Heya guys!! It’s been long overdue, but here we are with the newest installment of Questions & Answers by yours truly! Hopefully you guys are not as confused as this man to the left, but if you are I’m here to allay your frustrations!! 
For some old school answers to questions that have been asked, feel free at any point to go to my Questions category. It’s nothing but questions posed to me by readers, and the answers. Keep in mind while reading them however that some specific questions might no longer hold true with new patch releases.
For those who wish to contact me/ask questions by E-mail you can reach me at:
Skeleton.Jack@hotmail.com
As a note however, reaching me by comments on this site tends to elicit responses much more quickly. Either by me or the community. I can’t respond to every E-mail always in a timely fashion sadly.
Where are the specs!?!?
If you want some specs feel free to check out my post with the 3.2 specs:
3.2 Death Knight Specs: PvE DPS and Tanking
SJ, why is this new (enter generic spec) spec better than a previous one? Why should I be switching, and is the old one still viable?
Well viable is a questionable term to begin with. Will an older spec be viable in an end game raiding environment? Probably not. Now, will it be viable in casual raiding? Sure, why not!! Any time you see a talent tree’s spec evolve into a different spec you have to realize that as talents are changed, and itemization increases in ilvl (item level), specs will change as well.
But then again sometimes not. Blood for example has stayed very static, with only minor changes with the development of DK’s. Unholy on the other hand has had a progression through 3 different specs as your gear/patches progressed, while even offering a viable DW spec as well.
If I do a “summary post” about multiple specs I’m not going to be going into details as to why these new specs are “it on a stick”. Those kind of details are best reserved for spec specific posts. Sometimes you just have to trust me until I can get around to a detailed analysis for each spec.
What speed weapons should I be using when DW’ing Frost or Unholy?
Technically speaking you always want to be wielding Slow weapons in both hands, preferably with speeds of 2.5 or 2.6 respectively. Now as Unholy you can use a Slow MH weapon and a Fast OH weapon without a noticeable DPS decrease, but as Frost that is not an option. Due to the mechanics of Strikes being based off of weapon damage, Slow always beats Fast for instant cast strikes.
Threat of Thassarian allows you to use both MH and OH weapons for Strikes (for Frost) so Frost has to use Slow/Slow for optimal DPS. Unholy however lacks this talent, meaning it’s Strikes are all based off of the MH only. While BCB will do slighly more damage with weapons of speed 2.5 and 2.6. the increase is so marginal that it doesn’t really matter. So Slow/Fast is acceptable for Unholy DW.
But what if I have a better DPS weapon that’s Fast, and not Slow?
The dps jump would have to be massive in order to replace a “Strike” weapon. Meaning MH or OH for Frost, or just the MH for Unholy. If the dps jump is 20 DPS or less, then stick with the Slow weapon with lower DPS. Yes, the weapon speed makes that much of a difference.
If you’re getting into a 25+ DPS boost, then swapping is probably the way to go. Honestly though, you should ignore fast weapons on principle and focus on Slow.
What spec is doing the most DPS now?
That question is not easily answered. It might seem easy, but due to several factors it’s not. WMO (my fav site for checking dps) doesn’t have a setting (that I can find anyways) to only show the top 20 from the last week. They do it by “all time”. On top of that, they have not added in top 20 lists for the Coliseum.
So what I did was pull up the top10 guilds (total raid wide dps) for the Beasts of Northrend. 9 of the 10 guilds had DK’s. Here were the results:
- 2H Blood: 5653 DPS
- 2H Blood: 5622 DPS
- DW Frost: 5372 DPS
- 2H Unholy OB: 5359 DPS
- 2H Blood: 5249 DPS
- 2H Unholy OB: 5077 DPS
- 2H Blood: 5035 DPS
- 2H Blood: 4917 DPS
- 2H Unholy SS: 4773 DPS
Now this is not indicative of the true potential of DK DPS for 3.2 due to several factors. DK’s in guilds who did crappier raid dps might very well have done a lot more personal DK DPS. Also this was the first fight for some people, meaning they were not at 110% due to learning curve.
On the flip side it at least indicates that 2H Blood, 2H OB Unholy, and DW Frost are all close to par at first glance. Whether this stands the test of time has yet to be determined.
I swapped to this new spec, and now my DPS has totally tanked. What gives?!?
First off, anytime you swap specs to something new expect your dps to drop dramatically. No questions asked. Be prepared to suck it. Long and hard. Just sayin’. 
Why does this happen? Itemization, familiarity, learning curve, muscle memory, etc… One of the biggest mistakes made is not regearing for a new spec. If you had BISI for say Unholy, some of those BISI wouldn’t even rank in the top5 list for Blood spec.
Each spec values different stats at varying levels. If you have a lot of the stats that are good for one spec, that same gear just might do as well with another spec. And lets not forget the learning curve.
I don’t care how awesome you think you are, if you swap specs you won’t be as good with the “new shiny toy” as you were with the spec you’ve been playing for at least a month or two.
DPS is made by a contribution of multiple events:
- Spec
- Proper Gear
- Experience/Practice
- Proper Raid Buffs/Debuffs
- Player Skill
If you don’t bring everything to the table, then you won’t get the DPS you could be doing. Always remember to take in the big picture, or something will get left behind.
Is Frost DW a viable spec now?
If you’re still asking this then you didn’t read everything I’ve written so far. GG. A DK did 5372 DPS in the Coliseum already. So yeah, it looks viable with an expected cap breaching 7k DPS fully buffed/debuffed with T9 BISI.
If I Heart Strike one target with diseases on it, and it hits an adjacent target with 0 diseases on it, will it do full damage to both targets?
No. All Strikes get dmg multipliers based off of how many diseases you have on your target. This damage is calculated when it hits the target. So if you HS a target with 2 diseases, and then the “cleave” effect hits another target with 0 diseases, then you will do reduced dmg to that second target.
If I’m in lower ilvl gear (T7 and under), are these specs viable for me?
In a nutshell yes. There might be more optimal specs for lower itemization (like Unholy), but basically any top end spec will work for you no problem. The only time you need to consider making a wonky off-shoot spec is when raiding is not your primary time sink.
If you spend more time doing 5mans or PvP it might be time to consider swapping the specs around a little bit. But outside of PvP, any raid viable spec will work for you in any PvE environment.
Where is your DC button in your UI?
If you go back to my 2H OB post, you’ll see I have 5 bars. On the top right bar towards the far right end (4th from the right) is my DC button. For those who don’t know I play WoW with a Belkin Nostromo 52TE, or a N52 TE.
You can go read my post about the N52 TE and I HIGHLY recommend these things. IT IS THE BOMB!! And because of it, I don’t keep all of my “regular fire” buttons on my main action bar. It works for me! 
Insert *dumb* random question involving a target dummy. Yeah, I said dumb. If you said “target dummy” then I’m saying DUMB!! *grumble*
What is a Target Dummy good for? Practicing your rotation, new mods, and checking procs.
What is a Target Dummy not good for? EVERYTHING ELSE!!! I mean it damnit.
People always want to talk about their dps on a target dummy. Target dummies ruined WoW. Well…not really. But I’m tired of hearing about them. Without all raid debuffs and raid buffs, no test results from a TD will ever be viable, correct, reliable, or worth mentioning. It’s just a fact of life. The quicker you accept that fact and move on, the better.
Now if you somehow get all raid buffs, get on a dummy with full health, and get enough people there to fully debuff it… Well my hat will be off to you sir for suckering enough people to be your !@#$# boys. Otherwise, ignore the TD excepting for testing mods, procs, and rotations.
Hey I tried Disease-less again, and it was viable!!
No, it wasn’t. You just think it was. The previous 3.1 buffs to the dmg multipliers from diseases was enough to kill disease-less specs. But it still left 1 disease specs being viable. So they then increased BS dmg from diseases, and they increased the dmg on the diseases themselves.
If you play a DK now, and don’t use two diseases, then you’re nerfing your DPS.
Hey I found/tried this spec that I found on EJ (or other random site) and got x/y/z results!!
There are a ton of possible specs out there guys. And I’m sure that for some playstyles that they work. And I fully encourage everyone to always play what is fun for them. But when I list specs I tend to stick to the 2 best specs possible. And no more.
Generally speaking I find that some of the posts on other sites tend to cave in to public demand and list a ton of variant builds. While that may be “complete”, generally the message gets lost in translation. I prefer to hand over the best, or two best specs possible, and then let you have at it.
How are you doing so much damage with Death Coil in a 2H Unholy OB build?
- Are you using a Sigil of the Vengeful Heart?
- Are you using top end Unholy gear? See BISI.
- Did you spec correctly?
- Are you in a 25 man will full raid buffs and debuffs?
- Are you using the 2SR to your advantage, and working in HoW every 20 seconds?
Now in some fights DC dropped down to number 2 or 3 for dmg sources, but generally speaking it was high as hell (excepting the AoE fights like Thorim/Freya).
How did you do so much DPS on Hodir as Frost?
That is just a Frost fight due to all of the spell caster buffs. In general, it’s a caster fight and Frost has a lot of stuff that benefits there. Kind of like how Unholy decimates at Freya, Frost decimates at Hodir.
What about leveling builds?
I actually plan on getting back to these one I’m done with the 3.2 stuff. That said, it’ll still probably be several weeks before that happens simply because I need to do detailed posts on specs still, and get BISI underway soon.
New BISI posts?!?!
Yes, new BISI posts!! It’ll be another week minimum before this gets started (if not 2 weeks), but it will be coming much sooner this time. Just nailing down some numbers and waiting to see how sims are playing out in practice before doing the final prep work.
MOAR QUESTIONS!!!!
I don’t want this post to get too long, but basically I plan on answering more questions. I’ll have a second questions post up sometime late this evening, or tomorrow.
Feel free to post more questions on this post if you have any in general, or questions about things discussed here!!
-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.
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