Yes, in the world of max dps, unholy is parsing even higher then it did pre-4.0.6. That being said, in a 10/25m raid world, we still do middle of the pack dps, and we still bring 2 raid utility items in ICT and Brittle Bones. With alot of hunters (especially in my guild) going MM/BM, ICT stands out for the raid wide buff with hunting party no being used anymore. Brittle Bones is also an over all raid dps increase, while sacrificing some personal dps (by not going unholy). I am staying Frost for the love of the playstyle, and the 2 raid buffs that I bring as the sole Frost DK.

I also seen an increase with my dps upwards of 750dps using 3/3 virulence vice IBT on the dummy, and on cho'gall last night. I also un-reforged some some stuff for more +hit, and now I am running roughly 12% melee hit, and usually I parse 65-75% normal oblits with 35-25% crits... last night I was running an even 55% hits with 45% crits... Not sure if it was some dam good RNG, but I had a bunch more KM procs, with an overall obliterate dps increase of 6% vice only having 8% to hit.

Just my thoughts, could be a possibilty that the RNG was re-coded to a higher base % to KM procs on normal white hits, so more white hits = more KM procs, which is why I was thinking a higher +hit = more KM procs (percentage wise) post 4.0.6. Need to parse more, and run more sims, will post some updated stuff, but I definatley saw an 500-750dps increase overall for disease damage, and a 6% overall obliterate dps increase for adding 4% more hit to myself.

I'm not a fan of IBT. I pair my BT up with PoF (which have the exact same cooldown), and having an extra BT in the middle of my rotations is rarely needed to keep everything going and every second I delay using BT is essentially a dps loss from placing those talent points, plus it breaks the cooldown sync with PoF. Personally, I've always shunned the deeper blood talents, and I roll will 5/31/5 (2H frost). My reshuffling of talents to include 3/3 virulence and only 2/3 Epidemic is my only real change from 4.0.5 and yet I'm seeing almost a 4k dps increase on boss fights thanks to the 2H buffs.

This is the build I use:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I find that as long as I'm really good about reapplying Blood Plague as soon as it falls off, I never have to worry about FF, and the rotation is basically unchanged from 4.0.3 with a huge damage increase.

Edit: By means of comparison, among the members of my guild, I used to be a solid mid-range dpser (#5-10 ish) pre-patch and now I'm top melee dps (which puts me in the #1-4 spots raidwide) on almost every fight post patch.

Virulence > Improved Blood Tap

There is no uncertainty about it.
Virulence gives slightly more damage per point, is done completely passively (requires no extra skill), does not push you towards GCD capping, has 1 more point, and doesn't require you to get Butchery. IBT simply doesn't match up.

The choice is between Improved Blood Tap and Epidemic
Without accounting for GCD capping and assuming optimal usage, 2/2 IBT gives about 25% more damage than 3/3 Epidemic. It's a question of whether the theoretical benefit of IBT is worth the difficulties of making use of it.

Exactly, that's where the debate now is (IBT vs Epidemic).

I've done some napkin mats and raid testing, and came to conclusion that IBT is worth keeping over Epidemic. My reasoning behind this is - having to reapply Blood Plague slightly more often isn't going to significantly affect your DPS (Epidemic is only truly helping Blood Plague, since between your Rime procs and Outbreak CD, Frost Fever will often be passively on your target). On the other hand, a shorter IBT CD can really come handy on burst scenarios and gives you much more rune flexibility.

Another advantage for IBT is the possibility to capitalize on the blood rune / BT bug more often. Although the opportunities are rather rare in a real fight. I mean, when do you have 2 blood runes available and BT up at the same time?

Not having Epidemic in your spec gives you this exact scenario if you have Average or Below Average RNG. I've tested 0/1/2/3 over the past few weeks and honestly, my DPS stays within 1k of itself. It's insanely hard to figure out "what is the best?!" when we're heavily effected by RNG.

Now, to answer your question: When you have 0 points in Epidemic, Rime becomes a much higher priority on your list. You can NOT lose that proc or let FF fall off. At this point it becomes Diseases -> Rime if less than 3s on FF and not RP capped -> OB/KM proc if OB is up and you're not capped on RP -> FS.

It looks similar, yes, but there's more "weaving" required and you'll eat some over capped RP chances are. If FF has less than 4 seconds of up-time left, you have a KM proc and at 70 rp? Use OB/KM proc -> Rime.

What if you're at 90 RP with a KM and Rime proc and ~4 seconds left? Easy enough. FS/KM proc followed by Rime then OB->FS.

Not having Epidemic requires even more attention to procs/disease counter/runes because you're going to be making snap decisions. The goal, though, it is to not over cap RP. You'll have some people say "Always OB on a KM proc!" which I've personally found to lower my DPS because I just ate an additional FS by over-capping. Now, we're talking rather marginal numbers but we're here to min/max as best as possible.

What if you have no Rime proc? You'll have to burn a Frost Rune on HB, reapply PS at the same time so there is no time wait on that pair of runes.

Over-all, it's a more difficult time management spec and you will lower your DPS by having them fall off much sooner on fights like Cho'gal if you go kill the add and similar situations where you have to run off some where else. What do I mean by "lower your dps"? Again, it's marginal. It's around 1 or 2% from all my records on run around fights. Which, equates to about 300-500 dps. Not a killer by any means but I do know people that consider that a substantial decrease.

I think with the changes made to unholy and such blizzard is heading in a direction where if frost didn't have procs, it would do less than unholy but competitive to a point where the playstyle is what matters to the user. Add in procs and I think they want the average frost dps to match unholy's. If we get lucky on procs we do more, if we get unlucky, less (and by procs I mean KM, Rime, and RE).

Also one quick question about the OP, when he says "Ob if both Frost/Unholy pairs and/or both Death runes are up, or if KM is procced" does he mean use KMOb only when the runes are DDXXXX or --F-U- or when any combo of U and F runes are up (where - means any state and X is cooldown)?

I realized that I had an incorrect base duration for diseases in my napkin math of IBT vs Epidemic. With the correction 2/2 IBT and 3/3 Epidemic come out to roughly the same damage. IBT might be able to get more damage from the Butchery points but Epidemic will provide the same damage more dependably.

Having 3/3 virulence and 3/3 Epidemic is a straight dps gain, with no player button pushing. Passive dps boost is what we need as frost, and these two talents give this over IBT.
IBT = more button pushing, and more worrying about disease, which adds to a passive dps loss.

I am an engineer, so i have my new glove enchants (480 str!!) so i basically do a chain every minute...

Outbreak--> BT --> PoF --> Gloves--> Ghoul (if its up) --> OB OB --> (ERW IF ITS UP---> OB OB) ->> BS BS (or untill RP cap, I use RPM over butchery, personal preference,) 4 FS dump. I use that chain every time its up, mostly every minute. So you only use 1 Uh rune per minute on a plague strike upkeep, and RNG willing, you will always get a Rime proc for FF upkeep.

It may be "250-400dps"" less in the sim, but in ease of play and rotation smoothness, it pans out to have Virulence/Epidemic over IBT for a "player-side" dps gain. Everyone likes to have passive damage done, so we can worry about not having a KM proc for 7 globals (my luck last night >< )



EDIT: clarified my statments

This is true for 0/3 or 1/3 epidemic, but with 2/3 epidemic, you don't need to apply BP any more often than with 3/3. You're still applying it once manually between Outbreaks, just at the 29 second mark instead of the 33 second mark - all in all you're simply required to outbreak immediately upon it finishing it's cooldown as opposed to having a couple of seconds of wiggle room.

Then there are 2 seconds of non-BP downtime between the final tick of BP #2 and the next outbreak. That's not enough time for BP to tick anyway, so there's actually no DPS loss at all from this change as long as you've reapplied BP within 2 seconds of it falling off, and then again with outbreak as soon as it comes off cooldown.

In fact, the only argument I can see in favor of 3/3 epidemic vs. 2/3 is that with 3/3 you have some free time in case you're cc'd or have to move out of melee range before you absolutely must reapply. In AoE situations, longer disease timers help, too, I suppose. Still, single target with a perfect rotation you shouldn't notice any dps change between 2/3 and 3/3 epidemic (well, there should be a gain for the 2/3 build because that spare point should add more dps).

Edit: Veanorn, try popping your gloves and PoF prior to outbreak - your disease damage scales to strength so you'll get bigger initial ticks.

And this is where we differ. I don't use nor run the sim. At all. All of my numbers are from testing - in a raid setting. I used to do what you just said was proper and my DPS suffered because of it. Ever since I stopped capping/over-capping FS and not waiting ~2 seconds to use a KM proc on OB (while runes were coming back up) and instead use it on FS so I could get on with another ability - my DPS went from a solid 13k to 15k time and time again.

Now, before you go "Oh, RNG." No. It's not. I did many raids with the way you stated it and have done many raids since that point with how I do it now - and the numbers still show higher for me using the "Priority system" I stated.

By the way, I never once mentioned RE. The only RNG I was speaking about was Rime and KM.