For 0/32/39 fast/fast is the way to go pre patch. You should use blood presence. As for the patch it's still too early to tell which will be on top as far as dps goes. We can speculate and test on the ptr but that's it. There could be a few more builds come before release and things could change.

I've taken a look at your intended algorithms for estimating DPS in that post as you asked. Judging from your post, your spreadsheet estimates timing as 10-sec-per-rune-set-min-and-add-more-if-it-goes-over-6-GCDs. Beyond that, it simply models abilities used. Given that, in your spreadsheet, the first rotation I listed should have almost identical footprint to the default HB>IT>BS>HB>[procRPdump] rotation you used, down to the KM spacing for HB, Freezing Fog usage, total RP used, and every ability except one (substituting 1 BS for 1 PE).

Since the major differences between those two rotations are in timing subtleties which your spreadsheet does not model, if you are feeding your spreadsheet those two rotations and getting "far below" numbers for one or the other, then there is probably at least one implementation error. For a such a large discrepancy, a top candidate for the error is the spreadsheet either adding extra time where it ought not or not adding extra time where it ought somewhere. Either that or you did not feed one of the rotations into your spreadsheet properly (misrepresentation).

As far as suggestion for improving your spreadsheet's accuracy goes, full sequencing with rune cooldowns will be more accurate, of course, but if that is too much trouble, then moving to a 20-sec-per-two-rune-set model from your 10-sec-per-rune set model will give you a more accurate estimate. As long as the rotation you feed it is designed for it, 13-GCD rotations like this one...

IT>PS>HB>fs>fs>BS>BS
HB>fs>IT>fs>IT>IT

...has a theoretical 20-sec cycle time with 0.5 sec leeway, not a theoretical 20.5-sec cycle time with 1 sec leeway for one of the rune sets (before modeling for lag and haste). From testing I find the 13-GCD-in-20-sec estimate to be both more accurate in theory and in practice.

I do not always provide (along with the repeating portion of the rotation) the one-time starter sequence to generate RP reserve and prime the runes for 2-sec cooldown leeway on cold starts, because the starter sequence is generally obvious and not particularly relevant to evaluating the sustained DPS of the rotation. For example, the above FS rotation obviously will not execute as is on a cold start. Make sure your spreadsheet is not modeling the rotation as "cold start repeated." This point is pretty obvious, but sometimes people overlook the most obvious things.

You get 10 extra RP (5+25 instead of 20). You answered your own question with the bolded word "usually" above. Much of this depends on how you are modeling the 6th and 7th GCD in a rune set and delay between ability use. Of course, this will all change when the PTR changes go live. Still, even where there is a gain, the gain is too tiny to outweigh the risk of even a slight hesitation delay.

If you have a free GCD, 2xIT easily beats 1xHB. Generally, (live) rotation are only designed with 3xHB if it needs 2xPS to keep up Desecration (and is therefore GCD-limited), like this...

IT>PS>HB>dc>BB>BB(>dc)
HB>PS>IT>dc>HB>dc

Note that you are doing BB instead of BS, because BS dodge costs are much higher than with 4xIT rotations (where the two Blood/Death runes can be skipped separately on dodges/misses unless you will run out of RP to cover all GCDs). This is assuming that you do not have enough haste to shrink a 14-GCD rotation past the inflection point, of course. If you do, it is higher DPS to go 14 GCDs with 4xIT.

The advantage of simpler rotation like the one you listed...

IT>PS>HB>BS>BS>(RPdump)
IT>PS>HB>IT>IT>(RPdump)

...is that the rune use have identical timing on both rune sets, so you lose less DPS when recasting Frost/Unholy rune misses, which is useful for running below the spell hit cap to stack stronger stats.

One of the things Blizzard might have been trying to do was putting more DKs at the 12-14 GCD range where the math is more interesting (new FS glyph), but the HB change, which might have been designed to make Rime procs less skippable, backfired. The ability to chuck 4xHB per rotation without proc was trumping all kinds of mathematical subtleties and dumbing DW down almost to the point of 2H Unholy.

Hi there
There is one thing I dont understand.
Based on your report your primary dam comes from the white hits. Besides, on the report page I see you had got just the 9% miss rate but checking your character on on the armory I see you've got less than 300 Hit Rating.
I've got 400 Hit Rating and on the dummy I had 12% miss rate.
Am I missing something?

I just tried out MH only and OH only for white dmg on the target dummy. while the OH KM procs were few, the OH was still procing KM. The MH however was proccing KM more often. It was a brief test before the test servers went down so i didnt get a chance to try and get a PPM on MH only and OH only but OH was proccing KM, just at a slower rate.

Be aware unarmed attacks proc KM. Unequipping your MH won't stop MH procs.

does anyone have an idea of what the best weapon combo will be? slow/slow, slow/fast, or fast/fast with the 32/39 build in the patch?

Probably a result of pure RNG, on other fights in the same raid I had a higher miss rate (around 17%).

Please refer to my post on page 49.

Something interesting I picked up in Naxx tonight. If you use Blood Tap while you have blood rune active and a death rune rechaging (from a blood strike, say) you will immediately activate the death rune AND convert the blood rune to death. This is useful when used during trinket procs to gain two extra IT's instead of one.

Also, I have not confirmed this, but I believe both death runes will persist for the duration of blood tap (15s).

Can someone tell me how the cancelaura macro has to be?

At the moment I am using this:

/cancelaura Freezing Fog
/cast Howling Blast(Rank 5)


Is it correct?

Hi there, haven't posted for a few days. I have to questions:

1. With the 5 second cooldown as opposed to the 6 second cooldown on HB affect dps at ALL? I mean, unless you are using a priority system, 1 second off HB probably wouldn't change your rotation at all. Is this correct?



2. It seems that 12 KM procs a minute is still very good, thats one every five seconds. However, without taking away the cooldown on HB, would a 0/20/51 spec be more viable than 32/39? I know no one is sure yet, but some opinions would be nice :P

Just to clear up the cancel aura stuff once and for all for myself, I seem to need it spelled out like I am a third grader.

The benefits to canceling the aura all the time are that you are actually using your runes and generating RP and putting runes on cool down and the reason you want rime in the first place is really for the 15% crit chance to IT. Also, using the unholy rune which I noticed is kinda hard to use up all the time is a benefit.

The question I have is, why do you bother canceling the aura on an IT cast? Rime has no effect on IT and canceling it on HB should be quite sufficient if your goal is to use the runes to generate RP.

Yeah, I agree with that, infact I use the macro to cancel the aura only before to cast Howling Blast.

In a small guild will most likely only see 10 man regularly, have naxx on farm. Just respecced to DW and love it.

Have Hatestrike and Fang of Truth right now but last nite I got Torment of the Banished (2.6 speed). Specced 0/32/39 atm.

Just found Avool boe on the ah and cant decide, shell out and get the Avool and be set or respec to other dw build and use Torment + Hatestrike? Gold isnt really a problem so buying it wont get me broke or anything since JC:ing was good so far in WotLK.

Need one of you veteran DW's to give some input.

Hey, i was in same situation you are. Money is not an Issue, i had two fang of truths only doing about 2100 dps on the heroic dummy. That night i bought the Avools sword for about 2700g (to much). Then got grasscutter from the badges. Went up to about 2800 dps on the dummy. BUT, i am not so sure what is going to be the best weapon combo in the patch, nor if 32/39 will be the best DW spec with fast/fast. The best combo might be slow/fast, no one knows 100% yet.

Here is my advice. If money is not an issue for you, Avool's sword is well worth the money. If you dont want to waste 2k+ gold, I would wait till the patch comes out to see what the best spec/weapon combo is, and wait for more people post their findings on here about the PTR.

Hey, can you explain to me exactly what those macros do, and should i just replace them all the time with my IT and HB or no?

I just cant figure it out by reading these forums, thanks.

What mods are you using when testing your dps on the heroic training dummies? Running recount (Recount 2 seems bugged right now when reporting dps, although everything else looks fine) I'm only getting +/-2200 dps on a heroic dummy self buffed no gargoyle following the standard rotation. Spec's 32/39 with Hatestrike and Jin's.

Can someone point me to the page where Blood Presence beats out Unholy Presence is described? I have a 43/28 build and every test i've tried Unholy comes out on top. That's using the same rotation though. Is there a different rotation needed when in Blood Presence?

One thing I do differently than most of the rotations i see posted is try to do death coils between HB and the death rune ITs, thus giving KM more time to proc before each one. For example:

IT PS HB dc* BS BS / IT PS HB dc* dIT dc dIT

Now, I'm still not sold on canceling freezing fog. A frozen fog HB is supposedly bad because it:

1) generates less RP / cd
2) screws up rotations

with regard to 1), simply replacing the dc* with a free IT is a gain in both dps and RP.
with regard to 2), if you can follow-up your free HB with an IT fast enough (during 2s buffer) you won't impact your rune schedule.

Does this make sense? It is more complex...have to watch for freezing fog procs and start spamming follow-up IT; takes a little practice.

Check out the top of page 50 in this thread, I believe there's some tests that were done in regards to both weapon speed and presence choice on the PTR

While I was testing this, I did confirm that what you say is true, but for me I now have a perma Death Rune. I don't know how or why, but i can spam 3 IT's every rune cooldown now. For example, my rotation starts off the same for the first 2 HBs/RP dumps, but then it can be this: PS/IT/BS/IT/HB/rp dump/PS/IT/IT/IT/HB/RP

Don't know how or why, like I said, but I'm not complaining. Even while using UH or Frost abilities one of my (what should be) blood runes always refreshes as a death. My friend confirmed this on his DK too.

Since CF and EP currently dont stack, if you have an Unholy DK in raid would it be better to move the pts in CF to something else (in my case id assume notd and desecration)?