He is using BS on a single target which gives him 75% uptime on AM.

Also, I decided to test a variant of this build in an actual raid on live. Since my guild is working on sarth 3D, we are only allowed to PuG VoA and I didn't want to bring a test spec into a raid like that. So I went into a PuG VoA with this spec:

32/13/26

similar to what we are proposing, but points into BCB instead of outbreak, and glacier rot instead of toughness. Also, points into SoD and MoG so no gargoyle (UB on PTR).

Same rotation as we are proposing in unholy presence: IT PS BS DC ad nauseum.

Had strength food, icy talons was being put up by another DK but abom's might was being put up by me, no enhance shammy or MM hunter. Str buffed my pet but he died 30 seconds in. Brought him up again and he lasted for another 45 seconds. No flask or elixir. Did not use a potion during the fight. Army was summoned on pull.

Here is the result on melee unfriendly VoA, fight time: 3 mins, 48 seconds.

click here for Recount SS


A little lower than I hoped (with 33/38 I do 3900-4000 unflasked). But, take it as you will. My hit was lower than I would have liked at 250. I will try next time with slow/slow to make sure my hit is capped.

edit: put the image onto a better site. Using [Angry Dread]/[Widow's Fury] with FC/CG

Hard to see smth on your screen, too small

edited the post above for a better image :P

As I said with my post I had been hitting 3 targets. Rough napkin math would mean ~50% of my bloodboil damage was dealt to the other 2 targets, so I cut it out to 3800 from 4460.

I had AotD, which contributed to about... 500 dps ish sustained, then ghoul contributing 9% of the inflated damage with blood boil (likely closer to 12% ish), which would be roughly 450 dps, so that puts me, without a ghoul or aotd, to about ~2850 ish, which seems to be about the numbers most individuals are pushing. 3,100 to 3,300 dps it seems like from the slightly better geared individuals, the difference of 50-150 dps could be contributed to better RNG, but that is why I went to 2.5m damage as a means of stabilizing burst damage output.

I will say my test is far from the norm, with a ghoul out I normally put out 2980-3200 ish, that image I posted was a very good parse for myself.

I still feel that there is little to no hope at the current time for DW dps in Ulduar. Even using poorly itemized gear and a horrid 2 hander (cleaver) I am consistently pushing 3300 ish dps as 51/1/19 without AotD. Throw on a betrayer and itemize appropriately for 2H and bam, you could see another 400-500 dps increase, pushing 4k sustained on the test dummy fairly easily.

I have been thinking of going with this spec for 3.1:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Rotation:
OB-IT-PS-BB-BB UB RP dump
BB-BB-BB-BB-IT-PS RP dump
repeat the sequence

The blood points are to buff BB and get some decent white dmg boosters
Frost for NoCS
Unholy for Impurity and slight BCB necrosis boost

figure a slow/fast with FC/FC or FC/CG

Has this spec been tested on the PTR yet and if so what are its numbers?

The point of the spec being to go for spell dmging abilities over strikes and keeping the diseases up for max BB dmg. using UB seems from every post i have read to be a slight increase to dps over a DC if kept up. With the blood points letting you get AM right away and hysteria for dmg boost along with the extra crit and other melee boosters seems like there is some potential for this to be the new 32/39 except using BB instead of IT for the spam and going away from frost dmg based spells to shadow based...

Let me know what you guys think on this idea...

I like the idea, but i would change few things:


-4 points in Icy Talons? If you have Ench Shammy or other DK you could spent them for something more useful - 3/3 Veteran of Third War or Black Ice.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

I think you are right kudzupo in not geting BCB and puting the points into extending diseases. I wanted to clarify one thing about the rotation i was sugesting, the OB was in it strictly to get AM up and convert 2 runes into deathrunes not as a dmg producer. Thus if you follow the rotation your 2nd OB consumes the diseases which are then immediately reapplied to buff BB once more. I know AM will fall off and not have 100% up time, but it should stay up for most of the BB spamming part of the rotation which was the point. I think you are also right about using UP instead of BP for the faster rune cooldown.

The Reason i was taking Icy talons was cause our guild is not runing with and enhance shammy atm.

So with your guys ideas i am thinking something like:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I figure with the new DC glyph your RP dump might be something like: UB DC 1st dump, DC DC DC 2nd dump, then repeat.

I can see where you are going with this, but I have some concerns with using up 2 runes simply to "buff" an ability that is already "meh". AM probably has a better effect on IT then it would on BB, especially if you drop points into black ice (which you would if you don't take icy talons). You cannot perform this rotation in unholy presence seamlessly, which is another concern, and if you are in blood, then AM falls off before your intended goal of having it up for all BB's (in fact it falls off before you finish your first BB in the second part of the rotation). Ideally then, you would need to switch to BS. But then, you fall into the trap of having too many runes on talents that would be more ideal for a 2H. I did test 32/13/26 using both rotations, one with OB first and only once, and one with OB twice. Using BB, making sure it was only on 1 target. Both results were underwhelming...Keeping the rotation up was a bit difficult, in unholy presence i managed to get myself up to around 2300 and in blood i was hitting up to about 2600 using oblit twice. Using oblit only once was substantially worse. I was only able to use the PS, IT and ghoul glyphs, so switching to an oblit and/or DC glyph would certainly see some increase in dps, although marginal. But certainly I think IT PS BS (or BB if someone is putting up 10% AP) DC in unholy still outperforms this.

edit: sorry to clarify i tried oblit once in rotation with 32/13/26 and oblit twice in rotation with 32/13/26

hi there ppz.since the very first post i have been following this thread.as in 3.0.8 i am using the ownage HB spec.since in 3.1 blizz nerfing mostly HB spec but totally dw, we all are trying to come up with some new and creative builds.

i tried over 10 different specs and yet there are 5 specs that i could not try cuz of BotN,it is not giving death runes as far as i know.beside these,i noticed that almost all of the spec tests are being run in ebon hold where is crowded like hell with tons of diseases.i am not sure those dps values that close to reality.i am using other cities heroic dummies for spec tests.

anyway...i saw desecration is being taken by all unholy builds.i think i had read on some blue post all dks standing on desecrated area gonna benefit it and since no stacking which means in stationary fights 1 unholy dk will be ok and in mobile fights we already will not be able to stand even on our own desecrated area.the other thing is that ebon plage gonna stack for %3 dmg increase.i need confirmation on these two points.

for another matter, almost all HB specs currently have imp icy talons or any other frost dps specs..we all know it gives constant %5 haste to ourselves.now,around %12 haste is the optimum gear stat for dw.so,if we do not get imp icy talons does it mean we have to rise our haste rating by %5 which is almost equal 165 rating?just did a small test for 2mins 5sec; with imp icy talons 176 swings and w/o imp icy talons 170 swings.

after these subjests i want to share all the specs i tested with their dps in different cities but ebon hold.i will post here those which i found better useablity and competative dps.btw i did not use racial,hystria,gargoyle,trinket,any raid buff,any class buff if i have in that spec.you may do higher dps cuz,i think, i was infront of the dummy not at his back.so i got dodge/parry and i have latency like 90 all the time.

0-27-44 2650dps unholy pre

10-23-38 2.5k dps unholy pre

37-8-26 2.3k dps unholy pre

32-13-26 2.4k dps (prlly) unholy pre

29-16-26 2.4k dps (prly) unholy pre

i am going to test today;

38-33-0 both in blood and unholy

0-20-51 old IT spec

i am waiting blizz to fix BotN to test;

0-45-26 unholy pre

26-45-0 both in blood and unholy pre

0-52-19 unholy pre

15-56-0 unholy pre

i also have a small macro for those who are using ghoul frenzy;

/castsequence [target=target] Ghoul Frenzy(Rank 10), Plague Strike(Rank 6).

this macro forces ghoul to go frenzy when you have an unholy rune+when cd is rdy, in other times you cast PS.

all the specs are basicly IT+IT+PS+PS+BS+BS+rune dump with UB and/or DC and in 2nd run if you have death runes convert BS->IT rest is same i think.

Prior to the mentioning here, I was also playing with a similar BB focused tri spec on the ptr. I have noticed some mention of numbers in the 3.8k+ range and I am going to say BB was likely hitting more than one target with those numbers, the reasoning is simply because I too was able to reach this in Ebon Hold and close to it in Silvermoon where I also saw that BB was hitting more than one target. I ran this spec on multiple dummies, multiple times, the best place to be certain you are only hitting one target is in Thunderbluff as the Heroic dummy is LOS of the other ones on Hunter rise. In my tests I found the average dps to be 2.5k trying both fast/fast and slow/fast (fc/fc)

32/8/31Rotation: OB,PS,IT,BB,UB,BB, BB,BB with DC weaved in and rinse repeat.
Personal notes from the BB build is dps is steady with no burst.
I would also love to see numbers from a BB build from a 25man patchwork type fight.

I attempted several other dw specs and found most pushed a dps average of 2.5k (including deep unholy and other hybrid, and tri specs), the numbers closest to live, was a deep frost (0/51/20) build, with this I was pulling an average of 3k dps on the heroic dummy with fast/fast, fc/cg (last laugh/hailstorm)
(just as a note: AotD was not used in any test).
I haven’t been on the ptr lately and these test were done a while ago, but if I find time I may test some again to get screenshots.

Interesting idea. Here's my version with some tweaks.
Wowhead - 31/13/27
Traded 1/2 Runic Mastery for 4/5 Toughness
Dropped Icy Talons, Master of Ghouls, Scent of Blood, and Hysteria
Picked up Rune Tap, more VotTW, Annihilation, and Epidemic

Things I'm hazy on:
1) No Master of Ghouls = Gimped DPS: Pet ghouls are nice, but w/o frenzy there's still a lot of areas where he dies. What do you all think?
2) Toughness > Runic Mastery: I like AP but would the runic power translate into more DPS? If so, then why not go 2/2 Runic Mastery?
3) Annihilation: Correct me if I am wrong but if we're trying to BB mobs to death wouldn't retaining diseases and buffing the Oblit damage (by having diseases on beforehand) be nice?
4) Rune Tap vs. Scent of Blood: Getting AoE'd into some more runic power vs. self healing against said AoE. Opinions?
5) Hysteria: I want it, where's fat I can cut?

Edit:
6) 3/3 Morbidity vs. 2/3 and Hysteria: Input?
Wowhead - 32/13/26

Just a thought, Since PS does more damage the more diseases that are on, shouldn't 32/13/26 and other variants use a rotation as such to maximize PS damage:

OLD ROTATION:
PS>PS>IT>IT>BB/BS>BB/BS>UB>DC
PS>PS>IT>IT>BB/BS>BB/BS>DC>DC

NEW ROTATION:
IT>IT>PS>PS>BB/BS>BB/BS>UB>DC
IT>IT>PS>PS>BB/BS>BB/BS>DC>DC

This just seems more optimal when you think about it (at least to me).

Yes and I have been using the latter.

Okay i got on a ptr to test out my idea.
First off i would like to thank everyone for there input and ideas they are really helping.
Now to the fun stuff...

I tried out the spec they way i have it posted with posted rotation. kyruski is right in that the rotation doesn't work but i used it anyway to test things out for future tweaks.

I was only able to get out about 2100 dps on heroic boss dummy. Using a slow/fast or fast/fast yielded about the same in dps, both sets had FC/FC and were done in unholy presence. I was running the test glyphless. I believe i will try using kyruski's rotation and seeing if that improves dps.
Thanks for all your help guys!

Ok, I jsut see people posting the old one when saying their rotation, and I always thought it was a little queer.

I almost weep when I see massive testing being done on dummies, when it has repeatedly been demonstrated to be almost useless (If what you want is comparing raid dps), because of the lack of everything that being in a raid entails. It will make certain speccs look much better than others, skewing it terribly when compared to actual in-raid dps.
If you want to to produce at least usable numbers, try to get a raid for the patchwerk DPS test "boss", thats what its there for...

You are VERY correct, I have posted many times trying to keep this in context. I am waiting for the rest of my guild to get on the PTR, it is a little frustrating sometimes that I am unable to :P. If you do read one of my earlier posts, I went to a heroic VoA PuG on live with a similar build just for a small comparision (though still not completely comparable, it was less meaningless then our dummy test). Missing a flask and several buffs over a 4 min fight I did 3700 dps, which is a dps loss but not an insane one. I am quite anxious to try the build I have on the PTR in a raid but am limited a bit by what I have said above :P.

I agree that testing on the Boss dummy isn't the best way to see what your raid dps might be. But on the PTR the chance to do 25 man Naxx isn't possible for many. The boss dummy is available to everyone and when you compare the dps done there I believe it does give you a base line for the specs your are testing.

The thing is you don't need a 25 man Naxx. A 10 man of Naxx would still be much better than the dummies. It's not a full view but it's certainly a very good view of raid DPS IMO.

Some data is always better than no data, in my opinion. Personally, I don't have time to test every little idea or weird build I come up with in Naxx - 10 or 25. Boss dummy data may not be entirely accurate, but it's far from useless. You just have to realize that there are factors that will be affecting it (Merciless Combat, Necrosis, missing buffs, etc) and take them into account when drawing your conclusions.

I totally agree with you. Finding a group to test out a point or 2 switch for every little spec i come up with would take forever and if you take into acount that it is the dummy you can get a rough estimate of what you might be doing raid wise dps from it. I mean if you can only put out 1500 dps on the dummy obviously you are not going to be doing 3k in raids.

about ghoul frenzy:

as the test above shows it seems to be not quite a dps buff compared to the use of PS but how about surviveability?
as the tooltip shows while GF is up the ghoule heals it self. may this be worth the point / U rune for AE encounters (if you haven´t got NotD that is)?