Whats the Best DPS BuildFollow

5-mans: blood, MAYBE frost if you're good at it
raids: unholy
pvp: unholy

I would agree with this. With my gear, unholy does about the same dps as blood (single target), but when you add in the increased raid dps that unholy brings plus the insane dps jump on multi-targets, unholy is by far the better choice (for me, as the only unholy DK in my guild).

Edit: I do like blood for soloing old content (i'm running through all of the BC Heroics now for the achievement and I never have to worry about anything with blood spec).

Edited, Aug 2nd 2010 7:56am by Ailitardif

I've tried a Frost Build for 5-mans and so far have been coming out on top even. Once I got the rotation down it worked like a charm. Beating out the Locks and Mages by far.

I rock frost.
Rock it hard I do.

If you have an Enh Shaman, then no. Unholy will be top DpS on most fights. Frost wins on some, but not by much. And Blood never wins (well, maybe on ONE fight).

Mages, if they don't suck, should be doing 7-9K DpS on Heroic bosses and at least 5-6K on the smaller trash pulls. Even perfectly played, a DK won't beat that. HB, BB and diseases don't beat FSs and Blizzard. And Mages have CDs that let their single target DpS skyrocket on short fights, where DKs don't.

They even out in the long run for single targets. And DKs will bypass Mage DpS when there are a ton of targets (especially when they are Unholy). But for a dungeon, you'll only beat Mages if you are ludicrously geared compared to them and vastly more skilled. Classes just aren't balanced around 5-mans.

5-mans is where Unholy fails, because most AOE trash doesn't live long enough for Wandering Plague to work. I'd rather slap Cinderglacier on my off-hand weapon and go DW Frost. Timing a Killing Machine with a Cinderglacier proc makes Howling Blast mean.

Of course, this is all from Tier 9 and personal experience only. Others, wearing better or worse gear, might have different experiences and thus different opinions. I've done Unholy, 2h Frost and DW Frost in 5-mans (heroics). Never did try Blood, mainly because I lacked the ArPen.

For 5-mans? Anything you have. It really doesn't matter what you spec. You'll probably get better boss DpS from Blood than you will Frost simply because you get DRW+Hysteria and don't need to depend on procs. Frost only has UA (which rocks, but not as much). As people pointed out above, for the lower Heroics, Blood and Frost will do great.

For raids? Well, Blood's VIABLE, but is often a huge DpS drop from Unholy (and sometimes even massively below Frost). So its viability is debatable. More is better, obviously. And it depends on the rest of your gear as to how large the gap will be. If you are going Blood, you aren't doing it because you want to put out the best damage. So it doesn't really matter how much ArP you have.

But Obliterate and Scourge Strike are both large portions of Frost/Unholy damage (not to mention the physical portion of auto-attacks and BCBs), so they still heavily gain from ArP.

That said, I still recommend Unholy for a Heroic build. Things might die fast in the lower heroics, but Unholy is AWESOME for the harder ones. A, it gets huge DpS when things don't die instantly, which they won't in ToC+. B, you put the 12% debuff on everything, which means most other DpS are going to perform way better. C. It has awesome ST damage due to Gargoyle lasting most of the fight.

D. When you are faced with mobs that drop too fast to spread diseases, you are only slightly worse than Blood's AoE. If they have DRs, they can BB 4 times and you cap at 2. But that's only if they have Death Runes. Otherwise, both only get 2. But your DnD will hit harder than theirs (and you should be using it if things are going to live through 7 seconds of it or so). And your Blood Boil isn't that much weaker at all, since it gets more of your AP at its base.

Either way, more of your AoE DpS is gonna come from DnD, since BB sucks without a disease up. And if you can spread just one, then Unholy probably wins the AoE dps race. And, if you can't AND don't use DnD, then Blood is only slightly superior to Unholy. Plus, if you don't need DnD, then the things are dying so fast you shouldn't care.

Thanks for the info. I was just wondering because I got the Arpen trinket from Deathbringer last night which pushed me to 30% Arpen.

I normally agree with you on most things dig, but here I don't.

Heroic boss is a short fight, generally around a minute long. If as frost you use your BT/UA macro like you should you're getting 20% more strength for 33% of the fight (20 seconds).

As for the whole aoe thing in a heroic a frost dk pending on KM procs should beat mages. Basic intro to a good aoe pull is....

IT > PS > Pest > BB (to increase chances for KM proc) > HB > Blood Tap > BB

If you manage a KM proc you're going to outdps most anyone in a heroic, barring warriors who know what cleave, sweeping strikes and whirlwind are.



If you end up with near 90% arp as frost you switch to sigil of awareness for massive oblit. You're single target dps is pretty close to insanity while your aoe is going to suffer from lack of strength:ap conversion.

You have to factor in a few more things though.

You're not counting disease damage, blood boil damage, you'll get at least 2 blood boils out, plus any auto attacks.

Figuring against globals and the base health of heroic mobs you're looking at say 75k per mob, dk's will win out just because of globals, mind you I'm not factoring in any haste or MS for either mage or dk since that is above my basic napkin math.

Rank 9 FS is a 2 second cast, Rank 8 FS is also 2 second cast, both tick every 2 seconds. Blizzard Rank 9 is an instant cast with a tick every 1 second.

It takes a dk 4.5 seconds to apply diseases and spread them. On the 6 second mark they can BB or HB if they have proc'd KM, 7.5 seconds is a BB or HB.

In 7.5 seconds you'll see 2 applications of front loaded FS, 2 ticks from the first FS, 1 tick from the 2nd FS, 2 ticks of blizzard.

In 7.5 seconds you'll see (this is pending if diseases tick on application or after 3 seconds, i'm pretty sure its application though) 2 - 3 disease ticks on all targets, a blood boil, any auto attacks (assuming 2.6 weapons with just IMP IT its around a 2.0 swing I don't have the exact number so take this auto attack thing with a grain of salt) so 5-6 auto attacks on your main target, and Howling blast.

Factor in that third dps and the tank also dpsing you're mobs are most likely going to be dead after the 8 to 9 second mark. So, from this it's honestly tough to say what would win out with just base damages. Crit % and haste % will change it up entirely and even a dk adding in another BT/BB would throw things around.

In a heroic scenario I feel that it just seems more likely a frost dk should out dps a mage on aoe IF they get the KM proc, an obvious linch pin in the debate.

We've got a massive problem here.

For sake of argument and way give a relative number to this, I've pulled the gearscore of my dk, your mage and your other 2 dks.

Einziger - 5662
Yehoshua - 4763
Valfodr - 4366
Hiartuar - 4903

You're comparing your dk, whichever one, to your mage which is a huge problem. They're not of the same gear level, mine is even farther above your mage so my and your numbers end up skewed. Between all of this and how spells scale off of stats we're not going to come to a conclusion.

It's just like how fire becomes a viable raiding spec at certain raid specs, or how a shaman will change out glyphs every about 100-200 GS because they end up becoming better.

On a base level w/o gear you are right that a mage will most likely out dps a dk in aoe, but when gear becomes a factor its going to change it up entirely. More haste on my part the shorter my globals the faster I'm pushing out damage or the more times to proc KM, the same goes for you.

Like I've said before, too many variables are affecting both of our numbers which is why we cannot come to a conclusion unless it is at the VERY base level and I've already said that a mage will most likely win out.

Edit:

I just looked at the spec of your frost dk, its entirely wrong for dw, in fact it isn't even dw at all, its 2h frost w/o any glyphs. This completely invalidates your entire arguement since you are comparing an entirely wrong thing to your mage.

Edited, Aug 7th 2010 3:23pm by ArexLovesPie

An Arcane Mage can pull some crazy DPS on heroic bosses, yes, but on trash the Frost DK shines. Cinderglacier + Killing Machine + Howling Blast = pain galore.

Been there, done that.