First off, Festering Wounds are what get converted to Necrotic Wounds via Necrotic Strike. However, when you use Clawing Shadows/Scourge Strike, you actually blow up the Festering Wound for decent damage - this makes Clawing Shadows do significantly more damage than Necrotic Strike.
But Necrotic Strike is extremely powerful, and important to use often. So what do we do? I general use the 2-1-1 strategy. For every 2 Necrotic Strikes, I’ll use 1 Clawing Shadows and 1 Festering Strike. That way, I’ll be denying plenty of healing without going completely overboard and have my damage suffer because I’ve put too many stats of Necrotic to be practical.
This is strictly a guideline, though. There are times where using 100% Necrotic Strike for the next 15 seconds is absolutely the best choice. But in general, I find 2-1-1 the best of both worlds: you ensure that little or no healing gets through, yet deal enough damage to enhance the pressure/value of Necrotic Wounds.
As for Death Strike vs Death Coil: I tend to use Death Strike unless I am at full HP. Use Death Coil on proc; or when at full HP; or when your target is nearly dead but kiting. Again, it’s a guideline, not a hard rule. Sometimes using Death Coil instead of Death Strike is the right choice, but in general you will find the best results in continually keeping your HP as close to 100% full as possible.
Abomination isn’t only for damage; it is a free Virulent Plague, and afflicts the target with free Festering Wound, which really ramps up your pressure. Saving resources for Necrotic Strike and Clawing Shadows instead of Festering Strike is amazing.
That’s not to say Festering Strike is bad it’s just not as good as having free Festering Wounds and spamming Necrotic Strike/Clawing Shadows.
Yeah I used to use All Will Serve until 1) it was broken in PvP last patch, won’t shoot and 2) I realized that having a ranged, pure shadow damage nuke is amazing.
Clawing Shadows makes DKs much, much harder to kite. It enables easy Runic Power generation and Festering Wound bursting at range. It deals a lot of damage and scales directly with your Mastery: Dreadblade.
Oh, and another thing. Conflict and Strife is amazing on Unholy DKs, because Necrotic Strike is essential for UHDKs to have and that essence provides it for free. That means you get to choose another PvP talent, AND it makes you much more resistant to damage when stunned, which allows Icebound Fortitude/Lichborne to be used as more of a defensive/prevention cooldown rather than a CC trinket.
I find when being hammered upon that Icebound/Lichborne + Transfusion makes me almost invulnerable. But popping JUST Transfusion is a liability, because one decent stun pretty much shuts the entire process down.
So having the option to safely sit through a stun is a major appeal of Conflict and Strife. Especially since it also allows you to pick up Lichborne or Transfusion (or anything other PvP talent) instead of Necrotic Strike.
All that said, Lucid Dreams is also extremely potent on Unholy DKs, as 15 seconds of 100% faster rune regen (that stacks with Runic Corruption!) is insanely powerful on offense. You can layer a good 5-10 stacks of Necrotic Strike like it’s nothing with Lucid on.
So which one to pick? In 1v1, 2v2, and general wPvP, I’d go with Conflict and Strife. For 3v3, depends on comp; both CnS and Lucid have their favorable matchups. For RBG/BG/PvE, I’d go Lucid Dreams.
Look, I understand the appeal of auras. I really do. And they’re not weak by any means. But they’re nowhere near as strong as some of the alternatives.
Here is what I use.
PvP talents:
Necrotic Strike (via Conflict and Strife; essential)
Transfusion (essential)
Abomination (essential)
and now that I have a “free” slot thanks to CnS…
a) Lichborne: extremely powerful for tanking melee opponents, such as Warriors, Rogues, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druids, etc. Covers for Transfusion.
b) Necromancer’s Bargain: 45 sec cooldown that summons Magus of the Dead? Sign me up. Deals full damage with only 1 Festering Wound? Sign me up. Resets DoT whenever a healing spell is cast on the target? Conditionally amazing; sign me up already, damnit.
c) Reanimation: Surprisingly powerful in certain scenarios. Really good to use a couple when, say, you’re being kited by a mage, or a Feral hits Thorns and charges you. They can be countered, of course, but that requires manually targeting each one and using a damage ability, or using an AOE when each one gets close: in both cases, that isn’t always possible, and when it is possible it is always defensively benefitial for you. Situational, but strong when it works well. Oh, and if one actually lands… well, enjoy.
d) Anti-Magic Shell: can turn 3 back-to-back Chaos Bolts from a death sentence to “healed back with 2 death strikes.” Strong against certain casters.
And yes, Decomposing Aura works really well against certain specs, like Blood DK or Survival Hunter. But auras work best in BGs/RBGs. They have a place, but I wouldn’t default to them.
WotF is irrelevant for DK since we can just talent into Lichborne for matchups that need it. If you don’t go orc you’re giving up 20% stun resist and a racial dps trinket, plus slightly increased pet damage.
WotF means you don’t need lichborne. keep in mind we only have 3 talents, even with conflict and strife 1 talent is taken by abomb, so you have two to play with for your needs. depending on what you are doing you will not always take lichborne.
arcane torrent is also great for purging shields and hots that disrupt your kill window, as well as providing RP that can be used offensively with DC and Epi and defensively with DS.
as for dps, orc is middle of the pack: https://bloodmallet.com/index.html#death_knight_unholy?data_view=races
So I play about 10 BG’s and it is feeling better. Not as good as frost yet, but better.
It is strange though, I don’t actually really see/feel where my damage is actually coming from. Aside from what details shows me. It is less visceral than frost.
I am still feeling like I am waiting around for runes a lot too. I might need to ease up on things like chains to save runes for festering.
Depending on who you’re fighting, you won’t even need WotF. Stuns are much more prevalent in this meta than fear, charm or sleep, so 20% stun reduction is a more useful racial.
Blood elf is also an overall better pvp race than undead.
A racial burst trinket is much more important in pvp than 1% increased overall damage.
You can play whatever you want and do fine, but Lesbefriends asked what the best Horde pvp race is, and that’s definitely orc.
between conflict and strife, base vers, and DR im not sure it really matters that much. the longest stuns are 5 seconds, you are only taking 1 second off of that stun. also as unholy you can continue to control your pet while stunned. between dots and pets being stunned doesn’t matter as much because it doesn’t impact your damage output and pressure that much.
and that is definitely your opinion. frankly you can play whatever you want, going for the “best” of anything when you are nowhere near 99th percentile is pointless. the theoretical best race/spec/talents etc only make a tangible difference to the top 100 or so players. picking orc will not suddenly make you a 2900 player.
Why should you try Unholy pvp? If you like the idea of being a plate wearing warlock (with worse passive defense but slightly better on use D) and want a different experience than Frost.
You should try it if you’re interested in it. If you aren’t stick with Frost. You’ll get the best performance (for you) with the spec you have the most fun with.
There is a functional difference between a ‘kick’ effect and an ability that interupts a cast. DT charge doesn’t lock spell school anymore, like mindfreeze does. Thus it is an interupt.
7%. Unholy is actually one of the more gear dependent specs in the game between haste/vers requirements. Huge functional difference between a UDK running 15% haste and 26%+.
Yes you need them to flip runes properly. Don’t waste pooled RP on more than one coil, and be careful when you do it. When I see an opposing DK dump runic I swap; low mmr DK’s aren’t ready for it and tip over if their healer goes into cc.
Orc/Belf, decided by current meta. Wouldn’t waste a racial pick on Undead atm. If it means anything I’ve played @2k in MOP with both Orc and Undead, in that expac you could make a case for WOTF b/c fear didn’t break on damage more often than not. Now it does so Will isn’t as necessary, and you get a lot more out of the bonus damage to pets than Touch of the Grave.
A single second stuck in a stun can be life or death for you or a teammate. Considering how many classes have stuns in this meta, passive stun reduction is just more useful.
I’d say it’s almost factual considering how many top rated Horde players are orcs.
Spending Runic Power has a chance of increasing your rune rate for a couple of seconds. Runic Corruption is the spell. Even though DC procs cost no Runic Power, they act as if they do.