Unholy Death Knight

[Tony]

So, I leveled as a Blood DK. Loved it. In Fact I miss the days of being OP going from mob to mob and not ever loosing much health. Once I hit 80, well... Things changed. I have always strived to be the best that I can and master everything that I do. By all means I have never mastered anything, but I try. When it has come to the Death Knight, I have found that my DPS is far better and more comfortable for raiding with the 17/0/54 "cookie cutter" build. I played with Blood, and there are some much better dps'ers in the guild that do amazing dps as blood. For some of us that are under hit cap, the unholy build will help you out a ton.

Here is the build that I have run into and found most beneficial to me.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230200335003115203110023133151



I am still working out the Glyphs part of this post, but will update it with the proper glyphs when I get home.

Alot of the time I have found myself focusing on what buttons I am pushing and not paying attention to raid warnings. I did some research today and found a macro for spamming and adjusted it to the proper hit rotation that I need.

The First is single target dps, cast a Death Coil and/or Unholy Blight whenever they are available and the button is on cd. Usually it is only on cd for 2 seconds which is just enough time to cast a Death Coil or UB if its not up. After 7 clicks, it restarts the sequence. I am about 2200 dps on the target dummy unbuffed without trinkets or the gargoyle.

/castsequence reset=7 Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike
/castrandom Death Coil, Unholy Blight
/startattack


This is for AOE, and restarts after 10 clicks. With this macro, I am putting out 2100 dps unbuffed with the target dummy, unbuffed without trinkets or the gargoyle. I would assume that the dps would increase with more targets.


/castsequence reset=10 Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Pestilence, Icy Touch, Unholy Blight, Blood Boil, Icy Touch, Blood Boil, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike
/startattack


Let me know if I should adjust it or if you have some basic suggestions. This is my first time doing this so anything is welcome here.


Updated the AOE macro
Will update dps after WWs reports from tonight, and compare them to last night when I was speced blood.

[dharq]

This looks excellent, Tony! Thank you.

I've found that by modifying the build just a little bit...
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2305021303000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230230325003115000150223133101
I'm able to have one spec that allows for decent raid dps, great aoe dmg, and it also allows me to solo grind, quest, and even tackle old-world raid bosses without having to respec.

I still seem to change glyphs a lot though... Really hoping I can find a setup after the patch that I don't feel the need to swap out. The one glyph I always use is IT--the dmg loss sucks, but the extra RP is sweet during fast fights.

ST rotation - IT, PS, BS, BS, SS and DC until OORP.
On bosses I replace that with a gargoyle, and on raid bosses, I generally pop AotD when appropriate. (I'm not quite as AotD happy as I once was, Arc )

AOE rotation - D&D, IT, PS, Pe, UB, DC.
by the time I get around to having everything refresh, the pack is usually dead, if not, I start w/ SS or BS/BB until they are or diseases run out... Although they rarely seem to. Sometimes I swap D&D to the 4th position in the rotation, but that's mainly a matter of whether or not I trust the tank... Air, I know I can use D&D to lead off; Arc, not so much...

I don't use macros very often because I use a lot of keybinds, and after playing from lvl 55 to 80, I tend to have some muscle memory issues. That and I'd rather hit a sequence of buttons than tap one repeatedly.

[fiere redfern]

Looking at the spec you have posted, I'd only make a few tweaks to it:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMcZZfMhIxckxcR0fsut

Dirge - Since you have Butchery already this talent is basically superfluous. I found while I was leveling blood and had Butchery, I was basically guaranteed a full runic bar and had to actively work at getting rid of the wasted power.

Virulence - you said you're below hit-cap as Unholy, why would you skip over this talent? It's a free 3% spell-hit, handy since the cap (I believe) is floating around 17%. That said, I sit at about 13% spellhit in DPS gear talented and haven't noticed any issues.

Dark Conviction/Desecration - First, I'm curious as to why you only had one point in Desecration. It's a constant extra 5% damage, and tbh, there aren't many fights where you're forced to contiunally move and would have to chain Plague Strikes to keep the buff (except maybe Xevozz in VH). I know there are threads on EJ discussing the point of keeping it fully talented, but even then they had 2-4 talents spent in there.

That said, I pulled a few points out of Dark Conviction and popped 'em in Desecration. You can do what you will, there's another option that involves losing Outbreak and Bone Shield to get both talents maxed, depending on your preference.

I'm also of Dharq's mentality that I'd rather a sequence of buttons to hit than just one repeatedly - I don't use a mouse to play, so all of my primary abilities are bound. Sure makes it fun if I get a muscle spasm and hit a mass of keys at once, though XD

[Tony]

Thanks for the great input! First off, I updated the macros and posted some base dps. I will use these to compare a few things.

1. Blood dps is LEET, but with my current gear, most likely out of reach. I was speced last night in blood and am very curious to see the difference
2. Having all of the WWS reports will tell me if the "macrodeathmeltyourface" button helps. The main reason I did it is because I DO use a mouse

I dont know why I dont do more key bindings, but I would assume it is because I played on a laptop for a year and pvp'd with my twink most of the time. PVP'ing you gotta have a mouse for quick movement. At least I do anyway.

As far as hit cap is concerened, my spell hit is capped, but my mele hit is not. If I put on the Titansteel Destroyer I have, it increases a bit, but I loose out on crit and AP. I am going to go to the AH right now and price out some new gems. I noticed that Air had 2 +16 str gems in his boots. I have the same boots and have +8 str in each slot. We'll see if that helps as well.

Please keep the suggestions coming! I love talkin and workin out stuff like this. It really helps me to learn the mechanics of my character, and trust me, when we start in Uldar, we are all gonna need it...

[Tony]

Quick question..

If I am under hit cap, should I sacrifice AP or Str to get up to hit cap?

[dharq]

According to EJ, yes. +Hit rating provides the best dps return per point until you hit 289 hit rating. After that, load str.

I can tell ya, just going from 295 hit rating (w/ staggering legs and TD) to 244, I dropped a significant amount of ST dps... granted, i've gotten back some of it against trash because of aoe, but it's still been pretty painful having to adjust. I had to gem massive amounts of +hit to get back to 244 too   stupid DK t7.5 gear has no +hit on the chest or legs   oh, but we dooooo get haste! whoopee!

[Tony]

Does the Dranei racial add pre or post what it says in my character sheet?

[dharq]

post

[Tony]

Alright, so after last night, I gotta say that I love the macro! It helped me out a ton! It may not be for everyone, but damn... I love it!

Also, respecing to Unholy last night really made a difference for me. I just posted in Hugh's thread as to why, so I dont want to explain it again. I can say that as much as I want to be blood, I just cant do it yet. Hopefully I will soon...

Update, I got [wowitem]Undiminished Battleplate[/wowitem] last night which put my hit rating up to 297 (9.06%) WOOT!

I'll have to wait for the next 25 naxx run to compare numbers, but I might just use Malygos for some base data as well. I'll update again soon.