If you go and read that section, it has 9% boldfaced. Just from a topical point of view, people will see that number and call it gospel. Its like reading a price tag that says $29.95 and then in 6 point font it reads ("After $60 mail-in Rebate, does not include tax, tags, title, pint of blood and your first born") Might be worth changing if indeed its 8% with an exception rule.
One thing I went looking for was which presence to use (and i have gone through the compendium quite a few times over the last couple months or so). There is a generic section that does address the presences and it says that blood is generally the one to use for DPS however I've seen in a few places because of the blood spec rotation that unholy may be better.
That said, it might be worth adding, for clarity, a small notation to the compendium that Unholy spec may yield more DPS and benefit significantly by using the Blood Presence and that Blood spec may yield more DPS and benefit significantly by using the unholy Presence. I cant say anything about Frost because I havent gathered enough knowledge to render a decent opinion and would only mislead things.
Those may seem like minor details, but in the end can make a difference between lackluster DPS and something worth keeping an eye on.
I've read the PVE Dps section - it's just confusing to me to read one thing in that while every other poster in this thread is stating we need 8% not 9% to be special hit capped. Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot since we end up with so much hit on our gear anyway.
I've read the PVE Dps section - it's just confusing to me to read one thing in that while every other poster in this thread is stating we need 8% not 9% to be special hit capped. Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot since we end up with so much hit on our gear anyway.
Patches come out, things change, threads don't get updated. It is currently 8%, there is no debate about this anymore. Reading outdated documentation won't get you anywhere.
Just to chime in here as the author of the Compendium. I'm having a lot of work here in both RL with upcoming holidays and january exams and having to lead my guild, obviously. I'll try and get around to updating the Compendium, but you'll have to understand it's very low on my priority list right now.
In case you don't believe the other guys in this thread here. Our hit cap with specials (except the ones counted as spells obviously) is 8%. Spell hit cap is 17%. There.
I'm reposting this from the Frost thread here simply because more people read the Unholy thread, and it's relevant to all DKs. I believe that the current thinking regarding rune refresh times as stated in the DPS compendium may not be 100% accurate, and I'd like some other people to repeat my experiments to verify that the behavior I'm seeing is in fact true. Or if anyone already knows the answer, that's good too =p
My current understanding of the 8 second rule was that when a new rune refreshes, if you use it within 2 seconds of when it refreshes, it will have <10 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. However, after beating on the target dummy in Acheros for a little while, I think the reverse may actually be true. If you -wait- at least 2 seconds before using a rune after it activates, it will have an 8 second cooldown instead of a 10 second cooldown. If you use a rune as soon as it comes up, or before 2 seconds have passed, it will have a 10 second cooldown instead of 8. I'd like some other folks to test this for themselves and see if I'm crazy though.
I'm using Magic Runes as my rune timer, which has a convenient number that can be set to tell you the cooldown on a rune after it is used. I did a few rotations while using 3 FS and 1 HB Rime proc, and noticed that Magic Runes was telling me that my runes had an 8 second cooldown when I started using them again. Then I used two sets of runes in a row with no RP dump, and the second set had a 10 second cooldown. So I tried using one set of runes, auto attacking for 20 seconds, then using the next set of runes, and they had an 8 second cooldown. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit on how long you can wait either, as long as you wait at least 2 seconds your runes will refresh with an 8 second cooldown. So my current thinking is as follows:
1) Your first set of runes after entering combat will have a 10 second cooldown.
2) If you use a rune after it refreshes, but before 2 seconds have passed, it will have a 10 second cooldown.
3) If you use a rune after it refreshes, and wait 2 or more seconds before using it, it will have an 8 second cooldown.
If I've "discovered" something that everyone already knows that's ok too =p But this is the behavior I'm seeing in game right now, and I'd like to either be told I'm crazy and that's how it's always been, that this does in fact go against current theory, or that I'm just plain wrong. If it does it'd be good if some other people load up some rune timers and verify if they can see the same behvaior, and I think it would also imply that all Rime procs are good Rime procs.
I'm reposting this from the Frost thread here simply because more people read the Unholy thread, and it's relevant to all DKs. I believe that the current thinking regarding rune refresh times as stated in the DPS compendium may not be 100% accurate, and I'd like some other people to repeat my experiments to verify that the behavior I'm seeing is in fact true. Or if anyone already knows the answer, that's good too =p
It sounds like you're misunderstanding the compendium's explanation. It's not that you have a 2 second window to use your rune again in order to get a decreased cooldown. Part of what you're observing is correct-- if you wait more than 2 seconds, your cooldown will be 8 seconds.
The reason for the rule is coding against latency. You have a significant amount of wiggle room in order to prevent latency from slowly prolonging your rotations over the duration of a fight. When a rune pops up, the normal ten second cooldown is decreased by the amount of time delay between the rune becoming available and you using it again. Thus, under normal circumstances, the amount of time between rune refreshes will always be 10 seconds, even if you're slightly off in using your rune ability. The maximum amount of cooldown reduction is approximately 2 seconds, which is why you're noticing that if you wait longer than that, you always get an 8 second cooldown.
It's also important to keep in mind that cooldown mods are rounding and often don't accurately display precise cooldown numbers.
I believe you're correct that I misunderstood the explanation. I interpreted this line
Because you waited 1.5s after the rune was available to use the second frost rune, it's regen time was reduced to 8.5s. Do note, if you wait longer than 2 seconds the above does not apply.
To mean that you no longer receive a cooldown reduction at all, when it must actually mean that you receive no additional cooldown reduction after 2 seconds. Thanks for the clarification.
Just to clarify for the masses of people who don't know to do basic searches, the compendium has been moved to the TTT.
Ah yes, thank you. So, please direct basic hit rating and rotation questions to the Simple Questions thread at the top, or read the DPS Compendium in the Theorycrafting Think Tank, if you are unsure about the easy stuff like hit cap %, and acronyms / abilities.
Originally Posted by Veala
To mean that you no longer receive a cooldown reduction at all, when it must actually mean that you receive no additional cooldown reduction after 2 seconds. Thanks for the clarification.
Correct, 2 second window of 'give', which incedentally is best filled with an RP dump ability, since you can sneak one in there and still waste no time on your runes.
Correct, 2 second window of 'give', which incedentally is best filled with an RP dump ability, since you can sneak one in there and still waste no time on your runes.
I assumed the rationale for the mechanism was less latency (who has 2 seconds of latency?) and more that early testers quickly realized that, without it, dps was all about hitting those runes EXACTLY on cooldown. The "wiggle room" is more about making the class fun than allowing for latency. Similar to how they changed the way Slam interacts with swing timers.
I've begun updating the first post with a some quick information of sorts, to answer the most frequently asked questions. If you know something that should be up there but isn't, please shoot me a PM.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Note: This roation requires the Scourge Strike Glyph. Replace the next SS in your cycle with a PS+IT when your diseases have 3 seconds or less remaining. Items in parenthesis are optional and typically require 4pc T7.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with this. When you know you have three diseases up, losing a Scourge Strike for a guaranteed overwrite of the last disease ticks is going to be a DPS loss. You are better off using a final scourge strike and then refreshing icy touch and plague strike after they wear off. This isn't about trying to get lucky, although 1 in 4 times you do anyway. This is about maximizing the number of scourge strikes you cast.
There's an argument that maybe you should refresh diseases before they run out if you won't have any frost or unholy runes active for 5 seconds or more. In practice this situation is rare, and I believe you are better off just trying a scourge strike anyway, and the 75% of the time you fail to refresh, you can blow Empower Rune Weapon to start fresh. You can also use Rune Tap to get up a quick Plague strike in the extremely unlikely event that you have a refresh failure, a long time before your runes are active, and Empower Rune Weapon is down.
Related to the concept of maximizing scourge strike damage, you should always use scourge strike before blood strike. Blood Strike isn't bad damage, but scourge strike is better. And the whole reason to use Blood Strike is that it lets you use a scourge strike ten seconds later. When you could either blood strike or scourge strike and you choose blood strike, you are forcing a 3 second delay on scourge strike now to make your next scourge strike occur in 10 seconds rather than 13 seconds. The best case you can do is break even on scourge strikes relative to the "scourge strike first" option. If there is combat downtime (ie. you have to run out of melee range), you have a 30% chance of losing a scourge strike from this rotation. There's just no reason to use blood strike first.
It's worth noting that while Plague Strike should be used before Icy Touch whenever possible, if you are at range, using Icy Touch first is perfectly acceptable. Losing 10% extra damage on one Icy Touch is not the biggest loss in the world. It's not worth deferring rune cooldowns just to plague strike first.
Finally, rather than listing a runic power dump in the cycle, I think it's more appropriate to list the cycle purely in terms of rune cooldowns, with the caveat that you should always delay the rune cycle for a runic power ability if your next ability would take you over the runic power cap. When people hear "runic power dump", some of them think that means they should cast death coil until they run out of power, even if that means delaying a scourge strike, and that's not the right choice. In other words, you should follow a priority queue and not a cycle. It just happens that if you do the queue well, it will be relatively cyclic. Here's the queue:
Unholy Blight (when runic power capped)
Death Coil (when runic power capped)
Plague Strike
Icy Touch
Scourge Strike
Blood Strike
Unholy Blight
Death Coil
Obviously Unholy Blight, Plague Strike, and Icy Touch should only be cast when their associated DoT has worn off and not before.
This is a variant on Tedv's post above. Coming from a Shadow Priest background (which I think is a relatively easy transition to Death Knight, since there are some overlapping concepts), I agree that framing DPS as a 'priority' system versus 'rotation' is more useful.
One thing you quickly learn as a Shadowpriest is that a true 'rotation' is nearly impossible to nail down, due to inconsistent cooldowns, a channeled 'nuke' and variable dot times. In some ways, Unholy DKs are similar, because you can't really script DoT expirations (thanks to the RNG of the Scourge Strike Glyph), and you are constantly having to peek at things that get 'off rotation' due to circumstances.
If I were describing Unholy DPS to a new player, rather than map out a rotation, I might say something like:
1. Are all 3 diseases up? If not, Icy Touch/Plague Strike (as needed).
2. Is your runic power capped?* If so either Unholy Blight (if the prior cast has fully expired) or Death Coil (if Unholy Blight is sill running).
3. If all 3 diseases are up and your runic power is not capped, use the following, in order of preference:
a. Scourge Strike
b. Blood Strike**
c. Runic power ability
* This includes situations where your next runic-power generating ability will put you over the cap, such as casting Icy Touch at 95 runic power, etc.)
** Can be replaced with Pestilence in situations where multiple undiseased targets are in range, or Blood Boil in situations where large numbers of diseased targets (3+) are in range.
If you follow those three rules, you'll have a pretty good sense of what you should be trying to do, and then you can start focusing on 'when should I be using my long cooldowns to best effect?' Both Gargoyle and Empowered Rune Weapon are ideally things you want to think about pre-fight. Are you burning early to get 2 Gargolyes in? Are you waiting for a particular proc or buff to fire off?
But in some ways, for folks that are looking for the nuts-and-bolts, the top 3 rules will at least get them to a reasonable sense of what they should be doing.
I'm not really capable of the pure number crunching of the dps output from the 2 talents I'm mostly debating about. The three points in Toughness would gain me just shy of 31 AP, and in doing so I'd take 1 point from Improved Icy Touch and 2 points from Wandering Plague. I'm not sure of the 3 points in those 2 respective talents are worth the 31 attack power or not, over the course of a raid.
No, I cannot provide a WWS parse for me, I don't believe my guild posts them. Even rough numbers would help.
Also, here is a link to my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
Just going out on a limb here, I'm assuming you haven't read the thread you just posted in. Start with the spec I list here: Unholy DPS Discussion. Variable points are in CE and Virulence only. The talent choices made in this spec will net you a lot more than 31 AP.
Yeah, I got about 5 pages in and couldn't really read much more, attention span lacks on occasion.
Edit: Looking at your spec... it's not really much different than mine. I'm unsure when Corpse Explosion is truly plausible in terms of providing an appropriate dps output, with careful usage of a ghoul I don't know when I'll really need a reduced cooldown on Raise Dead, there are much better damage choices then spending the cast time and runes on Army of the Dead, and I'm already a bit over hit cap, so Virulence is near worthless for me in a PvE environment. I fail to see where the spec you gave me will provide me with "far more than 31 AP".
Has anyone noticed their Shadow of Death working reliably lately or have I just been extraordinarily lucky? It's been 100% for me over the last few days, twice even raising me after I didn't move out of Kel'Thuzad's void zones (and subsequently took 80k+ overkill). I have to say it's actually been a very nice talent to have beyond its pure stat bonus now that it appears to be working properly.
Regarding CE and virulence, you get very little bang for your buck from those two points anywhere that far down in the unholy tree -- everything is equally bad, so where you put those two points to get further along is a question of play style.
Night of the dead is imperative for unholy DKs. Check out any WWS linked on this thread to see how much of a contribution to your DPS the ghoul will be. On fights with AoE (which is most of them), your ghoul will die. A lot. For a relatively painless example of how bad it can be, I suggest running Heroic Halls of Lightning with a pally healer (lack of spammable multi-target heals). Then try to tell me with a straight face that the five minute cooldown on raise dead is fine. What's more, next patch it will provide passive 70% AoE avoidance for your ghoul as well.
This is not something that "simply being smart" can solve. In many instances, there will be AoE damage and your ghoul will be unusable without NotD -- period. Having a usable ghoul versus not having a usable ghoul in these cases is what provides worth far more than 31 AP.
Of course, you'd know this if you'd read the thread.
Regarding CE and virulence, you get very little bang for your buck from those two points anywhere that far down in the unholy tree -- everything is equally bad, so where you put those two points to get further along is a question of play style.
Night of the dead is imperative for unholy DKs. Check out any WWS linked on this thread to see how much of a contribution to your DPS the ghoul will be. On fights with AoE (which is most of them), your ghoul will die. A lot. For a relatively painless example of how bad it can be, I suggest running Heroic Halls of Lightning with a pally healer (lack of spammable multi-target heals). Then try to tell me with a straight face that the five minute cooldown on raise dead is fine. What's more, next patch it will provide passive 70% AoE avoidance for your ghoul as well.
This is not something that "simply being smart" can solve. In many instances, there will be AoE damage and your ghoul will be unusable without NotD -- period. Having a usable ghoul versus not having a usable ghoul in these cases is what provides worth far more than 31 AP.
Of course, you'd know this if you'd read the thread.
That's as much as I was looking for, a reason to use it. I didn't know it, and reading 31 pages takes too much of my time. I'm sorry that I don't want to sit here and read it for that long. Don't talk to me like an absolute moron just because I'm unwilling to read so much. What I did read of it pinned NotD as bad, I did not know that there had since been a revelation of its positive usage in raiding situations. Back to Corpse Explosion and Virulence, being hit capped so Virulence is worthless, would it be better to put 2/3 Outbreak, or 1 into Outbreak and 1 into CE. Again, I've read 6 pages of the thread or so, and as of then, Outbreak was considered a decent enough talent to invest in.
That's as much as I was looking for, a reason to use it. I didn't know it, and reading 31 pages takes too much of my time. I'm sorry that I don't want to sit here and read it for that long. Don't talk to me like an absolute moron just because I'm unwilling to read so much. What I did read of it pinned NotD as bad, I did not know that there had since been a revelation of its positive usage in raiding situations. Back to Corpse Explosion and Virulence, being hit capped so Virulence is worthless, would it be better to put 2/3 Outbreak, or 1 into Outbreak and 1 into CE. Again, I've read 6 pages of the thread or so, and as of then, Outbreak was considered a decent enough talent to invest in.
Many of us have read not just 30 pages here, but hundreds of pages of posts throughout this forum. Please realize that some may not appreciate what can come across as asking people to do everything for you. Outbreak is worthless, and Corpse Explosion is only viable after the patch goes through when it gets buffed. If you'd like to understand why Virulence is still effective after you have reached the melee hit cap, please go read pages 25 and 26. It should give you an understanding as to why spell hit is still valuable for our DPS after the melee hit cap. NotD is invaluable due to AoE damage and bad luck. This will not change, but will only be reinforced with the incoming patch.
I was just wondering why people don't spec 5/5 Desecration in PvE.
Its 5% damage for you in the aoe spot and if you have to move in the spot its not exactly hard to reapply.
Thanks.
I was just wondering why people don't spec 5/5 Desecration in PvE.
Its 5% damage for you in the aoe spot and if you have to move in the spot its not exactly hard to reapply.
Thanks.
This has been covered repeatedly in this thread on mupltiple pages if you wish to go back and read the discussion as to why. Desecration is a raid dps loss point for point and not worth it in today's raid environment.
Tedv/Waste, I understand your points. I will make the correction to not refreshing until the diseases fall off, but priority stuff is more advanced. Most people who post these questions are looking for an "EZ MODE" rotation.
Originally Posted by tedv
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with this. When you know you have three diseases up, losing a Scourge Strike for a guaranteed overwrite of the last disease ticks is going to be a DPS loss. You are better off using a final scourge strike and then refreshing icy touch and plague strike after they wear off. This isn't about trying to get lucky, although 1 in 4 times you do anyway. This is about maximizing the number of scourge strikes you cast.
This is true except in one case: when the SS in question is followed by two BS's.
Originally Posted by Waste
If I were describing Unholy DPS to a new player, rather than map out a rotation, I might say something like:
1. Are all 3 diseases up? If not, Icy Touch/Plague Strike (as needed).
2. Is your runic power capped?* If so either Unholy Blight (if the prior cast has fully expired) or Death Coil (if Unholy Blight is sill running).
3. If all 3 diseases are up and your runic power is not capped, use the following, in order of preference:
a. Scourge Strike
b. Blood Strike**
c. Runic power ability
* This includes situations where your next runic-power generating ability will put you over the cap, such as casting Icy Touch at 95 runic power, etc.)
** Can be replaced with Pestilence in situations where multiple undiseased targets are in range, or Blood Boil in situations where large numbers of diseased targets (3+) are in range.
This issue with this is that it does nothing for those who don't understand rune cooldowns. I can guarantee 90% of new DK's would be pulling 1k DPS at first glance of this explanation, since they don't understand the likely order abilities would be available.
Finally, a question. Anyone know a site with an up-to-date list of AP multipliers for our spells? I was unable to find it on a quick search at work.
Last edited by Zurm : 12/25/08 at 1:25 PM.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Finally, a question. Anyone know a site with an up-to-date list of AP multipliers for our spells? I was unable to find it on a quick search at work.
Have you checked the TTT article? Don't think the ones listed are far off insomuch as their damage hasn't been adjusted since the list was first made, which was just before release. Of course I could be wrong, any information regarding the accuracy of those numbers would be welcome.
First of nice guide zurm, The other night on Naxx 10man I tried this out and I found that its preatty amazing , I wasnt using a disease timer before and now it makes a huge difference I went from 2.3kdps to 3.3k dps on 25man with average 10man gear. I found that DC still is better for me at least than UB on single target and about using SS everytime to get reapplies isnt really that good unless it isnt where the SS1 is like zurm said.
Im still learning the rotacion and when to pop cooldowns.
about gargole my guild doesnt raid too often with shaman as we dont have many should I pop it right after its available to me or wait? I can usually keep it up for a min with a few DCs in between.
12/22/08, 8:50 PM
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