Mosg2's DK Manifesto

[Fat Tire]

I agree its a strange thing for DKs to have to gem for but in reality it is only frost DKs that gem for it and more specifically multiboxing DKs because we don't use obliterate in our rotations.

I play unholy, always have and I have always used atleast 150+ SP. What I was refering to in my post was that wars/rogues as melee dont have to waste gem/chant slots on SP like Enh/DK do. Granted I only play 1 DK, boxing with another melee so ymmv boxing 4/5.

[Noids]

Not only do wars.rogues not have to worry about SP though, our holy counterparts the ret pally do not need to worry as there is no holy resistance

I've only really played DKs in PvP since cata (not including the occasional run of leading my 4 shams with an unholy DK in LK :P) so I'm new to the whole spell pen thing. How much of your damage in PvP is done by death coil and diseases? Is the shadow portion of SS affected by spell pen? Considering how awesome strength is for unholy (ie. more valuable than hit even before cap) I would've thought it'd be better to grab it whenever possible? Obviously the cloak chant is a no brainer as there isn't a str one, but surely you should gem str over spell pen regardless of cap?

[Mosg2]

If you go to Arenajunkies they all state that getting ~200 spell pen is more important than any other stat first.

[Noids]

I can see that but they also recomend getting to the hit cap prior to getting to spell pen "cap".

Looking at the elitisjerks website however strength is actually more valuable than hit even before being capped. I realise EJ is a PvE website, but as such there is actually some fairly detailed calculations behind their recommendations as opposed to what I can see on AJ.

The same article recommending the spell pen also refers to vicious gladiator as viscous gladiator :P

Honestly, I don't know for sure, I am just throwing the possibility out there for consideration that considering it is such an annoying stat to gem for, it would be nice to quantify if it is actually worth it.

[Mosg2]

+70 enchant to cloak and then some +50 gems. It's even easier if you're a JC.

[outdrsyguy1]

the spell pen thing hit home with me when I was on my priest and noticed that the shadow resist buff gave me a 24% reduction in shadow damage done to me. Then applying the same principle to frost damage I do to others, it's a no brainer since such a huge component of a frost dk's damage is frost. The loss of a measly amount of strength to negate the spell resistance is well worth it imo.
I'm still on the fence about hit though, I probably should cap it for pvp but i'm undecided. hate to lose all the extra str gems.

[Mosg2]

Well, the "best" thing to do in my opinion is to be a Jewelcrafter. +70 pen to cloak, one +84 JC gem and one +50 gem. Then all the rest of your gem slots are +strength and you reforge all that shitty expertise and crit until you get the +hit cap.

I have heard and I believe I read somewhere that currently it's even better to ignore +10str gem slot bonuses in favor of the pure +str gems rather than use the hybrid gems--IE, 30 strength and 20 haste/hit/crit is worth less DPS than 40str in EVERY case. I can't find the post I saw that at though, so take it with a grain of salt.

[Noids]

the spell pen thing hit home with me when I was on my priest and noticed that the shadow resist buff gave me a 24% reduction in shadow damage done to me. Then applying the same principle to frost damage I do to others, it's a no brainer since such a huge component of a frost dk's damage is frost. The loss of a measly amount of strength to negate the spell resistance is well worth it imo.
I'm still on the fence about hit though, I probably should cap it for pvp but i'm undecided. hate to lose all the extra str gems.

Not arguing with it for frost as strength is not such a winner as it is for unholy and as you say spell damage is also a greater proportion.

Saying that having the number of 24% from 195 resist gives us something to work with. This means each point of spell pen gives 0.12% of increased spell damage. So a 50 SP gem will give a 6.15% bonus to spell damage which for DKs at a very conservative estimate is 3% total dps increase. Considering it costs 120 hit rating to get 1% melee hit, SP is clearly better. Now using the EJ comparison between hit and str, even if str were twice as good (it is not) SP is still at least 7 times as good.

Back to Mosg's idea about the 400 resist trink idea then with numbers. If you are already running resist auras then the 400 will give you approx 50% DR against spell damage. If you aren't and assuming all casters are running 195 SP then its more like 25-26%

[Noids]

Well, the "best" thing to do in my opinion is to be a Jewelcrafter. +70 pen to cloak, one +84 JC gem and one +50 gem. Then all the rest of your gem slots are +strength and you reforge all that shitty expertise and crit until you get the +hit cap.

I have heard and I believe I read somewhere that currently it's even better to ignore +10str gem slot bonuses in favor of the pure +str gems rather than use the hybrid gems--IE, 30 strength and 20 haste/hit/crit is worth less DPS than 40str in EVERY case. I can't find the post I saw that at though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Yeah, EJ says, go for pure strength unless you get a 20str bonus from a single slot or 30 from a double. AFAIK these bonuses don't exist.

[thedreameater]

What I've done is:

1. Melee toons into a Melee ATG.
2. Mapped key, that sends IWT Keybind to the Current Window only.
3. Added a "Do Mapped Key", to my spam DPS that does this IWT mapped key, for all members of my Melee ATG.
4. Created another mapped key, two steps that enables/disables the inserted Do Mapped Key.

When #4 is on, I press my spam DPS key.
It does FTL Assist, Calls the IWT but only for the melee toons, and sends the DPS Key to all windows.

When #4 is off, I press my spam DPS key.
It does FTL Assist, Cannot call the IWT for melee toons as that mapped key is disabled, and still sends the DPS Key to all windows.

The reasoning for my setup like that, I spam the same key irregardless.
But can control whether the DPS swarm (IWT Spam) or not, via the toggle.



The scattering is because the mob is dead, but they're still moving towards it.
You could spam slower; I sometimes hit my normal follow key to end the IWT movement, and then IWT once and wait until the toons are in range and then spam away.
Or if swarming is desired behavior then IWT something else, click back on the mob/horde and IWT spam now from a distance so they'll swarm as they arrive.

Got it - my IWT set up was flawed. I was using an IWT I set up a while back that toggled click to move on and off. Deleting that IWT with a new one (which assists current window in the first step, then send the IWT keybind (in game = END) just like a regular DPS keybind) worked.

Now, I need to figure out how to stop my toons from prioritizing corpses or each other when attacking.

I pull 4 mobs. One goes down, but they toons will never switch to the next mob (this doesn't happen with my ranged shaman). I click TAB to cycle to the next mob, it cycles for a second THEN GOES BACK TO THE DEAD MOB! I will wait a second or two before spamming attack again, but it always goes back to the dead mob. My current window is my pally tank (not in the melee ATG). Why is this happening and how do I prevent it?