Survival Build For Patch 3.3

A few weeks back we gave our readers the new top dog of hunter builds with our Marksmanship spec here: Highest Hunter DPS Build For Patch 3.3.  But just because Marks made a push past Survival in the max DPS build race certainly doesn’t mean that Survival is now an also-ran.  As a matter of fact, if you are more used to playing Survival and don’t feel like making the switch to a whole new play style, this Survival build still Dominates.  At a mere 164 DPS short of the max Marks build, this Survival spec pumps out a brutal 10,920 DPS (max theoretical).  So without further ado . . .

Gear

Sample Gear Survival Hunter Patch 3.3

Talent Builds

Survival Hunter Build Max DPS

Glyphs

Major

• Serpent Sting
• Kill Shot
• Explosive Shot

Minor

• Mend Pet
• Feign Death
• Your Choice

Priorities

1. Flask = Endless Rage
2. Food = Blackened Dragonfin
3. Hunters Mark
4. Summon Pet = Wolf
5. Auto Shot
6. Aspect of the Hawk
7. Rapid Fire
8. Kill Shot
9. Kill Command
10. Explosive Shot
11. Black Arrow
12. Serpent Sting
13. Aimed Shot
14. Steady Shot

As usual with all our build guides, this is a priority list and NOT a rotation.  You obviously cannot use kill shot until the mob is below 20% health, but it would take priority over all your other shots if the mob is below 20% health.  Keep an eye on the thread below for expert commentary from master hunters who can fill you in on all the details of a prioritized shot rotation.  It’s far less complex for hunters than DK’s and feral druids, however.  You should be able to figure the rotation out on your own based on the priority list here.

Damage Sources

Yeah, the uber geared marksman may still beat you a little in DPS, but if youre like a lot of people and loath change you can just stay survival and do just fine.  It’s too bad there isn’t a completely Dominating Beast Mastery build for raiding, but hey, you can’t have it all.  besides, the gigantuan pets tend to tick people off.  Too much stomping leads to bad blood between friends.  But this Survival spec will certainly keep pace in the latest round of top DPS wars, and we still see a lot of hunters sticking with Survival over Marks.  Good luck Dominating with your Survival hunter.

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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”

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Not Just A Raid Buff For 25’s Any More – Shadow Holds Its Own In 3.3

Another class that gets the short end of the PvE stick because of how OP they can be in PvP is the priest.  One little change to keep these guys from melting every face in arenas and they get a little worthless for PvE – again.  But the interesting thing about 3.3 is that there doesn’t really seem to be any class that is just completely on the bottom of the pile.  Almost every class has at least one spec in the 10k range, and the priset is now no exception.

Gear

Shadow Priest Example Gear Setup

Talent Build

Shadow Spec DPS Build

Glyphs

Major

• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Flay
• Shadow

Minor

• Fortitude
• Fading
• Levitate

(As per usual; the minor glyphs are quite a matter of personal preference since they have little or nothing to do with DPS in most cases).

Priorities

1. Flask = Frost Wyrm
2. Food = Fish Feast
3. Fortitude
4. Divine Spirit
5. Inner Fire
6. Shadow Form
7. Vampiric Embrace
8. Potion of Speed
9. Shadow Fiend
10. Shadow Word: Pain
11. Vampiric Touch
12. Devouring Plague
13. Mind Blast
14. Mind Flay
15. Shadow Word: Death (if moving)
16. Dispersion

Damage Sources

Remember to run your own numbers to get your Pawn scales for your current toon.  Plus, re-run your scales in the engine every time you get a new piece of gear so that you are always completely up-to-date when it comes to making gear choices.  We show you how to do that in the Article Making Gear Choices For Your Character. It’s been so freakin’ long since Law did shadow (think leveling with Sherpaman before WotLK as in this article: The Solo Priest; You Can Do It! and The Lawbringer Rules ) that I won’t even attempt to give you insight into the priorities here, you’ll have to get that from the thread below.

But at least at this point the shadow priest is more than just a decent addition to a 25 man raid, they can actually be a big contributor on an individual basis in the form of some seriously massive, and quite Dominating, DPS of their own.

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Retribution Is Back With A Holy Vengeance

Perhaps no other class waxes and wanes more in overall DPS than the paladin.  A lot of it has to do with PvP.  Paladins get a PvP buff, then in a week there is one in almost every arena team pwning face.  That’s no kind of balance so they get a nerf, then they are worthless in PvE.

We’re not sure why Blizz has such a hard time keeping PvP and PvE separate for pallies, but at least for now, the Ret paladin can do more than just respectable damage in raids.  The following build and numbers bear that out.  Since all we’ve done on Paladins for quite a while has been about tanking, we thought it was high time to do a DPS build for them.

Remember that the following comes from the Simulationcraft Engine.  If you have any problems with the use of gear or glyphs, you can download the engine yourself and tinker with the simulated toon and rerun the numbers for yourself.  Be sure to save your output and post it below if you can beat the preset numbers.

Also, once you’re done retrofitting your toon with any new spec changes and glyphs, run the engine yourself to get a fresh set of Pawn scales – you can read how, and why you should do this, in the article: Making Gear Choices For Your Character.

Gear

Gear Suggestion Character For Ret Paladin Early Patch 3.3

Talent Build

Retribution Paladin Build For Patch 3.3

Glyphs

Major

• Judgement
• Seal of Vengeance
• Consecration

Minor

• Anything you like

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Dragonfin Filet
• Seal = Vengeance
• Hammer Of Justice
• Divine Plea
• Arcane Torrent – (Assuming You’re A Blood Elf)
• Avenging Wrath
• Judgement – (Your choice here depending on raid makeup and mana issues)
• Crusader Strike
• Divine Storm
• Consecration
• Hammer of Wrath
• Exorcism
• Potion of Speed

Damage Sources

Ret experts should help out the neophytes by giving tips on how to use the priorities above, and there will probably be some discussion about how gear choices might have changed a bit now that three wings of ICC are open and it is at least fairly likely you could have gotten one to three pieces of t10 or t10 equivalent gear by now.

If you had your Paladin DPS spec on the sidelines for whatever reason, it might just be time to dust that bad boy off and give him (or her) a whirl.  One thing is certain, a decently geared Ret paladin can pump out some seriously dominating DPS in patch 3.3.

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Marksmanship Build Back At The Top In Patch 3.3

We’re not really sure why Blizz does this from time to time.  Back in tBC Marksmanship hunters were all the rage, with the odd BM hunter holding on to his leveling days until they finally gave up and joined the Marks crowd at some point.  At the beginning of WotLK it was the BM guys who had their Devilsaurs stomping around shaking screens in everyone’s face.  Then, finally, Survival hunters have been the flavor of the last six months or so (a spec I always wanted to play in tBC – when I was still allowed to play a DPS toon).

That all changed in the last patch, and we’re back to Marksmanship as the top DPS spec again.  The Wikki Simulationcraft engine lists four builds for DPS potential:

• Beast Mastery at 9725 DPS
• Survival at 10920 DPS
• Marksmanship at 10964 DPS
• Marksmanship at 11084 DPS

So BM has definitely been relegated to leveling duty once again, which may be because everyone else simply hates the BM pets in a raid.  The other builds are separated by by just 164 DPS, so it certainly doesn’t man Survival is dead by any means, but if all you care about is beating everyone in a raid in DPS, you’re probably going to want that 11k DPS build giving you every possible advantage.

Remember that this build is based on the Simcraft engine, but what what we’ve been able to tell from testing in multiple classes and specs – the engine just doesn’t lie.  My Shaman now hardly ever uses Chain Lightning, and my Mage pushes like 2 buttons.  And it works better than just making things up as you go along.  But, there will always be subtleties in every priority list that our readers will point out in the thread below the post, so ask questions if you have them and the experts will come to you.  And yes, we’ll try to make sure they are nice to the nubs.

Gear

Here is the best in slot hunter gear for T9T10 in Patch 3.3; at least it’s best in slot based on current content and what someone could possibly have at this point.  That doesn’t mean you could run out and get all this gear in a week, or even a month, but it should give you an idea what you should be (cough) shooting for.

Tier 9 Tier 10 Hunter

Talent Build

Patch 3.3 Marksmanship Hunter Spec Build

Glyphs

Major

• Glyph of Serpent Sting
• Glyph of Aimed Shot
• Glyph of Steady Shot

Minor

• Mend Pet
• Feign Death

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Hearty Rhino
• Hunter’s Mark
• Pet (Wolf)
• Trueshot Aura
• Aspect of the Hawk
• Serpent Sting
• Rapid Fire
• Kill Command
• Aimed Shot
• (wait for Chimera Shot if Cooldown on Chimera is less than .25 sec.)
• Chimera Shot
• Kill Shot
• Readiness
• Steady Shot

That’s all there is to it.  Kill command when you can, and then Aimed Shot at the top of the list.  Follow Aimed with Chimera and Kill Shot when it becomes available.  If not, pop readiness and then do steady shot.  So it’s really just Aimed shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot – Aimed Shot (Chimera Shot if cool-down is up), Steady Shot – Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot.  And you pop cooldowns for rapid fire and readiness when they are available, although you’ll want to wait on the readiness cool-down until after you’ve used both Chimera and Kill shot so they refresh for the next run through the list.

Damage Sources

Pawn Scales

This pawn scale is a little rough, since the engine didn’t spit this out and we had to build it manually, but it should be as close as you could hope for without the programming help.

( Pawn: v1: “Marksmanship”: Intellect=0.519, CritRating=0.893, Agility=1.444, HitRating=0.236, ArmorPenetration=1.116, HasteRating=0.124, Ap=2.837, GemQualityLevel=81 )

So for those of you who played Marks back in the tBC days, now is your chance to go back to your roots.  For everyone else, there at least is a very viable option to Survival builds, although BM is a good 1,300 DPS behind.  I was a big fan of Survival being the top spec, not that the guild will ever let me play a hunter, but it gave me a warm and squishy feeling deep down.  But no matter if a hunter was your first toon, or just another in a long line, this Marksmanship spec will help you Dominate.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Welcome to our next installment in the DK series. Today we cover Professions, Gemming, Enchanting and a few stats.

Professions:

JewelCrafting and Blacksmithing are you two top choices when it comes to professions for a DK. They combine the most Raid-Benefits to your character than any other professions. They are also the most expensive.
If you choose Jewelcrafting as one of your trade skills then you’re in for a treat. Jewelers’ Gems will be your best friends. You can have 3 of these unique Gems on your equipment with stats like 34 to Hit Rating or 34 to Strength and even 34 to Expertise that can produce results.
As a Blacksmith you’ll get two extra sockets to put those bad boys into.
One way to mitigate that expense, is to level Mining first while picking up twice as much ore as you really need. Get JC up and then drop Mining to pick up BS and use the remainder of your mats for that one.
If gold has always been an issue for you, feel free to pick up Gavin’s AH Mastery Guide

Your gemming priority is as follows:

1. Hit Rating
2. Strength,
3. Expertise / Armor Pen
4. Critical Strike

Enchants:

1. Strength
2. Attack Power
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste

Some Stats to make the above make sense

Hit Rating:

DKs and all melee classes share the same 8% cap on that, until you get 8% hit rating (263 Hit rating) this stat is your top priority. As long as your are not Hit capped you should be trying to get there. This is especially important when using a 2-H weapon, after all, every swing you miss is damage that you’re NOT doing.
Once you are Hit capped, Strength: you can never have enough Strength. For a DK 1 Strenght = 2 Attack power. Attack power directly translates into DPS …

Now the following comes from the guys at ElitistJerks.com. These guys really know the math.

Expertise vs. Armor Pen

Expertise
•1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25%
•32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried.
•8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged and parried (each) and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.

Armor Penetration Rating
It doesn’t affect our damage from Diseases, Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike or Death Coil. This makes Armor Penetration have a reduced value for Unholy and Frost Specs. Blood however does have quite a lot of benefit from ArP Rating, due to the majority of its damage being Physical.
We need 15.39 Rating to ignore 1% armor on our target.

So although ArPen is cheaper to get (15.39 = 1% armor ignore) the Expertise affects both Dodged hits and parries which redure your DPS significantly. Bottom line, for a DK they are relatively equivalent because we use a slow 2-H weapon and Strength is always more valueable anyway, so gemming and enchanting for those stats may not be so wise. Don’t forget that most of your gear will naturally come with some of those stats

“What  do I need to upgrade first?”

Just remember, you will never be taken seriously as a player, for end-game content, if you don’t enchant and socket your gear.

WoW-Heroes.com

WoWHead.com/profiles

Both have a fantastic tool to look at yourself in the mirror so to speak. Using those web sites you can see, at a glance, what your character has equipped, what he is missing, what upgrades are available and where to find them.

That’s it for this installment of the DK series, tomorrow we’ll cover the finer points and before we’re done we’ll have gone over the gear as well .

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Welcome back to the second installment of the DK series.  Today, we’ll cover Glyphs and Rotation.

Glyphs are pretty straight forwards; you saw them in the link to the build on Yesterday’s article. The only argument I see is for Glyph of Icy Touch instead of Glyph of Disease. And after field testing it in multiple scenarios, based on my play style and rotation I just prefer the Glyph of Disease because of the instant refresh of all diseases. After all the less time I spend refreshing a DoT, the more time I can spend DPSing.

Glyph of Death Strike- Major
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon-Major
Glyph of Disease- Major
Glyph of Horn of Winter-Minor
Glyph of Pestilence-Minor
Glyph of Raise Dead- Minor

When it comes to rotation, some classes have a fixed rotation (Prot Paladins) while other classes have a priority-based rotation (Feral Druids). Death Knights can, ironically put out more damage with the simplest of rotations. It’s probably why we’re accused of “Face Rolling”, but every DK knows that’s just plain Jealousy, even if no other class will admit it!

Step1: Put up your Diseases

Plague Strike(Puts: Blood Plague) and  Icy Touch (to put Frost Fever on your target)

Once those are up you can forget about them for the rest of the fight and as long as you remember to keep them up with Pestilence, you’re golden. Remember, Pestilence is a top priority before your diseases run out, It’s far less “expensive” to keep them up than it is to renew them if they fall off.

Step 2: Do your thing!

Death Strike, Heart Strike (x2), Death Coil (Runic Power Dump),

Death Strike, Heart Strike (x3), Dancing Rune Weapon

Rince and repeat.

It’s preferable to wait for the second time through your rotation to ensure that you have all 4 Blood Worms up before you call your DRW, but if you already have 4 Blood Worms, you can go ahead and pop DRW on that first pass. With the glyph, your DRW is up for 17 seconds and will spend the next 73 seconds on cool down. During that time Death Strike and Heart Strike are pretty much all you need, as long as you remember to keep up Pestilence before your diseases run out.

Now this may sound a little simplistic and too good to be true, but on the PTR I’ve personally done 8.4K DPS and after enchanting and gemming up the gear, I brought that up to a staggering 10,200 DPS. (Ok, it’s in full T9 and 245 Epics, but still …)
This just proves that a rotation doesn’t have to be complicated to generate results and that some times, the simplest way is the best way.

Next time we’ll cover Gemming and Enchanting as well as some base stats and their importance to a DK.

… To Be Continued

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