Legion Frost and Unholy Talent Recommendations (subject to change)

[demonardvark 556]

So, after playing around in the beta a lot, I am here to post potential builds for frost and unholy dk dps both single target and aoe as well as probable stat priorities. Now, these are current and based off sims and farting around. They are highly subject to change. We really don't know how specs are going to perform until we get to raids. This is just meant to be an early helpful guide. Tuning will impact everything as well as which legendary you get first. Also, this will not include Blood Dk, this is for dps only, simply because, I haven't figured out blood yet. It's rather squishy comparatively now, and I'm still working out what is beneficial to it. Also, this does apply to the prepatch that will launch "soon".  Let's begin.

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Unholy DK single Target. So all will serve is incredibly strong, our 2nd pet is currently tuned quite high so he is beneficial. For tier 2, pustules helps us with rune regeneration which is valuable and the other two talents don't give much for single target. Clawing shadows is currently our hardest hitting ability, it mangles enemies right now so its the obvious choice for tier 3. Tier 4 sludge belcher makes our primary pet super strong and the other two choices offer little as far as dps goes. Tier 5 really pick whatever, Corpse shield hurts timmy which is bad hes a huge dps gain. Some might prefer lingering, take what you want, throw away tier. Actually as I write this might be rethinking tier 6. Infected claws makes timmy able to burst bubbles as well which is good. However, shadow infusion might actually be better, Dark Transformation will likely be high priority, so shadow infusion may actually be better. Last, Dark Arbiter hits like a freight train. Simple. Its really powerful.

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Unholy Aoe. Basically every choice here is to allow aoe burst on everything. Clawing Shadows is still super strong, paired with defile which make it aoe, you are going to do leet deeps. Epidemic is basically blood boil. Bursting sores makes all popped bubbles do AOE damage. And necrosis makes clawing shadows stronger. Very powerful and straight forward aoe build.

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Frost single target build. Basically Frost rotation is obliterate, howling blast if rime proc, if not frost strike. That's it. This build gives the most power and value to obliteration. Tier 1 and 2 both feed you with runes. Icecap reduced the CD on pillar of frost increasing damage. Tier 4 is throw away. Same as tier 5, I picked permafrost simply because you will be doing such high damage with obliterate you'll get some decent shields. Runic atten, feeds you with runic power. Not super valuable but frostscythe is aoe and eats your km procs, we want those for obliterate. Tier 7 is obliteration, it makes your strongest ability stronger.

Now there is possible room for alteration to this build. For tier 2, freezing fog increases the damage done by rime howling blast a lot .This may actually prove to be more valuable. Legendary and tuning will decide this.

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Frost aoe. This build is built around using breath of sindragosa. This talent set up will feed you to the point where you can keep up BOS almost until its CD expires. This is a almost perma bos build for aoe. Tiers 1,2,3, and 6, all are based around feeding you runes and runic power to fuel bos. 

Now. Just like single target there may be other builds for aoe. I personally just really like this build. The other probably aoe build would be Switching to freezing fog, avalanche, frostscythe, and glacial advance. We've already discussed freezing fog. Avalanche is free aoe attack during pillar of frost. Frostscythe is basically an aoe frost strike that eats km procs to do more damage. And glacial causes aoe at eruption point. Tuning will likely dictate which is best. Frost AoE is sort of tricky.

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Now as far as stat priorities go. Unholy DK will likely want everything, you will want a high amount of all stats but mastery will be desired. Clawing shadows is currently the top hitting unholy ability and is effected by mastery, so we want it to be stronger, especially in aoe situations with defile. 

Frost single target will value crit for obliterate and if using BOS build will likely value haste. If a different aoe build such as the one i suggested is more valuable then perhaps mastery will become the stat choice there. 

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So, this is my current suggested guide for legion dps single target and aoe builds for frost and unholy dks. Lots of sim work and play testing went into these but only once we really get into the game and get raiding will we know. Early WoD unholy dks were simmed to use Defile when some genius (and absolute genius, sexy too) discovered that necroblight was preferable at that time. So, we'll see what happens. If you have any constructive feedback feel free to add it, and any questions just ask :)

p.s this is for pve only obviously. might try and tackle a pvp one "soon"

Cheers

[demonardvark 556]

This will be updated later today (weekend, monday morning? im terrible with deadlines. My last minute conceptual ideas were indeed correct.

For unholy single target shadow infusion is leaps and bounds superior especially during the pre patch. It basically ensures you have all but constant 4 piece bonus up, plus timmy and timmy jr just do so much damage now you need to focus on them. So that will be updated with new talent selection screenshot and an updated sentence repeating this.

For Frost, Freezing Fog is by far much better. Obliteration does require a good rune draw engine to feed it, however, it is short lived and with the new version requiring frost strike weaving, it only lasts so long. Plus it has a pretty long cooldown. So while waiting on it, your freezing fog rime powered howling blasts are going to be a much higher source of damage than having the extra rune regeneration. So, again that will be updated, as well as another screen shot for the alternative frost aoe build.

[Omola 0]

Im REALLY out of the loop as i havent been keeping very up to date with legion. Took a small break. But a few questions regarding the unholy tier 56, tier 58 talents, and tier 100. First i just want to say im using a pre-made level 100 on ptr so my stats are sub optimal. All these numbers are from the raid boss dummy in org with no buffs (No trinkets or rune weapons either, for consistency sake) no debuffs 

As for "All will serve" and "bursting sores", bursting sores seems to do more damage than all will serve. Bursting doing ~6k on the festering sore and another ~4k on the bursting sore talent (~10k in total). The pet from all will serve does ~3.8k a hit (And buggy as all hell...It doesnt attack 90% of the time but im sure it will be fixed come live). Even though the 2nd pets attacks cleave, it seems bursting sores is better all around. Especially with mastery and artifacts factored in

The tier 58 talents im really unsure about all together...With only 36% mastery, scourge strike ends up doing MORE than clawing shadows but only by like ~500 damage. I dont know what the stats are like at 110 and you only get 8% shadow damage via artifact. Unholy Frenzy LOOKS good but without any sort of sim its hard for me to tell. Faster auto means more chances at sudden doom, which means more chances as runic empowerment. Castigator I quite honestly didnt even bother trying, it doesnt even sound as good as the alternatives 

The tier 100 talents im also unsure about. Dark arbiter does ~13k a hit at 100 runic power spent and only lasts for 15 seconds. While regular gargoyle lasts for 40 seconds and hits inconsistently (idk why) for ~2.8-6k. Doesnt seem like its worth the talent OR the 100 RP you spend on it

This is just based on what im personally seeing with the shit gear thats available to me. I am a very inexperienced DK, its always been an alt class but ive decided to shift it to my main in legion. So i am by no means good or knowledgeable about this class, just trying to get a good enough idea how to play again in preparation for the new patch

Edited June 24, 2016 by Omola
clarification

[demonardvark 556]

20 hours ago, Omola said:

Im REALLY out of the loop as i havent been keeping very up to date with legion. Took a small break. But a few questions regarding the unholy tier 56, tier 58 talents, and tier 100. First i just want to say im using a pre-made level 100 on ptr so my stats are sub optimal. All these numbers are from the raid boss dummy in org with no buffs (No trinkets or rune weapons either, for consistency sake) no debuffs 

As for "All will serve" and "bursting sores", bursting sores seems to do more damage than all will serve. Bursting doing ~6k on the festering sore and another ~4k on the bursting sore talent (~10k in total). The pet from all will serve does ~3.8k a hit (And buggy as all hell...It doesnt attack 90% of the time but im sure it will be fixed come live). Even though the 2nd pets attacks cleave, it seems bursting sores is better all around. Especially with mastery and artifacts factored in

The tier 58 talents im really unsure about all together...With only 36% mastery, scourge strike ends up doing MORE than clawing shadows but only by like ~500 damage. I dont know what the stats are like at 110 and you only get 8% shadow damage via artifact. Unholy Frenzy LOOKS good but without any sort of sim its hard for me to tell. Faster auto means more chances at sudden doom, which means more chances as runic empowerment. Castigator I quite honestly didnt even bother trying, it doesnt even sound as good as the alternatives 

The tier 100 talents im also unsure about. Dark arbiter does ~13k a hit at 100 runic power spent and only lasts for 15 seconds. While regular gargoyle lasts for 40 seconds and hits inconsistently (idk why) for ~2.8-6k. Doesnt seem like its worth the talent OR the 100 RP you spend on it

This is just based on what im personally seeing with the shit gear thats available to me. I am a very inexperienced DK, its always been an alt class but ive decided to shift it to my main in legion. So i am by no means good or knowledgeable about this class, just trying to get a good enough idea how to play again in preparation for the new patch

All will serve is just rather op right now. The little midget guys damage is really good and he has a solid dps increase. You have to be careful when testing BS because the aoe cleave can hit other target dummies. So if in org or two moons, you can be cleaving off the other dummies thinking the damge is higher. Now, for aoe it is very much the go to talent choice. But for single all will serve just does more solid reliable dps.

As far as clawing shadows goes, its synergy with mastery is exceedingly high and its really our big beat stick right now (especially in aoe when paired with defile). Multstrike is going away and mastery is by far the strongest state for unholy, and mastery stacked clawing shadows, tear through enemies. Its pure mastery damage so you have to keep that in mind; and for that tier its the most powerful talent in both single target and aoe. 

apparently vrykul is  bit buggy in ptr right now,  however, you treat her like you do bos, pool full fp burn it down, couple quick attacks for more and  a last death coil or two to buff her. she is the strongest single target talent at lvl 100. defile is for aoe and soul reaper just isn't competitive in comparison. she hits for 100k + each hit increasing over time and is much more powerful than the gargoyle is. 

so just for good measure too i re-ran sims and checked on some of the top dk theorycrafters to see if something changed. the only place where there is variability is for single target some are recommending epidemic for tier 2 instead of pustules for rune regen, but that is with specific legendary gear. otherwise, the agreement from sims and theory work is basically what I have listed in the unholy picture minus shadow infusion being the best tier 90 talent (which i speculated, later confirmed, and have just not gotten around to updating yet :D )

[Darkovan 1]

I don't have beta access, only PTR, but i have been getting noticeably better results with avalanche then i was with ice cap for both single target and aoe.

Also for single target - Shattering strikes has been outperforming Murderous Efficiency. I'm not sure if its a bug or intentional change to the way razor ice behaves but if u have it on your main hand its applying stacks with both mainhand an offhand on abilitys that hit with both. So for example, if i have 5 stacks of razor ice on the target and hit with frost strike, the damage is buffed by the 5stacks, consumes them, deals its damage and then applies 2 new stacks of razor ice, follow it with obliterate which applies a stack with both main hand and off hand and your back to 4 stacks - during which time you will have usually made a main hand auto attack and if not it wont be far away.

On the PTR i have 30crit, 11haste, 60mastery.

[demonardvark 556]

Well I came here to write that with incoming tuning, all of my work is now garbage :(

For unholy the sores are getting a buff as well as zombies, so this will change a couple tier talents. For frost they are tweaking rime procs, the results of which will also either make some talents mandatory or pointless.

so yay!!!! will repost or maybe edit first post into 2.0 version when things are updated. the only plus though is so far we aren't getting nerfed. everything they have proposed is a buff. so, very likely we will be a strong dps class again. :D

[Bricktor 0]

Why not use frostscythe as frost for AoE? it deals significantly more damage than howling blast and it benefists from killing machine. 

[demonardvark 556]

8 hours ago, Bricktor said:

Why not use frostscythe as frost for AoE? it deals significantly more damage than howling blast and it benefists from killing machine. 

Agreed, that was in the 2ndary build posted underneath the first, which was later denoted to be the superior aoe talent. They just recently farted around with tuning so im not updating this until I get the new numbers right. The issues were previously with unholy you literally didn't need to use festering strike. Clawing shadows did so much damage that you would complete ignore the bursting sores mechanic altogether. With frost they are altering rime and km procs. Currently km can either never proc or proc like a gatling gun and you can fire off endless frostscythes, so they are altering how that works.

regardless though, for aoe, frostscythe is likely to remain the better choice in that tier.

[Shells 64]

Slightly off topic but any chance of seeing a similar one for blood please.

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Shells said:

Slightly off topic but any chance of seeing a similar one for blood please.

maybe but probably not, i'd just reference the hard guides on the site right now. things between ptr and beta and live got screwy and some things got buffed and nerfed. so the reference guides i did here are close but not 100% accurate right now. which was expected, I was going to keep them update but I just got back from holiday XD. so, I wasn't here for pre patch and the hard class guides are pretty good so i was more or less going to abandon this particular post.