Hello,
Anyone counted how much worth 4 pieces T7 bonus for unholy? Asking because I get in last few days few "best in slot" gear and I'm thinking about sacrifice 4pieces bonus for non set items. Extra 10RP per SS looks amaizing but raw stats from set are kinda useless (like tons of haste).

i personally cant answer that question directly, i have not read anything on the actual DPS increase of the set bonus, i bet it is hidden somewhere in the 56 pages of this thread, but you should compair what u gain/lose for stats by switching the gear and then applying it to the chart on the very first page of this thread. or atleast post what stats and how much you gain/lose so we can have some sort of idea what your looking at.

this is also going to depend on how efficient you are in your cycle and ditching your runic power. if u tend to notice your sitting at 100 RP a lot then its not as good of a bonus it otherwise would be. judging by the cycle of the unholy spec i would say if u can gain a reasonable increase in stats ditch the 4 piece but keep the 2 piece.

-devivus - moonguard

Some very loose math..

With PS-IT-SS-BS-BS-SS-SS-SS and no Glyph procs, that's 4x SS every 20sec, and that's 40RP extra.

Since we can't use more of UB, that's most probably an additional DC. Average DC around 4k puts 4xt7 bonus around 200dps.

at 200 dps the 4 piece bonus looks pretty good, but again if your not using your runic power efficiently you are not going to see that kind of a DPS increase.

Provided you manage your RP properly (i.e. don't let it sit at 100), then the 4 set bonus is much better than any combination of offset items you could have.

I made this post on our guild forums, which I think represents the best overall gear setup:

[Valorous Scourgeborne Helmet]
[Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]
[Sovereign Twilight Opal] or [Bold Dragon's Eye] (for Jewelcrafters)
[Arcanum of Torment]

[Favor of the Dragon Queen]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby] or [Bold Dragon's Eye] (for Jewelcrafters)

[Valorous Scourgeborne Shoulderplates]
[Greater Inscription of the Axe] or Master's Inscription of the Axe - Spell - World of Warcraft (for Inscribers)
[Sovereign Twilight Opal] or [Bold Dragon's Eye] (for Jewelcrafters)

[Drape of the Deadly Foe]
Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Undiminished Battleplate]
Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Bracers of Unrelenting Attack]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby] (for Blacksmiths)
Enchant Bracer - Greater Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft or Fur Lining - Attack Power - Spell - World of Warcraft (for Leatherworkers)

[Valorous Scourgeborne Gauntlets]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby] (for Blacksmiths)
Enchant Gloves - Crusher - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Girdle of Razuvious]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]

[Valorous Scourgeborne Legplates]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Icescale Leg Armor]

[Melancholy Sabatons]
Enchant Boots - Greater Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft or Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality - Spell - World of Warcraft (if Unholy Aura is regularly not available)

[Ruthlessness]
Enchant Ring - Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft (for Enchanters)

[Circle of Death]
Enchant Ring - Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft (for Enchanters)

---

edit: this one has 7.99% hit and 24 expertise. I'm not sure how you can get [Obsidian Greathelm] into any build without Nerves of Cold Steel and not either be severely lacking in hit or be missing 4pcT7.

Hmm you're right; I'd made several potential lists and I've copied the wrong one. I'll edit in the items to take it over 8% hit.

Why haste on cloak instead of agility? I got a very similar setup using rawr. Unholy rotation is very loose and has a lot of free GCD. Would haste be more profitable for Frost/Blood?

Agility gives very little DPS benefit. Haste at least increases white damage, Necrosis, Blood Caked Blade, and pet damage.

Both of them are stats from "lower bracket" but 22 AGI > 23 haste, at least for 2h Unholy. That is how it was in every stat weight and spreadsheet I saw.

I don't get the same results (I get 1 haste as about 50% better than 1 agility) and I still haven't seen much attempt in the stat weights to include pet scaling for haste, though I have seen 3.0 thrown around for strength when the ghoul is added in.

Curiosity killed the cat I'm sure, but I was wondering how Crude Discolored Battlegrips are considered better than Valorous Scourgeborne Gauntlets

I am currently hit capped while in raid, and using a mod like RatingBuster shows the Crude's to not provide as much dps as the Valorous. I was recently awarded these, so I guess what I am wondering is if I should hold on to them because once I finish out my gear that this will come into play.

They're better by most weightings I've seen, but generally you want to keep your 4pc bonus, so if you have to break your bonus to wear the Battlegrips then they aren't worth it.

Thank you. I thought maybe perhaps I was overlooking something. I do have the tier chest as well, but that would mean I lose Breastplate of Frozen Pain which isn't an option since it's BiS according to everything I've read. Besides it doesn't gain me dps either lol.

I'll hold onto the grips for now just in case it does come into play after I get my final BiS pieces.

[Undiminished Battleplate] is probably better than Breastplate of Frozen pain simply because it allows you to go for straight dps stats/gems/enchants on the rest of your gear while still maintaining hit/expertise cap (or at least really close to it, as the above posts show).

Assuming ebon plaguebringer hasn't been fixed (and thus only 1 DK have it up per mob), if you have 2 unholy death knights, is there a better talent investment for those 3 points somewhere else in the spec? Or will the 3% crit outperform anything else available? My original thought was to move the points from there as well as those from unholy aura (since the other Unholy DK would have this as well) and move it into desecration, or perhaps 4/5 desecration and the last point for virulence.

Speccing blood isn't an option, as neither dk is geared enough to pull off blood yet. I know many raids have multiple DKs, how do we work around this?

First pass at an Unholy build. Keeping the traditional 17/0/54 format. http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

Current thoughts:

1) How useful is Dirge? Would these two points be better served elsewhere?

2) I skipped Imp Unholy Presence until we can do some testing on whether the faster rune cd (and 15% haste) is better than the 15% total dmg of Blood Presence. The quick in-head math tells me no, as this would be 10% increase in rune-based DPS, +15% dps of white dmg, which is always going to be less than a straight 15% across the board, especially with things like the 3sec cooldown of BCB which penalize haste. Note: If Unholy Presence has a base reduction of rune cooldown, this would change the situation obviously.

3) Only took 1 point in Epidemic due to the increase in base disease duration. The flipping of morbidity and virulence means I can no longer steal a point from Virulence. Sadface.

4) Ghoul Frenzy looks like garbage, so there's one point saved.

5) Outbreak has gone from a "well, if you have a few extra points, take it" ability to a "Don't be a moron, take this talent" one.

6) The change to PS makes me wonder a few things, namely, is 2xPS better than 1xSS, and if so, how do we best capitalize on this?

Yeah. Ghoul Frenzy looks awful. Especially as it's channeled.

That said, moving my brain fart from the patch notes thread to here, where it belongs. Has anyone considered a frost-esque rotation that focused of desecration uptime? It would look something like this:

PS, BS, SS, SS RP dump.

Using this spec, as well as the plague strike and SS glyphs. Oh, and you blood tap before the pull to get yourself an extra Unholy rune.

Basically, the new, scarier plague strike (50% weapon damage +90, then plus a further 60% from the glyph) is solid damage. It gets you two disease up (BP + EP). And keeps 100% desecration time. The flip side is, in theory, less scourge strikes, and with only the glyph applying frost fever, less FF time.

That said, in a 21 second period (epidemic + 15 seconds) you should scourge strike 4 times, which at 25% should mean most times you'll have FF up. So in the end, you're comparing the 5% increased damage to everything versus one SS (well, and however the reduced need to blood strike plays out).

PS. DW guys have mostly proved that moving out of desecration isn't such a big deal on most current fights.
PPS. I don't know whether the spare two points should go into wandering plague (which I've done) or Dark Conviction.

I've been playing around with the mmo-champion calculator, trying to figure out a decent spec for Unholy and this is what I came up with. (PVE of course)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

I took desecration because it seems like it will be worth using PS if the damage changes go through. Though I'm not sure about putting any points into Epidemic due to using desecration. I also took 1 point out of dark conviction to max out desecration. I have 4pc t7, so dirge really isnt needed. The main thing I wanted to ask was if Wandering Plague is *really* worth taking? Most bosses dont have adds that you can fight near them, and trash in instances dies fairly quickly for this to be effective.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for hopefully taking a look over and letting me know if this would work out, especially the wandering plague thing.

Thanks again!

(also posted this in that big list of dk changes)

You linked the wrong build.

1) I think dirge is still very useful. Since Unholy generally has "enough" GCD you can really utilise every bit of extra RP you can get.
Per rotation we use 5 abilities in the Dirge list so thats 25RP extra, raid buffed my death coils hit for about 3000 average, so 25/40 * 3000 = 1875 damage extra per 20 seconds. That is 94 dps.
I think thats worth it

2) This is gonna be very very interesting. At first i waved it off, since BP still gives 15% extra damage. But lets get some stuff straight here.

Unholy presence will provide:
10% extra dps from faster rune refresh
15% more white damage // Mine hangs around 20-25% in raids so that would be 3-3.75% extra dps
15% more necrosis damage // Well Necrosis is 20% of white damage, so this would add 3% on top of the white damage, which is a very small amount that is somewhere close to 1%

However with just this we're talking about ~14-15% extra dps already, which trivals blood.

So this is some great food for thought.

3) Yea the flipping is pretty sweet for other specs, but for unholy its a pain since Virulence was a great filler talent in exactly the right spot.

I'm kind of wondering how worthwhile those extra points in epidemic are. They provide extra buffer for SS refresh, so you can push out way more SS, since the change to refresh diseases rises fast the moment you have a bigger buffer.
However if that turns out to not be really needed, the extra points are wasted since they are refreshed so quickly.

4) Ghoul Frenzy seems interesting on certain fights. However I dont think anyone will take that unless they remove the channeled part. Who in gods name is gonna channel his pet for extra dps. There is only 1 spot i can think of this working... And that is on Sapphiron when I'm hiding behind an iceblock

The healing on it is nice, but imo this should be a fire and forget ability.

If they want to make that talent decent they increase the cooldown up to 1 minute, Make it a free ability (no more 1 unholy, im getting tired of these stupid 1 rune abilities that break up rotations) that does exactly what it says it does now. So every minute your ghoul heals for 30% and gets 25% haste for 15 seconds.

5) Outbreak is awesome now, must have. Unfortunately this puts more strain on the first tiers of unholy, however. I already decided that I'm gonna drop BCB

I have been checking my WWS reports lately and BCB for me only adds 2% dps. For 3 talent points I find that to be pretty subpar. And with the new internal CD it wouldnt suprise me if this number drops lower.

Just doing some quick thinking / napkin math. But raid buffed my weapon has a swing speed of around 2-2.5 seconds. That means that instead of having a 30% chance to proc it every 2-2.5 seconds i have a chance (due to the 3 sec ICD) of 30% to proc it every 4-5 seconds instead.
Thats a small nerf already.
My math is probably way off, but 30% proc chance atm means 3 procs per 10 swings on average. With the new ICD thats means you get an extra 3 swings that cant proc it, so you'll proc it 3 times per 13 swings instead, which is a 23% procrate instead of 30%
I know the nerf was aimed at dual wield, but when you toss in a 3 second ICD with 2H weapons swinging just below that 3 second mark, its a nerf to 2H as well.

Dropping BCB should make the upper part of the tree a lot more flexible. However I can not really say how valuable BCB is compared to other talents.

6) Yea the new PS needs some thinking.

This is the new SS. Now the thing that I'm wondering. The 9% increase is that just for the bonus damage, or for the whole strike's damage?
If its for the whole strike, that means that SS will do 82% weapon damage + 235.75; with 3 diseases up. That sounds quite interesting. (Ow and another 30% from outbreak)

If that is true, and figuring in the armor ignore. I think SS will still be our best attack.
However if the 9% applies just to the bonus damage. I'm not so sure if PS+IT<SS anymore, SS will probably remain the best however, and if not they'll surely tweak it.

--------

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

Would probably be the build I'm thinking of right now.

The wording of the patch notes are a bit odd, and the mmo-champion "updated" calculator is pretty buggy still. The notes say Epidemic has three ranks for three seconds per rank, giving a total disease duration of 24 seconds (including the new 15 second base duration of diseases). This seems like a huge boost to overall DPS with Glyph of Scourge Strike, giving a lot more leeway for RNG.

Scourge Strike also seems to have it's damage flat out increased, "55% of weapon damage plus 436, plus 9% per each of your diseases on the target", and the exact wording for Outbreak on the patch notes is "Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%." Not sure what sort of typo that is, perhaps an internal change where Outbreak gave 45% to PS and SS, or if it isn't supposed to benefit SS at all. It seems like too much of a buff.

I don't see why Dirge wouldn't be worth the talent points. It's basically half of the 4pcT7 bonus. I see a lot of people skip this for things like the current Outbreak on live, and I just don't understand the reasoning behind it at all. The bonus RP is extra damage, pure and simple.

Ghoul Frenzy (as datamined: Ghoul Frenzy, Tier 6, 1 point talent - Grants your pet 25% haste for 15 sec and heals it for 30% of its health over the duration. 1 Unholy Rune. 45 Yard range. Channeled. 30 sec cooldown.) Pretty sure "channeled" is a typo. The rune cost is pretty awkward, but the ghoul's white damage ends up being 10%+ of your DPS. I don't think it should be completely ignored, though it seems like something that's probably going to be reworked.

Black Ice seems to be giving shadow damage now (similar to beta), which might make it interesting to pick up assuming it buffs Scourge Strike damage. "Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage. Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20%" This is not reflected in the first edition of the "updated" mmo-champion talent calculator.

The changes to Night of the Dead make it a flat 30 second cooldown on your ghoul whenever it dies (along with a flat 10m cooldown on Army). Generally you could keep your ghoul at almost 100% uptime if it didn't die too frequently, but maybe this will give me a better indication of when it randomly gets owned...

Improved Unholy Presence is interesting to say the least. Faster white damage (including Necrosis/BCB), faster rune regeneration, as well as faster resource use with the lower GCD.

Note that Shadow of Death was removed from the game, and although it didn't do much (especially with the 15 minute cooldown), we do lose out on 2% strength/stamina. Though, with the seemingly insane buffs to Scourge Strike itself, I can't complain.

I am wondering, with the Runic Power Mastery moved to the first tier of Frost, wouldn't it be better to spare some 2 points from Blood or Unholy and put them in there? 30 runic power is not a small amount, and can theoretically provide quite a dps boost I am currently sitting at 39.68% crit with HoW on, and maybe I can sacrifice 2% crit for 30 runic power. For me at least it seems like a nice idea, despite the additional GCDs it may cost - after all with the increased durations of diseases we get a bit more free time for that.

What do you think?