Unholy DPS Discussion - Page 2

Nefastilock · 11/20/08, 2:48 PM

While we crunching numbers for unholy dps, I get to wonder that if choose the route of taking all points in Necrosis & Blood-Caked blade, is haste a valuable stat?

tedv · 11/20/08, 3:14 PM

Originally Posted by Zurm

You aren't listening to what I'm saying. Sure, it "allows you" to replace a PS+IT with a scourge strike. However, it has a 32% chance to NOT proc AT ALL in a 4x SS rotation. and when it does proc, doesn't mean it will save you. It has to proc every 18 seconds, or you are SOL. And, when it DOESN'T proc, you will usually have to wait 3-5 seconds for runes to come off cooldown so you can re-apply diseases. Those 3-5 seconds are a time where you are doing reduced ability damage (not just strikes... DC/UB too due to a lack of ebon plague) AND are missing on diseases that even in my fairly bad gear tick for just under 600 in a raid situation.

The SS glyph would be good if it was reliable, or was predictable in some way. Right now, its just good for one thing: a CHANCE to make your diseases tick longer on a boss with a lot of running while you can't be on the boss. And in most of those situations, you are AoEing instead and can just refresh diseases with pestilence (not on your current target, but every other target).

This might be a play issue though. If you have 2 seconds left on disease and you use your last UB on Scourge Strike when the next pair is up 6 seconds later, then you are taking a huge risk. In this situation, I think you are better off manually refreshing diseases. But if you have two pairs of UB runes up with 2 seconds of disease left, a scourge strike glyph proc on the first hit has the potential to be nothing but free damage. If it doesn't work out, you just refresh. The other thing to note is that while a 4 scourge strike rotation has only a 68% chance of a refresh, if you do get that refresh and score a 5 scourge strike cycle, your chance of maintaining that cycle goes up to 85%, and that's quite good.

Logically I think the argument that "a glyph that has a chance to increase disease uptime will result in lower disease uptime" doesn't make much sense. Yes, this outcome could occur, but only due to improper play. If the scourge strike decision process is "Use Icy Touch / Plague Strike when the next pair will come up more than 2 seconds after disease would otherwise fall off", then mathematically it must be a DPS increase over not having the glyph.

Of course, there's the question of what the actual disease uptime would be and how many scourge strikes you actually gain from the glyph. But I'm not willing to write off this glyph simply because the proc rate isn't 100%. I'm also not willing to say it's worth the loss of 1 point in desecration. It just needs testing.

Regarding haste as a stat, consider the damage breakdown from the WWS parse that would be affected by haste:

Autoattack: 26%
Blood-Caked Blade: 4%
Necrosis: 2%

That's about a third of the damage. Or put another way, as Unholy, 66% of your damage is not affected by haste. I think that's a pretty damning conclusion.

Originally Posted by Buanna

1. Should I Plague Strike/Icy Touch every rotation to keep up Desecration?

2. Is Scourge Strike more than double Blood Strike?

We don't know the answer to 1, but I'm leaning towards it being unnecessary.

On the subject of Scourge Strike versus double Blood Strike, the WWS Zurm linked averaged out to 2600 damage for Scourge Strike and 1500 damage for Blood Strike. Due to dirge, they both generate the same amount of runic power. So that means two blood strikes is actually better damage than one Scourge Strike, by a sizable margin. I can't see how extra chances to proc Glyph of Scourge Strike ends up being 40 DPS better, given that we're not sure if the glyph is even useful. The only benefit of Death Rune Mastery seems to be freeing up a global cooldown, but even this might not be necessary. The gargoyle eats a lot of runic power, and using Unholy Blight in rotations means more runic power spent per GCD.

Perhaps we should just move 3 points from Death Rune Mastery to Descration and call it a day.

• Zurm · 11/20/08, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

This might be a play issue though. If you have 2 seconds left on disease and you use your last UB on Scourge Strike when the next pair is up 6 seconds later, then you are taking a huge risk. In this situation, I think you are better off manually refreshing diseases. But if you have two pairs of UB runes up with 2 seconds of disease left, a scourge strike glyph proc on the first hit has the potential to be nothing but free damage. If it doesn't work out, you just refresh. The other thing to note is that while a 4 scourge strike rotation has only a 68% chance of a refresh, if you do get that refresh and score a 5 scourge strike cycle, your chance of maintaining that cycle goes up to 85%, and that's quite good.

Logically I think the argument that "a glyph that has a chance to increase disease uptime will result in lower disease uptime" doesn't make much sense. Yes, this outcome could occur, but only due to improper play. If the scourge strike decision process is "Use Icy Touch / Plague Strike when the next pair will come up more than 2 seconds after disease would otherwise fall off", then mathematically it must be a DPS increase over not having the glyph.

If you can genuinely pull off this rotation in a typical raid encounter you are a far better player than I. I can almost guarantee I wouldn't be able to pull off a rotation with constantly changing rune usage unless I had some kind of mod to basically play the game for me. You'd have a whole new level of complication, checking constantly between disease time remaining versus available runes and runic power (since if you're at 100 you have to dump it or lose dps). In a typical rotation, however you can very reliable dish out the damage.

Also, please don't take my WWS parse as some perfect representation. I definitely messed up cycles at times, and again my gear is skewed. I'll probably link another WWS in 2-3 weeks when I have a full epic set (that will have balanced stats).

For example, many times I would scourge strike trash mobs that had no diseases on them because they were about to die (meaning they also didn't have the 13% additional damage from ebon plague). I never did this with blood strike. Also, my crit rate is VERY low (like 21% unbuffed), and a crit scourge strike easily beats two crit blood strikes. As my crit rate goes up, as well as T7 2pc and a sigil that doesn't buff blood strike (getting one that massively increases SS damage) you will notice this change.

tedv · 11/20/08, 3:44 PM

Originally Posted by Zurm

If you can genuinely pull off this rotation in a typical raid encounter you are a far better player than I. I can almost guarantee I wouldn't be able to pull off a rotation with constantly changing rune usage unless I had some kind of mod to basically play the game for me. You'd have a whole new level of complication, checking constantly between disease time remaining versus available runes and runic power (since if you're at 100 you have to dump it or lose dps). In a typical rotation, however you can very reliable dish out the damage.

Also, please don't take my WWS parse as some perfect representation. I definitely messed up cycles at times, and again my gear is skewed. I'll probably link another WWS in 2-3 weeks when I have a full epic set (that will have balanced stats).

For example, many times I would scourge strike trash mobs that had no diseases on them because they were about to die (meaning they also didn't have the 13% additional damage from ebon plague). I never did this with blood strike. Also, my crit rate is VERY low (like 21% unbuffed), and a crit scourge strike easily beats two crit blood strikes. As my crit rate goes up, as well as T7 2pc and a sigil that doesn't buff blood strike (getting one that massively increases SS damage) you will notice this change.

I come from a shadow priest background, where this kind of DoT management is what you do for the entire fight. The Unholy Death Knight DPS rotation certainly kicks the complexity up a notch since you need to make sure your runic power doesn't overflow, but I think playing a constantly changing rotation reasonably well is not a totally impossible feat. The challenge is part of what attracted me to the Death Knight class, I'll note.

I understand that your WWS parse isn't exactly gospel, but it's all we have to go on.

slant · 11/20/08, 3:48 PM

I tend to look at the glyph of scourge strike as an additional margin for error. I assume it never works and follow the standard unholy DPS rotation, but when I occasionally mess up or have to interrupt my rotation to reposition myself, I have more leeway as my diseases are fairly likely to have refreshed themselves. If you look at it that way, the glyph is valuable.

Edenfall · 11/20/08, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

The gargoyle eats a lot of runic power, and using Unholy Blight in rotations means more runic power spent per GCD.

Perhaps we should just move 3 points from Death Rune Mastery to Descration and call it a day.

Originally Posted by Zurm

Also, my crit rate is VERY low (like 21% unbuffed), and a crit scourge strike easily beats two crit blood strikes. As my crit rate goes up, as well as T7 2pc and a sigil that doesn't buff blood strike (getting one that massively increases SS damage) you will notice this change.

- GCD
- Yes or No to Death Rune Mastery
- Critical strike chance
- Sigil that improves OB/SS damage

About BS vs SS - how does armor mitigation affect the difference?
And if BS still does more damage, would ditching [Glyph of Scourge Strike] for a 100% proc chance of Desecration every 20 seconds do more damage than... wait, if we ditch...

Here's a theory:

17/0/54 without Epidemic: Link
PS,IT,BS,BS,SS,SS (3sec left = 2 GCD for RP dump ??? profit)
What just happened here was that we changed the spec to attain close to 100% uptime of Desecration, which is a flat out 5% damage increase.

This might be situational due to the lower duration of the diseases, thus this demands being at the boss all the time. However, in terms of theorycrafting, is this not superior under ideal conditions?

Edit: To elaborate - Desecration has a 12 second duration, which is the same as of the diseases - completing the circuit, so to say. Keeping Desecration up at all times.

• Zurm · 11/20/08, 4:20 PM

That's actually a very interesting proposal. The thing I want to note is that while in THEORY desecration is a fairly high % of damage gained, you have to keep in mind a lot of fights require movement, making it less than ideal. Very few bosses are of the Patchwerk/Brutallus nature, and while stroking our e-genetalia on those fights may be paramount for some, I find raid benefit to be the most important thing. In that regard, there are many fights where desecration simply is just not usable... to name a few off the top of my head: Gothik, Heigan, Grobbulus, Thaddius, Sapphiron, Malygos (since DKs are on spark bitch duty), and yes, even the lowly Archavon. The list goes on, but I'm sure you get my point.

Edenfall · 11/20/08, 5:11 PM

I get your point. I'm very aware of it, and it kind of sucks.
One thing which sucks is that I somewhy left out Dirge from the spec. Another challenge would be to find what two talent points to sacrifice for it.

Eh, very tired now. Was supposed to say something, but yeah. Ends here.

Applejuiced · 11/20/08, 5:28 PM

Zurm, I'm curious about your use of the gargoyle. Do you use it often in conjunction with UB or for those times that UB just isn't practical? I'm just starting to get the feel of unholy dps mostly since I played with frost a majority of the time in the beta.

Writhe · 11/20/08, 7:40 PM

Hey guys, this may seem like a bit of a derail but it is the place to ask about UH dps and hopefully get some input, basically I've been trying to come up with a simulation where the current unholy rotation doesn't drop runes off cool-down or overwrite frost fever or blood plague. This gets even more complex when you add in runic dumps to the time-line.

Basically what I'm looking for is some kind of rough proof that the rotation is optimal even though it overwrites diseases, and probably has rune downtime. (proof other than the fact we haven't found anything better..)

Basically I run into issues with the simulator where every rune usage has to solve a best use problem; with 5 other runes cooldowns, 2 diseases and gcd allocation for both rune abilities and runic dumps all as variable input to consider what to use it on if use it on anything at all. As you can imagine, I'm sure, this gets complex pretty fast.

FSM Building for the lose. Should have paid more attention in comp sci 101..

Shalymar · 11/20/08, 10:15 PM

Originally Posted by Edenfall

I get your point. I'm very aware of it, and it kind of sucks.
One thing which sucks is that I somewhy left out Dirge from the spec. Another challenge would be to find what two talent points to sacrifice for it.

Eh, very tired now. Was supposed to say something, but yeah. Ends here.

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 · 11/21/08, 12:10 AM

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

Davia · 11/21/08, 2:48 AM

Originally Posted by Zurm

That's actually a very interesting proposal. The thing I want to note is that while in THEORY desecration is a fairly high % of damage gained, you have to keep in mind a lot of fights require movement, making it less than ideal. Very few bosses are of the Patchwerk/Brutallus nature, and while stroking our e-genetalia on those fights may be paramount for some, I find raid benefit to be the most important thing. In that regard, there are many fights where desecration simply is just not usable... to name a few off the top of my head: Gothik, Heigan, Grobbulus, Thaddius, Sapphiron, Malygos (since DKs are on spark bitch duty), and yes, even the lowly Archavon. The list goes on, but I'm sure you get my point.

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 · 11/21/08, 3:49 AM

Originally Posted by 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

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.

Originally Posted by NeuroMedivh

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

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 · 11/21/08, 5:14 AM

Originally Posted by tedv

On the other hand, Virulence might be better than Necrosis. The 1% hit only really matters for Icy Touch and Death Coil, but these accounted for 13% of your Patchwerk damage. Even roughly assuming a 1% DPS increase on these spells from 1% hit means you gain 1.3% per point spent, which is twice as good as Necrosis.
[...]
The other thing I've missed in this analysis is that Scourge Strike Glyph will get you around 95% disease uptime rather than 90%, which should account for a 5.5% increase in damage from Blood Plague, Frost Fever, and Wandering Plague (currently 16% of the total DPS according to the WWS). That's a net gain of .88% DPS, or 25.

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.