The Gaming Lizard

Welcome to another post of Unliving after a long break. This week, we shall touch upon the topic of Dual Wielding [one of my personal fave build]. 3.2 brings to DK the one solution to DW problems: Threat of Thassarian

This DW post shall be about Frost DW, not Unholy DW.

So what's the appeal of DW Frost? Ans: You like holding 2 weapons instead of one effing big mace! [No, really] And if you like Frost spec, 2H builds are prolly dead.

If you read my previous post on Frost 2H [Before 3.2], Frost DW shares the same unique abilities as 2H. You'll get to see huge amount of crits, sometimes your crit rate of Oblit and FS will surpass that of non-crits.

o/53/15

This is the basic skeleton of Frost DW build. The 3 points depends on your preference on 2 talents:

Subversion: It gives you reduced threat and 9% extra crit rate to your Oblits and BS

or

Blood-Caked Blade: Gives you another passive attack to your normal attacks based on your diseases. According to what I've seen, BCB gives about 3% of your DPS. Since crit-rates are so RNG based, it's impossible to gauge how much DPS Subversion provides.


As DW Frost, STR is still your best stats follow by Hit Rating, Expertise and ArPen.

You need Slow/Slow weapons in your both hands. Runeforging is RazorIce/FC

As for Hit Rating, once you reach 8% [which is the Hit cap for your Strikes], HR value decreases to 1.2. The talent Nerves of Cold Steel gives you 3% HR, which means you only need 5% from gear. White hits HR is 27% which is near impossible to get.

Expertise cap is 6.5% and stops dodges from appearing.

Sigils: Currently, Awareness beats Vengeful Heart since Oblit is your No.1 attack. It is currently unknown if Virulence, bought with Triumph badges, is better than Awareness.


DW follows the priority system:

Diseases > Oblit > BS > BS > FS/HoW > Oblit > Oblit > Oblit > FS

That's 2 runes cycle. Rinse and repeat. As a general rule, if you miss/parried a Blood Strike you'll notice your blood rune will turn into Death Rune. If you find yourself missing BS, go for Oblit if your FU runes have refreshed or Frost strike.

Always prioritize Oblit over FS. Try to time Rime Procs with Killing Machine. Use Rime Procs before going into the Runic Dump phase [aka FS]



So this ends the DW Frost part of Unliving3.2, stay tune for Blood 2H sometime next week! [Maybe] As usual, any questions and comments can be directed here.

3.2 DK Talent Calculator

So now that 3.2 is out, all DKs should find their talents resetted. The new patch brought new significant changes to both the Unholy Tree and the Frost Tree, enough to make you decide if you want to stay as a particular spec of DK. Let us go through the new DK changes.

General

• Blood Plague & Frost Fever deals 15% more damage
  A really awesome buff to DKs, especially to Unholy DKs and anyone taking Black Ice talent

Blood

• Bloody Strikes: This talent now provides 5/10/15% increased damage to Blood Strike instead of 15/30/45%.
  A small nerf to prevent Blood DKs from using the newly buffed BS too much, thou currently BS damage is back to its 3.1 form. It's a nerf for Blood DKs during Hodir trash since HS is counted as a AoE attack
• Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
  No more waiting for your RP to cap at 100 or 110 depending on spec
• Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
  Small nerf, nothing much

Frost

• Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 3/6/10%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
  It's a buff to Frost DW builds since you dont have to spend excessive points in the talent. As for 2H builds, it frees up some talent points for utility talents
  
• Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
  Does not bother a DPS DK
  
• Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
  This new talent breathes new life into DW once again, making Frost the premiere tree to go for DW. Now, DW DKs will favor 2 slow handers. More on DW to come soon(tm)
  
• Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.
  Does not bother a DPS DK
• Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
  A straight nerf to FS, nerfing the already crippled FS damage for 2H just to keep DW damage in check
  

Unholy

• Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
  Makes Desolation purely for tanking only, nerfing a DPS DK graphical coolness.
  
• Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
  Appears to be a nerf since the damage buff will likely fall off before you can use BS again. On movement fights, it might prove to be a dps increase over the old Desolation
  
• Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%
Straight nerf to SS, some have theorize that Obliterate will surpass SS for Unholy at high ArPen

• Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
  A buff, you no longer have to worry about your gargoyle flying away if you dont have enough RP left.
  
• Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 20% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.
  One less button for Unholy DK to push, a nerf for Unholy DK's AoE

So to sum it up, this patch buffs Blood, DW Frost DKs and nerfs 2H Frost DKs. Whether the new changes to Unholy is a buff or nerf remains to be seen. Until then the next post, cya

Ah well, Dual Wielding Deathknights had a good run since WotLK comes out and all this dreams will/may end after Patch 3.1. I myself is a dual wielding fan, and ever since WotLK is on the beta, I've been messing around with DK talent calc. for the "perfect" DW talent spec. Heck, I even fork out 3k for a [Avool Sword of Jin] And I still say Suck it to all naysayers who believe DKs can only hold big bloody runeblades.

So what killed the legendary 0/32/39 ?

• Hungering Cold and Howling Blast have switched places in the talent tree.

So Howling Blast is now Frost's 51st talent while the underused, almostuseless Hungering Cold becomes the 31st talent. As 0/32/39, our only main double rune nuke is Howling Blast (FU). Without HB, DW have to find another kind of specs for 3.1

• Summon Gargoyle moved from Tier 5 to Tier 11.

Mr.Gargoyle, another of 0/32/39 main "nuke" so as to speak, is gone as well. In its place is Unholy Blight, previously Unholy's 51st talent, is lack luster compared to Mr.Gargoyle.

• Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) now has a 3 sec internal cooldown.

No more chaining of BCB, which forms a significant portion of DW attacks.

• Necrosis (Tier 3) now only affects main hand auto attacks. (Previously affected all auto-attacks)

So only MH weapon can trigger Necrosis, a straight nerf to damage.

• Black Ice (Tier 2) increases your frost damage by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Previously 6/12/18/24/30%)

While Black Ice nerfed our damage, it'll interesting to see if it's offset by the Glacier Rot buff.

So, with the death of 0/32/39, where should a DW DK's talent points go? On paper, I'd say being at least 51 in Unholy is the way to go if you insist on DWing. You get a Ghoul, more disease damage which is not dependent on your weapon damage, and the buff to Scourge Strike could be *slightly* helpful as its 5% less dependent on weapon damage.

We'll see...Comments? Ideas?