Glyph of IT sucks now. The value of Glyph of UB vs Glyph of Dark Death depends mostly on whether you have 4pc T7.


Some more napkinmath on glyphs, IT vs Dark Death vs UB. Dark Death gives you extra DC damage and UB/IT give you extra runic power you're going to spend on death coil, so all three can be valued in terms of your average death coil damage.


Glyph of Unholy Blight: The UB glyph increases the duration of UB from 20s to 30s, so to keep UB up full time you need to cast 2 UBs per minute instead of 3. That frees up 40 RP per minute, giving you one extra death coil per minute.

DPS value of UB glyph: average DC damage / 60s


Glyph of Icy Touch: If you're NOT using the scourge strike glyph, you IT once every 20 seconds. It takes you 80 seconds for the glyph to generate 40 RP, or one extra death coil.

DPS value: average DC damage / 80s


Glyph of Dark Death: +15% DC damage. With no other glyphs, and no 4pc T7, you generate 133 RP per 20 seconds. 80 from SSx4, 10 from IT, 15 from PS, 20 from BSx2, 8 from Butchery. We'll assume that you use your gargoyle perfectly on cooldown and keep it up for the full minute every time, so 1/3 of the time you're losing 3 RP per second. Taking that into account you have, on average, 113 RP per 20 seconds to spend on things other than gargoyle. You spend 40 of that keeping up UB, so you have 73 for DC, or about 1 death coil per 11s. Every 11 seconds you gain 15% of one death coil's damage, so it'll take you about 73s to gain the equivalent of one extra death coil.

Glyph of Dark Death also synergizes with 4pc T7 and every glyph that gives you extra runic power for death coils. If you have Glyph of UB, you throw one extra DC/60s, meaning Glyph of Dark Death gives you 100% DC damage every 400s. Glyph of IT gives you an extra 100% DC damage very 533s. 4pc T7 gives you an extra DC every 20 seconds (4 SS's = 40 RP) or 100% DC damage every 133s.

DPS value: average DC damage / 73s, more with other effects that generate extra RP


So, to compare them:

DC = your average death coil damage.

Glyph of Unholy Blight: DC * 0.0167
Glyph of Icy Touch: DC * 0.0125
Glyph of Dark Death, no extra RP generators: DC * 0.0137
Glyph of Dark Death, 4pc T7: DC*0.0212


Conclusions:

Glyph of UB > Glyph of Dark Death unless you have 4pc T7, in which case Dark Death > UB.

The relative values of UB and Dark Death do change slightly depending on garg uptime, but not by enough to matter. You'd need near 100% garg uptime to make UB > dark death with 4pc T7. You'd need to almost never use the gargoyle to make Dark Death > UB without 4pc.

Glyph of IT comes in 3rd either way, and presumably also loses to Glyph of the Ghoul, so Glyph of IT isn't worth using.

If glyph of IT is bad, then we don't need to assume that cycles that use IT more generate more runic power. That should make it easier to value Glyph of Scourge Strike or PS-spam specs without Epidemic.

Just did some testing, only 3 minutes per test though:

17/0/54 (No Desecration)
3384 DPS / 3min
Glyphs: SS, Ghoul, Dark Death
TB Heroic Training Dummy at 0%
- No damage from Necrosis (5/5) and Wandering Plague (3/3)
- HoW only

0/10/60+1
3591 DPS / 3min
Glyphs: SS, Ghoul, Dark Death
TB Heroic Training Dummy at 0%:
- No damage from Necrosis (5/5) and Wandering Plague (3/3)
- HoW only

Also tried Blood and Frost:
51/0/20 - 3238 DPS
17/51/3 - 3638 DPS (Merciless Combat active)

0/10/60+1 would do better then 17/0/54 even on a moving fight where I would gain less from Desecration.

Short info on gear: Betrayer, 4xT7.5, Obsidian Greathelm, Greatness & Bandit's Insignia
Edit: Using the same gear on armory.
Edit2: Added Frost numbers.

With Desecration (12/0/59) You will get 150+ DPS... as Methods explained
Using Both Specs I get a Difference of 2.4% In SS And DC

I find this math fishy. Suppose that there are 2 dks naked, each hiting for 1000 non crit and same damage all the time. These dk's has an option of 2 talents.
+%50 damage or %50 crit. One of them takes %50 crit, other takes %50 extra damage, each does 20 hits on boss. So it goes like

FIRST DK:
half of hits are crits, therefore;
10 x 2000 = 20.000
10 x 1000 = 10.000
Resulting = 30.000 damage

SECOND DK:
improved damage, so he does 1500 for each hit, nothing crits.
20 x 1500 = 30.000

Everything cool. Now both of those talents are buffed by %25, crit talent is now %75, boosted damage is now also %75.
First DK still hits for 1000, crits for 2000 by %75 chance. Second DK cannot crit, hits for %75 extra damage (1750). Now they make 20 hits again:

FIRST DK:
15 x 2000 = 30.000
5 x 1000 = 5000
Resulting = 35.000

SECOND DK:
20 x 1750 = 35.000.

I'm not sure if i'm mistaken (im not a talent mechanics expert) but your math seems diverting to me. %5 crit pretty much looks like same as %damage. (if you dont count non criting diseases). I think the difference is you are comparing the increase relative to previous damage before that, in that case the increase in my math as -crit reflection to damage- is lower than %25 ofc, but so is buffed damage talent (makes around %16 instead of %25). I feel like %crit talents are looked down too much, i don't feel like skiping %5 crit so easily at 3.1.

Well that poses a problem, because you kind of prove my point here.

You're talking about a +damage talent, I'm not. I'm talking about increase in DPS.

My post states 5% extra crit isnt the same as 5% more damage.
And it isn't, your own math shows it, going from 30.000 damage to 35.000 damage isnt a 25% increase, its a 16.67% increase in damage.

Also the way you say it is somewhat wrong, a better way to show my point would be saying their talents dont increase by 25%, but they each pick a second talent.
First DK gets a talent that increases crit by 25%, and Second DK a talent that increases damage by 25%.
The problem becomes visible right away since crit is added additive whereas damage multiplicative.

So the first DK would get the 35.000 dmg from your calculations, whereas the second dk wouldn't get 35.000 but 37.500 dmg.

----------

I'm just stating that a lot of people overvalue a talent that increases crit by 5%.
People too easily claim that 5% more crit would increase their dps by 5%... "After all 5% of the time you do twice as much damage !".

It's a bad way of thought that only applies if you don't have any crit to start with.

37500 ? They don't addup straight ? Since they are also damage increase talents, is it like adding up abomination's might, ravenous dead, shadow of death, veteran of the third war talents make more than %13 strength ?

( black ice + bone armor gonna be more than %12 ? )

The problem with this story is though, can you guarantee that there is going to be more then one Unholy DK in the raid? Personally I wouldn't risk that situation.

The difference between +crit and +dmg is this: +dmg also improves crit dmg.

To use the previous example:

First DK has 25% crit rating and 0% dmg increase, and does 20 hits for 1k base dmg.

15 are normal and hit for 1k = 15k
5 are crits and hit for 2k = 10k

So 25k dmg is what you would expect from a 25% crit rate (125% of 20k = 25k)

Now, give the DK a 25% bonus to his crits (for a total of 50% crit):

10 are normal and hit for 1k = 10k
10 are crits and hit for 2k = 20k

Again, what we expected, 30k = 150% of 20k.

Now, instead of a 25% increase to crit, increase his +dmg instead, so he has 25% crit and 25% +dmg.

15 are normal and hit for 1250 apiece = 18750
5 are crits and hit for 2500 = 12500

Total is 31250, because the 25% +dmg increase is not added to the base dmg (20k) but to the base+crit dmg of 25k.

Because of this, the only time +crit and +dmg are EQUAL is when you have zero +crit. All other times, +dmg will be better, regardless of how much (or little) crit you actually have.

It's a flawed argument since you won't have 0% crit ever unless there is ever a boss that puts a debuff on you to make you have 0% crit.

Maybe; it's also flawed because it ignores the relative item budgets of the stats. If one unit of item budget gains you 1 strength, or .01% crit, maybe the strength is better. If one unit of item budget gains you 1 strength or 90% crit, the strength is not better.

There is no accurate discussion (here) of the relative gains from +dmg/+crit budgets. (No, you never are given the choice between 25% crit or 25% "extra damage", whatever that stat is. For good reason. Thus, the comparison between X% crit and X% "extra damage" is pretty boring.)

If you're trying to compare the relative gains between crit rating and attack power (or strength), the comparison is much, muuuuuuch more complicated -- if you're interested, talk to Darkside or anyone who's spent time with stat weights.

Item budgets? The original argument was about the value of a +damage TALENT vs. a +crit TALENT. Item budgets and weightings are irrelevant.

The debate is between Dark Conviction (5% crit) and Desecration (5% dmg), so it's not a contrived talent build, it's a very relevant discussion.

Well the discussion drifted towards that.

The original point was that someone wondered couldn't figure out how 5% crit only lead to 2.5-3% dps increase. So I answered that with my post.

Then someone on this page quoted me questioning my calculations thinking that 5% crit and 5% damage are the same. Which several people now proved only holds true in a select few situations. No offense to radon because i think his way of thought is valid, and a commonly used way of thinking.

I think the discussion between desecration and dark conviction is useless though, because 5% damage is simply better than 5% crit.
Damage works on all damage, crit doesnt.

Not only are there abilities that can not crit, there is the fact that crit doesn't improve itself.

Its kind of hard to explain very clearly but it's because crit is additive and not multiplicative.
If you have 50% crit you do 150% damage, adding 5% crit increases your damage by 5% of the original 100%, and doesn't affect the 50% bonus damage you got from the previous crit. Bringing the new damage to 155%
Damage on the other hand does, 5% more damage increase the 150% damage to 150*1.05 = 157.5% dmg

Anyway, I think we should try not to slowly drift off to irrelevant subjects now.

I've been looking over the new gear on MMO Champion and like most other plate dps, I'm quite disappointed. As it stands now would it be better to go for Ulduar leather gear, or perhaps stick with 4 piece T7 and fill the rest with leather or decently itemized non-tier plate? Everyone talks about leather, but DK's get so many sources of +%str and as Unholy our ghoul gets an added benefit, so I'm thinking it may still be worth sticking to plate. And, unless I missed it, no one's compared the quality of T7 vs T8 as far as factoring itemization and set bonuses. To me, the 4 piece T7 looks pretty attractive especially in light of the recent T8 nerfs.

Perhaps it is best to keep 4 T7 until you get 4 T8, but that T8 4 piece is fairly large.

Every dps spec is either going to have Bladed Armor and/or the Ghoul, so having lots of armor/strength is a good idea.

This isn't necessarily true in regards to Bladed Armor. I'm already getting better results using 5/5 Black Ice over Bladed Armor in my current gear on the PTR. That said, obviously Strength is king regardless of spec, but the value of armor alone as a stat isn't much of a consideration for me.

The good news is if you want strength you'll be wearing plate anyway. Its not on anything else.

I would like to see a SS or a wws to determine the validity of your statement. That gives me 5 more points to put elsewhere as you suggested, that's a pretty big switch.

3.1.0 PTR Patch Notes Update - 03/27

Here is a thread started on this topic actually:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - [Bug] Necrosis not even single-dipping

Edit: Beaten to the punch, kinda. =P

From what blizzard have said, they just want necrosis to be a straight 0.2% of your white damage. No modifiers affecting necrosis, not even spell damage modifiers like EP and Black Ice.

As far as I know we currently lose a 15% damage from blood presence (it still affects white damage, but doesnt make necrosis double dip) and 13% damage from ebon plaguebringer.

Which basically mean you have to divide the old Necrosis by 1.2995 (1.13 * 1.15).

My necrosis did 6% of my total damage on all bosses the last naxx run, and 5% of the damage done on patchwerk.
Taking the last just to get the worst case scenario, and you get:
5% / 1.2995 = 3.85% or 0.77% per point

I don't think its as bad as Egnor said, but its a pretty heavy blow.
Probably still worth getting though.

There aren't a lot of options anyway in Unholy (strange considering this tree is packed with decent talents) if you fully skip Necrosis. You can indeed grab absolutely everything while skipping Necrosis (even Desecration) but it leaves you with not quite enough points to fully flesh out another talent elsewhere. While the change to Necrosis is obviously not great for us, I think we'll likely end up taking it anyway, at least to a point.

Well until this nerf, necrosis was an insane good talent.

More than 1% dps per point and scaling incredibly well due to the double dipping. All melee modifiers and all spell damage modifiers (not crit / hit) affect it.