PS is a solid part of the DW rotation, so it is correct that points spent in Epidemic are basically wasted.

My apologies for double posting this, but I posted it in the 3.08 raid dps thread looking for answers and was told that it was more of a report thread. I'm guessing it would be better suited here.

Pardon my ignorance, because i've been away from the game for 3 months now various physical injuries that kept me from sitting. I've gone through numerous threads looking for the best presence for 32/39, but I just cant find a definitive answer. I come out a bit better on dps in unholy on the dummies, but the haste throws me so far off of my rotation that eventually, I just find myself casting whatever comes up after a certain point, whereas blood has a definitive rotation taht you can stick to constantly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Blood is the definitive answer. 15% more damage at the cost of having to clip out the worst abilities in your rotation. Also, Unholy fails to benefit as fully from haste on your gear since you're already GCD capped, whereas with haste and raid buffs Blood can speed up the GCD.

On boss fights, yes, the talent is basically useless. But, in AOE situations, it's useful to squeeze another HB onto diseased targets without having to burn a blood rune on Pestilence. For a 44/27 build, Epidemic is always a waste since you get a death rune from Pestilence, but for a 32/39, it's pretty useful, especially for people that do a lot of heroics and dungeons.

Well I got 6000 dps as 32/39 on multiple fights last night (and a 5800 on pw) playing dps for the first time in wotlk(normally tank). I don't think there was a single fight that I did my rotation anywhere near perfect on. So if there is an advantage to the spec it is that you can face roll your way to the top of the meters on single target fights, and are basically a God on multitarget.

I would definitely recommend a dual wield spec to any dk starting to dps, rotation is not nearly as important as it is with the 2H builds. The spec is heavily based around auto-attack, pet attack, ghoul attack, and other things which are not affected by a poorly done rotation.

Ok, I got a second last laugh last night - I didn't really test too long because I needed to go to bed. However, I did some quick tests just to see how the second laugh stacked up and also how unholy and blood worked out (presence) this is with bone shield and HoW only on the non-boss target dummy. This is standard 32/39 only 1 filler point in desecration.

LL = last laugh AD = Angry dread

AD / LL - Unholy - 2800 DPS

LL / LL - Blood - 3000 DPS

AD / LL - Unholy - 2950 DPS

LL / LL - Blood - 3085 DPS

That being said, in my own experience at least it seems blood slightly edges out unholy. It would also likely be moreso in a raid environment because of bloodlust and its effect on GCD's on boss fights wherein unholy is already capped. It also seems that the superior DPS of LL outweighs the loss in offensive stats and in stronger strikes from a slower weapon.

If you guys would like me to do any other tests just let me know, as I know i'm in a pretty unique position to have two of these weapons. Ran those quick tests because I was wondering myself - and spent alot of DKP to get the second one. Seems it was worth it at least.


While i'm here just wanted to ask what someone previous had as well - beyond the melee / special / spell hit cap (295) is there ay use in going higher? I know it will effect OH hit % but thats about it correct? In which case, past the cap I should start stacking str? I'm at about 330 due to my tier shoulders replacing a no hit piece - and I can swap out some hit gems for str.

I'm pretty sure its because of lack of buffs.

Things like Kings / Battleshout / Faerie Fire / Sunder all benefit that much more if your attacks do 115% dmg.
On unholy presence the only thing they are increasing is the white damage.

I think people underestimate the effect of buffs. I mean just notice the difference in DPS between 10 mans and 25 mans, that sometimes differs 1500-2000 dps. And its purely buffs.

Also this is the reason that pretty much any DPS test done on dummies is totally irrelevant. Different specs benefit different from buffs/debuffs.

Also in my opinion we no longer have a real benchmark. Patchwerk has become a zergfest because he's being downed in 2 minutes now. That means that such a person has bloodlust for a good 33% of the fight and had gargoyle up for 25% of the fight.

That incredibly inflates any build that uses gargoyle or benefits more from haste (read: pets). I realise Patchwork is the best we have, but im secretly hoping for a true new benchmark in Ulduar, A boss that lasts at least 5 minutes so we dont get vastly inflated values anymore.

Question: Are you saying that the GCD is affected by haste if we use a spell instead of a strike? Thats all I can derive from your saying that BB should be used over BS. If thats the case, thats pretty interesting, but I was under the impression that haste did not affect the GCD for DKs regardless of the ability used.

Comment: Blizzard included net coding for rune abilities so that your ping will not negatively impact the cooldown of your runes. If you wait 1 second after a rune cools down to use it, it will have a 9 second CD instead of 10 seconds. If you wait 1.5 seconds, it will have an 8.5 second CD. The window on this is open until about 2 seconds after the rune cools down. Since the maximum number of GCDs a 32/39 spec will use is 7 (4 single rune abilities, 1 HB, 2 DCs), you can actually squeeze 7 abilities into a 10 seconds, and take advantage of the net coding to ensure your rotation is static.

Basically, because your GCDs take up 9 seconds on a 6 ability rotation, you have an extra second to play with, so you can use 7 abilities for 10.5 seconds each rotation (taking advantage of the net coding) twice and then only use 6 abilities the next rotation for 9 seconds, and that puts the total time for 3 rotations at 10.5 + 10.5 + 9 = 30 seconds, which is what you want.

If I understood you right about haste reducing the GCD on spells, then that buys you even more time, since a standard rotation uses 3-5 spells. But even so, you're only gaining 1 DC every 30 seconds over someone with 0 haste.

Yes spells are affected. It isn't obvious at low haste amounts, but check your gcd next time heroism is up and you do the 3x IT part of the rotation.

Did you mistype there? maybe switched a Blood/Unholy?

I'd also like to see a test with LL / AD, if you could. Curious about effects of fast/slow vs. best dps wep in MH.

I wouldn't draw any conclusions yet, in my guild for example all melees died against patchwerk in the first week after the patch because of some changes that people weren't aware of. There are also quite a few specs that haven't been played by many people yet, an example would be the 21/50 Frost spec with IT spam in Unholy Presence.