New to DK pvp, and necrotic strike is confusing the heck out of me. I know its amazing because of its healing debuff, but I can’t figure out how to use it.
Am I stopping scourge strike use completely?? How many FS do i need to use before applying necrotic.
Also… how the hell are you guys watching FW stacks in the middle of pvp? Weakauras?
Anyone have any tips for unholy pvp in general?
for the most part, yes, unless you are dealing with a class that has no self healing at all, you want to be using necrotic strike instead of scourge strike.
as much as you need.
yep. weakauras is practically required to play unholy well.
the general basic strat to get you started is this: you want to use dots and pets as your damage source, then keep applying necrotic wounds, your pets and dots melt the target while necrotic strike keeps them from getting HP back.
I’ve replaced Scourge Strike with Necrotic Strike on my action bar. You do not use Scourge Strike in PvP. Every single spec of every single class has some way of healing itself. What’s more, Necrotic Strike does “plague” damage which means it goes through armor - including cloth armor.
Remember: even Mages can heal themselves.
As for stacking Festering Wounds? Don’t think about that, at least not now. Just reapply as necessary. I think of Festering Wounds purely a limitation to overcome. I don’t stack them like they are a good thing.
As for very general strategy:
PvP talents - CORE
Necrotic Strike (Conflict and Strife)
Abomination
Transfusion
Necromancer’s Bargain
Remember that unlike Apocolypse, “Necromancer’s Bargain” only needs ONE Festering Wound for its full effect (very important), is on half the cooldown at 45 seconds (very important) which allows double the uptime of Magus of the Dead (extremely important).
Most battles should immediately start off with summoning Abomination (w/ Magus of the Dead #1) and Necromancer’s Bargain (w/ Magus of the Dead #2). That, along with Dark Transformation, will ramp up the pressure on your target astronomically + supply you with free Virulent Plague + free Festering Wounds.
As soon as you spend 1 Festering Wound to apply Necromancer’s Bargain, start stacking Necrotic Strike and don’t look back.
Important: general skill at playing a DK is important. That is: mastery of the rune system, pacing oneself instead of spamming buttons, wise use of Runic Power, expertly switching between kiting and melee, etc etc…
But if you have the general skills down, transitioning to Unholy DK is extremely rewarding.
how so? moving your eyes between your buffs, enemy debuffs, and resources means you are missing information, bringing all of your combat information into a single location means you are not covering important parts of the screen with the blind spot in your eyes.
addons are free to use, to go around not using them seems more like a point of pride than one of practicality. if you can help yourself out for free, then do so, even if you are already good, helping yourself still only makes you better.
for starters, i have no intention of going anywhere in arena, i really don’t like it. however the fact that several R1s don’t run addons doesn’t change the fact that this information needs tracking, and centralizing all of it makes things easier and simpler for most people.
further, the tone of your argument is back to epeen flexing, the idea that we need addons and you don’t does not imply any merit or skill. trying to pull a “gotcha” on the exception to a statement rather than the rule only shows you are immature and lack insight, and frankly, its cringey.
We all seen you type “practically” required as in it helps but not a necessity to play.
Then he goes on to say the best dks in the world don’t use WAs to track it. I assume the best players in the world don’t use it as in tourney I don’t think they have it anyways. (did they change that?)
Anyways was a great suggestion. Just ignore those types of people.
Blizzards UI Garbo. (they know it) so twitch is what we download add-ons right into WoW now lol. So yeah,make it clean and visible like it should be out of the box
It’s a big purple wound with a number on their character bar when you click on them that hovers over their character. If your diseases and wounds are on any target you will see their HP and debuffs. If you can’t track from that and need a weak aura to scream at you then idk. DK is pretty straight forward.
Pro tip: because necrotic Strike is plague you can still stack it through BoP and keep pressure high.
I dono man seems like a pretty weak argument to take. Tweaking the UI to be more optimal is something almost everyone does, and is helpful to anyone who doesn’t know about it.
Anyways.
Dont use Scourge Strike, just replace it with Necrotic Strike.
Yes. You can spec so your pet applies FW and Death and Decay as well. Generally for PvP just the pet one is fine. On a new target FS x2 is good enough. I will then Necrotic down 3-2 stacks of FW, then reuse FS as needed. Rinse and Repeat.
I use Flyplate Buffs. It shows my applied debuffs on the target above their nameplate. Keep in mind you may and frequently will, with swaps and pet application, have FW on multiple targets at a time.
Create macros for your pet stun and pet kick abilities, dont let the pet use them on auto. Very easy to see when a DK doesnt do this, and will be clutch when a DK does do this used at the right times.
at the basic level sure, but there is more to understand than the basic level. learning particular uses and aspects of spells and abilities often requires tracking for it.
All of which are easily visibly available on the base UI which I use. If you have nameplates up it’s a big bar with the debuffs underneath that has the numbers on it so you can easily track it. I kinda don’t see why people need a weakaura for wounds since they’re so easy to track, but w/e.
no they aren’t, wounds are trackable sure, but thats basics, you start with tracking wounds and then move on to other stuff. also personally i found a visual tracking system works better than a debuff with a stack number.
but to play the spec “well” you need to do stuff like not spend RP when runic corruption is proc’d in order to not over lap RC procs and have the highest return on the proc. you need timers to show you DT duration and pet energy to know when its pooled to hit DT. without weakauras or some sort of advanced UI you are looking at your buffs, back to the target, at your pet energy, back to your target, back to your buffs, back to your target. its like an evil old spice commercial designed to get you to miss some critical thing. not to mention things like CD timers and remaining duration until an ability comes of CD, even with a timer on the action bar, you are still moving your eyes completely away from the combat area to check a spell CD when you could just build one at eye level with WA.
if you have 10k+ hours on your dk, you probably have this stuff ingrained in your habit, so you might not need an addon for tracking it, however if you are just starting out, you don’t have that skill built yet. you need to consider that before looking at what R1s do and just mimicking it. they may be smokers too, but that doesn’t mean you should take up smoking if you want to be R1.
Well, it was entertaining to watch the “duelist” try to flex on someone.
Perhaps they were talking about me? Idk.
Nobody with PvP experience is really “flexing” on everybody here. You don’t need add-ons to do well in PvP as an unholy DK. The basics are literally keep plagues up, watch the BIG PURPLE DEBUFF on the enemies frame with a huge number on it to easily track your wounds, and don’t spend runic power on anything other than death strike. I can count on my hands the amount of times on my hand that I’ve spent runes on Scourge Strike in PvP on my DK since Legion. Just use Necrotic Strike, it’s superior in every way. If you’re know you’re going to be trained, save some RP for when your defensives are running dry and they’re still pumping damage so you can heal through it, although if you’re engaged and it’s not a caster you should be generating a ton of RP anyways.
Inemia, thank you for the advice. I have some for you and I think you already know this, but got sucked down the rabbit hole anyway.
Do NOT feed the trolls. Nothing good comes from it.
Moderator: Closing thread as it has ceased to be a constructive conversation.