Mosg2's DK Manifesto

[Mosg2]

http://www.justin.tv/mosg2/b/274564908

Instead of trying to type it all out I livestreamed my Manifesto for the DK's. Please bear with me as I've been up for 20 hours and I'm exhausted.

The DK conversation has been taking place in 3-4 different threads in varying areas on the forums, so I just put this in the main forums. If it needs moved, so be it :)

In any case, enjoy and I look forward to the discussion to follow!

[Shodokan]

Great job explaining some things man.

This is def the team i'm running, i actually just hopped off my druids to my dks to have them finished to 80.

[Nsaeyn]

Great job on the video.
Let me see if I understand your rotation technique for you DK's

One button that spams in order like steps each key in the rotation.
i.e. 1 presses 2 then 1 again presses 3 then 1 again presses 4 etc...

Is that correct or am i way off?

[Mercbeast]

Ya, over the past week I came to basically the same conclusion as you. This team will be a wrecking ball. I'm really interested in how you setup your push down and release dps setup. I'm also interested in how you toggle IWT click to move off and on as you mentioned I'm still a pretty big newbie when it comes to setting up ISboxer macros.

[Ualaa]

A little confused with Necrotic Strikes, which you say will be applied approximately 8 times in every 10 second window.

You're basically staggering them, so they're evenly spaced.
And then going Howling Blast and Frost Strike.
With the Mindfreeze thrown in every 2.5 seconds?

[Ualaa]

I'm really interested in how you setup your push down and release dps setup. I'm also interested in how you toggle IWT click to move off and on as you mentioned I'm still a pretty big newbie when it comes to setting up ISboxer macros.


Create an Action Target Group, call it Melee.
Add all of your Melee toons to this group.



Now make a new mapped key (I put mine in the General Keymap).
Call it Melee IWT.
No hotkey, nothing in advanced.
One step, Actions:
Send (Your warcraft IWT keybind) to the current window.



Modify whichever mapped keys you use in the FTL DPS Keymap.
In my case, I've modified DPS 1 through DPS 3.

By default we have:
Hotkey: 1
Steps: 1
Actions:
- Do Mapped Key: FTL Assist Me, Target: Current Window
- Send "1" to all windows.

We want to change this a little.
Right click on Steps and add a second step.
Set the mapped key to execute a step on press and release.

Steps 1
Actions:
- Do Mapped Key: FTL Assist Me, Target: Current Window
- Do Mapped Key: Melee IWT, Target: Group (All Of) Melee [or whatever you called the ATG, from the first step.]

Step 2
Actions:
- Do Mapped Key: FTL Assist Me, Target: Current Window
- Send "1" to all windows.



Now we need to make a Toggle Macro, for the Melee IWT mapped key.

Create a mapped key (I put mine in General).
Call it Melee IWT Toggle.
Give it two steps.
Give it a hotkey, I use G6 (on my G15 keyboard).
Advanced, will be left alone.

Step 1
Actions:
- Pop Up Text, Current Window, Melee IWT Disabled
- Keymap Actions >> Mapped Key State Action >> General Keymap >> Melee IWT disabled (Target: All windows)

Step 2
Actions:
- Pop Up Text, Current Window, Melee IWT Enabled
- Keymap Actions >> Mapped Key State Action >> General Keymap >> Melee IWT enabled (Target: All windows).



This gets us...

IWT is spammed automatically, just by using our normal DPS Keys.
At least the ones which we've modified.
The IWT is only sent to members of our Melee group.

If we really wanted, we could have additional mapped keys, which would add or remove toons from this group.
The same principle could be used for a healer group, and our healer repeater region could target the healer ATG instead of sending the click to a specific toon.

We can also toggle the IWT off, via the last mapped key.
So when you don't want the toons to IWT spam, hit the hotkey once.
And now your DPS is normal, without IWT.
DPS 1... will still call the mapped key for IWT, but since it is disabled nothing happens, on that step.
You'll still get the "1" sent to all windows, after first assisting the active character.

[Mosg2]

@Ualaa:
That's exactly how my IWT keys work. PvP keyset has IWT on all keypresses, PvE does not. I then just have a toggle button.

As to how my DPS key works, let me try and explain in more detail:

When I press Spacebar down, it sends IWT and F9 to my DK's. F9 is HB. On release of Spacebar it sends IWT and Shift-F9, Alt-F9, Ctrl-F9, Shift/Alt-F9, Shift/Alt/Ctrl-F9, and Ctrl/Alt-F9 to the DK's. Those buttons are more HB's, Frost Strikes, and the Plague Strike/Blood Strike castsequence.

I then vary the number of times the same ability appears on the Modifier+F9 series on my action bar so that an ability is "preferred" more or less. For instance, HB is on downpress PLUS two of them are on release so that HB should, almost without exception, go off before any other ability. Then there are two Frost Strikes and only one PS/BS macro--This is because I would always rather FS than PS/BS due to Runic Empowerment.

My Mind Freeze works like this: I have a 4-step key that gets pressed every time I hit Spacebar down. However, it has the "Only advance to next step after XX seconds" box clicked so that no matter how fast I spam it, it will only go to the next step until 2.5 seconds have elapsed. This works because Mind Freeze is off the GCD and costs zero RP--So, I get a MF every 2.5-2.6 seconds (I spam Spacebar 2.5 times a second or so).

It's 5:32am and I just got up because my wife woke up with a cramp in her leg haha. I hope I was coherent enough--I'll check back in in a few hours :)

Edit: I am going to find a way with ISBoxer to make it prefer Necrotic Strike but still alternate it a bit so that over a period of say, 30+ seconds one character is always doing NS every GCD without having it go in clumps--ie, everyone opens with HB, HB, and then NS. I want 3x HB/1 NS, 3x HB/1 NS, 3x FS/1 NS etc etc. I'll figure something out :)

[Mercbeast]

@Ualaa:


When I press Spacebar down, it sends IWT and F9 to my DK's. F9 is HB. On release of Spacebar it sends IWT and Shift-F9, Alt-F9, Ctrl-F9, Shift/Alt-F9, Shift/Alt/Ctrl-F9, and Ctrl/Alt-F9 to the DK's. Those buttons are more HB's, Frost Strikes, and the Plague Strike/Blood Strike castsequence.



IS the shift f9, alt f9, ctrl f9 etc spam, are those subsequent steps or all one step.?

[remanz]

Really good job on explaining things. Would be really cool to see this team in action.

Though I kinda don't have the energy to level another team anymore lol. NS stacking and Chain Death Grip. The DKs looking good.

Running healer as main and let alts IWT, this does have a problem though. Say the paladin stay back, I (the other team that you are facing) can turn a sharp corner behind a pillar and stay closed to the pillar, IWT would run straight line. and you won't be able to get me. You have to either quickly switch to a DK lead or run the paladin in front (probably not gonna do this). The good thing is that you got death grip. You can grip them into the open area.

[Slats]

Very interesting. Your video was excellent. I think I might jump on this bandwagon and give it a crack!

[ashlor]

Sold !! I myself have been wondering about driving a Team from the healer so I am looking forward to seeing this team do it's thing at 85. Great Job!!

[Mosg2]

@all:

Yes, driving with the healer can be awkward at times. There are a lot of building features that make me want to tear my hair out. The easiest way to deal with them is:

Hit your non-IWT key and then just use DG to pull people out. Once someone is DG'd into you there's not much they can do to get away: Hunters and Mages are best but you still then have 3 more DG's. The fact that you get a DG reset whenever you A) kill someone, and B) it fails due to immunity means that you basically have an infinite store of DG's.

My DPS key is not a sequence--It just plain sends all those keys. This is how I set up a "priority" system, in effect. I'm still trying to solve the Necrotic Strike problem so any help there would be awesome.

Finally: I'm uh, actually farming up Insane in the Membrane on my team (I just need a few more lockboxes and then exalted with DMF on all toons) so most of my play nowadays is boring as crap haha. I mean, if you guys want me to stream herbing with my Pally I can certainly do that :)

[Shodokan]

Just wanted to point out how OP necrotic strike is... not only does it do the negative healing but it does a 100% damage attack... so you get a free white attack off of the swing timer as well when you are doing it... which can be like a 12k crit in cata.

[heyaz]

Thanks for the info, you've done your research. You mentioned you found it even more powerful than dk/ret comp before the patch - how is it working at 80 against high resilience targets in BGs?

[Mosg2]

My guys are in mostly blues with some purple pvp stuff and the 1800 weapons--Against non-healers I'm turning them into mush in 2-3 globals at most. Healers sometimes take more time but generally speaking it's a cake walk.

Maybe I'll stream some BG's tonight. No promises though--I work late :)

[Mercbeast]

Mosg2 has sold me on the Pali over druid. So I am frantically leveling up 4 paladins as high as I can via boosting at which point 3 will be dropped and 1 will be given a 2 or 3 DK escort crew for questing to 80. Or I might run 4 80 DK's plus holy pali in instances for grinding levels out.

[remanz]

Well, I specced my DK frost. and I definitely see where you are coming from. HB is indeed insane. The new frost IS a burst machine.

[Ualaa]

I like that you have essentially created a weighted Cast Random.



For the Necrotic Strike.
You might go something like:

Mapped Key: Necrotic Strike
No Hotkey.
Four Steps, One per DK.
Each step, sends the Necrotic Strike key bind to one slot.
Prevent a step from advancing for a GCD (or whatever).

Then modify your existing DPS.
So the Necrotic mapped key has priority over other dps moves (ie, is listed first).

Something along those lines.

[MiRai]

Finally got a chance to sit down and watch this and I must say that I am sold. Great job on the explanation in the video, very
clear and concise. It is also great to see contributions like this on this message board. Well done sir, keep it up. :)

[Fat Tire]

Fantastic Vid-

Thanks for making it. Best of luck on your team.

Would love to go against more boxers this season(s)/expansion. BG Nightfall!@ GO!

[Hivetyrant]

I had decided to not bother boxxing in Cata as I wasn't convinced any of my teams would be fun enough to take through, but your vid convinced me that this comp will be a blast (literally)

[Mosg2]

Wow, I'm really touched with the amount of good will and positivity in this thread--I was hoping for a response like this but wasn't really expecting it, if y'know what I mean :)

@Ualaa:

Yes, I think that some sort of do-not-proceed setup that pre-empts the main weighted DPS key would work great. The only problem with that is that you're *potentially* losing some Necrotic Strikes due to Runic Empowerment resetting your Unholy rune. Hmmmm.

Another thing you could do would be to set up a /castsequence Howling Blast, Necrotic Strike key for your downpress and have it alternate--Two toons would go HB/NS, two would go NS/HB. You would leave your uppress to do the same thing it does now--At ranged you'd still HB whenever you had the runes for it. Hmmmm. Again though you run into problems where you're potentially losing some extra NS's due to Runic Empowerment.

Maybe the best option is just going to be letting it be free-for-all? I'm just wondering how much you gain by making the setup more consistent with application of Necrotic Strike vs what you lose by making your setup more rigid and not allowing for Runic Empowerment to be fully utilized.

Oh, and I totally forgot about Hungering Cold in the video >< It's honestly not super useful considering you're spamming Howling Blast all the time, but there are situations where it's useful.

[heyaz]

Well, I guess I'll be the first to post some concerns... can't all be positive.

First off, you said 2-3 globals to kill non-healer dps (assuming without passive healing and shields). That seems like an eternity for a multibox team in pvp - quad elemental shaman were doing it in 1-2 globals, if it took a 3rd you probably weren't getting the kill and needed to switch. The dk/rets could cut a lot of people to 20% on the first judge+white, then HoW for the kill. Before the resil buff, of course.

I have to admit the team sounds, in theory, amazing for multiboxing. The video made me very excited.You really tied everything together for how this would work, but ultimately, having not seen what I consider the first (and often last) test of viability - reliable burst on a high resilience target, and the ability to kill healers, even if it takes a few extra globals. If a healer can tank your team for more than a few globals, or even indefinitely (which happened to the dk/rets after the first resil buff last season), then it's most certainly fail. Perhaps that's where 4 strangulates and round robin mind freezes come in play, but I'm still wondering how long it takes to kill a healer just standing there doing nothing.

Love the theory, but hard to believe it without seeing a video of them in action with a breakdown of how you play the team and how it works in a real pvp situation.

[Toonarmy]

This is great. Once again I stand in awe of this community. Thanks guys.

[Mosg2]

Well, remember that the DK's GCD's are one second or less via Unholy Presence and you're getting 8x free HB while running to your target/while they're getting DG'd in. My guys are sitting at 682 resilience in mostly blue gear with the 1800 weapons and they destroy 1200+ resilience targets usually in less than 3 seconds. I will try and make it a point to stream some BG's so you can see what it's like--Though, I'm a little skeptical that it'll give the wrong impression :) My guys die pretty fast due to the gear issue.

Something that Shodokan pointed out to me tonight was that at 85 you'll be able to spec your DK's into Resilient Infection so that if someone tried to dispel your diseases your team just gets free Howling Blasts--Since you're not using Blood Plague at all they can only dispel the Frost Fever :)

Powerhouse!

[tundra622]

You have almost sold me and i don't plan on pvping any time soon

[heyaz]

Well, remember that the DK's GCD's are one second or less via Unholy Presence and you're getting 8x free HB while running to your target/while they're getting DG'd in. My guys are sitting at 682 resilience in mostly blue gear with the 1800 weapons and they destroy 1200+ resilience targets usually in less than 3 seconds. I will try and make it a point to stream some BG's so you can see what it's like--Though, I'm a little skeptical that it'll give the wrong impression :) My guys die pretty fast due to the gear issue.

Something that Shodokan pointed out to me tonight was that at 85 you'll be able to spec your DK's into Resilient Infection so that if someone tried to dispel your diseases your team just gets free Howling Blasts--Since you're not using Blood Plague at all they can only dispel the Frost Fever :)

Powerhouse!

Dying fast due to bad gear I can understand, a plate class with heavy defensive cooldowns will only get better with more resilience, I have no doubts about that (whereas shaman really never got very tough, no matter how much resil.).. but I'd like to see some killing

[Shodokan]

Dying fast due to bad gear I can understand, a plate class with heavy defensive cooldowns will only get better with more resilience, I have no doubts about that (whereas shaman really never got very tough, no matter how much resil.).. but I'd like to see some killing

This team's damage is ridiculous. 2-3 globals is not a lot, especially with necrotic strike. No they don't have instagib with flame shock + lavaburst but even then thats 2 globals without EM.

[remanz]

While I like the discussion we got going here, about teams/combos, how would they fair in pvp (arena/bgs).

But ultimately, does it really matter ? I thought you would get gear if you just keep doing arena or bgs in cata. There is no rating requirements on 2k rating gears anymore, is there ?

Correct me if I am wrong, but we would not be blocked by arena 1800 ratings anymore for the weapons right ?. We would just get them. So in a way, the team WILL work.

While I had the same concerns that Heyaz had about the dks (not able to down target in time, 1 BOP then you would have to rely on paladin to keep the DKs up, AOE stun, CC on paladin), I am sure they would be very fun.

[Ualaa]

Not sure how strong healing is going to be, at 85th.
And that will probably be a key point.

If we have four Necrotic Strikes landing every five seconds.
Or eight every ten seconds, and sustain that.
We're looking at approximately 6k off of every heal or every HoT tick.
A new necrotic strike will almost always overwrite the previous as soon as it is depleted.

While the composition might not have FS/LvB to instantly down someone.
It does have a lot of DPS pressure and the resistance to heals.
Howling Blast punishes everyone in the area, meaning you can kill large groups at once.
And unlike the level 80 game, even discounting Necrotic Strike, healers won't be able to full heal anyone virtually instantly.
Mana is a finite resource, one of the goals of the expansion; runes on the other hand, cycle at their pace indefinitely and never run out.




My biggest questions for the team are how they deal with the banes of boxing and melee in general.

Priests, Warlocks and Warriors have AoE fear, which can suck pretty bad.
Thunderstorm, especially staggered but spammed, is basically the same result.
The team will have trinkets against the first effect.
If the Pally is not hit, we have cleanse at least until our DK's run out of range.
We can make fear classes priority targets, but regardless will have to deal with this a lot.

The other concern is Snare and Root effects.
Death Grip, will bring targets to us frequently, which mitigates this to a degree.

Will Anti-Magic Shell protect us against the freezing effects of Frost Nova.
How about Entangling Roots/Cyclone, Sheep/Seduction or Frost Trap?

How about an Earthbind Totem or Mages snaring shield.

What do we have against those rogues who like to Sap one team member, but not engage?

I realize single boxers will go down fairly fast.
And with Death Grip, we can bring them into the killing zone often.
But don't like Snare/Roots or Fears as a boxed team, especially as a melee team.

[zenga]

As 4x frost dk are indeed insane: you can almost lock aoe lock them up forever, and pick them off one by one. Casters being a bitch? Magic shell. Out of range? Deathgrip x4 + hungering cold. They get out? Apply next one. If you are Belf you even have arcane torrent ...

hungering cold -> 10 sec
strangulate - > 5 sec
arcane torrent 2 sec
mind freeze 4 sec

Almost a minute and a half that you can shut them down, should be enough to get a kill off i guess. Tbh I can't really see how 1 or even 2 healers can 'tank' 4 frost dk's boxed. Def. not with necrotic strike.

Currently I'm pvp'ing on my 4th dk (he is 78), and he is a machine both in pvp and pve (4k single target dps vs dummy). My other 3 have been 80 for a while but I only un-shelved them after 4.0.1, and their gear is crap (blue pvp gear). Still they do more than alright vs wrathful geared players. I'll run with a disc priest however, 5x belf for arcane torrent.

My shammies will remain my main team, but the 4 frost + disc priest have some much utility that it's pretty crazy.

[zenga]

Priests, Warlocks and Warriors have AoE fear, which can suck pretty bad.
Thunderstorm, especially staggered but spammed, is basically the same result.
The team will have trinkets against the first effect.
If the Pally is not hit, we have cleanse at least until our DK's run out of range.
We can make fear classes priority targets, but regardless will have to deal with this a lot.

Lichborne protects and can be followed by a self heal. And with a plethora of tricks to shut them up, this seems to be at least on part with rets (that i have never played myself at level 80). I run with a disc priest to have fear ward / disspell and fear myself.



The other concern is Snare and Root effects.
Death Grip, will bring targets to us frequently, which mitigates this to a degree.

... and chains of ice, will prevent them from flying away


What do we have against those rogues who like to Sap one team member, but not engage?

Death & Decay is pretty effective to get them out of stealth. and icebound fortitude makes it damn hard for rogues

[Mercbeast]

Not sure how strong healing is going to be, at 85th.
And that will probably be a key point.

If we have four Necrotic Strikes landing every five seconds.
Or eight every ten seconds, and sustain that.
We're looking at approximately 6k off of every heal or every HoT tick.
A new necrotic strike will almost always overwrite the previous as soon as it is depleted.

While the composition might not have FS/LvB to instantly down someone.
It does have a lot of DPS pressure and the resistance to heals.
Howling Blast punishes everyone in the area, meaning you can kill large groups at once.
And unlike the level 80 game, even discounting Necrotic Strike, healers won't be able to full heal anyone virtually instantly.
Mana is a finite resource, one of the goals of the expansion; runes on the other hand, cycle at their pace indefinitely and never run out.




My biggest questions for the team are how they deal with the banes of boxing and melee in general.

Priests, Warlocks and Warriors have AoE fear, which can suck pretty bad.
Thunderstorm, especially staggered but spammed, is basically the same result.
The team will have trinkets against the first effect.
If the Pally is not hit, we have cleanse at least until our DK's run out of range.
We can make fear classes priority targets, but regardless will have to deal with this a lot.

The other concern is Snare and Root effects.
Death Grip, will bring targets to us frequently, which mitigates this to a degree.

Will Anti-Magic Shell protect us against the freezing effects of Frost Nova.
How about Entangling Roots/Cyclone, Sheep/Seduction or Frost Trap?

How about an Earthbind Totem or Mages snaring shield.

What do we have against those rogues who like to Sap one team member, but not engage?

I realize single boxers will go down fairly fast.
And with Death Grip, we can bring them into the killing zone often.
But don't like Snare/Roots or Fears as a boxed team, especially as a melee team.

This team has such incredibly front loaded DPS that lichborn and AMS are imo all you need to get that definitive upper hand in a fight. Once cooldowns are blown, the other sides ability to counter your heavy DPS load is essentially spent. By laying your cards out on the table and unloading Lich and or AMS pre-emptively you force their hand. They simply have to react to your DPS spike and hope they don't lose anyone.

In Arenas good teams, really good teams will still pick you apart. I don't think there is really any question about that. However in BGs and mid-tier Arena there is no reason why this team won't be a run-away freight train.

From what I have read, the dynamic of PvP will change in Cata. Fights will be longer, healing will be more critical, yet less effective. From my perspective this is where HB shines. It is a momentum changer. You run into a group and unload 8 HB's in 1s and the other team is in the red, INSTANTLY. This forces them into reactive, defensive play. You now have the impetus of the fight in your hands. By now you have probably gripped their primary healer, silenced him/her and they are dead in another 1s. If this is arena, you've all but one the fight at this point.

The beauty of DK's is as Mosg2 put it I think, reverse mobility. It doesn't matter if they snare or root you. You can still grip them, snare them and keep DPSing, and you can do this several times.

One neat little trick I started playing around with in AB was the chain grip. I'd setup at the Farm, I'd put 3 DK's inside the farm house with LOS out the door to my lead DK. I would wait for allies to roll in, I'd grip a healer to my main DK, and then grip him inside the house were it was instantly silenced and gang banged. The ability to use grip like this, is in my opinion hilarious. You can literally jerk someone well out of range of their friends and or out of LOS long enough that no help is possible. The first person who saw me do it in the BG's thought it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen in WoW.

[tundra622]

about half way through wrath myself and 2 friends rolled dk's and we entered WSG at 58and we ended up camping their graveyard and like you said we chain death-griped this 1 druid around the graveyard we had 1 dk each and it was totally unintentional.
Thanks for reminding me Mercbeast and now im sold on this team

[Mosg2]

Lots of good points brought up regarding the team--And a lot of totally valid points about their weaknesses. I think Mercbeast and Zenga have succintly answered most of them. I'll reiterate and add my point(s):

1. This team epitomizes "Shock and Awe". You use your defensive cooldowns to pre-emptively force the other team to play defensive catchup. With that in mind...

AMS pre-empts Roots/Polys--You can kill anyone, even getting heals, in 6 seconds.
Lichborne/Trinket/Racial/Cleanse pre-empts Fear--Lichborne is enough time to kill two+ people.
Pillar of Frost pre-empts TS/Typhoon--Pillar of Frost is long enough to kill an entire Shaman team :)
Snares/DG pre-empts Snares--Your snares are equal but you have near-infinite Death Grips.

2. As an arena team I grant that it would be really tough to make Gladiator--But if you drop your healer and just run the 4 DK's I think it's still totally possible. Virtually zero incoming healing on a target coupled with MASSIVE AE damage is insane, especially if the primary dps target is their healer. Shock and Awe baby.

3. Sure, for rated BG's eventually everyone will get same gear and weapons that are just a hair worse than Gladiator-tier weapons. This is just a team that, to me, is a blast to play and is terribly effective in BG's. This coupled with point 4 makes them my favorite team :)

4. By running the healer main and 4 plate classes that are capable of tanking, literally any PvE content is doable. You can offspec as many guys as you want into the tanking tree. With no enrage timers your worst case scenario is 4x Blood DK's chewing through a boss in 10 minutes :)

Overall I'm concerned about the same things you guys are--I'm just optimistic that this team has the varied tools to be super effective--There's no ability that this team doesn't have a counter for (I forgot about Pillar of Frost on the video). One last thing I want to stress is that 4 Death Grips is insane considering you get a free one every time you kill someone AND you don't "lose" one when the target is immune due to cooldowns.

[Mosg2]

Edit: I will do my best once I get off work tonight to stream some BG's and then save them on JTV so that people can go back to look at them. If I get it done I'll post in the Movies forums and provide a link in this thread.

[zenga]

On an added note: I'm still unsure about the best frost spec, not to mention dw vs 2H. I don't have any high weapons to test it now. My lvl 78 does 800 more dps with a 2H. Would be good to see some data about lvl 85.

[Mosg2]

At 80 I can say it's no choice--The best DPS for DW is in Frost Presence and 2h in Unholy--I'll take the 1 second GCD's and 15% run speed in a heartbeat.

[Shodokan]

On an added note: I'm still unsure about the best frost spec, not to mention dw vs 2H. I don't have any high weapons to test it now. My lvl 78 does 800 more dps with a 2H. Would be good to see some data about lvl 85.

More runic power (from 2h weapon strikes) = more runes = more burst

[BrothelMeister]

I like the looks of this team, I'm just pissed that I only just got my DK + 4 Rets to 80 a few days ago :X

I see your point about how Necrotic Strikes will reduce incoming healing, but since we expect this to get nerfed (I'd wager a guess that it will stop stacking between DKs, or have diminishing Returns like a CC) what kind of burst will you have? My DK + 4 Rets are actully not even as geared as your team, but when I pop Avenging Wrath, it's still a 1 hit kill with the Hammer on targets that are pretty geared, and Avenging Wrath lasts long enough to get 3 kills.

Basically this team trades Burst for Pressure, but I wonder if that might be too much. Keep us posted ! :D

[Mercbeast]

Overall I'm concerned about the same things you guys are--I'm just optimistic that this team has the varied tools to be super effective--There's no ability that this team doesn't have a counter for (I forgot about Pillar of Frost on the video). One last thing I want to stress is that 4 Death Grips is insane considering you get a free one every time you kill someone AND you don't "lose" one when the target is immune due to cooldowns.

Hungering Cold might even make this team even more viable. Setup a second DPS key that drops HB for single target DPS. Rotate hungering cold and just knife through groups one person at a time.

If you feel like being surgical, switch to your single DPS rotation, and round robin hungering cold. It will be like old school DaoC 8 man midgard zerker trains. Mez/hungering cold everything and then start blowing fools up :)

[Shodokan]

I like the looks of this team, I'm just pissed that I only just got my DK + 4 Rets to 80 a few days ago :X

I see your point about how Necrotic Strikes will reduce incoming healing, but since we expect this to get nerfed (I'd wager a guess that it will stop stacking between DKs, or have diminishing Returns like a CC) what kind of burst will you have? My DK + 4 Rets are actully not even as geared as your team, but when I pop Avenging Wrath, it's still a 1 hit kill with the Hammer on targets that are pretty geared, and Avenging Wrath lasts long enough to get 3 kills.

Basically this team trades Burst for Pressure, but I wonder if that might be too much. Keep us posted ! :D

Um... necrotic strike as it stands is not overpowered for a single DK, so it will not get the nerfbat for no reason. Howling blast on the otherhand might.

[heyaz]

Lots of good points brought up regarding the team--And a lot of totally valid points about their weaknesses. I think Mercbeast and Zenga have succintly answered most of them. I'll reiterate and add my point(s):

1. This team epitomizes "Shock and Awe". You use your defensive cooldowns to pre-emptively force the other team to play defensive catchup. With that in mind...

AMS pre-empts Roots/Polys--You can kill anyone, even getting heals, in 6 seconds.
Lichborne/Trinket/Racial/Cleanse pre-empts Fear--Lichborne is enough time to kill two+ people.
Pillar of Frost pre-empts TS/Typhoon--Pillar of Frost is long enough to kill an entire Shaman team :)
Snares/DG pre-empts Snares--Your snares are equal but you have near-infinite Death Grips.

2. As an arena team I grant that it would be really tough to make Gladiator--But if you drop your healer and just run the 4 DK's I think it's still totally possible. Virtually zero incoming healing on a target coupled with MASSIVE AE damage is insane, especially if the primary dps target is their healer. Shock and Awe baby.

3. Sure, for rated BG's eventually everyone will get same gear and weapons that are just a hair worse than Gladiator-tier weapons. This is just a team that, to me, is a blast to play and is terribly effective in BG's. This coupled with point 4 makes them my favorite team :)

4. By running the healer main and 4 plate classes that are capable of tanking, literally any PvE content is doable. You can offspec as many guys as you want into the tanking tree. With no enrage timers your worst case scenario is 4x Blood DK's chewing through a boss in 10 minutes :)

Overall I'm concerned about the same things you guys are--I'm just optimistic that this team has the varied tools to be super effective--There's no ability that this team doesn't have a counter for (I forgot about Pillar of Frost on the video). One last thing I want to stress is that 4 Death Grips is insane considering you get a free one every time you kill someone AND you don't "lose" one when the target is immune due to cooldowns.

Current pve content, in ilvl 232+ gear sure, but what about cataclysm heroics? All the videos I've watched show bosses with strategy and annoying mechanics, at least for boxers (how about the one that summons like a dozen tornados?). Even then, wotlk heroics weren't easy for boxers, people have forgotten the days of wiping on the snake boss and doing only a few bosses from select dungeons until like 2Q 2009 when we massively outgeared the instances people were doing with ilvl 180 gear.

[Fat Tire]

Current pve content, in ilvl 232+ gear sure, but what about cataclysm heroics? All the videos I've watched show bosses with strategy and annoying mechanics, at least for boxers (how about the one that summons like a dozen tornados?). Even then, wotlk heroics weren't easy for boxers, people have forgotten the days of wiping on the snake boss and doing only a few bosses from select dungeons until like 2Q 2009 when we massively outgeared the instances people were doing with ilvl 180 gear.


heyaz keepin it real. Remaz's post was spot on also.

Since the removal of personal rating needed for all but the 2200 junk, play want you want., how you want, when you want. Its a cyclical game, pve will be easy if not right from the start then once people out gear them. I have no desire to box a pve team again, LFD is just too easy and convenient to me against spending hours setting up CC macros for boxing pve in cata(that will be needed until you outgear it). I only did 4 heroic runs on beta so someone else can comment more on how much CC will be needed, but my groups used it. /shrug

I love double healer teams in pvp, other people dont, so I say play what you want, play what you are conformable with and we will most likely end up in the same place. I for one would love to go up against your team Moq2 on my lock/double healer 3s team. I think it would be alot of fun. If youre ever on the nightfall BG.....

[Ualaa]

Howling Blast, doing the AoE damage is huge...
Anytime they clump, you basically have a spell cleave.
For me, that's probably the top thing for the team; it's pressure in arena, but probably the main reason we'll take out larger groups of opponents in battlegrounds too.

And then Necrotic Strike, on whichever target you're going for.
That is icing.





What do you think about including Blood Tap, as one of the random casts?
It converts the Blood Rune into a Death Rune, which counts as any type of rune, whichever is most beneficial.
We effectively trade a Blood Strike for an extra Howling Blast, every 30 seconds.

It wouldn't be that hard to adapt the mind freeze.
So it hits your focus, if you have a hostile focus, otherwise defaults to your primary target.
That way, especially in arena, you could focus a healer and DPS whoever you feel like.
With the Mind Freeze automatically hitting a caster/healer, rather than the melee you're currently on.

[JackBurton]

wow nice. is Mosg the Day9 of Multiboxing? any other good wow video blogger out there besides the tankspot one?

[Shodokan]

Howling Blast, doing the AoE damage is huge...
Anytime they clump, you basically have a spell cleave.
For me, that's probably the top thing for the team; it's pressure in arena, but probably the main reason we'll take out larger groups of opponents in battlegrounds too.

And then Necrotic Strike, on whichever target you're going for.
That is icing.





What do you think about including Blood Tap, as one of the random casts?
It converts the Blood Rune into a Death Rune, which counts as any type of rune, whichever is most beneficial.
We effectively trade a Blood Strike for an extra Howling Blast, every 30 seconds.

It wouldn't be that hard to adapt the mind freeze.
So it hits your focus, if you have a hostile focus, otherwise defaults to your primary target.
That way, especially in arena, you could focus a healer and DPS whoever you feel like.
With the Mind Freeze automatically hitting a caster/healer, rather than the melee you're currently on.

Fine tuning will take a bit of time, but this is the same sorta thing that people are going to need to come up with for any team really.

I do like the use of Blood Tap though

[Mosg2]

@Heyaz:

Yes, heroics were hard... Until you had gear from heroics. Then we started beating them consistently. It won't surprise me if we can do random bosses out of the heroics after hitting 85--And then once we get equal level gear we'll start clearing the whole thing.

/shrug

[Mercbeast]

Howling Blast, doing the AoE damage is huge...
Anytime they clump, you basically have a spell cleave.
For me, that's probably the top thing for the team; it's pressure in arena, but probably the main reason we'll take out larger groups of opponents in battlegrounds too.

And then Necrotic Strike, on whichever target you're going for.
That is icing.





What do you think about including Blood Tap, as one of the random casts?
It converts the Blood Rune into a Death Rune, which counts as any type of rune, whichever is most beneficial.
We effectively trade a Blood Strike for an extra Howling Blast, every 30 seconds.

It wouldn't be that hard to adapt the mind freeze.
So it hits your focus, if you have a hostile focus, otherwise defaults to your primary target.
That way, especially in arena, you could focus a healer and DPS whoever you feel like.
With the Mind Freeze automatically hitting a caster/healer, rather than the melee you're currently on.

Opening with blood tap just puts this over the top. 3x4HB = total apocalypse for the other team. Anyone caught in all 3 from everyone is dead. Period. End of discussion.

[Shodokan]

Get on skype before you stream =P I wanna watch. 3 levels to go on my 75's >_>

[Mokoi]

yeah, I agree that this team has a lot of potential, but the proof is in the pudding. can you show us some fights with 5 people in a BG or something, even 3 or more just to show how you approach certain situations? do some BGs, and FRAPS them or something, streaming them ends up with bad quality, and important details might be lost.

I also have this team, and I feel like a priest may be an even stronger healer, given its got far more AoE healing and relief than a paladin does. with the shorter duration of bubble, and all that, I think priest shields and renew, prayer of mending would be MUCH stronger, no? do you have a priest you can do some tests with? I do, but i wont be home for a while and cant test it where I am, so maybe a comparison??

thanks though for this, it is really awesome to see someone getting all excited about a not-approached combo before. great job!

[zenga]

Well i got my main dk to 80 last night so I ran an AV with my 'new' team, bear in mind they are all in the blue pvp gear. So 4x frost with 2h + disc priest. Went to galv to defend on my own ... popped everything I head and literally all 10+ allies in the room fell over (would rather say 15):

horn of winter / Hungering cold (round robin) / death & decay / anti-magic shell / icebound fortitude / raise dead / army of dead
howling blast howling blast blood boil howling blast
empower rune weapon, howling blast howling blast blood boil blood boil

it was nuts

for me hungering cold on round robin is probably the most underestimated strength of this team

[Slats]

I've read the tooltip and I understand it gives 20% Stength. Are you saying that you can get it to stack of you RR it or something?

I have started to level my DK's - really quite enjoying the melee team but I too would like to see some PvP videos in FRAPs - not because I dont believe you but I always like a bit of encouragement before experimenting with something new.

Do you guys use follow-strobing or does that not really work with IWT? And are the people who are playing their own DK teams doing what mosq2 does and playing from the POV of the healer?

[Ualaa]

A correction on the Blood Tap.
The 2nd tier talent in Blood, reduces this to a 30 second cooldown.
As a Frost spec, Blood Tap is once a minute.

Still, it allows for three sets of Howling Blasts, as the opener instead of two sets.

I'd probably rather have the Unholy talent, where if a disease is decursed the rune (Frost) refreshes.
Not to mention, the first tier of Unholy is better overall for this spec... 9% spell hit, will really help Howling Blast.

[Shodokan]

A correction on the Blood Tap.
The 2nd tier talent in Blood, reduces this to a 30 second cooldown.
As a Frost spec, Blood Tap is once a minute.

Still, it allows for three sets of Howling Blasts, as the opener instead of two sets.

I'd probably rather have the Unholy talent, where if a disease is decursed the rune (Frost) refreshes.
Not to mention, the first tier of Unholy is better overall for this spec... 9% spell hit, will really help Howling Blast.

with a 1 disease build you really punish them for the cleansing... if they cleanse at all they will give you another howling blast.

These are the builds I am running:

http://wowtal.com/#k=ekPuFSOM.a8t.deathknight.mjYU3

http://wowtal.com/#k=t3DTUSAP.a8t.paladin.RofY4e or http://wowtal.com/#k=YfgNGzUD.a8t.paladin.RofY4e not really sure... kinda leaning more towards the ret spec.

[Mosg2]

@Slats:

Pillar of Frost makes you immune to abilities that move you :) So no Typhoon or Thunderstorm to get them off you.

[Mosg2]

I did some BG's today. You can see the replay on my stream.

[Ualaa]

Cool.

Will check them out.
Thanks.





*Edit*

Could not hear anything you said.
Was totally muted.

Could hear someone talking, so got one side of the conversation.
Along with quite a bit of eating sounds on their part.



Still...
You get a decent feel for how the team goes.
It sucks the level of gear disparity, between starter blues and that mage in the Strands game for example.
Would have gone quite differently within closer gearing.

I don't like the healing via Repeater Regions.
And having to select targets to IWT at the same time.
Although with larger HP pools and more even gearing... there will be more time to move the mouse back and forth.

[Mosg2]

Yeah, the hardest part to this team is that because of the HUGE gear disparity and the pre-Cata buffs the reaction window for healing is very tiny. I mean, my guys have 25k hp and 650 res. Most people have another 10k hp and twice the res.

I have the next two days off. Maybe I'll do some more.

[Mercbeast]

Yeah, the hardest part to this team is that because of the HUGE gear disparity and the pre-Cata buffs the reaction window for healing is very tiny. I mean, my guys have 25k hp and 650 res. Most people have another 10k hp and twice the res.

I have the next two days off. Maybe I'll do some more.

The proof of concept is, "can I kill people right now".

If you can kill people right now, including those 35,000 HP 1k+ resil guys, then the proof of concept was successful. Your DPS will only go up as you gear up into wrath and your survivability will only shoot through the roof. I personally have already done the proof of concept to my own satisfaction so I am not going to bother playing the DK's for any PvP until post cata with a gear reset. I'm busy getting my trade skills done and leveling up my paladin.

Question for you. Do you think the team gains more by having a healer, than by just going 5 DK's in PvP? Having 5 DK's and abusing blood tap is just an INSANE number of howling blasts you can open with. I'm unsure if I will run 5 DK or 4 DK + Pali. I will have both combo's avaliable. I've also got a level 60 druid I could potentially level up and use.

[Mosg2]

I'm sold on the healer. No question about it. I'm 95% sure Paladin is the right choice right now. I'll do more when I'm not exhausted.

[Ualaa]

The team had no trouble dropping people.
So proof of concept, or whatever you call it, it is there.

The trouble was, being dropped so quickly.
But that is a gearing issue.
And even with the lack of gear, the team could drop others fast.
So with good gear, not only does survivability go up so does the kill power.

I would want a 5th on the team, and for that 5th to be the healer.
Not sold on Paladin, although it looks to be a very good choice.
My preference would be:
a) Run 4x DK's and have a healer friend;
b) Run 4x DK's and play the healer when that is not available, or when questing/doing PvE content.

[Mosg2]

Well, I've actually went back and forth a couple times with the Paladin and here are my general thoughts:

You fifth should be a healer. This allows you to do PvE content and allows you the option to drop your healer and sub in a friend while you play just the 4 DPS. This is easier than running 5 DPS and then randomly dropping one, I think. So now that we've established the optimum setup is 4 DK's plus healer, the question is which healer and why...

Your options are Druid, Pally, Shaman, Priest. I will rate them as I see them as adding to the team:

Offensive Buffs: Paladin, Shaman, Druid, Priest. Paladin offers Blessing which is just plain hot. Shaman have totems but some Strength of Earth overlaps with Horn of Winter. Druids and Priests are almost negligible here.

Defensive Buffs: Paladin, Shaman, Priest, Druid. Paladin offers Blessing plus aura which confers 200 resist to everything. Shaman offers Tremor Totem, which I count as less than 200 resist because you have trinket, Cleanse and Lichborne for fears. Priest have Fort. Druids are negligible here imo~.

Single Healing: Shaman, Priest, Paladin, Druid. I think Shaman single target output with Earth Shield, their hots, etc are insane. Priests are equal to them in my eyes--They have tons of different ways of healing and preventing damage to a single target. Paladin throughput while you're clickied is insane too. Druids take hind teat here again imo~. With the nerfs to HoTs they're just not what they used to be.

AoE Healing: Priest, Shaman, Druid, Paladin. I think Priest wins this one hands down, with Shaman being a not-so-near second. Druids are decent with Paladins being somewhat terrible at this still.

Survivability: Paladin, Shaman, Priest, Druid. I guess this is why I'm using the Paladin now--Knowing I can bubble every other encounter in BG's makes me feel invincible. It makes my healer a terrible target and if they do come after me I can just bubble and keep on raping. Plus they're in plate with a shield. Shaman is a close second for me--They are in mail with a shield... Sadly they don't have bubble :) Priests are a little worse than Shaman to me with Druids being terrible in this regard. Yeah, you can go bear form but then you're not healing.

In light of all this, I've come to realize that Shaman are probably a better primary healer. You've got totems for fear protection, resists, spell protection and buffs. You've got the second best survivability. Good throughput. Great single target and AE healing.

Hmmm. Sigh. I have two weeks to make a choice. Dammit lol. Anyways, can we do further discussion on this?

[Boylston]

The healer discussion is an interesting one. Here are my thoughts. If I ever wanted to run this comp, I'd have all healer types available, so I hope I'm not too biased for or against any class.

Priest: Probably not as durable as the rest. Good AoE healing tools, which is probably still important. AoE fear is pretty decent, and I think you've overlooked that.

Pally: The bubble advantage is huge, provided you take care of the classes that can bust it. I think the thing that's nice about it is you can buy a lot of time with the bubble. Good players will switch off of your healer when they see this, and they're probably not going to pick the same DK to focus during the duration. Buff is good, healing pretty good, survivability is probably most important. Pally-centered AoE heal will be interesting, should you choose to intermingle with your team.

Druid: I agree with your points. I think you overlook the ability to use stealth, however. I'd keep my druid healer stealthed at all times and pop him out only as needed. Thorns might have some utility, too.

Shaman: Tremor would be a huge help, despite your other defenses. Bloodlust is also nice... Chain heal is made for this group, and earth shield on yourself plus good healing tools (and mail/shield) will make you somewhat robust.

Overall, you make some great points for the comp... I have two main overriding concerns:

* The power of the comp centers on a new re-work of a class and a few key abilities (esp. howling blast). Blizzard could retool frost DK in several minor ways that neuters the effectiveness of the team. Contrast this with Elemental Shamans, where the changes were incremental, pretty balanced, and we've seen almost no tweaking of the comp for many, many PTR patches. Knowing my luck, I'd roll up some DKs to pair with my pally and get them to 85 just in time to have major changes go through...

* The team comp really shines with 5 people. I agree it would be better to have another player as the healer-- even so, you're taking up 5 slots of a 10v10 BG. Somewhere, your team is defending a node with 2 people instead of 3 as a result. This is a non-issue for Arena, admittedly. For competitive BG, this pretty much guarantees you take up 5 slots to support the 4 DPS. (Contrast that with Shaman, who can quadbox effectively with some decent survivability built-in.)

All that said, I have healers available and getting DKs leveled up is inherently easier than any other new team... It's tempting.

I think I'll let you (and others) show us how awesome it can be at 85 before I take the plunge!

[Mercbeast]

I actually didn't see my inclusing in BG's WSG or AB as detrimental to the team once I got a grasp on the team in PvP.

The teams strategy has to take into consideration your presence. Generally in AB the first thing I would do was say "I am multi-boxing, the best strategy we can employ is 3 cap Farm, BS, LM and I will just sit between all 3 and go where the pressure is heaviest". That is the typical strategy, so more often than not that is exactly what we would do and we would win easy 3 or 4 caps. When the team I was on was not interested in defending at all we struggled. In WSG taking up 5 slots isn't be big deal imo. Your best position will be as a 4, flag escort and defense, or flag offense. Either way you are not taking too many slots up as a 4 man or 5 man team. I'd argue a 5 man DK squad on offense in WSG is going to be the ultimate sniper team to pop the flag runner and grab the flag back.

[Mosg2]

I appreciate the emphasis on Howling Blast, but I'm just not sold on it like some are. Yes, it's amazing. It's awesome. It pairs well with Necrotic Strike. That's great.

Even if it just did the same damage to a single target this team will be amazing. Absolutely amazing.

[Mercbeast]

I appreciate the emphasis on Howling Blast, but I'm just not sold on it like some are. Yes, it's amazing. It's awesome. It pairs well with Necrotic Strike. That's great.

Even if it just did the same damage to a single target this team will be amazing. Absolutely amazing.

It isn't the AOE, it is the range. That is what makes HB insane. The AoE is superflous to the fact that it is ranged. The biggest difficulty you will run into with a melee team is keeping everyone on the target against above average players. It isn't easy with the way IWT works. The fact a big chunk of your DPS can be dealt at 30 yards is what makes HB insane and what makes the DKs as in my estimation what will be quite possibly the best PvP team at Cata launch.

[Slats]

I thought the idea sounded great before I knew HB was ranged with no aoe cap. When I found that out I almost fell off my chair.

The amount of CC reduction,immunity,breaks you get as Frost just makes you a powerhouse.

ATM it is all theory I guess till we see how htings pan out at 85 - and its risky because this team would be very weak in Cata instances that seem to have alot of movement (ie all run away from the boss now) and I'm worried about a Blood DK Tank holding aggro off four AoE spamming frost DK's tbh.

But I have a Paladin who is Prot in my Shaman Team. I will be making him Holy - my DK's are only 62 - but more than anything Mosq I wanted to say thanks for your amzingly inspiring video I have never played a melee team before and I'm loving the 'blender' feel to it.

Keep up the discussion but lets hope we dont get Frost DK's heavily nerfed haha.

[Mosg2]

@Mercbeast:

Yes i totally agree--I just meant that people (imo~) overemphasize the damage of HB. It's not that as a single DK it's OP--It's that when you can do 8 of them from 30 yards away while you're running to a target in exactly 1 second it *seems* ridiculous.

@Everyone:

After writing about the different healers I've had a pretty big internal debate on whether Paladin or Shaman is the "most right" choice for a healer. I'm trying to separate the fact that I'm one faction away from The Insane on my team from my decision--I don't want my reluctance to restart rep grinding on a toon to decide which healer I play--That's what you all are here for :) So, without further ado:

I've discounted Druids and Priests. I think they'll work fine, I just don't think they're the best choice. They both lack in survivability--I want my healer to be a second-choice target if possible. If he is the first choice, I want him to have the survivability and healing throughput while being focused to survive. With that in mind, let me present the two healers as I see them.

Paladins are solid. They have the best survivability of any of the healers even without bubble. Adding bubble they become a very discouraging target--By prioritizing Priests and Warriors you're forcing the opposition into a no-win situation: They can target the Paladin, swap to a DK, then back to Paladin post-bubble or they can just ignore the Paladin. Neither of these are great options. My main concern with the Paladin is that (imo~) they have markedly weaker heals compared to Shaman.

Shaman are solid. They have the second best survivability as I see it. They wear mail and use a shield. They don't really have many defensive cooldowns though--It's more that they're just tough plus great healing.

In comparing the two it comes to this: Their non-healing, non-survivability utility is equal. Paladins have better general buffs (200 base resist, mounted speed increase, better damage buff) while Shaman offer really good burst DPS via Bloodlust and an extra layer of fear protection (huge). Basically, I'm saying that just looking at non-heals and non-survival stuff the choice between them is a wash. Imo~. That leads me to the two big topics then: Healing, and survivability.

Healing:
Plain and simple, I prefer the Shaman by a large margin for healing this team. ALL of the Paladin healing is reactive--The mastery shield you get is decent but not amazing and that's the only preventative/maintenance healing you get. As damage comes in you cast with the Paladin. Beacon of Light is really amazing in instances but it's just kind of "meh" so far in everything else. It guarantees that at least one of your DK's is getting constant heals but oftentimes the splash healing that goes to the Beacon is just wasted. Even though healing the Beacon generates Holy Power, both Word of Glory and Light of Dawn are weak heals I feel... At least compared to the Shaman counterparts.

Shamans on the other hand have the best of both worlds. Riptide is amazing--it's 10x better than Holy Shock to me. You can use a GCD while you're moving and you get decent heals while you're doing other things--Something the Paladin lacks. Earth Shield is also much better than Beacon imo~. It only heals when you "need" it in the sense that it's only using charges if you're actually taking damage as compared to Beacon where splash healing can often be 100% overhealing. Chain Heal is so much better than Light of Dawn, too. It's targeted and smart and there's no drop-off where the healing is less effective at a particular distance. It also synergizes well with Chain Heal.

I guess what turns me on to the Shaman so much is that with Riptide and Earth Shield you've got a lot of pro-active healing where you can plan for the future, so to speak. When you heal with the Paladin you're using GCD and cast time to fix health loss that has already happened--With the Shaman you can use GCD's and NO cast time (meaning while you're moving) to prevent current AND future loss of health. The difference to me is quite significant.

Survivability:
I think it's pretty obvious that Paladins win hands down on this issue. Straight survivability plus bubble makes it a moot point. There's nothing survivability wise that Shaman have over Paladins imo~.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo after all that...

Are the gains in healing worth the loss in survivability? Honestly I'm not sure what to say--Even if I did, I would wonder if I'm biased because I don't want to regrind all sorts of The Insane rep on my Shaman :) So, time for some intelligent discussion?

[zenga]

As said earlier in this thread I go with 4 frosts and 1 disc priest. I lead with a dk though and have my healer just on follow between my other dk's. That's the way I'm used to it, and a way that has worked very well for me so far (same with my shaman team). In reality I make hardly ever use of IWT in pvp. And next to that I do not click heal, I only button heal (I find that superior to click healing for my playing style).

On my 'main' account, I could go for druid (only lvl 60), priest/shaman or paladin (need to respec them as I've never healed with the shaman or paladin). As said I don't fancy leading with the healer though. So I also have a priest on account #3 and I could replace him with a resto shaman. What bothers me with tremor totem is that my toons often end up in different groups. If you pvp a lot it's a pita to /w the leader all the time and explain it.

Instead I find the fear ward + mass dispell way more attractive for this team. On top of that I have the shielding which mitigates even more damage. The ability to quickly fear any melee away that is on you just rocks.

The fact that my dk's are blood elfs for arcane torrent and that I like to have 5 toons of the same height/weight limits me to a priest or pally.
In the end any healer will work, it all depends on your playstyle and what you mainly do (bg's, rated bg's or arena).

[Ualaa]

I think the AoE nature of Howling Blast is huge.
This is the one thing, that (in my mind; I might be unfairly biased however) puts the composition ahead of what I can do with a set of Ferals; the healer is moot, since either comp could run 4x/5x DPS and 0x/1x Healer.

Howling Blast applies damage to a lot of characters at once.
We will have HB glyphed, so this means Frost Fever on several targets at once.
And talented, Frost Fever is a snare.
So we a ranged AoE snare/dot, and punish those who choose to cleanse this dual effect... by re-HBing them, for damage plus the snare/dot again.

If Howling Blast was a single target... that would really suck.
Other changes wouldn't be as devastating, for example if the damage were capped or divided between the targets... we'd still be AoE snare/dotting several opponents, and they'd be unable to cleanse that.
The range is excellent, especially for the melee team.
Pretty much only need to IWT, to ensure we're facing the target.

But, not sold on this being an over the top team if HB were single target.

A lot of other compositions will also put out single target DPS faster than any Cataclysm era healer can keep up with.
The AoE nature, is what puts the team over the edge, imo... the opposition will have several targets to worry about, and if one is bubbled we can switch to another target easily enough.
If it were single target, this would still be a killer composition but not the clear winner.

As Shodokan pointed out, it's unlikely to be nerfed because of boxers, when we make up 0.08% (or whatever) of the player base.





The necrotic strike, basically ensures the main target cannot be healed.
So that is very strong pressure.
It almost guarantees a kill, in the initial attack (while we're immune to CC type effects), unless they have an immunity effect.

The only defense to this really are effects like Pain Suppression (effectively doubling the time to kill the target) or bubble (where the target cannot be killed for the duration).

If the target gets protected, our effects like Anti-Magic, Lichborne, Etc, have a relatively short duration; we'll have them for the initial engagement, but if we fail to drop someone in this time... we become rather vulnerable to knockback, fear, etc (but not vulnerable to snare/roots thanks to Death Grip).
We'd have a good chance at killing someone, during the opening because they'll likely have a few hurt toons for us to choose between, because of the AoE nature of the Howling Blast.

If we can down someone immediately, particularly if that is the key class for their composition (arena) or the most dangerous healer type around.... we get a huge edge.
If they bubble the initial target and survive the opening... the match gets a lot harder.

That reason alone, makes me very strongly consider a Disc Priest, for the Mass Dispel. Without a bubble or damage reduction effect, we basically have a guaranteed kill.
But the Disc Priest is a lot more fragile than a Pally.
So the decision is not easy.

Which is preferable:
a) Our healer is more fragile (Pain Suppression, PW: Shield, Self heals... for reduced damage but not negating damage), but virtually guarantees the initial target is dead. Fear Ward and Mass Dispel, superior AoE healing, etc.
b) Our healer has superb survival skills (bubble, plate, shield), but if their composition contains a skilled Pally (also has bubble), our initial target has very high survival probability.

I'd lean towards (A).
Because, in arena if they're down a healer in the first 5-10 seconds, they've probably lost even if we lose our healer right after.
In battlegrounds, if the healer/fear/knockback threat is gone fast, the mass of enemies probably don't have a chance.
Conversely, if our healer (B) survives the initial burst (assume Bubble is not dispelled), but occasionally we don't down a target in that initial opening period, how does the team fare without the defensive cooldowns aside from the trinket?

[Slats]

I'm going to level a priest with my DK's since I have one at 70. I really like the idea of offensive mass dispel and driving from the healrs perspective. I think that is what got me quite excited in Mosq video - playing from a different POV and having that large scale view of the battleground and having your DK"s charging around with IWT.

[Ualaa]

Well.. have my Priests, Hunters and Death Knights, all to 75th.
In time for Cataclysm, and therefore able to become 525 alchemists.

Was initially planning on taking the Priests to 80th, since I love the 4.x changes to Disc.
They got me rather excited about the team.




But then Mosg2 posts this manifesto and video.
And suddenly, DK's at 75th is not high enough... thanks buddy :)
I've got extras (not part of an active team) of all four potential healer types.

But the (gnome) DK's suddenly want 80th; they've managed to reacquire the leveling heirlooms.
And are in the process of trying to talk my Pally or Priest into the use of an experimental gnomish device which is reputed to transform the user into a cute Blood Elf...



Basic plan is to rush level, 5x alliance ferals and 4x blood elf DK's + 1x blood elf Priest or Pally.
Hopefully both teams are powerhouses.

[Shodokan]

Comparing paladin vs shaman... been thinking about it all day so here ya go.

Paladin
Buffs:
single 200 resist buffs
10% attack power
beacon

Offensive abilities:
Stun (1 min cooldown)
Holy shock damage
Exorcism (1.5 second cast)
Holy Wrath (in AOE situations the damage scaling is too high to be worth it, only good for helping burst)

Defensive abilities:
Divine protection (10 second cooldown, lasts 10 seconds) - this is a big one, 20% less damage at all times.
Divine shield - 5 min cooldown... i honestly think this is negatable.. yes it gets you out of hairy situations once every 5 mins... but this is usable a few times per battleground only... unlike arena it would not make or break the group
Cleanse - all healers get this though
Aura Mastery

Healing:
Holy shock - crap heal, it is critting for like 7k as is but generates holy power, instant and on 6 seconds
Flash of light - good fast heal, you get extra haste when you judge
Holy Light - mana efficient decently large heal
Beacon - heal yourself or others, likely going to be putting it on yourself for survivability.
Divine - high cost, high heal, long cast time
Light of Dawn - AOE heal that requires rampup time (more so if you aren't being attacked), heals like a wet noodle, lets not kid ourselves here. This requiring holy power nearly kills the ability in my opinion due to the amount you should be having, unless you are beaconing someone other than yourself and constantly healing them with other thing (as you said, it will almost all be overhealing so there is no point to it other than for this reason)
Holy Radiance - 30 second cooldown that has an AOE heal... but if your deathknights are running off to kill shit you have to follow them to make it useful and they need to be within

My positives for paladin healers:
Their single target heals are amazing
10% ap buff
The resists... but that is limited to a single resist
Divine favor really helps with making sure people stay alive... combined with wings
Aura mastery and the anti-silence is nice

My concerns:
Bubble is not as useful as we think, it lasts 8 seconds and it is on a 5 minuet cooldown, can be dispelled and broken with a decent amount of things one will have to deal with on the regular (mass dispell, heroic throw etc...)

Light of dawn heals like a wet noodle... like seriously in comparison to other AOE heals it is a joke. As a mana costing heal it was fine but as a sacrifice of saving a single toon to keep them all alive like with a powerful word of glory? nty. This spell is also a conal heal and heals everyone for the same amount which is a baseline of about 3000 (@ max holy power)... i'm not 100% sure how this scales with spell power and such but it just seems so lack luster.

Divine protection eats a GCD every 10 seconds. You want to keep your team up in hairy situations then you will not be able to take the damage if they get a 2-3 dps switch to you. Same rules apply to us as to others... if they gang up on a healer its done for no matter what the class is.

Paladin has to be reactive, meaning they cannot really be played in any sort of offensive manner, which can be important in high level play. It's all good that you can do damage but one spell needs you to not heal, another is usable every 15 seconds and hits for shit and exorcism would need to be used instead of a heal in a combat situation which COULD kill one of your dks.

Mana is also a huge problem for a paladin, he has no means to regen mana outside of passive regen and divine plea (which reduces healing, in hairy situations where you need mana and need to heal yourself... yes you can bubble but if you don't have it up you are fucked.

The paladin glyphs really don't add that much to the class... i mean seriously?

Shaman
Buffs:
All resist totem
Anti-Fear Totem
Healing totem
Fire elemental
Earth elemental
Heroism/Blood Lust

Offensive abilities:
Shocks - using them reduces mana cost of heals by 75%...and 30% more effective.
Lightning bolt - 40% of the damage comes back to you as mana
Lava burst - it can still hit decently high if you have flameshock up on the target... awesome for burst!
Chain Lightning - Help with AOEing if you feel it is really necessary
Fire nova
Hex - A CC... which can be super useful

Defensive abilities:
Earthshield - pre-emptive heal, heals when target is attacked... sorta like beacon but not quite as effective... though it only gets used when needed and when they are effected by it your heals heal for more.
Spiritwalker's Grace - You are able to run around and heal... every 2 mins.
Ancestral Resolve - When in hairy situations and you need to heal... you take 10% less damage.
Ancesteral Healing - Oh you crit? here... take 10% less damage for 15 seconds!
Cleanse - yep... another cleanse.
Natures swiftness - instacast heal
Natures guardian: when taken below 35% life you gain 15% extra total HP.

Healing:
Riptide: Instacast heal that applies a heal over time that can make the amount of healing they receive from chain heal higher. (6 second cooldown) hand over fist better than holy shock.
Mastery: Higher healing to those who need it more.
Chain heal: Smart heal that heals the entire group. More effective if the target has been hit with rip tide...grants tidal wave (30% crit on healing surge, 30% reduction in higher heals cast time) heals for much more than Light of Dawn but does have a cast time.
Healing wave: Glyphed 20% of your heals go to you meaning when you use this it is a mini beacon of light, holy light equiv
Greater healing wave (or w/e its called) : divine light equiv
Healing surge: flash of light equiv
Ancesteral spirit: EVERY time you crit (any jump of your chain heal) summons a spirit that is a smart heal for 30% of the heal that spawned it.
After a shock your heals are worth 30% more healing
Healing steam totem... it's like having holy radiance all the freaking time and gives you ALL resist!
Healing Rain - Preemptive AOE ground heal, lasts 10 seconds on a 10 second cooldown
Earthliving weapon - heal over time from random heals.. like 20%
Unleash weapon - equivalent of a 1 holy power word of glory and increases next heal by 20%
Cleanse fucking heals when it actually cleanses something!

My point of view on positives:
It takes less time to cast a chain heal than it does to get the holy power to use a light of dawn... heals for much more due to spellpower coefficients and is a smart heal. All of your talents really make you better at healing... not a bunch of random stuff that could be useful and need to proc (cough cough no cooldown holy shock) Healing surge is just as good as flash of light. Shaman heal targets for more based upon their health. Riptide absolutely shits on holy shock. You get many many more crits from your heals because of all the talents making your overall healing much higher. There are lots of extra ways to heal your targets for much much more than the mastery of a holy paladin.

This class can be played in both a preemptive manner with riptide, earth shield, healing rain and precasting chain heal etc. You do much more healing overall because of the increases to crit and overall healing from other talents. Mana-tide totem is really important and makes this class much more mana efficient than a paladin, especially with the regen and such from water shield. You also take less damage while casting than a paladin as they need to use a GCD to take less damage, you also make victims of your crit heals take less damage as well giving the team higher survivability.

You get an extra anti-fear, blood lust for burst when you can use it (hello sated going away when you die), healing stream for a nearly constant "uptime" of a holy radiance type thing. Healing stream when glyphed gives you nice resists to everything. You have a much more efficient means of getting mana back by helping attack and you can burst for much more than a paladin can. You can also heal on the move every 2 mins.

The kicker... you take 10% less damage and do not eat a GCD.

Downside:
You really don't have an o-shit button like the paladin other than an instant cast spell. Your AOE heal does have a cast time. You don't have the ability to pop cooldowns to heal more in "oshit" moments but your mastery makes up for that as you heal for more as your health goes down. You have a CC and not a stun... with a stun you guarantee a kill. You are not plate and therefore take slightly more damage baseline. There is no extra attack power or mana regen bonus from the buffs a paladin brings, but then again you have enough mana regen it doesn't really matter now does it?

[Shodokan]

To sum up my thoughts
Shaman don't have the defensive o-shit button that paladins have... but thats OK because it is on a 5 minuet cooldown. Will it save you in some situations? Of course. Will you have it up all the time? Maybe 5 times a battleground depending on the BG. Paladin's AOE heals like a wet noodle in comparison to the high coefficient scaling of a resto shaman's chain heal.

The shaman has so much more to offer than the paladin does to the group as a whole, it can also be played offensively with preemptive healing with things such as healing rain. Your group takes much less damage overall as a shaman because of the mechanics for AOE healing, crits, extra healing from crits, extra healing from using offensive spells, constant AOE heals from totems unless killed.

Shaman can help kill the target and keep the group alive at the same time, where as a paladin will require full time heal duty and need to use EVERY global cooldown to it's best ability, and requires sometimes up to 18 seconds to get the correct holy power for their AOE ability. Sure people will be beating on you but the amount of holy power one will get from that may only be enough to AOE heal in a situation once where as a shaman could have done so twice and for much more.

If you really think bubble (lasting 8 seconds on a 5 min cooldown) combined with the throughput of healing every two minuets opposed to increased healing at all times and more so if your team is lower in health like some situations will call for and requiring usage of precious healing GCD to make sure your paladin is taking the least amount of damage possible then thats fine. The SINGLE saving grace for a paladin is the ability to beacon them self and get healing as he heals the team, but the shaman can get that in a similar fashion as well... keep in mind at 85 we can't go spamming flash heals either, and on a paladin when you OOM you die, on a shaman when you OOM you drop your mana spring totem and keep on trucking.

Edit: one last thing... you need to beacon your paladin which means you need to heal YOURSELF to get extra holy power which is a waste of a GCD, unless you plan on wasting a heal GCD to put beacon on yourself when being attacked. Shaman also don't need to spec differently in order to make them more effective offensively like a paladin does.

As far as throughput when you are in trouble.... healing stream + healing rain + chain heal/other heals + earth shield + riptide.... theres A LOT there... especially if you lust.



To talk about priests
They are very good healers, but when focused in cata have the 1 trick pony fear and then are done for. Yes they get mass dispel but your damage output on a target with necrotic strike cannot be healed so if a healer bubbles(paladin) then it really doesn't matter. There might be some situations where massdispell comes into play where they lust or something but the only real use for this i see is to dispel an AOE fear and this wouldn't be a problem for the shaman either because of the tremmor totem... so ultimately it is the same utlity with a pulse time opposed to a cast time... and you still need to trinket your fear to use it in that manner.

Fear ward = single toon anti-fear every 3 mins... good but not spectacular.

Disc priests are great preemptive healers and pretty damn good at healing otherwise, but i just think that with you having no real AOE heal and you need to constantly be using GCD on shields while healing and micromanaging all of that... yes it is possible but is it really worth it to be less effective overall? (in my opinion)

Don't get me wrong... priests can be great and HIGHLY mobile, but they were intentionally nerfed it seems as all the priests i know in game complain about their healing all the time.

[Mamut]

Driving with the healer looks very interesting. I'd love to try it out but cant figure out how to display my team as if they were in my party while in BG's.

As much as i love my keybinds i think id be more comfortable being able to click heal sorta like healbot allows while spamming my keys to control the DK's (much like i do with my rets).

While using a paladin as a healer (in a full team of pallies mind you) i found it useful to cast Beacon of light on the healer in combination with Protector of the Innocent. Seemed to help me keep the healer up while spamming heals on my DPSers.

Anyway great discussion i hope to see more steams/vids of these bad boys in action to inspire me to keep leveling my DK's.

[Boylston]

A minor negative with the Shaman healer (but I still think Shodokan is convincing me it might be better...):

Chain heal graphic streaking toward the DK team is pretty much going to paint a big "Kill Me" sign on your healer. You'd be less conspicuous with a different healer. This only matters in BGs, of course.

[Mosg2]

@all:
I think people are overselling Priests to be honest. With HB doing AE damage swapping targets doesn't hurt that much, especially if you've been on their healer--That means you've been damaging their healer and all their melee dps at least. A simple swap and BOOM, dead targets. Who cares if you lose a second or two swapping targets? I seriously doubt that Mass Dispel is worth the squishiness of a Disc Priest.

Another thing to add to the Paladin/Shaman debate is this: Wind Shear will work exactly like Mind Freeze does since it's off the GCD. Every 6 seconds your target or focus gets Wind Sheared, on top of Mind Freeze, Strangulate, Arcane Torrent etc.

@Ualaa:
Sorry to make you level what could potentially be the most powerful multiboxed team in Cata. My apologies! :)

[zenga]

Disc priests are great preemptive healers and pretty damn good at healing otherwise, but i just think that with you having no real AOE heal and you need to constantly be using GCD on shields while healing and micromanaging all of that... yes it is possible but is it really worth it to be less effective overall? (in my opinion).

It depends what content you do, arena, or (rated) bg's ... but I don't find myself healing every other second. So what I do is having a key (scroll lock) that alters the keys for my disc priest until turned off. And it basically shields target 1, shield target 2, ... etc on every keypress on my dk's.


I seriously doubt that Mass Dispel is worth the squishiness of a Disc Priest.

Tbh I wouldn't call a disc priest squishy ... I do think that you overestimate the value of armor and shield when you are being focused.



Another thing to add to the Paladin/Shaman debate is this: Wind Shear will work exactly like Mind Freeze does since it's off the GCD. Every 6 seconds your target or focus gets Wind Sheared, on top of Mind Freeze, Strangulate, Arcane Torrent etc.


Wind shear and purge, that is a very strong toolbox for a resto shaman.

Again, I really think it depends on your playstyle, your class experience so far and what you 'like' to determine the best healer for this team, as will the type of pvp you run do. Personally I'm a huge fan of aoe fear + hungering cold to move out of heat. And I expect some fun with leap of faith as well, however I did not play beta.

I go with disc, because I like it and because I'm convinced it's the best choice for 'my' team :D

[BrothelMeister]

This thread has changed gears a little, but to bring it back to viability of the team compared to DK+4 Rets, Im not sold anymore. My DK+4 Rets still have pretty bad gear (3.8K AP; 300 resil) yet they are really starting to dominate targets.

The AoE from Howling Blast might be pretty nice for pressure, but the single target damage is actually not that high, especially with the increased health pools cata will bring. With Avenging Wrath, the Paladins can blow a single target (Preferably a dps) up in seconds, from 30 yards away, and the mana free healing is very effective, even with my awful gear.

In BGs, the 4 DK team might have high overall pressure, but getting an actual kill in might not be as easy with the fact that your burst is not as high as the 4 Rets. In arena, I see the 4 Rets as being even more superfluous since you will 5 toons DPSing, instead of 4, and in arena, when you blow up a target or two in mere seconds, the enemy team will usually give up. The 4 DK team would be able to put up its mortal strike effect, but could still end up escaping before you have time to apply more pressure, and it could also be dealing damage to you in that time frame.

4 DKs vs 4 Rets is really just the question of pressure vs Burst, and as discussed many a time, Burst is better for boxers ,as fast kills mean less time for the enemy to figure out what the hell is going on.

[Boylston]

Can we have this thread locked? I really don't want to have to roll another team...

[Mosg2]

@Brothelmeister:
This thread wasn't originally about the 4 DK's viability compared to 4 Rets or any other comp--Just an explanation of how and why it's a dominating team. I think it's pretty well on track to be honest :)

To refute one or two of your points though, I have to say that the pressure this team puts out is different than any other's for one big reason: Necrotic Strike. This ability is going to change the world for boxers.

@Boylston:
Haha you scared me for a minute. The upside is this team starts at 55 and levels like a pro. I promise :)

[zenga]

@brothelmeister

I never wanted to join the 4x ret/dk discussion as I have not played that team at any decent level, but it seems to me (ever since patch day) that a geared ret pally was still very mobile and doing decent damage vs my shaman when i play him single (full wrath except shoulders). It was rather my survivability that was increased. So I can imagine if I was to have a 4 ret + dk team, to stick to it. On a sidenote: I sometimes have the feeling that some boxers ditch a class/team whenever they can't oneshot an opponent.

Reducing the 4x dk + healer team to a spamming HB gimmick is something that I don't really like, and definitely not the way I like to play. There are so many more features that this team offers, that you can use it for a multitude of playstyles (lockouts, cc's, ...). And how likely is it actually that you meet a shitload of enemies together within range? That is for me def. not the majority of the fights in BG's. On the other hand, saying that a frost dk his single target output is not that high ... I can't judge about lvl 81+, but everything so far up till lvl 80 has given me very awesome single target damage (which obviously requires something else than spamming hb). That the range on single target is limited isn't really an issue with 4x deathgrip. The reason I actually switched from unholy (still a decent choice) to frost was just for the single target output + the level of control I have over the enemy. It was rather by accident that I discovered the insane aoe power of HB.

[cmeche]

(i havent read all 8 pages)
Just wondering what race(Horde and Ally) would you pick if you were starting a new DK team at the start of Cata? My 5 DKs are all lvl 60 NE. Starting over wouldnt be a big loss.

[Mosg2]

It'll take like 2 hours to get a team from 55 to 60 :) Go Human imo~ if you're Alliance. Horde BE or UD have best racials for this team (imo~).

Edit:

And I'm still interested in the healing debate.

[Mercbeast]

This thread has changed gears a little, but to bring it back to viability of the team compared to DK+4 Rets, Im not sold anymore. My DK+4 Rets still have pretty bad gear (3.8K AP; 300 resil) yet they are really starting to dominate targets.

The AoE from Howling Blast might be pretty nice for pressure, but the single target damage is actually not that high, especially with the increased health pools cata will bring. With Avenging Wrath, the Paladins can blow a single target (Preferably a dps) up in seconds, from 30 yards away, and the mana free healing is very effective, even with my awful gear.

In BGs, the 4 DK team might have high overall pressure, but getting an actual kill in might not be as easy with the fact that your burst is not as high as the 4 Rets. In arena, I see the 4 Rets as being even more superfluous since you will 5 toons DPSing, instead of 4, and in arena, when you blow up a target or two in mere seconds, the enemy team will usually give up. The 4 DK team would be able to put up its mortal strike effect, but could still end up escaping before you have time to apply more pressure, and it could also be dealing damage to you in that time frame.

4 DKs vs 4 Rets is really just the question of pressure vs Burst, and as discussed many a time, Burst is better for boxers ,as fast kills mean less time for the enemy to figure out what the hell is going on.

I think you might be underselling DK burst. 12 HB's will kill people. Sure it will take 2s, but the fact it is hitting everyone in a 10 yard radius makes it difficult to heal everyone. Frost strike hits very hard as well.

Additionally, after 3 HB's you will have enough runic power for 1 or 2 death coil barrages which is extremely helpful for finishing off someone just out of melee reach.

Neither team will have difficulty killing people in terms of raw DPS output, however DK's have more control which allows them to be in the position to actually put that DPS into effect on a more consistent basis.

[Mercbeast]

(i havent read all 8 pages)
Just wondering what race(Horde and Ally) would you pick if you were starting a new DK team at the start of Cata? My 5 DKs are all lvl 60 NE. Starting over wouldnt be a big loss.

Horde the clear choice is BE.

Ally human or worgen probably.

This is if you are absolutely set on min maxing.

The human trinket racial is really good and Worgen(And goblins) just have stupidly strong racials period)

BE's have arcane torrent and grip + arcane torrent spells insta-doom for any caster you suck in and you don't even need to use mind freeze to accomplish this. When I enter large fights, just running into as many casters as possible and cycling your arcane torrents works wonders for cutting healing or ranged magic DPS down.

[Ualaa]

I look at it, like this...

A team has to be able to win against at least equal sized groups consistently. And if you can take out larger groups, that's a good sign.

Imagine the other faction has control of the Blacksmith, but sent 10+ people there to take it. You can hit BS with your team, and have a chance because of the AoE nature of Howling Blast. Even if you're going to die 9 times in 10, you'll put up decent pressure doing it. Meanwhile your team has 10 people elsewhere to take bases from 5 defenders.

When you go against masses of players, your Frost Runes are a priority. Every two Frost Strikes, is also a 90% chance of another Frost Rune. You might go Howling Blast, Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Blood Tap, Howling Blast... and then focus on a healer with Necrotic Strikes as the Frost Runes recharge.




When there aren't a lot of targets in one place, as a boxer we should destroy our opposition.
And most likely we will, most of the time.

But let's say you go to the Gold Mine, and they happen to have three healers there. That's a lot of healing output on whoever we focus fire.

Necrotic Strike, makes us far more likely to down a target in this situation than another team with similar or possibly even superior DPS. Burst is the only chance for most other teams in this situation; drop someone in a single GCD. Necrotic Strike, gets a very good chance of downing one of the targets despite the other two healers doing everything they can to keep that target up.




So good tools for both masses of opponents and for focusing on any given single target.

It might be worthwhile to build two castsequence (or DPS Mapped Keys). And have a toggle between them.

The first prioritizes Howling Strikes, exactly as shown in the Manifesto video. The second prioritizes Necrotic Strikes, in a similar fashion. And then have a toggle which switches the mode from one to the other.

Going with the priority system from the Manifesto video, possibly something like this:



Press:
Do Mapped Key - Melee IWT
Do Mapped Key A - Howling Blast (Keybind 1)
Do Mapped Key B - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 1)

Release:
Do Mapped Key C - Howling Blast (Keybind 2)
Do Mapped Key D - Howling Blast (Keybind 3)
Do Mapped Key E - Howling Blast (Keybind 4)
Do Mapped Key F - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 2)
Do Mapped Key G - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 3)
Do Mapped Key H - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 4)
Do Mapped Key I - Frost Strike (Keybind 1)
Do Mapped Key J - Frost Strike (Keybind 2)
Do Mapped Key K - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 2)
Do Mapped Key L - Necrotic Strike (Keybind 3)
Do Mapped Key M - Howling Blast (Keybind 2)
Do Mapped Key N - Howling Blast (Keybind 3)
Do Mapped Key O - Blood Strike (Keybind 1)

And then the toggle:
Step 1
- Enables Mapped Keys A, C, D, E, K, L.
- Disables Mapped Keys B, F, G, H, M, N.
Step 2
- Does the reverse.




As far as healers go... I would personally prefer all members of the same race.
As close to the same appearance as possible, which admittedly is a large boost for the Paladin camp.

Basically, so the opposition has a harder time focusing on the healer.

[Mercbeast]

Additionally, when you switch to single target DPS hungering cold comes into play which is an aoe incapacitate.

[Shodokan]

This thread has changed gears a little, but to bring it back to viability of the team compared to DK+4 Rets, Im not sold anymore. My DK+4 Rets still have pretty bad gear (3.8K AP; 300 resil) yet they are really starting to dominate targets.

The AoE from Howling Blast might be pretty nice for pressure, but the single target damage is actually not that high, especially with the increased health pools cata will bring. With Avenging Wrath, the Paladins can blow a single target (Preferably a dps) up in seconds, from 30 yards away, and the mana free healing is very effective, even with my awful gear.

In BGs, the 4 DK team might have high overall pressure, but getting an actual kill in might not be as easy with the fact that your burst is not as high as the 4 Rets. In arena, I see the 4 Rets as being even more superfluous since you will 5 toons DPSing, instead of 4, and in arena, when you blow up a target or two in mere seconds, the enemy team will usually give up. The 4 DK team would be able to put up its mortal strike effect, but could still end up escaping before you have time to apply more pressure, and it could also be dealing damage to you in that time frame.

4 DKs vs 4 Rets is really just the question of pressure vs Burst, and as discussed many a time, Burst is better for boxers ,as fast kills mean less time for the enemy to figure out what the hell is going on.

All i see here is "OMG WINGS + HAMMER = WIN!"

Burst is better for boxers as you say.... so lets do a comparison of a basic 100 attack sequence shal we?

Rets
Crusader strike - 115% base - after all is said and done it is 150% weapon damage 4.5 second cooldown (with sanctity + judgement haste + dk haste looking at about a 3.2 min cooldown)

Holy Wrath - decently large mana cost, small damage output especially against multiple opponents, 15 second cooldown

Exorcism - Only really usable when you have art of war otherwise it eats too much mana

Judgement - 8 second cooldown, the damage is laughable at best now.

Hammer of wrath - only usable while wings are up, or when target is below 25% life

Divine storm - shared cooldown with crusader strike, does 80% weapon damage (when bursting this is useless really, and limits your holy power generation unless you are lucky)

Inquisition - Increases holy damage by 30% requires holy power, lasts 30 seconds with max holy power... only applies to judgement damage, exorcism and holy wrath unless you have wings up.

Templar's verdict - Laughable damage and is not affected by inquisition (its a melee attack, not a holy attack) that does 235% weapon damage at max, and <100% for holy power less than that.


The rotation even in pvp requires 3 holy power to be used for inquisition every 30 ish seconds. 40% chance for it to give you 1 holy power back, judge exo and holy all have a 40% chance as well and hammer of wrath.

So out of 100 non templars verdict attacks you get the following (if you are not healing)

Judge (8 seconds)
Crusader strike (3.2 seconds)
Holy wrath (15 second cooldown)
Cusader strike (3.2 seconds)
Judgement (8 seconds)
Crusader strike x 2
Holy Wrath
Judgement
Crusader Strike

Assuming that rotation or similar is repeated to 100 total attacks you get approximately 70 holy power which is equal to 23x either templars verdict or inquisition.

Which puts this at a total of 123 attacks

As of 4.0.3a i am critting for about 11-13k with pvp gear on my ret paladin on training dummy with templars verdict

Deathknight
Each howling blast gives approximately 10 runic power per rune used other than frost which are 20. Meaning every set of runes used you gain 80 runic power. This does not include random procs from the spec.

Howling Blast x 2
Necrotic strike
Blood Strike (death rune)
Necrotic Strike
Blood Strike (death rune)

80 runic power dump = 2.5 frost strikes (im going to round up here to 3 to incorperate procs from spec)
3x frost strike

Howling Blast x 4
Necrotic strike x 2

100 runic power dump (going to up this to 120 because the proc is very high)

4x frost strike

So each basic burst or normal rotation includes

6 howling blasts
4 necrotic strikes
2 blood strikes
7 frost strikes

So you get this ~6.5 times to equal to the attacks (including usage of templars verdict/inquisition)

39x howling blast
26x necrotic strike
13x blood strikes
45.5 frost strikes

This means that for a deathknight in equal attacks... he gets his 100+% weapon damage over 70 times, 39x an attack that is equal to the damage of templars verdict (on a training dummy and some reforging it crits for 12k for me) and 13x attacks that are 80% weapon damage + 680 (at 85) and an extra 10% of that total damage for having frost fever on the target... so every attack is doing over 100% weapon damage.

Frost strike hits harder than crusader strike and is pure frost damage, and you can use it just as often because of the freaking cooldown on crusader strike. In 3.2 seconds you can easily get 32 runic power if you are attacking a target... hell you get 20 if you do two non frost attacks...

BtW in the amount of time the paladin throws out the stated amount of abilities (enough for 23 tv) you get 40% of 45 frost strikes as more attacks which equals even more frost strikes...

How is there even a comparison? I mean does the fact that you get to burst someone down every 2 mins with wings really make up for that?

[Slats]

I dont think there is a one best healer for this team. I think all 3 dicussed heavily so far are veyr strong in different ways and it depends on how you want to play the team. It sounds like half of the people taking up the challenge are doing to play from the DK PoV. The other half are interested in driving from the healer, with a single key launches the priority system and using priority and RR to throw in Mind Freeze/Death Grips/Pillar of Frost etc.

I was going to make my whole team Engineers as my focus will be Battlegrounds and rated Battlegrounds with a small dabble in Arena.

I'd love to see some fraps of PvP from Mosq driving his Paladin. I'd love to see th person who is using their Priest and their PvP.

For me thought at least for now this team is a pure PvP and secondary team so reputation/achievments etc are not a huge dealio.

I also agree maybe the thread is a little too excited about HB and ignoring the other amazing features of the Frost DK.

Has anyone considered going DW for PVP and not using a huge 2H considering most strikes (sadly not nectrotic strike) all hit with both weapons?

[Hivetyrant]

I played around some random dungeons with a terribly geared group of 4xDK 1xPally last night, driving from the healer and must say I found it quite enjoyable, granted the lack of range will probably hurt in some places, but the burst damage and CC is quite fun.

[Mosg2]

@Slats:

The problem with DW is that you need to be in Frost Presence to do better DPS than a 2h'er... And 2h'er is in Unholy Presence. This means that DW lose 15% run speed and base-1 second GCD's. The GCD thing is huge in my testing so far.

Also, after much waffling and talking to various people I've decided to stick with the Paladin for the following reasons:

The Paladin is a no-frills healer. You Beacon yourself and then just spam heals on whoever needs them. If you get targeted you Concentration Aura/Aura Mastery and keep spamming. If it gets worse you bubble. Either way the Paladin is a *terrible* target--If you attack me I'm healing myself and I get a Holy Power each time I do that--Which just builds how much healing I can put out. All the while my DK's are tearing you up. This forces people to target my DK's... And I can just sit there and spam heals unhindered. If it's just one person on me, the splashover I get from Beacon and Protector of the Innocent will keep me up until I run out of mana.

What does the Shaman do?

Well, after doing more testing they heal just the same that Paladins do. Earth Shield and Riptide are good heals, and I'd gladly trade Holy Shock for either, but their output is about the same that the Paladin's is... Except that amazingly enough the Paladins AoE is better than the Shaman. Chain Heal just took too big of a hit with the changes to talents and healing. Light of Dawn does have limitations, but the healing is solid on all the people I hit. Yes, the ramp up time is longer but the throughput is better. Mostly you're healing incidental damage with any group healing--Not as a primary way of healing direct damage. AoE healing in general is just not efficient enough nor does it have enough throughput.

So, single target? The Paladin does just as good as the Shaman. AoE? Everyone is weak as I see it. That leaves....

SURVIVABILITY!

And it's pretty obvious the Paladin is better at it than any of the other healers.

tl;dr:
Paladin wins.

[Shodokan]

@Slats:

The problem with DW is that you need to be in Frost Presence to do better DPS than a 2h'er... And 2h'er is in Unholy Presence. This means that DW lose 15% run speed and base-1 second GCD's. The GCD thing is huge in my testing so far.

Also, after much waffling and talking to various people I've decided to stick with the Paladin for the following reasons:

The Paladin is a no-frills healer. You Beacon yourself and then just spam heals on whoever needs them. If you get targeted you Concentration Aura/Aura Mastery and keep spamming. If it gets worse you bubble. Either way the Paladin is a *terrible* target--If you attack me I'm healing myself and I get a Holy Power each time I do that--Which just builds how much healing I can put out. All the while my DK's are tearing you up. This forces people to target my DK's... And I can just sit there and spam heals unhindered. If it's just one person on me, the splashover I get from Beacon and Protector of the Innocent will keep me up until I run out of mana.

What does the Shaman do?

Well, after doing more testing they heal just the same that Paladins do. Earth Shield and Riptide are good heals, and I'd gladly trade Holy Shock for either, but their output is about the same that the Paladin's is... Except that amazingly enough the Paladins AoE is better than the Shaman. Chain Heal just took too big of a hit with the changes to talents and healing. Light of Dawn does have limitations, but the healing is solid on all the people I hit. Yes, the ramp up time is longer but the throughput is better. Mostly you're healing incidental damage with any group healing--Not as a primary way of healing direct damage. AoE healing in general is just not efficient enough nor does it have enough throughput.

So, single target? The Paladin does just as good as the Shaman. AoE? Everyone is weak as I see it. That leaves....

SURVIVABILITY!

And it's pretty obvious the Paladin is better at it than any of the other healers.

tl;dr:
Paladin wins.

I'm not done arguing with you yet, get back on skype >=O i fixed my mic..

I have both healers... we'll see which is better in cata though.

[Mercbeast]

Honestly I think both will be good, and it will depend on play style and situation. I can think of situations where Shaman will be better and I can think of situations where Paladin will be better. Like you Shodokan I have shamans and paladins almost to 80 so I can decide after some experimentation which I prefer.

[BrothelMeister]

@Shodokan

The Ability to WRECK people every 2 minutes is EVERYTHING!! In arena, if you destroy 1 or 2 of the enemy team immediately, you pretty much win. The Rets have this from wings, and from Guardian of the Ancient Kings.

My other point has gone un-opposed that the healing on the DK+4Ret team is divided among 4 characters, which makes CCing the "healer" more difficult. The Healer+ 4DK team has 1 Healer, with little to no healing from the DKs, which means that when the healer gets locked down, the team is without healing,and Chain CCing 1 target is easy, as I'm sure we've all seen. The other Healing ability that the Ret's don't have yet but will is Holy Radiance, which will be very effective flow of healing for it's duration.

[Shodokan]

@Shodokan

The Ability to WRECK people every 2 minutes is EVERYTHING!! In arena, if you destroy 1 or 2 of the enemy team immediately, you pretty much win. The Rets have this from wings, and from Guardian of the Ancient Kings.

My other point has gone un-opposed that the healing on the DK+4Ret team is divided among 4 characters, which makes CCing the "healer" more difficult. The Healer+ 4DK team has 1 Healer, with little to no healing from the DKs, which means that when the healer gets locked down, the team is without healing,and Chain CCing 1 target is easy, as I'm sure we've all seen. The other Healing ability that the Ret's don't have yet but will is Holy Radiance, which will be very effective flow of healing for it's duration.

Holy radiance for ret really isn't that great, most people from the beta will tell you the same thing. So unless you blow all 4 at once it's not a stready stream of anything. If you blow all 4 the duration gets you to 40ish % life from 0. But also keep in mind it is a heal over time. It heals for 683 non crit baseline and 1024 crit... its like healing steam totem as ret, it really isn't that special as it can only heal for a max of 10240 per toon baseline, even if it could get to about 1/2 your health over 10 seconds it has a huge mana cost at 40% of your mana. Mana is an issue if you are using all of your tools when they need to be used. If you stagger them so that 40 seconds of every minuet you are getting heals then it isn't going to be as effective unless you forsee that the group is going to be taking little damage... and we all know that isn't the case.

Yes your healer can get chain CC'd, but with the paladin's healing if you are going to kill someone you need the damage from TV.

You seem to think that people are going to do 5's competitively in cata where blowing wings and killing a target is going to be the bees knees. Sure that is the case but the amount of arena wins it takes to get the same amount of points as in BGs is retarded. Also there are no longer any awards for being top rated arena teams from what i have read. So where does this really apply? It's the same thing with bubble... its once every 5 mins. Sure it is great when you have it but when you don't you are sitting ducks now that theres no more raid sac/bubble combo to keep the team alive. Also in how many situations did this team get obliterated when they were not getting constant FoL procs to heal themselves as they got AOE'd down? Especially now that divine storm is basically useless? Divine storm - School = Physical. So inquisition will not increase the damage of that either, meaning that the healing you get from it will still be negligible. If you are using divine storm every cooldown instead of crusader strike you lose out on a lot of damage... if inquisition buffed divine storm and the glyph for divine storm still existed i'd say there was a good chance it could work great but that's not the case.

Guardian SUCKS ASS, period. It does nearly no damage and basically only applies a STR buff. It explodes for less than mediocre damage as well.

Word of glory does not scale very well with ret unless you spec into increasing usefulness on other players, which only increases the healing of it by 50%. So your 6744 base turns into 10116 base meaning the crit goes to 15175. So this means that you are going to need to crit with all 4 and not get 50% of your life on a single character (plate blues is over 115k), at the sacrifice of a finishing move that does <= the damage of howling blast...and you only have the ability to use this ability when you know all of the rets have max holy power, and unless you get some macro or API/Addon to not allow the use of it unless it does have 3 holy power i don't think that it really is viable to rely on it with the inconsistency of gaining holy power from other things than crusader strike. Plus a healer can get someone 50k healing in less time than it takes to generate the holy power to do so. You're only going to heal for like 12k or so with single holy power, so is 1/10 of a single toon's life healing every few seconds really going to help all that much? So unless you are specing into protector of the innocent and getting 3-7k healing every time you use WoG for each toon as well... and then what is 3-7k in the long run? .025 to .05% of your total health.

With a leading frost DK you do have burst in the same means that 4x dks have (as in rotation wise), but keeping the entire team alive with less than mediocre heals isn't going to be easy or efficient.

With a paladin healer beaconed and the use of hand of sacrifice CC doesn't matter other than cyclone because it will be broken by the damage and immediately healed from healing your team or double healing from healing yourself due to beacon. So that point doesn't hold much ground if you play smart.

So to sum it up...

Paladin has inconsistent damage because it relies on healing most of the time with WoG. Relies on a 2 minuet cooldown to deal with equal members of the opposing faction and has crap for AOE damage and a 1 min cooldown to even make sure the team is being healed when it is actually going to use TV. The damage in comparison outside of wings is laughable at best especially in comparison to a frost DK. The ONLY saving grace paladins have is wings IMO and wings is not enough to make it better than a 4x dps + healer team.

If you wanna run the team, best of luck to you. But unless you have wings or bubble when you meet up with a 4x dk + healer... your entire team is dead by the time you kill a single target.

[Boylston]

Shodokan, for rated arenas, do you think Ele Shamans or Frost DKs will be the more effective team?

[remanz]

The trend I see is, if anything is OP, it will be nerfed. and nerfed very quickly. Stacking NS seems very OP to me. I felt 4DK and DK + 4 Rets are kinda on the same boat.

I like frost dk's burst and control. but they die hella fast. At least at level 80, they die like arm/fury warrior.The melee arena match, how long does it really last? More like 30seconds. The match total time is like 2mins. and minus the beginning and ending (clean up), the meaningful fighting time is like 30 seconds. Whatever you can come up in those 30 seconds matters. Wings and bubbles have their places. Death Grip and NS are also awesome. But they are all melees, and melees have similar problems.

Now if you get a friend the heal you, and you use 4 dks. That's a different story. that >>>> playing Dk + 4rets all by yourself, as far as effectiveness goes.

[Ualaa]

For arena, a team has to be strong against variable compositions of an equal number of players.

The trick is flexibility/adaptability to deal with different compositions, or tools which cannot be negated so you can force the style of play.

Death Grip, is a strong counter to a lot strategies.
The only defense to Necrotic Strike seems to be an immunity effect, but we'd just switch targets.

The weakness of the team, is a relatively small window of immunities, so the need to kill key components of the other team quickly, so they're in a position where they cannot win.

We don't need to blow all our defenses at once, and we do have several.
- Anti-Magic Shell, 5 seconds (7 glyphed) of immunity to the application of harmful effects, every 45 seconds.
- Icebound Fortitude, 12 seconds of sun immunity, every 3 minutes.
- Lichborne, 10 seconds of Fear (and Stun/Charm) immunity, every 2 minutes.
- Pillars of Frost, 20 seconds of knockback immunity, every minute.
- The PvP trinket, every 2 minutes.

Immunity to almost all effects (I'd read this as anything that gives a debuff icon), for 7 seconds every 45 seconds, is a very strong chance to kill any target that doesn't become immune to damage. And using this every 45 seconds, is not a long cooldown.

Knockbacks don't give a debuff icon, but not a lot of classes have these, and we are immune for a relatively long duration.

In the arena environment, I don't like having only one healer, who could be interrupted or chain CC'd. Hand of Sacrifice is 12 seconds, every 2 minutes. This might mean a DPS race of sorts; can we take them out quickly (without heals) as they focus fire our DK's in turn?




For battlegrounds, a team should be able to take out larger groups of opponents.
We're forced to have five of ten (50%) or five of fifteen (33%) of the team in one place; which is a disadvantage.

To counter this, we should be able to fairly consistently be the wrecking ball. Be able to take any position, as our team then holds what we take.

I really like Howling Blast, Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Blood Tap, Howling Blast, Frost Strike... for taking out large groups. Run towards the tightest cluster of enemies and Death Grip others into the storm. Of course dealing damage to a lot of opponents at once, doesn't guarantee they cannot AoE or Focus fire us, but the AoE gives us a strong shot.

At least that's my take on the best approach to rated BG's. Once we cap on Conquest Points for the week, we will destroy in the unrated BG's especially going against less coordinated opposition.

[Toned]

DK's are OP again news at 11.

Last 2 weeks that I've done ICC with Reprisal I've ran my 4melee mixed group instead of bringing my shamans to shard everything. My DK is very undergeared and im running a 2handed frost setup pulling crazy numbers.

If they don't nerf the stacking NS this group will be the alternative to shamans + healer multibox pvp imo.

[Mosg2]

@Toned:
As it stands now, if I understand it correctly, the debuff doesn't "stack" in the sense that consecutive NS's don't just add to the running total--They just reset it to a higher value and refresh the debuff (-30% cast speed). If it does indeed actually stack then this team is going to be the runaway best team to play for Cata.

@All:
Good discussion so far. I think everyone has brought up a lot of valid points but I'd like to say that I'm really surprised people *actually* think that Rets will be a workable team in Cata. Yes, your healing is spread out over 4 toons which makes it harder to CC your healing--But your healing also sucks. There's no way for you to ensure that you're only going to be using WoG when it's at 3 HP without *seriously* lowering your DPS. That means that you never really know how much healing you're going to get when you hit your button. Also, you're one-dimensional as 4x Rets regarding healing--You can WoG. You can Holy Radiance. That's about all you can do in a combat situation. Having a dedicated healer means you have options. You have versatility.

Also, let's not mention that you lose serious DPS in order to heal.

The DK's don't have any of these problems. They DPS like madmen while I heal like a madman. If someone gets on me I DG them off. Or I aura mastery and keep healing. Or I bubble. Or I shield. And meanwhile my DK's are saying hi to whoever is most threatening.

[Shodokan]

The trend I see is, if anything is OP, it will be nerfed. and nerfed very quickly. Stacking NS seems very OP to me. I felt 4DK and DK + 4 Rets are kinda on the same boat.

I like frost dk's burst and control. but they die hella fast. At least at level 80, they die like arm/fury warrior.The melee arena match, how long does it really last? More like 30seconds. The match total time is like 2mins. and minus the beginning and ending (clean up), the meaningful fighting time is like 30 seconds. Whatever you can come up in those 30 seconds matters. Wings and bubbles have their places. Death Grip and NS are also awesome. But they are all melees, and melees have similar problems.

Now if you get a friend the heal you, and you use 4 dks. That's a different story. that >>>> playing Dk + 4rets all by yourself, as far as effectiveness goes.

I had a long talk with a GM the other night about multi-boxing when i called to see if i could get a discount for x-fering all my toons which lasted for about an hour. We talked about specific mechanics that are abusable by a boxer such as necrotic strike etc and from the horses mouth unless the class is unbalanced overall and not just in a fashion that a VERY insignificant amount of users actually participate in then those abilities will remain as is. If we want to talk about things being OP in multiples... then both fulmination and lavaburst would not be in the game, but they are balanced around a single person using them on a single target so they remain. If a shaman didn't have lavaburst then ele would be complete ass.

On to NS. NS does not stack for every hit, it stacks based on the amount of people doing it on the target. Which means that if you NS and then NS again it just resets the amount back to the max amount of heals necessary, not NS1 + NS2 - Healing done to that target between the two attacks = new healing required. If this debuff does a checksome as to "is this buff on from another player" it then makes that button useless and ultimately the spell useless because you can use plague strike instead for more damage.

Arms warriors played by a skilled player are one of the single best pvp characters in the game. Comparing them to fury also isn't the best comparison because i barely ever see a fury warrior able to compete even 1v1 against a lot of classes, dks have tooks for taking out and preventing things from every class... so comparing them to a class and spec with a lax amount tools for certain situations isn't the best route. Even then warriors have last stand, shield wall, spell reflect, frenzied regeneration, howl of terror etc...

If you are talking purely about arena... the up front burst of a 4 paladin dk team with ranged hammer of wrath is unparalleled, especially if you have inquisition on. But the MAJOR problem for this in arena is that you can't blow this straight off the bat against any team with a priest... mass dispel kills your cooldown use, like bubbles avenging wrath can be dispeled.

Survivability of a shaman team is much larger than a paladin team and their damage is ranged and just as high. At 85 a single lavaburst + mastery proc is equal to about 50k damage... thats a lot and that is PER shaman. The target will die, even with pain suppression. Shaman get totems etc etc... we all know how practical shaman are. The largest advantage a shaman have over the paladin/dk team is that all of their attacks do high damage and fulmination as group is OP as all hell. If you have max fulmination you can guarantee the target will die from 4 of them. Lightning bolt also hits for a baseline amount of like over 10,000... which if you think about it you are doing 1/3 of someone's life every non crit. Not to mention the ability to flash heal someone for like... 1/2 their hp because it is 4 of them in flaky situations, plus you have purge and lust.

So for arena... shaman are superior to DK/Ret.

This team i see like the rets as a 1trick pony in arena though. Pop your anti-CC macro and spam the fuck out of howling blast and frost strike and kill 1-2 people. Then pick the rest off easily. Realistically the numbers for a single attack for a DK are close to 1/3 of their life per attack, so it will take 2-3 attacks to kill someone, but at the same time if NS is up they can't be healed so it doesn't matter. The largest problem for 4x dk team is that they need to use 2 blood runes before they can do their maximum burst potential. Unlike paladins and shaman dks don't have an instagib... but right now my frost strikes and howling blasts in meh gear are hitting for like 14k... so even at those numbers you are killing someone in 2-3 attacks, which because of unholy presence is <3 seconds. You get much more control over the situation in a lot of maps... and if you DG someone to you they are dead before they can be healed plain and simple.

Like i said though, arena is going to be on the back burner in comparison, even a lot of the arena players on Illidan and other hot spots for PVP like servers on BG9 are all happy that they get to do something that requires more than just coordination of cooldowns and switching at the correct times.

I myself am going to play both shaman and paladin/dks. Lavaburst is too powerful... period. 20k+ crits = at least 80% of their life gone, thats if you don't use unleash weapon first. I'm doing paladin + 4 dks, and 4 shaman, and will run my healer for both comps.


@Toned:
As it stands now, if I understand it correctly, the debuff doesn't "stack" in the sense that consecutive NS's don't just add to the running total--They just reset it to a higher value and refresh the debuff (-30% cast speed). If it does indeed actually stack then this team is going to be the runaway best team to play for Cata.


As of right now every DK gets their applied. So it "stacks" as in each DK gets their own anti-healing debuff on the target. It resets when the thing is used again, keeping them at -30% casting speed. So for example you have 10,000 AP and your NS has anti-healing of 7.5k, they get a heal of 6k, you NS again... they need 7.5k again before they can get heals again... not 8.5k (the 1k not used from before + new application). One debuff is consumed when they get 7.5k. So lets assume you have 4 debuffs on the target... it requires 31k healing before they get a bit of their hp actually healed.

Can NS be nerfed? OFC it can., but will it? I doubt it. Every other class with a MS effect (priest, hunter, rogue, mage, warrior) gets -10% healing for a duration and does not lose it's effect when they are healed. So in 10 seconds someone gets off 4 flash of lights + 2 holy shocks... 10% of all that healing is down the tubes (lets assume 10k), not just the first 7500 and then they get the rest. 7500 is much less than the 10% debuff over the duration (which resets when re-applied) so sure their first heal makes NS go away, where as the next heal or two after ends up being more healing prevented than the time it takes for regen of unholy runes. No the 10%'s do not stack, but NS and MS effect do so it makes no sense to make NS not exclusive with itself unless you make it non exclusive with other negative healing effects.

[remanz]

Wait wait, so it doesn't stack as ++. It merely reset the timer and amount to max.


Then remind me why it was OP again ?


since we have gone a great deal about this discussion, best if we pull out some numbers. What does necrotic strke really hit for @85 and how much healing does it really prevent ?

hitting for 10k prevent 4k-5k incoming heals ?

Does 5k really matter that much when incoming WOG is like 20k.


Sure you got 4k-5k debuff on your target 100% of the time. How is that better than 10% healing debuff from 1 guy.

[BrothelMeister]

Wait wait, so it doesn't stack as ++. It merely reset the timer and amount to max.


Then remind me why it was OP again ?


since we have gone a great deal about this discussion, best if we pull out some numbers. What does necrotic strke really hit for @85 and how much healing does it really prevent ?

hitting for 10k prevent 4k-5k incoming heals ?

Does 5k really matter that much when incoming WOG is like 20k

What I read from Shokodan is that each NS will reduce the incoming healing by 7500 per DK, so tha means everytime you apply it (twice per 9-10 sec) the incoming healing is cut down by 30K with 4 DKs. One GCD dropping the incoming healing by 30K, while dealing 10K+ damage isn't bad.

But at the same time, Wings+Hammer will be hitting for 16-20K per Ret pally (so 80K crit damage) depending on Inquisition from 30y away is twice the effective dent on the HP for 1 GCD.

As for Ret healing, any Ret that doesn't spec into Selfless healer for the +50% healing on other targets is a fool since you never need to cast the heal on yourself, and it gives you a 4%/8%/12% damage bonus when you do so. That with the +healing done and healing recieved talents in the Prot tree should make for some decent incoming heals.

@Shodokan
We're on the same BG, so we can get in vent and queue for 5v5 skirmishes against each other to try this out. I would be very curious to try my team against yours. I have awful gear, but we can try this tonight if you want, I think skirmishes are still available... hit me up with a PM if you want.

[Shodokan]

What I read from Shokodan is that each NS will reduce the incoming healing by 7500 per DK, so tha means everytime you apply it (twice per 9-10 sec) the incoming healing is cut down by 30K with 4 DKs. One GCD dropping the incoming healing by 30K, while dealing 10K+ damage isn't bad.

But at the same time, Wings+Hammer will be hitting for 16-20K per Ret pally (so 80K crit damage) depending on Inquisition from 30y away is twice the effective dent on the HP for 1 GCD.

As for Ret healing, any Ret that doesn't spec into Selfless healer for the +50% healing on other targets is a fool since you never need to cast the heal on yourself, and it gives you a 4%/8%/12% damage bonus when you do so. That with the +healing done and healing recieved talents in the Prot tree should make for some decent incoming heals.

@Shodokan
We're on the same BG, so we can get in vent and queue for 5v5 skirmishes against each other to try this out. I would be very curious to try my team against yours. I have awful gear, but we can try this tonight if you want, I think skirmishes are still available... hit me up with a PM if you want.

I am dinging 80 tonight dude, and it's arena is a whole different ballgame, like i stated a bunch of times...arena is not the pvp focus anymore. DKs + healer is not meant for arena imo, though they would destroy shaman. We don't even need to go into arena to know you'd win. My pally would be dead unless i pop bubble when you wings, and then the healing isn't enough to keep enough damage off of the incoming target from a focus fire of 5. I loved my DK/Ret team, yes they will do well in ARENA because of the wings + HoW. Using AMS wont help because the first of 4 HoW will take it off, and the other 3 will kill him. But then i have like 6 seconds to howling blast you to death before you get another chance to HoW... thinking about it... it could go either way really.

I'll be glad to skirmish when i know that my health wont be 100% gone at 85 from HoW =P I'll be glad to show you that you can't heal through DK's onslaught though if that's what you are looking to find out.

I'll PM you my vent info and we can talk when i get home if you'd like. Just sit in the welcome channel.

[remanz]

What I read from Shokodan is that each NS will reduce the incoming healing by 7500 per DK, so tha means everytime you apply it (twice per 9-10 sec) the incoming healing is cut down by 30K with 4 DKs. One GCD dropping the incoming healing by 30K, while dealing 10K+ damage isn't bad.

But at the same time, Wings+Hammer will be hitting for 16-20K per Ret pally (so 80K crit damage) depending on Inquisition from 30y away is twice the effective dent on the HP for 1 GCD.

As for Ret healing, any Ret that doesn't spec into Selfless healer for the +50% healing on other targets is a fool since you never need to cast the heal on yourself, and it gives you a 4%/8%/12% damage bonus when you do so. That with the +healing done and healing recieved talents in the Prot tree should make for some decent incoming heals.

@Shodokan
We're on the same BG, so we can get in vent and queue for 5v5 skirmishes against each other to try this out. I would be very curious to try my team against yours. I have awful gear, but we can try this tonight if you want, I think skirmishes are still available... hit me up with a PM if you want.


Ok reduce incoming heals by 30k over the entire attacking period 10 seconds is different from flat out reduce incoming heal 30k by 1 shot. Say I got MS on you, reduce healing by 10%. And in 10 seconds, the healer pumps out 300k (made up number), the effect is the same. You negate 30k healing in both cases. The difference here being, the more healing you get, the bigger the effect for 10% MS debuff. and 30k from NS stays flat.

So at the end of the day, it is just a MS like 10% healing debuff. having more DK only makes sure the debuff will stay on 100% of the time.

[Shodokan]

Ok reduce incoming heals by 30k over the entire attacking period 10 seconds is different from flat out reduce incoming heal 30k by 1 shot. Say I got MS on you, reduce healing by 10%. And in 10 seconds, the healer pumps out 300k (made up number), the effect is the same. You negate 30k healing in both cases. The difference here being, the more healing you get, the bigger the effect for 10% MS debuff. and 30k from NS stays flat.

So at the end of the day, it is just a MS like 10% healing debuff. having more DK only makes sure the debuff will stay on 100% of the time.

As of right now it stacks, i tested it on beta. There are 4 separate debuffs. It is 30k with the 4, it is 7.5k alone.

[tanknspanker]

I'd love to see a dk team with high arena points..
did anyone already tried arena with dk's?
cause when i just look at the pvp movie of mosg, i c he gets feared badly (in arithi basin it was i think)
and he needed to pickup again :(
im just a bit "scared" to start this combo cause of the different rune cooldowns and procs..

[remanz]

As of right now it stacks, i tested it on beta. There are 4 separate debuffs. It is 30k with the 4, it is 7.5k alone.

hm so

30k in 1 shot aye ? So my incoming 30k WOG crit becomes 0 when it hits, due to having 4 NS debuff on me. But 1 heal will wipe out 4 debuffs.


OR

30k incoming WOG crit hits, reduced by 7.5k , 22.5k still goes through. And NS debuff reduced to 3. In this case, it is nothing but MS. I would look at it as the same as 10% MS

[remanz]

@Shodokan
We're on the same BG, so we can get in vent and queue for 5v5 skirmishes against each other to try this out. I would be very curious to try my team against yours. I have awful gear, but we can try this tonight if you want, I think skirmishes are still available... hit me up with a PM if you want.


4dks will melt the rets team as Howling blast is truly insane AOE right now. Rets have lost their cleave big time. With equal gear, rets probably can't stand up to the DKs.

[Ualaa]

If the debuff is 7.5k per DK, which with four DK's adds up to 30k.

Ideally, you'd want each DK to apply the debuff immediately.
And to use the other Unholy rune to apply the debuff again, at the 5 second point.
By the 10 second point, the first rune will have regenerated, which means another application.

So, Necrotic Strike will negate the first 30k in healing, every 5 seconds.



That means two attack sequences, really.
One where we want to put out an AoE shit-storm.
So we prioritize Howling Blast, over everything and Frost Strike as secondary because that can regenerate a depleted Frost Rune (or randomly another rune type, but if the DPS priority is Frost Runes - Runic Power - Other Runes then most likely a Frost Rune).

The second type of sequence is whenever we want to focus on something.
So 4x Necrotic Strikes every 5 seconds, as top priority.
And then whatever is the most DPS.

[Shodokan]

hm so

30k in 1 shot aye ? So my incoming 30k WOG crit becomes 0 when it hits, due to having 4 NS debuff on me. But 1 heal will wipe out 4 debuffs.


OR

30k incoming WOG crit hits, reduced by 7.5k , 22.5k still goes through. And NS debuff reduced to 3. In this case, it is nothing but MS. I would look at it as the same as 10% MS

I'm not 100% sure, all i know is there are multiple debuffs on the target.

[Mercbeast]

@Toned:
As it stands now, if I understand it correctly, the debuff doesn't "stack" in the sense that consecutive NS's don't just add to the running total--They just reset it to a higher value and refresh the debuff (-30% cast speed). If it does indeed actually stack then this team is going to be the runaway best team to play for Cata.

@All:
Good discussion so far. I think everyone has brought up a lot of valid points but I'd like to say that I'm really surprised people *actually* think that Rets will be a workable team in Cata. Yes, your healing is spread out over 4 toons which makes it harder to CC your healing--But your healing also sucks. There's no way for you to ensure that you're only going to be using WoG when it's at 3 HP without *seriously* lowering your DPS. That means that you never really know how much healing you're going to get when you hit your button. Also, you're one-dimensional as 4x Rets regarding healing--You can WoG. You can Holy Radiance. That's about all you can do in a combat situation. Having a dedicated healer means you have options. You have versatility.

Also, let's not mention that you lose serious DPS in order to heal.

The DK's don't have any of these problems. They DPS like madmen while I heal like a madman. If someone gets on me I DG them off. Or I aura mastery and keep healing. Or I bubble. Or I shield. And meanwhile my DK's are saying hi to whoever is most threatening.

And you just have to target the offender and grip him to your DK's.

[tanknspanker]

mosg, would you like to share some of you macro's you are using please?
like ur castsequence etc, pretty please

greetingz

[Mosg2]

I'm getting ready to go to work right now but I'm thinking that tonight I will make another video and explain how each of my macros work.

[tanknspanker]

I'm getting ready to go to work right now but I'm thinking that tonight I will make another video and explain how each of my macros work.
awesome dude :D looking forward to it

[Zappy]

4dks will melt the rets team as Howling blast is truly insane AOE right now. Rets have lost their cleave big time. With equal gear, rets probably can't stand up to the DKs.

I dunno... as long as they keep the bubble cooldown on a different timer with wings - the rets lose 50% damage from bubble, but regain 20% from avenging wrath. Simply put - bubble, pop wings and go to town. Hammer of wrath x 4 even at a 30-40% damage reduction is still plenty to drop people in 1 GCD. In Bgs, when facing off against 7-8 opponents at the same time, bubble, wings, and two of them will be dead before bubble ends, and another 1-2 before your wings end.

4 well timed anti-magic shells can mitigate at least one of the hammers, so it might come down to a who's better at CC'ing game.

[remanz]

I dunno... as long as they keep the bubble cooldown on a different timer with wings - the rets lose 50% damage from bubble, but regain 20% from avenging wrath. Simply put - bubble, pop wings and go to town. Hammer of wrath x 4 even at a 30-40% damage reduction is still plenty to drop people in 1 GCD. In Bgs, when facing off against 7-8 opponents at the same time, bubble, wings, and two of them will be dead before bubble ends, and another 1-2 before your wings end.

4 well timed anti-magic shells can mitigate at least one of the hammers, so it might come down to a who's better at CC'ing game.

Weeelll, I will let the DKs defend their positions. I am on rets side still lol. The DK team does have healer though. But I am not a big fan of playing healer yourself and controlling DPS at the same time. I tried it back in the shaman days. It was a disaster.

[Boylston]

Haha Boylston, I'm definitely still sold on the Shaman.

Inserted for comic relief... :)

[BrothelMeister]

I love how people say that some people say DK+Rets have no chance against healer+DKs and others say the opposite when it hasn't been tested and no one knows.

[remanz]

theory craft is just that, can only speculate. Otherwise there wouldn't be any discussions.

I see HB is too much damage for just one frost rune. and getting free HB also from procs. Zappy brought up a good point on dropping ppl while bubble. So When it comes down to it, it becomes can rets kill the DKs before bubble + wings done.

[Zappy]

These theorycrafting scenarios really don't hold a lot of salt, especially as we don't create boxed teams to fight other boxed teams.

The fact that 4 rets can bubble and pop wings at the same time and basically do 8 seconds of decent damage with full immunity + another 12 seconds of even better damage, makes them an extremely strong team right now when paired up against another 5 players.

Who knows how either of these teams will scale @ 80. I've been playing my ally DKs a little bit more (~73) since this thread started, and can confirm that this new combo looks very promising, but can also say that I don't think it'll work well without a dedicated healer. I've only had a chance to do a few bgs with them, and the worst was WSG, where I was lucky to get 3 kills in that bg. After looking at the scoreboard, horde had 7 healers - we had none. LOL

When boxing arenas, I play all of my teams with a seperate healer with the exception of my DK/Ret team, and to me, that's one of the biggest strengths of the DK/Rets is that you are 100% self sufficient and not dependent on anyone else. The 4DK/Healer looks like that may be possible, but also looks to be a lot more challenging, but we'll see.

At first, I had severe mana issues when healing with the rets since 4.0.1, but after switching to use WoG procs to heal and having Eternal Glory (30% chance to not consume HP), it's quite easy to keep them healed up while still putting up a ton of pressure on the offense. Where this team tends to get hurt is by AOE damage -- it's easy to heal and top of 1-2 of them at almost anytime, but keeping up all 5 under heavy aoe damage is a different story.

[Boylston]

FYI-- I don't think "burst is dead" for multiboxers. I also tend to think that 4xShaman are going to continue to remain the kings of burst, and it's going to be very effective still.

If you see my latest modeling data (backed up with some L85 PTR results from Kruschpak) (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?p=306149#post306149) you'll see that a quadbox shaman team pressing the "FS, UE+Goblin Rockets+LvB combo" will deal a ton of damage to a 25% damage resistant target.

143,000 damage to be exact in the first 2.25-2.5 seconds. No crits (other than LvB) or overloads factored in. If a traditional Chain Lightning follows that brutal assault, it piles on at least another 20,000 damage (no crits/overloads) at t=3.7sec.

For "normal" BG situations when we're hitting stuff, we have UE available every 15sec. That combo of FS, UE+LvB, Chain Lightning combo will do about 105,000 damage. Again, no crits or overloads. This is very conservative.

Plain jane FS, LvB volleys with maybe a couple shammies in Clearcasting state still pack a whallop of 65-75k in under 2.5sec. (Again, no overloads/crits in there). Pile on chain lightning or lightning bolt to kill.

Fulmination will not be usable all the time, but if you get on a roll, the charges will add up and you will be able to thoroughly demoralize people with it. When someone dies in under a second or two, they're gonna get on Vent and bitch. They get defocused and start playing badly-- or even better, they play the "gang up on the MBer" and leave BG stuff undefended (I almost prefer this).

All this burst on top of good sustained DPS capability and lots of tools to deal with multiboxing problems. When we pop our IWIN buttons, people will need a sizeable heal to land within the first 2.5 seconds or they're dead. They will need bigger heals to survive beyond the next second and a half. Even just cruising around, we will punish people who aren't attended to immediately.

Later on through Cataclysm, resilience and HP pools may outpace spellpower gains. I expect it. Even so, burst will cause healers to overreact or will be necessary for kill shots. It will be just like WotLK... soften up a couple targets and then blow the big stuff when you catch a healer off-guard. For BGs, where even good healers may not be as constantly on-their-toes as they are in arenas, I think the 4xShaman team will still continue to be the dominant team.

* * * *

So, I've showed you mine, now you show me yours. What kind of damage on 25% resilience targets are you going to put out at 85...?

[remanz]

Huh, the debate on burst death was on the other thread. Never doubted shaman's focus burst abilities. We were just here to cheer for the stacking frost DKs.

Shaman has been proven many times already, battle tested. Not much to discuss.

I think a lot of us have 2 teams now. Having a shaman team and a melee team.

[Boylston]

Huh, the debate on burst death was on the other thread. Never doubted shaman's focus burst abilities. We were just here to cheer for the stacking frost DKs.

Shaman has been proven many times already, battle tested. Not much to discuss.

I think a lot of us have 2 teams now. Having a shaman team and a melee team.

Yeah, but I am trying to convince us (well, especially me) that running that new melee team will not be more effective than 4xShaman. The vast amount of enthusiasm about the new comp is probably a little over-hyped by my good buddy mosg2.

Or, maybe I'm wrong. I guess I haven't seen what the HB and Frost Strike numbers in blue PvP gear against 25% resistant targets look like. Maybe it's much, much better than the shaman, and I need to jump on the bandwagon too!

I have some L58 DKs that I would really like to leave un-leveled... =P

[Slats]

I do think alot of the downplay is by people who see the potential but don't want to level haha. We really do need to see a proper test of them in PvP. Maybe some FRAPS by someone in a battleground would be encouragement? :D

[remanz]

Well frost DKs are definitely not gonna outburst shamans on single target, that's for sure. And it should be more on the AOE side of things.

I ,personally , still choose to go with dk + rets as this is the combo to use as I play alone. As Zappy mentioned, this is the main strength of this combo. Shamans/Dks, both need support from the healer. And whether one can play healer + 4Dks effectively in arena, that's something remain to be seen.

To continue on the Dk side of things,

Can we reallllly ignore obliterate ? At least on my single target DPS test on dummy, I need to use obliterate to get on-par DPS. Otherwise DPS is low.

taking from a comment on wowhead.com



Cata Obliterate (Frost):
160%--base
232%--45% Annihilation
264%--20% Glyph of Obliterate
284%--12.5% One Disease
304%--12.5% Two Diseases
328%--15% Frost Presence (counting Improved)
334.4%--4% Blood Frenzy/Savage Combat
339.2%--3% Ferocious Inspiration/Arcane Empowerment


with DK alone can bring the damage up to 320+% weapon damage. that hits more than TV. Why not use it in the rotation. It is worth to trade that 7.5k healing absorb for bigger melee hits.

[tanknspanker]

Well frost DKs are definitely not gonna outburst shamans on single target, that's for sure. And it should be more on the AOE side of things.

I ,personally , still choose to go with dk + rets as this is the combo to use as I play alone. As Zappy mentioned, this is the main strength of this combo. Shamans/Dks, both need support from the healer. And whether one can play healer + 4Dks effectively in arena, that's something remain to be seen.

To continue on the Dk side of things,

Can we reallllly ignore obliterate ? At least on my single target DPS test on dummy, I need to use obliterate to get on-par DPS. Otherwise DPS is low.

taking from a comment on wowhead.com



with DK alone can bring the damage up to 320+% weapon damage. that hits more than TV. Why not use it in the rotation. It is worth to trade that 7.5k healing absorb for bigger melee hits.


nice to remind us on that one :)
imagine 320% weapon damage + killing machine :) would give us some nice numbers ^^
we shouldnt forget obli :)

[Shodokan]

I am not sure if shaman or dks will be better... i'm honestly leaning towards 4 shaman actually doing more damage than 4x dks. Dks get attacks once every second though, are melee, and have huge AOE pressure at all times... shaman get huge burst... it's a really hard decision.

In regular t10 gear btw, i crit for 17k with obliterate... almost twice what i crit with howling blast. BUT with the way rune regen works now i think for how WE want to play the dks it is superior to go with the howling blast and then the necrotic strike... i'd rather the extra healing pressure and take an extra second to kill someone than to risk not getting another application of it. That being said though we can assume that the damage is going to go WAY up in cata though, at level 80 my shit adds 2k to the damage as is... so you are looking at... a lot of damage(obliterate).

I think it will get much better with the first PVP set you can get for honor, which ends up giving us a lot more than 1.5x the str because of the 10ish gem slots..

[Slats]

One target vs Many though? You would need to give up some of the Unholy Talents and maybe the Armor -> AP talent in Blood to get the Obli buffs.

Really depends though

[Shodokan]

One target vs Many though? You would need to give up some of the Unholy Talents and maybe the Armor -> AP talent in Blood to get the Obli buffs.

Really depends though

Yeah, the thing is though the damage is so high, at double the weapon damage we do now since its based purely on weapon damage basically... that means we would be getting about 35k crits with it, it has a high crit chance too =P

[zenga]

I wonder what's wrong with playing both a shaman team and a dk team. As said it's only a few days till new cap, and it's not like we're going to have to play 10 weeks all day bg's to gear up. I'm perfectly comfortable altering between my teams, moreover, the change keeps me interested.

[Shodokan]

I wonder what's wrong with playing both a shaman team and a dk team. As said it's only a few days till new cap, and it's not like we're going to have to play 10 weeks all day bg's to gear up. I'm perfectly comfortable altering between my teams, moreover, the change keeps me interested.

I'm going to do the same, i just wonder which I want to level first ultimately, it will PROBABLY be the dks.

[Ualaa]

Obliterate uses 1x Unholy and 1x Frost runes, per use.
Two hits of Obliterate has used 4 of our 6 runes in the first 2 seconds.
Which leaves us two blood runes, and three seconds before we get runes back.

In the first case (Obliterate), we have (in a 5 second window):
- 2x Obliterate
- 2x Blood Strike
- 1 second of damage without runes.



Howling Blast and Necrotic Strike each use one rune, 1x Unholy and 1x Frost respectively.
The two blood abilities will also use two blood runes, so whatever we pick for the first (Blood Tap & Blood Strike or 2x Blood Strike), that will likely be consistent.

In the second case (Howling Blast + Necrotic Strike) we have (in a 5 second window):
- 2x Howling Blast
- 2x Necrotic Strike
- 1x Blood Strike.



Which will be higher damage, to a single target?
Even if Obliterate is higher damage, would we want:
- a single target DPS move; and
- a multi-target and/or healer resistant move
Or to just go with one move over the other?

[Boylston]

I wonder what's wrong with playing both a shaman team and a dk team. As said it's only a few days till new cap, and it's not like we're going to have to play 10 weeks all day bg's to gear up. I'm perfectly comfortable altering between my teams, moreover, the change keeps me interested.



I'm going to do the same, i just wonder which I want to level first ultimately, it will PROBABLY be the dks.


Nothing wrong with it at all. :) I'm sure I'll have one eventually too, just like my DK+4xRets team.

[Slats]

For me Paladin + 4 Shamans first. They are my crafters with 1 of every profession except Herbalism. Plus this team has 2 types of CC, self-rez for wipe recovery, great healing dps and tanking.

This is what I would use to learn all my instances.

Levle my DK's when IM burning out or tired and on rest XP/grizzly hills quests/cata dailies. I intend to fully play both teams tho :D

And I will be levelling a Disc Priest and driving form the healers perspective if I enjoy it come 70 onwards in this team.

Can't wait.

[Mosg2]

@Boylston:
Did I do something to piss you off? I really don't think I'm overhyping this. The team is solid and comes with all the tools a team needs to be successful.

@All:
All of these hypotheticals about whether or not this team will beat that team etc are worthless. All this manifesto was supposed to be about was a concise way of explaining why I think this is going to be "the" melee team of Cata. I've outlined all the positives I see in it and all the weaknesses that I see and through it all I'm still sold hook line and sinker that this team will continue to be a powerhouse. This isn't an e-peen contest--It's supposed to be an honest sharing of information. Can't we all just get along? :)

In any case, Cata goes live in 4 days roughly. I'll be live streaming my whole leveling process and have taken a week off work. I'll make sure to mark all of my instance runs on JTV so they get saved.

[Boylston]

@Boylston:
Did I do something to piss you off? I really don't think I'm overhyping this. The team is solid and comes with all the tools a team needs to be successful.


ZOMGosh, no!! :)

I am trying to be devil's advocate for this. I'd love to see it work out as well as you hope it does. I just don't want to level my guys up before my shaman team... :)

I still love you long time!

[Shodokan]

I'm going to level this first as well... just dang 79, i'll be 80 by morning.

Not like leveling a new team is going to take forever anyway, only 30 hours which aint bad at all.

[Ualaa]

I'll probably go in this order:
- My Ferals.
- Pally or Priest (undecided), with 4x DK's.
- Pally, Warlock & 3x Shaman (or 5x Shaman, if Pally joins DK's)

Then not sure.
Tempted to mix my teams up a bit.
But will likely level at least four teams to 85th, fairly quickly.

[remanz]

Obliterate uses 1x Unholy and 1x Frost runes, per use.
Two hits of Obliterate has used 4 of our 6 runes in the first 2 seconds.
Which leaves us two blood runes, and three seconds before we get runes back.

In the first case (Obliterate), we have (in a 5 second window):
- 2x Obliterate
- 2x Blood Strike
- 1 second of damage without runes.



Howling Blast and Necrotic Strike each use one rune, 1x Unholy and 1x Frost respectively.
The two blood abilities will also use two blood runes, so whatever we pick for the first (Blood Tap & Blood Strike or 2x Blood Strike), that will likely be consistent.

In the second case (Howling Blast + Necrotic Strike) we have (in a 5 second window):
- 2x Howling Blast
- 2x Necrotic Strike
- 1x Blood Strike.



Which will be higher damage, to a single target?
Even if Obliterate is higher damage, would we want:
- a single target DPS move; and
- a multi-target and/or healer resistant move
Or to just go with one move over the other?

Hmm, shouldn't your target be dead by the 2nd obliterate ? This thing hits harrrrrrrrrrrrd.

Anyway just a thought. Either option is fine, not a game changer. The HB range though is ridiculous. It hits hella far.
I guess I will open with HB and obliterate to kill my target.

[Mosg2]

Obliterate also doesn't snare the target.

The reason I like HB as much as I do isn't because it's ranged or does AE damage--It's because it does good single target damage and meshes with Necrotic Strike really well.

[remanz]

Well. It hits like a train and long range, and disease, and AOE.

This is the only AOE blizzard forgot to nerf.

I think enough has been said about the DKs. About time to make it happen.

As good as rets, they were/are an one trick pony, gimmick team. Lack the staying power and heavily rely on frontal burst zerg fest. If my frontal burst doesn't kill, I just flat out lose. Rarely I see come backs.

Hope the DKs can take it to new height.

[tanknspanker]

@ mosg2: dont want to push you but, how's that movie going? :p
where you'll explain some macro's and shizzle ^^

[Mosg2]

Haha I'm so sorry man. I had to stay late like 3 hours last night and I'm back to work in another 3. I work 10 hours/4 days and it's grueling when I have to do extra hours.

Worst case scenario I'll do it tonight when I get home. Even if it's 2am local :)

[tanknspanker]

Haha I'm so sorry man. I had to stay late like 3 hours last night and I'm back to work in another 3. I work 10 hours/4 days and it's grueling when I have to do extra hours.

Worst case scenario I'll do it tonight when I get home. Even if it's 2am local :)
very kind of you
i'll be waiting, there's no rush though

[Shodokan]

Mine just dang 80 a few hours ago... just in time to level all my professions =P

[tanknspanker]

Mine just dang 80 a few hours ago... just in time to level all my professions =P
also the setup like mosg?

[ZooljinX]

I just got 61 with my DKs... gonna have to 24/7 to release to get 80 before release hah!

[Boylston]

I think enough has been said about the DKs. About time to make it happen.

As good as rets, they were/are an one trick pony, gimmick team. Lack the staying power and heavily rely on frontal burst zerg fest. If my frontal burst doesn't kill, I just flat out lose. Rarely I see come backs.

Hope the DKs can take it to new height.

Despite poking at the topic a little bit, I am also very optimistic about this composition. I am going to dance with the Shamans that brought me, however, at launch. I made a mistake at WotLK launch and leveled a team first that I thought had potential but hadn't been proven. Then I leveled my shamans, just in time to be behind the gear-curve in arena. Switched to DK+Rets after that, again, just in time to see the resilience nerf hit hard. I regret not having just played the shammies first and stuck with them totally.

I think the things that are positive about the team are that there's a good way to keep people in your swarming melee blender without being kited all over the place, the damage should be strong and consistent, I think there are some decent tools for managing fear and other MBer problems, and the unique tools of Necrotic Strike and high Howling Blast range/damage/AoE look like they'll scale well for boxing.

I worry that the DK class will undergo some tweaking and some of these factors evaporate, but honestly, that's an issue with any team. Shamans could get the Lava Burst nerfbat tomorrow that would have a big impact on their effectiveness. The Frost DK mechanics are both new and have big PvE/PvP impact, so I think they're more "at risk" for change.

That said, I have a little team of DKs that's out of the starter area and ready to go should you guys prove that this is a winner comp. Even if it's not a quad-shaman killer, I'm sure I'll have a second melee team of DKs at some point...

Hugs and kisses,

Boylston

[Shodokan]

Despite poking at the topic a little bit, I am also very optimistic about this composition. I am going to dance with the Shamans that brought me, however, at launch. I made a mistake at WotLK launch and leveled a team first that I thought had potential but hadn't been proven. Then I leveled my shamans, just in time to be behind the gear-curve in arena. Switched to DK+Rets after that, again, just in time to see the resilience nerf hit hard. I regret not having just played the shammies first and stuck with them totally.

I think the things that are positive about the team are that there's a good way to keep people in your swarming melee blender without being kited all over the place, the damage should be strong and consistent, I think there are some decent tools for managing fear and other MBer problems, and the unique tools of Necrotic Strike and high Howling Blast range/damage/AoE look like they'll scale well for boxing.

I worry that the DK class will undergo some tweaking and some of these factors evaporate, but honestly, that's an issue with any team. Shamans could get the Lava Burst nerfbat tomorrow that would have a big impact on their effectiveness. The Frost DK mechanics are both new and have big PvE/PvP impact, so I think they're more "at risk" for change.

That said, I have a little team of DKs that's out of the starter area and ready to go should you guys prove that this is a winner comp. Even if it's not a quad-shaman killer, I'm sure I'll have a second melee team of DKs at some point...

Hugs and kisses,

Boylston

There are a lot of factors for the DK's that could get the nerfbat, but they like shaman remained mostly the same throughout beta. The damage factor isn't that high for howling blast, i mean it scales with AP and nothing else, so you're looking at maybe 5k base damage. The weapon damage and weapon swing attacks do a lot though, especially obliterate. But most people probrably wont be using that one much.

As far as nerfable things:

HB scaling via amount of targets. Damage won't be lowered... even at 85 it's not that much extra compared to now unfortunately (at least a GEARED dk)
Necrotic can be made to only have 1 of the debuff on the target at once
Runic power generation for 2 handers could go down
Reworking of some talents
Nerf to mastery (with reforged crap, and no mastery from gems and stuff my dude has 35% extra frost damage)
Nerf to obliterate damage
Nerf to glyph of howling blast

There's quite a bit, but the class as it stands is pretty balanced in comparison to a lot of other classes. All those nerfs are manageable though. Would they suck? yeah, they would really suck... but every attack does 100% weapon damage at least and you get like 6 attacks every 5 seconds or so plus autoattacks... and all the utility.

The thing that really makes this team for me is deathgrip x 4, and all the anti-CC + damage mitigation they possess along with their consistent damage. Being behind in pvp gear might hurt a bit, but it wont make or break the team... we've seen people get to 1800 in full furious when people were in wrathful... two seasons of gear behind and still do well.

[Slats]

Just hit 66 don't think I'll make it to 80 before Tuesday but I will be at least in Northrend and have my Priest setup. :D

Need to move all my Shaman CC and toggles and focus crap for Cata instances onto my X-keys and I'm ready to rock.

[Shodokan]

Ok i just needed to post this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbC5UukrAA

premades vs premades.

dks hit for...

howling blast non crit: 6kish
howling blast crit: 12kish
frost strike non crit: 8k
necrotic strike non crit: 4kish
oblit crits: 20k ish
autoattack crits: 6kish
blood strike non crit: 3kish

assuming no crits... we're looking at a basic rotation of

howling blast x 2> necrotic strike x 2 > blood strike x 2> frost strike x 4 > howling blast x 4 > necrotic x 2 > frost strike x 4

12k > 8k > 6k > 40k > 24k > 8k > 40k total time elapsed = 20 seconds damage done = 140k dps = 6.9k per dk

total damage for 4 dks over 20 seconds = 560k or 28k dps meaning it will take between 4 and 7 seconds to kill someone. average 5 second rotation would be something like 40k per dk or so

there really is no burst other than a barrage of frost strikes, especially because crit is so low at 85.

but if you notice how long it takes the dk to die... it is damage that can be healed through (us healing through them), with anti-healing and such we have the advantage. we don't however have enough burst to kill someone in a single shot like shamans do, they will be the only class to global someone on a regular basis.

TLDR: theres nothing to nerf.

found a vid of pvp set druid only getting crit for 15k by lavaburst... just to let ya know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vBDwK5BpU&feature=fvst

[tanknspanker]

Ok i just needed to post this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbC5UukrAA

premades vs premades.

dks hit for...

howling blast non crit: 6kish
howling blast crit: 12kish
frost strike non crit: 8k
necrotic strike non crit: 4kish
oblit crits: 20k ish
autoattack crits: 6kish
blood strike non crit: 3kish

assuming no crits... we're looking at a basic rotation of

howling blast x 2> necrotic strike x 2 > blood strike x 2> frost strike x 4 > howling blast x 4 > necrotic x 2 > frost strike x 4

12k > 8k > 6k > 40k > 24k > 8k > 40k total time elapsed = 20 seconds damage done = 140k dps = 6.9k per dk

total damage for 4 dks over 20 seconds = 560k or 28k dps meaning it will take between 4 and 7 seconds to kill someone. average 5 second rotation would be something like 40k per dk or so

there really is no burst other than a barrage of frost strikes, especially because crit is so low at 85.

but if you notice how long it takes the dk to die... it is damage that can be healed through (us healing through them), with anti-healing and such we have the advantage. we don't however have enough burst to kill someone in a single shot like shamans do, they will be the only class to global someone on a regular basis.

TLDR: theres nothing to nerf.

found a vid of pvp set druid only getting crit for 15k by lavaburst... just to let ya know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vBDwK5BpU&feature=fvst

very nice work right there ^^
how's ur team working atm? ^^

[tanknspanker]

from where i am right now.. cc's will not be an option with the dk's ..
except mindfreeze cause its free
but like hungering cold needs runic power.. but runic power is being dumped in frost strikes..
strangulate requires a blood rune.
and chains of ice requires a frost rune.
maybe some ideas from mosg or shodokan or any other dk boxer?

[zenga]

from where i am right now.. cc's will not be an option with the dk's ..
except mindfreeze cause its free
but like hungering cold needs runic power.. but runic power is being dumped in frost strikes..
strangulate requires a blood rune.
and chains of ice requires a frost rune.
maybe some ideas from mosg or shodokan or any other dk boxer?

hungering cold does not require rp
horn of winter generates 10 rp every 20 seconds
strangulate requires 1 blood rune, but you have blood tap every minute
and you have empored rune weapon on a 5 minute cooldown

it's the idea behind the dk design to make the best choice for each situation - given a limited amount of resources, but there are enough freebies to achieve that

[Ualaa]

Howling Blast is one of the main abilities of the team.
Glyphed, it applies Frost Fever to any target hit.
Talented, Frost Fever applies a 50% snare to targets.
We will glyph it HB and talent FF, so no need for Chains of Ice.

I'd probably not bother with Strangulate, given Mind Freeze will fire off every 2.5 seconds or so.



The main specials I'd use are:
- Anti-Magic Shell, lasts 7 seconds if glyphed and provides immunity to most debuff effects, and is usable every 45 seconds.
- Icebound Fortitude, 12 seconds of stun immunity, every 3 minutes.
- Lichborne, 10 seconds of Fear/Charm/Sleep immunity, every 2 minutes.
- Pillars of Frost, 20 seconds of knockback/pushback immunity, every minute.
- PvP trinket, every 2 minutes.

They don't really last a very long time, but they're relatively short cooldowns.
And they virtually guarantee someone goes down, when you Necrotic Strike while immune to CC's.

When the pattern is, a battle at Blacksmith... then move to Lumber Mill and defend/attack there... we should have a good number of the cooldowns for each encounter.

[tanknspanker]

hungering cold does not require rp
horn of winter generates 10 rp every 20 seconds
strangulate requires 1 blood rune, but you have blood tap every minute
and you have empored rune weapon on a 5 minute cooldown

it's the idea behind the dk design to make the best choice for each situation - given a limited amount of resources, but there are enough freebies to achieve that

glyphed that is

forgot to tell you that i was talking bout lower lvl's ^^

greetingz

[tanknspanker]

Howling Blast is one of the main abilities of the team.
Glyphed, it applies Frost Fever to any target hit.
Talented, Frost Fever applies a 50% snare to targets.
We will glyph it HB and talent FF, so no need for Chains of Ice.

I'd probably not bother with Strangulate, given Mind Freeze will fire off every 2.5 seconds or so.



The main specials I'd use are:
- Anti-Magic Shell, lasts 7 seconds if glyphed and provides immunity to most debuff effects, and is usable every 45 seconds.
- Icebound Fortitude, 12 seconds of stun immunity, every 3 minutes.
- Lichborne, 10 seconds of Fear/Charm/Sleep immunity, every 2 minutes.
- Pillars of Frost, 20 seconds of knockback/pushback immunity, every minute.
- PvP trinket, every 2 minutes.

They don't really last a very long time, but they're relatively short cooldowns.
And they virtually guarantee someone goes down, when you Necrotic Strike while immune to CC's.

When the pattern is, a battle at Blacksmith... then move to Lumber Mill and defend/attack there... we should have a good number of the cooldowns for each encounter.

TBH when i'm in a bg i just dont know when to hit icebound fortitude .. just like lichborn and pilars of frost :p
when entering a warlock i assume you just instant lichborne just like a priest, but the other 2 ?

greetingz

[Mercbeast]

People are forgetting about hungering cold.

[tanknspanker]

People are forgetting about hungering cold.


not really ^^ page 16 is full of hungering cold :) sertainly last posts on that page

[Ualaa]

Lichborne, if warlocks/priests are running at your group.
Or if you're going at a group that includes them.
Possibly warriors, but I'd be inclined to expect them to cleave us, not scatter us.

Pillars of Frost, when you go against an Elemental Shammy, Boomkin or Fire Mage.
Not a huge deal, unless you're near a cliff.

The Anti-Magic Shell, I've used a lot.
Even though I've not pvp'd with DK's yet.
It has come in handy against mobs.

Don't think I've ever used Strangulate, Icebound Fortitude or Hungering Cold.

But Hungering Cold will be worthwhile on round-robin.

[Noids]

Hungering Cold is amazing for PvP and PvE IMO. I am just running a 4 DK team to level at the moment as I already have 1 DK at 80 and am too lazy to get another character to 60 to level with them.

Despite not having a full group I hungering cold round robin every minute has let me complete both Hellfire instances at level without a 5th member and only with having one toon specced blood.

In PvP I tend to go in and blow a hungering cold early just to keep everyone in the same place and throw them off their guard/burn trinkets at the start of a fight. It is unbelievable that with 4 frosties we can pop this 10 second group freeze every 15 seconds continuously if we wanted to. I am only 64 at the moment and can't wait until 70 to see what howling blast feels like, because this team seems to be out of control at the moment even without a healer.

I have hungering cold, death grip and strangulate all set to round robin for use in PvP. I mainly use strangulate on the pesky mage that is immune to my death grip and is a pain in the ass to kill, whilst I kill his mates first. Once the target is in range of course mind blast locks them down nicely but ranged strangulate is really nice for support casters who pick your team off while you are killing your primary target.

Really enjoying this team at the moment, just wish I could skip the 55-80 grind and get into the real stuff :P

[Mercbeast]

Ya, Hungering Cold brings a whole new aspect to the group. You basically have two approaches to DPS, HB and then single target DPS via hungering cold. Both are going to work great I think.

[remanz]

Ok i just needed to post this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbC5UukrAA

premades vs premades.

dks hit for...

howling blast non crit: 6kish
howling blast crit: 12kish
frost strike non crit: 8k
necrotic strike non crit: 4kish
oblit crits: 20k ish
autoattack crits: 6kish
blood strike non crit: 3kish

assuming no crits... we're looking at a basic rotation of

howling blast x 2> necrotic strike x 2 > blood strike x 2> frost strike x 4 > howling blast x 4 > necrotic x 2 > frost strike x 4

12k > 8k > 6k > 40k > 24k > 8k > 40k total time elapsed = 20 seconds damage done = 140k dps = 6.9k per dk

total damage for 4 dks over 20 seconds = 560k or 28k dps meaning it will take between 4 and 7 seconds to kill someone. average 5 second rotation would be something like 40k per dk or so

there really is no burst other than a barrage of frost strikes, especially because crit is so low at 85.

but if you notice how long it takes the dk to die... it is damage that can be healed through (us healing through them), with anti-healing and such we have the advantage. we don't however have enough burst to kill someone in a single shot like shamans do, they will be the only class to global someone on a regular basis.

TLDR: theres nothing to nerf.

found a vid of pvp set druid only getting crit for 15k by lavaburst... just to let ya know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vBDwK5BpU&feature=fvst

From those videos, the amount HP at level 85 is disheartening. Burst is no longer the game.
The retribution paladin in the video is pathetic. Can't even go toe to toe against the frost dk in melee.

[tanknspanker]

@Ualaa:

When I press Spacebar down, it sends IWT and F9 to my DK's. F9 is HB. On release of Spacebar it sends IWT and Shift-F9, Alt-F9, Ctrl-F9, Shift/Alt-F9, Shift/Alt/Ctrl-F9, and Ctrl/Alt-F9 to the DK's. Those buttons are more HB's, Frost Strikes, and the Plague Strike/Blood Strike castsequence.


sorry to bump this, but is this done in multiple steps? or 1 step multiple actions?


AND isnt there a solution for the scatter-effect? when they all run away

[Shodokan]

I just wanna point out, this comp can't do quite a few of the fights in heroics. Yes this is a PVP discussion so i'll keep it short.

Example: anti-melee mobs that need to be kited around, anti-melee mobs that straight up need to be killed by ranged... etc. tol'vir and halls are some examples of these types of fights.

[tanknspanker]

I just wanna point out, this comp can't do quite a few of the fights in heroics. Yes this is a PVP discussion so i'll keep it short.

Example: anti-melee mobs that need to be kited around, anti-melee mobs that straight up need to be killed by ranged... etc. tol'vir and halls are some examples of these types of fights.


so u got the dks and the shamans :) what do u prefer atm?

[tanknspanker]

double post -.-

[Ualaa]

sorry to bump this, but is this done in multiple steps? or 1 step multiple actions?


AND isnt there a solution for the scatter-effect? when they all run away



Mosg2's set up is two steps.
Execute on press or release.

Step 1:
IWT & Howling Blast

Step 2:
Spams six keybinds (sends all keys)
(From the video, this is: Howling Blast x2, Frost Strike x2, Plague/Bloodstrike castsequence.)

So essentially, a weighted chance for one ability over another.
With nothing firing when you're on the GCD.
And a given ability cannot fire when it (or its rune type) is on cooldown.

You end up with consistent, IWT's and Howling Blasts.
And lots of Frost Strikes, when HB is not ready.
And some Plague/Bloodstrikes.



Would probably put the Mind Freeze mapped key into Step 2.
Have four steps for this.
Tick, do not advance for 2.5 seconds.
With one DK as the target for each step.



If you get runners...
IWT another target.
Or quickly hit /Follow, to regroup.

[tanknspanker]

Mosg2's set up is two steps.
Execute on press or release.

Step 1:
IWT & Howling Blast

Step 2:
Spams six keybinds (sends all keys)
(From the video, this is: Howling Blast x2, Frost Strike x2, Plague/Bloodstrike castsequence.)

So essentially, a weighted chance for one ability over another.
With nothing firing when you're on the GCD.
And a given ability cannot fire when it (or its rune type) is on cooldown.

You end up with consistent, IWT's and Howling Blasts.
And lots of Frost Strikes, when HB is not ready.
And some Plague/Bloodstrikes.



Would probably put the Mind Freeze mapped key into Step 2.
Have four steps for this.
Tick, do not advance for 2.5 seconds.
With one DK as the target for each step.



If you get runners...
IWT another target.
Or quickly hit /Follow, to regroup.
wow thx for this fast reply,
however i got some issues with the step 2.....
when i do the new action keystrokes.. (got like 5 or so of them,)
with the keybinds of my dps keys, he only does step 1 i'll try it in a moment again, bg now ^^

[Mercbeast]

I just dinged 80 on my Paladin and I am looking to start getting setup. I was curious Mosg2, what addons are you using? Oh how do you overcome getting into BG's without your own group, this happens all the time. You group Q and 2 characters are in one group, and 3 are in another.

[Mosg2]

http://www.justin.tv/mosg2/b/275194639

That's the link to how I have my DPS key and other random stuff setup.

@Mercbeast:
I use Grid and GridCustomLayout so that I only see my Paladin and DK's.

[Mercbeast]

http://www.justin.tv/mosg2/b/275194639

That's the link to how I have my DPS key and other random stuff setup.

@Mercbeast:
I use Grid and GridCustomLayout so that I only see my Paladin and DK's.

So you're not using vudho? Looked to me like you were ;p

[Mosg2]

Nope. Grid/GridCustomLayouts and Clique. I played with Vuhdo but it had waaaaay to much shenanigans attached to it. I love my Grid.

[ZooljinX]

Great vid Mosg2, great help :)

[Mosg2]

Thanks, I appreciate it Zooljin :)

[Shodokan]

Good video, randomly cuts out at like 10 mins, seems like you had more to say =P

[Slats]

Used the uplaod to Youtube button on Justive.TV as my ipad wont play this unless your streaming live.

Sorry for stealing it, edited it so everything poitns back to your site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd8lOQ5J0AY&feature=youtube_gdata

[Mosg2]

NP slats.

It didn't cut out at 10 minutes on accident haha. I've got a lot of farming to get done and I'm in a hurry nowadays :)

[Mercbeast]

How do you setup your paladin?

Do you have any hotkeys bound for the Paladin or do you just click everything?

[tanknspanker]

at this moment I'd like to kiss you! (not literally;-) )
but ur video just answerd all my needs for setting it up PERFECTLY
at this moment my setup works also, but with little little bitz, I think Lax can confirm this.
really thx!!

greetingz
tanknspanker

btw, I like he way you handled mind freeze.., allys now being like, WTF?!

[tanknspanker]

How do you setup your paladin?

Do you have any hotkeys bound for the Paladin or do you just click everything?

I think mosg is handling the paladin like i do ( or i do it like he does)
some buttons but without keybinds.
however i got 1 macro which is = /startattack => this is when im questing or pvping to random select target.
for the healing we use grid + gridlayout + clique

hope this answers ur questions ^^

[Mercbeast]

Well, I seem to be having an issue with getting the DPS macro to work the way he does.

My Paladin switches targets of his own accord whenever I spam it, and I can't keep click to move from activating on him. It's a little frustrating atm ;p

Nothing is bound to the hotkey I am using for the DPS spam. I'll keep fiddling with it.

[Mosg2]

You need to change your IWT key probably. My IWT is the comma on my DK's and it's C on my Paladin. That way he only gets it when I specifically press that button.

[tanknspanker]

Well, I seem to be having an issue with getting the DPS macro to work the way he does.

My Paladin switches targets of his own accord whenever I spam it, and I can't keep click to move from activating on him. It's a little frustrating atm ;p

Nothing is bound to the hotkey I am using for the DPS spam. I'll keep fiddling with it.


You need to change your IWT key probably. My IWT is the comma on my DK's and it's C on my Paladin. That way he only gets it when I specifically press that button.


what i did is, i have made a action target groups with only the dk's in it, so when you make ur action
--> do (mapped key) in ( ur iwt map) -> (the names of ur dk group)
credits go to ualaa for this though :p ( i stole it from him)

so make sure ur iwt is only for all w/o current or for the ATG
the click to move enabeling i had also this afternoon, strange enough, it solved itself xD

hope you got something with this

greetingz

[Mercbeast]

What I've done is create a DK action group. The entire DPS spam macro is sent ONLY to the DK action group. Yet for some reason my Paladin is doing some wacky stuff. I have serious problems with targeting. I target and it targets dead bodies, or it will switch and target the nearest friendly NPC.

Solved it, I had FLT assist set in my IWT melee spam as well so it was assisting and reassisting and causing all kinds of trouble ;p

[Mosg2]

Lol, I read your first paragraph Mercbeast and thought "He has multiple 'FTL assist' going at the same time" and then read your second line haha.

Void had the exact same problem and I helped him fix it eventually.

[Mercbeast]

What Glyphs are people using btw?

[Ualaa]

I'm using...

Prime:
- Frost Strike
- Howling Blast
- Icy Touch

Major:
- Anti-Magic Shell
- Death Grip
- Hungering Cold

Minor:
- Blood Tap
- Horn of Winter
- Resilient Grip

[Mosg2]

I'm using the exact same setup myself.

[tanknspanker]

I'm using the exact same setup myself.


where is ur pvp movie of a half hour?!

[Shodokan]

What Glyphs are people using btw?

howling blast
frost strike
icy touch

hungering cold
anti-magic shell
death grip

resilient grip
horn of winter(1 dk) rest i have blood tap
death's embrace


where is ur pvp movie of a half hour?!

We are all busy getting ready for cataclysm man, just going to have to wait till he gets the time.

[Mercbeast]

I think we will definitely want to use strangulate.

Paladins using holy power to instant heal are not easy to down when you are heavily out geared ;p Mindfreeze doesn't phase them.

[tanknspanker]

howling blast
frost strike
icy touch

hungering cold
anti-magic shell
death grip

resilient grip
horn of winter(1 dk) rest i have blood tap
death's embrace



We are all busy getting ready for cataclysm man, just going to have to wait till he gets the time.

but he had it on justin.tv already recorded, but it seems to be gone now,
nvm

[BrothelMeister]

Comment on the Interrupt only going once every 2.5 seconds:

Since the overall CD is 10 seconds, and you have 4 toons, that might make sense from a Theoretical standpoint, but what if the healer Jukes you (starts casting then stops just to get your mindfreeze CD) or you just drop Mindfreeze on them before they even cast? I just have a CC button on my ret team to drop a CC from each toon, and only leave it on a 1 sec timer. No spell will go off completely in 1 sec as of early Cata, so you can drop 2 in quick succession if need be. If you leave it as is, you will still end up missing important casts, and with the CD as it is set-up, you won't use all of them in a 10 sec period anyway.

For rets I have Repentance on 1, Stun on 2, Arcane Torrent on 3, and interrupt (Rebuke, or Midfreeze for you) on 4. This being a 4 step setup in ISBoxer, i have the DK just cycle between Silence+Mindfreeze, and Chains of Ice.

For a DK team you could cycle through the Interrupt, silence, Hungering cold, and perhaps just an extra deathgrip, since DG will interrupt at as well.

[remanz]

All bets on DK , is on the NS absorb healing. I played a bit frost DK at level 85 from a friend's account.

Without using obliterate , and plus the HP madness at level 85, the damage from frost DK won't be enough to kill. Holy paladin can just stand there and let you whack him. He won't go down.

Stacking NS, on the other hand, is pretty good. It will put him behind on healing. So he will die eventually. Just not burst down.


problem with melee is we can't multi-target, control other opponents. We can only focus zerg 1 target. If it takes too long to zerg down, other opponents will start to CC my team.

[Mercbeast]

All bets on DK , is on the NS absorb healing. I played a bit frost DK at level 85 from a friend's account.

Without using obliterate , and plus the HP madness at level 85, the damage from frost DK won't be enough to kill. Holy paladin can just stand there and let you whack him. He won't go down.

Stacking NS, on the other hand, is pretty good. It will put him behind on healing. So he will die eventually. Just not burst down.


problem with melee is we can't multi-target, control other opponents. We can only focus zerg 1 target. If it takes too long to zerg down, other opponents will start to CC my team.

1 DK maybe, but 4 I disagree.

[remanz]

1 DK maybe, but 4 I disagree.

disagree on which part , x4 dk spamming HB => NS => FS => BS can kill a holy paladin in 3 seconds ?

I can tell you up front. That's not going to happen.

Its 120k HP, and with any defensive CD . Its going to be -20% on your damage. DK has no stun, can't stop your target from using a defensive CD. If you can't kill him in the strangulate duration, he is not going down.

the Only target that might go down is the warlock. and if he portals right, or he is demo, he might live too. Priest will be hard to kill with pain suppression + that gay absorb barrier.

[Ualaa]

If you disregard Necrotic Strike, a single Frost DK cannot DPS a Holy Pally down.
Could four Frost DK's, without Necrotic Strike DPS a single Holy Pally down?
Or would the healing from one toon outheal the DPS from four, at least as long as mana lasts?

[Mercbeast]

disagree on which part , x4 dk spamming HB => NS => FS => BS can kill a holy paladin in 3 seconds ?

I can tell you up front. That's not going to happen.

Perhaps not but it is all relative. Nobody is going to blow a paladin up in 3 seconds period. Judging the effectiveness of a class based on an impossible proposition is silly. However in addition to Paladins being essentially insta unjackable, the changes in burst and health are relative.

The overall DPS you can put out with DK's combined with plate survivability, insane control oh and a significant portion of that DPS is ranged and it snares. A Paladin might not die in 3s, a mage might not die in 3s (frost and on the ball) but most other high priority targets will.

Now, if the Paladin just stands there, he will go down pretty darn quick, and we can help push that 'just standing there' thing along with strangulate and we can chain 4.

[Mercbeast]

If you disregard Necrotic Strike, a single Frost DK cannot DPS a Holy Pally down.
Could four Frost DK's, without Necrotic Strike DPS a single Holy Pally down?
Or would the healing from one toon outheal the DPS from four, at least as long as mana lasts?

I think even worse than a holy paladin is a prot paladin. 1v1 a DK isn't going to kill one period ;p I'm still considering a prot pali team driven by a DK. Not really as a backup, but to be different and to be extremely annoying in BG's ;p

[remanz]

Like i said, best bet is to target a warlock.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=62618 is not going to be good for melee teams.


with 4 dk + 1 healer, and dks last long enough to down the target with healing of their own is possible. Basically, put the other side's healer behind on healing, and you kill your target slowly. This is very possible. But if you leave the other 4 targets free for too long, they start to CC your healer + your DKs.

and

I just assume there is no prod. If there is, ignore him and kill others.

[remanz]

Perhaps not but it is all relative. Nobody is going to blow a paladin up in 3 seconds period. Judging the effectiveness of a class based on an impossible proposition is silly. However in addition to Paladins being essentially insta unjackable, the changes in burst and health are relative.

The overall DPS you can put out with DK's combined with plate survivability, insane control oh and a significant portion of that DPS is ranged and it snares. A Paladin might not die in 3s, a mage might not die in 3s (frost and on the ball) but most other high priority targets will.

Now, if the Paladin just stands there, he will go down pretty darn quick, and we can help push that 'just standing there' thing along with strangulate and we can chain 4.

The holy paladin doesn't even have to bubble is what I mean. Simply use divine protection + instant heal.
From what I've seen, nothing goes down in 3 seconds, even with x 4 melee DPS on him. We are obviously discussing pvp opponents that have a clue, Not those mages die without iceblock.

[Shodokan]

The holy paladin doesn't even have to bubble is what I mean. Simply use divine protection + instant heal.
From what I've seen, nothing goes down in 3 seconds, even with x 4 melee DPS on him. We are obviously discussing pvp opponents that have a clue, Not those mages die without iceblock.

Pally will be an easy kill without the bubble for this team.

Strangulate + interupts + CC.

They will be a pain without cooldowns of our own though.

[Mercbeast]

The holy paladin doesn't even have to bubble is what I mean. Simply use divine protection + instant heal.
From what I've seen, nothing goes down in 3 seconds, even with x 4 melee DPS on him. We are obviously discussing pvp opponents that have a clue, Not those mages die without iceblock.

Correct me if I am wrong, but cloth will be sitting around 80k HP at 85 in quest blues.

Presuming DK is in unholy stance and uses blood tap as an opener, that is minimum 24k x 3 (6k x4)x3 or 72k in 2 seconds.

First HB hits at 0s second hits at 1s third hits at 2s give or take a few hundred MS for latency.

That is enough burst to red line cloth enough for your paladin to hammer the target. Now, if we blow our reset, that is another 72k MINIMUM inside 3 more seconds. This gives us the capability of hitting with AoE for a minimum of ~144k in 5 seconds.

The reality is you are going to get some crits which will push the first number north of 80k and the second number closer to 180k than 140k.

Now this is theorycrafting, but this is not an unlikely scenario in BG's. This was infact my bread and butter in the opening move of an AB. Wait for a fight to start and be fashionably late. By fashionably late I mean I blew up pretty much anyone within the radius of my HB barrage ;p

In this scenario where you blow your reset you have to accept that people will get healing, but, and this is a big but, anything short of a healed tank is probably going to die in those 5 seconds. Remember that in 5s most of what you hit with your first HB will not be able to escape the 10 yard kill zone because they are all snared.

Either way you have killed people and you are probably looking at a bunch more who are critically injured and the healers are way way behind.

We will kill people. There is no question.

[Mercbeast]

Like i said, best bet is to target a warlock.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=62618 is not going to be good for melee teams.


with 4 dk + 1 healer, and dks last long enough to down the target with healing of their own is possible. Basically, put the other side's healer behind on healing, and you kill your target slowly. This is very possible. But if you leave the other 4 targets free for too long, they start to CC your healer + your DKs.

and

I just assume there is no prod. If there is, ignore him and kill others.

Can you not grip your target out of there?

[remanz]

Correct me if I am wrong, but cloth will be sitting around 80k HP at 85 in quest blues.

Presuming DK is in unholy stance and uses blood tap as an opener, that is minimum 24k x 3 (6k x4)x3 or 72k in 2 seconds.

First HB hits at 0s second hits at 1s third hits at 2s give or take a few hundred MS for latency.

That is enough burst to red line cloth enough for your paladin to hammer the target. Now, if we blow our reset, that is another 72k MINIMUM inside 3 more seconds. This gives us the capability of hitting with AoE for a minimum of ~144k in 5 seconds.

The reality is you are going to get some crits which will push the first number north of 80k and the second number closer to 180k than 140k.

Now this is theorycrafting, but this is not an unlikely scenario in BG's. This was infact my bread and butter in the opening move of an AB. Wait for a fight to start and be fashionably late. By fashionably late I mean I blew up pretty much anyone within the radius of my HB barrage ;p

In this scenario where you blow your reset you have to accept that people will get healing, but, and this is a big but, anything short of a healed tank is probably going to die in those 5 seconds. Remember that in 5s most of what you hit with your first HB will not be able to escape the 10 yard kill zone because they are all snared.

Either way you have killed people and you are probably looking at a bunch more who are critically injured and the healers are way way behind.

We will kill people. There is no question.

What happens to my 20% reduction from defensive skills. 80k for 2 seconds, really? if it is that simple, I have 5 ret paladin open wings and throw a 20k crit hammer at you (the hammer crits chance is like 70%). 5 hammers I be done. No escape. and that's only 1 skill from the rets.

The reality is, you open on them. They open on you. With any sort of CC, you are not getting your full damage out.

And who are the cloth really, priest/warlock/mage. Disc priest has mail like armors with talent, the barrier will be used on top of your team when you try to surround the priest. Frost mage has barrier and can simply range nova you before you can grip him. That leaves just warlock, which is your best killing target.

As for HP, I see 120k. I didn't see 80k at level 85 with pvp entry level gears.

[Mercbeast]

What happens to my 20% reduction from defensive skills. 80k for 2 seconds, really? if it is that simple, I have 5 ret paladin open wings and throw a 20k crit hammer at you (the hammer crits chance is like 70%). 5 hammers I be done. No escape. and that's only 1 skill from the rets.

The reality is, you open on them. They open on you. With any sort of CC, you are not getting your full damage out.

And who are the cloth really, priest/warlock/mage. Disc priest has mail like armors with talent, the barrier will be used on top of your team when you try to surround the priest. Frost mage has barrier and can simply range nova you before you can grip him. That leaves just warlock, which is your best killing target.

As for HP, I see 120k. I didn't see 80k at level 85 with pvp entry level gears.

We're essentially UnCCable for the first 10-12 seconds of a fight. If you read what I said with an eye to actually looking at what I said and not just trying to refute the viability of DK's you will notice I was talking about cloth classes, not paladins. Also this is not a ret paladin versus DK thread so why bring it up, this is discussing DK's not Retadins. Retadins might be able to blow someone up once every 2 minutes, but that isn't any different than DK's, only DK's do that DPS via aoe with much larger toolbox to control the fight and keep your guys actually DPSing. For me the biggest weakness of paladins, is once that cooldown burst is gone and you are dealing DPS via melee range. Well IWT is pretty bad at maximizing actual melee range DPS. This is what makes DK's in my opinion better at that, aoe snares keeping your target perma 50% movement speed. Easier to keep IWTing melee toons doing the funky chicken actually on the guy you're attacking.

I'm fairly certain that resto druids/boomkin, shamans, priests, mages, warlocks, rogues are not going to have 100k+ hp at level 85 immediately. Eventually yes, but then our DPS will also have scaled relative to that increase in HP to a large extent.

Yes, 74k in 2 seconds and that is without crits. I am talking about fresh level 85's. Most people are not going to have blue PvP sets for awhile what with them all using eternium which is the RARE ore in Cata. Once people throw resil into the mix, I would expect that basic ratio of survivability to DPS to stay roughly the same, what with the increase in DPS we will get from the same gear + weapons.

[Fat Tire]

We're essentially UnCCable for the first 10-12 seconds of a fight. If you read what I said with an eye to actually looking at what I said and not just trying to refute the viability of DK's you will notice I was talking about cloth classes, not paladins. Also this is not a ret paladin versus DK thread so why bring it up, this is discussing DK's not Retadins. Retadins might be able to blow someone up once every 2 minutes, but that isn't any different than DK's, only DK's do that DPS via aoe with much larger toolbox to control the fight and keep your guys actually DPSing. For me the biggest weakness of paladins, is once that cooldown burst is gone and you are dealing DPS via melee range. Well IWT is pretty bad at maximizing actual melee range DPS. This is what makes DK's in my opinion better at that, aoe snares keeping your target perma 50% movement speed. Easier to keep IWTing melee toons doing the funky chicken actually on the guy you're attacking.

I'm fairly certain that resto druids/boomkin, shamans, priests, mages, warlocks, rogues are not going to have 100k+ hp at level 85 immediately. Eventually yes, but then our DPS will also have scaled relative to that increase in HP to a large extent.

Yes, 74k in 2 seconds and that is without crits. I am talking about fresh level 85's. Most people are not going to have blue PvP sets for awhile what with them all using eternium which is the RARE ore in Cata. Once people throw resil into the mix, I would expect that basic ratio of survivability to DPS to stay roughly the same, what with the increase in DPS we will get from the same gear + weapons.

You would be 100% wrong

[Mercbeast]

You would be 100% wrong

Care to give me hard numbers? I know that they boosted HP again awhile back but I don't know by how much. So please give me some hard numbers instead of "100% wrong"

Guy on my server who is in beta is saying around 80k for a fresh 85 cloth class, up to around 100k for a tank. With t11 gear tanks will be 150k+ and DPS 110k.

So is this refutable or not?

[remanz]

We're essentially UnCCable for the first 10-12 seconds of a fight. If you read what I said with an eye to actually looking at what I said and not just trying to refute the viability of DK's you will notice I was talking about cloth classes, not paladins. Also this is not a ret paladin versus DK thread so why bring it up, this is discussing DK's not Retadins. Retadins might be able to blow someone up once every 2 minutes, but that isn't any different than DK's, only DK's do that DPS via aoe with much larger toolbox to control the fight and keep your guys actually DPSing. For me the biggest weakness of paladins, is once that cooldown burst is gone and you are dealing DPS via melee range. Well IWT is pretty bad at maximizing actual melee range DPS. This is what makes DK's in my opinion better at that, aoe snares keeping your target perma 50% movement speed. Easier to keep IWTing melee toons doing the funky chicken actually on the guy you're attacking.

I'm fairly certain that resto druids/boomkin, shamans, priests, mages, warlocks, rogues are not going to have 100k+ hp at level 85 immediately. Eventually yes, but then our DPS will also have scaled relative to that increase in HP to a large extent.

Yes, 74k in 2 seconds and that is without crits. I am talking about fresh level 85's. Most people are not going to have blue PvP sets for awhile what with them all using eternium which is the RARE ore in Cata. Once people throw resil into the mix, I would expect that basic ratio of survivability to DPS to stay roughly the same, what with the increase in DPS we will get from the same gear + weapons.

I am not saying rets are better than dks. I am just saying your target won't go down that fast like I originally stated. viability of DK's is well recognized. I am merely stating the difficulties for melee zerging in general.

The entire strats for melee as of right now is based on zerg down someone fast.

[Mercbeast]

I am not saying rets are better than dks. I am just saying your target won't go down that fast like I originally stated. viability of DK's is well recognized. I am merely stating the difficulties for melee zerging in general.

The entire strats for melee as of right now is based on zerg down someone fast.

Of course, but I don't think it is as bad as you make it out to sound. Everyone I've talked to from beta says DK HB = 6k to 13k crit fresh 85 and HP for fresh 85's is 80-100k~.

This gives us the potential to jack someone in 2 GCD's which in my opinion is pretty fast and even if it doesn't people are going to be redlining HP wise where you should be able to capitalize on at least 1 person to kill.

[Ualaa]

The other thing is, with four toons dealing DPS, we can down one toon in two globals or so.
Our toons should then survive at least four attacks, and possibly not fall until the eighth attack.

Battlegrounds, like Wintergrasp/Tol Barad are going to be more hectic than arena.
Imbalanced sides will be the norm, both in our favor and not.

I'd think the increased durability of toons in general, favors boxers more then non-boxers.
And we still have the edge in coordination of burst, whether we down someone in 2 or 5 GCD's.

[Fat Tire]

Care to give me hard numbers? I know that they boosted HP again awhile back but I don't know by how much. So please give me some hard numbers instead of "100% wrong"

Guy on my server who is in beta is saying around 80k for a fresh 85 cloth class, up to around 100k for a tank. With t11 gear tanks will be 150k+ and DPS 110k.

So is this refutable or not?

When my lock hit 85, I had the blue set right away which I think most people who have saved their honor will have. 127k hps and all the people I fought had between 115k and 140k

So yea for a fresh cloth class that buys the blue pvp set boom, non refutable proof. However, since cata just started there is no need to speculate any longer.

[Nisch]

That HealerMain/TankAlt is how I did boxing in Aion and it worked out really well. I hadn't tried it in WoW as I hadn't re-upped my accounts, but I like the idea. Nice vid

[remanz]

My friend's mage hit level 85. and he did some instances and some brief pvp.

He has about 100k hp in quest blue and normal level 85 dungeon drop, non-pvp gear, unbuffed. With pvp gear, it will be around 110-120k hp as Fat mentioned, may be even more.

There are a couple things concerning stats currently happening.

My friend's mage was doing 10k dps at level 80. When he hits 85, as now, he is doing 6k dps. His haste/hit/crit all below 10%. and Healers go OOM all the time (good news I guess), in both pvp and pve. The mana cost went way up for healing spells.

Time to zerg in pvp

[Mosg2]

I'm here to confirm that Necrotic Strike puts up an individual debuff for each character doing NS and... It stacks with itself. If you NS twice in a row it just adds the second amount to the first.

Going now to test if when I heal it removes healing from each debuff or just one.

[Shodokan]

so you hit 83? grats!

and i fucking told you guys lol

[remanz]

so 4 NS debuff, abosrb 30k healing in 1 shot ? Then it is gonna be good. And when he heals, how many debuff can he wipe out with 1 heal ?

Dks looking good.

[Mosg2]

OMFG.

Sorry for the delay, I had to go in to work for a few hours.

I'm NOW here to CONFIRM that when multiple people are NS'ing the same target:

A) each person gets their own debuff
B) each person's debuff gets REFRESHED and gets INCREASED with subsequent NS's
C) each NS is "smart" in that healing does not deplete EACH NS application, instead
D) IT ONLY EATS UP THE PREVENTED HEALING FROM THE OLDEST BUFF TO THE NEWEST
E) which means it basically "stacks"

So to sum up:

NS is the f'ing bee's knees and will dominate people.

[Shodokan]

OMFG.

Sorry for the delay, I had to go in to work for a few hours.

I'm NOW here to CONFIRM that when multiple people are NS'ing the same target:

A) each person gets their own debuff
B) each person's debuff gets REFRESHED and gets INCREASED with subsequent NS's
C) each NS is "smart" in that healing does not deplete EACH NS application, instead
D) IT ONLY EATS UP THE PREVENTED HEALING FROM THE OLDEST BUFF TO THE NEWEST
E) which means it basically "stacks"

So to sum up:

NS is the f'ing bee's knees and will dominate people.

l2 answer skype imo

good to know though, thanks for testing... i still haven't even played cataclysm.... fucking ques make me want to die in a fire.

[Umbaalo]

This news of NS "stacking" just made my pants get a little bit tighter...
Really hope it doesn't get nerfed to the ground before I get a chance to mess around with it!

[Mosg2]

It's basically the best case scenario for multiple NS's. Now you don't even need to weight your DPS key or setup some sort of silly macro system so that they get evenly distributed. Nope, you just lay on 8 of them in 10 seconds and watch people melt as they get ZERO healing. I'm eating dinner and broadcasting leveling atm but if I get some downtime I'll write up a blurb on why NS is 5x more powerful than damage--Mainly I think it has to do with the psychological aspect of not knowing how much your heal is going to heal for which forces people into spam overhealing mode.

[Mercbeast]

How are you dealing with BG's putting your group in different groups? Is there a way around this with Vuhdo (anyone?) I know you use grid and custom gridlayout or something to accomplish this.

This is my biggest hurdle now and I am not sure how I will tackle it with Vudho since I don't really have any idea what I am doing with the custom grid layout thing, I took one look at it and said "f-that".

[Mosg2]

I'm chernabog_gorefiend on Skype. Hit me up and I will walk you through setting up Grid and GridCustomLayouts--I dicked around with Vuhdo for two days and couldn't get it to do what I wanted easily.

[Mercbeast]

I'm chernabog_gorefiend on Skype. Hit me up and I will walk you through setting up Grid and GridCustomLayouts--I dicked around with Vuhdo for two days and couldn't get it to do what I wanted easily.

I don't have skype. I have a vent server if you ever use that when you game.

[Shodokan]

I don't have skype. I have a vent server if you ever use that when you game.

I'll explain it to you. I will PM you some vent information.

[ZooljinX]

Oooh that is sooo nice, i smell nerf inc tho, that is just OP.

my DK's are only 66! godamnit!

[Mercbeast]

How is everyone reforging/gemming their DK's?

[Mosg2]

@Mercbeast:
Mastery is the best stat for this team setup in my opinion. Period. Strength would be second due to it buffing Necrotic Strike.

@All:
I'm surprised to hear the "nerf" calls. People have been dominating with Shaman for what? 4 years? DK's just use a different tool set to accomplish this domination.

[BrothelMeister]

@All:
I'm surprised to hear the "nerf" calls. People have been dominating with Shaman for what? 4 years? DK's just use a different tool set to accomplish this domination.

It's not that they are calling for a nerf, it's that they are saying it will be nerfed because that is unfortunately very broken. People will be stacking multiple DKs in 5v5 teams, so that by season end the best comp will be Disc Priest + Holy Pally + 3 DKs.

The inability to heal through DK damage is good and all, but how long does it take you to actually kill a target, vs how long does it take them to kill you? You have to really drill on a target for a long time without letting them get away to make this team work. Without being able to blow someone up, your strategy is pressure. The more time you are spending on a target, the more time they have to snare you, or to be life-gripped, or to blink, or ice block, or get hand of protection, or to intervene away... etc.

Slowing down fights has not been a very successful boxing strategy so far.

[Mosg2]

Mmm, I think there might be some minor misunderstandings :)

With my 4 DK's on a target they blow up in less than 3 seconds--And I'm in the blue pvp starter set with the CoC 2h weapon.

[tanknspanker]

Mmm, I think there might be some minor misunderstandings :)

With my 4 DK's on a target they blow up in less than 3 seconds--And I'm in the blue pvp starter set with the CoC 2h weapon.

I'm very happy with the dk pvp abilities, but how do you tank?
I got a tank specced dk running along but blood vs howling blast is a joke,
tell me ur secret^^

[Mosg2]

When I do instances I run one DK as Blood. I do a disease-less spam that's just Death Strike and Blood Boil. As long as I Death Grip the initial target into the group he does a decent job of holding AE aggro. Single target is no problem.

[tanknspanker]

When I do instances I run one DK as Blood. I do a disease-less spam that's just Death Strike and Blood Boil. As long as I Death Grip the initial target into the group he does a decent job of holding AE aggro. Single target is no problem.
well thank you for the fast response!,
think i saw that blood boil deathstrike spam macrosomewhere
THX :)

[Mercbeast]

When I do instances I run one DK as Blood. I do a disease-less spam that's just Death Strike and Blood Boil. As long as I Death Grip the initial target into the group he does a decent job of holding AE aggro. Single target is no problem.

I found that running the entire team as blood was the way to go in most cases. In vortex pinnacle for example I had to heal on about 5 fights, the rest of the time the passive healing from blood, and the added survivability with 4 blood dk's meant nobody dropped below 90% hp for more than a few seconds.

Additionally I am thinking that DW blood for this team specifically will work wonders. In a typical situation this is a huge no-no due to threat generation, but when they are only competing with other blood DK's for threat the added blood worm proc is going to be massive. Having 10-12+ worms up during any longish fight might very well make healing a non-factor. The DPS is slow as molasses but I'd rather be slow than dead ;p

[Ualaa]

The team already has a full blown healer.
Do we need 4x Blood, as opposed to 1x Blood and 3x Frost for PvE?

Or maybe take it the other way.
Assume 4x Blood, fighting for threat and not caring who has it.
Then dual-spec the Pally Prot or Ret, whichever is better for PvE.

[BrothelMeister]

The team already has a full blown healer.
Do we need 4x Blood, as opposed to 1x Blood and 3x Frost for PvE?

Or maybe take it the other way.
Assume 4x Blood, fighting for threat and not caring who has it.
Then dual-spec the Pally Prot or Ret, whichever is better for PvE.

Ret would probably be better for situational healing, but the DPS a ret pally has when boxed is very bad. Keeping the pally as holy and just DPSing with him is probably a better choice.

[remanz]

Looks like they nerfed holy paladin in a hurry.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/143288/holy-paladin-nerfs

Is it still a good choice for the DKs ? or simply take bloodlust + tremor for pew pew.

[Mosg2]

I rarely use Light of Dawn. This has little effect on the team as a whole as far as healing goes.

As to other healers... I'm still sold on Paladin if only for Bubble. It makes such a huge difference in so many fights. It's just crazy.

[Mercbeast]

The team already has a full blown healer.
Do we need 4x Blood, as opposed to 1x Blood and 3x Frost for PvE?

Or maybe take it the other way.
Assume 4x Blood, fighting for threat and not caring who has it.
Then dual-spec the Pally Prot or Ret, whichever is better for PvE.

Without CC in heroics, I don't think we will go anywhere as 1xblood3xfrost unless you way way out gear the content. Gonna OOM way too fast with the Paladin, or any healer for that matter. Running your DK's as blood eases the pressure on the paladin when you cannot CC.

[Mosg2]

Just as an FYI, I'm leveling a Priest right now with my wife. This may or may not take over for my Paladin--I want an all-Worgen team :)

[Mercbeast]

Just as an FYI, I'm leveling a Priest right now with my wife. This may or may not take over for my Paladin--I want an all-Worgen team :)

Aren't you horde? ;p

I managed to get clique/custom grid working. I just need to join a BG now and see if it is actually working ;p

[Mosg2]

Yes I'm Horde, but... Worgen are so awesome!

[Mercbeast]

What priority are you using for necrotic strike? Did you push it up higher than frost? Currently I just swapped plague with necrotic but I'm wondering if I shouldn't swap to necrotic above frost strike.

[Mercbeast]

Ran some rated BG's tonight. Holy Paladin is definitely the weak link atm. It is a combination of healing being pretty terrible in BG's atm, and me not being used to running the Paladin in PvP as the healbot. I am strongly considering switching the Paladin to Prot and healing off of WoG. Less healing throughput, but more reliable healing and you will be more engaged directly in the fighting I feel.

However, even with me fumbling through my binds, and more often than not getting off one or two heals before my paladin got blown up, the opposing side usually had to commit a minimum of 7 people to deal with me, and usually more.

Unfortunately EoTS is a bit of a nightmare with respawning, and if your guys die even a few feet apart you might end up with part of your group else where.

[tanknspanker]

Looks like they nerfed holy paladin in a hurry.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/143288/holy-paladin-nerfs

Is it still a good choice for the DKs ? or simply take bloodlust + tremor for pew pew.


TBH, in my case light of dawn was THE spell to use for holy power, but seems it was to good to be true :(
i'll feel the changes i think

[Mercbeast]

Ok, so I made the switch on my Pali to Prot. I like it WAY more. I am adding more DPS, my pali is much, much more difficult to focus and kill, and I feel like by wearing stam/int gear, I am still able to heal moderately well in a crunch on for my DK's and my Paladin. WoG is pretty nice too.

I've been running Ruins of Gilneas and so far it's been pretty much a total faceroll, literally. I am still getting used to my cooldowns on my DK's so when the shit hits the fan, and by shit I mean allies and by fan, I mean me, I just mash all my cool downs and keep smashing. I usually ride straight for the lighthouse now, I think that is the one right in front of the ally GY.

Once there, I engage, and usually most of their team is there. What happens next is me rolling their team be it 6 or 7 people. About the time 5 or 6 die, those who died have respawned and I will eventually go down to a 3rd res group. However if my team mates are competent, they have capped 2 and are pushing on 3 in time to meet me there and then the three cap is on.