Mosg2's DK Manifesto

[Mosg2]

@BrothelMeister:
Necrotic Strike takes overall more healing to repair than if we used the Unholy runes for OB or some such--Not to mention the whole getting-diseases-on-target stuff. The joy of it is that the DK's damage even without NS is enough to wreck people.

And I think the psychological point is a good one. I find that the other teams healer(s) *MUST* always be casting the fast inefficient heal in order to A) heal the damage and B) wear down the NS stacks. It means that when you do a Strangulatex4@arenatarget1-4 you win. I'm finding healers going OOM in less than 20 seconds.

@Kromtor:
I got your PM but I'm working 16 hour days for the next two days Tomorrow night maybe I'm going to do another Manifesto-type thing and hopefully comment on the issues you brought up.

@All:
This team is the balls.

[wyofiddler]

Mosg2: This thread, and your enthusiasm for this team in general, have me leveling a brand new team that I'm really excited about. Also, I really appreciate how open you and everyone else have been with talking through all the setup details of how to make this team work.

[Mosg2]

@all:
I did some testing on the target dummies tonight and found what I feel are some pretty conclusive results about specs:

1. Unholy single-target is about 6800-7k dps. I was able to get a really good mash button going that would reapply new diseases when I get a new target but otherwise would Scourge Strike and Festering Strike. The DPS spiked to 8k-8300 dps once the pets went enraged but that's not something you're going to see often in BG's and arenas I think.

2. Frost single-target was about 6k-6200 dps. I was able to fine-tune my dps setup and get a great mash button going that was equivalent to hand-running one of them as Frost. This however does NOT take into account the prevented healing from Necrotic Strike. Each NS I do is 6800 healing prevented. I get AT LEAST two per 10 second rotation, usually 3 based due to random rune resets from Frost Strikes. That makes another 13.5-20k "damage" per 10 seconds. Divide that down and you're basically doing 7.5k-8.5k dps on the Frost DK's to a target that's getting healing.

This is with ilevel 333 blue pvp gear and the CoC weapon against a single level 85 heroic dummy.

3. I tried out having one Blood DK/3x Frost and then one Unholy DK/3x Frost to see if the DPS went up across the board. The DPS went down with the Blood DK by a fair bit and it went down by a little bit with the Unholy DK.

4. I was able to work Hungering Cold into my spam button in such a way that I get all four of them usually in the first 15 seconds of combat but usually not all at the same time. It's insane.

5. Profit!

[Mercbeast]

@all:
I did some testing on the target dummies tonight and found what I feel are some pretty conclusive results about specs:

1. Unholy single-target is about 6800-7k dps. I was able to get a really good mash button going that would reapply new diseases when I get a new target but otherwise would Scourge Strike and Festering Strike. The DPS spiked to 8k-8300 dps once the pets went enraged but that's not something you're going to see often in BG's and arenas I think.

2. Frost single-target was about 6k-6200 dps. I was able to fine-tune my dps setup and get a great mash button going that was equivalent to hand-running one of them as Frost. This however does NOT take into account the prevented healing from Necrotic Strike. Each NS I do is 6800 healing prevented. I get AT LEAST two per 10 second rotation, usually 3 based due to random rune resets from Frost Strikes. That makes another 13.5-20k "damage" per 10 seconds. Divide that down and you're basically doing 7.5k-8.5k dps on the Frost DK's to a target that's getting healing.

This is with ilevel 333 blue pvp gear and the CoC weapon against a single level 85 heroic dummy.

3. I tried out having one Blood DK/3x Frost and then one Unholy DK/3x Frost to see if the DPS went up across the board. The DPS went down with the Blood DK by a fair bit and it went down by a little bit with the Unholy DK.

4. I was able to work Hungering Cold into my spam button in such a way that I get all four of them usually in the first 15 seconds of combat but usually not all at the same time. It's insane.

5. Profit!

Pertaining to point 4, do you find you are breaking them with HB's or what? I'd be interested to see your new setup.

Currently I am running HB HB HB NS NS FS BS

I was running HB HB HB FS FS NS BS before. Trying to hit that balance between frost striking and getting NS up early and often.

This is of course referring to the pseudo priority DPS macro you showed us.

[Mercbeast]

Ok, the arena with the elevator is absolutely comedy gold. The other team has almost no chance. I just finished my CQ points for the week and had that one pop up twice. Here is how the second fight went.

I hit blood tap as the elevator took us to the top, I hit lichborne as we reached the top. I tabbed to the shaman in their group.

I quickly unloaded 3 HB's without moving, Shaman is at 20k HP remaining~ hit Empower Rune Weapon, hit 2 more HB's without moving. Shaman dies. I tab to the next target, a warlock running away from me. I grip him and kill him, spin around to see what is left.

Match ends. My opening 15 HB's killed 4 of their team. I almost feel bad, the whole match lasted 7 seconds maybe.

I also ran into a 5 box shaman group named Zappity or something similar. That didn't go well for the shamans, who did pretty much instantly blow up one of my DK's. Once I got into them however, arcane torrent round robin left them helpless. I wonder if Zappity is on these forums.

[Shodokan]

I've been slacking, i need to get my games in but i had stuff going on

[Mosg2]

My current pseudo prioritization is this (Remember the FIRST HB gets pressed on downpress so happens first 90% of the time if there's a Frost rune available):

HB / HB / FS / FS / NS / BS / HC

Yes, they break HC now and then. Yes, sometimes it goes off when nobody else is around. Yes, sometimes they all use them in the first four seconds.

Those are rare occasions.

The reason I have it in the spam button is because, to me, healing is the #1 priority for this team. You *have* to be a good healer to make this team work. Anything I can do to minimize how much effort I have to use maximizing what the DK's do is that much more effort I can spend on healing and positioning. HC in the spam button means it's erratic and really messes with the other team. In the games I played HC frequently hit 2-3 people after all my Frost runes were on CD and then my team went FS/NS happy on a single target. It was amazing.

[BrothelMeister]

Ok, did some target dummy testing and I retract my previous statements suround Obliterate vs NS + HB.

NS + HB does more damage, even if you don't count the debuff from healing, and the debuff from healing is about 60% the damage of the two attacks combined.

Definitely replacing OB with NS on my DK + Rets team.

[Slats]

I'm planning on leveling my Priest up with my DK's simple so if I want to run a dungeon daily I can and having one DK die on my is a PITA.

However I'm curious if anyone is playing this comp in arena/bg's with a priest? Was wondering how mass dispell/power word: barrier would be in these situations.

Also I've been following heaps of the justin.tv stuff and enjoying everyone in EOTS and the newer battlegrounds owning it up. Looks like great fun.

Are you guys just letting you IWT spam? Or are you using some kind of wait xx seconds? I dont see your guys run around insane circles as much as my DK's seem to do.

[Boylston]

Slats, mosg2 has IWT wrapped into his down keypress actions in a PvP key group so that they are constantly IWT-ing. I would imagine his PvE keyset has more of a IWT once type setup.

As for priest, I think mosg2 (and others) are fans of the Paladin because of the bubble advantages. I think they are compelling, honestly. However, I am somewhat like you in that I have a Priest available to run with my fledgling DKs. There is one little thing I keep thinking about that might make the priest interesting.

Holy Spec's Spirit of Redemption. It's 15seconds of mana-free, un-interruptible healing. That's nearly double the length of time that Pally is in his bubble, and it can't be dispelled.

Now, I think the enemy team is going to probably always focus-fire your healer down if you play a priest, but it might be OK if you can have a good length of time to punish them for that effort.

Also, the cooldown on Spirit of Redemption resets, well, every time you die. This means in a BG situation, it becomes more useful if you're defending a node-- when you respawn, it's up again.