Heya guys!!  Here we are with the second installment of Questions and Answers by SJ for the 3.2 release.  Hopefully this picture will encourage intelligent questions, but you never know about some people do you?  o.O

As always if you wish to reach me by e-mail I’m at:

Skeleton.Jack@hotmail.com

That said, it’s not usually the best place to contact me.  Leaving comments on site usually garners responses from either myself or the community far faster than e-mails do.  But if you need to e-mail me, there is my address!! 

So lets jump right in shall we?

I keep using all of my Rune CD’s and RP, but I always have left over time where I’m doing nothing?

Are you using a proper spec and rotation?  Are you in Unholy Presence when you shouldn’t be?  Are you using HoW when possible for extra RP generation?  Answer those questions first and you can go from there.

Got a good DK simulator for DPS?

Ever heard of a guy named Kathorie over at the EJ Forums?  That’s the sim I use personally.  I also go off of gut instinct (sometimes no matter what the numbers tell me I go with something else), other sims and researchers, in game testing, etc. 

No one thing will give you the big picture.  But collecting data from multiple sources will.

What nerfs can we be expecting?

Outside of a nerf to the Unholy 2H OB build, I wouldn’t expect anything coming our way soon.

What is Threat of Thassarian?

See the picture above please.  Note that I originally provided a link and a hover over tooltip for said talent.  If you can’t figure it out from there, then go away.  I can’t help you.

Is Armor Penetration that important for Blood specs?

Yes.  Actually make that a resounding YES!!!  Basically once you get into the 6000 AP+ (static, not with procs like Unholy Strength) you want APen over Str for Blood.  It’s really that good.  For Frost and Unholy it’s nice, but nowhere near that level.

Is DW viable while leveling?

As Frost, hell yeah!!  ToT makes DW totally viable in all fields of PvE dps.  I would not recommend leveling as DW Unholy however.

What’s the deal with Hit and Expertise?

I have not updated my post since 3.1, but I didn’t see anything go live that should have altered anything.  Please see my post:  Hit and Expertise Revisited

Glyph of Disease and Glyph of Pestilence

These are not the same thing.  GoD is a Major Glyph, refreshing timers on the diseases on your current target when you fire off Pestilence.  GoP is a Minor Glyph, increasing the range of your Pestilence.

How does Unholy Blight work?

It is a passive talent now that goes off any time you fire off a Death Coil.  You never lose damage from UB unless the mob dies before the duration of UB ends.  Each tick just stacks (or rolls over) as it is applied.  Meaning if you had 3 UB’s active on a mob doing 200 damage each, then until one of them ended UB would tick for 600 damage every tick (3 UB’s at 200 each = 600).

It does 20% of your Death Coil exactly.  Nothing modifies it except for the Glyph of Unholy Blight, which is complete and total crap.  Don’t get it.  No modifiers increase the UB damage because they were already applied to the Death Coil.  If they applied again to UB, that would be called double dipping (getting a bonus more than once).  And that goes against the game mechanics.

Should I break x Set Bonus from my Tier # armor?

Please see my BISI page.  It has in the T8 content the effective AP bonuses for each Tier 2/4 set bonus, as well as the AP values for armor.  You can best determine if a Set Bonus will make keeping lower ilvl items by using my BISI posts.

I spec’d Blood 50/0/21 and with UB it’s way better!!

No, it’s not.  You just think it is.  If you have more fun using UB than DRW then sure, stick with it.  But if you want top end dps, then go spec into DRW.  It isn’t maybe better than UB.  It just is.

DW Tanking vs 2H Tanking

Look, DW Tanking just is not a viable tool.  You *will* take more damage than a 2H tank.  I don’t care what drivel you have to say on the matter, or what tankspot link you find.  DW causes more parries, which causes Boss Parry Haste, which means you take more damage.  End of Story.  Sorry.

On top of that, your Rune Strikes will do less damage (coming from a 1H and not a 2H) which means you will be doing less TPS as well.  I know it sounds cool, but DW tanking on a boss that gets parry haste is not viable.  Could you do it and make it work?  Probably.  But the 2H tank will do more TPS and take less damage in an equal setting.

But there are no Crushing Blows, etc…

/SIGH  Really?  I mean you’re like a fricking pit bull snagged on a friggin’ bone!

The way parry haste mechanics work, boss white attacks get pro rated haste to speed up attacks to make up for the animations used to parry an attack.  This means that additonal hits after that pro rated attack are still firing off normally.  The end result is that you can have a boss fire off 2 normal attacks and a special attack all in under 1 second due to parry haste mechanics.

This is further accentuated by DW’ers because there are so many more parries that the oddball occurance of multiple attacks within a short span of time increases significantly.  I’ve seen logs where 2H tanks took 3-4 hits in under 2 seconds.  With DW the chance of it happening only gets worse.

Sure you won’t take successive crushing blows anymore.  But if you get hit for 8k damage 4 times when you already under 100% health in under 2 seconds, you jut might die.  Go figure…

Why did you not take Imp Icy Touch in tanking builds?

Available in a raid you have Infected Wounds, Thunder Clap (w/Improved Thunder Clap), and Judgements of the Just in addition to Frost Fever (w/Improved Icy Touch).  In my personal experience one of those 3 is always provided in a 25 man raid by someone else. 

If you have a different raid makeup, or different needs in say a 10man, then feel free to spec into Imp IT.  However for the most part it is a waste of points as a tank unless you *have* to provide it.  Also, if you paid attention I specifically said in the tank specs: 

 ”As with all tanking specs, your raid environment will usually force you into changing your spec no matter what a cookie cutter spec says.”

And then there were examples as well…

Bladed Armor versus Desolation for tanks?

I could be wrong there.  I’m not a massive tank guru.  I’ll have to look into that one.

Why no DnD in rotations, or AoE rotations?

If you don’t know how to do an AoE rotation by this point then I’m not sure that I can help you.  That’s like asking me to tell you how to put diseases on a target.  However, later on I will be putting them into specialized spec posts for completeness sake, but they should be relatively obvious.

As to DnD being used in a ST rotation for tanks, that’s ludicrous.  No shot.

What does TPS mean?

Threat Per Second

I asked a question, but you never answered it?!!?

Ask several questions first.  If the answer is yes, then that is specifically why I did not answer the question.

• Was the comment non-stop run on sentences with poor grammer and punctuation, in one solid paragraph?
• Was it asking me to critique a build/spec from a link?
• Was it asking me to check your armory and compare gear?  See BISI.
• Was is asking for some kind of a gear guide?  See BISI.
• Was the question already answered in the post itself?
• Was the question already answered in a comment?

If your question falls into one of those categories, I don’t answer them.  The first few simply because I don’t have the time to critique individual player’s gear and specs.  The last few because that’s just stupidity or laziness on your part.  Dem’s da factz!!

Could you explain better how to “RP”?

RP stanks for Runic Power.  In a rotation you can’t always say when a RP dump should happen.  In Blood it’s specific because you have zero time to work anything in.  In Frost it’s complicated due to Rime procs, FS’s, etc.  And in Unholy sometimes it’s a struggle to just never hit max RP and use it all before hand.

Later when I do full posts on each spec I will cover this more in depth.  But always keep two things in mind.  The 2SR, and always always always fire off RP abilities whenever you have Runes on CD.

How much Hit do I want for DW Frost?

It’s really more of a question of APE values, but I’ll try to give a rough estimate.  You want 288.53 Hit Rating for sure.  That means that you’re covered for melee and spell hit if you’re getting Heroic Presence, spec’d into Virulence, and getting either Virulence or Misery.  As to past that point, sure you’re getting some benefit.  But Hit isn’t all that great anymore.

However in a 10man environment where you might not have all of that, or your raid is missing some of those raid buffs/debuffs, then you will get a significant upgrade on dps from Hit until you make up for that missing amount.

Please see my post:  Hit and Expertise Revisited

So that’s it actually!!

I looked through all of the comments for the past week, and this pretty much answers everything.  Feel free to post more comments questions and I’ll try to answer them.  But for now the Q&A posts will be taking a step back while I gear up for new specs posts.

I will be doing a specific post for each spec with detailed talent point summaries/swaps, explanations, full rotation breakdowns, etc…

Need some Specs?  Go check out:  Live 3.2 Death Knight Specs: DK DPS, Tank, and PvP

Looking for other DK questions and answers?  See my Questions Category Page with tons of posts with detailed questions (by the readers) answered by me.

Posts you should read

Best in Slot Items – This page has listings for all T7 and T8 itemization currently.  It breaks the gear down into 6 different categories depending on your current hit and expertise ratings.  Highly useful for picking your gear out from instances..

The Two Second Rule, 2SR – This page explains the mechanics behind the 2SR.  As a DK it is paramount that you understand how this mechanic works to take advantage of all of the tools you have available.

Hit and Expertise Revisted – Most people don’t actually understand how Hit and Expertise come into play for a DK.  Or even what the caps are, or what they mean to you.  Here is your post.  Caps, ratings, etc.  It’s all here.

Blood Tap – Most DK’s never use this ability, but it’s actually key to many specs.  If you have any 1 Rune special abilties in your spec such as Vampiric Blood, Ghoul Frenzy, Bone Shield, and Unbreakable Armor then you need to read this post to see how you can use BT once a minute to fire these off without messing your rotations up ever.

Death Knight Macros – I need to go back and revamp this page.  Make better headings, better names, categories, etc…  But if you don’t mind pilfering through it, it’s still got some decent macros in there to use.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

 

Tags: Questions