I think there's a bit more to it than just comparing DC damage from gained RP vs. extra BS damage from the glyph.
Extra Deathcoil is also extra GCD used - GCD that you could often use for other things. Especially with 4-piece T7, you're rarely running out of RP, while GCD's are a wanted commodity.

Also, on moments like Malygos' Vortex and Heigan's P2, there's ample sources of RP around with a bit of AMS:ing. Vortex fills your RP pool pretty much as fast as you can spam DC as it is with AMS up (and helps your healers to boot), and on Heigan it's not too inconvenient to eat a burst if low on RP to grab some RP with AMS. Although granted that on the latter case you'll still be somewhat dry on ranged attacks towards the end, unless you have the IT -glyph.

But yes, the third glyph feels a bit of personal preference, or swap from fight to fight, if you will.
From BloodStrike to DnD to IT to even Boneshield, not any single one is going to make a big difference, and which is best is bound to vary from one encounter to the next one. I'll stick with BloodStrike as my general one, as it seems to get the most use on the fights that it matters and DnD on Sarth, but I doubt there's an universal "right" choice for that glyph slot.

During the Vortex you can also use Blood Boil to get Death Runes to be sure to have one more SS when you land.

On a different subject, I noticed a bug with Unholy Blight and I didn't see it mentioned here.
I was cleaning low level dungeons for achievements and I used UB a lot to clean packs faster but sometimes I wanted to cancel the spell to not agro some neutral mobs. When I clicked of the buff, the icon disappeared but when I came close to them the UB effect was still present, ticking and damaging the mobs.

Is 3/3 out of 3 blood caked blade really that much better than virulence? bcb barely procs and does mediocre damage. I would think having a spellhit cap so much closer to the normal melee hit cap would make a large difference in dps than 5% more chance to proc Bcb. I also found that I still do alot of dailies and having on a pale horse makes me feel like I do them alot faster/easier. I regularly raid with other dks that have unholy aura aswell so Im covered. I didn't really see anything else that would significantly boost my dps though.

Currently only level 70 on my Death knight but taking her very seriously but trying unholy and loving it there is a problem i have came across though and since i can't make new threads yet i shall ask here

This is my spec

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I am interested in doing the best Damage possible


My problem is with the rotation


PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> SS -> UB
SS -> SS -> SS -> DC

I get the First line off without a hitch but soon as i hit UB and go to Scourge strike i get one or two off then i can't do anything for 2-3 seconds because its on CD is there something i'm missing? should i use something as a dump inbetween

Im Roughly parsing around 900-1200 on typical fights looking to improve that i tried blood and the rotation there seemed to go off alot easier than the unholy one

Ardain,

I think it's been stated that the best rotation would be if you switch your rotation as follows:

PS -> IT -> SS -> BS -> BS -> UB

Basically if you switch the SS and BS then you will get a UF runes quicker and by the time your thrid SS in the second rotation pops, you should have your death runes back.

This first line is all I can get out when on soloing mobs...Usually if this is the case, then I just sub UB for DC.

In addition to what Dacrusha noted about your rotation, if you ever have 2-3 seconds before the next set of runes pop up and have runic power to spare, use that opportunity to DC, refresh UB if it is about to fade, or the like.

I can confirm this is also true.

Been running old school Strat a lot recently in the vain hope of the mount dropping and am having to wait around for the debuff to tick off before dodging around packs that I would rather skip.

Cancelling never actually cancels it, even though the icon is removed.

I think we can pretty much agree on this.

Each has its own advantage and disadvantage.

DnD glyph is good because pretty much all trash is dpsed down
Boneshield glyph is good because then you dont have to use a blood tap on bone shield, or even give up a SS
Blood Strike glyph probably has the highest dps increase on boss fights, but is somewhat group dependant
Icy Tough glyph will probably remain a favorite, due to its flexibility. IT is most reliable way to do ranged damage and generate RP.

With a ranged rotation like:

IT>IT>BB>BB>DCdump
IT>IT>IT>IT>DCdump

On certain bosses you can keep doing some neat dps. Although again like all glyphs they are all somewhat useful but only in certain situations

Yea got the same bug. Annoying when you try to speed run strat. But other than inconvienient i havent really had much trouble with this. Usually just means i have to wait 5 seconds after I AoE'ed the bugtrap.

Nothing wrong with that rotation.

The first thing you have to know about unholy is that its a lot looser. You dont have to dump runes like mad because you usually dont have to use a lot of GCD.

The second is that you should utilise the GCDs you have for dumps. With 4xT7 your SS will generate 30 RP, so those little GCD gaps are perfect to prevent RP from overcapping.

Actually that doesnt matter one bit. Instead of having to wait for runes for the 2nd SS you have to wait for runes at the 3th SS.

No matter how you really do it, you'll always face this issue:

PS -> IT -> BS -> BS -> SS
xx -> SS -> xx -> SS -> SS

or

PS -> IT -> SS -> BS -> BS
xx -> SS -> SS -> xx -> SS

(xx are free GCDs)
Not much difference in the end.

And even if you wouldnt have that, it wouldnt matter because then you'd just have a lot of GCDs free at the end of the cycle.

Well its a bit of a tossup.

The only spells you really use are DC / IT and UB. (As far as i know UB ticks can miss)
1% hit will be a minor increase in the dps of those. And for most part you probably wont even see any misses in a whole fight.

You could calculate how much dps you'd lose though. Roughly you could check how much:
1% DC DPS + 1% IT DPS + 1% UB dps compares to 33% BCB dps

If you look under the Death Knight PvE Dps topic in the think tank there is a list breaking down how much DPS per point your talents are. I'm quite sure that BCB is more damage per point as well as per roation than virulence. I had to reference it when I was looking at which talent to drop a point in to pick up CE for the fun factor.

As a general note on that list as a whole, the DK post in the thinktank is extremely out of date. I would not rely on most of the numbers in that post, including EP values and a number of the talent values.

That said, to the OP on this issue, my most recent Naxx-25 all-boss parse puts BcB at 2% of my damage, 312,595. 2/3 of that would be 206,312, a loss of 106,283. My DC+UB+IT damage=2,493,514. 1% of that is 24,935.14. So just with that quick napkin math, if I had 2/3 BcB and 3/3 Virulence instead of 3/3 BcB and 2/3 Virulence on that run, I probably would have done ~81,347.86 less damage.

Agreed on that point, I reworded my post above and ran some numbers to confirm. There are other talents on that list that have changed for us as well, but not BcB - Ravenous Dead is more valuable now that ghoul has been buffed, for example, and Necrosis was buffed as well.

Yea indeed.

However, remember this is napkin math.

Hit is actually worth more than 1% dps on the spell, because of the 2 roll system.

Also there is a second part to it.
Missing IT in your rotation can have some nasty consequences for your whole rotation.

However I do think that dps wise BCB is better than virulence.

Is anyone else upset over Ghostcrawler's reasoning behind Ebon Plaguebringer still not being fixed?

One of the biggest banes to Unholy spec DKs is another Unholy DK. It seems that this isn't being fixed because Unholy is popular amongst DKs, and they want DKs to use the other specs more. I don't really see why they consider having multiple U DKs a "reward". There isn't any extra utility that they provide, other than AMZs, I suppose.

Looking at these forums, you can see that every spec is very much talked about and used. Do you think Unholy is more popular in game because it has more fun mechanics and is suitable in more variety of situations?

Thats some appalling customer communication. I can't seriously believe he posted that.

Whether it's the case or not he shouldn't be saying 'we haven't fixed the problem because we want you to stop using that spec and start using these other worse ones'.

Thankfully it's not more than 100 or so DPS lost, which with todays easy raiding isn't an issue. If we hit Ulduar and it's still not fixed, then I agree we have a problem that needs addressing. For the moment, I think it's safe to say that the reason it's not been done is its not viewed as terribly important (which in the overall scheme of things, it isnt). Lets just wait and see what happens.

My recommendation for fixing Ebon Plague is to simply make it a debuff on the mob that isn't a disease and make Crypt Fever go up and only affect the DK that put it up (so we'll see multiple CFs) and make CF provide a disease increase to that DK only.

I use it because it just does so much damage. I tried blood spec last night, and still topped the meter, but did a lot less damage. To give you an example, I did the same DPS on loatheb as blood as I did on Anub'rekhan as unholy. W T F.

I was thinking giving it a Storm Strike / Flame Shock-esque mechanic would solve the problem.

You can have multiple Storm Strike and Flame Shock debuffs on a single target yet they only apply to their respective Shaman. Shaman A's Lava Burst won't consume Shaman B's Flame Shock, and the same policy applies for Storm Strike. Why not do the same with Ebon Plaguebringer? I know Storm Strike and Flame Shock use different mechanics for different purposes, but I'm sure it's something Blizzard could make work. Earth And Moon and Curse Of Elements can all be applied but won't stack.

I don't see why this can't be tuned similarly, and why it hasn't been done already.

I try not to have a huge opinion in what CM's do or say, but Ghostcrawler saying "we wanted you to try other specs anyway" was kind of like kicking dirt in my face. I really enjoy Unholy. Originally I played a Ret Paladin that went Holy for Wrath. I found Ret boring because it's still a shallow spec so I went Holy and began leveling my Deathknight. I've tried Blood and played it thoroughly through the beta but I found it a little too close to Ret and I'm unhappy with the numbers my gear support from it right now. I tried Unholy and it's everything I liked about Ret with a lot more depth and versatility. I really enjoy it. I'm currently Frost trying to master the IT Spam / HB Rotation but when I need to do what I'm expected to do, I'm Unholy.

I'm pretty sure the idea here is that it isn't game breaking for unholy, and they're more concerned with buffing blood and frost to be as appealing as unholy is than they are with fixing this.

Honestly I have barely noticed any difference in my damage due to controlling EP or not, and the content right now is not so demanding that the small amount of DPS lost is going to make or break your raid. I'm all for blood and frost being made comparable though. Actually I think frost is great, I just don't like having to add multiple hotkeys and pay attention to even more variables with it, not to mention potential frost resistant enemies going forward with raids in IC.

The problem is that EP is unlike SS/FS in that it has a raid buff component, while it is also unlike CoE in that it has a personal damage component. I can't say for sure but I'd guess this is where part of the problem comes from. While Earth and Moon and CoE can both be applied to a single mob can you have multiple applications of each spell on one target? My guess is no, which would imply its something in the way the code works for debuffs of that nature that has to change in order to accommodate EP. If it were a simple fix like making it act like SS/FS it would have gone in weeks ago.

That being said the math is already out there and even if you don't like how he worded his statement he did said they're going to fix it. I think this issue can be put to rest.

That can have a wide variety of reasons, ranging from raid composition to the fact you are unfamiliar with the spec.
Unholy DPS does good rotation. But in general all specs do good dps if played well.

I think the DK is unique in its kind that so many different specs are all so incredibly viable.

I presume that the "reward groups that bring multiple Unholy DKs" comment is solely directed at the previously proposed fix of allowing EP to simply "stack." This would mean, for example, if a raid took 4 Unholy DKs then there would be 4 stacked EPs on a boss, which would increasing magic damage taken by 52%. EP stacked multiple times is just way too good. Simply stacking EP is likely an easier fix to implement, but the personal use of the third disease without the stacking debuff is what I think they are holding out for.