I made some cards and managed to get a full Undeath deck. How good exactly is this trinket for DW?
Equip: Improves haste rating by 85 (2.59% @ L80).
Equip: Each time you deal damage, you have a chance to do an additional 744 to 956 Shadow damage.
It's a free trinket for me, but I could also get like 2k gold for it, so I'm not quite sure what to do.
The haste is changing to crit in the upcoming patch, so I'd keep hold of it for now as it's value will likely go up a lot with that change. The proc is 35% with a ~45 second internal CD from the information I've seen, and can crit (about 25dps if it procs every cooldown with a reasonable crit rate). However I have no idea if it's actually any good/how it stands in comparison to other trinkets for dual wield as a DK.
Ren, I noticed you said that you used Army Of The Dead on the Patchwerk fight. I was under the impression that the ghouls ran around taunting everything. I never use them for fear of taunting the boss off of the tanks. You don't have any problems with the ghouls taunting bosses during fights?
Even on tauntable bosses an Army of Dead ghoul won't taunt them. I've used Army of dead on Gluth for example, with no taunts. I wish they'd just shut that stupid ability/mechanic out period
Are you guys using Blood Presence or Unholy Presence? The "common sense" was unholy is for PvP but some pages back people have posted rotations requiring that presence.
I got 6559 DPS (recount ss) on Patchwerk earlier tonight with this 32/39 spec. I find that Night of the Dead is only useful on very few fights (Sapph, Heigan, Sarth) so I didn't bother speccing it. I tank on Sartharion anyways. The major glyphs I used were Ghoul, Icy Touch, and Plague Strike. Tejax, the other dps DK, was 17/0/54 Unholy.
I started channeling Army of the Dead the second the boss was engaged and then followed this rotation:
IT-PS-HB-BS-BS
IT-PS-HB-IT-IT
When [Mirror of Truth] procced I used Gargoyle. Before today I had solely raided as Unholy DPS. I found that trash DPS was actually higher with this spec. I didn't use Death and Decay at all, rather favoring Howling Blast on CD while burning blood runes on Pestilence and Blood Boil. HB just has a sickeningly high crit rate with fast/fast weapons and the damage didn't appear to be target capped. It wasn't uncommon for me to crit every mob in a trash pull with a 10k+ Howling Blast.
So I was playing around with this on the boss dummy and when I went from fallen crusader MH to cinderglacier I gained ~350 dps. I ended up at 3100dps over a four minute duration.
Was I getting an abnormally large amount of procs or is cinder better?
Are you guys using Blood Presence or Unholy Presence? The "common sense" was unholy is for PvP but some pages back people have posted rotations requiring that presence.
Assume blood unless someone is trying to make an argument in favor of Unholy. There are some specs and rotations for which unholy is roughly as good as blood, but I've not seen anyone come up with a spec where unholy gives a better rotation than blood, excepting high latency players.
Assume blood unless someone is trying to make an argument in favor of Unholy. There are some specs and rotations for which unholy is roughly as good as blood, but I've not seen anyone come up with a spec where unholy gives a better rotation than blood, excepting high latency players.
Bloodp. till Gargoyl is ready for some boost or you dont have any unholy aura and you need the runspeed.
Bloodp. till Gargoyl is ready for some boost or you dont have any unholy aura and you need the runspeed.
Quite right, I'd forgotten that the gargoyle is affected by Unholy Aura but not Blood. Is the ghoul handled similarly? I'll need to change the spreadsheet.
By the way, if you dps the Boss training dummy in ebon hold (so it's 100% single target), how much dps do you get without using any buffs except for bone shield and Horn of winter while not using long cds such as the gargoyle. (You use the ghoul, ofc).
So basically just doing the rotation without anything else.
The reason I'm wondering is that my gear is pretty equal to yours in terms of quality and I just wanna know if I'm where I should be with my DPS.
I maintained 3300 DPS on the boss dummy with Bone Shield/HoW/Ghoul.
Originally Posted by kamiu
Oh hello. You basically just blew all the theorycrafting out of the water by pumping 6559 DPS in to Patchwork with uncapped expertise and hit (and 24% unbuffed crit). Did the stars allign for you on this fight or are you constantly seeing this kind of output?
I guess we need to revamp that stat table a bit, judging Ren's DPS. AP>*?
I maintained 3300 DPS on the boss dummy with Bone Shield/HoW/Ghoul.
Damnit. I'm 400 dps behind you which I absolutely shouldn't be. I must be doing something wrong, but I can figure out what it is. The problem is that I can't do much more than just follow the rotation and try dumping RP at different times and sometimes I manage to do 3000 dps.
Either my recount is bugged which I highly doubt cause I got the latest version and you probably use that too.
OR
You're using less Icy Touches in your rotation than you write that you do because if you use less Icy Touches there are more KM proccs left for your Howling Blast which crits almost 2x as much as Icy Touch.
WOW, is this for real or some sort of bug you think?
Second question, when RIME does not consume runes do you repeat the same attack it did not consume or?....
The parse looks pretty reasonable to me. It's definitely set up to maximize damage against Patchwerk (Full desecration, no night of the dead), so it's probably a bit fragile against aoe bosses. Does appear to be using the CF/EP bug to advantage, but that won't make too big an error.
Originally Posted by faithplusone
You're using less Icy Touches in your rotation than you write that you do
On Patchwerk, he used 27 IT, vs 14 BS, 15 PS, and 14 HB, which matches his described rotation almost perfectly. (He appears to ignore rime procs)
The parse looks pretty reasonable to me. It's definitely set up to maximize damage against Patchwerk (Full desecration, no night of the dead), so it's probably a bit fragile against aoe bosses. Does appear to be using the CF/EP bug to advantage, but that won't make too big an error.
On Patchwerk, he used 27 IT, vs 14 BS, 15 PS, and 14 HB, which matches his described rotation almost perfectly. (He appears to ignore rime procs)
That is true...I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing diffrently cause I have almost as good gear as he has and I actually have a better (and faster) Main Hand while I have both more hit and expertise. Now of course, he has that greatness card but that can't be responsible for 300-400 dps alone, right?
How good is dual wield if you're the only DK in the raid (aka no ebon plaguebringer) ? I'm debating what spec to use tonight, as our two other DKs are unable to make it. I have pretty good 2hander gear (sigil, betrayer), but dual wield appears to be more dps. How much of dual wield's dps is due to the 60% disease damage bug?
That is true...I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing diffrently cause I have almost as good gear as he has and I actually have a better (and faster) Main Hand while I have both more hit and expertise. Now of course, he has that greatness card but that can't be responsible for 300-400 dps alone, right?
Are you timing your gargoyle to go off when the mirror and greatness have both procced? That might be worth a hundred dps or so over a 3 minute test.
How's your latency and reaction speed? An extra .05-.1 seconds between an ability being useable and being used is definitely worth a few hundred dps with that kind of gear, in blood stance. That's the reason so many hunters used macros hotkeyed to their mousewheel in BC. If you have more hit and more expertise, you have less crit and ap, right? Those stats are weighted higher than hit after the soft cap (which you both are), and expertise any time (which only affects about a third of your total damage).
Originally Posted by bionh
How good is dual wield if you're the only DK in the raid (aka no ebon plaguebringer) ? I'm debating what spec to use tonight, as our two other DKs are unable to make it. I have pretty good 2hander gear (sigil, betrayer), but dual wield appears to be more dps. How much of dual wield's dps is due to the 60% disease damage bug?
DW is still fine if you're the only DK in the raid. I'd recommend 20/51 (KM/RoR) if there's no 13% spell damage buff (which can be brought by three classes). Just make sure melee haste is covered by someone else.
Are you timing your gargoyle to go off when the mirror and greatness have both procced? That might be worth a hundred dps or so over a 3 minute test.
How's your latency and reaction speed? An extra .05-.1 seconds between an ability being useable and being used is definitely worth a few hundred dps with that kind of gear, in blood stance. That's the reason so many hunters used macros hotkeyed to their mousewheel in BC. If you have more hit and more expertise, you have less crit and ap, right? Those stats are weighted higher than hit after the soft cap (which you both are), and expertise any time (which only affects about a third of your total damage).
I asked him to try without the gargoyle and only use HoW, Ghoul and Bone Shield as buffs and then just follow his rotation. He did 3300 and I average 2900 dps doing the same thing.
I have 25-40 ms and I start bashing the next skill I'm gonna use as soon as I've pressed the one I'm using. I have about 0.8% less crit and about 170 less Attack Power so I used an elixir potion and some buff food to compensate that.
I have 25-40 ms and I start bashing the next skill I'm gonna use as soon as I've pressed the one I'm using.
Then the only thing I can think of is that he is better at bashing buttons than you are. If you're rapid-hammering on a button, the average time to get the skill off depends on latency, speed at which you can hit a button (which can differ substantially), and hardware/software latency (which is seldom significant). If you can make a WWS parse of one of those sessions, I can try to compare it to his timings if you like.
Also, I'm not certain whether he's using exactly a 20s rotation, or if he's going out to 21 to get the extra two DCs in (which should be higher dps, if he has the RP for it, and is very tight on timings).
How good is dual wield if you're the only DK in the raid (aka no ebon plaguebringer) ? I'm debating what spec to use tonight, as our two other DKs are unable to make it. I have pretty good 2hander gear (sigil, betrayer), but dual wield appears to be more dps. How much of dual wield's dps is due to the 60% disease damage bug?
The main reason that you need to be Unholy if you're the only DK is for the raid-wide +15% run speed. It's a completely unparalleled raid buff. Also, Pestilence puts up Ebon Plague on every single mob on a trash pull, which is completely unfeasible/not worth doing as a moonkin or warlock. This saves a lot of time on trash.
I noticed from looking at your armory that you favor pure strength gems in every slot over anything else. Your hit is only like 270ish with a dual wield build, and your AP is some 400 higher than most of the 32/39 DK's armory pages I look at. Are there any buffs included in that Armory somehow or is that your actual unbuffed AP as dual wield... cause that's some awfully high AP and I think this may account for the large difference I'm seeing in your dps in a variety of fights compared to most other "top" 32/39 parses I've looked at so far. I'm just trying to figure out what it is that the DK's getting 6500 dps average in Naxx fights compared to those getting 5500... cause most of the time the armor worn/stats are too similar to account for this - the exception being your AP being this much higher than the average (2800-2900) I'm used to seeing on 32/39 Armory pages.
I'm going to be raiding with 32/39 or 20/51 starting next week and especially after the patch, whenever it is. Sadly I expect that this spec is going to get nerfed if DK's start putting up 7k+ dps (which they will) into the first week of Ulduar, if not sooner.
I noticed from looking at your armory that you favor pure strength gems in every slot over anything else. Your hit is only like 270ish with a dual wield build, and your AP is some 400 higher than most of the 32/39 DK's armory pages I look at. Are there any buffs included in that Armory somehow or is that your actual unbuffed AP as dual wield... cause that's some awfully high AP and I think this may account for the large difference I'm seeing in your dps in a variety of fights compared to most other "top" 32/39 parses I've looked at so far. I'm just trying to figure out what it is that the DK's getting 6500 dps average in Naxx fights compared to those getting 5500... cause most of the time the armor worn/stats are too similar to account for this - the exception being your AP being this much higher than the average (2800-2900) I'm used to seeing on 32/39 Armory pages.
I'm going to be raiding with 32/39 or 20/51 starting next week and especially after the patch, whenever it is. Sadly I expect that this spec is going to get nerfed if DK's start putting up 7k+ dps (which they will) into the first week of Ulduar, if not sooner.
That's my unbuffed AP. I'm far over the 8% hit cap with Nerves of Cold Steel and only like 1.32% away from the spell hit cap in raids. I just don't see the point of gemming for hit when it affects only a percentage of my damage, while strength affects all of my damage and both Gargoyle and Ghoul. I also care about trash DPS, and hit does nothing for me there. I mean I can see getting the spell hit cap (289) to make rotations less messy, but any hit rating past that is far better as strength or AP.
Ok a few things that are on my mind that need clearing:
1.What is the FINAL word regarding presences, blood or unholy?
2.I am assuming I should be always gemming for strength, am I right on this?
3.With nerves of cold steel talent,can my hit dip in the say 5% range and will I still be safe when using blood strike and plague strike?
4.Regarding expertise shall I gem for it? what good does it do besides removing dodge from auto attack, plague strike and blood strike? Can auto attack critical hits be dodged?
1.What is the FINAL word regarding presences, blood or unholy?
This is still up for debate, but it seems the majority of people are going with blood. Personally I've tested both and just see blood as a better option.
Originally Posted by Ommar
2.I am assuming I should be always gemming for strength, am I right on this?
Not always, depends on what you need. Here are copy/pasted "suggested" gems for each slot, for optimum dps:
3.With nerves of cold steel talent,can my hit dip in the say 5% range and will I still be safe when using blood strike and plague strike?
As long as it works out to be 8%, I think you're ok. Not 100% sure on that but 8% seems to be confirmed in some post around here.
Originally Posted by Ommar
4.Regarding expertise shall I gem for it? what good does it do besides removing dodge from auto attack, plague strike and blood strike? Can auto attack critical hits be dodged?
Expertise cap is somewhere around 27. It's not bad but I don't think the DPS is worth going extremely out of your way.
For what it's worth, most of us can't gem for straight strength yet as we need two blue gems to activate the meta. This seems to make Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting even better than they already are.
I know that the sovereign Twilight opal does not exist yet, so if a normal DK wants to try to gem for solid strength, probably your best option is to use a perfect Green quality sovereign shadow crystal instead for two slots.
I have to say, I'm quite stunned at 6500 on patchwerk without hit capped and expertise capped stats. This sure changes things in my mind.
Unless the socket bonus is 8 strength or you need meta requirements, it would be very stupid to socket a green/purple gem into a blue socket. Also Inscribed Monarch Topaz doesn't even exist. That is a pretty stupid list.
So I have been wanting to try out the 32/39 spec for some time now, and finally decided to just try it out. I respecced to it right before the raid (from 2H blood spec). After doing a partial Nax clear and then calling due to lag I have to say that I am more than impressed with it. The highest I've ever hit as blood was ~4.7k dps.
Patchwerk was the 3rd boss we did so I really didnt have much exp with the rotation behind me. Ended up messing it up a couple times over the course of the fight, and still managed to pull ~5.3k. I'm sure I could swap out a few pieces of gear and what not to get a little better stats for DW, but I just went with my same gear setup minus the weapons. As of right now I have been converted, can't wait to see what the no CD on howling blast change will do to it.