Unholy DPS | Cataclysm 4.0.6, The Missing Frame - Page 11

Max zero · 01/12/11, 11:51 PM

Updated DK notes:

Public Test Realm Patch 4.0.6 Notes - Updated Jan. 12 - World of Warcraft

Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.

Overall it is fairly tame. DC will be covered by Mastery change, the RoR change should probably covered by the rumored SS buff (that hasn't made it into the notes). Overall being a little less reliant on the pet for damage will be nice.

deathbud · 01/13/11, 4:23 AM

Originally Posted by Max zero

Updated DK notes:

Public Test Realm Patch 4.0.6 Notes - Updated Jan. 12 - World of Warcraft

Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.

Overall it is fairly tame. DC will be covered by Mastery change, the RoR change should probably covered by the rumored SS buff (that hasn't made it into the notes). Overall being a little less reliant on the pet for damage will be nice.

To be honest I think this is just in anticipation to how much damage our mastery will be giving us. These all seem ( beside the strength nerf ) to be areas of heavy shadow damage ( i.e shadow pet damage and Death coil ) so I think with gear and mastery rework it will be mild compared to what they could have done.

Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage.With this I think will be amazing just due to the shadow damage of our DoT and the 30% additional damage that will now provide . This I think will also help make up for our " nerf "as well .

Let's also take a moment to look at the beautiful gems of mobility we got as well .Just to offset the nerfing we got

A) Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.That is going to be beautiful for us not only in a PvP role but perhaps in current and future PvE content as well .

B) Death's Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed.

Taiyoken · 01/13/11, 9:17 AM

I think you're overvaluing the damage from DoTs you will be receiving. Most characters have like 10-12 Mastery so that's about a 50-60% DoT damage increase you currently have - the patch takes it away and gives you a flat 30% diseases, less than your current mastery. You'd need like 50% extra shadow damage from Mastery in order to actually give you a DPS increase (multiplicative). Given that (I'm pretty sure) Mastery will greatly overtake Crit, you'll be getting a lot more Mastery on gear but it's not going to buff your disease damage to insane levels.

The changes seem fine, and it just seems like indirect buffs to SS in order to make it a higher percentage of your damage while taking away a decent amount of pet damage which I won't complain about.

Martialbob · 01/13/11, 2:35 PM

DeathCoil 1103554688 18 115527 9552 97733 8278 85 17794 16552 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
ScourgeStrike 804704320 13 114709 7015 94401 5961 78 20308 11916 17 6418 5 0 0 0 0 0
MainHand 750611264 12 155801 6449 86991 4330 53 29408 8657 18 8581 5 39402 3029 24 0 0
Ghoul 714067584 11 313029 2997 222751 2333 71 15526 4659 5 0 0 74752 1634 24 0 0
ScourgeStrike+ScourgeStrikeMagical 657457024 10 114709 5732 114709 5732 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ghoul: Sweeping Claw 403556608 6 95109 4243 90413 4043 95 4696 8092 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gargoyle 365106656 6 57490 6351 51746 5774 90 5744 11544 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
FesteringStrike 351010208 6 35222 9966 28892 8444 78 6330 16911 17 1990 5 0 0 0 0 0
BloodPlague 269684000 4 119999 2247 101356 1946 84 18643 3888 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 105
FrostFever 230962128 4 119999 1925 101426 1668 84 18573 3328 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 105
DeathandDecay 208298352 3 127586 1633 107562 1411 84 20024 2822 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ghoul: Claw 142666624 2 61504 2320 58395 2208 95 3109 4408 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
DarkmoonCardHurricane 110764448 2 18443 6006 15500 5562 84 2943 8343 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
UnholyBlight 110331304 2 115527 955 115527 0 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Army of the Dead 42024660 1 357784 118 321946 116 90 35838 129 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Damage breakdowns from Sims i've run this morning with the 4.06 changes now in place on the simulator

EP Generation gave me the following stat weights

EP AttackPower 0.71 DPS
EP Strength 2.54
EP Agility 1.02
EP CritRating 0.6
EP MasteryRating 0.5
EP HasteRating 0.98
EP ExpertiseRating 0.58
Before Melee Hit Cap 0.82
EP SpellHitRating 0
EP WeaponDPS 4.1
EP WeaponSpeed 650
EP 2T10 299
EP 4T10 467
EP 2T11 144
EP 4T11 255
EP 4T11 Tank 0
pawn Non hit caped Pawn: v1: "Non hit caped": MasteryRating=0.5, HitRating=0.82, CritRating=0.6, Dps=4.1, Strength=2.54, Armor=0.028, Agility=1.02, HasteRating=0.98, Speed=650, ExpertiseRating=0.58, Ap=1, GemQualityLevel=82 )
pawn hit caped Pawn: v1: "Hit caped": MasteryRating=0.5, HitRating=0, CritRating=0.6, Dps=4.1, Strength=2.54, Armor=0.028, Agility=1.02, HasteRating=0.98, Speed=650, ExpertiseRating=0.58, Ap=1, GemQualityLevel=82 )
Generated in 151.39 s

So far it seems Crit has moved up the ladder ahead of expertise, haste has moved above hit. Though hit still needs to be capped, and with those stat weights the built in optimizer did get me to hit cap.

Mastery is still showing at the bottom of the pile because it doesn't effect our scourge strike as of now.

If they fix crit going to our pets I'd also assume crit will become even higher, crosses fingers.

Murdoque · 01/14/11, 6:53 PM

Due to Runic Empowerment now stacking expertise EP value should increase by some portion as well , as we will be having faster rune regen rate for longer time than we used wich will definately result in some dps increase.

I assume you mean Runic Corruption via the Sudden Doom talent? Expertise in itself does nothing to boost Runic Corruption.
Remember expertise also affected SD before this patch. I don't see how expertise will affect the new talent more than it did the old version. In either case, the difference between 0 and 26 expertise in terms of SD procs will only be 6.5%. In my opinion, an additional 6.5% chance to proc a free 45% chance to proc Runic Corruption does not sound like it makes expertise worth stacking.

Edit: Or if you meant to say "because of the stacking nature of Runic Corruption, we now have more runes to spend, so expertise will increase in value", this might be true to an extent, but Crit scale with this effect as well. Therefor, crit will still be a better stat than expertise, so the point is rather moot.

Bobfred21 · 01/14/11, 7:27 PM

Originally Posted by Murdoque

I assume you mean Runic Corruption via the Sudden Doom talent? Expertise in itself does nothing to boost Runic Corruption.
Remember expertise also affected SD before this patch. I don't see how expertise will affect the new talent more than it did the old version. In either case, the difference between 0 and 26 expertise in terms of SD procs will only be 6.5%. In my opinion, an additional 6.5% chance to proc a free 45% chance to proc Runic Corruption does not sound like it makes expertise worth stacking.

Edit: Or if you meant to say "because of the stacking nature of Runic Corruption, we now have more runes to spend, so expertise will increase in value", this might be true to an extent, but Crit scale with this effect as well. Therefor, crit will still be a better stat than expertise, so the point is rather moot.

The reason expertise isn't very good right now is because we're not GCD capped so missing a few strikes isn't a big deal because we can use push it back and do it later.

Runic corruption stacking is a buff to expertise because it gives us more GCDs to use, with more GCDs to use the danger of missing is much higher because we could actually lose time in which we could be using another GCD. So while it's true that crit scales with this buff as well, it interacts with expertise in a way that crit doesn't.

MKlades · 01/14/11, 9:36 PM

I think you're grossly overestimating how much more RC uptime we'll have with it stacking instead of overwriting. The change is more quality of life than a game changer, because now you can dump your RP all at once instead of necessarily spreading them out to avoid wasting RC time.

Simsons2 · 01/14/11, 9:52 PM

Originally Posted by MKlades

I think you're grossly overestimating how much more RC uptime we'll have with it stacking instead of overwriting. The change is more quality of life than a game changer, because now you can dump your RP all at once instead of necessarily spreading them out to avoid wasting RC time.

Machine-Gunning DC , and increased RC uptime will make us GCD capped is why expertise value should rise , Im guessing it might be around ~10 sec uptime vs ussual 3 seconds GCD capped and even with small AMS nerf magic dmg fights will have a nice RC uptime.

Bobfred21 · 01/14/11, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by MKlades

I think you're grossly overestimating how much more RC uptime we'll have with it stacking instead of overwriting. The change is more quality of life than a game changer, because now you can dump your RP all at once instead of necessarily spreading them out to avoid wasting RC time.

I never claimed it would turn expertise into the best stat ever. The topic was that the runic corruption change will affect expertise scaling more than crit scaling, and it will for the reasons mentioned above. The changes give us a lot more to scale with all round, this change in particular causes expertise to be more valuable to us.

Jonneh · 01/17/11, 7:42 AM

I've been experimenting with better ways to use cooldowns, most notably how to best time use of your strength pot, gargoyle and heroism/UF. Since using Heroism and UF at the same time is obviously a waste, but having them both up for casting gargoyle is preferable, I have tried something like;

00:00 Heroism
00:15 Str Pot
00:38 Garg/UF
00:40 Str Pot/Heroism expire

Having the str pot up for heroism and the initial cast of your garg, as well as both haste buffs for when your garg is summoned meaning 1 second strike casts instead of 1.3/1.2 second with just UF/Heroism by themselves respectively. Obviously if you can also cast your garg with your trinket proc up, so much the better. This would probably be worth wasting a few more seconds of Heroism and UF being up at the same time if it meant you had a garg with another 2k str behind it.

Quick checks of my parses show a large increase in the damage the garg does when using this method, and a quick dummy test says its roughly 20% more garg damage unbuffed (just with heroism for testing, ofc)

Anyone have anything to note, or suggestions on how this might be improved?

deathbud · 01/19/11, 4:03 AM

Originally Posted by Jonneh

I've been experimenting with better ways to use cooldowns, most notably how to best time use of your strength pot, gargoyle and heroism/UF. Since using Heroism and UF at the same time is obviously a waste, but having them both up for casting gargoyle is preferable, I have tried something like;

00:00 Heroism
00:15 Str Pot
00:38 Garg/UF
00:40 Str Pot/Heroism expire

Having the str pot up for heroism and the initial cast of your garg, as well as both haste buffs for when your garg is summoned meaning 1 second strike casts instead of 1.3/1.2 second with just UF/Heroism by themselves respectively. Obviously if you can also cast your garg with your trinket proc up, so much the better. This would probably be worth wasting a few more seconds of Heroism and UF being up at the same time if it meant you had a garg with another 2k str behind it.

Quick checks of my parses show a large increase in the damage the garg does when using this method, and a quick dummy test says its roughly 20% more garg damage unbuffed (just with heroism for testing, ofc)

Anyone have anything to note, or suggestions on how this might be improved?

I love that and I tried this method on a dummy as well and I am seeing a 18 to 20% roughly . I have not raid tested it with full raid buffs but I think I will have the same results as you seen with yourself raid buffed . I also don't think there is room for improvement on this . I mean the slight overlapping of the UF and the BL are not even a consideration seeing as how you will most likely be getting a 18 to 20% boost in DPS off your pet .

Weidekuh · 01/19/11, 6:50 AM

Originally Posted by Jonneh

I've been experimenting with better ways to use cooldowns, most notably how to best time use of your strength pot, gargoyle and heroism/UF. Since using Heroism and UF at the same time is obviously a waste, but having them both up for casting gargoyle is preferable, I have tried something like;

00:00 Heroism
00:15 Str Pot
00:38 Garg/UF
00:40 Str Pot/Heroism expire

Having the str pot up for heroism and the initial cast of your garg, as well as both haste buffs for when your garg is summoned meaning 1 second strike casts instead of 1.3/1.2 second with just UF/Heroism by themselves respectively. Obviously if you can also cast your garg with your trinket proc up, so much the better. This would probably be worth wasting a few more seconds of Heroism and UF being up at the same time if it meant you had a garg with another 2k str behind it.

Quick checks of my parses show a large increase in the damage the garg does when using this method, and a quick dummy test says its roughly 20% more garg damage unbuffed (just with heroism for testing, ofc)

Anyone have anything to note, or suggestions on how this might be improved?

I always did it like that, if the fights permits it. Yes, it's a nice boost.

But don't forget. being able to cast garg one more time is still better than garg at end of BL

It's important to know how long a bossfight will be.
for example: under 3:30 min. use garg when best buffs are available (end BL with many proccs up). Fight duration just over 4 min. use the garg right at the beginning (when all procs are up) so you can cast it again at the end.

Most bossfights are longer, so you should be able to use garg multiple times. But the rule still applies. +1 garg cast > bl garg.

deathbud · 01/19/11, 1:21 PM

I think the pre-potting method say on long fights like nef is great for example

1 second before pull pre -pot
Then when set and quickly UH then Garg . Now if you have a good timing mod like most of us do you can actually wait till about 3 to 4 seconds before the pot expires to pop UH and Garg in the opening . I prefer to wait till about 6 seconds are left on the pre pot to pop UF . Reason being is that since it's a opening of a fight your going to have trinkets procin . So its best to take advantage of the opening trinket procs and the pre pot .

On most cata fights they are all over 3 min so you should be able to get the open powerful garg then using your method a second time to get the super uber garg .

Therosian · 01/19/11, 6:12 PM

Official WoW Forums

Originally Posted by Blizzard Staff

The Shadow portion of Scourge Strike is intended to be affected by Dreadblade (this was part of the intent behind changing Unholy mastery); however, there's a bug on the PTR right now that's preventing this from happening correctly. It should be resolved soon, or may already be resolved in the next PTR build.

Confirmation is a great thing indeed. This will place Mastery above Crit/Expertise in regards to stat weights as Consider has pointed out, but will still fall short of Haste.

Metaknight · 01/19/11, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by Therosian

Official WoW Forums

Confirmation is a great thing indeed. This will place Mastery above Crit/Expertise in regards to stat weights as Consider has pointed out, but will still fall short of Haste.

This means that Mastery/Haste pieces of gear will become more favorable than Crit/Haste, Hit Cap assumed. I think the BiS gear list is going to need quite the revising once this patch goes live if things stay as is.

Can someone see if Crit Scaling with the Ghoul was addressed yet? This along with the Raise Dead bug are two of the maajor bugs gripping Unholy atm.