An Unholy Terror

I returned from my holiday trip this weekend to my roommate informing me that DW Unholy is not only a viable spec but is also a lot of fun. I dabbled in Unholy ages ago, but since 4.0 I was sitting on a Blood spec I pretty much never used because that's what happens when your roommate is addicted to tanking. He nudged me to give it another try, and in between my struggles with Yellow Dot Syndrome I ran a couple Heroics with it.

My first impression of DW Unholy, post-Cataclysm, is that it is fast. The Runic Corruption talent speeds up the notably slowed-down rune refresh rate, and combined with Reaping you almost always have some resources to use. Festering Strike becomes part of your regular rotation, so you don't have to worry too much about refreshing your diseases. Wrath Unholy was a strict rotation spec, whereas Frost at the time was notable for the procs. Unholy has procs now too, most significantly Dark Transformation, which turns your ghoul into a bigger, nastier monster, and Sudden Doom, which gives you a free Death Coil.

Initially I was a little disappointed to see the different specs lose their flavor - it's like if DW Arms was suddenly a viable Warrior spec - but I really enjoyed Unholy for the few hours I got to play it. Once I've had a little longer to experiment with it I'll have more to say beyond my first impressions.

Death Knight 101: What Makes a Tanking Spec?

I mentioned in my last post that there are tanking options in every talent tree, but that you wouldn't want to use exactly the same spec for tanking that you do for DPS. So what sets a tanking spec apart from a DPS spec when they're both in the same tree?

The Big Three
Each tree has a first-tier talent that's a must-have for tanking: Blade Barrier in Blood, Toughness in Frost, and Anticipation in Unholy. Once you've filled out your chosen tree to the 51-point talent, these should be your next priority if you plan to tank while leveling. No level 80 tanking spec should ever be lacking these talents! You can use these as a cheat sheet in PuGs to see if your DK tank is actually a tank and not just a DPSer who wanted a faster queue. These talents, in addition to a set of proper tanking armor and a tanking-appropriate weapon rune, are part of what keeps you from going squish like a clothie.

The A La Carte Talents
Each tree also has at least a couple damage-mitigating talents far enough into the tree to make them prohibitive to pick up unless you're committing to that tree. Frost has several: Frigid Dreadplate, Unbreakable Armor, Improved Frost Presence, and Acclimation. Lichborne used to have a damage-mitigating component, but it's since been nerfed into something more suitable for PvP than tanking.

Blood's tanking talents are less directly mitigation-based. Scent of Blood doesn't mitigate on its own but procs when you mitigate. Veteran of the Third War gives a Stamina boost. Rune Tap, Improved Rune Tap, Vendetta, Mark of Blood, Bloodworms, Improved Death Strike, and Vampiric Blood are all self-healing talents. Spell Deflection and Will of the Necropolis are the only real mitigation talents in the tree. Improved Blood Presence should be skipped in a Blood tanking spec as you will still tank in Frost Presence (which I'll be writing about later.)

Unholy has the fewest talents with tanking utility, but Magic Suppression and Bone Shield do provide some mitigation. Again, Improved Unholy Presence should be skipped in a tanking spec because you won't be tanking in Unholy Presence.

Keep in mind that you may not need to use every tanking talent in your chosen tree, as depending where they're at in the buff/nerf cycle some may not be worth taking at the moment. And Death Knights can still do acceptable DPS out of Frost Presence with a tanking spec - not competitive with a proper DPS spec in raids, but good enough for soloing. When leveling or even in PvP you might want to put some points into these tanking talents for survivability.

Next I'll be explaining the Presences and why the best Presence may not match the tree you're specced into!

Death Knight 101: The Talent Trees

Because we start at level 55 and unlock our talent points over the course of only three levels' worth of quests, the question of which tree to put your talent points in comes up much sooner for Death Knights than any other class. We are also unusual for having talent trees that are less clearly-defined than most classes, as you can find a spec in any tree for either tanking or DPS (though you shouldn't rely on the same one for both if you want to do either well). There are more nuances than just, "This tree is for tanking," and as a result your choice of spec is based more on your own personal preference than anything else. So which one do you pick?

Before I really get into the meat of it I'd like to note that this post isn't going to be about min-maxing except for the occasional "As of this posting..." comment. We didn't see nearly as many adjustments to our class in the most recent patch as we have in prior ones, but Blizzard is still working out the kinks. The flavor of this month may not be the flavor of next, and I would like this post to still be a useful resource next month. Therefore, I'm just covering the concepts of the different talent trees rather than what's currently best. As always, I recommend Elitist Jerks for up-to-the-minute theorycrafting.

Frost
I'll start with Frost because, as you may have noticed, it's my specialty. Early in development, Blizzard declared Frost to be the tanking spec for Death Knights. They later changed their minds and gave all specs viable tanking options, but it's kept that reputation. More recently it's become the dual-wield spec because it is the only tree with talents that apply specifically to one-handed weapons. Both of these are misconceptions to a certain degree: It has excellent, solid tanking options but is not the only tree for the task, and while your DPS will be gimped if you try to dual wield as any other spec there are perfectly good two-hander-based Frost specs.

Personally, I see Frost as the AoE spec, whether you're DPSing or tanking, no matter what weapon you're carrying. The tree's 51-point talent, Howling Blast, is an AoE powerhouse for both damage and threat, doing damage on par with Obliterate on each mob it hits. Frost tanking is comparable to Paladin tanking for AoE threat generation, and it's excellent in any situation with trash pulls, especially if you're dealing with a rowdy PuG. For leveling, it's best for burning down large groups of mobs. If you're going to dual wield, the talents Nerves of Cold Steel and Threat of Thassarian are absolutely required for reasons that are self-evident in their descriptions. No other tree has talents that are specifically geared to bringing DW damage in line with two-handers.

The downside to Frost for most people is that, compared to the other trees, it's frankly kind of boring. There's no real gimmick to it. Even from a lore perspective, you have the necromancy tree, the vampirism tree, and the...hypothermia tree. The 9k+ AoE crits keep it interesting enough for me, though. The emphasis on proc-based talents like Killing Machine and Rime make it more reactive, which doesn't appeal to everyone.

TL;DR: Spec Frost if you want to dual wield or if you want to have strong AoE capabilities.

Blood
The whole point of Blood is survivability, both through raw stamina and self-healing. Early on it was primarily considered a leveling tree, since the self-heals meant you could keep going with very little downtime. More recently it's become a popular raid-tanking spec, trading Frost's AoE threat for talents that just plain keep you alive longer. Where Frost's threat generation is like a Paladin's, Blood's is like a Warrior's, with more emphasis on single targets. DPS is likewise more single-target based, with Strength-buffing talents that improve your overall damage but no AoEs except the basic class ones. This is fine for leveling, since you likely won't have more than a couple mobs to deal with and you can survive long enough to take them all down one at a time. It's also very good for boss fights. As a whole, Blood is the least magic-focused of the talent trees.

The downside to Blood is that when tanking, much like Warriors, you need time to ramp up threat on multiple mobs, which requires your DPS to actually show some restraint and maybe follow a *gasp* kill order. For DPS, your numbers won't look quite as good on those big trash pulls as more AoE-based classes.

TL;DR: Spec Blood if you want self-healing and extra survivability.

Unholy
The poor Unholy tree has been nerfed and buffed and tweaked all over the place since Wrath went live, but the basic concept has stayed the same: This is essentially the pet spec. All Death Knights can summon a ghoul for a short period, but with Master of Ghouls you get a permanent buddy. It even gets a new name randomly generated from some ghoulish words every time you raise one, some of which are unintentionally hilarious: I have a friend who once summoned a Gravelstealer, inspiring us to express concern about the safety of our driveways, and I once saw a Bonegobbler which made me giggle because I have a dirty, dirty mind. The perma-ghoul is a great little DPS boost for groups or soloing as well as an irritant for PvP. It's also useful for distracting any mobs that might attack when you're mining or herbing. I went Unholy DPS for a bit before 3.2 made Frost dual wielding viable, and I missed my ghoul when I changed. Unholy also has an AoE in the form of Corpse Explosion, but it requires you to have finished killing something to use it, so it doesn't have quite as much utility as Howling Blast.

The downside to Unholy is that, while you certainly could tank in an Unholy spec, there's nothing to recommend it like Frost's AoE threat or Blood's survivability. There's also the added responsibility that comes with using a pet, such as keeping it from randomly attacking the wrong things.

TL;DR: Spec Unholy if you want to play as a pet class, or if you think making corpses explode is the best thing ever.

Hopefully now you have a better idea of which talent tree is right for you and your up-and-coming Death Knight. In an upcoming post I'll get more in depth on the nuances that can make the same tree good for both tanking and DPS roles!

Welcome to Chill of the Grave!

I know, there are already so many WoW blogs out there, why start another one? Well, for one thing, because my boyfriend was getting tired of me keeping him up all night debating to myself the relative merits of Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Obliterate. I'm a writer deep down in my bones, and a chatty one too, so this is largely a place for me to talk about things.

It's also a place to provide information for people who want to actually learn to play this class, though I'm more interested in debate than simply saying "This is how you have to do things or you fail". While there are definitely things you have to follow, there's plenty that is open to your own personal playstyle, and I believe all valid ways of playing the game are, well, valid. I prefer debating the advantages and disadvantages of one thing vs another to outright declaring that one is the only way to do things. I personally prefer to play as DW Frost, both in my Tanking and DPS roles, and that's the view I'm going to bring to this blog, but I don't think other specs are wrong. In fact, if this blog catches on, I'll look into getting Blood and Unholy columnists, too. I'm planning to approach things more in the fashion of sites like Mania's Arcania than Elitist Jerks. So expect that to be the attitude of the blog going forward: Informing and discussing decisions, not making them for you.

I'm also planning to do something most class sites don't: Discuss the lore of the class. I'm a creative type and an RPer at heart, and part of what made me so certain I would love playing a Death Knight from the start is the compelling lore around which the class is based. Expect to see discussions of lore and write-ups/reviews of things like the Death Knight manga in between posts about PvE mechanics and tanking.

And just who am I? My main is Dariahn of Thorium Brotherhood, Forsaken Death Knight of the RP guild Hand of the Blightcaller. I don't do much in the way of progression at the moment because of time limitations, but I do weekly 10-mans, roflstomp Heroics, and stay abreast of everything going on with the class. I was raid-tanking in Burning Crusade as a Forsaken Prot warrior, and I knew from the announcement of the Death Knight class that the combination of tanking capability and Forsaken-esque lore was going to make me love them. Since before I could roll one I was determined to learn to play the class well, and I like to think I've done a pretty good job of it.

So check back every so often! I hope to update at least once a week, ideally more, with assorted thoughts and opinions on WoW's most misunderstood class, and always feel free to comment!