Help with friend's dk DPS?

[prancy 1]

Hello All,

 

I've got a guildie who has come back to the game recently and joined our group of friends a bit later, so hes behind the curve gearwise (636 vs the rest of us being around 660). We brought him along to Heroic Highmaul last week and DPS was less than stellar. I know exactly nothing about deathknights so I'm hoping to get some help from ya'll. Based on the armory and log data, does this look like a gear problem or a rotation problem? Sorry I can't really provide more info that what I've got here, I can try to answer questions if you have any that would illuminate more.

 

Thanks so much.

 

Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/darkspear/Darimus/simple

 

Most recent Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dmzXQ1gMnKGpLYRh

[VRDRF 9]

He has logged out in his pvp gear so its kinda hard to see if its gear wise.

He plays DW Frost?

Edited February 3, 2015 by VRDRF

[ChaiNspliT 5]

Since we can't judge his armory, I'll start with his Talents and Glyphs.

 

Talents:

 

1) Plague Leech is the correct choice, nothing to add.

 

2) Lichborne is a terrible choice, you will never want to use this talent. You usually go with Purgatory as your basic choice, since it's passive and can prevent your death if timed correctly with Deathpact. Depending on fight, you'd want to take AMZ, for example on Imperator, just before you nuke the adds.

 

3) Asphyxiate, again, is a terrible choice. This will do nothing, except stun trash, before the boss. Chillblains is the same deal, pretty damn terrible in every aspect (for PvE). So the obvious go-to talent here is Death's Advance, it passively increases your speed and actively gives you a temporary speed buff, very usefull to quickly change your position.

 

4) Never use Runic Empowerement, it's the worst out of the 3 choices. You either go with the slightly inferior Runic Corruption (still good) or the superior Blood Tap, if managed perfectly. 

Manuel Blood Tap > Runic Corruption > BT Macro

 

5) Irrelevant.

 

6) As for right now, you, in all cases, go for Defile. But once 6.1 rolls out, you're going with Necrotic Plague as the superior talent.

 

 

Now about the Glyphs, I'll quote myself here:

 

Suggested Glyphs:

Major Glyphs:

1) Glyph of Regenerative Magic. The side effects of this glyph are noticable, they will shorten the CD of AMS (Anti Magic Shell) and generates therefore more Runicpower over time resulting in a DPS increase.
Source: http://www.wowdb.com...enerative-magic

2) Glyph of Empowerement. It basically morphes into our second big heal CD, next to Death Pact (which should be taken 100% of the time).
Source: http://www.wowdb.com...-of-empowerment

3) Glyph of Outbreak. Only ever usefull, if you're faced against a great number of adds or against trash, before the boss. As of now, there's no use for it, other than Tectus and Imperator. And even then not necessary. You are free to happily ignore it and take the other 3 mentioned Glyphs.
Source: http://www.wowdb.com...yph-of-outbreak

Minor Glyphs:

1) Glyph of Tranquil Grip. This removes the taunt effect from your death grip and allows you to freely move any adds across the room to ease the process of spreading Necrotic Plague. Must have.
Source: http://www.wowdb.com...f-tranquil-grip

2) Glyph of Army of the Dead. This does aswell remove the taunt effect from one of your spells. Army of the Dead, to be exactly. If you're going to use this minor CD, then it's a must have.

Edited February 3, 2015 by ChaiNspliT

[prancy 1]

He has logged out in his pvp gear so its kinda hard to see if its gear wise.

He plays DW Frost?

Majority of his pve gear is pvp gear at the moment. Pretty sure hes DW frost in Pve but that might have changed.

Edited February 3, 2015 by prancy

[demonardvark 556]

I could be misreading the logs, but I see absolutely 0 usage of soul reaper. Like... none. Soul reaper is your big kill ability and you want to get as much reaping in as possible. Also I have a question about their tier 7 talent. It says now they have necrotic plague but the logs show normal diseases. This leads me to believe they were using defile but again, zero usage. 

[drumsmani 47]

Looking at the butcher kill, again no Soul Reaper usage, sub-optimal defile usage, way too many plague strikes, no army at the pull. I think it would help your friend to get started on the right rotation / ability priorities if they went through the guide here and also started with storm's rotation weak auras. 

[prancy 1]

Thanks for the help guys. We were pvping last night so I suspect he swapped over to necrotic plague for that. I'll let him know what ya'll had to say, sounds like it might just be a need to look up the basic rotation.

[skavader 0]

I would definitely have your friend read up on his rotation, because he's definitely doing quite a number of things wrong.

 

Basically, it looks like he's got his priorities really, really messed up in terms of his rotation. As was mentioned before, he's not using soul reaper AT ALL, and using that on cooldown is priority number 1 once his target is below 35% health. Not only that, but if he's DW frost, he should be dumping all of the runes he can on howling blast, and only casting obliterate to dump his unholy runes (according to the logs, he's casting WAY more obliterates than howling blasts which should definitely not be the case for DW frost).

 

Definitely just link him to the icy veins guide on Frost DKs. Once he knows his optimal rotation he'll start doing a lot, lot better.

[Impurex 5]

Agreeing with the comments above, he lacks some of the basic principles of DK dps. Might be wise if he's starting out to install Weakauras 2 and Storms rotation helper (he made them for all specs). They do a great job of getting your dps to a competitive level without too many effort. It also forces you to learn the rotation for your self....