Arkasi

Even at a 10 sec refresh rate, in blood presence, the 6 hs spam still doesn't leave enough room for an RP ability. This means that in order to use it's accumulating RP a Blood rotation must use at least one FU ability just so it has the room to use up it's RP.

 

Leaflock

Replying to this and some subsequent posts on the topic-- No. I made a point about this earlier. In Blood Presence, it's a loss of dps to skip out on Runic Power abilities. It's more important to use Runic Power and Sudden Doom procs than to hit the next HS when the rune is available. This is within reason, of course-- you should never do more than 1-2 DCs in a row.

The reason becomes much clearer because of casteel's discovery about rune cooldowns. When a rune pops back up, you have a 2.5 second (maybe even 3? we haven't tested this precisely) cushion before you'll actually lose any time on the next cooldown. This makes it much easier to fit in all the abilities you need to, and expend runic power for max dps. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.

 

Leaflock

I also toyed around with a 6 HS rotation with epidemic, but it doesn't actually work. The reason is that you're basically just stealing HSes from the next rotation, and not actually gaining anything by using more of them. The number of runes and their cooldowns dictate the rhythm of our rotations.

That was just with 2 death runes per rotation, too. In order to get 4 death runes for a 6 HS rotation, you have to use an extra Oblit which is just stealing runes from future rotations. For example:

PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - OB - HS x5 and your diseases run out. Even if you add in the 6th weakened HS, you're going to be left with a lop-sided half-rotation to return to a normal state and be able to do it again anyway.

 

Zurai

I can back it up with timestamped combatlogs that it does, though. I ran a test where I was doing nothing but spamming blood strikes on cooldown (with BS bound to my mousewheel ala Hunter shot rotations) and I was getting 8 second blood strikes.

 

◊ Embar

Tested the weakened first hit of DRW more extensively. DRW requires a target, so you either have to cast it on yourself or the target. I tested using myself as the target, the dummy as the target, and a second dummy I didn't damage as a target as well.

To answer Jaxdahl, if you are not attacking the target when you use DRW on it, the sword will still attack the target immediately and hit for less damage than expected.

Only 2 situations led to the first hit being 'normal':
(1) When I stood far away from the dummy I was attacking and summoned DRW on myself so it had to travel to reach the dummy; and
(2) When I dropped combat before summoning DRW, which worked no matter what the summon target was. Obviously this cannot be done on a boss fight though.

First situation seems to mesh with the theory that the scaling stats need some time to be applied to the rune weapon; but I don't see how and why being in or out of combat would affect that unless the delay only occurs while you are in combat.

On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -- James Nicoll

 

Arkasi

*Edit* Question answered by Leaflock. Hope that Casteel's Cushion becomes an official term.

 

kurokaze

Here's the sheet I've been working on.

I'm looking for some feedback. Quite a bit is missing mechanically - buffs, procs, pets, cooldowns, Unholy Blight - but most of the basics are there.

I just want to know if I'm on the right track while I finish up the parts that require a bit of thinking, so maybe I can save myself the trouble of getting to the parts that require lots of testing (or guessing).

Note that due to the lack of many important models the numbers from this sheet are not intended to be actually useful at this point. Maybe interesting, but useful will come later.

So is this worth the trouble, or should I just wait for Zurm's Rawr model?


The main thing that pushes me to make my own, even though I have weak background in both theorycraft and spreadsheets, is that both the DKTheoryCraft spreadsheet floating around earlier in the thread, and Zurm's Rawr model, from his description, seem to take the philosophy that a hard-coded rotation for each spec is acceptable, with custom rotations coming as a later feature. But to me, it seems that the specifics of the rotation would change based on many factors beyond one's main spec (mainly Annihilation and Epidemic, but there are other factors). And I want to be able to see for myself how effective it would be to, e.g., use death runes for IT IT instead of Ob in a frost rotation. That is to say, that a custom rotation is the very foundation which a DK DPS model should be built upon. Maybe in a few months we can say that we know for certain what the best three rotations are, but we don't even know exactly how runes refresh yet!


Anyway, my spreadsheet. Working features include equivalency points, DPS gain per talent point calculator, and basic generic custom rotations (generic meaning that you enter in F - U - FU - B - B rather than IT - PS - Ob - BS - BS and it theoretically picks out the right skill to use based on your talent selection and such). Nonworking and flat out missing features too numerous to list.

 

Aezoc

This. It's obviously not behaving the same for everyone, as my experience mirrors Zurai's. I'm not sure how useful this line of discussion is until we all have a common frame of reference.

 

Moratia

I'm back with my BS-BS versus SS, someone can run a test using DW with 2 runeforging crusader and unholly presence ( i get all interested point about DW versus 2 Hands but actually i just would like to compare BS and SS ).
Run the test without gargoyle and pet, and no RP skill but UB and the DC at the end of second part of rotation.

With this template and rotation :
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...03150203133151
PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-UB-SS-SS-SS-DC

And with this template and rotation :
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00150203133151
PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-UB-SS-SS-BS-BS-DC

Thanks in advance if you run it and give me the "global" dps you put out and the weapon you use + stat like strengh critical ap hit haste expertise ArP...

 

Sunstealer

Not quite sure what you're trying to test out moratia, as i'm positive it was made clear that just because you use 2 runes over 2 seperate abilities that doesnt mean it's better or even close to being equal to using 2 runes with 1 ability. It's going to be lower DPS without Reaping anyhow, because your 2 BS wont do more damage than your SS.

To test your theory out i decided to spec similar to yours (taking out wasted points in uholy aura and gargoyle, in order to finish filling out bladed armor), equipped my two 1h weaps (both 2.6 because that's what i bought when you could still buy other arena weaps) and took off my Sigil. I didnt do your rotation, so much as i'm trying to give you hard numbers for BS and SS side-by-side. I stacked some RP, went up to a lvl 75 dummy in ebon hold and put the 4 diseases up (kept them up as long as needed also) and did a few BS and SS attacks. The data came out as follows...

Blood Strike
2 hits, 4 diseases up -- 715 dmg for 1 strike and 716 for the 2nd strike. Total time used for those two abilities (including GCD finishing) = 2s

Scourge Strike
1 hit/1 crit, 4 diseases up -- 1482 dmg for 1 strike and 3334 (crit)dmg for 2nd strike. Total time used per SS = 1s

Add up the 2 BS and you get 1441 damage over 2 seconds, that's almost as much damage as you'll be doing for a single SS except you took another GCD to do so.

**I even went back and made sure i got some crits with BS to compare. Here's that data...

Blood Strike
2 crits, 4 diseases up -- 1547 dmg for 1 and 1558 for the 2nd strike.

Add those two up and you get 3105, which is still ~230 dmg lower than a single SS crit (3334 dmg). Again, taking twice as long to do less damage.



Honestly doing a full dps test on these hardly seems necessary, because a single SS will almost always be better than 2 BS, unless both BS' crit and the SS doesnt... But that doesnt seem like it will happen too terribly often, seeing how BS only has 3% more crit chance than SS (and BS doesnt get that nice 30% crit dmg bonus from Vicious Strikes).

So to make myself perfectly clear in this, casting 2 Blood Strikes is not in any way equal to casting 1 Scourge Strike, in damage, time or efficiency. If you want something to do with that extra GCD i suggest getting Glyph of Icy Touch so you can throw another DC into your rotations without hurting for RP to keep Blight up.


As far as a DW comparison, i got some nice numbers from tonite (with this DW unholy spec) that i compared to a test i did using my usual 2h Unholy spec, written down from the other day and the DW unholy build is about 250 dps and 40k total damage lower than the 2h unholy/blood build. Worth noting, while DWing i auto-attacked 228 times and missed 42 times out of that 228, but melee damage was still #1 on the chart for all my damaging abilities at 23.7%. (I didn't do the exact math for necrosis but i factored in about 11% extra damage to account for it, in each test done, seeing how the tests were done on target dummies)

This is just more proof for now that, until we have access to more hit gear, until they fix BCB and until/if they ever make nerves of steel less of a talent-waster in order to reach, 2h will be the best dps for Unholy by quite a long shot.

Also, a minor test on Fallen Crusader vs Cinderglacier (for the same Unholy DW spec from tonite). CG yielded an increase in dps by about 130 over the data i gathered with FC earlier, but the damage was still about 30k lower than the 2h Unholy dps test from the other day. Of course with a 2h build you'll probably want to use FC since CG wont proc as often as it needs to in order for it to be a major dps increase.

 

klineshrike

I would post a statistical reply to my DW claims, as I ran spreadsheets and well, could do the basic math. But I have access to beta now, so I am actually testing the things for myself .

But short answer - I didnt feel the need to respond to a baseless proofless claim with any hard proof. I am just annoyed how every time someone mentions DW the canned response is "well strikes are based off weapon damage too much so it takes away from them and that makes it suck" because this is baseless and wrong.

Now I just wish I could find some 1h weapons in beta to prove it to myself

 

• Zurm

They already stated they were fixing BCB. And Nerves of Steel isn't as good as Dark Conviction would be... as a DW Unholy DK I think you're better off going a spec something like 17/0/54. Just remember the main power of dual wield that makes it so attractive to other DPSers that can use 2H AND DW is that dual wielding scales considerably better with AP, haste, and hit/expertise. The strike damage isn't MUCH lower either.

Lets take a theoretical scourge strike. To make sure I'm working off the same ilvl, I'm going to use two hateful gladiator weapons... the 1H and 2H axes. The 2h axe does an average damage of 671.5, and the 1h @ 2.6 speed does 373. Assuming you have 4 diseases on the target, the scourge strikes would be:

1H: .6 * 373 + 190.5 + 4 * 95.25 = 223.8 + 571.5 = 795.3
2H: .6 * 671.5 + 190.5 + 4 * 95.25 = 402.9 + 571.5 = 974.4

So totally ignoring the increased benefits of haste, AP, hit and expertise (since we are taking purely about strike damage), the 1H strike at the same ilvl hits only 18.4% weaker.

Given that you'll be doing more white damage, as well as (comparing the 3.6 to a 2.6 and 1.5) 3.78 times more BCB strikes that hit for only ~20% less damage or so means that just because you see smaller numbers doesn't mean DW does less damage.

 

Low Life

If DK isn't completely different from the common mechanics in the game, you can't ignore AP. Weapon damage in skill tooltip means the weapon damage with normalized AP added. The bonus AP is normalized to 2.4 speed with one-handers (non-daggers) and 3.3 speed with two-handers. With 2000AP, the weapon damage part would be:

1H: 0.6 * (373+2000*2.4/14) = 429
2H: 0.6* (671.5+2000*3.3/14) = 685

With 3000AP:
1H: 0.6 * (373+3000*2.4/14) = 532
2H: 0.6* (671.5+3000*3.3/14) = 827

 

◊ Giant

In a purely theoretical setting the benefits of haste, hit and expertise would as you say be a wash comparing purely the strike damage but you cannot ignore the AP effect on the strike damage. There's nearly a 30% reduction in AP contribution to Scourge strike (3.3 vs 2.4 iirc) due to the normalisation speeds. Thus you would be reducing the DPS done by the strikes by ~30% regardless of any difference in the base damage ranges.

In fact you can largely suggest that except for cases when you compare the high end of weapons damage range that this range is becoming irrelevant in the face of AP values in the 3k+ range contributing more than 200 dps on their own to the weapon.

Granted DW improves your white DPS significantly and scales better with the mentioned talents but given that white DPS starts out as a minority of our DPS it would have to improve it to a very large extent to outweigh a 30% reduction in strike damage.

That said if people want to DW then all power to them, the dev's have said they'll try their best to keep them balanced and to be honest it does seem as if they've achieved it so far.

[edit] bah gazumped [edit]

 

Deathwing

I know we were talk about the threat from Rune Tap a some pages back, but does anyone know if the self-heal from Death Strike causes agro as a normal heal?

I was thinking of this build(Seryph gave me the idea):

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The DS glyph is very important to this build. Yes, I know it is missing blade barrier, I'm thinking the healing from 3 Death Strikes every 20s will more than make up for it.

Can pestilenced disease + unholy blight + wandering plague + occasional blood boil generate solid AE agro? On AE targets, Unholy Blight would be your only RP dump. On single targets, only rune strike. You want to be sitting at max RP at all times.


Unrelated question: is impurity multiplicative, or is it additive like other similar talent(i.e. shadow and flame)?

 

klineshrike

it would be 30% if all strikes did 100% of thier damaged based on weapons.... which they dont. They ALL get bonuses and this means it might scale 30% more but usually 25-50% of a strikes damage is a base component.

Alright look, first off, to take the Unholy arguement.

with an atp of 3000 your 2h damage normalized would roughly be 1313 (3000/14=214.85, we will call this 215, added to a 168 blue weapon = 383, times 3.3 to get the -average- normalized hit = 1263, times 1.04 = 1313, for those who question the math). For your 1her with a 129 dps (30% less than the 2her, which is the way they work iirc) it would be 825.

So 1313 * 0.6 = 787.8
825 * 0.6 = 495

Those are your weapon based values for SS. about a 290 diff there. after ebon plague, it becomes 327. the only thing that will affect SS alone (other bonuses apply to everything so I dont bother with those). This means, in a rotation like
IT PS BS BS SS / SS SS SS
you have 4 SSes in 20 seconds. So
327 * 4 = 1308 / 20 = 65.4. The dps lost by wielding a 1her.
For bs
224 * 2 = 448 / 20 = 22.4 loss from BS with a 1her.
PS with outbreak
190 / 20 = 9.5 dps loss here

giving us a 95.7 total dps loss by using a 1her. after all other bonuses and crit and such this cold probobly be about 150. Noticeable, but hardly huge, however, I will use the base number here as I will be using the base for white damage as well.


Now our 2h DPS was 383, after 2h spec its 398.3. DW is 344 * 1.575 (we assume NOCS because it IS a good talent, and is the only fair comparison to 2h spec) Giving us 541.8.

Now with 0 hit sans the NOCS
398.3 * 0.91 = 362.4
541.8 * 0.75 =406.3

We can see even with no hit (because that misconception that DW NEEDS hit to be viable is obviously wrong) we have a 44 dps increase with DW. This almost cuts our loss from strikes in half. 50 dps doesnt seem as huge as everyone seems to claim. But, it gets better.

that 44 in any GOOD unholy spec will have necrosis, which will increase it by 10%. so 48.4. Then, you gain your BCB bonus. When this is fixed god only knows how much its going to affect DW. Due to it proccing only MH damage, a quick OH can mean you proc MH more than 30% of your hits, so you gain a ton of damage from this. I would round it WAY WAY down by saying it gives at least 20% bonus, from your 44, which is 8.8
now we have 57.2 the strike loss is now only about 40. This difference will grow a bit because of things like ROR and Viscious Strikes, but even if it doubled, it wouldnt even be 100. And this is being extremely gracious to BCB because my calculations had it as adding a fuckton more than that when you realize you get over triple the procs at only 40%ish less damage.

I still dont think DW will be ndoubtably better. But these numbers are for those people who keep spouting the line about strikes making DW unviable by a LARGE margin.

 

Janraea

Oh, I never meant to imply that. Strikes are the reason DW hasn't been viable by the numbers I've run,. but not by a huge margin. I've never gotten a 2h spec that does more than 200 dps more than the Frost DW one in the same gear.

 

• Zurm

Ah yea, well I guess the AP would change things... but it's still not as bad as people make it out to be.

While its true that white damage is a relatively small percentage of our damage, so is our strike damage. As unholy a fairly large amount of your yellow damage comes from abilities that are based off attack power and not strikes, and I think its important to remember that. Diseases alone can be upwords of 20% of your total dps.
I personally have a preference to using a two hander...but people running spreadsheets have been showing that DW is better as unholy.

 

Janraea

Could you link those spreadsheets? I must be missing something, and the search function isn't very useful :-\

 

• Zurm

Here's one that Tzenes has been working on: http://elitistjerks.com/928204-post2612.html

Also, my preliminary numbers from my Rawr module seem to be producing the same numbers he has (minus the ghoul, I don't have that modeled yet). You can expect it to be released with probably the next semi-major Rawr release.

 

Janraea

That spreadsheet doesn't appear to handle dual-wielding anywhere - All of the rotations use 9% as the hit-goal, and every attack is normalized with 3.3 attack speed (that's in the C3 cell on each relevant page). Also, I hope no one is using the gear that's already in there for their calculations, since the stats all doubled when I put on t7.

He certainly knows how to build a complicated spreadsheet though! :-)

 

Tinweasele

There are more than a few assumptions made with the spreadsheet. My personal focus is on frost because i just love the feel of the spec and its obvious he made some assumptions with dealing with specs, ability rotations and ability priorities. Not to mention just downright wrong calculations on a few abilities.

1. Howling blast max crit listed as 2.7k in a raid, i have witnessed crits over 7k in pvp gear.
2. assumes a standard rotation of certain length(probably requiring extended disease durations.
3. assumes no conditional abilities or frost procs, freezing fog, killing machine combined with HB replace a few frost abilities in a normal rotation.
4. Generally the number of abilities and spec are already defined for his trees which really makes it not a true theory crafting sheet, just a way of comparing 3 specs+rotations.

 

Janraea

Well.. a 'true theory crafting sheet' is basically impossible for the deathknight. I can't imagine a spreadsheet that can handle the decision-making involved in keeping up with a dk rotation (especially without maxed hit and expertise). The abilities and talents all interact with each other too much.

Our only long-term approach is going to be to have a spreadsheet for each cookie-cutter build, with all the realistic rotations for each listed, much like this one (but preferably not tangled together so much).

 

• Zurm

I modified the spreadsheet to test out DWing, I'm not that dumb

But yea, it's not ideal. My Rawr module (sorry I keep talking about it, but it's a lot of work to start a module from scratch...) should have those abilities modeled out correctly, and it auto-detects for DWing and adjusts values appropriately. I'm actually currently working on a way for users to input their own rotations (so they can check a WWS parse and see what they are doing, then use that for the model) based on number of abilities used eat rotation, duration of the rotation, and disease uptime (I might stop being lazy and calculate this too at some point).

Still looking for some more info on certain abilities but most people haven't been able to answer my questions so its mostly my own personal tests on beta for some of them like ghoul or gargoyle.

 

Janraea

I assumed as much, but when I asked for the spreadsheet that shows DW being better for unholy, you linked me this one. Any chance you could put your modified one up on rapidshare as well?

(And did you use the gear he set as the default? Cause the stats in T7 seem to be crazily higher than those he has listed)