Necrotic Plague shines in certain scenarios

[demonardvark 556]

Sup,

So for dps DKS the talent choice is somewhat limited. More or less all sources say defile is your go to talent. In most cases this is correct. However, I have found that in a few scenarios its beneficial to switch to necrotic plague. The situation is basically 3-4+ enemies around.

 

Running everbloom I usually pull around 20k. Last night with my guild I got bored and switched to necrotic to play around. To my surprise clearing the trash I was pulling 38-39k. I realized how powerful necrotic plague can be. With a target rich environment you can reach 15 stacks in just a couple seconds. Apply with outbreak, spread with blood boil and unholy blight. By force spreading you increase the speed of the stacks. Once you have 15 stacks on 1 enemy you can spread it to all of them. The damage you do it just outrageous.

 

With highmaul launching today we have to ask is it viable there? The answer is yes on two specific fights, Kargath and Brackenspore. Both are very much add heavy and you can devastate with it. Tectus might be somewhat a viable place to use it but I haven't really checked that yet. 

 

The key is you need 3-4 adds in order to build up the stacks quickly enough. However, in single target it's garbage. In most of highmaul your talent choice needs to be defile. Necrotic plagues single target is weak. Exceedingly weak like very weak.  Also bare in mind in the aoe usage and add heavy fights, if you lose your 15 stack plague, your dps drops as you have to rebuild it.

 

SO!!! TLDR

 

Necrotic plague is exceedingly useful for clearing trash and doing insane aoe. In most dungeons you can be comfortable using it save for a couple bosses here and there. In highmaul there are a couple places where you can do some big damage with it. Once blackrock drops there are plenty of target rich environments to go crazy. Otherwise for pure single target use defile

 

So, don't necessarily just sit on one talent, play around switch it up, and find that some talents have much more viability then you might think :D

[Storm 426]

The only problem I see with that is that Defile is also extremely strong in aoe situations. Necrotic plague has the same issue whether single target or 5+ target aoe. the damage is only good if you can build the stacks to 15 very quickly. You can make it look good if you dump your entire rotation into making it look good, but is that really making it a good choice?

 

What necrotic plague is really good at is simplifying the rotation for some specs, especially frost. for 2H frost necrotic plague allows you to keep up full diseases with pretty much just your rime procs, allowing you to also plague leech when you have a rime proc, and overall allowing for more obliterates. The same thing happens for DW frost, your howling blast spam applies both diseases so you have no need to plague strike meaning you can obliterate instead which is a dps gain over plague striking with your unholy runes.

 

For blood also you can reapply diseases with just 1 icy touch, making it easier to plague leech on CD, but that would only matter on a purely one boss fight, any situation with multiple targets you can plague leech one and then blood boil to spread diseases back.

 

That's what I see necrotic plague as currently. it's a way of making disease management and plague leech useage much simpler to manage for frost, but I don't really see it as a dps gain in many situations if any. but it's probably no more of a dps loss than master complex vs. master simple, and plenty of DK's prefer master simple.

[demonardvark 556]

The only problem I see with that is that Defile is also extremely strong in aoe situations. Necrotic plague has the same issue whether single target or 5+ target aoe. the damage is only good if you can build the stacks to 15 very quickly. You can make it look good if you dump your entire rotation into making it look good, but is that really making it a good choice?

 

What necrotic plague is really good at is simplifying the rotation for some specs, especially frost. for 2H frost necrotic plague allows you to keep up full diseases with pretty much just your rime procs, allowing you to also plague leech when you have a rime proc, and overall allowing for more obliterates. The same thing happens for DW frost, your howling blast spam applies both diseases so you have no need to plague strike meaning you can obliterate instead which is a dps gain over plague striking with your unholy runes.

 

For blood also you can reapply diseases with just 1 icy touch, making it easier to plague leech on CD, but that would only matter on a purely one boss fight, any situation with multiple targets you can plague leech one and then blood boil to spread diseases back.

 

That's what I see necrotic plague as currently. it's a way of making disease management and plague leech useage much simpler to manage for frost, but I don't really see it as a dps gain in many situations if any. but it's probably no more of a dps loss than master complex vs. master simple, and plenty of DK's prefer master simple.

 

Unfortunately I forgot to post my spec, and my frame point sadly is more just from an unholy perspective. I haven't run it as frost (might be a fun project tonight). With spent runes, you can get off 6 blood boils (12 if you burst). This of course adds to the total overall dps gain shown. From what I have seen though the blood boils cause the stacks to insta jump and then jump on their tick again. So with 4 blood boils and the time to spend them almost all the adds will be at 15 stacks. So between the necrotic plague and blood boil you see the increase.

 

Defile is good of course in multi add situations. However, (and if I care to contribute I might get some logs up so i can show more data :D) in pure aoe my necrotic numbers were infinitely higher than defile. Defile does good burst but it has its 30 sec cooldown, necrotic ticks 15 times in that duration. With 15 stacks my necrotic was dealing 6120 per tick so in the 30 seconds it dealt 183,600 damage to each individual add. Multiply that by 5 and divide and you get some crazy dps. The highest tick i've seen necrotic hit was about 8k, Through observation and numbers it came to about 20k per add throughout its duration. So with 5 adds that gives us 100k vs 183k. With a full minute passing, that gives 200k vs 366k damage per add. So with 5 adds that difference is substantial. 

 

Now, this was on heroic dungeons and the rest of my group was undergeared (fresh 610s). So because of this the adds lived long enough for my plague to tick enough. With full 630s they might be burned down so quickly that it doesn't have time to tick. However, on longer lived adds, necrotic seems to pull ahead, if you burn to reach 15 stacks. I'm pretty certain blood boil spamming does increase jump frequency I need to look into unholy blights effects as well. 

 

So again, we are talking very specific scenarios to use necrotic in. However, it does seem for clearing trash and aoe bosses to pull ahead of defile in just those cases and for unholy (ebon plaguebearer effects necrotic plague?). Now for master simple I could potentially see that working too from howling blast spam. Assuming you chose unholy blight and don't eat your diseases.

[Storm 426]

Blood boil does add one stack to any necrotic it hits, as well as any ability that would normally apply or refresh a disease adds 1 stack.

[Riesen 5]

@demonardvark

 

Thank god you mentioned this.

I've personally done some test myself and always been surprised why none prefer 'Necrotic Plague'. I mean, surely 'Defile' has it benefits. But as you mentioned, in some scenarios, the 'Necrotic Plague' might be better. (If you manage to keep it up & and the encounter is long enough for the 15 stacks) With several adds of course.

 

I'm sure most of you had the same issue as me, that every Tank in a dungeon moved out from my 'Defile' because they were not used to it (Simply thought it was the enemies damage). Which made me try the 'Necrotic Plague' instead. Now however, I consider the 'Defile' better since the enemies dies rather quick in dungeons now. 

 

And as the single Death Knight in my raid team, I had no one to ask. Anyway, since more players share the same oppinion, I might actually try the 'Nectrotic Plague' during some encounters in Highmaul. Might be a huge bummer, but I can post my progress here. It might actually be a huge success!

[Storm 426]

I honestly don't think there's a drastic difference in dps between defile and necrotic plague. Defile is definitely the higher dps choice and min/max is min/max even if it's just a few hundred dps difference. but Necrotic plague has the advantage of making certain aspects of the gameplay easier so there are pro's to each.

[Riesen 5]

I'm personally going to play safe and use 'Defile' when our guild progress through Highmaul. Not only do I like the damage from 'Defile', but also the 10% reduced damage taken from whomever stands in it.(enemies).

 

But, just as demonardvark mentioned, I also noticed the damage difference with several adds during long encounters. 

I spent 2 hours in Molten Core and therefor tried the 'Necrotic Plague'. The annoying part was that you were not allowed to use AOE-spells on every monster. But when you were "allowed", the damage was insane. We were 3 death knights on the top of my recount.

And 'Necrotic Plague' as our highest 'damage done attack'.

 

We might've top the DPS with 'Defile' too. But I don't see a reason to run Molten Core again to test it..

Just saying that it would be fun to actually try the power of 'Necrotic Plague' in some encounter, (e.g) in Raid Finder during some of the encounters demonardvark mentioned in HIghmaul. Atleast as a Unholy Death Knight.

Perhaps we misjudged to whole point of 'Necrotic Plague'.

[demonardvark 556]

I'm personally going to play safe and use 'Defile' when our guild progress through Highmaul. Not only do I like the damage from 'Defile', but also the 10% reduced damage taken from whomever stands in it.(enemies).

 

But, just as demonardvark mentioned, I also noticed the damage difference with several adds during long encounters. 

I spent 2 hours in Molten Core and therefor tried the 'Necrotic Plague'. The annoying part was that you were not allowed to use AOE-spells on every monster. But when you were "allowed", the damage was insane. We were 3 death knights on the top of my recount.

And 'Necrotic Plague' as our highest 'damage done attack'.

 

We might've top the DPS with 'Defile' too. But I don't see a reason to run Molten Core again to test it..

Just saying that it would be fun to actually try the power of 'Necrotic Plague' in some encounter, (e.g) in Raid Finder during some of the encounters demonardvark mentioned in HIghmaul. Atleast as a Unholy Death Knight.

Perhaps we misjudged to whole point of 'Necrotic Plague'.

 

I played around with it last night while running heroics and part of highmaul. Sure enough in the kargath fight it just wrecks everything, especially if you get knocked into the stand oh dear god, I burned every CD to burst spread necrotic and I got up to like 45k dps at 620 ilvl. It was beautiful. However, on certain heroics it was completely crap tastic. Specifically achindoun and the grimrail depot (choo choo dungeon). In those two I struggled to use it, i was barely topping 12k. However, in the everbloom, in bloodslag mines, etc, it is the definite clear winner. 

 

So for maximum dps i'm in the mindset of switching up my talents depending on the fight and add concentration :D

[Uzern 1]

Are you guys never trying Breath?  I do pretty good damage tanking heroics (40-50k seems  common when I use Breath on pulls).  I tend to combine it with Dancing Rune Weapon + Outbreak.

 

Pulling way more than twice the dps of anyone else in my heroic is common when I do this.  Pretty much the only time I'm not top damage is on long, single-target boss fights.

 

Store up some Runic Power, get a bunch of Death Runes, a pile of enemies, and go crazy.  Use Plague Leech and then Empowered Rune Weapon to maintain the devastation.  You can keep BoS up for a looooong time if you use Runes/Abilities efficiently.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Uzern

[Riesen 5]

@demonardvark

 

Our guild decided to do a Normal run in Highmaul to test the tactics.

I also ended up with using 'Necrotic Plague' at Kargath and also Tectus.

 

Kargath:

 

 We managed to drop him rather easily. And since I was going to be sent up, I decided to use  'Necrotic Plague'.

 I fell behind during the beginning of the encounter but later ended up at 3rd place at the end. With  29K DPS.

 I'm sure I could've pushed it even further but the Tank wanted to play safe and didn't pull enough mobs.

 

Tectus:

 

 At Tectus, I started out with 'Defile'. We wiped when the first 4 Motes of Tectus spawned which  made us change the tactic a  bit. Basically the tank were going to move around A LOT more which  ended with me switching to 'Necrotic Plague'. Simply  because I wouldn't be able to use Deflie's full  potential.

 Just like Kargath, I fell behind during the beginning of the encounter. But ended up at 3rd place!

 

 

 

I should probably mention that I had 635 ilvl with the lowest ilvl in our guild (lol). And our guild member invited another Unholy DK with 640 ilvl.

I managed to surpass him at every encounter and expecially at these 2, I managed to reck him.

And of course my Soul Reaper had a huge part of maintaining my position in the recount.

 

Since Normal was rather easily, we're going to try Heroic Highmaul today. And I'm deffinetly going to try 'Necrotic Plague' at these encounters. I'll let you know how it ends! 

 

Thanks again for giving me the courage to actually test it a lot more ! 

 

 

@Uzern

 

Perhaps it's useful as an Blood DK. ( I actually don't know since it's been a while since I played Blood). But I personally don't see it useful as an Unholy.

Death Coil plays a huge part in my rotation (damage and dark transformation). And therefore consider Defile more efficient as an Unholy. (Since I rather not waste my runic power).

 

I used to off-spec blood and will probably give the "breath" a try in the future.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Riesen

[demonardvark 556]

Are you guys never trying Breath?  I do pretty good damage tanking heroics (40-50k seems  common when I use Breath on pulls).  I tend to combine it with Dancing Rune Weapon + Outbreak.

 

Pulling way more than twice the dps of anyone else in my heroic is common when I do this.  Pretty much the only time I'm not top damage is on long, single-target boss fights.

 

Store up some Runic Power, get a bunch of Death Runes, a pile of enemies, and go crazy.  Use Plague Leech and then Empowered Rune Weapon to maintain the devastation.  You can keep BoS up for a looooong time if you use Runes/Abilities efficiently.

 

To riesen too

 

In early beta I suspected Sindragosas breath to be a very viable talent. This was however, before I discovered the alteration to dots aka unholys diseases no longer being main dps source. I played around with sindragosas breath and it does align somewhat well with unholys rotation. You wait until you get your 5 stacks from death coil and build full rune power. Transform timmy and dump sindragosas. For unholy you can keep it up awhile. Sure enough the damage is fairly substantial. It became my number 1 source of damage really really fast. It just has one really bad downside.

 

The cooldown.

 

2.5 mins for an attack cooldown is just staggering. With just your normal diseases and rotation (as unholy) your dps plummets, bad. It almost turns DKS in what pallys used to be, subpar dps but with crazy burst. The implications are more harrowing for frost where your dependence on frost strike is much greater. 

 

So, yes, i played with sindragosas as well. I think for tanks its actually a pretty good mitigation choice however even then, defile has a shorter CD and can be used more often, plus, if the tank has chosen conversion then sindragosas is a problem. Then for frost and unholy it just doesn't play out that well, 2h frost MIGHT be able to make it work as obliterate and soul reaper are their many sources and frost strike is basically to dump rp, but otherwise for dps, I dont think it works.

 

Also @ riesen,

Glad you had fun playing around with it :D The reality is with a lot of theorycrafting people use dummies, and the dummies don't move and there aren't mechanics. So, realistic best talents I find can be very situational. Even the best rotation or gear stats can be. I found this in SoO. Everyone on the internet told me that festerblight was dead and unholy was weak. However, by playing around I got my dps up to 380k for most fights :D. The change to dots made me have to rethink unholy but even now, festerblight with necrotic plague very much can be a thing. You just have to work a lot harder but, I see greater dps for that work. 

[demonardvark 556]

HUGE DISCOVERY!!!!!

 

if you cast outbreak on one boss and pop unholy blight it bursts necrotic straight to 15 stacks. so you can insta get 15 stacks and spread on unholy blights cd. further implication is if you F up and necrotic drops you can burst it back up again :D

[Storm 426]

that's somewhat intriguing, means you can't plague leech, but I always feel like I'm wasting my last few ticks of 15 stacks when I plague leech it anyways. it's worth giving a shot. 15 stacks ticking for 20 + seconds of the duration would hit like a truck in aoe situations

[demonardvark 556]

that's somewhat intriguing, means you can't plague leech, but I always feel like I'm wasting my last few ticks of 15 stacks when I plague leech it anyways. it's worth giving a shot. 15 stacks ticking for 20 + seconds of the duration would hit like a truck in aoe situations

 

it really does, I almost crapped my pants when I realized it. I was fighting gug'rokk in blood slag and my stacks fell off. So i ran up to him and popped unholy blight and went on my rotation and saw the stacks just burst jump to 15, took like 3 seconds for full stack. I realized that's how i saw so many of my stupid numbers. I pop unholy blight on CDs and on a big stack of adds, every single one hit 15 without the disease jumping (it probably did once but i digress). From there you can pretty much pull the normal unholy rotation without your stacks falling off. When you end up with 4 death runes and 2 unholy here and there you have to sacrifice 2 scourge strikes for a festering but the pay off is big. Because for necroblight playstyle (this will become a thing ) you only need to maintain your stacks on 1 add, refresh and blood boil to spread maybe every 6-7 seconds.

 

EDITED: you only need to pay attention to one add, no need to tab around to check, a good blood boil does the trick. This also leads to glyph of blood boil being mandatory if you chose necrotic )

 

So aoe necrotic plague is huge, borderline insta 15 stacks and spread like butter on toast. For single target fights its HUGE the ramp up time is gone. At start, pop unholy blight, profit, and you don't waste like 25 seconds building up your stacks. Then if you derp and it falls off you can pop unholy again for full stack refresh. You lose plague leech but with necrotic you really wouldn't want that anyways

 

EDITED AGAIN: I also forgot to mention I realized the impact multistrike has on necroblight playstyle. Mulistrike does impact dots, sorta, it gives them a chance to tick again. So a 6k dot multistrikes for 12k at tick. With necrotic ticking 2 seconds instead of 3 you get 30 ticks per minute. If you are sitting on 80% multistrike (prolly not yet but eventually :D) you can almost get 1 tick of your dot a sec or a potential (max) 60 ticks per minute. So, thats a potentialy 36k in just dots, Add into that soul reapers damage, timmies damage, gargoyle damage, and omg, there is potential here.

Edited December 5, 2014 by demonardvark

[Storm 426]

So, necrotic plague with unholy blight is definitely not worth it on a purely single target fight, fyi. I did normal butcher again with some friends last night just to test different things, and on purely single target, playing 2H frost, because necrotic fits the best with the rotation for frost, I dropped from 17.5k dps with defile+plague leech to 16k using necrotic+unholy blight. Then back up to 17.6k for our kill when I went back to defile+leech.

 

I still think it sounds like a great idea for heavy aoe, but definitely a considerable loss for single target.

[demonardvark 556]

So, necrotic plague with unholy blight is definitely not worth it on a purely single target fight, fyi. I did normal butcher again with some friends last night just to test different things, and on purely single target, playing 2H frost, because necrotic fits the best with the rotation for frost, I dropped from 17.5k dps with defile+plague leech to 16k using necrotic+unholy blight. Then back up to 17.6k for our kill when I went back to defile+leech.

 

I still think it sounds like a great idea for heavy aoe, but definitely a considerable loss for single target.

 

on pure single target I agree completely that necrotic is bad news bears, however, even with a few adds i think its a good choice as well

 

so sorta like feral where blood talons is best for single where as lunar is better for aoe and cleave fights 

 

EDIT:

 

question though, you said that specifically you used frost, does not plaguebearer increase unholys diseases by 20%

 

EDIT:

 

yes, yes it does, in frost my necrotic hits for 3.5k vs almost 7k now in unholy. necroblight play is very much an unholy only thing for the most part. 

Edited December 10, 2014 by demonardvark

[Lewie4 2]

on pure single target I agree completely that necrotic is bad news bears, however, even with a few adds i think its a good choice as well :)

 

so sorta like feral where blood talons is best for single where as lunar is better for aoe and cleave fights 

 

EDIT:

 

question though, you said that specifically you used frost, does not plaguebearer increase unholys diseases by 20%

 

EDIT:

 

yes, yes it does, in frost my necrotic hits for 3.5k vs almost 7k now in unholy. necroblight play is very much an unholy only thing for the most part.

This sounds really interesting to me. Going to have to play with this over the next few days :)

[Lewie4 2]

Used it tonight in a normal mode run.  It seems to do well on fight's where adds come in and you can spread them from the boss.  Fights like tectus work but timing is off as if you kill one boss before the cool down of unholy blight is finished then it wont work well as it drops off and you need to gain stacks normally (DPS loss).  It can work really well on bosses like brakenspore when all you need to do is blood boil when adds are close.

 

 

Single target fights work okay but if it drops off you lose sooooo much dps. 

 

TLDR: Good on fights with adds if main target is close and still has Plague.  Bad on fights where target dies/plauge drops before unholy blight is off CD.

 

Logs for anyone interested.  I tanked some and DPS'ed some.  Last boss both me and the other UH DK dps'ed.  I was winning most of the fight but he AoE'ed more near the end and overtook me.  With a bit practice it could work really nicely though.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/L9ypbYBA1rfvxDMN#fight=7