Here's how I see it. With the UB glyph, You get 1 extra DC per minute. The Dark Death glyph adds 15% more DC Damage. It takes ~6.66 DCs with 15% extra damage to equal one extra DC (100/15=~6.66). Let's say on the low side, you do 4 DCs per 20 secs. That's 12 DCs in 1 minutes, you'll get about the damage of 1.8 DCs with the Dark Death glyph. I've also been doing some Sims and it seems like excluding UB from DC Spam builds gains DPS.

to Kithus: can you please explain why , in your build, you took dirge.....as far as i can see it doesnt benifit dw build in normal rotation, or am i getting something wrong here.

nvm i see difference...my bad havent seen "plague strike" part ....but still is it worth it, could you replace put 1 point there and 1 on frenzy? is it worth it?

I'm looking for places to pull a point for Ghoul Frenzy if it ends up being needed to keep my ghoul alive. Dirge is one place I've considered but we have to look at what we're getting from it. 2 PS every 9 sec equates to 10 RP per 9 sec from dirge or ~66 RP/Minute. That's over 1.5 DCs extra per minute and reduces our wasted GCDs. If we take ghoul frenzy we'll use that instead of PS every 30 seconds which will cost us 10 RP a minute from dirge. It's still almost 1.5 DCs a minute. If we take 1 point from dirge to pay for ghoul frenzy we're losing 28 RP/minute (assuming the game can store fractions of RP for us and doesn't round down automatically) or almost 3/4 of a DC a minute.

From the sim -

1 pt in dirge is ~75 DPS.
1 pt in necrosis is ~60 DPS.
1 pt in outbreak is ~35 DPS.

This is for my current gear level but overall it doesn't seem likely that the point in outbreak is going to overtake necrosis or dirge any time soon. Also remember the other build I'm looking at is 0/17/54 (0/18/53) and that comes close to 10/10/51 partly based on the strength of chill of the grave in a DC centered build.

Shouldn't that be more like ~33RP instead of ~28RP?

Also, here's some math for you. If you do try to use GF every 30 seconds through the use of a unholy rune, that's another 20RP + ~10 (if you had full dirge) lost per minute which should be about a total of ~47RP per GF (You'd be doing ~17.5 RP per 30 secs due to full dirge if you didn't take GF and then the 15 for if you used PS with full dirge instead of GF). That's .80 DCs. So unless GF can save the ghoul and buff the ghoul to do the damage of .80 DCs + 1 Plague Strike, it's not worth it.

If you try to use it once a minute with Blood Tap, then that's ~33RP + 20RP (25 with 2/2 Chill of the Grave) from Icy Touch (Best RP generator). That equates to 53RP (58RP with CotG), or 1.35 (1.45 CotG) DCs. So GF has to allow the ghoul to survive and buff the ghoul enough to do the damage of 1 IT + 1.35 (1.45) DCs. I think this somewhat proves that using GF more often and with Unholy Runes is better for getting the most use out of putting the point into GF.

It's only 28 assuming you were already using ghoul frenzy every 30 seconds. Since it doesn't benefit from dirge dropping dirge from 2 to 1 pts does not change the amount of RP you get from those two unholy runes.

Beyond that either I'm uninformed here and you'll have to correct me or one of us is confused. You say that using GF twicer per minute loses you 20 RP + 10 from dirge. I agree you lose 10 from dirge since it isn't on the talent but unless there is something really wrong with GF on the PTR it should still give 10 RP per use since it's using a rune. The only thing you should lose from using ghoul frenzy is the 5 RP per use of dirge or 10 RP a minute and the damage of one plague strike. Now let's make some assumptions:

1 PS ~= 1200 damage
~50% of a ghouls damage is normal attacks (the other 50 being claw and I tend to think I'm overcompensating here)

So GF gives him ~ a 12.5% DPS increase. Over 30 seconds that 12.5% increase needs to equal 1200 so 1200/30 = 40 DPS. 40 / .125 = 320. If the ghouls total DPS is 320 or higher, before GF, on average the haste makes up the damage of 1 PS. Again these aren't even real solid numbers just tossing some napkin math out because I don't think for a DW build that's using 2xPS anyways that GF is that detrimental. It might even be a slight DPS increase. As for the 5 RP I lose per GF that's 1 DC every 4 minutes and the trade off is keeping your ghoul alive.

Oh Kyr don't bother trying to model GF with the sim right now. It's completely not functioning as far as I can see.

If you don't use PS, you lose desecration, which is 5% dps increase for all your abilities.
Just to throw that out.

Assuming a ghoul does 400 white dps in raid, GF gives 100 dps to a ghoul in cost of 2 unholy runes every minutes.

Assuming PS hits for 1000, that is 2000 more damage per minutes, which translates into 33 dps.

In addition, assume a DW DK deals around 4000 dps in raid without counting pets, before desecration. 5% of 4000
is 200 dps. For 2 PS, that is 20 seconds of desecration gained per minute, thus giving 1/3 more uptime of desecration.

So that's another 200*1/3 = 66 dps gained.

GF, which gives 100 dps vs. 2 PS every minute, which gives 33+66 = 100 dps.

However, 2 PS also give 10 more RP every minute if dirged, which translates into 1 DC about every 3.5 minutes or about 10 dps gain. On the other hand, GF provides more ghoul uptime via heals, which translates to some dps gain.

Surprisingly, GF vs PS is very similar in terms of DPS gained.

You must not of understood what I meant in my post. Even if you replace 1 PS with GF, you should still have 100% uptime on Desecration. So you shouldn't even be calculating Desecration damage into it. You do 2 PS per 9 seconds. Let's say someone is stupid and does 1 PS and 1 GF every 9 seconds. Desecration should never fall off because it lasts for 12 seconds. So you have to be really idiotic to let Desecration fall off with a rotation that uses 2 PS every 9 seconds with the exception of 1 Rune Period where you do 1 PS in 9 seconds.

And just so things are clear, I'm not trying to attack you or anything if it seems like it.

GF also costs one talent point. That puts it below PS.

Well the DPS he was putting for PS vs GF for was incorrect. He was implying that if you did GF, you wouldn't have Desecration which is completely wrong. Also if it keeps your ghoul alive and buffs it, it will most likely be worth it. It seems like people focus more on the haste buff than the healing aspect but the healing aspect is pretty big and is what can keep your ghoul alive. So GF should be a DPS increase imo.

So I guess I've made a mistake. This then makes the trade off only between damage from PS and 10 RP vs damage from ghoul and ghoul uptime via heals. So in this case, GF will win.

Please try out the old school 17/0/54 with outbreak instead of necrosis. With 2 t7.5 and 2 t7, BoH and Sigil of Awareness I found that 17/0/54 was still doing alot more damage than 0/10/61(~600 more). Sorry if it is anecdoctal but I'm at work.

Good to see that DW isn't dead!

I'm reposting this from the DW unholy thread, I got some good input, but was cluttering the discussion there.



At 3.1 I went from 32/39 to 0/20/51 and my dps on the boss lvl target dummy hovered at around 1850 during my tests while self-buffed, however, I may have been reading recount wrong and not including my ghoul's damage, but I find that unlikely.

I then tried my homebrew god-i-miss-howling-blast build 2-51-18 and pulled down close to 2kdps (totally unbuffed, not even horn of winter) while UNGLYPHED. Not the damage people were getting last patch, for sure, but i felt that it was worth further exploration.

my napkin math tells me to get glyphs of obliterate and dark death for sure, and then go with either disease or howling blast for the third.

My reasoning is that with howling blast, my rotation can just be:
HB->OB->BS->BS->dump
HB->OB->OB->dump

With an extra HB whenever Freezing Fog procs. And just completely ignore PS in favor of more oblits.

With Disease it would be

IT->PS->BS->HB->BS->dump
HB->OB->OB->dump
Pest->HB->OB->BS->dump

I think the timing is right to keep the first blood/death rune cooling down fast enough to keep diseases up.

I wonder if anyone else has tried this build out, or just has any input. While we all know DW is in a sorry state compared to what it was, and the HB nerf hurts like hell, I think this has some potential.

...

I have since realized that by using Glyph of disease, I completely lose the benefits of all my Icy Touch talents, AND improved Icy Talons. This is no good. So now I'm debating between Glyph of Howling Blast, and Glyph of Icy Touch. Also, I realized that some of my frost tests were on a dummy with 0% health, which skews the numbers with merciless combat.

IT and Imp IT talents are activated by frost fever according to the talents, so using HB with the glyph should activate those debuffs/buffs as well. I think FS is still probably better than DC even with dark death glyph so I would suggest using FS glyph instead.

With chill to the grave you would get 20+20 +10+10 = 60 RP or 20+20+20 = 60 RP for 120 RP and if you use horn of winter before for 10 more RP 130 RP total for those 2 rotations which would give you 4 FS or 3 DC. and 4 FS >>> 3 DC. Which should be easy to put out 4 FS since there would be a lot of time between GCDs to use it with the 3 GCDs on 2 rune abilities.

Edit* Forgot chill effected obliterate as well.

I am also more leaning toward a build like this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Which is 15/53/3, mainly because with your rotation unholy talents don't help that much for DPS. Virulence is only for HB and blood boil if you use that. The only DPS increasing talents would be +3% str and nercrosis and BCB.

Blood offers higher crit rate for OB and butchery for more RP to do more FS. bladed armour should give a decent amount of AP that buffs all our abilities and auto-attacks. +5% crit on all abilities is nice too.

What it would come down to is does bladed armour + 5% crit provide more dps than BCB and necrosis. Which I am not sure, it would most likely depend on how much armour you currently have.

Well, I keep forgetting to look at my BCB numbers, but necrosis is HUGE. Like... 4-6% of my dps, which is pretty hard for anything to compete with. Knowing that my white damage is so strong, i set up the build to accentuate it with the best talents for that.

...

Did more testing, BCB is about 3.6% of my dps on the boss lvl target dummy. However, I bought a respec with the wrong talents active and now I'm delving into the realm of blood pvp/dps. soon as I farm up some more cash I'll get back to the DW frost shenanigans.

I'd like to hear more on this? 600 more dps is a large jump. I'm taking this being a duel wield build :p

HB damage in 3.10 is roughly the same as in 3.09, see here: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t40739-d...3/#post1180496
Only the IT damage was nerfed.

What rotation were you using for this build?

Just got [Malice] and [Remorse] from Ulduar last night, I would try this build but don't really know where to start rotation wise.

I was mainly using

(1)IT > PS > GF > IT > BS > BS > RP Dump (due to range, if you start being closer then PS first)
(2)IT > IT > PS > IT > IT > PS > RP Dump

IT = 20 RP each (10+10 Glyphed, untalented)
PS = 10 RP each
GF = 10 RP each
BS = 10 RP each
After 1st rune cycle = 80 RP in total = 2 x RP dump
--> hit 8 buttons
--> 2s downtime before 2nd cycle, 1s downtime if talented to Improved Unholy Presence
After 2nd rune cycle = 100 RP in total = 2 x RP dump
--> 20 RP unused, still 2s downtime or 1s downtime if talented to Improved Unholy Presence

(downtime is defined as the time all your runes are on cooldown and you don't have any RP to use any skill. I don't know any other word to use for it).

It's up to you either that Improved Unholy Presence is worth it, but to me it is not as beneficial as it seems to be, since I don't have expertise capped (It's difficult to get expertise capped because I will have to sacrifice either haste or hit for expertise), so sometimes the downtime is used up to recover the strike they dodge. In addition the downtime could be used to pop HoW and potentially put out another Death Coil, or popping blood tap etc. Fortunately I am a blood elf DK, so I have Arcane Torrent to help me get some extra RP as well.

Anyway just use up all runes, refresh GF when you have to (if you spec for it, otherwise just use PS). The reason why I have GF is because it heals the ghoul then I won't have to worry about the ghoul health on fights which has AoE damages. Unless the AoE damages is spiky (like the breath and I didn't realize to pull the ghoul away), the ghoul will be come almost invincible and will help throughout the fight.

I tested on 10 man Ulduar last night. The sustained damage gives me a very pleasant result. However due to the fact that there is no major cooldown to pop except for Army of the Dead which can only be popped at first to maximize dps, so the spiky damages could not compete with mages. I managed to stay on top of the dps list because the mage decided to save mana for long fights. It's difficult to say though because winning in 10 man numbers doesn't automatically mean that I could win in 25 man numbers, because of the party setup.

Unfortunately I cannot test in 25 man now (only naxx, because my guild decided to progress in 10 man first before bringing into 25 man Ulduar), so if any testing done by anyone I would appreciate it a lot.

*edit: To battletoad: The best setup is fast/fast because blood caked blade hits harder. However slow/fast you would notice only a slightly less dps, not very significant.

Sorry folks, that was a bit of a thread derail there.

That isn't a dw build it is 2 handed unholy. Got distracted by K's posting of dual wield in comparison to some 2 handed builds.

Over on my thread, we had this conversation already. Here's the verdict: you need to look at the differences in the specs and see what you lose/gain by changing to 0/27/44.

You lose 5/5 Rage of Rivendare. This is 5 Expertise and 10% to all abilities.
You lose 1/1 Gargoyle. Arguably the most powerful talent point in any tree that isn't a pet ghoul.
You lose 3/3 Wandering Plague. Take your melee critical % and multiply that by your disease damage.
You lose 2/2 Chill to the Grave. This is 5 runic power for every Icy Touch you use.
You lose 3/3 Annihilation. This is 3% melee critical for all melee abilities and the ability to use Obliterate freely.

You gain 5/5 Icy Talons. This does nothing in any group with a shaman. Gives you the ability to get Improved Icy Talons.
You gain 1/1 Improved Icy Talons. You gain 5% melee haste.
You gain 3/3 Glacial Rot: You gain 20% Frost damage for your Icy Touch. Unfortunately, it doesn't affect Frost Fever.
You gain 5/5 Killing Machine: You gain about 30-35% critical for your Icy Touchs.

So does 5% melee haste, 20% Icy Touch damage bonus, and a 35% critical bonus for Icy Touch replace 5 Expertise, 10% to all abilities, Gargoyle, 40% more disease damage, 15 runic power every 10 seconds, and 3% melee critical on all melee special abilities?

Short answer: No.

You are just discovering one of the problems of dummy testing: some builds get more from raid buffs than others. My build has a lot of physical damage which is mitigated by the high armor of the dummy. In the raid, I get sunder effects which reduce that armor by 24%. Your build gets 20% melee haste from Icy Talons when you attack the dummy that I do not. In a raid, I get that 20% melee haste for free from my shaman.

Here is the truth: in Improved Unholy Presence, which your build requires, Haste is a bad stat. Your build scales very poorly. Run it in a sim and look at your EP values. Now run it with my build and look at mine. Yeah, that's a huge difference.

It's this simple: Do your homework. We have already been there and done this. And found it wanting. Simple comparisons:

Is 5% melee haste better than Gargoyle. No.
Is 20% bonus to Icy Touch damage better than Wandering Plague. Nope.
Is a 35% increased critical for Icy Touch better than 5 Expertise and 10% to all abilities. Negative.
Is nothing better better than 15 runic power every ten seconds and 3% melee critical for special attacks. Of course not.

In a raid, you will do less damage. It's that simple. As a rule, I warn people in my thread that if you go higher than 35 points in Unholy, you should go straight to 51. The deep Unholy talents are extremely powerful.

There are three DW specs that have earned consideration: 0/17/54 IUP build built around Death Coil, 0/13/58 Blood built around Scourge Strike and Death Coil, and 0/18/53 Blood built around Obliterate and Death Coil.

All of them generate a ton of runic power. 0/17/54 generates the most. 0/18/53 generates the most in Blood Presence. 0/13/58 generates 6 runic power more than 2H Unholy every ten seconds.