everwatch

Flame Waves can bounce you around some. I have personally had a really bad luck day where I got bounced like twice and kept getting hit by the damn wave. That was a fluke, but it happened. This caused me to be taking hits for more than 5 seconds. Sapphiron's Whirly thingamob lasts for 10 seconds. Grobbulus total f'ups have meant that I needed to stand in poison bombs for more than 5 seconds to make sure I didn't contribute to the problem. Etc... There are plenty of scenarios where the Glyph proves highly useful.

It's a glyph that is a personal choice for playstyle. It's not necessarily the best choice by any means. I mainly took it for PvP tbh. I wanted to see how it would play out versus Frost mages, Locks, etc... 10 seconds of no magic effects and reduced dmg sounded hot. Then I kept it on in some raids...and found I loved it in raids. Without actually trying it...I'm not sure if you will actually see how useful it can be. And even then, some will never like it.

http://www.skeletonjack.com/

 

level12wizard

Some notes on this BDFFUU bug:

If you use the rune before Blood Tap is finished (the 20 sec buff), the bug doesn't happen. You can click the buff off (or macro to /cancelaura).

If you use Blood Tap while it's "stuck", then Blood Tap will always activate the other Blood rune. This means you can basically have a guaranteed two death runes (assuming the bugged one isn't on cooldown) at will every time it's up.

The bugged rune will actually revert back to a Blood rune if you leave combat for awhile, however, converting it with Reaping will make it stuck again.

It's nice for those odd 1 rune abilities you might use (Bone Shield, Chains of Ice, AMZ) or if you stumble upon some weird botched rotation. A small DPS increase as well if you make constant use of Blood Tap (most people don't seem to yet), but I imagine it'll be fixed rather soon.


I generally save any trinkets/Blood Fury for Gargoyle, although that might not be the best practice. I'm wasting a minute's worth of them in between Gargoyle cooldowns.

 

Wreckis

Is the extract as good for Unholy as it seems to be? I don't want to take it over a caster if it isn't that good.

 

Alandriel

Well, it's only .5% of my dps on Sartharion with 3 drakes up attempts (WWS to be edited in later), but normally it's 2% of my dps + the crit rating.

EDIT : WWS I promised - Wow Web Stats

 

Nethris

If you happen to have 2 strong AP on-use trinkets (with 2 min CDs), you could use the first for Gargoyle, use the second for a UB just as Gargoyle ends, or for a mid Gargoyle ERW UB, and then use the first one as soon as it comes up again, and have the second be ready for your next Gargoyle use - using the first one when it comes up again will even have it come up when Gargoyle would be coming up again if you were in a 7 minute fight for some reason. However, with just one AP trinket, or one much stronger AP trinket, being able to get a full 60 seconds of buffed Gargoyle use may actually make delaying trinket use the best option - though I personally suspect that Gargoyle AP scaling may be "fixed" at some point to update to your current AP occasionally, as while it's not permanent for the entire fight, the current behavior seems pretty similar to the old BM hunter trick of starting a scorpid poison stack with a bunch of CDs going and then keeping that benefit till the stack fell off, and could be a bit unbalanced in arenas to the point I suspect people will start killing Gargoyles on sight, though depriving the DK of targets to generate RP on would be a decent counter.

 

faight

For trinkets I prefer to macro them in to a disease starter. Since I normally open with PS -> IT, I macro the first one in to PS. Given that the majority of trinkets are 20 second buffs now they'll be up for a full rotation, or two sets of rune refreshes.

Assuming SS glyph (and never having to PS/IT again) and Dirge:

PS (trinket) -> IT -> BS -> BS -> SS -> UB (trinket still up, everything gets boosted)
SS -> SS -> SS (trinket fades)
BS (trinket #2, blood fury since I'm an Orc) -> BS -> Garg (should be around 45 RP after Garg) -> SS -> SS -> DCx1

You should be between 75 to 90 RP (depending on gains from Butchery/etc) right before the last DC, then SSx3 will give you another 60 RP, so you should have no problem keeping the garg up.

The only thing having my PS trinketed would mess up is if SS puts on brand new diseases with the trinket rather than refreshing the ones you have up, in that case I guess it really wouldn't matter and you should always save one trinket for Garg and just macro the other one in willy-nilly. And obviously if you pick up proc trinkets (mirror of truth) then this goes out the window.

edit: left out some stuff I meant to.

 

wow

It might sound like something stupid to complain about, but does anyone know if players ressed as Ghouls are meant to be unable to autoattack?

I've been speccing into night of the dead lately and today on 10 man KT a DPS warrior died to frost tombs pretty early on the in fight. I pretty much kept him ressed as a ghoul for the entirity of the rest of the fight, thanks to NOTD. When I looked at recount, he only did 66,000 dmg as a ghoul total, and all from claw. I tested this myself later and found that ressurected ghouls cannot autoattack like shadow of death ghouls can.

I honestly think raise dead would be extremely useful if they could, as a shadow of death ghoul does put out some decent DPS (with autoattack on and claw spam I do about 1500-2000).

 

• Zurm

I've heard similar complaints, though I have no recount or WWS to back it up. Perhaps it's a mechanic like with the Razuvious adds? Where you have to actually right click to start the auto-attack, and just using claw won't trigger it.

As a side note, I completed my Nobles deck last night. I think it will be interesting to see how the strength version of [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] performs, I'm expecting it to be one of our best trinkets by a decent margin. I'll try to post detailed info (proc rate, ICD, etc) once I get to test it a bit later today.

 

tedv

Scourge Strike is a reapplication, not a refresh, so the new diseases have damage scaled with your attack power at the time of the scourge strike proc.

 

wildcat

Background: been rading these forums for a few months and also looking over and referncing the DPS Compendium many times. I also have a 80 DK and been to all of the Endgame content so far.

I guess nagging question I have if you have the PS Glyph or even the SS Glyph why start with PS? Most of time you never start next to the mob. I usually open with a IT > PS. Now I can understand it if you are already next to the mob and in rotation 2 or am I missing some kind of assumtion using the PS > IT first?

 

• Zurm

As unholy, if you don't open with PS, then your IT (and consequently your frost fever) will lose 10% damage from Rage of Rivendare, and 13% damage from Ebon Plague. Opening with IT is fine while leveling or trying to tag mobs, but it is a DPS loss.

Also, the PS glyph is pretty terrible in my opinion. PS hits too weak for that glyph to be worth it.

 

Zurai

Another thing to add about it that a lot of people seemingly forget about: You gain RP for all the damage absorbed by the shield. I would throw it up for Malygos's Vortex last night and I had enough RP from just those small hits to Death Coil every GCD for the entire Vortex, and I started it at 20 RP.

 

sthompson

I don't know if this is exactly the spot for this or not but I'm seeing other WWS go up so what the heck... I'm pretty undergeared except for a few items (still wearing 7 or so pre-level 80 items) and I'd like some input as to areas I could improve to get better from some of the more progressed, better attuned DKs out there who are more familiar w/ WWS analization... Here is part of a Naxx 10 run. Please look over it and if there is anything that would spur conversation, anywhere I could improve, things I could change I'm all ears... Trying to stay on top of my game... There is a patchwork in there I believe...

Am I getting the appropriate amounts of dmgs from my abilities or am I using something too much / not enough? How much of my ghoul's damage ISN'T included on the WWS report? These are just a few of the questions I have... Thanks in advance.

WWS

 

tedv

I was thinking some more about trinket choices and I believe my math for [Extract of Necromantic Power] is off. Specifically, it's not fair to discount the crit, given that we have reasonable spell crit rating. I also forgot the value of Ebon Plague, giving an extra 13% damage. On the other hand, there's also our relatively bad spell miss rate. Assuming we have 8% hit rating from gear and 0% from talents (since they don't apply to the proc anyway), plus 3% from Misery, there's a 6% miss chance on the proc. It procs once every 30 seconds for us. (10% chance with one tick every 1.5 seconds means 15 seconds after ICD wears off before a proc.)

Our spell crit should be around 35% raid buffed. That's 20% from character sheet, 5% from Moonkin, 10% from Improved Scorch. And then there's 13% extra damage from Ebon Plague. So 94% of the time we hit for on average 113% * 135% = 153% of the tooltip damage. The tooltip damage is 1050 on average, so the expected damage per proc is 1050 * 0.94 * 1.13 * 1.35 = 1500 per proc. Given one proc every 30 seconds, this is a 50 DPS bonus.

There's also the value of 95 crit rating, which is worth roughly 150 attack power. Do we have a good estimate on the conversion rate between X attack power and 1 real DPS?

The next question I want to answer is... "For what value of X is [Extract of Necromantic Power] better than [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]?"

Assumptions:
1 crit = 1.6 attack power
1 strength = 2.4 attack power

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]: 190 strength = 456 Attack Power
[Extract of Necromantic Power]: 95 crit + 50 DPS = 152 Attack Power + 50 DPS

When is 304 Attack Power better than 50 DPS? When 6.08 attack power provides more than 1 DPS.

We haven't actually crunched numbers on the real DPS gain from 1 attack power (although this is a good idea). But I actually think a 6:1 ratio is a pretty reasonable approximation. Remember that a lower ratio (like 5:1) favors attack power more, meaning nobles is better. And a higher ratio (eg. 7:1) favors DPS more, meaning extract is better.

TL;DR Summary:
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] and [Extract of Necromantic Power] are competitive and it's not clear which is better. They are both superior to all other options.

 

• Zurm

We still don't know much about our stat weights, but after talking to a rogue friend I have to question your analysis of.

Lets use some rogue weights, obviously they won't match DK but we can still learn something from it:

Rogues are roughly 1 AP = 0.6 DPS so 50dps / 0.6 = 83.33 AP. Crit is like 1.5 AP for a rogue, so 142 AP + 83 AP = 225 AP, which is quite poor compared to the 300+ that all decent trinkets give. Darkmoon card's proc is 15 seconds long with a 45 sec ICD, so the uptime is something like 15 second every 46 sec (lets say uptime is 33% just to keep stuff even). As such, totally untalented and before raid buffs, the str [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] is ON AVERAGE 180AP + (600 * 33%)AP = 380 AP.

To me, they don't seem close at all. That's not to say that the extract isn't on par with trinkets like [Mirror of Truth] or the crit/AP on use that Loatheb drops in 10 mans. But it's no where near the Darkmoon card, even if you alter the stats weights any realistic amount.

 

tedv

To settle this question we need to know the real DPS increase from 1 attack power (or inversely, how much attack power you need to get a real 1 DPS increase). This is taking into account all raid buffs, armor reductions, etc. Are there any simulators or spreadsheets we can trust well enough to plug in +10 attack power, +50, and +100 to see what results it gives? In this case we need more than just the relative values of one stat to another; we need the actual DPS increase with a relatively low margin of error.

If not, I guess there will be a massive theorycrafting post incoming.

 

• Zurm

Give me two weeks or so to finish the Rawr module, and it should be able to spit out accurate stat weights for individual gear/talents/stats. The ability to calculate stats weights is already implemented (and is accurate), however, the model that those weights are based on is questionable to me currently. I need more time tweaking. Unfortunately, making an accurate model for three full talent trees and three full skill trees is proving to be quite a lot of work.

I agree entirely though. We don't know enough to make the kind of theorycrafting knowledge other classes are making. I don't want to come off as saying "YOU'RE WRONG", I just wanted to point out for another melee class it is VERY different, so much so that I don't think it can apply to DKs.

 

Malcophant

Spell crit is more like 40-45% raid buffed, at least from my own experience (I have 24.2% spell crit unbuffed). This doesn't change the numbers drastically, but it pushes them a bit in favor of the extract.

 

aldy

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]

I couldn't find a recently upgraded proc watcher, so I just used the Blizzard Stopwatch. Proc lasts 15 seconds and then there is an average 31 second downtime before the next proc (based on a sample of about 30). So 33% uptime is correct.

The proc itself is 300 str, but with the extra 5% from talents it goes up to 315 str. In a raid with kings that is going to be 345 str. Proc combines with Rune of the FC for 1.30(315+current), doesn't matter which one comes up first. Extra str does get transferred to the ghoul. Sidenote: summoning a ghoul when you have str buffs up does not effect the ghoul's resting str :-)

Procs on:
all damaging attacks (auto, IT, PS, BS, SS, DS, DC, BB, pest, strang)
Frost fever and blood plague DoT ticks

Does NOT proc it:
DnD, UB
pets (ghoul, gargoyle)
non-damaging (chains of ice, mind freeze)

Basically, it will proc within 1-2 seconds of it coming off ICD.

 

NeuroMedivh

Got one of these this morning, by far the best trinket for us right now.

Now the only question is which of the other trinkets is best for us. Right now I'm leaning toward's Bandit Insignia.

 

Tojara

Are people forgetting about Fury of the Five flights? This trinket more or less is a constant 320 attack power and has very little chance to fall off given that we can use abilities on the run to keep it up.

 

Shadowalker

The problem is how long it takes to stack up, and the risk of it falling off while on the run. As far as I know, our spells such as death coil and icy touch do not refresh the stack, because it stacks only from melee and ranged attacks not spells.

Correct me if I'm wrong on that. However, Fury of the Five Flights is excellent on fights with little movement such as Patchwerk, if that's what you're worried about.

 

Alandriel

Wow Web Stats

25 man Sartharion, 2 drakes, haste Sigil (damn you, Heigan), Greatness, Extract, for all your proc counting needs.

 

• Zurm

Just to add to this, I've also had it proc on first aid ticks, and Fallen Crusader procs. It really is ANY heal or damage. As such, I expect it to proc often for unholy. While DPSing, each white attack should offer us the white hit, necrosis damage, and Blood Presence heal. Each strike or ability then has itself + Blood Presence heal to proc it. It had extremely high uptime in my tests, and is without a doubt (in my mind, at least) the best DPS DK trinket in the game by a wide margin.

Not forgetting, but it's far better for other classes than for us. First, we attack slowly. Charges will take a while to build up, because it will only work on melee swings (or ranged attacks which we don't have... it means bow shots, not spells: [Fury of the Five Flights]).

Also, 20 stacks means that if we drop it, we are screwed and have to rebuild it. Realistically, it could take as long as 30 seconds for a DK to fully build up those charges. While that doesn't matter for patchwerk (again, the EXCEPTION to the rule), it does matter for many other fights. MANY. It's best served in the hands of a rogue, hunter, or fury warrior who deal physical damage very quickly, and IMO you should be passing it until at least all those classes have one.

I'm personally rocking a [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] and a [Mirror of Truth]. I still have my doubts about the extract, so I'm hoping we can get some better data on it, because 50 dps + some crit doesn't mean much when you're already doing over 4k dps.

 

tedv

I ran some quick napkin math on the proc of Bandit's Insignia and it's roughly the same DPS as the extract. Since 190 attack power > 95 crit, that makes Bandit Insignia the better choice by a small margin.