For you DK freak's

I stumbled across this info from Elitist Jerks and thought that i would share it with you kind folk's.

Dual Wielding as a Death Knight
1) Why to Dual Wield.
2) Gearing for Dual Wield.
3) Presences, Gargy, Ghouly and You
4) The Specs and Their Rotations

1) Hai, I'm Darklordxenu from (US)Misha. I'm here to give a quick reference guide to all those DK's looking to pump out as much damage as possible, as easily as possible. A quick reference Guide to show you how to DW DPS. DW'ing for Dummies if you will . Focused on pre 3.08 specs and handling.

Dual wielding as a Death Knight is currently producing more dps than any 2hd build. Note: This is extremely likely to change as nerfs have been introduced in 3.08 (albeit ineffective as of 10-12-09). It's an extremely simple spec to gear for, and rather fun and easy to play. DW'ing with your Dk will produce tremendous single target dps, as well as extremely competitive AOE dps.

I'm going to cover gear and overall ideas before divulging into the 3 major DW specs; as the gear and overall playstyle for both specs is *very* similar.

2) To properly gear your DK for DW'ing, you need to hit about 8% hit. Ren was one of the first DK's to show going past 8% hit from gear is pretty much a waste in raw damage. After you get 8%, go for Strength. We have talents to boost it, our fallen crusader, our ghoul, and our gargoyle are all effected by it moreso than AP, and lolkingslol.

After strength, Crit rating is important for Killing Machine Uptime (pre 3.08.) Take expertise, more hit, and haste as they come on gear but *always* gem for strength, excluding the 2 blues you need for the Chaotic Skyflare Meta gem (If you aren't a JC.) As our DW spec is based around critting, 3% more crit damage is the best meta we can get. Armor pen is utter garbage for DK's considering about 30% of our dps is effected by it. Armor Pen is pure garbage for us. Haste will be much more valuable in 3.08 with the way the current implementation of Killing Machine is on the ptr (PPM system.)

As for Weapons and sigils. Currently, Fast/Fast is the way to go for either of the dual wield specs, but 44/27 will benefit from a slow/fast combination. Come next patch, DPS > Speed > Stats with the changes to bloodcaked blade offhand procs no longer triggering mainhand procs. Sigil wise, [Sigil of the Dark Rider] will hold you for now. [Sigil of Haunted Dreams] is DECENT, but next patch, the Icy Touch sigil from Grizzly Hills Daily Tokens (cant remember the name for the life of me) will be the best sigil a DW DK can use.

The best tradeskills to be for a deathknight are JC / BS. Prismatic gems, with 2 extra gem slots. This is rather expensive, so make sure you have some sort of major income to level both up to Northrend levels.

TLDR Version:
Get 8% hit.
Gem nothing but STR.
Starter Sigil is fine.
Chaotic Skyflare Meta.
Weps should be fast / fast or Slow / Fast *only* if 44/27 or DPS discrepancy or 10 or more.
Great Starter DW weps : [Fang of Truth] [Reaper of Dark Souls]

3) Numerous tests and parses have shown that Blood Presence outpreforms Unholy Presence by a significant margin in almost every situation. So, use it!

Our DPS as DW comes in a large part from Gargoyle and our Ghoul pet. Thus, a large portion of our threat is not attributed to us. However, the draw back is you have to monitor and baby your pets constantly in order to stay top (or competitive) on the Charts.

Your Ghouly will do anywhere from 300 to 700 of your damage, so take care of him! Randomized Name Here Ghoul, will have about 11 to 14k hp fully raid buffed. That's a decent amount right? Not really. He has No AoE avoidance or mitigation at all. (Changes in 3.08 buff Night of the Dead talent to give ghouly 35% aoe avoidance per point invested.) Thus, you have to watch him like a hawk. If he's taking too much damage, pull him out of the fray and let the AOE heals pick him up back again before commanding him to rip faces once more. Also, on extremely AoE intensive fights like Sapphiron, he'll be pummeled into submission and be near worthless. Get used to it. You're going to get annoyed by it, but at the same time, who can't love a little guy named Ratdrinker?

Summon Gargoyle is the other powerhouse of this spec. Gargy can bump overall dps by 1000 while he's up. He's a monster, that sadly is getting nerfed. (Much needed however.) The way to use your Gargoyle is very similar to the way you use your ghoul. Gargy is fragile as hell, if you pop him out just before a major AoE , he'll get fried faster than chicken at KFC. So be careful with him. However, if there is no aoe to worry about (lolpatches) the best way to launch him is when you have every single trinket / weapon buff up simultaneously. Get an addon that shows when trinket procs are up (Procs off of [Mirror of Truth] and the like). The one I use is needtoknow. The reason to do this, is when Gargy is launched, he takes a screenshot of your stats, and uses those stats for his damage for the entire minute he's out. So if you have 1000ap proc from mirror of truth, 300str proc from Greatness card, and Fallen Crusader proced all at once, thats an extra 3k ap worth of damage he'll be doing for an entire minute, that lasts at most Seconds stacked on you. Learn to proc watch, love it, and watch that dps go HIGH.

TLDR Version:
Use blood presence!
Pet Owns, But be careful with him. He's fragile.
Launch Gargoyle when All your +ap trinket / weapon rune buffs are up.
Get Proc Watch addon like needtoknow to help with better Gargoyle launches.

4) FINALLY! How to spec / what skills to use! There's 3 major specs, I'm going to cover 0/32/39 and 0/44/27 as i have personally Raided as both. I'll give a brief glimpse into 0/20/51 but I'm not entirely sure how the spec rolls out on that one.

4a) 0/20/51
Your rotation is going to be:
IT>PS>BSx2>IT>RP Dump
ITx4>PS>RP Dump
Fast / Fast weapons will be the weapons of choice. As you can see, the spec is built around Icy touch spam, with Ebon Plague Bringer and Unholy Aura for your raid. If there is no other death knight raiding with you, you should be a spec with Ebon Plague bringer in order to help the raid. Sure boomkins and locks can do +13% magic damage, but for us, its a matter of Icy touch or PS, then pestilence and boom, its up on any mob in range; much, much easier for us to do on AoE packs then Boomkins or Locks.

If my rotation or Spec is off for this build, PLEASE let me know. I know very little about this build and am very willing to edit this section ASAP.

For glyphs, Boneshield, Ghoul, and Plague Strike. Getting Icy Touch glyph will hurt this build way too much as nice as it is.

4b) 0/31/40 The standard 0/32/39 is to remove my 1 point in Night of the Dead to fill 2/2 Merciless combat. I prefer at least ONE point in NOTD to keep ghouly up, and it was a dps loss of < 3% overall in raids for 1 point in MC from my parses. However, spec as you like there, its more preference than anything.
Your rotation is:
IT>PS>HB>BSx2>RP Dump
IT>PS>HB>ITx2>RP Dump
Yer RP dump is Death Coil (duh,) and if at all possible, save killing machine procs for howlingblast. Try to avoid using them on an icy touch, unless it pushes back your rotation too far (2 to 3 seconds or more.) Instead of using a touch, dump RP on death coil so you can save KM procs for HB. Simple, easy build.

There are people who use macros to cancel Rime procs so they can maintain a "perfect" rotation. If you're that interested about being top DPS, go through the thread and read it all to understand why. Otherwise, I'd use those rimes for free howling blasts just to make things easier and a little more fun. (WOW that 8k aoe crit was FREEEEEE! Free is always better imo . )

This build strongly benefits from fast/fast. However if you have a 140dps slow weap, and a 120dps fast wep, dont be fooled, go for the higher dps wep. Just try to "upgrade" to a faster equal dps wep .

Glyphs: Icy Touch, Bone Shield, Ghoul.

4c) 0/44/27
Basically the same thing, but lower ghoul survivability, and a different RP dump.
Your Rotation is:
IT>PS>HB>BSx2>RP Dump
IT>PS>HB>ITx2>RP Dump
Yer RP dump is Frost Strike in this case and DO NOT save killing machine procs. Your RP dump will consume KM procs, so saving them for howling blast will just be a drop in DPS.

Again with the Rime cancel mention...meh. Do as you like .

This build slightly, slightly favors Slow/fast due to RP dump relying on % wep dmg. The difference you see from Frost Strike dmg going up, will drop your KM / BCB procs however. So either setup will work fine for this build.

Glyphs: Icy Touch, Bone Shield, Ghoul.


And there ya have it. Quicky How to guide for DW dps. If you have suggestions or need to point out inaccuracies, please please please, PM me so I know to check over here and update / fix anything ASAP.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S here is a link to the page for you interested folks to find the links to the spec's and such.

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t37337-dual_wield_builds/p49/