Honestly HB still isn't that bad. If you look above, 0/51/20 gave me the second highest DW DPS, only 30 behind 0/20/51. I was very surprised to see that it's damage was actually pretty comparable to what I was seeing on live. Mind you this is with 100% merciless combat uptime and without full raid buffs. Of course the bigger problem is that it fell behind FS for damage done. That to me means that you would just be far better off using a 2h and Oblit instead of HB. Since oblit was bugged when I did that testing I opted for trying unholy presence instead, and it gave about 200 dps more. In fact, it gave slightly more DPS then 0/32/39 gave me in my comparison test on live. Frost Strike is pretty darn powerful right now.

Here is a screenshot of the recount just because.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...509_005233.jpg

Maybe they upped the ceofficiant on HB. How else could it compare without impurity?

Bind Deatchill and Unbreakable Armor to your IT (Unbreakable appears to consume no GCD)
PS IT IT BB BB UB DC (Subtract 1 IT for UA, add 1 PS or DC)
PS IT IT IT IT DC DC
Repeat.

ya FS is nice now...not used to seeing 5k crits with it with a fast 1hander lol

My first post here, after reading so much here I now try to participate and communicate my ideas...
So for now I made some thoughts about this patch, I just got on the PTR but testing is imho impossible there.

The new 0/20/51:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

And a new 0/51/20:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

New Hybrid Idea 0/27/44 (or 0/28/43):
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

Another new Hybrid 0/30/41 (or 0/31/40):
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

I also like the idea of the new "Unholy Aura" which will cut the CD of our runes... maybe it could be viable to build the next spec around that?

Could look like this 0/23/48:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

As for my thoughts, I think that at least 23 points in Frost are a must have to take "Glacier Rot". And if we think further, it could be that 28 points are the next step to take for "Rime" to maintain a better crit-chance for our IT rotation.

So this may also result in the different Hybrid 0/28/43:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

Or something like that:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

The only thing to test is the new "Improved Unholy Presence". Also, as far as I have been able to test it, BCB seems to become more and more useless. Now only doing about 2% overall damage, even with diseases on target. It may proof better to take "Outbreak", but I think Blizzard won't leave the "new" PlagueStrike that good.

With 3.1 they really give us much to think about...

Edimasta - aka Edurol - DualWield Spellknight Blog

So how much is blood boil hitting for now? Does it's damage increase per disease, or just by the affected being diseased. How does it compare to blood strike with a one hander talented/untalented?

By the way, Edimasta. Were you trying with fast one handers or is the new BCB cooldown shared by both weapons? If so, that pretty much garentees it's not worth getting for dual wield

The problem I am having with the theorycrafting of 3.1 is the fact that what made DW great before was the improvement to our white hit dmg that we got from necrosis and bcb, along with the higher rate of killing machine procs, all of which have now been changed to favor main-hand weapons.

With these changes I can't understand why DW would ever do more, or equal dmg to the same build using a 2H, since the 2H dmg from PS/FS/SS/HS/BS would be higher, and the other befits of DW have seem to gone away. Also the same build using a 2H would require us to gear for less hit.

Why would you want Ghoul Frenzy? Seems completely useless to me, in that, according to mmo-champion at least, it is a channeled spell :S could ofcourse be wrong, but if its channeled I dont see how that would be useful in pve at all. Let alone pvp.

I've been mulling this over and I think I've got two DW builds that work well with the new imp unholy presence.

0/27/44 - Imp Icy Talons

This is the build I would probably take because I do not have an enhancement shaman in my raid but I do have a boomkin or (likely) an unholy DK to provide the 13% spell damage debuff.

0/20/51 - Ebon Plague

This build assumes you have the haste buff from someone else. It takes Ebon Plague but, if your raid already has the spell damage debuff as well, could potentially take Wandering Plague or BCB. At this point Wandering Plague seems like the better investment to me.

Both of these builds assume that imp unholy presence will properly lower your rune CDs to 9 sec. With that in mind you would use the following rotation:

Time Attack RP
1 sec PS 15
2 sec IT 35
3 sec PS 50
4 sec IT 70
5 sec BB (or BS) 80
6 sec BB (or BS) 90
7 sec UB 50
8 sec DC 10
9 sec
10 sec PS 25
11 sec IT 45
12 sec PS 60
13 sec IT 80
14 sec IT 100
15 sec IT 120
16 sec DC 80
17 sec DC 40
18 sec DC 0

Aside from the 1 sec gap you should have a perfect rotation. No runes or RP is wasted. Assuming you are either providing the melee haste or have it in your raid you are standing at 35% total melee haste. I'm unfortunately not on the PTR but I'd love it if someone tested this on a boss level training dummy to see how it compares to blood presence reliant specs.

Hmm, I think I missed it being channeled (quoted above). That would be useless if it indeed is. I want my stupid copy to finish so I can see for myself.

Any thought on my Rime comments?

There are two main reasons to keep working out these builds, in my mind:

1. People want to DW
2. With the way DW scales it may still be able to put out competative DPS

As for the hit, it's not hard to come by and unholy and frost 2 hand builds still greatly benefit from the spell hit cap.

Well the 15% extra crit to icy touch in an icy touch specc isnt bad for 3 talent points I think... I always got it for my howling blast speccs.

But I just dont think that IT specc, even with the extra dps from new PS, is going to do any kind of dmg. Especially seeing as you might aswell go with a 2hdr. Icy Touch does not do more dmg if your DW. However, PS will do a lot more dmg with a 2hdr. Necrosis DPS will also, more or less, be equal, and BCB is better with a 2hdr now.

I am looking at this build Talent 0/18/53

PS / SS spam is what I am looking to test. This build will helps use the bonus from our T7 set and I would change my sigil from the IT to SS one.

Sigil of Awareness
Equip: Increases the damage dealt by your Scourge Strike and Obliterate abilities by 420.

Rotation would look something like this:

PS -> IT -> SS -> BB -> BB -> UB -> RP Dump
PS -> PS -> SS -> PS -> IT -> RP Dump

Blood Boil and Unholy Blight will be my aoe dps.

If I find that DW is doing less damage than 2h, I will just take those points out of Frost and put them in Blood and hang up my 1h weapons...

But, since SS and ps, both are based on weapon dmg, they will do more dps, and so will u in effect, with a 2hdr. As such your best pick would also be BS over BB in non aoe situations.

Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? It may certainly be true, but you can't just profess it's truth.

The reality is that weapon based special attacks are not the only form of damage DKs have, so it's not as simple as you claim.

True, but with Icy Talons my swing will be faster and my white damage will be more. I am stilling waiting for my DK to get copied over to the PTR. I will have to see which is better. If they balance out to be about the same, I will stick with DW since I like that play style. However if by taking those points and putting them into Blood with a 2h I do much more damage, well then unless I see an alternative I will be going 2h.

The description of the spell being channeled is a bit confusing.

You hit the spell, it activates, but the channeling portion behaves like the Hunter pet ability Lick Wounds.

The pet channels, it doesn't require the master to turn and channel the spell.

The logic is that the parts of your damage that are weapon based will likely see better results with a harder hitting weapon, and the parts of your damage that aren't weapon based will be the same if you're dw or 2h. Until the PTR patch, we still had talents catering to dw (Necrosis/bcb/whatever) that made it a nonissue.

Yes I agree with you, however the way Blizzard screwed up the Frost tree IMHO I have a feeling it would gimp my overall dps to lose all those talents in the unholy tree just to pick up Imp Icy Talons. Alot of these builds will be really hard to test in a raid. The test dummies are the only way for us to somewhat figure out what works.

Few points I wanted to make:

First one is that for the folks considering the baseline ghoul, I may just be fortunate with having great healers, but as 0/44/27 the only boss my ghoul dies on is Sapphiron (and sometimes Kel and Sarth if I don't get him out of the voids in time). Paying careful attention to him and hitting passive at just the right time to "leash" him does wonders for his survivability. Not to mention, you get a 2nd shot usually since your timer is up. Also, I'm 0/52/19 on the PTR and his respawn timer is down to 2 minutes; not sure how long that will last or if it will permanently, but I have never seen ghoul survivability as quite the issue most posters think (or experience it) it to be. Like someone here said not long ago, with the new gear in Naxx and so on, NotD is almost overkill. I concede none of us know exactly how much AoE damage will be in Ulduar, but I just wanted to stick that in everyone's brains. You can always ask your healers to put their UI to set pets on their grid.

Second point, was that GC responded a couple more times today to the DW Dismantling thread I've been trying to keep up to date here:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - DW Entirely Dismantled - Intended?

He says HB is not done, and that they're looking for feedback since the talents and so on are not done. So it's our job to put it in their ear that we may be in a bad way right now.

Last point, this post:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - DK Frost Blood of the North

BotN will be 3/3 points for any of those theorycrafting new specs. I also found it interesting the blue says "these" are known issues. I think we'll still see some rebalancing of DW and Howling Blast in particular as long as we stay in their face about it.

i'd love to test ptr if i'd stop getting critical errors when i try to log in

This morning I tried to test ... was a bit laggy, but OK.

0/20/51
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9626

5 minutes test
Unholy Presence active
selfbuffed with HoW
Ghoul
2x Gargoyle
Slow / Fast with UC / Razorice

Rotation:
PS-IT-BS-UB-BS-IT-DC
PS-IT-IT-DC-IT-IT-DC (Ghoul Frenzy when ready)

Recount showed:
Infight ~ 2400 DPS
After ~2301 DPS


(sorry - only german client)

1. Icy touch 28.4%
2. Melee 28%
3. DeathCoil 9%
4. Unholy Blight 7.4%
5. Frost Fever 7%
6. Blood Plague 7%
7. Plague Strike 4.7%
8. Blood Strike 4.2%

A 2nd 5 minutes test
Blood Presence active
selfbuffed with HoW
Ghoul
2x Gargoyle
Slow / Fast with UC / Razorice

Recount showed:
Infight ~ 2500 DPS
After ~2328 DPS


(sorry - only german client)

1. Icy Touch 28.9%
2. Melee 27.1%
3. Frost Fever 8.4%
4. DeathCoil 7.8%
5. Blood Plague 7.6%
6. Unholy Blight 6.5%
7. Necrosis 4.3%
8. Plague Strike 4.2%

It was a bit rough to play due to the bad latency... there should be some more DPS I think, but I am unsure that it can keep up with Live at the moment. In Blood Presence you clearly do more DPS infight but you really feel the difference in the global CD and rune CD when using Unholy Presence.

Hopefully this helps you a bit!