My DK dps isn't cutting it

[Sta]

Hey there~ I'm having problems with my DK's DPS, i see some players with the same gearscore as me out-shining me by 1-2k dps. I have a 5351 Gs and use that citadel claymore from marrogar. in randoms im 100% fine because the AoE from heart strike helps alot, but on single target it drops

here's my rough rotation on a single target raid boss: Plague strike > Icy touch > Death strike > Heart Strike > Heart strike > Death coil > Death coil > Deathstrike > Heart Strike > Heart Strike > Heart Strike > Heart Strike > Death coil > Death coil > Heart Strike > Heart Strike.

At this time all my runes will be on CD so i will pop Empower rune weapon and repeat that rotation but putting in a Blood Tap somewhere to refresh a rune.

To me that looks 100% flawless but im STILL not doing any special dps. Probably about 4.4k dps on Marrogar. I'm 2/5 on scourgelord armor too so i get the nice 7% damage from HS...

Oh and my name is Ceyn on darkmoon fairy EU if anyone wants to check me out to see a more detailed profile

my talents are 50/0/21

[Falaras]

Wait what you do 4.4k DPS with the 30% buff? I'm not a DK so I can't really help you but just looking at your armory you don't do the normal things that I would expect from someone doing that much damage (Gemming Stupidly, Enchanting Stupidly, Spending badges stupidly, stupidly.

[rithridan]

if you could supply something like a WoL then it'd be easier to see what you are doing differently that makes your dps drop. Maybe in Marrowgars case you aren't dpsing during bonestorms as well as the other dps are.

[Sta]

Wait what you do 4.4k DPS with the 30% buff? I'm not a DK so I can't really help you but just looking at your armory you don't do the normal things that I would expect from someone doing that much damage (Gemming Stupidly, Enchanting Stupidly, Spending badges stupidly, stupidly.

nah i came back to WoW so that was before the buff, i just done the 1st 4 bosses in ICC and my dps is currently 5.5k

[Sta]

if you could supply something like a WoL then it'd be easier to see what you are doing differently that makes your dps drop. Maybe in Marrowgars case you aren't dpsing during bonestorms as well as the other dps are.

WoL?

[Norellicus]

World of logs; if you don't know what it is, there probably isn't a record on it so don't think about it too much...but you could ask your guild, see if anyone else was running it.

[Norellicus]

Your gear looks okay, though I would focus on replacing the gladiator pieces asap for pve use; resilience on pve gear is wasted item budget.

Your spec needs a little work, and you have one useless glyph (you don't have Unholy Blight as a blood spec). Try shifting it around to something more like this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jfVMVh...Zf0hGxc:LqGMm0

Should help a bit.

(I left out DRW due to feedback from most people at how underwhelming it is; if you'd rather have it, move a point from Outbreak and replace the PS glyph with DRW)

[Arcana]

i'd move away from blood as a spec on a death knight for dps as soon as possible, its not great & unholy and frost will outshine blood on any boss in ICC.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

Switch to Unholy 2-hand.

It's been 4-5 months since I've played DK, but I think the rotation went like:

Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Blood Strike > Scourge Strike > Blood Strike > Death Coil burn > Scourge Strike x2 > Death Coil burn > Re-apply disease, repeat

Save Gargoyle for Heroism, or use on CD if it's a lengthier fight. I enjoyed Blood and thought I could hang with other specs... I switched within a couple hours later. It's just not the besti dea if you want the "best" DPS. Not absolutely horrible, but yeah.

[Gulkeeva]

There are some other small factors like...! your fps/latency which can decide your dps by a good 1000 +/- also.

Like theirs another hunter in guild we just recently recruited.. has "almost" identical gear as me just missing 2 277's T10.

He matches my dps almost on fights like... saurfang, but any graphic intensive fight say... festergut/rotface (even if he never gets slime/puke gas etc) his dps is anywhere from 1000-3000dps behind me, because he plays at like 300ms at 5fps.

[Tricen]

Post armory for the lazy peoples (aka me). Blood spec is rather outdated in general, and Forst/Unholy is just better for the raid environment.

[seph32]

Switch to Frost dualwield.

Fixed

Anyhow Blood spec only becomes viable with capped ArP which isn't likely you'd be getting anytime soon. But Frost goes ahead of all 3 specs still

[Mugekuge]

Well yea dps wise frost is a bit better than unholy but if you are on a raiding guild and there is more than 1 dk, you could go unholy for raid buffs depending what other dk is.

[Reii]

If there is no regular Unholy DK in your raid, you should switch to 2Hand Unholy DPS. If there is one already, then consider switching to DualWield Frost DPS, but be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on the target dummy to get used to Frost's priority cycle. If you don't have ilvl 251 or better 1-handers then being a second Unholy DPS DK isn't too bad, better than blood still i feel.

edit: Just looked at your gear, looks like you made the switch to Unholy. Firstly, your gloves are missing an enchant, 15 strength would be the best, and i believe 23 haste on cloak is still better than agility for DKs. Your gear looks OK, but your gearscore is technically inflated because you are WAY overcapped on hit. You only need 8% melee hit (7% since you're a draenei, but you might want to stay at slightly above 8% melee hit so you also cap your spell hit for when you use Glyph of Disease). If you have other decent gear lying around, try swapping out what you can, or work on getting replacements asap. Your meta gem also isn't optimal, you should be using Chaotic Sky-something Diamond, use a Nightmare Tear in probably your gloves or bracers to fill the meta requirement and pick up a +4 strength socket bonus at the same time. You will want to carry around stacks of the following Glyphs too to swap around for Single Target and AOE fights: Glyph of the Ghoul and Glyph of Dark Death for Single Target // Glyph of Disease and Glyph of Death and Decay for heavy AOE fights, not much use for AOE glyphs in Icecrown Citadel though unless your guild somehow lacks sufficient AOE.

[Sta]

If there is no regular Unholy DK in your raid, you should switch to 2Hand Unholy DPS. If there is one already, then consider switching to DualWield Frost DPS, but be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on the target dummy to get used to Frost's priority cycle. If you don't have ilvl 251 or better 1-handers then being a second Unholy DPS DK isn't too bad, better than blood still i feel.

edit: Just looked at your gear, looks like you made the switch to Unholy. Firstly, your gloves are missing an enchant, 15 strength would be the best, and i believe 23 haste on cloak is still better than agility for DKs. Your gear looks OK, but your gearscore is technically inflated because you are WAY overcapped on hit. You only need 8% melee hit (7% since you're a draenei, but you might want to stay at slightly above 8% melee hit so you also cap your spell hit for when you use Glyph of Disease). If you have other decent gear lying around, try swapping out what you can, or work on getting replacements asap. Your meta gem also isn't optimal, you should be using Chaotic Sky-something Diamond, use a Nightmare Tear in probably your gloves or bracers to fill the meta requirement and pick up a +4 strength socket bonus at the same time. You will want to carry around stacks of the following Glyphs too to swap around for Single Target and AOE fights: Glyph of the Ghoul and Glyph of Dark Death for Single Target // Glyph of Disease and Glyph of Death and Decay for heavy AOE fights, not much use for AOE glyphs in Icecrown Citadel though unless your guild somehow lacks sufficient AOE.

Thanks for this~ some nice advice

I done about 10 randoms in unholy spec to get used to it and my highest DPS was about 4.5k and that was when our tank pulled a ton of mobs and we had no other decent AoE, i wasn't impressed. In the end i lost my patience and switched back to a blood spec on elitistjerks.com~ i was impressed, i topped out at 5.1k in PoS then another 5k in a few other randoms. There's huge dps boost in blood every few minutes (or bosses) where i wait for DM card: greatness and wait for my trink to proc and then pop hysteria then ghoul then DRW lol it was fun.

Anyways~ since pretty much everyone i talk to says unholy will outshine in most situations these says, i think i'll play that a little more to get used to it.

I followed that exact rotation that Zanz posted, i realy was losting my patience with it. I spend 10 mins on the 3 dolls testing and pushing my DPS as high as i could get it... even with pets out i would only hit 5.5k MAX.
I saw a nice unholy DK in my ICC25 man with a 6k gearscore, with all his buffs and the tanks pulling both trashrooms at once his DPS went well over 12k~ i woulda loved to have been an AoEr during that run~

Any tips of getting my DPS up as unholy? (other than ones already said ofc)

[Reii]

Like DRW, align your trinket procs and such before popping gargoyle, haste pot >before< calling the garg helps too, same with bloodlust/heroism. Target dummy dps is probably not accurate depending on whoever else is on the dummy at the time, their debuffs may skew your results (things like sunder armor, faerie fire, totem of wrath etc). Also if the dummy is down to 1hp necrosis will only do 1 damage. Consider's Unholy thread on EJ is the best resource available to you, read it thoroughly, it was my bible when i played Unholy. Keep up bone shield and manage your ghoul, perfect your rotation and you should see results. Swapping/changing your gear/enchants like i told you to will help too. If you want maximum results, drop mining for Jewelcrafting for 3 x Bold Dragonseyes.

ps: Also i wouldn't take anything outside of 25mans as an even decent gauge of dps, not even target dummies. Make sure your damage meter of choice also adds your pet damage to yours and not list them seperately, the ghoul is a decent portion of your damage.

[Mugekuge]

Every time someone ask about dk dps i just tell them to check this link, very good and nice information about rotations on all specs, check it out!:

http://www.ensidia.com/forum_topic.p...topic_id=30191

I am not sure about gems, so mostly a question, which is better for dk nightmare tear(+10 all stats) or a sovereign dreadstone (10str,15sta)?, i use sovereign atm.

[Siniroth]

Nightmare Tear for sure, 10 Agi > 5 stam

[Tricen]

Nightmare tear is superior.

Tips for unholy:

Make a macro for bone shield and blood tap, so you don't interrupt your rotation when you bone shield is about to fall off.

When you summon your gargoyle, face your character away from the boss when you cast it, so that it will NOT melee the boss, and use gargoyle strike instead. This is pretty significant. You only need to be turned around for the cast, and that's it, you can turn back around when the gargoyle pops out.

I would suggest looking into disease twisting when you become serious with your dps maximization. It's a pretty complex thing, so I won't bother with it right now.

Expertise isn't that important for unholy as it is with other classes, so 26 is optional. You can be at around 21 expertise and be fine.

Pre-potting isn't unholy specific, all classes gain a good chunk of dps from it, but I would suggest it anyways. Using a pot 1-2seconds before a pull gives you access to another pot during the fight, which is pretty significant if your fight are 2 gargoyles or longer. Most fights have BL bein popped at the start, so you get a BLd 'goyle and a potted 'goyle assuming the boss doesn't die quickly.

Make sure your pt is on passive, and only have claw and maybe leap checked for its abilities being used, gnaw just uses unnecessary energy and bosses are usually immune to it anyways.

Uhhhhhhhhhh Anti-Magic Shield is amazing, use it in appropriate fights for free death coils, etc.

Can't think of anything else. Hit things hard, hit them often, and make sure you stay alive. Thats about it.

[Sta]

but your gearscore is technically inflated because you are WAY overcapped on hit. You only need 8% melee hit (7% since you're a draenei, but you might want to stay at slightly above 8% melee hit so you also cap your spell hit for when you use Glyph of Disease). If you have other decent gear lying around, try swapping out what you can, or work on getting replacements asap.

What do you mean overcapped on hit? and what do you mean replacments? D: replacements for what?