NeuroMedivh

Sorry, here is the build I was talking about earlier: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

The mmo-champion talent calc is 100% correct with what is on the PTR, so either the patch notes are out of date, or the current PTR build isn't completely up to date (I'm guessing the latter).

I'm assuming there will be some corrections coming down the pipe in a few days. For now, this is how I would spec, barring any new info on Imp Unholy Presence.

 

NeuroMedivh

Blood DKs I could see using it, but not Unholy. We shouldn't ever get over 100 rp anyway, so having an overflow isn't really worth the 2 points. Heck, I'm already trying to figure out where to steal a few more points in case I need to get desecration.

 

Mulgero

If improved unholy presence comes out better than blood presence you will not really need extra 30rp pool. You will instead weave DC into your rotation after every 2-3 attacks.

If 3sec cd stays in BCB it becomes virtually worthless talent since you will definetly want to get more points into dark conviction, desecration or maybe even get points from frost depending how black ice will end up. I don't see reason to take desecration tho at all. With longer disease rotation along current SS glyph (I'm starting to think that this will be changed to something else) you will use PS even less what it's currently now so definetly won't be worth of points, better spend elsewhere.

 

Afabar

About new Unholy presence vs Blood presence.
As it has already been calculated some time ago.

White damage : 15% more hit or 15% more damage. That is the same DPS
Necrosis : the same as white damage.
BCB : Due to the 3 second internal CD. Faster attack means less chance to proc for 15% minus damage.

9 second refreshing rune with a 1s GCD:
If the unholy rotation do not change, it's :
PS -> IT -> HS -> HS -> SS -> UB
SS -> SS -> SS -> DC -> DC

We use 11 GCD.
In Blood presence : that a 20 second cycle with 16,5 second in GCD.
In Unholy presence : that a 18 second cycle with 11 second in GCD.

To be superior to BP, in UP we have to do something with the 7 left GCD.
But I don't see what.

 

Frostx

The patch notes on mmo-champion.com are outdated patch notes from a previous test build i'm sure. Official and more accurate patch notes which (from what i've skimmed through) reflect what is on the PTR and the mmo-champion talent calcs are at MMO-Champion BlueTracker - 3.1.0 PTR Patch Notes

For now my gut feeling is to drop BCB and run in Unholy Presence with http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...1&version=9614


edit: changed wrong link

edit2: If Blood Presence still proves to be superior, then i guess just shift the 2 points in Imp Unholy Presence over to BCB or maybe leave it there for the runspeed if Ulduar features alot of movement fights.

 

NeuroMedivh

For Imp Unholy Presence to be worth taking, it has to be *significantly better* than Blood Presence, since running normal BP doesn't cost me two talent points.

I'm still upset at losing Unholy Aura, that was the primary benefit I brought to the raid.

 

bathoz

Sorry. I got the logic of my previous post messed up a bit. It's not one SS versus 5%.

It's the difference between IT and PS (each glyphed, I assume), and whether 5% from desecration over 20s is better than the difference between an extra SS and a pair of plague strikes. With the new, hard hitting SSs, that is about 8000 damage. Let's be generaous, and say that two plague strikes will do 4000 damage (though with 50% weapon damage and the 60% glyph it could be much higher - nevermind if it's affected by EP/CF).

Very very rough maths, 6000 dps over 20 seconds is 6000 damage. So, in (very rough) theory, it's better. But not a whole lot. Still 100 dps is not nothing.

All this, of course, is subject to comparative numbers between new SS. New PS and the (usually sad) Unholy IT.

 

Mulgero

with dirge, 4p T7 + butchery + horn

horn(10) + PS(15) + IT(10) + BS(10) -> DC(+5rp) + BS(10) + SS(30) -> DC(+5rp)
SS(30) + SS(30) -> DC(+25rp) + SS(30) -> DC(+19/21rp with butchery)

Would need bit more RP from somewhere or DC should have lower RP cost

 

Foxx2405

I'm not really seeing the fuss about Desecration.
It virtually wont change, other than removing the RNG of the talent if you dont max it.

I dont think we'll be spamming PS instead of SS now because it got a small boost. SS should still in every way be superior.

------

My calculations about Unholy Presence were way off indeed, you're only talking about 10% dps increase from the lower rune cooldowns. I think the BCB factor can be pretty much ignored.

This would still make it way subpar to blood presence. Which is a shame, because i really like unholy presence. Still leaves the question of the run speed increase though. The fact the rest of my group cant get it is a shame, but runspeed increase is still a pretty nice dps increasing factor on a lot of mobile fights.

 

Mulgero

Imp unholy presence will still allow 15% run speed in blood presence. Which in all movement fights is gonna be quite significant + it will give chance to use either 32ap or icewalker in boots instead of 8%speed + crap stats. Still looks worth of 2 talent points for me depending a bit coming specs.

 

bathoz

The trick isn't that it's better (it isn't). It's just that it may now be possible to build a 2h unholy build that actually manages 100% uptime. Before the combination of epidemic and glyph of SS means that you never had a reason to use PS. And 60% uptime (at best) wasn't a very attractive investment for 5 points. (Plus of course, for unholy, IT and PS were so anemic, you wouldn't want to do it anyway.)

 

aldy

Did/doing some testing right now on the PTR:

1) Imp. Unholy Presence is not as good as it seems.

Test 1:
rune CD for single rune in BP: 10 seconds
rune CD w/ Imp UP: 9 seconds
Therefore the talent is working

Test 2:
IT spam on a lvl 65 test dummy (no chance of miss), looking at timing on first frost rune (burning the 2nd as well); 270ms latency
10 first frost runes in BP: 93 seconds
10 first frost runes w/ imp UP: 90 seconds

The 10 in BP should take 100 seconds. I repeated this a few times and got the same results. If you are hitting runes as they refresh (which you can do with 2h unholy because its not too crammed for GCDs) then the rune refresh is actually shorter than 10 seconds (remember that window that Blizzard built in for latency). The one second reduction in rune CD only appears to work on rune refreshes that are the full 10 second duration. Ideally this should be tested with an actual rotation, but you can't really do that because of the RNG of SS glyph. Regardless, the benefit from Imp. UP is going to be less than a 10% improvement in rune CD in most situations for this build. There is still the question of how much you value personal run speed though.


2) Ghoul frenzy is not a channel obviously, that would be entirely ridiculous. You click it and your ghoul goes red for 15 seconds while it is hasted. I had him aggro a bunch of undead around LHC to check out the heal, its a HoT. Incidentally the HoT is affected by MS effects :-)
In a raid a ghoul will be doing roughly 800 dps. Assuming it was a straight 25% damage increase (it would actually be less since the dmg from claw would be unaffected) that would be +200 dps for 15 seconds, or roughly 3,000 dmg. The cost of using an unholy rune would vary depending on glyphs/spec/gear/rotation, but you could say the cost=avSS-avIT (as well as lost RP) which it makes it somewhere around 2,500 dmg.
In its current form, its only worth taking if you have the talent point, don't mind the change in rotation, and would like to ensure your ghoul stays alive. It's not terrible, it's not amazing.

 

Foxx2405

Yea i got that point.

But I still dont really see a reason to use PS other than refreshing a disease. 20% more weapon damage on it won't suddenly make it godlike I assume.

However I can see its a topic worth discussing.

Either we:

1) Skip Desecration and keep our current rotation of:
SS>SS>BS>BS
SS>SS>SS

Nothing much changes other than SS doing quite more damage, and possibly with the new length on the diseases Glyph of SS becomes even more powerful (instead of 5 SS inside that 18 second disease timer that can proc the glyph, you now might be able to get of 6 since the timers are 21 seconds)

2) We refresh PS + IT each rotation thereby keeping desecration up, but losing any purpose to use the glyph and epidemic
PS>IT>BS>BS>SS
PS>IT>SS>SS

This leads to the direct question: does PS+IT+Desecration>SS+<where ever you take 5 points from> ?
I doubt it, but its a valid question.

3) We switch to the same rotation 2H frost uses only with PS instead of IT. We rely on the SS glyph to provide us with Frost Fever, and pretty much need epidemic to get the most out of FF.
(I dont really think this is an option worth considering though, since we gain so much from that 3th disease we can not leave it to RNG)

PS>BS>SS>SS
BS>PS>SS>SS

With 4 SSs every 20 seconds there is only a 68% chance that you proc FF per rotation though (not 100% as someone claimed). Again i doubt its a gamble worth taking since all the strikes now scale much much better with diseases.

I personally hope we'll stick to the default one. I really liked the dynamics of the simple yet constant changing (due to the glyph) rotation of unholy.

--------
Yea still doesn't sound too awesome to me. If they could just remove the cost on it, it would be a lot better. Not everything HAS to cost a rune.
The problem with single runes more than anything else is that i feel it messes up your rotation so badly. Sure i can do an icy touch, but i hate it when my disease timers get out of sync .

 

bathoz

In fairness, I was working off the old think maths from the EP overlap discussions. If I remember the dps reduction from that wasn't huge. So the 32% down time (well, less, as 24 second diseases give you a little overlap). I'd have to dig to find the number. But the new percentage based strikes does throw it off.

Also, I based the better plague strike numbers on the combination of the extra 20% strike damage, and the "lifted from game files" mmo-champion talent calculators version of the plague strike glyph - which is currently reading "60% increased damage". If that's incorrect, then I agree. It's almost certainly going to be a loser.

Though remember, you're only casting one more SS per 20 seconds in the normal rotation - and even then, only when you get a glyph proc.

Anyway, I'm going to shut up until I get home and can download the PTR and do all that stuff.

 

aldy

You can see new glyphs in thottbott's batch of PTR spells, for DK's:
+10s on UB
-8 RP on DC
+10s on DRW
HB "infects your targets with frost fever"
-10 RP hungering cold
pestilence refreshes disease durations on primary target


source:Public Test Changes - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

 

Mulgero

Doesn't really matter it will not break rotation since you will use blood tap before frenzy and you're set. Bit like how frosties use BT before UA.

I know I'm beating dead horse with unholy presence until some other changes but haste from UP is direct buff also for ghoul, gargoyle and maybe even for army (can't remember did they get benefit from haste or not). I really hope that they make UP worth while for unholy...

Well there it is in the above post 32rp DC's. Still leaves propably 1 GCD short at least but damage haste for pets should make both presence quite even I would guess (I hope).

 

methods

I'm disturbed by the massive buffs to PS. All things equal on e-peen fights with little movement a rotation of:
PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-UB-DC
PS-IT-PS-PS-SS-DC-DC
(Obviously with PS glyph)

Will come out as one of the top (if not the top) unholy 2h dps rotations... my sheets are showing a 500dps increase (5.7k) over the previous SSx5 rotation (5.2k) and a 100-150dps lead over the current 5xSS rotation (5.6k-ish).

Good news is we 2h unholy's just got a massive buff all around. I'm not sure how DW can survive but I'll have to implement all the changes for them.

Edit:
I'm not OK with being forced to take 3/3 Virulence though. 2/3 was just fine...

 

Nerub

Glyph Changes via MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies:

Very interesting. We currently have two Glyphs that are considered a must-have for Unholy DPS, of the Ghoul and the Scourge Strike one. With 3.1 the Death Coil Glyph will become the third must-have. The Ghoul Glyph will most likely remain. But what with the SS Glyph? Is it really worth it now that we have a 100% reliable disease refresher with Pestilence? The new Unholy Blight Glyph looks tempting, though I don't know if it is Major or Minor. Along with the buff to 50% weapon damage even the Plague Strike Glyph may be worth a look, can someone on the PTR try this Glyph out? I guess there is something wrong with the tooltip, along with the buff to 50% weapon damage PS would hit like a truck.

We have the following options to refresh diseases now:

- reapplying via PS/IT
- reapplying via Pestilence Glyph
- reapplying via SS Glyph (unreliable)

The questions is now which option is best in terms of DPS. The problem with Pestilence is that you leave your second Blood or Unholy Rune unpaired whereas you may use it to dish out another SS when you use PS/IT.

 

• Zerack

In regards to the severity of the BCB nerf to 2H specs I ran a quick and dirty simulation of BCB procs over the span of 10,000,000 attacks. I made several key assumptions here that I feel are valid due to the limited nature of what I wanted to test. Specifically I was interested in testing the severity of the nerf to BCB assuming that raid buffed attack speed was below 3.0s (so two consecutive hits cannot trigger BCB) but above 1.5s (i.e. the third hit is always a valid chance to proc again). Of course if your weapon is slow enough to be > 3.0s after all raid haste buffs, none of this matters.

The old BCB was a pure 30% over X white hits, so that did not need to be modeled at all - it was known. For the new BCB I used the logic that every white hit had a 30% chance to proc unless the previous hit had been a proc. In that case, the chance to proc on that hit was 0%. Forgive me as I resorted to simulation to prove something like this that is probably doable with statistics in some absolute way, but it was easy to code up and run quickly. Anyway, the results over multiple trials:

Num. Attacks	Base Proc Chance	Num. Procs	Effective Proc Rate
10000000	30%	2289873	22.899%
10000000	30%	2305611	23.056%
10000000	30%	2281215	22.812%
10000000	30%	2282323	22.823%
10000000	30%	2278622	22.786%

Since those percentages are so close and the sample so large, I hope we can accept it as at least representative of the correct proc rate in this situation. The average proc rate is 22.875%. This is 76.25% of the current proc rate on live. In order to determine how this would affect our overall DPS, I looked to a parse from last week's Patchwerk kill for an idea of BCB damage. Of 855,000 damage dealt during the kill, 27212 (3.183%) was from BCB over 22 hits.

DPS gain from BCB on live in this instance:

total damage / total time = 27212 / 142 = 191.63DPS

If we use the mechanic as it appears on PTR we would have 76.25% of the procs and damage, which would be approximately 20750 damage, a loss of a little less than 6500 damage over a 2:22 kill.

For total DPS loss then in this instance the revised BCB would have given:

damage lost / total seconds = 6462 / 142 = 45.5 DPS

Which means that the new BCB for me would be worth somewhere around 145 DPS, or 48DPS per talent point at 3/3. On live it is worth ~64DPS per point for me. I would conclude that this is not as earth shatteringly terrible as people are suggesting, although the absolute value of the talent combined with the nerf may make it less appealing than other options given that we seemed to be starved for a few points in the current PTR build. Anyway, hope that's useful, and please point out any errors I've made so I can correct them.

 

Mulgero

Pestilence still uses 1 blood rune and doesn't do damage so reapplying via SS glyph is certainly better especially with 21sec disease duration unless you get real unlucky. What comes to PS/IT it might be better since you will have extra dps glyph then available and PS is made too good with glyph for now. It does even more damage than SS against 3diseased target.

PS damage will get toned down, it's way too close to SS even SS goes through armor. Unless black ice will give 20% shadow damage as rumor says but don't believe that happening.

 

methods

Not sure what you are looking at but assuming my Armory gear (assuming I logged out in my pve dps gear)...

A single PS glyphed averages (meaning after crit and everything) around 4k vs Bosses (sundered+ff) and SS fully talented with 3 diseases hits around 6.6k average on the same target. Even if you add in IT damage they come out to SS winning by a hair (not including the maximum 5 rp gain over 4p t7 SS's)

The only time PS is actually a better choice than SS is when you have 2 death runes to blow on it. IT+PS still isn't as good as SS.

 

Mulgero

- Glyph of Plague Strike -- Your Plague Strike does 60% additional damage.
- Plague Strike now deals 50% weapon damage plus 189 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time.
- 1 rune
- Outbreak gives 45% damage to plaguestrike

vs.

- Scourge Strike (Tier 9) now deals 55% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 185.63, increased 9% per each of your diseases on the target.
- Outbreak gives 30% damage to SS
- 2 runes

By looking those stats single PS will do same damage than SS or am I missing something? If this is true more or less then also epidemic is totally worthless and so will be SS glyph. Maybe not bad thing but feels kinda weird if you ask me. Also I wouldn't count on 4p T7 since T8 is coming and new sigils... who knows...

 

Fugazor

PS damage is lowered by armor while SS is not affected by armor and gets 13% increased damage from EP. Also PS glyph won't make it to live.

 

h4rr0d

What about BS->BT->GF? (could even be macro'd since BT doesn't cause GCD iirc)

Anyway, I'm realy wondering how's new unholy rotation going to look...

Orcs don't run from enraged kittens.

 

Fugazor

GF cooldown - 30 sec, BT cooldown - 60 sec. Not to mention BT is still needed to refresh Bone Shield on many fights. Hopefully GF cost will be changed to RP or Blood Rune before release.

You could also use Bone Shield/PS + GF with 2 death runes and then 30 sec later use BT on next CE.