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.

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

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

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

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

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

Shazaaaam!!!

Upcoming changes in 3.1

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...

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?