BitHead0023

Has anyone tried an Unholy/Frost spec along the lines of 0/32/39 or similar?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I know you typically spec for Scourge Strike with unholy, but I'm curious how a spec focusing more on Obliterates and the occasional Howling Blast would work.

 

sthompson

4k? Are you talking overall data on 25 man? Patchwork 25 man? Target dummy? What?

 

• Zurm

I was saying patchwerk 25 man... I did 4100 two weeks ago before I got many of the upgrades I have now (didn't even have 2pc T7). Hopefully this week I can pick up some combination of T7 helm (10 or 25 man), [Betrayer of Humanity], and [Sigil of Awareness].

The point is most raiders with a decent amount of epic gear should easily be able to pull 4k dps on a fight like patchwerk. I know its a bit hypocritical of me to be talking about patchwerk DPS after I keep saying its the exception rather than the rule, but when we gear for DPS, the concept is the same on a boss like patchwerk or any boss... the idea is to dish out as much damage as possible in a given timeframe. And the idea of 50 dps is for consistent dps, like patchwerk. If we have less dps time, the benefit of the trinket diminishes.

 

Natrozim

Well, while moving around is a big deal theirs not that many fights where I would think it would fall off currently. The whole spider wing you can easily keep it up 100%, same for abom wing besides when jumping platform to Thadius or if you have to run far away on Grobulus. Noth well maybe depending on how quick you kill the adds ( I think we usually wait more than 10 seconds before he pops back with all adds already dead). Heigan of course not but Loatheb definitely yes. Razuvious yes, Gothik probably not, 4H most likely yes. Sapphiron... well yes if you have improved anti magic shell, if not now. and its probably possible to keep it up 100% on KT besides on phase 1.

Malygos unless your lucky during vortex you probably can't and on Sartharion with drakes all down or all up I can probably keep it up 100% besides if I get a flame wave far from any add or drake ( usually the tanks move with us).

So honestly, its probably the second best trinket besides in a few encounters where I would probably just use the badge trinket or one of the 2 saph 25 man trinkets that were previously covered in this thread (whichever first is about to get De'd I guess since it would be only for a few fights)

It's too bad we have no ranged attack like heroic trow or fan of knives/volley to instantly get a high stack of the trinket on trash but I definitely see it as the second best trinket on a large majority of the encounters currently available.

 

tedv

Actually, if the fight is something like 30 seconds of DPS, 15 seconds of downtime, repeat, then the trinket actually increases in benefit relative to a trinket with static stat increases. That's because the trinket's internal cooldown still ticks during the 15 seconds in which you can't do anything. Sure your real DPS will be down, but you'll get a sizeable increase in procs-per-second-of-combat from the trinket. The same logic holds for on-use trinkets. If the fight is 90 seconds of attacking and 30 seconds of downtime, then a 20 second clicky trinket with a 2 minute cooldown will give you an uptime of 20/90 = 2/9ths (22%), rather than 20/120 = 1/6th (17%). That's a 33% increase in uptime during combat.

 

sthompson

But with a trinket that stacks, during the 15 seconds of downtime you're losing all 20 of those stacks that took you 20*weapon speed to stack up, and then you have to reapply them, only to lose them again... So mathematically the curve is very slow

 

Natrozim

Well obviously those fights are terrible for the trinkets that stack but he was saying that trinkets with "on use" abilities such as +600 AP for 15 seconds or trinkets with internal Cd's are actually much better than usual depending on the time your prevented normally from fighting. Fights like Malygos or Heigan come to mind where those trinkets are better than usual.

 

crimsonsentinel

For the purposes of proc effects, all our strikes count as melee hits so it's not as bad as you make it out to be, especially if you're blood and pumping out heart strikes. I agree on it falling off, but that's a problem for any class using this trinket.

 

Chairon

Does anyone have data of Bloodworms applying additional stacks on their successful attacks with respect to [Fury of the Five Flights]?

 

• Zurm

I still heavily disagree. You're pointing to the few fights where you actually COULD keep it up. Grobbulus, Gluth, Gothik (at least for the the first 75% of waves), four horsemen, Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow, Maexxna...the list goes on. I actually have no idea where you get that it would stay up in spider wing; Anub'rekhan you have to move from insect swarm (unless your guild can actually kill him before that), Grand Widow you have to dodge rain of fires (AMS helps, but unless your healers can take it most guilds have melee run out), and Maexxna (she stuns you, and that WILL ALWAYS cause the stacks to drop).

The only fights I can see it reasonably staying up in current raid content is 0-drake sartharion (even then possibly not, due to dodging lava waves), Patchwerk, Phase2 of KT, Thaddius, and Loatheb. Any other fight, you HAVE to break off at least once. One time can make or break a trinket when you stack it as slowly as we do (my bets are anywhere from 30-45 seconds for a full 20 stack unless Bloodlust/heroism is active). I very firmly believe that NO DK should ever take this trinket over a hunter, rogue, fury warrior, or enhancement shaman. At the very least, they ALWAYS get more out of it. More than likely, it's actually just flat out bad for us.

It does not. Same for your ghoul.

Our strikes yes. Not icy touch, death coil, or unholy blight. And yes, all classes have the possiblility of dropping stacks. But a rogue, who attacks with two weapons under 1.0 speed, can get all 20 stacks in say 8-10 seconds. It will likely take us a lot longer. Lets look at a typical unholy 20 second 4x SS rotation:

PS->IT-> BS -> BS -> SS -> RP dump 1
SS -> SS -> SS -> RP dump 2

In this time you have use 7 melee specials. Assuming you have a 3.4 speed weapon, at 20% raid haste, lets say you're raiding with 2.8s attack speed (rounded for math ease in YOUR favor). That gives you an additional 7.4 auto attacks, which puts you at 15 landed melee attacks in 20 seconds. This is simply pitiful. Given realistic raiding situations, you are looking at 30 seconds to fully stack it. A BM hunter, rogue, fury warrior, feral druid, enhancement shaman... pretty much any melee dps that doesn't use a single two-hander gets infinitely more use because ALL of these will stack it within about 10 seconds.

While your statement of blood is certainly more valid (9 specials instead of 7), this IS the unholy dps thread. I'm trying to keep the discussions pertinent to the spec, since that seems to be the new theme here.

Very true. But the same concept holds to any trinket with an ICD... the Darkmoon Card would beat this trinket by ane ven larger margin in this situation, giving you a 50% uptime on 300 str instead of 33% or so. Again, not that it's a BAD trinket per say, I'm just questioning if 50 dps can compete with say a 1k AP proc on crits from Mirror. I'm just saying "we don't know".

 

Zurai

Anub: When he casts Insect Swarm, he also summons a guard, which usually doesn't die 10 seconds before Swarm ends.
Widow: Just have the tank move her out of the rain of fire when she casts it.
Maexxna: Her stun does not last 10 seconds. So, no, it does NOT always cause the stack to drop. In fact, the only time the stack has any chance of dropping on Maexxna is when you get stuck to the wall.

 

• Zurm

Well I guess we experience things differently. I can see how Anub/Widow would work for your guild, ours does it differently (Adds die at least 15 seconds before locus swarm expires if we even get to locust swarm, and we never move grand widow). On maexxna...

Web Spray: Cast every 40 seconds incapacitating everyone for 8 seconds

If you don't land an attack that builds charges within 2 seconds before (which in an unholy rotation is actually quite likely) and then INSTANTLY after (or two total seconds of leeway before + after) it will fall. I'd say you have no less than a 50% chance on this fight to see it fall, unless you are purposely saving your runes and watching a timer mod (in which case, you are still losing dps).

The point is, for at least half of the fights currently out, [Fury of the Five Flights] is less than useful when compared with very easily acquireable trinkets such as [Mirror of Truth].

 

Leperchaun

I was checking out a few of the builds in here, and while I was a bit confused on talent choices for a few, I've generally come around as to why people would spec that way.

I like Zurm's build the best so far, but I have a few questions on the builds shown, that I haven't seem to found answers to.

Bear with me, I did a little bit of napkin math on some of these and I might be missing something, so please point it out if I am.

As you add more and more hit, and get closer to the cap, would you trade virulence for something else, and if so, what? I realize the spell cap would be a ways off, but there must be some trade off point where taking other talents would boost your dps from other spells more than virulence would.

For example, spell hit only requires about 26 rating for 1% hit. If you assume 3% hit from misery (lets say another 1% for alliance that have heroic presence), you'd only 342 hit rating to be completely spell capped. Is this number just too far off? I have way too much hit rating at the moment (think I'm at like 438 unbuffed, but I know the higher end gear has a lot less hit on it).

On outbreak vs blood-caked blade, I ran some quick numbers, but lets assume an 8 minute fight where you don't have to move and are wielding the [Inevitable Defeat] (saw that when looking at xyrm's talent build )

During that 8 mins, you'd auto attack for approximately 141 times (3.4 weapon speed weapon, giving the benefit to BCB). With the 30% proc rate, you'd get BCB to proc 42 times. This does 50% weapon damage (lets assume both diseases are up), for a total of 17.5k damage.

With outbreak during that same 8 mins, you have it hitting normally for 362 (say 831 top-end damage from * 30% + 113). There's an 18 second duration on blood plague due to you having epidemic. So if you refresh it exactly every 18 sec, during that 8 mins, you'd plague strike for about 26 times (480 sec / 18), of which, you'd have 39% crit (your crit rate from armory + 9% from talents), giving 10 crits in total.

For the normal hits, you'd do 16 * 362, giving 5792 total damage.

For the crits, you'd do ((10 * 362) * 2) + ((10 * 362) * 2) * 0.3) (30% bonus from vicious strikes) giving 9412 total damage.

Modify that by 30% and you get (15,704 * 0.3) + 15,704 = 20.4k damage.

Now this was just quick math, but if you clipped your plague strikes while blood plague was up, you'd get the 10% bonus from rage of rivendare as well, for another 2k damage.

I'm not really sure how attack power would modify either of these damages, so there might be more to it than I'm considering, but it seems like outbreak would definitely pull ahead of BCB for pure damage.

My last question is on desecration. Why does everyone avoid it, is the 5% damage buff just not worth the 5 points?

 

• Zurm

This was covered MANY times. Next time, please search the thread appropriately.

To answer your question, however, it's avoided because the current unholy rotations and the movement required on bosses don't allow it to have a high enough "uptime" to be worth the points.

 

Bloody_sorcerer

On BCB: We're unholy, we have 3 diseases.
On PS: Many of us are running the scourge strike glyph, reducing the number of plague strikes used.
On desecration: Without SS glyph, it's up for 12 seconds out of every 18-20, giving it at best ~67% uptime on fights where you're never moving. Once you start moving (aka non-patchwerk fights), its value goes down. Its value is also greatly diminished by the SS glyph.

 

Leperchaun

Thanks for the information, I had forgotten about crypt fever, that definitely changes things.

I found the death knight dps main post that contains answers to most of these questions, I'll be sure to read that more carefully next time.

Any information regarding the hit rating provided by virulence?

 

Zurai

That's the 40-man version of web spray. The 10-man version is 4 seconds and the 25-man is 6 seconds. That's something you should know already without having to be told. All of the Naxx boss descriptions on Wowhead are referring to the 40 man versions. You have to look at the actual data, not the flavor text or the first dozen or so comments. 6 seconds leaves you plenty of time to refresh your stack.

I'm kind of curious how you kill the adds on Anub 15 seconds before the end of Locust Swarm, too, considering that LS only lasts 20 seconds. Killing the add in 5 seconds, especially when it doesn't always spawn exactly when LS starts, seems extremely unlikely.

Anyway, just pointing out that your way isn't the only way, and just because your raid uses certain methods of killing bosses doesn't necessarily mean that FotFF is terrible for everyone.

 

aldy

The point is that there are probably 5 other people in your raid for whom Fury of the Five Flights is better and whether you argue from a progression minded standpoint of maxing raid dps or argue for the simple fact that you are friends with the people you spend 20 hours a week playing with, it seems odd not to pass on it. Yes it is a top 5 trinket, but there are other factors to consider. I think a dozen posts on the topic is probably enough :-)

 

Applejuiced

about the death rune bug, has anyone found a good sequence to get it going? I've been using PS IT BS BS and then trying to get it off before the FU runes refresh from scourge strikes but it doesnt get off some times. Maybe it would be worth it to just start it off with a BS BS on a trash mob at the beginning, but I haven't tried it yet.

 

Davia

WWS from Patchwerk tonight; we actually did him first, so WWS didn't fuck up the ghoul parsing. If you're looking at armory, this was before getting my current cloak, boots, belt, and shoulders later on tonight. Hopefully I can snag some Heroes' shoulders before next week's PW and get an accurate gauge on how much DPS the 4 piece ends up contributing (I'm expecting it to add around 150 DPS).

 

• Zurm

I never said it was terrible for everyone. I said there are 5 other DPS classes that without question make better use of it. And regardless of web spray CD, you can still get webbed on the wall or get unlucky misses (if you aren't capped in hit/expertise). My point was that if even ONCE in a boss fight you lose the FotFF stack, you are gimping yourself over other trinkets on a boss fight. Is it good for patchwerk? Sure.

Again, the other DPS classes I listen can usually stack it in TEN SECONDS OR LESS. I put math up that showed you at best, it will take us 25 seconds or so (disclaimer: as two-handed unholy... DW builds make perfectly good use of it). For fights that are lasting on average of 3-5 minutes, having to restack your trinket for that long greatly diminishes the effectiveness of that trinket. If you look at most ilvl 200 trinkets for melee, their average AP (or equivalence, when other stats are concerned) usually sits around 280+ anyway. Considering you have to restack Fury and these other trinket's ICDs/CDs are still being burned when you have to pull off the boss, I personally am going to invest in other trinkets. If you still feel strongly that Fury is an amazing trinket, by all means take it. But the math points to it being far superior to other classes, and I'm pretty sure its second best in-slot behind the agi darkmoon card for hunters and rogues.

Not in my experience, the add usually spawns right away. And you don't actually have to have everyone burning adds to completion, usually dots/the tank will finish off the last 20% and there's no need to stick around. I just know that usually, between when Locust swarm starts, and after the add dies, if I have Mirror/Unholy Strength up from the last strike on the mob, it falls off before I can get to the boss.

This is actually pretty much a dead-on summary of my point. There are at least 3 trinkets better us, and it's top 2 for two of the top DPS classes in your raid.

 

Davia

I'm starting to think that having an AP on use trinket is basically required for gargoyle for max DPS. Since swapping to the hit/AP on trinket from Nexus heroic my gargoyle has been around 14% of my dps on any fight where it doesn't fall out of the sky from AoE.

 

NeuroMedivh

I generally wait until my Mirror of Truth procs before firing the gargoyle.

 

Bsiddiq

I picked up an extract last night...probably to the dismay of several casters. Does anyone have numbers for ICDs for Bandit's and Extract?

I've heard 45sec for bandit, and 15 for extract, but I don't have any supporting evidence.

Wow Web Stats

The one thing that kind of stands out to me from this WWS is the UB vs. Deathcoil debate. You have 101 ticks of UB (since it ticks 20x per use over 20 sec, I'm assuming this was used 5 times). If you look at deathcoil, it also lists it as being used 5 times. (Granted that this is just you- and that this is just ONE patchwerk attempt), your deathcoil accounts for more damage than UB per use. Factor in that DC costs 20 less RP...and I think you can see where I'm going here. 5x60 = 300 (or ~7.5 DCs). Meaning you could've used 2x DC's than you used with the same RP. (probably ~15k increase in overall dmg).

The other thing I want to emphasize is that this is Patchwerk- a purely stationary fight. Ideally, you should get all ticks of UB...in fights where you have to move around this won't be the case. Seems like DC is edging out over UB in some cases of single-target DPS. Obviously any fight where you have to deal with adds (that are in close proximity) make UB the clear winner.


[edit]: Just read the changes to UB!

 

level12wizard

After being abysmally bad on Thaddius last night, I finally got the chance to try out the Raised Ally mechanic for myself.

There is no auto-attack. At all. No matter what you do. It has all the abilities of a Shadow of Death ghoul, but they're in a different order for some reason. Thrash doesn't work at all (or whatever the skill with the Subversion talent icon is). Gnaw works, Explode works, and I didn't try Leap. In a raid situation, basically all you can do is spam Claw.

EDIT: You can also bet that this is going to get fixed in the upcoming patch.


Four piece tier bonus looks really nice considering how much we use SS. I think it'll be especially useful for movement fights when you're trying to keep Gargoyle up.