Post by dragonrom
hello all my fellow death knights.
Recently i started a heroic progression group with my friend which after ~5 weeks we are now 6/8 getting blackhorn the other night. My main spec has always been blood tank. however as i am sure you all know, many fights in DS are 1 tanked. Since our other tank doesnt have a dps spec, i was chosen to go dps these fights. My gear was crap going in, made of ruthless/vicious pvp gear, and some tank gear. So far my gear is looking great, have 2 heroic hand of morchoks (got the first two week) as soon as i got those i changed my spec to dw frost (using 2handed with my tank experimental spec slicer). I have been getting gear just now finally got my 4 set after getting a few tier pieces on heroic finally. Not much else has dropped on heroic, got a few things on normal and lfr.
here is my current gear
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azuremyst/Leglon/advancedI do have 2 pvp pieces left, and yes im replacing them as soon as i get some pve gear. i also have the 378 trinket i will replace asap
also sorry for any missing gems/ enchants im a bit forgetful, and am gonna make those as soon as im done with this post.
Now i believe my spec and reforges and all are ok, just a couple rating over 8% hit, and 26 exp, with stacking haste then mastery on everything i can.
I understand the basics of dps in general, as well as frost Dks.
Obliterate is my highest dps atk.
use howling blast only on procs so that it is free.
use cooldowns on cooldown, except when i need to save it for a few seconds or something for a burn phase/lust etc. (macroed all cooldowns including hands trinks etc into one macro giving me a very large strength boost)
and then i use outbreak on cooldown.
My main question comes with the KM proc and my obliterate and frost strike.
KM procs from basic attacks as we all know and makes my next obliterate or frost strike auto crit.
Now i am one of the players that prefers to kind of spam buttons, in a sense of i will spam a button until the GCD is over and the spell casts, then moving onto the next ability.
So i may spam obliterate until im out of runes, then spam frost strike, and use HB whenever i get a rime proc.
Now i understand fully that this is nowhere near optimum for dps, but it gets the job done decently.
I want to know some answers to scenarios about what ability is better to use
1) runes up, i get KM, hit obliterate, no question here
2) runes up, no KM proc, do i still want to use obliterate, or wait for a KM proc?
3) all runes down, KM procs, now sometimes it procs as im hitting frost strike so it gets used there, nothing i can do about that, but depending on the length of the cooldown on my runes, should i wait for obliterate, or can i use frost strike, without losing substantial dps? I am assuming this would change depending on how long the runes are down, if it is a second or two, i could understand waiting for the obliterate, and maybe use the downtime to cast something like horn of winter. but what if it is more like 5 or 6 seconds, aka i just used obliterate multiple times and my runes are down for a few seconds. do i wait, and fill the time with other abilities, or just use a frost strike and hope i get an empowerment proc to give me the runes for an obliterate if KM procs again?
Just thinking of this has made me stop spamming buttons but more so, trying to think about every ability i use because of the procs and, i can see there being a huge increase in dps if i do it a special way. I am just scared that i am using obliterates at the wrong time by not waiting for KM procs, and then wasting the procs on a frost strike. My dps is fine for now, ~25-30K depending on the fight + i never really count an exact dps as what i can do, but a range. It is enough to pull my weight as an off spec dps, but i want to be able to pull more and compete with the other dps in my group.
P.S. sorry for the long message, decided to throw in some background / other stuff that i may just be failing that you guys might be able to help with.
Thanks for any help / tips you guys can give. The wowhead community has always done a great job at helping me out!
Post by DroRaz
2) In general: yes. Because of the way runes recharge, spending your runes is very important. If you're sitting on a unspent rune, you're waisting precious recharge time. If you read any good DK guide (and for that matter it doesn't even matter what spec it's intended for) you'll see that the top priority is basiclly "spend your runes".
Also, if you don't have a completely depleted rune you can't get any
Runic Empowerment procs, and that's dps you're losing.
3) That's excatly what I do, but I'd rather not advice here as I'm not enough of an expert to know if it's optimal.