize for that honestly, it's not intended. but it's true. not just here, but many posts. it's like the only frustrating thing about u that i've witnessed :P
well i didn't play here 3 months ago, and there was no update that i'm aware of in a long arse time but my dmg testing is correct.. blood strike does crap dmg :( i actually didn't think about bugs when i originally replied to u. i haven't tested or was even aware of the ss bug, guess i'll need to test that. and unless it was some bug that tied into the blood strike bug, i haven't seen any notable proc increase from blood strike then any other, and there shouldn't be ofc :P and chains of ice to keep uptime on my target? wouldn't it only need to be applied again [on target, not focus] if removed? festering strike extends the duration of CoI as well as diseases.
-warlocks.
and it's 195 [or 196 with epic gems], not 200. how would you even get to 200? 4x stormy gems? lawl. it would be 220 with 3 and cloak enchant. but the next resist cap after 195 is 240 for comps like mage/priest. But on warmane, there's like 5 of those total on the top 100 in 2's, highest one being rank 32, and after that for comps like feral/disc is just way too much spell needed, and there's only 1 on top 100 with that amount of resists that i see [druid/pala]. So spell pen requirements, are with 100% certainty, dependent on the comps you're up against. The lower your rating, the more you need the spell pen, since comp variety is a lot more flexible there. But the higher you go, the more you can accurately access your spell penetration needs.
Okay first.. the first comment is exactly why I prefer 1 point in RoR over 2 in SD :D And, I don't need explanation as to why haste is better, I AGREE WITH IT lol. Howeverrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. I keep my opinions out of the guide as best I can, unless admitting they're opinions. NO ONE has given substantial evidence that haste is better then crit or mastery in PvP. NO ONE. If you can prove me wrong, link it. I know it sounds crazy having someone say it's possible that Haste isn't the best, I do lol. Hell, I almost want to slap my own self lol, it's like blasphemy. But there is evidence of crit outperforming haste in situations, I haven't been able to reproduce the tests which is why I said in the guide [or meant to, did I say it? I dunno lol] that's it's probably best they follow standard practice of haste>all. But.. I'd never consider haste any notable mention with gurth procs, as uptime plays a notable role. And regardless of all your experience, I highly doubt that you know what is best. Sure, far more then likely that you know more then I do. But you don't, and likely no one else either, knows what's best. We know what's good, really good, best even out of whatever knowledge we currently hold, but we don't know it as absolute truth. I personally, have not seen sufficient evidence on many of the things I brought up in the guide, and will not advise any other player to believe another person's opinions as fact without really good evidence. But I did include what is generally accepted as "best", which is what I follow even, but only because I cba to figure out if it's true or not myself.
yea I know some people that removed Scourge Strike from their action bar too. But when you have no rp, got a few death runes, enemy is at 20k, I'm glad I kept Scourge Strike :P But I probably should make a section for people learning DK, which spells they can safely remove and still get high ratings, such as BS,SS,IT [I don't have IT on my action bar].
I'm the one that said 195.. not kemi :P and
blood strike is not bad! it just has limited use, limited enough that you 'can' go without it, but u really shouldn't. and ur implying that u should get 2 fs's asap, then shortly erw. but u made no mention about neutralizing enemy escape mechanics prior to it, or anything else. don't just erw cuz u have all ur runes on cd.. and sometimes u will want that CoI. extra runic power for another death coil.. CoI is used on focus too ya know, if it's a healer/ranged, they might not be near a desecrated area.
as for pet control, i linked reinhart's video guide and a quote from another player, cuz i didn't really have time to finish the guide yet and i promised at the beginning of the guide that i would pay tribute to the other outdated guides [truthfully, it's mostly just bad images or link urls]. i just started playing here again recently so I haven't worked out the pet leap issue yet for myself, but i'll add a workaround or two for it when i do.
just for conversation sake, i seem to have no issue if i use them seperately or with this macro
Code:#showtooltip gnaw /cast [nopet] raise dead;[nomod]leap;[mod:shift,target=focus]leap /cast [nomod]gnaw;[mod:shift,target=focus]gnaw /petautocastoff claw /petautocaston gnaw /petattack [nomod] /petattack [mod:shift,target=focus]
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Member
lol hahahahahhahahaha.
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Member
faceroll to win
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Member
on low rate that may be true :)
well the best tip i would give to new dk's is put every strike/ability with rune costs on your bar and play around with it. make sure to keep your dots up, and focus on getting a rotation going without rune downtime. just play a lot and watch your runes while doing so will help the most if you have no clue. everything else comes after that.
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Forum Veteran
Not every strike...
Since they all do different things, all have different uses,...
Main thing I'd say.. Learn what necrotic and festering strike is.
But yes, learning your rune management is the number 1 key to being a successful DK, pet management being 2nd.
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Member
So first of all SS is working since the time i stop playing (thats almost year ago). And 3/3 RoR SS does a lot more dmg than "buggy" BS ( to be clear its not BS itself thats bugged, but the dmg bonus from dots). Whetever u go full RoR or just play pure necro style depends on ur comb/enemy comb and personal preferences.... there are no bad/good ways to go
Second: The talents u post are pure ****...i cant belive u call urself a 2,5k+ dk and u got 2/2 in ebon plague bringer. That alone shows u got no understanding of ur class.
Unholy blight is also a "choiceable" talent, u dont need it, especially when ur playing pure necro style.
Same goes for "pale on the horse"
U can also run with just 1/2 in mind freeze and death advance.
I also havent seen a single word about "weapon switching"
The only + is ur profile picture.
Dont ever write a guide again, thx
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Member
1: there's nothing wrong with 2/2 ebon plague bringer depending on ur comp, but yes.. the 2nd point is optional.. i was in a rush when i made the guide, which is mentioned, as well as many things will need fixed/added in the future.
2: before u talk about understanding.. re-watch that video you posted. probably a lot of mistakes but i stopped watching when u manually changed targets to that feral just to CoI him.
3: Just cuz you're from AT.. doesn't mean you know anything, I don't see AT players r1 here, yet they talk how warmane players are bad lol. Your video is as bad as your attitude here, n that's saying something.
Don't ever pretend you're relevant again, thx
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