My Death Knight Dps rotation: Tongue, Nose, Forehead, Chin or Cheekbone (on proc), then Forehead until my eyes & nose water, then wipe face on keyboard. Repeat.
Ahem, sometimes I’m amazed by the facerollers, and wanted to help them improve. I hear league of legend is good too. Happy killing.
Good topic on wow insider a while ago asking if Healing priests should learn shadow, and it has resonance with a DK’s dps role. So I’ll rhetorically ask:
Should DPS Death Knights learn to Tank? And vice versa?
I’d like to give you a balanced and well rounded opinion on this, complete with examples and war stories, but I can’t. The answer is so bloody obvious it makes me wonder how you could have the opposite view – my answer is by hell and damnation they should.
Everyone will play better and understand roles better when they have a wider set of experience. If you have not done it, go try a different role in 5 mans. Do 20 runs in each role, and then see if it changed your attitude.
Disagree? Please tell me why.
The patch updates from 4.1 for the Death Knight class has changed Frost dps significantly. A Frost DK should review the new EJ notes which seem accurate to my quick testing (repeat wiping on Neferian) in last night’s raid.
Important updates:
Still to test is which of the off-spec talents are actually better, give the balance of diseases increased duration vs the persistent dps increase from other talents.
I’ve bashed the LFD Call to Arms as not going far enough, and not being an effective solution; and as a blogger with no leverage or responsibility in the game that is easy to do. So instead of a blog post which grumbles, here is a blog post with a suggestion.
Item stat based rules for Need vs Greed, for group roles.
The random dungeon finder tool now filters on armour type, but no further. I’m proposing that there is an algorithm which can filter the Need vs Greed option even further, so that gear is far less likely to be awarded to the wrong role. Using this the players would be getting gear with a far higher (but not imperfect) degree of focus on the role they joined to execute.
We have four roles and a range of special cases for gear within the class combinations created by those roles (Range DPS, Melee DPS, Tank, and Heal). It’s a bad thing to see a Need roll on an item which will never be used, such as a Death Knight rolling need on a Plate item which has Int on it, or a Hunter rolling on a staff with Spirit.
Here is a suggested solution to improve the algorithm which filters Need vs Greed selection:
Use role based filters for all Need role which restrict based upon:
This allows for the armor type restriction to hold as currently implemented, and the armor type restriction would still act as a restriction. It allows trinkets, rings, necks and other non-armor type items to be classified using the stats assigned to the item. This mean that it is not an arbitrary assignment of priority, but one based on the stats which the item has and how they are valued as recognised by item weightings.
The rules allow for an item within a armour type that a role might current role on to be corrected, like Int plate vs Dodge plate, or a trinket with only one stat, and allows for ignoring the Stamina values on gear. While this might disadvantage Tanks slightly, I am not sure of many items which would otherwise be selectable which would not also be valid choices for DPS characters – so the degree of impact is less.
All that we need to do is decide on the primary stat for each class & role combination, set a valid list of secondary stats, and also set some stats to exclude. It is worth noting that the inclusion of a stat in the included or excluded list is not mean to dictate a priority amongst them, it just means that this is a potentially valid stat for the class-role.
For example: It would be a shame for a range Tank to miss a role for an upgrade with Dodge on it just because a DPS in the same group rolls need.
The syntax is = Class Role: Prime-Stat / Stats Included / Stats Excluded
DK mdps: str / mast, crit, hit, expertise, haste / !int, !spirit, !dodge, !parry, !block
Pally mdps: as above
War mdps: as above
Druid mdps: agi / mast, crit, hit, expertise, haste / !int, !spirit, !dodge, !parry, !block
Rogue mdps: as above
Shaman mdps: as above
DK tank: str / dod, parr, mast, exp, hit / !block, !int, !spirit
Druid tank: agi / dod, mast, exp, hit / !block, !parry, !int, !spirit
Pally tank: str / dod, parr, block, mast, exp, hit / !int, !spirit
War tank: as above
Druid rdps: int / spell power, hit, crit, haste, mastery /
Hunter rdps: agi / hit, crit, haste, mastery / !int, !spi
Mage rdps: as per Druid
Priest rdps: int / spell power, hit, crit, haste, mastery, spirit /
Shaman rdps: as per Druid
Warlock rdps: as per Druid
Druid heal: spi/ int, mastery, crit, hate, spellpower / !hit
Pally heal: as above
Priest heal: as above
Shaman heal: as above
As a basic this does it. It could be expanded to understand the ratio of Spirit to Int in comparison of caster items, where one is valued to dps higher than healers.
It could be expanded to ignore the rules if the person who could roll Need already has an item in that location which exceeds the item weight by ~20%. Meaning a player could not roll Need on a ilevel: 333 item if they already have a ilevel 356 in that location. For them it becomes a forced Greed. That might mean that another player is the only one who can greed, or that nobody can roll need. You could also open the rolling so that if nobody is normally allowed to roll Need due to this rule, then the system lets them role Need if it is in their armour type. This way a offset item goes to somebody who might actually use it, not to disenchant or vendor.
And I’m sure there is a huge range of exceptions that might apply for funny items. No way in hell I was going to try and parse all of the WoWHead data to validate this.
On plan I think this is a solid idea. What do you think?
Blizzard has announced a new scheme which will reward the rare types of role in the queue with rewards. If you are the role that is most needed – you’ll have extra cash, pets, mounts, all the good stuff. But it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
It will be worth tanking – but only slightly more. Not significantly more, and as the reward is not gained for guild groups – so we’re actually discouraging friends from playing together. Why? It should at least allow 2 people to sign-up together, and 3 would be better. Would it matter if 3 guildies took 2 stranges with them on a run? Wouldn’t that speed the rewards a little too?
It won’t fix the fact that dps rolls on my Tank gear, and vice versa.
It won’t stop any role gear going to the wrong roles at all, which is what pisses me off the most. Almost every dungeon the loot from the last roll will be a series of Need rolls. Why? Because there is no recourse to stop them doing it.
It won’t stop people being rude, or kicking without reason.
It won’t stop the time wasters, the AFK’ers, and the gogogo-moron-boys.
It won’t stop Loot Fever. Except it could be easily stopped, as we have had roles for a long time, and its just lazy to think that we can code specially for Orbs, or for some mounts, but can’t figure out that gear with Dodge is a Tank item. Total bullshit.
I really hope my friends and guild are happy to keep doing runs, and I’d rather run with them than get a new mount. I’d rather walk.
Happy killing….end rant.
A quick note to help clarify something obvious. Cataclysm has totally changed the choice of which presence to use. We are in a new and highly logical world where the two choices are Frost or Unholy. Please do not use Blood Presence for DPS any more, its a Tank Presence now.
Update 26-Sep-2011: Use Unholy presence for DPS. The rest of this post is based upon old information, and has changed. I would not expect an update to this now until after patch 4.3, or even in the next expansion.
From now onward the choice of DPS presence is between Frost and Unholy. Generally if you are an Unholy DK, then use Unholy Presence especially where fights require a lot of movement. When doing AoE where you have time to switch out of Unholy, and will not be moving back to single target quickly you can switch over to Frost Presence.
Also if you’re a Frost DK then use Frost presence for dual-weild and Unholy for using a two handed weapon (see links for proof). This is a deliberate change in style so that the spec matches the presence.
So the DPS rule is now: 2h weapon = Unholy, x2 single handed weapons = Frost.
I posted a long time ago in Wrath about which presence to use, but that post is now totally out of date. I’m posting this now because my old post still gets a lot of traffic and it needs to be corrected, and also because I’m starting to play a DK again and I’m having to retrain myself as well. Heck – I still switch to Blood sometimes by habit.
Apologies if this is stating the obvious. Happy Killing.
Another great tool – the RaidBot for DPS History. Like the State of DPS, this is a graphical presentation of the dps ranks, but in a line graph. As cool as the State of DPS is.
Nice to see the geek-programmers out there creating parsing tools.
If you’re a dps fanatic, and like to keep in the loop on exactly which spec is progressing well, then check out http://stateofdps.com/
It takes the top 200 runs from the World of Logs project and supplies a ranking of the classes by dps output. You can further dig by class and by boss to really compare. Its really quite cool.
A note though – these logs are the best 1% people in the wow population, so do not expect to produce the same results. This site is a guide, so please treat it as such (until you can hit 22k dps, then you’ll be in the logs).
You do zero DPS when you’re dead.
Meaning the longer you survive, the better everyone else is. Don’t stand in fire, don’t pull aggro, kill the marked target, or at the very least the Tank’s target.
(this rule sometimes does not apply; like when I play my Boomkin)
Quick thought I had while tring to suss out invite mods, guild events, and all sorts of other tricky tasks – the in game calendar could be greatly improved by make the accept in calendar sign-ups also allow selection of role.
Meaning the selection of Tank, Heal, Range, or Melee; and having a sort on that field, just like the sort on guildmember rank, etc. Off-spec would be handy too, but not nearly as good as having the role that the character will bring to the raid.
