That's a good point leaflock, but the desecration impact on you're DPS depend of what you do in this time.

If you go for the usual rotation with a second part at SS-SS-SS-DC, you will only have two SS buff by desecration, it mean 4 GCD not having this buff, well 20% dps lose ( without white damage/nécrosis/BcB consider ).

But now if you go with PS-IT-SS-DC-BS-BS-DC, you will have 7 GCD off the desecration, 35% dps lose.

With the ice touch glyph, PS-IT give more RP than SS and allow you one more DC per 20 secondes (i not consider T7 bonus, i not work on stuff at all).

Also skip reaping and epidemic allow you to take other talent.

You can't just compare one skill against another, you can only evaluate a whole build/rotation, and that's all the hard work of unholly dps.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but percents don't work that way. You don't lose 35% dps. 5% off of each ability is still 5% total dps lost for the duration.

In any case, we were evaluating a whole build/rotation. Last time I checked, the extra Scourge Strike did enough damage to compensate for not having Desecration up for 10 seconds. This may no longer be the case, but I doubt it.

Edit: Dropping Reaping (let alone the fact I'd never recommend dropping Epidemic in any spec) means you're giving up another SS, on top of the one you're giving up to keep Desecration up. This is a significant loss in damage.

I can't believe we're back on Desecration again.

My original thoughts on it can be found here (note: almost 3 weeks ago):
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26113-d...94/#post921031

Now if you look at the follow ups to that post:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26113-d...94/#post921231
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26113-d...94/#post921187

you see that the conditions for Desecration:
PS+IT+1Tick of Diseases+5% of your second RP dump ?? 1.90xSS

all depend on the BS glyph, 2 times BS with BS glyph get a better scale than SS and go in front at dps.

For the % game with desecration i am not really agree with you. It's 5% of the overall dps you make in the time, that's ok. But it work only if you have the same range dps between as exemple 2 BS and 1 SS. But if there is a difference in dps between both then it won't be the same result having 5%BS +5%BS and 5%SS.

Well tzenes, all those post where before blackice, SS and UB nerf... And also it didn't event care about scaling and only point stuff like "you lose 70 damage on DC"...

Edit :
Blood Strike : Average weapon damage + ( 3.3 * AP / 14 ) + 191 + 50 * Average weapon damage / 100 + 3 * 95.5

Scourge Strike : Average weapon damage + ( 3.3 * AP / 14 ) + 190.5 + 60 * Average weapon damage / 100 + 3 * 95.5

Difference between both is 0.5 + 10% weapon damage. Please don't mind if i just ignore the 0.5...

Now which boost have both ?
SS ignore armor, it have shadow damage and get benefit from ebon plague + 13% damage,
BS not ignore armor, meaning 30% decrease damage

Both benefit from bone armor, rage of rivendare, 2 hands spec and blood presence so i skip them.

Ok, i have at one side 10% average weapon damage + 13% damage = 10% average weapon damage + 113% damage, and in other side 2*70% = 140% damage.

But now we have the crit which can change a lot, SS have a higher critic than other strike, 230% damage for SS and 200% for BS.

assuming 50% CC, and 2 SS versus 4 BS.

We'll have one SS at 113% damage and an other one at 260% = 373% damage + 33% weapon damage. in same time our 4 BS will have 2 crit.

280%+140%=420%.

Instead i miss something, i do not get how 33% weapon damage could cover 47% damage loss on using one SS instead of 2 BS.

For the PS-IT against SS, i end with SS higher, but not enough for cover the loss of desecration for 8 secondes.

If i did mistake i'll be glad you help me find it out.

Edit2 : i didn't put BS glyph in calcul since it is still debated.

A few questions.

Im thinking of this build, for a solo/grinding build with minimal downtime and survivability. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Logic :
Get master of ghouls for increased DPS and survivability
Get as many regen abilities in blood as possible
Since we are spending a bunch in blood anyway, get sudden doom and heart strike as the deep talents
getting lots of +crit and +bonus synergy talents, relying on deathcoil for the RP dump.

I may move pale horse points somewhere else, that was just for the mount speed.


I plan on using a pretty standard rotation,

IT, PS, HS, HS OB, with sudden doom tossing DCs in plus DCs at the end before the OB.

Ive been reading about more complex rotations, and have some confusion around annihilation/epidemic. Even with both of these maxed, Im not sure wha tyou do with the extra runes. You can't make it through 2 full rotations without refreshing, so if you end up refreshing at 1.5 rotations, doesnt that screw everything up? Is an extra OB worth the .5 gimped rotation? With deep unholy, scourge strike seems like it works, because you don't need the points in annihilation anymore, but im still confused what to do with the extra runes.

Since this is for soloing primarily, I suppose longer rotations don't matter, since I guess most things will die within one rotation. In that case, annihilation lets you respam OB in place of the FS PS which will probably kill the mob, and in that case you dont care that the rest of the rotation is borked.

Assuming you don't have annihilation, like in this build, what would be the right thing to do if you think things will take 1.5 rotations to kill?

IT PS HS (sdDC) HS (sdDC) DC OB? (??) It seems like reapplying diseases at this point is a waste, since we won't make it around for another OB, but what to do with the FU at the start of a rotation?

I count it in the calcul, upping old armor evaluate at 10900 to 11990 armor. 10% up armor not mean 10% decrease damage.

Here's one problem. That 13% from Ebon Plaguebringer is a multiplier, not additive. The actual damage of Scourge Strike is:
(.60 * Average weapon damage + ( 3.3 * AP / 14 ) + 190.5 + 3 * 95.5)*1.13

That changes things some.

Ebon Plague increases the damage of our magic damage melee abilities? That would be news to me. All the other spell raidbuffs would apply then, too.

Are these the correct formulas? I thought its

Blood Strike = 0.5 * (Average_Weapon_Damage + 3.3 * AP / 14) + 191 + Number_of_Diseases * 95.5

You have one additional Average_Weapon_Damage in your formulas.

I also have a question about Two-Handed Weapon Specialization:

Does this increase the total damage of our strikes by 4% or only the weapon damage part? Has anyone tested this?

Should be total, but the wording on Bloody Strikes makes me unsure.

Additionally things like crit and hit have already happened when SS/FS deals damage, so it's just like an armor debuff.
Thnaks for clarifying.

In a recent post on the beta forums Ghostcrawler stated that frost's dps would be lower due to it's debuffs and control. This statement was met with a great deal of dissent on the board saying that it does not really offer much in terms of control. I thought about this a bit, examined frost's abilities and talents, and I think blizzard's use and our use are completely different. I think what blizzard means is greater control of ourselves and what we can do in a given situation, not control over the enemy.

Hungering Cold's presence in the tree misleads many to thinking the tree is intended to control the enemy.

First, if we look at Frost Strike we see that it can be used very surgically, it's as cheap as deathcoil and hits harder. The other offensive runic power drains either use all of it or they're an aoe which makes it far more difficult to contol. Second we have Deathchill, a guaranteed crit, again a way to control combat. No other tree offers anything similar to that. Frost has howling blast, the only ranged option for a FU ability and really provides the only real additional option for a FU ability that isn't merely an overwrite of another. Unholy has Scourge Strike to replace Obliterate and Blood wants to convert FU abilities into death runes as soon as possible, Frost has two FU abilities that it can use relatively interchangably. Runic power mastery allows for greater control of when you spend your runic power. Most rotations nearly cap your runic power when they are done and thus nearly necessitate the expenditure when you are done, this talent gives you a bit more room to decide when to use it. While it seems largely determined that using runic power up is always the best idea it still gives you the option.

While don't think this was a comprehensive list of control talents I do think it highlights several of the important ones. The entire point to "Control" is that it gives frost more options for how to approach any combat situation, the other trees are largely set in how they must react to a given situation if they can at all. In the end Control is really about your ability to control you and not your control of someone else.

No worries on this one, I'm sure Hysteria will be a "goes to the Hunter, Warrior, Rogue only" type buff, unless of course the DK is selfish or we start putting up very competitive numbers.

1.13*X = 1*X + 0.13*X
0.7*X = 1*X - 0.3*X

1*X are in both equation so you can skip it for compare and end with 0.13 * X and -0.3*X, meaning 13% and -30%.

No mistake here.

Hi. I just realised I was referenced in this post, even though it was rather long ago. I'm usually 51/13/7 on the beta realm, so definitely not deep frost (I don't think deep frost would have Hysteria either, no?).

I would like to point out (since you brought it up) that Hysteria is a buff you can cast on others. This means that more often than not, you will be using it on the top physical DPSer in your raid, since 30% of his physical damage is more than 30% of yours. I don't see that as a crime, and in the above parse I chose to use it on that hunter (albeit I think he was saying there was some bugs with BM that build that contributed to his damage). No reason to use Hysteria on yourself to 'validate' your damage for some obscure reason.

Some observations of my own:

Death runes are a bit funky in operation. If for some reason you have 4 death runes up at the same time as blood (originally FFUU), any abilities you use will use the once-unholy death runes first.

Normally, starting with BBFFUU, you have:
1 - PS, IT, Oblit, BS, BS (leaves BBDFDU) DC, DC/wait
2 - Oblit, BSx4 (leaves BBFDUD)

The problem lies in the BSx4 streak - the first 2 should make use of death runes, but if your rotation is delayed for some reason, the blood runes will be prioritized first, leaving you with 4 death runes for the next 2 blood strikes. Subsequently, the 2 unholy death runes are used, leaving 2 frost death runes. This leads to a bit of a rotation screwup in the next cycle, and an especially big headache if your attack is dodged/missed/parried, and this delay builds up over time. Because of things like this, rotations are semi-fluid in practice.

Gargoyle was also not very easy to keep up previously - if you had one or two attacks/spells dodged or resisted, you would not be sustaining the gargoyle for its full duration of 1 minute. This would also be an issue on mobile fights. The recent changes should have made this easier, since it will stick around for longer before the RP drain seriously starts. I still have mixed feelings about DRW.

For unholy DPS, there are some fights (Sapphiron and Thaddius come to mind) where you stand far enough from the center of the boss model for unholy blight to not affect them. This used to be a big issue since you would lose the 4th disease, but I guess it's not as bad now.

To reiterate: if you're trying to optimize the raid damage, and someone else does more physical DPS, you'd be silly not to cast it on them - especially if they have several other cooldowns they can stack with it as well. If it was only meant for the DK, then chances are that it would be a self-only buff (see: things other classes have like Avenging Wrath for paladins).

That doesn't mean Blood DPS isn't balanced towards the DK casting it on themselves. Again, I can see your point in "maximizing" raid DPS, sure. But what's the point if you're doing subpar DPS?

From everything I've seen DKS are currently about 1-2k dps below some other top physical dps classes. Not sure what kind of guilds you run with but the guild I have been in the last 2-3 years is all about min/maxing and helping the guild run smoothly in every way possible, their is no reason to give hysteria to myself if a rogue or hunter is 1-2k more physical dps than I am, giving him hysteria is only gonna make that person even better and end the fight sooner before anything can go wrong (nice and smooth), also it is gratifying to some to be able to buff/help others, gives us a reason to be brought along.

I think Blizzard wants to make all dps classes near the same, but between them wanting to balance around arenas, as well as making sure their not undershooting or overshooting the mark with us and other dps classes once gear/buffs/enchants/glyphs are fully upgraded and stacked, I just don't think you are ever going to see all the dps classes close to one another.

Some classes will start off weak, others will start off strong, some that were weak might eventually surpass the ones that started off strong, with the ones that started off strong either getting even stronger or falling behind. IMO Blizzard should test all classes and specs with Arthas level tiered gear/enchants/glpys etc with the best players to see how dps stacks up in the end, but from everything seen in the past, I don't think they do this, so you gotta be prepared to be sub-par dps to others with a who knows how long time frame, we'll just have to wait and see.

That's what I mentioned a few pages ago. Everyone theorycrafts tight, long and complex rotations that almost allow no mistake. In reality runes will miss, especially as a tank. I use a disease based priority system. Refresh diseases first, then produce death runes, spend some power or use the powerful rune attacks. This is much more flexible, not every fight is Patchwerk.
The rune system is also what's going to make DKs not so popular in the long run. If you don't have a plan for your runes you'll suck. It's not like rage or energy, where you can and have to spam the same abilities right away (Ok, good rogues have to watch some stuff, too).

From what I can tell only hunters were that close to being really far ahead of DKs, and they are receiving an over 10% nerf. The only other people that were really far ahead were sudden death warriors and shiv spam rogues, both of which are also getting nerfed. It would not surprise me if well played dks were near the top of the meter now. Every raid I did on beta there was a dk near or at the top of the meter, on the premade server anyways. Additionally our aoe is much better than warriors, rogues, and hunters and our survivability is much better than anyones except maybe a rogue. I don't think dks are going to have a hard time justifying raid spots.

Giving hysteria to Hunters, BM hunters especially, is most likely not the best use of it.

As BM, the pets do ~50% of the damage of the hunter due to them scaling with raid buffs insanely well. Thus hysteria is only giving 30% extra damage to 50% of the damage (by my amazing mathematiclol skills, I make that 15%?). It would be much better use on say your top rogue or warrior.