Big Hit Box

Death Knight DPS Specs

For the first time ever all three trees provide competitive dps. There is a lot of information ahead so take your time digesting it all. All specs, glyphs, and rotations are 3.3 current.

Common Abbreviations:

BS - Blood Strike

BT - Blood Tap

DC - Death Coil

DRW - Dancing Rune Weapon

DS - Death Strike

FS - Frost Strike

HB - Howling Blast

HS - Heart Strike

IT - Icy Touch

KM - Killing Machine

OB - Obliterate

Pest - Pestilence

PS - Plague Strike

RP - Runic Power

SS - Scourge Strike

Some standards for all specs (unless otherwise noted):

Hit cap - Alliance 230 (and make friends with a draeni) Horde 263

Expertise cap - 26 or 6.5% after talents

Gemming - Meta Gem - Relentless Earthsiege Diamond 1 Nightmare Tear and the rest Bold Ruby Cardinals

If you find your self lacking in hit a couple Etched Ametrines will do the trick.

Enchanting

Head - Arcanum of Torment - Knights of the Ebon Blade

Shoulders - Greater Inscripition of the Axe - Sons of Hodir

Back - Greater Speed

Chest - Powerful Stats

Wrists - Greater Assault

Hands - Crusher

Belt - Eternal Belt Buckle

Pants - Icescale Leg Armor

Boots - There is a lot of debate on what should be put here I personally use Tuskar's Viatlity for the run speed

Weapon - Rune of the Fallen Crusader (for frost OH use Rune of Razorice

Frost

 0/53/18 Frost DW with glyphs

Rotation: 1st: IT->PS->OB->BS->BS->FS 2nd: OB->FS->OB-FS-OB

Benefits: 20% increase melee haste if the raid is missing an enhancement shaman

The most important thing that you need to keep track of in frost is your KM and Rime procs. You want to save your rime procs for KM procs and vice versa, which shouldn't be hard because KM procs a lot. Inevitably you are going to use a KM proc for FS, it's not the end of the world. You only want to use HB on rime procs as it is a dps loss to replace and OB with HB.

Even with out the perma ghoul talent don't forget to summon him! Pop him out before lust/hero he will do a good amount of damage in the 2 minutes he is out.Army of the Dead is on a 30 minute timer but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. Get them out before a hero/lust as often as possible.

Weapons of choice for dw frost are slow slow. If you want to see the logic behind this there is a great post by Stoneybaby (here) on how big of a dps loss a fast OH is. His is tailored to ehancement shamans but the principle is the same, a lot of our damage comes from strikes that are based off of weapon damage; a slow weapon will always come out on top.

Because this is a dw spec, and white damage plays a big part in your total damage and dps, optimal hit is around 320 even with nerves of cold steel.

  Blood

51/0/20 2H Blood with Glyph of Dark Death (GoDD)

51/0/20 2H Blood with Glyph of Disease (GoD)

GoDD Rotation: Start Up: DS->IT->PS->HS->HS->DC 2nd Rotation: HS->HS->DS->HS->HS->DC->DC

GoD Roation: DS->IT->PS->HS->HS->DC All Other Rotations: HS->HS->DS->HS->PS*->DC

*Pestilence is a higher priority then Heart Strike only when diseases are low elsewise use a Heart Strike

Benefits: Blood brings a very nice 10% AP buff to a raid that is missing either an ehancement shaman or a marksman hunter.

With the changes to Glyph of Disease there is no more rolling ap values for your diseases. Doesn't mean it's not viable. Refreashing diseases works great for a fight that you can refresh them every 20 seconds. If not I would recommend a spec with Glyph of Dark Death. You still want to apply diseases after you cast DRW, as it benefits from applying its own diseases. You want to use your DRW early in a fight and always after a hero/lust, hysteria, on use trinkets/abilities(horde),
and speed potion useage. When it is summoned it takes a snap shot of all your stats at that time, so make sure it gets full benefit.

Unholy

Benefits: 13% increased magical damage 30% increased disease damage.

Wow that lasted long. Scourge Strike was hot nerfed a day into 3.3 the shadow portion can no longer crit.

Ok if you are like me and have stopped crying lets regroup ourselves and figure out what that means.

Pre 2 piece tier 10:

17/0/54 Unholy w/Glyphs

Rotation: PS-> IT-> BS-> BS-> SS-> DC 2nd rotation: SS->DC->SS->BS->BS->DC

With no reaping, the change to glyph of disease, and the (now) slight buff to scourge strike we will drop 1 scourge strike for 2 blood strikes in the second part of our rotation. Pretty much everything else stays the same with unholy.

Scourge strike doesn't scale past 2 blood strikes untill you have 2 pieces of t10 and some other off set pieces with armor pen.

Post 2 piece t 10:

 14/0/57 Unholy w/Glyphs

Rotation: IT->PS->BS->BS->SS->DC 2nd rotation: SS->SS->DC->SS->DC

 The difference between the 2 specs is that we drop 3% crit for reaping. Once you have the gear the additional SS outweighs 2 bs + 3% crit, go go armor pen!

Info Pertaining to Both Specs:

The reduced cooldown on Army of the Dead and the perma ghoul are the big attractions for this spec. The gargoyle is on a small cool down of 3 minutes so you can use it multiple times in a fight. Pop it early and pop it during heroism.

Stat weights (thank you EJ):

as you can see once we get into 25 man ICC gear armor pen shoots way up the stat weight charts for us almost being as good as strength. So start saving up on your crit/armpen,hit/armpen, and expertise/armpen gear as it will be very very good for unholy DKs.