Unholy DK Specs, Stats and Talents for Levelling

Playing an unholy death knight has always been fun. When I started messing around in unholy again after 4.0 dropped, I loved the Sudden Doom and Dark Transformation warnings that popped on my screen. I loved seeing my ghoul transform from a boney thing barely hung together to a brutal globbulus abomination. Since Anyah on Twitter needed some help getting to grips with her DK after a substantial break, I thought it might be about time to look at how unholy plays now in Cataclysm.

We'll take a brief look at spec and stats in this post, but I'll mainly be focusing on the talents we have, priorities on attacks and how we can use them both to help in the new Cataclysm dungeons and the flavour that Unholy now has in Cataclysm. There'll be a resource list at the end of the post too.

Spec
I've chosen to run with a basic cookie cutter spec which I got from the ever trusty Deathknightbuilds.net. I'm unlikely to raid in unholy spec so choosing something just to get me from 80-85 in dps gear is enough for now. I've also chucked a point in Runic Power Mastery, because, well, I like it. Stats and gear wise, as someone levelling in unholy, your quest rewards are pretty much dictated to you. You have to choose plate, you'll find some comes with Int and Spirit on it. Obviously these are useless for us, we're far to clever to need any more intellect thank you and spirit? Well, we have no soul any more so that's useless. Hence, grab all the gear loaded with Strength and Stam. Yes stamina is good for levelling, it keeps you alive.

At the moment, mastery isn't much of a boon for Unholy (unlike Blood) so reforge that off if you want to. Haste is a good stat to have now and as we approach 85 you'll want to consider the hit cap. According to those maths gurus at Elitist Jerks, it looks like the hit cap is still 8%. Top three stats at 85 work out like this - Strength - Hit Cap - Haste then it's Crit, Expertise to the cap, Mastery and lastly, Agility.

Talents and Attacks
Now, onto those talents and attacks. I was concerned that as a few people had suggested, Unholy was loosing it's flavour in 4.0. Bone shield was removed and put in the blood tree. On a Pale Horse was stuck over in Frost. Well, I'm happy to say that with such things as Dark Transformation I'm not worried that we've lost the flavour. We are still bad-ass disease-ridden killing machines and as such, our diseases are still the priority.

Icy Touch and Plague strike need to be on those mobs sharpish - don't forget about Festering Strike and Outbreak too, I'll cover those in a bit more depth later on. Scourge Strike is still the big hitter but working up the RP for those Death Coils is important. A Sudden Doom proc grants you a free Death Coil, use it. 5 Death Coils will give you your Dark Transformation and turn your ghoul into a DPS monster. Whilst levelling, if I've had a DT proc at the end of a trash pack, I've been holding off on popping it (there's 30 secs to use it) until we engage in the next pack. If it's on a boss fight, well pop it baby!

Keeping up Diseases
Icy Touch and Plague Strike have long been a part of the Unholy DKs rotation. And they are still the basis of our priorities. In 4.0 (and now in Cataclysm) we are ever more dependant on these diseases to pump out the damage. Add to this two new talents, Festering Strike and Outbreak and we can see where Blizzard is putting the emphasis for Unholy DKs.

A bit more on Festering Strike then. FeS works to extend the length of your blood plague, frost fever and chains of ice effects. Essentially then, rather than hitting IT and PS to refresh your diseases, you can just hit FeS whack the mob for some weapon damage and refresh the diseases at the same time. Sounds good to me!

Outbreak sticks both IT and PS on a mob and comes with a 1 minute cooldown. It won't replace IT and PS because of this longer cooldown, but it will be handy to have for additional mobs. EJ don't seem to mention it on their latest breakdown which I guess tells you quite a bit about it's importance. Or lack of it.

So, we don't have a set rotation any more. Keep your diseases up, use Pestilence to spread them around on groups of mobs, hit Scourge Strike and use those Death Coils!

Dungeons - Now with added CC!
I like Bubbles wrote up a little post this week on the talents that DKs have that can help in the new era of CC in dungeons. For all those Wrath Babies who haven't had to use CC, it means Crowd Control. This is anything that effectively removes a mob from a fight for a period of time. If you see a CC-ed mob, don't hit it. Death Knights do not have CC tools. However, as was pointed out by Ilikebubbles, we do have interrupts and some other tools to help tanks and healers and the whole group in general.

Mind freeze - an interrupt with a 10 second cooldown and 4 second duration on the target. I have this sitting on my toolbar in handy reach as I have found it invaluable in the past. The quick cooldown means you can use it on a couple of mobs if needed.

Strangulate - another interrupt, this time with a 2 minute cooldown - not as handy imho as Mind Freeze due to it's cooldown time, but a good utility for it's silence on non-player victims.

Death grip - when used properly, death grip can be invaluable. I always ask my tank 'Do you want me to DG that caster/range/whatever into the group?' DG causes the target to focus on you for 3 seconds, thus acting like a taunt. Your tank needs to know you're going to DG a mob so they can peel them back off you. Failure to tell them may result in cranky tank. DG also acts as an interrupt and is thus very handy to use on the pesky caster at the back. You interrupt them, and gather them into the group to feel more AoE.

Chains of Ice - have you missed that mob running off to get more friends? Stick him/her on ice until the tank can catch up and you can batter them. Side note - DG + Chains is fun in BGs XDYour ghoul - Your ghoul also has interrupt skills - namely Gnaw, it acts as a 3 second stun whilst your ghoul chews off your enemy's arm.

Using these abilities will help your group through the dungeons. Using this knowledge will help at 85 because you'll know your class a lot better. And one step at a time we can break the Death Knight reputation of being, shall we say, less than clever?!

I hope these little tips have helped in some way to help you find your way to 85 with your unholy death knight.

Resources

Elitist Jerks - you know it makes sense

Death Knight Builds - full listing of all builds, take your pick.

Pwn Wear - for DK tanks, but you might want to have a look :D

Erm .. here?!

If you've got any links and good resources, please leave me a comment and I'll update the list.

Suffer Well!

Death Knight Talents in Cataclysm

So ... the 31 point talents dropped. I'd been hoping to be in the Beta to look at these myself but I've not been able to get there yet. Anyway, lovely people like AmberianAnex have been blogging about it in the beta and the talents are now all over the web. Let's take a look at them shall we? Well you go over to MMO Champ and take a look and I'll wait here. Hurry back now!

Blood ....
Now the tanking tree of choice! Well kinda. Cos you got no choice. WTF I hear you cry?! Yes that's right in case you didn't know, Blizz have binned off the Great Death Knight Three Tree Tanking experiment. AND! Holy Smoke Batman, but there's no def rating any more! I know! I died in shock too. We are now all Drood Bears and get our defense from our talents. Bah! And I don't want to talk about blood worms. Yuk.

Unholy ....
Well we've lost bone shield. What next? Sticking our ghoul out there as a tameable hunter pet? Oh no wait, I know, give Army of the Undeath out to the Warlocks as a new minion. Will Unholy be the PvP tree of choice? I'm going to say yes. Woah! Look at that, no sitting on the fence for Deme today!

Frost ....
Hai Howling Blast as the top (ZOMGWTF?) talent. I see Frost languishing in the raids as a PvE DPS spec that never quite works out like you think it will. Hey! Maybe the Dual Wield thing will make it big, maybe they'll give us a Titan Grip equivalent.

Runic power. Well let's assume it works like rogue combat points. Fooking shite. If I'd wanted to play a damn squishy rogue I'd have rolled one Blizzard! Let's assume it works like a warriors rage. EVEN WORSE! C'mon man! Give me back my swirly coloured six runes.

Of course you must now spend 31 points in any tree to get the key abilities so where will you chuck the others? Arrh well wild speculation (look if you've not picked up by now that this is a silly speculation post you're not going to), let's say you're a tank. Then right now I have absolutely no idea what you want. And frankly, if you think anything is going to stay the way it is now, you're madder than a box of frogs.

I promise to post something more constructive. Maybe. Probably about 2 weeks before the launch when I eventually get on the beta. Damn you Blizz!

Suffer. You can't suffer well this post so you'll just have to make do with suffering.

Deme

*You must forgive me. I was on holiday last week and missed all the RealID blogging opportunities and I have lots to say on it. For another time though I feel. Anyway, it's left me feeling a bit bereft of topics. Stick with me though, I promise to make up for this lame effort.

Unholy PvE DPS Since Patch 3.3

Right then, time to get down to something serious and deadly. In my guild, Unholy DKs are not the norm. Blood has made a big impact and it's hard to argue with it on occasion. Blood is a very powerful spec, with a rotation not dissimilar to unholy as it goes. Even looking at both cookie cutter specs since 3.3 you can see that all the talents in the top blood and unholy specs are split between these too talent trees, and blood can whack out some serious numbers. But unholy will win out.

Prior to 3.3 I had been struggling for a while with unholy, but I remained defiant. I've been unholy from the get-go and I love the playing style. I didn't think I could ever change it, even though the talent point resets and the constant tweaking can be annoying, it was too much fun to dump. 3.3 hit and I waited a couple of weeks for all those with the skills to run the numbers and work up the best rotations and gear suggestions. I admit that this patch has been the one time I have seriously considered dumping unholy altogether and bowing to peer pressure.

I'm not one to change something I love so readily though so I went off and read all the updates on 3.3. Once I started reading across the class forums, the leading guild sites and the usual suspects like Elitist Jerks, it was clear that unholy was the top spec in the end game instances. It was also clear that I need to upgrade some gear, tweak my spec, glyphs and rotations. So I did. And what do you know, it rocks to be unholy.

If you are just respeccing, or trying out unholy for the first time, here's a few points. Keep your diseases up (IT, PS). Your diseases are powerful, IT slows down your adversary and PS inflicts shadow damage over time. Even if you aren't able to hit your target, if you get feared, frozen, stunned whatever, your DoTs are there. They are doing damage. The reworked SS is the corner stone of unholy again, but you'll get the most out of it if you've got your diseases up.

Single target raid DPS
Providing you are running with this spec and DO NOT have any T10 or ICC gear, then your rotation is going to look like this:

IT – PS – BS – SS – BS – DC – HoW – SS – BS – SS – BS – DC – DC

I've used this spec as it's what I'm running with. For more options check the list below.

I still have some work to do, but I'm getting there. Few more EoT and I should have the T9 chest, which will stick with me for a very long time. Those EoF are much harder for me to grind and I'll need a small bank full to upgrade my legs.


For further reading
Ensidia
Good stuff here.
Elitistjerks -- seriously, probably every answer to basic DK stuff you could ever want.
deathknightbuilds.com -- does what it says on the tin
thestoppableforce.net -- DK blogger with UI and add on tips and ICC advice.

Suffer Well!

Deme

Editted cos my guildie found the Ensidia link I couldn't. Thanks @woodstonewow