Build Shop: Zulfon, Level 72 (42/0/21)

Yes, yes, I know, it’s turning into Death Knight Week here at TSF. Well, what can I say? I’ve got them on the mind.

Anyone looking at Zulfon’s build (she’s at level 72, so obviously all the talent points aren’t available yet) might find it a bit unorthodox, so I thought I’d run down each tree and point out what I took and why.

We’ll start with Unholy (yes, Unholy) as it’s got fewer points in it and so will be a quicker trip.

Unholy Talents (21)

• Tier 1: 2/2 Vicious Strikes, 3/3 Morbidity. While I’m sure Anticipation might be nice for tanking, this build in no way aspires to tank: this is a solo dps, heavy burst damage build. As such, I took Morbidity to lower Death and Decay’s cooldown (marginally useful), and to make Death Coil do 15% more damage (very useful), and Vicious Strikes because more crit chance and more crit damage bonus on two spells I already use frequently (Death Strike and Plague Strike) is never a bad thing.
• Tier 2: 2/2 Epidemic, 1/3 Virulence, 3/3 Ravenous Dead. Ravenous Dead is pretty obvious (3% more strength; the ghoul thing is a nice side effect since I didn’t take Master of Ghouls), and having Epidemic to make my diseases last longer is nice – don’t have to worry about getting my Death Strikes or Obliterates parried and then the diseases running out. I’ll admit I’m not pleased with that point in Virulence; basically I got down to the 4th tier and then needed to put 1 point somewhere to get down to the 5th, and it landed here. 1% chance to help Icy Touch (or Dark Command, or Mark of Blood, or any other spell-like effect) land, and another side effect that only really matters for PvP… meh. I suppose it would’ve worked better in Outbreak or Unholy Command… this point will probably float around somewhere else tonight.
• Tier 3: 5/5 Necrosis.  The nice thing about Necrosis’s 10% shadow damage is that, as shadow damage, that extra 10% ignores armor. I’m okay with that. And no, I will not put my extra 1 point from tier 2 into Corpse Explosion. If CE operated off runic power, I’d consider it (and really, it seems like it should be a runic power move), but a cost of one Unholy rune means I’d probably have to skip a Plague Strike to use it.
• Tier 4: 3/3 Blood-Caked Blade, 1/1 Shadow of Death. Blood-Caked Blade is a slight boost, at any rate: while my white damage isn’t always a significant part of my damage, I still do plenty of it; since Epidemic is making my diseases last longer, the odds that they’ll be up to boost a Blood-Caked Strike to 50% of weapon damage is pretty high. As for Shadow of Death, it’s pretty much a no-brainer: 2% more Strength on top of what I got from Ravenous Dead, 2% Stamina, and that whole you-come-back-as-a-ghoul thing for 45 seconds. If I’d had this talent when we wiped on Keristrasza a few nights ago, we’d have won on the first try. Period. We were that close.
• Tier 5: 1/1 Summon Gargoyle. This is as far into this tree as I went. Why? This is replacing Dancing Rune Weapon for me for burst damage purposes. I’ll explain more once we’re done with Blood.

Blood Talents (42; will be 50 at level 80)

• Tier 1: 2/2 Butchery, 3/3 Subversion. Butchery is pretty sweet because it keeps me loaded up with Runic Power. Period. Subversion is very useful right now because I find myself mostly being melee DPS, so more crit strike chance is good, and less threat is also good. (But if I’m in a situation where I need to tank for someone – such as on a group quest – I can still pop out to Frost Presence and have the improved threat from that. Basically I have two low-threat presences and a high-threat presence.)
• Tier 2: 2/2 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, 5/5 Bladed Armor. More armor = more AP, and two-handers = more damage. Again – a no-brainer.
• Tier 3: 5/5 Dark Conviction, 3/3 Death Rune Mastery. Dark Conviction is a flat-out crit chance bonus (as long as I’m not unarmed, I guess?), and Death Rune Mastery ensures I’ll always have the ever-useful Death Runes (well, almost always) for use if I need to step outside my usual rotation.
• Tier 5: 3/3 Bloody Strikes, 3/3 Veteran of the Third War, 1/1 Mark of Blood. Veteran is a straightforward Stamina and Strength booster. (A lot of the Blood talents are pretty straightforward, aren’t they?). Mark of Blood is a very useful talent when solo to throw up on something that hits pretty hard, and can be useful in parties as well (hint: if you have a boss with a soft enrage, put it on them when they hit that point to offset a bit of the extra damage they cause). Bloody Strikes is great because it is a fantastic boost for your Blood and Heart Strikes – 30% extra damage all the time, plus 60% boost to the bonus damage from diseases.
• Tier 6: 3/3 Bloody Vengeance, 2/2 Abomination’s Might. Abomination’s Might is, once again, 2% more Strength (for those keeping track: we’re now up to 13% extra Strength and 11% extra Stamina), plus a 10% boost to AP for you and your party members within 45 yards, for 10 seconds – just for using abilities you were going to use anyway! As for Bloody Vengeance – it’s more damage after you crit, and we’ve taken crit-enhancing talents in both trees. It’s good synergy.
• Tier 7: 2/2 Blood Aura, 1/1 Hysteria. Now, you may have noticed I opted for Blood Aura here over my normal preference on this row, Bloodworms. There’s pros and cons to each. For one thing, the aura is a guaranteed healing thing, and is raid-wide; however, it doesn’t stack with Blood Presence. Of course, this means I can keep Unholy Presence on most of the time, which is really not a bad thing. The Bloodworms seemed to do a bit more healing, but they never really seemed to appear when I wanted (and with only a 9% chance to appear, go figure), had a tendency to pop out at the end of fights and be useless, and – here’s the part that surprised me – they draw aggro. Quite a lot of it. I often found myself fighting enemies I wouldn’t have fought ordinarily because the bloodworm phalanx behind me aggroed them, then died. Thanks a lot guys!
  
  However, the important part on this row is Hysteria. This is best reserved for when you’re not tanking; alternately, when you’re fighting something, know you have a potion to pop, and are ready to burn it down really, really quick. In that case, wait until you’ve got full runic power, then hit this macro:
  
  #showtooltip Summon Gargoyle
/cast Hysteria
/cast Summon Gargoyle

You may also want to add lines to remove the error messages, or (for trolls) add Berserking (since it is also unaffected by the global cooldown). This is your big damage button. Hysteria turns you into an unstoppable killing machine, and Summon Gargoyle brings in a second unstoppable killing machine to spam green lightning bolts at your foe as long as you can keep feeding him runic power (or a minute, whichever comes first).
  
  Pretty cool, huh?
• Tier 8: 5/5 Sudden Doom. Your Heart Strikes and Blood Strikes each have a 20% chance to give you a completely free Death Coil – which, conveniently, is now 15% more damage thanks to a talent I took in tier 1 of the Unholy tree. Nice! You’ll find yourself casting a lot of free Death Coils, leaving your runic power free to keep Horn of Winter up or, well, firing off the above Hysteria/Gargoyle combo.
• Tier 9: 1/1 Heart Strike, 1/3 Might of Mograine (will be 2/3 at level 73, 3/3 at level 74). Heart Strike is the signature move of the Blood tree (enough so that the Elitist Jerks blood DPS forum’s title is “Help me my Heart Strike key is broken”), and is in every way a great replacement for Blood Strike. Might of Mograine is also fantastic, starting with a 15% critical damage bonus to 5 different moves at rank 1 and increasing to 45% at rank 3. Why is this so great? Because it stacks with Subversion (for Blood Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate) and Vicious Strikes (for Death Strike), so a great deal of the Death Knight’s arsenal has crazy-good critical strike damage bonuses.
  
  Additionally, before moving on to tier 10, I will probably drop back and put 1/1 Rune Tap or 1/1 Vampiric Blood. I’m undecided but I think Rune Tap would be more handy, especially with the glyph. It’s probably a tossup. Alternately, if Blood Aura isn’t working out, I will probably respec and put 3/3 Bloodworms again.
• Tier 10 (coming soon!) 5/5 Blood Gorged at level 80: There’s no questioning that Blood Gorged is a great talent, especially for Blood-spec – who specialize in keeping themselves healed up. Casting Hysteria is probably the only reliable way to knock yourself out of this. Expertise is nice, but it feels really “tacked-on” on this talent.

So basically, in comparison to the heavy Blood build I was running with a few days ago, this build dives into Unholy to pick up nice passive stat boosts, crit chance and crit damage boosts, and Summon Gargoyle – which replaces Dancing Rune Blade, as I go right down Blood but stop just short of that capstone. In testing, this build really does seem to lend itself to doing more damage, since 2/2 Blood Aura is like having Unholy Presence and Blood Presence on at the same time, all the time (or Blood and Frost, should I need the extra health, mitigation, and threat).

I don’t have hard numbers for dps, of course, having only run with this build for a day or so – and there are, of course, a few floating points I’d like to get nailed down – but overall, things seem to die faster. And when you’re leveling up, isn’t that really the most important part?

Questions and comments welcome.