DK Dual Wielding?
Posted 11-21-2008 at 07:06 AM by Tonypablos
I don't know if it's me who's fundamentally flawed in my brain but there's something that attracts me to dual wielding classes:
Played a rogue as my first class and I had to dual wield swords cause it just looked hella cool to me.
Played a Warrior and I dual wielded axes for lolcritdamageftw and it just looked better on that class.
Played the shaman and dual wielded maces or axes, depending on what I had to get, just because of lawlfury proc'ing stupid numbers.
Now, i'm playing my death knight and a lot of people will remember that when the beta wasn't even out, I was number crunching Arms dps spec as that's what I was looking at in the time. (Granted, I was moreso looking at TG's viability but Arms was an interesting concept to me and I had curious notions to slam)
So two handers should fall into my comfort zone, right? ...well then I saw in Icecrown the Death Knight with two swords and got chills of giddiness in me. Go figure =/
So, I've been thinking about this and this is what I'm thinking.
1 - All specs should have at the least 17 points in frost. This includes Imp Icy, Glacier Rot, Nerves, 2 points in Black Ice and probably 5 points in the Icy Talons to get haste cause Dual Wielding does get better with some haste anyway so why not give yourself 20%. This leaves 2 points for whatever else. Technically you could go 3 points and finish off Black Ice for more ice damage but only one attack really is dealt with ice damage and that's your DoT. It's an important skill but not your biggest damage dealer. Another option I'm thinking about is Annihalation: this would make it your damage dealer as it's got the most potential damage..however this would come into conflict with using the deep end blood or unholy talent. More testing needs to be done.
At this point, this is where I'm torn. You can either go full blood or full Unholy. Scourge Strike sounds like it will hit harder than Heart Strike due to the fact it has an extra disease to proc on. Blood also doesn't give as much damage other than personal damage and a lot of your casters will love the 13% extra damage from your talents.
So, I offer two choices here.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
This spec utilizes you to use Scourge Strike as your tool of damage. With a two hander, I was hitting things for damn near 5k a shot last night in Naxx with a similar spec. Rotation would go something like this:
IT, PS, SS, BS, DC, DS, SS, SS, DC
And repeat. I think. I'm still looking at the rotation factor of the spec. The big thing here is to see how much damage you could hit with SS with a one hander. I'm thinking a slow/fast weapon may be more beneficial seeing how we don't really get much out of our offhand other than damage. None of our abilities work off of using the OH so you may as well quicken the speed so you can hit more often with the MH.
Second spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
This is the blood spec. Focus will be Heart Strike which does a good chunk of damage, however your diseases don't stay very long on the mob so it's a shorter rotation
IT, PS, HS, HS, DC, OB
Rince. OB wipes your buffs off and gives you that extra oomph. This is where I could potentially see switching three points in Black Ice into Annihalation to get that 3 more crit and so OB doesn't wipe my diseases off, however this would only change the rotation to put OB before HS.
IT, PS, OB, HS, HS, DC.
Rince. Those are the two specs I'm looking at. The Two hander specs are a little different but I won't get into that as this is a focus for DK Dual Wielding.
Now, with this in mind, this has brought up an interesting question: Could Dual Wielding tanks exist? The main reason why you do not want to dual wield tank is due to the fact you can proc off a lot more parries on a boss and Parry gib yourself to death. However, with the inclusion of expertise in the mix, and a lot of it being prominant, I'm wondering if you couldn't dedicate a few pieces to expertise and allow yourself, perhaps by rings, cloak and trinkets, to get the required expertise with a weapon bonus to remove that.
As we know, I believe it's something like 5.2% or 6.1% that all bosses have to parry. Fine, I get that...Lower that with the expertise and you're looking at an interesting build where parries and dodges don't miss, dual wielding can potentially do more damage:
1) You're more reliant on Runestrikes. With Parry being higher, you could technically replace one or two death coils with hard hitting Runestrikes and put out a lot of threat that way. Threat should not be an issue.
2) You could easily use two one handers that have decent stat, or hell, even your offhand could have the expertise you're looking for to cap you off. use your MH to have a high slow damage and your OH a quick stat boss boost and you could do well.
The problem is trying to find a good balance between the two. It's worth a look at and it's something I plan on doing soon. However, spec wise, I would probably want to fall into Frost to test that build out.
Something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
Your main attacks would be Frost Strike and Oblit, and something in the form of
IT, PS, OB, FS, FS, DC, OB, OB, FS or some form. I'd have to look ingame how the runes would change on that rotation. Tundra Stalker will give you 5 expertise which is always nice too in the fashion of getting towards that number you want for expertise.
The biggest thing I need to check is this: Can I get enough expertise without hurting my stats to the point where it's not worth it? More to come.
Played a rogue as my first class and I had to dual wield swords cause it just looked hella cool to me.
Played a Warrior and I dual wielded axes for lolcritdamageftw and it just looked better on that class.
Played the shaman and dual wielded maces or axes, depending on what I had to get, just because of lawlfury proc'ing stupid numbers.
Now, i'm playing my death knight and a lot of people will remember that when the beta wasn't even out, I was number crunching Arms dps spec as that's what I was looking at in the time. (Granted, I was moreso looking at TG's viability but Arms was an interesting concept to me and I had curious notions to slam)
So two handers should fall into my comfort zone, right? ...well then I saw in Icecrown the Death Knight with two swords and got chills of giddiness in me. Go figure =/
So, I've been thinking about this and this is what I'm thinking.
1 - All specs should have at the least 17 points in frost. This includes Imp Icy, Glacier Rot, Nerves, 2 points in Black Ice and probably 5 points in the Icy Talons to get haste cause Dual Wielding does get better with some haste anyway so why not give yourself 20%. This leaves 2 points for whatever else. Technically you could go 3 points and finish off Black Ice for more ice damage but only one attack really is dealt with ice damage and that's your DoT. It's an important skill but not your biggest damage dealer. Another option I'm thinking about is Annihalation: this would make it your damage dealer as it's got the most potential damage..however this would come into conflict with using the deep end blood or unholy talent. More testing needs to be done.
At this point, this is where I'm torn. You can either go full blood or full Unholy. Scourge Strike sounds like it will hit harder than Heart Strike due to the fact it has an extra disease to proc on. Blood also doesn't give as much damage other than personal damage and a lot of your casters will love the 13% extra damage from your talents.
So, I offer two choices here.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
This spec utilizes you to use Scourge Strike as your tool of damage. With a two hander, I was hitting things for damn near 5k a shot last night in Naxx with a similar spec. Rotation would go something like this:
IT, PS, SS, BS, DC, DS, SS, SS, DC
And repeat. I think. I'm still looking at the rotation factor of the spec. The big thing here is to see how much damage you could hit with SS with a one hander. I'm thinking a slow/fast weapon may be more beneficial seeing how we don't really get much out of our offhand other than damage. None of our abilities work off of using the OH so you may as well quicken the speed so you can hit more often with the MH.
Second spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
This is the blood spec. Focus will be Heart Strike which does a good chunk of damage, however your diseases don't stay very long on the mob so it's a shorter rotation
IT, PS, HS, HS, DC, OB
Rince. OB wipes your buffs off and gives you that extra oomph. This is where I could potentially see switching three points in Black Ice into Annihalation to get that 3 more crit and so OB doesn't wipe my diseases off, however this would only change the rotation to put OB before HS.
IT, PS, OB, HS, HS, DC.
Rince. Those are the two specs I'm looking at. The Two hander specs are a little different but I won't get into that as this is a focus for DK Dual Wielding.
Now, with this in mind, this has brought up an interesting question: Could Dual Wielding tanks exist? The main reason why you do not want to dual wield tank is due to the fact you can proc off a lot more parries on a boss and Parry gib yourself to death. However, with the inclusion of expertise in the mix, and a lot of it being prominant, I'm wondering if you couldn't dedicate a few pieces to expertise and allow yourself, perhaps by rings, cloak and trinkets, to get the required expertise with a weapon bonus to remove that.
As we know, I believe it's something like 5.2% or 6.1% that all bosses have to parry. Fine, I get that...Lower that with the expertise and you're looking at an interesting build where parries and dodges don't miss, dual wielding can potentially do more damage:
1) You're more reliant on Runestrikes. With Parry being higher, you could technically replace one or two death coils with hard hitting Runestrikes and put out a lot of threat that way. Threat should not be an issue.
2) You could easily use two one handers that have decent stat, or hell, even your offhand could have the expertise you're looking for to cap you off. use your MH to have a high slow damage and your OH a quick stat boss boost and you could do well.
The problem is trying to find a good balance between the two. It's worth a look at and it's something I plan on doing soon. However, spec wise, I would probably want to fall into Frost to test that build out.
Something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
Your main attacks would be Frost Strike and Oblit, and something in the form of
IT, PS, OB, FS, FS, DC, OB, OB, FS or some form. I'd have to look ingame how the runes would change on that rotation. Tundra Stalker will give you 5 expertise which is always nice too in the fashion of getting towards that number you want for expertise.
The biggest thing I need to check is this: Can I get enough expertise without hurting my stats to the point where it's not worth it? More to come.
Total Comments 8
Comments
 | BTW: didn't notice it at the time of my post, however where do you find that "5.2% or 6.1% that all bosses have to parry" The only mentions I saw said between 11%-(15%-17%) Its sketchy at best. However, 32.78 rating to reduce 1% dodge/parry is what I found. In the short time I was able to look around, It looks like 476 expertise rating would put you at about 17% reduction to dodge/parry. I have looked and only seen speculation that bosses range from 11-17% chance to parry. so while this may not be a cap of any means, its something to shoot for. that number includes the 10 expertise you gain from the Human Racial, and Tundra Stalker. getting anywhere close to this number would be ideal, but the occasional parry is not going to be game breaking so just closing this gap a little could prove to be enough. Though all the itemization around expertise might outweigh the benefit from DW. |
Posted 11-21-2008 at 07:30 AM by Perfectchaos  Updated 11-21-2008 at 07:37 AM by Perfectchaos |
| |  Your problem with a dual wield spec is the fact that all the big strikes are based off weapon damage. You haven't put any emphasis Howling Blast (Or Death Coil to a lesser extent) which is where you would have to make up a bulk of your damage. I'm a bit confused however with some of your builds as the blood/unholy ones focus on DPS, but your Frost build has half focus on tanking while missing out on some good tank talents. Are you looking to tank or play as DPS? |
Posted 11-21-2008 at 07:40 AM by Caulle  |
| | Excerpt from my absolutely worthless (because no one read it) post on the official WoW forums ... "On tanking: This one can go both ways. The big concern has been the effect that parry haste will have considering the greater frequency of attacks. There's a couple of things to consider here, so let's just start with the expertise. Expertise is a stat that you're going to have and are going to want, regardless of your weapon choice or your tanking class. You're not likely to be trading other stats for it, because you probably won't be able to, and you won't want to even if you're using a 2H weapon. Having two weapons can give you some greater flexibility in your itemization in this regard as well. How about looking at other tanking weapons as well? You would generally be looking at a 1.5 speed weapon that would put down 40 attacks per minute. So dual wield a couple of 2.7 speed weapons. You'll be getting 5 extra attacks. So, let's say you wind up with a 10% chance to be parried ... That's a difference of 4 parries a minute versus 4.5. So what? Depending on when your attack is actually parried, that parry may have no effect on the boss swing timer anyway. " http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=4 I also cover the itemization issue, which boils down to the part where you don't really have a lot of options for stat trading ... which seems to be some concern for people regarding things like hit. You get what you get, for the most part. |
| Posted 11-21-2008 at 12:42 PM by Rude |
| |  Caelle, that's the first concern I had when I first thought about it. Every weapon skill we have builds towards a weapon damage coefficient which really reduces the output of the damage a one hander does versus a two hander. However..I'm starting to think the damage you can deal out with two weapons could potentially close the gap. Also the allowance of how fast runestrike would go would close the gap as well. At this time, it's unclear what the guild will require me to go. My heart's DPS but my loyalty and dedication to progression will put me in a tank position if deemed needed. Right now i'm just looking at plausible options to allow me to tank and still have fun doing it. I'm not saying smacking something with a two hander is not fun. I'm saying that dual wielding is just a preferred method of my work. The frost build is a build I was working on for pure tanking and I just liked going deep frost for it. It could be that I may have to review the talent but I thought I had gotten the core items needed for the build. It'd be something I'd have to review if it was wrong so feel free to put out some advice. As for the parry question, I could of sworn that in a DPS situation, you only needed a small amount, say 5.2, to reduce dodge chance. It was the same for tanks for parry and dodge so I assumed it was the same for 80. If someone could correct me on this, it could go a long way to burying the viability of Dual Wielding tanking. Because no way could you not gimp your gear and still be a viable tank if you needed too much expertise. edit: Aha, thought I had seen it somewhere. This is form WotLK Wiki: http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Parry Your chance to Parry an attack is a percentage equal based on the formula:
So let's do the math. You're at 5% to start. Your attack at 450 skill (I hope.) (465-450)x0.04 (15)x0.04 0.6+5 natural 5.6% parry rating. Therefore, at 80, for a person to have only a 0.1% chance for the mob to not dodge or parry: 32.79 at 80 is the expertise ratio 32.79x5.6=183.624. Rounded up: 184 Expertise rating. Seems a big number right? Remember though. Humans get 1% with maces and swords. Assume you're using either or. Also we get 5 expertise free from the frost build I linked. That's 6 expertise rating. It ain't much..but it's a start. Also, something else on the same page: Early numbers show a 32.78 gain for 1 dodge, which means an 8.2 Expertise Rating per point of Expertise. Bah, this gets overly complicated and I have a headache even thinking about it. So every point of expertise gives you 8.2 rating. So six points gives you roughly 50 rating. Then that means you really only need to get about 130 rating. I've seen items with 30, 35 expertise rating...This still gives me hope that it's achievable. Means about five items. two rings, trinkets, and other things...I think you could do it honestly. This would remove parry gimping and then allow you to dual wield. This is really rough math and my brain is rough when it comes to this. Lemme know if I missed something. |
| Posted 11-21-2008 at 02:05 PM by Tonypablos Updated 11-21-2008 at 02:37 PM by Tonypablos |
| | http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000 Another lil frost spec I decided to fiddle around as I figured maybe an issue is that I didn't have Acclamation. |
| Posted 11-21-2008 at 04:05 PM by Tonypablos |
| | Again, why I was totally confused. You didn't mention anything in your original post about tanking, just the viability of DK dual wielding. So when I looked at your Blood and Unholy specs I saw DPS builds, and then I looked at Frost and saw a Tank build. In regards to that last spec you linked, you failed to pick up Lichborne. Lichborne is huge. It's almost like a rogue evasion, plus making you immune to a ton of effects, and you can use it to break fear. But then you picked up something like Death Rune Mastery. The only point of DRM is for a deep Blood spec'd DK to get 4 Heart Strikes in every other rotation through Death Runes. There's no point in having an Obliterate/Death Strike converted into death runes if they're just going to be used up again the next rotation as either frost or unholy runes. |
| Posted 11-21-2008 at 06:22 PM by Caulle Updated 11-21-2008 at 06:29 PM by Caulle |
| | See, and this is why I still have a lot to work on. -.- I'm still not comfortable with a blood DPS spec and I did worse with Blood than I did with unholy. I need to figure out the right rotations and stuff for each dps spec. I find Obliterate very very cumbersome as well, I'm not sure why. |
| Posted 11-22-2008 at 01:56 AM by Tonypablos |
| | |
| Posted 11-22-2008 at 09:58 AM by Caulle |
Recent Blog Entries by Tonypablos
- Is it just me..? (12-17-2008)
- Needing to get a few things off my chest. (12-10-2008)
- DK Dual Wielding? (11-21-2008)
- And ding! (11-19-2008)
- Are you seriously kidding me? (11-17-2008)
