It seems apparent that the "right" solution is just to reduce HB aoe damage, but it seems like they've run out of time to tweak that and are just going to revert to the cooldown instead. The CDs within CDs is very annoying, and I hope at some point they're able to revisit HB damage balance, but this seems like what we get for now.

How does a no-cd HB compare to cleaving HS and UB+WP for aoe? If HB doesn't benefit from FF on the aoe targets, only the primary? With HB at base (non-doubled) damage on aoe targets, does it matter if KM affects the whole thing? Does DnD use affect any of those answers?

It seems pretty clear that "reduce the aoe" is right, but that doesn't provide a useful direction. Putting a cd on HB reduces the aoe damage, so it fits the proposed answer. Doesn't make it an awesome answer.

I quoted Doc's comment about IT being too strong because it seems to be a problem to me. Maybe 0 20 51 spamming IT with no other choice should be a viable build, maybe not. The strength of IT makes it better in many situations with many variants of x 31+ x to spam IT with unused unholy runes. If nothing else, it seems like HB should be strong enough for single target that you'd always want to use it to burn the extra unholy. That was the core of the initial question: What specific changes would make drop Icy Touch enough to prevent IT spam builds from outperforming intelligent HB spam builds? Then you'd need specific changes to insure the aoe damage on HB spam builds was at a sane level.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GC: Howling Blast cooldown not needed

Howling Blast cooldown is 5 seconds now. Apparently without the cooldown DKs were doing more damage than they are now on any fight with more than two mobs even after the KM and Gargoyle nerfs.

From the latest Patch Notes 1/15/09:

Killing Machine: Instead of a chance to be triggered on critical strike, this talent now has a chance to be triggered on each swing based on the swing time of the weapon (slow weapons more likely, fast weapons less likely).

So which one will be better? Slow/Slow, Slow/Fast, or Fast/Fast?

Any thoughts?

looks like slow slow. Especially with new bcb

With this news, and the added fact that Glyph of DnD now helps its pve damage, it looks like dual-wield could probably use this spell now.

Unless it has been confirmed that BCB is no longer normalized, you are 100% incorrect. A normalized attack like BCB will always benefit more from F/F. This has been discussed at length in this very thread.

That said, the benefit a slow mainhand will give to BS and PS *might* outdamage the DPS contribution from a fast MH BCB setup, especially if the BS glyph really can be activated by so many sources next patch.

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?

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