Play Styles: DK Caster Used in ICC-10

To expand on last week’s article, Play Styles: Death Knights for Spellcasters, I’d like to mention a specific example of where the concepts within that post were put to use. Some people disagree with what I had to say there, called it crap, said it was inaccurate and not worth reading.

Don’t make me Death Coil you…

Clarification
Since my intentions in the original post were apparently not made clear, let me say it again right here. The intention of last week’s article was to show someone who’s uncomfortable playing a melee class a method by wish to play the Death Knight (a melee class) in a caster-like playstyle so that it wasn’t so completely foreign that they could not stand playing the class. In no way was that post meant to suggest that it was a viable raiding spec, that it could be top DPS, or anything of the sort. The whole reason for it being there was to show you a different way to play the class.

Caster-Death Knights Used in ICC 10?
Yeah, you heard me right. Not just one, but two Death Knights asked to “go caster” in an ICC-10 raid this passed weekend. My guild isn’t large enough to run 25-man raid right now, but we do have enough high leveled and decently/acceptably geared alts to do Alt Runs for a second 10-man each week. I’ve been taking a break from raiding lately in favor of leveling other characters (I Play to Level, Not to Raid, remember?), so I wasn’t in the run I’ll be talking about or else I would have had screenshots to share with you as well. I also wasn’t in Vent while it happened because I was hanging out with one of my buddies in his own Vent server. My wife wasn’t in the raid that night because she’s currently chasing after the Loremaster title on her Shaman, but she was logged into vent and let me know about it during our lunch break today.

While we do have enough characters for a second raid, we don’t have exactly have the optimal setup for it. Of particular importance, we’re lacking caster DPS. We had one caster and one hunter in the group that ran on Saturday and there they were facing off against Lady Deathwhisper. For those that don’t know much about the Lady D fight, there are two types of adds that she spawns throughout the fight, casters and melee. She also randomly Empowers one of each group of adds where that mob becomes almost immune (99% damage reduction) to the type of damage that they deal – so casters are “immune” to spells, and melee are “immune” to melee. And the empowered melee mobs can just about one-shot anybody stupid enough to get in front of them, so the tanks taunt and kite them around the room while the ranged casters burn them down.

Well, when you’ve only got one caster and one hunter, that mob isn’t going to go down very fast. Knowing this, our raid leader asked the two Death Knights in the raid to “go caster” when the Empowered Melee showed up to help bring them down faster. And sure enough, they took her down just fine and did so on their first fight with her.

No Undue Credit for Me
Now, let me jump right out here for a second and mention that to my knowledge only one person from my guild reads my blog, and he’s a bit more of a PvP Fiend than a Raider. The decision to have the DKs go caster was not based on my post, and the two players I’m talking about do not have specs matching the one I listed in the previous post. These guys both pull over 8,000 DPS consistently with their melee skills, so they’re entirely comfortable with melee and don’t need to focus on playing like casters. At least, not in general.

So What’s Your Point
The point I’m making with this post is that sometimes you’re required to do things that you’re not familiar with or that you’re not used to doing; like acting like a spell caster when you’re playing a Death Knight. Even if you don’t have any trouble playing a melee DK, even if you already know the ins and outs of your class and every one of its specs, sometimes you have to step up and do something that’s “different”.

If you need to focus on casting your spells instead of using your melee attacks, then it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with which ones you should use and how to use them with the most benefit. In situations like the Lady D fight, AoE spells aren’t going to do as much for you as direct damage spells. Knowing that you’ll be able to prioritize your Rune and Runic Power usage.

Spells to Use Against Lady Deathwhisper’s Adds
If you find yourself fighting against Lady D and need to put your caster skills to use against her adds, here is some information to help you fulfill that role and help your raid:

Single Target Spells
Spells that hit only one thing will deal more damage to a single target than AoE spells will, but we don’t always have that option because of our Runic system. So here’s a list to guide you through your spell choices in a situation like this:

Blood Runes: Blood Boil, Pestilence (see below)
Frost Runes: Icy Touch
Unholy Runes: None
Runic Power: Death Coil, Gargoyle (Unholy only)
Frost + Unholy Combo: Howling Blast (Frost only)
Blood + Frost + Unholy: Death and Decay

Plague Strike isn’t going to help you much against the Empowered melee mobs, but you can still get your disease from it applied to them if you use Pestilence on another mob in the area that is diseased since Pestilence itself is a spell. Otherwise your source of damage from Blood Runes is going to be the Blood Boil AoE spell.

Whether or not you’re using a Frost spec, your best bet in a situation like this is probably going to be to use Icy Touch for one or both of your Frost Runes instead of something like Howling Blast which works better for AoE. If the mob just got empowered and is still near other mobs, then you can use HB instead to deal damage to them all, but otherwise stick to double-IT for your Frost Runes.

Since Plague Strike is the only Unholy-only attack we have, you won’t be putting these runes to use much unless you’re using them as combo points for something like Howling Blast or Death and Decay. If you decide to lay down a Death and Decay be sure to place it so that the mob will be kited through its area of effect for as long as possible. Your tank probably isn’t going to want to kite the mob back and forth through your D&D, so don’t count on too much damage coming from it.

With Gargoyle being a cooldown, you’re probably better off saving it for the boss herself, but if you need the extra dps on the add then go ahead and burn it now. Otherwise you want to stick to Death Coil for use on the empowered melee as often as you can.

Done and Done
So again, the purpose of last week’s article wasn’t to get you to pick up some freaky spec that I showed you and claim that it was great for DPS, it was merely to show you a new way of playing a class that’s not readily apparent. But as you can see from what I’ve told you here, just because it’s not the optimal spec or play style of DPS, it does have its uses and it can be the difference between a successful raid and failure. Never get so stuck in your ways or in the theoretical mathematics of others that you fail to look for the value in something different.

..because I may give you chills with my Icy Touch.

 

Play Styles: Death Knights for Spellcasters

Psynister here with another potential, could-become-a series. Today we’re going to talk about the play style of the DK class. My guest post over at For the Lore prompted some discussion on Twitter about people brushing off their old Death Knights, or perhaps giving them another shot for those that had given up on DK’s as I had not too long ago.

One person in particular, Anexxia of Bible of Dreams, mentioned that they could barely manage to get a DK out of the starting area because she just doesn’t work well with melee classes. Me and Miss Nexxi go way back in blogging/twitter terms as she was one of the first to show interest in my blog, so I made a special effort to let her know I’d gladly help her not fail as a DK and that you don’t have to be entirely melee focused to succeed as a Death Knight.

The Situation
At that point another one of our twitter/blogging friends, Furiey of Troll Bouquet, stepped in and said that DK’s are melee, and don’t fit the bill for spellcasters. A discussion followed between the two of us, with a fair amount of misunderstanding in what I was trying to express (that you can be a DK and not be overwhelmed by melee combat) and what Furiey thought I was saying (that DK’s could be likened unto Warlocks, Mages, EleShamans, Priests, etc.).

What it came down to was a level 76 Frost Tank (me) and a level 80 Frost Tank (Furiey) both expressing different view points on how you can play the exact same class, and both of us getting the impression that the other thought we had no idea what we were talking about. That’s probably the one major drawback to using Twitter (140 character limit on messages); misunderstandings or misinterpretations due to not being able to express your full thought.

So let me state right off the bat here that in no way did I mean to offend Furiey, and this post is nothing more than expanding on the playstyle that I spoke of and how to use it effectively without feeling entirely like you’re playing a melee class all the time.

TL;DR
If you’re playing the class to maximize your DPS then you have to embrace the melee aspect of the class, that’s all there is to it. But if you’re not comfortable with melee and need to stay more caster-like in the method of playing the class, then this is the setup you want to go with. It’s not about maximizing your DPS potential, it’s about maximizing your own potential with your given skill set.

Death Knights ARE Melee
It’s a simple statement, and largely true. It’s hard to consider a class that wields a two handed weapon, wears plate armor, is known for its powerful melee properties, and only has only two spells that aren’t instant cast in their entire arsenal as a caster. I don’t argue those points in the least. That’s right, Death Knights are a melee class, and a dang good one at that.

But what else defines a class as being melee rather than something else? To me, being a melee class means being able to deal your damage while you’re on the move chasing mobs, it’s about moving into position so that you’re behind the mobs as much as possible, it’s having the best weapons you can find to continue dealing the most damage possible, and it’s having the majority (not necessarily all) of your attacks resulting in melee swings rather than other forms of attack.

Death Knights can certainly match all of those definitions, but there’s one of them that it doesn’t have to match, and that’s the last point of the majority of your attacks being melee swings. And within that exception there is only one spec that can actually fill that role and still be successful: Frost.

Death Knights ARE NOT Spellcasters
Yet another simple statement of (mostly) truth. Spellcasters are known for being “squishy” (except for Holy Paladins), they’re known for stacking stats such as Spell Power, Intellect, Spirit, or MP5. They’re known for their crowd control, for their high DPS numbers, for their single target DPS and often their AoE DPS as well, and for spamming spells over and over to burn down their targets.

Death Knights definitely do not fit most of those definitions. We aren’t squishy little cloth wearers, we couldn’t care less about Spell Power (if you do, I will break your freaking legs), or other “caster stats” as we prefer stacking things like Strength, Agility, and Crit. We have very little crowd control, and our spec strongly determines our AoE capabilities. On top of all of that, our unique resource system of Runes and Runic Power prevent us from spamming much of anything.

Spec Details: Psynister, Make Some Sense Already!
Alright, so let’s break this down and get to the point – using a caster-like play style to be a successful Death Knight. To do this, the first thing we need to talk about is our spec. Hands down, no questions asked, there is only one primary tree that you can do this in, and that is Frost. It can be further enhanced by the Unholy tree if you like, but that will be closer to level 80 and we’ll talk about that further down the post anyway. Unholy actually does the most Magic Damage of the three trees, but most of that damage is dealt via melee.

As I said, the spec is the key to being able to use this playstyle, so here are the specifics on the spec for levels 60, 70, and 80. The minimum is level 60 because until then you do not have the talents you need to make this happen, particularly Howling Blast, the level 60 talent at the bottom of the Frost tree.

CASTER-LIKE FROST KNIGHTS
Level 60	Level 70	Level 80
Especially Notable Talents
Level 60	Level 70	Level 80
Lichborne Killing Machine Deathchill Rime Hungering Cold Howling Blast	Virulence Epidemic Morbidity	Corpse Explosion

Normally I go into detail about all of the talents you take, what they do, and so on, but this time I’m going to skip most of that since you can just follow the links if you really need to know. I am going to cover the ones that are key to this style of play though.

I will break it down into each of the spec levels that I laid out up there so that you have some guidance in each level bracket rather than a simple, general overview of the whole thing. Information in the lower brackets also applies in the higher brackets unless otherwise specified.

Level 60 Spec
This spec looks pretty similar to your generic Frost Tank spec at level 60, except that we’re missing some of the more notable tanking talents and instead we’re going for things such as Runic Power Mastery to increase our maximum Runic Power supply, and Merciless Combat which increases our damage to targets with low health.

If you would rather have some of those tanking talents to increase your survivability, then by all means do so. The talents I listed in the table above are the ones that are the most important ones in the bunch, as they’ll be the ones allowing you to fulfill your Caster-like role.

The talents that we just cannot do without for this spec and style of play are Howling Blast which is our big AoE spell, Deathchill which makes our hardest hitting spells instant-crits, Killing Machine which can proc for the same effect as Deathchill, and Rime which gives us the chance during the few melee attacks that we are forced to take to remove the cooldown on Howling Blast.

Two other talents are listed up in the table, but they are for survivability and utility more so than they are crucial to the build. Those two talents I strongly recommend, but you are not required to take them: Lichborne which will allow you to dump your extra Runic Power into healing yourself since we are missing some of those tanking talents, and Hungering Cold which serves as a backup to instantly apply Frost Fever to all targets within range, while also giving you the time to either bandage yourself if needed, allow your Runes to cooldown to rush back into a big AoE assault, or to refresh your diseases on all targets.

Minimum Level 70 Spec
On the path to level 70 I suggest you branch off into the Unholy tree to get some utility talents and build towards our Runic Power AoE, Corpse Explosion. Since we’re doing DPS here Virulence gives us some extra Hit, Epidemic increases the duration of our diseases so that it’s easier to keep them up at all times, and Morbidity increases our RP Nuke, Death Coil, which can also be used to heal ourselves when used in conjunction with Lichborne, and it also reduces the cooldown of Death and Decay which we will not use often but the option is open to us.

Required Level 80 Spec
Ramping up to 80 the biggest addition actually comes at level 71 with Corpse Explosion, providing us with an AoE spell that requires Runic Power rather than Runes. From there we say goodbye to Unholy and jump over to the Blood tree for just a second to grab Butchery to keep our RP supply full for use of either Corpse Explosion for AoE purposes, or Death Coil which can be used either for DPS or for healing if you have Lichborne activated.

Butchery is not necessarily required, it’s just a great way to keep yourself topped off on RP so that you can use your abilities more often. In addition to that, it also helps you to have a large supply of RP moving into a new fight so that you can get straight to blasting away rather than having to wait to build your RP. If you want to replace it with something else, feel free. My suggestion for a replacement would be Blade Barrier, also in the Blood tree, and using the three points in Nerves of Cold Steel there as well.

Caster Knight Glyphs

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Icy Touch: Your Frost Fever disease deals 20% additional damage.
Glyph of Disease: Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
Glyph of Howling Blast: Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.

Alternate Majors
Glyph of Death and Decay: Damage of your Death and Decay spell increased by 20%.
Glyph of Hungering Cold: Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 40 Runic Power.

Your most important disease, the one that should never fall off of your targets, is Frost Fever. The Glyph of Icy Touch increases the damage of that disease by 20%, which is a solid increase in your DPS.

While you have, or will have, four different methods of applying Frost Fever to targets around you, your Blood Plague disease will only be applied via your Plague Strike melee attack. The Glyph of Disease causes your Pestilence spell to refresh the duration of all of your diseases as well as spreading them around, so by using it you are able to keep both diseases active for longer periods of time, without having to resort to melee attacks. Finally the Glyph of Howling Blast is recommended as an easy way to apply Frost Fever, and keep it applied to all targets without putting special effort into keeping it up. As long as you’re using your strong AoE spell, you’re keeping at least that one disease up at all times.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Pestilence: Increases the radius of your Pestilence effect by 5 yards.
Glyph of Raise Dead: Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent.
Glyph of Corpse Explosion: Increases the radius of effect on Corpse Explosion by 5 yards.

The Glyph of Pestilence is going to give you the most initial benefit by allowing you to spread your diseases around in a larger area. Next up is the Glyph of Raise Dead which allows us to summon our Ghoul without a reagent and without the required type of corpse lying around. You can use your Ghoul to increase your DPS, draw some aggro off of you, or to sacrifice to your Death Pact ability you get at level 66 to instantly heal 40% of your maximum health. Last on the list is the Glyph of Corpse Explosion for a larger radius of burst damage. You don’t need to bother with this glyph until your last slot opens up at level 70 since you won’t even get this spell until level 71.

For this build I wouldn’t suggest any of the other minor glyphs that exist right now.

How To: Caster-Style Death Knight
So we have our spec and we have a general idea of what we’re doing; now we just need to bring all of that together and make it happen. The first thing to point out is something I already touched on just a bit up above: Death Knights do not have cast times. So our caster style is made up entirely of instant-casts. We do have some occasional melee attacks thrown into the mix as well, but we’ll talk about those as they come up.

So which caster can you think of that doesn’t bother with cast times (for the most part) and still manages to slaughter everything around them?

That’s right, your caster role model is the Affliction Warlock with their instant-cast DoT spells. Rather than spamming the same spells with their cast times over and over like a Mage, Priest, Druid, or Shaman, you’re going to throw your DoTs onto your targets, spreading your diseases as you go, and then bring them all down with your AoE spells. Also like a Warlock, you have spells that can heal you or restore your resources. Where the Warlock regains mana by damaging themselves, Death Knights regain their “mana” (Runic Power) by dealing damage to others with your class abilities. If you’re familiar with Affliction Warlocks then you’ll see the similarities. If you’re not then…well, just trust me on this one, alright?

A Warlock is going to have to cast their DoTs on one target, then another, then another, and on down the line for each mob that they’re fighting. That’s not the case for the Death Knight. Instead you’re going to group the mobs up, DoT one of them, and then use Pestilence to spread the DoTs to every other mob within 10 yards (15 yards if you use the Glyph).

From there it’s just a matter of hitting your AoE attacks to burn them all down, using melee attacks only when you have to to reset your diseases or because other abilities are on cooldown and you don’t like sitting there doing nothing for four seconds.

Caster-like Nuke Spells
If you want to be a caster, then you need to be able to nuke things. And so, here is a list of our nukes:

Single Target Nukes

1. Icy Touch: Cost: 1 Frost Rune. Deals Frost damage to a target within 30 yards, infects them with the Frost Fever disease, and slows their melee and ranged attack speeds by 15% for 15 seconds.
2. Death Coil: Cost: 40 Runic Power. Deals Shadow damage to an enemy or healing damage from a friendly Undead target within 30 yards. Refunds 20 Runic Power when used to heal.

Now, that’s not a very big list for something we’re going to be playing like a caster, but realize that we’ll be casting a lot of AoE spells with this build rather than burning down single targets. Single targets will die faster by taking the melee route, though that doesn’t mean that you can’t still bring them down with AoE spells as well.

Icy Touch is the spell you will usually end up pulling with, both dealing damage and establishing one of your diseases. When you get into your rotation you will not cast it quite as often as most of your Frost Runes will be used to power either Howling Blast, Obliterate, or Death Strike. While it is acceptable to use your Killing Machine and Deathchill procs on Icy Touch, you’re better off saving them for a Howling Blast if you can.

Death Coil is how you’ll burn through your Runic Power most often. When Corpse Explosion is either on cooldown or you do not have any corpses to power it with, Death Coil is your replacement. You can also use this to heal your Ghoul if you feel so inclined, or to heal yourself if you first use Lichborne to become Undead for 20 seconds.

Area of Effect (AoE) Nukes

1. Howling Blast: Cost: 1 Frost and Unholy Rune. Deals Frost damage to the target and all enemies within 10 yards.
2. Blood Boil: Cost: 1 Blood Rune. Boils the blood of all enemies within 10 yards. Deals additional damage to targets infected with Blood Plague or Frost Fever.
3. Corpse Explosion: Cost: 40 Runic Power. Explodes a nearby corpse dealing Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards.
4. Death and Decay: Cost: 1 Blood, Frost, and Unholy Rune. Corrupts the ground, dealing Shadow damage every second to targets that remain in the area.

Howling Blast is the big dawg of our AoE, and the reason why we’re focused on the Frost tree. It’s a ranged AoE which makes it great for pulling groups, but it works just as well when cast on a mob standing right next to you. It’s also able to be buffed by our Deathchill talent which will cause our next Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Frost Strike, or Obliterate to be a critical hit. We will also try to time all of our Killing Machine procs to be consumed with Howling Blast as well, which works the same as Deathchill except that it is not consumed by Obliterate. Most of our Frost and Unholy Runes will be spent on Howling Blasts, except for when it is on cooldown and we use Obliterate instead.

Blood Boil is our next largest AoE spell, costing only a single Blood Rune. The damage is increased when targets are diseased, so we want to be sure that we have applied at least one of our two diseases on a target and then used Pestilence to spread it around so that we get the most damage out of it that we can.

Corpse Explosion provides our Runic Power AoE to fill in the slow points where our Runes are on cooldown and corpses are available to be exploded. This build is designed to allow for a lot of Runic Power to be built and stored, so you should be able to make frequent use of the spell so long as there are corpses to target.

Death and Decay is the signature AoE spell of the Death Knights, but it’s getting the last slot for actually AoE nuke spells because of how it works. The damage on D&D is fairly low, but the threat rate on it is high. If you are using this build in a group setting then you are already going to generate excessive amounts of threat from using so many AoE spells all the time, so using D&D is often a bad idea in group settings. Also, this is the highest Rune-cost spell that we have, costing one of every type of rune to cast it. By using D&D we remove the ability to use other spells that may be more beneficial to use in the long run.

Melee Attacks You Do Need
There are three melee attacks that we’ll mention in particular here, because they’re the only ones that really matter for this build and playstyle.

1. Plague Strike: This is your second disease, and the only one applied from a melee attack outside of an Unholy build. You will generally use this at the start of a fight to establish a disease, and then rely on your Glyphs to keep it refreshed. If it ever falls off of your targets, go ahead and use it again.

2. Obliterate: This is your key to faster AoE kills, but not necessarily required. It’s also the reason why we’re going to Dual Wield with this build instead of using a two-handed weapon. Each time you attack and hit with it, you have a chance to reset the cooldown on Howling Blast and also make it a Rune-free cast. When dual wielding each time you hit with Obliterate you have two 15% chances to proc Rime which is what makes HB free and resets its cooldown.

3. Death Strike: This is your easiest, most reliable method of healing yourself during combat. When you hit with it you heal yourself for 5% of your maximum health for each of your diseases on the target. With this build and its intended play style you should have two diseases up at all times, so each attack with DS will heal you for 10% of your maximum health.

Other than those the melee attacks you have available are not necessary. If you’re fighting single targets then you may prefer to use Blood Strike instead of Blood Boil since it will do more damage for a single target, but it is a melee attack rather than a spell.

Similarly, it’s better when fighting single targets to use Obliterate instead of Howling Blast from a pure DPS perspective, but again it’s a melee attack rather than a spell, so the choice is yours for which to use and which not.

If you want to maximize your DPS as a Death Knight then you do need to embrace your melee side, but this post isn’t about maximizing your DPS, it’s about playing a melee class from a caster’s perspective and trying to use the play style you’re used to for a class that you’re not.

Putting It Into Action
Time for some Rotations and a sampling of how this actually works.

First Example: Ranged Pull

First Rune Set: Icy Touch (F), Plague Strike (U), Pestilence (B), Howling Blast (FU), Blood Boil (B), Runic Powers
Second Rune Set: Howling Blast* (FU), Blood Boil (B), Howling Blast* (FU), Pestilence (B), Runic Powers

With this rotation we’re going to start off with a ranged Icy Touch to pull our target and establish our first disease. We follow that up with a Plague Strike to establish the second disease, and then Pestilence to spread them around. We finish the first Rune Set with a pair of AoE spells; Howling Blast and Blood Boil. Your first Runic Power dump is probably going to be a Death Coil as you’ll likely not have a corpse to use for an Explosion, if you do have a corpse handy go ahead and Explode it instead.

In the second set we try to use as much AoE as we can muster while also keeping our runes up. Depending on your timing and how often you hit/miss with your attacks, you might need to swap the Pestilence and Blood Boil in the second set, or you may need to replace the second Howling Blast with Icy Touch/Plague Strike instead to reestablish your diseases.

* = If at any point you see “Howling Blast” but your HB is on cooldown, simply replace it with either an Obliterate (FU) or an Icy Touch (F) and Plague Strike (U) combo. If your diseases are about to wear off and Pestilence is not available to get them refreshed, go ahead and replace HB with Icy Touch and Plague Strike instead so that your diseases are up and running at all times.

Second Example: Melee Pull

First Rune Set: Howling Blast* (FU), Blood Boil (B), Blood Boil (B), Blood Tap (N/A), Blood Boil (B), Runic Powers
Second Rune Set: Howling Blast* (FU), Runic Power (rp), Blood Boil (B), Blood Boil (B), Howling Blast* (FU), Runic Powers

This rotation is meant to burn the mobs down quickly with burst damage from your AoE spells. I suggest you use this one only after you have the Glyph of Howling Blast so that it applies Frost Fever for you or else you rob yourself of some damage during the Blood Boils.

Since we use Blood Tap in the first set to reset a Blood Rune cooldown and proc it as a Death Rune instead, we’re not going to have a Blood Rune available right away in the second set. To make up for that we’ll make use of a Runic Power ability there (Corpse Explosion if we can, Death Coil if not), and then make use of our Blood Runes as they come back up.

* = If at any point you see “Howling Blast” but your HB is on cooldown, simply replace it with either an Obliterate (FU) or an Icy Touch (F) and Plague Strike (U) combo. If your diseases are about to wear off and Pestilence is not available to get them refreshed, go ahead and replace HB with Icy Touch and Plague Strike instead so that your diseases are up and running at all times.

 

Psynister: Level 80 Death Knight

First thing’s first:

/PatSelfOnBack

Now that my Death Knight has reached level 80 I will begin work on the final installment of the Frost Tanking guides. I will also include a bit about Unholy DPS since that is my dual spec, but that will likely be a separate guide unto itself. I did run a few randoms during level 78 and 79 as DPS so that I could get a feel for it before heroics, and since I was doing more DPS than pure DPS classes while still in my tanking gear, I’d say I have it down pretty good.

I’ve got my own army now, Arthas. Let us dance, you and I.

 

Conversations With the Masters: Satorri

In my guest post on upcoming changes to Death Knight Tanks in Cataclysm over at ForTheLore, I turned to who I personally consider to be the best source of DK Tanking information on the web, Satorri from TankSpot.com.

Since my guest post was directed at upcoming changes and a lot of what I talked about Satorri had to deal with our current stat situation, I wanted to make all of the information available but not have it all clustered up on Roger’s blog.

The “conversation” I had with Satorri came in the form of private messages on the TankSpot website, so it was a rather informal Q&A session of sorts with me sending questions and Satorri replying with answers.

You will find our conversation below, with my messages in green and Satorri’s responses in blue text and in blockquotes:

---

Satorri,

First I really must thank you for your amazing Book on Death Knight Tanking. I had completely written off the class as a possible tank after seeing so many fail at it. I have a blog about leveling and helping people understand and use their class in a given role so I decided to take on DK Tanking for myself to blog about it and your Book is by far the most detailed and informational source I found anywhere.

One of my fellow bloggers asked me to guest post on his blog about DK Tanking in relation to the upcoming stat changes in Cataclysm, and I wanted to talk to someone that’s more experienced than I am since I haven’t even reached the level cap on my DK yet. I thought for sure someone would have covered it here by now even if it were only in passing, but after going through 5 pages of search results I didn’t find anything.

For that matter it’s hard enough finding two people who actually agree on the priority of stats for DK Tanks. I know Strength is our threat stat, which also gives us some Parry, and that Armor and Stam are of obvious importance, but things get a bit fuzzy from there. For instance, some people seem to rank Parry high, where it’s pretty low on your list. With Parry switching from Avoidance on one hit to Mitigation on two hits, does it move up in priority or down? Does Dodge go up because of that, making Agility more appealing? Those are the kinds of questions I find hard to answer.

We don’t have the specifics of the stat changes yet, so I’m not looking for a real in depth analysis so much as your general thoughts on them. Any help you’re willing to give is appreciated.

Thank you for your time, and thank you again for your excellent contributions here at TankSpot.

Regards,

Psynister

Well, you did hit the nail on the head on one point: We don’t know how stats will work *exactly* or finally in Cataclysm so it is hard to discuss that now. I got the impression from the first half of your message that that was what you were interested in?

If you want to talk about stats now, maybe I can clear some things up. The first thing to be sure on is that it is much harder than some would lead you to believe to evaluate and compare stats, especially for tanking. Few stats are actually directly comparable since they will work through different methods or will dip their toes in multiple pools (for example, Agility gives you armor, dodge, and crit chance, and armor in turn can become AP). The value you get from different stats will often vary with many factors including what your current stats are, talents, and what you are facing.

If you are a tank, you have 2 responsibilities (things you *must* offer as opposed to what you could): threat and survival. You need to stick mobs to you, and you need to take the beating they give you. If you are interested in survival, there are 3 main features that you can group the stats into: avoidance, mitigation, and health.

Health is easy and obvious. When your health hits zero, you’re dead and no longer tanking. Stamina is the one way we change our health through stats.

Mitigation is tools that reduce the damage you take. This is armor, resistance (armor vs spells), and block/absorb mechanics. We don’t generally see the third, and resistances are usually a rare tool only used for specific fights since at any given time at least 70-80% of the damage we take is raw physical damage. Before t10 and the non-set gear, there was very little opportunity to get extra armor outside of the occasional piece of jewelry, cloak, or the odd trinket. Mitigation is generally a popular value with tanks because it just plain reduces damage taken. It’s always on and always active. We get this mainly from armor and bonus armor on gear, but also through agility-granted armor in smaller measure.

Avoidance is the tools that give you a chance to just plain not take damage. This is represented by things that increase your chance to be missed, dodge, and parry (defense rating, dodge rating, parry rating, and agility). Avoidance is much maligned, especially more as this expansion has gone on.The main reason for this is that the state of the healer balance and the damage taken by tanks is such that:
A.) Healers do not have easily reached mana concerns. It it possible to be run out of mana, but there are many tools to prevent that.
B.) Tank damage has been balanced to the point that healers are rarely encouraged to be tactical and generally can be more effective if they just pour healing on the group. Because of A this is reasonable to do, and as such it *appears* less important that tanks take less damage and more important that they can’t be bursted into the ground faster than heals can land.
The two combined mean that most tanks believe it is smarter to have 80k health than to take 30% damage (exaggerated for emphasis =D). The value of Avoidance, however, is that it interrupts the damage stream. It may be nice to some healers if the tank is just constantly being hit so they *know* what is coming and can spam heals in response, but for the sake of survival and all the times where healers are distracted or unavailable, avoidance allows you to just plain not take damage.

Because you asked specifically, there is one specific point to touch on: the reason parry is never smart to gem for as a DK is because of the passive spell effect “Forceful Deflection,” the one that turns Strength into Parry. Dodge and Parry rating both contribute essentially to the same thing, 1% Parry is the same as 1% Dodge for all intents and purposes (technically Parry will give us more threat but it is pretty small in scale). Because the two matching ratings also have the same exchange rate, the only thing that determines the difference in value of the ratings is that they have different caps they diminish to. Because of these caps there is an ideal line that will tell you when which stat is better (basically when your diminishing dodge is greater than 1.8x the size of your diminishing parry, parry rating is giving you more raw % avoidance). The catch with Forceful Deflection is that it keeps us so flooded with Parry rating that we have a hard time actually reaching a level of Dodge rating where Parry rating will actually be better again, and you certainly won’t unless you are actually stacking avoidance ratings (which next to no one does). For that reason, it’s pretty much never smart to gem for parry rating. It’s still a fine stat to have, and itemization is such that you will rarely lose total avoidance because you took the piece with parry instead of the one with dodge.

(Had to break here because of character limit, so Satorri sent a second reply)

Going into Clysm they’re talking about changing what it means to parry, which *could* make it a special sort of semi-mitigation ability, but I expect we’ll see a LOT of changes as the development cycle revs up as they figure out how to balance that best. It’s pretty premature to discuss anything now, unless it’s theoretical explorations of what you think would be a good idea for Blizz to do.

When it comes to threat and threat stats, as a DK tank I am generally of a mind for one simple method: Design your spec for threat concerns, don’t rely on stacking “threat stats” to support a spec that doesn’t support threat well. To understand the value of threat stats though you want to understand what you want from threat.

First off, we’ll assume you are not gemming, enchanting, or taking gear for threat with haste, crit, or armor pen. We will get them on weapons but that is rarely a consideration for what weapon we will choose, especially since the DPS on a weapon will always outweigh the stats. By the same measure I don’t expect it is worth adding Strength to your gear. It won’t hurt you, but if you are having trouble with threat that is probably not the way to solve it. There are 3 stats however that have significance to threat that will warrant consideration: agility, hit, and expertise.

Agility is an easy one to label but hard to place a value on because it is a very compound stat value. In short it is a delicious survival tool that gives you mitigation, avoidance, and adds a little bit of threat in the form of crit chance and a small amount of AP.

It may seem odd to put Hit and Expertise as values worth having when I say don’t bother with crit or haste, but let me explain. What do we need from threat? We need magnitude but with a smart spec and any set of tank gear appropriate to the level of content you’re running you will have fine Str/AP to support your threat. To that end we can expect a good player (read: smart spec and good play skills) can hold threat without an issue on the long run. However, the one thing that the best spec and skill cannot grant is reliability. To generate threat you have to hit the target, plain and simple. If you don’t hit you don’t generate threat and your group will have to compensate. If you are trying to make tight time tables the way most encounters are balanced, it will be hard for your damage dealers to respond well if your threat isn’t there when you expect it to be. Hit and Expertise are the answers to that.

So, to be clear, I don’t think either stat is required for your best overall threat, but I think they are very valuable for being able to apply threat the moment you need it, where you need it. The value from there is simply a variable based on how many spells you use vs melee swings, and what you want/need to rely on most. I prefer to stay as close to the hit and expertise soft cap as I can, though if I go over on expertise I’m not terribly worried as it is still a fine value, especially for me as Blood.

So, what exactly is it you were looking for, now that I’ve blathered on for a couple pages? =)

Satorri,

Thank you for the excellent reply, that helped me with some of what I’m dealing with right now (no idea how I missed Forceful Deflection’s existence) as well as where I’m going with this particular post.

The post is about how the proposed (as of right now) stat changes Cataclysm are going to impact DK Tanks. So I’m taking what we stack now vs. what we will want to stack in Cat according to the information we have right now.

In looking at what all we’re supposed to be stacking now I found you had a list:
– Armor
– Strength
– Stamina
– Defense Rating
– Dodge Rating
– Parry Rating
– Hit Rating
– Expertise Rating

You have them listed in that order, but I don’t know if that’s the order they actually belong in from a priority perspective. So for example, priority-wise do we stop stacking Strength because Parry becomes Mitigation and instead stack Agility because Dodge becomes the only Avoidance stat?

You mentioned the importance of Hit and Expertise. The notes we have on Cat right now mention that reaching those caps are going to be “much harder”, though they go on to say similar to the difference in hitting a level 83 mobs versus a level 80 mob which implies that it will be the exact same setup we have now only higher totals because of higher boss/mob levels (88 and 85).

Cataclysm notes also mention that Frost DK’s are going to get Haste and increased Runic Power Generation for their Mastery bonus, and they said we’re trying to loosen up the Rune system a bit so we’re not so strongly tied into a GCD system of burning runes, spending excess RP, burning runes, spending RP, etc. It’s hard to speculate with so little detail given, but we might see Haste becoming more important if they want us using RP more for tanking.

I guess in essence what I’m really after is which stats do we stack now versus which stats we should stack in Cataclysm based on the information we have right now. Do you feel we will ignore stats that we currently focus on (other than Defense Rating which is going away)? Will there be stats we “ignore” now that we may begin to stack come Cataclysm?

The list I posted isn’t a priority list, only a list of stats that we will see and care about on tanking gear.

Priority is a bit tricky since the values will vary as you get more of anything, as your gear changes, and depending on what you’re facing.

I have avoided touching anything on stats or proposed changes yet because I can promise you that everything you’re reading now is general enough and will change pretty seriously before the game goes live. I think it is a safe assumption that they are going to rebalance stats and their values. The specifics will take months to develop, and really I wouldn’t bother posting about it until the beta is actually underway.

From Blizzards posted stances though, I think it is safe to assume that:
A.) Health and Armor will always be desirable, that won’t change, they will always be central values.

B.) They want avoidance (and block) to be more attractive tools for tanks, particularly to the end of taking less damage. In BC it was a bad thing to be a mana sponge, if you needed constant healing it was predictable but you would also run your healers straight out of mana. They want that to be the case again, so it will be worthwhile to take less damage and take less consistent damage.

C.) They are adding the elements of Mastery that will go a long way to affect how different trees play, and probably what kind of benefits each spec of tank will be most keen on.

If they have been general about anything, they have been completely excluding DK info. They’ve made a point of saying they’re restructuring the way the class mechanics work particularly with the interests of smoothing out the kinks. They have not told us anything, but hinted that the changes will be significant, so there is another reason that it is very premature to talk about Cataclysm changes for DKs.

=)

And there you have it.

Satorri is a very active member of the TankSpot community with over 3,000 Posts, and hosts a blog on TankSpot as well, Satorri’s Blog.

And here is a link to the Comprehensive Guide to Death Knight Tanking if you would like to find out more about Death Knight tanking in all three trees.

 

AoE Grinding: Frost Death Knight Edition

I have covered the greatness of Paladin AoE Guides. I have revealed unto you the incredible power of Frost Mage AoE Grinding. And now I must bring forth, Frost Knight AoE Grinding!

You can use the general information from this post in conjunction with the Death Knight Tanking Guides for AoE rotations I use for questing. I use pretty well the same exact concepts and rotations when doing AoE Tanking on my Death Knight when the situation calls for me to focus on AoE to grab and maintain agro in an instant so that I can then settle into a tanking rotation.

For the purposes of this article when you see any form of “(BFU)” it is an expression of the ability’s Rune Cost, where “(##)” will show the amount of Runic Power that is required for abilities with RP costs rather than Rune costs. When using our Death Runes they will be noted as “(DD)”.

This guide also contains only information up to level 70, so spells obtained only at higher levels will not appear in this guide.

Death Knight Specs: Quick Overview
Any Death Knight spec can do AoE grinding to at least some degree. Frost and Unholy are much better off than Blood is in the AoE category (though perhaps not so much in the survivability area), but any spec can technically do it. Some just need to branch out a little bit more than others.

All DK’s have access to Death and Decay which is a solid AoE ability though it does come with a heavy Rune cost.

Spending 11 points in the Unholy tree grants you access to Corpse Explosion which serves as a Runic Power version of AoE damage to be used when you are in a Rune Blackout (all runes used and on cooldown). Corpse Explosion does require a non-elemental, non-mechanical corpse in order to be used, but it is another option for AoE damage once you’ve laid down the hate and started piling up the corpses. But any corpse will do, including a fallen comrade.

With 8 points in the Blood tree you can have Scent of Blood 3/3 which gives you a 15% chance after a dodge or parry to have each of your next three auto-attacks generate 10 Runic Power which could be taken in addition to Corpse Explosion to help fuel its repeated use. I don’t know that it’s a great option, but there it is if you happen to be a CE freak (like me).

You can spend 14 points in the Blood tree to get both Rune Tap (B) which will restore 10% of your health when used, as well as Death Rune Mastery which will cause the runes used for Obliterate and Death Strike to regenerate as Death Runes. Having both Death Rune Mastery and Blood of the North maxed will give you four different attacks that will grant Death Runes to help fuel whatever ability you might want to use.

Since I’m focusing on Frost here, I will point out that I suggest you get all the way through the Frost tree (level 60 minimum) before you branch off into the other trees. As for the rest of the spec, I suggest you follow the guide I offer in my DK Tanking: Frost Edition guides.

Frost AoE: General Information
You can use either a single disease or a double disease method for this, though my personal suggestion is that you go with a double disease, dual wielding Frost build.

Howling Blast (FU) is your largest source of AoE damage, and using things like your Killing Machine procs and your Deathchill ability to maximize your damage by providing auto-crits go a long way towards burning down the largest group of mobs in the shortest amount of time. Rime procs will give you free uses of Howling Blast as well as resetting its cooldown, so keep a keen eye out for those as well. You may want to consider using an addon such as PowerAuras Classic to help you keep track of your procs if you have trouble with them.

With Frost you are going to make frequent use of Howling Blast for AoE damage and applying the Frost Fever disease, Obliterate (FU) to generate Rime procs for free Howling Blasts, Blood Boil (B) for DK-centered AoE damage, Pestilence (B) for disease spreading, and potentially Death & Decay (BFU) as well. If you branched out into Unholy for Corpse Explosion (40) then you have a Runic Power AoE as well, which is centered on the corpse that it’s used on.

Pulling

As a Death Knight you have several tools to use for pulling mobs. The most obvious of these is Scorpion’s famous move, Death Grip, which will pull the targeted mob to you and “force” them to attack you for three seconds. Some mobs are immune to the physical pull, but they will still agro you and chase you down after you use it. Death Grip has a pretty big cooldown all things considered, but it does not require any runes or runic power to use.

You also have two sources of ranged AoE pulling, in the form of Howling Blast (FU) and Death and Decay (BFU), which can both be used to pull a group of mobs instead of just one. Howling Blast is a bit better if you are pulling the group and moving on to pull others as well, where Death and Decay is probably better off cast as you near the end of your pull so that you can make use of its DoT (Damage of Time) AoE effect.

You also have two forms of single-target ranged pulls in Icy Touch (F) and Death Coil (40). Death Coil requires RP to cast, so it’s not the greatest spell for pulling, but when you find yourself high on RP and nothing else to spend it on just yet you might as well get some use out of it.

If you don’t have much, or any, Runic Power built up during a pull, feel free to use your melee abilities rather than simply body pulling. Primarily you want to use Plague Strike (B) for this in order to establish a disease, or Blood Strike (B) to get your Blood Runes converted to Death Runes for use in the next round.

There is one other spell I want to mention here for pulling, but it will actually be more useful after the next step happens to help get stray casters to come to your centralized area. The spell is called Strangulate (B) which is a single target, 30 yard ranged Silence spell that lasts for 5 seconds. When you use that on a caster they will rush towards melee range as long as they are silenced, and 5 seconds should be more than enough for you to get them within range of your AoE spells.

And of course you do still have the old fashioned, tried and true body pull which can be done either mounted or on foot, which simply requires that you get within agro range of the mobs. Some locations allow for or maybe even require that you use Line of Sight (LoS) techniques to agro the mobs and then move to a location that they cannot attack you from so that they must run around it to engage you; running to the other side of a wall is a perfect example of this as they will run around the wall as well and then stand there clustered together to help with your AoE.

Centralize
In my other AoE Grinding guides I mentioned a step here that I called “Corral”, which is basically just gathering all the mobs up into a central area so that you can AoE them down from there. You want to do that with a Frost DK as well, but it’s not quite so big a deal as it is with a Mage; instead it’s more like grinding with a Paladin where as long as they are within your AoE range you really don’t care how close they are to one another.

To be technical on the subject, you do want the mobs to be within 10 yard of each other so that you are able to hit them all, but with the exception of casters they should all be ganged up around you to begin with. Again, using the various spells mentioned in the Pulling section above and things like LoS are key to getting the mobs centralized and ready to burn them down.

Reposition
Where a mage wants to put some distance between himself and the mobs, a Death Knight just wants everyone to look straight into his scourgefire eye sockets and see their own deaths rushing forth to meet them. As a DK you need to embrace your tanking habits and be sure to get as many mobs as you possibly can to be in front of you so that you can make use of all of your avoidance on them. You do this by repositioning yourself which usually consists of just backing up while facing them so that they get in front of you.

Some mobs just move in odd patterns and constantly seem to move behind you no matter what you do. In those cases you can either plant your back against a wall, or just ignore that one mob until you’ve taken out the others. Another option that is open to you is to use your Hungering Cold (F) ability to freeze everything in place, reposition yourself where you want to be (with all the mobs in front of you), and then either wait for the spell to wear off or hit them with a ranged AoE like Howling Blast to break them all out again.

Strategic use of Hungering Cold can make the difference between a successful AoE grinder and an exceptional AoE grinder. Use it to freeze the mobs in place, use Pestilence to spread your diseases (which does not break the ice), and then use a bandage on yourself if needed to restore your health and also allow your other runes the time they need to cooldown. Once you’re ready (or the 10 second timer is up) spread your diseases again with Pestilence and then go back into your rotation. If you do not have the Glyph of Disease to refresh your diseases for you then you will need to reapply them via Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence. If you do have the glyph then as long as the diseases are still on your current target it will refresh them and spread them around once again.

Important Note: Because our survival talent from the Blood tree, Blade Barrier, doesn’t come into effect until our Blood Runes are on cooldown, I suggest you go ahead and use up any remaining Blood Runes during this step. If you haven’t spread your diseases yet or you did spread them but they’re wearing off, then use Pestilence, otherwise go for Blood Boil if there are two or mobs near you or Blood Strike if there is only one.

Death to the Living!
Once you’ve gathered up the mobs and got them in place it’s time to burn those suckers down. Each DK has their own personal play style, so if you have another way you prefer to do this then by all means go with your own if you prefer, and of course feel free to leave any comments, suggestions, or criticisms you might have.

Rotation
1st Rune Set: Icy Touch (F), Plague Strike (U), Pestilence (B), Blood Boil (B), Howling Blast (FU), RP Dump
2nd Rune Set: Obliterate (FU), [Howling Blast (Free)], Howling Blast (DD), Obliterate (FU), [Howling Blast (Free)], RP Dump

Technically our first rune set will actually be a sporadic mishmash of whatever you happened to use to pull all of the mobs to you, but we’re talking about the rotation here.

The first rune set establishes your diseases, spreads them around, and then hits with two AoE spells. Your Runic Power Dump for the first set is probably going to be Frost Strike (40). If you have enough points in Unholy then it can be used for Corpse Explosion (40) instead if you want more AoE.

Frost Strike hits hard and it’s great for chopping down your groups faster which will lead to better survivability overall, but CE will help bring down the group as a whole so use whichever serves best in your situation. If you’re taking quite a bit of damage then it’s better to increase your single target DPS with FS to kill some of them off, unless the mobs are already low enough on health that CE might finish one or more of them off for you. If you’re doing fine on your health then stick to AoE spells as much as you can so that you get the most damage on the most targets for the resources you spend.

In the second rune set we focus more on AoE damage to bring down the mobs as one. With the initial Obliterate we are hoping for a Rime proc to use Howling Blast, but if we don’t get one then we’re moving right along to a regular Howling Blast and getting those Blood Runes (Death Runes in this case) back on cooldown to proc our Parry buff again. Whenever Rime procs go ahead and use your Howling Blast; if that screws up your rotation because HB is on cooldown then simply replace the HB with Obliterate instead and try for another Rime proc.

Remember though that we aren’t trying to tank an instance with this, so we aren’t so much worried about maintaining threat as we are simply killing everything around us. If Howling Blast is available and you still have multiple mobs on you it’s perfectly acceptable to use HB instead of Obliterate for the AoE damage. Rime is more likely to proc when using two weapons instead of one, so it’s especially acceptable for a 2H build to use HB over Obliterate since the chance to proc Rime is lower.

I’M GONNA DIIIIEEEEE!!!
Settle down now, you’re a DK…you’re already dead. Before we get on into the next section, let us take a break and talk about what to do when things go wrong and suddenly you’re in trouble.

The first choice you have is something I already mentioned up above, which is using Hungering Cold to freeze everything within 10 yards of you for 10 seconds. This gives you time to either use a bandage or put your running shoes on and get the heck out of there (only a coward runs from combat, but only a “moron” throws his gold away on unnecessary repair bills).

Another option that we have open to us is Death Pact (40 RP, requires level 66) which requires you to sacrifice your ghoul in exchange for 40% of your health to instantly be healed. It’s a big heal and it comes in very handy. For this reason I save my ghoul for when I need heals rather than using him for extra dps, pulling, or whatever. The one thing you need to watch out for is the runic cost of Death Pact. If you are taking a beating, be sure to build up your RP but try not to use it unless you have more than 30-40% so that you can DP when needed.

You also have the use of Icebound Fortitude (20) after level 62 which will give you 12 seconds of damage reduction to lessen those blows.

You can also make an adjustment to your attack rotations, replacing Obliterates and/or Howling Blasts with Death Strike (FU) instead, to heal yourself for 5% of your maximum health for each disease you have on the target.

If things are really getting hot, you’ve already used everything available to you that we’ve talked about here, then the only other option you have left to you (besides potions and such which you should already be well aware of) is to make an emergency switch over to Blood Presence (B) which increases your damage by 15% and heals you for 4% of the damage you deal. By default you should be grinding in Frost Presence (F) which increases your Stamina by 6%, your armor from gear by 60% and reduces damage you take by 8%. Losing Frost Presence can be a very dangerous thing when you’re already getting beat on hard enough to be worried, but if you can dish out enough damage in a short enough amount of time then Blood Presence can potentially save your life by switching to it, landing a big attack for the heal (Death Strike is optimal for this), and then switching back to Frost Presence for your damage reduction.

All Your Sparklies Are Belong To Me
And now that they’re all dead it’s just a matter of collecting loot and moving right along to the next group. A lot of your damage is going to be dealt over time rather than in bursts. So when you do get procs like Rime and Killing Machine, it’s a good idea to move right into your next pull to take advantage of those if you aren’t in need of healing. Timing your Rime/KM procs so that they’re used together is an excellent way to bring down a lot of mobs in a short amount of time.

What Spells Do I Use Again?

Howling Blast	Blood Boil
Corpse Explosion	Death and Decay