Death Knight DPS FAQ

[Air]

**Not my own, found it at the wow forums.
**most current version is at: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11829373227&sid=2000

There's been a lot of questions/discussions/complaints regarding DK DPS. Some say it's too hard. Some say it's too boring. Some say it's too weak. Some say it's just fine as is for the most part. I fall into the latter category; my own experiences as a DK tank and DPS'er have shown me that the class is perfectly competent and capable of doing competitive DPS...and also more often than not capable of falling flat on its face. But the major deciding factor is not inherent within the class itself; it is inherent within the player. Believe what you may, but I do have parse logs and a large amount of 10 man/25 man raiding experience in Beta to draw from.

With that said, the DK is a very complicated class to begin to master. There are several mechanics at work that make this class so.

1) It is a melee class. Generally speaking, it is more dangerous and harder on positioning for melee classes than for ranged classes. There are certainly some exceptions to this, but one cannot deny that there are more melee unfriendly fights than there are ranged unfriendly fights.

2) The class runs on two resource systems as opposed to one. Runic power's (RP) closest equivalent is rage, but even that is a limited comparison (RP is only generated from using rune moves, and does not generate from being hit or hitting something with auto-attacks). The rune system is somewhat similar to energy, except it is much more stringent and restrictive in terms of what you can use runes for (Death runes help to mitigate this a bit) and there are extremely few ways to refresh runes before their 10 second cooldown. This can be very attention-demanding for some players, especially also given the need to watch for melee dangers/repositioning.

3) The class also makes usage of a DoT's. For shadow priests and affliction warlocks before 3.0, the rule of thumb for DoT's was to let them run their full course, then immediately refresh after they had worn off (This is so that they can get their last tick of damage, and to maximize the amount of time you spend not refreshing DoT's so you can use your other damage-dealing moves). Granted that the DoT's are not a tremendous portion of our DPS, but for those looking to maximize their DPS this is something you need to consider.

4) The class makes use of arguably the most instant-attacks in the whole game in order to do the majority of its DPS. Most of the time, your usage of cooldowns will be fairly simple decisions (I have my diseases up and a frost/unholy rune combo is available, so I will burn it out my Scourge Strike/Obliterate. I have blood runes up, so I will blood strike/heart strike). But there are many decisions you make on a micro-level that are small at the moment, but overtime these decisions will ultimately decide just how much extra output you are squeezing out through your skill priorities (Do I sneak in a death coil or use a blood strike? I'm sitting at 60 RP and I have a F/U move popping in 1 second, do I use a RP dump or wait and use the FU move?) This is a class where attention to detail makes a big difference, along with doing some mental math when monitoring your RP.

Perhaps there are more things to mention, but this is what I can think of at the moment. What I'm about to post is not for people who are just looking to play DK's in a very lackadaisical manner. These are things I have learned and experienced that I think may help you if you're looking to do your role as DK DPS'ers well, at least as far as my experiences with unholy and frost have been in raids.

Without further ado, let's get to the meat of what I hope will interest you. Please note this is primarily for the purposes of raiding and running instances, and not for PvP or solo-grinding.

1) The basics

- You are a melee class. Never attack from the front, ever (Unless told otherwise). If you attack from the front, the mob's parry rate will be another factor that will hurt your DPS. ATTACK FROM BEHIND.

- When in doubt, do anything you can to stay alive even if it means nerfing your DPS a little. If you have to death strike while the healers are struggling to keep the raid up through Sapphiron, do so. If you need to burn your anti-magic shell (AMS) because a blizzard or rain of fire has suddenly popped over you, do so. You have a self-heal strike, AMS, and icebound fortitude (IBF). You have quite a few tools to keep yourself alive with, so use them. Unless all your cooldowns have been burnt, there is little excuse for you to be dead (Unless you got one-shotted).

- When looking at your DPS, look at the situations in which you are fighting in before you make a judgment call about whether or not DK's can DPS well. Some fights are just bad for us do maximize our DPS, especially fights where there is a lot of distance put between us and what we're fighting. Party/raid buffs and boss debuffs are also a big thing; does your group/raid have more buffs for your spellcasters than physical DPS, or lacking crucial debuffs such as sunders/faerie fire? Then should it really surprise you if spellcasters out-damage you? Think about the context.

- Use your cooldowns. Burn your blood taps whenever you can to sneak in an extra blood strike/blood boil (If AoE'ing). Use your Empower Rune Weapon after you've done a full rune attack sequence, as early as possible. Use your clicky-trinkets. Use your ghoul. Use your gargoyle. Use your deathchill. Use, use, use your cooldowns. Every little bit matters.

2) Gearing/Gemming/Enchanting

- Get to 9% melee hit ASAP. For raid bosses, 9% melee hit is the cap to make your auto-attacks/non-spell attacks NOT MISS (This is different from getting dodged or parried, which hit does nothing for). This won't cap you for spell hit purposes, but you don't really have to worry about this for the most part since the majority of our damage can be accounted for with the 9% hit rule.

- Get about 6% expertise. This one is not quite as important as the hit requirement, but it helps the greater majority of our DPS (Not spells though). This will reduce the amount of dodges your attacks run into, to the point that you'll get maybe 1 or 2 dodges at most throughout the course of a boss fight if you have 6% expertise.

- Focus on strength over AP. 1 str = 2 AP unmodified. Strength also scales with kings, some of our talents, and one of our major DPS runeforge weapon enchants (Rune of the Fallen Crusader) gets drastically better the more strength you have.

- Crit isn't bad at all. Some of our talents work very well with higher crit (Wandering plague, killing machine). Generally speaking though, you'll benefit far more from strength than crit since strength works for every single attack/ability we use while crit does not , and crit is still an expensive stat to gem/gear for. Don't ignore it, but don't make it your priority.

- Armor Penetration (ArP) is a little odd. It benefits blood the most, followed by frost, and unholy the least. It isn't one of our highest priority stats (We have a lot more armor-ignoring moves than most other physical DPS'ers do. unless you're blood), but it doesn't hurt. This one isn't too important though.

- Haste. Out of all our DPS stats, this one is probably one of our least valued. Inevitably, you'll find many DPS pieces with haste on it. Haste only affects our auto-attack damage, and does not help at all with the greater majority of our DPS (Instant attacks and spells). Never, ever gem for haste. It will come with the gear we use, but try not to get too much of it at the cost of losing out on strength/crit.

- Spell power. No.

- Gemming: Use your gem slots to follow the previously mentioned stat priorities. One case does bear worth mentioning though, which is the meta-gem slot. Unless they have changed it drastically, RED (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond) was the golden standard for melee DPS-types of ANY kind back at the Beta levels. Following along a similiar theme, Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (Which is relatively easy to gem for) is probably your best choice for meta-gem. The increased % to crit damage really is that good. I could be wrong here though.

- Enchanting: See the gemming section above, with a few caveats. I really like getting the expertise/hit enchants early on when I cannot achieve the hit/expertise caps from gearing alone. When I do reach the point in which I do not need those enchants, then I switch to straight AP (There are unfortunately no strength equivalent enchants in Wrath) enchants.

Generally, if you do enchant/gem your gear at all, you're probably better off than 50% of DK's out there at level 80.

Follow these gearing rules and you'll have a good gear foundation to work with, at the very least.

3) Rotations/priorities

Before I start this section, I want to post a very informative link to Sunny's post on prioritizing as opposed to rotations. Her insights and knowledge are extremely well-founded, and will give you a great chunk of information to work with when working on the actual utilization of skills.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11676580289&sid=2000

With that said, here is my two cents on this particular issue.

DK DPS is all about adaptability. You CANNOT expect to output your best possible if you rigidly adhere to a set rotation(s) all the time. However, there are certain fundamentals that should be met, as far as frost or unholy DK DPS'ers go.

- If you do not have your diseases up, apply/re-apply them immediately (Icy touch - plague strike if frost, plague strike - icy touch if unholy). But do not refresh early if you can help it; this is a waste of damage ticks from the DoT's and DPS time.

- If you have a F/U rune combo available and your diseases are still ticking, use your primary F/U move of choice (Obliterate if frost, scourge strike if unholy).

- If you have blood runes, use blood strike (Or bloodboil if in a multi-target situation and you've already set up prior with pestilence) to convert those two runes into death runes (You did spec into Blood of the North/Reaping, right?).

- Never let your RP cap if you can help it, ever. This is probably one of the trickiest ones to observe, and even I have capped my RP once or twice in the course of a boss fight. The trick is to find opportunities to sneak in your primary RP dump of choice (Frost strike if frost, death coil if unholy) when all of your runes are on cooldown (Ideally) or the majority of them are (Realistically). But avoid capping your RP if you can help it; you want to efficiently utilize your two resource systems.

Generally speaking, I observe these rules and output a very good amount of DPS. The trick is mostly in the execution, and this is where the largest variety in DK DPS'ers usage of moves happens. For example:

- How well can you calculate your RP to make sure you never cap, and that you dump your RP at the best times possible?

- How much time do you spend re-applying your diseases after you've let them run their course?

- Are you sneaking in frost strikes/death coils when most of your runes are on cooldown?

- Did you save up enough RP to refresh unholy blight after it has worn off so you can maximize its up-time as if it was another DoT (Don't even try to argue with me about not taking unholy blight as an unholy DK DPS'er. What alternative would you have spec-wise for 25 man's or even most 10 man's? It still does good DPS on its own for ONE talent point, provided that you don't do something stupid like gear for haste/crit only).

- Are you monitoring your RP carefully to maximize the uptime of your gargoyle?

Generally I find that unholy tends to make the hardest RP-based decisions, so this may not apply to all DK's.

4) Attention/awareness/courtesy/and MODS!

No one can really teach you how to be alert and attentive to what is going on. But do not deny the importance of these attributes; you can have great gear and a good understanding of what you want to do for DPS purposes IN THEORY. But the moment your attention wanes and you die from fire, or you tunnel vision on your resource management and die from fire, or you stare at the debuffs running on the mob and you die from fire, the fact of the matter is that YOU ARE STILL DEAD FROM FIRE.

With that said, here's a couple of things you can do to alleviate your eye and brain stress.

- Grab a mod that will allow you to modify the displays of what you're fighting. I use X-perl unit frames (There are many different kinds, but I find X-perl easy to use), and the VERY large debuff icons that appear around the mob's portrait make it very easy for me to keep track of my DoT's. I also place my target frame next to my rune/RP bars so I have much less space to keep switching back and forth between.

- Grab a mod to change your runes/RP displays. I really dislike the Blizzard set-up, so I use Runewatch (Again one of many examples). With its customizable rune displays and the fact that I can place it anywhere I please, it has drastically increased my ability to attend to my rune cooldowns.

- Grab a mod that will allow you to keep track of your own DPS numbers. Mods such as Recount are reasonably accurate in keeping track of your own personal comparisons (Although Stasis and WWS are probably some of the best, if more complicated to use). It's good to have an actual DPS tracker to see what you're doing compared to your peers. You shouldn't really pay attention to it in the middle of a fight, but it is good for your own learning after a fight is done.

- A mod that was suggested by Thrakcson for managing your DoT's, http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10749-EllipsisMulti-TargetDoTTimers.html

Conversely, shutdown any extraneous mods that may detract from your ability to see what is going on. If you cannot see half your screen and die from fire, then you are half-blind and DEAD. Do not try to make excuses for things that are within your control, such as screen visibility.

However, no mods can compensate for having a distracting environment and/or poor attention span. You need to stay focused, stop taking frequent AFK's, not get derailed from the main focus just because you saw something shiny on a random pillar nearby. You are engaging in a group-oriented, social task. Please treat it as such, meaning think about the people you are playing with.

5) Spec for Success

This one should be obvious. Having a good talent spec is also very important for being able to output good DPS. Let's start with the talents you will probably want to avoid if speccing for pure DPS purposes:

Blood

- Blade Barrier
- Scent of Blood
- Rune Tap (Great for utility, not so great for DPS unless you have points to spare)
- Improved Rune Tap (See above)
- Spell Deflection
- Vendetta
- Mark of Blood (See Rune Tap)
- Bloodworms
- Blood Aura (See Rune Tap, although perhaps not quite so as much)
- Vampiric Blood (See Rune Tap, although perhaps not quite so as much)
- Will of the Necropolis
- Dancing Rune Weapon? (This one I am not so sure. Some people debate its usefulness, especially since one of the popular DPS specs for blood is 50/0/21. This is pure conjecture, and not something I would rely on as being solid)

Frost

- Toughness
- Icy Reach (It seems nice in theory, but you should be in melee in the first place for DPS)
- Lichborne (See Rune Tap)
- Runic Power Mastery (Remember what I said about what you're trying to do with your RP; not let it cap, whether it's 100 or 130. This won't help you accomplish that)
- Frigid Dreadplate
- Endless Winter
- Chilblains
- Frost Aura (See Rune Tap)
- Unbreakable Armor? (This one is debatable)
- Acclimation
- Hungering Cold

Unholy

- Anticipation
- Unholy Command
- Corpse Explosion
- On a Pale Horse
- Magic Suppression
- Anti-magic Zone
- Unholy Aura (See Rune Tap, but this one is harder to fit in sometimes)
- Night of the Dead
- Unholy b...no, wait. DISREGARD (I'm being silly. Unholy blight is still definitely worth taking, from my experience)

BIG DISCLAIMER: I am NOT saying that you shouldn't take any of these talents at all for DPS'ing, but rather that their priority becomes somewhat secondary until you've taken most of the other DPS talents. Here's an example of my frost DK DPS build that I think did rather well in one of my full 25 man Naxx clears:

14/50/7 frost
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020200000000000000000003200505030502112301205101350230200000000000000000000000000

Take note that I did choose to take frost aura and unbreakable armor in my build, for example. Some of the above talents are quite useful to take for utility purposes. Just don't overload utility at the cost of detracting from your primary role as DK DPS'er (If that is what you are speccing for), unless you're doing so for certain gimmicks.

Here's an example of my unholy DK DPS build that I run with great success in most scenarios:

17/0/54 unholy
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230210305003115203150003133151

6) On blood vs. unholy presence

Generally speaking, I find that blood presence works perfectly for frost or unholy DPS specs. Even when taking butchery/dirge/chill of the grave/4 piece T7 bonus, I find that careful monitoring and usage of your RP will allow you to reasonably burn your rune cooldowns as they come up, while still preventing my RP from capping. My experiences with unholy presence have, for me anyway, shown me that it tends to be a DPS loss since I end up with a fair amount of "dead time" in which I am not really doing anything. I can't really quantify this any more than what I've said, but for the purposes of Beta I can always do a demonstration if you send me a tell in-game (Khaene is my DK on Northrend). That previous sentence will not be here when I actually post this guide on Live, but please mark my words when I say it is fully possible to follow my rotations/priorities fundamentals while being in blood presence.

7) The Final Golden Rule(s)

Be flexible, and stay out of fire. Please.

[Air]

Nice thread at EJ about how Death Knight's dps, with current thinking behind it:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t36303-death_knight_dps_compendium/

There's also Deathgraf, a DK tool that theorycraft's best possible ability rotation.  Thread for it is at:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t33152-deathknight_vontre_presents_deathgraf_-_dk_theorycraft_tool_beta/

The site for the DK tool is at: http://www.magegraf.com/deathgraf

[Tony]

Kind of a newb Death Knight, just hit 80 last week. I applied to your guild, but that's not why I am posting. I have been doing a lot of research on builds and gear and all that, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what to grind out.

I do however have a question about the 17/0/54 unholy build. There are a few other threads on other forums that say Unholy aura actually can benefit a raid in a few ways, particularly in the way that the 15% speed increase lets melee dps get to the fight faster. I believe the math was that it added an extra 364 dps. Taken from http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t36638-death_knight_pve_dps/

So the question is, should I put points in Unholy aura, or Desecration? When fighting Boss' and mobs, I don't really see any reason to slow my enemy by 50% (I don't even think that most heroic boss' can even be effected by this), however I can see the bonus of adding 5% additional damage (raid wide depending on the situation).

If someone could let me know what their opinion is on this, I would appreciate it. Would you rather have someone doing 5% more dps, or adding an extra 350ish additional damage (raid wide... Depending on the situation of course)?

At the moment, the talents in Unholy Aura are helping me fly faster to grind out rep, but that's about it.

[Rocknlock]

Desecration in my opinion. 5% increased dmg over a 5-10 min boss fight is a lot of dmg as long as the boss isn't constantly moving. I'd also put 1 point in night of the dead to help keep your ghoul alive from aoe abilities.

[capnpop]

What about DW vs 2h right now? Currently they are very close in dps (look at our own WWS parse) and the variations are due mainly to the length of the fight from what I can tell (and how willing your guildmates are to burn CDs on you to buff your dps with TotT and Hysteria).

[Tony]

What about DW vs 2h right now? Currently they are very close in dps (look at our own WWS parse) and the variations are due mainly to the length of the fight from what I can tell (and how willing your guildmates are to burn CDs on you to buff your dps with TotT and Hysteria).

Ive seriously been trolling every forum I can find on DK dps, and yes you are right. The 32/39 build that you are using is more superior than any of the ones we are. The KM and HB procs just cant be produced in 17/0/54 or ANY blood build. The issue is that the 32/39 build is very "gear" dependant, and if you dont have the gear, you wont do the damage. I copied your build and tried it out (with inferior weapons and gear of course) and in now way was able to put out the dps you are able to do. The current dps builds are very gear specific, so personally, I am doing 17/0/54 until I have the gear to run with your build. By the time that happens, it is very probable that our trees are going to be rearranged and we will have to adjust to it. If all of our DK's had the gear, than yes, we should all respec to 32/39 but that would require us to have some really nice 1h weapons. I would suggest that all of our DK's look at MMO-Champion . There are alot of idiots on that forum, but there is also alot of very valuable information on builds and such. Our second highest dps right now is Des, and I will most likely copy his build since I got Armageddon last night and see how it works out. With my gear and weapon (titansteal destroyer) I was pushing 2.5k, with Armageddon, I should be up in the 3's. I will report tomorrow to confirm this after Naxx.


Edit: I would really like to hear some of your guy's hit rotations as I am having issues with my build atm.

I have been trying to do this PS IT BS BS SS RPD, then SS SS SS RPD

The issue I am having is the gcd on the 3x SS - its just not there like the 3x HS from the blood build. Any suggestions?

[capnpop]

I've been thinking about trying a 0/44/27 build now that I have a slower MH option.  It may help prepare me for the 3.1 changes as well.

Based on what i've been seeing regarding DK dps there is no real "superior" spec right now.  The biggest thing that determines fight dps seems to be the length of the fight.  I've seen Patchwerk fights with DKs over 7k dps but the fight only lasted between 30 secs and 1 min (while doing Gorefiend the other night I was at about 6.7k dps and the fight lasted under a minute).

For DW spec you only need about 280-ish hit to be capped for spells (I'm currently under that).  The hardest gearing issue (i think) is the actual weapons for DWing since that amount of hit is what I was shooting for as a 17/0/54 DK as well.

I have been trying to do this PS IT BS BS SS RPD, then SS SS SS RPD

The issue I am having is the gcd on the 3x SS - its just not there like the 3x HS from the blood build. Any suggestions?

What do you mean the gcd on the 3x SS?  The downtime when you have no runes available?  Your rotation looks fine and the gap in the 3x SS + RPD can be slightly supplemented by tossing in a Horn of winter to refresh it mid-rotation although I've forgotten the "downtime" in the rotation where all your runes are on CD and your RP is gone.

[Tony]

What do you mean the gcd on the 3x SS?  The downtime when you have no runes available?  Your rotation looks fine and the gap in the 3x SS + RPD can be slightly supplemented by tossing in a Horn of winter to refresh it mid-rotation although I've forgotten the "downtime" in the rotation where all your runes are on CD and your RP is gone.

I'll give that a shot with the horn of winter.

Yea, I was talking about the gcd. There seems to be about a 3 second gap between the SSx3 part. Should I be in unholy aura or Blood?

[capnpop]

Blood, all the way blood.  Even while DWing I'm seeing that Blood is more beneficial than unholy.

[Rocknlock]

I'd have to agree that fight length has to have something to do with the dmg/dps output. On short fights like heroic boss (especially ones where its just a straight dps fight with no movement like h vh, h cot or h uk fights), I have no competition that comes close. Yet on raids like naxx or voa runs my dps drops a lot after my dancing rune weapon and ghoul is inactive. I used the 32/39 build for one run of naxx a while back and it seemed great on trash, but I lacked single target dps it seemed. As well as I had no aggro reduction talents and besides imp icy touch, I gave no buffs to the raid like I do with blood with abom. might (10% AP increase), blood aura and mark of blood.
 
  Theres some talk about a diseasesless build that Apolla was telling me about I have yet to try out, but blizz had mentioned in a post that no dk should ever be able to make a viable talent build without using icy touch and plague strike, and the changes being made in our talent trees with support this. So I think we should just probably wait to see what they do in 3.1 to see what the best specs will be. So far I've read that they are shuffling each of the trees around putting some more pvp talents closer to the top of the trees, and that they are switching the spots of unholy blight and gargoyle, so that gargoyle will be the 51 pt talent and its getting a little bit of a dmg buff.

  A couple guildies helped me out with the blood spec and rotation after the last big nerf patch to unholy. Now I use the 51/17/3 build which I've liked a lot. Only downside I've seen to it is of course the dps drop on long fights, and the need for a full rp bar before fights so I can get all my cds spent so they will be ready again sooner for a chance to use them again before the fight ends. The rotation for boss fights I'll have my ghoul out and myself targeted, then its Hysteria first, IT, DRW, PS, Oblit., HS x2, Blood tap, HS, Empower Rune Weapon, IT, PS, HS x4, then death coil till I'm out of rp, and then repeat from there. Oh and have to use unholy presence in this spec.

[Tony]

I'd have to agree that fight length has to have something to do with the dmg/dps output. On short fights like heroic boss (especially ones where its just a straight dps fight with no movement like h vh, h cot or h uk fights), I have no competition that comes close. Yet on raids like naxx or voa runs my dps drops a lot after my dancing rune weapon and ghoul is inactive. I used the 32/39 build for one run of naxx a while back and it seemed great on trash, but I lacked single target dps it seemed. As well as I had no aggro reduction talents and besides imp icy touch, I gave no buffs to the raid like I do with blood with abom. might (10% AP increase), blood aura and mark of blood.
 
  Theres some talk about a diseasesless build that Apolla was telling me about I have yet to try out, but blizz had mentioned in a post that no dk should ever be able to make a viable talent build without using icy touch and plague strike, and the changes being made in our talent trees with support this. So I think we should just probably wait to see what they do in 3.1 to see what the best specs will be. So far I've read that they are shuffling each of the trees around putting some more pvp talents closer to the top of the trees, and that they are switching the spots of unholy blight and gargoyle, so that gargoyle will be the 51 pt talent and its getting a little bit of a dmg buff.

  A couple guildies helped me out with the blood spec and rotation after the last big nerf patch to unholy. Now I use the 51/17/3 build which I've liked a lot. Only downside I've seen to it is of course the dps drop on long fights, and the need for a full rp bar before fights so I can get all my cds spent so they will be ready again sooner for a chance to use them again before the fight ends. The rotation for boss fights I'll have my ghoul out and myself targeted, then its Hysteria first, IT, DRW, PS, Oblit., HS x2, Blood tap, HS, Empower Rune Weapon, IT, PS, HS x4, then death coil till I'm out of rp, and then repeat from there.

Who is your DK?

[Rocknlock]

Tchofdeath

[Tony]

Tchofdeath

Right on, I actually have your Blood build in my talented add on. Love it! Anyway, I am not going to get too comfortable with any build until 3.1, but what I have now is working for me. The next step is gear and gems. Hopefully by the time I get those, we wont be too nerfed.

[Rocknlock]

Yeah, I just edited my post cause I forgot to add to use unholy presence as well. Be sure to gem STR and not get cheap with the AP gems!

[dharq]

Yeah, I saw the blue talk about no DKs ever depending on a disease-free build, and that is kinda troubling... I mean, with the notable exception of warlocks who still derive a lot of DPS from dots, most classes are able to hit right off the bat with their big DPS strikes... The 3 GCDs that it takes us to get up to speed really troubles me.

I have found only one time for recommending unholy pres at the moment, and that's during the KT fight (especially 25-man)... the extra .5 sec off GCD gives just a little more leeway for interrupting his frost bolts, and we don't seem to be lacking in pure, raw DPS on him.

Oh, and Ad, something to add into your rotation is UB if you have it. You only have to refresh once every 20 seconds, and depending on your spec and the 40 RP cost now, you can actually generate more RP than you can use w/ 2 DCs per RPD now. You can also use it w/ Gargoyle up and not worry about running OORP. Also, it ticks off of [item]Extract of Necromantic Power[/item].