◊ forostie

PS is a solid part of the DW rotation, so it is correct that points spent in Epidemic are basically wasted.

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

Macar

Remember that we have to take into account the length of the encounter as well. The short the encounter, the larger the contribution of such things as Heroism/Bloodlust, Army of the Dead and Gargoyle will be. If you are in a guild that has very good DPS:ers it means that your DPS on Patchwerk will be "inflated" by the fact that the fight is shorter.

http://www.siglaunch.com/sigs/wow/1/...11159sMIJL.png

 

Natohk

My apologies for double posting this, but I posted it in the 3.08 raid dps thread looking for answers and was told that it was more of a report thread. I'm guessing it would be better suited here.

Pardon my ignorance, because i've been away from the game for 3 months now various physical injuries that kept me from sitting. I've gone through numerous threads looking for the best presence for 32/39, but I just cant find a definitive answer. I come out a bit better on dps in unholy on the dummies, but the haste throws me so far off of my rotation that eventually, I just find myself casting whatever comes up after a certain point, whereas blood has a definitive rotation taht you can stick to constantly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

JALbert

Blood is the definitive answer. 15% more damage at the cost of having to clip out the worst abilities in your rotation. Also, Unholy fails to benefit as fully from haste on your gear since you're already GCD capped, whereas with haste and raid buffs Blood can speed up the GCD.

 

Richie Daggers Crime

On boss fights, yes, the talent is basically useless. But, in AOE situations, it's useful to squeeze another HB onto diseased targets without having to burn a blood rune on Pestilence. For a 44/27 build, Epidemic is always a waste since you get a death rune from Pestilence, but for a 32/39, it's pretty useful, especially for people that do a lot of heroics and dungeons.

 

zALDARIs

Because i've read this a dozen times, I've tried to convince myself that Blood is better.
So i've tried many times against dummies to use the same things with both presences and I always do better DPS with Unholy Presence during my 3min tests.

I get the best DPS when I'm in Unholy Presence and cast DC anytime no rune is up and I have 40+ RP so I use all the RP I get.
Never a test with Blood presence and casting DC at the end of rotation got better DPS for me.

So I'm wondering is it the fact that it's again a heroic dummy with no raid buffs that is in favor to Unholy presence.
But I don't understand how would a presence be better against dummy and not in raid.



I also have another question.

At the beginning I was using what everyone seems to call the best rotation :
PS>IT>HB>BS>BS
PS>IT>HB>IT>IT

But I have better results with this (with epidemic):
PS>IT>BS>HB>BS
HB>IT>IT>HB

Converting IT+PS to HB+1 free GCD is a nice DPS increase imo.
Anyone tested both and can explain why the most popular is the 1st one ?


One more question why people take PS Glyph when PS hit for peanuts.
We have 2 BS in our rotation that is for two times PS damage and Desecration, why not take BS Glyph ?

 

Flamingcloud

Well I got 6000 dps as 32/39 on multiple fights last night (and a 5800 on pw) playing dps for the first time in wotlk(normally tank). I don't think there was a single fight that I did my rotation anywhere near perfect on. So if there is an advantage to the spec it is that you can face roll your way to the top of the meters on single target fights, and are basically a God on multitarget.

I would definitely recommend a dual wield spec to any dk starting to dps, rotation is not nearly as important as it is with the 2H builds. The spec is heavily based around auto-attack, pet attack, ghoul attack, and other things which are not affected by a poorly done rotation.

 

thinkrevolutionx

Ok, I got a second last laugh last night - I didn't really test too long because I needed to go to bed. However, I did some quick tests just to see how the second laugh stacked up and also how unholy and blood worked out (presence) this is with bone shield and HoW only on the non-boss target dummy. This is standard 32/39 only 1 filler point in desecration.

LL = last laugh AD = Angry dread

AD / LL - Unholy - 2800 DPS

LL / LL - Blood - 3000 DPS

AD / LL - Unholy - 2950 DPS

LL / LL - Blood - 3085 DPS

That being said, in my own experience at least it seems blood slightly edges out unholy. It would also likely be moreso in a raid environment because of bloodlust and its effect on GCD's on boss fights wherein unholy is already capped. It also seems that the superior DPS of LL outweighs the loss in offensive stats and in stronger strikes from a slower weapon.

If you guys would like me to do any other tests just let me know, as I know i'm in a pretty unique position to have two of these weapons. Ran those quick tests because I was wondering myself - and spent alot of DKP to get the second one. Seems it was worth it at least.


While i'm here just wanted to ask what someone previous had as well - beyond the melee / special / spell hit cap (295) is there ay use in going higher? I know it will effect OH hit % but thats about it correct? In which case, past the cap I should start stacking str? I'm at about 330 due to my tier shoulders replacing a no hit piece - and I can swap out some hit gems for str.

 

Foxx2405

I'm pretty sure its because of lack of buffs.

Things like Kings / Battleshout / Faerie Fire / Sunder all benefit that much more if your attacks do 115% dmg.
On unholy presence the only thing they are increasing is the white damage.

I think people underestimate the effect of buffs. I mean just notice the difference in DPS between 10 mans and 25 mans, that sometimes differs 1500-2000 dps. And its purely buffs.

Also this is the reason that pretty much any DPS test done on dummies is totally irrelevant. Different specs benefit different from buffs/debuffs.

Also in my opinion we no longer have a real benchmark. Patchwerk has become a zergfest because he's being downed in 2 minutes now. That means that such a person has bloodlust for a good 33% of the fight and had gargoyle up for 25% of the fight.

That incredibly inflates any build that uses gargoyle or benefits more from haste (read: pets). I realise Patchwork is the best we have, but im secretly hoping for a true new benchmark in Ulduar, A boss that lasts at least 5 minutes so we dont get vastly inflated values anymore.

 

kurokaze

Regarding going higher than the melee/special hitcap:

It increases your Killing Machine procrate and your white DPS. It's absolutely worth getting extra hit. However, it's not worth sacrificing better stats (STR, AP, and haste) for. It's about as useful as crit rating, if I recall the numbers correctly.

Regarding Unholy Presence and dummies:

If you have bad gear and/or buy into the outdated 'haste is bad' crap from before it was known that our pets scale with our haste, and you have a long rotation or high latency, then you'll absolutely hit a point where Unholy Presence seems better on a dummy. The factor that you don't take into account is Wrath of Air Totem. According to some math I did for a similar question on DW Unholy, you need about 13% haste (including WoA) and to use Blood Boil over Blood Strike for that spec to produce a full rotation in 20 seconds in Blood Presence. If you miss this mark by a decent amount - for example, by testing on a dummy without WoA - then Unholy Presence will catch up. There should be one less GCD required for 32/39 variants, but you still need about 5.3% haste in that situation if you use Blood Strike and have 100MS latency. You're right at 5.6%, so if you had a bit more latency or the like, UP could have caught up.

 

dunsparrow

Question: Are you saying that the GCD is affected by haste if we use a spell instead of a strike? Thats all I can derive from your saying that BB should be used over BS. If thats the case, thats pretty interesting, but I was under the impression that haste did not affect the GCD for DKs regardless of the ability used.

Comment: Blizzard included net coding for rune abilities so that your ping will not negatively impact the cooldown of your runes. If you wait 1 second after a rune cools down to use it, it will have a 9 second CD instead of 10 seconds. If you wait 1.5 seconds, it will have an 8.5 second CD. The window on this is open until about 2 seconds after the rune cools down. Since the maximum number of GCDs a 32/39 spec will use is 7 (4 single rune abilities, 1 HB, 2 DCs), you can actually squeeze 7 abilities into a 10 seconds, and take advantage of the net coding to ensure your rotation is static.

Basically, because your GCDs take up 9 seconds on a 6 ability rotation, you have an extra second to play with, so you can use 7 abilities for 10.5 seconds each rotation (taking advantage of the net coding) twice and then only use 6 abilities the next rotation for 9 seconds, and that puts the total time for 3 rotations at 10.5 + 10.5 + 9 = 30 seconds, which is what you want.

If I understood you right about haste reducing the GCD on spells, then that buys you even more time, since a standard rotation uses 3-5 spells. But even so, you're only gaining 1 DC every 30 seconds over someone with 0 haste.

 

Flamingcloud

Yes spells are affected. It isn't obvious at low haste amounts, but check your gcd next time heroism is up and you do the 3x IT part of the rotation.

 

Stein

Did you mistype there? maybe switched a Blood/Unholy?

I'd also like to see a test with LL / AD, if you could. Curious about effects of fast/slow vs. best dps wep in MH.

 

Begotten

I think a lot of DKs gearing up would also like to see this added. Going from starter weapons (The Key/Fang of Truth) I'm unsure which hand is the correction hand to upgrade with a Hatestrike given all the new factors with speed vs. dps, etc.

 

Hidden

I wouldn't draw any conclusions yet, in my guild for example all melees died against patchwerk in the first week after the patch because of some changes that people weren't aware of. There are also quite a few specs that haven't been played by many people yet, an example would be the 21/50 Frost spec with IT spam in Unholy Presence.

 

Xipiu

I'm quite new to dual wielding, and got myself 2 "fast" weapons and tried out the 0/32/39 build.
I've been reading in a lot of posts that a "slow" main hand would be better than a "fast" main hand.
I know it has been explained somewhere in those 70some pages, but i really can't find it.
Can, someone, please, explain why, in numbers, and in which specc a "slow" main hand is better than a "fast" one?

for example, the 0/44/27 build uses Frost Strikes to rune dump. And Frost Strike is weapon damage based, but isn't the damage normalized? (aka, ( wep dps * 2.7 + bonus ) * modifiers )

i also read up that 0/32/39 benefits from a "slow" main hand. I know that pre-nerf a "fast" MH was good due to KM procs

can someone enlighten me?

 

Jeager

I ran a few tests today with my current build of 45/26 and came up with these numbers:

DW - Angry Dread MH (Fallen Crusader) and Maexxna's Femur (Razor Ice)
2h - Betrayer (Fallen Crusader)
All tests were also ran with Sigil of Sigil of the Frozen Conscience.
All tests had garg also casts once.

2h Blood Presence using HB - 2884 DPS
2h Blood Presence using Ob - 2706 DPS
2h unholy Presence using Ob - 2785 DPS
2h Unholy Presence using HB - 2929 DPS

Apperently I did not screenshot my DW tests but Unholy won each time. 2h Unholy using HB was my top. But best DW numbers came to 2800 DPS also, i'll retest them and edit the post. But hope this helps some.

 

kurokaze

Xipiu:

This gets asked far, far too often. We need something definitive. I'll give it a shot:

Dual Wield: Fast vs. Slow

Assumptions

A typical approximation of weapon-based skills used in 20 seconds by any dual-wield spec is 2x Plague Strike, 2x Blood Strike, and 4x RP dump, which may be Frost Strike.

Let's use 4000 AP, capped spell hit (289 rating), and 35% crit. 289 hit rating and NoCS gives us about a 15% missrate on white attacks. Let's say we have 14 expertise, which gives us a 3% dodge rate for a total of 18% avoidance.

We'll use three hypothetical weapons to demonstrate: one 1.5, one 2.0, and one 2.5 speed, all 156.7 DPS. Weapon one hits for 235 listed, weapon two for 313, and weapon three for 392.

White Damage and Friends

White damage itself - and the Necrosis damage that goes with it - is unaffected by weapon speed. I shouldn't have to explain the reasoning behind this, as it's extremely basic.

White damage procs Killing Machine at a base rate of 5 PPM from the mainhand. This gives us per-hit procrates of 2.5%, 3.33%, and 4.167%. Modified for missrate, these become 2.05, 2.733, and 3.4167. Overall procrate becomes identical, however there are more chances for a 'wasted' proc with a fast weapon. Let's say we use our Killing Machine proc an average of 4.5 seconds after it occurs. This means that our fast weapon will swing 3 more times, our medium weapon 2 more times, and our slow weapon 1 more time, before the KM is used. We can approximate the effect of this by modeling KM as a 4.5 second duration buff using the uptime formula from Proc Mechanics : 6.02%, 6.04%, and 6.06% uptimes respectively. The difference in these numbers is small enough that I believe it can safely be ignored. This applies to mainhand only.

White damage procs Blood Caked Blade at a rate of 30%. Blood Caked Strike is a normalized attack that deals 50% weapon damage. Since it is normalized, the attack power contribution to damage is identical for all weapons; only the 79 damage difference between each weapon's listed damage matters. This is further halved by the 50% modifier. Note that unlike last patch, offhand BCB procs will use the offhand's damage range (and damage penalty), so each weapon should be evaluated independently. A simple comparison:

Weapon speed	BCB PPM	Base weapon contribution to BCB damage	AP contribution	Damage per hit	DPS
1.5	12	117.5	343	460.5	92.1
2.0	9	156.5	343	499.5	74.925
2.5	7.2	196	343	539	64.68

Clearly, a fast weapon provides an advantage. This applies to mainhand and offhand.

Strikes
Strikes, as BCB above, are normalized. Since the number of strikes is static, this means that only the base weapon damage contribution matters, and AP can be ignored. A typical rotation as discussed above contains 2 Plague Strikes and 2 Blood Strikes, for a total of 160% damage contribution. The damage delta between weapons is 79, thus the strike damage delta between weapons becomes 126.4. Over 20 seconds, this becomes a 6.32 DPS increase for each .5 seconds slower your weapon is. This applies to mainhand only.

Conclusion - 32/39 and 20/51

Weapon speed	BCB DPS	Strike added DPS over 1.5	Net DPS	Adjusted for armor and Blood Presence
1.5	92.1	0	92.1	84.732
2.0	74.925	6.32	81.245	74.7454
2.5	64.68	12.64	77.32	71.1344

Frost Strike
Frost Strike is normalized 50% weapon damage. I'm not entirely sure how many Frost Strikes a typical rotation has; let's call it four. We thus add 200% damage contribution from the base weapon damage, giving a 158 damage delta between weapons, or 7.9 DPS. Add blood presence and it becomes 9.085 DPS. Adding this to the previous numbers:

Weapon speed	32/39 DPS	44/27 DPS
1.5	84.732	84.732
2.0	74.7454	83.8304
2.5	71.1344	89.3044

Final conclusion
We're talking differences of about 10 DPS here when you're probably doing over 5000. Seriously, it's trivial. Use the best weapons you have, speed or no. Offhand is definitely better fast than slow, and mainhand is probably better fast than slow unless you have Frost Strike. But it's not worth doing stupid shit like using a lower DPS mainhand because it has the right speed.

 

◊ forostie

In AoE situations your Unholy DK would be hitting Pestilence quite often to spread their diseases, so yours would be getting spread also. On top of that point, its unlikely most AoE packs will survive any more than 2 or 3 Howling Blasts anyway. The points are wasted.

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

jstrong

hey guys i am a first time poster long time reader been keeping up with the dw 32/39 thread as i see the numbers you guys are putting out. I keep wondering how lol i am pretty much geared i use :

silent crusader MH and split greathammer OH

rotation:
IT-PS-BS-BS-HB
PS-IT-IT-IT-HB

Armory:Jdeath

i push out 3.5k on trash and around 3.9k on patch < see people doing about 5k on him still wondering how lol
and 5k or 5.5k on thad

any input ??

 

Konata

Frost strike is 60% weapon damage + 150. But that probably won't make too much of a difference.

 

◊ forostie

Your typing hurts to read.

Anyways, the old rotation is still, I find, the best dps.

(first hit on boss should be PS, swap with IT)

This will ensure your rotation is tight, and foolproof even with random Rime procs. Pop Gargoyle when your AP is maxed (Trinkets, RotFC etc) and AOTD off the pull.
IT PS HB BS BS RP
IT PS HB IT IT

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

Khaosknight

Switch around your rotation a bit, as far as I know, casting 3x IT right before an HB is a bad thing, since you want Killing Machine to benefit your hard hitting, non spammable spell, not visa versa.

Maybe something along the lines of


IT PS HB BS BS
IT PS HB IT IT

or something like that.

When I DW I usually use a

Horn of Winter: 10 RP

IT <35 RP> PS <45 RP> DC <5 RP> (DC in between to allow more time for KM proc) HB etc etc.



As far as the big numbers on patchwerk go, those are on really short kills with very well geared guilds (2 minute kills are not uncommon) So heroism/bloodlust etc count for nearly 50% of the fight, causing absurd dps 'inflation'

 

jc-penney

1. 408 hit is overkill, so swap your hit gems for str gems (ignoring most socket bonuses). You lack str, and some crit.
2. Since you have too much hit, you can also change your "Sphere of Dragon Blood" for something else.
3. It's been recommended that people use icy touch sigil from grizzly hills.
4. Mining and herbalism make you live longer, but don't do much for increasing damage.
5. Enchanting your gear always helps.

 

RADRyanD

Got a question about an item for the 0/32/39 builds so far that have had a chance to test it over [Mirror of Truth]. Tonight I just picked up [Fury of the Five Flights]. In terms of weigthed dps increase will the FotFF outdo Mirror Of Truth? I know in some cases where there is a lot of running around that Mirror may be better, but in a standstill fight will it really outscale?