Sunday, January 23, 2011

Talents


Talents are a big part of being a proper dk in arena and pvp. I'll go over each talent i chose and give you some reasons why you need it.

Lets start with the unholy tree.

From the first tier you have 3 choices and because Virulence doesn't help us in pvp at all we must skip it. Making 2 points go in Unholy command (which is huge, 10 seconds off your only closer) and 3 points in epidemic which means you don't have to apply your diseases so often.

Second tier we have 3 choices. Now this comes down to play style, but Desecration is a must. 50% reduced speed for anything over the spot where you SS, means you won't have to worry so much about people chasing you. The next talent is Resilient Infection, which i have skipped. I skipped it because it doesn't work well with Unholy Blight which protects your diseases and should always be up on your current target. Might be more useful for 5s if you spread your diseases often with lots of dispels going out, but for bgs and 2s/3s i wouldn't pick it up. Last talent in the tier is Morbidity, which is a huge dps upgrade for our DC. It also ups your healing done to your pet and yourself through Lichbourne (which i'll talk about later on).

The third tier is pretty full, first off Runic Corruption changes the dks from a random rune pop up to a constant  faster rune cooldown. Also 6 RP off your DC is another huge dps upgrade. Unholy Frenzy is next and 20% Haste is huge for dks. Not only does it affect our melee attacks, but haste affects our rune regeneration. On a 3 minute cd though, it should be paired with Summon Gargoyle for best effect. I skipped Contagion because diseases make up about 8% of our pve dps with this talent. So losing a bit of dps from just spread diseases won't have much of a effect on your dps in bgs or arena. Last in the tier we have Shadow Infusion. This makes your DCs enrage your pet. When you get to 5 stacks he is doing 50% more damage with all attacks. Which can be upgraded with another talent we grab 2 tiers down, but more on that when we get there.

The fourth tier i hope is self explanatory but here we go. Magic Suppression is the way dks survive vs Casters. But AMS isn't only useful for them, some melee do alot of magic damage including rogue poisons, enhancement shamans, and other dks. Getting it up to 100% reduction is great, but another part about the talent is converting that damage to RP. More RP is more damage or more survivability. Rage of Rivendare is definitely not skip able as it ups all our strike damage.

Fifth tier is a lot more interesting, we start with Unholy Blight which does damage based on your DCs as a dot (which isn't dispellable) and prevents your diseases from being dispelled. This is why we skipped Resilient Infection above. Anti-magic Zone is next, and when your teammates are being hit from a caster or even when you are and AMS is down, its a great way to save the day. Improved Unholy Presence speaks for itself, 5% haste is huge for unholy dks, and should not be skipped. Also keeping up with people when you have to switch to Blood Presence when your focused is also quite nice. Dark Transformation is a HUGE talent, not only does it make your pet do 100% more damage, but it changes his form. Now i won't go into the skill changes that happen to your pet here, i'll save that for another day.

Sixth tier is very plain but has very necessary talents. Ebon Plaguebringer looks very lack luster at first glance, but its not the 30% disease damage your worried about (unless your near a shadow priest) but the 8% magic damage increase towards the target. This affects your DC and your Gargoyle, also helps for any casters on your side to output more dps. The last talent on this line is Sudden Doom, Free chance on DC when you melee is nice. More DCs means more ghoul charges which leads ultimately to him dealing more dps.

The last talent of this tree is Summon Gargoyle. He is the simple most burst threat you have as a DK. Unskipable.

We then move into the Frost Tree because it has more pvp talents we need.

First tier we have Runic Power Mastery which increases the amount of RP we can hold, works nicely with Magic Suppression and second we have Icy Reach, which is nice for Chains of Ice, but taken mostly because the last talent is just for DW dks in Frost.

Second tier we have Lichbourne, the single most biggest pvp talent i have seen. Not only can it be used to break from Fear, Charm or Sleep, but can be pre popped to stop Polymorph and Hex. It can also be used to DC yourself as it makes you Undead for the duration. It you spam DC yourself when your low and you have the RP you can easily hit full HP is just 5-6 GCDs. Last but not least, we have Endless Winter. I take this talent because interrupting heals is a huge part of killing healers as a DK. Having them free means more RP for damage and survivability.

Hope you enjoyed this first look at my talent spec, any questions leave them below and i'll get back to you. Next we will tackle Glyphs and maybe your spells and when to use them better.

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