Unholy DK Build For Patch 4 Cataclysm

Death Knight DPS got a boost in patch 4.0, but so did every other class. The priorities list hasn’t gotten a lot simpler, however, so you’re still going to have to face roll pretty hard to get max dps.

Talents

• DK Unholy DPS Build patch 4.0 Cataclysm Spec

You’ll notice there are 5 points leftover not yet allocated. We’ll update this build as soon as Cataclysm goes into full effect and the geekazoids at Simulationcraft update the spec to a final build.

Glyphs Required

• Raise Dead
• Scourge Strike
• Death Coil

The changes to the glyph system in 4.0 give you nine glyph spots and a whole new class of glyphs. Instead of just major and minor you now also have slots for Prime glyphs. We only list the glyphs that add directly to DPS, tanking abilities or healing power. The other slots are up to your personal choice and play style. Choose whatever makes the game more fun and fits your preferences will work fine, since none of them will have a direct correlation to damage per second.

Priorities

• Flask = endless rage
• Food = dragonfin filet
• Presence = unholy
• Army of the Dead
• Raise Dead
• Speed Potion – IF: NOT buffed by bloodlust and target time to die <=60 seconds
• Unholy Frenzy – IF: NOT buffed by bloodlust and target time to die <=45 seconds
• icy touch – IF: frost fever dot <=3 seconds
• plague strike – IF: blood plague dot <=3 seconds
• Dark Transformation
• Summon Gargoyle – IF: buffed by Bloodlust
• Summon Gargoyle
• Scourge Strike
• Festering Strike – IF: blood runes=2 & frost runes=2
• Death Coil – IF: runic power >90
• Death Coil – IF: buffed by Sudden Doom
• Scourge Strike
• Festering Strike
• Death Coil
• Blood Tap – IF: unholy runes=0
• Empower Rune Weapon – IF: unholy runes=0
• horn of winter

Remember that this is a priority list, not a rotation. Read our full article on how to read a priority list here: Priorities, Not Rotations. Basically you want to use things nearer the top of the list as often as possible, based on certain conditions. This may very well mean that you never get to the end of the list and “finish” the rotation. That’s because the order you do things will change depending on the conditions of the fight.

Damage Sources

Pawn Scales

Use the first scale above if you are not hit or expertise capped yet. Use the bottom scale if you are. Or, you can just remember to zero out each one once you hit the cap.

( Pawn: v1: “Death_Knight_401_Unholy”: HitRating=5.6548, MeleeDps=5.5636, Strength=3.2761, ExpertiseRating=2.4776, CritRating=1.6511, HasteRating=1.0438, Agility=0.8458, Ap=0.8244, MasteryRating=0.7386, Armor=0.0275 )

( Pawn: v1: “Death_Knight_401_Unholy”: HitRating=0.0000, MeleeDps=5.5636, Strength=3.2761, ExpertiseRating=0.0000, CritRating=1.6511, HasteRating=1.0438, Agility=0.8458, Ap=0.8244, MasteryRating=0.7386, Armor=0.0275 )

Back To Banking Basics

We’ve posted a lot of information about this topic before in various posts, but we received and email a few days back from a reader trying to put it all together. So let’s take a look at some of the intricacies of using DK toons as bankers and which professions you might want to consider giving them – here is the question:

I have a L80 with Jewelcrafting and Enchanting, and am raising a DK for
profession sake only.

I had considered Alchemy (for transmutes) and Inscription, knowing that I
will have to work hard to make money with Inscription vs established scribes
already working the AH on my server.

While reading blogs and listening to podcasts, it sounds like Inscription
requires much more knowledge of add-ons and market conditions, and this
would be the biggest profitability challenge of any profession. I like
challenges, and would enjoy learning a new market, but thought I would get
your advice before jumping into it. Should I be considering a different
profession than Inscription, this late in the game?

Tyberiuss

Two good moves here by Tyberiuss: first, a DK profession alt is a great idea, and second, Alchemy is certainly at the top of the list. Let’s walk through the other choices you can make here, Tyberiuss, and give you a good synopsis of everything we’ve talked about on the site in one clean spot.

First, I would park your DK in your favorite major city and leave him there to do your auctions as well. When you use a bank alt for professions he really should do all your banking, as the name would suggest. In order to make full use of Alchemy, which would have been our choice as well (my DK banker does the same on several servers) the only thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to train him up to level 68 to get the full benefit.

You have two choices with specialization in Alchemy, and although I prefer elixir mastery for the procs on flasks, on some servers there may be something to be said for transmute mastery if gems are hard to come by. That’s where you’re going to have to have a finger on the pulse of the economy. If your gem transmutes sell like hotcackes it’s not a terrible option, but it’s generally more profitable to go with elixir mastery. remember, you don’t have to do the dungeons to get Elixir mastery done, you can train for one of the other masteries (which only require things you can do yourself) and then switch to Elixir mastery later.

Next, I normally give my bankers enchanting for convenience sake, but it seems you already have one of those. The cool thing about hitting level 68 for alchemy is that you will already be past the level requirement for training all of the Grand master level professions, meaning you have three good options.

Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and the gathering professions almost require level 80 in order to do the dailies or gain the rep for the profitable patterns. So your first guess is a good one, that Inscription is not a bad idea, but let me throw in another one just for kicks – Leatherworking. Enchanting is also in this category, but you already have one of those.

Inscription, Leatherworking and Enchanting all have one advantage for the bank alt at level 65+. In each of these professions the best patterns can either be bought or learned from purchasable items. In the case of Inscription (and Alchemy, although the learned stuff kinda blows) you can learn all of the most profitable rare recipes from books of glyph mastery or the Inscription research spell. In other words, you can get all the good stuff and never do a single thing in Northrend.

The same thing holds true for Enchanting, where all the high end patterns can be purchased for Dream Shards, but don’t forget Leatherworking. Letherworking is a lot like Enchanting in that the epic leg armors can be had for Arctic Furs, so it also makes a good option. Depending on the mat cost of raising those two professions, and the profit potential on the leg armors you might choose LW instead. Besides that, it’s just simpler to make a profit on two items than it is trying to guess right on 50.

I’m not a big fan of Inscription for making gold, but it’s probably just the servers I’m on and the fact that I haven’t spent any time at all on it for more than a year. So your first instinct is probably the best one, which says that competing in the Inscription Glyph marketplace may be more hassle than it is worth. It’s not a bad idea to have an inscriptionist lying around somewhere so that you can make your own glyphs, but as far as dominating the Ah with one, it’s pretty hit or miss.

In the end, I did exactly that with my DK, however, since I didn’t want to blow Inscription on one of my raiding toons, and he ended up with Alch/Inscr – but only because I already have two raiding toons with Leatherworking. But as you all know, Law is just a weird alt-aholic with at least two of every profession (except Inscription, only one of those) maxed out to 450.

What it boils down to is that a DK alt for professions and banking is not only a great idea, it’s what we always do. And, for those off professions Alchemy is certainly at the top of the list. Past that, our favorite choices, in order, are: Enchanting, Leatherworking and Inscription. Any one of these professions can be effectively used to make a good profit or support your other toons at just level 68. But Tyberiuss is right about one thing, you’ll need to have some idea of just how saturated the market is for those leg armors or glyphs before you make your choice final.

Win A Little Swag And See Your Toon Enshrined On DYS

You may have noticed that we are updating our class pages to link to all the specs we’ve been posting.  In the interest of making things look a little better around here what we really need is a few good pictures of each class in action.

Now, Law could go and do them all (at least one level 80 of every class, except Lock and Rogue) but we know how picky you guys can be.  It just wouldn’t do to have pics of, say, my pathetic little Paladin in crud gear posing as Dominating.  But we know that not only do our regular readers have some seriously geared toons, they also have a good eye for the artistic.

A while back during the Midsummer festival event we had a little screenshot contest:  Screenshot Contest, The Votes Are In.  First place went to the lovely Fran Molina who submitted the fantastic shot below.  Boy, does 18 months seem like a really long time ago.  We’ve come a long way at DYS since then, but one thing hasn’t changed, our readers still Dominate.

It’s time to show off your skills once again.  We need you to get on your mains and snag some killer screenies of your toon in action.  We’ll all vote on the best of the best and your screenshot will be featured on our class pages.  The grand prize will be a $50.00 gift certificate to J!nx, where you can get some killer swag for your sweetie (or yourself if you’re like that) for Valentine’s day (if everyone hurries).  Second and third place will get WoW time cards so you can play free for a while.

Maybe it’s a pic of you doing the Captain Morgan leg-up on Arthas.  Perhaps it’s your toon in Mimiron’s head or some other wicked flying mount you bagged.  Anything and everything we’ll put up for a vote.  But one thing is for sure, we need some truly Dominating pics for each class.  Voting begins when we have at least one screenshot of each class (so hurry up) and then we’ll post them all for voting.

So get those screenshots submitted in the next few days and we’ll find out who gets to have their toon be the spokesperson for their class right here at DYS.

Send your screenshots to editor@dominateyourserver.com with the subject line “class screenshot”

When And What You Post Can Make A Big Difference

This one hearkens back to an old saying – since some of us are older than others (and I’m not sure they even use this phrase much any more) an intro is in order.

“That guy could sell [snow cones/refrigerators/ice cream/(anything cold)] to an Eskimo”

Yeah maybe – but wouldn’t he sell a LOT more snow cones to people in Phoenix, Arizona?  I mean there are some people that are just born with a certain amount of arrogance, and it is quite natural for that to directly translate to e-peen.  In other words, why go out of your way to sell the worst possible items at the worst possible time in the worst possible way just to prove you can sell something.  There is another old saying that I like quite a bit better:

“Work smarter, not harder.”

That, in a nutshell, is our entire gold-making system.  You can go farm, you can track hundreds of items, you can depend on your main toons’ crafting professions, you can spam trade chat, you can sell ice in Northrend . . .

As for me, I prefer smarter.  Now, being smarter doesn’t mean you’re some sort of genius.  All it means is that you track what works and what doesn’t work quite as well.  Then you have to filter that information to find out what really works best based on some sort of quantifiable number.  We can all be very subjective about things, being smart is when you set your preferences aside and just make a cold, hard decision based on cold, hard facts.

And that’s what we did.  For two years we tracked everything about everything we did that had anything to do with gold in any way.  What we came up with is a way of making gold that is based on a very simple root – time.

For a few years, I was a personal trainer.  I did the same thing with working out.  I hate working out – HATE IT.  So when I found a system that cut the time requirement down to the bare minimum and got even better results – I could do that.  And it was so simple I could teach other people how to do it as well.  The cool thing is that it works every time, for every person, regardless of age or any other factor.

And the idea rubbed off into everything else I do.  So when I started in WoW, it wasn’t long before I realized I needed more gold – a lot more.  So I applied the time factor to everything I did to make gold – and I did it all.

• My first 1000 gold farming copper, tin and bronze in Darkshore (pretty nub stuff)
• Grinding mobs for cloth
• Farming SMGY
• Farming rares for twinks
• Crafting blues
• blah
• blah
• blah

That was pre-BC.  Around the time the Burning Crusade came out, I was full tilt into the AH.  And what I found was that I could make more gold at the AH in less time than any other method.  And not just a little more gold – a LOT more.  I could scan the AH for under-priced stuff other people had farmed (copper, cloth, twinkitems) and then just re-list it for a profit and never leave IF.

And that is why I never farm – ever.  There is always someone else out there willing to waste hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of their time and sell those farmed mats to me for under market price – it’s the silliest thing I ever heard of.  Then, for about 2 minutes worth of work, I can turn right around and sell those mats for market price and make 15%-50% profit.

If I was just doing it with copper and tin it wouldn’t amount to much really.  But when you do it for EVERYTHING – it turns into a lot of gold really fast.  But I have digressed egregiously from our original premise – well, sort of.

When you begin operating an AH-only methodology, you get a really good feel for how the market moves.  And you don’t have to be anal retentive to sense things.  Today we’ll look at just one timing tip that can make a big difference in how fast you make gold on one type of crafted item – and time is everything.

A few days back we posted the article: Best Gold-Making Professions On Bank Alts, which was a follow-on from the article: Alchemy – WoW Quest Tricks.  Both of those articles bring us to the real point.  If you’re going to use a bank alt for crafting professions (which you should) there are some professions that fit bank alts better than others.  Alchemy is a great fit for a bank alt.

If you’re going to use alchemy on a bank alt, you need to be an elixir master for the procs of extra elixirs and especially flasks.  Since you’re getting the mastery for flasks, you will want to be selling those flasks for maximum profit – and now we come to the point.

As you scan the AH for things to sell throughout the week, the temptation is to just post them as you get them.  For certain categories, that works well – such as mats.  Mats are like a little black dress or blue jeans, always in style in every season and decade or day of the week.  We only resell items (armor, weapons etc.) on weekends when the most people are on (especially the nubs who don’t get to play all that often).  And there is a best time for other things as well.

For flasks, it’s Tuesday.  I know I know, big surprise, but it’s an easy thing to overlook.  After server reset, everyone is rushing back into ICC or doing the weekly for their frost badges, or even VoA for the week and the demand for flasks goes from a trickle to a roar.  And since there is a huge demand spike on Tues, there is a corresponding price spike potential.

If the raid leader requires you to flask and there are only 10 flasks on the AH (all yours btw) then you will pay whatever the price is or you don’t raid.  Pretty simple when you think about it.  Buy up all your flask making mats during the week and on the weekends (especially from the farming goobers who are killing time on Sat afternoon).  Then on Monday brew up a few dozen of each.  Tuesday morning you can throw all your flasks up on the AH (even buying out the other guys selling too cheap), corner the market, and quite easily double whatever you spent on mats.

So:

• Get you a DK
• level to 68
• get elixir mastery
• buy up flask mats during the week
• make flasks on Monday
• buy out cheap flasks Tues
• sell all flasks Tues
• make another 1,000g a week
• Dominate

It’s when you start stacking things like this that you really start to get rich in WoW.  Find a sweet spot for alchemy, Inscription, JC, DE, resale, mats and whatever else you can get your grubby little enterprising hands on and pretty soon you will never want (or need) to pick another weed, kill another mob or swing another pick as long as you play WoW.  And, you’ll have a LOT more gold to boot, which is quite simply – Dominating.

Two Trade Skills That Fit Great On Bank Alts

Alright kids, let’s review.  We don’t farm here at DYS – well almost never.  From time to time the perfect conflagration of once per year occurrences happens that makes us do it, as we have mentioned in this post: Investing And Farming For Gold.

Next, we recommend banking be done in certain ways.  First, a bank alt is by far the best use for a DK we’ve ever seen, and we’re going to tell you which two professions suit bank alts best.  But a DK banker is perfect because you only have to get to level 65 from a level 55 start to train all the way to Grand Master in any profession.  But over the last six months we’ve figured out two professions that just stand far and above the others when it comes to making gold quick and easy.

The first one will come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone who reads DYS.  Enchanting – the gran-daddy of them all when it comes to gold making.  I recently had to change my tune a bit when it comes to Jewelcrafting, but I still don’t make as much from Jewelcrafting as I do from enchanting – not by a wide margin.  Just in case you missed it, here is another post if you want to read about the true power of enchanting for making gold: Best Profession For Those New To Gold Making.

Currently, you’ll want to focus on DE items between level 200 and 300 skill.  With everyone doing 5 million heroics per day, the market for Northrend mats is pretty depressed already – flooding it with another 50 stacks of infinite dust will just generate even more downward pressure on the price by inflating supply that much more.

A few months ago we suggested using a DK as your bank alt and giving them Enchanting, it’s a little more complex than that if you want it to be, as in this post: More Banking Toons Make It Easier To Make Gold At The AH.  But after working with that system for a few months, another profession has jumped out of the woodwork as absolutely perfect for the single DK bank alt.

You will need one DK, a desire for more gold and enough patience to gain 13 levels.  You’ll need  to hit level 68, but with a DK that’s pretty easy to do in just a few hours if you concentrate.  Then it’s off to the profession trainers for Enchanting and . . . Alchemy.

Alchemy is perfect for a bank alt because it requires zero rep to get all the recipes, so you can stand all by yourself in the major city of your choice and end up with every recipe in the game through discovery.  And you’ll make all the accidental discoveries in record time.

In our last post – Alchemy, Wow Quest Tricks, we talked about how to get the Elixir Master profession bonus for Alchemy without doing the Elixir Master quest, which is a pain in the tookus.  At level 68 your DK can do exactly the same thing and end up with Elixir Mastery and that’s where the real dough starts rolling in.

On an average day I will have my DK bank alt brew up around 200-300 elixirs and flasks.  Now that’s just the number I have mats for.  Since the proc rate for Elixir Mastery is a little higher than 10%, I generally end up with an extra 10-15 flasks for every hundred I make, sometimes more.  With flasks on our server going for about 60g, that’s 600+ gold for zero extra work.

All I do is put all of the herbs and other mats for the best alchemy potions (Lil’Sparky is a must here) in my Snatch filter for AADV and grab everything under 100% market price a couple of times a day.  Then I just afk brew, post the products and profit – generally while raiding or watching SportsCenter.

Alchemy is ridiculously easy to make gold with, and unlike Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking and other professions that can be lucrative, they also all require that you be level 80 and gain exalted rep with certain factions or acquire recipe drops in raids to get the patterns that will make you serious gold.  (yes, I have seen the stupid youtube video of the guy DE’ing the JC rings a bazillion times, but with northrend DE mats prices being what they are LilSparky’s tells me I would lose a lot more than I gained doing that right now.)

So My main DK banker does Inscription and Alchemy.  Inscription is another good fit for bankers, but if you only have 2 to work with.  On a single bank alt, alchemy and enchanting is the only way to go.  Between those two professions you should be able to knock down an easy 2,000 to 5,000 extra gold each week and not spend more than a few minutes each day fiddling with it.  It’s easy, fast and very Dominating.

How To Get Elixir Mastery Without Doing Black Morass

Not all professions are created equal.  While I don’t use alchemy on any of my raiding toons I like to have one around to make gold with.  The only problem with that is that in order to really make a killing you certainly need to make it to level 68 and go get the Elixir Mastery specialization so that when you’re brewing up a few hundred flasks you have a chance to get even more to sell on the AH.

So off an on I’ve been leveling my trusty DK banker (who does alchemy and inscription BTW (and perhaps the only decent use I know for a DK (just a little DK dig there))) to level 68 for just this reason.  If your alchemy is at level 325 and you are also level 68 you can get one of three quests from several NPC’s scattered around Outlands.  Even if you do it the hard way the Elixir mastery specilization is worth it, but there is a much more Dominating way to get it done.

Here are the three quests:

• Master of Elixirs
• Master of Potions
• Master of Transmutation

Well, I never liked Black Morass anyway.  Then, when you consider the fact that you are going to have to do the silly walk-around quest and Old Hillsbrad first, bah, I’ve got gold to make with my time.  But I really REALLY want the extra flask procs – so what do I do?

I go get the last quest – Master of Transmutation and then pick up the recipe for Transmute: Primal Might.  By this time there are enough people just fiddling around in Outlands but not really doing anything there that making a Primal Might really shouldn’t be all that expensive.  In other words it’s pretty reasonable to find all the primals on the AH for cheap since no one uses them much any more, even if they are rare-ish.

Now, even though I want Master of Elixirs, I can use any of the Mastery quests to get there.  The only one that doesn’t require me to do a dungeon run (and have a flying mount for TK, not wasting that gold on a DK bank alt)  is the Master of Transmutation quest.  So I head out to Zarevhi in Netherstorm with 4 each primal earth, air, fire, water and mana – and the recipe from one of the vendors above.

If you go prepared you’ll be a Transmutation master in about 30 minutes or less if you don’t get lost easily and have the flight points.  Next just talk to Zarevhi again and tell him you don’t really want to be a transmutation master after all and pay him 150 gold (cheaper than a flying mount) to unlearn what you just did.  Don’t worry, it all works out well in the end.

All that’s left is to fly back to Shattrath and talk to Lorokeem (the bird doods kinda freak me out, but there’s not much I can do about it in this case).  Tell him you want to be an Elixir master and POOF!  You’re a brand new Elixir master ready to get all those free flasks out of your usual business for free.

Free gold is interesting to me, and so are shortcuts.  This way I don’t have to get a lock summon or buy a flying mount up to TK and then to the second boss.  I don’t have to do all the pre-reqs for BM and then actually do BM four or five times.  As a matter of fact there is an off chance the Primal mights could be already sitting on the AH from someone else making them for some goofy reason.

This works for any profession specialization, but specializations don’t mean quite as much now as they did in vanilla wow waaaaay back in the day.  Who knows, maybe Blizz brings that flavor back.  But in the meantime, on your bank alt alchemist (which I highly recommend btw) getting elixir mastery doesn’t have to be a huge pain in the tookus.  All you have to do is use this little trick and you’ll be maximizing your auction house domination of the flask market in no time.

Frost Tree Blood Presence Build Tops Charts In 3.3

Every now and then, a patch makes a big change to a class.  You don’t always see the changes coming, and it often takes people a while to adjust.  With a theoretical maximum of 9923 – this build rivals even mages for chart topping Domination

Gear

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=18133075

Since the build at simcraft didn’t contain the Pawn scales for this profile, you’ll just have to make do with looking for the best-in-slot gear from the profile itself.

Talent Build

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=18133075#talents

Glyphs

Major

• Frost Strike
• Obliterate
• Disease

Minor

• Horn of Winter
• Pestilence
• Raise Dead

Runes

• Rune of the Fallen Crusader – Main Hand
• Rune of Razorice – Off Hand

This is one case where the minor glyphs are as much a part of the build as the Major glyphs.  Having the Horn of Winter glyph moves the horn of winter ability to the bottom of the priority list, although you will want horn of winter up before the pull for obvious reasons.  We’ve also included the rune forging choices for each weapon to bring the entire thing in line with the build.

Priorities

• Blood Presence
• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Dragonfin Filet
• Auto Attack
• Raise Dead
• Icy Touch
• Plague Strike
• Pestilence
• Howling Blast
• Deathchill
• Obliterate
• Blood Strike
• Blood Strike/Death Strike
• Frost Strike
• Empower Rune Weapon
• Howling Blast
• Horn of Winter

You can see that although this is quite a bit more complex than the Arcane mage priority list, it’s nothing compared to something from the Blood build rotations you’ve seen in the past.  As you look at the chart below you get a good feel for just how easy this can be.  Your mele weapon white swings do a big chunk of your DPS, so after you hit Empower Rune Weapon you can just wait for the Howling Blast cooldown, hit it and then start back with Icy Touch.  Just be sure to throw in a raise dead whenever you can.

We know that the temptation is to mash buttons like a fiend, but it is really hard to argue with the numbers here.  There are other DK DPS builds in the Starfox file with Priority lists that include internalized rotations – in more than one spot.  If I want to think that hard about what I’m doing I’ll go engineer a bridge or something.  The great thing about this build is that the priority list is simple and it does ridiculous DPS.

Damage Sources

Obviously the fellow who built this profile doesn’t go in for Pawn scales (you might not use them either) so you’ll have to live without them in this case. Considering that this build should handily beat any other DK build for DPS and it has a painfully simple rotation (yes I know we’re not calling it a rotation any more) for a DK, you just might find yourself falling in love with beating almost everyone but rogues and mages (and the odd feral druid who knows what they are doing) while Dominating with this build.

Death Knights get quite a few changes in patch 3.3 and I want to go over some of them with you.  As of this writting these are the changes. Mind you, I have not gone into to much detail because it could all change as of patch day!! We are at your mercy Blizzard.

• Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Ok now this change seems like nothing really happened, if you consider what they really did. The main thing I see with it though is it means Army of the Dead will be ready for every boss in a dungeon or raid when combined with Night of the Dead.

• Raise Ally: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas. Has anyone ever used this besides me?

When I used it, the player got so angry with me I thought he was going to hunt me down and hurt me. He cursed so much and so loud I think I actually heard him from hundreds of miles away. Also make sure that the person you use it on knows what is going to happen.

• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.

Finally Blizzard has listened and helped the Death Knights that want to tank. The added defence and Stamina will help alot.

• Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.

Now this also will help the tanking ability and improve the ability to hold aggro.

Talent Changes
Unholy

• Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 2/4 minutes, down from 5/10 minutes.

This will definitly be a help to the unholy build.

• Scourge Strike: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.

It  was needed to boost Unholy build to the level of the Blood build.  With this change it is like Heart Strike for the Unholy build causing lots of damage.

• Unholy Blight: This talent now deals only 10% of Death Coil damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later another nerf but at least this one isn’t to bad.

Glyph Changes

• Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.

This is the best change of all on the DK changes. An Additional 20% is huge!!

Glyph Fixes

These are some minor fixes to some known to exist bugs and nothing is changed  that affects build.

• Glyph of Bone Shield: Now updates the number of charges in the Bone Shield tooltip.
  Glyph of Dark Death: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil. In addition, its own tooltip has been clarified to indicate it also applies to healing from Death Coil.
  Glyph of Death’s Embrace: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil to indicate runic power is refunded.
  Glyph of Heart Strike: Now updates the tooltip on Heart Strike to indicate Heart Strike applies a movement snare.
  Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Now updates the tooltip on Icebound Fortitude to show increased damage reduction.
  Glyph of Plague Strike: Now updates the damage shown in Plague Strike’s tooltip.
  Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now updates the tooltip on Unbreakable Armor. Tooltip on glyph modified to make its effect more clear as well.

Class Changes Mainly just corrections and do not affect gameplay.

• Bloody Strikes: Now properly increases the damage displayed in the tooltips of Blood Strike and Heart Strike.
• Bone Shield: Tooltip corrected to indicate the player has the correct number of bones.
• Chains of Ice: This ability will no longer appear to land on targets which are immune.
• Desecration: The debuff from this ability will no longer sometimes appear as if it were cast by someone else. In addition, the visual and snare from this ability will now both dissipate at the same time. Further, this talent will now respect snare immunities, and no longer sometimes snare immune targets.
• Frost Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.
• Master of Ghouls: Tooltip typo corrected.
• Night of the Dead: Tooltip typo corrected.
• Obliterate: This ability will no longer sometimes fail to do additional damage based on diseases on the target.
• Raise Ally: While this spell is active on a target, they will not be sent to the graveyard, prematurely ending the spell.
• Strangulate: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
• Taste of Blood: Corrected inaccurate information in combat log tooltip.
• Unholy Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.

Bottom line here folks, Unholy is getting a big buff, big enough that it just may rival Blood in terms of DPS and  possibly  Frost for Tanking. All this while blood retains the status quo. Blizzard made great efforts to balance the trees out in one of the biggest updates any class has ever received in a single patch.

Now on to a part I know you will all want to know….THE GEAR. Most gear is simple and straight forward. Most of us know what gear we “think” would be the best, but for those of you who maybe aren’t sure, we are dedicating an article just for it.  Keep in mind all that we have gone through in stats,   gems and enchants and you will have a better idea of what your really wanting  for gear.

The Death Knight starts with some pretty decent gear for all intents and purposes and it can get you far into the game towards level 80. Some quests give you some gear that may provide a boost in stats and that’s fine and dandy. But when do you need a major overhaul in gear? Your fist and most important gear set will be when you are level 78 when you will want a full set of

Savage Saronite Battlegear

• Savage Saronite Bracers
• Savage Saronite Gauntlets
• Savage Saronite Hauberk
• Savage Saronite Legplates
• Savage Saronite Pauldrons
• Savage Saronite Skullshield
• Savage Saronite Waistguard
• Savage Saronite Walkers

If you notice there is a repeating theme in these items. Firstly, Strength and Stamina and Secondly Critical Strike Rating and Resilience. These are really good stats for your Death Knight at this time and can get you running regular Dungeons and once you get to Level 80, running Heroics.  Even if this set is more for PvP, it can certainly boost your gear beyond the Quest greens you picked up alongside the BoE blues. There are a few items you can get to compliment your build even better.

Lvl 80 Crafted gear:

Icebane gear is a nice choice but you may ask why. They have uses down the line that can benefit you more than you might know. The best feature about these 3 pieces of gear is that they are highly customizable since you don’t really care about the socket bonus. You could for example fill all 7 available sockets with 20 str gems for a total of 140str.

• Icebane Girdle
• Icebane Treads
• Icebane Chestguard

Couple the Icebane set with these 2 crafted items (possibly replacing the boots):

• Spiked Titansteel Helm
• Spiked Titansteel Treads

Regular and Heroic Trial of the Champion

In Regular ToC, you can enter the dungeon as of level 75. You won’t be able to equip the loot in there until level 80 but the XP is good and if you can get carried (Yes, carried!) through it often enough you can certainly have a decent set of gear when you hit 80 (enchanted and gemmed).

• Banner of Victory
• Breastplate of Imperial Joust
• Drape of the Undefeated
• Gauntlets of the Stouthearted Crusader
• Girdle of Arrogant Downfall
• Helm of the Violent Fray
• Uruka’s Band of Zeal

Conversly as soon as you hit 80 you can start doing the Heroic version of the dungeon once every day to obtain the following gear:

• Ancient Pendant of Arathor
• Legplates of Relentless Onslaught
• Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates
• Plated Greaves of Providence
• Vambraces of Unholy Command

Weapons:

Two hand weapons or our thing and anything that adds Strength and Stamina are great such as your first weapon once you hit level 80,  the Titansteel Destroyer. This weapon is a weapon of choice because of its stats. You cant get much better until you run some heroics and get a nice drop. Keep in mind the stats you have learned to look for and you should do just fine.

A weapon to look for that is far superior is Edge of Ruin and can be found only in Heroic ToC.

Next thing your working toward on gear of course is Raid gear. You know that gear that is all pretty with the purple name tags and lots of gem slots and stats that make you drool that the other person is wearing and you think must be hacked because you have never ever seen anything like that before so it just cant be real…Oh its real…and you can get it. Even if you only play one hour a day you can get the gear for raiding.

Emblem Gear

Gear can also be attained by using Emblem of Conquest and Emblem of Triumph. This is the gear of champions. This is the gear that gets you invited to raids. Keep in mind you must know your role and how to play your character but the gear helps.

Emblem of  Conquest gear:

2-piece T8.5

• Conqueror’s Darkruned Helmet
• Conqueror’s Darkruned Battleplate

5 other pieces of gear that are of interest to DKs:

• Belt of the Singing Blade
• Bladebreaker Gauntlets
• Sigil of the Vengeful Heart (The Emblem of Triumph one is FAR better)
• Legplates of the Violet Champion
• Spiked Battleguard Choker

Emblem Of Triumph Gear:

When it come to Emblems of Triumph, Blizzard changed the rules for Tier 9. There are 3 versions of every one of the tier 9 pieces of gear that share a common set bonus. Let’s refer to them as 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 for simplicity. the last set (9.3) can only be obtained from Heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-H. ToC) token drop. and a single token can purchase any of the 5 pieces available. Gone are the days of running an instance 10 times to get the one piece of Tier gear you actually want.

The two other tiers 9.1 and 9.2 can be purchased with Emblems of Triumph: 9.1 requires only the emblems themselves where as the 9.2 set requires 1.5x more emblems as well as a Trophy of the crusade. On a side note the 2 and 4-piece bonuses of T9.x are way better then the T8.x equivalent.

Here is the complete list of items that are of interest to you:

• Bloodshed Band
• Faceplate of Thunderous Rampage
• Shoulderplates of Trembling Rage
• Mark of Supremacy
• Sigil of Virulence (This should be your FIRST PRIORITY)

Tier 9.1

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Conquest
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Conquest
• Koltira’s Helmet of Conquest
• Koltira’s Legplates of Conquest
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Conquest

Tier 9.2

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Triumph
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Triumph
• Koltira’s Helmet of Triumph
• Koltira’s Legplates of Triumph
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Triumph

You should note that if you are inclined to PvP there are complete sets available for purchase with both Conquest and Triumph emblems. For more information about gearing up to Raid, check out  Agorg’s Quick Gearing Guide for the Want to be Raider

Follow that guide and you’ll be raiding in no time flat, and Dominating the DPS meter in the process.

I hope you have enjoyed yourself on our DK tour of The Best DPS build for Blood Spec Death Knight in patch 3.2 and may your DPS meters hit the roof.

On a personal note. I don’t claim to have all the answers to all the questions about the Death Knight but it is my favorite class. I play the DPS DK exclusively and study and test it all the time. I have several lvl 80 DKs on different realms for testing and one I play on. I will get you up to speed on the upcoming changes as best I can for patch 3.3 and thank you for all your input.

Special Abilities And Pet Management

In this installment we’ll cover the little things that are important to know while playing your DK, some are common sense and some you might already know, but a quick recap never hurt anyone.

Keep in mind: your DK is a 2-Hand weapon specialist. Gearing up will be our next part of the series so I won’t go into details here.

What other skills will I need to use?  

Pestilence:

Is very useful for multi-mob as it puts your PS and IT on all causing damage to every mob. If you’re soloing, it works out just fine but in a group it can cause problems. In a group (5-10-25 man), the tank gets aggro on the first mob and you hit the main target right after. The tank in the meantime is making sure he has aggro on all the mobs in the group. If you hit Pestilence before he does get aggro on the group you could pull threat off the tank … and that is not good. Timing is very important. While you heal yourself for the most part, if you get aggro you will not be able to heal yourself fast enough causing your healer to start healing you as well as the tank. FYI If the healer has to make a choice between healing a Silly DK who pulled threat and the Tank that will keep the rest of the group alive, do you want to guess who’s getting the heal?

For the most part you should be able to keep yourself healed up without any help and sometimes….you get a healer that refuses to heal DK’s and up-time is critical for the success of any group.

Death and Decay:

D&D is not one of your very useful skills for a Blood build but it does have its uses.

Trash mobs! Now in Culling of Strath there are a few times to use it on the little turned humans being sure to get all your runes back up and ready for the next fight. Again this takes practice and there are a few dungeons you can use it but not many. It works alright when soloing a bit but again it’s not a skill used much for this build.

Chains of Ice:

Chains of Ice is mostly used as Crowd Control in PVP and does have its uses while soloing but rarely will you ever use it in a dungeon. All bosses are immune to CC and you want the tanks to keep the trash mobs busy. While soloing, you could be questing along just fine and fighting solo mobs that tend to run away when one gets away and brings back his friends en mass. OOPS!! This is about the only time it’s a very useful thing to use. It’s nice to have be be aware of it’s limitations: CC

The Pet:

Your Pet Ghoul (summoned from Raise Dead ability) and your Dancing Rune Weapon. These guys can boost your DPS quite a bit to the point of amazement. There are a few tricks however to using them that will help you get the most out of them you can:

• Make sure your Ghoul is ready for every boss. Summoning him is on a 3 minute cool-down and your Dancing Rune Weapon has a 1- ½ minutes. So this also takes practice and timing. Make sure both are off CD for every boss, (ie. Don’t click “Ready” on the ready check if you’re not ready!)

• Whatever you do, make sure you have your pet out on every fight and Keep control of your pet at all times. It should be attacking the same target you are. It won’t change target unless the target it’s attacking is dead. If it isn’t, command it to do so using the Gnaw ability or  Ctrl-1 to force your pet to attack a new target.

• If you control your pet in this way there is absolutely no reason to ever take your pet off of Passive mode, that way it can attack the Boss while you’re kiting some trash (Gluth fight).
• Keeping your pet on passive will allow him to attack a target that you death grip much faster. Otherwise your pet jumps 20 yds. to your target and is stuck running back to you at a leisurely pace, by which time your target is most likely dead anyway.

• If the pet is low on health, you can ask your healers to throw a little love(Heals) it’s way. Certainly not at the expense of the tanks, of course, but you can remind your healers that pets need health too.

• When all else fails and your health is really low, remember that you can sack your pet for the health benefit of Death Pact. Yet another “Oh, $H1T!” button at your disposal.

• Unless you’re Tanking yourself, don’t use the Dark Command ability (Taunt), every tank will be grateful, and so will you. The days of Crowd Control seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur with Wrath but thankfully, Blizzard has specifically stated they were bring it back “in the near future”, whatever that means.

Maybe by then the DKs will have to learn to use their pets again and so will Hunters. CC some mobs, protect the healer, even back-up tank (Yes, Hunter Pets used to be quasi-acceptable tanks back in the day). Until that day, focus on what you do best: DPS.

So there it is, mass destruction is a Death Knights purpose and it is key that when you’re playing one in DPS that you should do just that. Enjoy your Death Knight and remember practice and timing are your best friends.

The next, final, installment of the DK series will cover Gear.

… To be continued.