Warning for Ananais: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

Kaubel · 03/28/09, 7:00 PM

Post: Dual Wield Builds
User: Ananais
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Don't quote-split.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Orlgin

2) Dummy testing will favor Scourge Strike over Plague Strike/Icy Touch because the Dummy has full armor. Unlike a raid boss which will have a major and minor sunder armor debuff on it. Remember that PS/IT generates more runic power but also reduces the amount of Blood Plague and Frost Fever ticks. So comparisons between the two are tricky. See #5 for another issue with this.

3) Dummy testing is useful for comparing specs with the same buffs. Comparing Frost to Unholy is comparing apples to oranges. Frost gets 20% melee haste. We get 13% more spell damage, 3% higher crit, and 30% more disease damage. That's not exactly fair to Frost.

If I remember correctly the boss dummy in Acherus has auto-debuffs to simulate a raid scenario. I noticed that it has the 3% improved chance to hit/crit and the 13% spell damage increase, but I don't remember if it had the armor debuffs or disease damage bonus on. I'll have to check next opportunity I have to log on. If that's the case, though, then for comparison Unholy has the biggest relative disadvantage in regards to not having Icy Talons or Abomination's Strength active during our testing, which is something to consider in our numbers as Unholy is the only tree which will benefit additionally from BOTH of those buffs in a raid environment rather than just one.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

4) Raid Specs will have 2/2 Improved Unholy Presence.

I'm not sure I understand why this is the case. The movement speed increase is no question a DPS boost, especially to be able to use it in BP, but I'm not sure where those talent points will be coming from as it's already a pretty tight spec as far as required points go. I could see shifting some out of Outbreak if we end up not using SS at all, but other than that, it's a tough call. That's going to be the only benefit of those two points though, as this approach doesn't make sense to use in any other presence than Blood at the moment as we're already running up against empty GCDs, which means we won't gain the benefit of the increased rune refresh rate. Also, the fact that the movement speed increase no longer affects the raid, only ourselves, makes this much less attractive as a DPS talent.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

5) Assuming 4pcT7 is dangerous. That automatically favors 2H builds which use those abilities. That set will be broken quickly and the set bonus is worth a lot of DPS. A duel-wield build like this will be going for 2 pc T8 ASAP (preferably shoulders/legs) for the better stats and the bonus to Death Coil.

Regarding SS, I think you're correct that assuming 4pT7 is very temporary, and 4pT8 is unlikely as there are higher iLvl items available that will probably be more beneficial that retaining those slots for what looks to be like a very small damage increase, depending on how the 4 piece bonus is implemented. However, that being said, SS scales significantly better than IT or PS, even for 1H. It's probably worth crunching some numbers based on the Ulduar gear that we're seeing to find out whether the benefits of an additional .375 * average DC damage are going to outperform it over time.

EDIT: Regarding SS, if it does turn out to be the case that it's preferable to the IT+PS+15RP, it might even be worth looking at some other glyphs to replace IT. In fact, given that this build approach is going to run on 15s rotations, the Glyph of UB would allow UB to work perfectly timewise with the rotation and might provide enough additional damage to outweigh the IT glyph, even in single target fights. That sounds like it's the direction the 2H Unholy DPS thread is headed anyway, and although our approach is different, we're running up against some of the same questions they are.