emzdarth
Grandfathered
I've been wanting to write this for a while, the status of the death knight class in the 70 twinking community. From what i see, a lot of people are blind to this subject so i'd like to spread some light. First off I've been a 70 dk since 5.2 or so. I've seen this class at its height and its lowest. The thing is, Dk is not bad, and it never was bad(To a certain extent). Dk in the opinion of most is honestly a really easy class to play, it seems really boring, therefore no one really plays it. With the beginning of the prepatch to now i think dk has gone through its most difficult time. The stat squish made mid-maxing really difficult, and the reworking of death strike completely made the class unplayable. (Before this point Death strike was a set heal for a certain amount of runic power. You spend runes to get runic power. Now its retarded and its based off how much damage you take before you use death strike specifically thirty percent of the damage you take is healed, great for blunt damage but not for burst which was the meta at the time) Dk couldn't really compete with any other classes due to their self-healing and hybrid classes being the meta. In order to beat most classes i'd have to resort to means such as having a set haste, critical, vers and strength stat. If you went into one single stat as either unholy or frost, you couldn't outlast them, or out damage them. With having the neck heal or belt tinker to heal was the only possible way i could beat another 70 twink. To be more specific you couldn't stack a certain stat for example if you stacked strength, your runes wouldn't regen fast enough for you to gain runic power to heal if you can't heal then you die too fast to damage them down, because other classes could heal way faster then you could. **This is the reason my gear and stats are all over the place.**
But now with 8.1 death strike was buffed, making it semi decent and making dk viable a bit, along with transfusion which is a new pvp talent. (Generates 20 Runic Power and reduces the Runic Power cost of Death Strike by 50% for 7 sec.) This being on a 45 second cd. From what i see you could endlessly heal in theory if you had the perfect haste/vers ratio. Thus the resurgence of dk's is because of this, due to your power to heal you can now do suitable dmg enough to kill most classes now. Frost burst, and unholy blunt dmg and disease spread was always really good, but you couldn't do the dmg because you couldn't survive to that point. Now since you can people are thinking dk is really good. From my perspective it was always good, its just better now because its potential is being shown.
If you are thinking you want to twink a dk, take what i say with a grain of salt. I would suggest playing dk for sure, you start at 58 and 12 levels are nothing now with the leveling buff. But don't think for a second its going to be easy to twink a dk, because it isn't. Learning restraint and control of runic power/runes is kinda hard, if you just spam buttons a seasoned dk can see this and take advantage of this fact. Remember if you have no runic power you can't heal, you just can't its not like most classes though somewhat simple it has mini complications. I wanted to write this due to i'm seeing people saying Dk is op, such and such is really good at dk now. No that's not what happened. Dk was always good no one ever played it and the people who did were bad(including myself) This painted a bad color for the class and it made me sad seeing me being the only active dk twinking in this bracket, and other brackets suffered as well. Now with its potential being shown its likely many people are going to make dk's, but know its not a cakewalk like you may think it is.
For those of whom who want to play dk to its fullest extent, i would say the most difficult part of being a dk is the power to take shit from other people. If you can't do this, there's no point. You will get shit on, i bet some levelers with some pvp background could beat a dk who just got full bis. As you need to learn restraint on using your runic power on a whim. With that your runes as well. Two runes could mean life or death in some situations. The best advice i could give for unholy and frost is this and the advice i gave to rottenjaffar(Sam) is trial and error, somethings work for certain situations and somethings don't. For example you could just blindly burst and spam death strike with using cds when needed. Or kite your enemy and bait their cds then burst and use your cds when needed. Some people dont really expect a dk to trash on them because they're told dk is awful when that's far from the truth as I've expressed. You could use that to your advantage. With blood, blood has always been really good in pvp and pve respectably due to your power to heal, where the other specs lack in. This is why the other specs are now good, because they have the power to heal. I've mained blood in pve and pvp. They've always been really amazing tanks, and good flag carriers.
With gearing; As I've said, its impossible to stack a certain stack and be able to compete with another class due to the imbalance, the example being if your runes dont regen fast enough, your dmg doesn't really matter because you can't survive to the point where it matters. Unholy and frost have a innate crit% which is pretty high, a healthy amount i'd say is above 20 or even 25%. Haste is really important for a dk because its your lifeblood. No haste means no runes to gain runic power, no runic power means you can't heal. 14-17% Haste is ideal and your runes regen at a rate for which you can compete with most classes that are a healing hybrid. Vers and your hp you can sacrifice a bit, but i'd suggest between 6.7k-7.5k hp, and 8-11 percent vers. With 480-500 strength. This has been the most comfortable build for me, my burst is amazing, and i'm able to heal to a extent where i dont die early on so my dmg shines. <-( This is a dmg perspective i'm not getting into tanking as it'll make this post way longer then it already is or needs to be.)
To conclude this, i believe the resurgence of dk's in the bracket will either be the best thing or worst thing. I just decided since i couldn't sleep to put my views of the death knight class at 70. Since I've been playing the class at this point 4 years of my life
