Deathknight Frost Presc. VS Unholy + Obliterate vs no Obliterate

[Negativ1337]

Hey guys,

I have tried some things on the dps dummy. I have noticed that not using obliterate, while using unholy prescense give me the most damage on my toons. Would it be better to use frost precense anyway for HB to hit for more? Or lose some DPS and use obliterate anyways?

I could see that Obliterate would crit more often for higher damage, for more burst, but having lower dps. I am not so sure about what would be the best.

My dps macro is:
Press:
Howling Blast
Frost Strike
Frost Strike
Blood Strike
Dark Simulacrum
Necrotic Strike
Pillar of Frost

Release:
Howling Blast
Trinkets + Blood Fury (Orc Racial)

I've got Mind Freeze and Hungering Cold on round-robin.

I've also been thinking about getting Icy Touch / Chains of Ice in my rotation, but this would reduce the times that i cast Howling Blast.

Would love to hear suggestions.

Kind regards,

Negativ1337

(This is PvP/Arena wise, not PvE)

[Multibocks]

As I understand it, in PVP DKs always run in unholy unless they are getting focused and then they switch to blood. Unholy gives ridiculous rune regen and attack speed.

[ghonosyph]

i've got a total of 4 2-step dps keys that i use for arena/bgs.

the first looks a lot like yours, howling blast, necrotic strike, blood strike, trinkets. Also warstomp on a 10 sec round robin, and mindfreeze on a 2.5 second round robin. this is my standard go to spam key.

the second is my ohshit cooldowns dps key. It looks like this:

Chains of ice on round robin, every 5 seconds a differnt one casts, to avoid diminishing returns and to help stay on target. Icebound fortitude, lichborne, antimagic shell, summon ghoul, and death pact(to sac ghoul for health) at the end of this key is a few casts of target=self deathcoil, so that when you're undead via lichborne you get a buncha self healing.

third key is my "OMFG JUST DIE" healer killer key. it looks like this, and is usually used to burst someone down at the start of arenas, generally priests and mages... fuckin mages >.< lol The first four spells i want to fire off are 2 obliterates, 2 blood strikes, and then i want to be firing off necrotic strikes en mass so the first 4 keys in this two step should be a macro cast sequence on 4 buttons that does this
/castsequence reset=target/combat obliterate, obliterate, blood strike, blood strike, blood tap, necrotic strike, empower rune weapon, Howling blast, necrotic strike, necrotic strike, necrotic strike, howling blast, necrotic strike

what that will give us is a HUGE big burst to start with. diseases, then blood taps, for a free necrotic strike, then empower rune weapon to give us all our runes back. From there in the two step we want to call 4 necrotic strikes back to back, frost strikes, and 2 howling blast shots. this utilizes our death runes, any howling blast rime procs, and re-snares our target. If you wanted to get fancy you could sub in one slot on each of your toons instead of four necro strikes you could go 3 and strangulate on round robin to chain silence someone in the midst of your mind freezes. I have a separate key for that however.

what this will look like on your bars is this, in numerical order using 1 2 3 4 5 6, replaced with whatever 6 buttons you would use.

1. obliterate/bloodstrike macro
2. obliterate/bloodstrike macro
3. obliterate/bloodstrike macro.
4. frost strike
5. insert trinket or silence round robin or whatever in the last slot... i usually call outbreak on this slot but there's other stuff you can do here as well
6. i leave it up to you, i like to put obliterate here, and howling blast on occasion too. This usually gets used for the free cast procs from rime and the other talent.

Spamming this single target key, will work through that first macro over and over, calling everything in order. Its a HUGE burst but i dont generally spam the key, it doesnt snare everyone right away, but it is highly effective for death gripping in someone and bursting them down at the start of an arena or for open world pvp. lol


My fourth dps 2step key is a combination of obliterate spam and cc's, with lots of disease application/spreading and round robin on hungering cold every few seconds. You've probably already got a key like this tho

starts with a cast sequence
1 /castsequence reset=combat icy touch, plaguestrike, pestilence, obliterate, blood strike, obliterate, obliterate, obliterate
2 obliterate
3 hunger cold round robin
4 frost strike
5 necrotic strike
6 outbreak/trinkets

[Negativ1337]

Thanks a lot for your post!

third key is my "OMFG JUST DIE" healer killer key. it looks like this, and is usually used to burst someone down at the start of arenas, generally priests and mages... fuckin mages >.< lol The first four spells i want to fire off are 2 obliterates, 2 blood strikes, and then i want to be firing off necrotic strikes en mass so the first 4 keys in this two step should be a macro cast sequence on 4 buttons that does this
/castsequence reset=target/combat obliterate, obliterate, blood strike, blood strike, blood tap, necrotic strike, empower rune weapon, Howling blast, necrotic strike, necrotic strike, necrotic strike, howling blast, necrotic strike

I'm going to try thisone out

I have a question, how can you put keys on round robin inside a castsequence/dps spam key?


Kind regards,

Negativ1337

[ghonosyph]

Make a round robin keymap for the spell you want, then on your dps key map add a do mapped key action and call the round robin keymap within

[Negativ1337]

Thanks a lot! Sounds like you have a lot of experience, whats your rating in 5v5 and what realm/characters do you play?


Kind regards,

Negativ1337

[ghonosyph]

Lol I've got all of wotlk on my dks as far as experience goes I'm probably the single best dk player on my realm azgalor, tho I don't raid anymore and that's what people use to judge skill these days.

My 5s team is horrid atm, I have no real rating atm as I'm only just stepping in to arena this season and I'm vastly undergeared. But I do know dk theory quite a bit lol

Play on azgalor server horde side
Moocrewa c d x and palinnu, my paladin.

[Ualaa]

Chains of ice on round robin, every 5 seconds a differnt one casts, to avoid diminishing returns and to help stay on target.

Got a question specifically to this quote.

I've always been under the impression, Diminishing Returns is based on effects which the target is subject to, not to one specific character subjecting the target to whatever.

As in, anyone pvp snares/fears/whatever you, you are subject to the maximum 8 second effect.
If within the same diminishing returns window, the same effect lands on you (from anyone), you now can be affected for 4 seconds.
And so on...

If you have a five warlock team.
You cannot chain fear a single target.
With one fear from:
- Warlock A... 8 seconds.
- Warlock B... 8 seconds.
- Warlock C... 8 seconds.
- Warlock D... 8 seconds.
- Warlock E... 8 seconds.
Which if diminishing returns were based on the same caster only, would mean you are out of the first warlocks 30 second diminishing return window and he could fear you for another full duration fear.
Pretty sure that's not how it works.

[ghonosyph]

Its combined ualaa. If i chains of ice off just one character and then another, the second toon still gets affected by DR.

It REALLY doesn't matter which dk does the spam of chains of ice. I just space it out across all the dks via round robin so that the rune usage would be more "even" across the team. Also it helps out for if one dk is cc'd or dead.

It's not really intuitive for that tho, i just prefer to keep the rune usage spread out. Its not really even needed in the spam if you're to keep spamming howling blast, HOWEVER...

I've found that there are a few instances where i can draw out a pvp trinket use from a healer with it in arenas, which lets me set up for a big hungering cold/single target swap.

[Ualaa]

The rune expenditure makes perfect sense.
And the pressure is always a bonus.
Plus I suppose switching targets, lets the diminishing return timer reset for a target too.

I was questioning my understanding of diminishing returns there for a moment; the round-robin to avoid diminishing returns didn't make sense to me.