I just read Dekaye's discussion on stat caps and such and thought about replying to that one with this post. But I realized that this particular topic probably warrants its own thread: DPS rotation. I was recently in OS with another DPS DK, unholy spec. We were both neck and neck at the top of the damage meter pumping out 4K+ DPS with minimal buffs, so of course we start talking. He's unholy, knows little about blood. I'm blood, know litte about unholy. And as we know, the interesting thing about DKs is the infinite combination of DPS rotations you can build. Even knowing blood spec backwards and forwards at this point, some of the ideas he was throwing out were still intruiging enough to go whack out on a training dummy. He ended up doing the same thing and made it a point to seek me out hours later with his findings. It was very insightful. So that's what I wanted to do here, i.e. offer up complete rotations and get opinions on them. Why do you do this, can you substitute that, try switching this and that around, etc.

I use 51/13/7 blood spec (Annihilation).

1) Here is my main blood rotation for general trash and larger elites.

IT, PS, HS, HS, OB, DC (dump), OB, HS, HS, HS, HS, OB, DC (dump), repeat
- throw out a DnD for pulls of 4+ and refresh the runes with ERW
- substitute DS for OB if you need a bit of healing

2) Here is my main blood rotation for bosses. An important note here is that the object of this rotation is to get to 100% runic power ASAFP in order to kick off Dancing Rune Weapon with Hysteria. It's massive DPS for the first 30 seconds of the fight (which is why I shoot up really hard on the meter at the start).

DRW - Dancing Rune Weapon
ERW - Empower Rune Weapon
BT - Blood Tap
HYS - Hysteria (cast on yourself with a macro)

IT, PS, HS, HS, OB, ERW, OB, OB, HS, DRW, HYS, BT

At this point, you would resume the rotation from #1, but now your DRW is mimicking everything you do for 20+ seconds.

- By the time you get to DRW, you may not need the HS. The 2 OBs after ERW should cap you at 100% runic power, but if you need a little extra, throw in the HS.
- BT is needed in this rotation because by the time you reach it, everything is on cooldown. BT allows you to kick off an immediate IT, then cool downs will be ready afterwards.
- Always kick off DRW at 100% runic power, else it's wasted. After the first DRW, watch the cool down so you can build your runic power back up to kick it off again.
- DRW and Hysteria should always be on cool down.
- An important thing to remember is that the [DRW, HYS, BT] combo is all instant cast. Kick them off as fast as you can so you can quickly resume the rune rotation and maximize your DRW damage.

And that's the secret to Lamby's deeps. I'll add more as I think about it.

My game play is always an open book, so feel free to ask or suggest anything. Let's hear from the other DKs, tanking and DPS. Pleeeeease share the wisdom! /beg

have u tried frost deeps yet? with talents in the frost tree your obliterate can get to 27% increased crit chance and 45% increased crit dmg, many people think this spec is aoe only but frost strike deals nearly as much dmg as obliterate but can be spammed for 4-5 attacks with the right rotations

id try it out

sigh....the crying that involves Frost. As probably one of the few that have seriously tried to make it work, at current gear levels, it just doesn't fly. As for the crit dmg, Might of Mograine in deep blood gives the same dmg buff. As for frost strike, you are a lil incorrect. It actually outdmg's Oblit. I can easily pull off 8-9k FS crits 80-90% of the time. Just wait for Killing Machine Procs or if u spec for deathchill.

I am very happy with rotations and what frost dps does. But for some reason it just doesn't pump out the dmg. The last 2 weeks of raids I went from top 5ish dps to being lucky if I was top 10. My next project is going to be once I get the Frost sigil from XT heroic, I will be going back to Frost to give it another shot in either 2h mode if I get a certain axe from Ignis or a Sword from XT hardmode, and DW mode once I get another Stonerender from Cat Bitch.

I have yet to find any good information on Frost DPS. Even Elitist Jerks is pretty sparse on info. I have only run with one kick ass Frost DK and that bastard was pumping out insane damage, comparatively geared. And I mean not even close, we were top 2 in a 25-man VoA and he was a full 3 percentage points ahead of me. I tried to talk to him, but of course he responded like a complete douchebag, like I was trying to steal his precious. I have yet to understand why people feel the need to guard their game play stategy. I mean c'mon, is the meter really that important to people? Oh wait, overly competitive social idiots in an anonymous environment, just answered my own question.

Anyway, slight tangent there.

I think Frost is a viable spec, just have to figure out the little nuances. From what I can find, it doesn't look like you can run regular rotations like with Blood and Unholy. It seems more fluid and situational. I'm definitely going to be kicking the tires as soon as I get a pair of nice off-spec one-handers.

I also wanted to ask about Unholy DPS rotations. I set up my Unholy dual-spec specifically for Kologarn since DRW is bugged on him (big damage loss). What I've also found is that Unholy comes in really handy in thick trash. Not like 2 or 3 big elites, but rather 4+ regular elites. A good example would be in the ice path leading to Hodir (worms and pats) or in the Thorim arena. I'm starting to get my chops down with it, but I'd like to get some input. I will always stay Blood spec for bosses, just more or less looking for tips on multi-mobs. I currently use the 17/0/54 spec and my rotation is:

IT, PS, Pestilence, DnD, BS, BS, SS, UB, DC (dump), SS, SS, SS, UB, repeat

Thoughts or suggestions?

should grab corpse explosion and use that and unholy blight instead of DC to runic dump
the aoe is a little better and u no longer need to use unholy runes to mess up cds or target corpses with it, im sure it would do a couple thou in dps spec

and check out my offspec for a BA frost spec, i was top dps on maly against dows and my gear is worse... still have tank legs, they arent terribad cuz of the hit rating but still

uses uh pres
rotation on bosses: IT PS OB FS FS BS BS FS... OB OB OB FS FS HB refresh
rotation on aoe: IT PS Pest HB BB FS FS FS... HB BB DnD FS FS refresh
Glyphs: Glyph of Icy Touch, Glyph of Frost Strike, Glyph of Obliterate, Glyph of Pestilence
Glyph Bonuses: IT gets to 25 RP/cast FS costs only 32 RP Ob does 20% more dmg and pest has longer range

on bosses u never use howling blast unless u get the rime proc, if u do it helps keep ur dps up when u finally run out of RP from FS

Ok so most of you already saw that I went back to Frost tonight, but for those that missed it, OMGITSFUCKINGCOOLWOW! Sorry, just glad to finally have worked out most of the kinks and have respectable dps.

I did 4 heroics this morning with what turned out to be one of the top geared frost DK's. He was quite friendly in answering my barrage of questions. One of the major differences from blood and maybe unholy (i dont do unholy often so not sure), is that its more priority rotation and not a standardized rotation. But 1st the spec. I run it with a 17/51/3. It's pretty no brainer for the talent choices. Only changes I made to Ardnalis' spec is that he put 2 puts in Anticipation so he could go deeper into Unholy and get Epidemic. This caused him to only have 3 pts in bladed armor and 3 points in Dark Conviction on the blood side. Personally, with as often as I HB'd, I didnt' really need Epidemic.

For glyphs, I use Howling Blast for the FF proc, Frost Strike, and Obliterate. This spec is a lil gimmicky in that you do not cast diseases. Yes, thats right, no Icy Touch of Plague Strike. You only use Howling Blast, which with the glyph, will proc your FF. And to answer your 1st question, yes this still procs Icy Talons. Talons procs off of a new FF being cast. Since Howling Blast causes FF, not refreshes it like Disease glyph, it will proc Talons.

As for rotation/priorities. Your goal is to make sure you hit FS EVERY TIME KM PROCS. It's ok if HB steals it once in a while, but you can hit upwards of 9k FS crits with KM, so remember thats your focus. The same goes with Rime procs, You make sure you hit HB every time. Other than that, you follow a standard rotation:

HB(procs FF), OB, BSx2, FS until procs or HB is up. Insert your priorites (FS on KM's, HB's on Rimes) as they proc, interrupting your rotation and then resuming until HB is back up.

FS is not used as a rune dump. You wont have time to cast the 4 strikes needed dump it all. You want to have some saved so that you can make sure every time KM procs, you can use it, and KM procs a lot.

Thats about it, in a nutshell. I use the Proculas addon to help with watching my procs (ty Pet). I have it set to go off for KM and Rime only, and they go off with 2 different sounds, so I know which ones to use.

Feel free to shoot me any questions. Its nice to have a rotation thats a lil more fingerdancing on the keyboard then just a boring button mashing.

Sveeeeet, thanks for kicking the tires Dekaye. Are you dual wielding or 2 handing the spec?

Onto the training dummy!

At the moment I am going with 2h until I get a second Stonerender and the Sigil. Then I'll will start working on DWing.

i wouldnt try DW with this spec because u already have enough haste as it is and the KM proc chance is based on the base AS of your weapon, slower weapon higher chance faster weapon lower chance, so ull hit more but it will proc the same ammount, and FS and OB will do less dmg.

Mkay, so I'm totally hooked on Frost DPS at the moment. Thanks to Dekaye for all the initial information, that was insanely helpful. I'm also sporting the 17/51/3 spec (until the next patch of course). I think I've got a good feel for the rotation, but I wanted to get some input from the other DKs since Blood DPS is my forte.

My standard non-mobile rotation is:

HB, OB, BS, BS, FS (dump), OB, OB, OB, FS (dump), repeat

- For AoE packs, I throw a DnD, HB, and Pestilence. I then hit ERW to refresh runes and resume regular rotation.
- I keep Unbreakable Armor on cool down, that 25% strength buff is just too nice not to use whenever possible. I usually couple it with Blood Tap so I can kick it off the second it becomes available.
- I am also using Proculas to couple FS with KM (when I can).

So far it's a serious increase over Blood DPS. One big thing I've noticed is that the spec is very fluid and situational, nothing standard about it. There are many fights when my rotation needs a serious on-the-fly overhaul. It's stressful at times, but really really really fun.

Any thoughts on my current approach?