Unholy DPS Discussion - Page 51

richard · 12/22/08, 7:50 PM

Originally Posted by burlyman

But doesn't our hit have to be much higher than 8% to cover the spell hit needed? I mean, even with 3/3 virulence don't we need like 295 hit?

Stop being an idiot. There's several posts talking about the compendium.

Go here: Death Knight: PvE DPS

Dominated · 12/22/08, 10:12 PM

Originally Posted by richard

Stop being an idiot. There's several posts talking about the compendium.

Go here: Death Knight: PvE DPS

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.

burlyman · 12/22/08, 11:24 PM

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.

shed · 12/22/08, 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by burlyman

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.

Illundai · 12/23/08, 1:26 AM

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.

Veala · 12/23/08, 9:48 AM

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.

Leaflock · 12/23/08, 1:20 PM

Originally Posted by Veala

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.

Veala · 12/23/08, 1:27 PM

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.

Lanky · 12/23/08, 4:17 PM

Originally Posted by crimsonsentinel

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.

Neckface · 12/24/08, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Lanky

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.

• Zurm · 12/24/08, 10:41 AM

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.

tedv · 12/24/08, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Zurm

Rotation:

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.

PS->IT->BS->BS->SS->RP Dump
SS->(DC)->SS->SS->RP Dump

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.

Waste · 12/24/08, 11:52 AM

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.

Istik · 12/24/08, 5:41 PM

I was just curious about the potential of this spec:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

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

Broseph · 12/24/08, 6:10 PM

Istik,

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.