Let's come up with a new 5 man DK spec

[Multibocks]

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.


Ok with these changes in mind Im thinking deep blood and some frost/unholy to finish for talent choices on 5 man DK teams. Notice the blood worms heal more! WOOT. However it seems that blood stacking has been fixed, so all DK teams (no healer) may be in for no more hi level dungeon runs (heroics), but we will have to see!
I would link a talent page, but my work has most of them block or they dont work on our lame computers. So I will make up one later and we can critique it! :thumbsup:

edit: by deep blood I mean taking Heart Strike and Will of the Necropolis for reduced damage taken <35%.

[Multibocks]

Another thing I noticed.. Unholy Blight is now in range of blood aura and with that you can also get corpse explosion!! Hmm AE DK group is sounding fantastic right now 8o

[Redbeard]

At this point in time, assuming there are no new drastic changes to the trees in 3.1 (and there could be so who knows) I am planning on making my blood DK 50/0/21 in order to get unholy blight in lieu of DRW. While DRW will do more DPS in general I think UB will be much easier to manage (especially if I glyph it to make it last 30 seconds).

We'll see.

[Multibocks]

wow didnt know it could last 30secs with glyph. That definitely decides it, I will be doing at least 45 into blood as you have to take the armor boost from frost as well =(

[Redbeard]

From mmo-champion.com

Glyph of Unholy Blight *new* -- Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.

its 20 seconds base.

I guess these are not official yet so... we jus thave to wait and see =)

[Multibocks]

Ok thats really nice, however I have to give up some talents to hit UB that Im not sure I want to give up i.e. Will of the Necropolis. I can't use a real calculator right now, but its not looking good =(

Necessary talents for tanking: +10 parry, +15% armor talent, +5% dodge talent. This means you will always spend at least 5 points in each tree. It's even arguable that you need the IT talent in frost to slow down the melee speed of what you are killing. Even worse is that one of my slaves has to spec into improved IT for the group haste. 20% melee haste is A LOT to give up :cursing:

[Zerocool2024]

Current spec across the board cept for one with improved Frost and two less in the end in Dodge in unholy.

Don't see much changing in my specs, though, I will go where my damage tells me to go.

36/33/3 ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Durotan&n=R%C3%AAih%C3%AAalita')

[Multibocks]

So you wont get Howling Blast come 3.1 and that will drop your AoE dps. Im guessing you will spec up to heart strike to fill the gap? Or will you do Unholy Blight? I dont think staying in a 30x/30x/5x type spec will work anymore. If anything the new top teir talents are even more desirable. Free Death coil proc? Yes please! Heart Strike hits harder and two targets? Yes please!

edit: The more I think about losing HB the more I like Heart Strike. HB was really cool in BG pvp as you could do HB X 4 (or 5 in your case) and do some massive AOE dps. Now it looks like you either spec 51 into frost (and lose blood aura and worms) or take Heart Strike and live with the fact you will hit less targets, but harder. Which is great for instances too.

[Redbeard]

Depending on how the talents end up I will likely do something like.

50/0/21 ('http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2304021503003313201223101350000000000 0000000000000000000230200305103110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614')

[Multibocks]

Are you attempting instances with that build? I would really like to suggest you take the +10 parry talent. It's expensive, but its also one of the best damage avoidance talents DKs have. It's almost broken because it doesnt take into account diminishing returns on avoidance. Your blood runes refresh at 10secs so it will always be up once you do your first rotation. I wish our computers werent such POS's, they run IE6, so I cant really see what you chose until I check it out at home :S

[Redbeard]

If you check out my sig my DK is not 80 yet.. thats my theoretical build =) But the DK will not be tanking, my druid will be.

[Multibocks]

Oh ok I see! Ya then go all out on the dps talents =)

[Souca]

I'm trying to not get too emo about the patch, but I can't say I'm happy with the changes to DKs. There are some nice things from a boxing perspective, the auto cast Death Coil solves the problem I always had with Sudden Doom procs and Unholy Blight with glyph will be a fun addition. All DK groups will still be viable, but it might be roguh until we all regear and adjust to the new version of the class.

My main concerns over the DK are more on a the class as it is played solo. With the changes to auras they are basically taking away the only unique buffs that DKs brought to a group. Horn of Winter is a Strength of Earth totem. Icy Talons is a Windfury Totem. The different auras gave you a reason to have more than one DK in a group. Unholy would bring a move speed buff without the stun. Blood brought healing for everyone. Frost, well frost took up another buff spot. What does a DK bring to a group now? Does a 25 man benefit from having more than one?

I may be just in a bad mood, but I'm a little frustrated with the speed at which classes are changing ever since 3.0. I started playing seriously with TBC and I don't think I ever went through as many overall class mechanic changes as I have seen even before 3.1 is out. Is it just sentimentality, or does it seem like class change so much per patch that you almost need to have one of every class to make sure you will have a character you can enjoy playing?

Is this a good thing? Am I just frustrated because I don't have a team at 80 and I'm worried they will be nerfed just after I get them geared? Oh, and is it me, or are they really trying to destroy frost as a DK dps spec?

- Souca -

[pinotnoir]

You think they will do a talent refund with all the changes?

[Multibocks]

most likely

[Souca]

They would have to. If you currently have Howling Blast in your spec but don't have Hungering Cold, it's not like you could keep Howling Blast. Judging from the number of changes to all classes its likely they will just wipe all talents and it makes sense with the dual spec being introduced as well.

- Souca -

[Multibocks]

Ok finally got home heres my guess at what my DK tank will have

Blood Tank ('http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0055001533003303030213131000005000000 0000000000000000000005230305100110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614')

Here is 2 of the 3 slaves ('http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2304021503003313201223101350000000000 0000000000000000000230200305103110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614')

and finally the utility guy ('http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2304021503003313201223101350000000000 0000000000000000000230200305103110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614')(lets hope he doesnt die early on boss fights as hes my haste, lol.)

So these guys all will be using liberal amounts of Heart Strike, but I gotta figure out exactly what I need. Also I may make my tank do the frost stuff but I really really need an AOE spell and UB is really nice. Guess we will see.

[Souca]

If I had to guess, and I don't, but I will anyway, we are looking at at least 6 weeks or so on the PTR. Why six weeks? 2009 arena realms came up today and after two practice weeks there are four weeks of arena. While it is possible that Blizzard could release 3.1 and either keep the arena realms separate or tell the players to deal with it, I don't see that happening. Once the 4 weeks are over, all the competition moves to private servers that will get set up at the actual location of the tournaments, so it doesn't matter what version they run. The live arena will have GMs and I just don't see GMs having to explain why something works different in live than arena.

That said, six weeks is a long time for things to change.

- Souca -

[Zerocool2024]

You know, after actually looking at the new patch notes and checking up on the new talents. I got nerfed... My uberness is getting toned down a little. So now I ran my builds through my head and did the usual run down of glyphs, gear, talents, and I see improvments where I thought I was lacking. I 'm going to miss HB A LOT... But thats life. I will run with it till it gets taken away and sware by it about how good it was for 5boxing DKS.

I will post some ideas/thoughts in a little bit today after I make sure I got what I can get from Memory (or lack there of, lol) But i'm pretty sure I'm going to be happy with my new build(s). And hope fully some for people who at just hitting Wrath (70) who are having a little bit of a hard time with the new dungeons.

This is of course they don't nef the Aura and only make it stack with one. If that heppens... Well, you should all know what that means.

[Varmon]

Well they did replace all of the auras in the talent trees with improved presences... However at the same time the patch notes are pretty vague and don't really elude to anything outside of the auras no longer being acquired in the talent trees. Unless there has been some blue discussions/confirmations yet on if/why dk auras are being removed from the game completely who knows...maybe they are going to rework them a bit and make them similar to pally auras where they are all base skills, but only 1 could be active at once per character

[Multibocks]

You mean like this?



Unholy Aura was becoming mandatory as a raid buff. We considered giving it to other classes, but realized we would just be accepting all players moving faster all the time (which subsequently also makes some boot enchants look bad). Frost Aura was kind of lame, but I'm sure we could have come up with something better. Mostly, the mechanic was just a little awkward and hard to explain. We like the new one better.

Players often wish for a buff so awesome that it guarantees them a raid slot. But that is exactly the mentality we were trying to prevent with our big buff and debuff overhaul. In the Sunwell era, raid slots were already so precious that there is a good chance a DK might not have even earned a spot, and having more than one would be a total waste... unless we gave them two mandatory buffs, in which case the Retadin, Boomkin or dps warrior might have gotten the heave ho.

The new model is designed to let you get as many buffs as you want through several different configurations of classes and specs and still have some slots left over to bring who you want.

Sounds like blood DKs are screwed, however it didnt specifically mention blood aura above, so I hold out some small hope...

[Tombs]

My main concerns over the DK are more on a the class as it is played solo. With the changes to auras they are basically taking away the only unique buffs that DKs brought to a group. Horn of Winter is a Strength of Earth totem. Icy Talons is a Windfury Totem. The different auras gave you a reason to have more than one DK in a group. Unholy would bring a move speed buff without the stun. Blood brought healing for everyone. Frost, well frost took up another buff spot. What does a DK bring to a group now? Does a 25 man benefit from having more than one?
There are very few unique buffs left (Bloodlust, ?). DKs will still be topping the charts and be solid OTs with dual spec and that is appealing enough to get a raid spot. Just about every class/spec has this concern when it comes down to it cause someone else usually has the same buff. I wouldn't worry at all.

[Multibocks]

Actually DKs are very very solid MTs! I have seen some logs of DKs with 80% avoidance on boss mobs. Thats pushing ridiculous levels of avoidance.

edit: The more I read that quote the more I think they removed Blood Aura from affecting your group/raid which pretty much guarantees that it will no longer stack. This also means that all DK groups are pretty much done PvE wise. I look forward to being proved wrong though!

editx2: Read this thread ('http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t47413-imbalance_tanking_classes_aka_avoidance_hoooo/') if you are interested in how OP DK tanks are =)

[Souca]

Actually DKs are very very solid MTs! I have seen some logs of DKs with 80% avoidance on boss mobs. Thats pushing ridiculous levels of avoidance.

edit: The more I read that quote the more I think they removed Blood Aura from affecting your group/raid which pretty much guarantees that it will no longer stack. This also means that all DK groups are pretty much done PvE wise. I look forward to being proved wrong though!

editx2: Read this thread ('http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t47413-imbalance_tanking_classes_aka_avoidance_hoooo/') if you are interested in how OP DK tanks are =)The way I read it, is that there is no longer an aura. It is a player only buff that is built into your presences. Very similar to something like Survival of the Fittest for druids that improves their armor multiplier. It won't stack, because there is nothing for it to stack with. Taking the Imp presence talents will modify the existing presence bonus, not add a new one.

All DK groups are astill possible, but only because DKs have a strong self heal. The way you will pull it off will be more along the lines of having 5 characters that are designed to survive solo, not 5 characters that can survive because they are synergistically buffing each other. It will pretty much remove the benefit of only having DKs, as you won't lose anything by putting a Paly tank in there instead of one of the DKs.

DK MTs are great, I have one I love very much, I just felt out of place when I wasn't in a tanking role as I didn't have any buff aside from the aura that really helped the raid. Druids have battle rez, Pallys have auras, Warriors have shouts. I guess my thoughts are along the lines of if you have a DK, a Druid, a Pally, and a Warrior tank and one empty spot left, which of the tanks would you want an extra of? The answer to me is the pally or the druid, not the DK or the warrior.

- Souca -

[Pavavion]

anymore discussion on specs post 3.1 for the 5dk team no healer??

[Zerocool2024]

I'm working on them as we speak...

They died off a little bit because of the random nerfs and placements of said talents.
Right now, the best dps I am getting is with a Ghoul.

My Toon ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Durotan&n=R%C3%AAih%C3%AAalita')
Spec 1 ('http://thottbot.com/death_knight/t#gbKcMT9//i5,ydwn4')

With Test Dummies I am pulling around 1700 DPS.
This is of course low because all my gear is towards tanking and not DPS.

/use Seal of the Pantheon
/cast Dark Command
/castsequence reset=target Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Strike, Obliterate, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Ghoul Frenzy, Blood Boil, Blood Boil, Obliterate
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast !Blood Tap

That is me just playing around, currently getting the 1700 with this setup.
Still working on it to see if I can get any better out of it.

There are other specs I have been playing with, but nothing to boast about because I was only pulling like 1400DPS.

My next attempt is I know I lose Aura, but I might be able to make it work on one toon, and have the rest as the other spec.

Everything is still up in the air, but 5MAN DK teams are still usable.

[Multibocks]

Wait, you are using castsequence for that whole thing? Dont you get stuck when you are low on runepower? Which would lower your dps to just your white swings =(

[Zerocool2024]

Yeah, I've always done Castsequence...

I never use Rune attacks in my CS's because they will get hung up.

[ghonosyph and the moocrew]

Dk groups took a huge nerf, and that really sucks for all dk groups. I dont run all 5 dks, my setup is 3 dks and one feral druid, but i've grown acustom to using a very solid frost heavy/blood subspec that works very well for single target AND HUGE aoe dps/ plus the side bonus of having an AOE CC that you can spam on rotation (works great for stopping casters and other fun stuff)

Here is a link to the blizz talent calculator for the spec i use :thumbsup:
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=6&tal=2305021033000000000000000000320250503520030123 0105001351000000000000000000000000000000

the glyphs i use are Rune tap(for the aoe healing capability this is so awesome is not funny), Obliterate(thinking of changing this out to either howling blast or hungering cold when those become available on my server) and frost strike. Minor glyphs i use are horn of winter, raise dead, pestilence.

This spec takes full advantage of stacking frost buffs, good haste, and the Aoe is spectacular, if you're good at timing and such you can fire off some incredibly large aoe crits knocking stuff out quickly! Use runetap on a cast rotation*(3 dks, 2 dks) and you can get a pretty large group heal off every 15 seconds its amazing in instances

Basic rotation for bosses is: Icy touch, plague strike, blood strike*2, Obliterate, then spam frost strike for big dmg. This generates all your runes as death runes, so your next rotation will be 2 obliterates then icy touch and plague strike again, then spamming out frost strikes

For aoe packs, i like to lead with this rotation: icy touch, plague strike, pestilence, howling blast**hungering cold to stop everything in its tracks cc style and let your diseases tick for a couple seconds, blood boil 2 times, hungering cold again on another dk, howling blast should be up again so fire it off, then refresh diseases or spam frost strikes on whatever might still be alive. I use taurens, so you can put warstomp in the middle there somewhere to alternate cc as if you warstomp after spreading diseases, then howling blast, then hunger cold you can keep mobs cc'd for a long time lol


As i see it, this is the MOST effective boxing spec to use, it keeps major aoe and has solid single target dps(though nothing comparable to shaman dps lol) and the survivability can be unmatched with the aoe heal in runetap and the cc of hungering cold

good luck guys :)

[ghonosyph and the moocrew]

edit** The Great part about this spec is its ability to stand back and dps from ranged in certain boss situations where being in melee would get you owned(ie heroic occulus frost mage boss, heroic nexus dwarf ww boss) :) i usually just set my guys up max cast range and dps from there with icy touch, howling blast and death coil, and death and decays(manually placing them from range :)
I'm lookin for a way to make a video as i'd love to show you guys how i do a couple of heroics with my guys :D

[Diwa]

Another thing I noticed.. Unholy Blight is now in range of blood aura and with that you can also get corpse explosion!! Hmm AE DK group is sounding fantastic right now 8oI'm having fun with my blood DK when pulling the entire SM Cath or Strat Ghouls and begin to spam UB+BB+CE+Pestilence+D&D+PS. All of them die in few seconds unlike when I'm using my Pally to boost.


Total carnage! 8o


And healing was not a problem :thumbsup:


So this setup is possible.