A lot of people on Khadgar ask me where I get all of my money.  The short answer is that I’m a total AH-whore.  The longer and more detailed answer includes getting to know your markets, finding ways to make repetitive tasks faster, and time.  In this post I’ll give tips on how I make my gold, and how I keep it even when Hymn keeps spending it all.

Must-have Mods

The meat of this guide lies in the mods I use to assist in my money-making schemes.

Auctioneer Suite – This mod is where most of my time is saved, and there are many, many features that can help save you time and money.  It takes some getting used to, as it’s quite complicated, but it’s well worth your time.  Here are the best features:

• Scanner – this will take a snapshot (usually 10 minutes) of the current auction house and everything in it.  This information is useful because you don’t have to then search the AH for every good you’re thinking about putting up for sale to find out the price.  You just mouse over the finished good in your recipe book, decide if it’s worth the mats, and craft away.

• Post – Infinitely better than the standard WoW auction posting interface, this lets you post several of the same item at once, split however you would like it split (eg. 10 stacks of 2, or 5 stacks of 4, etc.)  I think this mod saves me the most time out of any other, as I have posted nearly 21,000 auctions since achievement tracking started.

• Snatch – This is my *favorite* function.  You can set a list of items that you buy often, and set a maximum price you want to pay.  After you take an Auctioneer Snapshot, you can scan for your snatch items, all in one neat little window.  Using this function, I can find 100 stacks of ore under or equal to my minimum price, and buy them all within 15 seconds.

• Resale – This feature requires you to set a minimum profit, and then searches the latest snapshot for items that have been posted under the market price.  The idea is that you then buy that item and resell it for a profit.  Being able to control both the percentage and volume of gold you deem worth it makes this feature really cool.

• Beancounter – This feature tends to be a bit buggy and doesn’t seem to capture everything I sell, but in essence it is a searchable database of everything you’ve ever sold or bought.

Postal – This mod allows you to open all your mail at the same time, inventory space allowing.  You can make it open only expired auctions, only auctions sent to you by other people, only won auctions, or any combination of sources you can think of.

Onebag3 – I know this sounds silly, but having a single inventory window instead of 5 separate ones *really* helps to keep me organized while I’m crafting and selling.  It’s a personal preference thing, but I dig it and this is the best mod I’ve found for it.

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The rest of my guide consists of general tips, and how I use the above mods to my advantage.

Don’t be a Pack Rat

This is a tip contested by many, but the simple fact of the matter is that if something is sitting in your inventory or bank, it’s not making you money.  If you know you’re going to need something later, then by all means, save it.  But if you’re unsure, selling it is the smartest way to go.  After all, you can always just buy it back or farm it later.  An exception to this is stockpiling things to sell for a new patch, and I do this quite often – which brings me to my next point.

Preparing Goods for Patches

I would say that 50% of my cash is made on Patch days and the short time following them.  Spend time stocking gems and cutting them into popular stat cuts, putting the most popular enchants on scrolls, making spell threads, patches, glyphs, whatever your market niche is.  Post them on the auction house the night before the patch hits (if you know when that is).  Lots of people plan ahead and make sure they have all of their gear enhancements ready for the patch, but a greater number don’t bother until the day of.

Another good patch-day tip is to make yourself available, and post in trade chat with your skills.  Even if you don’t usually make a lot from crafting tips, the sheer volume should be worth it.  After all, you can keep an eye on your goods and restock the AH while you’re tradespamming.

Spending Money to Make Money

I will admit that people with farming professions often are pretty much robbed of their goods, with how low the prices can get for ore, herbs and other trade goods.  And yes, I take full advantage of this.  The time I spend not farming on my alt is spent buying 10 times the number of goods and converting them into more expensive products.  Maybe I’m a slow farmer, but the value of what I can farm in Icecrown on my herb/miner alt is far inferior to the number I can make in an hour in Orgrimmar, even accounting for the fact that I also spend a great deal of money in that time.

Buy in Bulk

If you advertise that you are buying things in bulk, you’ll often get friendly people that will auto-COD all of their farming goods to you.  This is beneficial to both parties, as there is often a lower price involved for you, and the farmer then doesn’t have to worry about both finding a buyer, or paying AH cuts and deposits.

Patience is a Virtue

If an item you want to sell is lower than usual on the AH, it doesn’t hurt to wait until the price rises again.  Flooding the market only drives the price down further, and your patience will be rewarded.  Some items this won’t make much of a difference on, but it’s meant a larger profit margin by at least 30 per gem on several of my gem cuts.

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So what do I do specifically?  Here’s a list:

• I try to keep around 150-200 auctions up at any time;  these are about half enchants and half gems.  I keep the popular cuts up at all times, and often some of the less posted in case someone needs them.

• I always use the AH for trading.  You just get trolls if you try to sell stuff in /2.

• Something specific to JC/Enchanting (my professions) that I do, is save all of the crappy green gems from the mass prospecting that I do, and make Bloodstone Band, Crystal Chalcedony Amulet, Crystal Citrine Necklace, and Sun Rock Ring, purchasing the Eternal Earth from the AH.  I then blow these up into enchanting mats.  This is a lot of work, but well worth it, as you get a large amount of mats for a tiny cost.

• I make my own Armor and Weapon vellums on my alt.

I think that’s about it for my usual AH tricks.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment or ask me in game .

Hey all! I thought I would feature some addons that might help everybody out. If anybody would like to see an addon or addon category featured on here (whether its your own or just a fave!) please post a message in the Mod/Macros section of the forum!

My first addon post will be featuring some of the most common and popular Rune displays, with links to others at the end! There are a LOT of options out there – find an addon that won’t burn your eyes out! The ones I will be featuring have been updated recently, so aside from any possible bugs they should comply with the latest version of WoW. Any older addons will be linked at the end – I can not verify they still work! But maybe with some LUA lovins you can get them back in shape~

Please always check the addon pages to check what all features and options they have. I might list a few, but there might be more than meets the eye! Also please contact the proper addon authors with any bug reports or feature requests.

DKi Runes & Diseases – View & Download

This is probably one of the most popular Rune addons out there (and a personal fave of mine)! Created and maintained by ElderFuthark of DeathKnight.info this addon has everything to offer. With custom animations, rune art, and timer bars – what’s not to love? Most of the features and customizations were provided by contests held at the DKi forum community, so it is definitely a labor of love.

I’m personally not a fan of the animations and sword art, but they are quite awesome if they suit your UI! Also has OmniCC support and is maintained frequently.

Acherus Runes - View & Download

Right now this is the top rated rune addon over at Curse. There are many options to customize your runes just the way you like ‘em! Animations, disease timers, procs and more~ Right now the author is working on a Buff module and tracking for your Chains of Ice/Bloodboil glyphs. I am absolutely surprised at just HOW many layout options there are and with lots of frequent updates!

Has support for many profile settings, DataBroker Launcher, and even Button Facade!

Magic Runes – View & Download

Magic Runes was one of the first addons I tried when I first rolled death knight. The scrolling bars setup was simply not for me, but it is in the top3 on Curse! I must be missing out for sure

Wow! – There are a ton of rune layout options now – horizontal, vertical, bars, circles – and several rune icon sets to choose from! With either countdown or graphical displays I can see this fit in just about any UI setup.

RuneWatch – View & Download

Oh wow, another classic still around! If you like HUD-like frames you may love this one! The runic power bubble has that ‘Diablo’ feel to it, which is nostalgic. I also really love the look of the runes – has a glazed glass effect to it. This looks really classy, and they are working on more features.

If you thought this addon was abandoned, there is a great big sign saying it isn’t! So redownload if you loved this one in the past.

Yury’s RuneDisplay – View & Download

If you are looking for something very lightweight for just your runes – this may be perfect. Simply has a few layout and scaling options with your runes on timers. Can also have that half circle HUD look to it – very simple and to the point! They don’t plan on adding extra timers like diseases and such, so remember to be tracking those elsewhere.

TextyRunes – View & Download

Pfffff, who needs all those fancy graphics anyway?? Whether you’re a minimalist or just prefer numbers to pictures – this sets your runes as BBFFUU and they change into timer numbers when used. The author is planning on adding some backgrounds and artwork for the frame though, so do check back on it!

Simple Runes Bar – View & Download

How more simple CAN you get?? Bars that fill up as runes. I like the idea of a rectangle shape, as many use the basic circles. The author does not plan on adding new features but WILL be maintaining the addon for the future, so if you enjoy this one, never fear – it’s sticking around!!

RuneMover – View & Download

Maybe you enjoy the default UI? RuneMover simply adds some scaling, opacity, and basic layout options to the Default UI runes.

The following are some others that are either old or just need some more love! Feel free to try them out and let us know how it goes. But proceed with caution, always backup your UI!

RuneHero

Runica

RuneHUD

atrRunes

Great Runes

Runevolution <- An original concept and looking good so far! But this is an alpha version, so tread with caution.

SimpleRuneReloaded

nRune

ScudRune

Endeavour’s RuneBar

SimpleRune

Hope everyone enjoyed the writeup today, I’ll be back soon with more <3 Please leave feedback in the comments or on the forum, thanks!!!

Viewing a recent application to my guild, I’ve decided to take a minute to go over application etiquette.

When you apply to a guild, it might not be as important to you as a job application but you have to remember that any guild worth its weight probably gets a lot of applicants every week. Even if it doesn’t everyone wants to feel like you respect them, and the best way to show respect is with your time.

A typical application consists of a series of questions which usually cover the basic W’s in some form. “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Why are you here?” “How can we use you?” and It’s important to give each of them the respect it deserves.

An application is intended to let a guild know as much about you as possible in the least amount of time. They’re looking for whether or not you’ll fit in with the crowd, as well as how talented you are, not one or the other (usually). Skimping on your application sends a lot of signals, none of which are good. Guilds will think you are lazy, ignorant, disrespectful or immature.

So how does one go about applying in a way to turn heads?

Step One: Know who you’re applying to. If you’re applying to the best guild on the server, know that they are getting a lot of applications. You can expect that they’re looking for someone with good gear and experience, but they may be swayed by an excellent personality. Don’t just tout your skills, make sure to play up that you are a good, intuitive person. If you have a sketchy reputation with one of the members, be ready for a confrontation because you can bet that they’ll voice their opinion on you to whoever is in charge of reading applications.

Step Two: Take your time. Read every question fully and then answer it thoroughly. Be careful not to skip any portion of the question or leave out any blemishes on your record, they will usually find them out anyway. You don’t need to write an essay for each question, but show that you’ve written a full, intelligent answer.

Step Three: Spell Check. I can’t stress this enough, if your application is posted with a load of errors, you’re going to look lazy or stupid or both. Write the application in Word if you need it’s spell-checker, reread carefully and even have a friend look it over once before you hit “submit.”

Step Four: Format. The usual format for an application consists of copy and pasting a list of questions and then entering your answers below them. If their application is not already bold when you copy it, bold their questions to separate them from your answers. Use spaces and paragraphs if necessary to make sure it is legible, no one likes to read a wall of text. You can even go so far as to use color to accent points or highlight their questions, do not go overboard on this.

Step Five: Check Back. Once you’ve submitted your application the guild probably isn’t going to message you in game groveling for you to join them immediately. They may have follow-up questions or simply expect you to contact them. Responding to their questions or suggestions promptly is a great way to get off on a good foot with new people. If you’re blanketing (submitting an application to several guilds at once) make sure you make a note of each that you’ve applied to so that you can check back with all of them.

My final note is that some guilds are prone to refuse anyone applying to them who is still guilded with their previous guild. It’s a sign of disrespect to your guild in a lot of peoples eyes, and your new guild isn’t going to see this and think you’re a stand-up-guy.

Turning your Blizzard default UI into a raiding machine, in the shortest time possible.

This guide assumes that you are not a clicker or wish to become a keyboard binder. A section is included to help you get used to binding your buttons. This guide also focuses on being a DPS, I’m not going to suggest mods or tips specific to tanking or healing, that doesn’t mean this won’t be useful for non-DPS but you will have to do some of your own research as well.

Before we start messing with your add-on folder and your add-on settings, I suggest you take the thirty seconds to back up your current settings. Go into your wow directory, select your interface folder, right-click and hit copy, then create a new folder named Back up (Right click a black area in the folder and hit right-click and select New -> New Folder from the options). Once the folder is successfully backed up, go into the interface folder, and then the AddOns folder and delete everything inside it. You’re ready to install some new mods.

Before we begin installing anything, let’s do some downloading to get all the mods you’ll want, then install them all at once.

Spartan UI – This is a collection of mods configured for function, and it doesn’t look half bad either. The UI is focused on the lower portion of your screen, you won’t need to be glancing all around to check your health bars, map position, targets or even see your action bars.

Omen Threat Meter – This is a little more in-depth than the built in threat meter and lets you push it to the limit, ranged DPS are capable of going over the tank in threat before they pull agro, melee are not, it should really give you a nice idea of when you need to back off.

Grid – This is a Raid UI mod which has incredible versatility, it’s not just for healers, it has uses for EVERYONE.

DKIrunes – This one’s just for the DK’s, but I like having the flexibility this provides in placement of my runes, look and feel.

NeedToKnow – This baby tracks debuffs and buffs for you, letting you watch your diseases and buffs.

Rating Buster – This breaks down the stats on gear into percentages and gives you a sum of stats+ratings in the form of a percent at the bottom of the tooltip; it makes comparing gear a heck of a lot easier on the fly.

Recount – This isn’t just a contest for who has the biggest e-penis; it’s full of useful information on what happened last boss attempt. It’s like a portal combat log.

Deadly Boss Mods – This is the heart of raiding Add-ons. If you take nothing else from this guide, download this if you don’t have it. It provides timers on countless raid encounters, warns you when you’re about to explode and even puts raid icons on targets with important buffs/debuffs.

Now that you’ve got everything downloaded, throw it into your interface -> AddOns folder. Start up World of Warcraft, log in and before you get into the game, click the AddOns button at the bottom of your character select, make sure you’re loading everything (you may have to check “Load out of date AddOns”).

The awesomeness that is SpartanUI will be visible instantly as it comes pre-configured. It may however feel too large or too small for you. First type /sui maxres to auto-resize it, and then if it still needs some tweaking hit ESC and go into your video settings, then move the slider titled “UI Scale”

Now that Spartan is good to go, there are a couple of things that are going to need placement. Number one will be your chat window; there are two good options here. Depending on your UI scale you may be able to fit your chat window in next to the action bars on the UI panel at the bottom, increase the chat windows opacity so that it covers up the black box built into the UI panel. If this isn’t going to work for you because of resolution, and it very well may not, your best bet is probably going to be to put it directly above the UI panel. If this is the case you will need to go into your SpartanUI settings and disable your normal party frames as they occupy this space normally.

Next up you’re going to need a good position for your grid. I’d suggest the opposite side of your screen from the chat window. It’s been trendy for awhile to have your combat chat panel separated from your normal chat frame and positioned opposite it. This isn’t going to provide a lot of useful information while you’re fighting so I would forgo this option. Entering your grid options and playing with them for awhile is a good idea as it has a ton of customization, and I can’t feasibly write everything that can and should be done in this guide.

Now you’re going to want to join a raid group. Make sure grid works well with additional raid members (simulate this by putting someone in group 5 inside the raid to display the maximum size grid will reach in a 25man raid. This is a good time to set up the positioning on your Omen and recount. Omen should be easily visible with as little eye movement as possible. You don’t want to have to add too much effort to see this, or it will either become a distraction or it will get ignored altogether. Recount on the other hand can be placed a little more out of the way, it’s got a lot of use, but if you’re spending too much time watching your DPS during the fight, that’s a distraction you don’t need.

Treat DKIrunes’ placement with some respect, you’re going to spend some time looking at this, if it’s too far away that’s time spent not looking at your character or your surroundings. Don’t put it somewhere that’s going to b a distraction.

You’ll probably need to fight a few things to decide how you want to place your NeedToKnow to get it at a place where it’s useful and not obtrusive, make sure it’s covering all the buffs/debuffs you want it to.

A final note to configuring placement, try and imagine you’re fighting when you set it up. Don’t clog up your screen, you want as much visual room as possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to banish everything to the sides or top of your screen because a lot of it is really useful at a quick glance.

Assuming your UI is all configured and seems streamlined enough, get into a raid and see how it works for you, if you find a problem with it, take note of it and improve on it after the raid or during down time.

Now onto keyboard bindings: This has a lot to do with how you like to do stuff, and changing this is going to take some serious getting used to. But if you’re a clicker, you should see some improvement in your mobility and DPS if you switch to key bindings once you’re used to the hand gestures.

My solution is about maximizing the number of buttons your fingers can easily reach, it’s an extremely drastic change even from someone who pushes number buttons, but it’s a lot less hand movement. It’ll reduce stress on your hand after some practice and should feel pretty good.

So here’s what I change

Movement Keys: ESDF instead of the traditional WASD. Moving these over one creates several new buttons your fingers have access to with minimal movement.

Action Bar Binds: 3QWRTYAGHXCV these keys are all positioned lovingly around your hands home base, ESDF. Because your pinky finger is probably your least honed, it moves less and your index finger moves more often. I find binding the most used spells to R, G, and V will minimize hand stress in combat.

Mouse Bindings: I’ve got a mouse with two extra buttons, and I’ve long since bound something to them and clicking the middle mouse. The middle mouse button works great for a cool down, which often gets positioned away from your normal buttons as well as a short duration buff or anything else you use frequently in combat that just doesn’t fit on the other buttons.

UI Binds:

“Tab Targeting”: 4, I find that either moving my whole hand, or stretching my pinky to hit tab is a little much in a hectic fight, and if I’m tabbing it’s probably hectic. I positioned this at four because that uses my middle finger, which is most unlikely to be somewhere else when I need it.

Respond to Whisper: Tab, This one was a no brainer for me. R is used in my action bar bindings so I was forced to rebind it, and it happens that if once you’re pressed R in the normal UI, pressing tab will scroll through the names of other people you’ve recently whispered with. It keeps this functionality so it just seems to work well for me.

Monster Nameplates: J, This is a little difficult to reach, but it’s not so far out of reach that you’ll have a problem hitting it in combat if you need it.

Auto-Run: B, this is easy to reach which lets you toggle it on and off if you ever have more important things to worry about while running.

Here’s a screenshot of Amyliz’s UI, sporting most of those sexy addons. Unfortunately I don’t have one of my UI right now.

And Finally here’s a few more Add-ons you might enjoy, but that probably won’t improve your raiding expirience

Cellular – An instant messenger like mod to contain your whispers, it’s unobtrusive and helps maintain whispers without them being lost to other conversation. Never miss a whisper again!

Prat - A Chat frame mod which helps organize the window with colors and a more legible font. Try it out and you’ll never be able to live without it.

Fire is bad. It hurts a lot and more often than not will kill you. Worse than that, if you fail at it, it pisses off your healers, your raid leader, and your raid members and frankly it can make you pretty mad at yourself.

When I talk about fire, do I really mean literally fire? No. I’m talking about the targeted Area of Effect (AoE) damage which dictates movement in a great deal of boss encounters, raid or otherwise. When a Shadow Fissure erupts and kills you, you should have been able to get out of it and claiming “Lag” will only get you so far.

So now that we know what I’m talking about, what’s the first step to living through these awful nuisances and continuing on your path to success? Seeing them.

The easiest way to know you’re in danger is to be able to watch the ground you’re standing on. Anything completely lethal will give you a heads up before it hits you, and for anything that deals heavy damage while you stand in it, the sooner you see it the sooner you’re out of it. Learning your rotation and training yourself to pry your eyes from your UI so that you can be aware of the world around you is a difficult skill but it can be honed with practice. If you’re wholly concerned with your DPS or your Healing or your Threat, you’re probably at risk of death, and in reality you’re going to do a lot more of any of those if you stay alive.

Of course tricks exist to improve on this scenario to give you a leg up on concentration.

1.) User Interface Add-ons

There’s a couple of tips concerning these, the most obvious to start with is Deadly Boss Mods, there’s a few others like them, I’d put my money on DBM most days of the week however. Often when you are in danger DBM will have a preset sound to warn you verbally.

Another is a tip, not a mod. Don’t clutter your screen, make sure your character’s feet are visible and don’t have a bunch of junk drawing your eyes to the corners of your screen. It’s difficult finding a balance and spending a few hours on this can reward you exponentially.

Having a Raid UI like Grid is another great idea, it will show you who’s near you, if you’re out of range of your healers, who’s alive, about to die and dead and with a little configuration it will tell you who has important debuffs.

The final tip for this section is FOCUS, and while you should be focused, I’m talking about the UI command /focus. Often a boss will target the person it’s about to spit fire at, and this can give you the time needed to completely avoid damage and that earns brownie points with your healers and your raid leader.

2.) Communication

You can’t be everywhere, you can’t know everything. This might come as a shock to some, but it’s true. Organized, successful communication over your Voice over IP (VoIP) software can increase your entire raids survivability. Designating a few people to do the talking is a good idea, because too much chatter and no one’s hearing anything useful. I can attest, however, to the usefulness of the words “Flame Tsunami Left Side.”

Okay so let’s say you’ve put in the effort to improve your concentration and awareness, you’ve got a great dedicated raid team helping on vent and you’re UI is clutter free and streamlined for raiding. You’re almost positive you’ll see that fissure now, but do you have an exit strategy?

How you escape the area where doom awaits is as important as noticing it in the first place.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the first thing on my list is don’t back out of it. I’m going to repeat that. Do not back out. Everyone knows you move slower backing up and it’s never the best way out. Now what may come as a bigger surprise is that this is only one of the poor choices of how to escape the fire.

Because your character moves on your screen and then communicates with Blizzards server to move for everyone else and in reference to the game environment there is indefinitely some measure of lag for the server to actually update that you moved. There is a way of increasing the duration between updates to the server and there is a way to cut down on it.

When your character jumps, you move through the air and it is generally slightly more interesting than running. Unfortunately World of Warcraft is not Die Hard, and that fancy jump maneuver is not very effective. It turns out the server will not update your position until you’ve landed, which means if you’re cutting it close as it is, it will be your corpse landing at your destination instead of you. In contrast; when you strafe (sidestep) the server will update much more quickly than even normal walking. This is by far the safest way to exit any AoE.

This brings me to my last point and that is a very simple one. Never rotate using your keyboard and then run. Ideally you want to turn using your mouse’s right-click function; this will give you split second turn speed and allow for easy strafing without much finger dancing. If you’re against binding your spells to your keyboard and use your mouse to click them, practice staffing effectively with a turning button, rather than wasting precious moments turning on the spot.

Is Blood right for you?

Blood’s a heavy melee damage spec. Icy touch and Death Coil are the only spells you’ll cast regularly. Your Dancing Rune Weapon requires some thought to maximize it’s effectivenes, but deals pretty impressive damage over the course of a fight if used properly. On top of that your heaviest burst hit, Death Strike, will heal you for a percentage of your maximum health when used with diseases. This is the only spec that can easily heal up two or three thousand damage without losing any dps time. Further, blood worms will help keep you topped off from any minor damage, making this spec as heavy on survival as they come.

Spec suggestions

51/0/20

51/2/18

How do you pick one? The points in Night of the Dead will increase your DPS over a longer fight more than the points in Runic Power Mastery(RPM). The main reason for RPM is to increase the duration of your Dancing Rune Weapon(DRW) by an additional 6 seconds, increasing the duration of your burst. So my suggestion is that if you’re still running naxx and your fights are lasting about 2-3 minutes, try out 51/2/18, but if you’re in Ulduar and finding yourself fighting for longer periods of time, go with 51/0/20, the increased survibility of your ghoul will also help greatly in ulduar, as he’s pretty much wormbait the second you summon him on most fights without it. Ulduar hates melee.

Furthermore when choosing your 51 points in blood, Mark of Blood is only one of three approximately equal options depending on your personal preference and situation. You may swap the point in mark of blood for Rune Tap or for Vampiric Blood. Rune Tap is a flexibility option for survivability, VB is wonderful for OTing on occasion and mark of blood has a few situational uses. (Thank you THECames).

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of Death Strike
Glyph of Dark Death
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon

Rotation Suggestion

PS-IT-HS-HS-DS-DCx-DS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DCx and repeat.

Try to summon your Dancing Rune Weapons at the start of a rotation so they can apply their own diseases.

Using Death and Decay, Horn of winter and any other out of combat RP generation you have to farm up your RP before the boss fight will greatly smooth out your first Dancing Rune Weapon. (Curteosy of THECames)

AoE Rotation

D&D PS-IT-Pest-BT(Blood Tap)-BB

Gearing

It is extremely helpful to have the four piece tier 7 bonus for this spec.

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for any DK. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.

Blood additionally scales the best of any DK tree with armor penetration, it is not your go-to stat, but it certainly should weigh more heavily on your choices.

Is frost right for you?

Frost has very few pauses in the rotation even if you’re in unholy presence. It’s a veritable factory for runic power generation, and with a glyphed frost strike costing a mere 32 RP you’ll be able to use more RP attacks than either of the other trees.

The rotation is a little more complicated looking than unholy’s but I can assure you it is actually easier because you do not have to worry about glyph of scourge strikes 25% chance to renew diseases. Frost’s rotation is about memorization and not about improvisation.

Spec suggestions

12/51/8
0/51/20
17/51/3

How do you pick one? The best bet it to check out your gear level, bladed armor is a pretty hefty DPS boost when you’re gear isnt great. Just hit 80? probably wanna go with bladed armor. It doesn’t scale well however so you’ll end up getting a lot more out of necrosis, blood caked blade and night of the dead at some point in Ulduar.

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of Obliterate
Glyph of Frost Strike
Glyph of Icy Touch

Rotation Suggestion

Using unholy presence should yield better results

PS-IT-OB-BS-BS-FSx-OB-OB-FS-OB-FSx(This is also where you want to use Rime procs)

Creating a blood tap macro with unbreakable armor is an excellent idea for this build, preferably popping the macro once all your runes are burned at the end of the first complete rotation will create as little of an upset in your rotation as possible.

AoE Rotation

PS-IT-Pest-HB-BB

Gearing

It is extremely helpful to have the four piece tier 7 bonus for this spec.

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for any DK. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.

Is unholy right for you?

Unholy is well known as the pet spec, this means that you lose a sizeable chunk of your DPS if your ghoul dies, He’s quite good at surviving now but it’s just one more thing to watch as you mash buttons. Since odds are you already know that much, let’s talk more about how the rotation feels as unholy right now.

As disease duration has gotten a buff, glyph of Scourge strike has become more reliable than ever before, you can expect scourge strike to be as much as 40+% of your damage and depending on luck you can go several minutes without manually refreshing your diseases.

So what does that require of you? You have to watch your disease durations carefully to make sure they don’t fall off while you’re spamming SS. This is a limited button use rotation, and has several free GCDs. If empty space and improvisation turn you off, you may not be interested in this spec.

Spec suggestions
12/0/59
0/10/61

How do you pick which one? The best bet it to check out your gear level, bladed armor is a pretty hefty DPS boost when you’re gear isnt great. Just hit 80? probably wanna go with bladed armor. It doesn’t scale well however so you’ll end up getting a lot more out of 10% unholy and frost damage in the end.

Additional note: IUP (Improved Unholy Presence) may be something you’re interested in, it helps on a handful of fights and some people are fanatical about moving faster. If you’re going to take it, drop two points in necrosis for it.

Suggestions for major glyphs
Glyph of the Ghoul
Glyph of Scourge strike
Glyph of Unholy Blight, or if you still have 4pc t7, Dark Death

You may feel the RP generation is too low, and swap one of those out for glyph of IT, but because of glyph of Scourge strike you can expect you won’t get many IT’s in.

Rotation Suggestion

PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-UB-SS-SS-SS-DC/Garg
After that you want to prioritize Scourge strikes to keep your diseases refreshed. If they are about to run out and you would have to do a portion of your rotation without diseases, then bite the bullet and refresh with your last FU runes, rather than taking the chance. Aside from that keep UB up and DC whenever you have downtime from runes as long as you’re not wasting RP.

Ghoul Maintenance

Our ghoulish friend is much better at surviving than he used to be but he still shouldn’t spend a lot of time standing in the fire. I suggest making a macro for him to follow you and binding it to a mouse key for ease of use. Here’s a great macro for it

/petattack [nomod:shift]
/petpassive [mod:shift]
/petfollow [mod:shift]

Ghoul Frenzy
Using either death runes or FU runes on GF+IT once per 30 seconds is worthwhile and infact once per minute you can hit a blood tap-GF macro while your runes are all down to refresh it for “free”

Gearing

Like any 2her spec 8% melee hit is ideal, hit will continue to scale reasonably well until you reach a total of 17% spell hit (note spell hit and melee hit scale at different rates, check your character tabs). When I say total I am counting talents and buffs, 3% from virulence will reduce it to 14%, and 3% from your caster friends will reduce it to 11% which is pretty easily attainable.

Expertise is useful until approx 27, this is less important in unholy than in say the old disease-less blood spec which relied entirely on melee attacks, but missing an attack always offsets your rotation negatively.

Aside from those two obvious ones who people always want cap numbers on, your best friend in game is probably strength for unholy. You’ve got spells, which scale with AP, and you’ve got a ghoul who only scales with STR.