Dies anyone know what Unholy DPS is like in comparison to the other 3 trees at the moment? Seeing the changes to many things im very interested in going back to unholy as it was the tree i preferred so long ago.

In response to the UB vs DC debate, I don't think you can look at it purely from RP generated and divide by the number of DCs u can cast. You have to take into account the number of GCDs available. So lets say in a perfect RNG friendly rotation you always refresh your diseases and settle on 15 SS and 6 BS in 6 rune rotations. 60 secs gives you 37 GCDs to use up in a lag free environment. 21 are already occupied by rune attacks which leaves 16 left. Now 1 will be used by UB so that leaves 5 DCs. With the T7 4 pc, and talents I can generate 30 RP per SS and 10 RP per BS. That = 510 RP, added with RP generated from butchery, which will give another 24 in 60 secs. So 178 total generated. Assuming you don't waste RP you can pull off 3 UB, and 14 DCs with the DC glyph. But you only have 16 to spare so in the end u only get 13 DCs. If you look at the UB glyph, you only need to use 2 of those for glyphed UB so that leaves 12 possible. So in 60 sec you have 534 RP generated, 80 used for UB and 454 left for DCs. That = 11 DCs so you only have 3 potential GCD to spare within the span of a minute. So all told you get 2 extra DCs per minute with the glyph.

However, you could argue that once a minute you need to use one of your spare GCDs to do something, refresh Horn of Winter, cast Gargoyle, resummon a Ghoul, refresh bone shield etc... So take away one of those GCDs in a minutes span and you get a net 1 DC per minute with the DC glyph vs the UB glyph. In addition, this is assuming total RNG perfection and not having to refresh diseases because the SS glyph failed to proc costing another GCD. The final caveat to this is that we all know how difficult it can be to play perfectly, and how difficult it is to perfectly utilize every possible GCD in a boss encounter. I would argue that in the end the UB glyph is better just because of the added wiggle room you get. All told you would get 1 or 2 at most DCs less than someone using the other glyph. However, that person would have to be playing perfectly with no latency in order to see that advantage. Personally, I'd rather use the UB glyph and have those 3 extra GCDs for flexibility knowing that at best someone is going to have 1 or 2 extra DCs on me per minute.

Anyways, all this is assuming current gear. I'd be curious to see what the set bonuses on T8 will be. Once ppl start losing the 4 pc T7 bonus then the DC glyph would probably pull ahead I would imagine, but for now I'll be going with UB.

I'm definitely in favor of your assessment, Ghraabthar. For someone like me who for the life of them just can't seem to press the right button in in the right situation (Death Coil! Oh crap, no wait UB fell off... etc) giving myself more room for error would probably be ideal. Not to mention, with UB and DC costing 40rp each, who knows if a 32rp DC is going to make me start wasting time trying to cast 32rp UBs. Not to mention, with the delicious Dual Spec in place, I'll might even end up forgetting exactly which glyph loadout I've got at the moment.

Moral of the story - if you're not a top-notch bleeding edge player squeezing every point of damage per GCD, Glyph of Unholy Blight seems a bit more forgiving than Glyph of Death Coil for your 3rd major.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9626

I know it its still early in the morning, but what do you guys think of the spec above for the ''new'' 3.1 Unholy DPS spec. It allows you to benefit from buffed gargoyle and Ghould not to mention 30% extra dmg on SS. and also lets you keep your old rotation and glyphs. (you could go for 1% more crit but youll have to see what suits you best, i putted that one in Blood Caked cause i believe theres more dmg from it, accoring to having 10% more proc... please let me know your thoughts on it.

I would drop the three points out of BCB and pick up Morbidity, I would think 15% damage on DC's is better than a proc that can only proc half the time.

Edit: And the point out of Ghoul Frenzy, unless they make it RP, there are better uses for that Unholy Rune, stick that in 5/5 Dark Conviction.

This depends on the impact of the BCB nerf.

For me atm BCB is about 2-3% dps on the meters. Although it varies immensely between 1.5% and 3.5%
Say this becomes 2% after the patch. 3 Points for 2% gives 0.66% dps per point

My death coil is usually around 7-8% dps on the meters. 5% increase per point would mean 0.4% per point.
That IS less dps, however you have to consider the utility of the shorter DnD as well, which is great on trash.

All in all i find it a very tough decision, and i think we wont know for sure until we can get some serious theorycrafting / simulations / results to check it with.
Although it seems to be about 25% dps nerf to the talent.

I find it really hard, since i feel the only 3 talents to drop points out of are either:
- BCB
- Morbidity
- Dark Conviction

EDIT:

As for the calculations on BCB

Currently its 30% chance to proc. Meaning out of 100 strikes it procs 30 times.

The new one has a 3 sec Internal CD, basically meaning after a proc the next swing cant proc.
So basically it means to get the same amount of procs require us to get those 100 strikes + 30 strikes. The 30 strikes are the strikes following a proc.

30 / 130 = 0.23 = 23% proc chance or 7.7% per point.

However I don't know if these calculations really hold up in the end. Since these kind of internal cooldowns always provide severe complications in practice.

After having been UH specced for a couple of raids on PTR, It´s looking to me like desecration´s value is going to be much lower than it is, since most fights (even trash) is EXTREMELY movement intensive...
Then again, with PS hitting for decent values, maybe an UH rune every now and again isnt a bad trade-off for 5% damage. It does mess up the rotation though.

They should spawn a glyph vendor (maybe even inside the instance) for those of us who didnt copy with a bank full of them, for each specc!

Right now you cast 3 UB's per minute, with the glyph you only cast 2. So the glyph saves you 1 GCD and 40 RP per minute.
If you cast 5 DC's per minute you already save the 40 RP. I cast about 10 DC's per minute last Patchwerk fight, equaling a gain of 80 RP. So youre facing the decision: 1 GCD or 40 RP per minute, whats it gonna be?

Regardless of how much RP or GCDs you save its all about how much you can fit in your rotation. You can save all the RP you want but if you're not using it then what is it good for? In a general 5 SS rotation ( BS, BS, SS, SS RP dump, SS, SS, SS. Rune attacks taking priority.) you're looking at 4 secs of waiting for runes to refresh on the first RP dump and then 4-5 on the 2nd.

By the looks of it I would use the DC glyph. 3 secs of downtime is enough for a UB and DC then the next RP dump pull 3 DCs instead of 2. That being said you can get more DC in a 1 min time frame then you can using the UB glyph. Its all about what you can fit in that 20 sec rotation window.

Or have a minor glyph that makes it a free cost

Someone tested Scourge Strike and posted in the 3.1 thread that it no longer ignores armor

Which would explain the massive buffs to SS.

I was definitely seeing (52 Blocked) etc on PTR and I was noticing overall it seemed to be doing the same damage, but then again I didn't have sunders or faerie fire on the target to test it, was just on a heroic test dummy. You don't see (Resisted) anymore, just blocked damage.

Damage blocked has absolutely nothing to do with damage that is resisted on a magical damage strike. In fact, a magical strike can be both blocked and partially resisted at the same time [Scourge Strike hits for x (y resisted) (z blocked)]. And being blocked again has nothing whatsoever to do with if the attack is affected by armor or not.

As far as Scourge Strike being mitigated by armor, if it is, then it's almost certainly going to be either left that way, or the damage will be toned down from what is currently on PTR. On the present build I was seeing SS crits for over 10k raid-buffed on Iron Council attempts (16k+ while standing in the Rune of Power, a 50% damage buff). Scourge Strike being buffed makes sense, as it will help Unholy to scale better, which was certainly going to be a major issue going forward, but they may have taken it too far.

Edit: Just did a quick test on the dummy, and I can tell you that it is absolutely NOT being affected by armor, just by the same standard partial resists as always.

I'm the one who posted the test results, which were done on a lower level dummy - so partial resists did not come into play, and it was by no means a quick test. In any event the observed reduction of 20% is too high even for partial resists on bosses (around 4% from my last WWS).

The implication is that on a higher level dummy/boss it'd be affected by both.

With normal ability priorities, when one blood rune comes available to use, another one does too. So if you use blood tap to turn one into an death rune for Ghoul Frenzy what do you do with the other blood rune? You probably Blood Strike and in 10 seconds you're going to have a death rune and a blood rune up. Now what? You probably blood strike twice. If you hadn't used Ghoul Frenzy there would have been two death runes and you would have scourge stricked. So the result is: 2 BS and 1 SS become 3 BS and 1 Ghoul Frenzy (- 1 SS + 1 BS + 1 GF) probably still a loss and pretty similar to the non blood tap scenrio of (- 1 SS + 1 IT + 1 GF). The difference is between 1 IT and 1 BS, which matters, but probably not enough.

You can use Blood Tap right after using your two blood runes for "an extra rune". The blood rune does not have to be active in order to use Blood Tap.

Thank God. Even with the buffs to Unholy I don't see theoretical numbers anywhere near to what DW was. As far as I know that should be intended. If SS was mitigated by armor and still did shadow damage there would be very little flavor difference between it and OB. It would also be inconsistent design and to make any sense would HAVE to be physical.

I have gathered 3 of the 8 cards needed for the darkmoon card trinket. I would like to know how much of a boost to your DPS this card would provide considering the ghoul aswell as our own benefit of the strength. at the moment I have mirror of truth and the Sphere of Red dragon's blood. I intend to replace it as soon as possible. I was wondering if I should continue to farm and create darkmoon cards and not sell them so that i can complete the nobles deck.

No. Unless your adjusted weapon speed is at or below 1.5, BCB should have a 21% proc rate instead of 30%. It may still be that Morbidity is the better talent (particularly since it has a secondary benefit of reduced D&D cooldown) but please stop exaggerating the nerf.

If the equation DC * 0.15 > BCB (or DC * 0.05 > BCB, per point) is true for you, then go with Morbidity. So if BCB is 3% of your damage, DC (without Morbidity) would have to be 20% of your damage for Morbidity to be the better talent.

This is more or less correct theoretically on patchwork type fights. You will get more damage out of BCB on a point per point basis than Morbidity. That being said, what about all the real fights out there where you are forced to step away from the boss but can still sling some IT's and DC's. What about trash with DND (I'm assuming aoe will be less of a common solution in Ulduar though).

BCB needs more work done on it before I could consider taking it over morbidity for a max possible 0.2% net increase per point. Quite frankly, it's a very boring mechanic anyway.

I agree with all of that, and am sticking with Morb for exactly these reasons. I just get irked when people exaggerate the BCB nerf.

For me personally the dps percentages are pretty consistent:

BCB: 2%
DC: 8%
(of total damage done)

Now I'm having some ISP issues so the Deathcoil is quite low, im pretty sure i could squeeze out at least another 1%.
The BCB nerf is indeed not huge. It should go from 30% procs to about 22% procs which is a 25% dmg reduction roughly. So from 2% to 1.5%

In which case for a straight tank and spank fight 1 talent point in either talent equals:

BCB: 1.5 / 3 = 0.5%
DC: 9 * 0.05 = 0.45%

Say we do 6000 dps (we're talking ulduar here) that means BCB has a 6000 * (0.5 - 0.45) = 3 dps advantage.

We're seriously talking small numbers here, a stray crit can beat that gap.

Even when BCB would be 4% (thus 3% after the patch) and DC 8% (saying im spot on with my RP usage) we're only talking about a 36 dps gap. Which is hardly noticeable.

Considering trash dps / aoe boss fights (like sarth + xD) and ranged fights (like heigan phase 2). And my choice for Morbidity is personally pretty clear.

Its good to have options though. Having Virulence as option would've been better though.