With regards to the new talent builds out right now, I haven't seen much talk about Ghoul Frenzy... is it worth talenting for? it seems like it should be but I'm fairly new to DK mechanics here and I've been browsing around trying to find a high end Unholy DPS build with and without it... what I've come up with based on methods previous posts about top DPS spec
With regards to the new talent builds out right now, I haven't seen much talk about Ghoul Frenzy... is it worth talenting for? it seems like it should be but I'm fairly new to DK mechanics here and I've been browsing around trying to find a high end Unholy DPS build with and without it... what I've come up with based on methods previous posts about top DPS spec
Dmg-wise Necrosis (that's where you should take 1 point from) and GF are pretty equal (this was covered only 2 pages ago)
That said it basically comes down whether(sp?) your ghoul needs the heal, if it can live without it then no it's not worth it
I'd pull the point from Necrosis as well.
However, the rest of your statement may not be wholly true.
Even assuming just a 50% uptime on it (from Blood Tap; you're essentially not losing anything in this scenario, unless you need to re-apply BS), does the 25% haste increase to the lil ghoul equal a greater increase than 4% of about 5% of your overall damage (a total of 0.2% of your dmg)? I believe there were some numbers posted from PTR raid tests a few pages back about the % of dmg contributed from the ghoul. Granted the haste would only affect his white attacks, but would be a straight 25% increase to the damage from that source. Or I suppose a 12.5% increase to that damage source (ghoul auto-attacks) given a 50% uptime.
Edit:
Looking back to Fugazor's estimates of 90 DPS gain from Ghoul Frenzy (assumed 6000 DPS). The point from Necrosis would equate to about 12 DPS. So, that looks like it'd be a gain at least. even cutting the GF estimate in half based on 50% uptime. Another point made around that post is that Morbidity is likely the better place to take that point from. Though I'm personally hard pressed to sacrifice time off the CD on DnD (mostly just on principle really...no good reason).
The differences there are pretty tiny though. So, in retrospect, going back to ashur's post, the most compelling reason to pick this up is if it drastically increases your ghoul uptime itself. That would be a far larger DPS contribution than the haste to auto-attacks is.
Now is it worth going 4/5 Impurty for Ghoul Frenzy?? would just 5/5 Impurity be better?
If you want sacrifice something - do Necrosis - it got nerfed on PTR lately. Also I would move 3 points from Necrosis to Morbidity and change IT glyph to DC (Dark Death).
As for GF - it is small (~1%) dps loss (BT aside - you need to refresh bone shield with something) but if it will be enough to save ghoul in hard mode encounters it will be worth taking and using just as NotD now. We don't have much experience with hard modes yet, hell we haven't seen them all yet so it is hard to say if it will be worth taking for now.
Also we can still hope that someone at Blizzard will listen and it will be changed to RP or pet focus before live. If this would happen I would definitely drop Necrosis to 1/5 and took it.
If you want sacrifice something - do Necrosis - it got nerfed on PTR lately. Also I would move 3 points from Necrosis to Morbidity and change IT glyph to DC (Dark Death).
Whoops, I hadn't noticed that he hadn't picked up Morbidity. Obviously can't take points from that to feed GF then. I believe the evidence around the post that I linked most strongly supported necrosis as being the better point for point dmg contribution talent, compared to Morbidity. However, those determinations still strongly hinge on movement within encounters, unless I overlooked modifications to that estimate somewhere.
Edit: Of course it was your post I'd linked originally...maybe I should stop posting from work where my attention can be easily diverted...
What we could have really used is a new thread for Unholy PTR testing where the OP keeps up to date info on what people have found rather than a mish mash of pre and post patch data requiring 2 days work to sift through.
Probably a bit late now though.
It would likely be worth it for someone to post a new 3.1 Unholy thread though, especially since Zurm is playing a Ret Pally now, so doesn't focus on DK as much, and some of the talents have changed a lot (like Outbreak and Necrosis).
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Can i get a confirmation if Crypt Fever is working properly for multiple Unholy DK's in 3.1 ?
Yes, it works for all DKs with the talent to get the disease damage buff.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
For the sake of the argument, Necrosis should still be a higher point-per-point damage gain than Morbidity - which, however, yields additional utility in AoE-fights. I don't see a difference between having a 15 sec-DnD and a 20 sec-DnD cooldown simply due to rune cooldowns. So for the sake of dps maximizing, conditional on a set value of utility (i.e. DnD every 2 rune cooldowns), a 2/3 Morbidity and 2/5 Necrosis distribution should be optimal.
Last edited by Amroo : 04/03/09 at 8:49 PM.
Reason: sentence structure... getting late
For the sake of the argument, Necrosis should still be a higher point-per-point damage gain than Morbidity - which, however, yields additional utility in AoE-fights. I don't see a difference between having a 15 sec-DnD and a 20 sec-DnD cooldown simply due to rune cooldowns. So for the sake of dps maximizing, conditional on a set value of utility (i.e. DnD every 2 rune cooldowns), a 2/3 Morbidity and 2/5 Necrosis distribution should be optimal.
Assume the situation where you are running at an AoE Pack. You plant DnD on 30 yard range. Now by some coincidence you can't immediately kick off into PS after GCD is ready. This can lead to a gap between your initial Cd's on BFU from DnD and the remaining Cd's on the other BFU from IT, PS, PE.
You can simplify this scenario by assuming BFU - 5sekgap - BFU.
Now if you turn the clock a little you'll notice: BFU(10sek since DnD) - 5sekgap - BFU(15sek since DnD)
You might think that this scenario is grossly oversimplified and far-fetched and it probably is. However it is only one example for a gameplay situation where being able to DnD every 15 sek is beneficial.
Even perfect execution can't guarantee an orderly rotation. And in bossfights involving DnD I expect a lot of chaos.
This thread claims that T8 is actually a DPS loss. It was said earlier in this thread that the upgrade would be minimal, and 25-man T7 4P would only be worth upgrading with 25-man T8 4P, but with these simulations it seems it won't be worth it then. Anyone who has done the math have something contradictory to this? Would be very nice to know when considering the upgrade path to take when going for Ulduar loot.
Assume the situation where you are running at an AoE Pack. You plant DnD on 30 yard range. Now by some coincidence you can't immediately kick off into PS after GCD is ready. This can lead to a gap between your initial Cd's on BFU from DnD and the remaining Cd's on the other BFU from IT, PS, PE.
You can simplify this scenario by assuming BFU - 5sekgap - BFU.
Now if you turn the clock a little you'll notice: BFU(10sek since DnD) - 5sekgap - BFU(15sek since DnD)
You might think that this scenario is grossly oversimplified and far-fetched and it probably is. However it is only one example for a gameplay situation where being able to DnD every 15 sek is beneficial.
Even perfect execution can't guarantee an orderly rotation. And in bossfights involving DnD I expect a lot of chaos.
I actually did test this out of curiosity. I started running the moment I laid down DnD at max range and did IT while running and by the time the GCD for PS was up I was in melee range. This was without any run speed increase. This point is simply not valid - if there is a "gap" of wasted GCDs between the first DnD and the following moves it's due to idiocy and not game mechanics.
I'll give you the point, though, that technically you could do more AoE DPS over a one-minute duration if you have a 15 sec DnD CD and switch between rune sets for DnD. However, switching between rune sets requires way more attention (due to how rune CDs work) than just doing DnD every 20 seconds and using SS / BB / PE in between. For making use of a 15-sec-DnD (and not losing the DPS gain at some other point) you need perfect execution (which you stated could never be guaranteed - and I agree), while doing a DnD-every-20-sec enables you to actually pay attention to your surroundings, because it's absolutely streamlined. And as you've stated yourself, bossfights with extensive AoE on player side usually appreciate some attention...
And there is still the fact that Necrosis is strictly a DPS increase compared to Morbidity in single target situations.
I really don't know why the rest of you find it so hard to use DND every 15 sec as soon as it comes of CD, I for one think it's a really easy task if you are good at managing runes. You start with
DND > PS > IT > Pest > UB
After that you just look at your runes and see what you can use. If you got a B rune and the 2nd B rune is comming off cd before the DND cd is up, you TAB and Pest to refresh diseases. If you got a FU pair and the 2nd FU pair is comming of cd before DND, just do another SS. When it's 5 sec till DND cd is over, just make sure you'll have a set of BFU runes, rest you can spend on Pest or SS. When you get the hang of it, you can just keep a rotation of DND + Pest + SS + UB and throw out random DCs when having an excess of RP.
Maybe it does sound a bit complicated, but RunePack really helps with visually judging runes and what you can use when. Try it on 3x grps of practice dummies, it really ain't that hard. As for diseases, it's something like this:
1. After DND>PS>IT> Pest(on mob A) > full duration on all mobs (mob A, B and C+)
2. When you have your next nonDND B rune for pest > TAB before you use pest (say hit pest on mob B)
- Mob B has 1/2-1/3 duration on diseases, rest are back to full
3. When you have your next nonDND B rune for pest > TAB then Pest on mob A
- Mob A now has 1/2-1/3 duration on diseases, rest are back to full
As long as you always use Pest on a mob with high disease duration, you can keep this up all the way untill the AOE pack is dead.
If you got a B rune and the 2nd B rune is comming off cd before the DND cd is up, you TAB and Pest to refresh diseases.
That's the point - if the second B rune doesn't finish CD by then you have a rune sitting there on average 2-3 seconds doing nothing, although it should be doing something. Runes are the critical resource, once you don't use one that's been refreshed for more than 1.5 seconds you are effectively wasting DPS. If you do that a lot you can just do a 20-second DnD rotation that is very smooth.
And no, I don't have problems with a 15-seconds DnD rotation, since right now I can't think of situations where you use DnD and things actually live long enough for it to have a point to use DnD again. Fact is, that a 15-sec-DnD rotation is more prone to inefficient playing than a 20-sec-DnD rotation and the potential AoE gain (which in most boss fights will still be irrelevant - just that a boss has adds doesn't imply that you can AoE them down) doesn't justify the definite single target DPS loss from taking that third point in Morbidity.
After all, it doesn't really matter, though. It's one rather insignificant point in a 71-point talent build. Someone who maximizes single target DPS wouldn't spend any points in morbidity; 1 point in Morbity is pointless (oh, the irony); and 2 maximizies single target DPS conditional on the fact that there may be times where AoE might be needed. I don't really see where there needs to be further discussion about this.
I feel that that rune waiting there 2-3 sec for DND is less of a loss than 5 sec of dead space between 2 20sec DNDs. And even then, there's hardly a grp that lives long enough for 4+ DNDs, so the more DNDs you can throw at them while they are alive the more damage you're going to do. If you got only 2/3 points in DND you might as well calculate
DNDdamage x 0.75
for the actual damage it does during it's cd. And with an ability like DND that does 5+k per mob, in a grp with only 4 mobs you're looking at a 5k+ loss in those 20 sec. For grps with 5+ mobs the loss only gets bigger.
I actually did test this out of curiosity. I started running the moment I laid down DnD at max range and did IT while running and by the time the GCD for PS was up I was in melee range. This was without any run speed increase. This point is simply not valid - if there is a "gap" of wasted GCDs between the first DnD and the following moves it's due to idiocy and not game mechanics.
When I said "by some coincidence" I wasn't being ironic. I meant some event like mobs getting pulled farther away, a harmful effect or physical object blocking the way, a slow effect, or a distraction causing you to stop for a while. Whatever, the possibilities are numerous and considering the upcoming hardmodes I expect Morbidity to be of far greater value than the microscopic single-target dps increase Necrosis or BcB might provide.
(I am not saying they do have a ST-Dps advantage, I haven't seen the math yet. I am assuming that they might have but the difference, if it exists, is too slim to justify pulling points out of Morbidity.)
However with Dual Specc coming up it might be viable for some to set up 2 speccs just to distribute 3 points differently.
I'd like to know more about this guy's test conditions. What sim he's using, and exactly what gear he's wearing in each test. You wouldn't want to wear the same gear in other slots with full T7 as you would with full T8, because of hit/exp caps. He said he's not using the ghoul or the gargoyle, neither of which scale with set bonuses but both of which scale with strength. He's only simming about 80% of his DPS, and the 20% that isn't represented would favor T8. EDIT: Eruka just posted a 200h parse using the ghoul/garg, with T7 still > T8.
It's possible that 4pc T8 narrowly beats 4pc T7, but that doesn't change the basic problem: the T7 set bonuses are really good and the T8 ones are lackluster. I don't see an overall problem with the T8 stats. The chest, gloves, and legs are all straight-up better than T7, and the helm could be if it allows you to wear another hit/exp piece somewhere else. The only thing that needs changing is the set bonuses.
It's possible that 4pc T8 narrowly beats 4pc T7, but that doesn't change the basic problem: the T7 set bonuses are really good and the T8 ones are lackluster. I don't see an overall problem with the T8 stats. The chest, gloves, and legs are all straight-up better than T7, and the helm could be if it allows you to wear another hit/exp piece somewhere else. The only thing that needs changing is the set bonuses.
The T8 shoulders are pretty terrible which is a shame since the shoulders are generally the defining part of armor (visually). Looking at T8 they basically decided to mix and match ratings and provide a combo of every rating. I kind of get how they added a ton of extra armor in the game to 'please' every style, but at the end of the day best in slot is almost always the same for everyone.
This is my first post ever and I would like to say thank you everyone for your hard work and dedication to this site. I have been visiting this thread for quite a while and finally got the guts to ask a question. We all know unholy puts out the best aoe out of the three talent trees, but my question is with dual specs coming out is anyone thinking of making an aoe build(unholy) and a single target boss build. My thought is this. When I fight single target bosses my dps lowers slightly and I make up for it in aoe trash pulls and aoe type boss fights. I'm looking to maximize the dual specs option to make a build for aoe and single target and I was wondering if any of you had a build for the best single target boss fights (maybe blood) and the best possible aoe build. I like what I'm reading about 0/10/61 and 12/0/59 as a great unholy build. Are any of you thinking of using duel specs the way I am and if so what are your thoughts and builds?
The T8 shoulders are pretty terrible which is a shame since the shoulders are generally the defining part of armor (visually). Looking at T8 they basically decided to mix and match ratings and provide a combo of every rating. I kind of get how they added a ton of extra armor in the game to 'please' every style, but at the end of the day best in slot is almost always the same for everyone.
While there is a set of BiS items (it could differ by spec), I would think most players just get whatever has the most stats or whatever they can get first, so rest assured every item they itemize will be used by someone. Not everyone min/maxes their play.
Maybe it is a shame that Tier 7's bonuses are so good that maybe only 4 T8 beats it, but I bet the other classes on the DK token would be happy about that.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I'd like to know more about this guy's test conditions. What sim he's using, and exactly what gear he's wearing in each test. You wouldn't want to wear the same gear in other slots with full T7 as you would with full T8, because of hit/exp caps. He said he's not using the ghoul or the gargoyle, neither of which scale with set bonuses but both of which scale with strength. He's only simming about 80% of his DPS, and the 20% that isn't represented would favor T8. EDIT: Eruka just posted a 200h parse using the ghoul/garg, with T7 still > T8.
It's possible that 4pc T8 narrowly beats 4pc T7, but that doesn't change the basic problem: the T7 set bonuses are really good and the T8 ones are lackluster. I don't see an overall problem with the T8 stats. The chest, gloves, and legs are all straight-up better than T7, and the helm could be if it allows you to wear another hit/exp piece somewhere else. The only thing that needs changing is the set bonuses.
Methods linked some info a few pages back, presumably based on a sim: Unholy DPS Discussion
And that was done BEFORE the set got re-worked (which IIRC was a reasonable nerf from the original stats). So assuming those findings are correct, it's probably safe to say that T7 > T8, except perhaps for 4pcT8 (which could use some more sim testing I guess). This obviously assumes 4pcT7.
Methods linked some info a few pages back, presumably based on a sim: Unholy DPS Discussion
And that was done BEFORE the set got re-worked (which IIRC was a reasonable nerf from the original stats). So assuming those findings are correct, it's probably safe to say that T7 > T8, except perhaps for 4pcT8 (which could use some more sim testing I guess). This obviously assumes 4pcT7.
I redid the figures on my Spreadsheet Sim and found it to be a DPS loss (50-90 DPS in the 6k Range) to go from T7 4P to T8 4P for Unholy and Frost ONLY. Blood gets a healthy boost from the 4P of T8. We really should just call T8 the Blood Set.
Also, I redid some figures on Awareness VS the DC/FS Sigil and found that:
DC/FS = Awareness with 4P T7
Awareness > DC/FS with 4P T8
04/03/09, 4:21 PM
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