4x DK

[paranoidd]

Hey just curious to know why people dont do 4x dk for pvp, i been trying to find a new comp to make for cata and i cant find any flaws in this one, so input?

[Shodokan]

The reason is that well... they don't do enough damage fast enough even in the greatest PVP gear. Very limited AOE attacks, very limited cooldowns. In cata they will improve BUT the thing about them is that they will require lots of micro management especially with all the procs you will need to deal with.

Procs to deal with
Obliterate to trigger free howling blast (45%)
Runic power from auto-attack (45%)
Killing Machine (frost strike etc insta crit)
Frost strike replenishing one random rune (45%)
Death coil replenishing one random rune (45%)
Free death coil (15% from auto attacks)
Pet energy, amount of death coils used for pet infusion.
Keeping track of death runes (as they can even replen with the 45%)

IMO its a nightmare to deal with any TWO of those combined... let alone playing 4 frost DK's. As both frost and unholy there is NEVER a time you aren't pressing a button it seems. DK is going to require a lot of skill to play well IMO. They do a shitload of damage (in mediocre gear my frost strike crits for 12k, same with howling blast and oblit) So in a few globals you can obliterate someone very easily as a DK (pun intended) but to use them effectively it will require a lot of skill. Same as paladins.

[zenga]

I play now 3 dk's unholy dk's purely in BG's, leading from my pally that is using a pvp prot spec, with a disc priest as the healer. I use 8 buttons on my mouse, along with a G11 keyboard, G13 and a tripple footpedal, and I can tell you that about every available button is used to control them.

They have the blue level crafter pvp gear, a 200 crafted 2 hander and berserker + med. of horde trinket. My plan was to gear them up through last AV weekend, but I kinda shelved them after a few hours to gear up my 5th shaman. I find it incredibly hard to master this new setup in conjunction with my pally & priest.

The amount of tools available is huge, but to use them in the proper situation is kinda ... hard. I'll probably have to start macro'ing more situational sequences, but for pvp thats not optimal. However the survivability from this team is awesome.

I disagree with shodokan, the game is not always about being rambo and trying to kill stuff fast. There are many situations where 'average' damage and using other tools properly is more beneficial. Pvp is not limited to arena. That being said: even well geared players die relatively fast when they get deathgripped in from this team.

Long story short: the potential is huge, but mastering it like i do with my shamans is gonna take me a while, but that is also partially due to the fact that i've never played a dk solo.

This is for wotlk btw.

[Boylston]

Sometimes having too many tools to use situationally is paralyzing or ineffective.

One of the reasons DX+4xRets worked so well in WotLK is that it had a very simple DPS rotation and you could focus your attention on using fewer, but more powerful, tools.

[Fat Tire]

I play now 3 dk's unholy dk's purely in BG's, leading from my pally that is using a pvp prot spec, with a disc priest as the healer. I use 8 buttons on my mouse, along with a G11 keyboard, G13 and a tripple footpedal, and I can tell you that about every available button is used to control them.

They have the blue level crafter pvp gear, a 200 crafted 2 hander and berserker + med. of horde trinket. My plan was to gear them up through last AV weekend, but I kinda shelved them after a few hours to gear up my 5th shaman. I find it incredibly hard to master this new setup in conjunction with my pally & priest.

The amount of tools available is huge, but to use them in the proper situation is kinda ... hard. I'll probably have to start macro'ing more situational sequences, but for pvp thats not optimal. However the survivability from this team is awesome.

I disagree with shodokan, the game is not always about being rambo and trying to kill stuff fast. There are many situations where 'average' damage and using other tools properly is more beneficial. Pvp is not limited to arena. That being said: even well geared players die relatively fast when they get deathgripped in from this team.

Long story short: the potential is huge, but mastering it like i do with my shamans is gonna take me a while, but that is also partially due to the fact that i've never played a dk solo.

This is for wotlk btw.

I lol'd at that bolded part.

Shodokan never said anything about rambo in his post and also he also posted IMO twice- You cant disagree with an IMO. derp

[Fat Tire]

Sometimes having too many tools to use situationally is paralyzing or ineffective.

One of the reasons DX+4xRets worked so well in WotLK is that it had a very simple DPS rotation and you could focus your attention on using fewer, but more powerful, tools.

So true-

One could argue that since none of us really were given to ability to reverse engineer the dk-ret comp that no one has been able to reach the fully desired results when trying to replicate it.

[Shodokan]

I play now 3 dk's unholy dk's purely in BG's, leading from my pally that is using a pvp prot spec, with a disc priest as the healer. I use 8 buttons on my mouse, along with a G11 keyboard, G13 and a tripple footpedal, and I can tell you that about every available button is used to control them.

They have the blue level crafter pvp gear, a 200 crafted 2 hander and berserker + med. of horde trinket. My plan was to gear them up through last AV weekend, but I kinda shelved them after a few hours to gear up my 5th shaman. I find it incredibly hard to master this new setup in conjunction with my pally & priest.

The amount of tools available is huge, but to use them in the proper situation is kinda ... hard. I'll probably have to start macro'ing more situational sequences, but for pvp thats not optimal. However the survivability from this team is awesome.

I disagree with shodokan, the game is not always about being rambo and trying to kill stuff fast. There are many situations where 'average' damage and using other tools properly is more beneficial. Pvp is not limited to arena. That being said: even well geared players die relatively fast when they get deathgripped in from this team.

Long story short: the potential is huge, but mastering it like i do with my shamans is gonna take me a while, but that is also partially due to the fact that i've never played a dk solo.

This is for wotlk btw.

Survival can be key, but "average" damage can be out-healed. Maybe not so much in cata when people go oom. But i certainly do not think ramboing it is the way to go unless you are DK/Ret then you have no choice really. But as a pure melee team you can't afford to turtle and be super defensive...sure you might win with that strat a few times but with the loss of death strike being a good source of healing in cata unless you are blood spec then you can't really rely on self healing and survivability.

[ghonosyph]

tbh i think the 4 dk + backup healer played by another MIGHT be good enough, 4 pets and teh sheer amount of control /burst you can pull with dks(EVEN at range) is kinda high, even tho the dmg seems low. Plus with dispell resistances and dispell = resource gain mechanics in place, and with dispells costing as much as they do now, we might see a huge dk surge... that's debatable tho. I'm leveling up a fourth dk just so i can pair him up with my other 3. Same problems i see abound for all melee teams now tho, EASILY kited, ranged classes can hit from EVEN FARTHER away, and lack of good defensive spells just as bad as ret imo. I guess a team like this would be good in bgs but i can see hunter mage mage locking down a whole 5 man team of dks till the hunter kills you all, even with dg and silences.

Ranged classes have INSANE dmg and range, and to be honest most every melee group(either boxed or solo played) is getting rofflestomped every time. Even good players in full wrathful + shadowmournes are getting rolled by ranged classes. I've seen some crazy things lately lol. I dueld a frost mage 43 times the other night, blowing every cooldown i could trying EVERYTHING i could even los pillar humping and i never got him even below 90%... EVER. No matter what we tried he just frostbolt kite me, blinked, ice novas frost novas, rooted me slowed me. i only ever got into melee range blowing a stun or repentance, and the mage just lol'd and iceblocked or blinked... every time. I'm no bad player, and albeit theres lots of new mechanics at work but even against druids/shaman/shadow priests/locks/omghunters... theres literally ZERO chance that at current dmg levels for our poor pallys we're gonna be busting anyone... dks have SOME burst potential, but they're in the same boat imo... its looking like cataclsym spells DOOM for melee and casters will be on the pedastal once again. 5 shammy is looking a lot sweeter, and i'm mad i never leveld any >.< oh well my 5 druid team is almost 80 2 more levels to go! >.<

[Shodokan]

tbh i think the 4 dk + backup healer played by another MIGHT be good enough, 4 pets and teh sheer amount of control /burst you can pull with dks(EVEN at range) is kinda high, even tho the dmg seems low. Plus with dispell resistances and dispell = resource gain mechanics in place, and with dispells costing as much as they do now, we might see a huge dk surge... that's debatable tho. I'm leveling up a fourth dk just so i can pair him up with my other 3. Same problems i see abound for all melee teams now tho, EASILY kited, ranged classes can hit from EVEN FARTHER away, and lack of good defensive spells just as bad as ret imo. I guess a team like this would be good in bgs but i can see hunter mage mage locking down a whole 5 man team of dks till the hunter kills you all, even with dg and silences.

Ranged classes have INSANE dmg and range, and to be honest most every melee group(either boxed or solo played) is getting rofflestomped every time. Even good players in full wrathful + shadowmournes are getting rolled by ranged classes. I've seen some crazy things lately lol. I dueld a frost mage 43 times the other night, blowing every cooldown i could trying EVERYTHING i could even los pillar humping and i never got him even below 90%... EVER. No matter what we tried he just frostbolt kite me, blinked, ice novas frost novas, rooted me slowed me. i only ever got into melee range blowing a stun or repentance, and the mage just lol'd and iceblocked or blinked... every time. I'm no bad player, and albeit theres lots of new mechanics at work but even against druids/shaman/shadow priests/locks/omghunters... theres literally ZERO chance that at current dmg levels for our poor pallys we're gonna be busting anyone... dks have SOME burst potential, but they're in the same boat imo... its looking like cataclsym spells DOOM for melee and casters will be on the pedastal once again. 5 shammy is looking a lot sweeter, and i'm mad i never leveld any >.< oh well my 5 druid team is almost 80 2 more levels to go! >.<

Dks are better than paladins... thats for damn sure after the change to the mastery effected ret so hard.... 20k crit from howling blast? yes please.

[Mosg2]

I'm leveling my DK's for Cata as a possible replacement for my DK+Rets team. My thoughts in logical order:

1. Unless things change drastically, no melee class can *effectively* heal while melee'ing. Paladins can Word of Glory but you're giving up a lot of damage. Shaman require 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon so it takes awhile to get there. If you can't heal, then you need defensive cooldowns/passives...

2. Rets lost a lot of defensive abilities with Cata whereas DK's maintained/gained defensive cooldowns. None of the other melee classes is even close to either one defensively.

3. DK's gained a lot of burst damage and made gains on already-impressive AE damage via diseases spread with Pestilence.

So basically it comes down to whether or not Paladins can effectively melee while HoG'ing their team. Once 4.0 goes live we'll have 2-4 weeks to try it out and see if mechanically it'll function. If it does, I'm going ahead with the DK+Rets. If it sucks I'm going with the DK's.

As an aside... Necrotic Strike is going to be insane boxing. Stopping ALL healing on a target is going to just be... Insane. Insane.