Is [Last Laugh] really the worse choice? Comparing it to [Hailstorm], the axe seems to come out ahead in AP due to Strength scaling and they're very comparable as for as +hit goes. So you end up trading a ~10% increase in weapon DPS which affects our white damage (a major portion of our DPS), our Plague/Blood Strikes, BCB, and Necrosis, for a 1.62% reduction in armor and the various benefits of 31 Agility.

Similarly, compared to [Angry Dread] you're effectively weighing a 10% weapon DPS increase against 31 Agility and 0.63% crit. In addition, it sounds like most of the testing on this thread has shown that Fast/Fast is superior to Slow/Fast.

Based on that observation, it seems like dual-wielding two [Last Laugh]s would be our best-in-slots for MH/OH, especially for Orc DKs, unless I'm missing something?

With the patch looming I feel that these are my concerns for the dw spec.

Night of the Dead will be a very important talent. Especially when the ghoul makes up a fair portion of DW dps, so it will be a very good investment with 2 talent points to have that pet avoidance.
Does this talent affect the gargoyle?

Initial theorycrafting puts frost strike as better than DC once the new glyph is in place to lower the RP cost. This will favour slow/fast weapons of course. However we know that fast/fast produces the best rate of KM procs, so the question is will the lowered number of KM procs be made up by the frost strike dps.

Unholy Blight is an interesting talent for DW spec. Most specs I have seen eschew it, even gothya's build which goes all the way to RoR does not have it. However it appears to me to actually be a viable ability if you go down to RoR.
Lets say we drop points from wandering plague to get unholy blight, with tis new cost of 40 RP, how much dps would it add? Does anyone know what it will tick for with say 5K buffed AP? To me it is attractive because its a fire and forget spell, PBAOE to boot too.

With the new changes to howling blast, it allows for multiple spammage of this ability during a rotation. However does howling for 2 death runes do more dps than 2 IT's using the same death runes for single target dps?

In terms of itemisation, the sweet spot I think would be to NOT take virulence and just gear hit to 17% spell hit. If you go above that then it isn't a big deal as it adds to your DW white hit. I think it is imporrtant to keep white hit at a high level (by not taking virulence and therefore lowering your hit rating) because it is the source of KM procs and KM is everything to DW builds.
Keeping crit seems important too although the sweet spot seems to be around 32%.
AP brings the biggest boost and from analysis of people's WWS it appears that once you get past the 4.5K AP mark you see significant scaling advantages.

In terms of builds I think the 3 competitive builds will be

44/27 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Floater point is in on a pale horse.
Main concern with this build is no night of the dead and no gargoyle, although in any AOE situation this build is going to excel.

32/39 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Floater points in desecration.
Classic 32/39 build, not much to comment on here, you obviously get gargoyle and NotD, only for the real major loss of GoG and frost strike.

20/51 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Floater points in desecation and wandering plague.
Modification to Gothya's build with the inclusion of unholy blight and less wandering plague. You get all the nice IT buffs however you lose howling blast, depending on scaling that could be a good or bad thing with the HB changes.

Kami,

Excellent post. You raise a lot of questions I have been wondering about recently.

Unholy Blight does about 260 DPS in a raid-buffed situation, assuming you can keep it up all the time *and* can stay within melee range of the target. http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/detail/26621011. I think its use is much more situational than HB, although it could be as powerful in certain situations -- especially since it requires RP and not rune usage.

Hit does not effect how often you crit, and thus does not effect the number of KM procs. You could have a 50% miss rate and 30% crit rate and 30% of your swings would still crit. This is how melee hit tables work. So don't stack hit to increase KM procs -- stack it because about 60% of DW DK damage is either direct spell damage or autoattack + related talents, and both spells and autoattacks have high miss percentages. I think your reasoning for not taking virulence is spot on though.

Finally, for the specs that take HB, I think using the death runes to cast 2X IT will outdamage 1X HB for single target -- especially if you're in unholy presence and can afford the GCDs. Rime procs make 2X IT even more advantageous.

If you want to use death runes to IT you almost have to be in Unholy because if you have the IT glyph, which if you don't makes you terrible (especially after the upcoming change), you'll have a mountain of RP and you'll need to be spamming DCs as well. You're just not going to fit that in to a Blood presence rotation. Then rime procs and your rotation shoots itself in the head without even leaving a note.

Message to Broseph: It might not seem like it, but if you think about it, hit rating does help you gain more KM procs. For example, hit rating makes you hit more often. The more often you hit the target, the more you crit against the target. I hope thats clear enough for everyone to understand

The post below me seems to be correct. Check out Hit - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft and read through that. According to that if DW the magic number may be 10% hit. Once you get 10% hit you don't need anymore hit. That is only with your melee attacks of course. With the DW talent you would only need to get 7% hit or about 230 hit rating. That would however not cap your spell hit rating without at least 1 point in Virulence, which would put you at 8% spell hit. I could be wrong though.

Yes, read up on the 1-roll system if you don't know about it.

I understand there are a lot of non-melee classes who have just rolled their first melee class and might not yet be used to it, but a strong grasp of the 1-roll system is absolutely essential for any melee theorycrafter.

There are three distinct pieces to Unholy Presence that I feel some keep missing, overlooking, or discounting when discussing this presence.

#1 Increases attack speed by 15%
#2 Increases movement speed by 15%
3# Reduces the global cooldown on all Death Knight abilities by 0.5 sec

#1 The first point which answers this questions specifically, using the Titansteel Bonecrusher in my example, I gain an extra 1.512 attacks in a 20 sec rotation to have KM and BCB procs because of the way Haste stacks multiplicatively.

Haste Speed = Weapon Speed / ( (1+(Haste1 %)) * (1+(Haste2 %)) * (1+(Haste3 %)) ETC

Titansteel Bonecrusher
Main Hand Mace
251 - 467 Damage Speed 2.50
(143.6 damage per second)
+59 Stamina
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 29 (3.5% at 80).
Equip: Increases attack power by 140.

Weapon Speed - 2.50
Icy Talons - 20% haste
Improved Icy Talons - 5%
Unholy Presence - 15% haste

Attack Speed w/UP - 2.50 / (1.20 * 1.05 * 1.15) = 1.7253
34.7765 Attacks per Minute.
11.5921 - Attacks per 20 sec rotation

Attack Speed w/BP - 2.50 /( 1.20 * 1.05) = 1.9841
30.2404 Attacks per Minute.
10.0801 - Attacks per 20 sec rotation.

#2 Everyone says how great Unholy Aura is for a raid, well if you go deep Frost, you can’t pick this talent up, but you get your very own personal Unholy Aura without having to spend any talent points.

#3 Reducing the global cool down on ALL of our special attacks, which make up about +60% of our damage gives us flexibility in so many ways like our Runes refresh quicker allowing us to cast yellow attacks earlier in the second half of our 20 second rotation and we have time to cast Runic Power attacks with our delaying any Rune attacks.

No, you are only in unholy if doing the extra attacks gives you more than a 15% damage, excluding white damage. Deep frost is the only spec that actually fulfills this requirement - without frost strike or either RP talent, 3IT, 1PS, 1BS, 2DC is way better than the equivalent that uses all the runes. (You have to use a spreadsheet to know that).


UB is a dps bonus after the RP change (though less than 100 dps over DC), but it wasn't so when that WWS was made, or when most 'specs you have seen' skipped it - at 60RP it's only a gain if you have more RP than gcds available. As for 'fire and forget'.. the entire length of the UB is only a little more damage (1-2k) than a good death coil, and it's far less 'fire and forget' than is DC.

There's no such thing as a 'best-in-slot' for a DK, unless you mean for a specific build. That's why I said you should use a spreadsheet - even DW high epics, my white dps (plus nec and bcb) never got past 33% of my damage, and my gargoyle and ghoul did more than that. The weapons were certainly very close to each other in effectiveness - take it if it comes available. :-)

The theorycrafters you talk to are *not* overlooking any of those things.

#1: 15% more attack speed is identical in most respects to 15% more damage on white damage. The only advantage here is if you have killing machine. The fact that it' multiplicative is *why* this is true. (you get 15% more BCB procs, but in blood they're 15% bigger).

#2: Not an invalid point, but it's more accurate to say that 'in fights with lots of running, you should use unholy presence for speed' - there are plenty of fights like this, but you should definitely have a DK with the unholy aura in your raid if you're working on one.

#3: The flexibility gain is the reason we've all been working so hard to try and make UP viable for dps. We all would prefer to be in UP all the time, if it gave comparable damage. Casting your yellow attacks earlier within a rotation is not a dps gain in any situation where you can spend the entire period casting. The extra gcds to cast RP dumps in is the reason there is *any* build in which UP is useable, it's just not enough for any build outside of deep frost. We aren't making assumptions here, we all spend plenty of time fiddling with a spreadsheet, trying different potential rotations, and brainstorming about specs.

In general, you should assume that the people you're talking to here already understand the points you're bringing up, especially when they're this basic. You pretty much just read the tooltip to us with more words.

A couple things about Gothya's WWS since I've seen a lot of speculation on it the last couple days.

He has ~11.0% hit judging from his melee miss rate, and his lack of missing spells.

The other DK in the raid is an unholy tank, and though it would seem to make sense for the tank to pick up EP, I'd bet that gothya did for the extra crit.

That said, it seems that the only spec that makes sense is this. Possibly with 4/5 desecration and 0/2 unholy aura. The spec of the tank backs up Gothya having EP and Unholy Aura though. After the patch, I'd be willing to bet that taking a point out of wandering plague and into unholy blight would be well worth it for several of reasons. The ability to use the icy touch glyph, the reduced cost of unholy blight, and the (probable) removal of the bug that lets EP and crypt fever stack.

He has razorice on his off hand and fallen crusader on his main hand. You can see this by browsing through the logs.

As for glyphs, I'm sure that post patch, he'll be glyphing for IT, though now, that would obviously be counter productive, as he's getting so much of his damage FROM icy touch. I'd imagine that he has the ghoul glyphs, other than that though, I can't see too many glyphs that would be that useful for his spec. His crit rate on Plague Strike is almost identical to Blood Strike, so it's doubtful he has that glyph, though they both are ~10% higher than his auto attack crit rate, so it's possible blood strike was just abnormally high, and PS abnormally low. He may have blood strike or bone shield also.

Thanks Gehenna and Broseph for clearing that up about hit rating. However, I think there was a misunderstanding becauase I was thinking about hit rating before spell or specials cap.

I never assume anything and obviously not everyone understands these things or they wouldn’t come here asking why. It may be basic to some of us how the DK mechanics work but not everyone knows this information and this is the place to share that knowledge. I think that is why many people come to these forums.

Ghouls share their owner's haste, so their DPS is actually higher in Unholy Presence (ballpark of 10%). This is even reflected in their character sheets.

Well this is news to me. Very cool! The other assumption I was using all along is that they do not benefit from the 15% damage bonus from blood presence. Confirm/deny? Interesting point, Herb -- something I had overlooked completely.

Does anyone know of the rotation for the following specs?

0/44/27 - With Rime and Epidemic

Currently using...

IT - PS - HB - BS - BS - FS
IT - PS - HB - IT - IT - FS

...as specified by another post in this thread. I do not understand the reasoning for refreshing IT and PS. Coming from a 51/13/7 build I am able to fit PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - DC --- OB - HS - HS - HS - HS - DC before diseases fall off, I believe I can fit more abilities into the 2nd half of my current rotation using 0/44/27.

0/32/39 - Need a specific rotation for this build.

My Ghoul's paperdoll indicates 199-235 damage with a 1.75s swing timer in Frost Presence.

When I switch to Unholy Presence, it changes to 199-235 damage with a 1.52s swing timer.

When I switch to Blood Presence, it changes back to 199-235 damage with a 1.75s swing timer.

If I take off 2 pieces of haste gear, the Ghoul's swing timer goes up to 1.81s in Frost/Blood Presence, 1.58s in Unholy Presence.

I'll try to run some more tests to see if there's a difference between the paperdoll damage and actual damage, but the paperdoll by itself indicates that the Ghoul isn't getting the 15% damage bonus from Blood Presence.

Well aznG, there have been many rotations given throughout this thread for the spec 0/32/39. However, I will tell you that this is the rotation that works best for me.

IT-->PS-->HB-->BS-->BS-->RP Dump
IT-->HB-->IT-->(another IT if rime proced for HB)-->RP Dump

Then just rinse and repeat. Pretty simple, using unholy presence, but blood presence would work too, it would just be a little tighter. And of course, when it's availible, you would use your RP on gargoyle until it is gone.

P.S. Sorry I made a second post, I forgot to put it in my last one

Epicness, I wouldn't try to explain this as if it follows from a logical, perfectly coherent rule system.

Our ghoul's damage scales from our strength, hit, and apparently haste. This isn't how any other class's pet works. Take Spirit Wolves, for instance, which (now) scale from AP, whereas +AP gives absolutely nothing to our ghoul. So there's no logical reason why blood presence SHOULDN'T affect our ghoul's damage -- though according to Prinsesa's paper doll, it doesn't.

Trying to apply logic to any of this game's mechanics and then saying, "Of course, you idiot! It's only logical that it works this way!" is a big mistake.

Proof of how difficult it is to explain WoW by logic alone: Do our ghouls scale with our armor penetration rating? According to your system of logic, they should... but do they? Should they?

This is a big digression, but I do have a point here. The purpose of these threads is for the community to learn the mechanics of WoW and then optimize within those rule sets, not to try to explain ex post facto why those mechanics make sense (they don't). Up until Herb's post, I had not seen mention of ghouls scaling with haste, and I think several other members of the community were theorycrafting under this faulty assumption. So why not question whether they benefit from blood presence?

On a normal rotation in unholy presence, would it be worth to go blood presence for when Gargoyle is up?

You have to specify this to wether or not it's a rime spec. If it's a rimeless spec, then:

IT>PS>HB>dc>BS>BS
dc>HB>PS>IT>dc>HB
PS>IT>dc>HB>BS>BS

It's 31/40 rather than 32/39 though, but with same principle. Cold starting this rotation includes some seconds of idling. After one full rotation it floats on like a charm.


While we are on the subject, I'd like to know how the rotation would be for a similiar spec, but with rime and post patch (hb cooldown removed). Will a rime spec out dps the rimeless one? Anyone on the PTR with some knowledge?

Edit: typos and a spelling and what not...

Based on above notions (pets not gaining +damage from blood presence), and that gargs do cast faster from being launched in unholy presence (same goes for bloodlust; verified by some WWSes - see the unholy DPS thread for source), gargoyles are best off being launched from unholy presence right before a bloodlust goes out. Switching presences after launching them will not undo the 15% haste the gargoyle gained from starting in unholy presence.

People come to the EJ forums, at least they used to, for quality information. If people wanted basic information they would go to the wow general forums.