One silly trick which sounds like old good t12 buff abuse in the beginning of the content. If you're standing near boss, full RP-capped, and you have a certtain glyph, but your heals drinking|you're waiting 20 sec to Lust from the beginning of the fight, you're interested to keep DT as soon as pull starts. Usuallly it is 30sec+ 2-3 coils in pet given by full RPcap+HoW and DnD into nowhere to regen it. What I'm doing is, if we're waiting for something or explaining the tactics to the new person-simply start stripping, equipping white non-epic gear, to decrease your pet's HP and then dress up back. It will give your pet non-full health bar, which can be fulfilled by coils which will cost you just 14 RP. Awesome trick if you want to DT as soon as you will stack|proc your trinkets.
Haven't seen that trick in Merciless DK thread.
Autopsy, I'm your very fan since 4.0.3, that thread is amazing. Keep it up, thank you very much!

Sounds trolly, I've just want to show how to spend 14rp instead of 34 if you want to start the battle capped.

I didn't think of that. I'll add it to the thread! Thanks!

Didnt mean to come off as trolly was genuinely saying it was a good idea to get transformed quicker and increase dps

Yes you will as AMS does not stack with AMZ, which is something that has been stated in the basic Unholy DPS forum and was not needed to be said here as well.

I think he meant without an AMZ and only 2points in AMS + IBF. Simple math can solve this. Dragon Soul will be at 20% nerf next week so it will deal 300k *.8 = 240k. Then factor in the IBF 240k * .8 = 192k. Your max HP will be roughly 170k and AMS w/ 2 Magic suppression soaks 66% of that healthpool = 170*1.66 is your EHP = ~282k. You should survive with no issues as long as you're topped off.

I'd still recommend going AMZ build though since AMZ + priest barrier can cover a whole group at the loss of a whopping 40k damage per soak which considering how quick the kills come now is absolutely minimal. Also, you can quite easily be AMZ build with 7/1/33. If that's your reason for dropping AMZ, just drop 2 from contagion.

DnD vs. DC glyph. I believe this was discussed way back but I wanted to touch upon the subject again. In just about every scenario - at least that I've found - DnD outperforms DC (sim). DC is actually a detriment in quite a few situations (a small burn phase window) due to the time it takes to travel, etc. I'm just curious why many stick with the DC glyph? Just about every fight is either stationary or requires very little movement in DS.

The reason I'm testing this is because I remembered an argument within an old thread about DnD vs. DC. I recently switched over from Frost and the argument came to mind. What you've said makes sense. For s**** and grins I popped open SimCraft, imported my armory page, and ran it with default settings for the most part except with different iterations and bosses (Ultra and Patch). What popped up for me was a 100 dps - 200 dps differential. Granted, it's still within margin. See what you can find. I'm going to try 50,000 iterations tomorrow along with checking every setting. I'm so tired, atm. Perhaps, I'm overlooking something. Though, in a matter of months, it will be inconsequential. Our class feels so different in MoP.

Update: I found one error. If, for instance, you've changed professions (Engineering to Blacksmithing) and a tinker (though not useable) still exists on said object... SimCraft will still calculate in both the effect(s) of Synapse Springs and the extra jewel sockets.

If you're going for ranking I'd use D&D on hagara as well, since the majority of your big damage comes from pre-placing D&D on ice tombs.

On AoE fights, DnD glyph is absolutely stronger. On single target fights, the answer is DC for me at least. I've done some math comparing the two, and I always arrive at the answer that DC glyph results in roughly 20% more damage done than the DnD glyph by their respective abilities.

My math was DC (total damage in the fight) / 1.15 = Damage without DC glyph. Found difference between total and without glyph to find the net change in DC damage.

DnD glyph adds 5 extra ticks of DnD. Figure out average DnD tick via weighted average of crits and hits, multiple that by 5, then by the number of DnDs cast in a single target fight, and you get the extra damage caused by DnD glyph.

I did the math, and DC seems stronger. I believe, however, this will vary from player to player to some extent. You will cast more DCs if you use AMS properly, which I see a lot of DKs not doing. You will also cast more DCs if you weave them in properly. Gear will also factor in as more haste will mean more opportunities for casting DC.

On fights like Hagara, Yor'sahj, Spine (if you AoE heavily), and Madness (if adds don't insta die), then DnD glyph is superior. On the rest, I'd recommend DC glyph. On Morchok, I doubt many guilds would stack the two on top of each other for obvious reasons, and hence, the fight is effectively single target. Zon'ozz requires much running around during black phase, so DnDs may get wasted (adds die too quick) not to mention the fact that the adds are barely stacked. Ultraxion takes no DnD damage, so he's out. Adds on Warmaster move too much (well, P2 may make that a wash, I haven't done math on that). In the end, on most fights, there's always the possibility that the adds or boss moves out of DnD resulting in a great deal of lost damage. The longer you need the boss to not move, the more likely you are to lose damage (you're also more likely to delay casting DnD in order to assure full ticks, which results in less DnDs cast in the entire fight, which further weakens DnD in single target fights... The math above is in a perfect world).

Personally, I don't like the idea of using DnD to parse high on aoe fights. It feels cheesey. You are most likely not helping the raid, only yourself parse high. That's why I don't really talk about the glyph, but I guess I should.

Edit: I didn't use SimCraft for my math. I have a spread sheet of my previous parses. I added my damage totals for the past few months of Morchok (since I've gained full BIS, don't count parses before that) parses and did the math that way. It's not perfect, but I put way more stock in that than SimCraft.

I am having a fanboy moment over the OP. His thread is indicative of very high enthusiasm for the class and spec.

Best of luck in w/e RL stuff that cropped up, first and foremost.


A few points on raid mechanics, to compliment the DPS discussion:

DND:

-Does not proc spellweave on madness. If elementium fragments pop up and you have DND ready, it might not be worth saving it for congealing blood.

-If placed at the waist of a ship, will cause sappers to re-appear early.

-Some say it does not reach Ultraxion, even if the debuff shows on the boss. (Need verification.)

-I found it much faster to bind DnD to mouse.


Festering Strike x BB:

-If you foresee short AoE bursts, make sure to set up a full row of death runes with Festering Strike, so that you may BB after the adds come in force. Save outbreak for this if possible; even then one of the death runes will go towards pestilence. OP's point about blood tap, and how it sets up 2 death runes instead of 1 may be very important in this situation. If you wanna stance dance for this, make sure the ghoul has enough stacks to transform before you change to frost presence.


AMS:

-If you are AMS'd while deathwing shoots you with parasite on heroic madness, the parasite vanishes and has no effect.


Ghoul:

-These pair macros works well against switching to and from sappers on ship. I didn't take this from any source, so I could be wrong. If there is a more efficient way to do this, please do not hesitate to call me out and show a more correct macro.

-------------------------
/petautocastoff Claw
/petattack
/petautocaston Gnaw
/petaotocaston Leap
-------------------------
/petautocastoff Gnaw
/petautocastoff Leap
/petattack
/petautocaston Claw
-------------------------


-Do not overlook Huddle, and how to use it. Huddle freezes the pet for 10 seconds and causes it to take less damage. Fortifying Roar, however, in the transformed state, does not induce any penalties to the pet for the same mitigation effect. A number of mechanics in raids kills the ghoul; this can come in handy. Fortifying roar will persist its remaining duration as Huddle if DT falls off midway in its duration.

-Dismissing the pet before a jump on Madness seems to cause it to not go undertexture when it respawns automatically on landing. The pet retains its SI and DT upon respawn.


AMZ:

-Raid Success may sometimes hinge on AMZ. It's a DPS loss, but may have lead to a faster progression kill. I know this is not the focus on your thread, but just quibbling for completeness for the audience. Notable examples are elementium bolt and twilight onslaught.



other notes:

-Very annoying thing with with our rune system is that the ScS spending order for a 4-Death+2-UH rune plate is UH-UH-BL-BL-FR-FR. Sometimes FR will cap during the spamchain, and then Reaping falls off in the middle leaving you with capped FR. Casting IT may rectify this, depending on the situation.