Questions for Petkick

I noticed you have Death’s Certainty equipped on your DKs. It was the first Legendary I upgraded to 262 ilvl as I felt it would end up being better than Frenzied Monstrosity with the new pvp talents.

My reasoning for using Death’s Certainty was as follows:

  1. Sudden Doom procs can hit hard because the Embrace Death conduit can stack twice with Harbinger of Doom, the 35% from Death’s Certainty, and the damage from bursting 2 wounds with Bursting Sores.
  2. The 35% Death Coil boost works for healing as well; making it easier to heal up our ghoul and makes Lichborne a stronger defensive.
  3. Pet damage is very unreliable because it is easily kited, CC’d or killed.
  4. Most meta classes can kite well, have disarm, and/or parry/dodge CD’s that can negate pet and ScS damage. Death Coils hitting harder gives Unholy better damage at range and through melee CDs.
  5. Most people now play around Dark Transformation and can shut down our burst damage through any of the ways mentioned above when it is used.
  6. Perhaps the DnD CD reduction can help with spreading Necrotic Wounds to multiple targets.

However, I stopped using Death’s Certainty because I mostly play my DK with people’s alts and games would usually last less than a few minutes so I felt I wasn’t getting good value out of it. Also, I had bad luck with the vault and ended up with lots of crit gear and little haste gear meaning I rarely got 2 Sudden Doom procs for stacking Embrace Death, and few Sudden Doom procs in general.

Lately I’ve picked up more haste gear and have been getting some semi-serious arena games in on my DK that don’t end in a few minutes. I was toying around with a lot of different builds, and have gone back to trying out Death’s Certainty after I saw you had it equipped, and I’ve had some success. So I have a few questions for you:


  1. Are you using Death’s Certainty now just to test it, or do you feel that it is a better overall Legendary than Frenzied Monstrosity?

  1. Are there matchups in 2s/3s where you go back to Frenzied Monstrosity?

  1. Do you ever bother to play a more rushdown build in 2s/3s with Abom, Unholy Blight, Unholy Assault, and Frenzied Monstrosity, or do you stick with Doomburst, Bursting Sores, Army of the Damned, and Death’s Certainty almost all the time?

  1. Do you try to keep Necrotic Wounds up on multiple targets? I.e. when you get Sudden Doom procs and your main target already has 6 stacks?

  1. What are your thoughts on Strangulate? I have been playing it with the more rush down build, but do you find there are some times you take it over Doom Burst?

  1. When playing a build with Magus and Ghoul being your only pets, and without playing other pet based modifiers (No pet legendary and no Unholy Blight) do you feel that haste becomes a better stat than mastery for Unholy since it means more Sudden Doom procs?

Thanks for any insight.

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just saw this.Honestly i am still testing it, i haven’t gotten the chance to test it in 3s. In fast/lower games Frenzied monstrosity would for sure be better.

Also the lego/doomburst loses value if you don’t have good uptime i also rarely play strang ever

But yeah haste is better with this build for sure

I will let you know the more testing i do

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Thanks for the reply.

I’ve had a 10k Death Coil crit in arena, which is pretty beefy compared to normal Death Coil damage. So that’s a thing. I’m not sure if the target was low vers or what.

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yea i hit a 12k one the other day, it’s a lot of fun

also i got to try it in 3s tn and it felt really good

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Just an update yea haste is 100% better for this spec/build

also frenzied monstrosity is probs better for 2s( for the most part) and deaths certainty is most likely better for 3s

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Any specific reason?

unholy seems to lack the burst without it in 2s it doesn’t really matter as much in 3s cause your dps is probably a warrior or a ww or something so

This kind of makes me want to try and get back into pvp :thinking:

If you don’t have access to a lot of haste gear right now, does the only thing that changes is the leggo?

uh prob ya i mean even without haste it’s playable

Hm, I wonder if this is worth trying as Night Fae.

Granted, Death’s Due is still garbage but it’ll do a lot of dammies in 9.1.5. Even with Death’s Echo.

Now I know these things aren’t talked about. But I’m just kind of curious about Death’s Certainty’s interaction with Death’s Due is worth considering. Probably not.

I’ll probably stick to Slappy Hands experimenting this should I start PvPing once more.

Not sure about NF but Venthyr synergizes well with UHDK.

Only had time to play it a little bit in a reg BG but Death’s Certainty build during swarming mist cranks. Extra runic power to dump.

NL cov is still probably the best but it feels like UHDK can get away without slappy hands better than FDK. Especially in 3s playing with BM, spriest, Demo lock or spear warrior. Swarming mist lines up with every spear. With impenetrable gloom/embrace death its scary.

Not a pro so take it with a grain of salt.

i think venthyr will be decent next patch but losing kevins oozeling kinda sucks

i tried it 2 weeks ago and it just takes WAY to many globals i don’t think its worth

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I knew it!

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Yeah, you’re definitely right. Ended up having a lot of trouble finishing people off with Death’s Certainty. Overall damage seemed ok, but without Dark Transformation being as threatening it’s hard to land a kill outside of burst from Apoc or lucky Sudden Doom procs.

I would have priests live with 5-10% HP and 0 mana after Dark Transformation was over, and they’d live another 15-20 seconds hovering below 10%hp until at least Apoc came off CD. They’d have been dead with Frenzied Monstrosity.

Anyway, managed to get duelist with a friend’s alt shaman and both of us in 1800 gear. Thanks to Petkick for answering my questions.

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Glad to hear it :slight_smile: and anytime feel free to ask anything else as well but yea i think the deaths certainty build is better for 3s.

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Venthyr is fun, but maybe not that practical. I played Venthyr all of S1 and at the start of S2. Personally I like shorter CD abilities like Swarming Mist and Door of Shadows, but ended up swapping in S2 because Necrolord is simply better (and has better xmog in 9.1)

Unholy Blight, Dark Transformation, Swarming Mist and Badge line up really well giving a strong 1 min burst. I had situations in S1 where I’d pop my cds and then a rogue, war, or ww would stun me and still die while I’m stunned to pet + swarming mist + unholy blight.

The primary issue with Venthyr was survivability and Swarming Mist lacking utility. The dodge isn’t really worth mentioning and the RP generation doesn’t matter much with only 1 or 2 targets. Venthyr is giving up the survivability and utility for a 1min burst. Door of Shadows is neat, and it’s fun to fake kicks, but the only mentionable utility is in Theotar’s soulbind for the root break.

I also tried Insatiable Hunger with less than stellar results.

S1 I agree. S2 I have had a different experience albeit a small sample size in arena.

I think there is more utility than you expressed. I was able to survive duelist + geared carry stun bursts wearing honor gear using Draven. Probably how I got to 1600 relatively fast pugging through the most toxic bracket with 40k healers and dps. (Not trying to brag about my puny 1600 rating. Just pointing out I’ve had to survive against carries.)

10% damage reduction below 40%, 20%hp door shield, 5% more stam and 4% more healing when stunned or rooted, get 15% overhealing, 1-3% damage reduction all times. Feel very sturdy as Venthyr. The 13% swarming mist dodge has value when combine with Draven soulbinds.

I have had enemies back off their stun burst because they were dying to swarming mist while I was stunned. In BGs I’ve killed many while stunned.

Swarming mist runic power generation is awesome for burst and/or keeping you alive with lichborne.

Door with enduring gloom is great imho. Can save you or keep you aggressive.

All this to say, I agree, necro is still the best all around dk pvp covenant. Not trying to tell people to reroll, but Venthyr is defiantly practical for UHDK. Will push more when I have time or if I can find people other than ArenaFans in LFG. Pug life is rough.

Also appreciate the thread!

What do you play with in 3s? I tried the build with paying with my lock buddy and I just couldn’t keep on target enough to put any pressure out when facing caster cleaves :frowning: