Along with sarth 3D (a test of many of dps's skills), patchwerk is about the best test of dps we can muster, with raid synergy and everything and everyone working together to push things to the max. . What is your measure of how dps works? Please stop posting about this. We are testing dual wield builds in raids. Once we get some solid numbers, we can accurately look at raiding specs, 2H or not. You are just being antagonistic and not productive.

What I'm trying to say is you could find a build that does better DW DPS than 2H DPS with the same spec, BUT the DPS is sub 2k. This is not a good build to choose obviously. What I'm basically saying is we need to make sure it is at least somewhat close to 2H DPS builds if not surpassing. I'm not trying to be antagonistic even if I come off as that, I'm just trying to make sure we don't lose sight of the big picture. We have to have some standards for the DPS/Build we do put out.

This IS what we are trying to do. But, until we get into raids with these builds we won't see their true potential. Now, we are simply theorycrafting and looking at potential builds. Nothing wrong with this at all. Of course the goal is to be competitive with 2H builds. Some of the screwy numbers coming from builds on the PTR are just that, screwy, because of bugged talents and mechanics. We won't know until these are fixed and we can go into raids. Nevermind the fact that blizz has said the trees are not done yet. So, its all a work in progress, and we understand that. But, it doesn't stop us from trying! So, lets stop beating the dead horse and get back to it!

Impurity was the main reason for my trying this spec; and yes, a shammy would help it greatly. Of all the things I've tried so far, its really growing on me, sans the (too simple) rotation--but that can be an advantage in its own right for complex fights, like Sarth 3d.

I lagged out pretty badly several times during the test which resulted in UB falling off... which probably accounts for its relatively low damage. I did try FC/FC and got slightly lower dps than FC/RI. I do not have a second lvl 213 slow weapon but between your test and mine looks like FC/FC is better for S/S while FC/RI works for S/F. Or it could all just be RNG at work, the results are fairly close after all.

Ahhh, I forgot about the whole screwy mechanics so that could explain my question that I asked earlier about Weapon strikes and DW. I completely overlooked that, but it still wouldn't be a bad idea to just test it out. I would do it but I keep getting the patching bug where that one file is corrupted or whatever and whenever I try doing a clean wipe and reinstall, it keeps happening.

Might I suggest that you remove the 2 points in merciless combat and put them in imp. Unholy Presence. It might result in a bigger DPS boost for you since you dps in Unholy Presence.

Where is your proof? Where is the testing you have done, posted builds, posted screen shots that show the dps using both DW and 2h, using the same presence, same weapon buffs, attacking the same target, etc that 2h dps is so much superior then DW? Your comments are flawed and incorrect.

I am trying to understand why people keep bring this topic up on almost every page of the DW forum ever since the PTR was available. It is like you don’t want us to use DW so you make these comments to discourage others from using it? You offer no proof to back up any of your claims, but only offer options and conjecture. With ever build we explore, most of us are testing both DW and 2h and we are finding they do almost the same DPS.

I will say this again, Blizzard made a post stating this. If DW does less damage than 2h, they will adjust things to make them all equal. All the matters are the final dps number on the boss. Who cares how we accomplish that goal. If you prefer to use a 2h, then by all means use a 2h weapon, but please stop making these comments, they are just not true. Those of us who prefer to use DW will continue to do so and enjoy that play style while producing the same dps as a 2h play style.

I tried this for 30 minutes, didn't get past the 2700 dps mark. Merc is better, also theres a post on the page 92 I believe that shows that I lose only 50 dps when merc combat isn't in use. I know what your saying, I would think there would be a dps increase but there wasn't. I also had to wait like .5 to 1 second for me to use my next skill, alot of the time I was sitting. That what probably hurt me that .5 to 1 second of sitting and couldn't get a cast in

How about something like this:

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

Remove 2 points from plague strike talent and put them in the talent that increases runic power for IT.

With this build you should be generating a lot of runic power and with the death coil glyph to reduce its cost to 32 you should be able to fill the 0.5-1 sec delay with another death coil. I have reduced the points in plague strike, but that is because I think another death coil in your rotation would be a bigger dps increase than the 2 points in the plague strike talent. Of course I might be wrong, but it should work in my opinion.

The glyphs you should be using are "Icy Touch" "Ghoul" and "Death Coil"

I think the new patch very much favors blood builds. If you look at what DW'ing gives you over TwoH, you see physical damage. If you take bloody vengeance, Icy Talons, a massive boost to physical damage. I have made a spec that looks like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight

Very very simple rotation, just IT > PS > BS > (dump) > IT > PS > BS > (dump)... keeping UB up of course.
Now, on the ptr I do not have 1k g to blow on glyphs, so I have not optimized this build, but you would you UB, DC, IT glyphs.

The idea behind this is generate RP through IC as PS to use a cheap DC, keep cheap UB up, and faceroll IT > PS > BS.

I can link a screenshot as soon as I am able to get on the ptr =)

Your spec did much better than the one you posted earlyier, I was capable of maintaining of being above 2.8k and staying stable above it. Tested the spec for 4 mins and 40 seconds. Heres a screenshot of the data. Used rotation PS PS IT IT BB BB UB DC PS PS IT DC IT IT IT DC DC I was capable of getting another death coil in the rotation.
If thers any other adjustments or anything you want to add, I am willing to test more specs.

I like this build so far, but I changed a few things. I removed 1 more point from Outbreak and put it into Crypt Fever and took those points out of Runic Power Mastery and put them in Toughness. Toughness seems to offer more of a benefit. Using the glyphs Bone Shield, Ghoul and Icy Touch I seem to do about the same dps as I do on live with my 0/31/40 build with the un-nerfed HB. I would probably change the Glyph Bone Shield to Death Coil when these changes go live.

Talent 0/32/39

Why would you get toughness? It gives us no benefit besides more armor and less duration of snare effects on us. While runic power will let us cast more DC to help boost our damage. Toughness could help us get to our targets quicker I guess...But no bonus to damage output. and IMO outbreak would put out more damage than one point into crypt fever, This is my two sense on that spec, I'm not trying to attack you, I'm just trying understand what your doing <3 much love

I find Toughness offers my play style more benefit than RPM. I pvp alot and I never seem to reach the 100 Runic Power while keeping UB and casting DC. I tried both 2 points into Outbreak and 1 point in Outbreak and 1 points into CF and my dps seemed to increase with 1 in Outbreak and 1 in CF. Just a different flavor of the same build tweaked to my play style.

On a side note, I tried this build:

Talent 0/42/29

I transferred over another copy of my DK with the Frost, IT and PS glyphs so I didn't have to buy them on the PTR. I used the rotations...

PS -> IT -> PS -> IT -> BB -> BB-> RP Dump
PS -> IT -> PS -> IT -> IT -> IT-> RP Dump

and I found I am doing almost 200 more dps on the PTR than on Live with IT and FS being my top dps abilities. It is almost the same as the build 0/32/39, same rotation, same presence, but the focus is going deep into Frost to pick up FS and using that instead of DC.

This is similar to the build we were advocating before. The problems with your build are two-fold.

1. You take icy talons, but not improved icy talons. So, you miss 5% haste from the talent and it gets overridden if you have a frost DK or hance shammy in your group. Essentially 5 wasted points. Sure a build without it will do worse on a dummy, but that is because you are missing this key buff, which we account for when looking at builds like these.

2. You are missing 2 key elements to the build that makes it so your icy touch can make up a little bit for the lack of a big 2 rune strike. a) you have not filled up black ice and b) (much more importantly) you have skipped impurity, which is basically essential for the build to work, as much of your damage needs to come from IT and DC.

Other than these shortcomings, this type of build works well because it emphasizes white damage AND spells, which are the strengths of DW, which is why I am thinking of testing http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9626 in raid.

The 2% static to strength is quite a good reason to be taking these two talent points, even if you do have another raid member putting up 10% AP. If you do not, in these specs, you put up AM 75% of the time, still a very nice boost. Basically, the rule will be, BS if you have no one else putting up the buff (enhance shammy, blood DK, hunter), otherwise bloodboil.

If you were quoting me and my rough (and I mean very very rough) napkin math, That was just a ballpark idea of the DPS lost. Let's do some quick math from the numbers I used before to see how much of a DPS gain it is.

35 is 65% of 54 for ITs without Merc
19 ITs with Merc
19*3015= 57285 DMG for 19 IT at the Norm for before
57285/1.12=51147 Damage without Merc
57285-51147=6138
6138/188=32 DPS increase for a non-Merc test to a theoretical test with the correct(I say this very loosely) number of IT's getting merc.

That's 16DPS per point. Do you think that could be spent anywhere else is the question. This is different with the DPS increase is raids of course.

Also, How often were you sitting in a standard 20 sec(18 if you have Imp UP) rotation?

Here's my proof: The tooltips of your abilities and the patch notes. I don't need to go run tests on the PTR and screenshot them to tell you that melee hunter is inferior to a ranged spec.

Strikes do significantly more damage with a 2H. Do you dispute this?

The DW white damage and white damage from abilities is no longer significantly greater than 2H. Necrosis now favors 2H. BCB is a bit trickier, but either way it lost a lot of damage, and was a case where DW was coming out on top. Straight white damage advantage is negligible now that necrosis favors 2H. Do you dispute this?

There is no feasible rotation that completely removes strikes. Do you dispute this?

Spell damage is weapon indifferent. White damage is now weapon indifferent, or the difference is close to negligible compared to STRIKE DAMAGE. As per my last point, you WILL be using Plague strike at least. Again, do you dispute this?

Your Total Damage is a sum of white strikes, spell damage and physical strikes. TD = WS + SD + PS. WS and SD are weapon indifferent. PS immensely favors 2H. Therefore the is no advantage to dual wield.


What builds do I need to post? Every build favors 2H. Logically. Unless someone can come up with tests showing otherwise AND a reason for this discrepancy, I have no reason to believe otherwise. You claim I'm trying to discourage people from Dual Wielding. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've DWed since 58, and have had no intention on changing that for PvE. At the moment, I don't believe that there's any way the current PTR will hit Live without DW receiving some form of buffs, because I've posted exhaustively on the topic on the WoW forums, and GC has quoted me repeatedly while dodging the questions. Until we have some form of idea of how DW will get an advantage over 2H,
there's no point in trying to theorycraft for a strictly inferior option. You can feel free to work on caster specs all you want, we just know at the moment that they will still favor a 2H.


As for testing, while I haven't done any personally, let me direct you to the thread on the issue with Blue response: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> DW Entirely Dismantled - Intended? It doesn't get interesting until page 11+, I'd sort of recommend jumping in there unless complaints from people who don't understand the issue is your thing.

People there are posting that the expected difference between 2H and DW in builds that favor DW as much as they can is roughly 500 DPS raid buffed, or higher.

What I find funny is the test server has been out for what a couple of days now and people like you are already professing 2h is king of dps. We all know things will change many times before they are released but some are acting like every change you see now is set in stone.

Yes I dispute a lot of what you are saying and yes I have a build and a rotation that doesn’t use one strike but I am tired of derailing this thread again and again to prove my point which I have done over several pages now and I won’t do it again. This is the DW thread, If you want to use a 2h, then by all means do so, but you might find the discussion more to your liking in one of the 2h threads.

Here we talk about ways to improve our dps via DW and will continue to do so no matter how many naysayers come him giving their options that 2h is so much better than DW. Personally I really don’t care anymore, I know what I have tested and I will continue to DW. You can continue this discussion but I won’t wasting any more time replying to a topic that has been beating to death.

I was really hoping to wait until I had my hands on the new glyphs, which are integral to this theorycraft. But since everyone's at each other's throats, I'll give you guys a ray of hope.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9626 Is a pheasable dual wield spec.

Glyph of Howling Blast (hopefully applies diseases BEFORE damage).
Glyph of Death Coil
Glyph of (Ghoul? maybe, he has 33% uptime ptr atm). Take your pick.

Maybe I overlooked it but NOBODY is posting this vital information: blood boil does DOUBLE damage to diseased targets, and it's hitting for around 800-1k for me, depending on procs.

In Blood Presence, your rotation is Howling Blast, Blood Boil, Death Coil...that's it, do that every 5 seconds.
Butchery generates 2 RP every 5 seconds. Howling Blast gives you 20. Blood Boil Gives you 10. 32 RP, perfect for death coil.

Your rotation has at least 20 yd range, ignores armor, is buffed by all AP and Spell Hit/Crit effects, and magic damage vulnerabilities. This includes: Improved Scorch-type, Boomkin Aura-type, and Ebon PlagueBearer-type buffs you would otherwise not benefit from. This rotation favors itemization that completely ignores expertise in it's entirety, even though it gives you 5, leaving you room for more strength crit and haste.

Unbreakable Armor is now an effective 8.3% increase in strength, and an easy /cast /stopcast /cast macro can allow you to cast it any time you want with Blood Tap. This spec does not use death runes, and honestly, blood boil is strong enuf now that it's not all that important it gets them (atleast until HB is buffed back if at all).

I'll be the first to admit this will likely not be the best DPS spec under current 3.1 statistics. But I'll give you guys a mathematical comparison to Live.

Live - Major
+25% Spells Impurity
+12% White as shadow. Was already main hand only, test on like urself. Based on damage already mitigated by armor.
+15% White from BCB. Normalized to favor faster weapons. Slightly more if you had a 3rd disease.
+100% Howling Blast Bonus
Ghoul dps.

3.1 -
+10% All spells on diseased targets.
+08.3% Strength, Effectively 8.3% Spell dmg and white dmg, give or take.
+45% HB Criticals
+50% HB Damage.(down from 100)
Blood Boil hits about twice as hard on diseased targets.
1m of 3m-cd Ghoul

Overall, you lose dependancy on expertise (less dps scales from DW), our Howling Blasts are cut by about 1/3, and blood boil hits harder. As a result, damage is, yes, lower than before. How respectable it is I simply cannot test without getting my hands on those glyphs.

Positive notes: This spec/rotation is excellent for tanking options and pvp and LOOKS to be king of AOE in it's current state. You don't have a ghoul or gargoyle to worry about anymore.

My guess is bliz will realize what's missing from specs that take HB and give it back 100% bonus dmg to fever'd targets. This alone would make the spec truly viable without scaling viciously high on white damage. Unfortunately, and contrary to previous blizzard intentions, it will be the only DW spec that 2H probobly couldn't do better.

Actually pretty sure white damage scales far better with DW, assuming you drop Necrosis and BCB in favour of pure AP, as does spell damage when you consider RI/CG off-hand enchants. The trick is to find some way to capitalize on these factors more-so then is already being done because at the moment the loss ~65% physical and 10% frost doesn't seem enough to stop the massive strike favourability.

Let's try and keep the ALL CAPS and general sense of conviction out of the perfectly reasonable discussion.

Ok, let's take a look.
Not bad, though...
pretty sure this has been posted
Pretty sure you're 1-off their chuck, but this can be amended by swapping 1 HB for IT.
Problem with haste here is that you're wasting it by leaving 0.5s + 3*(1.5*Haste%) open until your next HB unless you swap it for IT.
Bare in mind that doing so will off-set your run cooldowns an extra 1.5-(1.5*Haste%) seconds.
You forgot 10% frost from OH.
I sincerely hope they do restore some of the HB Damage now that it's a 51 pt. talent with an infuriating 5s cooldown.
A few key features with this spec are broken though, Bladed Armour and Toughness though looking pretty together do not represent a significant AP boost (~20 per point in Toughness). Thanks to RI in the offhand FS with a slow MH will do ~30% more damage per RP and also requires no expertise. And as it stands, IT damage is almost on-par with HB damage however IT has no cooldown, uses only 1 run, generates more RP per cast and has a higher crit rate available from Frost talents.

Consider This Spec Running
PS - IT - IT - BB - BB - BT/UA/Cancelaura - FS - FS - FS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - FS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - FS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - PS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - FS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - FS
IT - IT - IT - BB - FS - FS - PS

I have been playing with two builds very similar to this one all weekend. I found the nerf to Howling Blast was a bit much. I hope that Blizzard puts back the old Howling Blast but leaves it at a 51 talent. Then it might be worth it. For now it doesn't seem worth it.

I did however find a combination of Unholy Blight and Tundra Stalker produced the highest dps so far for me of all the DW builds I have tested on the lvl 83 boss dummy.

The build looks like this:

Talent 0/50/21


If I wanted AoE and PvP, I think Blood Boil would work better than Blood Strike. I would take Impurity and Reaping instead of Guile of Gorefiend and Tundra Stalker. I found if I position myself to where Blood Boil could hit multiple targets, my dps shot up by a lot. This would work very well on raid trash and in pvp but on a single target my dps decreased by about 100.

The build looks like this:

Talent 0/42/29

Unless something drastically changes I will most like go with these two builds. One for raiding and maybe one for PvP and changing some of the glyphs around to help in PvP like the Blood Boil glyph, etc.