55 hits, and then the other 60 white swings were crits.

I guess I shouldn't try to decipher WWS after a week of pure insomnia.

Rawr item database starts with a preset list of items as inserted by the various developers. You can easily add/remove your own by adding item codes from wowhead. Note that the developer (Zurm in this case) has little, if not nothing, to do with the list of items that appear in application. If it is showing paladin tier gear, then the DK item isn't appearing in your item cache.

It would be nice if someone who has the time would generate a DK itemCache.xml that would contain a set of dk desired items, which would leave out the pally stuff you don't like. This would also speed up the application.

The DK module isn't actually complete. It's in Rawr kind of like an "Alpha" at the moment. To be perfectly honest, I haven't worked on it for at least 3 weeks now due to work and of course the very pressing matter of perfecting my character since the expansion was released.

I can assure you in the near future I will resume work on it. For now, treat it more like a toy than a reliable model. I highly suggest Method's spreadsheet or Deathgraf in the meantime. For now, what little Rawr time I do have is spent updating the Paladin Retribution module (the reason you see paladin gear is because the DK module was in fact originally copied from the Retribution module, then heavily modified) as there are far more Retribution paladins crying (big surprise!) than DK's, at the moment.

If anyone is well-versed in C#/.NET and would like to help with the DK module, I could certainly use it. Creating a new module takes a great deal of time, and perfecting the model always requires a second set of eyes.

After finishing up Naxx25 and Sarth25, here's what I have to say on Ghoul/Garg survivability as of now.

Night of the Dead is godly. I highly recommend a build where you take a point of out Virulence for 2/2 in it. It makes it significantly easier for you to keep your ghoul in the game if he gets killed by mostly unavoidable circumstances.

Your Ghoul is very likely to die on Sapphrion, more so than any boss. However, he tends to be able to be kept alive through NotD. There are various other fights where your ghoul has a chance to get beat up (Grobbulus, Heigan, etc), but I don't think it's too bad.

Sartharion is a pain in the ass. I think I went through a stack and a half of corpse dust in a handful of attempts because of Flame Tsunami/Lava Wave/Fire Wall/whatever. While YOU may be out of it, your dumbass Ghoul trails behind you and gets hit by it, guaranteeing death. It was hit and miss, he would get hit by it even when I was on the farthest edge of the wave.

Gargoyle really sucks on AE fights. It's such a huge portion of your damage, yet it gets obliterated by the stupidest things and there is really nothing you can do about it. Obviously, you can't keep bringing it back. I really hope Blizzard makes it immune to "raid" damage or something, because it's just dumb. Looking at WWS of Sapphiron, it basically gets four Gargoyle Strikes off, gets minimal healing from JoL, and dies to full damage from Frost Aura. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This includes all sorts of things, including Fire Cyclones on Sartharion which do 4k damage. /rage

Wow Web Stats

Heres a WWS from our raid tonight (first time I log one so it seems messed up here and there but should give an overall picture).

Sadly though it's not comparable to last weeks dps, our patch kill was far from smooth (1 tank and some dps death in the start). I messed up and played the entire raid without the SS glyph (I was even specced out of Desecration) and on several fights we had terrible lag.

/whine off!

I have to agree with everyone loving Night of the Dead it's simply an amazing talent for raiding, my ghoul was up constantly.

Edit: Looking more closely at the WWS report it seems to differ from the recount data I had during the raid. I didn't use Army of the Dead but it seems my ghoul-dps might be missing from several fights.

I think you may be undervaluing [item]40684[\ITEM]: Timing this proc together with crusaders and fully raid buff nets me around 7,5k AP droping my gargoyle at this point gives a nice dps boost.

Virulence VS Outbreak

Hi all,
I have seen in a classic Unholy template you usually put 3 talent points in Virulence and 0 in Outbreak.
Why is the +3% spell hit a better choice than 30% damage in 3 magic skills (PS, Pest, BB)?

Levelling 70-80 (even in normal instances) I use really often Pest and BB (and always PS) because of multi-pull.

Is - Virulence 3 and Outbreak 0 - a better choise only when I hit 80 and I will mostly do heroic "1 target" istances?

Thanks for answers,

Hemfive

I'm pretty sure the consensus is if you need the hit, go for it (without factoring in spell hit, I personally don't feel expending the effort to cap it is a bit of a waste), if not, go for Outbreak.

Most theory crafting only takes in to account single target dps which covers most boss fights, therefore to maximize you would want to be spellhit capped and melée hit capped to not waste stats on gear you would want 9% max melée which would translate to aprox 11% spell hit(?) so by getting virulence this will bring you up to 14% and with raid debuffs you would hit cap.
I personally would prefere outbreak with 1 point in virulence but I have overcapped melée hit. The diffence between single target may be a little less (due to I could replace some hit with crit) but aoe potential is much better. I believe personal choice is what it comes down to and how much importance you place on trash.

@Rawr and DPS Compendium Stat Values:
The DPS Compendium stat values are a very rough estimate and not anywhere near exact for two reasons:
a) The stat values always depend on your gear and your buffs.
b) The stat values in that thread are taken from an early spreadsheet version that still had quite a few errors, one of them reducing the value of crit rating and crit in general by a rather large amount.

In general I'd really like the DPS compendium to be updated, leaving it in the forum with so much wrong, outdated or questionable information really doesn't help with keeping the other threads clean.

We finally managed to down 3-Drake Sartharion last night. Here's a WWS of the night.

As you can tell from the parses, it is a VERY melee unfriendly fight. The drakes have a tiny hitbox, and while this isn't an issue when killing them individually, it becomes a very serious issue when you have to worry about void zones, lava walls, and maintaining your dps. Also, the first drake has a habit of running around like a madman hatching eggs, further hurting melee dps. I was also tasked with ensuring the little fire adds didn't stick to our drake tank (had to bring them over to our AOE tank) and tanking acolytes in the portals.

Some things I did learn:

-Ghouls will die pretty much every lava wave. It's just something you have to accept.
-Gargoyles will die within 5-10 seconds every time. I'll probably be making a post on the official forums about how Gargoyles need to be unkillable.
-You *must* be fluid with your rotations, and expect to reapply diseases more than anything else.
-Once the second drake lands and until it dies, IBF + AMS will NOT save you from the lava wave. You must react to it like everyone else.
-UB's use is ineffective. Due to the constant need to move around and avoid dying, you are often out of range. Use DC instead.

On a more personal note, 4pc T7 would have really helped DPS this fight, allowing me to death coil more and rely less on melee attacks.

Are you SURE? I heard our hunters mentioning it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's related to the random massive damage bug (on our first Sarth attempt, our Prot Pally inexplainably had 11k consecration ticks...notice he did 15k DPS). I would have expected a blue post to make a change like that official, with some warning.

I've read over the posts in regards to DC v. UB, but not being the math junkie I have a question about my own personal findings on it.

In a quick 60 seconds on the training dummy - unbuffed, 3160 AP

UB = 184 average tick (60 rp)
DC = 1959 average (40 rp)

So, over the course of 60 seconds UB has to be applied 3 times, and then only as the previous application drops. Any mistimed applications or overlaps reduce it's damage, which personally is what I find to be problematic.

Over 60 seconds, and our 180 rp cap for this comparison, you then get:

UB : 184*60 = 11040 damage
DC : 1959*4 (with 20 rp remaining) = 7836 damage

Now, this is pretty damning in and of itself and right where my confusion starts. If I look deeper at the numbers I see that my DC has, unbuffed, a 24% crit rate. Meaning it's probable I'm going to crit 1 in 4 DCs, which changes things:

UB : 184*60 = 11040 damage
DC : 1959*5 (with 20 rp remaining) = 9795 damage

Closer, but still easily pointing to UB. But again looking at my log I note that ANY interuption in UB uptime over the course of those 60 seconds wrecks havoc on it's output. Let's say given lag, standard player issues, and the general mayhem of a raid fight that I miss, overlap, or cost myself an average of 2 ticks per UB cycle. That's only 2 seconds per cycle, 6 seconds over the course of a minute worth of damage.

UB : 184*54 = 9936 damage
DC : 1959*5 (with 20 rp remaining) = 9795 damage (with 20 additional RP)

Am I way off here? To me it seems that unless you are certain you can run UB with zero interuptions over the course of a fight, it's not a matter of simply counting ticks; it's a matter of total fight time v. UB uptime - and if you cannot match those two incredibly closely, then DC is going to yield better results. Now of course if you ever have more than 1 target in range, UB should dominate DC in output, but in single target fights am I totally missing something here?

While soloing or hitting a dummy DC might be occasionally superior, in a raiding situation it will not be (unless the particular fight calls for a lot of movement where you are not within 10yds of the boss at all times, such as 3-drake sartharion). In a raid, you get a LOT more AP from buffs, and UB scales almost twice as well as DC. Gear also plays a large factor.

From my experiences when I wasn't tanking at Sartharion (I'm the Fire Elemental/Whelp tank now):
- You're right that the Ghoul will pretty much die with every lava wave because he sticks behind the drake which usually is a bad place to be when the lava waves come.
- I was often able to keep the Gargoyle up when I summoned it in the area where one lava wave doesn't hit it until the lava came from the other side, this probably depends on how the drake is tanked though.
- Why shouldn't IBF+AMS save you? If you have AMS up when the wave hits you, you don't get the DOT and just some very low initial damage
- UB obviously depends on the situation, I've often used it to do some additional damage to the Fire Elementals and Whelps when they were near the melees - otherwise you're correct, it's often wasted

I meant more as a reactionary measure, I actually never tried to AMS before I got hit, but it's interesting that it prevents application of the DOT. As for UB, our adds tank is on the exact opposite side as the drake tank, so I never had the option of AOE except for the occasional D&D dropped in the AOE pack.

On a related note:
Other magical effects that AMS allows us to ignore? It would be nice to get a comprehensive list of "great times to use AMS in PvE."


My personal observations:

1. KT's Aoe Frostbolt is worth a savy 40 RP or so with AMS up.
2. AMS appears to work on Loethaleb's periodic damage.
3. Glyphed AMS before Malygos' Vortex lands you with a great deal more Runic power than you had previously.
4. You can be flat out immune to the arcane bolts on that same fight.
5. Most of Sartherion's abilities, including the fire meteor stuff, Lava wave, and breath. It appears to work on this version of his drake's void zones too.

What I'd like to see tried:

1. Sapphiron's Deep Beath. Is it magical damage or a death effect like void zones? Only one way to find out...

The hit cap for 2H or 1H against bosses is definately 8%, however it likely wont last. From what I'm told, they "accidentally" lowered mele hit for 2H and non-DW by 1% instead of spell hit by 1%. I wouldn't be surprised if this got reverted in a future patch.

I heard this last week from a source and have been testing since then with just over 8% hit and I haven't received any misses in all my raids.

Is it worth trying to keep your Ghoul up in the Sarth situation by micro-managing its Leap ability (which can be used on Friendly targets to get him out of the way), or just not bother with all that and make sure to spec Night of the Dead, re-summoning him as needed? Re-summoning may be kind of costly Corpse Dust-wise, but with the minor rune that gives runic power on Ghoul summon it might not be such a bad thing.

Fully talented in Magic Suppression, I've totally absorbed a Deep Breath. It's a very handy way to get max runic power. By the way, her breath can crit - I've absorbed 150k damage in the 10 man.

Just thinking off the top of my head, for Sarth - since ghouls can leap to other players (like intervene), would a handy /tar healer /cast leap macro work for getting the ghoul away from the wave? I haven't tried it yet, but plan to tonight.

Does Unholy Blight count as a disease for the purpose for Wandering Plague? That would add to its damage by quite a bit... or at least cause it to scale as well as Deathcoil.

Also, if you had [Extract of Necromantic Power]. Unholy Blight would be better by virtue of the trinket's proc.

First time poster, long time reader. My glyphs are SS, Ghoul, and IT and as far as I can tell, my spec is the same as Xyrm's. One thing I think that I need clarified is the rotation that we are supposed to be using. Are we supposed to use the 2x BS when the death runes are up? Or are we supposed to use those death runes for a SS (or do we wait until we get the sigil of awareness to implement this)? Maybe I missed that in the pages behind, but if someone could clarify that for me, that would be great.

The reason I am asking is because if you take a look at my armory, I have 3553 AP unbuffed, 30.85 crit and 262 hit and I am noticing that some people in this thread are easily out DPSing me on certain fights. I thought I was pretty certain that I was following the correct rotation-- IT>PS (or vice versa)>BS>BS>SS>UB>SS>SS>SS>RD. I do my best to keep my ghoul up, but we all know it's survivability is weak and I try to use my gargoyle whenever he is off CD and I have 100 RP. However, it seems I have trouble to do anything but rune abilities when the gargoyle is up with no RP dumps--with the exception of 1 UB while blowing my empowering RW so I don't hit 0 RP.

I'll link a few WWS, but note that my gear changed from WWS to WWS--any tips would be much appreciated as I know I can do better than I currently am.
Wow Web Stats

Wow Web Stats

The third one is crap because it's the Gothik and Horseman fight and I was not near the person who did the log.