Mosg2's DK Manifesto

[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?