4.0.1 builds for 5 DK

[128z]

I have 5 DK 71 lvl.
Until 4.0.1 I was all unholy & heal was from blood stand.

Unholy rox because of pet (imho)
I want to go unholy now (4.0.1) but I don't see any heal in talents or stands..

Death Strike - to small heal..

Any ideas?

Maybe main as blood others as unholy?
Pls give builds with links if you have time :)

Many tnx

KR,
Denis

[Ualaa]

My DK's (running five also) were primarily Unholy.

Unless you go with Blood primary, you won't be able to reach Rune Tap.
And glyphed Rune Tap was a very nice heal.

I'm toying around with the idea of one Blood spec, to hold threat.
And then one Frost spec, for the melee buffs.
And three to stay Unholy, for the pets.

Not sure that Blood will be enough healing, without a healer.
Was messing around with Taunt, as a round-robin ability to move aggro about.
So only one is taking most of the damage at one point.

The other option... drop a DK from the team.
And add a toon that can heal.
And then you have a DK that can be added to another team.

[Mercbeast]

I duel boxed way back in 2008 with shamans. Just coming back, forgot my old l/p and can't recover it, and I am toying with the idea of a 5 DK team.

How viable in PvP will they be? I may drop 1 DK to run with a friend who is a Pali for arenas.

[Ualaa]

My team is a lot more fragile now, then they were pre 4.0.1.

I still have bandages and the endless healing potion.
But have lost the glyphed Rune Tap, which with 5x DK's was a 50% party heal every minute.

I'd think you would want some kind of a healer toon, as part of your 5x team.
If you were running a pvp focused DK team.

PvE we can round-robin taunt.
Have five very decent pets.
And excellent AoE disease attacks.

But for PvP, not a lot of healing.
Or anything really to prevent a given toon from being focused.

I love Path of Frost, which in PvP allows the 1x DK + 4x Ret team to play Stables/Blacksmith/Farm.
I love Anti-magic Shell on round-robin.
The new mortal strike like ability, which costs so much extra healing, will be fun.

If I was building a PvP DK team...
I'd probably go with 1x Frost (or Enhancement) for melee buffs.
And 3x Unholy, for AoE power.. better to take out larger groups of opponents.
But would want some kind of healer to go with the team.

[Mercbeast]

Ya, I'd level as 5x I think but PvP with 4x+healer. A friend of mine who is in a top rated PvE guild says he believes Blood DK will be THE tank in Cata for the foreseeable future as well. Which sort of runs against the grain of what I have heard. If you ran a 5xdk for pve would you stick to all blood? Or would you mix it up?

How would this compare to a paladin team do you think? That is my other potential group. I could end up with a 2700 rated paladin as my backup for arenas.

[Sephice]

all my DKs are Frost because you can Heal yourself very well and its just a great fun to bash a full ally raid with howling blast :)

the damage atm is just awesome and this team makes a lot of fun

[Mercbeast]

all my DKs are Frost because you can Heal yourself very well and its just a great fun to bash a full ally raid with howling blast :)

the damage atm is just awesome and this team makes a lot of fun

Is it possible to PvE with 5 Frost DK's or is that for PvP? Additionally, would you mind recommending a frost build? :)

[Sephice]

This is for PvP, in PvE you can try it with 5 Blood DKs ( Blood Parasite and runic Heal strong enough? ) but i never tried it

For Heros its just great to bomb with 4 Frost DK and one Healer, HB is just insane ;)

With lower Equip try 1 Blood and 3 Frost Knights, without a Healer it would be very hard, best would be a Druid or Paladin

Check my Build in my Signature, but they are for PvP and i play in Unholy Presenz because i have enough runic power and its much better for disturbing and makes more damage.

And reforge as Frost with my build everything to mastery, haste ist better with obliterae, but without ( like i play ) mastery wins. And in BGs you have always enough runic power to cast some DCs on the Lich

[Mercbeast]

Do you setup macro's for each of your characters to cast lichborne? Or is there a more fluid way I'm not thinking about.

[Sephice]

Yapp, like with shamans single heal

Main 1: Lich and self DC
Toon2: DC to Main

and and and

you need only one round, then you are full health ;) but most time it is enough to use deathpact in bgs or 1k, most time i have a privat healer @ my side and that rocks ;)

[Ualaa]

Lichborne - Deathcoil.
Thanks, had not thought of that.

Was a bit disappointed in Deathcoil, when I found it would only heal undead targets.

Thinking of a mapped key.
Something like:
- Step 1 - Lichborne
- Step 2 - Deathcoil & Set Mapped Key to Step 2.
- Reset to Step 1, after 60 seconds from first press.
Possibly with each DK targeting themself if that is valid, or each targeting another DK if a self cast doesn't work.

Could also have Clique/Healbot/Vuhdo have each DK cast Deathcoil at the frame clicked, for 4x/5x heals to the toon being focused.



I really like Unholy for the pets, diseases and strength of spreading diseases, Anti-Magic Shell, etc..
How does that compare to Frost (and Howling Blast) when attacking larger groups of opponents?

Unholy can (at 81st) get Lichborne, for the Death Coil healing; obviously Frost can as well.

[Sephice]

Howling Blast is atm one of the strongest AoEs

Kuschpak frapsed some action when we are wiping some allys raids, there you can see it

once in UC i had 300k DPS ( for short with GA ) but lol, the enemys were fast down

a HB Hits for high damage with full mastery and every target in near and adding ( glyphed ) drost fever in the target and with a blood spell ( dont know the englsih name and sry for my bad english ) you can cast 3 HBs in 3 seconds. And every target get full single Damage and that is much, really much.

I keep Frost in Cata because i have more unholy runes for the heal debuff, it stucks and so i think for a MBer it is possible :)

i like macros more than clique/healbot because i am faster with that but everyone like he wants.

The negativ thing is if you use Lich as Heal you can have a problem with fear, but my tip, grip Priest or Affli Lock and while gripping use magic shell, he will be down before he can use his instant fear and the AMS save you from the fear.

[128z]

all my DKs are Frost because you can Heal yourself very well


Heal yourself very well with what ability or talent?

[Ualaa]

Lichborne to become undead for 10 seconds, every 2 minutes.
Then Deathcoil to heal an undead target.

[Mercbeast]

Lichborne - Deathcoil.
Thanks, had not thought of that.

Was a bit disappointed in Deathcoil, when I found it would only heal undead targets.

Thinking of a mapped key.
Something like:
- Step 1 - Lichborne
- Step 2 - Deathcoil & Set Mapped Key to Step 2.
- Reset to Step 1, after 60 seconds from first press.
Possibly with each DK targeting themself if that is valid, or each targeting another DK if a self cast doesn't work.

Could also have Clique/Healbot/Vuhdo have each DK cast Deathcoil at the frame clicked, for 4x/5x heals to the toon being focused.



I really like Unholy for the pets, diseases and strength of spreading diseases, Anti-Magic Shell, etc..
How does that compare to Frost (and Howling Blast) when attacking larger groups of opponents?

Unholy can (at 81st) get Lichborne, for the Death Coil healing; obviously Frost can as well.

I was thinking of something like this myself. However I am not adapt enough with isboxer yet to really know how to do it. I'm guessing a repeating area, where you click on one of your DK's and that DK liches, and everyone then DC's him on the next click? Seems complex but amazing if its possible. If you do this, or something like this if you would post a walkthrough on how to set that up I would luv you long time :)

[Ualaa]

It is the same as using a Repeater Region to heal with.

You need one of: Healbot, Vuhdo, or Grid + GridCustomLayouts.
This gets you a set of frames, with an alphabetical (fixed order) sort.
So the top frame is the same character on every screen.

Then set your interpretation addon (Grid needs Clique, while Healbot/Vuhdo do this themselves) to recognize a given click means cast this spell.

In IS Boxer, set a hotkey for the Character Set, to bring up the GUI in game.
In game, press the hotkey and go to the Repeater Region tab.
Choose a target, which will probably be either All Of (DK Team Name) or an Action Target Group (which you would define in advance, and drag your DK character names into the group).
The target is who will receive the click.
Create the region, drag it over the Vuhdo/Grid/Healbot frame; resize it so the shaded portion covers the entire frame (the border portion is not broadcast).
Click Sync, so the region is the same on all screens.
Save it as "Auto", which means it will be loaded on its own, whenever this character set is launched.

That gets you an auto loaded region of the screen (which overlaps your Grid/Vuhdo/Healbot), which when the mouse is in, sends the clicks (including modifiers) to the chosen recipients.
And your addon interprets say Alt + Left Click to be cast Death Coil at that target.

For a team like DK's, I'd probably use all of the team as the target.

But for a team like Shammies, an Action Target Group might be a better target, because you can use another mapped key to add or remove toons from an ATG.
So you could have a mapped key, which puts your shammy into their second talent spec (Resto) and removes the other Shammies from the ATG.
And on another press of the mapped key, puts your shammy into their first talent spec (Elemental) and adds all Shammies to the ATG.
So you can run with Tank + 3-4x Shammies, as Elemental with everyone healing or go with Tank + 1x Resto + 3x Elemental, and have only the Resto do the healing.

[Mercbeast]

You're amazing :)

[Sephice]

Yeah, RR in IS rockt, but for PvP i prefer Macros as DK, because i can heal only my team ^^

But with my Retris or with the shamans in big BGs i prefer RR with Healbot, its just great and you can make a lot of support, i think i will make a pure Heal Team just4fun ^^

[Ualaa]

I have 5x Disc Priests.
Got them to 60th during RAF, and level them high enough for tradeskills; have never pvp'd with them... thought they might be a change of pace, to heal/support friendlies from way in the back, during AV's.

My current team.. 5x Feral.
Each have a Resto off-spec.
Much better chance to pvp with these, as they're max level and will be leveled first in Cata.

[Mosg2]

I'm working on my DK manifesto. I hope to get it posted before work tomorrow.

Short version: Most powerful team ever.

[Mystic]

A DK Manifesto eh?

I have 5 DKs (well 7 really, but I let two of my seven accounts go fallow) that I took to 80 as a team when they first came out. BGs were very fun with the team of five DKs back then.

I brushed them off when 4.01 came out, but basically just run VB dailies with them (and my 5 other teams, for the easy 1200g in under an hour).

They are spec'd unholy, they are in terrible terrible gear (ilvl 187 and below), and yet they hit like a mack truck with 4.01. They put my Ret team, who is almost full wrathful, to complete shame, as far as dps, and this is with the huge gear gap between the two teams. I can only imagine how they would be if in full wrathful right now.

I would be very interested in what you have to share about your experiences with a DK team post 4.01.

[Hivetyrant]

They are spec'd unholy, they are in terrible terrible gear (ilvl 187 and below), and yet they hit like a mack truck with 4.01. They put my Ret team, who is almost full wrathful, to complete shame, as far as dps, and this is with the huge gear gap between the two teams. I can only imagine how they would be if in full wrathful right now. .

I'm in the same boat, it's unbelievable how hard they hit.

Not only that but all 5 ghoul's hitting and stunning anyone that jumps me is hilarious.

[Sephice]

I'm in the same boat, it's unbelievable how hard they hit.

Not only that but all 5 ghoul's hitting and stunning anyone that jumps me is hilarious.

PvE oder PvP?

[Mercbeast]

I'm working on my DK manifesto. I hope to get it posted before work tomorrow.

Short version: Most powerful team ever.

Can't wait. I'm doing 5 DK's as well.

[Ualaa]

I've recently spec'd them 5x Blood, instead of 5x Unholy.
Frost is very nice dps, from what I've seen.
But I really miss the healing.

The DK's are 73rd, but they kill quest npcs (+/- 2 levels) as quickly as before... ie, one move (x5).
Using a very simple macro, but it is doing the job; switched to Rune Strike from Death Coil as my runic power dump.
Still have Death Grip on round-robin.

#show
/castsequence Heart Strike, Obliterate
/cast Rune Strike

Have not bothered with an AoE macro yet.

But they get:
- Blood Parasite
- Boneshield/Icebound Fortitude/Lichborne... most of the on timer defense tools (Lichborne at 81st).
- Deathstrike... +45% effect.
- Rune Tap.. 55% heal, every 30 sec (15% base, +10% each from the other four DK's).
- Will of the Necropolis > Gain a blood rune and Rune Tap refreshes, at 30% health.

The Rune Tap is obviously the major gain.
I'm still in Unholy Presence, mainly for the movement speed boost, but I like the 1.0 sec GCD's too.



I'm already missing the 5x Pets.
And although I've not pvp'd since the change, I miss Anti-Magic Zone.

But the self heals are very nice.
And so far, one click to kill anything is the same.

[Sephice]

Rune Tap Glyph will be reduced to 5%

[Ualaa]

Still...

15% + (4 x 5% = 20%) = 35% for the whole team, every 30 seconds.
That's a lot of healing, compared to anything else a DK gets.

You also get the passive healing from Blood Parasites.
Nothing stops you from doing the Lichborne + Death Coil trick.
Death Strike can be talented, etc.

[Mokoi]

I have been toying around with the idea of DKs, and mine are in really bad gear, but I was excited about the changes to some of the talents, and I hear that the healing debuff stacks? so you could put a shield that would absorb like 50k+ healing? yes, please. Does this include absorb effects like priest shields?

[Mercbeast]

One thing I have done, is to run a couple of the DK's in blood as DW. By doing so you seem to put out far more parasites.

[Sephice]

atm, for PvP, plz use a Frost template

its just fucking awesome!


This recount ws from the last city raid we stopped

http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=257&stc=1&d=1289708499

its just fucking amazing, howling blast makes 85% ... Krusch had no time to cast a Spell

plz blizzard, dont nerv that ;)

[Mosg2]

Yeah, Howling Blast spam is insane.

[Mokoi]

it seems that with the changes to PvP, teams who can not heal enough will just be slowly whittled away regardless of their HP or their DPS, do you guys find this at 80? how about anyone in the beta at 85?

DKs get some cool tricks in Cata, but as Frost, there is no healing to speak of, short of DC, and that's healing at the cost of ranged (and melee when you figure frost strike costs RP too) DPS.

Would 5 Blood DKs specced and geared as much for DPS and healing as possible be a better choice? They don't have the same ranged DPS that a frost DK would, but with 5 DG, range shouldn't be a huge problem for the DK team ever. Strangulate, DG and chains is pretty good. . the blood parasites do some good healing for the group, and the blood self-heal abilities, as well as group rune tap seems just necessary, doesn't it?

I don't see the difference anymore between a Frost DK and rogues, or hunters, or warriors, warlocks or mages. Any team without good healing just doesn't have the staying power that shamans, paladins, Druids have. and DK buffs are never going to have synergy since they don't offer enough of them. Unlike paladins, and even shamans with totems. Druids are about the only team with less buffs LOL.

That being said, a 4 DK + Disc priest may be the best way to go, as you have great absorption, great DPS and some fine heals. Power:word: barrier? or whatever? yes, pls.

[Mosg2]

I'm running a Holy Pally and 4 DK's. DK's have much better defensive cooldowns compared to the other classes you mentioned--Much easier to control while boxing. The DPS is insane and Death Grip substitutes for a kind of snare removal. With 4 of them and a random reset every time you kill someone, you *always* have one up.

I just got off work this week. Working on a DK manifesto I should hopefully get up this weekend.

[wodan]

5xDK have no heal and selfheal are not option

[Mokoi]

5x DK do have heals, plenty of them as Blood, the problem is when we want to go frost and have only death coil and death pact for heals.

[Mercbeast]

5xDK have no heal and selfheal are not option

Glyph rune tap. Each rune tap heals the party for 10%. That is up to 55% healing on a character every 30s in addition to death strikes and blood worm healing.

[Mokoi]

Glyph rune tap. Each rune tap heals the party for 10%. That is up to 55% healing on a character every 30s in addition to death strikes and blood worm healing.

5% now.


I was playing with my DKs today, one DK with a lot of gear (from my ret team) and 4 with not great gear, (deadly and furious) They were great on the target dummies, and useless in combat lol.

I would 3x spam HB on a priest and their HP wouldn't even budge lol. Im interested to see what you come up with Mosg2 since your DKs dont seem to have much more and even some less gear than even I do? or is armory lying or do you have a second team of them?

[Ualaa]

Still 10% for the glyph, today.
Unless they changed the glyph but not the tooltip.

I know its 5% in beta.
So most likely will change at some point.

[Mosg2]

Healing is pretty OP right now. I've decided instead of a manifesto I'm going to stream and explain how I made it all work and then save it and post it.

[Mokoi]

DK healing? or your paladin healing your team.

[Mosg2]

I mean that the amount of healing the healing classes can do is insane--Without MS it's hard for any group to get them down.

[Mokoi]

more DK nerfs today ><

[Mosg2]

Insignificant to a 4 DK plus healer comp.

4 DK's with 8x Necrotic Strikes every 10 seconds and a Mind Freeze every 2.5 seconds while Howling Blast/Frost Strike spam is going on will destroy people.

[Shodokan]

Insignificant to a 4 DK plus healer comp.

4 DK's with 8x Necrotic Strikes every 10 seconds and a Mind Freeze every 2.5 seconds while Howling Blast/Frost Strike spam is going on will destroy people.

see this in videos... its quite amusing.

[Mokoi]

where is the video for this?

[Shodokan]

where is the video for this?

not a boxer video, just a general video of 85 frost pvp.

[Mercbeast]

I did some 79 bracket PvP on my DK's this weekend before they hit 80. I ran 4 DK's frost spec'd and I wore the savage saronite set.

Howling blast double taps x2 is rowdy. I really feel like the ranged DPS ability of DK's with howling blast is what allows them to shine as a melee class for a boxer in PvP. Since I haven't actually played the game since early 2008 (I played a couple days when Wotlk came out hit 80 with a DK and literally quit out the moment I dinged and unsubbed) it took me a few games to get back into the swing of things. Once I did I was a runaway train.

I was like "The Wolf" from Pulp Fiction so long as my team was competent and followed a basic 3 cap strategy AND defended. Wherever there was a problem I went and solved it. There were times when nearly entire other team was pushing hard on a flag I'd roll up unload my HB load onto the highest concentration of bad guys and watch almost all of them fall over.

Few things I noticed about melee boxing. IWT isn't perfect in fact it is far from perfect for this application. It is VERY difficult even when spamming DPS hotkeys to keep your guys in contact with their intended victim. Snaring helps immensely obviously but it is almost mandatory to expect any sort of DPS from your train due to the way IWT works in melee for boxers. To that end HB is so unbelievably useful. It allows you to roll around with a plate wearer and get nice levels of spike DPS at range.

I ran into "pro" anti boxers and the most they could do is sap my main. Little did they know this actually improved my performance. I soon discovered that taking the control of my main character away allowed me to focus more attention on running my slaves and to maximize their performance WHILE still sitting there sapped on my main character ;p ISboxer rules in this regard.

I am currently debating subbing one of my DK's out for a Paladin or possibly a druid "leader" who will sit back, heal and direct my drones in the most efficient manner possible. The Paladin could excel with it's ability to stun for my DK pack, and the Druid would allow me to stay on the move keeping everyone hotted up.

All in all it was extremely enjoyable and once you start ticking death runes over, the HB spam is absolutely silly. I wonder how HB spam will scale at 85, think I read it will do about 12k which puts 5 DK's at just under 100k aoe burst off a 2x HB spam.

[ellyka112]

This is for PvP, in PvE you can try it with 5 Blood DKs ( Blood Parasite and runic Heal strong enough? ) but i never tried it

For Heros its just great to bomb with 4 Frost DK and one Healer, HB is just insane ;)

With lower Equip try 1 Blood and 3 Frost Knights, without a Healer it would be very hard, best would be a Druid or Paladin

Check my Build in my Signature, but they are for PvP and i play in Unholy Presenz because i have enough runic power and its much better for disturbing and makes more damage.

And reforge as Frost with my build everything to mastery, haste ist better with obliterae, but without ( like i play ) mastery wins. And in BGs you have always enough runic power to cast some DCs on the Lich
Do you setup macro's for each of your characters to cast lichborne? Or is there a more fluid way I'm not thinking about.

[Sephice]

Booth

Macro for each char but most time i use lichborne with all and attack the guy who need heal with IWT and DC

But my tip: get a personal healer, it rocks !

[Mosg2]

I run the healer main and the DK's as "alts". It's insane.

[Mercbeast]

I run the healer main and the DK's as "alts". It's insane.

Ya, it works really well. I think it almost works better than having a 5th to actually lead the pack. You keep better control of your team this way IMO.

Do you run a paladin or a druid as your 5th? I can see the benefit of both. I think I would actually prefer the on the run hotting that a druid allows, but you lose some survivability. At the same time the paladin stuns would be ideal for setting someone up to get smoked by the DK's.

AoE roots, on the run healing, vs stuns and harder to kill. Hard to decide.

[Mosg2]

I like the Paladin healer for two huge reasons (the rest is dressing):

1. Bubble. You bubble as soon as they focus on you and your DK's are tearing people up while they're wasting time.

2. Throughput with clickies. The amount of healing you can push out when you blow cooldowns is insane.

My wife has friends over, but once they're gone I'm going to record my DK manifesto and post it here on the site.

[Boylston]

Mosg2-- hey, thanks for getting me all excited about a team comp I don't have.... :)

[Mosg2]

Haha NP Boylston. I feel like I'm a disciple around Jesus' time. I'm just tryin' to spread the word baby.

[Boylston]

So, when's he manifesto coming out???

[Mokoi]

/bitingnails