Deim - Death Knight - Unholy/Frost

[Deim]

Player information:

- Age & Location:

28, Arlington, VA

- Usual Play Times (Server Time):

6:30pm - 12 weekdays & Sunday evening, Friday depends on whether I get distracted at happy hour, Saturday depends just how distracted I got on Friday

- Number of Testicles:

2, hanging slightly to the left.

- Can you attend raids on these days:

-- Monday: Y
-- Tuesday: Y
-- Wednesday: Y
-- Thursday: Y
-- Friday (optional): occasionally
-- Saturday (optional): usually
-- Sunday: Y

- Do any others have access to your account?

No

- Do you use a blizzard authenticator? If no, why?

Yes

- How long have you played WoW:

Since shortly after classic's release.

- Endgame experience (What bosses have you killed):

Clear through to C'thun in AQ and early bosses of Naxx wings, think Maexxna was the only end wing boss I got when the content was valid, did this content as Holy Paladin, Warlock and Rogue but primarily paladin.

BC: Clear through to Reliquary of Souls & Archimonde prior to attunements being removed, then clear through to M'uru prior to the nerf patch, M'uru and KJ dropped the following week, did all BC content as warlock primary though I dabbled in Resto druid when guild required additional heals.

WoTLK: Re-rolled DK and ran Naxx through to ToTC with Glory of the Ulduar Raider as progression content, then had to drop out of serious raiding to prepare to relocate to the USA from Australia for work, have done most the other content with SoS at various times and toons but not all hard modes.


Character Information:
- Name, & Class:

Scourage (Renaming to Deim on xfer), Death Knight

- Race & why did you choose it:

Worgen, was chosen primarily for sprint/crit racials plus they look badass, but as this application will also entail a faction transfer I'm currently weighing up the best option though I'm leaning towards Tauren even though I know I should be choosing orc for the expertise & pet dmg racials, trying to decide if my distaste for orc armor rendering is really that bad...

- Link to Battle.net Armory:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/c ... age/simple

- Can you describe the ruckus?



- Professions and why did you choose them:

Jewelcrafting and Enchanting, most efficient raid suited specs I've found, both provide good bonuses while having cash making potential to mitigate those pesky repair bills.

- Spec, Dual spec. How often do you play other specs?

Normal Primary: Unholy (http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jbuZ0hZcucdfsodfo:)
Current Secondary: Blood (http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jchG0srrusdZbhM:) - this is Heroic focused not raid just given current content scenario.
Normal Secondary: Frost (http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jbGZMI0rfuRzfz0h)

Frost/Unholy are largely interchangable for me depending on appropriate weaponry drops and how DPS scales with them throughout the expansion, but as of this moment due to available gear and need to tank a great deal due to shortage of tanks for heroics I'm more practised with Unholy, I'd be up to speed again with frost within a day or two, just have to retrain proc reactions properly.

For tanking offspec, I endeavour to maintain a gear set for it no more than 1 tier behind current progress tier if not better at all times. I'm a competent tank in general and wouldn't be afraid of filling in that role on occasion if required, but I don't consider myself of a tanking standard that I'd apply to a top end guild as a tank (I suck at working the varying size hit boxes of bosses for precise positioning, dunno why but I always seem to go that millimetre too far and having him jerk outta place).


- Explain your choice of gear for main & offspecs:

At this stage of the xpac, I'm largely just trying to balance out the critical stats

For unholy hit, expertise balanced appropriately with Str priority & Haste secondary, ditching mastery where possible to gain more of the others.

For my frost kit, more mastery rather than haste.

My tank kit's very slapped together atm gained through tanking heroics when I couldn't get dps spots with guildies, I need to begin to rework it away from the stam stacking its got atm for a more balanced avoidance kit since with the much larger base HP pools there's not as much need to cover 2-hit scenarios and avoidance is pulling ahead.

- What glyphs do you use for each spec and why:

Major/Minor's are the same in all spec's because there's very little of major benefit from the other options in PvE with the possible exception of Dancing rune weapon for blood.

Unholy:

Prime - Scourge Strike, Raise Dead, Death Coil
Major - Blood Boil, Pestilence, Anti-magic Shell
Minor - Blood Tap, Path of Frost, Horn of Winter

Frost:

Prime - Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Obliterate
Major - Pestilence, Anti-magic Shell, Blood Boil
Minor - Blood Tap, Path of Frost, Horn of Winter


For both Frost and unholy the prime's are chosen to all boost primary dps abilities, there's no real competition amongst the other options for the relevant specs with the possible exception of icy touch in the frost spec on AoE fights (30% increased frost fever dmg spread across 10 mobs adds up fast) but large numbers of adds in boss fights that stay up long enough for it to be highly beneficial are rare so its not my primary choice.


Blood:

Prime - Heart Strike, D'n'D, Glyph of Death Strike
Major - Pestilence, Anti-magic Shell, Blood Boil
Minor - Resilient Grip, Horn of Winter, Blood Tap

Designed for best aggro in multi-mob fights, I rarely tank single target fights, but in the event I needed to a great deal of that gets swapped for rune strike crit change.

- If you are applying as a DPS, what is your normal rotation?


Current unholy rotation needs some work I think, I'm not happy with it, but is: IT, PS, FS, SS, DC then enters a priority system of SS>DC>FS based on what runes are up while retaining diseases and maximizing uptime on dark transformation for my ghoul, once FS extension of disease drops them below about 5-8 seconds rinse/repeat. I'm still experimenting and following the EJ threads for level 85 rotations so its possible I'll change this completely, there's a lot of people tipping death and decay as being worthwhile in a single target rotation in place of a scourge strike but I just haven't seen the numbers back that yet though that could be because I haven't had a fully buffed 25 man raid to try it in yet.

I was beating up a target dummy the other day trying to prove it one way or the other if you're curious:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/981ng8uyviw4m5mf/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-utpsvyhz60wy0l8q/

Frost is similarly priority based, I haven't run it enough to have modified it beyond the default recommended:

Diseases, Obliterate, blood strike if blood runes up, frost strike when RP approaches cap, then proc management throwing in Horn of Winter and Festering strike on the odd occasion your runes layout appropriately.

- Highest PvP Rank on this character (vanilla & arena titles):

Done sod all PvP on my DK, highest I've made on any toon is Centurion on my Rogue during classic or 2000 rating as an MS War/Resto Shammy pair in season 2/3 BC.

- Prior guild(s) & your reasons for leaving:

As per above, I'm an Australian recently moved to Washington DC for work, so have been out of serious raiding since the Ulduar period of WoTLK as a result and taking the Cata release as a good opportunity to return to raiding without a massive gear & boss familiarity deficit.

Prior to that I raided in Omen on Lightbringer for late classic to mid BC, guild eventually collapsed due to lack of Oceanic recruits on a US server.

early-mid classic was an assortment of guilds, most significant of which was Destinatus on Duskwood, reroll guild on server release ran through MC to Twin Emps before paid-char transfer lead us to split and seek placement in guilds moving into Naxx.



Other Information:
- A Screenshot of your character's UI:

http://users.on.net/~sethale/ui.jpg

- WWS/Wowmeter/Worldoflogs reports (not optional):

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/qbivi8ahhctppanj/

Forgive my standing in fire the first attempts, hadn't seen the boss before and I misinterpreted the tankspot breakdown of fire mechanic being a "follow the player" rather than random spawn one and boxed myself in, felt like a right twit when I reread it between 2 & 3.

- Alts & their name/level:

Alaera - Priest - 80
Avaylia - Rogue - 85
Dasin - Shaman - 80
Deim - Warlock - 80
Elthea - Warrior - 80
Laesha - Druid - 80
Lyantri - Mage - 82 (yay for herbing XP!)
Sethale - Paladin - 81 (yay for mining XP!)
Vaelas - Hunter - 80


- Out of game contact information (AIM/MSN/etc):

[email protected], comes through to my iPhone

- How did you find us? Is there anyone you know in Simple Math?:

Hunting decent 25 man progress guilds through wowprogress.com, then checking the realm forums to see if they've got a bit of character about em.

- Why Simple Math? Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

Pickings are slim alliance side for Death Knights, so exploring the horde side you seem the best balance of being an established guild with a good raiding history, current progression suiting my timezone and abilities I could find.

- What kind of computer do you use? CPU/Memory/Video Card? Typical FPS during a 25-man raid?

Core I7 processor, 4GB RAM, Radeon 5800 GPU. Latency's about 45ms - 60ms (I'm used to 300+, this is heaven...) and very stable. Latency rarely goes below 20 FPS even on intensive AoE fights.


- What kind of internet connection do you have? Run an internet speed test against New York at speedtest.net Link the results below.

Verizon Fios 25/5
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1096245805.png

- Finally, we ask that you draw us a picture using MS Paint. (This is not optional).

Worst squirrel attempt ever:

[pelinel]

not another death knight who picks race based on looks!!! Go Orc btw.. They look good IMO and have awesome racials !

[Visions]

You lost me at "PS, IT"

[Deim]

The rotation or the acronyms?

PS = Plague Strike
IT = Icy touch
FS = Festering Strike
DT = Dark Transformation
DC = Death Coil
SS = Scourge Strike

[Ninetales]

I think he's trying to indicate a flaw in your rotation.

[Visions]

I think he's trying to indicate a flaw in your rotation.

Assuming single target boss fight you should literally almost never use Plague Strike or Icy Touch. You Outbreak at the start of the fight and Festering Strike will keep it up for pretty much the entirety of the fight. Even on fights where you have to switch DPS (IE: Magmaw -> Head/Valiona -> Theralion) Outbreak will still usually be up for the switch. Essentially you're wasting both a scourge strike and a festering strike with IT/PS use.

[Deim]

Could be right, absence of having done any of the current content at raid level has me unpracticed at the use of outbreak, I've been considering it my rotation reset button in the event of transitions/avoidances rather than an opener for each undiseased target.

I'm not entirely convinced that its not better held for that still in the long run, sure saving those PS/IT GCD's is a boost to dps but given how few you actually do in a fight now with FS keeping durations, opportunities to use pestilence on the move to get new targets diseased up within the GCD (haven't seen spawn scenarios for additional mobs relative to boss targets so this may not be a frequent opportunity), and how much dps you can lose if something gets out of whack at a key moment and its on cooldown.

I'll have to try it out and see, but yeah, not fully sold on the concept there just yet.

[phazon]

outbreak is how you always want to start a fight and use it at every possible opportune moment such as switching to an add or having to replace your diseases. icytouch than plague strike globals are not going to do as much as 1 global to outbreak and instantly going into double scourge strikes and double festering strikes.

i would like to know of any DK macros that you use, even if they are horn of winter macros.

as you are in fact dual wield unholy, i think that you may be far off from the hit cap needed for level 88 mobs along with the exp you need as well.

from the parses which are not very easy to read due to what they are and random. your disease dots uptime does not look very good at all, unless you can correct me, which shouldn't be a problem with outbreak, as well as the fact that your using DnD on target dummies makes it hard to read, any sort of baradin hold dps parse or even a tank and spank heroic boss parse would a big help here.

[Deim]

Have been testing and alliance finally got TB back on Caelastrasz,

I must yield on the outbreak aspect on a single target fight, popping it in a window where you're low on disease durations and have no other rotation abilities available is definitely superior, thanks for the tip

New parse: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/sdukvpb58tgmc279/

With regards to the hit cap, I screwed up reforging and changing my itemrack after replacing Right Eye of Rahj (with its +285 hit) with Darkmoon Card: Hurricane on new years day, no excuse for that (unless I can claim hangover?), just me f'ing up, its corrected now.

Current Macro's are:

frenziedGargoyle:
#showtooltip Summon Gargoyle
/use Golemblood Potion
/cast Unholy Frenzy
/cast Summon Gargoyle

PotFrenzy:
#showtooltip Unholy Frenzy
/use Golemblood Potion
/cast Unholy Frenzy

PotGargoyle - For fights when Unholy Frenzy may be too dangerous
#showtooltip Summon Gargoyle
/use Golemblood Potion
/cast Summon Gargoyle

tapDT - Not used always, just when DT's ready and I don't have a rune available
#showtooltip Dark Transformation
/cast Blood Tap
/cast Dark Transformation

clawSS (Claw's also on auto-cast)
#showtooltip Scourge Strike
/cast Claw
/cast Scourge Strike

clawDC (Claw's also on auto-cast)
#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast Claw
/cast Death Coil

Plus the usual array of Mind Freeze + turn alert /say /party msgs and boss specific "panic button" macros, when a fight requires an ability critically I bind my numpad keys to the "Panic Button", so I could in essence just punch that end of my keyboard and know its being triggered.

[phazon]

how do you feel about deathcoil on ghoul to get darktransformation up quicker for certain situations?

when do you use unholy frenzy within a fight?

how do you weigh stats, haste, exp, master and so on?

i may have missed it but do you know how dual wield and 2h frost work?

blizzard is going to fix unholy to get it away from using dual wield, when this comes do you have a weapon at the ready?

[phazon]

first thing i notice about the parse is and macros, is that you do make strides to use personal cooldowns with raid cooldowns together to max your dps to a degree.

When you pop cooldowns do you wait to pop them with heroism / unholy strength, and are you aware that popping unholy frenzy durring a heroism is a bit of a nono as we exceed the haste soft cap and get diminishing returns on haste effects unlike if it is popped after heroism.

Also you are taking damage from meteor cleave, were you asked to stack in the piles?

[Deim]

deathcoil on ghoul to get it up is an interesting idea, given the ~30 sec window you have to activate dark transformation and its 30 sec duration once activated, any long transition period where you've already got a stack or two up and runic power to burn it'd be best used in the last 1-2 sec of the timer, add another stack then just before phase start burn it to proc if possible, very situational so I haven't come across a scenario where I'd be looking hard for it in heroic to make a dps timer but in raids you could force a fair chunk of extra dps like that.

Unholy frenzy for me works on a priority system,

1) Is there a risk of AoE/Cleave/special mechanics killing me due to the extra dmg
2) Will we be blowing heroism at a time that won't sync up with use #x or #y during the fight

In the event that the answer's no for all, pop it on cooldown along with gargoyle all fight, otherwise its a per fight basis.

As unholy, presuming hit capped (oops), Str -> 1/2 Expertise Dodge Cap (12ish) -> Haste -> Expertise Cap -> Crit, remainder's based on gearing to maximize those, at heroic level gearing where expertise will be more plentiful I'd be going with (hit presumed capped) Str -> Expertise Dodge cap -> Haste -> Crit sort remainder, but I'm anticipating one of the very near patches to potentially push mastery further up that chain so I'm somewhat stockpiling offset mastery gear since it works well into frost.

I don't want to misrepresent my frost understanding, its based largely on the elitist jerks threads and some tinkering with target dummies since I've had to tank a lot, but essentially I want Str->Mastery->haste after the hit/exp caps are dealt with (I've got several mastery pieces from heroics in the bank in the event I need to go that direction.) and its about managing my procs & RP to maximum efficiency, I would need a couple of days running this regularly to really have this down since the difference between being average and good at it is how good your instinctual reactions on them are, but I ran it extensively in early Ulduar where it was one of the first spec's blizzard designed like that and I was reasonably good at it (~7k -8k dps in naxx & early uld gear on Vejaxx) so I'm not too worried about relearning it.

140 f'ing troll artifacts and no Zin'Rokh.... I have several heroic 2H'ers in my bags, but not the unholy optimal Whitefin Axe from Ozumat in Throne of the Tides, bastard keeps dropping double trinkets (which everybody else in the group loves I'm sure)

[Deim]

first thing i notice about the parse is and macros, is that you do make strides to use personal cooldowns with raid cooldowns together to max your dps to a degree.

When you pop cooldowns do you wait to pop them with heroism / unholy strength, and are you aware that popping unholy frenzy durring a heroism is a bit of a nono as we exceed the haste soft cap and get diminishing returns on haste effects unlike if it is popped after heroism.

Also you are taking damage from meteor cleave, were you asked to stack in the piles?

For unholy frenzy during heroism, tbh I haven't researched its optimal usage time that closely since I've assumed I'll be allocating it to an assigned dps warrior whose mastery makes it that little bit tastier.

For the parse, we were asked to stack in piles yes, to the average Cael guild he's "Brutallus w/rain of fire" anything more than that confuses em

[Deim]

Hi folks,

An alliance guild I'd apped to prior to the holidays and thought had passed me over were actually just not active much given the Christmas break and have gotten back to me, given the cost involved in moving all my toons across both faction and server and feeling they might be a slightly better fit for me giving my preference for a PvE over PvP environment, I've decided to accept their belated invite.

Want to apologize for withdrawing so late in the discussion process and thank you for reviewing me, its been nice to have a guild engage in such a good dialogue during the app process.

-- D.