Here is a post about that specific gearing/reforging choice with stat weights using my gear from 2 days ago. Both weapons are close, with normal Gurthalak still being ahead of heroic Ataraxis (assuming the sim is correct of course). The reforging changes though depending on the weapon equipped considering that the rest of the gear was unchanged (apart from reforges) in my simulations.

It would be a waste of AMZ to attempt to stack it. Although the tooltip shows a set amount that it would absorb it doesn't always work like that. If you were taking dot dmg it would absorb upto that amount but if you take a large hit like that on H Ultra it will absorb 75% of the entire hit. So using 2 AMZ at the same time will end up still just absorbing the 75% so 1 ends up wasted.

not quite correct

on H ultraxion it will absorb the exact amount displayed in the tooltip for each player staying in the AMZ. It's the same with any other spell whose 75% reduced damage would exceed the displayed amount

Also, stacking the AMZ would only work if both DKs are staying in the twilight realm. but raid-wise it would be significally better to use one AMZ for every group of 5 players who are staying down. except if you have for example a group consisting of 2+ fire mages who survive with cauterize. in that case it would be better to cast AMZ after HoT was casted to absorb the damage cauterize would cause to the mages

edit: speaking of Ultraxion HC. anyone experienced any high damage spikes during HoT soaking with both AMZ + AMS up? we have 3 Unholy DKs in the raid in 3 different groups, and most of the time we take only 30k dmg per hit, but in some (well, more relatively often) tries we take up to 90k per hit, even with both buffs present (also with resistance aura up)

edit2, regarding edit: could it be cause of client/server-side lag that the AMZ or AMS gets added to the Debuff list after HoT damage is done? Same happened on Morchok, sometimes the AMS just doesn't absorb a thing.

AMZ is extremely good against things like the large Barrage on Blackthorn and Elementium Bolt impact on Madness given that it's a large damage nuke that hits the whole raid at the same time. In essence, AMZ immediately despawns but it reduces that damage for everybody before it does.

I can confirm that even the LFR Gurthalak (I was running with it for 2 resets and just got normal in this one) tends to do significant amounts of damage.

For example on all fights I checked the tentacles damage was well beyond our 4pc bonus from t12. Now I know the bonus itself isn't particularly amazing but it's just an example. It was quite often contributing 8-10% of my total damage on patchwerk style fights.

Overall I would say the sword is definitely an upgrade from normal Rag mace or the Shannox HC axe.

Two weird things though - and I need to test this out properly is that I don't think the tentacles do damage to Ultraxion and for some reason WOL isn't showing them in my damage done =/.


Edit: Indeed the tentacles show up as a pet, silly me

It shows up as a pet, and it does hit Ultrax. Looking through all the heroic ultrax parses for unholy DKs, it seems to be around 1.5-3k dmg.


Edit: To those who argue against the weapon because of the RNG consider this: At the bare minimum the proc does AT LEAST 1k. Do any weapon stats really compete with that?

After taking part in a trinket list I decided to do some more sims when I finally received [Sulfuras, The Extinguished Hand] in regards to stat weights. These are the results with 50k iterations:



Would this actually be worth reforging Crit > Haste > Mastery or is the differences too small to be recognisable. I understand that the relationship between Haste and Crit has always been close and is unlikely to change unless Mastery increases in value with Gurthalak.

I replaced [Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster] and saw a predicted increase by over 800 DPS. I have seen many suggestions that the Raggy mace would be able to compete with [Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps] yet can anyone prove this with sims. I too agree that the RNG factor with the sword seems too unpredictable and unlikely, which leads me to think a stat orientated weapon would be the way to go yet a variety of sites (including this one) say [Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster] is still the way to go.

The fact of the matter is you do less damage with Gurthalak. If you sim even with the Heroic version you still do less damage, maybe there is a bug I do not know about yet I doubt anyone would use this weapon if its so unpredictable. In addition I was under the impression that Ultraxion doesn't take into consideration DND damage so your damage would have been much higher if that was the case.

The sim is undervalueuing the proc quite a bit.

Less than what? Heroic Gurthalak sims ~3k higher than Sulfuras and 2k higher that Ataraxis. The normal version sims about 700dps higher than Ataraxis. Or are you talking about some imaginary sim where the proc doesn't matter?

Gurthalak is BiS, and it's not particularly close. You could have extremely bad luck on some pulls, sure. If you don't like that fact, then that's a personal decision. But on average Gurthalak is going to do the most dps.

I am having a bit of trouble deciding on a gear setup for HC Ultraxion. Patchwerk simulations are good, but on this fight we can basically use AMS on cooldown for lots of extra RP, and we take frequent ~1s stuns during which our dots and Gurthalak tentacles continue to dps and our runes regenerate and cap out. The mechanics, and personal experience on the fight, make me want to reforge out of haste completely into crit and mastery.

Doing so would put me at 1953 crit, 1564 mastery, and 977 haste. Using "normal" stat weights I would have 1614 crit, 818 mastery, and 2061 haste.

How are you gearing for HC Ultraxion?


edit: Also over the night Gurthalak was 7.9% of my total dps, so simulationcraft does indeed undervalue the proc.