Hello, ive been playing around trying different rotations to get myself one which i find myself comfortable with, and on the target dummies the one ive been able to pump out more dps was: PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-(RD)-SS-SS-BS-BS-(RD)
Ive tried several times to reach the same dps output with the standard PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-SSx3 but i just cant keep up with the one posted above.. Is it me doing something wrong with the standard rotation? Would appreciate any help as ive gone through both threads on this matter and i just cant get it to work.
Thanks

"Standard" rotation would be:

PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-Dump (usually UB)
SS-SS-SS-Dump (Death Coils)

Are you not dumping in your quoted "PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-SSx3"?

Oh apologies, forgot to add the dumps to the second one, yes i am dumping, hence my confusion!

I recently hit 80, and have been looking into specs a bit, and am a bit curious on how they would hold up.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That is one of them, only posting it here because its the only unholy one. Anyway back to the point. The spec focuses heavy on auto attack damage, with the haste from icy talons, necrosis, and blood caked blade. Not sure which presence would be better either. I'm not saying this will be a viable pve dps spec, I'm just a bit hungry for some others input.

Then posting it in the Unholy DPS thread is probably not the best way to get input.

The spec listed many times previously in this thread is vastly superior dps to the one you've posted.

I don’t think that spec would be good in conjunction with an unholy build. You would lose a lot of critical hit which is arguably the 3rd best stat if you are hit capped and 4th if you are not for increasing our dps output. Our most important stat is Attack Power. You lose Bladed Armor which adds about 60 attack power based upon your current armor value and scales. And you loose a flat 2% weapon damage from 2h weapon spec.

In return you gain 30% more damage from IT every 20 sec in our standard Unholy rotation and 30% damage from Black Ice which only affects IT, the only frost spell we cast. In addition you gain Icy Talons which increases our attack speed, a lack luster ability since haste is near the bottom of the list for stats we use to increase our dps.

Agreed the spec gives little boost to Unholy, but Black Ice does increase Frost Fever damage, thereby increasing the damage it does with Wandering Plague. Regardless, the attack speed boost is not worth losing all that AP/Crit/4% weapon damage.

tedv: I'd be curious to know Cinderglacier uptime as well versus Fallen Crusader in an effort to determine which is better for sustained DPS.

Cinderglacier is 20% damage boost for two shadow/frost attacks, not 10%.

Edit: I think I misunderstood what you meant when you said 10%. Forgive my ignorance if I was wrong.

I know in my testing Fallen Crusader has 1PPM, lasts 15 seconds with an ICD of either 40 or 45 seconds (I got 44 seconds one time, but that might have been to human error/lag). Either way, I've seen it have a fairly consistent 23-25% uptime.

I have no data on Cinderglacier (I only modeled FC because I needed the data for the DK Rawr module I'm making). I blindly assumed Fallen Crusader would be better, as it was the higher enchant. My GUESS is that even if they share the same proc rate, Fallen Crusader will be better because it scales with ALL of your abilities, and while it certainly doesn't yield a 20% damage boost on any one ability, over the course of the proc I'm fairly consident it results in more damage.

Also, I tried the Scourge Strike glyph on Archavon last night... except for one extended period where I could not attack the boss, the diseases NEVER fell off, and I was pulling many 5x SS rotations. Any questions I had about the glyph I fully take back, it is simply amazing. Using a mod like Runewatch (which I find to be an all-around fantastic death knight mod) really helps keep this in check.

Edit: No idea how this double posted with hours in between. Odd.

To make this not a completely wasted post, I'd like to agree with the posters stating hwo good the SS glyph is. With a decent mod to track your diseases, its trivial to make sure you have constant uptime, and it means you can pull off some very very high dps cycles.

The only downside to it is (as stated previously) losing disease ticks if it refreshs just before a tick of disease, but I'm confident not having to cast PS/IT will more than outweigh the damage loss.

The rune mod thread in the UI forum is getting derailed with questions about Ebon Plague, so I thought I'd move one over here. We all know that Ebon Plagues from different DKs don't stack, greatly diminishing the dps of a second Unholy spec DK in a group. This is usually avoidable in 5 mans, but for raiding it might become more of a problem. I'm wondering though, can the problem be avoided by having the second Unholy DK not spec Ebon Plague, and take only Crypt Fever? Would this allow both DKs to stack 3 diseases, or will Crypt Fever be overwritten by the application of Ebon Plague?

Until Blizzard realizes how strange the stacking mechanic on Ebon Plague is, it seems like this might be an important question to answer.

Haven't tested if Crypt Fever and Ebon Plague can be placed on the same target, but Ebon Plague also gives you a passive 3% crit which isn't insignificant. You're pretty much restricted to one Unholy DK per raid until Blizzard fixes this. I would imagine it would have to be some wacky thing where Ebon Plague counts as a third disease for all DKs but only if they have the Ebon Plague talent itself.

I noticed the same trend in naxx last night, the thing I am wondering about though is with the loss of desecration from Scourge Strike constantly refreshing your diseases and eliminating the need for plague strike in a rotation, is does the added Scourge Strikes make up for the loss of desecration in our overall DPS. Mind you this argument only really applies on a fight where you are fairly static, on any fight where movement is involved Desecration is usually void making the SS glyph very powerful.

As we've already mentioned, desecration is a questionable talent to take for raiding in its current form due to constant movement.

I just tried the scourge strike glyph on Malygos 10man last night, and one of the things I liked about it (besides the dps increase of about 50dps) is that it freed a lot of global cooldowns. I found myself just mashing the SS button, wtih the occasional BS and RP dumps, it's really amazing. Gargoyle was easy to keep up, horn of winter was finally worth the GCD and bone shield/ghoul were alot easier to keep up. I'm even getting afraid it oversimplifies the class and I get lazy

One thing to note about malygos is that the ghoul get full hp back after the vortex, I dunno if that was because of the aoe heals or the auto-resummoning, but it really helped alot. Most of the tries I just had to resummon it once and it stayed up for the entire fight.

Not to mention that having Desecration in a raid makes you a huge dick because you can't see anything under it.

I really think Unholy Blight could have been made the "third disease" with CF/EB being applied as a magic debuff or something, which still wouldn't make two unholy DKs optimal but it would at least treat the CoE effect as an afterthought rather than the main event. It is annoying and hopefully will be fixed somehow, but I'd hope the other two trees would simply be viable in their own right. If blood and even frost are up to par (DPS and mitigation) there isn't a huge need to stack unholy DKs anyway.

Sorry I should have clarified more, I meant on static fight's like patchwerk where you would be getting the benefits from Desecration when had it down.

Pretty much, although I will most likely have a tank spec for the second spec. So with this I am most likely going to pull points out of desecration and drop them into Necrosis, with the fact that it effects our white damage constantly and that it scales much better than I previously thought, and with one last spare point I am thinking of dropping it into Toughness for a little AP boost via Bladed Armor, either that or a point into Outbreak. Thoughts?

I would definitely put the spare point in Outbreak. I remember there was some napkin math done in the old thread (if I find it, I'll link it, but I'm sure others have seen it and will agree) that the conversion of AP from toughness is so small that it's really not worth it as a DPS talent. Outbreak will help on those AoE trash/boss pulls quite a bit... I often see 5k+ pestilence/bloodboils (total on all targets, not just one), and 10% more damage on that seems like a pretty sweet deal.

Anyone else having problems with keeping up Gargoyle for any extended period of time on Maylgos 25 man?

From my experience it seems like the Gargoyle usually gets killed before it lasted the duration it should? Since Malygos is in my opinion the only somewhat challenging encounter in the game as of right now I am thinking about maybe dropping Gargoyle, mmm.
Oh and Boneshield seems to be invalueable reducing all dmg on Malygos but not losing Charges on Vortex.

Yeah with the Scourge Strike Glyph I'm really liking This build But I love that the Scourge Strike Glyph can add such a completely different element to playing an Unholy.

However I'm trying to decide if there are a few talents I can drop for OaPH for the purpose of farming and questing. Also it probably doesn't matter but can you guys think of any particular tradeskill that would have bigger benefit for Unholy?

I agree, Toughness would net you about 10 Attack Power for 1 point vs. Outbreak which adds 10% increase to damage from PS, Pest, and BB. Outbreak seems like the likely choice here.

Yep, coupled with Icebound Fortitude in the air I was only taking between 480-540 damage a tick in the 10 man version while keeping all my Bone Shield charges.

Unfortunately I also noticed my gargoyle dying prematurely, yet my ghoul managed to live long enough to port up to Malygos and melee him while he was flying up for phase 2. He stayed there as well.