Non-Tank Dw\'ing

Post by Alathea

Ok, so by now we have all seen a million, zomg you'll parry gib yourself!1! (read as: you'll shoot your eye out!) regarding dw tanking. However, when you're behind the boss you cannot be parried, so how does DWing fair as a dps spec? I've seen some very nice numbers on WWS, but I would like some actual input. What kind of DPS are you guys pulling?

If possible provide some math, rotations, gear (weps at least and hit rating), and/or specs.

Thanks for any and all info.

Also, I do realize that DWing is a strongly controversial topic atm, with people arguing strongly for and against it. If you're one of the people who hates it, and you're simply posting your biased opinion then please, save you, me, and everyone else the time and don't post a reply.

Post by visas

for DPS, dual wield isnt that bad an option - most of the controversy here comes from DW tanking.. You need to go with a spec that benefits DW instead of 2handers, and you need to gear differently than you normally would - hit rating is far more important than crit or AP up past 15% or so. Ideally, you'll manage around 20% +hit, 20% crit, and 2500-3k AP minimum with dual wielding.

A build like this would work fairly well for DW DPS:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0VZG0exIxdohoZfM0hxco

You want to use howling blast for your frost/unholy runes, not obliterate. the 3 points in annihilation is for extra crit, not for the disease removal portion - you'll always do more damage with howling blast than you will with obliterate while dual wielding.

Blood runes... not much of a choice on those. You could switch some points over into blood of the north to get your blood runes turned into death runes, but you'd have to give up other valuable dps talents for that. I'd probably use up blood runes on pestilence (aoe pulls to spread frost fever for howling blast) and blood boil - since with most 1handers your blood boil, being based on AP instead of weapon damage, is going to out-damage blood strike. With subversion you do have a higher crit chance with blood strike, however - that's up to you.

One other note, when dual wielding for DPS purposes, you might be better off using unholy presence for an extra 15% melee haste than blood presence, due to so much of your damage being based on autoattacks instead of strikes or spells. Unholy presence does stack with icy talons, so you can get up to around 40% haste before gear with those both active.