DualWield DeathKnight Blog

3.2 Start for DW

2009-08-05T07:26:00.003+02:00

3.2 is here so I'll sum you up what Specs are going to be good for the start:

1. Frost DW Spec - 0/53/18

Rotation:
IT - PS - OB - BS - BS - FS
OB - OB - OB - FS - (FS)

Priority Rotation (most important at the top):
- Frost Fever
- Blood Plague
- Killing Machine + Rime
- Obliterate
- Blood Strike
- Frost Strike

The rotation focuses on the power of Obliterate, therefore the diesease must be up! Killing Machine and Rime procs are to be used together to get the optimal DPS.

Presence: Blood presence
Runeforges: FC/RI
Sigil: Awareness

2. Frost DW Spec - 3/51/17

This spec sacrifices IIT in order to improve personal DPS. As such, it can skip the 6 points used for (Improved) Icy Talons, letting it pick up every other DPS talent in the frost tree and leaving 3 points for utility talents. It uses "Glyph of Disease" to maximise the usage of Obliterate and Rime procs.

OB - OB - BS - Pest - FS
OB - OB - (FS) - OB - FS

Presence: Blood presence
Runeforges: FC/RI
Sigil: Awareness

3. Unholy DW Spec - 0/17/54

First simulations show that Unholy DW may keep up with the new Frost DW. So this spec uses only single rune attacks, and generates massive runic power in order to fuel death coil. This Spec will take the most advantage from the new Unholy Blight spell. This spec also features a near 100% uptime on ghoul frenzy.

PS - IT - BS - DC - GhulFuror - IT - BS - DC
PS - IT - IT - DC - DC - PS - IT - IT - DC - DC

Presence: Unholy - You need a lower GCD to fit all the single rune attacks.
Runeforges: FC/FC
Sigil: Vengeful heart

I'll try the first spec today and I am really looking forward to that!

Source: ElitistJerks DW Thread

Surreal Fantasy

2009-07-21T19:12:00.003+02:00

Just wanted to share that with you... wanna see real FANTASY besides Warcraft?

Check it out at DeviantART:

Please leave some Feedback there. Would be great :)

Finally - First Test!

2009-06-27T22:57:00.003+02:00

I was finally able to log in on the PTR, thanks to the "great" B.Net Account which delayed the whole thing. I decided to try the spec that seems to be the most obvious for 3.2:

15/53/3

I did not spec "Merciless Combat" because of the Target Dummy beeing on 1 HP all the time.

Only selfbuffed with HoW in Blood Presence, no Ghoul or any other Buff / Drink

All I can say for now is that this is really fun! I was able to top my personal best DPS which I pull on Live with Blood 2hand when I am alone at the Bossdummy. Infight I managed to keep up over 3600 DPS, nearly reaching 3700 with nothing but HoW.

This spec gives you much work to do, and I think I might shift some points to Unholy for Epidemic... because you really run out of diseases very fast with all the Procs for HB and those many FS you can spam.

So the final spec may look like: 10/54/7

But it is sure nice to see how this is working out, and it is really good to see DualWield coming again. I am really looking forward to the Patch!!

PTR up - New Talent Trees

2009-06-23T22:03:00.002+02:00

MMO-Champion has the new talent trees available... and ToT is very deep in Frost.
So no possibilities for a hybrid. That was kind of clear :)

So I have now 3 different ideas to go with... and that need to be tried:

10/46/15

0/53/18

15/53/3

0/45/26

I'll keep you up to date here. Please post your ideas!

Shakes & Fidget Browsergame

2009-06-23T19:31:00.003+02:00

Shakes & Fidget Browsergame is finally here!!!

http://87.106.249.160/index.php?rec=423

Just join it with my link above, would be great and help a bit!
And have some fun, really nice done =)

BLICKVANG

2009-06-23T14:08:00.002+02:00

Just wanted to share something of my company... kicks ass ^^

BLICKVANG on Facebook

BLICKVANG Online

Edurol Style

2009-06-21T22:39:00.000+02:00

Some stuff from Ulduar, starting to look really decent :-)

New Spec...?

2009-06-21T12:43:00.002+02:00

So how could a new DW spec look like?

Obviously Blizzard wants us to go for Deep Frost as stated prevously. They don't want to make the mistake again from pre 3.0 where we were able to push DPS so high by speccing Hybrid 0/32/39

So it will be something like around this one:

0/53/15

With the last 3 points free for the new talent.
If UH or Blood will be better in addition to frost has to be tested.

What do you think?

Speculations

2009-06-21T12:27:00.002+02:00

The new talent for DualWield has risen some speculations. How will it work?

Some players think that the OH will not count for the damage, just the MH is important for calculatig the strike damage which will be cut in "half" for the OH strike.

But honestly, me and some other "Theorycrafters" think, that this won't be the way it will be done. This would mean that it wont matter what weapon you put in your OH. An ilvl 1 Dagger would do it for that. So it seems like, after the problems Blizzard spotted with our Procs using faster weapons, a calculation for OH based on the Strike you used and the weapon dmg of the weapon will be the way it will be done.

So if you strike with f.a. Obliterate, the strike will be calculated for the MH and seperately for the OH. Then, the OH damage will "roughly" be cut in "half", equaling the damage that you will do to the target.

In a formular:

x% of MH weapon dmg + y% per Disease = dmg1
x% of OH weapon dmg + y% per Disease = dmg2
dmg1 + (dmg2 * 0.5) = dmgTotal

Found this on the EJ Forums, thanks to the Author for that!

So what does that mean? Easy to say:

SLOW weapons will be more important for us!

Patch 3.2 Notes - DW gets it!!

2009-06-18T22:10:00.001+02:00

Finally!!!

Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.
Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
Talents

Blood

Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.

Frost

Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 5/10/15%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.

Unholy

Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

New DW idea

2009-05-22T17:43:00.002+02:00

Just wanted to give this one a shot:

DW Unholy DPS - ElitistJerks

Looks pretty interesting, I might give it a try... but surely I am lacking of the Ulduar equip because I am going for Blood ArP. But I may also wait for the next major patch, where DW will get its update...

I changed my second talent spec to 0/13/58 and if the raid is comfortable with it, I am going to try it with my oldschool DW-gear from Naxx ^^

Anyone tried this DW Unholy build out?

Update on DW

2009-05-21T12:12:00.003+02:00

Ghostcrawler posted a statement after a user posted his concerns about DualWield... here you go, short and painless:

"Next major patch."

Source - Offical Forums

DW Explanation

2009-04-18T16:12:00.002+02:00

So another Bluepost for DW... great that they are telling us now that they wanted to stop DW completely before redoing it.
Dual-Wield spec nerf
"This is one of those categories, like the Conflag nerf, that we feel like you have options. We needed to kill the DW spec where you pretty much ignore weapons and just try and proc big spells. That was not the DW DK style we wanted. We felt like we had a choice between OP DW DKs and no DW DKs and thought the second was a more acceptable risk.

As we have explained, one of our ideas long term is to give Frost a couple of DW talents. It might not take much more than "Your Frost Striks and Oblits now hit with two weapons." Having 3 tanking and PvP trees is challenging enough. Expanding that matrix by also having DW Blood PvP and DW Unholy tanking gets to the insane level. But having DW Frost PvP, DW Frost PvE and DW Frost tanking (only) may be more manageable. We are not at all sure if this is the approach we will use, but it's an idea.

DKs were overpowered in a few ways. Fixing that was more important thank keeping DW at equal dps to 2H. That does not mean we have given up on DW for DKs in the same way that we no longer support 2H for Enhancement shamans.

We would not turn Frost into a DW tree. We would just make sure all DW DKs were Frost. And again, this is just an idea. We may reject it for some reason. As I have said many times, we want DKs to be a class that uses 2H or DW. We do not want DW to dominate, as it typically does in classes that have that option."

Armor Penetration

2009-04-18T16:08:00.000+02:00

So, Ghostcrawler told us how this works:

"Okay, here is a fairly technical explanation we put together for how armor pen works.

We didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against low armor targets, like it had been in BC. We also didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against high armor targets.

So, we decided on a system where there is a cap on how much armor the Armor Penetration Rating can be applied to. So, the first X armor on the target is reduced by the percentage listed in the Armor Penetration Rating tooltip, and all armor past that X is unaffected. Another way of understanding that is we multiply the percentage in the tooltip times the minimum of the two values: the cap, and the amount of armor on the target after all other modifiers.

Computing the cap is a little tricky unless you are already familiar with how World of Warcraft armor works. There is an armor constant we’ll call C.
C is derived as follows (in some pseudocode):

If (level<60)
C=400+85*targetlevel

Else
C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59)

For a level 80 target, C=15232.5.
For a level 83, C=16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3.

A level 80 warrior creature has 9729 armor. C=15232.5. So, the cap is (9729+15232.5)/3=8320.5. Let’s say a player has 30% armor penetration from armor penetration rating and no other modifiers that complicate the calculation (talents, Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, etc.). The game chooses the minimum of 8320.5 and 9729, so 8320.5. That is multiplied by 30% = 2496.15, and so that much armor is ignored. The effective armor on the target is 7232.85 (9729-2496.15). From a player point of view, the armor penetration rating didn’t ignore the full 30%, but instead ignored 25.66%. (85.5% as effective as expected).

These equations should help you be able to test and verify that Armor Penetration Rating is working correctly and as we designed. The tooltip is not actually inaccurate, as it states: “Enemy armor reduced by up to 30.00%.” That "up to" is key.

Please be sure to test without any other effects which modify the armor calculation (Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, Mace Specialization, etc.) as they may involve other systems that add additional complexity to the calculation."

Webvaluer...

2009-04-15T14:03:00.001+02:00

Interesting little toy...

My site is worth
$2,381.9
Your website value?

Blue Post PTR

2009-04-04T10:37:00.001+02:00

Newest Bluepost on the DualWield Problem:

We want both dual wielding and 2-handers to be viable for Death Knights, balancing both of these inside each tree has been exceptionally challenging and caused an issue or two. If we have to make it so DKs have one type of fighting, it will be the 2-handers.

We are considering something like making the frost tree the dual-wield tree, so some frost specific abilities would hit with both weapons through that tree only, and then have unholy/blood as 2-hand focused. Nothing is set in stone though.

Great, I don't know what they test or how they test, but DW is far away from being viable on the PTR now. It really is a mysterium to me how Blizzard is testing... we will never understand it.

As for that bluepost, I am surprised they picked up my idea I came up with months ago. The problem are the talent trees, so take one and transform it into a DW tree and seperate the talents for DW from Twohand.

If Blizzard would only listen a bit to some experienced players...

It shall be done...

2009-03-13T23:45:00.003+01:00

... that Edurol will be a BloodKnight from now on. At least for some weeks because of my raid :)

The Patchnotes and tests from the PTR as it is now, and as it seems to remain in the future builds, made my decision easier to support my raid a bit better and to try out something else.

So... stay tuned here. Maybe, sometimes, there will be a DualWield BloodKnight ;-)

New PTR Build 9658

2009-03-06T21:44:00.001+01:00

Frost

Howling Blast damage has been doubled (from 259-281 to 518-562 for max rank), cooldown changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Frost Presence now reduces spell damage taken by 10%. (Down from 15%)
Guile of Gorefiend now increases damage done by your Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and Obliterate abilities by 5/10/15%. (Old - Critical damage only, 15/30/45%)
Lichborne doesn't increase the chance of your enemies to miss you anymore.

Blood

Dancing Rune Weapon now lasts 20 sec (up from 10sec) and last 2 (up from 1 sec) sec per 5 additional runic power but attacks for ?% reduced damage.
Will of the Necropolis now cannot occur more often than once every 15 sec.
Might of Mograine now increase all damage done by your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate abilities by 3/7/10%. (Old - Critical damage only, 10/20/30%)
Vampiric Blood cooldown has been increased from 1 min to 2 min.
Blade Barrier now decrease damage taken by 1/2/3/4/5% for 10 sec.

Unholy

Bone Shield cooldown has been increased from 1min to 2min.
Ghoul Frenzy cooldown has been removed.
Blood-Caked Blade proc limitation has been removed. (Old - This effect cannot occur more often than once every 3 sec.)
Outbreak now Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 10/20/30% (Down from 15/30/45%) and Scourge Strike by 7/13/20%. (Down from 10/20/30%)
Necrosis now affects all your auto attacks. (Old - Only Main-Hand)

Seems that BCB and Necrosis now remain viable for DualWield, but the change to HB seems a bit strange... now with 10 sec CD? How should that work? It is only usable once per mobgroup because of the rune CD... I don't really get that one. Do you?

2009-02-27T06:56:00.001+01:00

PTR is pretty laggy, no matter when I go online its around 400 to 500 ms... testing is possible, but not quite smooth. So I specced my 0/51/20 to give it a try:

~5 Mins test
Blood Presence
HoW
Ghoul
Slow / Fast with UC / RI

~2600 DPS infight
~2500 after

Looking better than the 0/20/51 testing, but I don't really know why because of the lags you are not able to do a smooth rotation. And still the Patch itself is very buggy.

But it is nice to see FrostStrike on 2nd place, but HB only on 4th place, BCB not in the Top 8 and Necrosis not there because the dummy was on 1 HP. I did not spec Merciless Combat because of that, or else there would have been wrong numbers.

I think this spec has some potential, but I am also thinking about a Tribrid like 10 in Blood, at least 51 in UH and some in Frost without KM. But I am not sure about SS, imho Blizzard will fix that... way to high damage for a onehanded weapon.

2009-02-26T07:43:00.004+01:00

This morning I tried to test, new build was put up on the PTR. But unfortunately it was really laggy, and that at 7am in the morning...

0/20/51

5 minutes test
Unholy Presence active
selfbuffed with HoW
Ghoul
2x Gargoyle
Slow / Fast with UC / Razorice

Rotation:
PS-IT-BS-UB-BS-IT-DC
PS-IT-IT-DC-IT-IT-DC (Ghoul Frenzy when ready)

Recount showed:
Infight ~ 2400 DPS
After ~2301 DPS

1. Icy touch 28.4%
2. Melee 28%
3. DeathCoil 9%
4. Unholy Blight 7.4%
5. Frost Fever 7%
6. Blood Plague 7%
7. Plague Strike 4.7%
8. Blood Strike 4.2%

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A 2nd 5 minutes test
Blood Presence active
selfbuffed with HoW
Ghoul
2x Gargoyle
Slow / Fast with UC / Razorice

Recount showed:
Infight ~ 2500 DPS
After ~2328 DPS

1. Icy Touch 28.9%
2. Melee 27.1%
3. Frost Fever 8.4%
4. DeathCoil 7.8%
5. Blood Plague 7.6%
6. Unholy Blight 6.5%
7. Necrosis 4.3%
8. Plague Strike 4.2%

It was a bit rough to play due to the bad latency... there should be some more DPS I think, but I am unsure that it can keep up with Live at the moment. In Blood Presence you clearly do more DPS infight but you really feel the difference in the global CD and rune CD when using Unholy Presence.

If possible I will try one of my developed Hybridbuilds next time.

First PTR impression

2009-02-24T21:18:00.002+01:00

Horrible...

Mostly buggy, Pestilence is missing (??), graphic bugs, lags... but I was able to do one thing:
10 min autohits unbuffed and without Ghoul in Darnassus, the only Dummy left alone with HP:

What you can see there - BCB really going down, only 2.9% when just doing autohits, so when pulling a normal rotation the overall participation in dmg will go further down... seems that it might be OK to skip the new BCB.

Also the procs for KM look a bit strange.

PTR 3.1

2009-02-24T07:48:00.005+01:00

PTR 3.1 UPDATE - The Frost Tree was changed completely.

HowlingBlast now is the new 51-point Talend, therefore our beloved 0/32/39 Hybridbuild is history. I quickly took some ideas for new talentbuilds, here you go (click the numbers for link):

The new 0/20/51

Brand new 0/51/20

New Hybrid: 0/27/44

Improved 0/32/39 to: 0/30/41

The Patch details for now:

Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage.
Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its radius has been decreased.
Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
Death Pact: This heal cannot be a critical.
Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
Pestilence does no damage and has only one rank.
Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove hots. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate.
Raise Ally has a >15 min cooldown to keep it out of Arena.
Raise Dead: Duration lowered to 60 sec. and cooldown lowered to 3 min. The cooldown on this ability now begins when the pet dies rather than when it is summoned.
Rune of Cinderglacier now procs per minute instead of a 5% chance.
Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%.
Strangulate no longer does damage and has been reduced to 1 rank.

Talents
Blood

Blood Aura: Replaced with Improved Blood Presence. This allows the deathknight to keep the healing from damage done bonus of Blood Presence in any presence, and increases healing received while in Blood Presence.
Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence.
Bloodworms now heal more.
Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
Scent of Blood will now proc on a dodge, parry or taking damage, and internal cooldown lowered to 10 from 20 sec.
Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3.

Frost

The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter.
Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage.
Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20%
Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.
Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). Moved to position currently occupied by Glacier Rot.
Endless Winter: Moved to position currently occupied by Chillblains.
Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence.
Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20. Moved to position currently occupied by Endless Winter.
Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree (HB is now at 51, and HC is now at 31). In addition, the damage bonus for targets with Frost Fever is now only 20%.
Icy Talons - This talent how has a new icon.
Runic Power Mastery down to 2 ranks.

Unholy

Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect.
Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance.
Epidemic: Epidemic now has 3 ranks (adding an additional 3 sec of disease duration). Magic Suppression is 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.
Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 sec.
Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks.
New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.
Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities.
Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%.
Scourge Strike: Damage increased.
Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the Deathknight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence.
Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent.

Also I like the idea of the new "Unholy Aura" talent with improved Rune CD. Makes me think of using Unholy Presence with 2 slow weapons (or 2 fast weapons maybe?) and a sort of new hybrid theory:

0/23/48

I think t his one could turn out pretty well. What do u think?

DualWield Power

2009-02-12T10:46:00.001+01:00

Edurol - guarded by his two Padawans

In yesterdays Raid we have been 3 DualWield SpellKnights... so I experimented a bit further with Photoshop ^^

World of Artcraft

2009-02-11T18:05:00.002+01:00

I gave it a try... what do u think?

Shazaaaam!!!

2009-02-08T07:36:00.002+01:00

Upcoming changes in 3.1

2009-02-06T11:43:00.002+01:00

Blizzard posted some information about the upcoming changes in Patch 3.1 for DeathKnights. It seems that DualWield Hybrids as we have them now will be history... Blizzard really wants to put that to an end, so what I think will happen: KM and HB will go deeper into Frost so that it will be impossible to get it with 0/32/39.

Overview of the changes:

Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise

It seems that the in the future, our beloved DualWield SpellKnight will change into a FrostKnight or UnholyKnight... and also a bit ridicoulus:

Gargoyle gets a nerf - now gets a buff again but goes deeper into the tree. Oh well... that is what I call a good developement *rolleyes*

Sorry for the frustration.

New Berserking calculations...

2009-02-01T16:02:00.004+01:00

I made myself some kind of spread sheet to do some calculations for our enchantments in comparison to Berserking.

Now I want to show you some rotations with 2 cycles using 0/32/39 without any enchantments, with Cinderglacier, and with Berserking.

Bacis for my calculations:

AP unbuffed: 3000
AP with Berserking: 3400
Including Impurity

Mainhand: Angry Dread
(391.5 weapondmg, 156.6 dps at 2.5 speed)
Offhand: Split Greathammer
(250.5 weapondmg, 156.6 dps at 1.6 speed)

10 sec per cycle
=> 4 swings with Mainhand, 6 swings with Offhand

Talentbuild: 0/32/39

Icy Touch @ 440 dmg

without any enchantment: 1515.09
with Razorice: 1590.84
with Cinderglacier: 1818.10
with Berserking: 1608.04

Howling Blast @ 540 dmg

without any enchantment: 1308.45
with Razorice: 1373.87
with Cinderglacier: 1570.14
with Berserking: 1379.95

DeathCoil @ 443 dmg

without any enchantment: 1005.5
with Cinderglacier: 1206.6
with Berserking: 1080.5

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cycle 1 - no Berserking, no other enchantment proc
PS-IT-BS-BS-DC-HB

5216.99 Spelldmg + 5489.11 Swingdmg
=> 10706.09 dmg

Cycle 2 - no Berserking, no other enchantment proc
PS-IT-IT-DC-IT-IT

7296.29 Spelldmg + 5489.11 Swingdmg
=>12785.4 dmg
plus optional HB when Rime procs => 14093.85 dmg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cycle 1 - with Berserking
PS-IT-BS-BS-DC-HB

5456.44 Spelldmg + 5911.97 Swingdmg
=> 11368.4 dmg

Cycle 2 - with Berserking
PS-IT-IT-DC-IT-IT

7743.09 Spelldmg + 5911.97 Swingdmg
=> 13655.06 dmg
plus optional HB when Rime procs => 15035.01 dmg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cycle 1 - with Cinderglacier (used up for IT and DC)
PS-IT-BS-BS-DC-HB

5721.1 Spelldmg + 5489.11 Swingdmg
=> 11210.21 dmg

Cycle 2 - with Cinderglacier (used up for 2x IT)
PS-IT-IT-DC-IT-IT

7902.32 Spelldmg + 5489.11 Swingdmg
=> 13391.43 dmg
plus optional HB when Rime procs => 14699.88 dmg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion:

One cycle with Berserking is way better than a cycle without anything.
One cycle with Berserking is slightly better than a cycle with Cinderglacier.

This seems to be because of the much higher swingdmg when doing a cycle with Berserking.

I did not do another calculation for using Razorice because as you can see when looking over the spells, Razorice is always below Berserking and not counting for DC, or f.e. UB, Gargoyle, Ghoul... so you will lose more DPS when using Razorice.

More calculations for 0/44/27 and 0/20/51 are on the way, and also for the Gargoyle... as soon as I find out what the basedmg is and how it is scaling with AP, same for the Ghoule. Anyone can tell me that?

Flash News

2009-01-31T14:48:00.003+01:00

Just to show that this Blog has not been forgotten. I am currently working on something big, some kind of a clip season for showing different things to do with DW...

Also I am working on more calculations for Berserking and some other Talentbuilds that are crawling around the community.

You can still contact me here via comments or ingame on Antonidas!

KM - Bug or Feature?

2009-01-25T14:47:00.004+01:00

There seems to be another hidden "nerf" for KM as some tests from a user on MMO and the US Forum showed.
Source: US Forums (page 3, posting #56)

44 minutes, only Slow Mainhand, no Offhand:

~ 5 PPM with over 200 procs

44 minutes, Slow / Fast as usual for DualWield:

~ 2 PPM and only around 130 procs

Something is going wrong there, KM is only possible to proc from the MH, so far so good, but if you are using 2 weapons like it is usual for DualWielding, KM procs get cut in half.

Why is that? Did anyone notice that?
You can check it for yourself when hitting the bossdummy to get a proof of that.

KM news

2009-01-24T08:57:00.003+01:00

Ghostcrawler was talking about KM again... no good news for us:

"We originally talked about letting the MH and OH both proc but at different rates (Windfury does something like this). Then we became convinced that dual wielding by DKs would probably sitll be good even without the OH procs from Killing Machine. Now it is just main hand procs at a frequency of 5 per minute.

PPM is a statistical average, so you will see a lot of variation unless you test for a long time. But we'll keep an eye on this thread and the talent itself to make sure."
Source: Off. Forums

That is why KM is proccing so bad for us. No OH proccs. Imho one of the worst changes for us.

0/20/51

2009-01-23T18:02:00.005+01:00

First test using 0/20/51 selfbuffed on a 60% hp bossdummy. It was really interesting.

Slow / Fast with Crusader / Berserking
Ghoul
HoW + BS
Blood Presence
Buff-Food and Elixier of Accuracy

Recount for this ~5 min Test:

1. Icy Touch
2. Melee
3. Unholy Blight
4. Frost Fever
5. Necrosis
6. Blood Plague
7. DeathCoil
8. BCB

At first it was very odd to play this new rotation, so in the first try I was only able to do about 2580 dps. Then I tried it again, more concentrating on the rotation, and I managed to push it to over 2750 dps.

Every KM that procced was used up for IT, I couldn't see any overwriting of KM, it really isn't proccing as good as it was before the patch. Because of this, IT is only about 55% critical. But you get so much RP that you can cast UB everytime you need to, and you even have enough RP to cast the Gargoyle and refresh UB or cast a DC between it.

Rotation I use consists of 2 cycles:

PS - IT - BS - BS - UB - DC
PS - IT - IT - IT - IT - DC - DC (or UB if needed)

I will test it tonight when going Naxx 10men... really excited how it will play there.

Berserking Theorycrafting

2009-01-22T22:13:00.003+01:00

My Offhand is no longer having a Rune Enchantment. I got myself Berserking after I did some first calculations which I want to share with you:

Calculating Icy Touch - AP Coefficient is 0.1 - IT Tooltip Dmg 430-448
Lets take a app. dmg of 440 when used and do the calculation with 3000 AP.

440 + (3000*0.1) = 740 dmg
+ imp. Icy Touch 30% = 222
+ Glacier Rot 10% = 74
+ Black Ice 30% = 222

= 1258 dmg

Now lets calculate it with active Berserking:

440 + (3400*0.1) = 780 dmg
+ imp. Icy Touch 30% = 234
+ Glacier Rot 10% = 78
+ Black Ice 30% = 234

= 1326 dmg

And now instead of Berserking lets do it with full Razorice on Mob:

1258 dmg +5% from Razorice = 62,9

= 1320.9 dmg

Berserking is leading with ~6 more dmg only for IT in this scenario. If not having Razorice on it, Berserking leads with 68 more dmg per IT.

And now lets go further on, calculating the swingdamage, using my weapons:

MH: Angry Dread: 156.6 DPS having 2.5 speed (Weapondmg = 391.5)
OH: Avools Sword of Jin: 143.3 DPS having 1.5 speed (Weapondmg = 215)

Formula:

MH: (Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed
OH: [(Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed]/2

MH: (156.6 + 3000/14) *2.5 = 927.21 dmg per swing
OH: [(143.3 + 3000/14) * 1.5] / 2 = 268.19 dmg per swing

Taking a normal rotation of about 10 sec you have ~4 swings with your MH and ~6 swings with your OH. So this equals:

Mainhand 927.21 * 4 = 3708.84 dmg
Offhand 268.19 * 6 = 1609.14 dmg

= 5317.98 dmg in 10 sec

With Berserking and 400 additional AP you can put it like that after calculating the dmg per swing:

Mainhand 998.64 * 4 = 3994.56 dmg
Offhand 289.62 * 6 = 1737.72 dmg

= 5732.28 dmg in 10 sec

That is about 414 more dmg than without Berserking, just in 10 seconds doing a normal rotation, not counting Crits or Misses. I also did not count Impurity in that one, I will do that later when calculating some more and when I can show you some maths of different rotations using Berserking or Razorice / Cinderglacier.

Bossdummy Testing

2009-01-22T20:27:00.010+01:00

I managed to get a bossdummy for me alone this morning with 100% HP and a bit of time to test some variations, using 0/32/39 as always.

Test 1:
Slow Mainhand with Crusader
Fast Offhand with Berserking
Selfbuffed HoW, BS and Ghoul active
Blood Presence
5 mins

DPS: ~2430

Test 2:
Fast Mainhand w Crusader
Fast Offhand w Berserking
Selfbuffed HoW, BS and Ghoul active
Blood Presence
5 mins

DPS: ~2540

Test 3 - Just 4 Fun:
Slow Mainhand w Crusader
Slow Offhand w Cinderglacier
Selfbuffed HoW, BS and Ghoul active
Unholy Presence
5 mins

DPS: ~2430

The KM nerf is really visible, IT and HB mostly not over 50% crit, sometimes only 30% or 40% crit. Also the unvisible CD on HB is really irritating and therefore I was not able to do an exact rotation.

I am now thinking of testing 0/20/51 in a raid-situation tomorrow...

First Test - Sartharion Heroic

2009-01-21T20:56:00.003+01:00

I took the chance to do the first test after the patch-release in a raid and got to Sartharion Heroic.

0/32/39
HoW, BS, Ghoul
Blood Presence
Slow Mainhand (Crusader)
Fast Offhand (Berserking)
Raidbuffs

It was a strange experience, not seeing any CD on HB was kinda irritating. See the recount of the fight against Sartharion:

1. Melee
2. Howling Blast (~50% crit)
3. Icy Touch (~50% crit)
4. Frost Fever
5. Necrosis (nice surprise!)
6. DeathCoil
7. Blood Plague
8. BCB

KM proccs have gotten a bit rare, that is why IT and HB are not ~70% crit as before, only about 50% crit. The good thing is Necrosis, doing better damage than before. I really like it.

So far not much has changed, the KM nerf is hitting us as expected and the new Gargoyle is really weak in damage. The new Ghoul Glyph is cool and the new NotD really helps to keep him alive.

I also tried the weapon enchantment "Berserking" on my offhand, I was thinking about trying this since a long time. It seems a bit better to me in combination with Crusader, pushing the AP for a 400 more, increasing the damage of every skill you use. Cinderglacier and Razorice seemed a bit weak for me, not knowing which to choose.

For now I am thinking of trying something else, like 0/20/51 or 0/26/45, both without using HB, just pushing IT to the limit. But I am not quite sure about it...

Patch 3.0.8

2009-01-21T07:22:00.004+01:00

The Patch is finally going live in Europe today. You can already download it, but you cannot login on your server.

For more patch details and a complete list you can visit mmo-champion here.

DeathKnight Changes:

All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
Anti-Magic Zone: This ability’s duration has been cut to 10 seconds.
Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.
Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.
Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.
Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 20 second cooldown.
Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
Killing Machine: Instead of a chance to be triggered on critical strike, this talent now has a chance to be triggered on each swing based on the swing time of the weapon (slow weapons more likely, fast weapons less likely).
Mark of Blood: The total amount of healing this can grant is now capped based on a percentage of standard creature health at the target’s level.
Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 secondsseconds and now has a 15 minute cooldown.
Summon Gargoyle: Damage dealt by the Gargoyle reduced by approximately 20% and maximum duration cut to 30 seconds.
Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being castand now considers the resilience of the target in determining its chance to be triggered.
Vampiric Blood (DK) changed from 20% health / 50% healing to 15 % health / 35% healing.
Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded. It no longer affects the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell and retains the current damage reduction bonus.

DeathKnight BugFixes:

Blood Aura Will now always do the correct amount of healing, based on the actual damage taken of the target.
Blood Caked Blade: Now does the proper damage amount when triggered by an off-hand weapon.
Bloody Strikes: The tooltip for this talent now has correct values.
Butchery: Will now always grant 20 runic power, regardless of the creature type killed.
Chains of Ice: This ability is no longer able to land on death knights who have Anti-Magic Shell active.
Crypt Fever: It is no longer possible to have a duration longer than the disease which caused it. Will also no longer incorrectly increase Death and Decay damage.
Corpse Explosion: Fixed a bug where how much Runic Power the Death Knight had was affecting the damage done, and also increased the damage substantially.
Dancing Rune Blade: The weapon no longer echoes the Raise Dead and Army of the Dead spells. In addition it will now more closely match the master’s damage and will cast Rune Strike when its master does.
Death Chill: The effect from this talent will no longer be consumed if Killing Machine is active.
Death Pact: This will no longer cause guards to attack the Death Knight.
Desecration: will no longer break stealth.
Ebon Plague: It is no longer possible to have a duration longer than the disease which caused it. It will no longer stack with Crypt Fever used by another character.
Frost Fever: This talent now works properly when spell reflected.
Gnaw: This ghoul ability is now able to be set on autocast.
Icy Clutch: This will now be applied properly in all cases to targets that gain Frost Fever via the Pestilence ability.
Mark of Blood now works correctly with periodic damage.
Pestilence: The diseases will now spread correctly even when the damage from Pestilence kills the primary target.
Raise Dead no longer puts you in combat when you cast this spell.
Shadow of Death: This ability will no longer cause tracking abilities to become inactive when the death knight becomes a ghoul.
Tundra Stalker (Rank 1) will now work properly on Death and Decay.
Unholy Blight: Will no longer cause spell pushback

There still is a BUG on US servers where HB shows no CD in the tooltip, but triggers one. This will be fixed soon, so unfortunately HB will keep its new 5 sec CD:

"Howling Blast has a 5 sec cooldown. There is a tooltip error where it appears that the spell has no cooldown, but the game will still enforce one.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We plan on getting the tooltip corrected as soon as we can."

Source: Off. Forums

Hopefully I will be able to do some first testing tonight, and at the end of the week I will have my next raid in Naxxramas normal... so we will see how 0/32/39 will do for now.

Howling Blast Statement

2009-01-18T14:40:00.005+01:00

New bluepost about HowlingBlast:

"Howling Blast was designed for AE dps, for which it was doing too much damage without a cooldown. We totally understand the concern about having a cooldown being awkward to work along with rune cooldowns, which is why we removed it. But that change made the spell too powerful, as we feared.

We will continue to iterate on the design and the ultimate goal is to remove the cooldown. There are some ways we can reign in the damage (such as a smaller AE cap or the damage falling off after the initial target) that will take some more time and testing to implement.

The DK is a new class, and while it is working well overall, you can expect to see some iteration on it compared to the classes that have been tested and upon which players have experimented for four years"

If somebody would be able to do 2 HBs (maybe critical) in a row without getting instant aggro... I would understand the additional Cooldown. But you cannot really do that. Just one critical HB when AoEing gives you a higher threat which can result in badass damage for you.

How the hell are those devs at Blizzard testing...

My suggestion - implement a deep frost talent or change a deep frost talent, so it reduces the CD of HB for x seconds. Or just make using HB give you a debuff that decreases the dmg of the next HB by xy% when used in the next x seconds...

What do u think??

Video - Loatheb

2009-01-17T18:02:00.009+01:00

I took the chance to make another movie to show you my rotation and how the DualWield SpellKnight works in a raid. So I recorded a fight against Loatheb in 10men Naxxramas.

0/32/39
Fast / Fast weapons
Blood Presence with Ghoul activ for the whole encounter

High Quality Download (~200 MB)

http://files.filefront.com/Loatheb+DualWield+DK+PoV/;13003967;/fileinfo.html

Low Quality Stream:

Loatheb - DualWield DK PoV

I hope you like it, keep the feedback coming!

Stylepic

2009-01-17T15:10:00.002+01:00

Between the testing and calculating and some other stuff, I finally was able to get new shoulders after nearly 2 months of hunting and rolling low numbers... so here you have the newest picture of SpellKnight Edurol:

Another slap in the face...

2009-01-15T20:55:00.005+01:00

"Cooldown is intentional, but the tooltip hasn't been updated. This is a known issue"

Great, this seems to be the next hard hit for DualWield - HowlingBlast has got its CD back. No one knows why, only this lonely bluepost from Maaven which you can find here.

So now we got:

- KM only proccing from Mainhand with only 5 ppm
- HB with CD back on it
- Gargoyle decreased duration and lower DMG

3 main skills for the DualWield SpellKnight got nerfed to the ground. It seems sure to me that for now we are not equal with TwoHand, no way... we sure can be happy if some players will be able to keep up with other good DDs.

This really is a slap in the face Blizzard!

And another comment about the "new" KM only proccing from Mainhand:

"We'll investigate. Thanks."

Edit:

Ghostcrawler posted an answer here:

"I believe the cooldown is 5 seconds now, so at least it should mesh a little better with 10 second rune cooldown.

We knew there was a risk in taking the Howling Blast cooldown off. Unfortunately, we saw dual-wield DK numbers as high as ever even with the Killing Machine and Gargoyle nerfs. It typically only happened when the DK was fighting multiple targets, which suggests Howling Blast is the right thing to change.

We still agree that a cooldown makes rotations more awkward, and we will continue to look for an implementation that lets Howling Blast be off a cooldown without all death knights feel like they need to DW Frost or go home.

(And no, we can't buff other DK specs and other classes to 7000 dps or whatever to compensate.)"

Talking about players doing 7k DPS shows me that the Devs over there really don't have a clue about the DualWield Spellknight. I can only remember 1 or 2 people who were able to do that much DPS. And if they think we can do 3x HB when AoEing they fail... doing only 2 boosts the aggro so high that we would be killed instantly.

And furthermore, why are we forbidden to do good AoE damage? Shadowpriests can do, even Hunters can do now, and don't forget Warlocks... they are allowed to do, but we are not? Why?

A good posting in the topic from a player was, that AoE spikes are really not important, no one cares because they say nothing about the skill or the potential...

I am disappointed - I was hoping, Blizzard finally understands how to get things right. How to "balance" it... but with trying to get every talent tree on the same level for the DeathKnight and to make DW and 2hand equal, they made everything worse!

It will end up with DW being behind 2hand and other DDs.

PTR Informations

2009-01-15T09:17:00.003+01:00

With the new PTR Patch comes a new KM correction, confirmed by some players in US:

It is not possible to procc KM on offhand hits.
For now, KM will only procc on hits with your mainhand.

This is the new fix for KM and it really hits DW hard. I tried it out this morning using the 0/44/27 again and I was able to notice that KM now proccs much less than before. Now there is no big difference between the two classic DualWield Talentbuilds, and I remembered that the decent amount of 2600 dps was because of "Merciless Combat" and the bossdummy being on 1% hp all the time. Sorry for that.

This morning I had the chance to test a bossdummy with over 6 million HP and no one else testing there...

0/44/27
Slow MH with Cinderglacier
Fast OH with Razorice
Blood Presence, HoW and Ghoul

DPS: 2100
HB, IT and FS only about 50% critical

0/32/39
Slow MH with Cinderglacier
Fast OH with Razorice
Blood Presence, HoW, BS and Ghoul

DPS: 2200

KM now proccs really bad... there are many gaps between the proccs, and sometimes it doesn't procc during a whole cycle of 2 rotations. The bug of HB lowers the DPS a bit, so I think you can do about 100 to 200 more DPS with each specc.

Only good news: Necrosis is doing pretty fine! Up to about 7% from 3% of the overall damage, surpassing BCB, this clearly is the only buff for now.

But this surely is a nerf for our beloved DualWield Spellknight, currently doing over 2700 dps on Live when soloing the bossdummy.

PTR Test II

2009-01-12T13:43:00.004+01:00

It is impossible to have a bossdummy for you alone with enough HP to test... no matter where or when. So I guess we will have to wait until the patch goes live to see how good Necrosis works out.

As for now, I did some further tests to have some comparison... only selfbuffed with HoW and BS using Blood Presence and Ghoul.

Live Server:

Fast / Fast => ~2600 DPS
Slow / Fast => ~2400 DPS

PTR Test:

Fast / Fast => ~2500 DPS
Slow / Fast => ~2300 DPS
Slow / Slow => ~2300 DPS

I used Crusader on the Mainhand and Razorice on the Offhand, only the last test on the PTR with slow / slow was done with Cinderglacier and Razorice. Each fight lasted appr. 5 minutes and I did about 800,000 dmg each fight.

As I said before, the Gargoyle Nerf hits us more than anything else. It is interesting to see that two fast weapons on the PTR are still better than the slow / fast or slow / slow combination. I think this is what Blizzard meant in the last bluepost when they said, that for now KM isn't working like they wanted it to. There are still enough proccs, even if there are moments where nothing proccs and you loose DPS.

I am curious to see how it will work out in a raid using slow / fast or slow / slow. But as it is for now, it clearly is a nerf for DualWield.

Edit - Interesting Test

I specced 0/44/27 to see how it will turn out.
Using Slow / Fast - Blood Presence - Crusader + Razorice - Ghoul
Selfbuffed with HoW, no Desecration, no BS

And I was able to do ~2400 dps

Recount showed:
HB, followed by Melee, FS and IT.
HB was ~66% crit, FS 67% crit, IT 67% crit

I was able to use every single KM procc thanks to FS, which critted about 3,200 up to 3,800. I was a bit surprised because there was no Desecration and no BS to push the overall dmg, so I expected to do lesser damage than above.

Maybe I try out Cinderglacier to see if I can push it a bit more. But this talentspecc is becoming more interesting... I will watch it closely.

Second Edit:

With Cinderglacier on slow MH I was able to squeeze out ~2600 dps. KM is really proccing very well, I think there will be done some correction... 0/44/27 is working to good with it, having 3 different skills to use up KM.

PTR Test

2009-01-10T22:25:00.004+01:00

Tonight I accessed the PTR to test my Spellknight with the 0/32/39 talentbuild and to see how the changes will effect the DPS. Unfortunately it was a bit full there, so I was not alone at the bossdummy, and due to the low HP of it, Necrosis wasn't recorded correctly, so the recount is a bit falsified.

I will try it again tomorrow moring, hopefully there wont be so many players around.

What I can tell after those first 5 minutes of fighting alone, only selfbuffed against the bossdummy is, that you are able to use the KM proccs more effectively.

I used a slow Mainhand with Crusader and a fast Offhand with Razorice, fighting in Blood Presence with my Ghoul and just selfbuffed with Horn of Winter and BoneShield. The proccs for KM were acceptable, sometimes there was a small gap where nothing procced, but then again it kept proccing really smooth. I was able to use HB better without the CD as you can see on the screenshot, nearly 90% critical hits with HB after 5 mins. It is really nice to use HB now without the CD. Nearly everytime KM proccs you can use HB and therefore controll the DPS a bit better.

Unfortunately I also experienced a loss in DPS of about 200 to 300 infight. The new Gargoyle really sucks... only 30 secs up and doing lesser damage. This will also hit 2h Unholy DKs as well. But I think the DPS loss was also because of the low HP of the dummy, not everything was working correctly. We will see when doing the next test.

The new IT Glyph helps generating more RP, the new Glyph for Horn of Winter helps keeping it up a bit better, also it is really cool that it's for free now and generating 10 RP when using.

Here you have the screenshot, infight after 5 minutes:

1. Howling Blast (nearly 90% crit !!)
2. Melee Hits
3. Icy Touch
4. DeathCoil
5. Frost Fever
6. BCB
7. Blood Plague

PPM

2009-01-09T17:53:00.010+01:00

To clear some things up, here you have an explanation for PPM:

(PPM)/60*(WEAPONSPEED)

For example, if you have a weapon with speed 2.0 you can put that like this:

(5)/60*(2) = 0.16

This means you have a 16% chance to procc KM on hit (not crit anymore) when using a 2.0 weapon. So this means that you can procc something like 10 or more KM in a minute, or just 4 or less... and this is what PPM means. Not just 5 proccs in a minute - it means there is a certain percentage KM can procc on a hit.

Using slower weapons, the chance to procc KM on hit will increase. Also PPM is not related to Haste, so no matter how much Haste you stack, the percentage to procc KM on hit remains the same. So if using 2 slow weapons with a good amount of haste you could come up with enough KM proccs for decent amount of DPS.

Doesn't sound that bad now, DualWield Spellknights use 2 weapons, produce more hits and therefore can produce more proccs than a Twohand DeathKnight.

Furthemore this correction of KM to PPM is also erasing one problem we had - double or even triple KM proccs which could not be used. It happened very often that KM procced so fast that we were not able to use every procc due to the GCD or rune CD.

So for now it seems that Crit will become less important. Strength and Haste will be more important when the Patch goes live. And I think 2 slower weapons will be better... stronger BCB proccs, stronger Necrosis proccs, higher white hits - and don't forget HB without CD!

Now the Nerf sounds a bit softer... ^^

Nerf

2009-01-09T06:49:00.005+01:00

And here it comes... unstoppable for everyone of us, Blizzard hits the DK with a Nerf:

"Killing Machine is a "ppm" now or a proc per minute. That means it will proc 5 times a minute with 5 ranks, depending on your weapon speed. We generally use ppm when we do not want players to gravitate towards faster weapons with the sole purpose of improving proc rates.

Killing Machine now is based on autoattack hits, not crits. Overall the random element will decrease, but it won't greatly benefit faster weapons. It will still benefit dual wield, just not as much."

Now Killing Machine will procc from our melee hits, not from crits any more. This sounds kinda good, but the new PPM mechanics is making this whole thing kinda bad for us. Now it also is useless to use 2 fast weapons any longer, because it will be impossible to procc KM more often.

Further changes that will hit the DualWield Spellknight will be:

Necrosis will give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
Summone Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds (Down from 1 minute). Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69

KM is nerfed, Gargoyle is nerfed, Necrosis gets buffed... lets see how this will change our DPS. I am now thinking of going with 2 very slow weapons. BCB was corrected for the Offhand, Necrosis DMG will be doubled and KM can't proc more than a few times per minute... So it may be nice to have the slowest weapons possible to reach higher white hits and crits, more dmg with Necrosis and higher BCB proccs. Also when playing in a raid, having some decent buffs, this could turn out very good.

I will test that...

Another one...

2009-01-07T22:35:00.002+01:00

I wrote something additional for the german community - discussion can be found here:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=7536454281&sid=3

"Ich möchte hiermit die Entwickler bei ihrer Arbeit unterstützen, da es ihnen anscheinend schwer zu fallen scheint den Überblick zu behalten bzw. sich intensiv genug mit den diversen Gegebenheiten und Situationen auseinander zu setzen.

Der DualWield Todesritter kann hohe DPS Spitzen erreichen und gehört momentan zu den Varianten die am höchsten Schaden fahren können. Das ist unbestreitbar.
Was aber festgehalten werden sollte ist, dass genau so andere Charakterklassen und Varianten selbige DPS Zahlen erreichen oder in manchen Begebenheiten oder Encountern sogar toppen.

Dies sollte und muss berücksichtigt werden. Der DW DK ist im Schaden nicht alleine an der Spitze.

Ich werde nun versuchen die Kernprobleme aufzugreifen und Lösungsvorschläge zu bringen und würde mich freuen, wenn sich Spieler aus der Community auf vernünftige Art und Weise konstruktiv einbringen.

Die Talentbäume

An sich eine tolle Idee der Entwickler, jeden Baum möglichst gleichwertig zu gestalten und ähnliche Möglichkeiten zu geben. Jeder Baum kann genutzt werden um DPS zu machen, um zu tanken oder im PvP genutzt zu werden. Eine gute Idee, aber auch die größte Schwäche aufgrund der Spielmechanik.

Durch diese Auslegung der Talentbäume können DualWield und Zweihand nie gleichwertig sein. Es gibt zu viele Möglichkeiten um nützliche Talente zu kombinieren und Synergien zu erreichen, die für eine der Varianten unbestreitbar potent sind.

Die zweite Schwierigkeit und somit auch der nächste wichtige Schwachpunkt ist die mangelnde Seperation zwischen Zweihand und DualWield. Es gibt nämlich keine! Wir haben im Blutbaum ein Talent für erhöhten Waffenschaden und im Frostbaum ein Talent für die Unterstützung von DualWield.

Das war es auch schon. Keine Spezialattacken nur für DualWield. Keine Spezialtalente nur für Zweihand oder DualWield. Nichts. Keine wirklichen Möglichkeiten sich abzugrenzen oder intensiv zu spezialisieren.

Dies macht es in meinen Augen unmöglich eine Gleichheit zu schaffen. Es ist keine Trennung vorhanden die es möglich machen würde, eine Balance zu schaffen.

Mangelhafte Talente

Mitarbeiter von Blizzard sind der Meinung dass ein Buff von "Necrosis" sich stark auf DualWield auswirken würde, und zwar zu sehr im positiven Sinne. Die Sache scheint nur die zu sein - besagte Mitarbeiter haben anscheinend nicht den mangelhaften Schaden dieses 5-Punkte-Talents wahrgenommen.

Necrosis liegt als DualWield Todesritter bei 2% bis maximal 3% des Gesamtschadens und damit meist an letzter Stelle. Für satte 5 Punkte hätte ich mir persönlich etwas mehr erwartet.

Wie würde sich also ein Buff dieses Talents auswirken? Wie könnte ein Buff aussehen? Das Naheliegendste wäre wohl eine Erhöhung des Schattenschadens bzw. der Skalierung. Die Frage wäre aber, inwiefern sich dies dann auf Zweihand auswirken würde. Vielleicht zu stark?

Eine andere Idee wäre, sollte Blizzard unbedingt die Streuung nützlicher Talente über alle Talentbäume beibehalten wollen, Necrosis zu einem reinen DualWield-Talent zu machen.

Blutverkrustete-Klinge wird momentan nur auf Basis der Waffenhand berechnet, auch wenn es von der Offhand geprocct wird. Hier ist eine Änderung gerechtfertigt da aufgrund einer schnellen Offhand öfters Proccs zu Stande kommen können, die aber stärker sind aufgrund der Mainhandwaffenberechnung. Hier ist eine Korrektur angebracht, kostet den DualWield Todesritter aber sicherlich DPS da sich BCB meist unter den Top 6 Schadensarten befindet mit 5% bis 8% verursachtem Schaden je nach Procchäufigkeit. Ein interessanter Fakt!

Ein weiterer Streitpunkt ist der Gargoyle. In den Augen von Blizzard zu stark, ist er in meingen Augen nur beschränkt nützlich und schwer einsetzbar. Die Bossencounter werden immer schwerer und Effektlastiger. Der Gargoyle überlebt selten seine ganze Minute, je nach Bosskampf. Er wird regelrecht vom Himmel geblasen. Im Gegensatz zur zusätzlichen Runenwaffe eines Blutritters, diese ist nicht anzukratzen und kann in Ruhe durchgehend volle DPS fahren. Eine Ungerechtigkeit? Kann sein und sollte angepasst werden.

Ein Nerf der DPS des Gargoyles ist dann plausibel und fair, wenn er unverwundbar wird oder mindestens genau so von dem neuen Effekt des Talents "Nacht der Toten" betroffen werden darf.

Der wohl größte Punkt ist nun Tötungsmaschine. Dieses Talent kann durch 2 schnelle Waffen und einem im Raid hohen Critwert nahezu alle paar Sekunden auftreten und steigert somit enorm die DPS. Dieses Talent ist eines der Kerntalente eines DualWield Todesritters und muss deshalb mit Vorsicht behandelt werden!!

Eine PPM Begrenzung ist in meinen Augen OK solange sie im Rahmen bleibt. Hierzu müsste eine Aufstellung stattfinden, wie hoch momentan die Procchäufigkeit in der Minute sein kann und wie sehr eine Beschneidung derer Einfluss auf den Schaden hätte. Hierbei müssen auch die Geschwindigkeiten und Procchäufigkeiten bei Zweihandwaffen in Betracht gezogen werden, da es eben, wie leider schon erwähnt, keine Seperation zu DualWield gibt.

Es benötigt auf jeden Fall Feingefühl!!

Lösungsvorschläge

Kurzum zusammengefasst:

- Überarbeitung von Necrosis da mangelhafter Schaden für 5 Punkte.
- Korrektur von BCB
- Überarbeitung des Gargoyles
- Überarbeitung von Tötungsmaschine als Kerntalent

[u][b]Ideen für DualWield[/b][/u]

Die bereits angesprochene, mangelhafte Seperation zwischen Zweihand und DualWield sollte in meinen Augen mit neuen Talenten / Fähigkeiten gelöst werden.

Es könnte spezielle Fähigkeiten geben die nur für DualWield gelten. Da der Todesritter nun bereits genug Skills hat die auf Waffenschaden basieren, sind nicht zwingend spezielle Zweihandfähigkeiten notwendig. In meinen Augen wäre es aber wichtig, bei diversen Nerfs von Kerntalenten für DualWield, weitere Optionen bzw. Ergänzungen und Möglichkeiten zu bieten um sich zu spezialisieren bzw. zu diversifizieren.

Dies könnte so aussehen, dass es eine neue Meleefähigkeit gibt die nur mit zwei Einhandwaffen einzusetzen ist. Ein Schlag mit beiden Waffen der einen Debuff auf den Mob zaubert. Ähnlich dem Sturmschlag des Schamanen.

Weiters könnte es eine Attacke geben die nur die Offhand benutzt, hier könnte wieder der Schamane als Beispiel dienen. Diese Attacke macht dann einen zusätzlichen Bonuseffekt der von der Runenverzauberung abhängig ist.

Es könnte aber auch eine Art "Klingenhagel" geben der für ein paar Sekunden den Todesritter in unheilige Raserei versetzt und ihn für kurze Zeit rasant schnell zuschlagen lässt, wobei je nach Seuche auf dem Ziel Bonusschaden verursacht wird.

Auch könnten Fähigkeiten eingeführt werden die nur eine der möglichen Seuchen konsumieren und dafür einen Bonuseffekt auslösen. Eine Art Schlag der beide Waffen einbezieht und dafür die Blutseuche aufsaugt um sie in einer neuerlichen Explosion gegen den Mob zu wenden.

Als letzten Einfall wäre für mich die naheliegendste Lösung, jede der Meleefertigkeiten als DualWield Todesritter mit beiden Waffen auszuführen bzw. für die Berechnung des Schadens beide Waffen einzuberechnen. Nutze ich den Blutschlag, so wird nicht der Schaden der Mainhandwaffe als Basis genommen sondern die Summe beider Waffen als Basis.

Soweit zu meinen Ideen. Ich freue mich nun auf eine hoffentlich ausgedehnten Diskussion und weitere Vorschläge, Meinungen und Ideen von eurer Seite - und ich hoffe dass dies hier nicht alles umsonst geschrieben wird!!"

Nerfing DualWield...

2009-01-06T18:24:00.003+01:00

...is the wrong way. As always, Blizzard seems to just take the easiest path to reach their goal => absurd nerfing. You don't look at the whole picture. You just see that some players are able to do tremendous DPS. But that is only a small part of the community imho.

Players visiting my blog ask me very often how to reach 3k or even 4k DPS and many are wondering and asking me how to reach over 5k dps? How this could ever be possible using DW. And this is enough proof for me to see that not many players are able to make the DK look OP.

But it seems that the developers are not noticing that. They just see "ololol big numbers n33d nerf" and that is all.

Furthermore, we are not alone. Good 2hand DKs can do some brutal DPS too. Hunters can do. Even Retris, Furywarriors or Enhancers can do some immense amount of DPS. If the player is able to do so and has the knowledge, it is not a big problem. If a raid only consists of 2 very good players who pull off some insane DPS, what does that mean for the rest?

And that is being overlooked by the developers too.

And honestly... I don't think Blizzard does understand how DW works. Seriously, you guys programmed the DK, but oh well... You know that basically a DK is dependant of weapon damage? And that this is not very effective for DualWielding? So what will a DW DK do?

Yes, he will concentrate on spells, instants, no skills with weapondmg. That is simple logic.
So if you nerf the mainspells for the only way for a DW to do damage, you nerf the whole DW DK and make it useless, not even worth a choice.

Is that the path to go? No it is not!

My suggestion is to seperate the 2 choices some more, make the talent trees a bit different... put some DW talents in there, but deep enough to make it hard to decide which one to take, making it impossible to do a strong dualspecc that gets everything you need for ultimate DW DPS.

Change the mechanics, let DW use both weapons when striking with a melee ability. Using that, a nerf for KM or BCB could look ok.
And thinking about that, there is no real seperation at the moment. No special ability just for DW. No special ability just for twohand. Why not?

Why not implement one or two new abilities that use both weapons when striking, like we can see it at Enhancement Shamans. And those abilities could be dependant of what Rune-enchantement you have on your weapon...

Just some ideas...

And Necrosis surely needs some improvement... even with DW it is useless, doing about 2% to 3% of the overall dmg for 5 points. I am pretty sure that the devs didn't even know about that...

Sorry for being emotional guys - but it is hell to be that helpless when reading what Blizzard is thinking about DualWield DKs - and you cannot do anything about it.

New Design

2009-01-05T11:39:00.001+01:00

Well... I am sure you kinda noticed that already.
Hope you like it - new design especially for my DualWield Spellknight!

Naxx Patchwork

2009-01-03T10:08:00.003+01:00

Yesterday we did Naxx normal mode and I recorded the Patchwork fight with my recount... was a very clean and fast encounter, see for details:

- Melee
- Howling Blast (with about 61% crit)
- Icy Touch (with about 64% crit)
- BCB (big surprise - had good proccs!!)
- Frost Fever
- Blood Plague
- DeathCoil
- Necrosis

I really was surprised by BCB, I hade many proccs and it did some nice damage for 3 points. I wish Necrosis would be that viable for the 5 points... HB and IT were both above 60% crit. And finally Patchi dropped the fast 1.6 sword for my mainhand, now I have two fast weapons for further testing.

There can be more DPS, I was just missing some more raid buffs and stuff... lets wait for the next time in heroic mode :-)

Raids, raids, raids...

2009-01-01T16:32:00.005+01:00

The 1st day in this new year and I started ahead, finishing Archavon and Sartharion in Heroic 25. Was really fun, Archavon really is the free-loot Bossmob in this game for now.

Sartharion with 25 players is also not really exciting, going down very fast. I was the only one who reached over 4000 dps in this encounter. Was much fun, but no drops for me :(

Recount for Sartharion Encounter:

- Melee
- Howling Blast
- Icy Touch
- Frost Fever
- Death & Decay
- Blood Plague
- Blood-Caked Blade
- Deathcoil

And on the following screenshot you can see how my stats look when I am near fully raidbuffed:

Happy new year!!

2009-01-01T00:19:00.001+01:00

I wish everyone a happy new year, hopefully all your dreams and wishes will come true!!

New DPS testing...

2008-12-31T11:35:00.006+01:00

I did find some time to test the 2 different builds which seem to be the best for my "DualWield Spellknight" as I call him. Here you go with some facts...

Time used: 5 min / try
Equip: See armory for details, slow MH, fast OH

Test 1
0/32/39 with Blood Presence activ
Selfbuffed: +40 hit (food) +50 str (potion)
Output: 2600 to 2700 dps infight
After finishing diseases kept ticking, recount dropped to 2549 dps

The DPS infight are completely OK and kinda usual for this very strong build. I am very satisfied, with a bit more equip and playing in a 25 man raid, this can go up to over 4000 dps infight.

Test 2
0/44/27 with Blood Presence activ
Selfbuffed: +40 hit (food) +50 str (potion)
Output: 2600 to 2700 dps infight
After finishing diseases kept ticking, recount dropped to 2560 dps

What a surprise, no big difference. The only things that I could notice were the bigger crits for IT and HB because of GoG. FrostStrike was critting for about 3000, which was a bit higher than DC. Interesting is that I did 60,000 lesser damage in this try, maybe this was because of the missing desecration and BS which push the dmg for 7%.

And then I tried something fun... I switched to Unholy Presence while using the 0/32/39 just to see what will happen... and my DPS was increasing up to 3000 infight. I was surprised, I even forgot to do a screenshot of the recount. Damn it.

I may try it in raid, using Unholy Presence... it seems that pushing attackspeed even further is resulting in much more white damage, crits and killing machine, even when loosing the 15% dmg bonus. Also the shortened global cooldown seems to help, even if you have some seconds where you do nothing but hitting with normal weapon swings because every rune is on cd.

Merry christmas!!

2008-12-25T09:00:00.003+01:00

I wish everyone a merry christmas and some nice holidays!!

Also I would like to thank every visitor who is interested and participating in this blog. You are really helping me to keep this going. Without all of you, this would not be possible!!

My Interface

2008-12-23T19:28:00.003+01:00

In the last days many people asked me for my interface, how I did it, what I used... and to upload it. So this is the moment for all of you, here is my interface:

Edurol Interface 1.0 - Download

Be sure to save a copy of your own interface folder, unzip this one, copy the WTF and rename Charactername and Accountname, and of course replace the Servername :)

It is made for 1680x1050 widescreen ... so there may occure some problems when using a lower resolution.

If you have questions, don't hesitate and comment here.

Sartharion Movie

2008-12-22T17:48:00.004+01:00

Again we visited Sartharion in normal mode, and I took the opportunity to shoot some scenes of this encounter and show it to you in full length. It was not the best try, but it worked all out and everyone in our group who did not know this encounter did a great job.

The problem you can see there is that the Ghoul does not survive long enough in such a battle with many spells and explosions 'n' stuff... really looking forward to the talent overwork to reduce the damage. Also I have some problems with the Gargoyle. In most bossfights it just gets blown apart after a few seconds.

I think there needs to be done some work, like making the Gargoyle nearly "invulnerable" to AoE Damage or something like that because he floats over the battle... it is really annoying to loose a good DPS help which has a CD of 3 minutes but does not even survive a few seconds.

So enough of that talk, here is the link to the movie - Stream will be up soon:

Sartharion - DualWield DeathKnight PoV Movie

The recount of this encounter was the following:

- Melee
- Howling Blast
- Icy Touch
- Frost Fever
- DeathCoil
- Blood Plague
- BCB
- Necrosis

If you watch my Scrolling Combat Text closely you can notice the BCB and Necrosis Proccs as well as their damage. It is nice to see that BCB keeps being under the top 8 damage sources, but I am really thinking about dropping Necrosis... 5 points are not worth just 2% to 3% damage. Maybe put them in Virulence and Outbreak for more AoE Damage.

What do you think?

Naxx 25

2008-12-20T23:57:00.004+01:00

Just out of nowhere I was asked to go Naxx 25 as DD and I took the opportunity to see how DW is working out there. It was just brilliant, having all this raid support my DPS at mobgroups was over 5000.

And I had some luck with the drops: Angry Dread (<= click)

I like this weapon, slowest and best dps mainhand weapon there is for now. Besides the sword which can drop random in Naxx.

Recount after the raid was showing the following:

- Howling Blast (with 61,6% crit !!)
- Melee
- Icy Touch
- Death & Decay
- Frost Fever
- Blood Plague
- Death Coil
- BloodCaked Blade

I really love it and I am looking forward to push my equip further to the limit to see how it will work out. And I may also try the deeper frost spec, now that I have a real cool mainhand :-)

Good company...

2008-12-18T22:39:00.002+01:00

It is so good to see that I as a DualWield DeathKnight am in good company... thx to the lore of WotLK :-)

Naxxramas

2008-12-18T10:00:00.008+01:00

Clearing 4 wings in Naxxramas is really exciting. I like this dungeon very much, nice flair and many many mobgroups for my spec ;-)

This was really awesome, mobgroups with 3 or 4 mobs push the DPS way over 4000 per group for me. The only thing I try to focus on now is the single target damage which could be higher. I might try a deep Frost/Unholy spec for that with a very slow mainhand for Froststrike. But having a shaman in the group helps, and if you add a warrior and feral to it, it is getting near perfect.

To give you an example, this was the recount after yesterdays run:

- Howling Blast
- Melee
- Icy touch
- Frost Fever
- Death & Decay
- Blood Plague
- Death Coil
- Blood-Caked Blade

And this was the recount just for finishing Patchwork:

- Melee
- Howling Blast
- Icy Touch
- Death Coil
- Frost Fever
- Blood-Caked Blade
- Blood Plague
- Blood Strike

Very nice to see is that Blood-Caked Blade is doing some acceptable damage and is also procing regularely. Necrosis isn't really doing much damage, but it helps push the DPS a bit. I am now thinking of using 2 fast weapons to get faster attack speed => more crits => more killing machine => way more damage with IT and HB.

And then I have the idea of the second spec with slow MH and fast OH going deep Frost for FrostStrike and more weapon damage...

Sartharion Experience

2008-12-14T18:08:00.004+01:00

Today was the first time I got the chance to participate at a raid, we did 10-man Sartharion and it was really exciting. I tried the new spec which was posted by Norjena: 0/32/39

Basic rotation:

IT - PS - HB - BS - BS - DC
PS - IT - IT - DC - HB - DC

Pushing the magical damage to a higher level with this build, including more Icy Touch because of the Death Runes. I need to stack more Hit and Crit to get Killing Machine going, and I also think of using two fast weapons for more hits and more crits.

At the end of the raid recount was the following:

DualWield Guide

2008-12-09T13:56:00.003+01:00

For all of you out there who speak german:

My DualWield Guide is doing some progress, I gathered many interesting facts and started work on the core topics. Maybe you are interested in it and can find something you can use:

Official Forums - DualWield Guide

Trispec Reloaded

2008-12-08T18:32:00.003+01:00

Being level 80 for some days now, I tried out a new sort of Trispec. I wasn't quite sure about it, because it goes a bit in frost and unholy as well, but not deep enough in both trees to get the bigger stuff. So I thought this would be a decrease in DPS. But I was wrong.

The Spec I am talking about is: 15/31/25

The big deal with it is the increased damage against single targets, thx to "Necrosis" and "Blood-Caked Blade". Howling Blast keeps things going for groups and still crits nice, even without "Tundra Stalker" or "Guile of Gorefiend". With the Deep Frost DW Spec I used before, crits where above 4500 or even 5000 with Howling Blast. Now it is between 4000 and 4500. Still doing well. Really interesting is, that thanks to "Killing Machine" HB is between 60% to 70% critical, which is really awesome!

BCB is about 5% of the whole damage I do, Necrosis about 2% to 3%. Most of the damage is done with HB and Melee.

I also did some heroics now, and in every single dungeon I was 1st place in damage with this spec. I am able to do 2800 to 3000 dps on mob groups, single targets are up to 1900 to 2100 dps for now. Still improving my gear!

Basic Rotation for mobgroups:

IT - PS - Pestilence - HB - BB - DC - HB

But I don't keep it always like that, I am very flexible during fights, so sometimes after HB I do another Pestilence to keep Diseases spreading out and ticking, or I through in some DnD for more AoE.

Rotation for Bossmobs:

IT - PS - HB - BS(BB) - BS(BB) - DC - HB - DC

If you have questions, please go ahead and comment!

Level 80

2008-12-05T17:55:00.002+01:00

I reached level 80 tonight:

So now it is time to get things rolling, I may try to gather some better equip / weapons before I start testing some specs on the poor dummies ^^

If anybody is interested, I could do a new video about level 80 dungeons or even about some heroics. So, anyone who wants to see a DW DK in Heroics? And also something important: I think I am going for tank... but I am not quite sure about that for now.

Drak'Tharon and Gundrak

2008-12-03T12:06:00.005+01:00

The next step with my DeathKnight, now level 76, was to do Drak'Tharon and Gundrak. I got the chance to visit those 2 dungeons with a group of very nice random players, lead by a druid tank. I took the chance to record some fights and boss fights to cut a new movie for all of you - you can download it there:

DualWield DeathKnight - DPS Part 2

In this movie you can see, how DualWield Frost is working out. You will see some nice crits, triple crits, some basic tactics and you can study my rotation in different situations. Hopefully you like the video, I did my best to put some new music in it ;-)

First we got to Drak'Tharon, it was very interesting, beautiful design, I liked it a lot. I was there with a new, some kind of "Offtank" Frost build, which is good for leveling and can be used to tank or help in hard situations. You can check it out here: 15/52/0

We had no problems, no wipes, everything was going fine, the druid tank pulled of some nice damage, but I was able to catch up at the end of the run, recount showing the following:

After this run, we decided to visit the next dungeon, which was Gundrak, and switched the enhancer with a shadowpriest. After I warmed up in Drak'Tharon, I was able to work on my rotation and do some better damage. I love mob groups, and there were a lot in this dungeon. I also had no big aggro problems, which was very surprising because I did not skill "Subversion" in Blood. Sometimes I got close to pulling aggro, and in 1 or 2 cases I pulled it from a mob, but that was no big deal, thanks to the offtank build I am using. I even pulled off some adds that were disturbing our healer, or pulled some ranged mobs to our tank with Death Grip.

Recount after finishing the dungeon:

As you can see, Howling Blast is showing some nice amount of crits: 57,4%
After that, Melee , Icy Touch and FrostStrike are following.
Those are also my main attack skills I use in most of the fights. I did not use RuneStrike much, because I was behind the mobs and not really parrying anything. I kinda missed this, because after a rotation using Howling Blast and spending RunicPower, I was missing something I could use.

BloodStrike isn't really doing any damage, I just use it to keep my Death Runes up and the cooldown running to keep Blade Barriere.

To see melee on 1st or 2nd place most of the time, it really gets more and more important to stack Hit, Crit and AP. This will push the damage for a DualWield DeathKnight a lot, resulting in more white damage, more crits and as a result of that, more Killing Machine !!

Blue News

2008-12-03T08:03:00.001+01:00

An interesting bluepost was made about the DK and upcoming changes:

We’re not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with. Most of these changes apply predominantly to tanking death knights, so I avoided cross-posting this thread, but there are probably items of interest to dps specs as well.

Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.
One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it’s asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)
Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially.
Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.
We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp. (EDIT: I am refering to using DnD outside of combat just for the runic power (kind of like Bloodrage for warriors). It's totally legit and intended to use it to start a fight to gain threat and hurt the bad guys.)
There are some odd situations caused by Shadow of Death that we would like to fix. The talent isn’t designed to let you escape durability damage or rez by zoning into an instance.
There are some annoying parts of the non-pet ghoul. We want to lower the aggro range (for less accidental pulls) and spawn the ghoul in quicker when dismounting. The ghoul, at least Unholy’s version, could also use some AE avoidance like other pets.
We are probably going to add a new spell to let you raise fallen allies so that you don't have to make the decision between bringing back another player (which was just supposed to be a fun bonus) and bringing back your ghoul, which can be pretty crticial for some specs.

This isn't everything we're talking about of course, just a little preview.

Sigils
We are aware that DKs may be struggling more to get defense. They lack tanking weapons, shields and guns, all of which can provide defense to warriors. It's something we're working on.

AoE as Blood
We're also working on Blood AE.

Horn of Winter Glyph
We would change the Horn of Winter glyph (to something like duration).

Tanking oriented 2H Weapons
I would not expect full itemization for two-handed tanking weapons. We wanted DKs to tank with dps two-handers (and have their mitigation benefit somewhat from the dps stats). We might add a craftable weapon or something down the road, but only if that felt like an option for the DK, not a mandatory piece of gear. You can also dual-wield tanking weapons if you want, but again, it isn't the intent that is the only way to play. (Please don't turn the rest of this thread into a discussion of whether or not DKs should be able to dual-wield.)

Rune Strike
Rune Strike is a tanking ability. It was designed to let DKs make up for the fact that their threat suffers so much from hits that fail to land. It does suffer from a confusing tooltip (which we have since fixed) but it is the DK who must avoid the attack to get Rune Strike to light up.

Active abilities usage
We still like DKs as the "active abilities" tank. We just think it might be a little too extreme right now. Icebound Fortitude was intended to be something you use when a big, predictable damage spike is coming, but DK tanks seem to want to keep them up 100% of the time for fear that they will die without them.

Tanking

2008-11-27T18:07:00.006+01:00

Today I got the chance to tank Azjol-Nerub as
Frost DW, I was very curious because I never
got the chance to visit this Dungeon during Beta.
There were no big problems, the second DK was
Unholy and was keeping up in damage, but at
the end I was the lead.

Healing was done by a Retribution Paladin in
Healgear... sometimes it was a bit close to
0% hp, but THX to Icebound Fortitude and
Antimagic-Shell I managed to hold on.

Was really fun, my Runestrike triggered so often I was even running out of Runicpower.
When pulling a mob group, I parried really often... even 3 or 4 times in a row,
getting no damage.

This will be really interesting at 80 in decent gear, I can imagine to parry / dodge
very often. My gear is improving for now, gathering more and more tank items.
Hopefully I can tank the next Dungeon pretty soon.

Build used: 5/53/7

If you have questions, do not hesitate and go on!

Nexus Adventure Part II

2008-11-25T16:17:00.008+01:00

Today I was feeling a bit better and got a fast chance to get Nexus going again and finish those damn quests... Random group, another DW Frost Tank was our Maintank, interesting thing was that he was not able
to keep up in the damage.

I was just duelling with the Rogue, but at the end of the instance he was not able to keep up with me. It was
really fun, I did some offtanking and protected the
healer when there was an add. There is much
more potential in DualWield, really looking forward to
do more!

And for all of you out there who speak german, I started my DualWield Guide in the official forums:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6986629797&sid=3

Sick...

2008-11-22T07:28:00.002+01:00

Got me a bad flue in the last days... mostly I am in bed, trying to get healthy again.
Sorry for the lack of updates, hopefully I am good to go at the start of the next week.

Do not hesitate and ask me some questions so I have something to do... :-)

Interface & Questions

2008-11-19T17:59:00.004+01:00

To answer some of the questions that I am being asked the most in the last days...
first off the list for my interface:

- XPerl
- Skinner
- ScrollingCombatText
- Recount
- Bartender4
- MagicRunes
- Omen (will be visible in the lower right)
- SimpleMinimap
- ChatMod

And the second one - which songs did I use in the DPS movie? Here you go:

Hervé Feat. Plastic - Little Cheap Thrills (Vocal Club Mix)

Guru Josh Project - Infinity 2008 (Klaas Remix)

From the CD1 of "Ministry of Sound - The Annual [2009]"
Hopefully I could help all of you out there, so maybe we can come back to the DW DK :-)

Nexus Experience

2008-11-16T21:06:00.009+01:00

Today I got the chance to visit Nexus a few times with the DW Frost Specc I am currently using.
The first run was with 5 people, one of those a very good Druid Tank doing some
nice damage as you can see in the small recount window on the lower right.

There were no problems in Nexus, sometimes I pulled aggro but I compensated this with Icebound Fortitude and Lichborne, pulling some nice damage with Howling Blast and Frost Strike. To explain the window for you:

1. Howling Blast
2. Melee
3. Frost Strike
4. Icy Touch
5. Frost Fever
6. Blood Fever

The two following runs were done with only 4 people, the tank and me remaining, plus Shadowpriest and Shaman Healer. We decided to try that because the druid and me
were doing decent damage, and doing it with only 4 will result in some more XP.

And it worked out pretty well, no problems, no wipes, going through it in about 40 minutes:

Showing the same order of the skills, and also a good average DPS of over 1000. I had some decent Howling Blast crits with over 3500, it is a lot of fun using this build!
What also is interesting - Melee Physical Swings always do 25 to 30% of the overall damage!

Specc I am now using:

12/50/0

Reached level 71 tonight, and after 3 times doing Nexus the cool Plate Shoulders dropped,
looking pretty nice on Edu:

Dual Wield DPS movie

2008-11-16T15:41:00.003+01:00

I did a short movie to show 2 different builds doing Dual Wield, the first one is the Trispecc and the second one is a DW Frost Specc. No big surprise that Frost is stronger for now, better burst and magic damage which is not related to your weapons.

The Trispecc is really hard to play at 70 with the first equip pieces from quests in Northrend, and so I think I am going to drop this until 80. Frost DW is playing very smooth and the burst is really usefull in most of the situations.

Enough for the talking, have fun with the short clip:

http://files.filefront.com/Death+Knight+Dual+Wield+Test/;12369533;/fileinfo.html

Northend + Triplespecc

2008-11-16T00:24:00.003+01:00

Today I reached lvl 70 and got to Northend, finally some new stuff to do there and also time to start using my Triplespecc. So currently I start testing with the following build:

27/18/16

The rotation I now use for this special build is very simple:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - Obliterate - BloodStrike - Death Coil

You can build up to 4 Death Runes, and after regenerating all of them you could pull off:

IT - PS - OB - BS - BS - OB - DC

That means you can get two Obliterates in one rotation, resulting in more damage. And you keep those Death Runes because of using OB (thx to Death Rune Mastery), so you can vary your rotation to 3 or 4 BS in a row for example.

The only thing about such a Trispecc is that it is extremely related to your equipment. And starting in Northend with a fresh 70 DK is not the easiest way to play it, but it is starting to work better as you are increasing in +hit and +expertise.

The Trispecc is meant to get every synergy for physical damage that is possible, boosting strength and the overall damage of the Strikes you are using. This means that more +hit and +expertise relates in more Damage at the mob, which can be boosted by stacking +crit and +str and also +haste at last.

Also, the faster you hit, the more often you trigger Necrosis and Blood-Caked-Blades, delivering some kind of a second and a third hit at once.

And stay tuned, I am doing a short rotation movie for you out there showing a comparison between 2 builds at level 70 with DW!

Spell Rotation

2008-11-14T17:42:00.004+01:00

Since I got asked a few times on mmo-champion.com and in the offical wow-forum, I now give some advice for rotation as DW Frost DK during leveling in Outland.

Thanks to Blood of the North, we can do two different rotations. My simple rotation is like:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - BloodStrike - FrostStrike - HowlingBlast

or just in a different way:

Icy Touch - PlagueStrike - BloodStrike - HowlingBlast - Frost Strike - Blood Strike

But you can also change the rotation, depending on the runic power. I really have enough of it, so most of the fights I can start like:

IT - PS - BS - FS - FS - HB - BS

So, using Blood of the North I charge both Death Runes, and using following rotation at the next mob:

IT - PS - BS - HB - FS- HB - FS

No mob is surviving this, also very nice for groups. A very good t hing about Frost DW is the proccing Killing Machine, it's up most of the time, resulting in nice HB and FS crits :)

2008-11-13T21:13:00.004+01:00

Edurol is doing pretty well, after about 3 hours from the start I reached 59 and got to Outland, gathering all the stuff from the mules to start skilling Blacksmith, and also to get my 2 swords I bought.

Looking pretty fine I think, and the leveling is going really nice. I use Crusader on the Main and Rune of Black Ice on the Offhand for some debuff proccs.

I started with 15 points into blood and the rest into frost, burst damage is good and every mob was down after not even 1 rotation. The "big nerf" is not really as hard as I thought in Beta.

This screenshots shows me after finishing everything on the Hellfire-Peninsula, with my sweet little undead dragon from the CE.

Just love this thing, they really did this one well :)

I easily reached 62 with alle the quests, finding some other guys to finish the group quests. I then headed to the next area, many more quests to do and surely getting 63 in about 2 hours.

For now I reached the 63, and got me my 2 Axes with the same enchantments as the swords. They really look sweet on a Deathknight :)

I changed my talents now, and took 2 points from Blood to get Frost Strike a bit earlier. My current talent build is looking like that:

13/41/0

Doing very well with this one, I have more chances to use my runic power... I had to much of it for now to use, Frost Strike is using it up pretty well. Better than the old costs of 1 Frost Rune.

So, I may finish all quests of this swamp tonight, and then I'll go over to Terokkar to do 64 and maybe 65, to off to Nagrand. Really looking forward to it.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask :)

WotLK Launch

2008-11-13T11:12:00.006+01:00

Today, finally... first time I woke up was like 4 am in the morning (german time), I was so nervous ;-) Then I got up at 6 am, and travelled to a store near me, which opened at 7 am. When I got there, I noticed it had opened earlier this morning and oh boy, what a crowd in there.

So many different people there, and this just in a small area of Vienna. Holy crap.
I lined up, and saw some Collectors Editions from the far... and I got there, asked the guy "Are those reserved for someone?" - he looked at me, took one in his hands and reached it to me.

OH MY GOD!!

Everything went fine, no problems during installation, just this strange DK bug... if you cannot do a DK, even if you have a 55+ char, just do a new lvl 1 char, log in, log out, and then - voila, you can do a DK.

And here he is, allmighty Edurol, I have chosen a Nightelve for now because he looks a bit cooler and smoother in my opinion. No problems in the starting area, nearly no none there this morning, and I reached level 59 now in about 3 hours.

Beta end...

2008-11-10T07:44:00.003+01:00

So, it's been a long time since my last posting, sorry for that guys.

I was really busy, and now the Beta ended... so, we have to look forward to the Launch of WotLK in a few days, it seems that my developed Trispecc is still a good choice for DW!

I will start my DK as soon as the servers are up, and I will document every step here in this blog, every experience I make while leveling, and I am also planning on writing a complete guide about DW DK.

Hopefully everything goes as planned... ^^

Beta Nerf

2008-09-06T08:02:00.001+02:00

And here it is, with the new build 8905 the big nerf for DKs hit us... what this will mean for DW I will see in the next days, but I don't have a good feeling about it.

Blood
Skills

* Blood Strike now deals 50% weapon damage and bonus damage lowered for all ranks.
* Heart Strike now deals 50% weapon damage and bonus damage lowered for all ranks.
* Strangulate damage lowered.
* Blood Boil range reduced to 10 yards.
* Blood Tap mana cost reduced.

Talents

* Might of Morgraine (Tier 9) now affects Obliterate. Critical Strike Damage bonus has been reduced to 15/30/45%. (Previously 20/40/60%)
* Death Rune Mastery (Tier 3) now requires you to hit the target.

Frost
Skills

* Obliterate bonus damage lowered.
* Icy Touch damage lowered.
* Frost Strike now deals 50% weapon damage and bonus damage lowered for all ranks.

Talents

* Blood of the North (Tier 8 ) has been changed to 3 ranks.
* Merciless Combat (Tier 6) now increases damage done with Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Icy Touch, and Obliterate to targets under 35% by 10/20%.(Previously increased damage by 30/60%)

Unholy
Skills

* Corpse Explosion damage lowered.
* Death Coil damage lowered.
* Death Strike bonus damage lowered.
* Death and Decay damage lowered.
* Plague Strike now deals 30% weapon damage and bonus damage increased for all ranks.
* Scourge Strike now deals 65% weapon damage and bonus damage lowered for all ranks.
* Death Gate now has a 1 minute cooldown.

Talents

* Summon Gargoyle (Tier 5) runic power cost lowered to 30. (Previously was 50)
* Outbreak (Tier 3) no longer affects Scourge Strike. It now increases the damage of Plague Strike in addition to Blood Boil and Pestilence by 10%.
* Unholy Command (Tier 2) no longer affects the cooldown of Dark Command.

Unholy DW in Nexus

2008-08-31T17:18:00.004+02:00

So with the new unholy DW specc I went Nexus to try it out. It was awesome, with a good tank there is no prob bringing diseases up an all nearby mobs and then Unholy Blight and SS. Just brutal damage... and it is just fun.

See for yourself - recount after finishing Nexus:

1st is me
2nd is DK with Blood 2Hand
3rd is Elemental Shaman in decent badgegear

For now it seems that Frost and Unholy are farewell balanced out, a bit to much burst possible with Unholy at the moment, and I think Blood-Caked Blade needs some working... proccing way to less, maybe just every few mobs.

Blood is surely underpowered at the moment, there is no way to keep up with Frost or Unholy at the moment - and also I was thinking about my Trybrid specc, which may be usable in Raids at lvl 80, but for questing / leveling it's better to go Frost or Unholy at the moment. You lack the selfhealing, but you bash the mobs fast.

And for the critics out there... there are other classes who also do 7000 or 8000 crits, so we are not the only ones. And it seems to me, that balancing is focused on lvl 80 raids and not the questing before.

Third movie !!

2008-08-31T12:56:00.004+02:00

Finally, I managed to finish the scenes for my third movie on this beautifully Lag-Server... and here you go, a few fights in Northrend showing my Trybrid specc and the new Unholy DW specc at level 72:

Filefront Download Link

Music is listed at the end of the movie, if you have questions don't hesitate and post a comment.

Unholy DW surprise

2008-08-31T08:16:00.007+02:00

So yesterday I was able to get an impression of Unholy when DWing. And boy was I surprised, the new Scourge Strike is awesome, hitting for nearly 7000 dmg critical - with a one hand weapon!

Also I finally saw my first Blood-Caked Blades procc in the combat log.

Here you have some screenshots of my combat log, sorry for the german, I'll explain everything below the Image:

Scourge Strike hits critcal for 6558 dmg.

Scourge Strike hits critical for 6804 dmg.

Scourge Strike hits for 2860 dmg
Necrosis proccs for 119 dmg
Blood-Caked Blade proccs for 413 dmg

Here you can see the recount after a few mobs, showing that Scourge Strike is first, followed by White Hits and Unholy Blight.

My third movie is in progress, showing the Trybrid build and some farming with Unholy build. As for now, the Unholy specc is in advantage... doing way more damage, and giving a nice combination through the synergies for shadow damage.

The build I used for those screenshots was:

2/9/52

At lvl 80 this could look like:

2/17/52

Hopefully I can release the third movie tonight or tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Build 8885

2008-08-30T09:40:00.003+02:00

The new build 8885 has arrived and brought some changes to the DK. I will take a closer look at the next posting, what I have seen for now is the new Scourge Strike, now looking much better than Obliterate and maybe a worthy additon for DW... but that would mean I would have to skip my Trybrid Specc.

Maybe I'll give it a try...

Blood Caked Blades still seems to be buggy, my combat log isn't showing a single procc.
Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

Trybrid...

2008-08-28T21:21:00.009+02:00

I was just thinking about my trispecc, which I now call "DW Trybrid". Most people suggest to go one tree deep until the ultimate... something like deep Frost for DW, or even deep Unholy.

I don't think that this is a good idea. Sure, your Dmg won't be calculated from your weapondmg at all, but what I ask myself... will this scale better than a Trybrid?

When doing a "Trybrid" specc, nearly all your skills that you are going to use are pushed in Crit and Dmg, and also your overall white damage will get an extreme boost... it seems that like everything starts to scale from everything.

Thinking of being lvl 80, this could look something like this:

33/19/19

To sum up the synergies:

5% more Crit
9% more Crit on Oblit and BS (sumed up 14% additional Crit)
6% Crit on Plague Strike (sumed up 11% additional Crit on this attack)
6 % more Shadowdamage (pushing Necrosis,Death Pact, Diseases)
15 % more Physical and Shadowdamage w Bloody Vengeance
11 % more Strength (Pushing everything)
15% more Haste w Icy Talons (Pushing swings and Necrosis)
3% Hit and 15% Offhand damage
10% AP proccing w Obliterate
25 AP per 1000 Armour
Necrosis and Blood Caked Blades for Auto Attacks

Of course this is all just theory for now. But I am doing very well with it while questing, and I can really feel every point I gain with equip. Sure we now need to see how this will be at 80 in decent equip... and when raiding in high end equip. But for that we will have to wait quite a while. Depends on how fast I will go when WotLK goes live.

;-)

Dwarf DK pictures

2008-08-27T20:12:00.006+02:00

To share some of my recent experiments I will show you some pics, where I tried on some items I could find in the auction house as well as the first lvl 70 blacksmith tank set, that really looks decent on a dwarf... also I give you some pics when you start a flight from dalaran... so here you go:

Further DPS testing...

2008-08-26T17:55:00.002+02:00

Huanz from the official EU Beta Forum did some further tests regarding DW Frost and 2 Hand Frost as well as blood to compare the DPS and the Damage at Level 73... and here you have the suprise:

DW can keep up with 2 Hand!!!

And here you have the stats with pictures, short explanation afterwards...

Deep Blood 2 Hand

DPS: ~1170
Build: 51/0/13

Deep Frost 2 Hand

DPS: ~1290
Build: 15/49/0

Deep Frost Dual Wield

DPS: ~1320
Build: 5/44/15

Rotation (after a few Cycles):

IT -> PS -> BS -> IT (BotN DeathRune) -> HB -> Frost Strike -> Frost Strike

Comparison and conclusion:

So here you have the surprise ... just being at lvl 73 shows, what potential lies beneath DW.
To sum it up:

Frost DW does about 1320 DPS, infight there can be peaks to nearly 1400 DPS
3-spec DW does about 1220 DPS, infight there can be peaks to nearly 1300 DPS

Frost 2H does about 1290 DPS, infight there can be peaks to nearly 1400 DPS
Blood 2H does about 1170 DP S, infight there can be peaks to nearly 1200 DPS

Frost shows much potential for good burst, resulting in higher peaks during fight. It seems realistic that at lvl 80 you can easily reach peaks over 2000 DPS. Followed by that is my trispec, showing more consistent DPS and also some potential... maybe I can get a few pieces of better gear than my green quest stuff and some new weapons.

New DPS Test

2008-08-26T17:25:00.006+02:00

I reached lvl 72 and wanted to try my developed Trispec again, last time at 70 I was able to get over 1000 dps... this time I managed to break that again:

My Trispec for that level is a mixture of deeper blood combined with the best synergies from Frost and Unholy - click for the link:

29/18/16

For the ones who are not familiar with german recount:

1. White Damage
2. Obliterate
3. Necrosis
4. Blood Strike
5. Death Pact

Really interesting to see the DMG of Necrosis reaching 12%. I did not skill BCB because it still seems to be buggy, but those 3 points are reserved when BCB is working.

And it is good to see how the pure DMG is scaling with Hit, Crit and AP... 2 levels, a bit of better gear and a fixed rotation brought me nearly 200 dps from the last time. This also is because of the pushed up synergies you get when speccing a "Trybrid", nearly all your skills that you are going to use are pushed in Crit and Dmg, and also your overall white damage will get an extreme boost.

At lvl 80 this could look something like this:

33/19/19

To sum up the synergies:

5% Crit
9% Crit on Oblit and BS
6% Crit on Plague Strike
6 % more Shadowdamage (necrosis ftw)
15 % more Physical and Shadowdamage (yay more necrosis)
11 % more Strength
15% more haste via icy talons
3% Hit and 15% Offhand damage
10% AP proccing on Obliterate
25 AP per 1000 Armour
Necrosis and Blood Caked Bake for Auto Attacks

Dear Jayde...

2008-08-26T07:23:00.004+02:00

Everyone seems to know you in US Beta Forums:

http://jadefury.blogspot.com/

Don't get me wrong now, dear Jayde - I like how you put effort in the DK and try to make him better than he is now.

But you always forget 1 thing:

Dual Wield

The DK has the choice to do DW, but you really ignore that. It seems that you try to push everything in the direction you want it to be:

2 Handed Damage

That is not fair, nor correct. As a Beta Tester, you should test both sides and post suggestions to improve both sides. Your own opinion does not matter, as a Beta Tester you should be as neutral as possible and leave the choice to the players out there if they want to DW or 2Hand.

But please stop pushing everything in the "wrong" direction and try to keep thinking if your suggested changes would also be viable for DW or would it even make more worse.

Feel free to contact me, maybe we can find a way and work together.

Regards,

Edurol

2008-08-26T07:15:00.004+02:00

Got the Chance to test Nexus with a new Trispecc... I'll post the thoughts on this one later:

29/18/15

Here you can see my recount after finishing:

Second place behind elemental Shaman... which is no prob for me because I know how awesome they DPS.

As you can see, most of my damage is white hits, followed by Obliterate and Necrosis. I wish BCB would work so I could skill that and see what it does...

But this trispecc has potential, and I think at 80 with nearly 3000 AP, 40% Crit, Hitcap and Haste, this build will do a tremendous amount of dmg.

I for now think that Frost is not satisfying for me as DW... when you skill Frost while DWing, the only strong spell not linked to your weapon damage is HB... the rest is not changing. It is like 2hand specc, and that is why I don't like it.

I really believe in the Trispecc with as many synergies as possible to be the ultimate style for DW DK. Surely 2h will scale better with all strikes, but a DK with 2h will never do a balanced trispecc to get every synergy for STR + CRIT that is there... he will focus on a tree to do good damage using a good rotation.

When DWing, most of the dmg comes from white hits, necrosis and something like Blood Strike or Obliterate. So it is clear for me that boosting ap, hit and crit, you will boost your white dmg and overall dps way up.

So I developed this Trispecc:

35/18/18

You get all important synergies for boosting damage of your white hits and crits... with the rotation:

IT - PS - OB - BS - BS - OB

or when "death rune mastery" finally is working:

IT - PS - DS - BS - BS - OB - OB - OB

The fact here is, that you push the dmg or your swings with necrosis and bcb, overall with bloody vengance... and you could put the 1 point from hysteria into shadow of death for even more str.

It just seems logical to me... My recount always shows that White Hits, Obliterate and Necrosis are leading - so I push that as far as possible.

Frost may be nice now for leveling with some sweet burst, but imho it is a 2h build (frost strike scaling way better with 2h) which has no real difference to DW, also for now this is the overpowered build like blood was before...

Testing DPS in Blasted Lands...

2008-08-26T07:11:00.003+02:00

Being lvl 71 I wanted to test a few speccs after the newest build had arrived:

1st Fight with Unholy Aura
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/6092/dpstest01qv6.jpg

2nd Fight with Blood A ura
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/3830/dpstest02fc8.jpg

Specc was a Trispecc in both fights and lasting for about 3 minutes:

26/18/18

Then I specced deep Frost with Unholy, fight lasting about 4 mins with active blood aura:
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4299/dpstest03ph5.jpg

Specc was:

0/44/18

Without "Merciless Combat", so you have the "real" numbers.

My conclusion:

Blood Aura seems to scale the damage better up, than the haste effect of the Unholy Aura does. This results in nearly more then 100 dps of damage on my level in this test.

Frost seems to be capable of doing more dps for a DW DK ... I just don't have the perfect rotation for it now, need a little practice. But the frost damage and the many guaranted crits are really boosting the DPS way up.

The first mobs in Northend with Frost where also no problem, I killed them really fast and was doing around 800 dps after a few mobs. That is an increase of over 200 dps for me.

Only prob for now is the missing selfheal... lvl 71 mobs really hit harder.

DW Death Knight - First thoughts...

2008-08-26T07:02:00.003+02:00

Hi there - this was posted on 17th of august by me in EU Beta Forums:

Since I am in the beta I started my DK and leveled him as a DW. I love DW, it is a lot of fun and really fits the Deathknight very well... even if some players think the opposite and are trying to defame DW.

So, to give everyone an impression what the DK is like when you play him as DW, I made a first video in the build 8770:

http://files.filefront.com/WotLK+Beta+DW+Death+Knight/;11429308;/fileinfo.html

Starting gear and 2 swords from the honor hold, it was really fun but I noticed, that the lack of +hit takes quite some damage away.
Also build 8770 hade a few bugs, necrosis was not proccing with correct damage, blood-caked blades not proccing, Ghul somehow going amok...

So with the new build 8781 from august 12th I did some newer scenes, mostly with level 66 or 67 and a different specc, to show you how it is to play DW in this build and what it will be like when you are nearly finished in outlands:

http://files.filefront.com/WotLK+Beta+DW+Death+Knight+II/;11521570;/fileinfo.html

But unfortunately, there are still Bugs in this build. Blood-caked blades still not proccing, so I did not skill it this time... Icy Thalons is giving no haste buff, that is kinda disturbing when you DW. But you can see, that it is still fun and that DW has a nice killspeed with no down times.

Going Northend...

Now I am 70 and did quite some quests in Northend. The gear from the quests there is simply amazing for a fresh DK, finally you can get rid of the (still awesome looking) starting gear and get some new, really good looking and refreshing stuff which also fits together in color and style.

I took most items with +hit and +crit (there is stuff with like +53 crit rating... awesome!!) and I could see an increase in DPS and a decrease in miss... finally, it was getting more fun!

Doing around 300 to a maximum of 400 dps in Outland, I can now reach 700 dps, and with some critluck also 800 dps. And this with just some green questitems and buggy talents / skills...

Possibilities...

Aiming for a good Specc for raiding or 5-man groups, some points in blood are fine and push the DPS - but not all points in blood. So you have to find the right balance... and I think, the best specc to go for Raids at Level 80 is to put most of the points into Frost until Howling Blast or even until Frost Strike, and take the important stuff from Unholy like Necrosis und Blood-Caked Blades (when they are finally working...). and just the rest into blood.

That could look like:

0/53/18

Or you can try to do more Unholy:

0/40/31

But that would cost you 5% crit from blood and a synergy from Unholy... but may be worth it, if Blizzard gets the balance of RP costs and RP Generation for frost. At the moment, it is nearly unplayable because you cannot really do everything you need to do in a fight - you run out of runes and RP very fast.

Problems and concerns...

One of the best things of a DK is the self-healing. But not for a DW. Most helpfull talents are imho in Frost and Unholy. Some say deep Blood would be better with spamming blood strike and heart strike etc... but I don't think that it is reasonable to put the points in the same tree a 2h DK would use.

So, when leveling with DW you may lack selfhealing, which is why I specced a bit more into blood now. Helps a lot in Northrend.

The biggest concern at the moment are our talents which mostly are based on weapon damage. Seeing 2h going up to 700 or even 800 max damage, our main hand weapon barely will have half of the damage.

As DW we may can have mor AP or will stack more +hit and +crit ... but I think this won't balance it out. A solution I would have for that would be, that every skill or talent that "strikes" the enemy with the weapon, strikes as DW with both weapons and is calculating the damage on the sumed up weapon damage of both weapons.

For example Blood Strike:
[i]Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus 164 for each of the Death Knight's diseases on the target[/i]

This could look like that for DW:
[i]Instantly strike the enemy with both weapons, causing 60% of the overall weapon damage of both of his weapons, plus 164 for each of the Death Knight's diseases on the target[/i]

Weapon example:

Main hand 430
Off hand 300
Summing up 730 - 60% of that for the damage calculation

The talent could have 2 tooltips, or there could be 2 talents - one for 2h and one only to be used for DW.

This would equal 2h and 2 1h weapons in the damage calculation. I don't really know how far 1 hand weapons will go up on level 80... so this should be closely watched that this calculation won't exceed 2h weapons.

Because this seems to be the current fear of the 2h DK fans... that DW will overcome 2h like it is with warriors or shamans.

But summing up that in some cases, a very fast offhand with lower weapon damage might be better for proccing rune-enchantments, there wont be such a huge overall weapon damage then with 2 slow 1h weapons... I think, it would be worth a try!

Another current problem for now, is that many of the important talents are buggy, so there is no way to 100% calculate what it will be like in raids, but one thing I saw in my last Utgarde run:

Unholy Presence plus a working Icy talons will give you an insane attack speed, counting Killing Machine in with Howling Blast, and Necrosis and also a working Blood-Caked Blades ... we will be able to get some nice damage output.

Thread Link:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9023695394&sid=2003