So, has anyone compared the 27/44 spec with the full frost spec with full raid gear and a nice weapon to see if they are comparable or is one specifically better? 27/44 seems to scale better based on the talent modifiers.
Wanted to bring up razorice for a bit too.
I think its one more plus to a frost knight to have this on his weapon instead of fallen crusader because it benefits the raid as well. Specifically, it benefits all frost spells.
Now, I know few mages raid as frost these days, but frostfire spec is the DPS spec for many raiding mages these days. And frostfire bolt benefits from the frost vulnerability debuff debuff.
The graphic is also way cooler (intangible plus points!) and its so much more fitting to our frosty theme dk.
What kind of numbers are blood and unholy getting?
We did our first trip into naxx25 the other night. I am the only DPS DK atm with 17/54/0 build. I have 2T7 and Death's Bite (and a fair few blues still) and came 2nd on DPS overall for boss fights (and top incuding trash). I had only been to Naxx10 before for 4 bosses so all very new to me.
Here is the DPS i got for our kills which I am sure will be better this week. The SP is very well gear compared. I think we were missing a few DPS buffs too.
I was using the following rotation all night from Blood Presence:
IT - BS - OB - OB - RP Dump
I did notice this rotation would sometimes stuff up. I am not sure if this was due to a strike missing and the runes being in a mess when I did not noticed, or if there is something else going on.
(Anyone know a mod which will play a sound when attack is dodged or misses?)
I tried the following in a 5man last night and it never went wrong. I am not sure why it should be different.
IT - OB - OB - BS - RP Dump
Also I noticed our overall DPS as a raid is lower than many parses - we certainly have no one hitting 4k DPS on every fight yet. Could be gear; oceanic lag; or we fail...
Why are we taking unbreakable armor exactly? 10% strength in a cooldown cant be that useful for dps compared to other things can it? I havent looked at what else i could get but lich born seems like a waste too. Just wondering
...dps...
I was using the following rotation all night from Blood Presence:
IT - BS - OB - OB - RP Dump
I did notice this rotation would sometimes stuff up. I am not sure if this was due to a strike missing and the runes being in a mess when I did not noticed, or if there is something else going on.
There's currently a bug being talked about in Blood and Unholy threads when you have Death Runes as all your non-spec runes, and you use 2 non-spec rune abilities, it will use up both your Unholy or both your Blood or both your Frost runes rather than the Blood and Unholy that it should have. Hard to describe because it varies by spec. But for Blood, my off-runes are F & U. So when I have 4 Death Runes and I do IT/PS, it will use both my Unholy runes rather than a Frost and an Unholy. This takes my rotation out of whack for about 7 seconds. This leaves you with two Unholy runes, no Frost, and you're using your blood runes, so you have no good ability to use.
This may be the essence of your issue.
And, no, there's nothing much better than Unbreakable Armor, it's a nice little built-in trinket. You could atleast have bothered to look at a talent calculator before posting an inane question.
I tend to find unbreakable armor quite unusable since it spoils one of your Frost Runes... making it pretty much useless unless you pull aggro and if you do you're a sad excuse for a dps... or your tank is s(craped) metal.
Icy reach actually tends to have very little effect in terms of a dps gain and the range is already nice enough. I consider it a PvP talent.
Death Chill and Hungering Cold may seem extremely PvP talents but they aren't... having no RE cost on Mind Freeze IS a DPS gain. And it IS a raid gain. Being scared to dump RE from fear of missing a MF costs dps... not being able to MF a cast might mean a raid wipe.
Hungering Cold may seem the stupid option but on any AOE boss it is rather incredible. It allows you to AOE dump your RE if you haven't used it on the boss and if AOE DPS is the priority (otherwise FS on the boss).
Allowing you to use HB without having to apply IT and Pestilence (gain of 2 runes) which in turn allows you to D&D for extra AOE DPS.
This build has helped me pull extra DPS on more than one encounter. Saving an extra GCD and being able to pop HB with less delay helps in terms of AOE DPS.
And who knows... you might save a life.
As for Frost vs Unholy vs Blood...
Using the no PS rotation I shave off 170 (the least so far) to 440 (the most so far) dps more than my respective Blood and Unholy guild members on almost every encounter (yes we raid with 3 DK's).
In early levels of gear they put me to shame (by over 500 dps for the Unholy DK if I remember our first Patchwerk).
It seems that Frost is indeed the build that scales the most with gear.
Considering Weapon SEP the values seem a bit off so far.
I tried with 7 different weapons and I've come to the conclusion that weapon SPEED matters very little. Weapon DAMAGE on the other hand matters ALOT. I came across a 221 dps difference using Runeblade of Demonstrable Power and Demise and another 173 extra dps using Death's Bite . Of course stats play a part but stats alone cannot create such gaps.
I'll have to look into it seriously and if someone with a grip on maths could lend a hand after I post some WWS Dummy testing it would be appreciated.
REKYUKE STFU? Each step must carry the mark of one's blood - No one can hold a candle to me
Roudolf Khametovitch Nouriev
Vôtre score de connard prétentieux est très exactement de 95
There's currently a bug being talked about in Blood and Unholy threads when you have Death Runes as all your non-spec runes, and you use 2 non-spec rune abilities, it will use up both your Unholy or both your Blood or both your Frost runes rather than the Blood and Unholy that it should have. Hard to describe because it varies by spec. But for Blood, my off-runes are F & U. So when I have 4 Death Runes and I do IT/PS, it will use both my Unholy runes rather than a Frost and an Unholy. This takes my rotation out of whack for about 7 seconds. This leaves you with two Unholy runes, no Frost, and you're using your blood runes, so you have no good ability to use.
Thanks - maybe that explains it. I will try to check what runes are on CD next time... or see if the new rotation fixes it.
Also Thanks for the charts Dr. Had not seen those - my entir
Thanks - maybe that explains it. I will try to check what runes are on CD next time... or see if the new rotation fixes it.
Also Thanks for the charts Dr. Had not seen those - my entir
I covered your issue in a lot more detail around about page 5 but to summarise:
From a state of DBFFUU
it->bs->ob->ob will refresh in the order
F
D
FU
BU
If you repeat DBFFUU here you will consume:
F
D
FU
CAN'T OBLITERATE (you only have BU left)
The simple solution to this is to use
IT-OB-OB-BS
as you have done... However even this is not perfect... you get
F
FU
BU
D
When you consume these you use up
F
FU
CAN'T obliterate: D still on cooldown
DU <- OB 1.5 sec late
B <- BS 1.5s late
This delay will in fact keep crawling further each rotation, unless you delay the whole rotation 1.5s each time(which you proably do if you have a 1.5sec gap in there and use 2 cooldowns on rp dump).
But there is a better rotation:
IT-OB-OB-BS-RP[0-2x]
IT-OB-BS-OB-RP[0-2x]
How this works?
Lets run a timeline with lowercase meaning used
Start 0.0: DBFFUU
1: IT: DBfFUU
2: OB: DBffuU
3: OB: bBffuu
4: BS*: bdffuu
RP dump: 1-2 times... if you do more, you will be extending the time till next rune is used... if it's not within 2 sec of the previous one, its effective refresh time will go from 10s->12s+ (see the 8second rule in dps compendium)
Break: in theory you are now at the 9s mark. In reality you add in a bit of lag, and you are very likely at the 10s mark if not over it. So long as corresponding stages of the second half of the cycle are done within 0.5s of the rune refresh there is no problem.
second half:
start 10.0: bdFfuu
1:It: bdffuu
2: OB: bdffuu
3: BS: ddffuU <- note that an U is up now and not used by the bs... it has to be used within 2s of coming back up to be available again at this time next cycle
4: OB: dbffuu <- now the U is used up, If it was used within 2s of it going up, it should be available next rotation at stage 3, not 4, allowing you to restart from the previous half.
One thing I found very effective tonight was to use unholy presence for trash pulls. Assuming pretty much every guild is chain-pulling and aoeing down the trash, it's much easier to dump your runes on the mobs before they die if you're doing it with a 1 second gcd. Blood pulls ahead when fights start to last longer than one rune cycle, so you'll obviously switch back for boss fights.
Also, I tried the new rotation tonight and was pleased with my success.
I was pleased with my performance--my rogues refuse to use tricks of the trade on me (LAME), or I would have been 1st in several encounters.
A few fight-specific thoughts:
Gluth - Best way to cheese the meters is a trinketed, death chilled hb on the decimated zombies as they zerg the boss. We lost one of our kiters in this fight so I hopped off of dps to pick up the zombies, but normally this is an easy fight to top meters for a frost dk.
Thaddius - Don't do your normal rotation every gcd here. Stop using your runes when he casts polarity, and then dump them as soon as the buff stacks.
edit: removed question which was answered on previous page
I covered your issue in a lot more detail around about page 5 but to summarise:
...
But there is a better rotation:
IT-OB-OB-BS-RP[0-2x]
IT-OB-BS-OB-RP[0-2x]
Thanks for the tip. I used a 3 way version of it tonight which worked better for me but achieved the same thing.
IT-OB-OB-BS-RP[0-2x]
IT-OB-OB-BS-RP[0-2x]
IT-OB-BS-OB-RP[0-2x]
My DPS was pretty decent unless i screwed up and Sigil of Awareness dropped 1/2 way through. First time I had done 1/2 of the fights but looks like the Sigil makes a huge difference.
Heigan - 2330 DPS (6th) - sigil dropped
Loatheb - 4608 DPS (3rd)
Anub-rekan - 3176 DPS (1st)
Grand Widow - 3340 DPS (6th) - did not realise we were on boss... failed hard
Maexxna - 3650 DPS (1st)
I am quite encouraged considering I still have some blues, and got some upgrades on the night to test out next time. Also I have too much hit, green gems, and cheap enchants.
I also had Undiminished Battleplate drop at the end... not sure if i should break my 2T7 bonus to use it...
Sedith,
What frost spec were you testing with? Was it the 17/54/0 typical build, the 27/44/0 build or the variant 0(1)/44/26(27) build? Simply curious. Still glad to know that I wasn't crazy to think that frost was an acceptable build.
Mild Confusion,
After hit cap hit is worth about 0.
17/54/0
Might try 27/44/0 seriously if I get an excess of expertise.
I've noticed that after my second rotation I usually end up having between 95-99 runic power before my FS dump.
With IT glyph, chill of the grave, and butchery, I am generating quiet a lot of RP.
Last night I hit 3/5 T7 and realized that with my next item set, I'll be getting an extra 20 rp per rotation and was wondering what would be the best way not to waste the RP.
I was thinking that I could either use a FS in the middle of my rune rotation or use some of my floater talent points to put 2/3 runic power mastery and do 1 extra FS every other cycle.
I'm posting this one for two reasons - I tested the 8% hit cap vs. 9% - I ran the whole raid with about 8.75% hit. For the duration of the raid, I had 0 misses from all non-spell skills. I'll be posting this in the main thread as well, but as long as I'm posting it here, I'll include that note that the %hit needed to eliminate misses on non-spell attacks is definitely lower than 9%.
Second, someone asked me to test a fight in Unholy Presence to see whether or not killing machine procs would make up for or perhaps surpass the damage lost from being in Blood Presence. The fight in the WWS that was in Unholy Presence was Instructor. All other fights were Blood Presence. I think it's pretty clear that Unholy Presence was not a benefit here.
I had 11 Killing Machine procs two weeks ago in Blood Presence, vs. 13 procs last night. 2 crits that may have already been crits (I'm averaging about 45% crit for the skills KM benefits) is not enough to offset the 15% overall DPS loss caused by not using Blood Presence.
On this fight, I did just about 685k damage. Take out a generous 5k for each of those two procs (that would approximate them turning into dodges on FS, not even just normal hits on IT for example,) and the total comes down to 675k. Add 15%, and the damage would have been approx. 776k had I been in Blood Presence. Losing 100k damage in a 4 minute fight to gain 10k damage doesn't make sense. For this fight, swapping to blood presence instead of unholy would have been an increase of 372 DPS. Hope this puts that to rest
I've noticed that after my second rotation I usually end up having between 95-99 runic power before my FS dump.
With IT glyph, chill of the grave, and butchery, I am generating quiet a lot of RP.
Last night I hit 3/5 T7 and realized that with my next item set, I'll be getting an extra 20 rp per rotation and was wondering what would be the best way not to waste the RP.
I was thinking that I could either use a FS in the middle of my rune rotation or use some of my floater talent points to put 2/3 runic power mastery and do 1 extra FS every other cycle.
I addressed this on the last page - you can have a situation where you have 4 'dumps' at the end of your cycle. Due to the 1.5 second rule you should be able to use all dumps and not disrupt your rotation, however, if you want to use all dumps and can't pull it off with the 1.5 second rule you'll need to swap to unholy presence. I've seen no testing on unholy presence with 4-piece, so it's hard to say if the damage increase from the extra dump every Rime proc will offset the 15% DPS loss. As this situation will only happen on Rime procs, and since Rime procs fairly infrequently for me, unholy will probably be a DPS loss. You can pretty easily fit 3 dumps into every rotation without unholy, so even if you end up skipping your Rime proc it will probably be better to keep blood.
Also, you could delay using Rime until the next rotation if it pops on a 3 FS rotation and not have to worry about the 1.5 second rule, but you potentially lose an extra Rime proc by doing so (the chance is fairly small.)
I'll test that and post when I have my 4-piece. Should be soon.
Hey everyone, I'm a newcomer here, and I do apologize in advance if my line of questioning has already been addressed, or is just plain noobish. I've tried my best to read through the thread, but there's a heck of a lot of posts, and a heck of a lot of numbers.
Anyway, it seems that most are now employing the rotation that is sans Plague Strike. Myself, I've been running with the tri-spec that was created by Khaene on the beta, and I love it. Now that I'm hit capped, and I have around ~5% dodge reduction from expertise (when I use expertise elixirs), my rotation goes off uninterrupted by misses, and almost uninterrupted by dodge, and it's pretty much seamless. Having the 2 points in Epidemic allows me to do the following rotation, with (FS/HB) for when I have extra RP or Freezing Fog: PS > IT > OB > BS > BS > FS > (FS/HB) >> OB > OB > FS > OB > FS > (FS/HB). On fights like Patchwerk where I can just stand and DPS the whole time, the rotation goes off without a single hitch, while some seem to be experiencing rune refresh problems with the non-PS rotation.
It's essentially giving me the same amount of Obliterates per 20 seconds (4), the same amount of Blood Strikes (2), and the same amount of Frost Strikes (3-4), as the non-PS rotation. However, I'm also getting extra damage from having Blood Plague up. The only snafu is if I have a HB or FS at the tail end of the second half of the rotation, they tend to lose the benefit of the first disease, which has by then expired.
What do you guys think? Is the non-PS rotation better than mine? Or are the 7 talent points invested in Unholy for Epidemic more worthwhile being placed in Blood? Am I a total noobcake?
Hey everyone, I'm a newcomer here, and I do apologize in advance if my line of questioning has already been addressed, or is just plain noobish. I've tried my best to read through the thread, but there's a heck of a lot of posts, and a heck of a lot of numbers.
Anyway, it seems that most are now employing the rotation that is sans Plague Strike. Myself, I've been running with the tri-spec that was created by Khaene on the beta, and I love it. Now that I'm hit capped, and I have around ~5% dodge reduction from expertise (when I use expertise elixirs), my rotation goes off uninterrupted by misses, and almost uninterrupted by dodge, and it's pretty much seamless. Having the 2 points in Epidemic allows me to do the following rotation, with (FS/HB) for when I have extra RP or Freezing Fog: PS > IT > OB > BS > BS > FS > (FS/HB) >> OB > OB > FS > OB > FS > (FS/HB). On fights like Patchwerk where I can just stand and DPS the whole time, the rotation goes off without a single hitch, while some seem to be experiencing rune refresh problems with the non-PS rotation.
It's essentially giving me the same amount of Obliterates per 20 seconds (4), the same amount of Blood Strikes (2), and the same amount of Frost Strikes (3-4), as the non-PS rotation. However, I'm also getting extra damage from having Blood Plague up. The only snafu is if I have a HB or FS at the tail end of the second half of the rotation, they tend to lose the benefit of the first disease, which has by then expired.
What do you guys think? Is the non-PS rotation better than mine? Or are the 7 talent points invested in Unholy for Epidemic more worthwhile being placed in Blood? Am I a total noobcake?
The last 7 talent points in Blood are pretty significant, giving 5% crit and 4% damage, vs. a mostly wasted 5 points in unholy to get a 6s longer disease.
Blood plague for me has been ticking at about 500 damage, and plague strike has been hitting for an average of about 750. In 18 seconds, it will tick 6 times, for a total of 3750 damage. There would also be a boost to the other skills from having a 2nd disease up. The skills at the end only benefiting from one disease isn't really a loss (except with Rime procs if FF is dropping off,) as with the other rotation they'd be benefiting from only one anyway.
if you're at 3000 DPS with 17/54, you'd drop down to 2880 from losing the 4% damage. If you lose another 5% from losing 5% crit (I'm pretty sure 1% crit correlates pretty well with 1% DPS - anyone know for sure?) you'd drop down to 2736. The 3750 damage from blood plague/plague strike per 20 seconds would add 188 DPS, bringing you back up to 2924 - so far, a DPS loss.
So, the extra damage on your Oblit and BS from that disease would have to make up an additional 76 DPS, or 1520 damage in a 20-second rotation. BS gains 95 damage from having the extra disease, so that leaves 1520-95-95 = 1330/4 = 333 damage extra per oblit to break even. Glyphed, Oblit gains 73 damage per disease, so in this rotation you would come up 260 damage short per Oblit with no crits, or 187 short with 100% crit. If you had 100% crit, you'd still be down by 37.5 DPS or so vs. the IT>BS>OB>OB rotation. This is also assuming that the disease never is missing for any of the strikes. If one or both falls off before you can get all the skills that benefit in, the difference will be greater.
So in conclusion, the rotation looks interesting but in theory the IT>BS>OB>OB>Dump rotation with those 7 points in Blood instead of Unholy will come out ahead and (at least for me) is much easier to maintain.
@dlb
One of the bonuses to the non-PS rotation is that it's simply a shorter rotation, giving less time to be interrupted and more leeway on the dumping period. If you're having success with your tri-spec, then there's no need to change but I can't help but think that that the 7 points in unholy would be better spent getting 3% more crit and 2/3 or 3/3 RPM (which becomes a big deal if you get 4/5 T7 and is otherwise just convenient) and either lichborne (i hate being feared) or hungering cold for an easy FF application and is hilarious with deathchill+HB.
I'm posting this one for two reasons - I tested the 8% hit cap vs. 9% - I ran the whole raid with about 8.75% hit. For the duration of the raid, I had 0 misses from all non-spell skills. I'll be posting this in the main thread as well, but as long as I'm posting it here, I'll include that note that the %hit needed to eliminate misses on non-spell attacks is definitely lower than 9%.
You can't say it is definitely lower than 9%. In the WWS you have slightly less than 1000 strikes against raid bosses. The chance of you not having any misses with .25% chance to miss over that number of strikes is ~8%.
Your data suggests that it is less, but it is not definitive.
Last edited by LockApologist : 12/10/08 at 3:27 PM.
I've been playing around with DRM on the Acherus dummy. I quickly noticed what has been mentioned in this thread: it's very difficult to predict which runes will be consumed when you have potentially 6 death runes coming off cooldown in an erratic order. My lag is nil, and I'm using AutoHotkey to achieve perfect GCD usage (holdover from when I used it to get the most out of my druid's lifebloom cycles); for neither rotation* was there ever a moment when an ability (OB/BS/FS) that could be used was not because I was holding down another button.
(* For DRM, I quickly devolved into FCFS because none of the rotations in this thread can apply to that tangled mess of death runes)
With DRM (21/50/0) (20'39" or 1239 seconds)
474 mele
41% OB (274)
33% FS (223)
15% IT (102)
10% BS (65)
1% HB (10)
664 total specials: 1.86 seconds/special (2539 DPS)
Without DRM(21/50/0) (20'0" or 1200 seconds)
447 melee
34% OB (236)
32% FS (221)
17% IT (120)
16% BS (110)
1% HB (6)
687 total specials: 1.74 seconds/special (2761 DPS)
Observations:
My observation is that DRM, with my FCFS approach, leads to protracted rotations and a higher seconds/special -- which directly kills DPS. However, it also yields a higher percentage of OB and FS compared to IT and BS. If I could 'solve' the protraction issue without disrupting that proportion, it should yield a significantly higher DPS than the no-DRM spec.
Both seconds/special are inflated slightly and equally by HoW refresh (every 120 seconds) and UA+Rune Tap (every 60 seconds).
Notes:
1) It seems UA+Rune Tap must be used only when the first blood rune is either on cooldown, or a death rune -- Rune Tap (almost?) always refreshes only the first blood rune to a death rune. The least disruptive use is when blood rune #1 was just used, and blood rune #2 is a ready death rune.
2) I began with working with the DRM spec, so this was quickly exposed: at some point into the combat, using one of the two blood(death) runes for IT *or* obliterate caused that blood rune to come up again as a death rune. This never happened immediately, but once it began happening, it continued to occur until the end of combat, or until I reset my rotation (by allowing all runes to cooldown, or using ERW). This is probably a bug, and probably contributed directly to the higher % of OB and FS with the DRM spec. I confirmed that the runes actually were D and not B by using them immediately in another OB. Lastly, once in this death-rune-refreshing streak, OBing with two blood(death) runes would cause one of the two (always the second) to come up death. This seems to occur on every 3+ minute fight, with both specs. Perhaps it only occurs on dummies?
3) Rarely and with no regularity, a death rune granted to me either by BS or by the bug above would 'turn' back to blood <1 second before finishing its cooldown. I'm using MagicRunes, and began (also) using RuneWatcher once I first noticed this. Also, *very* rarely, it would turn again back to death a few moments (<1s) after becoming available. Both addons show the strange switching and at the same instant/screen refresh. I confirmed with OBs that these were not cosmetic changes.
4) In addition (and mostly while using the DRM spec since it has so many more death runes), both addons would show an OB only consuming one of its two death runes (and the remaining death rune would be unusable -- 'insufficient runes' -- until ~10 seconds later).
Last edited by Goetterdaemmerung : 12/10/08 at 4:06 PM.
The last 7 talent points in Blood are pretty significant, giving 5% crit and 4% damage, vs. a mostly wasted 5 points in unholy to get a 6s longer disease.
Blood plague for me has been ticking at about 500 damage, and plague strike has been hitting for an average of about 750. In 18 seconds, it will tick 6 times, for a total of 3750 damage. There would also be a boost to the other skills from having a 2nd disease up. The skills at the end only benefiting from one disease isn't really a loss (except with Rime procs if FF is dropping off,) as with the other rotation they'd be benefiting from only one anyway.
if you're at 3000 DPS with 17/54, you'd drop down to 2880 from losing the 4% damage. If you lose another 5% from losing 5% crit (I'm pretty sure 1% crit correlates pretty well with 1% DPS - anyone know for sure?) you'd drop down to 2736. The 3750 damage from blood plague/plague strike per 20 seconds would add 188 DPS, bringing you back up to 2924 - so far, a DPS loss.
So, the extra damage on your Oblit and BS from that disease would have to make up an additional 76 DPS, or 1520 damage in a 20-second rotation. BS gains 95 damage from having the extra disease, so that leaves 1520-95-95 = 1330/4 = 333 damage extra per oblit to break even. Glyphed, Oblit gains 73 damage per disease, so in this rotation you would come up 260 damage short per Oblit with no crits, or 187 short with 100% crit. If you had 100% crit, you'd still be down by 37.5 DPS or so vs. the IT>BS>OB>OB rotation. This is also assuming that the disease never is missing for any of the strikes. If one or both falls off before you can get all the skills that benefit in, the difference will be greater.
So in conclusion, the rotation looks interesting but in theory the IT>BS>OB>OB>Dump rotation with those 7 points in Blood instead of Unholy will come out ahead and (at least for me) is much easier to maintain.
Thanks so much for all the data. I do apologize for having you do all this number crunching without having listed my spec's breakdown. I really, really thought I had, but as I now see I had not, I guess better late than never. My spec is 14/50/7, so I do actually have 2 points in Two-Hand Spec, and 2 points in Dark Conviction, so the net damage loss would only be 3% if we keep the 1% damage: 1% crit ratio (I believe the actual 1% crit:damage ratio scales based on total crit rate. At higher crit rates, 1% crit is worth less to overall damage than at lower crit rates. Not sure of the actual numbers, though).
Thanks to this wonderful forum EJ has, you can go ahead and check out the specifics of my spec on the left. Really love that, by the way, if any EJ guys are reading. Props to you.
Anyway, just plugging in the numbers you've already used, if 17/54 does 3000 DPS, my 14/50/7 should do 2910 before Plague Strike/Blood Plague. Adding the 188 DPS gained would put me at 3098 DPS, plus my damage from additional diseases, which may actually be less than you believed, as the Obliterate Glyph reduces bonus damage from diseases by 50%, while adding 20% weapon damage. Conversely, however, my Plague Strike (assuming an equivalent level of gear), should crit harder, and crit more often than yours, due to having 2/2 Vicious Strikes. I doubt the DPS increase would be particularly significant, but it's an additional increase nonetheless.
Any further thoughts?
EDIT: Also, regarding the ease of the non-PS rotation, that's not really an issue for me. I was an Elemental Shaman through TBC (two button spam), and a Holy Paladin through all of vanilla WoW (one button FoL spam while cycling targets, two buttons when tank healing). Getting to press all these different buttons is actually exciting and thoroughly enjoyable for me, and I prefer a more complicated rotation to a simpler one.
Another thing to keep in mind while creating "cycles" is that you can have a maximum of six GCDs in each half; no more, no less. If you don't want to split into half-cycles, you gain a 13th gcd but you then have less than 0.5 seconds of wiggle room which makes for an untenable setup with more than low double digit latency :-/.
IMO, the 3% crit, 15% Rime chance, reapplying IT (which hits big on it's own), and the 15 RP per 2 rotations lost, is better than trying to work in PS.
From personal usage, i'm liking the IT->OB->OB->BS rotation more than my previous IT->BS->OB->OB.
I addressed this on the last page - you can have a situation where you have 4 'dumps' at the end of your cycle. Due to the 1.5 second rule you should be able to use all dumps and not disrupt your rotation, however, if you want to use all dumps and can't pull it off with the 1.5 second rule you'll need to swap to unholy presence. I've seen no testing on unholy presence with 4-piece, so it's hard to say if the damage increase from the extra dump every Rime proc will offset the 15% DPS loss. As this situation will only happen on Rime procs, and since Rime procs fairly infrequently for me, unholy will probably be a DPS loss. You can pretty easily fit 3 dumps into every rotation without unholy, so even if you end up skipping your Rime proc it will probably be better to keep blood.
Also, you could delay using Rime until the next rotation if it pops on a 3 FS rotation and not have to worry about the 1.5 second rule, but you potentially lose an extra Rime proc by doing so (the chance is fairly small.)
I'll test that and post when I have my 4-piece. Should be soon.
I'm referring to the 20 extra RP I am gonna be generating per cycle from the 4 piece T7 bonus. At the moment, at the end of each cycle, I'll have roughly 95 RP before I do FS dumps bringing me back to 15 not counting butchery. Rime procs do not give RP cause you are not using runes.
I am trying to find the best way to use that 20 extra RP that we will get before it is wasted by reaching the RP cap.
One way could be to burn a FS in the middle of rune usage and another is 2/3 runic power mastery.
Comparing the 27/44 spec with the deep frost specs that take hungering cold. One key thing is that its AOE capabilities are much weaker without hungering cold. Can such a spec still AOE effectively? And how crucial is AOE in general for DPSing.
Other question would be how 5 points in tundra stalker compares to talents like abomination's might, veteran of the third war and bloody strikes. Looking at the wws of many DKs, autoattacks are about 20 to 25% of their DPS. So, tundra stalker only boast 75% of their total DPS by 10% which makes it less than 2% per talent point.
By going 27 into blood instead of 17, you get 8% str (if you take abomination's might instead of bloody vengeance which would be 6% damage bonus), 6 expertise, 12% dmg bonus to bloody strikes, and rune tap.
So, we lost 7.5% dps and 5 expertise to gain 12% to BS (small dps increase), 8% str (which at 1k strength is 160 atk power gain), and 10% attack power for the raid (which goes well with our other raid buffs of 20% melee haste and horn of winter), and we net 1 expertise and lose hungering plague.
So, on the assumption that we're using 4000 ap, the bonus from blood would be 576 attk power or ~41.14 weapon dps. If that bonus nets you > 7.5% of your dps, then it's better to go 27 blood instead of 17. The equivalent weapon dps bonus for 5/5 tundra stalker would be ~21.43 dps (based on simply modifying your dps bonus from ap and nothing else). Now, due to certain abilities scaling differently with ap, i'm not sure which would be more, but it seems reasonably sound to say that for sheer dps (single target) 27 blood > 17 blood... and you get rune tap!
Hungering cold helps with AE situations, but the extra 10 pts in blood will prolly increase your single target dps by more (especially if you have an enhance shaman and take bloody vengeance over abominations might). Hungering cold is also hilarious in pvp, but that has nothing to do with this thread.
12/09/08, 10:44 PM
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