• Zurm

The way I've approached is the following. If diseases are about to fall off and SS has not refreshed your diseases yet (usually I do this when theres 3-4 seconds left on disease timers) then my next U and F runes will be for IT+PS. The damage is lower, yes, but the disease ticks (and wandering plague that results from them) is significant. Once I get in teh swing of things, I usually follow the following roation:

SS -> BS -> BS -> SS -> RP dump 1
SS-> SS -> SS -> RP dump 2

Where I can replace any SS with an IT/PS as needed. You'll have to do 2x BS every two rune cooldowns to put death runes up for an extra SS.

 

dr_AllCOM3

I was Frost till today. I've made a spreadsheet to compare all talent builds. Everything is included, but I kinda guessed DRW, Gargolye and the Ghoul.
You don't use UB during Gargoyle?

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Davia

It's very odd that WWS for some reason is parsing ghouls into 100% missing and being dodged/parried. I noticed it in your Patchwerk WWS after noticing it in our guild's WWS from last night on everything except Noth (the first boss we did).

 

Zeldazan

I find that it can be a risky thing to do. Because if you lose Gargoyle then you're out added dps and it's on CD. Though I have tried this out a few times and have been able to do it (popping Empowered Rune Weapon right after UB, of course) but it has to be ideal conditions. IE, mob standing in one spot and you have runes up to do damage right afterwards.

I have a bigger problem restraining myself from death coiling when gargoyle is up because sometimes I get into the mindset of blowing it when I can in my rotation and then a second later realize my pet up and flew away.

 

Sh4d0wfury

I usually delay my Blood runes to the end of the cycle, starting with IT->PS->SS->BS->BS. Of course the start of the cycle becomes a SS after the diseases are up. However, different from you, if my diseases are about to fall of, I usually have both frost and both unholy runes refreshing. This way I can use one more SS in the hopes it refreshes the diseases, and if they do not the next runes become a IT->PS right after the diseases have fallen off. If the blood runes are death ones I don't waste a GC this way too.

RP dumps are somewhat confusing, I can't really rely on using them in the end of the cycle. I try to fit them wherever I can, just with the priority being the end.


On another subject, I got used to macroing Bone shield and blood tap at the same time, and I find it very usefull especially on heavy raid damage fights or Tanking. It's also 20 RP on the same key, which allows a HoW when RP starved.

 

Ten

You can only use UB or DC during Gargoyle when you have full energy and at least one pair of runes about to come off cd. Popping ERW usually isn't the best idea until you're near the end of the timer since it means you'll just get a quick burst of RP but then have no RP generation at all for the next 10 seconds.

 

Melchior

Does the Sigil of Awareness add a flat 420 damage per SS? Looking over Xyrm's latest WWS where he's using the SS glyph, it seems like that would be kind of a ridiculous upgrade for Unholy; at 534 SS's over the course of the run, he would have gained at least over 225,000 damage. Is it really that powerful?

 

dr_AllCOM3

Yes, it is that powerful and I'm a proud owner of it . A must have for Frost and especially Unholy.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Dwwimm

Thanks for the fast answer, so, is there any stats weight available after hit cap ?

My white hits are still enormous part of my dps, so more hit can't be bad.

For the ghoul on patchwerk not showing on wws, i have the same problem, must be a wws bug.

 

Raveneye

Something I have gotten in the habit of doing, but I have not yet seen mentioned here, is using DnD, Blood Tap, and Bone Shield to build up a near-full RP bar before the pull.

DnD is 20 RP every 15 seconds which is enough to offset the 1RP/sec loss for being out of combat. Then Blood Tap + Bone Shield add 40 RP every 60 seconds. Taunting or SSing rats or maggots will also build RP before the pull.

Going in with 80+ RP on the pull lets me open with Horn of Winter, top off with Blood Tap, and summon Gargoyle while running in, and then do my first PS-IT-BS-BS-SS rotation to get RP back near full.

 

◊ Vontre

A few notes from deathgraf simulations and general play here:

Reaping: Good talent even if you're using blood strike over scourge strike. I believe the reason is that it increases flexibility in maintaining disease uptime, I notice that my death runes sometimes get used on icy touch and plague strike. Simulations indicated this talent is a significant gain in dps.

Epidemic: Testing and simulation both indicate this is a must have. The 12 second disease build for max desecration uptime is 5-10% lower than a regular cycle. This probably has more to do with 12 seconds being a poor fit for rune refresh timers. At any rate both target dummy testing and simulations indicate epidemic is a Big Fucking Deal. (tm)

Unholy Blight: Sometimes this doesn't hit dragons if you stand at the edge of the hit box. Specifically Malygos, where I was trying to stand in the spark buffs. Be wary of this.

Anyway that's all for now.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." -Ghostcrawler, 2009

 

Nekali

Here is my WWS Breakdown for todays Patchwerk. Unfortunately the Ghoul is not merged, it added (fully glyphed, specced and buffed) about 600-700dps, yielding a total of ~4300 DPS. Did a few minor mistakes (including no boneshield) and forgot to put up a second gargoyle for the last 30s.

Wow Web Stats

I tested Night of the Dead and I can only recommend putting in 2/2. You get near 100% Ghoul Uptime even on Sapphiron (just get a new one after every bomb + free 20rp). This should provide a much bigger DPS increase then points in Outbreak or Virulence (spellhitcapped with misery anyways). Blowing up Ghouls with CE ist fun, but costly.
Is there a way to summon a new ghoul, when raid members are dead (i.e. instead of resurrecting them)?

 

Kroandar

Very informative discussion. I do have one more question, or rather, I guess I am bringing it back into play. That of Necrosis.

Roughly, autoattacks account for roughly ~20% (upwards of ~25%) of an unholy deathknight's total damage output in raids. Even with weapon scaling, this appears to be roughly the same contribution in comparison to other abilities with gear scaling. My question is, assuming a base of 20% damage as autoattack, 5/5 Necrosis adds 10% shadow damage, or in other words, 2% total bonus to your overall dps. In addition, while perusing WWS charts, Necrosis tends to account for anywhere between 2-4% of overall dps of unholy deathknights. Example would be Xyrm and Nekali's most recent WWS showing Necrosis contribution at roughly 3% dps.

I understand necrosis will scale with better gear, however, will it scale at a higher rate in comparison to other abilities? Otherwise, investing 5 talent points for only 2-3% overall dps return does not seem to be a good investment.

Please provide advice or by all means correct me if I'm wrong, I'm merely theorycrafting here and would like the community's input.

 

◊ forostie

Using Sartharion as an example it worked out that Necrosis did about 10k damage over the duration of the fight with 5/5, so 3/5 would have yielded 6000 damage, and, if I had points in Desecration like I do now, that the damage lost would be overcome by the 5% damage buff. Necrosis is free damage sure, but it doesn't really feel like a 5 point talent.

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

dr_AllCOM3

You can take 5/5 Necrosis without loosing anything. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
There are only three "free" points, since NotD is better on many fights. With movement and the SS glyph Desecration really isn't that great.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

faight

As far as people ressing guildmates with Raise Dead: I have yet to be on the receiving end of this, but does the individual get an option to decline the Raise Dead? I remember reading something before about the person you raise having the option to accept and control themselves versus just having the pet come back.

If it's a case where they can decline and you get a normal pet, maybe instituting a "Don't accept Raise Dead" policy for raids is called for.

Question might belong in the question thread, but since I see discussion about it here I figured I'd raise it.

 

Bungie

I used a 5/5 necrosis specc on our 4/5 wing clear of naxx last night, WWS

With necrosis being about 3% of my overall damage.

I am encountering alot of errors with the ghoul registering on WWS when it's up and doing damage and not showing, does anyone know why this is happening and if there's a way to fix it, or if it's just on the WWS client it's self that is causing errors.

 

Savetheday

I do not understand the reason why you'd want someone to decline? I'd like to think the average person I'm raiding with is smarter then an AI that stands in fire and/or any other aoe. I "ghouled" 3 people last week on our complete fail kel'thuzad kill.(I guess maybe they're not smarter then my ghoul) Each one was hitting for around 2k. Having 4 ghouls attacking KT pretty much sold me on NotD.

Xyrm, your DPS has improved so much this week. How much do you think the SS glyph, more comfortable rotations, and upgrades have to do with it?

Also back to the trinket discussion. Is Extract of Necromatic power that good? Modeling some of these trinkets is damn near impossible due to not knowing PPM/internal cool downs. What trinkets are everyone going for atm?

 

Melchior

Well, I just got mine tonight and it certainly is everything I expected. Fantastic piece for this build, couldn't be happier.

I'm also going to echo the sentiments of Night of the Dead - I tried it out tonight in our brief 25 man raid, which was OS and two wings of Naxx plus Razuvious. It was so much easier to keep my ghoul in the fight, I will probably keep it in my spec over Virulence from here on out.

 

thory

Thought I'd drop my WWS from Patchwerk in a full Naxx 25 clear last night - WWS. I have 764k damage on the WWS, but that missed 121k from my ghoul - worked out at around 4.4k DPS on my Recount. Apologies for not logging off in DPS gear - I have 3pc T7, some other drops from Naxx 10/25 and the majority of the better Heroic drops. I'll remember to log off in it tonight.

Few things to state:

- I have considerably more hit than I need (~350), although this is largely due to using the hit trinket from Heroic Nexus. As you can see, I had no misses on Patchwerk. With time/gear, you should be easily able to drop Virulence and possibly get away from needing to gem for hit.
- Continuing the Necrosis/NotD theme, I went with 5/5 and it accounted for 3% of my DPS. I'll agree that this isn't amazing for a 5 point talent point investment, but then, there aren't any other significant DPS increasing alternatives. You could go 4/5 Necrosis and go 2/2 NotD - 100% pet uptime on Patchwerk (obviously, very easy) net me 121k damage, whereas 5/5 Necrosis gave 21k. I've not tried NotD yet - I went 5/5 Necrosis and took 1/2 Unholy Command for Malygos spark convenience.

Although Savetheday's question was for Xyrm (re: SS gylph, rotations, gear), I will answer that from my experience and say it's huge. I initially ditched the SS gylph to get the Oblit one to try Blood, but the more I've raided back as Unholy with it, the more I like it. Yes, it is a little unpredictable and inconsistent sometimes, but I still believe it to be fairly significant when increasing DPS. I can only see this increase becoming bigger when you get the SS Sigil from Heigan in Naxx 25 too. It simplified my rotation no end. In terms of gear, every piece I'm getting from 25 mans is making a notable difference. I think I'm reaching the point where upgrades are making smaller differences every time, but it should be interesting once I get a 213+ ilvl weapon.

 

Sekke

I thought the reason for this was that it had been shown that an AI controlled Ghoul out-DPSes player controlled ones, as well as the fact that the AI Ghoul is permanent whereas the player controlled one is temporary (though this may be one of the big reasons for it being less overall DPS).

 

• Ren

Here is a 5200 dps parse on 25-man Patchwerk: Wow Web Stats. I'm using the exact same gear and spec as in my armory. Glyphs were Ghoul, Scourge Strike, and Icy Touch. WWS isn't recording ghoul dps for me, but I was 2nd on Recount at the time of Patchwerk's death. Looking it over, it appears I failed pretty hard at Gargoyle uptime and the Emerald Boar use is pretty god-awful.

Just to reiterate, Night of the Dead is amazing for improving ghoul uptime. I've even specced into and am using Corpse Explosion on trash for burst damage.

Now for a couple questions: has anyone tried using Gargoyle on Loatheb or Thaddius? Does it benefit from the increased crit chance or damage multipliers? How about Unholy Blight on Thaddius, does it affect him at max melee range? I don't blame anyone for not knowing, they seem like things that shouldn't be done.

 

thory

My WWS link has decided to die, but before it did, I did manage to check my Thaddius kill from last night and it doesn't seem like the Gargoyle benefited from the damage multiplier.

 

Savetheday

It was more directed towards Xyrm for the fact his DPS had a very significant increase since his last report iirc. I was wondering what he thought made that big of a difference.

I just picked up the Axe off KT 10 man and sigil off 25 heigan. We have all of naxx left to do this week so hopefully I'll have a report by the end of the weekend. As a side-note about hit, I'm way over the hit cap. I am actually over the hit cap for spells with misery without virulence.(and I still have iron-spring jumpers chilling in my bags) I feel like our itemization is soo poor even if I do get upgrades to bring my hit down(and crit/haste up) they'll barely bring my DPS up.(reminds me of BC shadow priest)

Ren it appears that gargoyle does not get the spore buff and/or the polarity shift so no. To be fair if it did get the polarity shift that could potentially be bad(since it doesn't move.) IIRC I was getting UB ticks on thaddius, but I do not know if i was at max range. I think the only fights I noticed not getting UB ticks were sapphiron and malygos.

 

• Zurm

It's actually MORE powerful. That 420 is before multipliers such as the 13% magic vulnerability from ebon plague, the 10% damage from RoR, and many other things (including crits). My napkin modeling (which could be wrong) has put that sigil at a little under a 500 dps upgrade for my unholy spec and rotation, all things considered. It is without question the single biggest upgrade I can get at the moment, even more than [Betrayer of Humanity]. However, Heigan has decided he was better off NOT dropping it the last three kills... *shakes fist*.

That's correct. It also doesn't benefit from bloodlust/heroism or even get a chance at the crit buff from spores on loetheb... as far as I can tell. It DOES benefit from your AP at the time of summoning... so you should blow your AP cooldowns before using it, and right before they expire use gargoyle. Your gargoyle will gain the increased AP for the full duration... that's what I did on patchwerk this week and was seeing 3.4k gargoyle strikes (mirror of truth also procced at a very opportune moment).

Well some upgrades played a part, but again I didn't have two piece at the time, and I STILL don't have [Sigil of Awareness]. The rotation and glyph definitely played a large part... also more careful use of cooldowns and overall more attention payed to DPS, and less to experimentation (although in a way, you could argue the whole run was an experiment with a new rotation and glyph set).