DK DPS and YOU!

Hi folks! As we are getting a fresh pair of DK dps machines I figured it might be useful to put what I've picked up on my travels into a little post on this here blog thingummajig. So with no further ado:

How to be a DPS DK (or more diseases please we like it dirty!)

Before we get onto spec choices lets get some basics out of the way first:

ATTACK FROM BEHIND!!!

Bosses in Naxx are gonna be bigger and uglier than anything you've come across on your travels and they will be able to kill you in one swing. If you attack them from the front you give them a chance to parry your attacks which means they'll stop you hitting them and will promptly smack you in the face. Death will ensue, tanks will giggle, healers will point and laugh and those wimpy ranged dps will look at you down their noses. Don't be that guy (or girl) stand behind the boss.

• Hit Rating: As bosses in Naxx are level 83 it means that they are harder to hit than mobs the same level as you. 8% harder to hit in fact. This means that in order to hit a boss every time you swing for it you will need enough rating to improve your chance to hit by 8%. This is a magic number that is calculated through the use of chicken sacrifices and dancing in underpants. To save you the trouble (chicken blood gets everywherelet me tell you!) I can tell you that the magic number is... 263! This will do you for now on hit rating. There are further considerations but for now just worry about getting reasonably close to that number. This is probably the first thing you want to look at as even if you hit like a truck, if you miss, the boss is just gonna laugh at you :o(
• Expertise: After getting "hit capped" the next thing to stop bosses sneakily avoiding our damage is to try and stop them dodging our meaty hitting stick. Bosses get a 6.5% chance to dodge your blows so you will need 214 Expertise Rating (or 26 Expertise as it's shown on your character pane) to avoid them dodging you. I wouldn't worry too much about this one for Naxx as you are likely to have a fairly limited amount of access to gear in the time remaining that would let you balance stats and things to get expertise capped. Hell Infester aint even close and he puts out kick-ass dps :o)
• Primary stat: For DPS DK's Strength is the be all and end all of stats. It is the sugar coating on our cream pie of delicious awesomeness. Stack it to the hills boys and girls. Learn to love your bulging muscles! I could give lots of good reasons why STR is better than AP or Crit but you would get bored so just accept it. Strength Rocks!
• Runeforging: The only rune that you will want to use for DPS right now is the Rune of the Fallen Crusader. It grants more strength and we all know how obsessed we are with that right?

Specs:

What spec you play is totally up to you. I know from experience that some specs just play nicer than others. I for example absolutely love playing Unholy. Nothing better than being a lean mean disease spreading machine! Having said that here is an example spec for each tree that I have blatently stolen from ElitistJerks.com. Have a look onthe site if you want but remember this...They plunge the depths of geekiness so that we don't have to! Millions of pages of excel spreadsheets were sacrificed to the god of numbers in order to bring you these ridiculously over tweaked specs.

A few notes beforehand to help you decipher the geek speak:

The Rotation section on each spec is a recommended order of using your various abilities. I realise this is gettingto the point where we are basically telling you how to play your character. Please don't feel you have to do exactly what is written here. This is just a guide and if you can get close (or even just pick up some ideas) when you're playing you'll be fine. I know from my experiments that hidden under what are pretty simple orderings are very clever methods of making best use of every talent point that you have picked up. Still the main point is take the ideas here and go play with them to see what works for you.

Abbreviations:

• IT = Icy Touch
• PS = Plague Strike
• HS = Heart Strike
• DS = Death Strike
• SS = Scourge Strike
• DC = Death Coil.

Blood:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stZfzhhxc:IpGMmV

Glyphs:

• Dancing Rune Weapon
• Death Strike
• Dark Death

Rotation:

• IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-DC
• DS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC

Frost:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jZG0exAbczf0cuzAofM0hxM

Glyphs:

• Frost Strike
• Obliterate
• Icy Touch
  

Frost seems to play more with a priority systems than a rotation so the idea here is to do the action that is highest on this list if it is available:

1. Killing Machine -> Rime
2. Killing Machine -> Frost Strike
3. Keep Frost Fever up
4. Keep Blood Plague up
5. Obliterate
6. Blood Srike
7. Frost Strike
8. Rime
9. Horn of Winter

Unholy (My personal favourite! No bias here honest;o):

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMMZZfM0Ixcdg0ux0uIqo:LsbMmV

Glyphs:

• Dark Death
• Icy Touch
• the Ghoul
  

Rotation:

• PS-IT–BS–BS–SS–DC–HoW
• SS–DC–SS–SS–DC

Minor Glyphs are the same for all specs:

• Horn of Winter
• Pestilence
• Raise Dead

I think that's more than enough to get you going for now. Take a look at the specs (they may not be too different to what you already have) and see what you think. I look forward to getting hit in the face so that you can be as awesome as you can be.

Also if you're up for some serious geekage check out: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/

Have fun!

Meatshield and button masher extraordinaire G.