DW Frost seems to have taken the lead for DK DPS Specs, followed by Unholy/Frost.
Always wanting to be the best possible DPS for our raids, I went DW again to check it out for myself. I have a couple of ilvl 251 axes I've accumulated from the gunship--so I respec'd, re-glyphed, equipped the axes and went to work in ICC. I'm at 11% hit with a trink equipped, and have played DW before (pre-nerf), so the semi rotation/priority system is still familiar with me.
In T10/ 251 gear, Rime and Killing Machine proc a shit ton. It makes trash epic fun, but with no threat reduction, definitely makes you pop CD's and death pact to survive. On single targets, though, I was less than impressed. Hit and expertise capped, I expected more damage. ToT didn't seem to be procc'ing nearly as much as it should be, and frost strike didn't seem to be critting very often with KM up--so it felt kinda wasted. As DW I'm at 34% crit unbuffed--so I don't know if something was wrong with the way things were working out, or if it was just a bad RNG night.
*** I've since respec'd and gone into ICC as Unholy, and the same goofy mechanics seem to be happening; on some attempts I'm critting a ton, and others none at all. It's almost as if there's something screwy with close quarter combat. I'm gonna keep looking into this...***
After a night playing DW Frost, I had to go back to Unholy-- So I spec'd into the reapingless Unholy/Frost
build that elitist has deemed to be the most bang for the buck. And it is.
Posts
So just how far behind the pack is Blood for DPS? I just got the hang of it and don't really want to switch it up.
ReplyDeletePretty far behind--unless* you're close to being ArP capped...which is pretty tough to get to.
ReplyDeleteThe Scaling with Unholy is awesome. I'd recommend it if you haven't tried it yet. Bloods good at beginning gear levels, but I've found that once you've hit 4 pieces of T9 or better, Unholy is the way to go. That would change with 25 ICC gear and a massive amount of ArP.
DW sims out really well, but its just not working as well as unholy for me in practice
Dunno if you remember me Shyste but its Kentos here from Sylvanas EU. I recently respecced to Blood and regemmed all my +strength gems to +ArP gems and I can tell you that I'm doing more damage then I did as unholy. Its worth checking out if you have the cash to replace all your gems again if you end up don't liking it. I'm sticking to blood for now :) More fun rotation, bigger crits and 2 cooldowns to pop instead of that pesky flyer :P
ReplyDeleteTo put it in numbers, in a VoA 25 pug I was pulling out 10K+ DPS and last night on Saurfang 10-man I was up to 8k+ DPS. The unholy guy who's gear is really on par with mine was dragging behind @ 7k DPS
Kentos
Sylvanas EU
Well, shit Kentos. I might have to try that now...
ReplyDeleteHow far above me are you in terms of gear? Deathbringers will?
Shit.
Why Kentos? Why?
lol
Chris was testing Blood in VOA today. The burst was ridiculous and even after a minute he was at 8400. Definitely gonna try Blood on my DK when I get a bit more gear haha.
ReplyDeleteYo Chris,
ReplyDeleteI've been lucky in ICC25 pugs... My guild only raids 10mans but if you look at my gear a lot is already 264 Ilvl. gonna go buy the Legplates of Painful Death tomorrow. Another sweet upgrade :)
So, seeing from Nagu's post I'm gonna assume Blood went fairly well for you? If you're gonna stay Blood I would suggest keeping your strength gems for now until you get more ArP gear. As you prolly know, ArP only scales well when you have a shitton of it.
GL m8 :)
Kent
Btw, the Blood DPS guide on EJ forums isn't as good as the Unholy one by Consider but its still has a lot of good tips. Like save hysteria and DRW for your second rotation so you can apply double disseases and DRW get buffed by your Hysteria as well. Also, popping a Haste pot before popping DRW is a significant dps boost.
ReplyDeleteKentos
After going Blood-- I'm sitting at 52% ArP without Deathbringers Will, and am half strength/Half ArP gems... I sim'd it out, and the ArP was giving me slight increases, so I switched a few. Unholy sims for me right around 9k, and Blood 9.2. With T10 chest (i need to grab) and Saurfangs Trink, it shoots up to 9.8 assuming gems dont change. Pulled 8.6 single target on Tor in VoA this weekend--so I'll try it out in ICC this week as well.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't understand this... what I've read is that ArP gives more benefit per point with every point you get... it isn't a flat rate like agil or str. So, once your base ArP gets you to where each point of ArP is worth more than a point than str, you gem for it COMPLETELY. It's not a matter of a balance between str and ArP, it's strictly about the amount of ArP you have. I'm applying this from what I've read about hunters, but the concept is the same: if a point of A is worth more than a point of B, gem for all A. As a matter of fact, you could argue that you could gem for ArP before you hit the situation where ArP is more valuable... since ArP increases in value as you get more of it, you would overtake the other ability at some point if you're close enough to the break even point.
ReplyDeleteAh Kemosaabe-- so close, so very very close.
ReplyDeleteArP does give more value point for point--but this is not the value that you want to look at. Remember, when we talk about value, we're not talking about the inherent value of str or Arp, but in a quantitative "dps" value that they magically provide.
The issue then, is finding that balance where ArP overcomes Str in terms of raw dps. I'm not gonna pretend I know the exact point where this is, but, if you take your current gear level, and then run the sim w/ str vs arp gems, you get an idea of where it is. There's not much difference between the sims--So I chose a path the netted slightly higher dps gain, while still maintaining 6400 unbuffed AP. Whether I guessed lucky or not, the sim don't lie. And, the addition of T10 chest and Saurfang trink would then put me on par for max ArP (for DK gear sans heroics and shadows edge).
I have no idea how those sims work but I just went all out ArP. I still have 5656 AP unbuffed left and atm I'm at 1038 ArP which gives me 74.17% armor reduction. I'm quite enjoying it :)
ReplyDeleteKentos