Damned Forever

So yeah, my bold experiment with Frost lasted about a week...

Trying out Frost in heroics, I was pulling about 80% of the DPS I'd normally do as Unholy. Ok, I thought, at least I'm giving some more DPS to the Rogues.

And then I got a Battered Hilt...

I went through the (awesome) Quel'Delar questline, determined to get my hands on a Cunning of the Shadows to be my new main-hander. In the end however, with egging on from my guildies, I decided to get Might of the Faithful and return to my Unholy build.

I can rationalise this as follows: Apart from myself, we usually only have one other meleer in raids, so the Improved Icy Talons buff is really only helping one other person, and maybe the tanks. Meanwhile, the ability to spread Ebon Plague to every mob in Pestilence range will boost our damage in AoE fights. It's also one GCD our Warlocks don't have to use.

And whilst it's true I already had Ramalandi's Blade of Culling, in terms of itemization, the Might of the Faithful is clearly a better Unholy weapon...

Well ok, maybe I am a loot whore...

But still, you have to admit, it's very shiney!

Into Icecrown Citadel!

I'm going to write a bit about our experiences in Icecrown Citadel, but first I should probably deal with the big hotfix announced to Unholy:

Scourge Strike can now crit only once. The Shadow portion of the damage cannot separately crit. We wanted to keep the double crit mechanic as a way of making Scourge Strike do more than just being an attack that hits for equal part physical and Shadow damage. The change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids. The Shadow portion Scourge Strike will continue to be increased by effects that currently boost Shadow damage. Source

It was fun whilst it lasted, but the change wasn't unexpected at all. I'll see how damage holds up in the next few weeks and if it isn't that great, I might give into the Rogue's whining and go back to Blood. (They're addicted to Abomination's Might)

But anyway, we started Icecrown 10 last night, and despite a few bugs and glitches, we managed to kill three out of the four available bosses.

*Lord Marrowgar: Fairly straightforward fight when you know what you're doing. Bit too aggro sensitive for me though, and ticking diseases on the Bone Storm phases led to me being gibbed a couple of times. I'll get the hang of it eventually.

*Lady Deathwhisper: Pretty straightforward when you know what you're doing. We wiped a couple of times due to sloppy add-handling, but nothing else provided a challenge.

*Gunship Battle: OMFG THIS FIGHT IS SO MUCH FUN!!!! Again, it's just a matter of coordinating people and prioritising targets, but the flavor mechanics behind it make the fight amazing. It's one of the more unique and genuinely fun fights I've participated in for ages!

*Deathbringer Saurfang: We got to this guy late and didn't get too many decent tries on him. Without Typhoon or slowing traps, the Blood Beasts were a pita. Best attempt was 8% before the Blood Beasts started munching the Ranged DPS and he suddenly healed to 20%. Heartbreaking, but I'm confident we'll get him next time.

3.3 Thoughts

Ok, I had about an hour last night and about 45 minutes this morning to play around with Patch 3.3, so my thoughts will be necessarily brief.

*Despite my misgivings, the Dungeon Finder/Cross-Realm LFG is really good. I queued as a DPSer twice to do the daily random heroic (once last night, once this morning), and both times I was matched with a group within 5 minutes. And both groups were really decent. No drama, no fuss, just efficent killings.

*Unholy DPS is everything I hoped for in 3.3. I love my 12k Scourge Strike crits!

*Haven't tried the new heroics yet. That may have to wait until Friday because:

*Icecrown 10-man tonight! Initial reports suggest the bosses are easy, but I'll see how that translates to SCRC's skill levels.

Patch 3.3: Bye, Bye Blood!

Well, it's been confirmed that 3.3 will be hitting us tomorrow (or today for you sods in the Colonies).

With that in mind, I logged in this morning to change my specs. First of all, I tweaked my Unholy DPS build to 17/0/54 include Epidemic and Reaping. As I mentioned before, the buffed Scourge Strike and the passive pet avoidance from Night of the Dead deal with my two main peeves with the spec. I see no reason not to make it my main DPS spec now, especially since I've been struggling with Blood DPS recently.

My beloved Blood DPS spec has now become a Frost Tanking spec: 10/51/10. Why Frost? In one word: Howling Blast. It's an incredibly strong burst AoE threat move, which is the one area Gray's traditionally lacked in for tanking heroics. I don't see Gray becoming a raid tank, since we have an active and enthusiastic tanking corps, but it'd be nice to be comfortable pugging heroics as a tank.

3.3 and Unholy

The other, more personal side of 3.3 is I may well turn Graysun to full-time Unholy DPS and not look back.

As I mentioned in my earlier post on Unholy, I'm not a fan of DPS builds that exist soley to fuel Death Coils. It's ended up that way because of the relative wimpiness of Scourge Strike.

I also have a big problem with Unholy's reliance on summoned pets, since they currently lack any sort of Avoidance ability to save them from any splash AoE the bosses deal. I tried Unholy last night on a few Firefighter attempts and I couldn't keep my Ghoul and Gargoyle alive through Shock Blasts and Laser Barrages.

Thusfar, I tend to switch to Unholy for lolAoE content (Heroics and Naxx runs for a Guildy who wants to do The Undying), or for Anub'Arak 10, where I want to limit my self-healing.

Happily however, both these problems are fixed for Unholy DKs in 3.3. Scourge Strike now does decent damage compared to the other FU attacks (and it scales better with Armor Penetration) and DK pets get 45/90% AoE reduction from the Night of the Dead talent. The rotation looks a little nicer as well, with more big strikes and less of a boring 10-second rotation. I'll play with the numbers in 3.3, but it might be enough to persuade me to stay.

Unholy Pacts

I've been experimenting with Unholy DPS recently on farm raids. Blood's still my first love, and I've collected an ungodly amount of Armor Penetration gear to support it, but people have convinced me I should have a back-up plan for Anub'Arak Heroic Mode, where Blood's self-healing becomes a detriment. Besides, Ebon Plague's a nice buff to have if you don't have a Warlock or Moonkin handy.

To this end, I've swapped my heroic-tanking offspec to a rather cookie-cutterish 16/0/55 Unholy 2H build.

Overall, I don't think I like it. The rotation's a rather mechanical 10-second "push something every global cooldown" deal, the only variation being when I have to refresh Bone Armor every minute. The whole rotation is basically geared towards generating Runic Power to cast Death Coils, which are one of your biggest damage sources.
The single-target DPS is comparable to Blood, and in AoE situations I kick arse, simply because my diseases do around twice the damage they normally do, and have a chance to crit thanks to T9.

That said, I don't get the 12k crits I get from Blood, and so whilst my damage is undoubtedly comparable, it just doesn't feel as fun. And I really hate Death Coil DPS builds. To me Death Coil is something you use when you're out of runes, or if the boss is out of melee range, it shouldn't be your rotation's raison d'être.

Still, if it helps us get Anub down, I'll persevere with it on some fights and hope the buffed Scourge Strike in 3.3 makes it a more fun spec.