Fortis: Fortis Death Knight Specs

Fortis Death Knights please post your current spec here along with any commentary on why you chose what you did. There should be only one post per druid with their spec and no posts debating anything. Create new threads for extended discussions or debates of various choices.

These threads were originally utilized to keep track of what roles we were each playing, and make an excellent reference for what does and doesn't work for each individual.

Sweet, we can make as many posts as we want and druids can't! Take that, officers!

i r so confused...

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqMcIsboxzAZuZfMhI00o

This is my current spec. Some explanations...

Death Rune Mastery: I felt it hurt my DPS more to have the ability to deviate from rotation since I'll be slower to react to using death runes to their full extent, plus then I end up having a long period of time where all I am doing is white melee damage. I don't believe there is ever a time in raids where I "need" to or should be front-loading a lot of damage in 15 seconds; if there ever is an encounter like that, I would probably take out Rune Tap for it. For now though, having the Rune Tap glyph is probably more useful.

Dancing Rune Weapon: I probably messed up on this, taking Glacier Rot instead. 5% extra Icy Touch damage is pretty weak compared to 11% extra damage to all attacks. (DRW basically says "Use 100 runic power to do double damage for 20 seconds; 3 minute cooldown. This approximately equals 11% extra damage if I use it on every cooldown.) The other comparable thing to take would be Summon Gargoyle.

Talents in Unholy are self-explanatory, I maximize my strength and damage abilities; Virulence I probably don't need since I need less hit for my spells than my melee, but, while I'm under hit cap, it'll be nice to have for my IT and Dcoil.

I'll definitely be making some changes next time I respec...

I'm obviously not 80 yet, but this will be my spec when I hit 80.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMV0cIsfopzAoZfMhI0co

I will probably spec out some of the healing stuff, but mark of blood is useful for healing tanks with low health or myself even if I'm the target. Vampiric Blood is nice if I need a heal too, so we'll see when I get there. Everything else is pretty much about maximizing damage, and pretty self explanatory.

Well still haven't found a spec I am really excited about, but your spec looks real good Wynidras might be trying it. My spec was from EJ forums but not liking the damage output not one bit there was also a duel wield frost dps spec maybe ill try when gear gets better

Yeah, I'm also waiting to get a couple good 1hers to try out a DW-frost spec.

Honestly, Blood or Unholy is the way to go if you're looking to DPS. It's been tested. If you're going to tank, the threat you lose by dual-wielding combined with the increased parries makes DW not worth the Defense you might gain.

Hell, right now I'm thinking an Unholy tanking build might work better for heroics and even 10/25 mans with the way bone shield works: charges having an internal cooldown. This basically means you can bone shield + Icebound on pretty much every pull, and if you've tanked a heroic yet you know that as a DK the damage can be extremely spiky. I'll go ~5 sec parry/dodging everything, then the next 5 seconds get raped for half my health due to healers relaxing during the period of no damage.

I guess in the end it depends on what you enjoy, but don't be surprised when what you enjoy results in sub-par performance.

There have been blue posts talking about changing how IBF, Bone Shield, and Fros Pres work, I believe, and the main point was, as you said, Bone Shield is pretty OP right now which makes Unholy the preferred tanking spec. I think what they said was Frost Pres is gaining more bonus to armor while IBF will have DR based on your defense.

Anyway, I just want to have comparable gear in every slot to test out other specs. It's hard to see what works well when my 2h weapon is like 50 ilvls higher than my 1h weapons.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfAMV0cIsboxzAZZfMrI0bk

My current build. Put extra points in Blade Barrier instead of Blood Aura for offtanking purposes. Summon Gargoyle is pretty sweet, although it does suck up a lot of runic power which throws my rotation off by 1 gcd, but it's a ton of damage.

Waiting on a second 1her to try out a talons-dps build. It probably won't be as high as blood or unholy, but it's got some crazy potential imo.

Something like this maybe: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0mZG0exhxoRhRVocxfM

Bought the Grasscutter and am currently on this build:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jZG0ethxdRhRzosxfMohxck

Some of the downsides that I see already are having no reduced threat in blood pres, which sucks for tanks :o

However, this spec performs incredibly well. Killing Machine is up about 50% of the time, and I've got Cinderglacier and Razorice runes on my weapons, so I've seen my Howling Blast crit for 6700 on every target in radius. Icy Touch has been upwards of 3500, and the proc on Rime (the one that makes Howling Blast free) is pretty good, allowing me to tack on an additional attack per rotation. Having increased RP on my frost attacks also helps me keep Gargoyle up longer.

I've been seeing anywhere from 2200-2600 DPS in heroics in a couple different group makeups so far, and it's definitely a fun build. I may have to end up switching some points around to get Subversion for raids, which might cause my dps to suffer because of the loss of Blood-Caked Blade and Necrosis- with Icy Talons and Meteorite Whetstone proc, I'm getting 1.06 attack speeds

I also took the 1-pt tanking cooldowns for short-term tanking viability. Need to stabilize the tank? Gogo gadget cooldowns and I'm a brick wall for 20 seconds hehe.

For raids you could get those talent points you need from dropping icy talons, as it doesn't stack with windfury.

i wanted to try but dont have the 1 handers which are you using?

AFAIK, we don't have an active/raiding Enh Shaman. Melee doesn't have any sort of haste buff atm, and IT is better than an unimproved WF.

Well, even if we had an enhance shaman, I still need to get to the 45-pt frost talents somehow.

Pam: I'm using Window's Fury (Faerlina-25) and Grasscutter (50 badges).

Technically Semih/Skaai are enhance but have had to heal :S