Mosg2's DK Manifesto

[zenga]

As 4x frost dk are indeed insane: you can almost lock aoe lock them up forever, and pick them off one by one. Casters being a bitch? Magic shell. Out of range? Deathgrip x4 + hungering cold. They get out? Apply next one. If you are Belf you even have arcane torrent ...

hungering cold -> 10 sec
strangulate - > 5 sec
arcane torrent 2 sec
mind freeze 4 sec

Almost a minute and a half that you can shut them down, should be enough to get a kill off i guess. Tbh I can't really see how 1 or even 2 healers can 'tank' 4 frost dk's boxed. Def. not with necrotic strike.

Currently I'm pvp'ing on my 4th dk (he is 78), and he is a machine both in pvp and pve (4k single target dps vs dummy). My other 3 have been 80 for a while but I only un-shelved them after 4.0.1, and their gear is crap (blue pvp gear). Still they do more than alright vs wrathful geared players. I'll run with a disc priest however, 5x belf for arcane torrent.

My shammies will remain my main team, but the 4 frost + disc priest have some much utility that it's pretty crazy.

[zenga]

Priests, Warlocks and Warriors have AoE fear, which can suck pretty bad.
Thunderstorm, especially staggered but spammed, is basically the same result.
The team will have trinkets against the first effect.
If the Pally is not hit, we have cleanse at least until our DK's run out of range.
We can make fear classes priority targets, but regardless will have to deal with this a lot.

Lichborne protects and can be followed by a self heal. And with a plethora of tricks to shut them up, this seems to be at least on part with rets (that i have never played myself at level 80). I run with a disc priest to have fear ward / disspell and fear myself.

The other concern is Snare and Root effects.
Death Grip, will bring targets to us frequently, which mitigates this to a degree.

... and chains of ice, will prevent them from flying away

What do we have against those rogues who like to Sap one team member, but not engage?

Death & Decay is pretty effective to get them out of stealth. and icebound fortitude makes it damn hard for rogues

[Mercbeast]

Not sure how strong healing is going to be, at 85th.
And that will probably be a key point.

If we have four Necrotic Strikes landing every five seconds.
Or eight every ten seconds, and sustain that.
We're looking at approximately 6k off of every heal or every HoT tick.
A new necrotic strike will almost always overwrite the previous as soon as it is depleted.

While the composition might not have FS/LvB to instantly down someone.
It does have a lot of DPS pressure and the resistance to heals.
Howling Blast punishes everyone in the area, meaning you can kill large groups at once.
And unlike the level 80 game, even discounting Necrotic Strike, healers won't be able to full heal anyone virtually instantly.
Mana is a finite resource, one of the goals of the expansion; runes on the other hand, cycle at their pace indefinitely and never run out.




My biggest questions for the team are how they deal with the banes of boxing and melee in general.

Priests, Warlocks and Warriors have AoE fear, which can suck pretty bad.
Thunderstorm, especially staggered but spammed, is basically the same result.
The team will have trinkets against the first effect.
If the Pally is not hit, we have cleanse at least until our DK's run out of range.
We can make fear classes priority targets, but regardless will have to deal with this a lot.

The other concern is Snare and Root effects.
Death Grip, will bring targets to us frequently, which mitigates this to a degree.

Will Anti-Magic Shell protect us against the freezing effects of Frost Nova.
How about Entangling Roots/Cyclone, Sheep/Seduction or Frost Trap?

How about an Earthbind Totem or Mages snaring shield.

What do we have against those rogues who like to Sap one team member, but not engage?

I realize single boxers will go down fairly fast.
And with Death Grip, we can bring them into the killing zone often.
But don't like Snare/Roots or Fears as a boxed team, especially as a melee team.

This team has such incredibly front loaded DPS that lichborn and AMS are imo all you need to get that definitive upper hand in a fight. Once cooldowns are blown, the other sides ability to counter your heavy DPS load is essentially spent. By laying your cards out on the table and unloading Lich and or AMS pre-emptively you force their hand. They simply have to react to your DPS spike and hope they don't lose anyone.

In Arenas good teams, really good teams will still pick you apart. I don't think there is really any question about that. However in BGs and mid-tier Arena there is no reason why this team won't be a run-away freight train.

From what I have read, the dynamic of PvP will change in Cata. Fights will be longer, healing will be more critical, yet less effective. From my perspective this is where HB shines. It is a momentum changer. You run into a group and unload 8 HB's in 1s and the other team is in the red, INSTANTLY. This forces them into reactive, defensive play. You now have the impetus of the fight in your hands. By now you have probably gripped their primary healer, silenced him/her and they are dead in another 1s. If this is arena, you've all but one the fight at this point.

The beauty of DK's is as Mosg2 put it I think, reverse mobility. It doesn't matter if they snare or root you. You can still grip them, snare them and keep DPSing, and you can do this several times.

One neat little trick I started playing around with in AB was the chain grip. I'd setup at the Farm, I'd put 3 DK's inside the farm house with LOS out the door to my lead DK. I would wait for allies to roll in, I'd grip a healer to my main DK, and then grip him inside the house were it was instantly silenced and gang banged. The ability to use grip like this, is in my opinion hilarious. You can literally jerk someone well out of range of their friends and or out of LOS long enough that no help is possible. The first person who saw me do it in the BG's thought it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen in WoW.

[tundra622]

about half way through wrath myself and 2 friends rolled dk's and we entered WSG at 58and we ended up camping their graveyard and like you said we chain death-griped this 1 druid around the graveyard we had 1 dk each and it was totally unintentional.
Thanks for reminding me Mercbeast and now im sold on this team

[Mosg2]

Lots of good points brought up regarding the team--And a lot of totally valid points about their weaknesses. I think Mercbeast and Zenga have succintly answered most of them. I'll reiterate and add my point(s):

1. This team epitomizes "Shock and Awe". You use your defensive cooldowns to pre-emptively force the other team to play defensive catchup. With that in mind...

AMS pre-empts Roots/Polys--You can kill anyone, even getting heals, in 6 seconds.
Lichborne/Trinket/Racial/Cleanse pre-empts Fear--Lichborne is enough time to kill two+ people.
Pillar of Frost pre-empts TS/Typhoon--Pillar of Frost is long enough to kill an entire Shaman team
Snares/DG pre-empts Snares--Your snares are equal but you have near-infinite Death Grips.

2. As an arena team I grant that it would be really tough to make Gladiator--But if you drop your healer and just run the 4 DK's I think it's still totally possible. Virtually zero incoming healing on a target coupled with MASSIVE AE damage is insane, especially if the primary dps target is their healer. Shock and Awe baby.

3. Sure, for rated BG's eventually everyone will get same gear and weapons that are just a hair worse than Gladiator-tier weapons. This is just a team that, to me, is a blast to play and is terribly effective in BG's. This coupled with point 4 makes them my favorite team

4. By running the healer main and 4 plate classes that are capable of tanking, literally any PvE content is doable. You can offspec as many guys as you want into the tanking tree. With no enrage timers your worst case scenario is 4x Blood DK's chewing through a boss in 10 minutes

Overall I'm concerned about the same things you guys are--I'm just optimistic that this team has the varied tools to be super effective--There's no ability that this team doesn't have a counter for (I forgot about Pillar of Frost on the video). One last thing I want to stress is that 4 Death Grips is insane considering you get a free one every time you kill someone AND you don't "lose" one when the target is immune due to cooldowns.

[Mosg2]

Edit: I will do my best once I get off work tonight to stream some BG's and then save them on JTV so that people can go back to look at them. If I get it done I'll post in the Movies forums and provide a link in this thread.

[zenga]

On an added note: I'm still unsure about the best frost spec, not to mention dw vs 2H. I don't have any high weapons to test it now. My lvl 78 does 800 more dps with a 2H. Would be good to see some data about lvl 85.

[Mosg2]

At 80 I can say it's no choice--The best DPS for DW is in Frost Presence and 2h in Unholy--I'll take the 1 second GCD's and 15% run speed in a heartbeat.

[Shodokan]

On an added note: I'm still unsure about the best frost spec, not to mention dw vs 2H. I don't have any high weapons to test it now. My lvl 78 does 800 more dps with a 2H. Would be good to see some data about lvl 85.

More runic power (from 2h weapon strikes) = more runes = more burst

[BrothelMeister]

I like the looks of this team, I'm just pissed that I only just got my DK + 4 Rets to 80 a few days ago :X

I see your point about how Necrotic Strikes will reduce incoming healing, but since we expect this to get nerfed (I'd wager a guess that it will stop stacking between DKs, or have diminishing Returns like a CC) what kind of burst will you have? My DK + 4 Rets are actully not even as geared as your team, but when I pop Avenging Wrath, it's still a 1 hit kill with the Hammer on targets that are pretty geared, and Avenging Wrath lasts long enough to get 3 kills.

Basically this team trades Burst for Pressure, but I wonder if that might be too much. Keep us posted !