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Festering Strike

Festering Strike

1 Blood, 1 Frost	Melee Range

Instant
Requires Death Knight (Unholy)
Requires level 62

Requires Melee Weapon
Deals 225% Physical damage and increases the duration of your Blood Plague, Frost Fever, and Chains of Ice effects on the target by up to 6 sec.

Unholy
The Runes spent on this ability will become Death Runes when they activate. Death Runes count as any type of Rune

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

1 Blood, 1 Frost

Range

5 yards (Combat)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1 second

Effect #1

Normalized Weapon Damage
Value: 1

Effect #2

Weapon Damage - %
Value: 225

Effect #3

Script Effect
Value: 6

Flags

Requires main hand weapon

Guides

Death Knight DPS Guide
(Frost/Unholy)

Warlords of Draenor Death
Knight Changes

Comments

Comment by Sunsharior

This is the new ability unholy death knight and pvp-death knight will be using to counter the fact both Scourge strike and necrotic strike use 1 unholy rune and leave them up with 2 useless frost rune. It also serve the purpose of saving one global cooldown as well as less chain of ice spam in pvp on your primary target anymore.

As of right now, this ability cost 1 blood and 1 frost and interact with reaping, keeping the death runes when it apply.

Comment by Nimmersatt

A new move to eat up the blood and frost runes, since Scourge Strike is now only one unholy as opposed to one frost and one unholy. Does 150% WD, 217.5% with Rage of Rivendare, and increases the duration of your diseases by 6 sec, allowing you to keep them up as long as you want (though for practical reasons you shouldn't keep them up over a minute given that's the cooldown on Outbreak). Using this twice, with Reaping, gives you 4 Death Runes, allowing for the use of SS more often, as well as making it a necessity to keep Dark Transformation up.

In essence, this, along with the change of Scourge Strike to one unholy has made Unholy the 'New Blood' dps tree, only you actually benefit from your buffed presence, as runes refresh based on haste and Improved Unholy Presence gives you an extra 5% haste (during Wrath, many Blood dps DKs chose Unholy Presence for the extra GDC reduction given all of the spamming and ignored Blood Presence and Improved Blood Presence, which had the role of Frost Presence now).

Edit #1: Talent Calc Changes

Edit #2: Updated patch info

Edit #3: Updated for 4.10

Comment by icritmypants

I think this will help make a dk have more moves to cast instead of pushing a couple buttons. It will make it even moar fun!

Comment by Leviatharan

Question: If you hit Outbreak with diseases set for up to 33 sec uptime (adding Epidemic and with yesterday's build reducing totals from 48 sec to 33 sec), then immediately hit Festering Strike, do the diseases go up to 39 41 sec (or ~~37.5~~ 39.5 sec once you factor in GCDs) or do they just hit the cap of 33 sec again?

EDIT: Apparently it's been buffed to 8 sec for diseases. So the revised question is, will the diseases ALWAYS go up 8 sec, or do they just hit the 33 sec cap?

Comment by loik

Does this ability reset your diseases? If not, if it only increases duration... :(
Edit: why downrated? Is just a question, I don't know everything...

Comment by Shadowmaim

I'd have to guess that Threat of Thassarian won't work with this, right?

Comment by tachycardia

This will likely be the method for Unholy to maintain a snare (Chains of Ice) in PVP.

It increases Chains' duration by 6 secs (maybe 8, reading above posts). As it also allows Unholy to keep up diseases for a very long time, you would use it a lot and get very high Chains uptime.

Frost will use Chilblains + Glyphed Howling Blast

Blood - I guess they don't really want Blood to be snaring too much in PVP; in order to do so you'd have to basically save all frost runes for Chains. I feel that now Chains is a constant 60% snare, the duration should be a bit longer since you have to use a rune to cast it. 10 secs would at least allow you to recharge your rune during the Chains duration and be more consistent with other snares.

Comment by ArMeDSuRvIvOr

Comment by loik

This is a reverse Death Rune Mastery! Instead of Death Strike giving you Death Runes, it's Festering Strike that does it. Add 1 Unholy Rune Scourge Strikes and voila, you have your own Unholy Carpal Tunnel spec! :D The old Blood DPS spec is back! Hah!

(For those who don't remember what Death Rune Mastery was, it used to be a talent in the Blood tree -pre 4.0.1- that made your Death Strikes give you Death Runes, which could then be used for more Heart Strikes)

~~What?~~
Ah, I understand now, in place of 6 consecutives Heart Strikes with Death Rune Mastery, in Unholy we now have 6 consecutives Scourge Strike... OMFG + Desecration

I know that with Glyph of Heart Strike, Heart Strike also decreased movement speed, but this is an AoE, pretty god :D

Comment by lolomghax

Just to make it clear

Festering Strike is used as a replace for Icy Touch and Blood strike as soon as Frost Fever is active on the target, since Scourge Strike no longer costs a Frost Rune.

Frost and Blood will not use Festering Strike in their basic rotation (unless they need to prolong diseases for some reason)

Comment by Tripster

What I'm wondering, though, is does this increase the duration of Chilblains? Though I doubt it, I guess. That would mean pretty much an infinite root.

Comment by Battleclown

I am a little suprised at the fact that this skill is found on the frost tab of your spellbook.
It would be more suitable on the unholy tab of your spellbook since the only rotation this skill would fit in is usually an unholy spec.

Comment by CrusaderFelbane

does this affect the duration of Scarlet Fever?

Comment by DroRaz

Seems to have gotten a new (awesome) icon in 5.4.
Old icon was the same as Hatestrike

Comment by ArMeDSuRvIvOr

The new icon added in 5.4 is a bit misleading; it looks frosty rather than... unholy-y. Feels out of place in my bars as unholy, sadly =(

Comment by Mathayuz

Does this extend Necrotic Plague? or adds stacks?

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