Theory Crafting: x4 DK + 1

[daanji]

I've been looking at specs and trying different configurations to min/max the team for damage output and survivability.




1. Scarlet Fever

I've been thinking about using this spec for one of the DKs. With 2/2 Scarlet Fever, it reduces all melee damage by 10%. That should reduce the pressure on our team for our healer a bit.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jchrZGzRrfzRdbu

This of course requires Blood Plague to be on the target. To control, this I"ve created the following castsequence
and added it to this single DKs spam keys.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=21 Horn of Winter, Plague Strike, Pestilence

What this will do is cast Horn of Winter first, then Plague Strike to apply Blood Plague and Scarlet fever. Pestilence is used to spread it to the rest of the opposing team.

Since Horn of Winter is on a 20 second cool down, it will block until for the next 20 seconds (during which time we will do Necrotic Strikes). This is ideal since Blood Plague lasts for 21 seconds.

Thoughts? We are giving up too much to do this? A 10% damage reduction against melee cleaves could be nice.


2. Butchery

I've also been toying with the idea of speccing into Butchery
Butchery 2/2
Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate up to 20 Runic Power. In addition, you generate 2 Runic Power per 5 sec while in combat.

On the surface, this doesn't look so good. However, it procs whenever you kill the following

Pets
Shadow Apparitions (5 health)
Minions

Just imagine the opposing team has a shadow priest that is spawning a ton of Shadowy Apparitions. They will easily die to our AoE and grant us free Runic Power

3. Scent of Blood

I've also considered Scent of Blood.

Scent of Blood 3/3
You have a 15% chance after dodging, parrying or taking direct damage to gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 3 melee hits to generate 10 Runic Power.

This would give us a ton of extra Runic Power.

With more runic power from #2 and #3, we can Frost Strike more which will reset our runes more often.


However, we do sacrifice some tasty talents such as Unholy Command and Hand of Doom.

Though, in my experience this team is a 1-minute team. If we fail to kill someone in the first mine, it is almost always going to be a loss. So if we can maximize our burst and sustained damage perhaps we can kill more reliably.

[remanz]

Though, in my experience this team is a 1-minute team. If we fail to kill someone in the first mine, it is almost always going to be a loss. So if we can maximize our burst and sustained damage perhaps we can kill more reliably.

You said yourself. 1min team. Its all out offense or die trying. Don't really need the tank talents.

10% melee damage deduction is not needed as your DKs don't lose to melee cleaves. You are the best cleaves in the game. Unless the other side got 4 warriors or something.

Other blood talents, they are not a game changer but probably not as good as reduce CD on death grip and + disease damage.

[Shodokan]

I like the scent for blood as it gives me more frost strikes which is more offense. I won over 20 games in a row after switching to a spec with 3/3 into that against teams i was having problems with before with decent AOE damage.

[daanji]

I like the scent for blood as it gives me more frost strikes which is more offense. I won over 20 games in a row after switching to a spec with 3/3 into that against teams i was having problems with before with decent AOE damage.

That is what I was thinking too. Combined that with Butchery...more Frost strike, more offense.
I'll try different specs and see if my dps increases at all.


Does anyone know if Death Grip resets when you get a killing blow on Shadowy Apparitions?
Might be a nice tactic to try - target apparitions kill them to get a Death Grip Reset.


Also, what is everyone's thoughts on Virulence (30% disease increase), it could add a bit more pressure but doesn't do a lot of damage.

[Kruschpakx4]

You are the best cleaves in the game. Unless the other side got 4 warriors or something.

NOT FUNNY http://eu.battle.net/wow/de/arena/st...v5/ulticleave/

[Multibocks]

Did you lose to them?

[Toned]

I use scent of blood

[Kruschpakx4]

Did you lose to them?

no^^ but just saw a few days again there were 8 warriors and a resto shaman in that team

[Noids]

I have lost to a melee cleave team. It was a 2 heals team with 2wars and a frost dk. I could not believe the rate at which my health dropped, even with poh spam. The wars would end each game on 400k damage with the dk on 300. Even the rr hungering cold trick wouldn't work due to ams and blade storm. After the third loss trying a few variations in tactics I switched all dks to blood and didn't see them again.

I recently switched out of virulence and desecration into Blade barrier and hand of doom. This was mainly to get the 1min cool down on strangulate and work with some macros so I can cast strangulate on my focus (healer1) every 5 seconds (on 2dks) and at my target (healer2) every 5 seconds also. I have also built in all of my cool downs into my opening hb spam so I have 10seconds of unccable dps on a healer or caster dps with healers effectively cced.

[Mosg2]

Yeah, I did the same with my DPS key. Getting that initial huge DPS boost from Ghoul, Pillar of Frost, Trinket etc is huge while you have AMS and Lichborne up.