One of the harder items to judge as there are a lot of Plate Shoulders out there. This guide should prove useful on which shoulders are the best in slot.
Seems weird that a ilevel 200 item is better than your T7.5. Personally I would rather choose the T7.5 as your best item as Haste does little for most Death Knights unless they are DW.
The strangest thing about neck slot is everything has agility on it with an x amount of attack power. Most have a good amount of hit and crit as well. The question remains what is the best Neck piece for Death Knights. This really depends on your spec more so than anything else as Blood or Unholy will get more advantage from attack power, while Frost (DW) uses more Agility for its stats.
From the list it shows that Fool’s Trial is the best neck piece for all three specs which comes from Naxx Heroic. The nice thing that it can drop from four bosses, so you have a high chance of obtaining the item.
I am going to start with Head slot items. Some of these items can be obtainiable via Heroics, while some you will need to raid to get these items. Below is a direct link to the best Head slots for Death Knights. Remember this is DPS, I have yet to plan anything for tanking yet.
As you can see the best Helm slot is the Fire-Scorched Greathelm which drops from Naxx Heroic. Though if you have the Spiked Titansteel Helm you can see that will last you a long time probably until you get your T7.5 or the Fire-Scorched Greathelm.
Earlier today I decided to make a BiS (Best in Slot) item post for each class. I have been getting a lot of requests for them since my blog started. Now that I am using Death’s Bite on my DK, and have most of the gear to match, I can start working on a BiS post for everybody. I have decided to do this in a schedule over the next few weeks. I have some notes below of what you can expect to see in the next few weeks. My plan is to start with Death Knights and work my way down to Warriors. With patch 3.1 coming in the next few months these posts might not be updated until that time arrives. I am hoping to get even more BiS items once the patch has been released.
Some notes about it:
So it seems we may have gotten a slight nerf and a slight buff. One of major abilities in Pestilence no longer does damage. This is one change I am not to keen on as Pestilence is not just a disease spreader it is a damage dealer at the same time and is a staple for Unholy Death Knights. Unless your Blood, all Frost and Unholy Death Knights use thier disease to increase their DPS. Blood on the other hand does not need to use diseases as much unless they plan on using Pestilence. I know our diseases do not do very much for us other than lower resistances and do a minor DoT on the target, Pestilence was the major reason why to put diseases on the target. I think we can see some Unholy builds later without the use of diseases.
I am kind of skeptical on the Frost tree. Are they changing it for more DPS and bringing back the DW build that has been very famous, or are they nerfing it even more to where we have to go to Blood or Unholy? I do not like the choice that Blizzard is putting in front of us because they do not see many Blood or Frost Death Knights they will nerf one tree to see other specs be fulfilled. Personally I think that is wrong, as it is our choice on what spec to be. You give us the options, we just execute it.
I am not to sure on the UB and Gargoyle change. Something very much worth testing.
Over the last few weeks I have been doing some extensive testing on rotations and specs to see what 3.08 has given us. After a lot of testing I can finally give you the finalized rotations for all DPS specs. Also note I will not be listing a DW DPS rotation at the moment because there is still a lot of testing there to be done.
Blood
Normal: IT PS HS HS OB DC IT PS HS HS HS HS DC DC
AOE: IT PS Pest BB HS DC HS BB BB HS DC DC
Frost
Normal: PS IT BS BS OB FS PS IT OB OB FS FS
AOE: PS IT Pest BB HB FS
Unholy
Normal: IT PS BS BS SS UB SS SS SS DC DC
AOE: IT PS Pest BB SS UB SS BB BB SS DC DC
I have been doing some testing and testing other players out to see how good DW DPS is now seeing that 3.08 is out. From the looks of it Blizzard made a big change for Death Knights in terms of trees and specs. From what I have seen Unholy / Blood is made for 2H while Unholy / Frost is made for DW. With the huge nerf to Howling Blast this looks like to be the new rotation of choice.
Blood (0 points)
None
Frost (20 points)
3/3 Improved Icy Touch
2/2 Glacier Rot
2/2 Icy Reach
5/5 Black Ice
3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel
5/5 Killing Machine
Unholy (51 points)
2/2 Vicious Strikes
3/3 Morbidity
3/3 Virulence
3/3 Ravenous Dead
3/3 Outbreak
5/5 Necrosis
3/3 Blood-Caked Blade
1/1 Shadow of Death
5/5 Impurity
3/3 Reaping
1/1 Master of Ghouls
5/5 Desecration
2/2 Unholy Aura
3/3 Crypt Fever
3/3 Ebon Plaguebringer
5/5 Rage of Rivendare
1/1 Unholy Blight
The reason for no Howling Blast now is because the damage from Unholy Blight is so much greater. While Frost still is the number one DPS because it is based on spells, the new way of DW is based more on Melee over Spells. This means you do not need the 28% hit anymore, but back to a 9% hit that was found more on 2H if you were Unholy. While Unholy Blight does its damage over time, and not in a big hit like Howling Blast you will see that your spells and diseases benefit more from it.
The rotation is slightly different than that of a 0/32/39, but not by much.
IT > PS > IT > BS > IT > UB
Alandriel got over 5000 DPS using this spec and this rotation. A guild member of mine was roughly using the same build and the same rotation and came out on top with about 4500 DPS.
As it shows, this seems to be the best DW spec at the moment. While 0/32/39 is a great build, this one depends less on raid buffs, while 0/32/39 depends on to make it efficient.
Some changes in 3.0.8 for Death Knights have had some major effects to Death Knights in general. We know that Blood and Frost got major changes to them to where their specs might not be viable any longer. We do know that Unholy had minor changes to Gargoyle in reduce damage, and time. The nice thing is our Scourge Strike did not get any changes to it, and Unholy Blight got a buff in terms of DPS.
From some internal testing that I have done, the 17/0/54 standard Unholy build is perfect fine just with a minor change to your rotation. The new rotation is as follows:
PS > IT > SS > BS > BS > UB
SS > SS > SS > SS > UB
Seeing that Unholy Blight does more damage now than Deathcoil it is now viable to include Unholy Blight in your main rotation and it is best used to waste Runic Power over use a Deathcoil to dump Runic Power.
Some people might say that Desecration is not worth it anymore because of moving battles like Grobbulus. While correct, Desecration is still a nice damage boost. 5% extra damage is always a nice thing even if it is just for a few attacks.
The rotation above has been tested, and can do about 3000 DPS very easily. Depending on your gear, this rotation for Unholy can do as much as 5000 DPS. We will find out later in the week how useful Blood or Frost specs are for DPS.
I have been getting a lot of questions lately on what kind of enchants I should be getting for my Death Knight now that most Death Knights are hitting the level cap. From most Death Knights I see most are not enchanting their gear properly. I am hoping that the list below will help most people out.
Cloak
Major Agility – This helps a tad with DPS. It will give you an extra 22 Attack Power.
Chest
Powerful Stats – Increases all stats by 10. For you this is a nice enchant to put on as it will grant you 20 Attack Power.
Wrist
Greater Assault – A fine enchant as it grants you 50 Attack Power
Gloves
Crusher – Another fine enchant. 44 Attack Power
Legs
Icescale Leg Armor – A perfect match for you. Lots of Attack Power and Critical Strike Rating.
Boots
Greater Assault – Attack Power by 32
Icewalker – This is the more popular enchant as it grants hit and Critical Strike Rating, It should be noted if you are over hit cap than this enchant is useless for you. It would be better to put on Greater Assault.
I just read some blue posts on how some of the new changes are being dealt with. One change is Howling Blast now has a set rate on when it can go off. This is called PPM. All classes have this including Death Knights, but it seems they are altering it now to where you do not need a fast weapon to make it go off according to Ghostcrawler.
Killing Machine is a “ppm” now or a proc per minute. That means it will proc 5 times a minute with 5 ranks, depending on your weapon speed. We generally use ppm when we do not want players to
gravitate towards faster weapons with the sole purpose of improving proc rates.
Killing Machine now is based on autoattack hits, not crits. Overall the random element will decrease, but it won’t greatly benefit faster weapons. It will still benefit dual wield, just not as much.
Summon Gargoyle has also been changed, as Blizzard has reduced it’s time to 30 seconds and does about 20% less damage now. I do not see many Death Knights picking this up anymore because of the less damage he does. While I do not mind the time limit change as I use it when the boss is at less than 20% health.
Necrosis has been buffed by an extra 10% of shadow damage. While I can see this helping, this ability needed a bigger buff than 10%. It does almost no damage now, come patch day it will do a little more. Another waste of a talent for Unholy it seems.
And for everybody who likes to use Anti Magic Zone, well the spell has been shorten to 10 seconds from 30 seconds.
In general it looks like Death Knights are getting a big nerf for their DPS, while tanking is getting a nice sized buff. I am not sure how this will effect the community at large, but I do not think we will see as many Death Knights as we are used to.
