UNHOLY IS AWESOME!!!
Heya guys!! This is a break down on Unholy spec and glyphs for maximum raid damage. I made a post recently on a forum I read, and after I did it… Well I realized it had a lot of information in it you guys might want. So here we go.
Heya guys!! I’ve been out of the loop with EJ for some time now because I’ve just been too busy leveling and raiding. And while some of my opinions have already been stated, I did wish to express the same ones in my own way.
I’ve found so far that the 17/0/54 spec is the superior Unholy raiding spec.
When dealing with a boss fight the first “questionable” talent that comes up is Virulence. Since you can hit the hit cap with raid debuffs (aka Misery) and with Draenei it comes to the question of whether or not you need that hit. The alternatives are: Anticipation, Unholy Command, Outbreak, Corpse Explosion, and On a Pale Horse. Out of these only Outbreak and Corpse Explosion offer any kind of a dps increase. Luckily, all current dps models have shown quite well that these two talents do not actually cause that much of a dps increase for an Unholy DK. The application of CE for a boss encounter is minimal at best. And especially with the application of the SS Glyph, Outbreak becomes lackluster at best.
The next stop is Reaping. I’ve seen several people question the validity of using 2xBS over 1xSS. The best litmus test for you honestly is to just go grab a buddy warrior and have him sunder up a dummy. Then just go to town and see how the damage works out. Depending on your gear, there might actually be certain times where it’s possible that BSx2 would win. But once you move into T7 and T7.5 gear, this changes. The Sigil of Awareness and even just the 2 piece bonus from T7 (not even gonna talk about how uber the 4 piece is) push SS far above the lead. Making Reaping a no brainer when you take the time to examine the gear that you will have available to you.
When you reach Unholy Aura and Desecration you come to a much debated topic, even outside of EJ forums. I’ve seen the conversation here lead to basically the same conclusion I had already made. It’s a bad talent. If you’re using the SS Glyph, which I highly recommend, then you’re not hitting PS to begin with. Then add in that the majority of fights now require a great deal of movement and this talent begins to get a dull tarnish on it. Lastly, there are the raid complaints. Which are actually important. Not all, but many raids will complain about the graphic obscuring the ground, causing lag, etc. Overall more people complain about this one talent than any other ability available to a DK. The fact is, if it’s griefing your raid then its just not worth it.
As far as Unholy Aura is concerned. Multiple threads have proven time and time and time and time again in EJ forums that a 7% movement speed increase is the best dps enchant possible for melee in game on boots. With the addition of more movement encounters in LK, and the fact that our Aura doubles the standardly accepted 7%, how could you possible argue the value or weight this talent carries? It allows healers to get back to healing quicker, people out of AoE’s, people getting back to dps’ing, etc…
With 1 spare point available, you stare at the previous problem before when weighing Virulence. Magic Suppression and Descration are now on the table as well, but they again are pretty much lackluster when taking all of the variables into account. So 1 more point gets dropped in there.
Once this is done, every point is spent in Unholy possible, filling in all of the top tiers. The one questionable talent is Night of the Dead. So lets talk about Raise Dead and Army of the Dead.
Army of the Dead is FAR FAR more valuable than many people give credit on boss fights where the boss can be taunted, which atm is a lot of them. One example is KT in Naxx. When in P3, if it is lasting too long we have chained 2 Armies of the Dead to buy healers time. Also if an OT dies to the adds, an Army of the Dead usually buys enough time to get the situation in hand. The same for other encounters when you absolutely have to take an out of hand situation and do something about it. Every time I’ve used it in a raid so far, my entire raid has been, “OMFG, that so helped.” Be more aware of this ability and try using it more often. It is difficult to model, and honestly difficult to explain the best ways to use it. Think of it more as an “Oh !@#$” button for tanks and healers that only you can press. My instructions every raid to my healers and tanks has been to shout out in vent if there is trouble, and I’ll drop AoD to take some heat off. Some may argue that this ability has a 20 min CD and you could use it once per boss fight as is. But the fact is sometimes it’s helpful on trash and also sometimes you wipe. It happens even to the best of us.
Raise Dead
First off, if you target yourself and cast this, it will summon a NPC ghoul for you to command no matter who is near you as a corpse. If you find you can’t do this quickly without making your dps suffer, a simple targeting/casting macro will do this for you.
Secondly, your Ghouls are an invaluable part of your DPS as Unholy. If you’ve kept track of Blizz Blue Posts, you’d be aware that when they nerfed Unholy dps on Beta, they specifically noted the Ghoul dps. Because of how much pet dps it does, they toned us down. And for good reason. I’ve been experimenting with an un-glyphed ghoul recently because I wanted to test out some Anti-Magic Shell/Bone Shield theories, but even while nerfing my ghoul he is fantastic. But sadly, many fights result in severe AoE dmg and the pet dies. NoD is almost a guaranteed pet at all times. And considering how often he dies in many of the fights, I’m not sure how any one would pass it. And if you would, go try to measure the talent you’d pick instead of it versus always having your ghoul up. I doubt it would be remotely close. But I’d love to hear you explain it. Some fights, such as Patchwerk, make this talent useless. I’ve never had my ghoul die there. But elsewhere, like at Sapphiron, I can’t seem to keep him alive no matter what happens. It has it’s uses.
As far as the Blood talents, they are the standardly accepted best DPS talent choices. Feel free to argue them if you really disagree for some reason. I’ll do my best to refute/debate your opinions; however, the majority of posts I’ve read here agree (or have already listed these options).
I also saw someone earlier question why UB did more dps than DC on a Single Target (ST). If that is ever in question, in all honesty EJ Forums isn’t the place for such a question. Recount/WWS can show you, for your character, quite clearly which one will do more dps. Just multiply the UB dmg by the ticks and then compare it to your DC dmg. While I think EJ is a great resource for asking questions, asking a question you could easily answer with a simple in game test in under 10 minutes should be skipped.
Regarding Glyphs for Unholy.
Scourge Strike should be a no brainer imo, however it seems to be debated some. Now I’ve heard many people quote the “1 minute” uptime advantages. However in all fairness, the bad luck streaks should be noted. I’ve had more than one boss fight where it wouldn’t proc no matter what, or the proc would go off on the very first SS used after PS/IT. It made me want to scream. But that being said, that is not as common as some would think. Overall this glyph is more beneficial for several reasons:
1) Frees up GCD’s
2) Scales better with gear (Read sigil and T7 set bonuses)
2) Simplifies rotations so long as you can easily manage disease timers
Some people complain that this in fact makes the rotations more complicated. And for some, this may hold true. But in fact, if you have a solid mod that makes disease tracking easy then it makes your rotations super easy as the buttons you’re hitting become far less. Leaving more time to spend worrying about other factors in a fight.
Raise Dead should also be a no brainer imo. The fact is, they do a ton of DPS. And they are part of your dps, whether or not WWS shows it. And if your guild cares that much about your dps numbers, simply pointing out a Recount example with the ghoul added in will make people see the truth.
For your third Major, honestly you can go anywhere you want. The fact is that the few that do add DPS, offer so little that buying utility somewhere else is a totally valid call. The theoretical highest dps gain would come from Bone Shield imo, followed by IT, and then PS glyphs. However the fact that you will so rarely use IT/PS with the SS Glyph makes these unfavorable compared to the normal weight I think they should be given.
Because of this I think that the Bone Shield, Anti-Magic, and Death Strike glyphs are your best options. 10 seconds of reduced magic damage means you can stand in a blizzard at Sapphiron. It means you can run through Grobbulus plague bombs if needed. It means you can run to a disc that is *really* far away at Malygos. Etc… The amount of survivability it brings to the table shouldn’t be discounted. A dead DK isn’t doing dps. Same goes for Death Strike. If a healer dies early, or any number of other bad luck factors crop up, extra self healing is nothing to scoff at.
As to minors…who doesn’t have Pestilence???
I personally picked up Horn of Winter because the less RP I spend in a fight on buffs the better… As to the last, well Raise Dead is the only other one that can increase your DPS. Sometimes when running, have you ever noticed you’re about to run out of RP and your gargoyle might desummon? This is basically a free 20 RP on tap if you absolutely *HAVE* to have it. And for when the ghoul does die, which is often, its a freebie 50% DC.
So what about clarifications on rotations, etc?
I gotta give you guys something to look forward to. 
