Why after? Isn't everything that the gargoyle gets calculated when it's summoned? Even if it isn't, a haste pot you take after you summon the gargoyle can't possibly effect it...can it?

Actually, buffs that are placed on you after the gargoyle is summoned do in fact effect it too. That's why the highest DPS parses you'll see will usually include something along the lines of; " I popped Gargoyal when I had Mirror/Greatness etc and heroism was about to go up."

I'm sorry, of course what you say makes sense. Taking a second look, it seems gargoyle and the speed potion were cast at the same time -- probably macroed together so he gets the haste buff just before summoning. Unfortunately, another DK summoned a gargoyle at about the same time, and WWS does not distinguish the two Gargoyles in its log file here, so it's difficult to see how, exactly, Ariastrasza's gargoyle benefited from the extra haste. That was my mistake in my initial reading of the log file: the speed potion was popped immediately before summoning the gargoyle.

Edit: I feel I have to add that KhaosKnight is wrong so that misinformation is not spread. Gargoyle's spell power is determined by your AP at the time of casting for its entire duration. Using AP on-use effects after summoning does NOT affect its damage. This is a very well understood mechanic.

Yeah, so ideally you have everything proc/used when you summon the gargoyle, and then bloodlust when its in the air for maximum effect.

Just picked up a Hailstorm and something occurred to me that is probably common sense, but I'll throw it out there anyway.

Hailstorm is generally considered the best mainhand we can use. Thus, the instinct is obviously to toss it in my mainhand. However, I already have an ilvl213 fast mainhand (Widow's Fury). Widows Fury/Hailstorm ends up edging out Hailstorm/Widows Fury; they should get equal KM proccage, and Widows Fury hits slightly harder on strikes.

--

Regarding builds to use when Crypt Fever is not an option, what about going back to a tri-spec such as 10/31/30? Bladed Armor is pretty comparable if not better than the other stuff you trade off for it in that case, and the first 5 points are pretty solid filler.

Running some numbers... Ooh. Caught a huge bug in the KM routines - it was proccing off of strikes as well as auto swings. Should help explain why I haven't seen as much improvement from weapon speed as Janraea etc. have.

Rotation used was IT PS BS BS HB DC/FS -- IT PS HB IT IT DC/FS DC/FS
except for 20/51 which used PS IT BS IT DC IT DC -- PS IT BS DC IT DC IT DC.

Mainhand	10/31/30	0/20/51	0/31/40	Frost Strike	Unbreakable Armor
Last Laugh	6350.5	6458.61	6446.76	6256.42	6343.87
Hailstorm	6332.18	6451.24	6426.45	6228.88	6317.76
Titansteel Bonecrusher	6260.8	6365.65	6350.9	6199.03	6248.32
Torment of the Banished	6248.49	6341.81	6334.98	6192.51	6232.47

Edit: Whoops, should have done IT PS HB BS BS DC/FS, or IT PS BS HB BS DC/FS. I'll fix the numbers in the morning. I doubt it makes a massive difference though, as the margin by which Frost Strike is losing in these numbers is pretty large.

Managed to get some practice last week with playing the spec and the rotation and for a change our server wasn't as laggy as normal today so I got a decent Patchwerk kill.

Recount showed as



Wowmeters showed me as about 500dps less, i know there are issues with pets and what now, but seemed a like a decent drop off. Topped a few other fights that one of our hunters normally does as well.
WOW Meter Online - The Best World of Warcraft Combat Log Analyse System!Fully support Wrath of the Lich King!

Wrong, Gargoyle damage is only determined by the amount of AP and Haste you currently have at point of summon, it can then later be affected by raidwide boosts like Bloodlust if it is active when Bloodlust is cast.

I found something interesting. At 14% Haste with 100ms latency, you can do 7 move rotations using Blood Boil. Here's a rotation that used Blood Tap prior to opening for the Death Rune. It assumes 20/51 and Blood Presence.

PS -> IT -> IT -> IT -> BB -> UB -> DC
PS -> IT -> IT -> BB -> IT -> DC -> DC

At 14% Haste, a spell uses 1.29 sec + 0.1 sec latency = 1.39 sec which x 6 = 8.34 sec. Add 1.6 sec for PS and you get 9.94 sec.

14% Haste is a lot of haste. But it's possible to do so and still reach the hit and expertise cap if you use 0/20/51 and take 3/3 Virulence. It's also easier if you are Human.

Use 4 piece 25 man t7 and Obsidian Greathelm. Girdle of Chivalry, Bracers of Unrelenting Attack, Drape of the Deadly Foe, Favor of the Dragon Queen, Ring of Invincibility, Band of the Kirin Tor, Sabatons of Sudden Reprisal, and two Hailstorms. With correct gemming and enchants, you can get it. Certain professions such as Blacksmithing make it easier to do.

The nice thing about this setup is that these items are already the items you likely want. The bad thing is if your latency is high, it won't work. If you got a nice connection, you can lower the amount of haste needed to pull it off.

0/20/51 makes it possible due to the 5 Expertise from Rage of Rivendare. That frees up enough points that you can shift them toward Hit and Haste. It's possible there are better combinations of gear but to be honest, I looked at Ariastrasza's gear and swapped the rings, weapons, and made the legs 25 man t7 and the numbers added to what I needed with enchant/gem changes. I just wanted to see if it was possible before I committed this to the thread.

So i was doing so extensive testing of garg trying to get the optimal set up and know how much it pushes it by.

my set up was basically using recount separating my dps and my pets dps so the pet is its own list.

started by doing blood and unholy with no buffs and they where virtually the same both 27 strikes.

which surprised me because i though i read on here that unholy haste effected the gargs strike speed.

base my garg did around 600DPS 27 strikes when having unholy str and mirror it went up to 1k which i felt was pretty good.

my question i guess was that over all my test i never really saw a climb in the number of strikes when using unholy over blood. Does testing it this way not capture it or am i just not looking for the right thing that reflects the added haste?

So if I'm hearing you right, you cast Gargoyle AFTER you pop your cooldowns but BEFORE Heroism/Bloodlust?

My tests would seem to confirm it, I noticed if I cast Gargoyle after a Heroism it didn't inherit the haste buff, just wanted to clarify.

I feel that duel wielding as a death knight is a horrible idea. First off, most of your abilities as a dk are scaled to your weapon's damage, that should be a red flag right there. Any dWing death knight i feel like slapping. I really dont see a point to it. Not to mention higher crits with a 2h. So heres the choices- 2h, slower attacks (but most of your abilities are instant as a dk so it doesn't matter) and higher crits and dmg or..... DW, more attacks, doing pitiful damage, and crits that are about as sad as can be. You choice.

Edit: What's beyond me is how he managed to find this place, let alone making posts.

I think we have to redo all our theorycrafting regarding DW, for all classes who are able to wield 2h and 1h weapons....

It's called damage over time, kid.

The idea isn't to see OMG DID YOU SEE THAT 7K CRIT I JUST GOT!? in raid chat. It's sustained damage. By the way, after the patch comes out, move to the cyclone battlegroup. I'd be more than happy to show you what 4 howling blasts in a row can do.

thanks for posting such a well-thought out synopsis of the dual wielding variant. I'll make sure to wave to ya from the top of the dps chart.

From one thing to another, do we have any numbers for [Item not found!]?

Anyone using this trinket? Perhaps willing to do some tests? IF it in fact procs quite a lot, do you think it's worth considering?

edit: typos.

yea it seems like some haste effects it and some does not. For instance I know people have said to go into unholy prior to casting garg but in every test i did that never got me above the what i assume is base of 27 hits (assume its base since its what i get pretty much any time i dont tweek anything with haste)

No i also tested it with blood but activating it on a whetstone proc and same thing even though the proc should add 444 haste im still at 27 strikes in blood presence.

However if im in unholy presence and have a whetstone proc i jump to the low 30's in strikes, even though they seem to have no effect seperate.

I also have found that speed flask +500 haste buff always seems to put me in low 30's strike so it always seems to have an effect?

Is there anything that explains this or am i some how testing this wrong?

I use it. On the dummy it did around 13k dmg over 4 minutes.
It's not great but it's better then the other trinkets I had. Saving up for a greatness card to replace it though.

I have it on currently - check the armory link. I was going to post something about this as well - you beat me to it.

Last night's output on kel'thuzad (I died about 5-6 minutes (from circle activation) in because I'm a noob) showed 9 procs for ~ 14k damage. It ended up roughly about the damage of blood strike, and has more crit on it than the Whetstone (which I was using in the slot prior to getting this).

From what I've been told/read it's a believed 15% proc w/ a 45 second cooldown and scales horribly with AP.

that being said - it was critting for nearly 3k around 24% of the time, average damage was about 1700 (on roughly 5k buffed AP), and ended up being about 1.8% of my overall damage.

Now that trinket vs. the haste from whetstone I'm not sure about. If someone would like to do a comparison go for it.

Honestly - you'll get more out of a "priority" system than using a rotation. I'd get more used to doing it that way.

the reason being is you WILL get out of rotation at some point and your dps will suffer horribly if you try to wait to get back into it (either from the mob moving/dodging or your fat fingers).

As you notice your runes coming up, you should focus on keeping your dot uptime at 100%. After that, depending on runes that are up - Howling Blast, deathcoil, IT, BS as your priority rankings. Don't pay attention to whether or not you have 1 or 2 blood runes as death.

If you space the ITs out w/ deathcoils in between, they'll crit 98% of the time. If your UF runes for HB are coming up within the next 2 seconds, burn a deathcoil and wait for it and use the KM proc on HB. You don't want to be waiting for another KM proc to use your HB. DPS suffers.

Just try playing around with it on the dummy. After a couple hours you'll get it and see a major dps increase from what you're used to seeing. It's a HUGE difference.

I can imagine it to be so far on a dummy i do about 2.2, but like i think my gear is suffice to do more. Most of the time i don't pull my ghoul out to test dps but i will start doing it now. Prio system sounds just about right its gonna take some practice. I got a malygos attempt tonight wonder if i should go back to 2h Unholy. I can't wait till HB loses its cooldown and Glyph of Icy Touch loses its 10% loss. 3.0.8 is going to be amazing.

The proc doesn't scale at all with AP -- but roughly ~2% of your DPS coming from a *proc* is really fantastic. I think it gets a bad rap because it doesn't scale, and people assume that a proc per 45 sec. is too little damage to be worth it. But right now, with today's level of gear, being able to increase your crit chance by 2% *and* adding roughly 2% to your DPS is an incredible amount of bang for your buck.

The only reason I wouldn't use the Extract is if it meant I couldn't use a proc- or on-use AP trinket for supercharging the gargoyle.

It reminds me a lot of the scryer/shattered sun rep necklace -- the one with the arcane spark proc. I remember soooo much resistance to it because the aldor version (+AP proc) seemed so much better... but after the numbers were run, having that steady arcane spark once every 45 seconds elevated that necklace to the best thing I could get until sunwell by a fair margin (I was a feral druid).

Picked up Angry Dead the other night (no one else wanted) and thought id play around to get a little anecdotal evidence to go along with all the theorycrafting. I was, and am again, 32/39 with Maexxnas Femur MH and Red Sword of Courage OH (no luck on rolls for ups yet) and ~3100 AP unbuffed.

I tried 44/27 variant with FS and without, 32/29 and 20/51 and none came close to 32/39 with fast fast even with an inferior combonation of stats.

I see some theorycrafting where a slow/fast could be as good or better but i couldnt make it work in any spec. Looking at the recount breakdown of the damage and then spending some time crunching numbers of the 3.0.8 changes, I agree with the posts saying fast/fast is the only option for max dps now and especially post patch.

The question now is how will DW workout post patch if KM is put on a ppm and garg is nerfed. The other 2 DKs I raid with are deep blood and deep unholy. I generally sit around 300 dps higher than the blood dk and 500 or so higher than the unholy (his gear is a bit worse than ours). For reference i did 4300 last Patch kill and 4100 last Sarth...and the guild is fresh in 25 mans so our kills are a bit slow.

Im hoping i dont have to start looking for a big 2her post patch.

this I wasn't aware of. I was told that it DID scale with debuffs, and judging by the recount I looked at last night, that would be confirmed.

Wonder if blizz will allow it to scale with AP. Would keep the trinket usable/time.