• Zurm

As an additional note, what is *actually* responsible for partial resists on bosses is weapon skill. For example, if you tried to scourge strike a level 80 mob with 1 weapon skill, aside from parries/dodges, the strikes you DID land would be mitigated in half (which is actually the most a SS can resist, it will always hit for at least half damage)... until you're weapon skill was at or near max. Since Raid bosses count as your level +3, and there is currently no way to raise weapon skill beside the level max, you will always see partial resists in raids.

Another side note, when you see a strike that says, say "Your SS hits X for 4000 (200 resisted)", you wouldn't have originally done 4200 damage, but actually quite a bit more. The (X resisted) is actually before modifiers/buffs/talents/crits, so in reality, if half a strike was resisted, you might actually see something like "Your SS hits for 2.5k (1.9k resisted)". Just some food for thought. I can't tell you how many time's I've seen 5500(900 resisted) when my SS crits that don't resist always break 8k.

 

Bullshifter

Hey Zurm, since you seem to be hanging around for a minute, I am curious as to whether the stat weights in the current OP are still the current "best guess" or whether there has been any changes to these as the time has gone on, and 3.08 was implemented. I love this particular thread because it seems the most current on the site regarding Unholy DPS, and would just like that first post to continue to be the best "go to" for information that I can refer people to. =)

And thank you for speaking on the spell penetration thing, that was something I've been curious about as well!

 

• Zurm

They are up-to-date and should be fairly accurate. You may see other places with stats weighted slightly higher (specifically strength worth around 3.0 ap), those include the ghoul. The original post of this thread only includes the personal values.

Just keep in mind that those values are based on a specific individual's gear/talents. Depending on your gear/rotation/talents, the values will change (slightly, more likely than not, but still change).

 

Bullshifter

Thanks for that Zurm, that's what I wanted to know. =)

 

Sekke

With Death Runes no longer resetting to their original state (namely Blood runes for an Unholy build) shouldn't that have some effect on the weight of Hit and Expertise (probably lowering it), assuming this factor was included in the original model. If it's already been updated then forgive me.

Also, with the change to Night of the Dead there's really no excuse for an Unholy DK to NOT have their Ghoul up 90% of the time, so wouldn't it be advisable to use those numbers primarily? At least post both sets and note what the difference is. The different values equate to fairly significant changes in ideal gear setup.

EDIT: On a semi-unrelated note, I was wondering if anyone might give me some advice. On Patchwerk my DPS for the last 3 or 4 weeks has been around 4800 pretty consistently. I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong with my rotation. My Blacksmithing isn't at the point where I get extra sockets yet, and I don't have the Greatness deck. Most of my gear is best in slot, but even lacking these things I feel like I should be pulling more DPS.

I'm popping haste pots for Garg, using AP flask and Str food. AotD on pull. Keeping UB up, only using IT and PS if my diseases fall off. We don't Hero until like 45%, so that it's up from 35% to dead (for people who do more damage on lower health mobs), and that's when I pop Garg. The fight isn't long enough to pop 2.

It just seems like with my gear I should be getting higher numbers...though maybe what I'm lacking really does make the difference. Any ideas?

 

Kintaru

I was wondering how effective it would be to replace one of my trinkets with the Mark of Norgannon to cap out my expertise and replace some pieces of gear that I would grab for expertise, with other pieces. Currently I use the Bandits Insignia and the Mirror of Truth. The on use ability would also make it easier to pop for bloodlust/gargoyle. I know its not one of our best trinkets, but any thoughts?

 

• Zurm

I can try to dig around for another set... if method's is still here, maybe he can give us some fresh numbers WITH the the ghoul?

I consider myself fully end-game except for the lack of a [Drape of the Deadly Foe], and I was able to pull about 5900 dps last night on patchwerk. The greatness deck will be a pretty huge boost, but the lack of extra sockets should be pretty minor. Perhaps there is a little room for you to tighten your rotation or have better timing with gargoyle.

Strength/AP before any other stat. Your current trinkets are way better, and the current thinking is that it's better to just stack strength over hit/exp... with a rotation as open as the 2H unholy one, you have plenty of time to retry strikes if you miss.

 

Stoical

It's hard to give any advice without a WWS or a look at your dps gear (you're in tank gear on armory). If you have the 4-piece, you could be capping out on RP if you're not paying attention. If you're going by WWS, your numbers may also not be including ghoul or AotD.

Also, a couple of posts in this thread brought this up a long time ago but no one ever closed the loop - I think that [Indestructible Potion] is much better than [Potion of Speed], even if you don't want to go nuts and pop an Indestructible 5s before the pull so you can get two off. Going off Method's numbers, 500 haste = 350EP for those 15s. 3500 armor = 97 AP/EP, but it's up for 8 times as long as the speed pot, so that's 776EP in comparison. The effect of speed pots on gargoyle and ghoul during bloodlust is nice, but I don't see how that could make it more than twice as valuable, which it would need to be to catch up with armor pots.

It can take up to 30s for the AP to reevaluate armor, so on an expected 3m kill, you'd want to pop it 30-45s in to get maximized uptime during BL. A 2m kill, you can just pop it right after the pull of course.

 

aldy

I can't stress enough how important the duration of your Patchwerk kill is to your overall dps. Comparing 5800 dps on a 2min fight to 4800 dps on a 3min fight is an absolutely worthless comparison. This horse has beaten to death, please stop bringing it up.

 

• Zurm

While this is true, personal DPS increases raid DPS, thus lowering kill time. So in that way, it isn't a worthless comparison, it's just a combined comparison of guild + player. You could also say it's worthless simply because so many factors go into a fight. Even on a 10 minute fight, sample size is small enough that serious fluctuations in RNG can occur, making the same person who did the exact same thing one week do 500 or more dps the next.

This is why our theorycrafting tools model fight length, as well. If these numbers were truly worthless, we wouldn't have anything to base our performance on!

 

Goetterdaemmerung

That's an interesting point (for all specs). It seems natural to use it pre-pull, except potion of speed buffs a prepull AotD+Ghoul quite a bit more; using the indestructible pot 1 minute into the fight means the fight needs to last ~3.5 minutes to get full effect of the second pot.

 

Sekke

I don't have a WWS, but I do take screenshots of my Recount breakdown on most Patchwerk kills. I was going to post it here, but was able to figure out the problem myself.

My UB uptime is absolutely atrocious. On the two kills I have screenshots for (both were around 4800 DPS and both fights lasted about 2:50) UB only accounts for about 40,000 damage, and is one of my lowest damage sources. The first thing I'm going to do when I log in today is change some addons around to make it way more noticeable when UB isn't up. Death Coil, on the other hand, accounted for far more than double the damage of UB. It's my understanding that if I'm doing everything right UB should put out more damage than DC.

 

AmeroGER

No it shouldn't. UB should only do more damage than DC per runic power. DC will still do a higher percentage of your damage but at the cost of much more RP.
I recommend PowerAuras for stuff like keeping an eye on UB.

 

Stoical

AmeroGER is right about this, and those UB numbers sound fine to me. For reference, a recent Patchwerk kill for me lasted 2'55" and I did 5581 dps. I'm pretty good about keeping UB up, and it only accounted for 37k damage, whereas DC accounted for 107k damage.

 

Malcophant

To check on your UB uptime, just find how many ticks of it you had, and thats (approximately) how many seconds it was up. Compare that to the fight time for decent analysis.

 

pindle

Should also note that you'll have to be standing pretty close to some mobs with UB, even if they have a very large hitbox. First thing that comes to mind is Sapphi, if you're not standing in him he won't get the UB ticks. Can't think of more but KT atm but there's more of those. Really annoying if the hitbox is humongous (e.g. Sapphi) yet you have to move in 5-8 yards to have UB do dmg

Edit: hmm missed the stress on the PW fight - should not be an issue there ofcourse.

 

Halle

I see most people using Glyph of Icy Touch and also use it myself. It's also listed as the glyph of choice in the first post.

Are we certain that Glyph of Blood Strike wouldnt be a better idea?

Has anyone worked out how the occasional 10RP weighs up against the 20% extra dps on the 2 blood strikes in every rotation?

Considering that you dont always even use IT due to SS refreshing diseases, I think it's probably a matter of personal preference.

Or am I totally off the mark here?


[edit] Sorry, I now see reading back I missed a discussion on this and it seems that glyph position is indeed personal preference. Death and Decay/Icy Touch/Blood Strike/Bone Shield being the likely candidates, situation dependent.

Maybe a note added by the OP in the glyphs section is needed to keep things 100% in order to save tards like me missing it.

I used to be a hardcore raider, now i'm a hardcore father.

 

parvindk

The common glyphes are Scourge Strike and Of the Ghoul.

For the last one you have choice between BS PS IT.

None are any good, it's all about individual choices.

I myself use DnD as 3rd glyph so when I respec to Tank I don't have to switch it, and in Naxx25 it's good on trash mobs too

If you're just about maximizing DPS on single target bosses then BS might be the ability you use the most, if you have a FFB mage or something it's supposed to work so you might wanna give it a try.

EDIT : If you don't have 4/5 T7 you might wanna choose IT because Unholy has spare GCDs so extra RP is never lost.

~

 

Nedim

Hey guys,

I have just a few questions.

I have been using the 17/0/54 Build for the majority of my raiding. My issue is, I can not find a stable DPS cycle that works. I seem to get lost in the cycles very easily. Can someone list out the exact cycle?

Im using the SS BS BS SS but the runes are down sometimes and Im wondering if that is the set optimal dps cycle. Here are some WWS of my 17/0/54.



Wow Web Stats -- Sarth kill
Wow Web Stats -- Loatheb (No spore killing for achievement)
http://wowwebstats.com/azhmamodov355?s=180508-187834 -- Noth
Wow Web Stats -- Grobb


Wow Web Stats -- Sarth 2 Drake Up

http://wowwebstats.com/tmozychr12ijm?s=83223-99415 -- Maly 25. Had the Bug occurring So I am trying to find longest fight we had.

 

• Darkside

Why are you not using Plague Strike and Icy Touch?

 

Mulgero

Regarding the small discussion about expertise capping couple pages ago, I changed all my exp/hit gems to str and swapped couple items to stay hit capped. I didn't notice any major changes to dps, might have gone slightly up actually (I still have reasonably high expertise without gems tho). I didn't test long enough with 2h unholy spec but at least with my current 2h frost build str is better than exp it seems.

For unholy 1 dodge causes 8% delay to be able to land new SS and reseting disease timers. I'm not quite sure whether that's significant impact due rune CD's to make expertise capping higher priority than just stacking str.

 

NeuroMedivh

Got a question about itemization and the Rawr addon.

I did some gear modeling, and I ended up with two nearly-optimal gear sets. One is based around Obsidian Greathelm and the T7 Chest, the other is based around T7 Helm and the Undiminished BP, with most of the gear the same, just a few minor enchant and gem choices moved around. I worked on the assumption that I had to keep the 4 piece tier bonus, but I haven't really been able to model how much dps that is worth.

Now, one of the gear sets I have nearly finished, all I need is the Obsidian Greathelm (and Drape of the Deadly Foe, but the Drape is BiS regardless of all other gear). Interestingly enough, I found a DK with the exact gear setup as my alternate (Just from Doomhammer, DK of <Drow>). Just's gear choice matched what I predicted as the other gear setup.

Here's the weird thing: My setup, using Obsidian Greathelm, ends up with 21 exp and 232 hit (as I'm alliance, I factored the +1% hit bonus from having a SpaceGoat in raid). The other setup, the one Just uses, ends up with 24 exp and 262 hit, and slightly more +power, but less +crit. According to RAWR though, the Obsidian Greathelm setup is 6 dps MORE than the other, even with less +hit and exp. My question is, how accurate is this? Is RAWR correct in it's analysis, or is the bungling of a rotation due to missed strikes more of a factor to DPS than even the stat weighting implies? I checked my WWS reports, and the absolute best dps I've done (patchwerk 25) was when I somehow never missed a single strike, meaning I never had to correct my rotation.

My current plan is just to stick to getting the Obsidian Greathelm, as that would just about complete my gear setup (other than the drape, which doesn't contribute to +hit/exp, and thus not relevant). But if the higher +hit/exp build is better, I'd rather run that.

 

level12wizard

I'm using the same setup as Just (minus the fact that I'm still waiting on Drape, Sigil, and Malygos boots...hit/exp values don't change), it's something I planned out awhile ago (once the 8% hit cap theory came around) with some online gear modeling tool that I can't for the life of me find again. I'm sure if you look around enough you will find a lot of people who went the route of Undiminished Battleplate.

It ends up with 262 hit (7.99% chance on character sheet, but I often go entire content clears without a single miss), 23 expertise (5.75% neglect) assuming a typical 17/0/54 build (Just's current build has no RoR and 3/3 VotW, likely for tanking), but it caps dodge neglect with the Orc axe racial (you need 26 expertise 6.5% neglect, this give 28). We're both also using prismatic gems in Helm/Neck/Shoulder, if you really wanted you could dump the 8 attack power socket bonus in the neck for hit in the pants to truly cap melee hit.

For reference, since armories are subject to change (I know I log out in PvP gear a lot), the setup is the same as what Xyrm has in the original post, but with the following changes:

Neck: [Favor of the Dragon Queen] over [Collar of Dissolution]
Chest: [Undiminished Battleplate] over [Breastplate of Frozen Pain]
Wrist: [Bracers of Unrelenting Attack] over [Bracers of Lost Sentiments]
Boots: [Melancholy Sabatons] over [Bladed Steelboots]
Ring2: [Circle of Death] over [Ring of Invincibility]

Gems and enchants are purely for strength/AP (even boots), with prismatics in helm/neck/shoulder.

As far as how much of an impact a small number of dodges have on your DPS (versus a little more crit/ap) it can be very hard to say. Personally I love never missing (aside from weird parry moments like Thaddius), as it's one less thing to worry about, and one less factor of RNG that can screw you.

 

Cabal

First your post would belong on the Rawr thread Rawr Discussion , and if you so much as skim that very same thread, you will quickly find out that Rawr for DKs is largely a work in progress, and no where near finished. Use it to "build gear sets" at your own risk.