Unholy vs Frost Death Knight PvE

[Contagion 0]

    Hey, I am Contagion of Darkspear. Just attempted Highmaul for the first time today, and while I was top of my raid in DPS as Frost, I was WAY behind others who had similar ilvl who played Unholy. I have an ilvl of 640 and averaged around 17k DPS. While looking at the world of logs, I noticed there are people with 635 ilvl who are pulling 30k+ DPS as Unholy. Now I know Unholy is better for dps, and I played it for a long time. I just don't understand how. When I play it, I get around 13k, which is less than my Frost spec. I have read basically every guide out there, theory crafted with my guild for hours, done hours upon hours of testing, to no avail. I simply can't get my DPS up near where these other people are. I can't even get it to surpass my Frost, which is vastly inferior to Unholy.

My rotation is as follows;

 

-Soul Reaper on targets at/below 45%

-Outbreak to apply diseases

-Defile

-Festering Strike x2 to convert frost/blood runes to death

-Scourge Strike to dump unholy/death runes

-Death Coil when sudden doom procs, or at 90+ RP

-Gargoyle on CD

-Plague Leech when low on RP and out of runes, reapply diseases with Outbreak

-Rinse and Repeat

 

Again, I don't understand how people are pulling so much. Would anyone care to help me out? Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong? Am I just retarded? What is going on. It is baffling. I seem to just lack DPS when it should be there. Quite frustrating.

 

My armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/darkspear/Contagion/advanced

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

-Contagion.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Contagion

[demonardvark 556]

I can imagine 3 possibilities:

 

1. You don't mention soul reaper. With unholy with enemies at 45% health you can begin casting soul reaper. This is almost the top priority for unholy dks (next to defile) or if you use a different talent, it is top priority. This hits like a freight train.

 

2. Defile. Defile is powerful HOWEVER it does have a major drawback. The enemy has to baste in it. If you drop defile and tank moves the enemy out of the way say goodbye to a large portion of your dps that fight. Defile has to be used on CD yes but it has to be used accurately, otherwise, you'll bottom out quick.

 

3. Multistrike - Your multistrike isn't bad at 18% but of course we want a lot more a lot lot more. You have an open socket you aren't using and not everything that can be enchanted is. Gems spots in WoD are sorta rare now so enchants are a big thing. 

 

4. Okay so, 4th one. Are you using pots? Are you using food? These are small difference but add up.

 

Edited for 5th one:

Don't save rune power until 90. Spam death coil as soon as possible. Getting timmy to digivolve is a big priority and there is no benefit in pooling rune power.

Edited December 4, 2014 by demonardvark

[Contagion 0]

I can imagine 3 possibilities:

 

1. You don't mention soul reaper. With unholy with enemies at 45% health you can begin casting soul reaper. This is almost the top priority for unholy dks (next to defile) or if you use a different talent, it is top priority. This hits like a freight train.

 

2. Defile. Defile is powerful HOWEVER it does have a major drawback. The enemy has to baste in it. If you drop defile and tank moves the enemy out of the way say goodbye to a large portion of your dps that fight. Defile has to be used on CD yes but it has to be used accurately, otherwise, you'll bottom out quick.

 

3. Multistrike - Your multistrike isn't bad at 18% but of course we want a lot more a lot lot more. You have an open socket you aren't using and not everything that can be enchanted is. Gems spots in WoD are sorta rare now so enchants are a big thing. 

 

4. Okay so, 4th one. Are you using pots? Are you using food? These are small difference but add up.

 

Edited for 5th one:

Don't save rune power until 90. Spam death coil as soon as possible. Getting timmy to digivolve is a big priority and there is no benefit in pooling rune power.

I do use Soul Reaper, Just forgot to mention it in the post(now edited). I have it nearly constantly applied on targets at or below 50%-45%. Depending on how fast they are going down.

I have defile on CD, and 9 out of 10 times the boss will stand in it for the duration.

Alright, I'll go get what I can enchanted.

Yes, I was full buffed, food buffed, and had the whispering crystal (+100 stats)

Edited December 4, 2014 by Contagion

[drumsmani 47]

Not necessarily related to the issues that you are seeing, but the crystal only increases stats by 100. The tooltip hasn't been updated.

[Contagion 0]

Not necessarily related to the issues that you are seeing, but the crystal only increases stats by 100. The tooltip hasn't been updated.

Hm. In that case would a flask of strength be more effective? since it sits at 250 strength?

[drumsmani 47]

For raids, definitely go with flasks. There are going to be wipes as fights are being learnt and flask effect persists through death. You could possibly go with the lesser flasks for normal and switch to greater for heroic / mythic if you don't want to spend too much on them.

[Contagion 0]

Alright, thanks for the tip man. I had no idea. GG blizz.

[demonardvark 556]

oh one more thing, that I am not 100% sure on (so don't kill me if im wrong) but i think now pvp gear scales down in pve content, so your ring is a pvp ring and i believe that now gets weaker when you raid... not 100% on that though

[Contagion 0]

oh one more thing, that I am not 100% sure on (so don't kill me if im wrong) but i think now pvp gear scales down in pve content, so your ring is a pvp ring and i believe that now gets weaker when you raid... not 100% on that though

I don't believe so. I scale UP in PvP, but remains at it's base ilvl in PvE. In essence, it is a 660 ring, which was better than the 636 I had. Someone in my guild ran this by me as well, did ilvl and stat comparisons in a dungeon to test.

[Contagion 0]

UPDATE: turns out World of Logs is just buggy. The top Unholy DPS is actually pulling 23k, instead of 30k. I had a lengthy conversation with him, and turns out I am just not using soul reaper enough. He also has a trinket that grants a CRAZY amount of strength. Also, upon returning to highmaul as Unholy, I was pulling an average of 18k, so I am only behind by a few thousand, as opposed to 15k.

[Storm 426]

I have seen some logs here and there of Unholy doing 27-30k, but they're honestly just outliers. If you take the average of 90th percentile at the heroic level you're looking at 24k dps for Unholy and 21k dps for Frost. Unholy is definitely ahead by enough that even the best Frost players will have a difficult time beating an average Unholy DK, like statistically proven and everything 60th percentile unholy is 21k and almost exactly even with a 90th percentile frost.

 

The legnedary PVP ring is 660 in PVE, and will be better than a normal ring, asside from maybe a 655 Multistrike+Mastery ring, but I don't know if there are any of those.

 

I have a weak aura I've been working on that puts the whole unholy rotation on the screen, ability by ability, and makes buttons flash in real time. It isn't completely finished yet, and even when it is finish it won't be 100% perfect, but having only put 2-3 hours into making it so far, I've already gotten my unholy dps from 15k up to 18k. When I get home tonight I'm going to work on putting the last couple of cooldowns into it, and then I'll share it with everyone else.