DK + 4 Ret Tips n Tricks

[Kromtor]

The obvious pally buffs (speced means the person using it should have the talents that amplify it):
-Righteous Fury (speced)
-G Blessing of Might (speced)
-G Blessing of Wisdom
-G Blessing of Kings
-Retribution Aura (speced)
-Devotion Aura (speced) or Crusader Aura when mounted
-Frost Resistance Aura or Shadow Resistance Aura
-Fire Resistance Aura
-Sense Undead (Glyphed)

IMPORTANT CAVEAT:
One thing I've noticed with pallies is that they have several talents that amplify the power of multiple auras. It may seem like a good idea to split these talents between pallies - it isn't. You have to make sure that you put all those talents on the same paladin and that he activates his aura last. Failure to do so will mean that another pally's unbuffed or partially buffed aura will overwrite the bonus effects of the previous pally. The talents I'm talking about: Improved Devotion Aura, Sanctified Retribution, Swift Retribution. Get all these on your devotion aura guy and then get Sanctified Retribution also on your Retribution Aura guy.

-Use all 3 different judgements. Double up on judgement of light, it's the most important.
-Use Seal of Righteousness and get as many points in the holy talent that improves it as you can. I was able to get 3 points in it. Use a Seal of Command build only when you're in full relentless.
-Make sure you have 2/2 Divine Guardian on each paly.
-Use Sacred Shield on all your pallies (just self cast). If you're really good switch it off one pally to your DK when you see him being focused or if you're in PvE.
-As soon as you start taking damage pop divine shield and Divine Sacrifice on one pally. Wait 10 seconds (or if you see it mass dispelled) and pop it on the next pally. You'll have a long period of very high group damage reduction without sacrificing much DPS. DONT USE WINGS until after this is used up.

-In PvP you need to be able to throw massive heals at single targets. You need FoL with a /stopcasting at the end of it in round robin with a seperate button/macro for each member of your team as the target. You can make another similar macro for exorcism but chances are you wont want to both with this in arenas. You'll be healing.

-You NEED 5 cleanse macros in similar fashion to the FoL macros. If you're not cleansing your guys then you're not playing paladins.


-Each pally needs a
/cast [target=arena#] Repentance
and
/cast [target=arena#] Hammer of Justice

Range is low and you must be facing for these to work so they wont often work but spamming them can prove effective in many situations to lock down seperate individuals.

-Use Hammer of Wrath on low targets
-Spam Crusader Strike (get the frost emblem libram for this) and Divine Storm when in range
-Use your racials
-Use Concecration often in PvE and if you happen to feel like it in PvP. Sometimes it'll just break your repents and isn't worth it
-Spam hand of reckoning on PvE trash for a big DPS boost
-Consider using hand of sacrifice/hand of protection the same way as cleanse, very difficult though



DK Stuff
-Horn of Winter
-Path of Frost (can eat a dispel.. maybe I dunno I use it)
-Abomination's Might (speced - use a deathstrike immediately to proc this)
-Improved Icy Talons (speced - use a speced chains of ice immediately to proc this)

In the heat of PvP Arena battle you're going to be doing a lot of death strikes and a lot of death coils. Chains of ice and death grip is also your best friend. Save death grip for a secondary target and pull him into the AoE shitstorm you're throwing on somebody else. I still use all 3 stances and can't decide which I like best. The run speed and global reduction from unholy is great, damage reduction from frost is good and the extra damage + healing (if speced) blood is great.

You all know about interact with target, I spam this on my main guy too often. It allows me to focus on unit frames and ensure that the person I'm DPSing is a good choice. If you waste time DPSing a divine shield or hand of protection, or some other high damage reduction ability target then you will lose. Get an addon that will alert you to buffs your target may have. Don't DPS these:
Divine Shield,Ice Block,Dispersion,Hand of Protection,Divine Shield,Deterrence
and don't DPS these unless they're near death:
Divine Protection,Pain Suppression,Shamanistic Rage,Evasion,Anti-Magic Shell

[Fat Tire]

Who do you target first?

How do you handle having one of your guys focus fired/chained CC (cant cleanse everything) while still trying to dps?

You dont use a mouse very often I am assuming? one hand on a game pad of sorts or keyboard and another on numpad?

How do you handle being kited once HoF is down?

Also, are you able to tunnel someone down or do you have to switch alot? I would imagine tunneling at high rating to be difficult but I dunno. Tunneling until they use an immune ability I am guessing?

Do you use a strangulate/mind freeze/gnaw on a healer or just your current target? Do you always lead with your DK? also do you assist target or assist focus, using snyergy you dont use a ftl correct?


No idea if your post was rhetorical lol. Was just posting some questions I had hehe.

Thanks Kromtor!

[Zugdud]

Krom thanks for sharing this, having had the chance to play more arena matches as this team I can really see the advantage of using 5 keys to direct 4 cleanses on a single target vs a "cleanse a friend" spam key (my current solution) Also using IWT on your leader in the heat of melee while focusing mostly on unit frames seems like a great idea (this actually seems like it will be huge, for me anyway...driving the leader is a bit of a distraction).

Good mangement of DS/DS seems pretty key with this team, i've tried to accomplish this a few different ways using separate keys, round robin, and a staggered castsequence (ex: ,,divine shield, divine sacrifice,,,,,). Though, the staggered castsequence seems like the best way to manage it as long as you arnt spam happy with the key, (to avoid double use) is this also how you manage yours?

Do you have any specific addons you find handy? I'm finding power auras to inform me when divine sacrifices are active is pretty nice, using gladius to handle arena targeting and informing me of any key buffs on the target, grid for my teams status and needed dispells, and pitbull for my teams health bars

While i'm sure you adjust often to the situation at hand, how do you typically open on an opponent, ride in and just start DPSing your first target or do you just use a wave of CC on your opener or save it for mid battle? Do you blow rockets immediate to try for an initial gib? Do you tend to chase ranged dps first and ignore melee, or do you like to focus on healers first? Locks and rogues for example seem like the easiest to deal with and focusing eigther requires them to kite and slow their DPS, elemental shaman and hunters a different story....I tend to chase elemental shaman to shutdown their dps and then make a target switch to someone else. Hunters...hunters I usually end up having to save for last

Here is a link to my team,

http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&ts=5&t=Hail+fellow+well+met&select=Hail+fellow+well+met

I actually started out leveling with warrior + dk + 3 rets but changed to dk + 4 rets once I hit 80 (MS is great, but once I got a feel for the paladins burst an extra ret just seemed superior to me) Ive tried many games with both righteousness and seal of command specs. Still a bit on the fence here as they each have their advantages, with command I have a harder time killing anyone on a 2 healer team until its time to pop wings but the cleave is definitely quite nice, Going to take your advice and give devotation aura guy all the aura buffs (sans santified retribution), neat factoid to know about the aura overwriting

Sorry if thats a bit long winded, lol...i couldnt stop typing! Really having a blast with this team, its been alot of fun so far

[drevil]

thanks for the tips!

[Altsoba]

Thank you for sharing this information Kromtor and gratz for your success.

One question to start with:
For a newly 80 dinged in savage pvp gear which way would you go to start with arenas:

Good (emblems) pve gear;
Farm honor and buy Furious with points next season?

Any more insights on this if not covered are deeply appreciated.

Thank you

[Mokoi]

thanks a ton, the aura thing was unknown to me, and I will try to use that.

GRATS on your 2500 BTW.. that's really amazing and I am so happy that we have someone like you around to inspire the rest of us.

It seems like

5 keys for FoL
4 keys for Cleanse
4 Keys for DS/DS

I don't know where to put them on my regular keyboard, do you use a gamepad etc?

grats again. Any more info you can give us would be /win =)

edit: also, with SoC do you find your mana gets low? I'm interested to know why nobody has mentioned the Glyph of Salvation, and the 20% reduced dmg it gives for self-casts.. does nobody bother with this? am I missing something about how it works? seems like it would be a good tool when you see a bladestorm, and does it work in conjunction with DS/DS combos?

[Mosg2]

Considering your new build do you think that the Darkmoon Card for +90 str and the +300 str proc would be more beneficial than the +hit trinket? Without the consideration of cash for the cards plus regemming? Also considering it doesn't trigger a cooldown on the Rocket gloves?

What do you consider the easiest targets? It seems like *no* class is "easy" in the sense that they all have a one-button escape mechanism or shield that makes them a poor target (Potentially minus non-Ele Shaman).

Does your PvP /click only have Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, and Judge in it? No Exorcism?

What made you try the SoC Build? Since you swapped to it it looks like you went *at least* 10-0. Did you do practice games before any real games after swapping? Do you feel like anything less than Relentless-level str it would be better to stay with a Righteousness build?

[zhongguohua88]

Thanks for the tips!

Considering your new build do you think that the Darkmoon Card for +90 str and the +300 str proc would be more beneficial than the +hit trinket?

I believe he chose this trinket so that he could chose when to proc the boost on all his characters at the same time rather than to wait for it to proc randomly.

[remanz]

Big thanks to Kromtor for sharing. Those are really good tips.

I found "castsequence divine shield, divine sacrifice" is a bit of harder to execute in the heat of the battle. Watching which paladin gets low, and bubble sacrifice him while still maintain movement and dps take some practice. Still work in progress


EDIT: btw. do I need some expertise for pvp ? I see some parries and dodges on my targets. I think it might be worth while to get those off the attack table. (not from defensive cool downs).

[suprafro]

Per Kromtors advice I switched from a single spam cleanse a buddy button to 5 keys and Id say its made a huge difference already though I still have much practice to put in to master it, So far i've setup my unit frames to only show debuffs and only specific ones to help make dispelling a bit easier, for situations where everyone needs to be dispelled like frost nova I just roll my finger across all the cleanse buttons (doesn't eat a GCD unless there is something to dispel). Do I have the right idea here? How are you guys managing cleansing?

For me a typical match consists of charging in, sometimes blowing up the first target and sometimes not...then about 30-40 seconds of DPS until im out of divine sacrifices. Then I pop AP trinket + wings. Thing is, almost every team has a frost mage, elemental shaman, hunter or some combination of these. Say you just gibbed the lock/melee or whatever and are up against an elemental shaman + hunter + 2 healers, what do you think is the best generalized approach to deal with them? This is the biggest thing I seem to struggle with

Also just to throw the information out there incase it helps anyone, judging with seal of righteousness procs a seal when it hits where as judging with seal of command does not. Seal of command procs can be dodged/blocked/parried and judgment of righteousness can not. And this may be bit generalized here (plug your stats into the formulas to compare) but the judgment damage on seal of righteousness also tends to be about 2x greater (AND the judgement procs a seal, making JoR brutal burst damage) where as seal of command procs will be a bit higher and can crit (and cleave of course), seal of righteousness procs can not crit

[Boylston]

Can you make a click macro for cleanses, where one button would potentially call out 4-5 others through clicks that would each target an individual player?

[Mosg2]

I tried it. It gets stuck on the casting of Cleanse if they can't be cleansed, and since it goes in order it just sits there trying to cleanse the first guy in each sequence.

[suprafro]

Here's another question I wanted to ask, how do you guys control your burst damage? Currently I have a spam sequence which just includes my judgement and crusader strike then I manually controll divine storm and concecration, i'm wondering if it would be wise to manually controll the judgement as well and have crusader strike as the only spammed ability? That would be great controlled burst but i'm not sure if it would be worth the additional micromanagement and having potentially less uptime of judgements from manual control and less incoming mana (judgements of the wise)

[remanz]

IMO, it is not worth giving judgement and crusader strike 2 seperate keys. Those two skills need to be used as soon as they become avaliable. Judgement gives you mana back. And crusader strike procs str (for the frost libram) or ap (pvp libram). First come first serve on those 2 skills.

[Mosg2]

i don't think it's worth it. This team is a micromanagement nightmare and adding that into is failsauce imo~.

[suprafro]

Definitly agree there, plenty of stuff to do as it is. Though damn...unless wings are popped it just seems really hard to score kills vs any half decent team when they have 2 healers up. I Figured I must be missing something, Mabey the key is better use of CC midgame? And throwing out a clutch strangulate?

[Mosg2]

What weapons are you using? With Quel'Delar on everyone I can gib anyone, even in full relentless, if they don't have an insta-"Don't kill me" button that I can't Strangulate through.

[suprafro]

Garfrost hammers, though my team is in 5/5 furious armor with full relentless accessories minus the cloak.Working on the Quels though, almost have the funds to get 4/5 hilts

Do you tend to use your strangulate on healers or dps casters? I didnt think about this but it sure would be easy to explode a mage after hes iceblocked if he was silenced for 5 seconds, even with 2 healers up

[Boylston]

I tried it. It gets stuck on the casting of Cleanse if they can't be cleansed, and since it goes in order it just sits there trying to cleanse the first guy in each sequence.

Bummer!

[remanz]

Actually on second thought, I think I dismissed the "manual controlling skills idea" rather too quickly. I am not as geared as you guys yet. I find myself struggle to bring down my targets. Attack power is not the ONLY issue here. Another major issue is skill out of sync. PVP is about to deal the most damage you can in a smallest time window possible. I notice my target's HP drops slowly when I spam my attacks "cursader strike, jugement, divine storms". Obviously, my attacks were not landing at the same time and totally healable. and I guess this is what I get being first come first serve. Once out of sync, I can't bring it back in sync. My attacks are scattered.

Enough gear might overcome this. But I think it might be worth looking into improving. On the other hand, the DK defensive cool downs, IMO are overrated. I can totally just click/castsequence on those things. That should free up some more keys.

[suprafro]

The DK defensive cooldowns are almost all off GCD with a few exceptions like death pact and bone shield, so I just have a single emergency button that looks like this on my DK:

/cast anti-magic shell
/cast icebound fortitude
/cast runetap
/cast vampiric blood
/cast empower rune weapon
/cast mark of blood

AMS is guarenteed to to cast on the second press if it doesnt occur on the first, also I almost always have DPS targetted on my DK until it's clean up time so I find this a good place to include mark of blood as well. As it attempts to use 2 blood rune abilities before empowered rune weapon it also brings up bladebarrier if it wasnt up already.

Mabey not an ideal solution to all situations, but a pretty decent comprimse imo. Any other suggestions or ideas for this? You could put blood tap here, or exclude empower rune weapon i suppose. I currently combo blood tap with strangulate

Also im currious how you guys are using your DK abilities? Currently I have my rune abilties in a castsequence on my main spam button as:

/castsequence reset=3 Chains of Ice, Death Strike, Pestilence, Blood Strike
/cast !rune strike

I exclude plague strike as it leaves me with a spare death rune in every rotation to use for a manually cast chains of ice when needed

this same key controlls my default spam sequence for my rets

and then another key which will use yro rockets + death coil on the dk and hammer of wrath on the rets