Death Knight discussion

[zYN]

Hey.

Please refer to the DK MULTI MEGA THREAD OF GIGANTIC DOOM. Your question is (most likely, as far as I remember) answered there already.

[zYN]

On your actual question ("which spec should I play?"), I really have no answer. If you want to do as much damage as you can, Unholy is probably your best choice. If you suck with it, you should pop some L2P-pills and cowboy the hell up, top the meters and date lots of internet e-ladies. Or you can be a wussy dual-wielding frost weakling that gets a pity spot in raids for windfury (note: you will also probably grow bitter at life in general).

Up to you. DO YOU WANT TO BE A WINNER??!?!¤?¤533246

[Karn]

I have used this play style in the past few raids and I am diggin it. I went with a 14/0/57 spec, glyphed with GoD, GoIT, GotG (dropping GoDD since it's generally considered the glyph to drop, plus Morbidity points were moved).

Syn,

In #2 about the Cinderglacier proc, are you saying the 20% damage modifier is only active on the current target? The diseases spread by Pestilence do not get this bonus? If this is true, that answers the long standing question I've had about Pestilence and Ebon Plague. I've always wondered how the disease application works on the "spread targets" and if the spread diseases got the benefit of Ebon Plague.

In Allcom's defense, he's a respected contributor at EJ. I too have had some bad luck getting CG procs and I believe that's all he meant. Sometimes I get the proc in a few seconds. Sometimes I'll go through a couple of rotations before it procs.

To those asking about rotation: If you were in a fight with zero movement and all you did was sit on the boss, you would:

PS - IT - SS - BS - Pest - (Fillers)
SS - SS - SS - (Fillers)

Fillers being Gargoyle, Death Coil, HoW, etc (aka rune dumps or gcd fillers). However, as Syn stresses, you will not be in a position to repeat this verbatim. In most fights, you will have to move around or the boss will leave the fight through some mechanic (Sindragosa or Queen flying away. Putricide stunning you and running off. Fights with adds). Optimally played DKs can't follow a set rotation due to the Rune mechanics. We are specifically limited to certain attacks which are tied to specific runes. Sometimes it's the correct choice to Pestilence out of rotation when new adds join the fight, which prevents you from that third SS. If you get a rare alignment of buffs and you want to re-apply diseases to start rolling a better set, you'll need to PS - IT again out of rotation and carry on intelligently from there. So, a rotation in the strict sense doesn't exist. But what you can do is follow the rotation as a beginning guideline, until you are comfortable enough to think on your toes and can deduce the best use of your runes when you have to break the rotation.

About Engineering, I have been tossing the idea around to drop Blacksmithing and pick up Engineering (I have JC and BS). The main thing holding me back is that I tank quite often and Blacksmithing benefits my tank role with two additional sockets (i.e. 2x 30 stam gems) and I can't think of decent benefits that Engineering brings to a tank. If anyone can chime in on what Engineering brings to a tank, it would be much appreciated.

Karnul - Staghelm (Alliance)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... &cn=Karnul

[zYN]

In #2 about the Cinderglacier proc, are you saying the 20% damage modifier is only active on the current target? The diseases spread by Pestilence do not get this bonus?

Yes, for some reason they don't get it.

If this is true, that answers the long standing question I've had about Pestilence and Ebon Plague. I've always wondered how the disease application works on the "spread targets" and if the spread diseases got the benefit of Ebon Plague.

No, they don't get it on the initial pestilence. However they do get the full benefit as soon as you cast another Pestilence while the diseases are up - this is a known bug (supposedly) slated for a fix since ca. 1986. But anyway on the double Pestilence to get the full bonus (and full WP AoE and such through that), it's usually not worth it. Most of the time it'll be doing "unnecessary damage" that you could put toward downing a boss; padding damage meters isn't usually the goal. There's maybe a couple of encounters where it's beneficial.


On engineering if you tank: No, it's definitely not the most optimal. Is having engineering going to be the difference between you doing constantly or not? I doubt. If you do die constantly, it's because your healers hate you and because death knights just aren't that hot as tanks in general at the moment.

If you're any kind of MT, leatherworking is a profession that actually _will_ make a difference. Considering how many MTs for top guilds aren't even sporting it, my guess is that even that isn't completely necessary.


On engineering as DPS

And mainly just since someone asked me in an intelligent manner in-game instead of the usual drivel I get, here's why engineering rocks:

The regular enchants, bonuses, grenades and whatnot are quite OK to begin with. Popping gargoyle with speed potion and accelerator is awesome. Usual stuff with battle chicken applies too. You're going to lose only a few DPS compared to JC/BS - this is hardly a gamebreaker.

Where the power of engineering actually lies isn't just in the fact that you can do siege damage on to platforms to make them rebuild, it's the rocket boots. This is the part where I say that I can't count how many times they have saved my life in raids, blah blah blah, you mess up but get a chance to recover from a fatal mistake and get to do more DPS for the rest of the encounter. This is a point that needs to be made, even if it's a boring one.

However, the rocket boots are also an ungodly amount of real DPS. There's only one encounter in ICC where you can't utilize them well enough and that's Saurfang. On Rotface, for example, you can easily fire off rocket boots the second you get Mutated Infection and run to the OT, get dispelled and still run back with the same speed. Stuff like this happens in every encounter. Try and guess how much damage would have been lost there just running the regular way back and forth? Okay, good. Now try and guess will JC make up for that in the next 5 raids combined on that same encounter? It's the same deal on Sindragosa, Marrowgar, Deathwhisper etc etc - these encounters are the norm, not the exception. Hell, you can even pop them on the pull (such as on Blood Queen - just don't get hit by blood mirror) and get an extra 2-5s of melee time.

What I wrote above was just from the POV of a personal DPS increase. Now imagine something like the red slimes on Putricide hard mode. These are really shitty to kill for melee on the phase changes most of the time. If the kite target has rocket boots, you can position the slime instantly (or after a green goo explosion) for maximum DPS for the crucial all-out burn in P3 - this one easy maneuver can very well be literally worth half a million damage on the boss itself. Go and ask FtH, Ensidia or whoever how many times they have wiped on Putricide below 1-2%. I'm guessing just with those two guilds the tally goes up to 10 easily.

Or what about Val'kyrs on the Lich King? Imagine getting defile cast on you at, well, any point really. Instead of forcing the whole raid to move and to stop DPS, you pop rocket boots and carry defile away. I seriously doubt JC will make up for that kind of RDPS loss.


In essence: yes, some of the DPS from rocket boots is only potential. Considering that you fill the gap between other professions mostly from the self-enchants and grenades alone, it's easily worth the trade-off. In every single encounter in ICC, except for one, you get to utilize them enough to come ahead of other professions by a fair margin. Personal skill also matters a lot in the usage, unlike with JC/BS.

Just because theorycrafting in a vacuum encounter in space, DPS'ing Saurfang for 10000x5min doesn't produce a positive number for that specific profession, doesn't mean that it's shit. It just means the tools for simulating it do not exist.

[arx]

Just noting that by using rocket boots, you miss on the passive speed enchant on boots. A slight con, but something you should be wary of. This obviously doesn't matter at all for those classes that have a speed talent

[dr_AllCOM3]

I want to like the GoD, but I still have major issues with it.
You have to do a perfect intro to maximize the disease rolling. That is managable, but only worth it on a few bosses. Those are mostly the easier bosses in ICC. On bosses with minor movement I often have to use a death rune to keep my diseases rolling. Refreshing Bone Shield throws off the blood rune timing and you better refresh BS often on hard modes. BS is very good.
On bosses with y lot of target switching you have to reapply PS+IT constantly and if you have to pestilence you do it right away.
I think the GoD is really nice for an aoe spec without reaping. The Lich King encounter is made for that glyph.
The glyph can be nice, but it's not a must-have at all.

Rotface is a bad boss for comparing disease damage. The blobs get hit by Pestilence and it depends on how often that happens.
On Saurfang I like to use Pestilence when the blood beasts spawn and that's not always when you want to use it to refresh your diseases.



Cinderglaicer is very good in theory, but it's a simple PPM proc and thus totally unreliable.

Diseases on secondary targets get the bonuses you have at the moment you use Pestilence. It counts as a fresh disease aplly and has nothing to do with the rolling diseases on your main target.

[zYN]

You have to do a perfect intro to maximize the disease rolling. That is managable, but only worth it on a few bosses. Those are mostly the easier bosses in ICC. On bosses with minor movement I often have to use a death rune to keep my diseases rolling.

I haven't run into this particular issue. On a handful of bosses I'm of course refreshing the disease before it's actually going to end - mainly on bosses such as Putricide with the slimes. In these instances, though, I'm spreading the disease to adds. Without GoD, the diseases would run out on Putricide before getting back to him.

You might be running into an issue with latency or something, I have no idea.

Refreshing Bone Shield throws off the blood rune timing and you better refresh BS often on hard modes. BS is very good.

I completely agree that BS is godlike. As long as you put your blood runes on cooldown prior to using blood tap, the "out of sync" issue is extremely minor at worst.

On bosses with y lot of target switching you have to reapply PS+IT constantly and if you have to pestilence you do it right away.

This one I don't get, if it was meant as criticism. On pretty much every single boss in the game that I can think of, I'll be doing way less PS+IT to apply diseases WITH GoD than without. This, to me, is an improvement. Maybe you can clarify?

Rotface is a bad boss for comparing disease damage. The blobs get hit by Pestilence and it depends on how often that happens.

You can substitute whatever boss you want for it. On this week's heroic Festergut, the damage gained from ToTT'ed diseases alone was roughly 65-70k on a 5 minute kill. This is a quite conservative estimate. I very much would like to see any counter-arguments for this particular point. Even if you ignore the other beneficial aspects of the glyph, the damage gain from diseases alone makes GoD the undisputed choice for #1 glyph.

What I used was meant only as an example to show how much exactly we gain from it and to show the rogues in the poster's guild how much better ToTT targets we are compared to a lot of other classes or specs, even if it initially might seem otherwise.

On Saurfang I like to use Pestilence when the blood beasts spawn and that's not always when you want to use it to refresh your diseases.

Yes, and you can set your blood runes to refresh every single time exactly for when the adds spawn. Basically you gain a free pestilence through the refresh, instead of having to apply pestilence anyway without the glyph.

Cinderglaicer is very good in theory, but it's a simple PPM proc and thus totally unreliable.

Yes. And depending on the fight, you can use this knowledge to your advantage. It obviously isn't _the_ thing to do in every encounter. It is just as obvious that it's incredibly powerful in some and should not be dismissed just because it's some extra trouble to use it effectively.

Diseases on secondary targets get the bonuses you have at the moment you use Pestilence. It counts as a fresh disease aplly and has nothing to do with the rolling diseases on your main target.

Yes, I clarified this in an earlier post - the point I was trying to make was that Cinderglacier/ToTT is a massive gain in any fight with multiple adds as Wandering Plague ticks for significantly more damage. Secondary targets do not gain the full disease damage with the initial application of pestilence. If you apply it twice, they do gain it. Whether the culprit is Rage of Rivendare not being applied or Ebon Plague bugging out, I'm not too interested - the part that is useful to know is that you don't get full ticks with one pestilence.

[Xokati]

Do we know when when in ICC Sigil of the Hanged Man beats Sigil of Virulence? In fights like festgut, blood queen its clear, but I wonder how it looks at Lord Marrowgar, Profressor, Sindragosa,LK or even rotface?
It takes 15-16sec to gain full 3 stack buff and there is a risk to break rotation and force SS even without diseases to maintain buff after some running.

[zYN]

Out of the ones you listed, only Sindragosa has somewhat of a problem with the stack dropping during air phases before the cubes come up. You can easily re-build the stack from the cubes before getting back to Sindragosa's melee. This is also an extremely nice part to fish for Cinderglacier procs for +35% diseases that roll for rest of the fight. Just set it up with your rogues. ([edit because of nitpicking:] you still ofc get +5% from desolate and +3% from advantage as well, so in essence it's +43% - but +35% compared to baseline.)

Rest of the fights you listed you'll have the sigil stack up. LK has a few parts of the fight where the stack might drop, but definitely not enough to warrant dropping the sigil. Same goes for Putricide if you happen to crit a red goo kite duty - even if the stack drops, you still want Hanged Man for the phases that make or break a bosskill.

Valithria is the only encounter that I can think of where Virulence might be better for the first half of the fight. That, and maybe Gunship. These are hardly encounters where it makes any kind of difference though. Feel free to min/max it here too, however - it's not like it'll hurt. Unless you forget to change the sigil for rest of the fights.

[Xokati]

This is also an extremely nice part to fish for Cinderglacier procs for +35% diseases that roll for rest of the fight. Just set it up with your rogues.

Can you describe this little more?
Is this mean that i can start encounter with some weapon that got Cinderglacier enchant, use proc to appy both diseases and swap weapon with FC ench, maintain diseases using GoD? If i good rember GoD was fixed to update current buff state during refreshing some time ago.
What with rogues? TnT damage increase on diseases is refreshed by GoD?

Or i missunderstood this part?

Thx for ansfer about sigils. I`ll use now new in all fights except lady and gunship.