Rolled 5 DKs

[blast3r]

deathknights! ZOMG so much fun to play! My team is feral druid 3 blood spec death knights, and i've found a bunch of useful and fun stuff about this setup.

I'm reluctant to drop my druid and level up 2 more dk's to 80 as i've already got my druid and the other 3 geared up somewhat, so my basis isn't a full box team experience but i do have some pointers for you guys out there

First off, i DO NOT use a round robin macro for deathgrip, i much rather prefer an on demand modifier for each alt ie lets say caps lock is my D.G. caps on my main toon, ctrl caps shift caps alt caps takes up the other 3... this way i can on demand if someone pops a trinket to grab them back without worrying about the macro firing, its a little harder to remember whose is on cooldown but its also a lot easier than round robin and with a ZERO miss percentage unless you forget to watch/time it

lots of people say that unholy is the way to go, i however prefer blood spec, and quite a bit lately i've added and found a few new tricks. Unholy is pretty good atm for a few reasons tho, i'll rant mroe about that at the end of the post after my Blood spec goodies.
First- Almost everyone here that's playing deathknights knows about the runetap skill, improved runetap, and the runetap glyph.... what you might not know is if you glyph for vampiric blood AND runetap, when you pop vampiric blood and then 3 runetaps thats about a 98 % heal for the whole party... ie vamp heals 3 % (glyph) runetap heals self for 20%(improved) and then each of those heals is increased by vampiric bloods ability, on top of the other 2 dks (if you only pop 3 at a time) for another 20 + vampiric blood modifier, in pvp this oh shit button is rediculously overpowered. Couple this with antimagic shell, icebound fortitude, licheborne if you go frost some for anhillation(spelling), Deathstrike for even more healing, 3-5 blood auras if you go that route for even more stacking healing.... i can go on and on, retarded utility survivability is what i'm getting at. I think the only thing lacking in blood will be fixed by the patch 3.08 (lack of aoe ability vs the other specs) and (more healing via blood aura doubled, and deathstrike's healing doubled)

Okay nuff said bout the healing bit, it seems a lot like theory craft when written down on paper, but trust me when i say you REALLY should try it out =)

Another crazy fun useful thing i've found in the blood tree is dancing rune weapon. While it seems a kind of lackluster "bleh" cooldown, there ARE some fun things about it. First things first it mimics EVERYTHING you do only a little less powered..... everything except for rune tap from what i've tested... these abilities that i've found most useful/frigging amazing are listed below:
1. Death and Decay - it gets doubled from the sword... ie the drw drops its own death and decay when you do
2. Summon Ghoul - if you summon your ghoul while drw is up, it will summon its own ghoul!
3. any powerful weapon strike - when you disease strike(icy/plague) it does it too, heart strikes obliterates.... LOTS of dps here its kinda silly (note***not sure if it heals you when it hits with deathstrike, i may do some solo dk play to test this)
4. The best and the beautiful of the lvl 80 dk skill..... some of you have yet to hit level 80, but tbh its worth it just to do this on some poor unsuspecting fools on the alliance/horde side of your choosing doom. First you've gotta save up some runic power via dpsing other stuff, once you have 100 drop your dancing rune weapon, army of the dead, summon ghoul, death and decay and watch... as all of your assailants SHIT themselves with what happens next..... each of your deathknights will summon two sets of 8 army of the dead**one per deathknight, and one per deathknights dancing rune weapon** 2 ghouls per dk and then death and decay(abuse the death and decay glyph while you can! )

If you've not yet seen army of the dead on its own then you may not understand, but seeing 2 sets of it off a blood spec deathknight is just amazingly fun and funny... you LITERALLY have a small army (lets say you only 4 box 4 dk's) thats about ...oh 72 if you get the full army and ghouls off

Chains of ice any poor slob in your way and run away spamming /lol! :thumbsup: pure win

as for a damage rotation i usually follow elitistjerks info on their dk dps compendium
for blood spec its something like this on a 20 second rotation: first 10 seconds should go icy touch, plague strike, heart strike, heart strike, obliterate and death coil till you cant anymore... your runes should be coming back up now, so the next 10 seconds should go like this icy touch plague strike, heart strike heart strike heart strike obliterate obliterate deathcoil till the end then repeat step one. Throw in pestilence somewhere in there for aoe pulls, blood boil is kinda low dmg unless you load up all the enemys with diseases, death and decay is a little meh for placement cuz i software box and dont like to use it for the clumsy mousing over windows approach but it's useful for aoe.

for aoe pulls i pick the biggest beefiest mob i can and load it up with icytouch plaguestrikes and pestilence to spread the diseases, then heartstrikes to try to get the runes to cooldown as death runes. If they do, my next move is to spam blood boil and try to pestilence to keep up the diseases on everything i can so that you can maximize bloodboil aoe dmg>


UNHOLY hmm unholy spec i've not tried much, one reason is because i like the healing and utility of the blood tree, the other reason being that ebon plague doesn't stack, so one of your deathknights will ALWAYS be doing more dmg than the others... thats not a bad thing really, but its not good either This isnt saying that the unholy tree doesn't have utility... far from it, so lets discuss a bit what it has for goodies.
1. the big thing i think, is the permanent pet ghoul... oh how many times i'd wish i had him to help me out as blood spec. From what i've seen with the right spec/glyphs, these lil bad boys can do some decent work! Keeping them alive with deathcoil every now and then tho, seems like a pain in the azz, way too much micro management with targeting and what not... more macros, more keybinds to memorize, bleh!
2. unholy aoe abilities... wandering plague, the other aoe abilities that slow enemies... in pvp this seems just too good, instancing would also benefit i think because unholy really can dish out some decent aoe moreso than blood spec, and there are PLENTY of aoe fights all over wotlk to take advantage
3. anti magic ZONEoftotallawesomeness - I've seen a couple posts but yet to try it, but theoretically, with all of your deathknights as unholy with antimagic zone, you can keep it up pretty much 100 % of the time round robin style ... in pvp this can be very useful, as it will be very hard to burst the bubble, if they do, pop another lol deathgrip them in to a glyphed death and decay and watch as they cower in fear and die... in fights like halls of stone or halls of lightning where the bosses do some heavy spell dmg you can pretty much zone through the whole fight, and if the zone pops you can pop your antimagic shell and prevent whatever you can till the next zone goes up.

I believe i've been ranting long enough, and i wish i could cover unholy dps rotations, and frost spec information, but alas i'm not well versed in those areas, tho i'm going to try them eventually... good luck guys, if anyone would liek to see the spec i use let me know here on this thread and i'll do what i can to help out with an talent spec calculator link :thumbup:

good luck!

Think I may take another look at that blood tree! Thanks so much for this informative response!

[ghonosyph and the moocrew]

normally you have 6 runes, 2 frost 2 blood 2 unholy, using up blood strikes/heartstrikes (in blood tree) makes your runes cooldown as "death" runes which count as any type of the 3 runes i just listed.... so you can use any ability pretty much that uses a rune... so lets say you want to spam blood boil which costs one blood rune to cast. You can cast it twice before it goes cooldown till the blood runes come back up, but if you put up your diseases, then use the strikes that generate death runes and get a couple to go death when they cooldown, when they do you can spam that blood boil(or whatever else) more times in a row. It helps a lot in different applications. hard to explain better, just makes more choices for dps increase by being able to do better attacks.

[5fingersofdoom]

What ~Gnos said above.
I'd like to add,Death Runes really helpful for the attacks which require 2 diferent runes to use,[as these are always by far your highest damage and RP generating Strokes].
So for instance Frost Spec,so I use /Castsequence Icy Touch, Blood Strike, plague strike to get my diseases on to the target/slow them/and activate my Death Runes,once they are cooking I will drop Obliterate on them,or if they still need more rotations of IT/BS/PS Death runes are there for that.
Also not to forget to create a macro /cast rune tap
/cast horn of winter
This is vital if your needing to drop pestilence for AoE bursting and find your self stuck without active runes.
Also tying your HoWinter to your Rune Tap means its less easier to forget to use in combat,I find im always needing Death Runes.
The above is always for BG not Arena,hope this helps

[FIra]

Next patch will make frost and blood better, while killing everything in unholy. I enjoy the immense survivability with unholy right now. The Bone Shield + IBF + AMZ makes incoming damage very small. But next patch we will be seeing AMZ last 10seconds, AMS glyph only 2 seconds, IBF 20% or so, Bone shield 20%. The buff to frost presence makes you have to use it to stay in the same damage mitigation as youwould pre-patch.

Now the buff to Frost is pretty good for me. Howling blast not on Cooldowns. Chillblains will affect everyone when pestilence is used to spread frost fever. Chilblains will also affect everyone with hungering cold. Reduced cost of HC to 40.

I've macroed Mind Freeze with a generic melee attack so when I death grip and strangulate is on cooldown i can still stop something.

Dancing rune weapon is getting nerfed regarding to Summoning ghouls and army of the dead. What I enjoy most about frost spec is the fact that I won't be burdened by staying in frost presence. All my spells and abilities for aoe and high damage use atk power instead of weapond damage(exception: frost strike) and still crits for good numbers.

Whats beautiful is next patch I could very well be able to stay at the starting spot in arena until they come to me, then build up RP quickly and unleach some hungering cold when their all grouped together... except for dalaran sewers...I hate that place.

[king.pa]

4. The best and the beautiful of the lvl 80 dk skill..... some of you have yet to hit level 80, but tbh its worth it just to do this on some poor unsuspecting fools on the alliance/horde side of your choosing doom. First you've gotta save up some runic power via dpsing other stuff, once you have 100 drop your dancing rune weapon, army of the dead, summon ghoul, death and decay and watch... as all of your assailants SHIT themselves with what happens next..... each of your deathknights will summon two sets of 8 army of the dead**one per deathknight, and one per deathknights dancing rune weapon** 2 ghouls per dk and then death and decay(abuse the death and decay glyph while you can! )

If you've not yet seen army of the dead on its own then you may not understand, but seeing 2 sets of it off a blood spec deathknight is just amazingly fun and funny... you LITERALLY have a small army (lets say you only 4 box 4 dk's) thats about ...oh 72 if you get the full army and ghouls off

Chains of ice any poor slob in your way and run away spamming /lol! :thumbsup: pure win

I just can't wait to test this !!!!
I loled for a long time yesterday after I read this :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Multibocks]

Army is nerfed in new patch to not work with Dancing Blade. Also Howling Blast now has a 5 sec cooldown on test.

[king.pa]

DAMN :thumbdown:

[daviddoran]

WTB video of the 72+ mob armies!

[ghonosyph and the moocrew]

never did get any video as i dont know much about vid recording and wow, but me and a buddy DID get a couple pics of screenshots to show, once i'm back at my home computer i'll post them, lmao it sucks they did that, but it WAS a lil overpowered, it never lasted very long, maybe 10 seconds at the most, but it was enough for me to win 10 arena games back to back to back with my blood dk's in crappy gear lol, jsut pop all your defensive cooldowns get some runepower and BOOM army time wrecked house lol

[Multibocks]

awesome lol, I'm glad someone was able to get some exploitation out of them =)

I bet the other arena teams just stared at their screen after dying not knowing whether to laugh or cry =)