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Damien

[Archived] Unholy Death Knight 5.4

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Guest Sucellus

Great introductory guide. Just one little bit of errata.

Order is defined as Strength > Hit + Expertise > Crit > Haste > Mastery, but then in the section about haste, "It is your most beneficial secondary statistic after reaching the hit and expertise caps."

Cheers.

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Great introductory guide. Just one little bit of errata.

Order is defined as Strength > Hit + Expertise > Crit > Haste > Mastery, but then in the section about haste, "It is your most beneficial secondary statistic after reaching the hit and expertise caps."

Cheers.

Thank you for pointing out this inconsistency! We'll resolve it as soon as possible.

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Awesome guide!

A quick suggestion- under the "Mastering your Unholy Death Knight" section it would be worthwhile to mention proper usage of AMS. Using it strategically will not only help out your healers, it will grant more Death Coils and therefore more runes and higher uptime on Dark Transformation. In my book, using AMS properly really sets a great Unholy DK above the rest.

Thank you very much for your hard work on this guide!

Edited by viciousMinion

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Awesome guide!

A quick suggestion- under the "Mastering your Unholy Death Knight" section it would be worthwhile to mention proper usage of AMS. Using it strategically will not only help out your healers, it will grant more Death Coils and therefore more runes and higher uptime on Dark Transformation. In my book, using AMS properly really sets a great Unholy DK above the rest.

Thank you very much for your hard work on this guide!

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added a section for this in both the Unholy and Frost guides :)

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Guest Fletch

Quick question: Does runic corruption and the unholy stance stack the regeneration rate for Runes? I know you are recommending Blood Tap, but I wasn't sure if there was some statistical backing here. Also, minor glyph of Geist I have found to be much easier to use. Everytime I have been flying with the pet summoned as a ghoul, he continues to have to come out of the ground first before attacking targets. The Geist is right there every time and immediately starts to attack. I posted in the Frost section about how I didn't like using Unholy due to pet issues. This has been one of the biggest fixes for me.

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I have a question. When using the glyph for death coil, does casting it multiple times on a friendly target stack the damage absorption ability or is it a waste of runic power to do so? Thank you.

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Quick question: Does runic corruption and the unholy stance stack the regeneration rate for Runes? I know you are recommending Blood Tap, but I wasn't sure if there was some statistical backing here. Also, minor glyph of Geist I have found to be much easier to use. Everytime I have been flying with the pet summoned as a ghoul, he continues to have to come out of the ground first before attacking targets. The Geist is right there every time and immediately starts to attack. I posted in the Frost section about how I didn't like using Unholy due to pet issues. This has been one of the biggest fixes for me.

I am sorry, I didn't see your post until now. Yes, the increased rune regeneration rates from Unholy Presence and Runic Corruption do stack. Glad you're happy with your pet now :)

I have a question. When using the glyph for death coil, does casting it multiple times on a friendly target stack the damage absorption ability or is it a waste of runic power to do so? Thank you.

Sadly, it does not stack. Each subsequent cast of Death Coil just refreshes to shield to its initial duration and size. The shield size seems to depend on your attack power at the time, and for me it's roughly 15-19K. Not much at all frankly, but it could still save someone's life in a pinch.

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Great guide, and clarified a lot of things that I couldn't figure out with my DK. I do want to expand a little bit on the usage of Soul Reaper. The optimal time to start including it in one's rotation is 5 seconds before the target will go below 35% life. The earlier you can apply it without wasting it (by having the countdown expire above 35%), the better. Depending on the HP pool of the target, you may sometimes open with it and still benefit from its effect, whether it be the extra shadow damage or the massive haste buff.

Edited by Tarazet

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Great guide, and clarified a lot of things that I couldn't figure out with my DK. I do want to expand a little bit on the usage of Soul Reaper. The optimal time to start including it in one's rotation is 5 seconds before the target will go below 35% life. The earlier you can apply it without wasting it (by having the countdown expire above 35%), the better. Depending on the HP pool of the target, you may sometimes open with it and still benefit from its effect, whether it be the extra shadow damage or the massive haste buff.

Thanks. You won't be able to open with it on any raid bosses, and it won't even work on something with low HP like an Energy Charge on Elegon - but the rest of your tip is good and I will include it in the guide :)

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Thanks. You won't be able to open with it on any raid bosses, and it won't even work on something with low HP like an Energy Charge on Elegon - but the rest of your tip is good and I will include it in the guide Posted Image

Actually, on a trash mob or add with low HP, you will get the 50% haste buff when the target dies, which has a large impact on rune generation. On my level 88 DK, it improves the rune speed from 7.4 seconds to 4.96, which means that it's actually regenerating faster than I can spend the runes. (I realize the stat scaling changes dramatically at 90!)

Elegon's Energy Charges are pretty much the ideal type of fight for an Unholy DK. Use your glyphed Pestilence off the boss to hit all the orbs, drop a Soul Reaper on one of them then focus it down, get all your runes back from the haste buff, Festering Strike the boss to prolong the dots, rinse and repeat.

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Guest Scook999

There is a minor glyph worth noting: Death's Embrace. You use Death Pact to drop your pet's health down to half, and using Death Coil with Death's Embrace will refund 20 Runic power each time you use it, so the net cost is only 12 RP. If you have 60 Runic power, you can use this technique to quickly force a Dark Transformation on your ghoul. Depending on the length of a fight, you can pop 1 or 2 more super ghouls.

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Guest Turlogh

I don't think that blood tap is actually random, it always seems to return the last used rune type. Maybe someone else can confirm this, but after using it while raiding as frost for some time, this is definately a trend I have noticed. however if you are just macroing it into your runic power attack (frost strike/etc) then it would be random, of course. I stopped macroing it just for the slight bonus of stacking the 2 extra runes just before pillar of frost is coming off cooldown, etc.

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Guest Moograin

Hi I would just like to mention that in this guide the macro you recommend is for death coil then blood tap however in the frost guide it is blood tap the frost strike. I believe it would be more beneficial to do it in the order in the unholy guide other then that great guides thank you!

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Guest Moograin

Isn't PLague Strike the way to apply the diseases?

I would think no since it costs an unholy rune which would be better used on a Scourge strike and outbreak costs nothing

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Guest Shakaroom

Is the stats on the polearm so beneficial that it outweighs having absolutely no STR? seems really weird 2 me atleast :/

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Guest Tseo

I would think no since it costs an unholy rune which would be better used on a Scourge strike and outbreak costs nothing

Use when you cannot use Outbreak

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Guest Fraggleshock

What Horde race is best for Unholy? I just always figure Orc for racial. It seems more consistent than Troll berserking, but then again I could be wrong.

 

 

Thanks.

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I was wondering if anyone could assist me.... I'm an Unholy DK and one of the highest DPS in my guild. However, I feel my dps could be much higher and I've been scratching my head since 5.4 hit... I follow the Crit>Mst>Hst build but at Ilvl 545 130K single-target dps feels low to me and I was wondering if there's any balancing I could do to help improve my deeps...

However, I do also play on a Sat internet connection so my latency is always 700+ ms, this may be a major hinderence to my dps...

I just need some info from another pro Unholy player for some input, before I go reforge happy and break the bank

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I was wondering if anyone could assist me.... I'm an Unholy DK and one of the highest DPS in my guild. However, I feel my dps could be much higher and I've been scratching my head since 5.4 hit... I follow the Crit>Mst>Hst build but at Ilvl 545 130K single-target dps feels low to me and I was wondering if there's any balancing I could do to help improve my deeps...

However, I do also play on a Sat internet connection so my latency is always 700+ ms, this may be a major hinderence to my dps...

I just need some info from another pro Unholy player for some input, before I go reforge happy and break the bank

The priority of your stats may change depending on how much haste you already have. For me, since Patch 5.4 hit, haste always had a higher prio than mastery, so it was crit>haste>=mastery. But in the end, since they are so close, this will not really have a significant impact on your dps.

 

About which boss are you talking for your single target dps? I would say Malkorok nhc is the best boss to evaluate your single target dps, where 130k would be a bit low for your gear.

The other alternatives for "single target" bosses (Iron Juggernaut and Sha of Pride, to a degree), will normally result in lower dps due to boss mechanics.

And your armory link and some logs would help giving some more feedback, since dps depends heavily on weapons/trinkets/set bonus/legendary gem/cloak

Edited by Farnion

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Battle.net- link removed

Mr. Robot- link removed

 

Mr. Robot is where I do most of my calculations, due to giving tight hit/exp calculations, and has my most up to date gear as of 11:15 Central time 10/8/13

 

-Legenary cloak

-legendary meta

-trinks= Timeless Alacrity of Xuen, and LFR Fusion-Fire Core (not optimal I know)

-Weapon= LFR Greatsword of Pride's Fall

-Currently no set bonus... Lots of Timeless gear (not optimal I know)

 

My aformentioned dps is unbuffed, no food/flask, and on a training dummy... With Buffed dps on bosses like Sha and Juggs my dps sits steady at ~155K...

 

1) I know my latency effects my dps, at ~700 ms I'm wondering if it would cause a major disruption

2) as of Mastery and Haste... is HST rating >= MST rating... or HST percentage >= MST percentage?

Edited by loboshu

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