Thanks to the 4pc t7 bonus it is no problem to keep UB up during Gargoyle and squeeze in some DCs. Additionally, the Gargoyle RP drain is down to 3 RP/s from currently 8 RP/s (PTR build 9704). A 60s Gargoyle costs 200 RP (50+(3*50).

Ah gotcha, so it doesn't really matter anymore. It's been a while since I've played, it's hard to play catch up haha.

Still the dropping of the raid wide auras is a bit depressing, because now it leaves Unholy with providing what feels like less of a buff. Yeah we can buff disease damage, and especially in a raid with multiple DKs (of course a shadow priest gets this benefit too) they bring less depending on your raid comp. Now this probably means more to me since my guild does not have a reliable enhancement shaman; I'm thinking if I really want to benefit the raid now I will want to switch to blood or Frost. Am I missing something or is there really much less raid wide benefit from Unholy now?

13% spell damage from Ebon plague is nothing to scoff at.

Shit you're right I was completely forgetting that it means locks don't have to use COS; guess I have to weigh out the DPS of a warlock using a different curse vs melee getting 10% AP or 20% haste. Though common sense leads me to believe that the latter two would be more beneficial due to our lack of enhancement shamans; hell I think we have one shaman. So from that prespective Unholy offers less of a DPS bonus raid wise in that situation.

Anyways that's a little off topic; what are we looking at here in terms of new top end specs? I've seen people talking about 10/61 and a few others going back to our old one without bothering to change it up too much which I don't think would work.

I like what I'm seeing with 0/10/61, 2/10/59 and 12/0/59... but in reference to the first two:

Can we really justify letting go of Bladed Armor? Personally, I am at 13892 armor which equates to 77.17 Bladed Armor ratio, which would mean a 385.88 AP loss. That seems like a lot to me. Does anyone know numbers on how losing Bladed Armor but gaining those 10 points in Frost will balance? Inquiring minds want to know!

Boomkins add the same 13% spell damage debuff as either DK's or 'locks, and without a DPS loss like the 'lock one.
ANY shaman can drop a WF totem for the haste buff, but without an enhance shaman you will be missing the 10% AP buff that a blood DK could bring.
The ONLY unique buff Unholy DKs bring to the table is the 30% disease buff, but that's not exactly a huge DPS increase for a non-Unholy DK, though your local neighborhood SP may miss it.

With SS added to desecration you should have pretty good uptime on it on any fight that isn't constant movement. I believe most people are calculating it at 4% damage increase.

You're forgetting one important advantage that Ebon Plague has over it's clone debuffs: it can be easily applied to large packs of mobs. This is invaluable in any fight where AoE is a factor at all, since most of the AoE damage dealt by a raid is magic damage.

The point is, that Bladed Armor yields a rather fixed amount of damage increase, since your armor won't increase drastically as you increase in raid tiers. 10% shadowfrost damage are exactly that - 10%. So as your gear get's better the value of this talent in AP-terms increases significantly, as well.

That's why current assesments often predict for Blood subspec to be superior in current gear, but for Frost subspec to be possibly superior with future raid tiers (and the equipment gained from them).

Yeah but with only one shaman I won't even get that, so it kinda feels for a raid's benefit I have to go Blood or Frost if I want to provide as much benefit as possible; though I will probably just stick with Unholy because I enjoy it's loose playstyle a lot more than the spam centric blood play style.

Too bad our Disease debuff doesn't increase damage from poisons too, that would be pretty amazing for rogues hah.

So did they ever state why they were taking away our raid wide 15% movement increase? That seemed like a fun unique buff that added benefit but wasn't a requirement to play.

There is a quote by GC that (especially Unholy) Auras weren't planned as a requirement, but more a gimmick, yet Unholy Aura was on movement heavy fights so strong, that it felt like a requirement for a DPS maximizing raid. That's why they changed that whole aura-design.

I was afraid that was the point, I suppose it's still useful but certainly not as much. Are people putting the two points into that talent? Or do we have places we can put those 2 talent points that taking the minor run speed enchants would be more efficient for our DPS?

Because it seems it's still getting picked up; but there are so many run speed enchants; if you drop those two points and put them in say desceration, or somewhere in the blood or frost trees could there be more benefit there?

Looking at the trees, why is Ghoul Frenzy being overlooked so much? I would think run speed enchant so we could pick that up may be a DPS increase instead, and maybe even throw down the 1 point in descecration so you can go all the way up the tree?

This is of course very true, but my personal point of view has always been that boss DPS > trash DPS. I will /cry for my mages/boomkins/locks that aren'y cracking 10K DPS on trash pulls if it makes them feel any better.

There are several fights with they're fair share of adds in Ulduar (Thorim and Mimiron come to mind), where having a quickly applied 13% magic damage debuff to all mobs would be EXTREMELY valuable.

As a generalization, if your talent tree has a run speed buff, it is worth taking. If your tree doesn't have it, then the runspeed enchant is practically required. (15% from talented version > 8% enchanted).

Fair enough, I'm not up to date on what all the feet enchants are since it's been a while when I last looked at them (I don't even have my boots enchanted shame on me). And Run speed enchants aren't 15% right? they're like 9%?

What enchants are comparable to a haste buff + healing for our pet though? or maybe 1 point ghoul 1 point run speed enchant would be more beneficial?

The problem is that Frenzy costs an unholy rune, which is a very heavy cost for hasting your ghoul. I don't know how much more AOE there will be in Ulduar, but in current content my ghoul never dies from AOE with NOTD. Even if he does die I can resummon him at the minor cost of a GCD with full health.

He has an unavoidable CD now that starts from death. You wont get him back instantly anymore.

Alright, so you are left with 30 seconds without your ghoul when he dies. I can see how it would be worth spending an unholy rune to heal your ghoul up rather than lose him.

However, Sapphiron is still the only fight where my ghoul occasionally comes close to death due to AOE damage. If I'm not mistaken, multi-target heals still target pets. Sapph is a little weird from a positioning standpoint and everyone is constantly taking damage so it is not as likely that your ghoul will get hit with smart heals. Any other fight that he dies on currently it is a one-shot from something like a void zone.

I think it all comes down to how much AOE damage your ghoul will be taking in Ulduar. If he is dying often then frenzy makes more sense.

I haven't seen any testing numbers on ghoul dps alone, but that may just be because threads are moving so fast. I'm working on the assumption that 25% haste, which is less than a 25% dps increase to your ghoul, is not worth a lost SS every 15 seconds.

I'm going to agree that it's most likely not; I'd much rather see that as a runic power cost rather than a rune cost. But maybe I"ll do some tests with my ghoul; granted I'm lacking a good amount of strength on my character.

I have done some limited testing with ghoul frenzy and personally I would like to see the Dev's buff the haste part of the buff or even the duration and turn it into a 1 min CD, using it in conjunction with blood tap is very nice. Currently the builds I have been messing with on the PTR are not speccing into it but that is mainly bc I am trying to find what I believe to be the best possible spec and am respeccing all the time.

Reference the 0/10/61 build, I like it a lot I have been doing a bastardization of it recently without blood caked blade and going with points in blood for less threat. The threat difference is no HUGE dps increase but it can be nice for any fights where there is a lot of aoe as our AOE threat as unholy is pretty intense. Just a thought. Blood caked blade is a nice talent but really isn't that much dmg when push comes to shove.

Since the last change on the PTR I was thinking about something alongside this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...6&version=9704

For people (like me) in a normal (10 ppl) raid enviroment, without an Enhancer or Frost-DK.

The last three point can be spend somwhere in Epidemic/NotD/IUP/Subversion.

IUP might be called a "must have", but without buffing the raid, I am well aware that you can provide some
decent damage (IT/BB/DnD) while moving from one target to another. So it might come down to personal preference and maybe pick an enchant.

1 point in Epidemic would be enough to provide the same duration as it is on live.

1 point in NotD might be sufficent to keep your ghoul alive most times

Threat might become problem (especially on trash), so maybe 1-2 points there would be nice.

I think I will give it a shot and see how it performes besides the so far mentioned possibilities.

Glyphs:
If you don´t like the RNG´ish playstyle with the SS-Glyph, I think Glyph of the disease is not that bad.
You can completely forget about IT and PS and settle into a smoother rotation. But again, the loss of one
BS vs. better handling might be personal preferance.
If you do care about performance on trash, you might even take the DnD-Glyph over Ghoul/DC.

Just an alternative thought if you are not running heroic raids.