This guide made me rethink what it means to play my Death Knight. I have been an unholy DW morber, but now I want to try out frost dk. Consider that like button obliterated and a new sub to boot 👍
Thank you for making this video. I parse high eighties too low nineties and really haven’t been able to figure out how to improve. Hard to find info on frost dk, everything i see is unholy, so this guide made my day.
I’m currently parsing 97-99s and still found this guide extremely informative and helpful. I’m hoping to keep climbing with some of the info you’ve shared here- really appreciate it. Liked and subbed!
@@Giothermal24 I am sure that Valae could answer better than me, but typically before the fight (assuming it's available). I army on Thaddius during the phase shift right after I jump off the platform.
@@Giothermal24 I personally do it 12 secs before prepull and swap into blood spec so I have all the runes for my opener. That being said there's few fights when you can use it in the middle of the battle because of interphases (thadius and sapphiron are a couple that comes into my mind). It's just a dps loss if you add it in the middle of the rotation even with snapshot.
23:38 as stated before , if you want to max out on your obliterates counts you would want to use 2 seperate UA macro , 1 as you showed in the video only as opener and the other one w/o blood tap that way you desync them and benefit of 1 Obli cast per 1 minute. ( In blood sub spec)
@@tionblack use 2 macros . 1. Normal Umbreakble + Blood tap for your opener. 2. every next refresh of ( Unbreakable ) you are going to use alone withouth Blood tap , use it with in a combination with a death rune which you should have around the same time it comes up. use blood tap roughly 12 seconds later aftter you used your death runes for an additional Obli + blood tap here to refresh in time with pesti. I don't know if it was simplier but just try it and you will get what I mean
- I made a video detailing how to cast unbreakable armor outside of the opener as a supplement to this video, th-cam.com/video/5942n8AI_vE/w-d-xo.html - The value of hit is higher if you are consistently using howling blast and autoing a boss for longer - Remember to always use 2 slow weapons regardless of what combination you have. - Some less expensive alternatives for the pre-raid BIS ring and weapon are Ring of Scarlet Shadows / Reaper of Dark Souls. - Loatheb's Shadow is also a good alternative to the trinkets discussed as it no longer shares a CD with gloves. I will be making a follow-up video for which fights sub-unholy will be better on in the future.
Really appreciate you making this video! Thank you! There is not enough Frost DK info out there imho. I still have 2 questions: - Do you use cancelaura BT? (I dont use it, but i've seen people that do) - How and where do you fit in UA and BT after the opener? (when they come off cooldown mid fight) So far i've been using UA with a death rune and then saving BT for when I mess up the rotation and don't have a blood/death rune up for pestilence Keep the video's coming! I'm really interested!
TY so much king! I don't cancelaura it - pretty much I just use unbreakable armor immediately and don't really worry about the rune impacts while subblood. if you only have one usage of it left in the fight you probably want to line it up with other procs When messing up our blood runes matters more as subunholy the timing will be more precise. I believe you typically want to use it right after pestilence in the 2 obliterate part of rotation You should always use blood tap with ua unless it's trash maybe
Thanks for the video brother. I was rank 44 world Enh Shaman in TBC but have not been able to find the same success as a Frost DK in WoTLK. Wasn't doing bad in Naxx but have really been falling flat in Ulduar. I'm looking into what I'm doing wrong because at this point it's clear I have to be. This video was very helpful hopefully I'll start progressing forward now instead of backward.
Your overall knowledge on the subject is apparent and very helpful. I'm a newbie DK so some may say my judgment of your knowledge isn't valid.. I claim it from this tho: your overview of every topic you touched on gave much needed context to start to understand how this class works and how it is best utilized. Hopefully you have or will make more guides getting into the nitty gritty of different fight situations. Anyway, thanks a lot for the content gold.
I went from late 80 parses to orange 95s because of this guide. Everything I was looking for in a guide for my frost dk. Thank you so very much ! Subbed
Finally a good guide. I just tried out frost DK and it was difficult because I kept thinking I could get 3 obliterates in before refreshing diseases. Did my first 10 man Sunday and it painful with the diseases always coming off because of the 3rd obliterate. I realized after the raid in a dungeon that I just HAVE To refresh after 2 and do a BS but then I thought well, wtf is the reason for them making death runes? The unholy sub spec with the pandemic talent (6 or extra seconds I think) made it a lot of clearer and prob more fun to mash 3 and then still be able to refresh diseases. But I'm blood for awhile since my gear is shit. One other thing I was actually disliking about DK in general is always IT/PS/Pest every pack when they die so fast. I'll try DnD and howling on weaker packs. I actually got glyph of howling blast for the very reason of not wanting to put up diseases every pack in dungeons. But I don't go on spamming FS as much now so I think I'll go back to FS glyph and just use DnD. Is bloodboil worth it for those quick packs? Over all I like the pattern/rhythm you can get into with frost and the big numbers. killing machine 100% FS crits and since it attacks with both it's 2 big crit numbers which is always a feel good!
Thanks for the kind words 🙂 keep owning on your new frost DK! It makes it so much fun that everything hits twice, huge numbers! Having to use death runes like blood runes is in fact cringe though I think blood boil is pretty good if having a death rune won't benefit you. But if you would get a howling blast sooner because of death runes probably want to use bs and pestilence mostly.
The rotation, when explained that way, its really hard to memorize... for me at least. A better way would be simply: if you think oh unholy+frost runes as pairs, then you want to prio using your runes always, so that, you use 2 pairs of unholy+frost runes for 2 obliterates, then keep 1 blood rune for refreshing diseases and one for doing blood strike. Always do it like that. Now, because of how timers line up and because of rune grace periods, you will be able to have both blood runes as death runes in a small window so you can obliterate another time. How to identify this window? Because your diseases refresh at the same time, both will have the same timer, so, whenever any of them has AT LEAST 9.5 seconds duration, you can use obliterate and still be able to "catch" the refresh when a blood rune comes back. When your Unbreakable Armor is coming off CD, make sure to prepare your blood runes so that when do you UA+BT you dont end up wasting a blood rune. That single mistake is bigger than the whole use of Flame Caps for example.
One advanced tip that you could also mention is after using your second UA ( and beyond ) you can double oblit, pesti the blood runes ( if the death runes comes back first gotta wait a bit) and oblit again, then use bt/pesti, it allows for an additional obli during UA
Could you explain the exact sequence of runes spent here? I know getting an extra obliterate with UA is possible in the sub-unholy spec on certain versions of the game, however, I haven't been using this as sub-blood.
@@ValaeDK (2xoblit)> UA + pesti on the 2 death rune>2x oblit>pesti ( on the blood rune that was not converted due to using UA )>bt + oblit ( on double death rune) then go on as normal
@@ValaeDK I found that to get the best of both worlds, (get the extra obliterate and keep up UA uptime) I will keep death runes synced for 3 death rune cycles after the opener. For example: 1. UA comes off CD UA -> pest 2. 1 Death Rune and 1 blood rune come off CD BS -> pest 3. 2 Death Runes and BT off CD Obl -> Obl -> Obl -> BT -> Pest After this, I just do rotation you described in the vid until I see my next UA will come off CD.
Bro you're a beast! I'm ranked ~200 allstar right now and I'm totally ashamed to admit I haven't even been using Raise Dead whatsoever lol... Arblarg - Benediction
Solid guide, and thanks for clarifying your rotation as the only credible one I could find is from Warmane and that is pretty dated. One thing I noticed you do differently is prioritizing FS>OB when over a threshold of RP, whereas I would always prioritize OB regardless of RP to increase rune usage, but it makes sense being able to not waste RP or go over cap too much. My parses are in the mid 90s right now but using those little tips and trying to snapshot my raise dead should help out tremendously (:
Great guide dude! I'm an OG DK player but holy shit there is a lot of good info in here. I've definitely filled in some gaps of my knowledge about the class and spec. One thing I do want to add/suggest/say, I use a swing timer so I can see when I will possibly get a KM proc. The main reason I use it is for HB, it's great in fights with 2/3+ mobs. I've always found it to be a DPS increase for me (especially on AoE fights).
If the fight is around 1:15 this will be worth it. If the fight is >1:30 its likely that the extra AP during this will outweigh the 3rd potions benefit. If the fight is
Really awesome guide! Love to see it. A few things that I was hoping you would bring up but you didn't was 1. Army of the Dead. When to pop it, what about snapshotting that, manual crowd pummeler? etc. and 2. What about weaponswapping your offhand between a weapon with Rune of the Crusader to a weapon with Berserking when Crusader proccs, then back ágain once berserking proccs or crusader runs out. ? Is that a thing for frost or only for UH?
As subblood use army of the dead before the fight starts, as its damage is minimal compared to expending our runes on obliterates. Once we play the sub-unholy snapshotting army may be important since we gain the Ravenous Dead talent. Weapon swapping is likely a DPS decrease but I will have to look into that, I did see the recent unholy weapon swap tech.
Great vid! Very informative. I saw your other parse video and was struck by how smooth and unique the visuals were. Any chance you can share your video settings?
22:34 your raised ghoul does not benefit from attack power , haste is correct, it also benefits of strength not attack power if you meant to say that but otherwise its would just be misinformation since trying to snapshot orc racial or mirror trinket proc ( attack power ) would be useless.
I’ve seen most guides suggesting to use blood strike immediately after pestilence to keep the death runes synced. Do you find it is optimal to solely use blood strike on rune cd and when you don’t have enough runic power for frost strike?
Keeping your death runes synced only matters rn when the boss has about 5 obliterates left because we are subblood. Until that point always prioritize frost strike if you have the runic power or blood strike if you don't. Once we are sub unholy keeping them synced will be important
Not sure if you will still read this, but is it worth to use Str + Hit / Crit gems to activate the socket bonuses in phase 4? And if so, is it better to gem Str + Hit to get closer to spell hit cap or is it better to gem Str + crit? Thanks!
Whenever your frost and unholy runes are not on exactly the same cooldown you can accidentally expend a death rune while casting obliterate. In this case its best to get the death rune on cooldown by using blood strike if it means a wasted global waiting. Another example is if you will have approximately 5 obliterates left in the fight you want to ensure your death runes are coming off cooldown together. Since we don't use our death runes as anything but blood runes when in the blood subspec outside of a few examples, syncing them is not as important. When we are playing sub-unholy you will want to sync your runes every time they are shown as blood runes.
@@ValaeDK Thanks for the reply man, I actually went to your wclogs and went to timelines to see your opener. So what im undderstanding is it's always better to bloodstrike after a pestilence to ensure 2 death runes come up together for 2x Oblieterates?
Nope! Syncing death runes does not matter until the end of the fight as subblood. If you drop your diseases you may have to blood strike to not obliterate away a death rune
Really great guide. Perhaps, for a future video, you can go over the rotation in a combat situation. Analyzing some VODs you have of your best parses. Also, quick question, how highly do you value the 4 -piece set bonus over higher ilvl items?
I second this. Openers for long boss fights are fine, though what about times when a rotation cannot include the big cooldowns Also he did not cover the use of Death and Decay and Army of the Dead precasts before a boss fight And some more discussion on things such as rune grace period and rune syncing and how to keep that consistent would be welcome, via things such as pairing Blood Strike with Pestilence
I think I will make a rotation deep dive guide to give a better understanding of decision trees outside of the opener. I think the 4pc set is overvalued in a short fight, items such as chestguard of the recluse and frosted adroit/belabored is likely better in this case. Outside of the opener however the 4pc provides benefit since you run out of runic power easily
Our BL/Hero shaman is usually a bit slacky and pops it 10-15 secs late sometimes, do i still go full out with this opener or do i wait for BL before popping UA och rune reset?
You should encourage your shaman to use it at the appropriate time. In some fights a mid combat erw can be even better then using it in the opener but you will never want to delay your first ua
Really awesome guide. But I have a question about the second macro. Should we use this macro on every ability? One Makro for Icy touch. One for plague strike and so on?
I have not tested it personally but the damage intervals in ulduar favor sub blood on most fights although a fight like xt or vezax I could see it being worth. I will make a video once I can test it myself
I love the frost dk, it has the abilities have the best visuals among the dks. My dk's gearscore is just under 3800. According to wowsim, 15/56/0 does higher dps compared to 0/53/18. Do I need to wait for better gear before going to the latter build?
22:09 another *advance tip* that you should utilize especially in scenarios as showen in the video is to pop AMS + DnD even on ST since you are going to overcap on runic power you want to dump those into Frost Strikes asap which is fine since you just used DnD+ 1 set of runs which lines up perfectly + you re doing free dmg by just using 1 gcd ( dnd) instead of casting 1x Obli+ overcapping on alot of Runic power.
why is Angry Dread a better choice over Last Laugh? we get a ton of dmg from auto attacks and LL just flat out has much higher dps. Has anyone actually parsed this or are people just assuming someone has because everyone lists AD as the weapon of choice? I'd like to see some actual stats as opposed to " feel facts"
Read the talent might of morgraine. Our abilities are based on top end and slow weapons have higher topends. Last laugh would be worse then the 10 man weapon because of this
@@ValaeDK Ill be happy to read all the talents, while I do that can you read your own logs? see how much dmg your basic attacks account for and then adjust for another +20 dps from your weapons. deal?
@@JohnSmith-ry8tj Just ignorant and disrespectful without need, but i'll explain to ur dumb ass. Obliterates will hit like wet noodles with fast weapons, LL is good for UH morb because they don't use scourge strike, making the weapon dmg worth it.
@@jvqs55 Le sigh..... look at your own logs if you play frost. Oblits account for roughly 25-28% of your total dmg. Now look at the number of casts, now compare to number of regular attacks and amount of total dmg done by regular attacks. wow more attacks and more dmg from regular attacks! Yes, your Oblit dmg will go down by using faster weapons but your regular attack dmg will go up by more. In total you do more dmg.
Awesome video and explanation, i got a question tho, in the rotation you use UA then Blood TAP but in the macro you have you do BLOOD TAP THEN UA .DOes that change anything if so whats that ?
my guild only does 10s pull timers on bosses so i can't pot 61s before pull timer, is using indestructible still better as a prepot over potion of speed?
If the fight is >1:20 its consistently better to prepot indestructible except on like 4horseman and thaddius. Having the AP for longer is more important then using 3 potions in a long fight.
Tell me, I'm looking at your clothes on wowlogs, and it's different from the one you have in the video.And it was the belt, the ring, the wrists that you gave them, as I understand it, more emphasis on expertise? or is it better to collect equipment like in the video ? Thanks .used google translator
Nice guide bro but i have one question about 5man dungeon with Frost DK you can use Unholy presence while we killing trash and switch blood for boss or still stay in blood presence? what is best for dungeons thank you :)
Is frost dk really suppose to macro rune strike into all of your abilitys? I was told it was a net dps loss because its overall less frost strikes but im not sure
If you check out the % weapon damage that Rune Strike does compared to its runic power cost, you will see why its worth :-). It doesn't scale with a lot of our talents but 20 RP for 150% weapon damage is worth
Use 1 km during the opener after erw for efficiency but if you dodge or parry it can cause your diseases to fall. Some prefer to wait till after 5 obli to use km. Rime should be one of our lowest prio but with km it does about as much as fs
There are few rings available with strength and they do have a nice benefit of being affected by the strength modifiers. I personally prefer the expertise but greatring of collision probably is better in an optimal case
how is it possible to get off 6 obliterates after ERW before the next pestilence. On tar dummy im lucky if I can squeak off 4. Is that in a lust hero situation? Im running sub blood spec.
In aoe packs that will stay alive a while I spread diseases then Howling and follow up with Bloodstrike. I don't understand why persons avoid it. It will do noticeable damage and the one spent blood rune is easily recovered
19:24 you are forgetting your talent : Tundra Stalker , which is why it makes 0 to use Howling blast and then pesti , it should be the other way around that way your Howling blast benefit of the 15% + dmg to infected targets with Frost Fever.
24:00 binding rune strike is good but not in all abiltieis such as Frost strike which still needs rp to be casted , its not a dps gain to lose on a KM FS proc becasue its macroed into a rune strike and therefore rune strike instead of spending the rp on a KM FS .
Sometimes it's good to cast it if having a death rune will not be beneficial to you or there will be a decent amount of time before you use these runes again
1:38 Blood caked blood does approx 1 % per point so idk where the 5% come from you would usually be around 2-3% with that depending how luck you get. Also BCB basically a 3% st dmg talent has nothing to do why you actually transition to sub unh spec , its just an addition and well spent talent point since you benefit rougly 1% per 1 talent point spent. 2:34 '' the 20% auto dmg doesnt do much'' it literally does more or equal to BcB per talent point spent yet it receives less recognition than bcb ?
This guide made me rethink what it means to play my Death Knight. I have been an unholy DW morber, but now I want to try out frost dk. Consider that like button obliterated and a new sub to boot 👍
Like button is obliterate, obliterate, obliterated
Thank you for making this video. I parse high eighties too low nineties and really haven’t been able to figure out how to improve. Hard to find info on frost dk, everything i see is unholy, so this guide made my day.
You made my day!
I’m currently parsing 97-99s and still found this guide extremely informative and helpful. I’m hoping to keep climbing with some of the info you’ve shared here- really appreciate it. Liked and subbed!
Thanks for that king :D
When are we supposed to call army of the dead?
@@Giothermal24 I am sure that Valae could answer better than me, but typically before the fight (assuming it's available). I army on Thaddius during the phase shift right after I jump off the platform.
@@Giothermal24 I personally do it 12 secs before prepull and swap into blood spec so I have all the runes for my opener. That being said there's few fights when you can use it in the middle of the battle because of interphases (thadius and sapphiron are a couple that comes into my mind). It's just a dps loss if you add it in the middle of the rotation even with snapshot.
23:38 as stated before , if you want to max out on your obliterates counts you would want to use 2 seperate UA macro , 1 as you showed in the video only as opener and the other one w/o blood tap that way you desync them and benefit of 1 Obli cast per 1 minute. ( In blood sub spec)
can you explain this in a way more simpler manner,
@@tionblack use 2 macros . 1. Normal Umbreakble + Blood tap for your opener. 2. every next refresh of ( Unbreakable ) you are going to use alone withouth Blood tap , use it with in a combination with a death rune which you should have around the same time it comes up. use blood tap roughly 12 seconds later aftter you used your death runes for an additional Obli + blood tap here to refresh in time with pesti.
I don't know if it was simplier but just try it and you will get what I mean
@@XxLyrokxX98 thank you , i think in time when i get more experience with class ill understand what this means hehe
love the editting, straight to the point. def point people to this video for fdk tips, hope you can make boss by boss guides.
- I made a video detailing how to cast unbreakable armor outside of the opener as a supplement to this video, th-cam.com/video/5942n8AI_vE/w-d-xo.html
- The value of hit is higher if you are consistently using howling blast and autoing a boss for longer
- Remember to always use 2 slow weapons regardless of what combination you have.
- Some less expensive alternatives for the pre-raid BIS ring and weapon are Ring of Scarlet Shadows / Reaper of Dark Souls.
- Loatheb's Shadow is also a good alternative to the trinkets discussed as it no longer shares a CD with gloves.
I will be making a follow-up video for which fights sub-unholy will be better on in the future.
The best dk video i have ever seen, and i think i have seen them all.
Really appreciate you making this video! Thank you! There is not enough Frost DK info out there imho.
I still have 2 questions:
- Do you use cancelaura BT? (I dont use it, but i've seen people that do)
- How and where do you fit in UA and BT after the opener? (when they come off cooldown mid fight)
So far i've been using UA with a death rune and then saving BT for when I mess up the rotation and don't have a blood/death rune up for pestilence
Keep the video's coming! I'm really interested!
TY so much king!
I don't cancelaura it - pretty much I just use unbreakable armor immediately and don't really worry about the rune impacts while subblood. if you only have one usage of it left in the fight you probably want to line it up with other procs
When messing up our blood runes matters more as subunholy the timing will be more precise. I believe you typically want to use it right after pestilence in the 2 obliterate part of rotation
You should always use blood tap with ua unless it's trash maybe
Thanks for the video brother. I was rank 44 world Enh Shaman in TBC but have not been able to find the same success as a Frost DK in WoTLK. Wasn't doing bad in Naxx but have really been falling flat in Ulduar. I'm looking into what I'm doing wrong because at this point it's clear I have to be. This video was very helpful hopefully I'll start progressing forward now instead of backward.
Your overall knowledge on the subject is apparent and very helpful. I'm a newbie DK so some may say my judgment of your knowledge isn't valid.. I claim it from this tho: your overview of every topic you touched on gave much needed context to start to understand how this class works and how it is best utilized. Hopefully you have or will make more guides getting into the nitty gritty of different fight situations. Anyway, thanks a lot for the content gold.
Sick Frost DK guide for the #1 Frost DK in the world and second best Warlock in my TBC guild.
I went from late 80 parses to orange 95s because of this guide. Everything I was looking for in a guide for my frost dk. Thank you so very much ! Subbed
Let's go bro!
Since it can only be based on observing 1 raid it can just as well be new gear, better raid comps etc. Not saying guide is bad. not at all. Its great.
Great stuff bub!! Keep it up, you have made my casual play more competitive , exciting and worth my time with my Frost DK TY 🙏
Finally a good guide. I just tried out frost DK and it was difficult because I kept thinking I could get 3 obliterates in before refreshing diseases. Did my first 10 man Sunday and it painful with the diseases always coming off because of the 3rd obliterate. I realized after the raid in a dungeon that I just HAVE To refresh after 2 and do a BS but then I thought well, wtf is the reason for them making death runes? The unholy sub spec with the pandemic talent (6 or extra seconds I think) made it a lot of clearer and prob more fun to mash 3 and then still be able to refresh diseases. But I'm blood for awhile since my gear is shit.
One other thing I was actually disliking about DK in general is always IT/PS/Pest every pack when they die so fast. I'll try DnD and howling on weaker packs. I actually got glyph of howling blast for the very reason of not wanting to put up diseases every pack in dungeons. But I don't go on spamming FS as much now so I think I'll go back to FS glyph and just use DnD. Is bloodboil worth it for those quick packs?
Over all I like the pattern/rhythm you can get into with frost and the big numbers. killing machine 100% FS crits and since it attacks with both it's 2 big crit numbers which is always a feel good!
Thanks for the kind words 🙂 keep owning on your new frost DK! It makes it so much fun that everything hits twice, huge numbers! Having to use death runes like blood runes is in fact cringe though
I think blood boil is pretty good if having a death rune won't benefit you. But if you would get a howling blast sooner because of death runes probably want to use bs and pestilence mostly.
The rotation, when explained that way, its really hard to memorize... for me at least.
A better way would be simply: if you think oh unholy+frost runes as pairs, then you want to prio using your runes always, so that, you use 2 pairs of unholy+frost runes for 2 obliterates, then keep 1 blood rune for refreshing diseases and one for doing blood strike. Always do it like that.
Now, because of how timers line up and because of rune grace periods, you will be able to have both blood runes as death runes in a small window so you can obliterate another time.
How to identify this window? Because your diseases refresh at the same time, both will have the same timer, so, whenever any of them has AT LEAST 9.5 seconds duration, you can use obliterate and still be able to "catch" the refresh when a blood rune comes back.
When your Unbreakable Armor is coming off CD, make sure to prepare your blood runes so that when do you UA+BT you dont end up wasting a blood rune. That single mistake is bigger than the whole use of Flame Caps for example.
One advanced tip that you could also mention is after using your second UA ( and beyond ) you can double oblit, pesti the blood runes ( if the death runes comes back first gotta wait a bit) and oblit again, then use bt/pesti, it allows for an additional obli during UA
Could you explain the exact sequence of runes spent here? I know getting an extra obliterate with UA is possible in the sub-unholy spec on certain versions of the game, however, I haven't been using this as sub-blood.
@@ValaeDK (2xoblit)> UA + pesti on the 2 death rune>2x oblit>pesti ( on the blood rune that was not converted due to using UA )>bt + oblit ( on double death rune) then go on as normal
You should definitely be doing this on fights where your unbreakable armor uptime is not impacted by delaying usage of blood tap.
@@ValaeDK I found that to get the best of both worlds, (get the extra obliterate and keep up UA uptime) I will keep death runes synced for 3 death rune cycles after the opener.
For example:
1. UA comes off CD
UA -> pest
2. 1 Death Rune and 1 blood rune come off CD
BS -> pest
3. 2 Death Runes and BT off CD
Obl -> Obl -> Obl -> BT -> Pest
After this, I just do rotation you described in the vid until I see my next UA will come off CD.
Bro you're a beast! I'm ranked ~200 allstar right now and I'm totally ashamed to admit I haven't even been using Raise Dead whatsoever lol... Arblarg - Benediction
SMOGE
Nice guide, Valae! Tons of great work out in here!
You should get more views, great guide. Thank you!
thanks for that, you dropped this👑
Really really nice video dude! Completely new to Dk and try to choose between frost and uh 👌
Solid guide, and thanks for clarifying your rotation as the only credible one I could find is from Warmane and that is pretty dated. One thing I noticed you do differently is prioritizing FS>OB when over a threshold of RP, whereas I would always prioritize OB regardless of RP to increase rune usage, but it makes sense being able to not waste RP or go over cap too much.
My parses are in the mid 90s right now but using those little tips and trying to snapshot my raise dead should help out tremendously (:
Great video, man. My DK's name is Eugh, I'm itching to try out frost now. Straightforward, good niche info, perfect guide.
Glad it was helpful! :-)
My DK's name is Cumcloth. Can't wait to use all these tips just like you!
This guide has very good info, ty
Amazing presentation.
Thank you :-)
lil tip : u can sometimes save howling blast to use it with a killing machine for a big dmg
aoe ofc*
I love this video, you are insane Valae!
awesome content ! high quality gamer
Great guide dude! I'm an OG DK player but holy shit there is a lot of good info in here. I've definitely filled in some gaps of my knowledge about the class and spec.
One thing I do want to add/suggest/say, I use a swing timer so I can see when I will possibly get a KM proc. The main reason I use it is for HB, it's great in fights with 2/3+ mobs. I've always found it to be a DPS increase for me (especially on AoE fights).
thx!! this is best guide for frost dk!!!!
glad you liked it :-)
61 sec before pull Indestructible, 1 sec before pull haste, after 1 min another haste into exec. Triple pot brother.
If the fight is around 1:15 this will be worth it. If the fight is >1:30 its likely that the extra AP during this will outweigh the 3rd potions benefit. If the fight is
Oh shit, you must be rank 1 or 2 giving the rank 3 king advice. Oh... you're not.
@@MikeHawkPEN15 Bro there's not much difference between 90%-100% parses. The difference is RNG, and CD feeding just to parse.
@@deadzeddicious3684 I feel like the difference between 99-100 is how many uh dks you have in the raid lol
@@deadzeddicious3684 then be 100% stop with excuses
great video!
Good shit. Solid guide.
Great info, thanks !
Awesome guide. Thanks for the time
Glad to help!
Really awesome guide! Love to see it.
A few things that I was hoping you would bring up but you didn't was 1. Army of the Dead. When to pop it, what about snapshotting that, manual crowd pummeler? etc.
and 2. What about weaponswapping your offhand between a weapon with Rune of the Crusader to a weapon with Berserking when Crusader proccs, then back ágain once berserking proccs or crusader runs out. ? Is that a thing for frost or only for UH?
As subblood use army of the dead before the fight starts, as its damage is minimal compared to expending our runes on obliterates. Once we play the sub-unholy snapshotting army may be important since we gain the Ravenous Dead talent.
Weapon swapping is likely a DPS decrease but I will have to look into that, I did see the recent unholy weapon swap tech.
Thanks bro this is sick
you had me at frost dk
Best DK guide!
Leveled as blood on my dk. Was kinda bored when I reached 70 in pre-patch. Gonna try out frost and level it to 80 now.
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baaaased!
Wonderful guide. Fell in love with frost early on. Is there an addon that helps spot Rime proc, in all the buffs that pop up everywhere?
check out my discord for my DK weakaura which keeps tracks of procs.
Great vid! Very informative. I saw your other parse video and was struck by how smooth and unique the visuals were. Any chance you can share your video settings?
do you mean in game video settings?
@@ValaeDK Yeah. Or if that's a combination of your video card settings.
I think I run on all low settings with projected textures on. My video card settings are default for a 3070 TI. Hopefully that is helpful!
22:34 your raised ghoul does not benefit from attack power , haste is correct, it also benefits of strength not attack power if you meant to say that but otherwise its would just be misinformation since trying to snapshot orc racial or mirror trinket proc ( attack power ) would be useless.
I’ve seen most guides suggesting to use blood strike immediately after pestilence to keep the death runes synced. Do you find it is optimal to solely use blood strike on rune cd and when you don’t have enough runic power for frost strike?
Keeping your death runes synced only matters rn when the boss has about 5 obliterates left because we are subblood. Until that point always prioritize frost strike if you have the runic power or blood strike if you don't.
Once we are sub unholy keeping them synced will be important
Thank you for a great guide
Why does this guy not have 200k followers?
16:49 Ice Touch crits doesnt proc rime, just obliterate can proc rime
True!
Not sure if you will still read this, but is it worth to use Str + Hit / Crit gems to activate the socket bonuses in phase 4? And if so, is it better to gem Str + Hit to get closer to spell hit cap or is it better to gem Str + crit? Thanks!
Do you have any frost DK tank guide? Was mostly thinking about glyphs.
I don't understand when to cast Pestilence with Blood Strike to sync up runes. Anyone care to explain why/when we should do that?
Whenever your frost and unholy runes are not on exactly the same cooldown you can accidentally expend a death rune while casting obliterate. In this case its best to get the death rune on cooldown by using blood strike if it means a wasted global waiting.
Another example is if you will have approximately 5 obliterates left in the fight you want to ensure your death runes are coming off cooldown together.
Since we don't use our death runes as anything but blood runes when in the blood subspec outside of a few examples, syncing them is not as important. When we are playing sub-unholy you will want to sync your runes every time they are shown as blood runes.
@@ValaeDK Thanks for the reply man, I actually went to your wclogs and went to timelines to see your opener. So what im undderstanding is it's always better to bloodstrike after a pestilence to ensure 2 death runes come up together for 2x Oblieterates?
Nope! Syncing death runes does not matter until the end of the fight as subblood. If you drop your diseases you may have to blood strike to not obliterate away a death rune
@@ValaeDK ah got it. Thanks a lot my man! And keep up the good content.
Really great guide. Perhaps, for a future video, you can go over the rotation in a combat situation. Analyzing some VODs you have of your best parses. Also, quick question, how highly do you value the 4 -piece set bonus over higher ilvl items?
I second this. Openers for long boss fights are fine, though what about times when a rotation cannot include the big cooldowns
Also he did not cover the use of Death and Decay and Army of the Dead precasts before a boss fight
And some more discussion on things such as rune grace period and rune syncing and how to keep that consistent would be welcome, via things such as pairing Blood Strike with Pestilence
I think I will make a rotation deep dive guide to give a better understanding of decision trees outside of the opener.
I think the 4pc set is overvalued in a short fight, items such as chestguard of the recluse and frosted adroit/belabored is likely better in this case. Outside of the opener however the 4pc provides benefit since you run out of runic power easily
Our BL/Hero shaman is usually a bit slacky and pops it 10-15 secs late sometimes, do i still go full out with this opener or do i wait for BL before popping UA och rune reset?
You should encourage your shaman to use it at the appropriate time. In some fights a mid combat erw can be even better then using it in the opener but you will never want to delay your first ua
fire vid frost gang!
FROST GANG
what do u think about the desync rotation?
The desync rotation is good on paper but difficult to execute in practice and is not worth in my opinion
@Valae1 are u using cancleca aura macro for blood tap after u use it ??
Really awesome guide. But I have a question about the second macro. Should we use this macro on every ability? One Makro for Icy touch. One for plague strike and so on?
That is what I do personally!
Is it worth going on unholy sub-spec earlier with the ulduar ilvl changes? Or will the weapon damage from ulduar weapons still be to low?
I have not tested it personally but the damage intervals in ulduar favor sub blood on most fights although a fight like xt or vezax I could see it being worth. I will make a video once I can test it myself
So i am currently with 4 piece t9 and double caress of insanity and 5374 gs. What do you think is the right spec for that right now?
I love the frost dk, it has the abilities have the best visuals among the dks. My dk's gearscore is just under 3800. According to wowsim, 15/56/0 does higher dps compared to 0/53/18. Do I need to wait for better gear before going to the latter build?
Yea the subunholy build requires more weapon damage to be better since you gain a lot of AP/crit from the other one!
22:09 another *advance tip* that you should utilize especially in scenarios as showen in the video is to pop AMS + DnD even on ST since you are going to overcap on runic power you want to dump those into Frost Strikes asap which is fine since you just used DnD+ 1 set of runs which lines up perfectly + you re doing free dmg by just using 1 gcd ( dnd)
instead of casting 1x Obli+ overcapping on alot of Runic power.
Obliterate does way more damage then DND, you do not want to do this.
why is Angry Dread a better choice over Last Laugh? we get a ton of dmg from auto attacks and LL just flat out has much higher dps. Has anyone actually parsed this or are people just assuming someone has because everyone lists AD as the weapon of choice? I'd like to see some actual stats as opposed to " feel facts"
Read the talent might of morgraine. Our abilities are based on top end and slow weapons have higher topends. Last laugh would be worse then the 10 man weapon because of this
@@ValaeDK Ill be happy to read all the talents, while I do that can you read your own logs? see how much dmg your basic attacks account for and then adjust for another +20 dps from your weapons. deal?
@@JohnSmith-ry8tj Just ignorant and disrespectful without need, but i'll explain to ur dumb ass. Obliterates will hit like wet noodles with fast weapons, LL is good for UH morb because they don't use scourge strike, making the weapon dmg worth it.
@@jvqs55 Le sigh..... look at your own logs if you play frost. Oblits account for roughly 25-28% of your total dmg. Now look at the number of casts, now compare to number of regular attacks and amount of total dmg done by regular attacks. wow more attacks and more dmg from regular attacks! Yes, your Oblit dmg will go down by using faster weapons but your regular attack dmg will go up by more. In total you do more dmg.
Do you have a layout for WA which can just be installed as is ?
check out my discord for my weakaura I made
I always try to play unholy or blood and I keep coming back to frost. I know unholy is highest pvp tier but I just can’t do it.
Awesome video and explanation, i got a question tho, in the rotation you use UA then Blood TAP but in the macro you have you do BLOOD TAP THEN UA .DOes that change anything if so whats that ?
Should not matter either way but I should have made it consistent
I would love a rotation video on a target dummy.
Sounds like we Hardly use Frost strike.
Check the rotation section. You should fill with frost strike whenever possible
16:45 that's false , only your Obliterates have a 15% chance to proc Rime , not '' your icy touch or obliterates'
my guild only does 10s pull timers on bosses so i can't pot 61s before pull timer, is using indestructible still better as a prepot over potion of speed?
If the fight is >1:20 its consistently better to prepot indestructible except on like 4horseman and thaddius. Having the AP for longer is more important then using 3 potions in a long fight.
@@ValaeDK thanks for the reply mate
Tell me, I'm looking at your clothes on wowlogs, and it's different from the one you have in the video.And it was the belt, the ring, the wrists that you gave them, as I understand it, more emphasis on expertise? or is it better to collect equipment like in the video ? Thanks .used google translator
Try to keep your statistics close to those shown in the video. I am using different pieces because I have not gotten all my BiS items yet.
@@ValaeDK thanks
Perhaps a noob question but what is the reason for the Icy Touch cast before the Rune Strike in the macro?
Either order will work since rune strike is off the global cooldown down you can cast it at any time. It will just be used on your next auto attack
Nice guide bro but i have one question about 5man dungeon with Frost DK you can use Unholy presence while we killing trash and switch blood for boss or still stay in blood presence? what is best for dungeons thank you :)
Stay blood presence as much as you can
in which weapon damage threshold is it worth to change sub blood to undead?
They say that blood caked blade should be 5 percent of your overall damage for it to be worth so probably end of this tier or in togc
Is frost dk really suppose to macro rune strike into all of your abilitys? I was told it was a net dps loss because its overall less frost strikes but im not sure
If you check out the % weapon damage that Rune Strike does compared to its runic power cost, you will see why its worth :-). It doesn't scale with a lot of our talents but 20 RP for 150% weapon damage is worth
@@ValaeDK what about for blood tanking spec, do we macro rune strike to every ability also?
How do you deal with KM and/or Rime procs during the opener? Do you instantly use it or wait till after to not mess up timings?
Use 1 km during the opener after erw for efficiency but if you dodge or parry it can cause your diseases to fall. Some prefer to wait till after 5 obli to use km. Rime should be one of our lowest prio but with km it does about as much as fs
I see many other frost DKs, guides and youtubers recommending glyph of icy touch over glyph of frost strike. Whats your opinion on that?
Icy touch damage is not much of your overall damage so I would disagree
So for the sub UH spec do you do that when you are full bis in p1 or is that late game thing as in like icc phase?
I'm hoping in ulduar bis there will be some fights where it will be better although we will have to see kill times
great video
Very nice. Can i level as frost? Or do i have to wait until a certain gear level?
Yes you can level as frost but you won't be able to solo dungeons. If you don't mind that frost and unholy are both great leveling specs
I have a question, Circle of death > Greatring of Collision? Why's that?
There are few rings available with strength and they do have a nice benefit of being affected by the strength modifiers. I personally prefer the expertise but greatring of collision probably is better in an optimal case
@@ValaeDK Seems reasonable enough. I was just wondering if there was something that I wasn't aware of. Cheers mate.
Which is good weakauras for frost dk? Can you help?
You can download my weakaura package on my discord
I'm playing enh shaman but you just made me wanna have a frost DK for my alt :D
best class OFC! enhance shaman seems like a lot of fun too
how is it possible to get off 6 obliterates after ERW before the next pestilence. On tar dummy im lucky if I can squeak off 4. Is that in a lust hero situation? Im running sub blood spec.
Should be 5 obliterates. You should be able to do it without lust just remove the extra frost strike after erw
In aoe packs that will stay alive a while I spread diseases then Howling and follow up with Bloodstrike. I don't understand why persons avoid it. It will do noticeable damage and the one spent blood rune is easily recovered
Blood striking is good to get another death rune. I should have mentioned this.
Do we, as a frost dk, ever use the Army of the Dead?
As subblood use army of the dead before the fight if its off cooldown (~10 seconds on pull timer).
Is using a fast weapon bad? I have torment of the banished equipped currently but also have split greathammer. Not sure which to use.
never use a fast weapon in either hand.
Please do an unholy dk vid
Why don’t you pestilence before howling blast on AOE for the increased damage on the blast, is getting it on cd that important?
I think either is probably fine but that is the idea
19:24 you are forgetting your talent : Tundra Stalker , which is why it makes 0 to use Howling blast and then pesti , it should be the other way around that way your Howling blast benefit of the 15% + dmg to infected targets with Frost Fever.
No, I clearly mention this talent. Feel free to rewatch this section.
Wouldn't it be better to use one Frost Strike after Obliterate and right before the first Pestilence in the Opener?
Adding too much extra globals can result in disease falling if you are ublucky but I think in a perfect example you are corrext
👍👍👍👍👍
AotD prepull right?
yea about 10 seconds on the pull timer
With this gear that you showed,I get 6.83% hit (234) how can I get 8-10% that you are saying we should have?
Check the spell tab for your spell hit
With all the armour pen gear blood DK DPS is still viable
if you only get 42 strenght extra from jc couldnt you just have ench then where you get +40 ap per ring?
Strength > AP when you consider the bonus strength DKs get from talents, and the 20% increase in strength we get from UBA as frost
Like a previous commenter said strength is better then AP cause of kings and talents
Does the same rotation apply to sub/uh spec?
The rotation is similar but includes a triple obliterate using your death runes. I will make a video on that rotation when it's more relevant
I'm stunned people still play.
24:00 binding rune strike is good but not in all abiltieis such as Frost strike which still needs rp to be casted , its not a dps gain to lose on a KM FS proc becasue its macroed into a rune strike and therefore rune strike instead of spending the rp on a KM FS .
This is simply not true. Check the threat of thaurissan talent if you are curious why Rune Strike is still better then frost strike
So you never cast blood boil in aoe rotation correct?
Sometimes it's good to cast it if having a death rune will not be beneficial to you or there will be a decent amount of time before you use these runes again
Str is 2.9 buddy not 2 :D
1:38 Blood caked blood does approx 1 % per point so idk where the 5% come from you would usually be around 2-3% with that depending how luck you get. Also BCB basically a 3% st dmg talent has nothing to do why you actually transition to sub unh spec , its just an addition and well spent talent point since you benefit rougly 1% per 1 talent point spent. 2:34 '' the 20% auto dmg doesnt do much'' it literally does more or equal to BcB per talent point spent yet it receives less recognition than bcb ?
This guide is way too sweaty for my taste lol.