Death Knight Leveling

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Death Knight Leveling guide for WotLK Classic.

[Eskymojo 0]

It seems to me that the Corpse Explosion build for Unholy, as per Metagoblin's vids, is quicker to level than Blood (except maybe for the BF spam between levels 60-70), any thoughts, or worth adding into the guide?

[Soulglaive 0]

There is an oversight in the section regarding Presences.

You assert that Unholy Presence will not help you kill quest mobs faster than Blood Presence. If Unholy Presence only increased attack and movement speed, this would be true. But you're forgetting about the GCD reduction.

Unholy Presence does more than just increase your movement and attack speed - it also lowers your GCD from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. This effectively increases your DPS by ~30% compared to Blood Presence as long as you have any Runes or Runic Power available to spend.

This is a massive increase to your burst potential, and since you will often have plenty of Runes and Runic Power available at the start of a fight, it provides a huge advantage against standard quest mobs (and enemy players). If it takes around 1 complete rune cycle or less to kill something - which is most of the time - then Unholy Presence will help you kill it faster.

Unholy Presence will not increase sustained DPS by that much, because you will still be throttled by your rune refresh rate. Boss fights are where Unholy presence starts to lag behind. But most mobs (and players) are not bosses, and as a DK, your base DPS is high enough that the GCD advantage alone makes Unholy Presence unequivocally better for leveling than Blood Presence. The movement and attack speed bonuses are just icing on the cake.

If your strategy centers around mass pulls where it will take several rune cycles to kill everything, then Unholy Presence becomes less advantageous, but in those situations you will want to be using Frost Presence anyway.

Edited September 18, 2022 by Soulglaive

[Sellinz 14]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:47 PM, Soulglaive said:

There is an oversight in the section regarding Presences.

You assert that Unholy Presence will not help you kill quest mobs faster than Blood Presence. If Unholy Presence only increased attack and movement speed, this would be true. But you're forgetting about the GCD reduction.

Unholy Presence does more than just increase your movement and attack speed - it also lowers your GCD from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. This effectively increases your DPS by ~30% compared to Blood Presence as long as you have any Runes or Runic Power available to spend.

This is a massive increase to your burst potential, and since you will often have plenty of Runes and Runic Power available at the start of a fight, it provides a huge advantage against standard quest mobs (and enemy players). If it takes around 1 complete rune cycle or less to kill something - which is most of the time - then Unholy Presence will help you kill it faster.

Unholy Presence will not increase sustained DPS by that much, because you will still be throttled by your rune refresh rate. Boss fights are where Unholy presence starts to lag behind. But most mobs (and players) are not bosses, and as a DK, your base DPS is high enough that the GCD advantage alone makes Unholy Presence unequivocally better for leveling than Blood Presence. The movement and attack speed bonuses are just icing on the cake.

If your strategy centers around mass pulls where it will take several rune cycles to kill everything, then Unholy Presence becomes less advantageous, but in those situations you will want to be using Frost Presence anyway.

Hey Soulglaive, thank you so much for checking out my guide and offering this insight, it means a lot to me that you put so much into your reply and critique as it is very important to me to get the best information out there. 

The GCD reduction is a key part of Unholy presence, for sure and as you said a massive *potential* burst increase. I would love to see if you had any numbers on this but I understand both  from my own experience and just the reality of how like niche these situations can because of different mob types, the actual density of mobs, your ability to apply disease etc. In my personal experience leveling on average each pull I did ended up being close to 1.7 rune cycles, basically my original 4 runes would have come back and be spent by the time mobs died/were dying. I do agree that there are situations, especially if you're overleveled which you often will be during the pre-patch thanks to Joyous Journeys where Unholy Presence is the better choice, but I think for the average person the flat damage increase and more importantly the added self sustain from Blood Presence is the better option.

 

I apologize if this comes across as a non-answer to what was an extremely well thought out post by you. As stated above, it means a ton to me that you checked out my guide.