"How to solo", a Death Knight dungeonning guide.

[Boii]

Many thanks for these comprehensive answers.
You should know that apart from the warrior I have no proficiency with the other classes. I have always been a warrior.
But I like to play the other classes to know their strengths and weaknesses in case I have to face them.
Furthermore, when you have finished min-maxing your main, when after having spent entire weeks doing the same dungeon for the much desired 3-socket belt, once the brief moment of enthusiasm has passed, don't you feel a sense of emptiness?
As Illidan says to Maiev once defeated: the huntress is nothing without the hunt.
That's why I start a new toon.
I've always loved death knights, I like their style and their lore.
The last time I played one seriously was in wotlk when in every spec both tanking and dps were allowed.
But a lot of things has changed since then.
So if I understand it, the damage is "normal as it is", it's not me doing something wrong.
I'll try versatility instead of mastery to see if it improves damage, and other small adjustments.
Thank you

Yep! I forgot, dks need consumables much more than other classes (sharpening stones and such)

And RP ftw, they have a good power level when kitted out even min-maxed that they arent OP when questing.

 

[Boii]

Ah my bad I misunderstood
Okay then you can go for some mastery no problem and as @Boii said you can keep the crusader. To be fair your toon is already extremely impressive as is so I'm not sure I would tweak much around besides the talents as we don't really have anything as generally useful as the talent tree in my previous post. As I said Runic attenuation is bad (for Unholy/Blood) and Brittle is basically a worse and unreliable stoneskin gargoyle.
Haste is still our best stat for runes/runic power generation but Unholy and Frost have less of an issue with those since they have https://www.wowhead.com/spell=51462/runic-corruption and https://www.wowhead.com/spell=81229/runic-empowerment to help.
I still stand by proc effects not being optimal on such a class but then again if you stack them you might get a decent enough uptime that it'll be worth it.
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle brings much needed, reliable damage and survivability that is invaluable to make the class reliable for soloing purposes so while it may be a bit inferior to Crusader for pure DPS, it's sadly the least of out concerns as DKs.
And yeah I'm not sure you're gonna be seeing 4 digit numbers besides in PvP depending on the scaling of your abilities of which I sadly have no clue about.


How do you do such miracles (how does obliterate do more than FS) haha ? I'd assume those numbers are based off of having absolutely every proc when hitting because you sure as hell aren't getting those reliably (unless you're talking about PvP in which case I am unaware of the scaling so I may very well be way off).



https://www.wowhead.com/spell=81229/runic-empowerment





I'd have to disagree on that. The ghoul can be summonned when needed, is more reliable and has useful abilities. I really dislike Brittle and while it may be slightly better 1v1 for pure DPS you miss out on https://www.wowhead.com/spell=316916/cleaving-strikes which is far superior for damage.


Now to be extra nitpicky I'm not sure you can afford that for soloing but other than that yeah 100% go frost strike.


Respectfully, no. Versa is better, bringing slightly less (0.2% per point versus 0.22% per point) damage but better survivability. And honestly when you take in consideration the 8% baseline mastery, you don't even get that much more damage from mastery at the beginning. Mastery's defensive part is not that strong anyways, it's a technical x% effectiveness increase to your death strike that only works on physical hits. Versa is more reliable and we have big cooldowns to heal where a bit more healing from DS don't really matter anyways if used well.

Overall nitpicks, you know your stuff damn well mate. I'm entierly sure you know the class better than I do if I'm to be honest haha, ty for your insight.

Runic empowerment! I swear its not in ny spellbook but yeah thats what has been going on XD

The most important thing is playing how you have fun. I never thought my DK would end up topping my hunter in dps and it doesn’t, but its hella more fun haha

 

[Boii]

How do you do such miracles (how does obliterate do more than FS) haha ? I'd assume those numbers are based off of having absolutely every proc when hitting because you sure as hell aren't getting those reliably (unless you're talking about PvP in which case I am unaware of the scaling so I may very well be way off).

Both str proc and on use active (when using darkmaster talisman), as well as crusader proc, and getting double crits. If i were in a RDF group and had the 15% more damage it would be wild, but this was just on training dummies XD

 

[Boii]

found a few things out, currently my damage output is higher with TW runeblade of rivendare than a crow wing reaper with 3 +3 str gems, apparently the wep damage and 17 vers outdoes 9 str. so for blood dks, that would be best unless needing the socket slots. also, if you want to try to swap between weapons for the different enchants, there is an off-balance debuff i got when swapping out RUNEFORGED weapons, does not trigger with regular weapon enchants. it disables runeforge enchants for 1 minute. also to reiterate here, blood does do the best pve damage, i am now getting 1.4k death strikes and suffice to say, my frost does MEGA aoe damage but not even close to that kind of single target savagery....


then theres my hunter thats getting 3.1k mongoose bites XD
i love the DK playstyle and lore, so im gonna be sticking with the less dps output in favor of my enjoyment, although i truly enjoy frost more than blood. If only a rework happened in favor of that XD

 

[orcgazmatron]

If only a rework happened in favor of that XD

t h i s ^
MAN do I wish they'd roll us back to SL available abilities!
Like.. why do we have to put a talent point into a single ability at the top of our chart? Why isn't that just granted?
'Illusion of choice' for sure.

Curious 'bout your kit tho... Is the toon a work in progress, or dripping af?

 

[Boii]

t h i s ^
MAN do I wish they'd roll us back to SL available abilities!
Like.. why do we have to put a talent point into a single ability at the top of our chart? Why isn't that just granted?
'Illusion of choice' for sure.

Curious 'bout your kit tho... Is the toon a work in progress, or dripping af?

Eh, hes pretty much drippy. Farming the enchant on my alt, got everything including recipe but skill points for the +5 str on wrist and need a new mark of the claw for the neck. Then if i really am autistic ill farm the 3 socket waist belt, but pretty much done i enjoy him as is

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/character/us/alleria/dauðar

 

[CroyeTchor]

found a few things out, currently my damage output is higher with TW runeblade of rivendare than a crow wing reaper with 3 +3 str gems, apparently the wep damage and 17 vers outdoes 9 str. so for blood dks, that would be best unless needing the socket slots. also, if you want to try to swap between weapons for the different enchants, there is an off-balance debuff i got when swapping out RUNEFORGED weapons, does not trigger with regular weapon enchants. it disables runeforge enchants for 1 minute. also to reiterate here, blood does do the best pve damage, i am now getting 1.4k death strikes and suffice to say, my frost does MEGA aoe damage but not even close to that kind of single target savagery....


then theres my hunter thats getting 3.1k mongoose bites XD
i love the DK playstyle and lore, so im gonna be sticking with the less dps output in favor of my enjoyment, although i truly enjoy frost more than blood. If only a rework happened in favor of that XD

God damn that's a nice thing to know ty very much.
TW Rivendare is much less painful to farm than crow wing but crow wing has the nice advantage of being available anytime (though for the time being TW Rivendare kinda is too).
I wouldn't count out crow wing as future scaling might make it better again (so many sockets on a solid weapon can always find some use) while making it tougher to farm than it is currently so while TW Rivendare may be better for now, maybe get yourself a crow wing while scaling is in our favor just in case.

1.4k Death Strikes is trippy, my DK with 180 strength, 15% versa, 26% mastery (weapon is classic Rivendare) can barely get 1k with crits outside of procs/trinkets. With the latter two it's a different story but it's not too reliable.
Blood's AoE is nice in that it is uncapped (and we have so many AoE tools outside of blood boil that I'd argue it's one of the best AoE toolikits at 20) but Frost is so much cooloer (no pun intended).
I fall in the same boat as you though I only play Blood for soloing, Frost has too much appeal to me ^^

 

[Boii]

If we ever get access to +4 str gems the socketed weapons might do better but so far doesnt look that way to me

 

[CroyeTchor]

If we ever get access to +4 str gems the socketed weapons might do better but so far doesnt look that way to me

Yep if there is one sad occurence to have happened with TWW scaling, this one may be the saddest one.

But hey who knows, maybe future scaling will shft thing around
To be honest I'd love if we could get rid of sockets on dungeon drops (and only have them via crafting like current DF necks work) and have all gear on a similar scale (as in not DF's mess and TW gear not better than standard dungeon gear). This way we could use anything, how nice would that be ?

 

[orcgazmatron]

Yep if there is one sad occurence to have happened with TWW scaling, this one may be the saddest one.

But hey who knows, maybe future scaling will shft thing around
To be honest I'd love if we could get rid of sockets on dungeon drops (and only have them via crafting like current DF necks work) and have all gear on a similar scale (as in not DF's mess and TW gear not better than standard dungeon gear). This way we could use anything, how nice would that be ?

I want the Cata gems to scale on par with TBC... shoot, why not ALL the gems outside of Current Content scale on par with present TBC gems.