Unholy DPS | My Friend of Misery [4.3.0] - Page 20

Panthros · 01/12/12, 3:59 AM

Originally Posted by rayzorium

Has anyone messed around with only throwing out really beefy outbreaks and extending them with FeS until the next outbreak buff window? I've looked around but haven't seen anything on the subject. I can't tell whether it isn't really done or it's just assumed that everybody does it.

Sooner or later you would be capping frost and blood runes that should be converted into death runes by those festering strikes you are saving. You should test if those buffed thicks win over those scourge strikes you are missing (I think it wont).

Snob · 01/12/12, 1:02 PM

I decided to try out Simcraft for the first time today. I have been using other sources to figure out stat values in the past. However, it seems as if I'm doing something very wrong. I've followed the instructions on the simcraft website, and with my current gear (4pc t13 + LFR Gurthalak), I get these stat values (same order on Ultra, Patchwerk and heavy movement encounters):

STR 3.449
Exp 1.0734
Hit 2.9254
Crit 1.7628
Haste 1.5704
Mastery 1.7326

It seems very off compared to the stat values posted by the OP. What am I doing wrong? This can't possibly be correct.

Hinenuitepo · 01/12/12, 2:24 PM

Originally Posted by rayzorium

Has anyone messed around with only throwing out really beefy outbreaks and extending them with FeS until the next outbreak buff window? I've looked around but haven't seen anything on the subject. I can't tell whether it isn't really done or it's just assumed that everybody does it.

Although disease damage isn't what it used to be, optimizing it still looks to be a noticeable gain. Most people use outbreak as they're running in, right? So no procs at all, and no stacks of Eye of Unmaking if you have it.

I did a quick and dirty test on the dummy. With just HoW, BP ticked for 3022. With FC, 10 trinket stacks, rotting skull on use, 4pc proc and orc berserking, it ticked for 5465. It sounds like a case of stars aligning, but it never took more than 20 seconds to get the procs I wanted.

Granted, my trinket setup happens to work well for this trick, but I think these numbers aren't overly optimistic. At least on the initial outbreak, that's about an 80% damage boost for BP and a little less for FF. Subsequent outbreaks won't see quite that dramatic an increase, but will still be much better than ignoring buffs. I've been fiddling with simcraft but I'm nowhere near savvy enough to figure out how to implement this. Is anyone else interested in following up?

If I'm understanding your post correctly you seem to be asking if you can roll buffed diseases a la 3.xx; this is not the case any longer. Back then, you wanted to wait until your attack power was very high (due to procs etc) and then apply diseases and then refresh them to keep high-damage diseases going throughout the fight. This has long since been changed and diseases simply tick based on current attack power; that's why you see the fluctuation. Don't worry about it; as the OP says, it's most important to keep diseases up so that your strikes hit harder. Apply them via outbreak and keep them up via FeS whenever possible. You can outbreak if they're about to drop off or have dropped off, although with target switching I often try to save it to apply to new targets if I can't pest diseases to them.

Originally Posted by Snob

I decided to try out Simcraft for the first time today. I have been using other sources to figure out stat values in the past. However, it seems as if I'm doing something very wrong. I've followed the instructions on the simcraft website, and with my current gear (4pc t13 + LFR Gurthalak), I get these stat values (same order on Ultra, Patchwerk and heavy movement encounters):

STR 3.449
Exp 1.0734
Hit 2.9254
Crit 1.7628
Haste 1.5704
Mastery 1.7326

It seems very off compared to the stat values posted by the OP. What am I doing wrong? This can't possibly be correct.

That doesn't seem far off to me. Without looking at your gear specifically I'd guess you're at about 2000-2100 haste. At that level with Gurthalak and 4pc mastery is going to be very strong, crit's not bad and haste may not get you much without losing dps due to frequent rp capping (in part due to 2pc procs); it doesn't seem far off actually. If your haste is naturally high enough, forging to mastery and/or crit actually sounds like sacrilige, but may in practice not be a bad idea (with lots of *caveats* to say it has to take into account your specific gearset).

Snob · 01/12/12, 2:38 PM

Originally Posted by Hinenuitepo

If I'm understanding your post correctly you seem to be asking if you can roll buffed diseases a la 3.xx; this is not the case any longer. Back then, you wanted to wait until your attack power was very high (due to procs etc) and then apply diseases and then refresh them to keep high-damage diseases going throughout the fight. This has long since been changed and diseases simply tick based on current attack power; that's why you see the fluctuation. Don't worry about it; as the OP says, it's most important to keep diseases up so that your strikes hit harder. Apply them via outbreak and keep them up via FeS whenever possible. You can outbreak if they're about to drop off or have dropped off, although with target switching I often try to save it to apply to new targets if I can't pest diseases to them.

That doesn't seem far off to me. Without looking at your gear specifically I'd guess you're at about 2000-2100 haste. At that level with Gurthalak and 4pc mastery is going to be very strong, crit's not bad and haste may not get you much without losing dps due to frequent rp capping (in part due to 2pc procs); it doesn't seem far off actually. If your haste is naturally high enough, forging to mastery and/or crit actually sounds like sacrilige, but may in practice not be a bad idea (with lots of *caveats* to say it has to take into account your specific gearset).

So in that sense, mastery/crit is ahead as long as my haste is high enough? If I were to reforge off haste now into crit/mastery, would that increase the value of haste, the less I get, while decreasing it the more I get? I'm at 2100-ish haste at the moment, so I assume reforging some of it off in favor of mastery/crit wouldn't be worth it?

Pyryte · 01/12/12, 3:37 PM

Originally Posted by Snob

So in that sense, mastery/crit is ahead as long as my haste is high enough? If I were to reforge off haste now into crit/mastery, would that increase the value of haste, the less I get, while decreasing it the more I get? I'm at 2100-ish haste at the moment, so I assume reforging some of it off in favor of mastery/crit wouldn't be worth it?

It depends on your gear. Don't treat the OP stat values like the bible. Sim your gear and see what it tells you is strongest. I'd recommend reforging a piece or 2, (100-125 haste, or around there) to mastery and then resim your gear and see what it tells you.

The sims make it easy to test out different gear too, so you may not have to actually do it in game to test it. Just put in the different stat values and see which sims higher. There are some cases where sims tell you for example, mastery is higher per stat than haste, but once you do so, your dps drops. So just take the time to run multiple sims and see what you come up with.

rayzorium · 01/12/12, 5:42 PM

Originally Posted by Hinenuitepo

...diseases simply tick based on current attack power...

But that's not true. Diseases tick based on what your stats were when you applied the disease. This means that most people are applying close to the weakest diseases possible and extending them for at least the first minute of most fights, and probably much longer, since it is seemingly reasonable to extend diseases until you're forced to outbreak again.

All I'm proposing is to start off with IT+PS, and wait until you've ramped up all your procs to use outbreak. And every time you have to use outbreak again, try to make sure you only use it when you have a lot of buffs up.

This is of particular interest to those of us that use Rotting Skull (heck, it may be potent enough to bump Rotting Skull up a few ranks). Going from a completely dry outbreak to a fully procced one, my BP and FF gained about 4k per tick between them. Factoring in crits and raid buffs, it looks to be a very substantial DPS increase.

Uspoonybard · 01/12/12, 6:16 PM

Originally Posted by Snob

So in that sense, mastery/crit is ahead as long as my haste is high enough? If I were to reforge off haste now into crit/mastery, would that increase the value of haste, the less I get, while decreasing it the more I get? I'm at 2100-ish haste at the moment, so I assume reforging some of it off in favor of mastery/crit wouldn't be worth it?

The rough estimate of the haste you want to start reforging out of it is around ~2200, that's because BL and UF start to provide us GCD caps then, before that though haste is still our best secondary stat and shouldn't really be reforged into anything else, unless hit is a problem. Plus, if you have gurthulak and you're reforging out of haste for mastery, that's meaning less chance of a proc, because you're hitting less.

Paxtez · 01/12/12, 6:42 PM

Originally Posted by rayzorium

Has anyone messed around with only throwing out really beefy outbreaks and extending them with FeS until the next outbreak buff window? I've looked around but haven't seen anything on the subject. I can't tell whether it isn't really done or it's just assumed that everybody does it.

Although disease damage isn't what it used to be, optimizing it still looks to be a noticeable gain. Most people use outbreak as they're running in, right? So no procs at all, and no stacks of Eye of Unmaking if you have it.

I did a quick and dirty test on the dummy. With just HoW, BP ticked for 3022. With FC, 10 trinket stacks, rotting skull on use, 4pc proc and orc berserking, it ticked for 5465. It sounds like a case of stars aligning, but it never took more than 20 seconds to get the procs I wanted.

Granted, my trinket setup happens to work well for this trick, but I think these numbers aren't overly optimistic. At least on the initial outbreak, that's about an 80% damage boost for BP and a little less for FF. Subsequent outbreaks won't see quite that dramatic an increase, but will still be much better than ignoring buffs. I've been fiddling with simcraft but I'm nowhere near savvy enough to figure out how to implement this. Is anyone else interested in following up?

If the diseases work anything like casters dots: True the dots do scale with AP/SP and it does snapshot it based on your AP/SP, but extending the duration of the dots resnapshots the AP/SP. So your dots would do more damage until you have to refresh it with FeS, then they would change to whatever AP you have when you use FeS.

If one was to mod the FeS line of the sim to prefer to use it when some sort of AP/str boost is in effect, it might be an increase?

Nahela · 01/12/12, 7:00 PM

Unless this has changed since beta, rayzorium is actually correct. FeS doesn't update disease damage like Haunt or the SW:P refresh talent does. It simply extends the duration based on a snapshot. They told us this would no longer be the case, but unless FeS was changed in recent times, disease rolling is still the case for DKs.

gharnef · 01/12/12, 8:28 PM

Originally Posted by Nahela

Unless this has changed since beta, rayzorium is actually correct. FeS doesn't update disease damage like Haunt or the SW:P refresh talent does. It simply extends the duration based on a snapshot. They told us this would no longer be the case, but unless FeS was changed in recent times, disease rolling is still the case for DKs.

Just tested it on a dummy and the unless I cast OtB the damage from diseases didn't change, neither gaining buffs nor gaining buffs and then using FeS changed the damage.

This is definitely something worth looking into. Napkin math would make me think that it isn't worth it to reapply diseases at the start of the fight (losing 1 SS and either 1/2 1 FeS or another SS seems pretty big), but using OtB later in the fight before diseases run out only when FC and other buffs are up is probably worth it.

Minoan · 01/12/12, 11:50 PM

^
I think it was spoken in 403 that FeS does not refreshes your diseases but adding the timer for them. Which is bad,because I'm used to start a fight without outbreak and keep it to Frenzy+4t13pc

Still suggesting that crit is much more useful for diseases, and crit-based build-for Madness. Anyone tried different reforges on Madness? Logically, Madness requires exp cap, but that's too expensive.

Hinenuitepo · 01/13/12, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by rayzorium

But that's not true. Diseases tick based on what your stats were when you applied the disease. This means that most people are applying close to the weakest diseases possible and extending them for at least the first minute of most fights, and probably much longer, since it is seemingly reasonable to extend diseases until you're forced to outbreak again.

All I'm proposing is to start off with IT+PS, and wait until you've ramped up all your procs to use outbreak. And every time you have to use outbreak again, try to make sure you only use it when you have a lot of buffs up.

This is of particular interest to those of us that use Rotting Skull (heck, it may be potent enough to bump Rotting Skull up a few ranks). Going from a completely dry outbreak to a fully procced one, my BP and FF gained about 4k per tick between them. Factoring in crits and raid buffs, it looks to be a very substantial DPS increase.

Nope, that would be a waste of your outbreak and gcds.
And while I was a bit lazy, I did mean the same thing as far as disease application. As you say (and I meant, attack power at time of application - as opposed to rolling diseases). You'll get slightly higher disease damage for ONE cycle if you follow your recommendation, while losing out one being able to SS as soon as you reach melee range (if you IT/PS instead of outbreak while running in); that alone makes it not worth it.
And re-reading your comment it seems perhaps you're still under the misconception that using FeS doesn't reset (i.e., whatever your AP at time of FeS is what your diseases will tick at. They do. Test it). YOu CAN'T roll diseases like you used to in the old expansion. Therefore, using outbreak in this manner is a dps loss.

EDIT: I'm at work so I can't address this at the moment (even my abilty to properly search is limited due to filters). If wrong, I'll eat my crow - and happily so. If we CAN roll diseases, I'd really like to know that and it should change the OP etc for our class. As you point out, Ultra is the fight this would be most applicable to, but actually it would change my starting rotation for Morchock, Zon'ozz, and probably Yorsahj as well (Using AMS correctly lets you keep diseases up all or nearly all the fight on Morchock and Zon'ozz - Yorsahj only if you get to stay on boss or can kill oozes quickly enough). So, if the data supports your claim I'm all for it.

Minoan · 01/13/12, 11:41 AM

^
As for now, 2ss are much more profitable in hoping of Gurthalak proc.

rayzorium · 01/13/12, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Hinenuitepo

...whatever your AP at time of FeS is what your diseases will tick at.

But FeS doesn't work like you describe. It doesn't take another stat snapshot; it just extends the current snapshot. I did test it before I posted, to make sure I was right, and it was confirmed by two other people in this very thread.

I have a H Ultraxion log to show the kind of difference this makes in disease damage. It's not mine; I actually just happened across it while checking to see if anyone else uses this trick. I've included the three entries closest to him for comparison. Note that he does use Rotting Skull.

Maximizes outbreaks - Kikoo
No maximizing 1 - Veltaius
No maximizing 2 - Tedibiase
No maximizing 3 - Syntaxx

I'll summarize the relevant information: BP and FF were 9.0% and 6.5% of his damage, respectively. That's very high - much higher than you would expect for a single target fight. The others' numbers were: 7.3% and 5.0%; 7.2% and 5.0%; 6.8% and 5.4%.

Obviously, the usefulness of this trick will vary depending on the fight. It seems quite powerful on patchwerk style fights (Morchok, Ultraxion), but wanes on fights with adds and target switching (pretty much everything else), as pestilence does re-snapshot.

Illu · 01/14/12, 11:04 AM

An easy way to test how diseases work regarding crit is on the first boss in Well of Eternity 5man. I've noticed that since you always enter the fight with 100% crit, the diseases will thusly automatically crit each tick, even when the shadow buff drops off, until the disease drops off as well. This can usually be tested after he emerges from vanish, and you didn't evade his eyes for the full 30+ sec (You might get too long crit buff then).

It definitely works with FeS too, seemingly verifying that it simply extends the duration. This ought to improve crit further, shouldn't it? Especially in cases such as Creche trinket.

edit: also did the most recent test with Blood + vengeance proc, it definitely does not update ap values. Manually applying at a high stack gave increased ticks, and not after FeS.