Post by Shane Small on Jul 23, 2009 23:09:07 GMT -5
COMMON ABBREVIATIONS
AoE = Area of Effect
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
APE = Attack Power Equivalence
BB = Blood Boil
BCB = Blood Caked Blade
BP = Blood Presence
IT = Icy Touch
DK = Death Knight
DC = Death Coil
DnD = Death and Decay
DPS = Damage per Second
DRW = Dancing Rune Weapon
FC = Rune of the Fallen Crusader
GCD = Global Cooldown
HoW = Horn of Winter
PS = Plague Strike
RP = Runic Power
UP = Unholy Presence
SPECS
Currently Accepted Spec(s)
51/0/20
www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stZfMbhxc
The meat and potatoes of a Blood spec are the same, the variants will honestly show very little difference, and I’m not really sure if some of the changes would be noticeable even over a long period of time due to RNG etc.
In the Blood tree you will have 4 points to play with. If you are looking for absolute max DPS you will want to go with 3/3 Bloodworms and 1 point in Imp Blood presence. Why? Bloodworms will add a little (reports say ~ 80) DPS, and your other options being Mark of Blood and Vampiric Blood, both of which require the use of a Blood Rune, and that’s 1 less Heart Strike!
In the Unholy tree the most common line of thinking goes: Ravenous Dead > BCB > Necrosis. Some people like to get 2 points into Night of the Dead as well. From my own experience, I’ve found BCB to be slightly higher than 1% DPS per talent point, whereas Necrosis was slightly < 1% DPS per talent point. Keep in mind though that Necrosis can effectively crit, whereas BCB cannot, so people with very high crit rates may see a swing in the relative value of these two talents.
Morbidity works itself out to be approximately .6% DPS per point, fairly m’eh unless you are using DnD a lot.
I am currently experimenting with a 3/3 Ravenous dead, 1/3 Morbidity, 2/2 Night of the Dead build. My initial feelings were that NotD wasn't worth it, as your summoned ghoul only does ~1k DPS, but I was running a 2/3 Ravenous dead build. There isn't a lot of exciting variance to blood, so this was something new that appealed to me. I will let you know my findings.
51/2/18
www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stMZfMhhx
The 51/2/18 build utilizes Runic Power Mastery in the frost tree. I don’t personally use this build as I prefer the passive BCB, although I might consider it if I had the Sigil of Vengeful Heart making my DC’s feel like they had a little more oomph. Here you would want to max Morbidity as DC’s should become a higher % of your DPS with a higher RP ceiling. Some people also like this build b/c they say it makes it easier to not drop too low in RP, screwing up the Death Strike Glyph.
GLYPHS
Major
[Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon]
[Glyph of Death Strike]
[Glyph of Dark Death]
Minor
[Glyph of Horn of Winter]
[Glyph of Pestilence]
[Glyph of Raise Dead]
There was a great post by Foxx which showed why we shouldn’t use the glyph of disease, and I agree with his conclusions. There were also reports that the Glyph was bugged, then it wasn’t, then it was again, I’m not sure where it stands currently.
Otherwise, Glyph selection for Blood is pretty straightforward.
GENERALIZED ROTATIONS
SINGLE TARGET
I've had lots of fun with rotations over the last few weeks after having elbow surgery and only being able to play 1 handed. I bound a rotation to my scroll wheel, and off I went!
The meat of your single target rotation will be
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -DUMP- DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
In the first dump phase of your first rotation you should raise your ghoul in general, there is a nice little free GCD there for you. Like this:
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
If you are a creature of habit, or just want to make your life easiest, you can stick with this rotation, and do just fine.
At the beginning of fights you can switch your first rotation around slightly, as follows: Leading with Death Strike will proc Abomination's Might right off the bat, getting it up before making any other attacks. Making your initial rotation:
DS-IT-PS-HS-HS--Raise Ghoul-DC-HS-HS-DS-HS-HS -Dump- then return to:
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
This is for raid situations where the raid DPS increase from your Abom's Might being up immediately will outweigh your personal DPS loss due to the mechanics of [Glyph of Death Strike]. Since you are using Death Strike first you will have no runic power, and therefore lose out on this bonus.
GEARING AND STATS WEIGHTS
The two most important stats for Blood DKs are Strength and Armor Penetration. The general rule of thumb while gearing up is ALWAYS gem for STR, except to meet Meta gem requirements.
The following are the currently accepted stat weights for Blood DKs, thanks to Methods for his outstanding work with DK stat equivalencies!
Stat APE
Attack Power 1
Weapon DPS 9.89
Strength 2.89
Armor Penetration 2.75
Hit Rating (to cap) 2.51
Expertise Rating 2.47
Crit Rating 1.56
Haste Rating 1.5
Agility 1.37
Hit Rating (to spell hit cap) .52
Armor .03
This link will allow you to see which gear in the Wowhead database is currently best according to these weights:
Blood Loot Weighting
Hit and Expertise:
Theoretically both STR and ArP are more important stats then both Hit or Expertise, which means that even if you are not Hit Capped, or Expertise capped, you will always see the biggest DPS increase by gemming STR/ArP.
The melee hit cap is 8% or ~262 Hit rating, this should be fairly easy to obtain with the gear currently available from Ulduar. The challenge I have found is typically not overshooting the Hit Cap by too much, at one point sitting at a frustrating 383 Hit Rating!
The soft expertise cap is a little more tricky as there are so many variable that go into it. It is a little more straightforward now that the 5 expertise on Blood Gorged was converted to 10% ArP. You want to be aiming for 25 Expertise (note "25 Expertise" not "25 Expertise Rating").
The relative weights of these stats were calculated factoring in misses, etc. so let's please not turn this thread into another argument about sims.
The use of both sims and some great spreadsheet are being applied in the BiS thread, covering all specs of DKs. While new content continues to be bested, and new drops continue to be added I will for now refer you to that thread, as they are doing a great job keeping up with the changes. Once we reach a better statis I will update this post with what is determined to be the best set of gear.
Gear Lists will also be uploaded once the approximate weightings have been sorted out. For now, it is probably best to refer to the Optimal gearing: the BiS thread.
One of the current discussions is regarding an inflection point between STR and ArP. It has been currently theorized that once you exceed 6200 AP the APE for ArP will exceed that of STR. Making it proper at that point to start gemming for ArP. The math and sims behind this theory seem solid, and personally once I hit around 6300 AP raid buffed began switching some gems, with positive results thus far.
CONSUMABLES & COOLDOWNS
Flask: [Flask of Endless Rage]
Primary Potion:[Potion of Speed]
Secondary Potion: [Indestructible Potion] (The gain from Bladed Armor is ~97 AP).
All cooldowns should be timed with Bloodlust (which your raidleader should be calling at the start of every fight). If for some reason you are saving Lust (Mimiron P2, for example), use cooldowns (sans potion) immedietly at the beginning of the fight and then again during Bloodlust.
Notes on [Indestructible Potion]: This should be used about 5s before you enter into combat on any given fight. This will result in you not being potion locked for that particular encounter and enable you to use another potion as soon as the cooldown expires. It should also be noted that the AP gains from the armor will not be calculated till your strength changes in value. This can be done via a simple weaponswap macro, cancelling and reapplying HoW or simply waiting for a FC proc.
Sigils
The best Sigil for Blood DKs is [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart]. However, if you win this over Frost DKs expect to see nerd-rage like you've never before experienced. Fortunately [Sigil of Awareness] is easy to obtain, and a suitable substitute until you can get [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart].
Professions
If you are looking to make gold, I don't care, this isn't the section for you. If you have lots of gold to spend, and want to maximize the effectiveness of your DK, it's going to be expensive.
Jewelcrafting
Jewelcrafting is the all-star profession right now, if you don't have it, you are missing out. Unfortunately it is so good that they're nerfing it, and I'll try to share some of my thoughts on that as well. For right now however jewelcrafting has a few great things going for it, so we might as well enjoy while it lasts
[Bold Dragon's Eye] and if you're hardcore [Fractured Dragon's Eye]. The prismatic quality of these gems lets you meet both your Meta Gem and item socketing bonuses.
Looking to the future, The dragon's eyes will no longer be prismatic, but J/C'ing will still net you the most benefit. Each Dragon's eye yields 27-16 = 11 extra strenght, and over all three this nets you 33 strength. This is still the single highest APE benefit you will be able to gain from a profession.
Blacksmithing
Blacksmithing is expensive to level, but the benefits are worth it in the end. The two free sockets you get, gloves and bracers, allow the use of two more +16 str gems, for a total benefit of 32 strength. This is close to the benefit you see from J/C'ing and while expensive, the Combo of Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the best 2 professions you can select
Engineering
I'll set aside engineering b/c some people just like it, and I can't hold that against them. The only real advantage engineers get are the Hand Mounted Pyro Rockets and Hyperspeed Accellerators. Both of these are solid glove bonuses, and if engineering got anything else, could make it a competitive choice, popping speed pots, bloodlust, and the Hyperspeed Accellerators is a blast.
The Rest
Everything else is just a huge drop from those already mentioned:
Enchanting: 2 ring enchants at 32 AP a pop, a total of 64
Leatherworking: 114 AP to bracers, a gain of 64 AP
Inscription: 114 AP 15 crit shoulder enchant, a gain of 64 AP
Tailoring: Cloak enchant, Swordguard Embroidery, quoted elsewhere at 58 AP.
Alchemy: Increased potion effectiveness and duration, havent crunched the numbers to see how much this adds, but I've never heard it come up as a serious contender. Increases the AP on your flask by, you guessed it, 64 AP
Skinning: 32 crit rating, ugh
Mining: 50 stamina, bleh
Herbalism: Self heal, whee
AoE = Area of Effect
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
APE = Attack Power Equivalence
BB = Blood Boil
BCB = Blood Caked Blade
BP = Blood Presence
IT = Icy Touch
DK = Death Knight
DC = Death Coil
DnD = Death and Decay
DPS = Damage per Second
DRW = Dancing Rune Weapon
FC = Rune of the Fallen Crusader
GCD = Global Cooldown
HoW = Horn of Winter
PS = Plague Strike
RP = Runic Power
UP = Unholy Presence
SPECS
Currently Accepted Spec(s)
51/0/20
www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stZfMbhxc
The meat and potatoes of a Blood spec are the same, the variants will honestly show very little difference, and I’m not really sure if some of the changes would be noticeable even over a long period of time due to RNG etc.
In the Blood tree you will have 4 points to play with. If you are looking for absolute max DPS you will want to go with 3/3 Bloodworms and 1 point in Imp Blood presence. Why? Bloodworms will add a little (reports say ~ 80) DPS, and your other options being Mark of Blood and Vampiric Blood, both of which require the use of a Blood Rune, and that’s 1 less Heart Strike!
In the Unholy tree the most common line of thinking goes: Ravenous Dead > BCB > Necrosis. Some people like to get 2 points into Night of the Dead as well. From my own experience, I’ve found BCB to be slightly higher than 1% DPS per talent point, whereas Necrosis was slightly < 1% DPS per talent point. Keep in mind though that Necrosis can effectively crit, whereas BCB cannot, so people with very high crit rates may see a swing in the relative value of these two talents.
Morbidity works itself out to be approximately .6% DPS per point, fairly m’eh unless you are using DnD a lot.
I am currently experimenting with a 3/3 Ravenous dead, 1/3 Morbidity, 2/2 Night of the Dead build. My initial feelings were that NotD wasn't worth it, as your summoned ghoul only does ~1k DPS, but I was running a 2/3 Ravenous dead build. There isn't a lot of exciting variance to blood, so this was something new that appealed to me. I will let you know my findings.
51/2/18
www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stMZfMhhx
The 51/2/18 build utilizes Runic Power Mastery in the frost tree. I don’t personally use this build as I prefer the passive BCB, although I might consider it if I had the Sigil of Vengeful Heart making my DC’s feel like they had a little more oomph. Here you would want to max Morbidity as DC’s should become a higher % of your DPS with a higher RP ceiling. Some people also like this build b/c they say it makes it easier to not drop too low in RP, screwing up the Death Strike Glyph.
GLYPHS
Major
[Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon]
[Glyph of Death Strike]
[Glyph of Dark Death]
Minor
[Glyph of Horn of Winter]
[Glyph of Pestilence]
[Glyph of Raise Dead]
There was a great post by Foxx which showed why we shouldn’t use the glyph of disease, and I agree with his conclusions. There were also reports that the Glyph was bugged, then it wasn’t, then it was again, I’m not sure where it stands currently.
Otherwise, Glyph selection for Blood is pretty straightforward.
GENERALIZED ROTATIONS
SINGLE TARGET
I've had lots of fun with rotations over the last few weeks after having elbow surgery and only being able to play 1 handed. I bound a rotation to my scroll wheel, and off I went!
The meat of your single target rotation will be
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -DUMP- DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
In the first dump phase of your first rotation you should raise your ghoul in general, there is a nice little free GCD there for you. Like this:
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
If you are a creature of habit, or just want to make your life easiest, you can stick with this rotation, and do just fine.
At the beginning of fights you can switch your first rotation around slightly, as follows: Leading with Death Strike will proc Abomination's Might right off the bat, getting it up before making any other attacks. Making your initial rotation:
DS-IT-PS-HS-HS--Raise Ghoul-DC-HS-HS-DS-HS-HS -Dump- then return to:
IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-Raise Ghoul-DC-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-
This is for raid situations where the raid DPS increase from your Abom's Might being up immediately will outweigh your personal DPS loss due to the mechanics of [Glyph of Death Strike]. Since you are using Death Strike first you will have no runic power, and therefore lose out on this bonus.
GEARING AND STATS WEIGHTS
The two most important stats for Blood DKs are Strength and Armor Penetration. The general rule of thumb while gearing up is ALWAYS gem for STR, except to meet Meta gem requirements.
The following are the currently accepted stat weights for Blood DKs, thanks to Methods for his outstanding work with DK stat equivalencies!
Stat APE
Attack Power 1
Weapon DPS 9.89
Strength 2.89
Armor Penetration 2.75
Hit Rating (to cap) 2.51
Expertise Rating 2.47
Crit Rating 1.56
Haste Rating 1.5
Agility 1.37
Hit Rating (to spell hit cap) .52
Armor .03
This link will allow you to see which gear in the Wowhead database is currently best according to these weights:
Blood Loot Weighting
Hit and Expertise:
Theoretically both STR and ArP are more important stats then both Hit or Expertise, which means that even if you are not Hit Capped, or Expertise capped, you will always see the biggest DPS increase by gemming STR/ArP.
The melee hit cap is 8% or ~262 Hit rating, this should be fairly easy to obtain with the gear currently available from Ulduar. The challenge I have found is typically not overshooting the Hit Cap by too much, at one point sitting at a frustrating 383 Hit Rating!
The soft expertise cap is a little more tricky as there are so many variable that go into it. It is a little more straightforward now that the 5 expertise on Blood Gorged was converted to 10% ArP. You want to be aiming for 25 Expertise (note "25 Expertise" not "25 Expertise Rating").
The relative weights of these stats were calculated factoring in misses, etc. so let's please not turn this thread into another argument about sims.
The use of both sims and some great spreadsheet are being applied in the BiS thread, covering all specs of DKs. While new content continues to be bested, and new drops continue to be added I will for now refer you to that thread, as they are doing a great job keeping up with the changes. Once we reach a better statis I will update this post with what is determined to be the best set of gear.
Gear Lists will also be uploaded once the approximate weightings have been sorted out. For now, it is probably best to refer to the Optimal gearing: the BiS thread.
One of the current discussions is regarding an inflection point between STR and ArP. It has been currently theorized that once you exceed 6200 AP the APE for ArP will exceed that of STR. Making it proper at that point to start gemming for ArP. The math and sims behind this theory seem solid, and personally once I hit around 6300 AP raid buffed began switching some gems, with positive results thus far.
CONSUMABLES & COOLDOWNS
Flask: [Flask of Endless Rage]
Primary Potion:[Potion of Speed]
Secondary Potion: [Indestructible Potion] (The gain from Bladed Armor is ~97 AP).
All cooldowns should be timed with Bloodlust (which your raidleader should be calling at the start of every fight). If for some reason you are saving Lust (Mimiron P2, for example), use cooldowns (sans potion) immedietly at the beginning of the fight and then again during Bloodlust.
Notes on [Indestructible Potion]: This should be used about 5s before you enter into combat on any given fight. This will result in you not being potion locked for that particular encounter and enable you to use another potion as soon as the cooldown expires. It should also be noted that the AP gains from the armor will not be calculated till your strength changes in value. This can be done via a simple weaponswap macro, cancelling and reapplying HoW or simply waiting for a FC proc.
Sigils
The best Sigil for Blood DKs is [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart]. However, if you win this over Frost DKs expect to see nerd-rage like you've never before experienced. Fortunately [Sigil of Awareness] is easy to obtain, and a suitable substitute until you can get [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart].
Professions
If you are looking to make gold, I don't care, this isn't the section for you. If you have lots of gold to spend, and want to maximize the effectiveness of your DK, it's going to be expensive.
Jewelcrafting
Jewelcrafting is the all-star profession right now, if you don't have it, you are missing out. Unfortunately it is so good that they're nerfing it, and I'll try to share some of my thoughts on that as well. For right now however jewelcrafting has a few great things going for it, so we might as well enjoy while it lasts
[Bold Dragon's Eye] and if you're hardcore [Fractured Dragon's Eye]. The prismatic quality of these gems lets you meet both your Meta Gem and item socketing bonuses.
Looking to the future, The dragon's eyes will no longer be prismatic, but J/C'ing will still net you the most benefit. Each Dragon's eye yields 27-16 = 11 extra strenght, and over all three this nets you 33 strength. This is still the single highest APE benefit you will be able to gain from a profession.
Blacksmithing
Blacksmithing is expensive to level, but the benefits are worth it in the end. The two free sockets you get, gloves and bracers, allow the use of two more +16 str gems, for a total benefit of 32 strength. This is close to the benefit you see from J/C'ing and while expensive, the Combo of Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the best 2 professions you can select
Engineering
I'll set aside engineering b/c some people just like it, and I can't hold that against them. The only real advantage engineers get are the Hand Mounted Pyro Rockets and Hyperspeed Accellerators. Both of these are solid glove bonuses, and if engineering got anything else, could make it a competitive choice, popping speed pots, bloodlust, and the Hyperspeed Accellerators is a blast.
The Rest
Everything else is just a huge drop from those already mentioned:
Enchanting: 2 ring enchants at 32 AP a pop, a total of 64
Leatherworking: 114 AP to bracers, a gain of 64 AP
Inscription: 114 AP 15 crit shoulder enchant, a gain of 64 AP
Tailoring: Cloak enchant, Swordguard Embroidery, quoted elsewhere at 58 AP.
Alchemy: Increased potion effectiveness and duration, havent crunched the numbers to see how much this adds, but I've never heard it come up as a serious contender. Increases the AP on your flask by, you guessed it, 64 AP
Skinning: 32 crit rating, ugh
Mining: 50 stamina, bleh
Herbalism: Self heal, whee