I wasn't really refering to tanking, more solo grind or 5-man DPS. Bloods RP generation just seems a bit low compared to Frost and Unholy. On top of that, Unholy gets a 51 that they can throw at lower RP totals and just "make up the difference" afterwards while Frost get +30% effective RP for when they activate their 51. Really, I thinks it's just SoB sucks badly compared to Dirge and Chill of the Grave.

He's probably meaning tanking and/or soloing where parrys will be a factor.

As for spell resists, it's down to 9% in wrath and it's all removable, so if you're melee hitcapped you're also spell hitcapped.

Ah, ok. I never really worried about soloing. Tanking.. The theory there is a complete beast, and depends crazily on what spec you're using. (mostly unholy is the special one)

Oh, sweet. :-D

Speaking of runic power (RP), I find I often skip over Runic Power Mastery when I spec 51 into Frost. The only damage spell we might use is Death Coil, and we spend RP on Frost Strike instead. More Death Pact healing, while nice, is not a necessity. IBF allowing only 47% instead of 50% seems pretty weak for 3 points. Lastly, the only power a frost DK has that scales is Hungering Cold, but we'd get a few more seconds out of the freeze at best (assuming nothing is breaking those freezes anyway). Overall, I vastly preferred the reduced RP cost version that Runic Power Mastery was previously and I don't see much motivation to put points into the current version of the talent.

One thing I noticed when I was tanking earlier on my DK is, set rotations are all nice on paper, but when tanking you can't really get them out all the time. I dropped unholy rune mastery so it wouldn't randomly speed things up, but still, watching the FRAPs of draktharon bosses, there were a lot of issues.

Basic rotation is icy>scourge>oblit>blood>blood>DC then oblit>oblit>blood>blood>DC(you have to wait 1.5sec for first unholy rune before first oblit). That's the usual stuff to proc blade barrier, and usually you should have it up most of the time. However, when tanking, it doesn't go all that nicely. First, you need to use icebound fortitude and bone shield randomly. You'll also drop icy touch for the last blood strike(even with epidemic). On top of that, taking into account lag, you're already cutting it VERY close by using these perfect rotations. Then you add parries, misses, dodges, and all the rotations go to crap. Yes you do get runes back after an avoided hit, and yes they proc BB, but only if they're the last runes up in your rotation(last blood strike pretty much). For every other ability which miss, you'll have to skip the Death coil to proc blade barrier, and if 2misses, you're fucked for a whole rotation.

Every time you use bone shield or icebound fortitude(which is quite often), your rotation goes to shit and you probably drop blade barrier if you stay on the set rotations. You pretty much have to improvise stuff(which usually means doing 1.5rotation and skipping DC) to recover.

So I actually question the power of Blade Barrier, someone will probably end up modelling it, but you can't keep it up 100%, and probably way less than that, unless you play like a robot, and never use icebound/boneshield and have capped hit/expertise in tanking gear. However, it means tanking as a DK is pretty fun, because you have to modify optimal rotations all the time to try to catch up. It's like your own little minigame, that you slap on top of the usual fight mechanics(running around, turning the boss, watching calls and so on).

Man, I totally didn't notice the 'spells' wording in there >.<

Totally agree, though I think it ought to say 'abilities' instead.
I'm hoping they just forgot to change it when they switched FS to RP.

Any specifics on how Runic Power Mastery actually interacts with those sustained powers?

Oh, I'm expecting to have to change up my 'rotation' on the fly--I'm actually looking forward to it to be honest--but it feels like there is a *lot* of flex time in at least half of that proposed 'rotation'. During all of the wait points (between open & middle as well as during the wait period in the full cycle portion) there exist 3 'free' gcds with which you can use runic power or free abilities (or burn rune mastery runes). While this doesn't cover saving runes for icebound fortitude, it's pretty much impossible to model for that -and- allow for blade barrier :-/. Ditto with avoidance during non-infinite sets; you can attempt to use percentages to model theoretical misses but you can't model the rune refunds during that finite set of time (just as you can't really model rune mastery talents during finite periods).

Regardless, one thing that I just noticed is that you're favoring a longer rotation than I believe I am. One gcd longer in each portion on fact as I favor an extra double rune ability or strike per rotation. Is there any reason for that aside from spec? Maybe flexibility as more single rune abilities leave you a rune for an oh shit button longer than burning everything you can asap does (which is what I'm doing)...

Also, what relative priority do you normally give the various strikes hat you rotate through? This may be an excersize in futility as the spec I'm theorycrafting is different from the currently favored unholy spec but...

With butchery, I actually have more RP then I can use, so I've switched to unholy for grinding. Every mob dies in generally one rotation, usually less, and since 5 abilities generates 50 rp and every kill generates 20, I'm usually sitting at 100 rp if I'm constantly grinding in blood presence, even when using DC everytime my runes are on cd. And this is w/o SoB

What kind of strikes do you use? I keep the diseases up(have to use 1rune for each), which is 3secs, then obliterate with the 2 runes left. After that, you have 2 bloods, and all you can do with them is 2 bloodstrikes. You can use D&D on rotation, for 3runes with 1GCD, then you need 2GCD for diseases again, and you have a blood left, so you do save 1 GCD. But you can only do this 2 out of 3 rotations. Blight and Gargoyle are nice 1GCD RP burners, but they have cooldowns and max duration(at least blight does atm even though it says it shouldn't, if they remove that then it's a good RP burner).

Maybe I missed something, but there's no double rune strike that doesn't use both unholy/frost anymore, besides stuff like Hysteria. If they added a blood double rune again like old oblit, you could probably optimize rune removal better, atm you either use 3GCD by putting up diseases, or 2GCD on next rotation with icy touch dropping for 2secs every other rotation(shouldn't be an issue with imp TC anyway). At 1.5s per GCD since you can't have unholy stance bonus, you're looking at a minimum of 3GCD when not applying disease and using D&D, and 5GCD next for disease reapply, or 4GCD with disease+D&D and 4GCD next (more balanced system). That's assuming you do use D&D which is pretty terrible for single target threat but well, can probably manage depending on the fight.

Once they fix blight to not stop after 20secs, you should have more room to play, but until then it's pretty tight if you try to fit deathcoils without wasting RP. Was just saying anyway, Blade Barrier usually shouldn't be assumed to be 100% up, taking into account lag and fight reqs such as moving around and such, you might have a pretty low uptime on it. Still a decent investment for 5points though.

well, there are a couple of ways to get an extra 2rune strike in there - either death rune mastery, of BotN.
if DRM, make the first oblit a DS and you get three oblits next round. lose some threat, gain some health, and a gcd.
with BotN, you just turn two BS into an Oblit.

Deep unholy with a frost minor is kind of screwed here (and that seems to be the best spec, otherwise).

I think GCD and BB uptime problems could be solved if they moved Obliterate back to its old cost(1B 1F) and Death Strike to 1B 1U. Currently, blood runes aren't used to keep anything important up on the target, so they're kind of "junk" runes. And utilizing them currently eats up a lot of time, relatively. With those changes, you can keep up your diseases, dump your runes, and still have lots of time in a 10s rotation for dealing with misses/dodges/parries. As for blood dps builds...well, that's your priority then. Take a bit more time to spend your blood runes on Heart Strikes to get more dps.

As nevinera suggested, I'm theorycrafting with a deep frost spec (50-54 pts) which has Blood of the North, turning my blood runes into death runes for approx 50% of the rotation, allowing for a minimum of two obliterates during the second portion of the rotation (as long as nothing too crazy goes on, forcing rune use towards mitigation rather than threat).

The basic rotation involves putting up frostfever and blood plague (IT + PS; 1f 1u), obliterating (or howling blast if it's up), blood striking twice, and popping frost strike during the first half of the rotation. This ends up leaving you with 10 rp--if rp is still generated at a rate of 15/ability--and no runes. The second half of the rotation involves a minimum of two obliterates and leaves you with two death runes to do whatever with (3rd oblit, refresh debuffs, pop IF, whatever) and will net a minimum of 55 rp to frost strike again with. Rinsing and repeating over 30 seconds nets ~1800 tps when lowballing many numbers but ignoring armor/avoidance. As a bonus, you almost always have 3 gcds between halves of the rotation to recast missed abilities and I ~think~ you have enough buffer on blade barrier to cover most of that.

Aha, but they're a dependable way to get two death runes for a deep frost build with blood of the north. That alone makes them extremely valuable to at least one--probably two or three--build and serves to allow blood runes to power Blood tree talented buffs or a bread and butter DPS/Threat strike (Blood or Heart, depending on spec). Unholy/Frost specs are pretty much the only ones that don't really have much of a use for blood runes and, even then, they're probably nice for a steady threat boost that doesn't burn a more useful Frost or Unholy rune *shrug*.

Assuming Pestilence ever attains proper functionality, you will be dumping Blood runes on that any time multiple mobs come into play. As Oblit looks to be the biggest threat:rune strike we have at first glance, I'd rather not have it directly conflict with control of the rest of the pack. (Yes, this is only for 5man/trash, but I think those are worth a bit of consideration.)

As for BB uptime, well, I'm still fairly certain it's possible assuming a correct rotation/skill queue, at least for deep Unholy/minor Frost. (I think final opinions/determinations will need to wait for further builds/release.)I haven't gone much beyond 30s in, as between 25-30s it looked like it stabilised at only 1 or 2 runes coming up at a time, either from Oblit (another Oblit), Scourge(Another Scourge or BShield if cooldown's up), Icy (Same again) or Blood/Pest(Same again.) On that note, mmo-champion shows IBF as costing 20RP. Is this not the case, and it actually costs 1Fr? This would certainly change my assessment, but only from 'quite possible" to "pray a bit."

Realistically giving a spell casting melee the ability to do a "fake" root, which is a snare in diguise, combined with the anti-blink "get over here" move of DG is less OP that current combinations in game. Such as the Druid I'm at range from you, rooting, cycloning, lol'ing at you, movement forming away, and casting more spells at range, and then going bearbutt mode when in melee. There's Entrapment Hunters, Frost Mages, and other builds to consider. As an Enhancement Shaman in Arenas I can tell you that without a strong skillset of movement impairing abilities, melee is beyond frustrating in PvP. Hell, any paladin can Justice someone and gg there getting away if he can stick on you, which with improved movement speed and BoF...he can!

As is, I think DK "closing" abilities are under expectations. They have a solid snare and DG is amazing. But once you are CC'd, you're pretty much screwed. No reductions on movement impairing abilities means that you will *always* have to DG every single chance its possible no matter whether you intended on bursting or even using DS to heal yourself. Stuns, snares, silences (no spells like DG), fears, roots, etc... GG on crappy design. DK in BG's will probably be fine. But at current implementation, they are totally reliant upon their allies to keep them in range of their enemies which is a major design flaw.

So new patch, gonna list the changes I see until WoR or MMOChamp makes one:

Bloodworms is now 4-12%(4per point) to proc bloodworms on any melee attack

Auras are bugged, not too surprising. It seems you actually have to cast them yourself from your spellbook, at least some of the ranks. For example rank1/2 of blood aura works, but 2/2 you have to cast it yourself.

Frost Strike was boosted, it does more damage than deathcoil now, from a rather small sample of tests, it seems to do as much damage as a no disease oblit. (Might have been because I was in tanking gear, thus smaller AP pool)

I learned a mount in my spellbook(my DK flying mount), unsure if it's the new way, or just this one that's bugged. My elekk is still in the mount tab in Pet window.

Ghouls seem fixed somewhat. They now have abilities(but still don't proc diseases) and you can access them through the pet tab in ability book like hunter stuff, if you have master ghoul. Master ghoul still gives perma ghoul pet(until it gets killed at least, but doesn't unsummon auto). Travels with you when you port and stuff.

Blood Baked Blade now works, and as expected, it's fucking overpowered. 15%chance to hit for 1.2k is retarded imo, but well ^^.

Necrosis seems pretty perfect now, it's doing pretty much 25% of my autoattack

Night of the Dead still does nothing, not even a bugged buff now.

Pestilence is fixed, and it now hits 3targets instead of 2. It now also jumps quite far. Not sure what's max range, but it seems to be ~10yard range. Meaning it's easy as hell to propagate diseases now.

That's it for now, going to bed

Outside of pvp, 15% chance to increase a hit by 150% is slightly weaker than 100% chance to increase it by 25%
(works out to 22.5% increase to white damage)

If you think it's overpowered, it's either bugged
(if it's working on yellow hits it probably is overpowered, but it shouldn't be)
or the the large numbers are confusing you.

I repeat, it is weaker than necrosis, please don't call it overpowered!
(The nerf-gods are watching)

Bear in mind Necrosis is 5 Talent points compared to 3 in BCB.

Is BCB spell damage like Necrosis?

Also, Nevinera, I think you're reading BCB wrong. It's 15% chance to an extra 60% weapon damage per disease, which is at the very least going to be 2, sometimes 3. Maybe 4 if Ghouls count.

Ghouls no longer have Infect, so you're looking at 4 max with Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Ebon Plague and Unholy Blight. Maybe five if Gift of Arthas still counts.

With the new look for lower unholy I wonder if a Blood/Unholy spec rather than Blood/Frost would do better for DPS. You're giving up 20% haste and Runic Power Mastery for 15% more DC damage (so that's a wash) 20% shadow damage (less chance to proc BRM but might be affected by spell damage increasing talents) and you'd get BCB too. You wouldn't have as many diseases but your white damage is that much higher so it should hit for significant damage.

From WoR:

Blood
- Bloodworms: 3/3 Your weapon hits have a 12% chance to spawn 2-4 Bloodworms. Bloodworms attack your enemies, healing you as they do damage for 20 sec or until killed. (Healing amount remains the same)

Unholy
- Morbidity moved to Tier 1 in unholy
- Virulence moved to Tier 2 in unholy
- Blood-Caked Blade: Your autoattacks have a 5/10/15% chance to cause Blood-Caked Strike, which hits for 50% weapon damage times the number of your diseases on the target. (Was 60%)
- Night of the Dead: Hitting a target with Plague Strike or Scourge Strike reduces the cooldown of your next Raise Dead and your next Army of the Dead by 30 sec / 1 min. This effect stacks up to 5 times. (was bugged to be 1 min for both ranks)