Shalymar

What if we took the 2 points from Unholy Aura and gave it to Dirge?

Something like this 17/0/54 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the rotation I am using right now on some test dummies to get some numbers.

1st Rotation
PS --> IT --> BS --> BS --> SS --> Runic Power Dump (UB/DC)

2nd Rotation
SS --> SS --> SS --> Runic Power Dump (DC)

 

NeuroMedivh

That build lacks Epidemic and Reaping, so I don't see how you're doing a triple SS on the second rotation.

 

Davia

I know that you've said you don't use it, but for those of us with glyphed Scourge Strike, desecration is even worse. The SS glyph isn't to be relied upon for refreshing diseases, but offhand I would estimate that I only have to Plague Strike about once a minute once I get going on a single target. Assuming that number is anywhere near accurate, you're looking at about 1/5 uptime for desecration, and so ~1% total damage for 5 talent points on a stationary fight.

 

Edenfall

No, Unholy Aura gives an insane benefit to the entire raid at all times; indirectly increasing DD uptime and increasing the success of actions involving movement, which includes a lot of // most fights in the game.

If anything: Settling for a 2/3 Outbreak and 2/3 Ravenous Dead would be an option.


The thread is less than two pages full, so far. And therefore I suggest you read up on the points of why we do what we do. We are trying to find the best build(s) for Unholy DPS, and that requires reading what other people also think.

Epidemic is removed for a 12 second rotation for up to 100% uptime of Desecration.
Reaping is out because tedy's numbers suggest 2x Blood Runes for 2x BS does greater damage than 2x Death Runes for 1x SS.

 

Hidden

First, 1% of 13% is 0.13%, not 1.3%. However if you're GCD capped, Virulence allows you to do a DC after IT instead of having to cast IT twice if it missed, increasing the total damage gain by more than 1% of IT+DC damage.
Second, why should you have a 95% disease uptime? From the spreadsheets I know and my Naxx25 raids thus far having a rotation you just repeat every 20 seconds is suboptimal, a priority system worked just that much better for me in raids and the spreadsheets. (Priorities being Blood Plague > Frost Fever > SS > BS > Gargoyle > UB > DC)
UB is also doing way more damage for me than DC currently, even single target.

I was pulling ~2.6-2.8k DPS playing like that on Patchwerk25 in full rare/green gear.

In case anyone is wondering why I'm not specced into Unholy Aura:
That build was mostly for Patchwerk because we had some problems with missing geared tanks.

 

NeuroMedivh

Before you castigate me for failure to read, please take your own advice and read what *I* wrote. I merely stated that with the build he linked, he would not be able to do the rotation he described, as he would not have the Death runes to do 3xSS in the second rotation, and without Epidemic those Scourge Strikes would be sans disease.

 

Shalymar

You are right and that rotation was based upon having Reaping which I should have mentioned.


-------------------------------------------------------

Some info about our rotation and a question.

We start out with 2 Frost Runes, 2 Unholy Runes, 2 Blood Runes and no Runic Power (Warrior Rage).

Our rotation starts with Plague Strike
PS(0s) -- IT(1.5s) – BS(3s) – BS(4.5s) – SS(6s) – UB(7.5) – 2.5 sec wait on Runes.

The reason we start with PS (Plague Strike) is because it infects the target with Blood Plague, the talent Rage of Rivendare adds 10% more damage if the target is infected with Blood Rage.

Each ability cost these Runes.

PS – Cost 1 Unholy Rune
IT – Cost 1 Frost Rune
BS – Cost 1 Blood Rune
BS - Cost 1 Blood Rune
SS – Cost 1 Unholy and 1 Frost Rune

After we cast SS, we have used up all our Runes (0 FR, 0 UR, 0 BR) and have 4 seconds before our first rune Unholy should be available (10 sec cooldown). At this time, we should have a bank of about 65 Runic Power. We gain this from casting our previous abilities.

PS - gain 15 Runic Power (10 base + 5 from Dirge)
IT – gain 10 Runic Power
BS - gain 10 Runic Power
BS - gain 10 Runic Power
SS - gain 20 Runic Power (15 base + 5 from Dirge)

This is where our Runic Power Dump comes in. Unholy Blight cost 60 Runic Power to cast.

Now, we are around 10s to 12s since we cast our first PS. Since we don't have Epidemic PS and IT will only last 12 seconds, I am wondering if we should recast PS and then IT for their disease counters and debuffs on the target or go with our second rotation (posted below) which now seems lack luster because of the lack of disease counters on the target?

With this build, our second rotation would have to look something like this:

SS(10s) – BS(11.5s) – BS(13s) – SS(14.5s) – DC(16s) – 4 sec wait on Runes

 

Natelo

New here, so bear with me.

clicky

I have been thinking about this build for a long time, and i think this is one of the most effective build to come up with,

why? because it has good synergy with the trees, and basing on what i've read in this tread, necrosis and BcB are worth the points, im not so into math and such, and i like to know what i could change

My rotation is: PS, IT, BS, BS, SS, UB, SS, SS, SS, and then start from the beginning.

i know i still have one point missing, i dont know yet what to do with it, my first instict was putting it in master of ghouls, for more dps, but i still want your opinions on this, Imp icy touch could prove to be beneficial too.


Any good?

 

Customs

Unholy tree looks good but move one point from Outbreak to Master of Ghouls. Control of your ghoul means you can control it's survival, which is a good thing. Plus the ability to save a healer on trash, etc. You should also take a point out of Outbreak for something I will explain a bit later.

Since this is an Unholy DPS spec discussion, the points in toughness aren't necessary. It could be argued that movement impairing effects take from DPS time, but compared to 5% to crit with everything, this is nothing.

In the blood tree you should pick up Two-Handed Spec for obvious reasons, keep Bladed Armor maxed out, and allow your extra points from Outbreak and the one roaming point you have to go into Dark Conviction. 5% crit is not worth passing up for Toughness.

In the end it should look something like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Natelo

i agree with most of you changes however, i use thoughness to get armor scaled better, in the beginning the 5% crit is probably better, but at T8-9 would the thoughness armor+ with bladed armor not outdps the 5% crit?

 

Inamorata

Did Patchwerk 25 yesterday and got surprised by how much damage minions contribute with.
WWS
17/0/54
Glyphs: [Glyph of Death's Embrace] , [Glyph of Pestilence], [Glyph of Death Strike], [Glyph of Raise Dead] Forgot to change them before raid.
Used a IT-PS-SS_BS-BS-SS-SS-SS rotation.
Used gargoyle twice with a powerup trinket.

My ghoul did 149289(according to recount since wws don't pick up ghouls) damage or about a average 460 dps.
Gargoyle did 136194 damage or a average of 1134 dps while up.

If you include the minions damage to mine I did about 3800 dps, and that's with basically only rare items from lvl 75-79 dungeons mixed with 3-4 heroics drops and [Armageddon].

 

Customs

This discussion isn't about the future, it's about what currently tops the charts(or gets as close as possible). I'm not sure if the tier 8/9 armor values will be high enough to top 5% crit, nor am I sure that it is even reasonably possible to top the 5% crit due to no set values for AP/Crit as a DK. What I do know is that at the moment the 5% crit is providing more DPS than the extra 15% armor.

 

tedv

Wanted to reiterate what other posters said. The two points in Unholy Aura are not optional. They are half of the reason we even get a raid slot, as the raidwide movement speed buff cannot be contributed by any other class. This allows the entire raid to upgrade boot enchants, a sizable increase in raid DPS.

Good catch on the bad math. Regarding how missed Icy Touches mess up your cycle, I'm not convinced this is a big enough concern to seriously shift the value of Virulence. Remember, it only affects 1% of your Icy Touch casts. Even without the Scourge Strike Glyph when Icy Touch is cast once every 20 seconds, the talent will stop this situation once every 33 minutes. So we've basically concluded that both Virulence and Outbreak are bad, and you should always max Necrosis first.

On the subject of the Scourge Strike glyph, I wasn't suggesting slavish adherence to a fixed cycle. Rather that was my estimate for scourge strike uptime when following the algorithm "Scourge Strike if diseases are up, cast diseases if they are not". It seemed like diseases would be refreshed once every 40 seconds. Refreshing the diseases two seconds after they are down works out to roughly 95% uptime. I do think it's important to wait for the diseases to fall off before actually refreshing them though, or we're guaranteed to miss the last disease tick.

 

Solithaira

A question with regards a discrepancy I note between the priority system and our standard rotation.

Do we only follow the PS, IT, BS, BS, SS rotation the first time through so that we can start converting runes to death runes, followed by all subsequent rotations placing the SS before the BS? Or would someone using the priority system always cast SS before the BS?

 

Davia

I have personally been always casting SS first, although I'm not sure if that's optimal. I plan on screwing around with the boss target dummy a bit when I get home today to see how much of a difference it makes though.

 

tedv

As this is our second data point, I thought it would be interesting to review some basic numbers.

Average damage of some interchangeable abilities:
Scourge Strike: 3900
Blood Strike: 2000
Death Coil: 2750

So skipping the Reaping talent actually gains you 100 damage every 20 seconds (or 5 DPS) at no cost of runic power, assuming you can spend the extra GCD. I'm certain that when you get the Scourge Strike relic or the +5 runic power set bonus, reaping will be worthwhile again though. 5 runic power alone is worth over 300 damage from Death Coil.

This parse also shows the value of Necrosis. I noticed your build only has 3/5 Impurity, but still seems to provide high damage. The question is what percent of your damage is affected by Impurity. "Spells" seems to mean Icy Touch and Death Coil for a standard rotation, and probably also disease damage. What else does the talent affect though? Does it affect Scourge Strike (a melee attack) because it deals non-physical damage? I'd think not but it probably needs to be tested. Next time I respec I'll try it out, I suppose. If it's just diseases, death coil, and icy touch, then the talent only affects 24% of your damage. If it also affects the gargoyle, then it modifies 37% of the damage, which means you definitely want the talent maxed out.

And last, a few numbers:

Damage sources affected by haste: 33%
Damage sources affected by crit: 73% (64% melee, 9% spell)
Damage sources affected by attack power: 100%

I think backs up what we already know about the relative ordering of stats. We clearly want attack power and hit first, crit second, and haste as a distant third.

 

Corvin.

I am not sure how you arrived at this number. I suspect you counted out the disease damage, but that's not actually right. Because of Wandering Plague diseases are affected by crit and a "critting" disease tick deals double normal damage (in a single target situation) so the damage increase from crit is the same as for auto-attack for example.

Which leaves only Necrosis and Blood-Caked Strikes, which made up only 7% of total damage in this parse. What I mean is crit is even better than you stated (obviously it'd be different for a build without Wandering Plague, but that's not what we're discussing).

 

tayedaen

You can't cast SS at 10s since you have only one single rune at 10s (frost rune number one).
So i can only be:
wait (10s) - SS(11.5s) – BS(13s) – BS(14.5s) – SS(16s) – DC(17.5s) - 2.5 sec wait - next rune (20s)
In the 4 secs of your proposal, we have GCDs for 2 runepower dumps, while in reality you have only one.
So it does make a difference.

I wrote a spreadsheet to specifically test these scenarios, but it's still unfinished due to RL.

Now if you do not cast SS, but PS-> IT again, then you could fit 2 runepower dumps.
And you would gain more runepower too since 10+10 > 15.
One additional advantage would be that we gain 2 points from epidemic to use it in another place.

Now this leads me to another scenario:
What if we include the IT glyph ?
The glyph would give us much more runepower, and so we could fill more GCDs with a runepower dump.

The scenario would be:
Use the IT glyph, put talent points into dirge and butchery, and use the following four line rotation:
line 1: PS(0s) - IT(1.5s) – BS(3s) – BS(4.5s) – SS(6s) – RD(7.5s) – 2.5 sec wait on Runes
line 2: PS(10s) - IT(11.5s) – RD(13s) – SS(14.5s) – SS(16s) – RD(17.5s) - RD(19s)
line 3: wait for GCD(20s) - PS(20.5s) - IT(22s) – BS(23.5s) – BS(25s) – SS(26.5s) – RD(28s) – 0.5 sec wait on Runes
line 4: PS(30s) - IT(31.5s) – RD(33s) – SS(34.5s) – SS(36s) – RD(37.5s) - RD(39s)

(RD = runepower dump, if enough runepower is present)
All the lines can be shifted by up to 1 second because if we use a RD at the end of the line (example: at 9s) then we get into situations where we have to wait for GCD (like we have it at 20s).
But we always have free room at the end of the lines to get back in sync.
And since runes always come back at (first usage)+ (10 * (rotation_line-1)), we are not loosing anything in the end.

Now with this scenario,
- IT does less damage due to the glyph
- we replace two SS with PS+IT
- we have 100% disease uptime
- we gain 2 points from epidemic
- we gain 50 RP each rotation (40 from the 4 ITs, and 10 from the 2 x (IT+PS instead of SS) )

My personal oppinion is that it works very well in fights with a lot of movement due to the fact that I can use DC and IT while moving.
However I am not sure about the numbers (yet).

Has anyone already a final conclusion about this scenario?

Edit: Added the fact that not only DC but IT also can be used while moving.

 

tedv

It was actually to be consistent in my fuzzy math. For example, the numbers for white damage swings include both non-crit and crit swings, and those together account for 26% of the total damage. With a 35% crit rate, this damage is actually broken down as 19% of total damage from "normal" white swings and 7% of total damage coming from the critical strike bonus on white swing crits.

For example, suppose there were 3 white damage hits, one of which crit. The two normal white hits are all 1000 damage and the white crit is 2000 damage. This could be classified as 3000 normal white swing damage (the damage you score just for getting a hit) plus 1000 white swing crit damage (the extra 1000 your crit got over its normal 1000 just for hitting).

Of course, all of those numbers are lumped together. In the cases of DoTs and wandering plague though, it's different. The non-crit damage is recorded by Frost Fever and Blood Plague, but the crit damage is recorded by Wandering Plague. So I added those numbers together so that they reflected the same concept as all the melee strikes.

To be technically correct about crit application, however, we should string through the parse and determine what the percentage of damage would be if the crit rating was 0%, and then get a breakdown of what percent of these sources can have crit apply to them. I'm pretty sure it will be in the 70% ballmark though, so fuzzy math seems good enough. All we're I'm doing is concluding that attack power is better than crit, and getting a precise number isn't going to change that conclusion.

 

Shalymar

Yes you are correct we would be waiting even longer for runes to refresh which makes me think even more now that this rotation would better than trying to squeeze in extra SS . I need to spend some time testing once I get done leveling.

PS(0s) -- IT(1.5s) – BS(3s) – BS(4.5s) – SS(6s) – Runic Power Dump

 

• Ren

One thing I want to bring up: Night of the Dead. Now I haven't had a chance to see the damage breakdown over an entire run with WWS, but with Recount my ghoul does roughly 15-17% of my damage on a single target fight. 2/2 Night of the Dead pretty much means that you can summon a new ghoul whenever your current dies to AoE. Any thoughts about the theoretical DPS contribution of this talent? Remember that it's only competing with the lackluster trio of Outbreak/Virulence/Desecration.

Also, once you obtain [Sigil of Awareness] your Scourge Strikes always hit harder than two Blood Strikes. Keep that in mind before theorycrafting too much about non-Reaping specs.

 

A Man In Black

How much harder? It may be that Reaping/SOAwareness is still not a better choice than the alternatives.

 

Shalymar

If we take Reaping, we would need to take Epidemic so the uptime on Blood Plague and Frost Fever last 15 seconds instead of 12 adding to the bonus damage for Scourge Strikes x3. Now the question is what do we get rid of that cost 5 talent points to get these two talents and is it worth it?

 

Davia

I'm thinking about respeccing to grab Night of the Dead myself. Going to take my 1 point in Outbreak and my 3rd point in virulence, I think.

 

Ommar

Sirs,
In consideration of the debate of scourge strike vs blood strike effiicency,has anyone tried to sub speccing into frost for annhiliation and replacing ss with obliterate? I am yet a level 74 dk wth sub par gear so and dps input from me would be useless.
Unless vicious strikes are additive obliterate should do more damage with armor peneteration gear