Fix my spec - again!Follow

I'm sorry I guess I just don't get it. I've tried several specs, stuff people have posted as the great leveling spec this that or whatever, but it never seems to work out for me. Now this spec has the ghoul and healing that I want and if feels like it's working really well for me, but I understand it has a lot of room for improvement. I use the ghoul for all kind of stuff, pulling sometimes, killing lowbie mobs that like to attack while I'm farming, chasing down runners sometimes... Lazy use I suppose but I guess I play lazy. I work at my job and play at WoW, lol... So here's the build I'm running with now. Feels powerful to me but I'll quickly admit that I don't know much about the mechanics behind all the skills and what modifiers do yadda yadda...
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=6&tal=23050215020333120300000000000100000000000000000000000000205000305023210200100000000000
If you can tell me what changes would make this more solid I'm all ears. If you can explain why X is better than Y for what I want to do, so much the better. I appreciate it.

Also here's (I hope) a link my character on WoW armory.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodhoof&n=Yarius
If you care to take a look and make really general suggestions like "try to concentrate on attack power and not no much on crit" or whatever might apply that would be cool too. I buy a bit of gear in the AH but mostly I just pick it up from whatever quest rewards or random drops fall in my lap. Like I said, lazy!

Thanks

Aww gee, forgot to mention I don't understand this at all. What's an RP dump? I get IT, I use that right after I pull em in with the purple grabber spell. After IT, I usually hit em with the yellow/green button, then the red button, LOL! Then I'll get em with the bloody axe button to heal myself a bit and fire a green skull at em if they run away. How's that? Ooh, and if I get a couple mobs at once, I'll use DnD, the swarm and blood boil. The one I NEVER use is that damned blue sword button. Takes about a month to actually strike when I use that one.
So I guess I'm doomed unless I study up enough to at least know the language, but seriously I don't understand most of the two letter shorthand so if you can toss a couple more letters in there I'd be really grateful.

Okay, we'll start from the beginning.

You know that you have 4 different FU (requires a Frost and Unholy rune) abilities you can use (one requires talents). These are Death Strike, Howling Blast Obliterate and Scourge Strike. Both Oblit and SS will gain a damage boost from the number of diseases you have on a target. Death Strike gains more healing from diseases. Howling Blast doesn't have any direct disease modifier, but most builds will boost its damage with Frost Fever-related talents.

Then you have Blood Runes, which are GENERALLY spent on either Blood Strike or Blood Boil. Both of these have disease modifiers. BS does more with every disease, and Blood Boil does more with a disease, but additional diseases don't boost it further.

Because of that, you want to (generally) use these abilities after diseases. Your diseases are placed by Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

So, while the exact order may change, most builds use their abilities in an order like this:

Diseases > Frost/Unholy abilities > Blood Abilities

Now, all of these 3-5 abilities will generate Runic Power. An RP-Dump is one that uses this instead of Runes. These are: Death Coil, Unholy Blight, Dancing Rune Weapon and Summon Gargoyle.

So, until you get good at weaving in your dumps (you can see how this is done in a few threads where Therion posts his rotation), you'll often see them used at the end of the cycle. So, it'll become:

Dis>FU>B>RPdump.

Now, as Blood, you'll get Heart Strike, which is a more powerful BS that hits two targets. The aim of this rotation is to use HS as much as possible, by using Death Strike to turn FU runes into D runes (which can be used as anything).

So, using this spec (I'll just recommend it for leveling), your rotation will be:

Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Death Strike > Heart Strike x2 > Death Coil (as many as you can) > Death Strike > Heart Strike x 4 > Death Coil, then start again from the start.

Use Rune Tap as much as needed (considering you will get 4% of damage as heals, Blood Worms and 15% of health for each DS, this shouldn't be that much on non-elites).

Progress towards this spec.

Now, that "Blue sword" ability is, I presume, Rune Strike. This acts differently than all your other abilities in that it isn't an instant attack. When you hit the button, you will "mark" your next auto-attack, making it a Rune Strike that hits for 50% more damage (and a lot of threat, which doesn't matter while leveling). It won't consume the RP until it swings.

You don't need to use it. You may if you want, but it is really a PvP and Tanking tool.

[EDIT]

I actually recommend NOT using Rune Strike, because 1 Death Coil should be more damage than an additional auto-attack (RS is a 50% bonus to an auto-attack, so two of them is like an additional hit).

Edited, Jun 2nd 2009 5:07pm by idiggory

You sure about this? If so, I am going to have to change my frost tanking rotation a bit.

To the OP, how would you like to play? If you like the pet and lots of AE damage, pick Unholy. If you like big hits and self healing, go Blood. Not sure of Frost DPSs play style since I haven't tried it but some people swear by it. Decide how you want to play and then pick a build, rotations are easy enough to figure out. Once you have decided we can go from there.

Whether WoW is just for fun or not, if you're looking to optimize you need to learn your abilities strengths, weaknesses and general uses.

To be fair, having to read a DPS FAQ to learn the abbreviations isn't exactly the most obvious thing out there. And I find it a bit ironic that you complain about the OP being lazy when abbreviations are the hellspawn of laziness.

Yes, writing Plague Strike > Icy Touch > Death Strike > Blood Strike > Blood Strike > Unholy Blight takes a bit longer than PS>IT>DS>BS>BS>UB, but this being a forum and not MSN Messenger, I think it's time well spent.

Just saying. As a guy with four years and 23k posts here, I had a hell of a time trying to learn all the abbreviations used for the Death Knight. It seems that there are way more abbreviations that only consist of two or three letters here than on any other class forum. IT, UB, PS, DS, BB, BS, RT, DRW, IBF, ERW, etc.

I see why some people find themselves lost in translation.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2009 12:52am by Mazra

lolwhut?

Anyway, to clarify:


Not entirely accurate. I would put it this way: Get diseases up, generate Death Runes, use the Big Gun, dump RP.

Each spec will have different abilities for each step but the basic process is standard across the basic builds. The Big Gun depend on the build. Blood gets Heart Strike, Frost gets Obliterate, Unholy gets Scourge Strike. But in the end, it's leveling. You could probably just randomly hit buttons and proceed just fine. Read the tool tips of each ability to learn where to use (or not use) them is that process and you'll be on your way to basic understanding of Death Knight mechanics.

Happy hunting.

EDIT: BB now only gets a damage bonus on targets affected by one of your diseases, no additional bonus for multiple.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2009 4:42pm by TherionSaysWhat

Last I heard it was heavily bugged. You'll get various error messages and it won't fire.

Also, it is only good for Blood. Unholy can use Glyph of SS to refresh their diseases. It doesn't happen all the time, but they don't have to sacrifice damage to do it. Plus, their PSs do more anyway.

And, with Frost, you get, basically, the same number of Oblits. Really, you just change PS+IT to Pest+BS. And the damage on the former is higher, so this glyph could lower your DpS if you lose it.

Well the respec only cost 15 gold so I couldn't have tried out too many specs. I must have been thinking of other old characters or something.


Thanks again for all the pointers and insight, hopefully I'll have my mining skill up to 350 so I can get back to some XP mobs this weekend. I'll look into changing out my glyphs before heading back to Northrend too. I haven't jacked with that stuff in a long time.

I have not tried disealess since 3.1, but from what I read on EJ and listening to guild mates, diseaseless isn't tops anymore. On EJ, a few people have tried, and usually the powers that be dismiss the info. I may of missed something though.

What if your Death Rune generator is your Big Gunâ„¢? With 130 Runic Power and Glyph of Death Strike, Death Strike hits for more than Heart Strike. Although, this might be due to me being level 78 and thus not having the final ranks of the two strikes.

I usually open up with Icy Touch, Plague Strike and then a Death Strike to get two Death Runes. I then use my two Blood Runes to get in two Heart Strikes. By then, the Frost and Unholy Runes I used for Icy Touch and Plague Strike should be ready to be spent on another Death Strike, unless diseases need to be refreshed.

About diseases, I really wish they'd up the duration on them. 15 seconds means I have to refresh them instead of using a Death Strike every other rotation. I wish they'd make them last 24 seconds, or even several minutes, with the damage reduced, of course.

To make sure people don't run around with a gazillion diseases on them in PvP, make them not stack, but make Death Knight strikes work off of other Death Knight diseases as well. I never did see the point in having strikes that do more damage on diseased targets when only your own diseases count. That would be like a Mage's Shatter talent not working on targets frozen by other Mages. Or Hunters not being able to get Steady Shot bonus damage on targets that have been dazed by other players.

I'm a believer! Just went to Sholazar Basin looking for my first aid manual and got the drop on undead kill #1, lol.

While making my way to the undeads, I got jumped by a level 77 sapphire hive wasp(five levels above me). Kept resisting my diseases but I still managed to kill it no sweat, then killed the three level 77 drones that swarmed me immediately after. Not that that's so amazing or anything, but that would have been a hopeless fight without the knowledge you folks shared right here.



These are gold:


Thanks again.