Aside from the other obvious mistakes already pointed out (white damage and BCB damage is the same in unholy/blood presence, necrosis is 15% better in blood), this logic is so egregiously wrong I have to respond.
First, you're somehow fitting three full IUP rune cooldowns into a 21s disease timer. How exactly is that possible? Your runes cool down 11% faster, not 50%; on average, depending on where your SS fall in your cycle, you'll average 11% more SS (and thus 11% more chances to refresh diseases). Second, your IUP rotation apparently only has to blood strike every third rune cooldown? No, the cycle is the same, just a bit faster, so if you choose three random 9s intervals you're as likely to have only seven SS as eight.
Let's go with a naive strategy that magically distributes SS evenly through a cycle and never refreshes diseases early. If we further assume that your last set of diseases was refreshed by an SS (meaning simultaneous 21s diseases exactly one SS interval ago), then both BP rotation SSing every 4s, and IUP rotation SSing every 3.6s, will only hit SS five times. Granted, sixth IUP SS comes at 21.6s, so let's give them the benefit of math magic and allow them to always squeeze a sixth in. So in this overly simplified case, BP has a 23.7% chance to have to refresh manually while IUP has 17.8% chance. Not bad.
Now let's make the numbers excessively averaged, which isn't totally unreasonable over a lot of fights. Figure you average deciding to refresh diseases with 2s left on them to avoid having them off for long (depends heavily on when your next UF are cooling down of course), and still that, based on randomness in cycle of when diseases can get refreshed, SS are distributed evenly. So in 19s, BP gets 4.75 SS, while IUP gets 5.277 SS. Thus, a bit more realistically, BP will have to refresh diseases 25.5% of the time while IUP will have to refresh 21.9% of the time. I'm not sure how much damage boost that translates to, it's on the order of 16% of (SS-IT-PS damage, plus a bonus GCD). That's hardly comparable to 15% of all strike and necrosis damage, especially when we're not GCD starved at all.
I'm uncertain that "runes finish their cooldowns 10% faster in Unholy Presence" is happening at all on PTR. Timing it with a stopwatch in-game and manually, with 2/2 Improved Unholy Presence I am seeing the same rune cooldowns no matter whether I am in Blood, Frost, or Unholy Presence. Respecced 2/2 twice, still no discernible change in cooldowns whatsoever in Unholy Presence. Is anyone actually seeing the rune cooldowns going to 9 sec on immediate use?
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.
I did that test back when the PTR first came out, it was working at that time for a single rune CD, but its benefit was lessened over time with the 2s lag window. It could have broken since then of course.
I'm uncertain that "runes finish their cooldowns 10% faster in Unholy Presence" is happening at all on PTR. Timing it with a stopwatch in-game and manually, with 2/2 Improved Unholy Presence I am seeing the same rune cooldowns no matter whether I am in Blood, Frost, or Unholy Presence. Respecced 2/2 twice, still no discernible change in cooldowns whatsoever in Unholy Presence. Is anyone actually seeing the rune cooldowns going to 9 sec on immediate use?
It seems to be working for me. Timing a single rune cooldown is pretty inaccurate considering internet and UI lag; a better test would be to spam a single ability, say IT, for a fixed period--probably a minute or two would be fine--and count the number of actions that you were able to perform in each presence. (As a matter of paranoia, I always toggle my presence when I talent IUP; I have no evidence to suggest it makes a difference, but historical problems with hidden aura applications make me do that a bit compulsively.)
Aside from the other obvious mistakes already pointed out (white damage and BCB damage is the same in unholy/blood presence, necrosis is 15% better in blood), this logic is so egregiously wrong I have to respond.
First, you're somehow fitting three full IUP rune cooldowns into a 21s disease timer. How exactly is that possible? Your runes cool down 11% faster, not 50%; on average, depending on where your SS fall in your cycle, you'll average 11% more SS (and thus 11% more chances to refresh diseases). Second, your IUP rotation apparently only has to blood strike every third rune cooldown? No, the cycle is the same, just a bit faster, so if you choose three random 9s intervals you're as likely to have only seven SS as eight.
Let's go with a naive strategy that magically distributes SS evenly through a cycle and never refreshes diseases early. If we further assume that your last set of diseases was refreshed by an SS (meaning simultaneous 21s diseases exactly one SS interval ago), then both BP rotation SSing every 4s, and IUP rotation SSing every 3.6s, will only hit SS five times. Granted, sixth IUP SS comes at 21.6s, so let's give them the benefit of math magic and allow them to always squeeze a sixth in. So in this overly simplified case, BP has a 23.7% chance to have to refresh manually while IUP has 17.8% chance. Not bad.
Now let's make the numbers excessively averaged, which isn't totally unreasonable over a lot of fights. Figure you average deciding to refresh diseases with 2s left on them to avoid having them off for long (depends heavily on when your next UF are cooling down of course), and still that, based on randomness in cycle of when diseases can get refreshed, SS are distributed evenly. So in 19s, BP gets 4.75 SS, while IUP gets 5.277 SS. Thus, a bit more realistically, BP will have to refresh diseases 25.5% of the time while IUP will have to refresh 21.9% of the time. I'm not sure how much damage boost that translates to, it's on the order of 16% of (SS-IT-PS damage, plus a bonus GCD). That's hardly comparable to 15% of all strike and necrosis damage, especially when we're not GCD starved at all.
I think he was counting it in this way.
2 Cycles in unholy presnce take 18 seconds.
That means that for the duration of your diseases ( 21 seconds) you have 2 whole cycles + 3 GCD (19 / 20 / 21 second marks).
In those 3 free GCD you could theoretically with 0 ms fit 3 SS's
I think you have a point when you look at the bigger picture.
But i can kind of see how morb was thinking, and i dont see it as a bad way of thinking.
Every time your SS refreshes diseases you should be able to fit in 3 more SS's before the 21 pass than with blood presence.
However that requires (near) perfect latency, and requires you to fire the SS's as soon as the runes come up. Which in practice is probably very unrealistic.
-----
If Unholy Presence turns out to be the best presence, i'd personally be very happy. Because i personally prefer the feel of a 1 sec GCD rotation over a 1.5 second.
It gives a bit more leeway, allows for a mistake and for some mobility.
----
@Morb
The way you were thinking with haste and how it stacks multiplicatively is right. But you forget that if you add 20% base haste to stack multiplicatively, that the 15% damage also gets multiplied with that. Because you are doing 20% more attacks that do 15% more damage
So unfortunately that argument doesn't hold up.
I would wish with passion that it turns out that IUP + UP becomes the best presence combination, but I have a lot of doubt that that will actually happen.
While this is possibly a symptom of "zomg bugs stay away" or perhaps its even fixed on the ptr (lol) but assuming it operates the same on live, using the perm death rune bug and the glyph of disease allows for a stable rotation of
SS SS SS
SS SS BS Pest
So basically SS instead of PS+IT+BS. and you gain a GCD (albeit one I suppose we don't need?)
Maybe thats beneficial, maybe its not, but it hasn't been discussed at all despite the pest glyph chats. Just thought I'd bring it up.
I've been stuck at around 2300 dps for a long time. I even bought the darkmoon card greatness trinket, and it did very little to get me out of this dps. I'm using the cookie cutter spec setup recommended here.
I'm not asking "fix my problem for me", but i was just wondering, at this point, does it become harder to see a sizeable increase in damage? I'm just wondering if maybe i'm expecting too much. Is 25 man naxx gear required for unholy to push out 3k+ dps?
That means that for the duration of your diseases ( 21 seconds) you have 2 whole cycles + 3 GCD (19 / 20 / 21 second marks).
In those 3 free GCD you could theoretically with 0 ms fit 3 SS's
I think you have a point when you look at the bigger picture.
But i can kind of see how morb was thinking, and i dont see it as a bad way of thinking.
Every time your SS refreshes diseases you should be able to fit in 3 more SS's before the 21 pass than with blood presence.
However that requires (near) perfect latency, and requires you to fire the SS's as soon as the runes come up. Which in practice is probably very unrealistic.
I also assumed this is what he was thinking; my point is that it's just not possible even in ideal circumstances. Even assuming you could jigger your runes so they all cooled down in the first three seconds of your cycle (this _might_ be possible with rune regen autocorrection but it certainly would be hard to get your 2x death rune from a pair of blood strikes into this state), you still can't ever get 8 SS off during a 21s disease. First of all, you will always have just spent UF on applying the diseases, whether through SS glyph proc or IT+PS, meaning that even if you could set up the following (which I don't think is actually possible, but what the heck):
If SS1 procs diseases, then you'd still only have seven SS during that set of diseases. Not having a perfect picture in my head of how the rune cooldown correction works, I can't say for sure that this is impossible; however, it's at best incredibly difficult and requires, among other things, that your first SS in a cycle like this always procs the glyph. The other "pretty good" case has SS4 proc the diseases, though you only get six SS during their duration since you didn't hit your death runes right. The worst case, though, is if SS3 had proc'd the glyph, since then you only get four SS before diseases fall off at 23s, and since SS9 won't come until 27s, you've now made a player error in allowing your diseases to be off that long (if I were a lock in this theoretical DK's raid, I'd be applying CoE). Realistically, it's both safer and easier to allow your runes to cool down more spaced out, allowing more leeway in choosing to IT+PS to avoid disease downtime and giving enough GCDs to RP dump without capping RP (in the rotation above, you generate 90 RP all at once, so if your previous rotation left you with 35 RP, then you just waste 25 RP).
While I'm here...
Originally Posted by Oxylos
While this is possibly a symptom of "zomg bugs stay away" or perhaps its even fixed on the ptr (lol) but assuming it operates the same on live, using the perm death rune bug and the glyph of disease allows for a stable rotation of
SS SS SS
SS SS BS Pest
So basically SS instead of PS+IT+BS. and you gain a GCD (albeit one I suppose we don't need?)
Maybe thats beneficial, maybe its not, but it hasn't been discussed at all despite the pest glyph chats. Just thought I'd bring it up.
SS probably does a little more damage though it generates less RP than IT+PS+BS (5 less with 4t7, 15 less w/o), and as you point out, you don't need the extra GCD. The real problem, though, is that you don't even get a full SS over an IT+PS+BS, since you're replacing SS glyph with disease glyph. Totally out of my rear estimation, I probably refresh diseases 1.5 times a minute on average thanks to lack of SS glyph procs, meaning that I only have to do so on about half of my 20s cycles. So with my super fuzzy estimation, you're only gaining that SS over an IT+PS+BS every other cycle (though if someone wants to do the math to compare SS to IT+PS+BS+5RP, I'd be interested).
This is, of course, not to mention that you're relying on a bug that will hopefully be fixed in live 3.1.
I've been stuck at around 2300 dps for a long time. I even bought the darkmoon card greatness trinket, and it did very little to get me out of this dps. I'm using the cookie cutter spec setup recommended here.
I'm not asking "fix my problem for me", but i was just wondering, at this point, does it become harder to see a sizeable increase in damage? I'm just wondering if maybe i'm expecting too much. Is 25 man naxx gear required for unholy to push out 3k+ dps?
Even thought the previous answer was yes, after looking at your armory I believe you have more than enough gear to push out 3k+ DPS. The only answer I can come up with is your rotation or maybe very bad lag due to a bad connection. Given that you are 17/0/54 and have decent gear I don't see any reason why you aren't pulling at least 3k-3.5k DPS. I think thats what one of our recent Unholy DKs was pulling with similar gear just stepping into Naxx25.
Read lots and lots here, go to Ebon Hold and bang on the target dummy until your rotation is perfect. Also make sure to pop Gargoyle during your trinket procs to maximize your DPS.
Thank you for that. I was really frustrated; i have just about all that 5-mans can give me, and demise is not a horrible weapon. It seems like my dps stopped increasing as quickly as before around the 2100 dps mark, so maybe its me as you said. My connection is actually top notch, i can run the game on full graphics and still hit a smooth 50+ fps.
Is the PS > IT > BS > BS > SS > RP dump, then SSx3 > RP dump still the agreed upon best rotation? I've read this thread front to back just about, but I want to make sure that rotation wasnt old. How do you guys handle pestilence > blood boil? Should i do that during my runic dump, instead of DC or UB, or in addition? I think knowing when to use pest/bb and ub might be whats tripping me up; every second counts and I don't really fell secure in this rotation yet. (i was using a horrid rotating before learning about it here, thank you EJ)!
I can pretty safely say that you can push out more than 3k dps before naxx 25.
I have to say that naxx 25 gear pushes your dps a lot higher ( be it through the combination of gear and buffs ), but i was already doing a solid 3500 dps in Naxx 10.
Your gear isn't full naxx 10 yet (you miss the T7 4-set bonus for one, which is a pretty big dps factor), although with the gear you have you should be able to touch the 3k dps on a good fight
As for the rotation the rotation goes like:
SS>SS>BS>BS (doesnt really matter if you use the 2nd SS first or the BSs first)
SS>SS>SS
Whenever your diseases have run out (in case you still have UF runes available) or when they are about to run out (few seconds left and no runes available for the next couple of seconds) You replace one of the SS's with PS>IT
Requires you to have the SS glyph of course.
Pestilence and Blood boil are only used on trash in which case you use a combination of PS>IT>Pestilence and Death and Decay
No. Depends what we're talking about here. Overall damage done during run, certain boss damage or what? I'm pushing over 5k dps on Patch. Hoovering around 3k overall dps during whole run in 10mans with no optimal group composition (and this is with frost spec which does atm with my gear less personal dps but thanks to raid buffs increases raid damage).
I'll disagree bit with Foxx for trash aoe if your tank is good use DnD while running to trash pack and then ps/it/pest afterwards. DnD will get damage multipliers once you land diseases but you will get several dnd ticks before you're even at pack + you will get dnd runes up for second rotation faster which might let you use them before they're dead. Also don't forget that you can easily do on almost every trash pack blood tap + pest/BB when all your runes are on CD.
Not saying it's easy but use flasks, str food, ac/haste potions, decent rotation and yes requires good 10man gear naturally.
You'd be surprised how much 4T7 would help though. Depending on buffs, there is absolutely no reason an Unholy DK should not be near #1 in overall damage. Even with your gear you should be pushing the meters on trash and such.
Your single target DPS is very dependent on your buffs and how well you can perfect a rotation (and readjust it when things go wrong), ~100% disease and UB uptime, Nearly 0 waste of RP, Proc Timed Gargoyles, AoTD (optional) 5 seconds before the pull, your ability to strafe and do ranged dps during odd fights, using Pest when adds spawn and switching to a diseased target because of it, Etc.
I think that this is why I play Unholy. There is just so much to keep track of that you can be distracted by the lack of raid content while e-peening the meters and making fury warriors wonder why they are getting nerfed.
I've been stuck at around 2300 dps for a long time. I even bought the darkmoon card greatness trinket, and it did very little to get me out of this dps. I'm using the cookie cutter spec setup recommended here.
Are you? According to the Armory, you have Outbreak and On a Pale Horse, neither of which is part of the cookie cutter spec, because they're bad for Unholy PvE, instead of Virulence and Dirge. You're also 1% over hit cap and ~4% under expertise cap with a level 72 tanking ring and no enchant on your shoulders, cloak, chest, bracers, or gloves. Fixing those issues will probably help more than you realize.
I have a question for you guys- The assumption to date has been that the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is the way to go. I've been looking over it and have to wonder, is it really, if you're not a jewelcrafter? Comparing it to the Agility meta, you'd have (assuming you aren't a JC like I said):
with the other you'd have:
21 Agility + 3% increased crit damage
16 strength + 8 hit/crit (str/stam gem + str/hit or str/crit depending on pre-hit cap or not)
So essentially the question would be is 21 crit worth more than 21 agility + 8 hit/crit.
I guess either could be influenced by socket bonuses where applicable, but I'm just curious on your takes on it.
with the other you'd have:
21 Agility + 3% increased crit damage
16 strength + 8 hit/crit (str/stam gem + str/hit or str/crit depending on pre-hit cap or not)
....
I guess either could be influenced by socket bonuses where applicable, but I'm just curious on your takes on it.
You are looking at maybe a 3 APE difference between the two when not considering socket bonuses. I can think of a few pieces that could easily make up for that loss. Most notably the T7.5 shoulders with it's 4 str bonus. Looking at some of the Ulduar gear there are still plenty of Blue gem slots with Str bonuses. I'd stick with 21 crit 3% crit damage personally.
It should also be noted that the more you are using spells the less valuable Agi gets. If there are any battles in Ulduar like Heigan then the actual APE value of agi will decrease for those fights specifically (and overall). That being said, it's really not that important as long as you have the 3% crit bonus.
Thank you for that. I was really frustrated; i have just about all that 5-mans can give me, and demise is not a horrible weapon. It seems like my dps stopped increasing as quickly as before around the 2100 dps mark, so maybe its me as you said. My connection is actually top notch, i can run the game on full graphics and still hit a smooth 50+ fps.
Is the PS > IT > BS > BS > SS > RP dump, then SSx3 > RP dump still the agreed upon best rotation? I've read this thread front to back just about, but I want to make sure that rotation wasnt old. How do you guys handle pestilence > blood boil? Should i do that during my runic dump, instead of DC or UB, or in addition? I think knowing when to use pest/bb and ub might be whats tripping me up; every second counts and I don't really fell secure in this rotation yet. (i was using a horrid rotating before learning about it here, thank you EJ)!
Since you bring up the question of when to use pestilence and blood boil I must ask if you are talking about your overall DPS or boss DPS, and are you talking about your DPS in raids or in 5-mans, because this makes a significant difference.
Next time your in Naxx look at your DPS for each boss because in all reality overall DPS doesn't mean much.
Stoical also pointed out some things I had missed when quickly looking at your armory that you take a look at ASAP.
Pest and BB can't be used during a runic dump because they use blood runes and UB should be weaved into your runic dump once per 20 seconds, or every full rotation (2 rune sets).
Pest and BB should only be used when you are AOEing, such as on trash and would replace BS in the rotation.
Are you? According to the Armory, you have Outbreak and On a Pale Horse, neither of which is part of the cookie cutter spec, because they're bad for Unholy PvE, instead of Virulence and Dirge. You're also 1% over hit cap and ~4% under expertise cap with a level 72 tanking ring and no enchant on your shoulders, cloak, chest, bracers, or gloves. Fixing those issues will probably help more than you realize.
Sorry, i should have added "with slight modifications". Outbreak is bad? Good! I'd love to get rid of it honestly if that's the case. Pale horse... i'm a miner/herbalist, so i admit to making some concessions in the name of laziness and getting around quicker haha. The ring is being replaced with the kirin tor ring in a bit here, i just dropped 10k for the card so its just a placeholder ring till then. I'll get on enchanting out those items, thanks for the input!
Since you bring up the question of when to use pestilence and blood boil I must ask if you are talking about your overall DPS or boss DPS, and are you talking about your DPS in raids or in 5-mans, because this makes a significant difference.
Overall DPS really. I do a run and get beat out by a orc blood spec i run with (who doesnt have the trinket, and gear close to mine), and it depresses the hell out of me, then i go wail on the boss mannequin and get 2300 dps numbers out of recount, so i think im doing something wrong. But, i think what you guys said will help a lot. I'll respec, get rid of outbreak, doubletime my farming for the ring/enchants and see if that doesn't fix my issues. Thanks for the patience with me, im learning alot. Sorry this turned out to a "fix me" type of discussion; that wasnt my intention, but i really do appreciate it.
I guess boss dps really. I hammer on the 80 boss mannequin and get 2300 dps from recount atm, which is depressing the hell out of me; yet i tend to do decently in overall, I just get the feeling my damage is lacking. I think some of the advice you guys have given me will go far though; i'm still learning. Thanks again for the patience with me.
Boss dummy DPS is way way different than in raid DPS. You have to factor in all the raid buffs you'd have and debuffs the boss would have. You'll always do less damage solo and the more people in the raid the better you'll do. I'm not too sure you have a problem with your DPS considering your gear and spec, because you'll do much better inside a 10 or 25 man.
Item - Death Knight T8 Melee 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 5%.
Item - Death Knight T8 Melee 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Increases the bonus damage done per disease by 20% on Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike.
- 2 piece T8 is worse than T7.
- 4 piece adds 5.4% to SS damage with 3 diseases = 5.4% of SS vs 25% of DC per one SS = worse than T7 too
At least they seems to be better for Blood and Frost.
BS>BS>SS>SS>DC>DC (80 rp gen 80 used)
SS>SS>SS>DC>DC (90 rp gen 80 used)
Glyphs = SS,DC,Ghoul
Real perk here is the 10 rp buffer, in the event that RNG screws you and you get not SS glyph procs IT+PS+10 rp spare allows you to continue your rotation no problem.
Obviously you swap in ps/it if your disease aren't up by the end of the rotation.
Now loosing the 4pc t7 the rp generated really drops short and u have to change the rotation.
Drop one of your glyphs for IT, most commonly drop glyph of SS....
IT>PS>BS>BS>SS>DC (75 rp gen 40 used)
SS>SS>SS>DC>DC (60 rp gen, 35 left over, 80 used w/15 spare)
So lets compare lets average the 4pc t8 into 5.5% SS dmg and the 2 pc is a flat DC +5% crit.
Well 2 pc t7 is a 6.7% boost to SS assuming vicious strikes + meta.
And 4 pc t7 gives an additional 35(25 needed) rp over the t8 rotation.
So lets compare I'll be using a flat number like 200% = 2 scourge strikes etc. Calculating the diff in set bonus and the rp change.
03/11/09, 6:49 PM
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