Lollersk8er

In my sheet Awareness is better for both sets, but 4/5 (excluding the helmet) T7 does ~130dps more than T8.
For Frost it's almost the same, Blood is better with T8 by about 30dps.

 

methods

We should start sharing which Unholy spec we are testing in. My quoted tests were in 12/0/59. I assume yours are in 0/10/61? Mine shows the same sort of results you listed in that spec.

For clarity:

T7 4P and 0/10/61: Awareness > DC/FS Sigil always
T8 4P and 0/10/61: Awareness > DC/FS Sigil always

T7 4P and 12/0/59: Awareness = DC/FS Sigil or ~0 gain/loss
T8 4P and 12/0/59: Awareness > DC/FS Sigil always

So that means that we will be passing on the new Sigil besides offspec Frost/Blood DPS where it really shines.

 

◊ zirky

Methods, out of curiosity, when you test for 4pc, you are talking about chest, legs, shoulders and gloves, correct?

 

methods

That would make sense but I think I used all but the legs since Plated Leggings of Ruination is actually BiS. I realize the helm is considered trash but I highly doubt the change between them would cause a huge difference in the generalities listed previously.

I'll check tomorrow and let you know if I find a damning amount of difference.

EDIT:

I double checked and the difference was fairly negligable. The previous statements still remain true.

 

Sythral

How do the changes to Necrosis and GF impact the new stardard 12/0/59? I believe what I have been reading is that BCB becomes better per point than Necrosis, and GF is a must have now... Am I correct?

 

Ashur25

Yes to 1) and maybe to 2)

to explain 2): According to Fugazors numbers GF is a slight dps loss, so basically it comes down to the heal. If your ghoul can't survive in Ulduar even with NoTD(doubtful for some fights) then yes it's a must

 

Tenemit

With the change made to Necrosis, I wonder if maybe the forgotten build 7/10/54 or something like 0/15/56 would be a better deal than 0/10/61?, I'm trying to run some numbers on this, but looks almost the same (only a few points difference). Who has run something on this lately?

 

NeuroMedivh

I'm running http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...6&version=9757 as my current test spec, but I'm not entirely convinced about DC over Necrosis. I'm running around 30% crit without DC; This gives DC about .77% per point to Necrosis's .7%, but with better gear I could see Necrosis pulling ahead.

 

Amroo

Since the whole crit discussion seems to creep up again and again, I just want to make sure that I correctly understand how crit affects our damage. If my math is correct it would mean that you extremely overvalue Dark Conviction and this whole discussion might finally stop. If my math is wrong, though, it'll probably change my whole lfie.

I took a WMO from a post a few pages back and summarized what I saw:

The player did 100% damage (no surprise there). Of that damage 25% was damage not affected by crit (ghoul, gargoyle, UB, BCB). 75% was damage from sources that could crit (Pretty much everything else).

If you have a crit rate of 30% unbuffed, your crit rate in a raid is about 40% on the sheet, probably even more due to talents for specific strikes. Let's assume 40% crit rate. Let's further assume, that the average crit modifier is 2.2 (SS is higher, DC and Melee is lower, so it should about fit).

So of all your attacks that could crit 40% did (and dealt 2.2 times the damage) and 60% did not. So:
0.4 * 2.2 = 0.88
0.6 * 1 = 0.6

Normalizing that to 1:
0.88 / 1.48 = 0.594595
0.6 / 1.48 = 0.405405

So of your damage from sources that could crit 59.5% is damage from critical strikes and 40.5% is damage from strikes that didn't crit. Translating that to your total damage (multiplying those numbers by 0.75) yields:

Damage distribution:
25.0000% from sources unaffected by crit
44.5046% from critical strikes
30.4054% from normal strikes, that could potentially crit

Now let's take a look at the situation after 1% crit was gained:

0.41* 2.2 = 0.902
0.59 * 1 = 0.59

Normalizing that to the previous scale:
0.902 / 1.48 = 0.609459
0.59 / 1.48 = 0.398648

Laying that over the previous damage distribution:
25.0000% from sources unaffected by crit
45.7095% from critical strikes
29.8986% from normal strikes, that could potentially crit

Which sums up to 100.6081%

So, a 1% crit increase yielded only 0.6081% damage increase.

This is for an effective crit rate of 40% - as I've previously stated probably underestimating the real crit rate in current BiS-equip. A higher effective crit rate would further diminish the value of additional crit.

On the other hand you have now Necrosis. Your white damage is usually about 17% of your damage. Necrosis, as it works right now on the PTR, simply increases that by 4% per point, so 0.17 * 0.04 = 0.0068. That is a 0.68% damage increase per point and clearly superior even if my numbers above were slightly off (My estimates probably even favored crit).

 

Aram

No, in a fully min/maxed raid group, you'll never get the Icy Talons buff since it doesn't stack with Improved Windfury. You're better off putting those points in Necrosis since you'll get more bang for your buck that way.

 

opacita

before reading further, just note that a) i began reading this thread again recently so i havent gone through all 60 pages since i checked it last and b) i have done close to 0 work on the ptr. with that said, most of what i think about is theoretical ideas which can be easily disputed by numbers, im sure.

first, what happended to desecration to make it be a cornerstone in all specs? is the fact that it now includes SS's and therefore achieves 100% uptime that much better than before? someone did the dps % / talent point chart on the other page, and although i cant find it now, it seems pretty obvious to me that desecration has a 1%/point ratio, which means its actually better than dark conviction (read 2 posts up).

what im getting at is that we already took points out of dark conviction to put into all the different places in unholy, so obviously those were better than it, and desecration is better than it too. thus, take more out of it to put in desecration.

second, regarding improved UP: am i the only one who doesn't like to depend on fucking up in order to make a talent feel worthwhile? obviously nowadays 1 of 25 people can fuck up to make your talent feel worthwhile, but the value of that will be diminished in 3.1...by a factor of 25...

what ive come up with is this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...6&version=9757

obviously there are 3 points left over for either necrosis or dark conviction (im assuming), or ive also see some people drop points from epidemic. I havent done the math on necrosis vs dark conviction, although from what i understand from 2 posts up, dark conviction is .6%/pt. Using a rough estimate of 25% damage being melee, 4% of that is 1%, meaning that it too, is better than dark conviction. This continues to be true until weapon damage is 15% overall damage (although that doesnt take into account as weapon damage % goes down, all other damage % goes up).

 

Draconax

I should think that the numbers favor Necrosis even more over Icy Talons, or DC. Since Icy Talons gives you 20% more melee attacks, that means your melee white dps is increased by roughly 20%. However, Necrosis should give *more* than a 20% increase in your "white dps" (I use quotes, since Necrosis is technically not white dps), due to the fact that it bypasses armor. It should also give an even larger increase with Black Ice increasing it by another 10% (up to 22%). The same holds true with respect to the above post comparing it to DC. If the math is true, and DC is only a .6% increase per point, Necrosis should be even more than .68, since, again, it bypasses armor, and isn't a straight 20% increase to your white dps.

 

stampy

Nope... the white hit is affected by armor (and perhaps block and glancing), so necrosis is affected by armor. Necrosis hits for 20% of the damage that the white hit actually did, not the damage it would have done to a 0-armor target. So, on a high armor target, your white hits are less, and so your necrosis hits are less too.

If you stand there and white-hit something for a few hours, your necrosis damage will be 20% of your white damage on the nose. In fact, since it isn't supposed to benefit from any other talents or debuffs whatsoever in 3.1, we may see it being 20% on the nose in practice, unless maybe it can be resisted.

 

Foxx2405

I see a few trends here on this forum that really concern me.

The first, and probably one of the most worrying is that people treat Necrosis like its the new stray dog or something.
Everyone is dropping points in it like crazy.

People, just because necrosis has been nerfed doesn't make it a bad talent !
20% of white damage, you're still talking about 4-5% total dps there, thats 0.8-1.0% dps per point, thats among the better talents.

You really see the weirdest specs popping up in here where people drop points that could've gone in necrosis for points in dark conviction (which time and time again has been proven to be inferior), points in icy talons, etc.

Second is the whole thing with Imp. Unholy Presence, simply said its hard to pull straight math on this one because those kind of calculations are extremely complicated.
YES its no longer a raid buff, and YES the part that affects unholy presence is 99% useless for us in raids. However:

DO NOT underestimate 15% movement increase.

From every side I hear that ulduar has a ton of movement.

Again I have no real idea how the calculations go, but taking a wild guess:

A boss fight with 2/3th static dps and 1/3th movement (run out, run back in). Without any speed boost, you spend 66% of your time dpsing. And assume you can't do dps while moving.
Now with IUP, you run 15% faster, a rough guess is that you'd do the movement part of the fight 15% faster.
(again im not 100% sure if the calculations are right, please correct me if im wrong. I'm not even sure if this is even the way to go at stuff, but i wanted to get a rough picture)

33% / 1.15 = 28.70% of the fight you're in movement instead.
That means that 100% - 28.70% = 71.30% of the time you're dpsing now. Thats an increase in dps time (and thus in dps) of 5.3%.

Again just rough figures, but movement in a movement fight can be highly valuable.
Of course the 5% dps number is a bit too high, since you keep doing dps while moving (IT / DC / diseases), and i doubt there are many fights where movement is really 33% of the fight. But its a good indication of how much of an impact it can have i think. (Assuming my math isn't totally wrong, which it easily could be)

----------

3th. I see a ton of people dropping points in Epidemic.

I see the line of thought (with 1 point its the same as with 2 points now), but I get the feeling people are missing an important thing and that is that:
The longer your diseases last, the bigger the chance you'll refresh them with a proc from the SS glyph.

Those 3 extra seconds mean on average an extra SS. Someone calculated a while back (can't remember who) how much that affected the chance to refresh diseases (something like 10% extra for the first point and 6% extra for the second point in epidemic).

Might be worth discussing how much of a value this holds versus the direct dps increasing talents.


-------------------

Also one last thing:

People, PLEASE don't try to argument decisions made on your feelings.

Too often do you see specs pop up with weird choices because they "feel" like its a good talent.

"I took Dark Conviction because i feel I lose too much dps without the 5% crit"

Stuff like that, please leave that for the official forums, either back your stuff up with math, or ask for the status on a certain talent. And we kind of assume you at least read the last 5 pages of the discussion since things keep popping up that were discussed 1 page before.

 

Sekke

Coming back to the T8vsT7 discussion I was wondering something (excuse me if it's already been brought up; I read this thread almost hourly but could have missed it): It's know that 4P T7 will likely be slightly better than 4P T8 for Unholy, AND it is known that Unholy will slightly out DPS Blood with currently know gear. I'm pretty sure I've read that T8 works a lot better for Blood, so what I was wondering was this: Has anyone done a DPS comparison of Blood with 4P T8 vs Unholy with 4P T7? Would be interesting if Blood came out on top in that scenario (reminds me of Destro Locks in Sunwell).

Sorry if people are tired of hearing about gear comparisons, but I really feel like figuring this whole T7 vs T8 thing out conclusively is important. It will drastically impact people's loot decisions in Ulduar (ie if T7 turns out to be the best it makes gearing the rest of the raid faster instead of wasting tokens on a DK).

 

norg

See this post by Methods in the 3.1 thread for 4pcT8 Blood using his sim: Death Knights 3.1: BIG UPDATE

Scroll up a little for his findings on Unholy w/ 4pcT7.

 

Gavain

@Foxx

To discuss and revalue IUP is absolutly worth it.

For your mentioned reasons people will be unsure of it´s value concerning our dps.

Facts are:
- it´s worthless while standing
- when moving, it´s value is reduced by a nice arsenal of ranged dps (IT,DC,DnD,BB)
- while moving and casting IT you "free" a GCD you would otherwise use to apply diseases on your first rotation

So, your math for IUP (as you said yourself) is more an estimation...I dare to say that IUP is even worthless during short movements (2 sec.), because your IT-GCD would be used anyway on the (new) mob. (Yeah, I am aware that PS goes first usually, but we are talking about using your time of movement effectively).

If I really bring it down to the time I move and loose dps (= substract ranged dps from possible unranged dps) the benefit devalues strongly. And 5% more time of dps (as you calculated) are not = +5% total dps...due to the fact that our dps is not linear.

Yes, it´s nice survivability and the question is what benefits you gain from the 2 free points. But classes/specs without +speedbuff manage to survive too.

As long as the time window for the benfit of IUP is an estimation (and I can´t see how this could change) it´s whole value will be a pure estimation based on "feelings" no matter what kind of math you provide to back it up, because the math will always be based on an estimation.

I do not say it´s not worth the points or bring up a better use for the 2 points, I just say the "set-in-stone-mentality" for IUP is worth to undergo further discussions.

I can resist anything, but temptation (O.Wilde)

 

Sekke

So based on that, then, Blood with T8 is still worse than Unholy with T7.

I can't decide if I like or hate these findings. It will make acquiring offset pieces much easier in Ulduar, and if our DPS remains competitive with other classes then there isn't any HUGE reason to complain. Would just have been nice if Blizz could have made it even a slight bump in damage, if only for aesthetic reasons.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Blizz is still working out a few kinks in DK design. Once they figure out what they're going to do with the Frost tree (a Blue recently posted that they were considering making it the DW tree) and everything else settles down I could see them maybe reworking some of the gear that was current at the time.

 

scrizo

For now I am trying the shadowfrost build before patch time, after that I will give the GhoulFrost tem a shot.. But I noticed with this shadowfrost the damage difference.. I guess I am so used to being in Unholy Presence that I seem to forget Blood can dish out lots of damage.. But this unholy does do really good for me in PvP & PvE situations.. Has anyone thought about the new glyphs that are coming out

 

Syrvantez

One major piece of information that I see consistently being overlooked in this thread is just how much gear is in Ulduar. Yes, our T8 blows, no doubt about that. I probably will only take it after everyone else that it's actually useful for, has it. Keep in mind the blues said there are ~800 different pieces of gear in Ulduar, and it is entirely possible that this could be the next mix & match fest for those who played Enh shamans in BC.

One very significant question I have regarding IUP is does it affect your vehicles on those fights in Ulduar that require it? One last bit regarding IUP, considering how much moving around melee will have to do, I can't imagine it being a "waste" of points, it all will really boil down to what you view in testing when the patch goes live. Each guild will learn the fight slightly differently or decide to play an encounter a certain way that may be harder on casters or harder on melee. Keep in mind that while the math is a good guiding reference, there is a lot (in this case time spent in melee range) that can be VERY different depending on how your guild decides to do things.

My guild, for instance, does Sarth 3d with a VW on sarth, a DK on adds, and a tank on drakes. Some guilds prefer a DK to tank Sarth, while others like to use druids with HoS, PS, etc. rotations for breaths, and others prefer to do it with the speed run before the 3rd drake even lands. I'm sure you can all see how subtle differences in these can make a significant difference in how much time you will or won't spend in melee range dpsing.

 

◊ zirky

Back when the changes were made, there was a fair amount of discussion about the talent. The obvious place to put the points would be into Dark Conviction. Using this formula to determine which usage of 2 talent points netted a higher dps showed that IUP was superior in a fight which has almost any movement than Dark Conviction. Metharme was nice enough to dumb it down as the formula itself is a little daunting for the mathematically challenged like myself.

Basically, any fight which has 4 seconds of movement a minute, which has been every fight I have seen on PTR, save Flame Leviathan, IUP is superior to DC. Sure it's not a mandatory talent, other classes get by without it. The point is that it helps maximize our dps and our dps time at a higher return than any other place to drop the points.

 

Seref

Which spec would be better 10/10/51 or 0/10/61? I keep hearing that 0/10/61 is going to be the main unholy spec come 3.1, but would the 10points in unholy be better spent in blood for:

More RP (Butchery)
Less threat
4% 2H Increase (which affects SS, melee, and Nec/BcB) which is a significant portion of your dps
Armor->AP

?

 

Ashur25

12/0/59 will most likely be the dominant spec come 3.1, 0/10/61 will the one once you're decked out in BiS gear

 

Metharme

It is certainly true that several of the numbers in the formula were based on simplifications and abstractions, but that's the nature of numerical models. You can certainly question fairly whether the abstractions are valid; as I said before, the methodology ignores ranged attacks/diseases but also assumes that DPS is continuous. Both are pretty serious abstractions, which cut in opposite directions (the former tends to decrease the value of being in melee because you can still deal non-zero DPS while out of it, while the latter tends to increase it, since for a class that depends on the proper ordering and prompt execution of actions to keep from wasting rune cooldowns/runic power, being forced out of that can throw off your DPS for an entire interval).

But the point of the model wasn't to say "this is absolutely the number" so much as it was to provide a baseline for reference; it's a data point for discussion, and what it suggests is that movement speed increases require very little actual movement to be valuable DPS upgrades for melee classes. "It's just a model/estimation" is a charge that can be leveled at all theorycraft, but it's one which misses the point of the numbers. I don't believe that the talent is "set in stone" anymore than any other point is, but I do think the math is valuable as a tool for suggesting that the talent provides highly significant benefits beyond survivability, even in fights requiring very little movement.

 

Foxx2405

Although i totally agree with the points you give, the point of my post was mostly to "face people with reality" rather than to provide accurate math. Zirky provided nice links to math that is way more accurate and detailed than mine.

Its pretty much exactly what Metharme in the post above discribed.

The thing is that people think too lightly about 15% movement increase because it doesn't directly affect DPS, its not a "you now do x% more dps" talent like most others are.
The same is true for Epidemic, both are indirect dps increases, and a lot of people either underestimate or oversee the power that goes behind them.

Well first, there are hardly any fights where you perfectly stand still. To be exact, in Naxx there are only 3 fights where you can totally stand still. That being Razuvious, Loatheb and Patchwerk. Every other fight has movement or a chance you have to move (Maexxna).

The last 2 are true, but keep 2 things in mind:

1. The dps from simply using icy touches and blood boil is in fact really low. Its of course higher than 0 dps, but it does not really decrease the value of faster movement a whole lot.

2. As Metharme mentioned. Using those GCD can in some cases also lead to doing less dps once you get back in range. Of course this is partially prevented by knowing the fight and timing your attacks, knowing when to stop. But having a rune still on cooldown when you do get back in melee leads to possibly lower dps.


Again this are feeling arguments, you simply can't say a spec is better because "It has ALL this, and the other spec ONLY has that". Stuff doesn't work that way.

Butchery is a nice talent, but remember we're talking about 8 RP per 20 seconds, thats 1/5th of a DC ~= 800 damage per 20 seconds or 40 dps. Out of 6000 dps total thats 0.67% dps for 2 points.
Thats quite a low investment of 0.33% dps per point.

Less Threat is not needed, even without subversion i never get even close to a tanks TPS. We just take it because there is nothing better.

4% 2H and Ar->AP are great talents.
However the latter is fairly static (armor hardly increases), that doesn't mean its a bad talent. It does however mean that in BiS ulduar gear it'll be nearly as good as in naxx-10 gear.
4% 2H is a great talent as well. However both are out scaled at a certain moment by +10% shadow+frost damage.