One thing I've been thinking about, and often come across as a problem is whether it's worthwhile to use trinkets as soon as they come off cooldown, or if they should be saved 1 extra minute for gargoyle. This assumes an approx. 4-4.5 minute fight where you'll get two full gargoyles, but not a third.
Unfortunately I am unable to test this at the moment due to computer problems, so I was wondering if anybody already knows or has put math into it.
Another problem is whether we should wait for procs, or simply hope they proc and forget it if not. Often trinket procs can take 30 seconds to a minute to occur due to either low proc rates or internal cooldowns. While I can afford to wait for fallen crusader, I'm often unsure whether to continue waiting or just gargoyle without them after around 10 seconds of no proc.
On another topic, has anybody found they've had trouble dropping their hit to around 8%? With only access to 10 man and heroic gear, I'm having a lot of trouble getting below 9.2% hit. The couple pieces with enormous amounts of hit (staggering legplates, spiked titansteel, 55 hit trinket, etc.) are pushing my hit up by 1-1.5% a piece. On top of that, I'm likely to upgrade to Black Ice soon(2 people in front of me for D'sBite), which will push me over 10% hit. It's obviously just a matter of time until I get T7 helm and a better trinket, but I was wondering if anybody else experienced this problem.
I've experienced your "problem" Shadowalker with regards to have excessive hit (I am somewhat similarly geared) Its even worse because i'm a Draenei haha.
In reality thought, the pieces are the best that I could find and to me the extra hit is only a problem if you are "giving up" some other stat in order to obtain the hit. By browsing the armories of individuals on this thread, i'm noticing that as you start to pick up some naxx pieces, your hit falls more in line with what you could expect.
With regards to your trinket, I really feel this depends on the fight itself. As of right now, I would not hold onto a trinket cooldown on any fight with AoE, because I don't know how long the gargoyle would survive. I would also be wary on some fights like Maexxna, because you could get incapacitated at the wrong time and not be able to keep your gargoyle up.
On a fight like Patchwerk though (and really he is the only example I can think of, which might mean this is a bad example) I do actually save my trinket. I do however tend to time it so that my trinket effect is about to expire a second or two after the gargoyle is about to come off cooldown. This way I get to use my trinket as early as possible, and still ensure that my gargoyle will come out beefier.
On another topic, has anybody found they've had trouble dropping their hit to around 8%? With only access to 10 man and heroic gear, I'm having a lot of trouble getting below 9.2% hit. The couple pieces with enormous amounts of hit (staggering legplates, spiked titansteel, 55 hit trinket, etc.) are pushing my hit up by 1-1.5% a piece. On top of that, I'm likely to upgrade to Black Ice soon(2 people in front of me for D'sBite), which will push me over 10% hit. It's obviously just a matter of time until I get T7 helm and a better trinket, but I was wondering if anybody else experienced this problem.
Once I get my [Bladed Steelboots] (only 1 badge away!) I'll be able to remove my remaining hit gems and be sitting right near 8% hit (a drop over, but that never really hurts). I think hit just kind of falls into place once you get to a certain level of gear, the same with expertise (I only have had to use one gem for expertise). This falls in line with what beta testers, including myself were saying... once you get to a full T7 (ilvl 200-226) setup, you usually are hit/expertise capped as a result.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Pardon my nubness, but can we now get away with only 8% hit (assuming 3/3 Virulence and an spriest with Misery) without having IT and DC miss?
The 8% we are referring to is melee hit chance. Spell hit remains unaffected and your IT and DC will still miss at 8%.
@Zurn, the problem is that I don't have access to most lvl213 items, and all 226 items, unless I get super lucky with a decent PuG. Like I said, I expect everything to fall into place in due time, but I was just wondering if anybody else has the same problem.
Do you guys find yourself gemming/taking expertise despite it's low value relative to Strength? Strength is valued almost double that of expertise, but I've been considering picking it up on the chance that our relative values taken months ago may not hold up anymore.
Would it be worth attempting to re-calculate the Attack Power Equivalency values to provide a better guideline until our model/spreadsheets are perfected? We can only go so far doing math in our head as we look at the loot tables, eventually we need to know those small 0.1DPS differences between two pieces. A good example of this is [Heroes' Scourgeborne Shoulderplates] vs. [Shoulderplates of Bloodshed] which are both fairly close in value(provided hit is a non-factor such as my case, and meta gem is already accounted for).
Last edited by Shadowalker : 12/15/08 at 11:45 PM.
Reason: expertise != hit
Do you guys find yourself gemming/taking expertise despite it's low value relative to Strength? Strength is valued almost double that of expertise, but I've been considering picking it up on the chance that our relative values taken months ago may not hold up anymore.
I value Expertise highly because one dodge will leave a 1 GCD gap in your rotation for the whole fight. Say one blood strike gets dodged, well now you have to use another GCD to put that rune on cooldown and that loosens your rotation.
On another topic, has anybody found they've had trouble dropping their hit to around 8%? With only access to 10 man and heroic gear, I'm having a lot of trouble getting below 9.2% hit. The couple pieces with enormous amounts of hit (staggering legplates, spiked titansteel, 55 hit trinket, etc.) are pushing my hit up by 1-1.5% a piece. On top of that, I'm likely to upgrade to Black Ice soon(2 people in front of me for D'sBite), which will push me over 10% hit. It's obviously just a matter of time until I get T7 helm and a better trinket, but I was wondering if anybody else experienced this problem.
I planned out my projected final set of gear that I'd like to have before the next raid is introduced. Gemming/enchanting purely for not-hit/expertise, I ended up with 8% hit pretty much on the dot, and 28 expertise with the Orc racial. It's rather difficult to get to truly perfect levels of hit+expertise on best(s) in slot gear, even with the flexibility of Well Fed buffs.
Before that, you pretty much have too much hit, and you have to juggle around gems (and maybe enchants) to keep expertise just right. There isn't a lot you can do about it, Blizzard is really loving loading hit on base gear.
Right, which is why I'm not understanding why you would want to limit yourself to 8% instead of 17% total (to include Virulence and/or a Misery buff).
I try to limit to 8% because if I gear for Icy Touch and Death Coil, I am gearing for a very small section of my DPS compared to melee/Scourge Strikes which deal about 60% of my damage.
@Sacerdos, I deal with those gaps using Death Coil. I'm very good at managing my rune cooldowns, so it isn't a problem for me. Your death rune Scourge Strikes will also end that gap on the next rune cycle, but I understand what you're getting at.
From these responses, I think I will start gearing more expertise, but I'm not going to regem what I have already.
I value Expertise highly because one dodge will leave a 1 GCD gap in your rotation for the whole fight. Say one blood strike gets dodged, well now you have to use another GCD to put that rune on cooldown and that loosens your rotation.
That's basically the problem. The calculations for the value of expertise were just on the damage lost to a typical white swing. The damage lost to a rune attack is greater because it can shift the cooldowns of all future refreshes of that rune. There is a 2 second grace period on rune refreshes, so generally one dodge won't mess things up too much, but any more than that and your cycle goes to hell. There's also the issue that if a scourge strike used with death runes gets dodged, the death rune will refresh as blood, meaning you can't even try again. Now you have to spend two GCDs on blood strikes rather than one on scourge strikes.
I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but a while back I redid all my strength gemming into expertise-- going from 11 expertise to 21-- and I noticed a sizable increase in overall DPS, around 5%. It's possible that it's just from cleaner cycles making it harder to mess up things like the Gargoyle. And maybe with absolutely perfect play, you can react to dodges well enough that gemming for strength would be better. But I think getting expertise capped will provide the most consistent DPS increase for now.
To summarize current stat rankings for gemming:
Hit (to cap 8%) > Expertise (to cap 25 skill) > Strength > 2 Attack Power > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration
Hit (to cap 8%) > Expertise (to cap 25 skill) > Strength > 2 Attack Power > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration
I have found this to be true as well regardless of what my spreadsheet says.
I would have to force an increase in total dps time per dodge to get fully accurate numbers. Capping is ideal but at the expense of STR it may be good enough to minimize the multiple dodge scenarios that become more rare as expertise climes. Anywhere between 20 skill and cap should be sufficient (granted that this is just guesswork based on anecdotal evidence).
I'll see what I can do to update my numbers to be more accurate on 'real' misses.
I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but a while back I redid all my strength gemming into expertise-- going from 11 expertise to 21-- and I noticed a sizable increase in overall DPS, around 5%. It's possible that it's just from cleaner cycles making it harder to mess up things like the Gargoyle. And maybe with absolutely perfect play, you can react to dodges well enough that gemming for strength would be better. But I think getting expertise capped will provide the most consistent DPS increase for now.
To summarize current stat rankings for gemming:
Hit (to cap 8%) > Expertise (to cap 25 skill) > Strength > 2 Attack Power > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration
I have to fully agree here as well. The moment I capped on hit and expertise, my DPS jumped by a very large margin (probably by a good 5-600, but multiple upgrades and gem changes were done at the same time). Being able to have some reliability in your rotations is probably the most important thing as a death knight, given the heavy interdependance of runes, RP, and disease timers.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Hit (to cap 8%) > Expertise (to cap 25 skill) > Strength > 2 Attack Power > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration
Ok, I just added a rough addition of time to a total dps cycle based on spell miss and melee miss chances. The results are very close to what we were expecting. The following is raid buffed for 2H specs pre hit and expertise cap:
Stat
Unholy
Blood
Frost
1AP
1.0000
1.0000
1.0000
1STR
2.4847
2.5570
2.3650
1CRT
1.0207
1.2805
1.3212
1HIT
2.4631
2.7485
2.9114
1Haste
0.6046
0.6345
0.5619
1Exp
2.1660
2.8481
2.0712
1AP-R
0.5918
1.2693
0.9086
1AGI
0.8150
0.9164
1.0008
1Armor
0.0278
0.0294
0.0319
1dps (wpn)
6.3169
8.4347
9.5283
Spec
17/0/54
51/13/7
17/54/0
Again, this is not perfect but it is becoming ever so much closer.
Again, this is not perfect but it is becoming ever so much closer.
Just from a quick gander at your relative stat weights based on spec, it seems Frost is the most gear dependant spec (especially for weapon) and also seems to have a much higher scaling potential. I'm also curious what those numbers would like like for the DW hybrid builds; my guess is that towards the end of T8 or early T9 we will start to see DW pulling ahead of 2H, if it hasn't already.
Regardless, this chart does tell us what we already knew about unholy, so we can place some faith in its accuracy. We know unholy is the least dependant spec on weapon DPS, and gets the least out of armor pen and crit due to very high magical damage coming from DoTs.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
I know earlier in the thread there was talk of whoever gets Ebon Plague up first keeps it, but in a pug raid last night, our MT kept losing his own Ebon Plague to other Unholy DKs in the raid. So it isn't a situation of whoever gets it up there first keeps it unless it runs out.
Doesn't include having to repeat rune-abilities on misses, but asumes 8%+ hit.
DW already is ahead and has a better utility.
These simulations can't possibly be accurate. 1 AP = 90.90, and 1 STR = 100.0? Also not sure why you're assuming 8% +hit, that's not the relevant value for DW.
I know earlier in the thread there was talk of whoever gets Ebon Plague up first keeps it, but in a pug raid last night, our MT kept losing his own Ebon Plague to other Unholy DKs in the raid. So it isn't a situation of whoever gets it up there first keeps it unless it runs out.
I don't quite understand this. Ebon plague gets applied whenever you apply a disease to a target, but as long as an Ebon Plague already exists on the target a second one cannot get applied. I've run heroics with other Unholy DK's, and I was never able to apply an ebon plague as long as the other DK was able to keep his diseases up (Ebon plague actually lasts a bit longer I believe so you don't even have to be spot on to make it stick).
Just tested it on PTR, and currently Night of the Dead is affecting Raise Ally cooldown by the same increments as it affects the Raise Dead cooldown. Not sure if this is intended or a bug, but I hope that it is intended, because ghouling people more than once per 5 minutes is a nice perk of being deep Unholy.
Ok, I just added a rough addition of time to a total dps cycle based on spell miss and melee miss chances. The results are very close to what we were expecting. The following is raid buffed for 2H specs pre hit and expertise cap:
<snip>
Again, this is not perfect but it is becoming ever so much closer.
I am the main tank for my guild, and every so often we have another unholy dk that raids with us. Me being the MT, I will always have my disease up first which triggers Ebon Plague, and very often after I get my first diseases up I lose Ebon Plague to the other death knight. I believe the same thing happens with Warlock's Shadow Embrace. So it's not just who gets it up first but something else.
That's basically the problem. The calculations for the value of expertise were just on the damage lost to a typical white swing. The damage lost to a rune attack is greater because it can shift the cooldowns of all future refreshes of that rune. There is a 2 second grace period on rune refreshes, so generally one dodge won't mess things up too much, but any more than that and your cycle goes to hell. There's also the issue that if a scourge strike used with death runes gets dodged, the death rune will refresh as blood, meaning you can't even try again. Now you have to spend two GCDs on blood strikes rather than one on scourge strikes.
I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but a while back I redid all my strength gemming into expertise-- going from 11 expertise to 21-- and I noticed a sizable increase in overall DPS, around 5%. It's possible that it's just from cleaner cycles making it harder to mess up things like the Gargoyle. And maybe with absolutely perfect play, you can react to dodges well enough that gemming for strength would be better. But I think getting expertise capped will provide the most consistent DPS increase for now.
To summarize current stat rankings for gemming:
Hit (to cap 8%) > Expertise (to cap 25 skill) > Strength > 2 Attack Power > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration
I agree with this 100% as well, being capped on both hit and expertise is most important for overall DPS as far as my testing/raiding goes. WOW Meter Online - Top DK DPS Worldwide seems to back this up as you can see both my and Xyrm's name on that page several times (even more-so if you limit that to show US only).
I still have a few items I've yet to see drop that I need so I can change my current gems (yet again and the reason why I use the el cheapo gems ), but I will ALWAYS be hit/expertise capped first and foremost.
12/15/08, 1:02 PM
), but I will ALWAYS be hit/expertise capped first and foremost.
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