Hight Five: 2000 DK+4 Rets

[Firstcow]

Firstcow, do you arena with your dk as the blood or unholy spec? I'm having trouble with my DK spec and he does terrible damage but it's somewhat similar to your blood spec. Do you find bloodworms very helpful?
what spell rotation do you use on your dk?
and grats by the way

The only thing that matters for the DK is Abomination's Might, Imp Icy Talons, and Imp Rune Tap. Everything else get whatever you want. And no, the DK is not there for DPS, DKs dps sucks unless you have like a lot of arpen like warriors. And you need to be unholy or something.
Not sure about the bloodworms but I do get focused a lot in arena so basically the DK's role is to be a tank and to control with chains and deathgrip and silence.

[BrothelMeister]

Wouldn't the 264 trinket from Frost Badges be better than the Darkmoon card? The haste and AP would still scale with the DK's buff.

[ghonosyph]

Darkmoone card death is extremely strong in arena as the silly amount of burst it procs can often mean the death of a target, steady attacks won't really often happen in arena and as such the 264 trinket will be pretty bad based on the fact that more often then not you're going to not have a fully stacked buff

[BrothelMeister]

Well with that being the case, the 245 badge trinket with: equip: 128 hit, use: 1024 AP

seems like a real winner.

more bursty, and it means u get to stack crit on your back and neck instead of hit.

Also, since judging from your match reports, the DK puts out only half the damage of the rets, why do you even gem strength on him instead of strength+stam or straight stam? By changing reds to purples, and a few of your enchants around, you could get over 2400 more hp on him, (with kings up)

[remanz]

Well with that being the case, the 245 badge trinket with: equip: 128 hit, use: 1024 AP

seems like a real winner.

more bursty, and it means u get to stack crit on your back and neck instead of hit.

Nah~ 1024 AP x 20 seconds vs 1750-2250 Shadow Damage. 20 second is a long long time. You would always want to take the frontal burst. Plus shadow damage doesn't get migrated by armor.

If you got cash, Darkmoon is the way to go. Otherwise, Mark_of_Supremacy is the 2nd choice.

[Firstcow]

Nah~ 1024 AP x 20 seconds vs 1750-2250 Shadow Damage. 20 second is a long long time. You would always want to take the frontal burst. Plus shadow damage doesn't get migrated by armor.

If you got cash, Darkmoon is the way to go. Otherwise, Mark_of_Supremacy is the 2nd choice.

I'm not using darkmoon death, i'm using darkmoon greatness. 15 seconds of 300 more str is way bigger than one hit that does 2k*4=8k dmg. That one hit is wasted if it goes on a target that is protected in any way from dmg.
Given this reasoning, the 1024 AP trinket is even better than the darkmoon greatness, but the only issue I have with it is the long 2 min cooldown, versus 45 sec cooldown on the greatness card.

[Firstcow]

Well with that being the case, the 245 badge trinket with: equip: 128 hit, use: 1024 AP

seems like a real winner.

more bursty, and it means u get to stack crit on your back and neck instead of hit.

Also, since judging from your match reports, the DK puts out only half the damage of the rets, why do you even gem strength on him instead of strength+stam or straight stam? By changing reds to purples, and a few of your enchants around, you could get over 2400 more hp on him, (with kings up)

Which is what I just did last night. I changed all the str+res gems on the DK to res+sta gems because really the DK is not there for DPS and he needs to survive at all cost.

As far as the darkmoon card: greatness this one procs for 15 seconds and then for the next 30 seconds is on CD. Then another 15 seconds it procs again and so on. The trinket with 1024 AP procs only once every 2 mins for 20 seconds and a match doesn't last that long usually. So the trinket gives me one opportunity to use it a match, the darkmoon card has 2-3 chances to proc a match because a match lasts more than 45 seconds but less than 2 mins.

It's true that the difference is quite big from 600 AP to 1024 AP.

If I could guarantee a kill by procing wings and the 1024 Ap trinket then this would work.

Good idea, I'm going to give it a try. Keep the ideas coming my way

Thanks!

[Firstcow]

Well with that being the case, the 245 badge trinket with: equip: 128 hit, use: 1024 AP

seems like a real winner.

more bursty, and it means u get to stack crit on your back and neck instead of hit.

Also, since judging from your match reports, the DK puts out only half the damage of the rets, why do you even gem strength on him instead of strength+stam or straight stam? By changing reds to purples, and a few of your enchants around, you could get over 2400 more hp on him, (with kings up)

I did testing and the 245 badge trinket is only slightly better than the darkmoon card greatness so i'm going back to greatness.

[remanz]

How is 1024 AP x 20 second (let'say 10 hits, counting special attacks) better than 2k dmg 1 hit ? This 1 hit gets migrated, but those hits don't ? If anything, you be lucky to land those hits within that period.

Worry about dmg getting migrated (absorbed) for the darkmoon death case where landing 10 hits are certainly tougher. (you get feared, slowed, CCed)

roughly, 14AP = 1 DPS , so (1024 / 14) x 3.6 (weapon speed) = 264 per hit

now let's say you hit him 10 times, it is merely 264 x 10 = 2640 dmg added.

The number of hit times might be off , but 264 per hit is really not that attractive.



If anything, http://www.wowhead.com/item=40371#dropped-by is better

[Firstcow]

How is 1024 AP x 20 second (let'say 10 hits, counting special attacks) better than 2k dmg 1 hit ? This 1 hit gets migrated, but those hits don't ? If anything, you be lucky to land those hits within that period.

Worry about dmg getting migrated (absorbed) for the darkmoon death case where landing 10 hits are certainly tougher. (you get feared, slowed, CCed)

roughly, 14AP = 1 DPS , so (1024 / 14) x 3.6 (weapon speed) = 264 per hit

now let's say you hit him 10 times, it is merely 264 x 10 = 2640 dmg added.

The number of hit times might be off , but 264 per hit is really not that attractive.



If anything, http://www.wowhead.com/item=40371#dropped-by is better

That one time 2k hit is only better if it lands and I also get a kill at that time. If I miss the kill it's wasted, but during the 15 seconds of extra dmg from darkmoon card I can have the opportunity to land a different kill which is what usually happens in most of my arena games. I rarely land a kill by one shotting on the first charge.

In theory you are right, in practice it doesn't work. Imagine mage iceblocking, hunter deterence, pally bubble, priest pain supp, etc During those no matter what you hit them with they dont die. But once those effects are gone, they will probably die in the rest of seconds while the proc from darkmoon is still up, or at least there is a chance.