Shalymar

Latest changes. Looks like they moved the perma ghoul deeper into the unholy tree to prevent deep Blood/Frost builds from getting it.

 

Foxx2405

Would you lose anything by dropping crit ?
We don't have any abilities (talking from an unholy PoV here) that rely on having a high crit chance. The only thing being Wandering Plague, but due to the internal cooldown the loss is minimal on single target and non-existent on aoe.

Also be very aware that you don't overestimate the effect of 5% crit.

5% crit is NOT equal to 5% dps.

As I explained here

 

Foxx2405

Doesn't seem to change much for unholy builds, other than that the Unholy Tree looks really miss-shapen

The only thing this changes is that it would be possible to totally skip both BCB and Morbidity, but I doubt there is any place to put those points where they benefit us more.

 

Shalymar

I don’t know, while this doesn’t directly affect unholy DK’s, it does change the variety of builds that were available. It seems to me like Blizzard is all but forcing DK’s to go unholy now. I was DW until they totally destroyed that idea, then I considered going deep frost with the rest into unholy for the perma ghoul, now if I want to dps and have the pet, I have no choice but to go deep unholy. I have a gut feeling you will see most DK’s moving to an unholy build if these changes go live.

 

Foxx2405

I think it's a good change.

The ghoul is pretty much the embodiment of the Unholy tree.
I found it a real shame that they made that so readily available to the other trees.

Besides from what I note most blood / frost users are happy with the change because:
- They don't want to manage a pet
- They would be to forced to spec at least 16-19 points in unholy that their builds became really rigid, forcing them to pass on fun talents or other good talents
- The perma-ghoul would be a liability on any non-"stand and nuke" fight (and ulduar has little of those), due to missing out on Night of the Dead
- Bringing NotD up in the tree allows them to rely on their guardian ghoul a lot more. In stead of a unreliable, dodgy cooldown; its now a reliable and more fun cooldown. (Even though its a guardian)
- Bringing up NotD allows them to benefit from a 10 minute AotD as well, which I find more fair. Ghoul as pet is a real Unholy feat in my opinion whereas AotD is our whole class' level 80 ultimate ability.

If you add everything up from the changes between the last build and this they basically gained:
- 30 second shorter on their ghoul cooldown
- Higher reliability on the ghoul in case of any aoe damage
- 10 minutes of AotD

They lose:
- Perma ghoul abilities like the stun (although again i think this is fair seeing how the ghoul is really an unholy tree feat)
- No longer having a ghoul indefinitely as long as the damage is low (a la patchwerk fight)

 

Miracleknight

I'm confused (As you were concerned) about Scourge Strike vs Disease (Glyph wise) Disease requires you to use pestilence, which doesn't create a death rune meaning that your rotation would shift from BS -> BS -> SS -> SS -> SS -> SS -> SS (Assuming one of these SSes refresh your diseases) to BS -> Pest -> SS -> SS -> BS - BS -> SS -> SS -> SS (Which would have to be your standard rotation at all times to keep diseases up) right? So wouldn't that be a little bit of a DPS loss there?

 

Sinrat

Pestilience, through Reaping, does generate a Death rune as of current PTR build.

 

Tenemit

Pestilence do Create Death rune now...

Check here for the rest

 

Miracleknight

Yeah; I was looking at an older version of the talent calculator posted by someone else and it still had the old tooltip my bad. It's kind of a bit sad then because the way the SS glyph worked was fun; need some napkin math comparing the two but I would think that SS would still provide a DPS increase since Pestilence doesn't do any damage in of itself.

 

Foxx2405

SS glyph is still better

With the pestilence glyph you exchange one blood strike for 1 pestilence every 20 seconds.
With the SS glyph you exchange 1 SS for 1 PS + 1 IT, every minute or so.

I assume the raw damage loss in both cases is pretty equal but with the glyph of SS you lose that damage less often.

For me personally the glyph of diseases would have to have a distinct advantage before I'd consider it. I like the playstyle of SS glyph much more as its dynamic.

 

Sinrat

PS, with the buffs as well as Outbreak (which we will take, naturally), will not feel as worthless as on live, which makes Glyph of Diseases less attractive, in comparison. Especially if you choose a frost subspec (stronger IT).

 

Fyrestryke

I think it would likely be a better set-up to go with UB, Ghoul and IT/PS for glyphs over either Disease or SS if you're going Frost as your subspec. The RNG factor of SS may make for more interesting rotations, but the straight-up DPS increases of 10 more RP from IT or 20% more PS damage, ESPECIALLY in conjunction with Outbreak, Imp IT and Black Ice make for some pretty strong arguments to go away from it.

 

Miracleknight

Well it has a distinct advantage, which is you can refresh your disease on your main target and every target around it at the same time; and we're sure it's not possible to have both right?

The option of using Scourge strike to keep up diseases on a mob, but when it falls only use one blood rune to refresh the diseases instead of using Icy Touch and Plague Strike would probably be a small increase, but not better than Dark Death or Ghoul? I mean if it comes down to it you wouldn't be optimized but for play style, for trash, and for mob heavy boss encounters I would think both glyphs is certainly a workable solution.

 

Fyrestryke

Using both glyphs is redundant, and will certainly result in an overall DPS loss when you have to ignore one of the other VERY useful glyphs at the disposal of an unholy DK.

 

Sinrat

Speaking of glyphs, I may have been silly here and missed a post, but has there been any math done on the glyphs?

I'm leaning towards SS, Ghoul - just as on live. But for the third, I'm a bit torn between deathcoil and IT glyphs. More DC damage is great, but so is the extra RP from IT, especially considering we're bound to lose 4pt bonus. However I might just have answered my own inquiry by using SS glyph - we won't use that many ITs in a given boss fight.

If we assume SS glyph procs once per rotation (ps-it-bs-bs-ss dump ss-ss-ss-ss) we're speaking a very low increase in RP from the IT glyph.

This is just my (perhaps not very qualified) estimate - but if were any maths done on this topic I'd really love to see them. Again, sorry if I missed any posts with this already sorted.

 

Fyrestryke

You wont average a SS proc every rotation. Even if you got that insanely lucky to average 1 proc per rotation you would just as likely get it at the begining of the rotation as at the end. You may also get multiple procs in one rotation, even further slanting the numbers. You will use IT regularly.

 

Sinrat

Yes, that's indeed true. However every SS glyph proc makes the IT glyph less worth. Less ITs, less extra RP from the glyph. But it doesn't answer how it fares compared to the DC glyph.

 

Amroo

Dark Death increases DC damage by 15%, so after about 7 DCs you have 1 "additional" DC. You need to cast 4 IT to generate the RP for one additional DC, so it boils down to the question what happens faster. Evene if you don't have a single SS-glyph-proc 3 IT last you for one minute, in a rotation IT-PS-BS-BS-4xSS you generate without 4T7 125 RP, that is 1 UB + 2 DC, so 6 DC per minute. 4T7 increases that to 9 DC per minute (not taking into account Gargoyle, though). So with 4T7 Dark Death is definitely better, but even without it's probably worth considering:
In one minute you cast 16 SS, the probabily that the glyph doesn't proc even once is 0,75^16 = 1% - the expected value of procs is 4. Those might occur directly chained, but even if they do (0,25^3=1,6% probabilty) this should push your next IT far enough that Dark Death is even better under those circumstances. Gargoyle shifts the comparison slightly in favor of IT again, but overall Dark Death should be significantly better.

 

Chrisyn

Looking athe the new talentbuild - i'm thinking of something like 7-10-54. So in my case i think we gain all those talents that outdamage the previous mentioned 12-0-xx Build from the latest Ptr build. Main Question ive got is ill have to make a decision though.

5/5 Necrosis and zero points in BcB ?
or 2/5 Necrosis and 3/3 BcB ?

But for me it looks pretty solid, some one have a better idea what to do with the current ptr build ?

/ps: Sry 4 mybad english =/, its a while ago i relly need to speak/type english =) (german)

 

Tenemit

With the Plague Strike damage increase (50% weapon damage plus 189 + OutBreak) you will do more damage with PS+IT+BS than wasting one blood rune to refresh diseases. (But you will get like 2 extra GCD)

 

Foxx2405

Seems like a waste to me, you'd never use the Pest option uniess you're aoe'ing. And in those situations the dps gain doesn't matter (its relatively low), and you can use other ways (like PT your main target, switch target and PT again).

I think you're overestimating the effect of the extra RP. I mean, its pretty good but, i doubt it holds up to an extra SS.

Say your DC does 4000 damage (counting average with crit included and raid buffs).
An IT>PS instead of SS with the IT glyph gives you 15 more RP (20 + 15 - 20).

15 RP / 40 RP * 4000 = 1500 damage
With a 50% crit rate, that means your SS needs to do 1000 damage (non crit) more than IT>PS to be stronger.

It should do 1000 damage more. (I believe the damage difference is about 2000 dmg)

Well I don't know. The chance is pretty high, and with the new disease length it might get even better.

There are extremes, I've had 3-4 rotations in row without procs. But I've also been on 5 minute fights where i had to refresh diseases "manually" only 2 times.

Definitely put 5 points in necrosis.

I think it's an interesting build, but i think some people lose perspective.
You have to realize very well that the first tier of blood and the first tier of frost are next to useless.

2H specialization is a great talent, probably more dps than either Morbidity / BCB or IUP you sacrificed.
However you put 2 points in Butchery and Subversion which probably are a dps loss.

I think if you add it together it isn't worth it. But it's an option worth thinking off.

 

Fyrestryke

Certainly longer diseases will give you more opportunities to proc it during the disease, but there is still no guarantee of WHERE in the rotation it will happen if it does. Procing it on your firt SS doesnt really help you that much. Procing twice in a row is even less helpful. The RNG factor makes it unreliable. I think I may stop using it for 3.1 for the same reasons DW people use the /cancel freezing fog macro in their rotations. Especially with the other good major glyphs they're adding actually giving us some options for once. Making UB 50% more efficient is really nice. Personally at this point I think I'm leaning towards Ghoul/UB/PS for my 3 glyphs.

 

Foxx2405

Not necessarily.

If you look at statistical averages then yes, proccing the SS glyph on your first SS is a bad thing.

But you have to view each disease duration independently from the others, the proc chance remains the same whether you refresh your diseases on the first or the 5th SS.
Each time you refresh your diseases you have the same amount of SS following to refresh them (well small difference because BS's are in the way sometimes)

I found the RNG factor not to make it unreliable. This isn't a case of "If it doesn't proc we are doomed" no this is simply a case of "If it doesn't proc we adapt our rotation, and if it does proc we gain some dps".
On the other side the RNG factor spices up the rotation, I'm not repeating the same boring rotation over and over again, and yet are dynamically "dependent" (but in a good way) on the glyph.

The reason people used the /cancel freezing fog macro has nothing to do with the fact that it was bad RNG. it had to do with the fact it was bugged. A free Howling Blast is a good thing, but due to a bug it didn't generate any RP, which combined with the extra GCD made it a dps loss, and would make the rotation complicated.
Totally different case.

PS.
I heard the Plaguestrike glyph had some issues. A lot of posts back, it turned out that it only increased the bonus damage of plague strike and not the actual weapon component, but I'm not sure how it currently stands.

As for me the choice for:
Ghoul + SS + Dark Death are pretty solid for the start of patch 3.1. Unless they change stuff around badly dark death combined with the 4xT7 bonus are simply too good to pass up.

 

Disargeria

Some announced bug fixes:
That's a bit of a nerf to necrosis.

 

Fyrestryke

Won't that flip-flop the relative power of Necrosis and BCB per point?