Not to long ago I embarked on a journey to swap my dps spec from Blood to Frost and it’s been a fun ride. It has also taken me pretty deep down the rabbit hole into the mechanics of how to dish out the damage properly and learn many of the small intricacies that when added up can make a substantial difference in performance. I still have a great deal to learn but I’d like to share what I have already learned.

If you are interested in turning in your Heart Strike or Scourge Strike for Obliterate, or if you are feeling a little curious what all the hype is about, read on!

I will not be updating the blog post as the guide gets updated, for the most up to date guide please visit The Official 3.3 Frost Thread

I’m going to take information from a few different sources and start compiling an official Frost thread. I am predominantly my guilds main tank, but I’ve gathered some gear and I dps whenever I can. I am not an expert on Frost dps, but I do a decent job of gathering the information around me and displaying it in a readable format.

Audience
It is expected that you are already somewhat familiar with the DK class. Please see Tiki’s Spec Compendium for pros/cons and other general tree info if you are still deciding on what tree to go to. I will assume from here that you have already decided to go Frost and are aware of it’s benefits.

Sources
Elitist Jerks – An excellent Frost guide and where I have acquired a lot of the info for this guide.
Tiki’s Spec Compendium – Where I first got my hands dirty with the dps frost.

Talent Builds
For the most part, the community has concluded that the starting template should be this: (0/52/15)
This leaves 1 glyph and 4 talent points to spend.

With the 4 points left over you have some options for spending them. I simulated dps per talent based on a pretty standard ICC i264 geared toon with GoIT. I can expand the value of the points later.

Subversion
One of the major benefits of this talent is 8% threat reduction per point. From my sims it has produced the 2nd highest dps per point gain behind BCB.

Blood Caked Blade
The highest dps gain per point according to my simulations and many other resources I’ve read. I’d put 3 points here first unless you are experiencing serious threat issues.

Black Ice
My sims show this behind Subversion and BCB. I haven’t seen any recommendations to pick this up over Subversion or BCB, perhaps there is a reason out there somewhere?

Chill of the Grave
This talent actually simmed higher then Subversion and BCB but mileage is going to vary on your raid composition. The rule of thumb is if you are starved for Runic Power, put a point here. If you have to much RP, take a point out. (If you are running GoD build and have the extra FS available, the value of this talent goes up)

1/52/18
This is the spec that I have chosen to go with. I recommend spending at least 1 point in Subversion for threat reduction. 3 points in Blood Caked Blade as the top dps per point option.

Glyphs
Glyph of Obliterate is a must.
Glyph of Frost Strike is another no brainer.

What we are left with is either:
Glyph of Disease or Glyph of Icy Touch.

GoD – The benefit of GoD is an extra GCD for Frost Strike and an Obliterate instead of an Icy Touch, Plague Strike and one blood strike. The downside is if you have a great deal of lag there can be complications keeping the diseases up. The current fix to that is to use both blood runes for pestilence. So pestilence twice in a row. It will make sense when you see it.

GoIT – I have found this glyph to be more forgiving and reliable. On a fight where you have to apply fresh diseases often (target swapping) or where diseases fall off due to fight mechanics (air phases or having to run away from target) this GoIT is a better choice. The downside is it can be more difficult to squeeze all the frost strikes in to spend your RP.

Rotations
Frost is considered by some to be a priority system when used with GoIT, and a rotation system when using GoD and utilizing Rune Grace Period. Killing Machine is where the fun kicks in and what the “priority” revolves around. Here is a community accepted “priority” list for GoIT which is probably the best place to get comfortable as frost:

Single Target
1- Killing Machine + Freezing Fog -> Howling Blast*
2- Killing Machine -> Frost Strike
3- Keep Frost Fever up
4- Keep Blood Plague up
5- Obliterate
6- Blood Srike
7- Frost Strike
8- Rime
9- Horn of Winter

* Debatable, from what I’ve read it’s better to use Killing Machine proc for Howling Blast if Freezing Fog (Rime proc) is available. The reason is a HB crit + non-crit FS is better then a crit FS + non-crit HB. Additionally, FS crit rates are so high that you have a good chance of critting them both if you HB then FS.

So a simplified beginner example of an opening rotation would look like, making sure to use FS whenever a KM proc is available:
IT – PS – OB – BS – BS – FS – Horn
OB – OB – OB – FS – FS

Once the general concept is down, we’ll get into perfecting the system further below. However one thing you’ll want to learn early on is watching Killing Machine and make sure you use it quickly. It is a high priority. We’ll work on setting something on your UI to make sure you don’t miss any Killing Machine procs further below as well.

More advanced priority and rotations further below.

Runeforging
Mainhand: Rune of the Fallen Crusader
Offhand: Razorice

For most situations you want Razorice as your offhand Runeforge. If there is a fight with a lot of adds and single target dps is not as important, you can swap to Cinderglacier.

Advanced Topics and Techniques

Rune Grace Period
Rune Grace Period is something not talked about much and I don’t think I’ve seen it in a guide but it is something that needs to be understood. Typically after a rune is used, it takes 10 seconds to “refresh” the rune and make it available for you to use it again. However, without a “grace period” we would get less dps the slower internet connection we have. The reason is it takes a certain amount of time for your computer to send the command to the server to use the rune. If it takes 500 milliseconds (or .5 seconds) for the server to receive the command, then you are losing .5 seconds on every rune you are trying to use. So it would be 10 seconds for refresh, 500ms (or whatever your latency), 10 second refresh, etc.

No Grace Period
- Uses Rune
- 10 seconds later the rune is ready
- Player mashes rune again, but due to latency it takes .5 seconds for the server to use the rune.
- 10.5 seconds later the rune is available once again.

So as you can see if this is how it worked, we would see network performance play a huge part in players performance, or DPS. So what Blizz has instituted is a “Grace period” of 2.5 seconds. What this means is when the rune becomes available, you have 2.5 seconds to use the rune and the rune will begin refreshing AS IF you had used it as soon as it was available.

With Grace Period
So if we start combat with the grace period and use a rune immediately, the rune should be available at the 10 second mark.

0 – Rune used
10 – Rune available

Then we use it again, but due to the time it takes for the server to receive it, we lose .5 seconds. However, the grace period begins refreshing the rune with only 9.5 seconds until ready instead of 10 to make up for the .5 seconds lost on the network.

0 – Rune used
10 – Rune available
10.5 – Rune used (begins refreshing with 9.5 seconds instead of 10)
20 – Rune available

So the Grace Period compensated for your network delay. The fun part is we are allowed up to 2.5 seconds of this “Grace Period” where we can actually use other abilities and then use the rune and it will still refresh as if it was used immediately. I’ll discuss why this is important in the next section.

Using Rune Grace Period effectively
So hopefully we now understand the rune grace period. Now how it can help improve our dps. For frost spec, it’s primarily used to squeeze in frost strikes. Without knowledge of the grace period we typically burn all our runes, then dump our runic power while all the runes are on cool down but we don’t want to do this!

Instead we want to weave frost strikes in between rune usage. Let’s look at an example where we use our grace period to weave in a frost strike.

0 – Rune used
10 – Rune ready but we’ll Frost strike instead of the rune. Frost Strike has a 1 second global cooldown.
10 – 12.5 is our Grace Period and as long as we use the rune before the 12.5 second mark, it will still be ready at the 20 second mark.
11 – Rune used. Rune begins refreshing with 9 seconds until ready thanks to grace period.
20 – Rune ready

To explain the above, when the rune was ready we use a frost strike instead of our rune but still got the rune back at the same time we would have if we used it right away. How does this add dps? Well when we look at the big picture when all the runes are being used, there is time to weave frost strikes in between obliterates which provides more potential for using the Killing Machine procs because frost strikes will be separated instead of 3 in a row.

Assuming diseases are up and we have both death runes:
0 – OB1
1 – OB2 (ready at 11)
2 – OB3 (ready at 12)
10 – OB1 (ready again at 20)
11 – OB2 Ready! Frost Strike instead
12 – OB2 used (ready at 21) OB3 ready
13 – Frost strike
14 – OB3 (ready at 22)

As you can see, we weaved frost strikes in between the obliterates, and thanks to the grace period all the runes will be ready as if we didn’t frost strike at all! This is why Grace Period knowledge is important and how it will improve your dps. For more questions about the grace period check out this thread: http://deathknight.info/forum/index.php?topic=8341.0

Hit Rating
Thanks to Nerves of Cold Steel we receive an extra 3% hit. This means we only need 5% hit from gear for all of our special attacks and main hand auto swings to hit. We still gain benefit from extra hit rating for our offhand swings. I’ll look into the value of hit after the 5% cap and update the post.

“Rotations” and “Priority Lists”
Glyph of Disease rotation
When used with GoD this comes pretty close to a solid rotation.
Opening Rotation: IT – PS – OB – BS – Pest
Repeating Rotation: (damage part): OB – OB – OB
Repeating Rotation: (refresh part): OB – OB – BS -Pest

Frost strike mileage may very depending on raid composition/spec but the idea is you are using frost strikes in between each OB.

Glyph of Disease Priority
1- Pestilence to keep diseases up
2- Killing Machine + Freezing Fog -> Howling Blast*
3- Killing Machine -> Frost Strike
4- Obliterate
5- Blood Srike
6- Frost Strike
7- Rime
8- Horn of Winter

The difference between this priority and the GoIT priority is pestilence moves to the top.

Talents and stats
Killing Machine and Haste
reposting and cleaning up Akengro’s post at EJ:
Number of procs per minute including haste formula is : PPM = KM_P * (145 + haste % from gear)/100
KM_P is the number of talent points you have in KM.

Scenarios :
1) no haste on gear, 5pts in KM
PPM = 5*145% = 7.25

2) no haste on gear, 4pts in KM
PPM = 4*145% = 5.80

3) 10% haste on gear, 5 pts in KM
PPM = 5*155% = 7.75

4) 10% haste on gear, 4 pts in KM
PPM = 4*155% = 6.20

Tundra Stalker
If you are using Glyph of Disease, you will need to re-apply your first frost fever to get the effect of Tundra Stalker. This is because when you jump into combat and apply your first disease (usually frost fever because you icy touch as you run in) this disease does not benefit from it (because when you apply it there are no diseases). The next time you apply frost fever, it will receive the added benefit of Tundra Stalker and your Frost Fever can then be rolled with the full damage amount. The exception is if there is another DK in your group and they put Frost Fever up before you, then you will not need to refresh but they will. So coordinate with the other DK in the raid for who puts it up first.

Love him or hate him, GC took the time to get pretty involved in a discussion about DK’s success and failures throughout WotLK. The discussion was in the tanking forums and titled “3.3.3 Worked (sorta) for DKs” and can be found over at the official forums here.

Among the topics discussed was the population fluctuation of DK’s. First, they were “OP” according to GC, then they were fixed to be more inline with the other classes. This caused a lot of DK’s early on in the expansion, and tapering off later on in the expansion.

As the posters in the thread stated, the 3.3.3 patch was relatively successful for DK tanks, seeing our class used more often in ICC encounters. There is now a DK related blues news thread where we will attempt to consolidate any news relating to our class which should save some time trying to stay current. You can find the thread here.

Not the greatest illustration, I’m not the best at Gimp/Photoshop but this should give a rough idea.

Instead of the 200% example that GC was giving, it’s better to think of the strikes as taking 50% of our rune pool. It’s going to be hard to differentiate between Runic Power used for Frost Strike/Death Coil and the “Rune Power” or “Rune Energy” in the new rune system. Maybe a name will catch on somewhere…

Basically, we will have 3 runes now in theory. We will still actually have 6 runes, but to understand how it works, and to put GC’s description into illustration, it looks like this:

After you use an Obliterate, which used to take 1 UH and 1 FR, it now takes 50% UH and 50% FR. This leaves your Rune “Energy” now at 50%.

Now the UH and FR rune energy is regenerating, much like our old rune system did.

So our “Rune Energy” for Unholy and Frost is now 60%. If we Obliterate again, which takes 50% (of the full pool) we are left with 10%.

To discuss the system in more detail, please follow this link to the forums.

Here is an additional visual aid created by wooshiewoo at mmo-champion forums. This gives an actual breakdown of what we’ll see the runes doing in Cataclysm, according to what was released in the preview.

Thinking back to the post about good Death Knights, we (meaning all the DK players out there) need to destroy the illusion that Death Knights are for average players, face-rollers, newb-bait, and piss poor. I want to see a change in the perception of Death Knights in WoW.

Even with the additional content released in patch 3.3, you may still see Death Knight players of lower level spouting rubbish, or horsing around as alts. Even worse is that I think the DK class is still not beyond all the stupidity of calls of being imbalanced.  That said I know we can’t kill every troll on the forums. Hunters have had the curse of Tard for as long as I can remember, and I know certain inane opinions will never truly die. But we can start to alter the perception by changing the way we play.

At best it will affect the change I/we want, at worse it will make your online time more satisfying.

Here are some trigger points for action for any serious Death Knight player, who wishes to change the face of the class within the community.

Triggers for Action:

1 – Be ready to help. If somebody asks for help, take the time to give it to them. Or at he very least write down their toon name, and maybe offer help later. This crosses over to all other classes, but especially the other plate dps classes too, as our stats and goals in gear are very similar. I know many folks who appreciate the explanations in plain English about Expertise and Hit Rating, and showing a willingness to assist goes a very long way.

2 – Share your positive stories. In your guild pages, blog comments, wow.com rants; everywhere. A statement made about a real scenario carries weight, and is very hard to debunk or call out. The negative elements of the community may attach to your message, but in the end if your story is truthful then you have presence. Have a screenshot and it weighs three times as much.

3 – Do a good deed every now and then. Give a boost to a starter DK, it could be an entry point to a new good player, may get you a thank you, and will certainly be a way that the other player might seek advice in the future. My effort a little while ago was crafting a set of starter blues for a DK just hitting Northrend. This meant his gear needs were pretty much set, and he trundled through to 80 pretty quickly. Toon is probably better geared than me now. :)

A place of solace for Death Knights - Inside Ebon Hold

4 – Know the resources. Find and link to the common and useful DK resources, such as DeathKnight.info, the DK forum in Elitist Jerks and the WoW.com DK area. Better yet help make others aware of these. Kill a mob for a DK and they’ll have silver for a day, teach that DK to kill, and they’re rich for life.

5 – Don’t feed the trolls. If you get baited into a troll comment, or see a total asshat speaking rubbish, it might be better to reply in a light, even handed way, and then move on. You keep the higher ground and make the asshat look silly, which is what we want.

6 – Don’t be a loot whore. This means that you should be honest about what is your main vs alt, what is your primary vs secondary spec, and what you really Need, versus what you only want/Greed. I’ve watched in horror as a DK started spouting that Tanking was actually his main spec, just as a Tanking item dropped for DKs. The fact that the toon was in the raid as dps, had a terrible tank and dps set, seemed not to matter, and then I found myself in an argument about declaring our main vs offspec roles after it had already been discussed.

Happy killing – TyphoonAndrew

Greetings everyone! Today, I will be covering Anubarak (25man HM) for dps. Guilds have been struggling on this guy, doing over 100 attempts on this guy. This encounter is by far one of the most hardest blizzard has came up with. People will say Yogg or Algalon are the hardest. I think the only reason Algalon is hard due to the fact that its only one hour a week. Yogg with the keepers up is easy once you get things done. I will admit though Yogg with 0 keepers is pretty hard. What I am writing about today is some tips and tricks to playing a Dk during this encounter. I am not saying I have the best tips or the best, but it works. Also I am gonna outline the fight for ya.

Basic Information

When you get to the boss, he is chilling in his UFC ring waiting. Its important to Flask/food up and make sure you switch to your AoE spec/w glyphs. I used this spec with glyphs. Unholy really rocks in this fight. The Death and Decay damage is nice.  Anubarak is pretty much a AoE fight with some single target DPS. The single target DPS comes from when you get adds down quick and have about 5-8 secs of just DPSing the boss. Make sure your ghoul spell doesn’t get locked out either. A couple of times I couldnt summon my ghoul from falling down into the water and had to leave the instance to be able to summon.

The Fight: Part I

Pretty much when the tank starts, the boss comes to him around middlefield. 6 Permafrost spawn and I always brought the first one down, followed by another DK bringing his down. I used a macro on this. /tar Frost Sphere. Just a simple macro, nothing fancy. The main reason why I dont put a Deathgrip command in is, I want to line up the Frost Sphere with my tank. Positioning is important. I always stand right on his back right leg and then bring it down for the raid. It’s important to have other people help out by dpsing the sphere. A time here or a time there when you bring it down, it might not be in melee range. It will then float away and might not be in a great position. Anyways, once I deathgrip it I like using Icy Touch on it first to throw some kind of Dot on it. I always found even in not in melee range, that I only have about 10% of its health remaining and then Deathcoil it. I know there is other ways but I like my way. So, the second DK bring his frost sphere down and then the adds will come out shortly after. The MT gets the boss in a position and the add tanks puts the addons on the perma frost. The offtanks can’t let the adds stack or let them burrow in the ground. This stuff causes wipes. All the tanks grab aggro on the adds and you pretty much AoE everything until Anubarak burrows in the ground.

The Fight: Part II

When you goes into the ground, bugs will start spawning and you need to kill them fast. Reason why is that they stack some nasty poisons on your raid members. Very Bad! Alright, when he goes into the ground, he will choose someone in the raid and go after them. Let’s say he targets me. I run to the web where you came in at and wait for a paladin to Blessing of Protection me when Anubarak gets to me. I then run into the perma frost and he gets stuck in it. Now, one of the most important things about this part is WATCH THE CORNERS! Let’s say I took him to the perma frost on the left(west perma frost). He chooses a warlock in your guild, only one problem your warlock is to the right on the right perma frost(east perma frost). Anubarak has a chance to start chasing him and crash into the other perma frost. Now he get a 3rd member who has to kite him around for like 30 secs. It’s alot of confusion. We are gonna say the warlock does him job right and brings Anubarak to the perma frost. He will choose a 3rd target. Important part to this is the 3rd target only has him for like 15 secs which is just another run to the web. During this time, I am breaking off from killing bugs to bring down the first perma frost. *Important you do this, due to the fact the perma frost does roam around alot. You might not have a chance to bring it in a good spot if you wait until the last second. My GM always makes our members come to him where he is at the way left side(if your looking at the web) away from me. The boss pops up and the other DK brings down the other frost sphere. Part I begins again.

The Fight: Part III

After part I of the fight is over, it goes to part II. Only difference is your kiting him to the UFC ring and bringing down the frost sphere there.  Part I of the fight begins. Around 33% I or DBM clicks off my Fort buffs and then at 30% Anubarak does his main move: Leeching Swarm. Pretty much is leeches a % of your current health, which is way you remove your fort buff. During this phase its important to pop a Frost Potion to help out the healers. One other debuff he puts on you is Penetrating Cold. It deals frost damage to your every 3 secs and thats alot considering you dont get healed very much during this phase. Just AoE the adds and try to stay alive by popping CDs.

Tips and Tricks

1. Make sure you keep your disease up at times.

2. Make sure you Death and Decay on the adds as soon as possible.

3. Remember, Glyphs are Ghoul, Dark Death and Death and Decay.

4. Pop CDs during Phase III of the fight to help out.

5. Pop Gargoyle during Phase I and after 30%.

6. Make sure you put your perma frost in a great position to AoE all adds.

7. Make sure your death and decay hits all adds.

Hope this little guide helps out. Good luck with the boss. Until next time, Tomorrow is another day.

I know many of you are scratching your head right now thinking, “Rune Strike? Isn’t that for tanking?” Well, you can wipe the dead skin cells off your keyboard because I’m about to show you how Rune Strike can be beneficial to a Blood/Unholy Death Knight in PVP. Keep in mind that Frost will never want to use Rune Strike, as your RP is best served cold with a Frost Strike.

I haven’t used Rune Strike since I was leveling, What does it do again???

Well you aren’t alone since not everyone tanks. Rune Strike makes your next auto attack strike the target for 150% weapon damage plus [150 * AP * 10 / 10000]. It is only usable after you dodge or parry, which is actually more often than you would think, and it cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked.

That doesn’t seem so great. . .

Beyond the tooltip there is a hidden buff that people forget about. Rune Strike counts as an auto attack. This means that Necrosis (Rank 5) will add 20% more damage as shadow, and Blood-Caked Blade (Rank 3) has a 30% chance to add 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% for each disease on your target.

Sounds a little better but can we have some numbers?

With both Necrosis and a Blood-Caked Blade proc while having both of my diseases on my target, I have crit for over 12.5K damage on rogues. Keep in mind that this is with improved Blessing of Might, Sigil of Virulence, Rune of the Fallen Crusader, Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Str), and Abomination’s Might (Rank 2) all proccing and up at the same time giving me over 8000AP.

Now 12.5K damage isn’t an average crit for my Rune Strike, however I do crit for 9.5K+ on average with an attack that cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried. This can make the difference in killing a rogue that pops Evasion, a warrior that uses Shield Block, or a hunter that uses Deterrence.

Now since I average 4750 hits and 9500 crits with Rune Strike, this comes out to 237.5 – 475 damage per runic power. With my Death Coil typically hitting and critting for 3500-7000, netting 87.5 – 175 damage per runic power, you can begin to see where the advantage is.

How do I fit Rune Strike into my rotation?

Since Rune Strike needs to be activated, cannot be activated unless it procs, and you must have enough RP, I like to macro it to all of my melee attacks. Here is an example and explanation of one such macro.

#showtooltip Heart Strike
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Heart Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro will enable Rune Strike if available, cast Heart Strike, and clear screen errors that would show up if Runes Strike is not available. On mouse over it shows the tooltip for Heart Strike, and since there is an ! in front of Rune Strike, it will not disable it if it is already enabled. You can also use this to enable Rune Strike if your target is not within melee range, making your first attack use Rune Strike as soon as you are within range.

When you are fighting a class that can get away from you and your Death Grip is not available, you can still cast Death Coil since the RP is not consumed by Rune Strike until the attack is used. This also allows you to take a step back and use Death Coils and Icy Touches to break through the defense of Hand of Protection, or while you have it on yourself if running with a Paladin.

Can I use this tactic in PVE also?

Outside of PVP, this tactic can still be used, and I have seen an increase of 500-800 DPS depending on the encounter using these macro’s on raid bosses. Just keep in mind that if you do not have Subversion (Rank 3), and you are running with an under geared tank, you will really need to be careful since Rune Strike pulls a lot of threat.

About Breathless

Formerly a member of HordeInvestments on Malygos (PVE) as Breathless and newly transferred to Rivendare (PVP) joining New Era as Breathlessdk, I am a Blood DK that enjoys playing and learning everything I can about my class.

Outside of the World of Warcraft, I am a 24 year old Helpdesk Technician that spends my down time reading and learning everything I can to better myself in both worlds.

If anyone finds any new advantages or disadvantages of using Rune Strike as DPS, if you have any other tips, or specific questions about what was written here, please feel free to contact me.

If I was asked what makes a good class-toon normally I’d be looking for nice gear, following instructions, and being on vent as the top three. However Death Knights have built up a shady reputation over the lifespan of Wrath (DeathTard anyone?), in that everyone has played one, and a lot of people persist in playing them, making the opinions of the class are very broad.

To my perception after so many players trying the DK class it seems that even this long after release we are still seeing really bad Death Knights. So bad in fact that it makes me ponder just how incompetent the person at the keyboard really is.

Here are brief musings of being a Death Knight character that I’ve encountered over the past few months or so, and what they did well, and what went badly. Some of this material can be applied to all characters, and some of it is DK specific; and as you’d expect the non-dk material are things that everyone should be thinking about.

Attitude is everything…

…especially with DKs. Because the population is so high, the attitude you project will speak volumes about you, and is the first real way to stand out from the crowd of “LFG melee dps”. Being polite and speaking up without speaking out of hand is the goal, and then performing well will make folks remember you. Also ponder that with so many Alt-DKs floating around a player who behaves like they care will often be remembered well, as opposed to a player who is just taking it easy, or killing time, or trash talking other folks in the run.

A case in point recently I saw was a dps-dk forming a group for the heroic daily. He wanted gear scores, spoke in trade-chat language, and was generally a borderline idiot. Once we formed up at the stone I did a quick inspect and saw a set of blue gear with missing gems and enchants and prompty asked him to put his propper dps gear on. Apparently he thought it was acceptable to get carried through the heroic daily, because his main was well geared. Now I think if he’d been up front about it, or even less of a pain about everyone else in the run then that would be ok, but after his attitude he just came across as a fool.

We ran with him anyway, he died a lot (I think the healer meant it), and provided marginally less dps than I did in my Tank set. Poor sap even went as far to talk about putting us on friends list, which I noted nobody mentioned recipricating.

Another example was watching with displeasure as a DK tank zerged at full speed through a UK pug run, but at no point used any tanking cooldowns, or waited for his healer/mana. The Death Knight has some awesome panic abilities, and this guy seemed to only know that Blood Boil did AoE. This is basically unexcusable. Each power is there for a reason, and ignoring them is gimping your own performance and that of anyone who you play with. His health was poor, threat was an issue, and he would not stop typing comments and advice. Basically a player who is a complete waste of oxygen, who proceeded to moan about the run being too slow. I mentioned the instance lock expired in 4 hours, but the subtlety was lost and that seemed to reinforce the stupid behaviour. I’ll live and learn, I doubt he will.

Welcome and embrace your death…

You have to have a death wish, and like being right up close to the kill targets. This will lead to you being number 3-4 on the threat meter, which in turn means that you’re next to the boss when the tanks die, and often the next character to get smashed.

Naxx’s Patchy fight illustrates this well. I’ve accepted that my role is to die straight after the tanks, and offer the other raid members the opportunity to run like bastards, or feign/invis/vanish. If you’re a tank you know that you die a lot, so you’ve already embraced the Ghost form as your form of threat reset. A repair bill is not bad if those repairs moved the group forward.

Love white line fever…

In concern with that deathwish should also be a fanatical drive to dps as hard as possible. To me that means spending time getting the rotations right, and learning what is best for your playstyle; a.k.a. White Line Fever. “Blah-spec” dps rotation might be technically best at the moment, but if you play on a high latency connection you’ll be forever out of sync with your cooldowns. Trial out a few specs on a dummy for 15-20 minutes, then pug something easy and spin up the rotation on a boss.

The contrast to this rule worth mentioning is:

a) never pull threat as dps, lest you look like a fool, and you’ll find your dps drop to zero very quickly. I love surfing the threat wave, and think its all part of taking it seriously.

b) Utility is as important as dps. This means that many abilities we have are present for the benefit of others. Every player should be thinking about the team’s overall progress, not position on the damage meter. You should be keeping Horn of Winter up all the time, and every other buff and debuff you can. Think about locking down mobs with chains if they’re hitting the healer, or using Death Grip…

Everyone Hates Death Grip…

Knowing when Death Grip is useful is a boon. DG is mostly hated by non-Death Knights, and thats because its generally used in PvP (*smile*) and often badly in instances or raids. It does however have huge potential outside of strategic use in particular boss fights like Malay and General Vez. I recently used DG in a CoS pug run, to pull an errant caster mob into the Paladin tank’s consecrate. It worked a treat: switched targets away from the mob straight after, and it mean the Pally could keep doing his tanking as normal. The Tankadin even thanked me.

and Army of the Dead…

AotD is the new Death Grip. Look for places that Army of the Dead can be used, and use it often. BGs are a given, some instance runs where there is a lot of trash, and even some raids can benefit. I use this regularly to begin soloing the Threat From Above daily quest in Ice Crown, always use it for “oh bugger!” moments in runs, and rarely get negative feedback from groups. The poor dragon in TFA is sometimes dead before the Army has de-spawned. This goes hand in hand with learning what is appropriate, and what better place than a battleground to test those different tactics. Note though – some Tanks hate it, which has to be respected since aggro-pong can frustrate the hell out of them.

You might need a rename?

Any damn fool DK that has a name which references Arthas but with a typo, accent, or extra vowel. I know (before the hate-email begins) that it is not fair to categorise everyone as shoddy for this choice of name, some players might be cool folks. However think back to the bad character names we’ve all seen in the past: Legolasss Hunters, Merlin mages, etc. It makes you look initially suss, and then your first mistake marks you as a try-hard. Its the same reason that Dkleetsauce is bad, as the viewer does not see the sarcasm or humour, just the character’s silly name. This counts double if you’re using the Jenkins title.

Strange but true…

There should be an achievement for zerging through a normal Ramparts run at level 60 with no healer. This was a while ago and it was funny to attempt, and ugly as hell. It worked only because the DKs spread out and taunt-ping spammed the bosses between the level 60 Death Knights in the group. From memory there were 4 DKs and a Hunter, all of whom had accepted that our repair bills were going to be huge, and we would rather do this than wait in LFG for a healer. That this is even possible could be seen as representation of how broken the class gear was at initial release, but the fights were darn tough when done this way. Somehow I doubt that we’d get away with it now, especially with deminishing returns on taunts. We had to focus fire and co-ordinate a lot, and you bet that the chance of getting any loot was so much lower when x4 plate wearers all roll Need.

Lastly a job well done…

Early in Wrath I watched in awe as a Dps Death Knight in VoA stepped up and took the Tank pain after one of the tanks DC’ed. He seemed to Frost-pres switch darn fast (almost like he was expecting it), and was blowing cooldowns straight away. An impressive amount of healing was needed to keep him up, but that was far better than watching the squishies try to face tank, or leaving the other tank to get smashed. It was totally ugly, far less than ideal, and had many dead at the end; but for the most part the team survived and we were able to rez the dead and loot.

That particular DK is still on my friends list, and he’s out performed time and time again since.

cheers,

TyphoonAndrew

——

TyphoonAndrew has been a wow blogger since November 2006; a self professed devil’s advocate who enjoys the lighter side of wow. The Death Knight was initially just a way to see the new content, but since the first few quests left him drooling, he’s been a DK fan ever since.

3.3 is looking awesome. The new bosses we’ve seen on PTR are looking innovative and challenging (albeit, Blizzard have said they’re not trying to make Icecrown as daunting as Sunwell).

We’ll see Unholy DKs going back to a traditional deep spec, but necrosis has lost its value in that spec. Current EJ theory is seeing either Dark Death or Disease glyphs being top; I personally would prefer to use Disease, and for AOE it’s the winner. Runeforge Gossip wrote how to use disease glyph. He also likes the scourge strike change to having mix of shadow and physical damage.

The changes around levelling alts were a little surprising for me. Hodir enchants being bind on account, for example, and increases in how quickly you gain rep from other groups in Northrend. I suspect Blizzard just bundled some Cataclysm changes into 3.3, which as a whole will make it easier to level new character from L1 all the way to L85.

Racial changes are available now too. Being a new class, mostly I expect DKs to remain on their current races (not like we can really claim to be bored of it), although I have had a question on switching to Night Elf from Human just for tanking.

I’m levelling a new DK now, and picked a Tauren for their awesomeness of size.

The Emblem changes in 3.3 mean we can get some wonderful raid-quality loot from heroic 5-mans, and the new LFG system will make that even easier, and helps old guys like me gear up their new mains.

But do you miss using crowd control in there? 2fps talked about cc. I like having cc, since it creates a bit more complexity for the tank, but am glad it’s not as crazy as in the L60 days.

A new blogger is on the scene too, Hinen writes on dps and whilst a new blog, it’s very active and worth visiting. His post on the Bleeding Hearts addon is relevant if you want to roll the best diseases.

A few addons recently updated or have caught my eye, and some well-written reviews.

But first a quick personal update from me. I’ll be posting on dk.info less often for the remainder of the year, as I’m busy with a move back to Australia. Then to frustrate me, tonight pwnwear is up and down for maintenance whilst my hosting company upgrades my blog’s server, so I thought heck I’ll ramble on here instead.

Tanking:

• Tanktotals updated to 3.22 compatible (my view)
• TankPoints also to 3.22

Raiding:

• Find out which dork has used a train set in your raid, and fine them 50 DKP!
• Mouse-over tooltip showing the average iLevel of their gear, nice for PUG raid leaders

nostockui:

• handy review of the various rune timers for DKs. dk.info runes even gets a mention, woot Futhark
• plus a commentary on a tanking UI setup

Other important ones:

• mik’s scrolling combat text has been updated
• my new unit frame of choice is Shadowed. Customisable very easily, simplicity itself, yet not a weaksauce unit at all. Very powerful tools including debuff filtering so you only see your own on a target.

Addon- management:

• OptionHouse is a great tool to check memory or CPU usage and to disable addons whilst in-game.

We’ve got a few discussions actively going on the tanking and dps changes in PTR 3.22. I think PvPers will like the bone shield cooldown being reduced to 1 min too. MMO-Champion has done a spell comparison with very promising results.

Ghostcrawler has commented now, read the discussion.

Death Knight
Blood

• Heart Strike now has its total damage increased by 10% for each of your diseases on the target to the primary target, and half that to the secondary target.
• Vampiric Blood now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec.)
• Subversion now also affects Scourge Strike.

Frost

• Frost Presence now reduces damage taken by 8%. (Up from 5%)
• Threat of Thassarian now also affects Rune Strike.
• Unbreakable Armor now increases your armor by 25% and increasing your Strength by 10% for 20 sec.

Unholy

• Bone Shield cooldown has been lowered from 2 min to 1 min.
• Dirge no longer affects Obliterate.

Tier 9

• Item – Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus – Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Bone Shield abilities by 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec)

Glyphs

• Glyph of Scourge Strike – Your Scourge Strike increases the duration of your Blood Plague and Frost Fever on the target by 3 sec, up to a maximum of 9 additional seconds. (Old – Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever.)
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor – Increases the armor granted by Unbreakable Armor by 20%. (Old – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%.)
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood – Increases the duration of your Vampiric Blood by 5 sec. (Down from 10 sec)