From the man who brought you the "Ask a PVE DK" thread and the person who showed the world that 51/0/20 OB2HS2RPD was a competitive spec, I hereby bring the Theorycraft thread for future builds.

In here, I have posted some of my own ideas for possible DK builds in 3.1, some builds to look at, and at least one build for lesser geared players. If I've missed anything, please let me know and I'll edit. If you have a spec, rotation and proper explanation and reasoning for possible success for such rotation, please let me know and I'll add it to the list.

As of this writing, information is barely a day old. Keep this in mind in case this gets referenced later on. This is by no means the authority for 3.1 specs, simply a place for intelligent 3.1 conversations.

First: Dualwield is dead. Howling Blast is a 51 point talent now, which completely destroys the spec. The Icy touch sigil has had its damage reduced and Necrosis only affects Main Hand attacks now. RIP Dualwield. (Note: If I'm wrong and someone discovered a DW build convincing enough to not suck, please let me know. I'm all ears.)

Second: Watch for Death Strike. It may not be killer for PVE, but its PVP uses mean that it could end up being a primary strike in PVP. Apply diseases, use death strike and lol at your opponent as you heal for massage damage as well as do more damage via Death Strike. Vicious Strikes means 20% more Death Strike damage and with other strikes taking a slight beating, this might actually be used on something other than Onyxia.

Third: No disease blood took a hit... possibly a big hit. 15% damage lost on crit damage for Obliterate and Heart Strike means that it's probably better to keep diseases up. I'll try it, but it's probably going to sink.

Fourth: Glyph of Pestilence is buttsex. Everyone's griping over Pestilence in its new form, not doing damage, but the Glyph means that for one blood rune, you're now able to refresh every disease on every target (including your main target), meaning that there are some creative rotations available that might allow you to "act" as if you have no diseases on your target and going into a more comfortable no-disease rotation for entire boss durations (depending on the boss).

Fifth: My overall impression from this is that 2H Frost is going to remain the same. Some points were shuffled, but if you're willing to spend the 51 points into the tree, you should notice no difference. Blood is going to take some creative work, but I do believe that 51/13/7 is going to see a comeback. Unholy is going to be godlike. Outbreak alone is going to make Unholy put out massive numbers right out of the gate. Changes to disease durations means that Glyph of SS will increaes the likelihood to prevent you from having to reapply diseases in mid-fight. With the ability to advance to 130 RP in each tree, Dirge and 4pcT7 mean that you could crank out something like SSx3, DCx3.

Specs
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=23030204000000000000000000000200000000000000000000000000230230335003115203000023133151&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

14/2/55 (The new 2H version of 17/0/54)
If you lack the 4pcT7 bonus, you can probably put your 2 Frost points into Blood. The 2 points in frost allow you to possibly churn out 3 DC's on a RP Dump (Or 2 DC and 1 UB).

You're giving up 1% crit and some minor AP (3/5 Bladed Armor) and instead, going to pick up 30 additional RP cap, and all the goodies in Unholy. Some of that **@@ looks insane. This scales with gear and will perform better with 4pcT7 and once again, Sigil of Awareness (Sigil applies to base damage, and now there's more multipliers). Additional disease damage length means that with the Glyph of SS, you may only ever need to apply diseases once.

Rotation remains the same.

IT, PS, BS, BS, SS - RP Dump
SSx3 - RP Dump
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http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=23050215030033032012231013513200500030000000000000000000230200000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

51/13/7 (Comeback time)

Important Glyphs: Pestilence, Blood Strike, Obliterate
(Pestilence will refresh diseases on your primary target)

Rotation:

Line1:IT, PS, OB, HS, HS - RP Dump
Line2:OBx2, HS, Pest - RP Dump
Line3:OBx2, HSx2 - RP Dump

Lead in on line 1. Move onto Line 2. Then Line 3. From there it's 2-3-2-3-etc.

1-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-boss dead

On AoE packs, you'll still do the same rotation. I fear that diseaseless blood is most likely dead at this point. Fortunately, you can apply diseases on a boss and as long as you pop pestilence before they fall off, you could do nearly the same "no disease" rotation for the entire boss fight at the cost of 1 Heart Strike every other rotation. I believe that the bonus damage given to OB and HS based with diseases on the target will make up for the 1 out of 4 Heart Strikes that'll merely refresh diseases instead of do strike damage. If you paid attention on "why" the original no-disease blood spec worked, it was because you were able to pump out 4 Obliterates per 2-line rotation instead of 3 or 2. Obliterate will still do very good damage with diseases applied and aside from the initial start up, you're golden.

On AoE packs, pestilence means that you can swap targets and act as if you're doing "No disease" blood rotations by using only Pestilence to refresh diseases. This should make the former no-disease blood users happy. You should only need to apply diseases once per AoE pack. Your overall AoE should go up significantly as well since you're able to apply and maintain diseases on all targets.
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51/2/18 (Some flexibility)
No disease Heart Strike Spammer.. Not that great for the better geared.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=23050215320033032010231013510200000000000000000000000000230030305100100000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

This is a good mention for those who may lack the 4pct7 bonus or the Sigil of Awareness. Hell, maybe it might allow for other gear options if this becomes superior. There are a lot of flex points in this build that were placed as filler points. Personal preference can be used where you see fit (non-DPS talents).

Rotation:
OBx2, HSx2 - RP Dump
HSx6 - RP Dump
(Blood Presence)

With Sudden Doom no longer causing screwups on rotations, you're free to do your rotation without weaving in procs. Heart Strike got a buff on non-crit damage and a slight buff on crit damage. All of this bonus damage is non-reliant on diseases (even though they scale with diseases, it should be a slight boost over the current no-disease heart strike setup). This build is worth testing, but I can't see it taking off. Perma Ghoul is nice, even if it has less survivability. It can't be discounted on fights where damage isn't too rough.
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Frost 17/51/3
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=23050205000000000000000000003200505035200301230105101351030000000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

Fluffer points in frost has been reduced, so you can accumulate all of your points for about the same price. You can choose Deathchill over Hungering Cold for personal preference (but minimal DPS increase). Black ice took a nerf, but Glacier Rot got a boost, so it appears to even out.

Rotation:

Line 1:Blood Tap ITx2, PS, BS, OB(Rime Proc) - RP Dump
Line 2:IT, Pest, OB, OB(Rime Proc) - RP Dump
Repeat Line 2

Rime procs, you pop Howling Blast and continue Frost Striking. You trade heart strike damage for the ability to constantly have disesaes on every target and to keep plague strike damage on your target at all times, which should boost Obliterate Damage. I believe that overall, Frost is going to remain the same in damage. You lose strike damage from a Blood Strike, but make up for it by constantly having diseases on every target, and at least have the disease from Plague strike on your target constantly, which should boost Obliterate damage.

Keep in mind that Might of Mograine got nerfed from 45% to 30%, if MMO Champion is accurate, Guile of Gorefiend still remains at 45%, meaning Obliterate should get a little extra damage from the second disease, compared to the previous 1-disease 2H frost build.
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Summary: Dualwield is dead. Unholy is going to be godlike. No-disease is fairly dead, however newer rotations are available if the change to Glyph of Pestilence goes live that could allow for similar or higher damage. Frost remains about the same.

Bump for one of the better threads on the subject.

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Q u o t e:
First: Dualwield is dead. Howling Blast is a 51 point talent now, which completely destroys the spec. The Icy touch sigil has had its damage reduced and Necrosis only affects Main Hand attacks now. RIP Dualwield. (Note: If I'm wrong and someone discovered a DW build convincing enough to not suck, please let me know. I'm all ears.)

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0/27/44 0/23/48 and 0/18/53 are all doing very similar damage to 0/32/39.

I can tell you right now that the higher max RP is worthless for Unholy spec. Those points are better spent in Blood. There are by far enough GCDs available in the Unholy rotation to never cap out your RP even when 100 is the max.

Honest question. not trolling. Why not give up the extra runic power and crit % for slightly more ap and 5% damage and just use unholy presence?

from what i can tell by looking at he current notes and talents for 3.1

51/13/7 will mean you loose either 15% deathcoil damage or 6 seconds from your diseases. the swap of morbidity with virulence is the reason for this.
Next with the addition of improved Deathstrike and the fact that Obliterate had its damage lowered at its base and the fact that black ice was not changed to give 10%frost and shadow damage, it makes going down to even bother with obliterate very hard.

As much as I'd love to believe otherwise, 51/13/7 just flat will not be able to stand up against the permaghoul, Necrosis, BCB, and Outbreak boosts from a 51/2/18 spec.

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Q u o t e:
From the man who brought you the "Ask a PVE DK" thread and the person who showed the world that 51/0/20 OB2HS2RPD was a competitive spec, I hereby bring the Theorycraft thread for future builds.

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didn't you get roflpwnt by someone posting your guild's WWS parses showing you doing pathetic dps in your "ask a better pve dk" thread?

or was that you doing it to someone else.

memory is hazy.

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Q u o t e:

Bump for one of the better threads on the subject.

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Thank you.

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Q u o t e:

0/27/44 0/23/48 and 0/18/53 are all doing very similar damage to 0/32/39.

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Do you have any info or links to this? I can't see how considering that HB was moved to a 51 pointer, Icy Touch Sigil was reduced and Necrosis only affects main hand weapons. I wish Blizzard left things the way they were, honestly. Watching a flurry of attacks has always been pretty cool to me, even though I'm a traditional 2H DK.

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Q u o t e:

I can tell you right now that the higher max RP is worthless for Unholy spec. Those points are better spent in Blood. There are by far enough GCDs available in the Unholy rotation to never cap out your RP even when 100 is the max.

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I've seen so many times that my RP has capped out. Maybe it doesn't cap out on Patch, but with Dirge and my 4pcT7, I've seen it cap out quickly with SS's being tossed out. On fights where Butchery takes off and you get tons of extra RP, the extra RP helps with the dump.

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Q u o t e:
Honest question. not trolling. Why not give up the extra runic power and crit % for slightly more ap and 5% damage and just use unholy presence?

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Where's the extra 5% damage coming from? I could see forfeiting the RP so you could get more into the valuable blood points, but it just depends on how you manage your rotations/RP dump.

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Q u o t e:

from what i can tell by looking at he current notes and talents for 3.1

51/13/7 will mean you loose either 15% deathcoil damage or 6 seconds from your diseases. the swap of morbidity with virulence is the reason for this.
Next with the addition of improved Deathstrike and the fact that Obliterate had its damage lowered at its base and the fact that black ice was not changed to give 10%frost and shadow damage, it makes going down to even bother with obliterate very hard.

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With the rotation I listed, the extended disease duration helps. The reduced DC damage hurts a little, but the ability to ensure that you'll always keep diseases up is critical to the rotation I listed to 51/13/7. Also, Obliterate will still do more than Death Strike.

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Q u o t e:

As much as I'd love to believe otherwise, 51/13/7 just flat will not be able to stand up against the permaghoul, Necrosis, BCB, and Outbreak boosts from a 51/2/18 spec.

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Believe me, I'll be trying it. It'll be tough to get some "real world" results until 3.1 goes live. Target dummies don't take other things into consideration. The changes to Obliterate and Might of Mograine make it difficult to believe that the spec will stay alive :(

Also, you won't really need the extra RP as with Sudden Doom, you'll never really generate enough RP for 3 DC's.

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Q u o t e:

didn't you get roflpwnt by someone posting your guild's WWS parses showing you doing pathetic dps in your "ask a better pve dk" thread?

or was that you doing it to someone else.

memory is hazy.

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http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14990442180&postId=149891041875&sid=1#0

I'm #13.

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Q u o t e:
Believe me, I'll be trying it. It'll be tough to get some "real world" results until 3.1 goes live. Target dummies don't take other things into consideration. The changes to Obliterate and Might of Mograine make it difficult to believe that the spec will stay alive :(

Also, you won't really need the extra RP as with Sudden Doom, you'll never really generate enough RP for 3 DC's.

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Meh, the extra RP is for DRW duration, nothing more. That said, is mostly a toss up between 6 extra DRW seconds, or 8% more white damage. I'm also still undecided if Outbreak will end up being more dps than the final 3 points in Necrosis.

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Q u o t e:

Meh, the extra RP is for DRW duration, nothing more. That said, is mostly a toss up between 6 extra DRW seconds, or 8% more white damage. I'm also still undecided if Outbreak will end up being more dps than the final 3 points in Necrosis.

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I'd probably see 8% more white damage. In PVP, however, I think the 6 seconds on DRW is going to be killer.

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Q u o t e:
Dirge and my 4pcT7

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Once you have 4 piece drop dirge.

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Q u o t e:


Once you have 4 piece drop dirge.

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When new patches come out that completely change the way a class works, you must challenge the old mentality on things. Pre 3.0.8, 51/0/20 diseaseless blood didn't work out because Glyph of Obliterate did 20% weapon damage. After 3.0.8, it was changed to 20% overall damage. In 3.0.8, you didn't pick up Dirge because you'd cap out your RP so quickly with 2-3 Scourge Strikes. With the ability to change your total RP to 130, you have the ability to let 30 more RP sit, which means a potential of 3 death coils instead of 2 per RP dump... and we all know that Unholy has plenty of dead time to do that. If Dirge contributes to a few extra death coils per fight, where the alternative is to just sit and twiddle your thumbs, then Dirge is a DPS bonus in a world where nearly every DK will have 130 RP.

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Q u o t e:
I've seen so many times that my RP has capped out. Maybe it doesn't cap out on Patch, but with Dirge and my 4pcT7, I've seen it cap out quickly with SS's being tossed out. On fights where Butchery takes off and you get tons of extra RP, the extra RP helps with the dump.

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Let me tackle this from a different angle. If you're capping at 100 because of Butchery...you'll be capping at 130 because of butchery. The only fights you should ever cap on are fights that involve killing large numbers of adds, in which case you'll cap out no matter what your max RP is. Barring those exceptional cases, you should never cap out.

If you are capping on fights that do not involve killing huge numbers of adds, that's a personal issue that you need to work on, not something that you should spec around.

Edit: upon reading your above posts, I can understand why you might be capping. There should not be a set place for you to RP dump, you should be dumping your RP as soon as you have enough RP for UB/DC and have a free GCD in your rotation.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15207817896&sid=1

that is a good thread about DW

2h frost got a large buff via 15% dmg FS and 25% str UA

Pest seems good but at the cost of a glyph and blood rune makes it a large price to pay. I might see this possible for 2h blood, possibly but less likely 2h frost.

I'm digging your 2h Frost rotation, it's basically the same one I came up with. Aside from the first set of rune cooldowns where you use Plague Strike, It essentially replicates the current no-PS rotation by replacing Blood Strike with Pestilence.

Hopefully, between Blood Plague ticks and the boost to Frost Strike damage, we should be able to negate the damage loss from replacing Blood Strike with no-damage Pestilence. The 10% nerf to Black Ice seems like a wash since we get an extra 10% off of Glacier Rot now.

I'm super-pissed about the hit our AoE is taking, I mean, I thought the point of taking a lower tier ability and making it a 51-pointer is so you don't have to nerf it, but alas... I think that our single target should remain stable, if not improve with 3.1.

I'm no theorycrafter or mathematician, but should anyone feel so inclined, it'd be great to get some numbers for the added DPS given from Blood Plague/+15% Frost Strike damage, and the DPS lost from dropping Blood Strike, so we can see whether our single-target will go up, and by how much.

I'm liking 12/2/57 once you hit higher levels of gear. The loss of Dark Conviction means you pick up RP Mastery and Imp unholy presence which have good applications imo... like an extra DC per rotation and lowered rune CD. This is pure opinion i dont have any numbers but i believe the loss of a little crit more than justifies keeping the big damage talents in unholy especially once your well geared

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=23030204000000000000000000000200000000000000000000000000230230335003115203000023133151&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

thats the spec im thinking of

I believe frost 0/50/21 , not the 17/50/3 the op poste actually im going to try 0/48/23

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=03000000000000000000000000003200505035200311230005101350230200332002100000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614

The numbers from frost strike on the PTR are huge, and i believe with 4 piece and all the runic power generation of this spec it may be op.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=00000000000000000000000000003200535035000311230005001351230200315003100000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614


i feel that this could be a decently viable dual-wiled spec for 3.1.
i have not tried it on the PTR but from the looks of it I have to say its no worse that the 2h build imo.


edit: for the necosis only on main hand wep ull just have to put the larger dmg wep on main hand.