Flamingcloud

Uh, attack speed by 40%? They do not stack, with themselves or with windfury the only haste frost gets is +5%.

As far as SS vs BSx2 go. SS is what 65% of wep damage + huge number? well eventually 50%+small number x2 is going to surpass that, I am not sure why blizzard thinks that SS is going to have competitive scaling. Not really sure where the math could indicate PS+IT > SS, ps hits for almost nothing and SS crits for +130% and IT only +100%. You do not have nearly enough globals to IT-PS-BS-BS-IT-PS. Additionally refreshing your diseases will lose you half a tick on average. You lose an average of 2 full ticks every 10 seconds with that rotation.

As to DW viability I think that will change quite abit when they remove the internal cooldown on Blood Caked Blade. Still seems to me that DW frost/unholy makes the most sense since a larger portion of your damage comes from straight ap abilities.

 

Daedalix

When DKs are dual-wielding, what sort of weapons do we want in each hand? Is it like rogues (Slow + Hard MH, super-fast OH)? I wouldn't think it'd be like Shaman or warrior (slow + slow).

Even though there has been a little interest in DW initially, it may model how warrior DWing went and take some time for it to be the dominant spec. It seemed obvious to 2H as a warrior in Vanilla but Fury began to become the dmg spec as gear and the class and its dmg specs developed. It may take some time for DW to become as viable and balanced with 2H specs. Speaking mostly about PvE here. Or it may be that they can be completely balanced because it doesn't affect our power generation nor do we have any abilities that are based on both weapons (unlike warriors, and shaman). Warriors are the only other class with any real choice in the matter.

DK DWing still seems like a bit of an afterthought.

 

Aezoc

Slow/fast. DKs have no off-hand specials that would favor slow offhands, and a couple of talents (like Killing Machine) that favor fast offhands. And yes, DW does largely feel like an afterthought for DKs.

 

Flamingcloud

Ya dks have nothing related to an offhand damage attack at all, and both BCB and Killing Machine are made better with fast weapons. Frost still relies alot on weapon damage even if you howling blast instead of obliterate (frost strike, bs, ps, and occasional obliterates)

I almost wish they would remove DW from DKs if they aren't going to flush it out properly.

 

nachrichter

If they "flush it out properly" the way you guys seem to want, it'd be the dominant and only "correct" choice. They've stated, repeatedly, that DW isn't receiving a lot of booster talents intentionally, to keep it and 2H close. If the math and experience is making it look like DW is better in some gear sets but not others, or better with certain specs and rotations but not others, then it sounds like they've achieved the goal they stated.

This thread is like a lich except his phylactery is the mind-numbing idiocy of every imbecile that walks the earth. -Slake
<Sappo> ARE YOU NOT MURGGRUGURGURGMRRMGRU?
<Sappo> ARE YOU NOT MORGRUGURGRMRGURGGRMGURGRMG?

 

Nethris

DW frost looks like it loses more than DW unholy does from losing 2h damage though, as either frost strike is losing the damage of a 2h or you're using DC as a runic power dump instead, and obliterate loses more than SS does. DWing does feel really unfinished as others have commented though, ideally you'd want HB, DC, and/or IT to be a lot of what your spec focuses on, but getting HB commits you deep enough in frost that you should probably get frost strike...

One of the trees really would need to be reworked a bit to be less weapon damage oriented, which there does seem to be room for, but is probably unlikely this late in the development cycle. Giving heart strike similar functionality to what frost strike is now and centering blood around that as an RP dump and being the obliterate focused tree (eliminating a lot of the "junk" currently sitting in that tree), and moving the focus of frost to DWing, HB, IT, and possibly an alternate single target FU rune ability replacing frost strike in the tree could work, as could making SS entirely AP based and making unholy largely a DWing tree - the second may be the cleaner option, as it's less of a drastic change.

Having both frost and blood being obliterate + BS focused makes one of them really likely to clearly not be as good though, which I think is part of the current problem where blood is pretty much the least interesting and probably least used tree. Buffing heart strike to being a 2 rune ability - maybe BU? - with increased damage to compensate might be another decent option, as well as replacing some of the mediocre tanking talents with decent ones in blood (spell deflection, will of the necropolis come to mind). The sheer amount of healing talents in blood also seems a bit overboard as well, replacing one or two of those with a tanking talent - that would also increase PvP survivability as the healing talents do - might be in line as well.


To end that minor rant with more a "productive" question though, assuming the Chilblains slow can be trinketed out of, does doing so also remove the frost fever, or is there a separate debuff that is removed? I can't find any such debuff on Wowhead, but losing frost fever damage to PvP trinkets or even potentially the PvP reduction of slowing effects to 10 seconds would make that a very 2-edged talent for something that is a relatively minor slow.

 

Janraea

Slow/Fast. But BCB is the only reason it matters - I'm pretty sure the rest of our instant attacks are normalized.

 

klineshrike

Its funny how everyone kind of just assumes there is all loss and no gain just because most of your abilities are based on MH damage.

If you ever crnched some numbers, you would see the damage lost from specials is evened out by the damage gained through DWing. When BCB is fixed this gain will be tremendous.

The thing is BS and SS gain a ton of thier damage from the bonus, so the loss isnt as huge as you would think - and while they will scale much worse with a 1h the scaling of white damage becomes so large it evens out.

Frost can replace strikes with spells, but the spells can tend to be weaker as previously stated. Plus if you want to finish a frost spec and go unholy for BCB to DW properly, you miss out on almost all blood talents. Unholy can get the DW talent and bladed armor, which evens things out more.

In the end it seems like depending on how you spec, DW and 2H unholy both scale evenly. Not sure if this is the case for frost as I havent crunched those numbers to death, but because I plan on playing DW unholy I definately did those numbers.

As for a tree being less strike based, Unholy USED to be perfect for this - BB was scaling better than BS by a long shot, and even at pitifully low ATP it did more damage than BS as DW, and eventually with enough atp it even did more damage than BS with a 2h. This meant your only weapon damage skill was SS, and again, this doesnt get hit as hard as one would think, and the scaling white damage FAR made up for the lack of SS scaling.

It was probobly nerfed because eventually DW unholy would blow 2h out of the water this way. Thats prolly why they maintain strikes in all builds. but people seem to think strikes make up 90% of your dps and not using a 2her drops your damage by a rediculous amount.... which it doesnt.

 

Arkasi

I was curious if anyone has collected all the player castable diseases in the game?

I know Devouring Plague is a priest disease, do these abilities affect our damage? Can they be spread using Pestilence?

As it stands the tooltips for obliterate and other abilities do not specify that they only react to your diseases. I think the utility of this information is fairly obvious.

I have only checked Priest and Warlock at the moment. Priests have devouring plague, Warlocks do not seem to have any unless I missed one. Do any other classes have abilities classified as a disease?

 

Arkasi

I'm not sure if you have thought about this, but there are two reasons I think two hand weapons are superior to dual wielding.

1) You need more +hit stats to be effective, this cuts into your actual damage stat budgets.

2) Positionally speaking more attacks equals more parries. If you are tanking that means the potential for parry gibs, and otherwise means you need to spend more points on expertise.

 

Janraea

The first one makes sense - if two hand and dw 'scale the same', then dw has a major disadvantage because it scales from a lower point.

The second statement does not. Sure, more parries is bad when tanking.. but no one is talking about DW tanking. If you're dpsing, you are not in front of the mob you're attacking, and it can't parry you. Also, DW doesn't affect parry rate or dodge rate, so DW or not, you'll need the same amount of expertise.

We are on this bulletin board because we ARE crunching numbers. There is both gain AND loss from going DW. At the moment, the best DW rotation/spec I could come up with tied for dps with a basic blood rotation/spec at various levels of attack power. All the number crunching is done assuming the talents work like they should, and not like they do now - GC confirmed that BCB's procrate is a bug, so nobody's using the current one.

'In the end', your conclusions are pulled out of a hat. DW and 2h are both viable, but Frost with an Unholy subspec is the only DW build that seems to keep up with the standard two-handed builds.

Now, if you have tested your theory, or have a detailed spreadsheet to back up your assertions, feel free to drop it on us. We love those. DK theorycraft is very complicated, and it's quite likely that we've all missed things - if you have a rotation and spec that works out to better damage, I'd be happy to hear it. Your generalized statements about the nature of DK dps, however, read like they are coming directly out of your donkey.

 

klineshrike

its assumed your goal is 8 hit to not miss with yellow attacks. At 8 hit dw is better than 2h. Hell, even at 0 hit the 3 hit you get from the talent makes DW still better. And if you were going with a frost build, you still need hit for your spells, so you actally increase all your dps by gaining hit.

And the whole "wasting budget" on hit is moot. You gain more from atp and crit as DW so this counterbalances it. And to flip side that arguement, what about wasted hit when you gain more than 8? sometimes you cant just ignore it and hit is pretty much put on enough gear that this could happen.

It seems to me there is still that stigma that its rediculous that a DK should be able to DW, and everyone wants every reason to kill it by it not eveer being viable. But it seems to me blizz did a good job of balancing the two. So there is no need to worry.

 

Janraea

You aren't listening. You make these claims, but fail to back them up in any substantial way. We know exactly how each stat affects the specs we look at, and we know this because we have fairly large spreadsheets with which we model the effect those stats have on dps.

I've done quite a bit of looking at DW specs because I desperately want to use one. I will probably be going frost/unholy DW even if it hurts my dps by a few percent. But the things you say are basically nonsense. DW will be just barely viable if BCB continues to work with offhand proccing mainhand swings, and it appears to require near-zero latency and unholy presence to keep up.

NOTE: If they let icy talons stack with WF, DW Frost/unholy will be comparable in dps to the best rotation I could come up with for blood or unholy 2h.

 

Moratia

Icy touch should critical strike for 200% like all DK's spell.

Why go in DW ? Well the point is i wanna reach the "spell" hit cape ( 17% ), for get it i will surely need about 20% hit, meaning if i use a 2 hands, 11% hit from stuff waste. Very bad thing... Also BcB procc from offhand on the damage base on Main hand, DW with slow + fast weapon maki it really interesting, even more interesting since if you not plan on use reaping, you could get bladed armor (400+ AP can concurrance weapon difference between 2H and DW).

Going farther, you will have ont more socket for gem if you go blacksmith and one more weapon enchant.

 

kurokaze

I'm working on a fairly detailed DPS spreadsheet now (I'm not sure whether anything will come of it, since it seems 95% of the people here already have their own private spreadsheet, but the public one I found a few pages back was rather incomplete and didn't have easily editable rotations) and I'm finding a few places where my theory-fu is clearly lacking. (In addition to the inevitable places where I think I know but I'm wrong.)

Namely, additive vs. multiplicative bonuses to damage. I can't seem to locate the exact mechanics of this, just specific examples. My gut tells me that, for example, the 25% damage to Icy Touch (which doesn't work according to my tests, but will someday) on Tundra Stalker will stack additively with the 30% damage from Improved Icy Touch for 155% damage. And it seems that more general boosts such as Black Ice stack multiplicatively, from the examples I've seen on wowwiki. This brings us to 201.5%. And finally there's overall boosts such as Blood Presence and Desecration. Blood Presence alone clearly multiplies again bringing us to 231.725%, but does Desecration add with Blood Presence as another "increases all damage" effect, or multiply? (Let's ignore the fact that you can't get both Tundra Stalker and Desecration.)

The other thing - does anyone have proc rates on Cinderglacier, Fallen Crusader, and such? I can do a rough test myself but I don't know how to handle things like hidden cooldowns, so if one is 5ppm with a 45 second cooldown (extreme case, yeah) I'd get the model completely wrong.

Necrosis: Does this take 10% of physical damage done (i.e. after armor), or 10% of base weapon damage? It definitely tends to hit harder than 10% of an auto-swing, but that can be attributed to buffs such as Ebon Plague. Anyone know offhand, or shall I test it?

Dancing Rune Weapon: Is this an exact clone of you melee-wise? Same AP, same weapon? What happens if you're nuts enough to dual wield as 51 Blood?

Bloodworms: Anyone have any idea how to model their damage? It's quite low, of course, but it's non-zero.


And then I have several questions about how things should be handled. On my previous, much less in-depth spreadsheet, I planned for the current build, with the idea that the class is in flux anyway and planning for a fixed BCB was futile when the same patch that fixes it might give us, as a random example, Heart Strike hitting with the offhand. But we're coming up to release soon, the discs are gold; is it time to assume that we're pretty much at the final state, and pretend that the bugs with Tundra Stalker and BCB aren't there?

Rune cooldowns. This has been confirmed by GC to be a side effect of anti-latency code. But that doesn't speak one way or another towards whether it's going to be changed. I'd be inclined to use 8-second cooldowns and assume that as a 'side effect' rather than a 'bug', things won't be changed very quickly if at all. But 10-second cooldowns is definitely the 'pure' way. Not a huge deal - I can easily put in a way to use either - but which should I use for general testing and theorycrafting?

Rotation flexibility. Currently, I have my spreadsheet set to have a user-modifiable list of skills for rotation A (no death runes, generally) and rotation B (death runes), and then spams them on the GCD and RP dumps when done. (Or you can RP dump in the middle, if you wish.) Is there - for a no-Annihilation Obliterate build, perhaps - a compelling reason to code in the capability to delay 0.5 secs rather than mashing as fast as possible? It would take a bit of redoing to implement, but it seems like it could be useful to some builds.

Also, the current coding will assume diseases are never obliterated if either Howling Blast or Plague Strike is available AND one of the two hits harder, on average, than Obliterate. This will mess up in the case of a setup where Howling Blast hits harder than Obliterate (DW) and Annihilation is not maxed. Is such a scenario particularly worth bothering for, or can it be a low-priority outside case?

What's a good armor value to assume? I saw 10900 thrown around somewhere, but I really have no idea.


Edit:

Imp Icy Talons is a separate haste buff, multiplicatively, from Icy Talons/Stolen Heat, right?

edit: removed some badness, never mind

 

Arkasi

Mechanics - Death Knight Wiki
Combat Ratings at level 80

Those two provide numbers to discuss this.

For two handers and one handers (non dual wielding) you have a 9% chance to miss.
To cap hit for two-handers at 80 you need 294 +hit.
For spells you have a base 17% chance to miss.
To cap hit for spells at 80 you need 556 + hit.
For dual-wielding you have a 28% chance to miss.
To cap hit for dual wielding at 80 you need 915 +hit.

With Nerves of Cold Steel. You gain an 3% chance to hit.
To cap hit for dual wielding at 80 with the talent you need 800 + hit.

So comparatively, you need 506 more +hit than someone who strickly capped 2 handers, and you need 244 more +hit than someone who strickly capped spells.

On a side note, you off hand weapon only hits for 50% weapon damage, and 65% talented.

So a couple things that need to be determined for dual wielding.

What is the stat equivalence between +hit, crit, and ap?
While dual wielding does gain more from ap does it really overcome two handers?
Is dual wielding viable with out a minimum of 8 talent points in frost?

I am not saying that dual wielding is not viable, far from it, I expect they will actually be relatively equal, but as of now I've seen little to truly support it.

*edit*

Assuming 1+ hit = 1 ap

Then dual wielding is missing out out on 36.1 dps for the just two hander cap, and 17.7 dps for the spell cap.

Assuming 1+ hit = 1 crit

Then dual wielding is missing out on on 11% crit for the just two hander cap, and 5.3% crit.

 

Aezoc

I'm not sure anyone's sat down and put together a comprehensive DK spreadsheet yet, since there's been a lot of fluctuation with each patch until recently. In other words, take this with a large pinch of salt, but from my beta experience and gut feeling based on the way other classes have turned out:

1) DKs will not try to white cap. Compared to the other DW classes, DKs get less from white damage - 65% offhand damage instead of 75% (less than rogues and warriors), no attacks with both weapons, and no strong feedback loops like the rage mechanic or combat potency. If I'm not way off, and the ideal DW build looks something like what I listed below (deep frost, so decent damage from IT and HB), then gearing for spell cap might make sense.

2) Going 8 frost will definitely be mandatory for DW builds. Even though I have no interest in going DW personally, I'd love to be proven wrong here, just because more options are always a good thing. But I'm not seeing any DW builds where those points are better spent. Honestly though, from my reading of the talent trees, DW is pigeonholed into frost/unholy anyways, so Nerves of Cold Steel might be the least of your worries. Something like this build, possibly with a few points swapped, seems to be far superior to any other DW build I can come up with. I'm pretty sure that even if DW turns out to be competitive DPS, it's not going to have nearly the flexibility of the various 2h builds.

 

Zurai

Errr... not really, no.

17% hit for spells against level+3 enemies (ie, bosses). 9% hit for weapon specials and single-weapon attacks. 28% hit for DW.

Now, we'll assume 9% in hit rating because all attack types need at least that much. That 9% physical hit rating translates into 11.24% spell hit, because spell hit (despite being the same "hit rating" stat) is cheaper. Add Virulence to that for +3% spell hit, bringing you to 14.24%. Now add Improved Faerie Fire or Misery: 17.24%.

Voila, you're spell hit capped with nothing but your required-anyway 2h hit cap, a 2nd-tier Unholy talent, and a raid buff that any shadow priest will have.

 

Argavaine

I didn`t find an answer to my question and hope that somebody knows that.
I try to compare all the damage increasing talents in unholy.

How would you rank the following talents ?
- Necrosis, Blood Caked Blade, Impurity, Rage of Rivendare

Which spells are affected by Impurity?

 

kurokaze

Based on my old spreadsheet, which isn't all that accurate, and the current bugged Blood-Caked Blade:

Rage of Rivendare >>>>> Impurity > Necrosis > BCB

With BCB fixed, it will probably be more like RoR >> BCB >> Impurity > Necrosis.

The specific numbers I was getting were like, 1.5% damage increase from RoR, 0.75% from Impurity, 0.7% from Necrosis, and 0.6% from BCB.

It will, of course, vary with gear and such. Both Necrosis and BCB (when unbugged) scale nicely with DW. Impurity doesn't care about your weapon type and RoR should scale somewhat better with 2H, since it affects only specials and many specials are strikes.

Impurity affects anything we use that uses spell mechanics. Off the top of my head:
Diseases
Icy Touch
Howling Blast
Death Coil
Death and Decay
Probably Pestilence and Blood Boil - unsure on these
Unholy Blight

It does not affect elemental-based melee attacks such as Scourge Strike.

It will not result in an increase in damage by 25% of your attack power, obviously; it will increase the coefficient (usually 5-20%) by 25% resulting in something closer to an increase of 1.25-5% of your AP.



Additional question: Bloody Strikes - What exactly does this do, number-wise?

- Increase the base and weapon damage by 18%, and increase the disease bonus damage by 60%?
- Increase the disease bonus damage by 60%, and then (multiplicatively) increase the base, weapon, and disease damage by 18%?
- Increase the disease bonus damage by 78% (additive) and the base and weapon damage by 18%?

My money is on the first, but that doesn't technically fit the tooltip wording like the others do...

 

richard

Just expanding on the disease question. I don't have beta access and haven't played a DK yet, but how many diseases can a DK put up anyway?
From the skills and talents I can only find Pestilence and Unholy Blight, and since alot of attacks are based on how many diseases there are on the target, where do all those diseases come from?

 

casteel

I don't know if they changed anything about this since your comment, but I see very different results right now. My observations are:
#1 - If you get into combat, all your runes will go 10sec cd from their very first use.
#2 - If you stay in combat, and use the rune immediately when it's up, it again will go 10sec
#3 - If you stay in combat, but don't use the rune immediately, the cd will decrease by exactly the time you waited to use it again (or a maximum about 1.5-2 sec)
#4 - If you get out of combat, the first rule applies when you get into combat again

In fact, this mechanic makes a lot of sense, and helps us with those nasty "21.5 sec rotations", the ones where you use the same 2 runes for 1-1 rune skills and then a doublerune skill: when you use (for example) the Scourge Strike after the initial PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-RP rotation, the F rune will go 10 seconds (rule #2), but the U rune will only go 8.5 seconds (rule #3), so you can start over the whole rotation just in time, making it a 20sec rotation without having us to mess it up (you know, that SS-PS-IT-SS-(RP)-SS-BS-BS-SS-(RP) rotation, which is kindof sensitive on parries and dodges).

 

Spiry

Blood plague (from plague strike)
Frost fever (from ice touch)
Crypt Fever, which turns into Ebon Plague (from deep unholy)
Unholy Blight (from deep unholy)

 

François

(edited : too slow)

 

Darkrenown

Feral's infected wounds is a disease too.