Sharkweek

Has anyone had any trouble with reaping not proccing a death rune? I'm not talking about the death rune running out after not using it. I've noticed on several occasions when I've had both blood runes up and then use blood strike or blood boil twice only one of them activates as a death rune and the other one recharges as a blood rune. I don't know if this is a bug or not so that's why I'm curious to see if anyone else has experienced it.

 

Bloody_sorcerer

Yes, I have had this occur, but not in any controlled fashion; my best guess is that it has to do with latency and lag spikes.

 

Zurai

I've seen it but never been able to pin down what causes it.

 

mewse

Yes, I've seen this except while specced frost and the talent Blood of the North. Sitting at a target dummy, two blood strikes in a row will sometimes produce 1 death rune with the second blood rune staying blood. It's a very annoying bug but I've switched to a rotation that doesn't use two blood strikes in a row, and that seems to work around the problem.

I thought it might've been my unit frames but I disabled them and the default Blizz frame still shows the death rune not being produced.

 

everwatch

Leaf the problem you have is that you are assuming that only a small sample is being observed, and only at a certain gear level. I run a Death Knight Blog, it's my sig. I've gotten multiple reports from readers in game, in comments, and in mail showing their improved turn outs with DW builds at varrying gear ranges. I've seen the evidence on WWS and on WMO. And then I've seen the same brought again in Recount SS's, and in various posts on both EJ forums and elsewhere. The sample size is not marginal or small in any degree. You however may have only had a limited viewing of this new aspect in WoW for DK's however. So, some may have been making assumptions based off of small sample sizes. You are correct in that. But speaking as someone who has been researching the hell out of this for my own blog posts about DW, I can tell you empatically that I am making no assumptions off of a limited sample size. Even going so far as to log in to other servers and ask other players about their DW experiences.

Lyssa, I am well aware of issues with WWS reporting pet damage for DK's. However first off in Patchwerk the occurances of glitches *now* are much more rare. Typically it reports Ghouls/Gargoyles every time now. It just leaves out AotD. Also my recount reference was specifically to recount only comparisons, not recount versus WWS/WMO. IMO, to be safe, I only compare like to like. WWS vs WWS, Recount vs Recount, and WMO vs WMO. Just in case a code or programming issue would cause otherwise unseen or missed discrepancies.

http://www.skeletonjack.com/

 

Muarf

I don't know if this has already been posted but I noticed a small bug with my gargoyle yesterday on Heigan, maybe it also happened before but I didn't see it.
It died almost as soon as I summoned it, but I still kept the buff draining my RP, I had to click it off.
I didn't pay much attention because I was runnng around to avoid the lava so I only noticed that 30sec later.

 

Nerub

Looks like we can expect a Gargoyle nerf soon, maybe even with 3.0.8 when a new build is pushed.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Gargoyles not OP?

And maybe some tinkering with Necrosis.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - GC: Blood Caked Blade, DW vs 2 Handed data.

 

Zelegith

OK here's a question... prolly a silly one but it's been on my mind and i haven't tested it quite yet. Army of the Dead ghoul corpses, can you use them for CE? I'm guessing you can't since they are friendly, has anyone done any testing with it? because the change to CE is making me consider taking a point from somewhere and speccing into it, because it's one of my favorite talents but i dont have it because it is so underpowered atm.

 

Kaejin

Friendly corpses aren't exceptions to CE, as most of the people I raid with know fairly well by now. The only reason I can think of that you might not be able to CE AotD ghouls is because they fade out rather quickly compared to other corpses.

 

Zelegith

hmm well thats good news in anycase, i can see it being useful in a single target boss fight that doesn't have a frontal cone attack or something, and after the ghouls die i can CE a couple to get some extra dps going, i'll do some testing with this and see how it works out

 

Tholofonos

From what I've been able to gather, casting Gargoyle sets up a delayed trigger. Since the first 10 seconds or so are "free", you don't have the Gargoyle buff. It appears 10s after you cast it - but it appears regardless of whether or not the garg itself is still alive. If the Gargoyle dies while the buff is up, the game is pretty good about removing it and stopping draining your RP, but on fights where it'll probably die fast (Heigan, Maly, Sapph, Raz) I watch the screen like a hawk. If I see that bat fall out of the sky in the first 10s, I make sure to click off the buff once it shows up.

If this doesn't get fixed in 3.0.8, I might just have to bind a /cancelaura Summon Gargoyle macro to a key to speed things up.

 

• Zurm

I've seen this happen twice in my dual-wield spec, but I've never seen it happen as my 2H spec.

 

Mooncrow

Nope, the base time on both is 10 seconds. If the gargoyle dies in those first few seconds, the buff icon will stay up and continue to drain RP.

 

ksearo

Has anyone tried it? I know that you can CE your ghoul while he is alive (just like the skill you receive with Shadow of Death). I'm wondering if maybe the ghouls from AotD will work in the same manor.

Edit: I went ahead and tested it. You can't CE the ghouls from AotD while they are alive like you can with your personal ghoul, but you can CE their course. I'm thinking that maybe a macro might make targeting their courses right after they die will make this idea work. Something like:

/cast [target=Army of the Dead Ghoul] Corpse Explosion

I'll try it in 20 and see if it works.....

 

everwatch

Wow, good heads up. I've never noticed this myself. What happens if you reach 0 RP? Will the buff fade off if there is no Gargoyle out? I don't think I'd have ever noticed this myself as I look for the Garg or his attacks, or his body if that is the case. So I burn my RP right away. If it fades at 0 RP, then that'd explain why I've not noticed it. I rarely watch for the buff itself. Are there any other Gargoyle related bugs?

http://www.skeletonjack.com/

 

ladolcevita

Hello everyone....I was given shoulderplates of bloodshed last night which according to several other forums say they are better than my heroic drop from NAx shoulders of Opportunity.....everyone keeps talking crap every which way....which one is better until I can get the IDEAL set for unholy? I trust your opinions.....

 

TheWicked22

Questions like this really do belong in the Simple Questions, Simple Answers thread.

[Shoulderplates of Bloodshed] are superior if you're not hit capped. The armor penetration on [Shoulderguards of Opportunity] make them less useful for an unholy build than a blood build due to the fact that a larger portion of unholy's damage is spell damage, and thus already ignores armor.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...heWicked22.png

 

Tholofonos

From what I can tell from my admittedly limited testing, the buff (and associated RP drain) behave exactly the same way in both cases of Gargoyle living or not living the first ten seconds - the buff appears after 10s and continues to tick out your RP until either your RP runs dry or the buff's duration expires. The only difference, of course, is that in the latter situation, your gargoyle is doing no damage.

 

aldy

I've have switched to a DW build, so this doesn't help me at all, but I recently realized that [Indestructible Potion] for the standard 2h build with 5/5 bladed armor would be a 97 AP buff. If you drink one 5 seconds before combat, you would be able to drink a second one later and get 3 minutes 55 seconds of +97 AP, which is more than enough time for the majority of the 25m bosses out there. Seems far superior to the 15 seconds of 500 haste especially considering how poor haste is for 2h. I know I'm certainly not the first person to think of it, but I don't recall ever seeing anyone mention it anywhere, so hopefully it will help some people out there :-)

 

CaptainMcCloud

This actually raises a question I've had for quite a while, but didn't want to seem out of place. I've been recently talking to a few different Death Knights on my server about the merits of Haste. We all know it affects our White-based DPS, (Auto-Attack, Necrosis, Blood-Caked Blade) but what about its contributions to our Pets' DPS? My primary question here is, is the stat weighting for Haste in an Unholy build taking into consideration its effects on our Pets' DPS?

It's easy enough to see the effects on the pet ghoul; his attack speed in the character sheet pane changes based on both the passive and active haste you have. (For example, a Meteorite Whetstone proc will lower your ghoul's attack speed as well) The gargoyle, however, is another story. I've been eye-balling this and the PvE DPS Compendium thread for this topic to pop up, but I haven't seen anything on it besides the fact that the gargoyle does benefit from active haste like Heroism/Bloodlust.

I don't trust my own numbers, so I thought I'd bring this up here. Looking over a few WWS reports (Patchwerk kills, mostly, for consistency) where there are multiple Death Knights with Summon Gargoyle at full duration, the number of Gargoyle Strikes is usually within 1-3 of each other, but the one ahead in the count will always be the Death Knight with more haste. I can't draw a conclusion from the few I've looked over so far, but I was hoping someone else would have some more insight. I, too, discount the benefit of a Haste potion, but if the gargoyle proves to benefit from our bonus haste rating upon being summoned, I'm sure that'd change a few minds about the consumable.

Edit: I partly answered my own question with three 9-minute tests on the boss level training dummy. (3 uses of Summon Gargoyle) The gargoyle benefits from haste effects that you gain. I recorded 26-27 Gargoyle Strikes with no haste effects active, and 32-33 Gargoyle Strikes with a [Potion of Speed] active before summoning.

 

Zadus

First let me say I don't claim to be amazing at math and I am not going to bother posting any numbers up.

My thoughts are this. According to the stat weight breakdown between each spec. Frost scales the best, then blood then unholy.

Some have already said that they have seen unholy already reach its limit while the others havent.

I was just curious to the fact while our scaling has been measured, what about our pet? Dont we constantly scale more than other specs becuase of the pet?

With the new glyph and our talent that increases STR contribution, doesnt that still cause unholy to do the most DPS? Because while blood and frost have the potential to outscale unholy, will there ever be gear in the game to make it happen? Will gear in the game ever be good enough to make it outscale unholy's damage + pet scaling?

If im completely wrong please let me know.

 

• Lanky

The pet offers a very small scalar outlet, my ghoul has more than 3k strength but he doesn't output more than 500 dps. The pet alone will never compensate for better scaling in other specs.

 

Stoical

You may be selling your ghoul a bit short. Mine did 680 dps on Patchwerk last night.

 

Leaflock

(emphasis mine)

Yep. As to the rest of your response to me, you should stop reading my observations about the overall reception of the current DW spec as personal attacks on you.

Look at the sentence immediately after the one you quoted and took as an assault: "If it wasn't clear, I was thinking of some posts that were suggesting the only spec worth bringing to a raid was DW, which is ridiculous."

end derail

 

aldy

I'm sure a lot of people have already seen, but latest PTR notes as they pertain to unholy DKs (from mmochampion):

* Virulence now reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 10/20/30%. (Old - Affected all spells)
* Necrosis now give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
* Summon Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds (Down from 1 minute). Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69.
* Anti-Magic Zone now lasts up to 10 seconds. (Down from 30 seconds)
* Glyph of Death Strike now increases your Death Strike's damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect.
* Glyph of Raise Dead - Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. (Old - You generate 20 runic power whenever you summon a ghoul.)
* Glyph of Obliterate - Increases the damage of your Obliterate ability by 20%. (Old - Your Obliterate strikes for 20% additional weapon damage)
* Glyph of Death and Decay - Damage of your Death and Decay spell increased by 20%. (Old - Targets of your Death and Decay Damage of your Death and Decay have a 10% chance to cower in fear for 2 sec)
* Glyph of Bone Shield - Adds 2 additional charges to your Bone Shield. (Up from 1)
* Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell by 2sec. (Old - Also increased cooldown by 15 seconds)