evilhacker

I've spent the morning looking at various sources to figure out how Armor Pen specifically affects my primary attacks as a Blood DK. Could someone more versed at TC confirm my assumptions below? Some of the articles on Wowwiki I found were out of date.

1. Armor Pen offsets the amount of damage we lose when hitting a boss. A boss typically has 13083 armor and that reduces our damage by 46.2% [(13083/(13083+15232.5)]

2. The Armor Pen cap for a level 83 boss is 9906 [(13083+16635)/3]

With these assumptions, I end up with this formula for figuring out how ArP affects damage:

Base Boss Armor Reduction - Adjusted for ArP Boss Armor Reduction
(13083/(13083+15232.5)) - ((13083-(9906*ArPen%))/((13083-(9906*ArPen%))+15232.5))

The reason I'm confused is because it looks to me like the more ArP you have the better it gets and the decision on when to gem ArP really doesn't have a lot to do with how much AP you have, it depends on how much ArP you have.

Here's a link to what I've got: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...WX1FhaGc&hl=en

Also, I assume normalized weapon damage is still calculated as Base Weapon Damage + ATK/14 * 3.3+Bonus (Base Weapon Damage can be calculated as top damage on weapon + bottom damage on weapon /2) and this is what we apply as "weapon damage" in our attack's tooltip.

 

• Darkside

You're correct in realizing that ArPen has "positive feedback"; the more of it you have, the more valuable it becomes. However, it's relative value when compared with other stats is affected by how much of the stat you are comparring it to you have. For example, if I am comparing the worth of ArPen to attack power and I have very little AP, the relative value of ArPen when compared to attack power dimishes. It's value will increase as I stack more and more AP until I reach a theoretical breaking point (which is a function both of ArPen and AP). This breaking point has never been reliably calculated (though the math to do so is actually fairly simple, I would have done it long ago except I'm really lazy). That being said, the decision to gem armor penetration will never be cut and dry simply because of how necessary AoE is in many encounters and how little DK AoE damage is affected by ArPen. Furthermore, different specs get different mileage from similar amounts of ArPen, just because of how their damage breakdown is split.

edit: looking at your formula, it looks like you got a few numbers wrong. With 100% ArPen, the boss should have 0 armor; your formula gives a different result. Did you not account for the pre-reduction effects of Sunder and Faerie Fire?

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Varag

For Phase 3 of the Heroic Anub'arak fight, are Blood Death Knights finding that they avoid the use of Death Strike all-together for dps?

Do you tend to work out an arrangement with your healers to avoid healing you for said phase save for Penetrating Cold?

 

Dev93L

This is going to boil down to a basic gear question, and for that I'm sorry. It's just that I've tried everything I know to do as a player, and I can't find my answer.

Basically, I have a 0/53/18 DW Frost DK. He has three weapons. The [Tankard O' Terror], 10 man normal ilvl 232 of [The Grinder], and [Singed Vis'kag the Bloodletter].

I'm confused by my results from the tools. I've used Rawr - it says Grinder/Tankard is the best. TeamRobot says Viskag/Grinder is the best, and I'm just getting confused the entire way around. I've searched up and down on the forums, but I honestly get confused easily too.

Can anyone hopefully straighten me out and teach me something? I've been trying to figure this out for a few days before I finally broke down and realized I'm not figuring it out on my own.

If that damn sword just had stats like a normal weapon, this wouldn't be an issue. Thanks for reading my wall of text, I apologize for it. I realize my question in the immediate sense is about the weapons, but in the greater sense I want to know if I'm doing anything wrong with the tools or if they simply disagree on the items. I am eternally grateful for anyone's time.

 

• Darkside

A combonation of JoL, Imp. LotP, Blood Presence (10000 dps with adds up means a hefty amount of healing) and Unholy Strength procs means my healers never have to bother healing our DKs when they don't have PC. I don't know much about Death Strike, but I imagine that it would be better to avoid it in order to keep the Anub healing to an absolute minimum. As such, you're probably better off swapping to a different spec for this fight as the damage loss from no longer using Death Strike and it's consequences (no Death Runes, being forced to reapply diseases etc.) will by substantial.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

teiglin

1. Boss armor was reduced in 3.1 (I think, whenever sunder was nerfed). Base armor for bosses is now 10643.
2. The armor pen cap is based off _your_ armor coefficient, not the boss/lv83 coefficient. So ArP cap for boss is (10643+15232.5)/3 = 8625. However, a more relevant number is the cap of 7774 against a boss afflicted by sunder/ff, whose armor has been reduced to 8089.

The math you follow up with doesn't look quite right. Without inspecting your spreadsheet, the easiest way to calculate post-arp mitigation is simply to calculate the boss' effective armor after your ArP is applied, then plug into the mitigation formula. So if you have 50% ArP on gear and blood gorged, and are attacking a fully debuffed boss, you just subtract 60% of the ArP cap from the boss' armor, leaving about 3425 armor, and 18.35% mitigation.

In any case, your conclusion that ArP provides increasing gains as you get more of it is correct. As a general point of reference, the last few points of ArP rating are roughly half again more valuable than the first few.

 

masterben

I've been searching through these DK forums for a couple of nights and was just wondering is anyone could point out the current "best" DK tanking spec. I was told by a RL friend this morning that 2H frost was best for threat and mitigation.
I am currently spec'd as a 2H unholy tank, as I seemed to have a little trouble with holding aggro as frost. Maybe it's my gear - it's all around 200 lvl.
Any advice or direction would be much appreciated 8)

 

Aryla

The threat issue could be just on you, going with a new spec, that will require a diffrent rotation. That might have contributed to it. It tripped me up for awhile after I went from Blood to Frost.
Keep with Frost. I'm a fan of it as well.

 

maui

My question is to the Blood DPS spec. Since we have such a rapid rotation and this spec does utilizes 2 points in unholy tree's "Viscious Strikes" that increases our plague stikes critical chance by 6% plus increases the bonus critical dmg by another 30%. Would it be beneficial to remove 3 points out of Necrosis and place them in Outbreak to further increase the dmg out this physical strike? Also curious on perhaps even glyphing for plague strike on how that might pan out. Anyone have any experience with this or simulated it out before?

 

Amroo

You put 2 points in Vicious Strikes because there is no other place to put them. So, no, 3 points for a 30% damage increase of a strike you use once every 20 seconds is not worth it. Same reasoning regarding the glyph.

 

maui

the thing of it is, my rotation isnt 20 seconds, more like 10 seconds. With a standard rotation of PS,IT,HSx4,DS,DCx2. With that in mind (unless my rotation needs to be adjusted) since I would be using the PS more frequntly, does 5 pts in Necrosis really pull out aheaad vs having 3 pts in Outbreak and leaving 2 in Necrosis? From my experience on the dummy my PS criticals hit just under 6k with the 3 pts in Outbreak vs being under 3.4k w/o.. and regular hits bering around a 700 dmg difference (give or take).
Another thing does PS scale better with ArP vs Necrosis, or do they scale the same?

 

• Darkside

If you're a Blood spec you shouldn't be using PS that much, as you should be rolling your diseases with GoD after the first or second application. Furthermore, I can't imagine that you're seeing that large a difference between the two specs in PS hits. The damage difference should be a mere 30% and you're posting a difference of nearly 100%.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

ElasarX

I've finally thought about make a death knight, but is it worth it? How do they do end-game, are the accepted into raids most of the time? How do their DPS compare to others?

 

Terralis

I've looked all over for the answers to these questions, but if they're here, they may have gotten buried somewhere and the search function isn't helping. My questions pertain to Frost spec (something I'm new at and playing around with).

1. Obliterate typically accounts for what percentage of Frost DPS? What about Frost Strike?
2. What would do more damage assuming no armor set bonuses? FS+SotVH or OB+SoV?
3. Would Frost Strike gain greater benefit from 3/3 Veteran of the Third War and 2/2 Abomination's Might, or 5/5 Impurity?

 

Pipson

Ofcourse it's worth it. Seeing how you're on the DK forums, most people will agree with me.

They're accepted into any raid that isn't already full of them. Tanking on the other hand is another quesiton...

In my opinion you shouldn't roll a class based on which place they end up on the meters. By the time you reach 80 and get the gear to start competing, things might have changed, and will definitely continue to do so in the future.

 

consumerboy

Stupid question because I want to make sure I understand a particular phrase...

What is 'rolling' with regards to diseases and how explicitly is it usually achieved?

thanks

 

Uhkt

How much Defense past the floor do I need for it to be worth it for extra mitigation?

 

• frmorrison

1. Any defense past the 540 defense cap is useful to have, although not as good as dodge or parry. In fact with the 25 defense rune, you can go up to 565 defense without hitting DR.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

teiglin

The term is usually implies keeping a higher AP/crit on your diseases by applying them with str/ap/crit procs active, then refreshing them via Glyph of Disease so they keep the higher damage from the proc bonuses.

Saying "without hitting DR" is misleading at best. There is no point at which dodge/parry aren't affected by diminishing returns, and it's not like those diminishing returns accelerate when your defense skill hits 540. DRs on dodge/parry include all contributions to those stats--defense rating as well as dodge rating/agility/parry rating/strength. They do NOT include dodge/parry from talents and runeforges, including defense from SSG. The only significance of 540 defense is that it makes raid bosses unable to crit you; it is only a small part of your total avoidance.

 

Aryee

I've been doing some reading and I kinda just need to throw this over to the people. So for Anub 25 HM I've been using the following:

IT>PS>Pest>DND>SS>BS repeat - dumping where runes are on CD, with glyphs DnD, IT, and Ghoul.

On the ensidia guide it recommends for unholy:

IT>PS>Pest>DND>IT>PS>Pest>SS>BB repeat.

Is this used as an opener to engage the 2 second rule and then use DnD after pestilence on cooldown? Or is it used as the base rotation for the entirety of the fight? I have been testing both rotations on lvl 60 dummies in org ( 4 dummies in a diamond ) for wandering plague purposes. The second rotation does 500-1000 less dps than the 1st. I have only tested the first in raids and it is netting me ~11500 dps on most pulls.

Just wondering if anyone had advice because ensidia doesn't answer rotation questions on their website.

 

crazy dodo

Both rotations that you've mentioned are impossible due to the simple reason that you have 2 of each rune. Once you do IT>PS>Pest>DND you have no runes left (DND uses 1 of each rune... I knew that:P ) which is why you need to use the following 2 rotations

Rotation 1 (DND ready)
IT>PS>Pest>DND>DC>(DC/Horn)

Rotation 2 (DND on cooldown)
IT>PS>Pest>SS>BS(some argue in favour of BB here)>>DC>DC

Again you could techincaly use BB instead of BS however you're loosing Desolation, Reaping and 2PT9 proc buffs. You can read more about it in the Unholy thread as it is currently being discussed... again

 

Amroo

After IT>PS>PE>DND you have, in fact, no runes left since you used all six. The rotation Aryee postet is for 1.5 rune sets, the Ensidia rotation for 2 rune sets.

I suppose the Ensidia rotation is for a talent spec without Epidemic (which is until 3.3 still the highest Unholy single target DPS spec, although some people spec Epidemic specifically for Anub). If you have Epidemic in your spec for Anub there is no reason to reapply / spread diseases every 10 seconds.

 

Peinbringer

Quel'Delar, the epic quest sword has been revealed on the PTR, and can be seen here.

There are three versions that could possibly be used by DK Tanks:

Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful
Sword
Two-Hand
Speed 3.60
769 - 1155 Damage
(267.2 damage per second)
+164 Strength
+164 Stamina
Item Level 251
Equip: Improves haste rating by 91.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 99.

Strength and Stamina on this look good, however haste and crit are not important for DK Tanks. For DK Tanks having only something like Justicebringer this could be a minor upgrade.

Quel'Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned
Sword
Two-Hand
Speed 3.40
727 - 1091 Damage
(267.4 damage per second)
+144 Agility
+136 Stamina
Item Level 251
Equip: Increases attack power by 197.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 99.
Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 91

Low Stamina and Agility make this not interesting.

Lightborn Spire
Mace
Two-Hand
Speed 3.20
684 - 1026 Damage
(267.2 damage per second)
+144 Agility
+144 Stamina
Item Level 251
Equip: Increases attack power by 191.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 103.
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 84.

It could be interesting because of the expertise, however the stamina is low.


Is my opinion on these weaopns correct, or am I missing something?

 

• frmorrison

These will be good items for casual DK tanks that never got a Justicebringer. The Mace is the most "tank", while it has 20 less stamina than the first item, agility > strength for a DK tank for EH (not that either is that useful).

What is interesting is they put Agility and Expertise on a 2H weapon again (last time it was on that trash drop Naxx Mace), so that would also be nice for a Druid as well.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

layde

Deleted.