• Chicken

It should be further noted that Death Rune Mastery works somewhat different from what you'd expect. If you have all your Unholy and Frost Runes as Death Runes (so BBDDDD), and then use an Obliterate or Death Strike, the following happens:

1. Your two Unholy Runes which are currently Death Runes will get used by the ability.
2. Only one of your recently used Death Runes will remain a Death Rune. The other will turn back to Unholy, despite having just been used for an ability. (Or BBDDDU)

If you have only your Unholy Runes as Death Runes, and your Frost Runes are currently on cooldown, thus making it that your two converted Unholy Runes get used by Obliterate or Death Strike (BBFFDD), the following happens:

1. Your two Unholy Runes which are currently Death Runes will get used by the ability.
2. As before, only one of your two Unholy Runes becomes a Death Rune, however one of your Frost Runes (despite not being used by the ability) will also become a Death Rune. (BBDFDU)

That also applies if you have two Frost Runes as Death Runes and you use those for Obliterate or Death Strike. You end up with one of the Frost Runes staying a Death Rune, while one of the Unholy Runes will also turn into a Death Rune.

Or to put it differently, Death Rune Mastery will always convert what would normally be a Frost and Unholy Rune to a Death Rune, and not directly convert your Runes used on the ability that triggered it to Death Runes. It does have preference for converting your most recently used Frost and Unholy Runes however. Presumably the same applies to Reaping and Blood of the North but that's only possible to test if you have one of those talents and Death Rune Mastery at the same time.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Illundai

Can anyone confirm that Runes are still working like we noted before? That means that after the first usage of a rune, there is that hidden timer starting allowing us some leeway with using fresh runes (the 2s timer and 8 sec rune regenerations).

I'm trying to consolidate the DPS information we have so far and I realised I didn't actually test if this behaviour was still there in the last beta build.

 

Cabal

This is just flat out wrong, the single most important stat to cap for any melee is expertise, until you have 6.5% chance to ignore dodges (and yes, even from behind). People should just not post "This is Best" posts unless they master the most basic mechanics, I think.

 

Tantlin

Update for my Tanking Spread Sheet.

At the moment it's only in excel format, as I want to shake out the bugs before I port it to OOC.

Download DKTankCraftV3.01 macro.xlsm

It has a new TPS section, that compares multiple rotations over one minute and uses rotation push back to calculate loss of dps from failed attacks for more accurate TPS.



A few notes; RS Damage is slightly off and will be fixed the next update, and D&D threat I am not sure on, I set it at 1.75 as RS and TC are modified as such, so it seemed a likely value.

 

Mito

I dont like UB as it is now, not a disease and the dmg it does is hm hm, for 51 talent point its just week.

While I did try out Blood and Frost in beta, I always got back to Unholy and will be Unholy in WoTLK, thats why I dont like our "ultimate".

Tbh Gargoyle is just so powerful for 21 point talent, think it will be much better for Unholy tree if they would just change places.

Make UB 21 point and Gargoyle 51 point talent, and make it last 1 min flat, or remove UB and make some new talent like

Carrion Swarm
50 runic power
10 yd range
Instant
1 min cooldown
A wave of shadow magic splashes over enemies in front of the caster, dealing xxx Shadow damage and infecting them with Blood plague or reducing healing they do, or daze them or what ever.

Im just throwing idea out there, what you think?

 

• Zurm

This was true pre-3.0. This is not necessarily true anymore after 3.0, as the way mechanics have changed in most classes puts str and crit significantly above hit and expertise (yes, before cap). For example, expertise and hit are no longer the best stat for ret paladin, rogues, or fury warriors before cap (not necessarily deathknights, because a missed strike fed by death runes means no second chance)... both strength and crit are SIGNIFICANTLY better (and armor pen is now worth less). Pre-3.0 assumptions no longer apply. Ask one of the poeople running an accurate spreadsheet (like methods or Tzenes) to try and give you a breakdown. I can't guarantee the same is true for Death Knights, but you are definitely wrong saying it's a "basic" mechanic in a post-3.0 world.

However, you were right about the other poster being wrong. Expertise is never a non-issue in a raid. Being behind a boss simply means you don't have to worry about parry; dodge is still a factor.

UB scales much better than Deathcoil, don't write it off until you've tried it with better gear. True, it costs 60 rp instead of 40, but it uses 1.3 * 20 = 26% of your AP per cast + (48*20 = 960), where deathcoil uses 15% + 443. Deathcoil can crit, which does give it a slight leg up, but those multiplier differences are massive, especially when you start working with the 4k+ AP range.

Also, while you are certainly creative, I don't think discussion of abilities that don't exist in game or positing of existing talents is going to change anything. I think we should work with what we have for now, and hope for the best when we get our review shortly into wotlk.

 

pldcanfly

Despite the formulas are too complicated, i will make a little xls-sheet to compare, if i got at home.

 

tayedaen

Can't test it now, but if this is true, then this would mean we are using a rune that is ON COOLDOWN.
We could use that to our advantage, at least with macros, by using more abilities then we should normally be able to.
Like using 16 abilities in 15 secs (with GCD of 1.5).

 

Tantlin

Also something of note is that DC does not receive all of your crit, as agiltiy does not effects its crit value. Heres a visualization for easier understanding. It shows DC% damage per RP of UB, with AP and crit accounted for.





And heres a OOC file for you to play with

UB Vs DC

You need at least 35% spell crit before DC is ever better than UB and that is with a ton of AP. This of course assumes you are effecting your target 100% of the time.

 

Illundai

I'd love a bit of a stat breakdown so I can add some seperate sections to my WIP consolidation thread for each stat. I haven't looked at the spreadsheets in close detail, so I have no idea how much better stat X is compared to Y.

Oh and if people could post their Unholy/Frost specs, that'd be awesome too; I just haven't played those specs enough at 80 to know which specs are the best option.

I know there is no way to know for sure and my post will reflect that, don't worry.

(Same goes for DPS rotations, by the way)

 

Flamingcloud

D&D is 2.0 threat modifier.

 

gorsameth

Not really, the thing is that runes are used as expected (aka both deathrunes are used) but as Deathrune Mastery says it then turns the frost and unholy rune used into a deathrune.
Yet both runes are originaly unholy so a single unholy rune is turned into death while a frost rune currently on cd become a deathrune (No idea if its cooldown is reset, I never tested it).

Looks like a bug to me tho.

 

• Zurm

A frost spec I really enjoyed (not raiding, but abusing the raid boss dummy for a few hours total) was 17/54/0. There was definitely some filler in there, but I tried to put it in places I felt would offer the most raid utility where significant damage boosts weren't possible.

The rotation I used for it was:

PS->IT->BS->BS->Oblit-> (FS dump)
PS->IT->Oblit->Oblit-> (FS dump)

Within the "FS dump" I would also unload any Rime procs I had acquired in the cycle. In addition, I'd imagine certain PVE situations would hold preference of HB over oblit... obviously you can't use HB back to back due to the 6 second cooldown, but in those cases you would use it when possible (making sure to never let a Rime proc go to waste).

One thing I love about frost is that Frost Strike hits extremely hard for a 40 RP dump. It scales extremely well with weapon upgrades and AP (where as DC/UB/Gargoyle only scale with AP), and the fact that it can't miss is very nice. Also, the 45% crit multiplers in frost as opposed to the 30% one found in unholy makes it the single hardest hitting spec in the game once you break a certain level of gear (this wasn't the case in quest blues, but was in higher-end gear).

 

Mito

Yeah I know its much better than DC, and the RP cost dont bother me also, but after removing the disease component it just dotn justifies 51 point talent for me, on the other hand that 1 point cant be spent better anywhere else.

I dont know, maybe its just the feeling of disappointment that you get when you have something awesome turned into only good.

After they boosted the dmg (37 to 48 i think) I thought it will be enough to call it very good talent. I like it when I AOE and AOE tank, but when I do single target dps I just wish I had something else, especially since its not affected by Wandering plague.

The UB was 8%-10% of total dmg in some Naxx runs I made and Gargoyle around 7% with that bug that made him go melee from time to time, so it might have been in same range as UB.

I think they nerfed UB little too much imo.

 

methods

Here are the stat conversions i've found when comparing 1 point added to each stat. Here are the base values i used before talents and raid buffs:

Base stats	Value
Mob Armor	11990
WpnDps	180
WpnSpd	3.6
crit	21.8
hit	5.37%
str	947
ap	380
haste	149
armor	13117
Exp	(3) human

The following is a basic "Stat" to AP conversion:
Base stats+ Talents (no raid buffs)

Stat (rating)	Unholy	Blood	Frost
1STR	2.2588	2.3246	2.1500
1CRT	1.0373	1.0073	1.1060
1HIT	2.1779	2.2607	2.1017
1HASTE	0.4194	0.3964	0.4106
1EXP	1.1290	1.3559	1.0307
1DPS(wpn)	7.3187	8.3013	11.0691
Spec	17/0/54	51/13/7	17/54/0
DPS TOTAL	1905.23	1953.51	1889.98

Base stats+ Talents +Raid buffs

Stat (rating)	Unholy	Blood	Frost
1STR	2.4847	2.5570	2.3650
1CRT	1.1240	1.1453	1.1894
1HIT	2.4748	2.6609	2.4046
1HASTE	0.6214	0.5640	0.4978
1EXP	1.3914	1.7023	1.2453
1DPS (wpn)	7.5670	8.9665	10.3610
Spec	17/0/54	51/13/7	17/54/0
DPS TOTAL	3114.42	3278.62	3152.79

Keep in mind there are bound to be errors in my sheets somewhere so these are more of a guideline.
Assumptions:

• Based on 3 minute fights
• Unholy does not include Gargoyle still
• Unholy does not use UB though it should for the unbuffed portion
• Blood uses DRW but not Hysteria
• Frost uses OB but HB on Rime procs
• Fallen crusader rune enchant
• Did not assume Crypt fever was up for Frost and Blood though +13% Magic damage was applied
• Frost and Blood use the OB Glyph
• All specs use the IT Glyph

 

• Zurm

For hit and expertise, is that 1% hit, or 1 hit rating? Same goes for expertise. I ask because my Rawr module shows different (although it also weighs according to item budget).

Edit: Regardless, at least I was right on expertise, even if not hit. Back to the Rawr module and figure this out... hopefully I'll have it done by WOTLK.

 

dr_AllCOM3

What do you mean? 2s timer?
The rune addons I made clearly showed 10s(1s) cooldowns.

I'd like to collect the theorycraft stuff, too. Unfortunately this thread is waay too spammy to get anything useful out of it. In case you plan something, write me a PM.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Pyros

Well it's an AE, I don't see an issue with it not being optimal for single target DPS. It has some obvious AE uses, and totally destroys everything else if there's at least 2 targets. It was better before for single target, but I guess it was actually too good. If I had to compare with the other 51pt, it's arguably the best. DRW is ok but the general consensus seems to be gargoyle is better even though it's a 21pt, and frost one usages seems VERY limited to me due to the range nerf.

Seems like a solid 51point to me, it fits with the class role and tree, and can actually be good for single target dps at high lvl of gear too. A lot of stuff was simply overpowered on the early DK, but I believe the current DK is actually quite balanced. Better that than getting a volley of nerfs in the face on first patch because everyone cries about DKs being too good. You know, like rets, to the ground baby meme and so on.

 

methods

I'm going to double check my Hit values. Yes, I did use rating and not % for all values that use rating. As for OB Glyph i did see an increase in DPS once stats get higher for both blood and especially frost that favors OB.

 

• Zurm

Ironically, I thought the oblit glyph did something different. After looking at it on wowhead, I understand. Excellent work though Methods, both on this and the unholy talent breakdown.

 

blair

I have a question concerning Runeforging. Looking at the different ones available from the get-go, it would seem that Rune of Cinderglacier would be the best for an unholy leveling build; at least, until 70 when Rune of the Fallen Crusader becomes available. How does the DPS benefits from Cinderglacier compare to normal weapon enchants such as Mongoose or (one that I've heard several people talking about using 60-70) Crusader?

 

• Zurm

I don't have numbers, but if you're leveling as unholy (if not that's fine, but most people don't recommend it) I would say cinderglacier is the best you can get until Fall Crusader because the extra shadow/frost damage affects Scourge Strike.

 

Faerlun

That seems odd to me, with most other results coming back having gargoyle better. Your results show that is true with over 8k AP, but I don't think 8k AP is realistic to hit very quickly. Am I missing something, did I misunderstand your results? On a side note, I looked around a bit and couldn't find any solid numbers, but how much AP do death knights generally have when first hitting 80, and then with full naxx gear?

 

blair

That's what I hypothesized myself. I guess I'm more curious about the proc rate than anything, whether it is a static percentage based or if it's PPM. Considering 20% is a large amount of damage I couldn't foresee the proc rate being that great (or maybe having a cooldown), but then again Blizzard did say they wanted runeforging enchants to be the best option for DK's. If anyone has actual numbers on this enchant and are willing to share it'd be much appreciated.

 

CumpsD

One more (maybe stupid, I don't know the details of instance mechanics) question about this.

By saying it's instance I'm already happy no 70s are going to come gank me, however I wonder inside the instance, will it be per faction, or will you have Alliance and Horde DKs in the same instance? Thus still resulting in PvP during the tutorial.

(Not a carebear, just can't be bothered to PvP right from the start and wanna level out of tutorial asap :p)