DK Guide

[a_shadow_of_life]

Well in the DK Guide it states a build, and where to put your talent points, but the IG talent advisor says otherwise for certain talents, such as Blade Barrier, which should I follow?

[Zygor]

Follow the ingame talent build. :-)

[a_shadow_of_life]

Alright. Even though I like your site guide better, considering Blade Barrier looks nice.. but you are the master ^.-

EDIT: Bladed Armor 5/5 looks nice too! lol

[a_shadow_of_life]

Once I obtain Improved Blood Presence, should I use the Frost Presence for increased Armor and Stamina, or keep using Blood?

[rokku]

Depends what you're doing -- tanking or DPS (levelling). If tanking, use frost presence; if DPS (or levelling), use blood for the heals

[Kamchak]

Stick with the blood spec for leveling and for tanking.

The frost has lost its benefits of being the tank spec, and most of the effective DK tanks I have run with are using blood spec.

Once you get to 80 I'd recomend dual spec'ing with blood and unholy; blood for tanking and unholy for DPS.

[rokku]

Really Kam? I've just spec'd into frost for tanking as I was told it was better for 5-man heroics. I know blood will be the tanking tree in Cata, though, so have thought perhaps I should go to blood... do you have a recommended build? (I'm still using the blood dps one you set for me, and it's great)

Also interested in an unholy dps spec if you have one, or why you think Unholy is better for dps than blood.

/thread hijack ends

[Kamchak]

Really Kam? I've just spec'd into frost for tanking as I was told it was better for 5-man heroics. I know blood will be the tanking tree in Cata, though, so have thought perhaps I should go to blood... do you have a recommended build? (I'm still using the blood dps one you set for me, and it's great)

Also interested in an unholy dps spec if you have one, or why you think Unholy is better for dps than blood.

/thread hijack ends

Most of the DK tanks I have run with are either frost or blood.

The frost DK tanks I can pull aggro from them, sometimes with just a wand, no joke, no exageration.
The DK tanks that I can unload on have been blood.

For my own DK I was using blood as DPS (not comfortable enough to be tank on my DK... have a pally for that).
Once it was suggested to go unholy to increase DPS output.
The instance I went into right after I respec'd blood to unholy showed an increase in my DPS output of 600 points in overall data.

The best build to use (and the one I use) is from elitistjerks.com. At least that is the one I have stuck with.

As for why I have a hard time tanking as a DK... I really dont know. I know the mechanics of the toon, but it is not pretty, and I choose not to effect 4 other players with my inability to fullfill that role, especially since I can do the job on my pally.

[raynman]

Most of the tanks are running a Blood spec these days unless they are tremendously under geared (quest blues and ilvl 200 crafted purples) and only run heroics. Every DK tank I know regardless of spec still uses Frost Presence. As a tank without a shield it's pretty hard to beat the 8% less damage taken, 8% more stamina, 60% more armor, and increased threat.

For endgame content, I believe Unholy might be the preferred DPS spec now although, I think the difference between Unholy and Blood is not that much to really concern yourself with unless you are trying to do the min/max thing.

I will have to plug in some gear and EJ DPS specs and run the sim a few times to see what the results are, I will report back later this weekend on my findings are.

[Kamchak]

Yes, tanking ='s frost presence, regardless if your blood or frost spec.

For unholy on DPS, go with blood presence.

The only time I am using unholy prescence is for the added run speed, then go back to blood or frost to engage.

[bellefso]

Everyone confuses spec with presence. You can use Frost presence in all spec's. This give you increased stamina, armor and threat generation. Blood presence gives you more self healing etc.

I tank and DPS with Blood, dual spec'd. But use Blood presence for DPS and Frost for tanking.

Bottom line the presence you are in is not the same as the spec you have. They are independent of each other.

[cabby]

And of course it's looking like all of that will change with the Cataclysm release so don't get too used to it.

http://considerit1.wordpress.com/cataclysm-notes/

[bellefso]

Cool, thanks for the link. So it looks like they are moving frost presence stats to blood presence. Also appears that there is no boost to self healing like blood had before.

[a_shadow_of_life]

Got a quick question.. what would be better for Dual Wielding? Grand Marshal's Handaxe or Swiftblade? The build I plan on using has Improved Icy Talons

[bellefso]

I would say the axe. Generally most DK's abilities are instant cast weapon dmg based. So if you look at the base dmg, not the dps, that is what you will deal out. In this case the axe does 138-207, the sword 85-129. So since the abilities ignore the swing timer they hit instantly, higher actual dmg is preferred. I don't dual wield on my DK's so I don't know how this affects the off-hand.

Fast weapons can run into an issue with something called parry jibbing(I think this is the right term) and it has to do with the parry mechanics. I am not sure what the actual issue is since I don't dual wield I never researched it much. If you have more ?'s i would probably google for DK slow vs. fast weapon or something like that.