My Frost DK for Cata

I know this is a little late in coming and many sites have their own frost dk advice already, but i felt that maybe someone can find my information useful should they stumble upon this blog.

As many of you know, i prefer melee dps when i dps.  back when i first started playing wow, i thought i'd be a good mage.  but as time wore on and i learned how to use my strafe buttons more (really, my n52 controller makes it a breeze) i began to love melee dps.  this began the obsession with my feral druid and later moved on to my DK, paladin, warrior, rogue and, finally, my mage.  =D  I'll explain more about my mage later.

But of all the dps characters i played, i loved the wotlk paladin and dk the most.  now that they've changed the whole design of playing a paladin, i feel like a very gimped rogue. Although the holy power system is not reliant on the mob you're facing, but rather, its energy built and sustained with you no matter how many times you switch mobs (and surely, a rogue should be able to put multiple stacks of combo points on multiple mobs at the same time).  inquisition feels like savage roar or slice and dice.  and procs (or lack thereof) only add to the incredible inconsistancy of every fight.  i dont like it one bit.  now i do like procs.  but for the paladin, i dont see it working well with our holy power system.  now in comes the dk.  it hasnt changed much throughout the years.  each deathknight spec used to have its own flavor of tanking and dps.  now we have one dedicated tanking tree and two dps trees.  the whole dual weild vs. 2hander debate continues (although 2handers have had the edge for ages) til this day and the whole class has gotten its share of loltards.

PvE Frost DK Basic Talent Tree
I've chosen dual wield since i like the idea of walking around with two one-handers.  this is the only reason why i've gone dual wield vs. a single 2hander.  i dont think it matters much in the end (apart from stat priorities), so pick whichever your heart desires.  some will argue that a single 2hander will do more damage.  that's great if you care that you're doing 15,684 dps vs 15,612 dps.  overall, it doesnt matter.  and those numbers were taken directly out of my ass, so take it for what its worth.  what matters more is that you, me, and everyone else enjoy the game play while doing their best.  some folks like to enjoy the game without doing jack, at the expense of others carrying them.  that's not what im talking about.  at least, if you choose to be in a sub-optimal spec (ie. sub rogues) at least play it to your best ability.  thats all i ask.

There are three talents in which you will have to decide upon based on your choice of weapon:
1. Nerves of Cold Steel for dual wielding.
2. Threat of Thassarian for dual-wielding.
3. Might of the Frozen Wastes for single, 2-handers.

These talents arent mutually exclusive, but picking all (3 points each) will waste 3 to 6 talent points no matter how you look at it, since, if you're using a 2-hander, you get no benefit from Nerves or Threat and if you're dual-wielding, you'll get no benefit from Might.  Do not pick them all simply because you want the ease of switching between dual-weild or 2handers without respec or switching talent specs.  This is suboptimal and will rob you of precious extra damage you can be doing, or wasted on utility talents you can place elsewhere.

Overall, the talents are cut and dry with some variations on the subspec options.
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jZMI0bfuRzf

What i've left out of this spec is the last two talents necessary to reach howling blast.  What you'll need to decide, for yourself, is whether you prefer Endless Winter, On a Pale Horse, Merciless Combat, or Runic Power Mastery.  There's a total of four points in which you can choose to use in any of these talents.  The only one with direct dps increase would be Merciless Combat. Some people prefer the utility of having free mind freezes whenever they're necessary or added speed increase to their movement or more runic power so they do not lose runic power from being "capped".   Once you decide which talents you prefer, finish the tree with Howling Blast.  Now you're set to move to the blood or unholy trees.

Some pointers regarding Merciless Combat:  you'll get more mileage out of this talent if you raid more.  Seeing that most raid bosses spend a lot of time under 35% makes this talent worth while.  however, you can also argue that even for trash mobs, they will have a point in time where they will be below 35% health too.  my argument to this is that you can only dps so many at once, and if you're lucky, you might get two Obliterates in before the mob you're targeting dies.  If things line up perfectly, this will be a great talent for trash.  but more often than not, i find mobs under 35% dont live long enough for me to take advantage of this talent.  again, mileage may vary. 

From the above talent tree i ended up taking Runic power mastery because i find myself capped at 100% often, and an extra strike will have wasted my runic power buildup.  it isnt necessary to do this if you're good at weaving in frost strikes between your normal strikes, but its tough to get it down right all the time, especially when there's interupting, running out of bad, activating cooldowns, etc to deal with.  i find the extra 20 (or 30) runic power to my power bar becomes a godsend at times. 
Here is what the distribution looks like now:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jZrI0bfuRzfz

As far as subtrees and dps goes, putting 3 points in bladed armor in the blood tree is the first step there.  In the unholy tree, you'll want Epidemic to extend the life of your diseases since this talent will save you precious dps time reapplying diseases.  Honestly, i'd pick Obliterate over having to Icy Touch+Plague Strike, Or Howling Blast+Plague Strike a second or time in a fight when i dont have to with Epidemic.  Also, do not forget Virulence, as it increases disease damage by a lot.  After auto-attack, Obliterate and Frost Strike,  your diseases should be fourth in damage done.

Now, with my options to pick Endless Winter and Runic Power Master as my optional talents, i end up with this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#j0hZrI0bfuRzfzMh

Now, there's two more talent points to be used.  And really, there isnt very many choices left.  If you find yourself in 5-man dungeons often, you might want to go for Morbidity in the Unholy tree.  This will give you more damage to your Death and Decay.  I often pull this spell out once in a while when i find that i have an extra unholy rune to use.  Death and Decay is not my primary aoe spell as frost since i already have howling blast (when glyphed, will add Frost Fever, so double the awesome!).  Honestly, you'll barely miss the aoe damage that DnD does when you're busy doing HB to everything in sight.  It will only become an afterthought once you try to figure out what to do with the extra unholy runes you have (PS, FeS or DnD).

Besides Morbidity, you can also choose Butchery in the Blood tree.  This will give you extra runic power (however small that might be) but it might be a dealbreaker when you're stuck at 30 RP and wished you had 32 RP for that last frost strike.  Yes, it does make a little difference, but no, it also doesnt make that much of a difference.  And giving you 10 RP when you kill a mob probably means that you have to do the killing blow.  This might be great for solo play but the odds of you actually landing the killing blow on a mob is about 25%.  more or less depending on group composition.

Finally, you can use the last two talent points in the frost tree.  yes, you can do that.  there's nothing against that. As for me, if i wanted to, i can put the remaining points into Merciless Combat, since my build didnt have that. Or, on a pale horse offers some utility.  

Another toss up, if you want some utility, would be Desecration in the Unholy tree vs. Chillblains in the Frost tree.  both will cause a slowing effect, but with 20 second Desecration, they will be slowed when in a circle area whereas with Chillblains, the mobs will be slowed for 10 seconds so long as they've been hit with Frost Fever.  Both have their strengths and weaknesses.  And if you end up thinking Runic power mastery is for the less alert, and who needs On a Pale Horse when you have speed enchants on your boots, then go for Chillblains or Desecration.... or both or Endless Winter, or Morbidity if you really like DnD.  Keep in mind, the slowing effects wont stack.  If you run with an unholy dk, chances are they already have Desecration ;)

So with that, i leave you with a talent tree with options. Some options are better than other options based on how you play, what you prefer, and what enchants and/or glyphs you might have. 

As seen above, I have two points left in which to spend anywhere (again, with the optional points in Runic Power Mastery and Endless Winter, which can also go anywhere).  It is up to you, the player, to determine where these talents go.  Please dont put all your talents into the frost tree, as these will not be as useful in DPS as some of the talents in the Unholy or Blood Trees.  Once you're able to add points to the other trees, i would suggest adding points to Epidemic. It will lessen the amount of times you refresh your diseases on boss fights and will almost eliminate refreshing your diseases on dungeons mobs (boss or trash) in TBC and Wrath dungeons.

I wanted to highlight the talent points you'll definitely need in the picture above, but MS Paint isnt giving me the options i need.  If you read through the blog post and click on the links, you'll be able to see which talents are "needed" and which are filler.  Sorry, i cant make a TL:DR picture for the masses.  =[

Also note two talent points in the middle:  Hungering Cold and Pillar of Frost. 

Before 4.0 we had this cooldown called Unbreakable Armor, which increased our strength for a while. This is basically what Pillar of Frost is.  Take it.  Use it often!

As for Hungering Cold, this seems more like a pvp ability to me, and rightly so, as it freezes enemies in place.  But dont forget that even if the spell is primarily aimed at PvPers, it still has it's PvE uses.  Ignoring the high cost of the spell (and dont glyph it unless you'll pvp), it can be useful in certain situations.  learn to use it since you will already have it, as it's necessary to take in order to get Howling Blast anyway.  But think about all the little spots in dungeons and raids that you can use this ability, especially if you dont have a mage and for a split second, thought to yourself, "A frost nova would be great right about now."  It will be worth while. 

In the future, i'd like to continue this pseudo guide with a post on stats, gemming, enchanting and reforging with a post on how to actually play the DK (you know, when you actually have to dance and press buttons).  But for now, the talent points will hopefully help a lot of people out there. 

The Rock

Last night i was tanking a bit and found myself looking for level 70 gear to tank with, as if i didnt already have the entire cobalt tanking set already. why not have a choice? maybe i do like a few more options to itemize my stats (yea i realize that BC plate gear is itemized for the pala and warrior tank and is not that much useful for the death knight that was introduced in Wrath). things like shield block and block rating ignored, there are some nice pieces for tanking.  i am especially looking for anything to compliment my cobalt set which includes a cape, rings, trinkets and a neck piece.  i dont understand why DK's do not get their actual tanking runeforge until level 72.  it was a bit of torture tanking Utgarde keep and Nexus between level 70 and level 71.  Even with the runeforge (Stoneskin gargoyle or Nerubian Carapace) tanking wasnt fun as i would get hit for a lot of damage often. 

Anyway, so i queued for various dungeons, including Shattered Halls, The Botanica, The Black Morass, The Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth. I think i skipped over Steamvaults because it didnt have anything exciting for me.

In ay case, of those five instances, i was given The Arcatraz.  things started off pretty easy at first.  I'd deathgrip the first group on the left, then the group on the right.  then i took the middle group along with the mutation.  Easy enough.  Then we got the big mutation thing and we took care of that easily.  I dont understand how previous runs resulted in wipes at this point.  but in previous runs, i was not the tank, or the healer. I was merely dpsing.  this was several months ago on my paladin.  in any case, we cleared pretty much everything without incident until the last room, where the healer decided to go afk.  then we wiped and healer left.  an insignificant dps left as well.   This left us with top dps shadow priest and second top dps mage.  The priest decided to switch to healing so we moved on to take out the trash mobs.  In the last room, there are several difficult mob encounters, but they can be pulled separately.  firstly, there's two groups of two satyrs immediately inside the room, with a patrolling infernal.  you can aggro the inferal without aggroing the two groups of satyrs.  and that's exactly what i did.  the inferno is probably the funnest fight due to it casting meteor strike.  simple watch the ground around you to monitor if you're being targeted for meteor strike.  if you see red fire ripples around you, move.  thats it. it gets tough when tanking because i really dont know who is being targetted.

The drill is simple.  tank until he casts meteor.  move to position 2.  he casts meteor again, move back to position 1.  the problem occurs when there's four people and two of them have pets.  or in our case, one mage caster with a pet.  sometimes they get targetted.  what we did was set the mage's pet to stand at a certain spot.  if he tanks the hit, then great!  if the mage gets targetted, he moves to the priest.  if the priest gets targetted, he moves to the mage.  if the tank gets targetted, he moves somewhere.  after dying several times to this (since there are two infernals in that room) we finally downed them.  having just the tank and the healer made it easy (albiet long) to complete since meteor can only hit one of two people.  plus, with PWS up, we both can withstand a meteor hit.  however, it will usually leave us with about 10% health so a quick heal is needed after the meteor strike.  i continued to use vampiric blood whenever i can (1 minute cd) and IBF in between (really not sure if meteor strike is physical or magic damage or both). 

In any case, with that fun part out of the way.... we went in and one-shot the boss.  many would remember this fight as being a fight with three semi-bosses and then one boss that sometimes mind controls and will make copies of himself (twice) during the fight.  each copy needs to be killed.  overall, it took several minutes with one mage dpsing.  but we did, in the end, kill Skyriss.  simple encounter.

So no real post with content today.  im just telling a story of victory over nerfed content!

How to be a Great DK

As DPS.

Because if you dont look like a bear, or have a shield, you shouldnt be a tank.  jk.


But really though, here are some things to always look out for when doing dps in five mans or whatevers.

1. Use Anti-Magic Shell. Often.
It absorbs magic damage around you and give you runic power in return (for more death coils, mind freezes, and gargoyles).  what's not to like about this ability?
It eases the strain on healers healing multiple people through magic AoE damage.  they'll really like you for it.  trust me i would.  unless they're bored.  yes, then they'd want everyone to take some damage so they can heal and act somewhat useful.
What else does it do?  it keeps you from having to run for your life in certain situations. Boss is casting an AoE blast (Loken, anyone?) what do you do?  run away?  no.  you cast anti-magic shell and anti-magic his ass. note, do this for the second blast, since the first one doesnt hit that hard. anyway, overall, this improves your dps.  you want that dont you?  go you.

2. Use Icebound Fortitude. Same reason above.
When things get hairy and the tank cant keep up with the 8th add to the pull, you IBF and tank it for him for a second.
When an "engineer" decides to toss you a land mine or bomb, or when mana wyrms blow up when they die, IBF. 
When a boss decides to whirlwind and you want to stand in it for an extra few seconds.  IBF.

3. Learn to Death Grip.
No i do not mean learn to press death grip when you see a mob.  anyone can do that.  what i mean is learn when you should use it. 
Use it to grip a caster the tank doesnt have aggro on.  stand close to the tank and deathgrip a caster.  if you place yourself right, the caster should be standing right in front of the tank.  of course, you'll grab aggro for a sec, but any smart tank can see you just did him a favor and will taunt it off you or hit it off you.  or mind freeze the caster and he will eventually fall to the tank's AoE attacks eventually anyway.  end result?  you look awesome.  healer doesnt get aggro. everyone thinks you're "pro". 
death grip a mob who's running to the healer (whose purpose is to bash said healer's face in, ofc). sometimes this saves your healer and will give your tank some valuable time to grab the mobs back.  always remember that you're using this spell to "guide" the mobs back to the tank. 
One thing to remember about death grip is that it interupts casting.  meaning, that healer who's about to heal the whole part is almost done casting Greater Super Prayer of Healing.  what do you do? you're too far away to do a mind freeze (more on this later), and you're out of runes.  Deathgrip will kill the cast. 

4. Mind Freeze Casters, especially healers
You can often tell when a mob is casting.  they have casting animations.  you can also tell, from experience, who the healers are in a group.  always save your runic power, at least 20, for situations like this where there are healers, or casters who casts mana burn, or casters who will do some AoE damage... oh and of course those casters who like to polymorph random party members.  Some even work on the boss. It doesnt hurt to try.  These interrupts can be a life saver.  sometimes, its just there to speed things up.  the less a mob healer heals their party, the less time you need to spend killing.  the less a mob casts mana burn, the less time you have to wait for the healer to drink.  see how that works?  When that first boss in Ramps yell, Heal Me!! Quickly!!  you turn to his lackeys and hit Mind Freeze.  no more heals. 
The above advice also works with Strangulate. It does the same thing but has two big differences.  one, it can be cast at range.  and two, it lasts for 5 seconds. oh and it costs 1 red rune instead of 20 runic power.

5. Use your Cooldowns.
Wait, dont you mean IBF and AMS? you already mentioned that in 1 and 2. 
No, i mean the other ones. Blood dps have Hysteria.  Use it on yourself, or the top dps to make his dps even more uber.  Frost Dps should all have unbreakable armor.  its has a strength boost similar to a trinket.  use it.  use it in conjunction with your trinkets.  use it in conjunction with Blood Lust.  Use it, use it, use it!  Unholy Dk's use your bone shield to gain more attack power, use your pet's frenzy if you have it. These are all spells used to increase dps.  use them!!

6. Use your Resets.
Most DK's only have two.  Rune Tap resets a blood rune one cooldown and makes it a death rune... to be used for ANYTHING.  if your spells dont work, its because all of your runes are on cooldown.  this spell will give you one rune back to be used for anything.  use it.
Empowered rune weapon.  this is even better.  it resets all your friggin runes. come on now.  whats not to like?

7. Use your Final Talent Tree Abilities.
Blood Dks have dancing rune weapon.  Unholys have a gargoyle.  Frost has... well nothing really.  but they're so awesome they dont need a stupid pet weapon killing things.
Anyway use those.  the talent points are spent, so use the abilities already. 


There.  Hopefully this list will help the OK DPS DK, doing uber dps and all, topping the charts dk , hopefully it will help him to actually learn to play his class.  hoepfully.

Compliments

Just to think, i thought my tanking kinda sucks cos of all the stupid things that keep the tank sapped, disarmed, or feared. and then i get this...

I was actually complimenting the healer as he never let me drop below 50% health.  okay maybe once but that was due to a bad patrol running around.

keep on tanking?  hell yea!

now all i gotta do is figure out why dks have bad rep.... ha!

DK Blood Tanking Lv 60

Death Knight Tanking So Far

So my girl and i decided to make death knights!  i already have several death knights.  Unholy Tank, Frost DPS, and some others i got bored with.  What i find most interesting is the whole experience of tanking at level 60, and then turning around and healing other DK tanks at the same level.  Here is my experience so far.

Death Knight's POV
Here i am standing at the entrance of Ramparts, level 60, with brand new spells like Death and Decay.  I dont have all the talents i need yet to be effective (and when i say effective, i mean super good that everyone praises me and stays in hopes that i queue up again).  But i do have enough points to do what i need to do.

Preface:  There are talents in every tree for tanking, and in the first tier.  these talents should be used by all tanks at level 60, even if it keeps us from the juicy Howling Blast talent.  These talents are easy to get, as they're in the first tier of each tree.  Blood tree, get Blade Barrier. Frost tree, get Toughness.  Unholy tree, get Anticipation.  These talents are there for every Dk to easily get so they can tank effectively in any spec they choose.

I am spec'd in blood so i have some of the juicy self-healing spells that totally rock.  i also have the DK's version of the warrior's last stand.  I am sooooo hoping for icebound fortitude soon (warrior version is shield wall), which will reduce the damage taken by about 40%.  since i dont have defense rating, i'll need to glyp it, but i already have my two glyph slots filled (dilemas!!!) with Death Strike and Vampiric Blood.  I should probably get rid of the DS glyph. its more damage anyway.  I was thinking of replacing it with Rune Strike, but +10% crit "can" help, but not really if my main concern is just to hold aggro and stay up.

My blood tree is filled with talents that improve my survival, increases my runic regeneration, and gives me nifty tools to regain lost health.  it does not include any extra crit, but i do have the 2-hand weapon talent.  more damage is, actually, more threat.  but im more concerned about survival. 

I've also gone ahead and put 5 points in the frost tree in Toughness and 5 points in Unholy tree in Anticipation.  These are the bread and butter of tanking, but it does require 10 points spent elsewhere, and early on.  optimally, we'd want to spend those 10 points after we fill up 51 points in our main tree.  but for tanking, im at 40/5/5 instead of 50/0/0.  Since i only have 40 points in Blood, one juicy tanking talent (the one that reduces damage if im lower than 35% health, i forgot the name) is missing.  Imagine being a Frost tank, and not having howling blast (a staple) until level 70 because we have to spend 5 points in blood and 5 points in unholy first.  that sucks for frost tanks (unless they skip Blade Barrier and Anticipation to fill them up between 60-70). 

I am now building up my unholy tree and hopes to get a shorter cooldown/CD on Death and Decay and longer disease durations.  As of right now with zero points in Morbidity, i find that if DPS are decent, we will kill a group about 10 secnods before my DnD is refreshed.  What i'd like, is for the DnD to be available immediately after killing one group, so that i can use it on the next, or that i can use it again should there be adds. 

What i also find is that tanking is not as smooth as dps.  every pull requires Death and Decay.  why?  because of Disarms.  that's correct. for those who have never tanked Ramps, it is an annoyance for many tanks due to the mob's disarm effect.  they will "disarm" me for several seconds.  in which time, i am unable to attack much (but i do punch!) so having DnD down to maintain aggro is a great tool.  I cant imagine tanking without some AoE tool that will allow me to hold aggro until i get my sword back. and once i do get my sword back, i get disarmed again after a hit.  its quite annoying, but im still doing my job.  oh how i miss DPS.  i never get disarmed and my rotations are always as smooth as silk.

Positioning: In terms of positioning, Ramps is quite a challenge.  Every group is spread apart OK, with very little wiggle room to move around.  Not only that, there are patrols roaming around.  If those patrols arent dispatched properly, they can aggro during a fight (and not only the patrols, but also the group standing close enough to the patrols, so then you'll be dealing with two GROUPS of adds, instead of just one).  what i try to do is face the mobs to the side so my back is usually against the wall.  this offers lots of camera angling and zooming just to be able to see around me, but it keeps me and the DPS from "butt" pulling the next group. To butt pull, simply walk backwards into a group.  They will notice your butt and spank it.

This "buttpull" happens a lot with new tanks, actually.  They seem to not realize that when they charge into a group of mobs, the melee dps needs to stand BEHIND the mobs they're tanking.  in so doing, there is a possibility that the DPS will aggro a new group.  This is stupid play and all tanks should learn to move the group of mobs to a safer spot in order for the dps to actually stand behind the mobs.  now if you have only ranged dps, where the tank faces sometimes does not matter.  The tank still needs to be able to face the group to see if there are mobs running to chew on the healer or ranged dps.  but i find this practice uncommon in the many instances i've been in lately. 

Although it seems like i can handle two groups of mobs at a time, i usually try to keep it to one group only.  the reason for this is that i do not have all my cooldowns yet, my rune usage is wonky, i dont have rune strike until level 66 and i do feel a bit squishy.  When am i not squishy?  when i never dip below 35% health (this is when Mik's Scrolling Combat Test chimes me that im low in health).  But when the healer constantly has to work to keep me up, i know that im taking a lot of damage.  Whats strange is that i've healed many dk tanks similar to me and it felt just fine.  my mana usage was decent, my heals were flowing nicely, and i rarely had to use Nature's Swiftness emergency spell.  But when it comes down to me tanking, i have this irrational idea that if i dip too low in health, i shouldnt tank (maybe this is due to countless heroics where i've tanked, and kept many tanks up where we're never below 50% health unless somoeone screwed up bad). 

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts on level 60 tanking.  it sucks.  i dont know how people do it. 

Death Knight DPS Spec vs. Tanking Spec

Here's why i am writing this post:

GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ???   What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec. 


So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good.  Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy.  Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap). 

Click Pic to Enlarge

Note that this is the level 80, single target (ie. bosses) talent spec.  leveling spec would be a little different but very much the same.  also the only different between this spec and an AoE spec is the switching of two talents.  otherwise, everything's the same.  note that for tanking, you'll need talents from every tree.  note also that some of your fun dps talents are crossed out.  this is because no tank needs a ghoul, and no tank needs a gargoyle.  those are strictly for dps.  since this is an unholy spec, you're also giving up some nice dps talents from the blood tree as well.  you still want 2hand swords, but you're going to give up some in bladed armor to jump to blood tap and improved blood tap. 

I can do this for the Blood tree and the frost tree as well, but since my GF is Unholy, i fugred this is the best way to explain so she'll have some idea what im talking about.  unholy dps is really good with the AoE dps.  I also find that Frost dps is great as well.  Blood dps is solid, but rather boring.  tanking, however, is a totally different game and requires a familiarity with your buttons and surroundings that requires a good proficiency in one of the three specs.  what i mean to say is, get good with one spec before you plan on tanking in that spec. 

So to debunk some common misconceptions (pre-cata, ofc)...

1. All specs can tank.

2. The difference between dps and tank are the talent choices within their relative tree.

3. Frost is not THE tanking spec.

4. Unholy DPS is the highest dps spec, for you.  this means that if you spec into all three specs, assuming skill level is the same, you'll do more dps as unholy.  This does not mean that i wont come by in my frost dps spec (and since my skill > your skill) and decimate your dps.  again, assuming the same skill level, unholy will do more dps.

Death Knight Frost DPS (Power Auras)

This is just a quick post about Power Auras. I've mentioned this to some folks already. This has helped me a lot, especially with classes that have procs.

What power auras does is ad visual cues to your screen to show you what's happening in terms of procs, poisons, cooldowns, debuffs, etc. I use it on my DK for Rime and Killing Machine procs.

Find Power Auras Classic Here.

Import Strings are basically my settings for a certain "Aura" in text form. use it by opening up power auras (typing /powa) and then making a new event.

Then click on the "Import Set" button and paste my import string below into the dialog box.

Save, and it should work like a charm.

This is my import string for Rime. Please use responsibly.

Set=@
Aura[1]=Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.40392156862745;
optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Frost_ArcticWinds; size:nu1.2999999523163; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.21176470588235; y:nu-30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue;
timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu2; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; spec2:botrue; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu1; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stFreezing Fog; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1@
Aura[2]=Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu6; g:nu0.75686274509804;
optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\INV_Sword_122; size:nu1.0799999237061; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.54901960784314; y:nu-30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu4; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu4; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu2; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stKilling Machine; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1@

This is my import string for Killing Machine.

Set=@
Aura[1]=Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu1; g:nu0.40392156862745; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Frost_ArcticWinds; size:nu1.2999999523163; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.21176470588235; y:nu-30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu2; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; spec2:botrue; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu1; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1;
buffname:stFreezing Fog; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1@
Aura[2]=Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu6; g:nu0.75686274509804; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\INV_Sword_122; size:nu1.0799999237061; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.54901960784314; y:nu-30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu4; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu4; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu0; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu2; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stKilling Machine; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1@

(Note: i looked at both import strings and see that the are probably identical. this may mean that the string is for the "page" so that every event will be recorded. so with the import string you copy, you'll get both events, the killing machine and the rime events. not sure if this is how it works, but try it out. you might only have to copy it once.)

This is what my Killing Machine proc looks like on-screen.

This is what my Rime proc looks like on-screen.

This is what my Killing Machine and Rime procs look like together.

Death Knight Frost DPS (a quick guide to get started)

This post is specifically made for Kylie (and also Moz, since he's stated that blood dps is boring) who has just made a new troll dk and will be on my new server leveling up with me.


There are a few basic ideas that are very similar with their DKs. I know moz was blood and kylie was unholy and blood, so DK play isnt that new. but frost brings two things that you wont be able to get from the other two specs: dual wield and procs. All dk's start off with the basic (IT+PS) to start their diseases going. what they do from there depends on spec. even tanks often start off with IT+PS, or use IT+PS right after they drop their Death and Decay. This is the back bone of every DK. and like all backbones, it supports your other spells and attacks. you dont use your backbone when hitting someone, you use your arms, so the backbone only supports your arm. if you have a broken backbone, your arms do not swing for as high of damage as with a healthy backbone. sound like preaching, but IT+PS is not your damaging abilities. they are the backbone-- the backbone for all specs, for that matter.

One very important thing to watch out for is Death Runes. like unholy spec, frost spec'ed dk's produce deathrunes by using blood strike, blood boil, or pestilence. any of those spells will use up a blood rune and will cause the blood rune to refresh as a death rune (so you can use it for a better attack, like obliterate). managing deathrunes is another fun factor in playing a dk. first you have your basic runes, then you have your runic power, then you have this "deathrune" thing going. what more do you want to watch? well with frost spec dk's, you get to watch "killing machine" and "rime".
what the hell is that? Well killing machine is a talent in the frost tree that procs while you're attacking. when killing machine does proc, your next icy touch, frost strike or howling blast becomes a guaranteed critical hit. yep. sexy.

and rime? when this procs, you get a free howling blast (costs no runes, and cooldown resets so you can use it right away). and look at the killing machine description above, it says that if that procs, you get as one of three spells, howling blast, to proc. so rime+killing machine = USE HOWLING BLAST NAO!!!

There ya go. thats all there is to frost dps. yep. easy peasy lemon squeezy.


The Nitty:
Ok. to go a little futher into the art of frost dps. i've explained almost nothing above. except that you get two juicy spells to play react to. lets go and see what the differences are.

1. Frost uses Blood Strike to convert blood runes to death runes (Blood uses deathstrikes to convernt frost/unholy runes to death runes; Unholy uses blood strikes to convert blood runes to death runes).

2. Frost uses Frost strike as their primary rune dump spell (Blood and Unholy use Death Coil). as frost, use Frost strike always. Heck, take death coil off your bar and use it only during ranged encounters.

3. Use Howling Blast often when in AoE situations. Death and Decay is less of a factor in dps, so dont use it as often as you would if you were another spec. now if there were 4 mobs in a group... you may want to use it. but you have better aoe abilities with howling blast anyway, especially with the two procs going off at once. i am not saying do not use DnD. just saying that you have another option that's not so expensive.

4. Use two 1handers. two maces, swords or axes. do not use a 2-hander, even if it looks good. even if the stats are a lot better. the reason for this is that you have three or four different talents that buff up your dual wielding damage and also, you have the benefit of two runeforge enchants processing.

4a. In terms of weapons, use slow 1handers if you can. fast 1handers are fine if the dps increase on the weapon is significant (say, you're upgrading from a 90 dps mace to a 130 dps mace). try to avoid fast tanking weapons, as you're not only gimping your dps with the speed of the weapon, but also with the secondary stats the weapon may have (like +defense rating, +dodge, +shield block).

4b. In terms of stats, weapons with Agi are meant for hunters and rogues, but can be used by the DK as well. Agi will add to your physical crit rating but you will benefit less from that than if you picked a weapon with +Str. Most 1handed weapons, however, have +agi so go with that if there are no other alternatives. you can always get more weapons. Devyn has two Black Icicles from H. Halls of Reflection, which have +Agi. so although we prefer str, agi is fine.

5. Use Obliterate (Blood dks use Hearth Strike. Unholy dks use Scourge Strike) as your major attack. no folks, do not think that two icy touches and two plague strikes will equal two obliterates. They do not. Dont waste your time using icy touch or plague strike unless you're going to refresh your diseases. use it ONLY to refresh diseases. Use Obliterate. (blood strike to make death runes and then use the deathrunes to do more obliterates).
Note: if you're low on health, you can use deathstrike to regain health instead of using obliterate. you trade a little dps since deathstrike will do a lot less damage than obliterate. if you have runic power, summon your ghoul and kill it for about 50% health back to you. personally, i'll summon my ghoul and sacrifice it. its "cheaper" to me, ie. i'd rather use runic power than runes to regain health.

The Gritty:
Now that we understand a little bit of the differences between the three DK specs and what frost should be focusing on, lets move on to how a battle should be played out. There are always two types of battles. The multi-mob battles and the single-boss battles. Lets start with the single-boss variety.

---Single target stuffs in BLUE.
---Multi target stuffs in RED.

Single? Why hello nurse!! (single-mob)Every instance has boss encounters and most of them are basic tank-and-spank. some require a little running, but all will focus on you, the dk, dps-ing down a boss (not the orbs ala Toravon).

What to look for when encountering a boss:
1. Know your rotation. Know where your buttons are. Know where in your HUD your runes cooldowns/runic power displays are so you know what you will be needing to do next. Efficiency is key as a frost dk. so always be on the lookout.
2. Stay behind the boss. Always.
3. Stay out of flames, fires, ooze, void zones and other bad things. (Strafe left and right to avoid it, easy). 4. Watch for Killing Machine procs and Rime Procs. using Mik's or any other scrolling battle text addon really helps with this. Also, there's Quartz procs and Power Auras Classic. They do more than show procs. they will show procs as long as its active and give you a big fat icon covering everything until you use it up. So instead of looking at your fist for a white glow (killing machine) or at your character for small shiney rays of light (rime), you can have a more noticable message when your procs do proc. seriously, the in-game indicators that you have rime/killing machine processed is hard to see. and during any instance, i see my fists turn red, blue, yellow, orange, green, etc. so figuring out if the glow means "killing machine" is kinda tough. use addons for this.

Quadruple Grande Americano for Tri at the bar! (multi-mobs)
What i love about frost dps is that i get choices. choices to use DnD or Howling Blast, or if i should use howling blast without rime procs, or if i should spread diseases now, or refresh diseases on my main target, depending on remaining health, ofc.

When encountering multiple mobs, like say, four mobs. the priority shifts a little. of course, we'll always start out with the same, icy touch and plague strike. the rest is a big mess.

Again, always stand behind the mobs. and stand clear of bad things.
Since there isnt an obvious target, you'll have to target the same mob the tank is targeting. that's the best choice since you probably will not pull aggro if you attack the tank's mob. let the other three mobs get a pestilence, and maybe a blood boil or howling blast. if you get a killing machine proc, you can use howling blast, as this will cause more damage than an obliterate or frost strike. that's basically the only difference in rotation between a single target and multiple targets.


ROTATION:
(rotation is subject to priority. read this first, then read priorities. they'll make sense one day)
A-single. Always start out with Icy Touch and Plague Strike. (there are people who say do PS first, you get 10 more dps. gimme a break) But always start with those two. doesnt matter which comes first.
A-multi. Start with IT/PS. Then pestilence + Blood boil. then follow the rest.
B. Then use Obliterate.
C-single. Then use Blood Strike to use up your blood runes (to change them to death runes).C-multi. you should have already used your blood runes. skip C.
D. Use Frost Strike for your runic dump. never use deathcoil--it doesnt hit for that much anyway.
E-single. When "Killing Machine" procs, use frost strike as soon as you can. yes, delay your other attacks and just use frost strike to "use up" the proc. you want to use up the proc because you want it to proc again as soon as possible so you can do another juicy crit frost strike. saving it up makes no sense. just use it. you'll get it again later anyway.
E-multi. When "Killing Machine" procs, use Howling Blast if you have enough runes. sometimes its better to wait for the runes to cooldown and use howling blast than it is to use the KM proc on frost strike or icy touch. just wait it out. its only a few seconds anyway. when the mobs start to die off tho, like when you're down to two mobs, use the KM proc on a frost strike instead.
F. When "Rime" procs, use Howling Blast. This is a free attack. so use it even if howling blast is an AoE attack. It still does damage to one boss, and its free. do not use it if it will cost your runes (aka, no rime proc). use your runes for Obliterate. never use your runes for Howling Blast. always use your "Rime" for howling blast. get that? hope its not confusing.
G. Refresh Diseases. when your frost fever and plague strike nears its end, or ended, use icy touch and plague strike once again.


Rotation Priority:
1. STAY ALIVE (even if this means running away for a few seconds).
2. Always keep your Diseases up. unless your mob is almost dead.3. Rime (if you see it, use howling blast).
4. Killing Machine (if you see it, use Frost Strike/if you see it, use Howling Blast)
5. Obliterate
6. Blood Strike (to covert runes)
7. Frost Strike (without Killing Machine Procs)


Stat priorty:
Again from earlier on about the weapons, prioritize Strength above all else. gem for strength as much as you can. if you need to activate a meta gem, use a prismatic gem (it counts for all gem colors).
Primary Stat priority:
1. Strength
2. Agility
(stamina will come with just about everything. dont worry about it much. int will come with some gear, dont trash it, just evaluate if the STR or AGI will give you better results. same with armor, etc... in outland, i had some mail drops where i can gem that tripled by STR for that slot (gloves, helm, pants) and i used that instead. gear becomes more defined for classes in northrend, but in outland, its fine to use mail gear or paladin plate gear so long as the STR is higher, or that you can socket some bold bloodstones, bold scarlet rubies or whatevers)

Secondary Stat priority:
1. Hit to 8% at 80. if you're leveling, dont worry too much about this.
2. Attack power. its great to have. although str is preferred, attack power should never be scoffed at.
3a. Crit from crit rating. it is very important to understand that crit rating increases the critical strike percentage of your physical attacks and spells. Agility only increases the critical strike percentage of your physical attacks.
3b. Expertise to 26. I think its 26. but make sure you get that up at level 80. while leveling tho, dont worry about it; gem strength only.3c. Haste rating. although your attacks are dependent on your runes and not your global cooldown, having haste will help late in the game, when you're maxed out with Hit, Expertise, and ripping at the seams with crit.

One last thing to note... you're dual wielding. so each attack hits twice (hopefully). this means that for abilities that are actual attacks (plague strike, obliterate, frost strike) your recount will count each attack twice. one for the main hand, and one for the offhand. i do not know if there's a way to separate those. but when you look at totals, that's what you'll see... the offhand/mainhand attacks combined. for spells like icy touch and howling blast, these will be counted once since you're not using your weapons to apply these attacks. you're actually casting these. looking at your recount, to see if you're keeping your IT:PS at a 1 to 1 ratio (ie, you're doing it right), you should see twice as many plague strikes as icy touch. it's like that because recount will count your offhand as a separate attack. dont worry about this too much. if you do 50 icy touch, you should be doing 100 plagues strikes, according to recount. but in reality, its 50 icy touches and 50 plague strikes. to further pound this in: if in a boss fight you think you did 20 obliterates, recount will say you did 40. again, you're using two weapons. each weapon has its own "count" with recount.

One last last thing... about howling blast. It will apply damage to specific mobs individually. there is not "cap" i dont think, and the more mobs you have within range, the more damage you will do.
lets say you have three mobs and each howling blast you do will deal 2k damage to each mob. that means your howling blast will do 6k damage to three mobs. if its one mob, you only do 2k damage. lets say. what if you crit? you'll do 150% more damage. so that's 9k damage total, or 3k to each mob. now lets say you're killing those man crystals running around halls of stone. there's 10 of them, and you get a killing machine proc. 3k x 10 mobs = 30,000 damage.major dps boost there huh? probably. although i've only seen my crit howling blast do 30k damage at most (see ss above), im sure it can do more if you have enough mobs together in one place.

last last last note: runeforge the main hand with fallen crusader. if you dont have it yet, use cinderglacier. for the offhand, use razorice.


excited yet??? go respec already!! lol go leave me questions if you have any. hopefully i've explained enough to get you guys started. hope i was clear. sorry, no pictures. =[

Monday Report

Here is an update for those who care to read about my adventures (I know its Tuesday. But yesterday was Memorial Day so i am posting this a day late).

Krakkenskull
This past weekend was pretty dull to say the least. i tried leveling my DK, Krakkenskull, to 80 but stopped short at 79 that week. went and did Hodir rep and went all the way to getting the quests for Halls of Lightning. I spent about 400g on Ulduar Relics and used most of them to gain Exalted. One more level and i can add some shoulder encahnts and never have to worry about hodir rep again. what's pretty awesome is how after i actually turn in the quest to make nice with the Sons of Hodir, i jump straight to Honored rep. wow. that's pretty friggin easy if you ask me.

And Krakken went from mid level 75 to 79 doing mostly instances. He's now pretty sick of VH, DTK and Gundrak. Startig to get sick of HoS.

VH has been a bit of a snore. I've been getting the same bosses over and over and it doesnt help that they drop everything i needed already, the first five times i was there. but now, the second five times im going there, i have never gotten the core hound or the big eyes with tentacles. its been the water revenant, the etherial, the voidwalker, or the arrokkoa and his two friends. same drops, over and over. same routine over and over. although the only real variable is the tank, since no tank is the same, they often make the instancea bit more interesting.

I went through DTK about five times only. yes, that's it. i went through it twice before i actually did the quest for drakuru, collecting about 30 mojos. that's 15g worth of mojos. the other times werent really noteworthy.

Gundrak is amazingly fast tho. especially since the bosses are all pretty close to each other and 1/3 of the instance is essentially skipped (the parts with the trash). overall, its a fast 4 bosses and maybe some loot.

Finally, Halls of Stone has been annoying. Sure, its fast, but that 5 minute survival event has lost its lustre as of late. the people that i've ran with are usually competent enough to stay out of the lazer beams, but they do ignore the purple orb, since i guess, 30% speed decrease and decreased damage really isnt that bad of a debuff. still, not much good stuff to be had there. but i've only ran this place maybe five times on krakken. it's not too bad yet. i really enjoy the large pulls and increased dps, especially when i see an Killing Machine proc and i oh so conveniently have howling blast on standby. that will give me quite a lot of damage to pad my numbers. lol. i feel almost like my warlock doing Seed of Corruption on everyone. it does feel good to boost numbers. but in the end, i know i should be dead last in boss fights.

I queued once specifically for halls of lightning and got my two hodir quests done. loken sucks. how did he blow so hard i do not know. these fights are fun still, but they seem so easy nowadays. has northrend content been nerfed that badly? or is everyone i am going with just rolling alts now? they seem to know all the fights, backwards and forwards. of course, when i started doing these instances, it was done in heroic mode, but i figured, at level 78, it would be just as difficult doing normals.

So after the daily heroic (for ze emblemz!) i will be specifically queing for Culling of Strath, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinicle, and Oculus. Hopefully i will not have to repeat any of these, but chances are, i'll end up having to do a few of them twice. There are two quests inside UtPin that will give me some decent gear and good exp.

Oculus is always fun and is a well-needed break from dw-frost-dps. riding dragons is always fun. what i did wish was that the controls may be a bit more intuitive, that the dragons are used a lot more during the instance than just for transportation. really, we dont even really fight on the dragons until the last boss. what a lame design. may as well keep them as taxis for us and have us kill the boss the old way. nope. it seems like bliz wanted to confuse the hell out of everyone and introduce three new "vehicles", each with their own special mechanic. not only that, but they give us almost no time to learn how to use these new vehicles. whats more? these vehicles are never used later on.... ever. even malygos' encounter calls for a completely different strategy. wtf? granted, these are awesome ideas but hey, Aces High doesnt cut it. and giving us an instance (a very annoying one at that) and giving us mounts we wont use until the last boss is... THE STUPID.

So after having said that, i cant wait to DPS on the wings of the amber drake!
Build 5x shock charges then detonate. then build 10x shock charges, then detonate. run when boss in his shifted plane and he summons balls. timestop right AFTER he does his enrage. Eregos is easy sauce now.

Krakken has also been topping the dps charts vs. pretty much every class. he was outgunned by an 80 warrior. and also a 79 mage who was 3 bars away from dinging 80. what else? 2k dps on average. at 78. in halls of stone. k? not lying. im amazed really. i didnt know these figures existed pre-80. on my first dk, i leveled as a tank, with a tanking spec and in tanking gear, so my dps never went over 1k until i hit 80. then i tanked for months and got my dps to about 2k finally, before switching to dps. and frost dps is a blast. that's how dks should be played. as frost dps. and i started off doing 2k dps with entry level weapons and entry level gear (rep gear, pvp crafted gear, etc.) and quickly jumped in dps. one last thing to take note is that i switched to dps before patch 3.3.3, which made frost dps a lot better. and i see it as i can duplicate devyn's level 80 dps at level 78. not bad at all. what does this all mean? bliz buffed frost dps. thats all. and rightly they should. i cant wait to fight shamans for lowest dps in raids. i can hardly wait. hero class my ass.


Devynity
Devynity is still doing fishing dailies, and should be almost at 300 now. ghostfish is easy to catch compared to 10 terrorfish. easiest daily tho, is finding the severed arm. outland fishing isnt so bad either. although the darkfin darter takes a while to get right. He did ding 72 and also went off to the Black Morass several times, each time with people who need to do their elixir mastery quest. im still hoping to get exalted with them before i hit 76, since 75 is the last level we can queue for it specifically. i think. if anyone knows how a level 80 can queue for this, please tell me. please!

Doing the daily dungeon run sucked for Devynity. somehow, he's getting into crap groups. Please see other post about the buckets of asshats. nexus shouldnt be so bad. but in any case, asshats make me value the good parties i join. well it took me about two hours to finally get a good group to do my daily. and of all places, we went to AN. woot! now when i say good group, i did not mean it was easy. i had a warrior tank who turned with the keyboard still. she didnt have a clue how any of the fights went. so we wiped several times. The healer dropped. but we got a new healer who actually did some dispelling. woot! the tank learned the fights pretty quickly, but the mess with the spider boss took up half the instance. Anub took forever too. his burrowing didnt make the fight more fun, as the developers might have thought. in any case, that's basically all i did with devynity over the weekend.

Other
I still will need to get on my priest and take some screenshots. hopefully i can heal well. i havent healed on her in ages. will have to though since i do want to do a blog entry on healing. since, after all, this blog is called One Tree HEAL. and obviously, i havent been healing in a long while!
Hopefully, i can get back into Druid healing too. I may druid heal first thing come cata though, and end my days on wow that way. speaking of the end, i dont find very many things interesting in wow anymore. as im leveling up two melee dps (DK and Pala) i find that there isnt a lot more to do. leveling an Enh shaman will be similar to leveling a dk or pala. i thought about it and figured its too soon to go through all that leveling again. 58 levels of ugh until i hit outlands. then it becomes less ugh. but still ugh nonetheless. im all heroic'ed out, so going through northrend would suck too. maybe its time to throw in the towel unless i can get my gf to play with me. maybe i'll go alliance. lol. who knows.

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.