Talk:Death knight builds/Archive01

The hell?
The article needs a serious clean-up. There should be done changes to point out the talents that specifically tailor to certain roles; tank, dps, PvP rather than a focus on spamming builds.

Guide to good talent build info

 * Info to include on the Death knight build samples page
 * Patch it was tested; should be at least Patch 3.0.8
 * Level needed to create build (some people may not want to get to cap to try it)
 * Current build link (most people use Wowhead)
 * Point distribution in trees (x/y/z)
 * Build strengths/weaknesses
 * Strategies/tactics for playing with build
 * Significant mobs soloed with build
 * Info NOT needed
 * Personalized observations that include "I", "my", etc.
 * Your character name and server &mdash; WE DON'T CARE
 * Putting "Tested" &mdash; WE DON'T CARE (listing what you actually did is more important)

Also, feel free to delete builds that foolishly and explicitly say they were not tested. This is not a build testing service page. "Hey I put up a build made from random clicks! Can you try it and post what happened?" NOT! -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 6:28 PM PST 4 Dec 2008

Make links current
please update the talent build links with ones that are current. the Wowhead talent calcs are (as far as i know) current. Kevin92091 (talk) 23:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Tanking builds updated.
Hooray!


 * Jaime: apparently you are new to WoWWiki. Please sign your edit on discussion page. On the other hand, it is generally not prefered to add your own name on the main article. You can check other talent build pages for reference. --WakemanCK (talk) 09:54, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Talent suggestions, what do you people think of these talent builds?
a pvp dual weilding blood death knight http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jbEhqc0IsfRzuAohrcx

a blood tank based on fear resistance and being as self sufficient in heals as possible http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xGqIhccfMzZ0xxzhZ0xG0xbo

a pvp frost dps death knight http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jZGMetIedRIobost0gh

an unholy tank based on summoning http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xMZ0xxzZcgMctbkMtqocsuk

and finally a hybrid blood/frost/unholy tank who in my opinion can take more of a punch than the others but needs a good healer http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jbLGoIbZ0xxzhZbxGbxcoMxVo0o

i'd love to have people's update on this and tell me if it's good or i have the entire idea wrong.

thanks,

gultrekk

Build Preview
I also have a Build that I was wondering if it was good: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVhcIsbotzbZG0xthxzo It's a Frost/Blood hybrid picking up talents like Improved Icy Talons, Deathchill, Lichborne, and Annihilation in Frost and Blood Strike, Hysteria, Vampiric Blood, Sudden Doom, Mark of Blood, Vendetta, and other talents I felt were good in Blood. You can switch some around if you like like putting some in Rune Tap. This build is more PvE focused as a DPS/Support/Offtank but can also be good in PvP. Cabeza (talk) 02:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I have a build that i find very good. (You duel wield with this spec.) Good in doing good constant DPS. It's also great in soloing. My current rotation with this spec(when in instances or raids) is: Icy Touch. plague strike, pestilence, blood boil then howling wind. Also, you can use Deathchill before you use howling wind. When soloing mobs use the same rotation but blood boil isn't necessary to use, unless your taking on a multiple mobs. When your low on HP while soloing just use Death Strike. Here is the build. []

Death Tanking
Removed: 'Edit (Apparently this guy played in Beta and has never tanked in his life.)'

If you disagree w/ the article, then please cite specifics.

Simply implying that the article is rubbish isn't worth much unless you take the next step and 1) cite your disagreements and 2) defend your position. This system is (in part) is meant to be a place where good insight can come to the fore. If your perspective is better, don't hesitate to offer it.

Don't get me wrong - if the article could be improved, I'd love to know how. But until that happens, well...Thescale99 (talk) 16:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The Black Glacier explanation is a load of hot air. "You crit twice as much!" No you don't, it is the same crit chance, you don't parry twice as much either. What you do, is have far higher miss rate and the enemy has higher chance of parrying. Why is so much devoted on it? Makes it look like the super build when more of good attempt. It is a build aimed at PvP and AoE.

RESPONSE According to the recount values shown in a test run consisting of 80 mobs (40 DWing it and 40 2Hing it) all of the exact same level, class, and name and equal to the Death Knights level, the amount of crits when using Dual Wielding for this build vs. 2H for this build (with points modified to help 2H instead of DW), show that DWing has LITERALY twice as many crits vs. the 2Her. Recount values do NOT lie! Also, there are several addons you can download to verify how many times you have crit'ed, parried, dodged, etc. While using 2 1Hed swords (both the exact same sword), the tests show that the character had twice as many crits and twice as many parries as when it was using a 2H Sword of the same level/capabilities. Download whatever addons you want to test it yourself, you WILL get the same results unless you purposely buff yourself when using a 2Her, or gimp yourself when DWing to get differed values. Only 4 abilities were used, in the exact same order, and the same amount of times per each fight so that there would be no difference in combat strategy. No buffs were added to either test. Numbers don't lie! So YES you do crit twice as much, and YES you do parry twice as much! Sorry to burst your bubble! As for your "miss rate and enemy having a higher chance of parrying", yes the enemy can parry more often, which is perfectly fine! An no, you do not have a higher miss chance. You would think you do but, the miss chance when DW vs. 2H are actually equal. Now, as for the description, its to explain in detail how the build works, what you use it against, what DK tanking is all about, etc etc. People look for information like this when getting a talent build. This build is SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR TANKING!!! If you had played a Prot Paladin before, you would understand the use of AoE's and DoT's and what they do for threat! Three key things in tanking: 1) Hold threat/hate successfuly, 2) Be able to take the damage (In a DK's perspective, be able to lower the enemies magic capabilities to nothing), and 3) understand HOW to build threat/hate (for instance, when the tank takes damage he gains a small amount of threat, so parries against the tank help build small threat. The tank parrying the mob gives a bit MORE threat. Same with the tank dodging. AoE's usualy do higher threat than normal attacks, DoT's always do pleanty of threat, doing more crits means more threats, etc etc.). Ahem...so yeah...ty...and yw! lol response

Original Poster again. Fast reply, I am impressed, though I will clear up myself a little and response to a couple of your points. (Also, I played a Prot Paladin, I understand how that all works.)

Dual wield has a miss rate of 24%, compared to 8% from a two-handed, which allows you to stack gear with other stats. Dual-wield miss chance - http://www.wowwiki.com/Dual_wield#Miss_chance

As for your reasoning with more crits, you are you just looking at the pure number of crits or the percentage? Obviously there would be twice the crits are pure number, because you are generally hitting twice as often, however, the percentage is the same (or lower, due to higher miss rate.) I will give an example with crit - I hit you 4 times and 2 of those crit, while on another time, I hit you 8 times, and 4 crit. Now, between these times, I crit twice as many times as in number, however, the crit percentage is still the same, 50%, so no, you don't actually crit more, you crit the same.

You also miss out all the abilities pretty much weapon scale, so all your abilities such as Runic Strike, Blood strike, etc all cause less damage, so less threat too, caused by those.

Also, you miss out talents such as Blade Barrier which gives me a constant 10% extra parry chance, not only do you have to get threat, but also take less damage as you said, and parrying is a great way of doing this. You got other talents which are pretty useless in regards to tanking/threat in any form.

Don't get me wrong however, I understand that you got a good AoE system, which is good against casters too, but you really do have to doubt its viability when it gets to the level 83 bosses.

Responder again yeah, when i mean "twice as many crits" i mean the raw value, as in since you have 2 weapons you will have twice as many base crits, not that you have a higher crit rating percentage. I think that's where it got confusing. in a single fight you will actually hit as a crit more often because you are hitting two times per the 2Hers 1 time (normaly). Just criting, even though its not a lot, actually builds threat. That extra threat and the extra smaller damage from each hit (seeing as how you're hitting with 2 weapons rather than one) is enough to make up for the loss of threat on the spells, and believe it or not, when comparing the spells, i'm only loosing a 5-8% damage loss per spell, which is not that much. Technically speaking, when you spec in the Frost tree to improve your 2H capability you're making the miss chances a lot less. Plus I would never want to use a DWing char that doesn't add Hit rating anyways, or any tank for that matter. Expertiece and Hit rating are very important, as you know. When looking at damage wise, within one fight using a 2Her spec it would be more like say 2400, where as when speced for the DW ability it was more around 3900, which is a nice jump in damage. The increase actually came from the raw melee increase by DWing rather than a 2Her. Plus specing it just right you can hit for 20-25% faster on the mob, meaning you have increased how many times you hit even more so that makes up for the misses completely in itself. As far as the 83 elites (if you're refering to the elites) then yes, this spec works just fine, but you need a good healer also to keep you going. Now you also have the ability to come back as a zombie should you die to continue on. You will start loosing threat at that point, but you will rarely ever die if you have at least a decent healer. Now, like I said, I would never take a DK against any boss that is melee based anyways, they can't handle it as well as a Warrior or Paladin can. I'd rather keep the DK's in a place where they can offtank those bosses, and main tank the magic casting ones, which is what this build is all about, takeing care of the magic casting bosses/creatures, and not really the melee ones. The non magic ones i'd rather leave to the pros ^.^ (Paladins and Warriors). They are just way more viable for those. Sorry if there was any confusion!

Original poster I understand that you can do more damage with dual-wield, greatest example of this is in warriors, who use both. However, I am concerned about the hit rating as tanking gear doesn't compensate for that, thus, you would be spending stat points with enchants and gems to get increased hit while others would be using them for stamina and avoidance, giving them a lead over you due to being able to surrive longer. As for melee boss fights, I don't think Death Knights won't be as bad as you say, as all the other tanking classes have their own niches. It has the same weakness as druids, though we can parry as well. So in a sense, Death Tanking melee tanking is far closer to a druid than a paladin (which is mainly block). I think in End game, it will be like TBC, in the sense, Warrior have the single target niche, but this doesn't mean a Death Knight can't tank or do it poorly, it most likely would be good, just ever slightly inferior. (I am having no trouble in instances at all so far.) but damage based would be interesting. Shame Blizzard don't release a tool which would simulate these calculations.


 * To the "Original Poster" and "Responder": I don't care which of you win the arguement. What I want to say is please sign your name by adding four  at the end of your paragraph whenever you post anything on the talk page, so that people who really care know who are talking. Using Original or Responder only makes both of you look noobish.  -- WakemanCK (talk) 03:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The Black Glacier tanking rant is rife with inaccuracies and misunderstood mechanics such as:

1. Death Knights are a magic tank niche tanking class (This is incorrect in that Blizzard has stated that niche tanking is not supposed to be part of the game anymore. Wow Insider)

2. Hitting more often equals generating more threat (This is incorrect in that threat is based on damage done, not times hit. Hitting less often for more damage will generate the same amount of TPS all things being equal.  In addition, faster swings lead to increased damage on the tank due to parry hasting, a.k.a the increased attack speed caused when a mob or player parries an attack.  Incidentally this effect is most likely why the recount data cited in the above argument and in the rant itself shows an increased number of parries with DW and an increased amount of melee damage on the DK. Parry)

3. There is an entire section discussing combat against casting classes that is both nonsensical and not germane to a tanking conversation.

It is for these reasons, and the fact that the entire rant is an opinion based screed about tanking on a talent build page, that I am removing it. --Gambor (talk) 01:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Necromancer Build
Please include specifics about the rotations and such used with this build rather than a dozen sentences claiming how great the build is. As it stands, there is no usable information in that paragraph.

Original Spec Build Poster - I have added some specifics into the build information as you requested. This should be more than pleanty of information for anyone that doesn't understand how to use an Unholy build. Otherwise, they wouldn't have needed it.

Question: Why 3 points in Outbreak, would not these point be more useful in Virulence?Mshacked (talk) 16:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Article Cleanup
This article is a mess. A substantial number of these builds are outright terrible and misleading. Many people view pages like this as a holy grail of how to spec and play, and the overwhelming amount of disinformation present is extremely misguiding a large userbase. This page needs a thorough cleanup ASAP Bloody Sorcerer (talk) 06:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The Paladin build page is a very clean page with basic builds on the main page and fan suggest builds on a seperate page. If anyone wants to start implementing that here that would be great. I have already created the sample page and copied everything over. The main page can now be cleaned-up to show only partial builds. Paly 1 (talk) 05:06, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I'd like to clean up the Death Knight builds page as well. Anyone willing to help me with that, my specialization is with Unholy so I can only explain the basics on what to expect from that tree. I noticed that the sample page is outdated as it does not contain all of the builds in the main page - will work on that. Klaudandus (talk) 9 December 2008

The sample page just got created the other day. So feel free to add to it. The builds on the main page will be deleted eventually since they are all suppose to be on the build sample page. Paly 1 (talk) 18:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I hope my cleanup is not too drastic - I'm trying to provide the earliest PvE leveling build for all three trees, explanation of the talent trees, suggested rotations and moving the most updated build samples into the sample page. . Klaudandus (talk) 9 December 2008

The main page looks great so far Klaudandus. It is a step in the right direction. The only issue is those people who cannot read and still try to post their builds on this page. On the Paladin main page it was a constant clean-up for about 3 months until people realized what we were trying to do by separating the player suggested builds from the basic builds. Paly 1 (talk) 22:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

"This article is a mess." Seriously. I'm not even talking about the content - simply from a formating and editing standpoint, I've seen better orginization in a Chinese fire drill. Massive amounts of reorginization regarding headers/titles/links/you name it is needed. I will start to do this as time permits, but honostly, any help would be welcome... Thescale99 (talk) 17:01, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

-Response: I agree, as of now this page is a mess. This might work for the paladins but hey, they're weird. I understand the desire to put "player suggested builds" (everything here is player suggested...I hope) on a separate page, but instead I think we need to toss out the many erroneous builds that have accumulated and keep the builds on the main page. I mean, it is entitled as such.--Sefu 03:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Sefu, the problem with putting full build suggestions on the main page is everyone has their own opinion as to what the perfect build is and then they start putting their own builds back on the main page again. Also, as patches and talents change it becomes a mess to keep it updated. That is why the Paladin main page only has partial builds as to what what the minimum requirements are for that particular build. By doing so it keeps the main page clean and is a good basic reference to the basic points for a particular build. If someone wants to see the 30+ different build suggestions people have suggested they can look at the build samples page. Paly 1 (talk) 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, then lets start talking about the builds we can remove. I'd say we'd be pretty safe dumping many of the 3.0.0. builds.--Sefu (talk) 01:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

You should have seen it a week ago. It was really messed up then. It is leaps and bounds better now than it was then. I agree that work is still needed and any help would be greatly appreciated. Paly 1 (talk) 22:53, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Do we move Golan's entry in the Death Knight Builds page into the samples page or not? I thought we had talked about not allowing caped builds in the main page. But I'd rather have a consensus before moving it to the secondary page. Klaudandus (talk) 15 December 2008

Again, another capped build - so tempted to move it to the sample page just for that reason. Klaudandus (talk) 18 Dec 2008

I did exactly as the header told, I filled the empty Frost Tank section with a bit of explanation and a partial build. It was actually the only partial frost tank build in wowwiki. Everything was promptly deleted. I will obviously never edit the page again. Disgruntled, Oern 29 Dec 2008

Klaudandus, feel free to move any complete builds over to the sample page. If a build already exists to the one you are looking to move on the sample page then delete it. Paly 1 (talk) 16:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Update
Obviously, with the recent patch, things have been changed. As a general note for this and the other build listings (also PvP/PvE guides), it needs to be updated. Terrast (talk) 03:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Unholy PvP
I had always been under the impression that Unholy was top for PvP, yet I see not Unholy PvP build in here. --Morec of Rivendare (talk) 13:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Never mind. --Morec of Rivendare (talk) 13:59, 22 March 2009 (UTC)