Horribad DK

I know lots of people have experienced bad hunters, dks, paladins, etc. i'd like to contribute to the community with this useless post. So here. check out the lowest on dps. she was level 60 at the time. im not even gonna armory her. dont wanna know.

This was my first or second trip to Ramps, so i was level 59 for sure. But even at that level on my DK, i was doing 500+ dps.

So lets take a look at this DK's figures and see where she may have gone wrong.


1. Melee attacks (basically auto attack) make up the largest proportion of his damage at 37.8%. This is usually in line with that others do, although a little less, about 30% is good. Auto attack is one of my top three damage components, so seeing auto attack at the top is pretty common.

2. Second on this list is Death and Decay at 34.5%. DnD being the second highest amount of damage isnt all too bad, considering there are many AoE packs/groups in ramps, i can see the use of DnD being high. However, looking at her other attacks, heart strike in this case, i can tell she's a blood spec dk, meaning she should not have talents to improve DnD cooldown time. This means that DnD should not be, for the blood spec dk, the priority when it comes to AE/AoE damage.

3. Third on the list is Icy Touch, hit 23 times for 7.7% of the damage. While i dont see any problem with this by itself, i have a problem with it being third in damage (it should be much lower) and that it was used twice as much as plague strike (which is its partner in crime, and should be used in pairs, almost always, especially as blood spec). on any recount totals, i will know that a DK knows what they're doing by looking at the amount of times they hit these two keys. They should be, idealy, the same. If i see 23 icy touches, i should see 23 plague strikes, not 12. this girl had 12 plague strikes.

4. Frost Fever DoT makes up 5.8% of the total damage. Frost Fever and Blood Plague should always be below the top three or four attacks. Always. In this case, frost fever was fourth. blood plague was sixth. It should be Fourth and Fifth. And i think Frost Fever is 5th because of all of the Icy Touches that were used.

5. Fifth highest damage maker is Heart Strike. This is the bread and butter of blood spec, and its 5th in this case. sadness. this spell should be one of the top three. it hits TWO mobs, and its damage is increased if Frost Fever and Blood Plague are on the mob.


I dont want to break it down any more. but here's the basic idea of playing a Blood Spec DK in patch 3.3.3. bear with me as its not as simple as using icy touch over and over again. i swear, if it werent for the rune cooldowns, im sure many many people will be using icy touch over and over and over again, even though it does crap damage.

So here's the basic rule of thumb when playing a DK. Please understand that when you do play a dk, you're starting at level 55, and the main assumption here is that you've played the game before and have some high level character, so you understand the concept of the game and are able to read tooltips and can decide how best to use a spell based on what the tooltip says.

1. Icy Touch and Plague Strikes do crap damage. So why are they there? They're there to inflict Frost Fever and Blood Plague. That's it. use them for this and onlyt his. The idea is to keep Frost Fever and Blood Plague up constantly, or close to 100% of the time. Needless to say, using Icy touch again before Frost Fever falls off is a waste of an Icy Touch. same for Plague Strike/Blood Plague.

2. Special attacks do damage based on Frost Fever and Blood Plauge. let me rephrase that...
Special attacks do crap damage alone. Better damage with frost fever on the target. and much better damage wtih frost fever and blood plague. For those who have no idea what these "special" attacks are, let me list what i can remember: Heart Strike, Frost Strike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate and and Death Strike.

3. There are talents in every tree that will cause certain runes to change to Death Runes. These runes can be used as any type rune (frost, blood, or unholy runes) and should be utilized to use your "special" attacks more often. prioritize this please.

4. Every tree has a runic dump ability. Blood has deathcoil. The above dk did not use this, ever. Unholy has deathcoil as well. Frost DKs should use frost strike. Tanks will prioritize using Rune Strike, and dps should also consider using dancing rune weapon and gargoyle. Use your runic dumps please. its there for dps. its there for you to use when you're waiting on cooldowns, or when you're planning on using your extra special abilities, if you spec into them.

So basically, there's three things to watch for. Diseases, deathrunes, and runic power. thats really it. there isnt much else to keep your eye on besides your diseases, your runes and your runic power. Let me just lay out the main idea of a typical fight just so, if someone should happen to read this and also make a dk, would know what to do.

1. enter the fight using an icy touch and plague strike (and use Icy Touch and Plague Strike again only when Frost Fever and Blood Plague runs out). this puts a DEBUFF on the mob called Frost fever and Blood Plague. as long as these two debuffs are on, you will use your "special" attacks. Blood DKs use Heart Strikes. Frost DKs use Obliterate. Unholy DKs use Scourge stike. please. thats it. use those. nothing else.

2. Make yourself death runes during the fight. How? Blood DKs use Death Strike. Frost and Unholy DKs use Blood Strike. This changes runes to death runes. For blood dk's death runes will allow you to use frost/unholy runes for Heart Strikes. For frost Dks, this allows you to use blood runes for Obliterates and howling blasts. For unholy dk's this allows you to use blood runes for Scourge Strikes. its not really that complicated when you think about it. its complicated typing it out because there's three friggin specs to talk about all at once (its annoying. i should just make a guide for each spec, instead of one guide for all three specs).

3. When you start building runic power, dump it during rune cooldowns. or weave it into your rotations so you wont have to dump all 100 runic power at once (this is important for the frost dks with 130 runic power maximum and the glyph to lower runic power cost of your frost trike) (see how annoying it is trying to cater to three specs at once?).

4. are your diseases (Frost Fever/Blood Plague) gone? well reapply it with icy touch and plague strike. i know these two attacks do craptacular damage, but it makes everything else better. so use it now. yes, you should have this drilled in your head please. icy touch does crap damage. plague strike does crap damage. they're only useful for the dot/debuff on the targets. thats it. please think of it that way and you will definitely go on to doing much better damage.

5. What about Pestilence? Blood Boil? DnD? Yes. use them. but these spells are basically useless without the understanding that ICY TOUCH DOES CRAPTASTIC DAMAGE.


Thanks for listening.




So with all that said, what should the girl above be doing? *coughgrindingcough*
Sorry... had to say it.

So the girl in the example above should be doing several things differently. She should be running into the fight with the following spell choice: icy touch, plague strike, pestilence.
Then she should be using death strike. then two heart strikes. wait for her frost/unholy runes to activate again and do a death strike. while waiting, she should be using deathcoil. If there are four or more mobs in the group, she should be using blood boil instead of heart strike. if there are 1-3 mobs in the group, she should be using heart strikes. reapply diseases as necessary.

She can also weave in Death and Decay for groups. But since we were running with a warrior, i would wait until the warrior does his shockwave ability before dropping the high dps Death and Decay.

The Dk's top three attacks should be: Melee, Death and Decay and Heart Strike.
Her next three attacks should be: Blood Boil, death strike, and her diseases.
Icy touch and plague strike should be at the very bottom of the list.


In the next week i want to put up a DK guide for dps. I want to start with what i know best, frost dps, then move on to unholy and blood. I dont know if its worth doing a quick guide for blood, however, since blood will be changed into THE tanking spec come cataclysm. but until then, it will remain the boring spec we currently know it as, boring both in regards to tanking and dps. Please stay tuned as i go through a few major concepts in frost/blood/unholy dps. i may venture into tanking in those three specs, but again, come cata, these will be useless and we'll all have to tank in blood spec frost presence. So stay tuned for "something" if anything.