Your wording here is a little odd but I'm guessing you mean that you're pulling 1k dps less than two different DKs you know, one of whom is blood and the other is DW. It's hard to say what the difference is as we don't know what the gear gap is (your gear isn't bad though) among other determining factors (execution, latency, raid make up, etc.). I wouldn't say he's using optimal numbers based on gear, you can see for yourself in the Raid DPS Thread that Unholy certainly has the capability to be competitive and even dominant. You can also see the rather large divergence between different reports, even as blood and DW the numbers have a pretty large range.

The flip side to your statement would be that just because you're coming out on the low end doesn't mean that Unholy can't stand up to other specs, from all the info contained just in these forums I'd say that would be an inaccurate assessment.

That has been my observation as well. In the field, SS appears to come out much stronger then the math and simulations would suggest. I wonder if perhaps the dps contribution from Glyph of SS or simply its ability to bypass armor is greater than we suspect.

I suspect it is in fact both of those, as well as the fact that SS can allow you to go on long chains of 4x SS, 2xBS, depending on the Glyph, which reduce damage input (and loss) from IT and PS. Right now the weakest link for 17 / 54 looks to be BcB, which is routinely doing far less damage than Necrosis, and less than Wandering Plague. It is less than 1% dps per point at the moment.

2H Unholy also provides a very strong Ghoul, and I am no longer underestimating that little bugger, he is routinely doing 10%+ of my damage.

Even when I use a generous 5xSS/2xBS rotation Unholy is still subpar on paper. I think I'll have to check the SS number in some logs.

I think I should clarify. At endgame gear levels (which to me doesn't seem to be the case for you, and you say the same) Unholy 2H seems to be doing quite well, close to 0/32/39 at the very least (if not ahead, as I have seen with my own tests). Blood, IMO, is just aweful currently for DPS. I think we should leave blood as the new tanking tree of choice, and leave various combinations of frost and unholy points as the main source of our DPS talents.

In terms of math on paper versus actual results, I think it may be something far more simple than that. An unholy 2H rotation is probably the easiest rotation to pull off, also the least impacted by lag or poor computer performance (at least, IMO). The heavily spaced out rotation allows more time to think, and makes a priority cycle (instead of a fixed rotation) much easier to absorb than other builds. From what I've seen, the actual damage each strike does actually seems quite close to what the spreadsheets modeled it out to be, but I have noticed (this is more annecdotal than fact, as I have a relatively small sample pool to go off of) that my SS crit rate seems a bit higher than I'd expect.

Zurm, I have had pretty good experience with 2H Blood so far, but I did do a patchwerk where I sat at 5.6k without breaking a sweat as Unholy, the Unholy buffs really did give some juice to Unholy in general.

If you have tested everything which I haven't had time to do, perhaps I should just skip the testing and go 2H unholy, I enjoy that the most anyway

Have we confirmed this? Back around page 39 I saw your suggestion to parse SS results with and without this talent, but didn't find a follow up. Did someone do this test and reach a conclusion?

The 5xSS rotation was running with only 1 disease . With 5xSS, proper glyphs and sigil 2h Unholy comes out as the best spec by about 100dps. Rp dumping while the Gargoyle is out isn't really modeled, 4 T7 is a nice boost there.
DW is still 100-200dps more.
Maybe it's time to continue my simulator, it doesn't have the limitations spreadsheets have .

I noticed from the last time I had checked this particular thread that the rotation had changed a little. It now starts off with a SS? Is it actually better to open with a scourge strike as opposed to applying both diseases manually? I have personally gone through entire rotations of 9+ total SS's and never had my glyph proc, so what I am really asking is, is it reliable to start off with a SS instead of IT/PS? After all, it is not a guaranteed proc, so it may be very inconsistent even on the same boss (I.E. Patchwerk over multiple weeks could show very different results depending on your 25% chance procs) If so what was the main reasoning behind this?

After re-reading the first post I am a little confused on the wording (mostly because I am easily confused anyways). When Zurm said "Replace the next SS in your cycle with a PS->IT when your diseases have fallen off." does that include the very first attack, replacing SS1 with PS/IT on the initial pull?

Has anyone tested out the difference in DPS between opening with PS/IT compared to just purely opening with SS?

Forgive me if this has been adressed, I may have missed it while skimming the pages.

The sentence two sentences after the one you quoted reads "Obviously, at the start of a fight, replace the first SS show with a PS->IT."

Opening with purely SS is a very bad idea. Huge chance you won't see any diseases for at least 10 seconds. No, open with diseases.

Also realize that once you glyph for scourge strike, you can no longer really use a set rotation but you switch to a priority system.

What zink posted on the front page was pretty much a simplified version of the priority system:

SS>BS>BS>SS
SS>SS>SS
Replace any SS with PS>IT if diseases go down.

Is a simple version of a priority system that goes something like this:

1. If diseases go down -> PS>IT
2. If diseases wont go down before another UF rune free up -> SS
3. Convert blood runes to death runes using BS
4. If RP>40 and UB is down -> UB
5. If RP>40 and UB is up -> DC

Because of the nature of the unholy rotation you have a lot of breether room, a lot of free GCDs, so keeping to this priority rotation is really easy.

But since diseases are down at the start of a fight you always open with PS>IT

EDIT: Actually the priority list I made isn't really correct since you should dump RP if it gets too high. Rune refresh cushioning easily allows you to do that without pushing back your rotation.
That should probably be priority 2 then.

2,5% or about 100dps.

Quick question - I just got lucky and got the Inevitable Defeat to drop on some trash last night and I got rid of my Runeblade of Demonstrable Power which has served me well still keeping me up in the top 5 on bosses. My question is other than the Betrayer of Humanity is there any worthwhile upgrade to the Inevitable that would really be a game changer or should I only look to upgrade to the BoH.

I've searched this whole thread and the compendium and I can't find anything about Necrosis vs Impurity post 3.0.8. With Necrosis' shadow damage doubled I'm seeing it move up my contribution list in recount pretty significantly. It's clearly above BCB now but I'm having trouble figuring out if it is now better than Impurity.

I got a slight DPS boost going from The Inevitable Defeat to The Jawbone, probably due to the Jawbone's weapon damage. It's not going to be anywhere near what upgrading to Betrayer would get you though.

who cares, you should have all three in a DPS build.

With the BCB doing 1% dmg, Would outbreak be better?

To the best of my knowledge the reason there is no single target dnd rotation is because, even though dnd may do more total damage over its course than a SS (I don't actually know if it does, if someone could confirm or not), it is extremely rune costly, and doesn't allow you to gain a second death rune from your blood strikes. You will be popping it every time it is up being that the cooldown is longer than the spell duration. From my understanding a SS and BS combined will do more total damage than a full course of dnd on a single target.

After being 51/13/7 (Blood) for most of my time at 80, I've given Unholy some love recently, and well I've loved the playstyle much more than Blood.

My gear really hasn't changed any since I've last tried Blood and my DPS on most encounters has went up by around 1k on most fights. I'd say part of this is the the relaxed feel the rotation seems to have when compared to Blood, with blood it seemed like I never had a free GCD (due to the fact the rotation was so strict) to DC when I had full RP or had a SD proc, but with Unholy having more of a priority based rotation its much easier to what you need rather than following a strict rotation. Hopefully in the next week or two I can get my 4th teir piece, as well as the Sigil off Heigan which has yet to drop for my guild .

Also does anyone know of a good addon to monitor UB uptime? I use runewatch for my runes, rp, and diseases. My buff bar is usually so full in raids it's hard to watch for it there, I know it gives the boss a debuff but it never has a countdown so its hard to make the choice of refreshing UB or DCing.

Classtimer + Magic runes will do everything you need. If you want to display your abilities cooldowns then I also reccomend Omnicc.

I've seen the concept of a priority system pop up a few times in the last few pages. Just so we're clear, when we switch to a priority system is everyone doing something roughly similar to:

#1 Rune Dump if at 100
#2 Unholy Blight if not up
#3 Death Coil if no runes are up
#3 refresh diseases if < 5 seconds
#4 BS if blood runes are up and aren't death runes
#5 SS if runes are up

I know that SS is last on my priority list, but given the condition nature of everything else I still am hitting SS more than anything.

I personally found Classtimer a bit buggy, in that the timers sometimes for no reason at all disappear.

The 2 addons i use at the moment are TellmeWhen. Which is highly customizable and just shows a big square icon for whatever you want it to be. (Disease) Timers / Cooldowns / Procs / etc.

The other i use is Power Auras Classic. This addon shows a big glowing object in the middle of your UI. I find this insanely convenient for procs like Killing Machine / Rime (though thats the frost departement).

--------

As for the discussion on DnD in a solid rotation.

I think that you simply lose too much on a death and decay.

Basically purely from the runes alone you have to compete vs a BS and a SS.
On top of that you lose a lot of RP, with the 4x T7 set bonus you get 40 RP from BS + SS, whereas DnD only generates 15.
Another issue is that because DnD doesn't generate any death runes you will never be able to turn 2 blood runes in 2 deathrunes for an extra SS.
And the 4th is that due to the loss of some of those SS, you have a smaller chance of refreshing your diseases, which means you have to use PS+IT which are inferior to SS to bring those diseases back up more often.

So basically if you look at the whole picture.
I know you use a priority table, but lets just say that your rotation looks something like:
PS>IT>BS>DND
SS>BS>BS>IT>PS
DND>BS>SS

This 30 second rotation is repeated twice per minute. I know its probably not exactly what you intended, but it comes close, and makes for an easier comparison what exactly it is you lose and gain by using DnD. Because it is NOT just 1 BS + 1 SS you lose.

The default SS rotation is this, lets forget SS glyph here for a minute, however the glyph DOES work in benefit for the non-DnD rotation.

PS>IT>BS>BS>SS
SS>SS>SS
repeated 3 times over 60 seconds

Ok lets see what you do compared to the normal one:

DnD rotation
4x DnD
4x PS
4x IT
8x BS
2x SS
400 RP

SS rotation
3x PS
3x IT
6x BS
12x SS
525 RP

Difference:
4x DnD + 1x PS + 1x IT + 2x BS
VS
10x SS + 125 RP

So the question is whether or not 10x SS + 125 RP is higher dps than what you get.

I personally think it is, if you consider all the circumstances. the glyphs etc.

I could pull out some calculations but i think we can safely say that it is probably higher.