Unholy Death Knight - (Yes, another thread...)

I tried out Unholy over the weekend, and I am not too sold on it. It feels very underwhelming to me. Albeit, I believe my setup may be a bigger culprit than I am lead to believe.

My DPS button sends out the following: NS + NS + IT + Chains on RR + BS + Pest + Mind Freeze on RR

The problem I am having is, actually using Dark Transformation. Having to wait for 5 Death Coils, then having to get 60 Runic Power, then if I am lucky enough to have an Unholy Rune.... It'll bloody cast. But since there is so much being casted, it's about 1/5 or 1/10 casts where I'll get the big ugly to come out and play.

The mobility was nice, and they seemed to survive decently.

But the DPS was really mundane, from what I was able to see.

Has anyone else dabbled in it?


Before I forget:

Dark Simulacrum
How the hell do you get it to work?

I have been trying to get this ability to work since 85... What is the big damn secret?

I don't bother with Dark Simulacrum at all. Too hard to manage on more than one Dk at a time.

necrotic strike? lol unholy is ALLL about scourge strike and festering strikes... the dps is much higher once you get diseases up and start with the ss's.

That being said, you wont do as much dmg as frost simply because you cant aoe as well. Throwing diseases on one target and spreading them before they get dispelled, and then keeping them up in large scale pvp is just a tax on your patience. If you're single target burning people down fast tho, then you're set
lol

I honestly wouldn't bother with multiboxing unholys anymore. The reason we were looking at it was the unsnareability but now that is nerfed to 75% it is simply not worth it.

As you mentioned there is considerably more ramp up time with unholy unless you have outbreak free. You do need to change your dps rotation around to pioritise scourge strike over everything else, add in a festering strike to keep uptime on diseases as well as some nice big single target hits.

For runic power include a death coil and gargoyle in the rotation and of course your dark transformation key. The nice thing about unholy blight is that it does make your diseases undispellable once they're up.

Frost really didn't get nerfed much with the patch though in the end and it fits the multiboxing formula much better than unholy for me. Good ability to frontload damage for fast initial kills, reasonable uptime through endless snares, DG etc. and good passive defense with the cooldowns. Unholy lacks the frontloaded damage of frost, doesn't gain any survivability and I didn't really seen improved uptime over frost when I tried death's advance at 100% let alone now it's 75. Saying that if you like it, go for it, just set up your dps a bit better and you will see a significant improvement.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vociferate

Dark Simulacrum
How the hell do you get it to work?

I have been trying to get this ability to work since 85... What is the big damn secret?

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I dont know if you will mange to use this often as a boxer. But lets say you on your DKs are fighting a Mage. you grip him and are rdy to beat the crap out of him. but ofc he will blink directly out. Well you got a new grip rdy as a boxer for him, but instead of doing that. You grip him and have all DKs directly casting Dark on him, then when the mage blink, all your DKs will get a copy of blink (or what ever spell he uses). And you can blink right after him.

Or, mage casting sheep, you put dark on him while casting and then pop anti magic shell. You wont get sheeped but you have a copy of sheep, so you sheep him or someone else instead.

Or you are beating the hell out of a resto druid. You pop Dark on him, and the next heal we will do, you will all get a copy of. Maybe the best use of Dark in a boxing enviroment.

Its damn funny to use when you start to learn how to predict ppl. This is a 100% pvp ability, maybe the best in the game. You can use it in Pve aswell but not really that efficiant.

You vs a single target...
You would want something of a buff.
So you kill them faster.

You vs a group.
You would want some kind of a CC effect.
So you can isolate and pick them off.

Unfortunately, you cannot control what you get.
If the casting time is very fast or instant.
You might be able to land it, when you see their cast bar doing a nice spell.
Not sure on that at all though.

i've had some success with a repeater region with dark sim on it as a big clicky button, what i do is put dark sim to cast on my obliterate/blood strike spam key, then whatever spell i manage to steal just click that big button to use it.

In arenas i generally focus a pally first, get him low, then flip the switch to beat him down with my obliterate key... which often times has netted me his bubble * 4 on my dks, which proceed to rape face on the rest of his team as he dies watching his bubbles pop off on me lol :) good times indeed

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

You vs a single target...
You would want something of a buff.
So you kill them faster.

You vs a group.
You would want some kind of a CC effect.
So you can isolate and pick them off.

Unfortunately, you cannot control what you get.
If the casting time is very fast or instant.
You might be able to land it, when you see their cast bar doing a nice spell.
Not sure on that at all though.

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So I understand the mechanics behind it, it's just getting the macro to work. Do you have any suggestions?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ghonosyph

i've had some success with a repeater region with dark sim on it as a big clicky button, what i do is put dark sim to cast on my obliterate/blood strike spam key, then whatever spell i manage to steal just click that big button to use it.

In arenas i generally focus a pally first, get him low, then flip the switch to beat him down with my obliterate key... which often times has netted me his bubble * 4 on my dks, which proceed to rape face on the rest of his team as he dies watching his bubbles pop off on me lol :) good times indeed

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How do you have it cast?

/cast [@target] Dark Simulacrum

I am just not sure how to get it to cast.

why unholy ?

I mentioned multiple times that the burst is not there for unholy. The ramp up time is just too long for 5 v 5. DT takes like 30 seconds to build up. and the hits are all small for unholy. The only reason to bring unholy would be for 8% spell debuff and AMZ. So 1 unholy is about enough for the team.


Blood in full PVP gear is the way to go. So 4 Dks, mix them up for the buffs. Frost Frost Unholy Blood

Out if curiosity mostly.

But now it's mostly fine tuning my macros. And even though Dark Sim is unpredictable, it's another spell I would want to incorporate into my rotation with frost.

Also keep in mind with Dark Sim You need to be STATIONARY to use the ability. if your running you'll find 9/10 it wont cast.(The stolen spell, not dark sim itself) Just my experience with it in Arena.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by auscontrol

Also keep in mind with Dark Sim You need to be STATIONARY to use the ability. if your running you'll find 9/10 it wont cast.(The stolen spell, not dark sim itself) Just my experience with it in Arena.

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Instant cast = awailabol while runing.
Spells with cast time = intant for you, but you need to stand still that second.

Im not boxing now days, but i do play a DK and have quite okay exp with using this ability. I think that i would not try to macro it in on a "auto cast and use" way. I would have it on a saparate button which would have all DKs using it. And then use it in situations where you might get something usefull. Vs healers you get heals so easy, start with that and play around with diffrent classes. Mage mirrors, deep freeze(need hungering cold to use), blink, mass fear etc are really cool things to copy :P