Stat	APE
STR	3.177
AGI	0.373
AP	1.000
Crit	0.698
Hit (before 8%)	2.104
Hit (after 8%)	1.625
Hit (after spell cap)	0.552
Exp	1.075
ArPen	0.415
Haste	1.743

Added in a relatively elegant kludge to estimate rotation pushback on misses/dodges. Changed the gear level to the best-in-slot pieces based on my previous numbers. Fixed a bug that was causing death coil's damage contribution to be approximately halved.

Now we need to figure out why my numbers still don't match Methods' and which are correct.

The crit/agi discrepancy is likely due to differences in the Killing Machine model. I believe mine to be more accurate than the one posted in the spreadsheet thread but I may be wrong.

Strength - I'm using the 40% ghoul glyph; that accounts for some of it. Are you modeling Fallen Crusader?

Haste - My model assumes 100% haste contribution to both gargoyle and ghoul. I'm pretty sure I tested that on the ghoul, but there's a chance it's a wild-assed guess. I have only hearsay to suggest that the gargoyle receives haste from your gear at all, and no testing. Haste to the gargoyle would definitely account for a large increase in its relative value.

I'm posting my spreadsheet in the appropriate thread; it's gotten far enough that it's not too embarrassing to show.


Edit: Some preliminary testing definitely shows that the Gargoyle gets more casts in on average in the same period of time when I have Icy Talons up when casting it. Ghoul's haste contribution is 100% or very close to it assuming a base speed of 2.0 (I have IIT so I can't check without respeccing). Confirmed that the ghoul double dips from Icy Talons and IIT, with an odd side effect.

Normal ghoul speed was 1.8 after gear and IIT passive haste.
Ghoul speed with IT up was 1.25.
After IT fades, ghoul speed is 1.5 until something in my haste changes.

It seems to update the ghoul's haste whenever mine changes, but somehow since my IT drops at the same time as the ghoul's IT, only one of the haste drops goes through.


Gargoyle testing methodology was pretty basic - get 100 rp then summon and count the casts while generating no additional RP. Either wait for IT to fade or don't.

Running the numbers in my spreadsheet for an unhasted gargoyle, I get 1.00 APEP for haste rating, very close to Methods' number. So that's probably our disagreement there.

I have been dual wielding for a bit now and for the moment it seems like the way to go at least from a numbers stand point. I have always been the type to break the mold though and was wondering if a 32/39 spec without desecration or some form of Blood dual wield spec could be feasible. My guild doesnt allow Desecration in raids due to the spell bogging alot of systems down even with spell details set to low.

I searched the thread for what I am about to say but no results showed up.

I am just wondering if anyone has done any math on the weapon enchants that are best for DW spec? Obviously the FC is a given, but I was wondering if anyone gave any thought to enchanting the OH with Berserkering, or is Cinderglacier better than Berserkering?

Your best bet is probably to just dump the Desecration points somewhere else. It's hardly a necessary talent to the build; it just happens to be the highest DPS filler. I would skip it as well personally since I definitely have problems avoiding some types of fire with it up. You'll still likely end up with better DPS than a non-32/39 variant.

You could also go 44/27 with or without frost strike.

Ive looked around a lot of Armories and it seems like most DK dont have Desecration. I dont and my dps is still usually at the top.

I think he is misquoting a result where I got a 2.8% increase in ability damage by replacing DC with FS for a specific FS-friendly rotation (with a specific gearset). The point was that going FS is not quite as much of a DPS gain as the direct comparison between DC and FS may make it seem.

Of course, just as thoughts of plentiful Freezing Fog HBs and endless FS in Unholy Presence are forming, Blizzard decides to put KM on PPM.

Generally speaking, using KM procs as soon as possible gives you higher DPS than saving it for bigger hits. There are exceptions, of course, like when hitting multiple targets with HB. The numbers will change if KM goes to low PPM, of course.

Remember that we are talking about a small edge for Blood Presence with an almost fully optimized rotation or priority system. In terms of overall DPS increase, this is something on the order of a few percents. Even if you are doing everything right, you are not going to see the kind of DPS increase you get from an extra 500 AP, or your raid dropping Patchwerk in 2:45 instead of 3:20. Also, remember that this advantage is in average damage. Unholy Presence can still spike higher because it benefits a lot more from lucky Freezing Fog streaks, especially if you are Gargoyling in Blood Presence without a presence switch.



A few quick notes on the basics of Blood Presence rotations and priority systems:

Rotations

There are two tricky elements in optimizing your Blood Presence rotations. The first is how you model the leftover time after 6 GCDs; the second is how you use your 2-sec leeway on rune cooldown (2SL).

The 2SL is usually used in one of three ways. The first is to synch aggregated rune pairs for multi-rune abilities (runes used for PS+IT in one rune set and HB in the other); the second is to neutralize contigent delays in rune usage (Freezing Fog, miss, dodge); the third is to combine the leftover time from the two rune sets into your 13th GCD in 20 sec (using alternating "long" and "short" rune sets). It is not always possible to combine the three.

A typical 12-GCD rotation...

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

...uses aggregated rune pairs in both rune sets. You cannot insert a 13th GCD or handle contingent delays in rune usage without extending this kind of rotations beyond 20 sec. The advantage of this kind of rotations is simplicity and leeway for consistently high latency.



A typical 13-GCD rotation that uses aggregated rune pair...

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

...can use aggregated rune pairs in at most one rune set. You have no choice on which rune set is "long" in this kind of rotation. If you move the DC at the end of line 1 to the end of line 2, you will extend the rotation beyond 20 sec.

All rune use on the "long" set except the second half of an aggregated rune pair can be pushed back one GCD without extending your rotation beyond 20 sec. You still need to "skip" an ability to keep the set at 7 GCDs, of course. Rune use delays on the "short" set will extend your rotation beyond 20 sec.

For example, if your lead IT misses, you can replace your PS with IT recast and still keep your rotation 20-sec long...

{IT}>IT>HB>BS>BS>dc>dc
HB>dc>HB>IT>IT>dc

...whereas if your PS is dodged, recasting PS on the next GCD will extend your rotation beyond 20 sec.

For another example, if you get Freezing Fog on your lead IT, you can displace your next BS with a f-IT for a DPS increase (this shifts your Blood rune usage by a rune cooldown, but is an overall DPS increase)...

IT>PS>{HB}>IT>BS>dc>dc
HB>dc>HB>BS>IT>dc

Generally speaking, your first option for single-target DPS is to displace a Blood rune usage (BS, d-IT, BB, or PE), as long as you will still have enough RP to cover 13 GCDs.



A typical 13-GCD "Desecration" rotation without aggregated rune pair...

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

...can have either rune set be "long" without going over 20 sec (other considerations like KM spacing, better RP overflow leeway still apply, of course). Like before, you can use Freezing Fog in the "long" rune set for a DPS increase by displacing a Blood rune usage (or DC usage, if you are short on RP to cover 13 GCDs).

Note that for the above "Desecration" rotation, the average damage per GCD with a typical 0/31/37+3 build hovers right around one DC. Using the IT glyph will give you enough RP for a 4th DC. However, unless you remove a rune ability, this will extend your rotation by basically a full GCD (to a 14th GCD). In other words, without sufficient haste to make the 14th GCD good, the IT glyph will generally result in a DPS loss outside of Gargoyle (until the -10% penalty on the IT glyph is removed anyway). 25% DC is only better than 10% IT if you have a free GCD to chuck it with (like when under Bloodlust/Heroism or Summon Gargoyle).



Priority Systems

Optimizing DK priority systems revolves around the proper use of Blood runes. Priority systems manipulate the use frequencies of resources available to maximize DPS. Conceptually, your Blood runes are your weakest resources (when there is enough RP to cover 13 GCDs). Whenever higher-quality additional resources are available (Freezing Fog or RP beyond what is needed to cover 13 GCDs), you preempt the use of a Blood rune (pushing its CD cycle back and decreasing its use frequency).

A common mistake is to give Death-rune ITs the same priority as Frost-rune ITs. Generally speaking, unless you know combat is going to end by the next cycle, d-IT has roughly the same priority as BS/BB/PE (roughly but not exactly because of potential RP shortage/overflow).

Conceptually, a typical priority system looks something like this:

(F) HB+HB; fixed frequency
(F) f-IT+f-IT; fixed frequency
(U) HB+HB; fixed frequency (unless you use Freezing Fog)
(U) PS or PS+PS; generally fixed frequency of either 1 per 20 sec or 2 per 20 sec
(B) BS/BB/PE+d-IT; variable frequency depending on RP availability
(B) BS/BB/PE+d-IT; variable frequency depending on RP availability

...and is generally started as a hybrid of the form...

IT>PS>HB(>mixed bag of BS/BB/PE/d-IT/DC/FS)
IT>dc>HB(>mixed bag of BS/BB/PE/d-IT/DC/FS)

...or...

IT>PS>HB(>mixed bag of BS/BB/PE/d-IT/DC/FS)



While we are on the subject of Blood rune usage, note that the rune use frequency concept also applies in the comparison between BS and BB. DW builds don't gear for Expertise because HB, IT, DC, and FS all cannot be dodged. If you are near the spell hit cap, BS will basically hit ~6% less often than BB. Since it is usually a DPS loss to recast a Blood rune miss (regardless of whether it's BS, BB, PE, or d-IT) as long as you won't run out of RP to cover 13 GCDs, the Blood rune cycle pushback from a dodged BS is equivalent to losing 1/2 BS + 1/2 IT. So the the comparison is closer to between 1/2 IT + 1/2 BS versus 1/2 IT + 1/2 BB that misses ~3% less. Of course, BB is also ranged, hits multiple targets, and has its GCD reduced by haste.



For a quick visualization of fast/fast versus slow/fast, try this:

Assuming 1/3 of your strike damage comes from your weapon damage.

2.4/1.6 (5 chances for BCB procs per 4.8 sec)
(0.8 + 1.6) x 5 = 12

1.6/1.6 (6 chances for BCB procs per 4.8 sec)
(0.8 x 1.6 / 2.4 + 1.6) x 6 = 12.8

With your typical raid-buffed 5k AP, you need a 1H weapon with more than 178 DPS for your weapon damage to be 1/3 of your strike damage, and that is before factoring things like Unholy Strength (FC proc), Greatness, and on-use AP trinkets, which will swing things further in favor of fast/fast.

Did you use Army of the Dead? That seems to be around 75,000 damage for me. Also, the people with higher numbers have kills that can be more than 30 seconds faster than yours, which increases dps. Also, don't forget RNG.

Hi!

A few days before I have changed my build and now i have 32/39 DW talent but I think that build has a weak point and this is the ghoul. I dont know what are you doing but my ghoul is always dead he can survive only 1-2 mins depends on the boss fight. I know in the next patch the "night of the dead" talent will give avoidance but theres no free point to get that talent.
Im thinking about another DW build but cant choose the best dps build.
SO my question is do we need that ghoul and how can we keep him alive? DC is not enough.

To be honest, your main hand is not particularly weak. Despite the defensive stats, Slayer of the Lifeless is actually a very solid DW weapon because of the high STR (for a 1H), +hit and 1.5 speed.

I can't tell from your screenshot, but if I had to wager a guess it would be your raid-buffed AP (which is just a symptom of gear and lack of flask really) and possibly lack of Army of the Dead during your PW kill.

Also, if you are really sticking to that rotation without deviation it's probably costing you a bit of DPS. Without inserting any RP dumps in the middle of rune usage (because you have that free GCD to play with due to rune refresh), you can't quite get full effect of KM procs. I'd guess your HB crit rate in particular would be hit the most by that because it falls last in your alternate rune sets leaving you a very slim window to generate a KM proc for it.

Grigori's massive post above gives a better idea of how to sort of "massage" your rotations when using Blood Presence as it will give you a better distribution of KM proc usage without having to extend your rune refresh timers.

You're doing fine. People hitting 6k+ have the very, very best gear, and raids that kill bosses very, very fast. Because of that, Blood Lust and Garg are up for a higher amount of time.

For example, if a person's raid killed a boss in 2 minutes compared to your 3 minutes, that person had Bloodlust for 1/3 of the fight and Garg up for 1/2 of it, compared to you having Bloodlust for 2/9 of the fight and Garg up for 1/3.

Because of that, the greater the overall dps of the raid, the greater your personal dps will be. I personally do almost exactly the same amount of DPS you do on Patchwerk.

Not sure if it was mention before, but I'm not sure how good a meta is for us (32/39 or 44/27). Right now I'm wearing Fire-Scorched Greathelm wich doesnt have a meta socket. Should I go back to a lower lvl item like Spiked Titansteel Helm for the meta ?

Keep in mind that the spiked titansteel helm is having its stats changed for next patch:
Link

I don't think its a huge issue. Yes desecration might be the best choice for personal dps benefit, it has its disadvantages. And I personally don't really like it (FPS drain, covers up magic effects, useless in moving fights, etc)

I personally opted for convenience talents. 1 Extra point in Epedemic, mainly because of soloing / grinding / easy BG pvp / heroics. 2 points in On a Pale Horse, again for convenience, i do a lot of dailies and fly around, i find this speed boost to be convenient. 2 points in Unholy Aura, this was something i missed most, and my raid too. Its a great dps increase too (from a raid dps POV).

Some people opt for 3 points in desecration and 2 in Unholy Aura, but I don't like putting half points in Desecration personally.

ATM i personally got 2 points in Night of the Dead, to test it out. But without a real unholy rotation with 1 PS and 4 SS's every 20 seconds, the return from that talent at the moment is rather poor.
With a standard rotation it takes me 75 seconds to reset the cooldown on Raise Dead, which is beneficial but not as much as i hoped. So i might go back to 3/3 CF until the patch.

I think Sacerdos awnsered that pretty well.

In my opinion Patchwerk by now lost most of his value as a benchmark. The fight at the moment just lasts too short for it to possess any value other than e-peen messurement.

Due to the fast kills on patchwerk nowadays, i mean the record is currently just under 2 minutes. It hardly holds any value.
What value can we pull out from a fight where bloodlust is up 1/3th of the time and Gargoyle is up 50% of the time. Nothing. It's a burst fight nowadays. And the faster you kill him the longer, respectively, your cooldowns are up. The faster you kill him the more fluked your dps can be. If a fight lasts 5 minutes, the chance of lucky crit streaks or well lucky KM procs is far less likely than on a 2 min dps race.

The only problem is, is that at the moment, we don't have any other solid benchmark to compare stuff on. So we'll probably keep using patchwerk.
However I seriously suggest people take some of the DPS WWS's with a grain of salt. Buffs and procs are playing such an incredible huge role in your final dps number that even equal geared players, can see differences of up to several thousands of DPS.

Well seeing as our crit average on IT and HB (due to KM) is near 70-80%, i assume that a meta gem slot plays a fairly large roll for a DW, definitely more than for the other specs.

That is my guess of course.

I noticed a lot of the 032/39'ers only have their hit rating at around 200-270ish. Is this because hit rating starts to lose value past 8% or simply because of a lack of gear?

Or is Str/ap that much better than hit rating for us (past 8%)?

It starts to loose value past 8%.

Yes.

I looked at your stats and you only have about 300 AP and 10% more crit than me, yet I only manage to do 2.7k dps on 25man Patchwerk. Can 300AP and 10% crit make that much more of a difference of 2.1k dps on Patchwerk? If not, then what am I doing wrong?

As everyone else is saying, your personnal DPS will be higher if your raid has high DPS because the fight will be really short and Gargoyle / Bloodlust will be up for a big part of the fight.

Maybe your guild takes 5 minutes to kill Patchwerk and that explains a great part of the gap between yours and hers DPS.

~

I am seeing conflicting information on this thread regarding expertise.

On one hand, a couple of value charts have been posted showing expertise to be a somewhat undesirable stat. Posters view these and then proceed to build arguments and assumptions.

On the other hand, it has been briefly stated that the value charts do not fully take into account the value offered by not having your rotations interrupted by a dodge, and that expertise should be capped for this reason alone.

Can someone who has studied this enough make the conclusion and correct previous posters?



Edit: It looks like Kurokaze has attempted to build this into his analysis, but I can't comprehend how expertise could be so low? An earlier chart had expertise only slightly behind strength. I find that a string of dodges can be devestating, especially in fights with movement, and you find you have just wasted a large chunk of the limited time you had with the target.

@Epicness
A difference of 300 AP and 10% crit is quite noticeable. For instance, with all the talents for HB, 300 AP is an extra 450 damage per HB crit (more with cinderglacier and other procs involved). Not only that, but 10% crit is a huge difference in crit. If you go from 25% crit to 35% crit, you're going to get about 30% more white crits, which means 30% more KM procs, which means 30% more guaranteed HB crits. Crit is what fuels DW. That's why you see some people with the minimum 8% hit rating and a monstrous unbuffed crit %. With the one roll system, they don't need all their white numbers to hit, they just want a bunch of crits (and hit rating doesn't give you more crits).

@Loyant
Only BS and PS can be dodge/parried, so expertise for DW is lacking to say the least. Post patch even more so will that be the case because if you want, you could use an all spell rotation by replacing BS with Pest. If you're 32/39 you can already make expertise worthless by replacing BS with BB.

@Ewokchilli

Switching out to Blood Boil is something I had considered (and dropping all my [or most] expertise), but I haven't seen any discussion on the dps loss of the switch? Have I just missed those posts? Does switching to Blood Boil mean the new +45% talent may be worth choosing? Certainly the idea of eliminating the need for expertise appeals to me......

Currently I am DWing Avool's Sword of Jin and Grasscutter. I am starting to run 25 man Naxx and was looking at weapon upgrades. I saw earlier in this thread that 2x Hailstorms is best, and from my reading, is due to the high AP on the weapon. My question is with my current two weapons would Widow's Fury from heroic Faerlina and/or Silent Crusade be any any upgrade to me? I am noticing not much of our dmg comes from white dmg, so is it safe to assume that even though the dps is highers on these 2 swords that the AP loss or going from F/F to S/F would lower my dps rather than increase?

On fights with significant movement, you cannot use a rotation. Using a priority system on those fights, I rarely even wind up *using* any attacks that can be dodged - the occasional PS isn't bad dps, since you can assume the entire disease will tick before you renew it, but IT and HB are both higher priority at practically all times, and BS gets swapped for BB if there's any doubt about being in range.

In any case, you'll never have a 'string of dodges' as your dodgeable attacks would just get skipped if they are missed. The people that complain about the impact of missed attacks on a rotation are mostly using two-handers; missing PS for a SS or Oblit/HB build is pretty damaging to dps.


And if anyone's interested, the difference between Slow/Fast and Fast/Fast in terms of ppm (for 32/39):
That's a 300 run set of 20 minute sims.

Going from F/F to S/F is a *far* bigger loss than can be made up by an increase in AP. 1.5 ppm loss (as seen above) is almost a hundred dps (napkin math) in entry level raid gear. (Around 180 in top end gear.)