Use it when all you have up is a death (blood) rune. Frost rune saved!

Because you didn't use your death rune for an OB? I find UA to be a totally wasted talent for dps.

He didn't like that it ate his frost rune. I fixed that for him. Throw up UA, toss out a BS, and go on with your life. That 20 seconds of 10% STR is going to make up for the difference. The talent aslo provides you with some utility, which has some value.

But it's not going to outweigh that lost blood strike until well past 700 Str. Napkin math puts +70 Str netting about +550 damage over the 20 second duration, not counting lost runes. As soon as that blood strike disappears, you lose upward of 1000 damage for a net loss of 450ish. This may be worth revisiting at 1400 unbuffed/self buffed str levels (are we already there?) but I'd bet that the loss will outweigh the gain until your strength makes up a stupid amount of your total AP.

The only use i can see for UA is before a fight even happens, you use it, the rune refreshes in 10 seconds so you could get possibly 10 seconds out of it. But as for using it during your rotation, If you're using the IT OB OB BS or any various of that, then you'll be replacing an OB with UA and have 1 unused unholy rune... just chilling out... not doing anything... all alone. I don't think UA, even over 20 seconds will make up for a missed OB.

I posted this a little earlier, but I think it got lost in another discussion. UA is undoubtedly a dps increase when used cleverly. Make a macro that says something like this:

/cast Unbreakable Armor
/cast Blood Tap

Then you use the macro when you have a death rune to activate UA with, but no frost runes. A fun thing about Blood Tap is that it ends your GCD as soon as the Death Rune pops up, so you can immediately do the Oblit or BS you were going to use anyway.

But it still results in the loss of a Death Rune in your rotation unless blood tap can take a blood rune currently on CD and immidiately activate it AND convert it to a death rune (in which case, you use a death rune... And immidiately make another which isn't nearly as bad at all (only problem is that I think you need to swap the order of the abilities as UA might cause a GCD).

Yes, Blood Tap turns a blood rune into a death rune AND refreshes it. So, in the normal IT BS OB OB, you'd do it between the two OBs without screwing your rotation.

UA does cause a GCD, but Blood Tap isn't on the GCD. Blood tap also has an effect of shortening or ending the current GCD, so the only dps time you lose is the time you spend hitting your macro. Not sure the exact effect is has on the GCD, I just know that you can Obliterate as soon as your new Death Rune appears.

MSBT or MikScrollingBattleText provides this functionality. Used it with my rogue for precisely this kind of thing as well as hitting 5 cp and reaching low health.

I believe the MSBT Shared Media module provides more sound options, it comes with 5 default sounds if I remember correctly.

But you don't lose expertise with Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It would seem the jury is still out on DRM, and if it's more hindering than helpful, those 3 points could be placed somewhere else,

It comes down to trading:

30 RP cap
Lichborne
20 sec. of 10% Str every 60 sec.
10% Damage on Frost Fever targets

for

1 Expertise (lose 5 from Tundra stalker, gain 6 from Veteran of the Third War)
8% Str. All the time
DRM/whatever else if DWR screws up rotations
~20% Stronger Blood Strikes
10% AP to you and raid (assuming no Enhancement Shaman, if there is, this is clearly a 0 gain, the alternative to which is a 6% Phsyical damage buff, not nearly competetive with 10% more damage from Tundra Stalker).


Unless Lichborne and the increased RP are really THAT useful, I can't see how that's a bad trade to make iff you don't have an enhancement Shaman. I happen to be a human, so I may be undervaluing Lichborne since I have a fear/charm/sleep break of my own, and there are other virtues to Lichborne, though, like emergency self-heals with Death Coil, but those are unquantifiable.

You probably noticed I also took Toughness over Improved Range, Merciless combat, and the free crit every 2 minutes. I like toughness because it's "always on" (opposed to one crit every 2 minutes, and 12% more damage on 3 abilities at <35% enemy HP) and I don't find myself wanting for range. It helps in fights where you get snared, and stacks nicely with Bladed Armor.

Ugh, I hadn't actually done the math on it; 10% sounds like a pretty solid armor boost, and when I did the math for just bladed armor it was *huge* (for tanking, I.E. Frost Presence). So yeah, in my current gear, in Blood Presence, Toughtness accounts for <40 AP. That's a pretty poor investment for 5 talent points, you're right. Lichborne, Mercilles Combat, and 2/3 Runic Power Mastery are a better choice. So something like:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'd really like to test out DRM myself sometime. the idea of a whole set of Death Runes appeals to me for some reason. Though certainly a 17% self-heal is nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately right now I'm a conscripted tank.

Let us know how the DRM works out. I tried it and it was using my runes in all the wrong ways.

Was looking at the rotation of someone from a page or two ago who was doing OB-OB-IT-BS, and at least by excel theory, if you switch the BS and the IT every rotation, so, OB-OB-IT-BS-dump -> OB-OB-BS-IT-dump -> OB-OB-IT-BS -> etc., you don't have any lost GCDs or having to wait to OB or slowing up your rotation. And only your first 2 OB won't have disease damage on them, but that's hardly a big deal when you think that you don't have to worry about the rotation being clunky anymore.

Could someone add the OB-OB-IT-BS-dump -> OB-OB-BS-IT-dump rotation into that Frosty DPS spreadsheet or similar spreadsheet? I'm curious to see how it'll work out. Would be awesome if it could be worked into Deathgraph since that is pretty robust as for showing how things work out over multiple minutes.

As long as a rotation is mathematically equivalent to another (ie. same abilities, just different locations) then it can be freely substituted for another, equivalent rotation in the sheet.

In this case, you're looking for rotation #4.

Also, ninja update, KM works for the relative value block on Str, AP, and Haste and the verdict is (drumroll please...):

Haste becomes less valuable when KM is 'on'.

Still have no idea how to model misses in an appropriate manne--ooh, idea: for every miss, I'm going to add 1.5 seconds to the rotation time. Admittedly, a human would modify the rotation on the fly, attempting to maximize damage during disease uptime, but this is just about the best idea I can come up with right now.

My apologies if I missed this in the rest of the thread, but on the topic of using UA and chewing up a rune, I've attached both it and Deathchill to Frost Strike and made a macro for it.

#showtooltip
#show Frost Strike
/cast Unbreakable Armor;
/stopcasting;
/cast Deathchill;
/stopcasting;
/cast Frost Strike;

This way, I fire off UA ~every min and Deathchill ~every 2 mins when I'm doing a FS rune dump and by the time I'm done with 3 FS it seems like I can restart my normal rotation without much of a hiccup. Just a thought.

Hey, I just read in the DK PTR changes post that Glyph of Frost Strike was changed to reducing RP cost by 8. Does this mean now that 3/3 RPM will be the better choice, allowing for a string of possibly 4 frost strikes assuming max RP?

I was wondering the same.. as well as the change to the Obliterate Glyph and not applying PS in the new rotation listed in this thread.

With the glyph no longer causing a 50% dmg reduction per disease.. wouldn't the damage increase greatly if PS was worked back into the rotations?

Also.. A question.. Given that Glacial Rot and Tundra Stalker increase dmg to diseased targets. If it is found that a rotation including 4 FS's as Bordon mentioned, and PS to buff 2 obliterates, is better.. will epidemic be needed to ensure all the attacks happen while the mob is still diseased? If it is, what is a good way to fit in in? Easiest way I am seeing reduces our crit from blood tree and even cuts into our AP gain, I am not sure that the loss of 5% crit and 2AP/180Armor will be made up for by being able to frost strike 3-4 times and gaining the 20% dmg bonus.

Sorry for the stream of questions. I was frost DPS when I started raiding 25 man. But I got a betrayer and decided to test out Blood. With the new changes I am really leaning toward frost again but am having trouble envisioning the optimal rotation/spec.

I'll see if I can come up with a rotation bringing plague strike back in without that. Perhaps if you could use something to start the disease chain going but separate the disease applications, you could keep it sustained. I don't know, just throwing stuff out there.

I was doing some testing tonight on a dummy and I noticed if I was in unholy presence and my rotation went off without a hitch I would have 2-3s left on my diseases when i finished. (this was using the old Rotation of PS+IT+BS+BS+OB+FS+FS;;; PS+IT+OB+OB+FS+FS) only problem I saw is even if we are CAPABLE of ripping off 4 Frost strikes in succession.. I wasn't generating enough RP to throw 3 in.

ATM I believe Obliterate is generating 20 RP, correct? on patch it says all 2 rune abilities will generate 15RP. So.. that would put a further strain on the RP for Fstrikes.

I guess what im wondering after thinking/testing a bit more is if points are needed in RPM at all. With frost strikes at 32 RP, we can still throw 3 if we have a full RP bar. Might be a good way to free up a few points for other things.

Obliterate generates 20 because you have Chill of the Grave (15+5).

doh.. my bad, thanks for correcting me on that!

I looked back and found the discussions regarding Cinderglacier VS Crusader runes.. but couldn't find a definitive winner. Which is the best for us currently?