• Lanky

Unless it is changed, It will be the single best sigil in the game for a very long time. Unholy uses Scourge Strike constantly, and the benefits are obvious there. Frost Uses Obliterate a decent amount, again, a glyphed and sigil boosted Obliterate is nothing to laugh at. Only Blood may not want it, although nothing has been confirmed yet over the usefulness of the haste rating blood sigil.

 

Okoi

apparently this was useless

 

Broseph

Xyrm just posted that this alone could cause up to a 500 DPS increase.


You are posting like these are new ideas. Read the thread. We've come to these same conclusions many times over in the last, oh, two or three pages.

 

Okoi

I had meant to say not the Sigil off Heigan, as that was in fact my first loot. Anyway, as far as the "ideas" I posted them to be useful, I don't see any exact quotes of what I posted. I didn't read this thread as much as I should have though, my fault.

 

methods

Hm. I don't think this Sigil can account for 500 or even 300 average dps in long fights. I can see lucky crits giving a substantial boost but when considering total possible output it seems fairly simple to calculate.

In my spreadsheets its accounting for about 200dps for an unholy build (4xSS rotation not the 5xSS glyph 'guesswork' one) in raid gear.

Lets assume a perfect rotation with SS glyph procs. 55% crit for SS.

Sigil = 420dmg * 5ss /20seconds = 105 raw dps before modifiers
Sigil = 105 * 1.13 * 1.1 *1.02 = 133.125 dps before crit mod
Sigil = 133.125 * (1+(.55*1.3)) = 228.31 dps average

At that gear level the equivalent in STR for the sigil would be about 175 STR. That's a strong over-budget if you ask me. I'm only bitter because all of my 25 man Naxx's will be in 'pugs' since my guild is small and focusing on 10 mans only.

That being said, congrats to anyone winning this godly piece of gear.

 

Bungie

Expertise, how important is it to go for dodge cap? Especially now with SS's glyph and it being our largest single target source of damage, anyone know or have any math on this?

 

Sevv

I'd assume it's still just as important. You wouldn't want your Death Runed Scourge Strikes to be dodged or anything since they become Blood Runes again.

 

◊ forostie

Wow Web Stats

Halp me, I'm getting outdps'd by blood D:

Where am I going wrong? I'm always diligent with DoT uptime, SS as much as possible, even have the fucking Sigil and still getting dominated.

[e] Hasty post. Seems I'm getting beaten on white hits. Crit I know I need more of, but is that extra white damage that the Blood DK is doing simply gear and Blood Gorged?

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

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

 

Alandriel

Blood did 13k more damage, with 1s more damage time, on a static fight on a single target mob. Isn't that statistically insignifigant? You have desecration, he has Blood Gorged with no chance of losing the buff.

 

◊ forostie

Shouldn't I be destroying him though? Or at least doing better than 3.5k. I need to work on my cooldowns and stuff, and keeping UB up which I haven't even thought of doing until now, but still...I guess it would add up but nothing drastic.

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

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

 

Alandriel

Your gear looks comparable. He hit Blood Fury twice. Converting the Death Coils to Unholy Blights would have added 10k damage. You had 27 Blood Strikes when you should have been able to get by with 19 (2 every 20 seconds, -3 when you popped Blood Tap). Converting the 'extra' 8 into Scourge Strikes looks to be ~1500 more damage. You had 56 Frost Fever and 53 Blood Plague ticks, so you were either refreshing really early and clipping diseases, or you had no diseases on target for an average of 45 seconds/ disease over the course of the fight. 5 Plague Strikes in the combat log means Desecration was only up for 50 seconds out of 210.

Why do you think you should be destroying him, out of curiosity? It is a single-target dps check which is something Blood should be good at. However, if he had popped Hysteria on Leichen, total rDPS should have gone up even more.

 

thory

Forostie - Going by your gear, your hit rating looks a little low - [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood] can help to eleviate this. Additionally from the WWS, you had a few dodges too and this looks due to a lower amount of expertise. Despite the fact that the Titansteel Destroyer is a very solid weapon with hit rating on it, you should be better off with an Axe ([Death's Bite], or failing that, [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver]). Generally, it looks like you could do with a few more enchants too. The only thing I could suggest from a rotation/playstyle point of view is that it doesn't look like you trinketed the Gargoyle or use either of your on-use trinkets during the fight.

 

• Zurm

The 500 was actually and overshoot, as I noticed a significant error in my math. I actually put it around 300, when including 2pc T7. My current raiding crit rate with scourge strike is 46%...which on a crit can put the ACTUAL benefit of the sigil well over 1k for that strike. But yea, 300 dps for a single item in a typical 5x SS "rotation" (I say rotation loosely because obviously you need to make sure diseases are up) is pretty nuts. I spoke with our other Death Knight... so when it drops it will be mine guaranteed. When I DO aquire it, I'll post some combat logs with + without it for more testing. As we've seen already, what looks good on paper and what really works often differs, though I don't see it really being the case with this item. That being said, I *really* hope blizzard doesn't nerf [Sigil of Awareness] because our other Sigils are so aweful that it's really all we have.

I've been really lucky with drops so far (just picked up 3 more upgrades in the 10-man, and working my way towards [Bladed Steelboots] either this week or next). I just recently became expertise capped (not in time for this weeks raid) and I still have a good 48 hit rating to go until hit cap. I expect another significant dps boost from hitting cap on both of these alone, allowing me to keep tight, accurate rotations and keeping my runes in line.

Edit: The new armory actually shows the CORRECT paper-doll stats for my character now, if anyone was curious where I sit.

 

dr_AllCOM3

In my spreadsheet Sigil of Awareness provides 200dps for Unholy, 150dps for Frost und none (compared to the blue one) for Blood.
I think that Unholy is the best spec because of the Sigil and the Glyph. Blood just doesn't have anything comparable and Frost can't keep up anyway.
Edit: Unless I didn't make a major mistake DW Unholy seems to be the best spec by quite a margin. The standard tri-spec isn't bad either.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

methods

At the same time, 'paper' has been surprisingly close, sometimes even in error. I agree that this sigil doesn't need a nerf but instead more sigils need to be added with equal potency. My only issue with this sigil is that there is no near equivalent in the 10 man sector. I'd even take a lesser version (say maybe 300 to SS and OB?) It's probably too late to let the developers know that it's time to give up on haste. Our badge sigil is probably one of the worst item misjudgements I've seen in WotLK.

 

• Zurm

I will try to post up some combat parses from the ebon hold target dummy later. In my experience, unholy is actually the lowest single-target DPS of all the 2H specs (even with my recent changes to playstyle), while Blood is next and FROST is actually top. The only thing keeping unholy competitive is the perma-ghoul damage, in my opinion. That being said, I haven't tried frost on live yet, but don't underestimate how overpowered frost strike is. It has a higher crit rate than death coil due to it being a strike and has 245% critical damage instead of 200%. With an unholy DK present, I would actually guess that frost would be top DPS, as it ignores far more armor than blood (read: has more elemental damage) and has a much more open rotation to "bleed" RP, preventing it from always staying capped. Also, obliterates as frost hit stupidly hard...Blood players are getting 11k crits on non-buffing bosses, frost would likely see 13k+. In my gear, the highest SS i've seen on a boss that doesn't modify damage (ie: thaddius) is 8k. I can almost guarantee I'd see 12k regular obliterates, and Icy Touches in the range of 3k crits, with frost strikes hitting for at least 50% more damage than anyone's deathcoils on average. In fact, Frost strikes should hit almost as hard as scourge strikes non-crit (due to lower static +damage), and HIGHER on crits (30% versus 45% crit modifiers).

Regarding haste... I think the developers are intentionally including it to cater to the DW crowd...because for Dual Wielding it is actually a passable stat. That being said, even as Dual Wield, AP and hit are far more important than haste.

 

methods

I've noticed this as well on paper. I haven't seen anything recently regarding the increased damage to specific abilities tacked on to Tundra Stalker. There was mention that there would be a 25% damage increase to OB and possibly FS? Did this happen? I don't see it on live but I haven't tested it either. It would help in explaining why frost is hitting harder than unholy.

 

• Zurm

Since the weekend is coming up and we are done raiding for the week, I will spec Frost to try it out, though I will post my results in the Frost thread so as not to derail the unholy discussion.

Regardless of my findings, I will still be raiding as unholy unless we have another death knight who wishes to try unholy. The utility that unholy provides via unholy aura, extra disease damage for other DKs, and an easily spread 13% magic vuln make it essentially required in a raid.

 

Nessaja

This might be a silly question, so bear with me for a moment! Do you use any kind of mod to keep track of unholy rotations?
I play my DK as an alt, and i somewhat have trouble in instances in not screwing up my rotation. I often find myself losing track of what spell i used before, and consequently what to use next. In particular when i have to pay attention to whatever boss ability is about to hit me in the face.
I keep my spells in a relatively ordered fashion and have runewatch to my side, but i still find myself with having screwed up rune timers. Is it a matter of getting more practice or are there any hints out there on how to keep my rotation more stabilized?

Thanks for any help!

Dancing on your hunter corpses! - http://tinyurl.com/2fw3j5

 

Ommar

Do you mean 2 hander?

 

boomix

So far I've been practicing on dummies, because on mobs I just try to kill them as quickly as possible. And I know I don't follow rotations because regular mobs are dead quickly. It would be okay, if someone made "Guitar Hero" type of mod for DKs. Which would reduce the value of playing a DK. But would help drill in rotations. You could use magegraf to create strike rotation for your spec and then create that rotation in the mod, and follow key strokes.

Only advice I can offer you is to watch your runes more then your bars and put your rune mod above your target. Because that is where I usually focus, or if you focus on timers such as ClassTimers then put it near there.

Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell

 

Tel

Practise, practise, practise. That's your first goal.

Secondary to that, install a rune mod you find easy to use. I love runepack, others runewatcher, others magicrune. Find one that works for you, as they all feel very different atm.

Thirdly, I strongly suggest getting a mod to watch your timers, i use a heavily filtered version of Elkano's Buff bars, simply because its all i know how to use. NeedToKnow also works here.

You start to get a feel for what your priority is after a while. Initially I'd focus on getting your strikes off in the right order, then once you've got the hang of that, start looking for gaps in your cycle to dump RP. If you have a good rune mod and a good disease watcher, then it doesn't matter what you hit last. You know what's up at the mo, and know whats top priority to hit next...

thats what worked for me anyhow.

 

nokomisa

Quick question guys. Necrosis does an extra 10% of your auto attacks as shadow damage. Ebon plague makes your target take 13% more magic damage. In other words, your auto attacks would be doing an additional 11.3% damage. I have seen that in unholy, about 25% of the damage you deal is auto attacks. Assuming that, necrosis then adds 2.875% damage done, or .565% damage per point. Wouldnt it be worth it to add necrosis in all builds then?

 

dr_AllCOM3

I (hopefully) improved my spreadsheet. All three trees are somewhat equal, given that Unholy is the subspec. Unholy itself is heavily dependent on it's pet and the Sigil (=200dps).
Blizzard managed to keep a quite good balance.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Fugazor

That may sound stupid but I always thought that DC > UB on single target - I think that was leveling habit when you could not use UB full duration

How long UB needs to last to beat DC on single target? My simple calculation gave me result of 15 sec on single target, (7-8 sec on two etc.).