Archive for January 1st, 2009
Heya guys!! So…time to put my foot in my mouth eh? 
Dual Wield spec is the highest, best, most redonkulous DPS spec possible for Death Knights. An Unholy DK (which was the best) can attain 6k+ DPS in Best in Slot items eventually at Patchwerk. A DW DK can attain 6k+ DPS in sub-optimal gear at Patchwerk. And the DW build is getting buffs in the upcoming patch on top of it. o.O
0/31/40 is the best DPS Spec in game. Yes, the 0/32/39 spec is actually wrong. But it’s an easy misconception players will eventually come around to. Now there are alternatives to this spec.
- Merciless Combat – 6% bonus damage to two of your attacks for only 35% of the fight does not stack up to benefits attained in Unholy. Since the goal is to reach Howling Blast, once this is done you leave this talent with only 1 point.
- Night of the Dead – The upcoming buff to this will grant your pets (Ghoul confirmed only atm) 70% avoidance to all AoE damage. Considering that Ghouls do roughly 500-600 DPS full talented, keeping them alive is a big deal. Add in that you can resummon pretty much whenever they die, and it becomes a no brainer. While this is not useful in fights such as Patchwerk, this will overall give you more total dps on Boss Encounters than skipping it will. If you’re looking to get ranked however, or to show off your E-peen at Patchwerk, skip this talent.
- Unholy Aura – If you already have an Unholy DK in your raid then you can skip this talent. If not, this talent is a mandatory Raid talent. Not providing it when it is lacking is grounds to boot you from a Raid imo. I sure as hell wouldn’t bring you if we didn’t have it and you refused to spec into it. It’s like an Enhancement Shaman refusing to spec into Improved Windfury Totem and Unleashed Rage.
- Bone Shield – If you can pull points from NotD or from Desecration, then you can pick this up (depending on your alternative spec choices). If you are the only DK in the raid, and have nowhere else to pull points from then take it from Crypt Fever. While NotD is a better buy, CF is not. With only one DK in the raid, Bone Shield is greater than +10% disease damage. If you are going for an E-peen build for Patchwerk, then you could pull NotD and get Bone Shield.
- Desecration – This talent is sub-optimal for just about every Boss Encounter in game excepting Patchwerk and Loatheb. Maybe 2-3 others tops. And even on the others, there are times where you cannot count on standing in it always.
The E-Peen Build: 0/32/39
Basically this spec takes advantage of the points made above. For a fight like Patchwerk where there is no movement or AoE damage to deal with, this spec will outperform anything. If you want to get ranked on a site, or get SS’s of the best possible DPS spec…this is your baby here. It is not however a practical raid dps spec, as it loses dps and raid viability on just about every single Boss Encounter in game outside of Loatheb and Patchwerk.
Weapon Choices
The consensus says that you need to go Fast/Fast for your two weapons. Ideally using weapons ranging from 1.5 to 1.6 base weapon speed. However I have seen reports of DW DK’s doing comprable damage with SLOW/FAST as well. Due to the nature of player skill, gear, and RNG it’s nearly impossible to determine the factors on why they are both so close. However napkin math atm does show FAST/FAST as the overall winner. If you get a SLOW MH weapon that is 10+ dps more than your current weapon, I would likely swap to it until you find a FAST MH upgrade.
Rotations
PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> HB
PS -> IT -> IT -> IT -> HB
*OR*
IT -> PS -> HB -> BS -> BS
IT -> PS -> HB -> IT -> IT
The basic concept is to keep HB at the same point in each rotation, while refreshing the disease DoT’s. Whenever your Runes are on CD, burn your RP into Death Coils. When possible burn your Rime proc’s on HB. If HB is on CD when your Runes come up, just burn them in to IT/PS. I’ve heard of a DK who did 6k+ dps on Patchwerk who did not use his Rime procs, but cannot confirm that information yet.
Glyphs
Glyph of Blood Strike is misleading to begin with because it works with BS and Heart Strike. The deal here is that the Frostfire debuff applies to bosses, even though they don’t run slower. Which means the BS Glyph works, and you get the bonus +20% to all of your BS and HS on any boss if there is one Frostfire spec’d mage in your raid. And as luck would have it, Frosfire spec is the highest raid dps spec available for mages!! /WIN If you do not have a Frostfire Mage in your raid, then pick something else like PS or Bone Shield Glyphs.
Runeforging
The DPS gain from RI with any FF Mage in the raid makes this the overall best choice over FC and Rune of Cinderglacier, which is rather crappy to begin with. Dual FC is probably the highest DPS possible, however there is no math yet to prove it.
Gargoyle
This lil guy benefits from your AP at the time of casting and also can gain buffs once cast. Why is this relevant? If you have Mirror of Truth, Rune of the Fallen Crusader, or some other item that can USE/PROC any kind of AP gain then you want to save your Gargoyle summon for when that happens. You also need to coordinate with the Shaman in the raid to set a certain % of health to use Heroism, and to call out a 5 second warning before casting it in Vent/TS.
Typically Raid Leaders will call for Heroism to be thrown down at 35% (+/-) depending on the raid’s dps capacity. Far too many class have relevant abilities that do bonus damage below 35% or 20% health. So Heroism is typicall called for between 35-50% health on a boss depending on how much dps you can do. On a few encounters it is called for at 90% in order to burn a boss down before he can unleash certain abilities, etc…
When you know roughly when the Heroism will be called for, prepare for it. For about 20 seconds before the Heroism call, watch for AP procs and then fire it off. You can even call in Vent/TS at that point that the Shaman can fire Heroism off when they are ready so long as there are no other DK’s who need to get a Gargoyle out as well. Doing this will cause a massive damage spike to your Gargoyle. I’ve seen him do 15% of my total damage on a boss before.
Itemization
Expertise Cap and Spell Hit Cap. Just do it. You can roll off with just Melee Hit Cap to start np, but eventually you want to reach Spell Hit Cap in a 25 man raid with debuffs out. Need info on how to do this? Go read here: Hit and Expertise Revisited
After that Strength is your best stat. As to how to weight everything after that…I’m not sure. I’m still trying to find some solid weight scales for this DW build, but it’s so new that no one has the math done yet. We’ll see how it goes.
/FIN
So that’s it guys. The best raiding spec possible, which is due for some buffs in 3.0.8, and all of the major tricks that go along with it. I personally expect this build to see some kind of a nerf as Ghostcrawler stated more than once that they did not want to prop up DW builds and that they wanted to see 2H DK builds as the best viable DPS builds… But we will see.
-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.
P.S. I changed the pic. I did not really like that pic. I only used it because it reminded me of this one…so I just put it up again, heh.
