Leveling Specs

[un4]

I'm leveling my DK, Vidar, as 2H blood for the crazy DPS and self-healing.  Currently working up the blood tree, after which I will be spreading out to unholy.  Not sure if I'm going to get Ravenous Dead or Vicious Strikes (both unholy) yet.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jf0GqIcIsbRtzAoZ0g0hx

What're you guys Doing?

[Rocknlock]

I went unholy and starting to put some points in blood. The aoe capability is crazy, and a death strike or two (depending if it crits or not) will keep me healed up usually. I ride in a group of mobs with bone shield up, gathering 5-7 of them, dismount and get my diseases on one and spread them with pestilience and hit blood boil. Then drop a death and decay and unholy blight, death strike and blood boil till they're all dead  maybe use ice bound fortitude in there if my death strikes aren't hittin or healing enough for the dmg I'm taking, but with all the dmg being done, blood presence and death strikes usually do the job.

[Hugh]

Straight blood. cause of the self heals, i never rest and usually kill a mob in like 3 or 4 hits and jsut go nuts lol.

[dharq]

Two builds I've found for grinding/leveling that I've really liked.

(45/0/26) http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqI0IsbMtzZZfM0IxckM0o --
started with http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMaIZZfM0IxckM0o to get the perm pet from unholy. put points into blood as i leveled.

(37/0/34) http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0qI0IsbMzZZfMhIxco0xoR --
I used this one for about a week (about 1/4 of my play time on this toon). The big self heal from vampiric blood w/ rune tap is wonderful, and DRM means it's almost always up when needed. The biggest problem I've run into with blood so far is simple... The dmg heals only trigger off mobs that would grant XP/honor, so if you're farming a lower level instance or running old quests, a huge benefit from this entire talent tree disappears... It's also the only tree that suffers from this.   Cool part is, vamp blood makes death strike a HUGE heal.

(34/0/37) http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVh0IsbMZZfMhItck0xoR0o --
my current grinding build. bone shieldy goodness. and he's got blood aura and unh aura which allows me to fight in frost presence and still benefit from the self heal and speed increase. strangely, my dps in this build is only about 60-90 pts below blood presence when fighting in frost presence due to bladed armor and armor boost from frost.

My current build's been a bit difficult for me.. I really miss my rune tap for when things get hairy. With the changes to bone shield and vampiric blood next patch, I might flip over to the second one (diff link to show the 3.0.8 patch talent changes)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305001533003313200201000000000000000000000000000000000230230335003100050101200000000&glyph=081214040503

I've tried a bunch of frost builds and unholy builds. Unholy's pretty neat, but I just can't find a frost build that I like. Next patch, blood's also going to be getting a big AOE boost with the removal of the 10s cd on pestilence. With DRM, you can easily set up for 8 pestilences (or 1 pest and 7 blood boils) in a row, and with the boost to blood boil damage as well, you're going to have some very nice AOE.

One thing with dual wield builds that I've noticed... pick up both necrosis and blood-caked blade. I know the few times I've tried various dw builds, I saw huge improvements in my autoattack dmg w/ these talents. Sadly, I still can't find a dw build that gets up to the same dps I get with a 2h--even without the 4% 2h dmg boost talent.

[fiere redfern]

<-- oddball, apparently

Leveling as frost, dps is meh, but I'm enjoying tanking a LOT. It's a lot different from feral tanking - paying attention to aspects of weapons that I never had to before (weapon speed? top end damage? wut?) and figuring out ways to maximize my runes.

My spec's a little awkward at the moment, had a plan up until I hit hungering cold and now I'm placing points in whatever looks good >.< Currently at a 2/55/5 point distribution. I need to find time to go play with the trees on wowhead, heh.

[Air]

For tanking I'd suggest these talents for all tank spec's: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZ0xZ0x

[spell=55226]Blade Barrier[/spell]: Adds 10% parry, that isn't effected by diminishing returns.  Very good talent 

[spell=49789]Toughness[/spell]: We don't get block so more armor, the better.  Also work's well with Bladed Armor, but don't consider it a dps talent.

[spell=55133]Anticipation[/spell]: More dodge can't be bad.

I'd also suggest getting [spell=49175]Improved Icy Touch[/spell], [spell=49036]Epidemic[/spell], and [spell=48978]Bladed Armor[/spell].

[spell=49175]Improved Icy Touch[/spell]: well because this is our thunderclap.  Slow the mob's attack speed down, means less damage overall.

[spell=49036]Epidemic[/spell]: Longer lasting diseases allows me to do more things, and not have such a strict rotation.

[spell=48978]Bladed Armor[/spell]: More threat to all abilities, and normal attack's.

[fiere redfern]

Question for you, Air - how often do you use Hungering Cold, exactly? I couldn't seem to find a time to use it at all until I picked up Butchery and was able to keep more than 40 RP at one time. The only time I'd actually use it is if a pull went south and I pulled a group or three more than I could handle - and being that it's so situational, if I'm caught at no/low RP, the group is screwed, heh.

Reason I ask is because I'm thinking of dumping that point into something more useful and less reliant on damn near my entire RP bar. Though Runic Power Mastery may help that... hmm.

[Air]

I don't use it all.  I don't even spec into it   It would require me to get runic power mastery and I find that talent to be lackluster.

Snap aggro for DK's is probably one of our weakest points right now.  With 3.0.8, there will be no more cooldown on Howling Blast.  Using blood tap, it's possible to get off 2 HB's, and even a 3rd one if Rime proc's.

I'd suggest getting the glyph for pestilence that increases it's range by 5 yards.

Generally what I do get aggro on aoe packs, is to cast Icy Touch when a mob is far away.  Than cast pestilence when it gets close.  And than hit Howling Blast afterwards, and than maybe a Blood boil for extra threat.

[fiere redfern]

That's basically been my methodology as well, though depending on the size of the pack, I'll either drop a D&D first, or pull with IT (or Death Coil if it's up because of its longer range), hit HB (I've it macro'd to Deathchill so if that's up it's a guaranteed crit), then Plague Strike/Pestilence and start repeating my disease rotations when they're up.

[Trismus]

I have been using unholy, the thing I find most curious is that with a partner, particularly a healer (restokin actually worked very well) I can AoE grind incredibly fast due to the fact that my dps is about 75% higher then another class of the same level.

Just wanted to weigh in, and also test my new sig 

[fiere redfern]

Partner leveling as a DK is actually pretty damn fun. I've taken to running with a friend of mine who likes to swap back and forth between blood and unholy, while I've stayed frost. Between the two of us, we're able to AE-grind like it's nobody's business. Helps me practice holding aggro on multiple mobs, too, since he'll frequently do his damndest to pull one off me XD

[Air]

There's a new thread on Death Knight tanking on EJ, found at: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t44638-bucks_fireside_chat_dk_endgame_tanking_updated/. 

The current one at: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t36998-dk_tanking_discussion/ is fairly out of date, and alot of people arguing about the same crap over and over again.

The new thread is done by a guy who i've found to be fairly knowledgeable in Death Knight tanking.  The thread is still fairly new, but should be updated on a daily basis.  I'd keep an eye on the main thread for updates.  Hopefully this will help those thinking about tanking as a Death Knight in the future.

[Iliessa]

I should probably post this in a tanking thread, but since both Fie and Air are talking about it here....

I tried a Frost tank but my rotation felt shaky. What's weird is that I was doing exactly what both of you are: Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Howling Blast. According to the Fireside chat thread, Oblit is a Frost tanks main attack and HB isn't even mentioned. I can see it on single target tanking, but not for multi target.

The problem with using HB is you cannot cast Death and Decay at the beginning of the pull because you already used both Frost runes. Maybe I'm misunderstanding DnD, but it seems like that is supposed to be the big AoE opener, but when I use it I also HATE having to wait so long to use HB. By then, most of the mobs are dead anyway.

And for the love of all that is holy, could someone explain to me why Obliterate > HB? Oblit has some nice talents and a glyph that increase its damage, but HB does double damage from frost fever, hits all targets, and can still crit on top of that. I had a HB at level 66 do almost 4K damage from critting 3 out of 4 targets. An obliterate crit at that level does 1200 on a single target. (no glyph, no Guile of Gorefiend yet)

Obliterate =  and HB = 

I gotta be misunderstanding something.

[fiere redfern]

The reason I don't use Oblit is because when I tank as frost, I don't spec into [spell=51473]Annihilation[/spell] which, IMO, is the only reason to choose Oblit over HB. I also have Deathchill macroed to HB, which means my first one is guaranteed to be a crit. Yeah, you can do the same for Oblit, but without Annihilation you'd be ridding yourself of the constant threat tic from diseases, and it doesn't hit more than one target. Especially in today's instances, AE threat > huge single-target damage.

As far as rotations go, here's the basic layout with the runecosts listed above:

B/UH/F  F     UH    B            40 Runic Power                         UH/F             B
DnD -> IT -> PS -> Pest. -> Rune Dump into Frost Strike -> Deathchill/HB -> Blood Boil -> Reapply diseases and AE effects as needed.

The alternative is to hit HB first, rune-dump, and then apply your diseases but then you'd be substituting a consistent tic for a single, huge damage blast. What you also need to think about is that [spell=59057]Rime[/spell] will sometimes give you a free HB, so you may be able to use it earlier in your rotation.

Them's mah thoughts, hopefully this helps you.

[capnpop]

One problem the theory-crafters have with Rime is that RP isn't generated for the HB cast (other than the 5 bonus if specced for it) so they have a /cancelaura in their HB macro to remove the Freezing Fog buff (i think that's the name of it) so HB isn't free.

The "free" HB is apparently a dps loss according to theorycrafters as it effectively robs you of 15 RP and throws off your rune-use rotations.