Monday, September 22, 2008

DK 1vs1 Survivability vs Damage.

So what's it like in a duel situation against a lot of classes?

Watch, and find out.

Spec used.

Track listing:
DT8 Project Feat Andrea Britton - Winter (Original Vocal Mix)
Emjay - So Clear (Stimulate) (Dogzilla Depth Charge remix)
Karen Overton - Forgot the name of the song. >_>


This is what happens when you can cherry pick so many over-budgeted talents like this. It's also easy to see how depressing the DK's damage is, especially once the ghoul goes down.

Watching this isn't necessarily a good way to visit class balance, but it is a good way to identify the issues that DKs are having in PvP.

And as far as not using unholy presence, I'm going to eat my words and say it's not worth it for this type of palystyle at all.

With unholy aura, and a real lack of ability to deal out burst damage at all, and not needing to worry about being caught in GCD, there's really no reason to use unholy presence given those factors in pvp, or anywhere, right now.

AMS, Death grip, mind freeze, ghoul stun via master of ghouls, and IBF are all off the GCD. The only other important ability that isn't is strangulate, which you can often cover by other interrupts. Unholy aura grants 15% movement speed. Being able to spam blood boil, death strike, plague strike, and icy touch 33% faster via the lower gcd, really doesn't yield any scary burst for anyone to worry about. The only ability that you'd want to burst in quickly is scourge strike, which is bugged, or obliterate, which is laughable burst without MoM or GoG.

Thus, unholy presence is actually not ideal in the long run in many situations for pvp, it seems, which is a pretty big let down. Most of our key abilities are off the gcd, making one of the big draws of unholy presence yielding you to be less likely to be caught in the gcd less valuable by a large margin.


I'll let everyone reach their own conclusions after watching it.

By the way: This spec vs holy paladin = never ending fight. We can't kill each other, and we can't die. Ever. I dueled one and finally just gave up after 30 minutes straight.



So I tried this spec in the arena. Here's what I get:






31 comments:

Anonymous said...

I figured I'd just post on this, NV. lol. I'm MiniGun from Planetside. I thought I recognized your face and when you talked about Cham it pinned it for me. Do you still play with Nova?

I played with them for a while on Sargeras WAY back when but I had to quit for work. Quite the drag. lol.

I'm enjoying your feedback quite a bit by the way. I'm going to roll a DK for the expansion when it comes, I've planned many ways to run my teams. :P

Anonymous said...

does it get better when you skip all those survival talents in favor for DPS increasing talents?

Anonymous said...

hmm i dont know why you say you "destroy" everyone, right the first battle against that retpaly was very close at the end....

if your survivability is so overpowered, than why does it get so close? imagine your survivability was lower, that ret would have pwned you just like they do on PTRs atm.

dont get me wrong, that build is really EXTREM in terms of survival skills, but you always have the possibility to choose more DPS talents instead of pure survival stuff.

but damn you dmg is so low, i have a level 51 rouge alt on live getting bigger numbers sometimes oO.

Anonymous said...

ah i forgot one thing:

i noticed that you often click your ghoul, i guess you try to heal him with DC?

maybe a target=pet deathcoil makro could help you here ^^.
especially in the next build with buffed DC values.

you said yourself that the ghoul is a huge part of your total dmg, so maybe its worth keeping him alive instead of doing a little bit more dmg to your opponent with DC.

Anonymous said...

lol that pally saying "wtf is immune to stun".
this shows once more that most people have no idea of the DK skills / how they work and how to fight against them...

Unknown said...

Nice video. Loved the music like normal.

I am not that knowledgeable about the DK abilities; but, what is healing you? Some times I see a chain of 20ish heals. Then I see around 1.6k-2k alot. And then not too often about a 4.5k heal. That seems to be an incredible amount and an easy way to stay alive.

Watching you duel Socio, it is clear that DKs anti magic everything is a bit too strong. Also, your pet alone gets him down to around 1/2 hp before he is able to take him out. When facing the rogue where you don't attack, your pet gets him down to around 2% hp before the rogue does you in.

The amount of reactive heals and just insane survivability is way OP atm for the DK. You do good steady damage and take very little damage in any duel. Pretty sick.

The self healing is just too crazy.

Great music once again. After watching alot of your vids my Ipod is now loaded with similar tunes.

Hearteater said...

I wish they'd do something interesting with Unholy Presence like make runes recharge in 9 seconds instead of 10. Even 8 seconds might not be overpowered.

Knaughty said...

what's the last track?

you have very similar taste in music :)

Anonymous said...

This has nothing to do with your vids. I've been looking at DK's for awhile. I was wondering what build you used when you tanked old strat as frost, and if you don't mind some feedback from frost tanking as well.

Unknown said...

First off: ROFL @ that rogue almost losing to ghoul damage while you stood there and did nothing. Just proof that ghoul damage needs to be toned down quite a bit.

Secondly, what glyphs do you use? It seems like Glyph of Icebound Fortitude would be a no-brainer. Maybe Glyph of Blood Boil for the slow. I noticed you use Blood Boil over Blood Strike. Is that strictly for the death runes granted by reaping, or is the ability just easier to use in a PvP environment?

Anonymous said...

Interesting build that focuses strictly on cherry-picking talents.
Can be made obsolete with two simple changes in the blood talent tree: bloodworms in place of rune tap (with imp. runetap moved down and reduced to two ranks for the same effect, so 3 for 3 essentially) and a slight buff in mark of blood followed by a swap with hysteria (which could also be VERY helpful as far as burst damage is concerned if there's a healer nearby).

Out of curiosity, what was the composition of the 4 teams that did take you down in 3v3?

Unknown said...

I've been following your rantings since the start of beta, thank you for giving us such good information about the DK-class.

/Mikael

Unknown said...

Im surprised no dirge in your spec. I understand that death coil is very lacking atm, but I would still put 2 points in dirge over...impurity. I've never really done number tests with it but it seems kind've meh.

also, Whats with all the death runes? You get them from blood boil and death rune mastery, Is there some 6 death rune ultimate move im not aware of? :)

Very nice video as always, Arena used to be my forte, but I haven't been a huge fan ever since s3. These new arenas are pretty awesome tho, and hopefully the new balancing specs are getting will fix arena. They really need to do something about personal rating abuse.

Anonymous said...

He didn't lose 4 games in 3v3.

The screen shot can be misleading if you look at it carefully.

He played 21 3v3 games, didn't lose once, and his personal went up to 1769. That's while playing with an incredible mage. Nothing wrong with that, but he didn't play all 44 team games. Maybe he would have been even higher. Given the previous arena matches shown and the duels it's obvious some people simply aren't used to dealing with DKs.

Additionally, the 2v2 team he only played 3 games on thus the 1815 rating is kinda irrelevant.

Simply posting the 3v3 page breakdown would have shown all the "useful" information, but the full screen shot will have some people going off about wrong information.

The two screen shots shown where you were top dps, were those the only two times? The only two times you took screen shots? I'm just curious why you choose to show those two times after talking about how low dmg is.

The spec used obviously sacrifices a ton of offense for defense, so after the arena games has your opinion changed about dmg being "too low"?

Anonymous said...

Follow-up

Looking back I may have done that whole "sounding too negative" thing again. (bad habit lol, sorry)

Here is some of the discussion/information that I think could be useful to people weighing DK viability and who they might want to team with:

- How many games were against good teams? Not just good comps, but actual good teams?

- How many games did people actually grasp how to deal with you and play well? Lots of people have very little experience fighting DKs and watching people not recognize some of the basic effects (AMS, AMZ, etc.) obviously skews how things went.

- How many games would have been *LOST* if you were a similarly geared/played warrior? What about rogue? These games weren't super high level, so possibly none, but maybe a goofy situation or a great utility play you were able to make that might fit one team better than a war/rog/etc.

- What was your role against certain teams/comps? Using DG to help keep targets in LoS of the mage can be strong. It's also strong on peels. What else though? Chaining a strangulate onto a CS/Poly/Cyclone can be useful, etc. Basically some chatter about what the "DK" really brought to the comp.

- Any major weaknesses? Obviously when people don't bother to hit you and lots of talents aren't as useful, and your damage is intentionally lower, but aside from that, what classes/comps presented issues?

- How did the high survival/low dps spec play out in the "good games"? Did you find yourself ignored and running after people hitting for low damage? Were there times when you had burst situations, but lacked the talents/abilities to close the deal? This is largely a team comp/play style issue, but again I think people weighing different specs will be interested.

- Possible re-specs? Following up on the last question. Any plans to try a deep frost build to bring a bit more CC? Plans to bring a deep blood spec for some additional burst? What potential do you see for DK on other comps? Do you see all DKs spec'n high survivability/low dmg at this point?

Finally, I'm curious what, if anything, you think carries over from the lower ranked games you played to the higher, more competitive games later on? There are lots of specs/comps that can attain similar ratings, but later on they simply aren't as viable as others.

Discussion of the above would be a lot more useful for people evaluating how to spec their dk, what teams to play them on, whether or not to even roll a dk, etc.

Anonymous said...

Jayde what is the name of the addon you are using in the videos to track rune regeneration and Rune power total?

Anonymous said...

Hello Jayde, I am an avid viewer of your videos and all that you have tested for the DK class. I was wondering if you had time could you go and make videos and evaluations of the other trees in PvE and PvP. Unfortunately I was not blessed with a beta key and cannot test myself, so I, and im sure other potential DK's would appreciate a peek of the newest builds damage and survivability for blood and frost. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

If Unholy Presence isn't that good, those 2 talent points could go a lot of places...Veteran of the Third War for Str/Stam/Expertise, Scourge Strike when fixed, Blood Caked Blade, fill out Toughness, Necrosis..., etc. Any thoughts?

Anonymous said...

The presence talents are "on" regardless of the presence you are using. Even sitting in blood presence you still benefit from both points in unholy aura.

Anonymous said...

Couple of things Jayde:

1) Why would you go 42 pts into Unholy and fail to pick up crypt fever? 1 pt grants you 1 more disease, which will in turn effect pretty much everything you do (death strike, blood strike, Oblit, etc).

2) I don't know what the 'bug' is that people are speaking of regarding Scourge Strike. I haven't been able to log into beta in the past 2 weeks...but why wouldn't you take this 1 pt and put it into SS? It's damage should be similiar to that of Oblit, but doesn't remove the diseases, and it's shadow damage.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqc0csoZZfMGhLbkMxqRbo

That is what I would do. Also I can't decide if bloody strikes or bloody vengeance is better.

Sam said...

Weird.

I did pick up crypt fever. Is my talent build link broken? :(

Anonymous said...

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j0E0sI00oZ0LZfMGI0bkheoRfoh

Looks like it's there. I was looking at a lot of your builds and must have gotten confused. Sorry! :)

Lazy Student said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lazy Student said...

I'm sure that this has been said many times before but I'm hoping repeating it might spawn a new video. Your current spec is an interesting one that is very good for survivability, but lets be honest, you're far from spec'd for pure damage. I guess my request is that you make a duel video spec'd for damage talents only and just see how it goes. (Even if it is just a few clips to you dieing horribly to sad music at least you can prove your point that DK damage is lacking)

PS Love your choice of music and editing, very excited for the class whether its an evil paladin or not :D

Anonymous said...

Just thought I'd comment on your vids. For myself being a long time Paladin player (since original beta in '04) the death knight has finally peaked my interest. I've noticed you like to stick to the unholy tree with your specs, and since I haven't been blessed with a beta key yet I was wondering if you could show some of the other specs in action, even if they are lacking as some say, just to give the rest of us who can't try them out first hand an idea of what to expect.

In not playing a DK in beta yet, I am unsure as to rotations, full use of abilities, etc so I took a blind attempt at a spec.

Please post feedback, and a vid or two showing pros/cons of the other specs so that we are more informed.

Thanks,
Acid

P.S. Here's a spec I slapped together without any first hand knowledge of the DK class:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqs0IsfRz0hZZ0gMhxckL0o

Thoughts?!?

Anonymous said...

I'm not in the beta, but i've been watching your videos consistently, now from what i gather off your spec, you have opted for survivability over dmg talents, but it seems deathknights are meant to play with lots of hits (i see low numbers, but i also LOTS of those numbers pop up). So it seems that deathknights tend to favor more of a "Death from a thousand cuts" playstyle as opposed to the warrior "fear my big scary crits" play style. This is just my speculation, it seems that all trees promote some levels of survivability rather then lots of burst options. this late in development i don't think blizz is really inclined to re-vamp a talent tree to say focus on burst as opposed to steady dps to give playstyle variety, but it would seem to make more sense, much like combat rogue vs subt (combat being steady dps as opposed to sutbtlety's burst) Your damage done in each arena screen shot you posted is higher than the mages, so with those low numbers popping up, i think perhaps we should focus on the frequency of those lower numbers as oppposed to the value. But this is coming from someone not playin the beta and only observing.

Jame said...

Hey, nice video, I like the music choice too.

About the lack of DPS. Whilst I agree that the ghoul's damage should go down a notch and our personal damage should go up, I'm not surprised your damage is rather low. I mean, take a good look at your talent build, it looks like you're trying hard to avoid all the DPS oriented talents :p

Necrosis, BCB, Rage of Rivendare, Dirge, Desecration, 2H weapon specialization, dark conviction could have been maxed out instead of DRM. And let's not forget that Scourge Strike is broken.

Now if you'd combine all that, your dps would be far superior. Of course you'd have to sacrifice a lot of survivability to get all that, but you get my point. Can't have both: high dps and crazy survivability just wouldn't fly :P

Jame said...

Oh also, do you think you could upload your videos on warcraftmovies.com too? Somehow, I get really horrendous download speed with Filefront. In any case, it would be a nice way for your videos to get more views ;)

Unknown said...

Jayde: I got temp forum banned for that comment where I said 'stfu noob ur probably just getting carried by your teammates' :(

oh, and grats on outdamaging me AND venruki, with your frost damage buffs up, and us shattering each other's deep freezes :P

arenas tonight, 6pm, gogo

Sam said...

Sure thing. I can't believe how many bads are crying all over the forums right now. It's insane.

Militus said...

Out of speculation and not playing a DK in beta, what do you think of a build like this:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0qZ0xxZfMMGx0kxxqocod

Maximises spell / disease damage and crit chance while still giving you lots of survivability.

Thoughts?