debunk DK arena strat

[Ellay]

Love me some theorycrafting.

Ability Soul Reaper, after 5 seconds if target is below 35% hp - BOOM.
Read it can be dispelled. Two things, the glyph that makes diseases undispellable but reduces damage by 30% - work on this?
Place on then place diseases, or mix in with them, causing dispelling to not be worth it.

In the hectic form that is arena's. You've got 5 seconds after placement. In those 5 seconds popping defensive cooldowns so no loss of control of character using Antimagic zone, possibly using 2 would be safe - preventing a large amount of CC.
In total you get 3 globals, possibly 4 with all the haste that DK's have in that 5 second window to drop a target by 65%. 100% is tough but 65%..? that's seems totally doable no?
Weave in a necrotic strike to ensure low heals.

I keep hearing DK's have issues dropping targets but they seem more than able to become unhindered for a good 10 seconds and not be locked down, this seems like a great recipe to close that gap.

Tell me where this fails. I'm really tempted to level up my dk/paladin combo as well - the druid/sham combo is good but they are both oh so tempting.

[djensen2010]

Just do both lol. Burst is getting a little nerf due to blizz reducings stats from trinkets so that may mean bursting a target will be more difficult. Necrotic strikes take death runes now so you would probably have to spec blood tap and make a macro once you have enough blood charges to use blood tap then necro strike. Oblit can crit for up to 120k with cds and diseases on a geared target so killing a target shouldnt be too difficult because if u cant be cc'd and you can keeps target close with death grip there isnt much they can do unless they block, bubble, wall, etc. and yeah, soul reaper isnt worth it because even if you stack diseases, a priest, if they have one, will just mass dispell it.

[Ellay]

Wow.. ya that priest mass dispel sort of kill any kind of mass dots haha.

[Ellay]

although in 5's... the priest would be the first target

[djensen2010]

although in 5's... the priest would be the first target

Really? id be afraid of dispersion unless u just blow em up so fast they dont even know what just happened lol. ive done that a couple times haha

[Ellay]

ya... I really gotta get back into the swing of things and see everyone elses abilities. Only way to do that is to play!

[ebony]

my deathkight's level 89 are getting hammed in bg's, ptr testing did not go to well on deathkights the prob with deathkights they need some good gear to tie them over before u can go all out on a target.

i don't trust ech shams blizzard are hitting high dps classes a lot (unless your a mage)

in 5.2 healing tide prob wont stack (its to strong) its one them spells they can not hot fix i think they hit some off ech spells as well to lower there dps a little more. hell level them but without knowing whats going in 5.2 could be out in feb/match and i can see it going down like the hunters.

[Ualaa]

Haven't done anything at maximum level this expansion.
Doing a lot of the RAF thing...

The last couple of expansions...
Against double healer teams, have DK A & B focus Target One and DK C & D focus Target Two.
Use Gladius to target them and set the focus.
Have DK A & C Strangulate and then DK B & D, so ideally both healers at once.
Strangulate requires facing, and with IWT spam (to stay on target) you're often not facing the right way...
Against double healer teams, win rate maybe 20%.

Against single healer teams...
Go for a DPS without an immunity effect.
Once they lose 1-2 DPS, the match is won.
If they don't lose 1-2 DPS very quickly, the match is lost.
Against single healer teams, win rate around 50%.

I just played the minimum games for points.
Never really tried to raise the rating.

[Shodokan]

Love me some theorycrafting.

Ability Soul Reaper, after 5 seconds if target is below 35% hp - BOOM.
Read it can be dispelled. Two things, the glyph that makes diseases undispellable but reduces damage by 30% - work on this?
Place on then place diseases, or mix in with them, causing dispelling to not be worth it.

In the hectic form that is arena's. You've got 5 seconds after placement. In those 5 seconds popping defensive cooldowns so no loss of control of character using Antimagic zone, possibly using 2 would be safe - preventing a large amount of CC.
In total you get 3 globals, possibly 4 with all the haste that DK's have in that 5 second window to drop a target by 65%. 100% is tough but 65%..? that's seems totally doable no?
Weave in a necrotic strike to ensure low heals.

I keep hearing DK's have issues dropping targets but they seem more than able to become unhindered for a good 10 seconds and not be locked down, this seems like a great recipe to close that gap.

Tell me where this fails. I'm really tempted to level up my dk/paladin combo as well - the druid/sham combo is good but they are both oh so tempting.

Soul reaper is dispellable every time basically and is ultimately useless.
AMZ is pointless as it doesn't stop CC
You are unhindered for 6 seconds, then you have to trinket a ring of frost normally

Essentially the reason that dks are not viable right now is..

Lack of CC (and their CC can be dispeled)
Lack of mobility
After your defensive cooldowns are used offensively you have over a min before you can apply unrelenting pressure once again and are prone to AOE cc during the duration between those times
Their tier 90 talents are mostly useless but in 5's you can get remorseless winter off, their healers will trinket and likely will allow for them to live.
Their burst damage is once per 5 mins otherwise it is just sustained from obliterate and howling blast and in best case scenario you get 6 oblits off which normally if they pop a defensive or get bop'd and you need to waste a global to dispel with icy touch they will be healed enough that your burst is essentially negated.
If you don't get a kill in the first 20 seconds of the encounter you lose and the chance of doing so without a real 1shot mechanic is slim to none with nearly every class having an immunity where as the shaman will kill something instantly and you'll have a 5v4 to deal with.
DK aoe pressure is good but it isn't as good as it was and with more gear people's health pools and damage reduction will make howling blast spam worse
Soul reaper is pointless obliterate actually does more damage and works as a better execute.
Necrotic strikes are near pointless since they do not stack, one single DK needs to be doing necrotics where as the others need to be doing damage (if they are all alive) due to this mechanic.
Your paladin is a sitting duck as you can't peel worth a damn other than grips and chains. Once chains is on DR they have free reign on your healer and he basically is going to die to a warrior or any comp with a spriest if it isn't dead fast enough.
Mages are a pain in your ass and multi mage comps are going to rip you a new one
Demo locks can almost global your entire team
If you get CC'd during remorseless winter it is negated, if they get freedom or any sort of run away ability where you can't grip them in IMMEDIATELY then it won't go off.

A lot can go wrong and so many compositions are just anti-your team. I mean warrior/mage/demo lock/druid/hpal... good luck killing anything, dealing with their CC and one shot capability on your healer or any of your DPS for that matter.

Will you get wins? Sure... but you'll need to play over 500 games to hit 2200 with the comp IMO and thats if you get lucky queues.

[heyaz]

Too much Instant CC, much of which is aoe, on short cooldowns, etc. With DK's in BGs I use all my defensive CDs offensively and it's possible to just wipe everyone (or die and take half their team with you) during that uptime and high burst... but the nature of BGs is a lot different, less coordination, more space, etc. People may have cooldowns and even their trinket on CD at any given time due to all the combat going on in the battleground, unlimited lives unlike arena, etc. so you don't often run into a well-coordinated cc chain or enough to really put your guys out of commission. But in arena you get all of that and a whole lot more.

DK's are still pretty squishy even when using cooldowns defensively... and you don't really have the option to do that since you're going to need them to pressure the other team during your burst window. You're going to AMS to avoid magic CC, mage snares, etc. You're going to IBF to get out of constant stuns. Lichborne is probably going to be used to break an aoe fear and not much to heal you (though it's not that effective for self if you are frost).

I feel like Soul Reaper is a waste of a rune in general, I quit using it weeks ago. It doesn't hit that hard straight up, and only provides a proc if they are below 35% 5 seconds later (that's an eternity in PVP), or they die before 5 seconds and you get the haste buff. I believe obliterate hits harder than the proc of soul reaper but I'm not sure.

For peels you've got 4x death grips, Possibly gorefiend's grasp although that spell is difficult to pull off effectively, Asphyxiate although you won't get more than 1 or 2 of them because you'll need chillblains on a few of your DK as well, but at least they still have strangulate.

----------------

They are slowly applying nerfs and changes which affect things a bit. Large nerfs to warriors, hunters... changes to trinkets (but I really doubt a couple thousand spell or attack power was the problem), and Battle Fatigue being changed from 15% to 30% healing debuff, although not sure if that'll hurt a boxing team even more. Haven't seen anything in the pipeline for shaman or DKs though, except shaman nerfs that were intended for Resto that hurt all three specs.