All DPS, All the Time - Needs Help MS Blood, OS Unholy

I have just recently started raiding ICC 10 man, being out of WoW for a few months I knew I was under geared and needed to get some new pieces. As I did, I started noticing I'm still not pulling the damage I should for the gear I have. My rotation has been evaluated via Elitist Jerks.

here is my WoW armory link: [LINK]http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...e&cn=Nerrectuz[/LINK]

I am following a Blood spec DPS rotation involving

BT > DRW > IT > PS > HS > DS > HS > DS> DS > DND > BB > RP > Repeat


Now that will vary depending on mobs, AoE threat needed, and if another DK is tanking or not. Normally use my Dancing Rune Weapon with IT and PS to get double of each plague, hit with Heart Strike to get the extra weapon damage, and then Death Strike around 3x to get my stacked +72 strength from my Relic. Once that goes, the DND and BB make multiple mobs cringe, but I still see my DPS at 4.4k max in ICC 10. I thought I was gemming okay, but I don't know. Any advice here would be appreciated.

Change your meta gem to Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (and make sure it's activated). Also, change that crit gem in your helm out for another strength gem (as well as upgrade the blue gem in your belt to an epic, this soon before Cataclysm's release gems should be dirt cheap, if not, spend emblems). Fix the enchant on your shoulders (unless you're enchanting for resilience on purpose?), upgrade your bracers (and enchant them). Enchant your chest piece. Also, the frost emblem relic isn't very good for DPS... I mean, top end is better than the triumph one but, the triumph one gets up instantly and, in any fight where you have to change targets or hold DPS or what not, the triumph one outperforms the frost one.

Most importantly gear wise though... Rune Forge your weapon... Fallen Crusader will push your DPS up quite a bit. :)

Make sure you're using your Hyperspeed Accelerators on EVERY cooldown possible during the fight, time it with Heroism/Bloodlust if you can.

Sorry I can't help with rotation, I've never played blood DPS. =D

Ok you don't really have a set rotation essentially you are trying to get off as many heart strikes as you can whilst keeping your diseases running on the target and you need to have that clear in your head.

Raid haste buffs, movement etc all throw any sort of set rotation out so you need to understand your dps abilities not some sort of macro rotation.

An add-on like CL-DK will help at the start as it prompts you on screen what attack to use next .. however this is a crutch you need to treat it as aide ... you need to learn to feel why you need to use you diff abilities.

Lets see how good my simulator is I am showing your DPS at 3500 self buffed on heroic dummy and 4250-4400 in a 10 man which you sort of indicated.

So whats wrong? Lots of little things

1. Spec its not terrible but its not fantastic either. You do really want blood-caked blade. http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jfVMVh...0stZfzhhxc:ILG is a much more normal 51/0/20 setup and a good place to start playing.

2. Glyphs again are very strange plague strike and d&d? The normal blood glyphs are included in spec above.

Those changes alone should bring you up 300-400dps


Now the bigger change you need to get your head around the fact you are way over 5500 AP just standing around and over 7000 AP raid buffed and a +20 strength gem gives you only 40AP. In other words as your gear improves the value of gemming strength diminishes. In reverse of that armor pen is very low 146 and +20 makes a massive change to the armor you are seeing on the thing you are hitting. You can have high armor pen stats on gear or you can gem for it doesn't matter how you do it but you need to consider it.


My first suggestion is you need http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50198 however this is going to set off a pile of problems. You are requiring the +hit trinket to cover your lack of hit on your gear. And here in lies the real problem you are missing +hit and +arp stats in your pursuit of +strength and now you have boxed yourself into a corner.

I don't know what you have in bank etc and spare badges to fix stuff so I can only speak generally. If you decide to get or have the NES trinket the armor pen cap is 1400 the trinket proc gives you 678 so you need 722 arp on your gear so when it goes off you hit the cap. You need you 268'ish hit to give you your 8%. And you need to do all that while keeping your AP and crit as high as you can.

EDIT: I have a baby alt DK on a different realm to my mains which doesn't raid which is sort of at the same gear level to show you a better sort of balance: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rfang&cn=Ubbdk. You would obviously use your good trinket where I have the crap PVP trinket but as you will see it 755 arp and is hit perfect. Statically on heroic dummy it does 5.2K in that gear and around that in heroics and 6-7.5K in raid

Small update to my toon yesterday. Purchased the Hellfrozen Bonegrinders and have yet to gem them. Working on fixing some Gems here, but I did gain some Arp off the new boots. Didn't realize I forgot to change my glyphs since going from Unholy to Blood full time (before Dual Spec).

I keep being told to use the Ametrine gems for +Crit/+Str on my Yellow/Red gems, but right now it seems I need +ArP more than anything. When I checked my hit yesterday I was at +10, so maybe my WoW inventory is slow on updating, but that is right above HIT I thought.

You need 8% hit but you have 10%. The problem is that your hit trinket is giving you 4% of that. Without it, you are only 6% and that trinket is not very strong. What they were saying is replace your hit trinket with needle encrusted scorpion IF you can hit cap from gear and you will see an increase.

I wouldn't change your gems from Strength to ArPen until you're able to hit the cap.

Also, I believe the conversion from Strength to AP is 1 to 2.7AP, not 2AP. Further, you could also change the +20 strength gem in your helm to +10 Strength/+10 Hit orange gem. You'd end up with the socket bonus giving you just 2 less strength than you had before but, also giving you more hit towards getting rid of the hit trinket.

For hit rating you can get Icewalker on your boots and (I think) there's a hit enchant for gloves or bracers but, that may be expertise... Check it out anyway. :) They'll all do you good for dumping that trinket.

Okay, changed some of my Glyphs, picked up the Shoulder/Head enchants I needed, resocketed some gems (still need to add HIT though), changed my spec to the recommended one, and am playing off my diseases.

Anything else seen that can help me DPS wise?

The first thing is that the meta for DK's is the Chaotic Skyflare diamond not the relentless. The activation of the chaotic is only two blue gems so u put in a nightmare tear and a sovereign dreadstone somewhere and the meta is achieved. Second, the armor pen soft cap is 720 so with the gear and Needle encrusted scorpion you should be there, but the hard cap is 1400 and that is virtually unattainable without lots of ICC gear. So enchant your boots with icewalker get Needle encrusted scorpion out of H FOS and get rid of the mark of supremacy and that should take care of your hit issue. Armor pen is going away in cata so gem strength. The blood rotation if in fact u have the 51/0/20 spec. On trash(mobs of more thantwo)it is IT>PS>pest> BB 2 or however many u can get off, DC to dump runic power and spam BB. This part is straight out of ElitistJerks thread... "Blood's strength is it's ability to do exceptional single - or double - target damage, once you exceed 3 or 4 enemies, you would be much better suited using a UH off spec for AOE fights. Most of the AOE in ICC currently are trash fights, which isn't a main concern of this guide. In general for AOE you want to spead your diseases, and use Blood Boil. As Blood generates a large amount of death runes, especially the Glyph of Disease spec, you will be able to cast a tremendous amount of Blood Boils. In general Blood Boil begins to outperform HS at around 5-6 targets." The boss rotation is IT>PS>HSx2>DS>BT>DS or HS (which ever is up)> empower runic weapon>Ghoul>DRW>Hysteria> then HSx3> DC, then rinse and repeat the first part of the rotation through DS or HS. Only refreshing diseases as needed. The only dk dps rune is rune of the fallen crusader get it on your weapon and leave it alone.Here is where u need to go to learn all u need to know to make u an effective dps'er in 5 mans and raids Death Knight Raid DPS Compendium (FR/BL/UH). The rotation in this guide doesnt allow for hysteria, ghoul, DRW, or empower runic weapon, he covers when to use those but there is now defined rotation to fit them in so use the one i told u above. Also an end note the sigil of virulence is better than sigil of the hanged man. Go to http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t61176-b...ay_music_died/read the topic heading under sigils as well as the post. Between the two i linked it will help you alot.

First, paragraphs, man! =D

Second, The difference between Chaotic Skyflare and Relentless Earthsiege is fairly negligible, especially when the requirements for Relentless Earthsiege are fulfilled with a Nightmare Tear.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by latormenta

The first thing is that the meta for DK's is the Chaotic Skyflare diamond not the relentless. The activation of the chaotic is only two blue gems so u put in a nightmare tear and a sovereign dreadstone somewhere and the meta is achieved. Second, the armor pen soft cap is 720 so with the gear and Needle encrusted scorpion you should be there, but the hard cap is 1400 and that is virtually unattainable without lots of ICC gear. So enchant your boots with icewalker get Needle encrusted scorpion out of H FOS and get rid of the mark of supremacy and that should take care of your hit issue. Armor pen is going away in cata so gem strength. The blood rotation if in fact u have the 51/0/20 spec. On trash(mobs of more thantwo)it is IT>PS>pest> BB 2 or however many u can get off, DC to dump runic power and spam BB. This part is straight out of ElitistJerks thread... "Blood's strength is it's ability to do exceptional single - or double - target damage, once you exceed 3 or 4 enemies, you would be much better suited using a UH off spec for AOE fights. Most of the AOE in ICC currently are trash fights, which isn't a main concern of this guide. In general for AOE you want to spead your diseases, and use Blood Boil. As Blood generates a large amount of death runes, especially the Glyph of Disease spec, you will be able to cast a tremendous amount of Blood Boils. In general Blood Boil begins to outperform HS at around 5-6 targets." The boss rotation is IT>PS>HSx2>DS>BT>DS or HS (which ever is up)> empower runic weapon>Ghoul>DRW>Hysteria> then HSx3> DC, then rinse and repeat the first part of the rotation through DS or HS. Only refreshing diseases as needed. The only dk dps rune is rune of the fallen crusader get it on your weapon and leave it alone.Here is where u need to go to learn all u need to know to make u an effective dps'er in 5 mans and raids Death Knight Raid DPS Compendium (FR/BL/UH). The rotation in this guide doesnt allow for hysteria, ghoul, DRW, or empower runic weapon, he covers when to use those but there is now defined rotation to fit them in so use the one i told u above. Also an end note the sigil of virulence is better than sigil of the hanged man. Go to http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t61176-b...ay_music_died/read the topic heading under sigils as well as the post. Between the two i linked it will help you alot.

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While the advice above is solid, I would recommend keeping this in mind while you decide how much of it you follow:

When the next patch goes live, Blood DPS is dead. It's becoming the dedicated tanking tree. You may want to seriously consider developing your unholy spec as your main spec.

Also, regarding regemming for Armor Penetration, That's going away in the next patch too, and any ArP gems you have will become 20 crit rating gems. Spending a lot of gold on Fractured rubies now will be an unneeded expense in a week or two.