I've tried DRW and Gargoyle with blood and unholy presences and cannot seem to hit anything over 2k on bosses. Am I limited by my gear? I was thinking with Demise I should be hitting bigger numbers, but I am probably limited by my low ap (barely over 2500).
Is there a place that has a compilation of useful Deathknight macros or tricks? Like the fact that dancing RW can summon a 2nd ghoul, or cast 2x hysteria on you... I just can't figure out why my dps is sucking. My friend is a warrior with similar gear and is hitting 3.5-4k dps easy, while I'm squeezing out every possible rune possible and using all my cooldowns as much as possible.
I've tried DRW and Gargoyle with blood and unholy presences and cannot seem to hit anything over 2k on bosses. Am I limited by my gear? I was thinking with Demise I should be hitting bigger numbers, but I am probably limited by my low ap (barely over 2500).
Is there a place that has a compilation of useful Deathknight macros or tricks? Like the fact that dancing RW can summon a 2nd ghoul, or cast 2x hysteria on you... I just can't figure out why my dps is sucking. My friend is a warrior with similar gear and is hitting 3.5-4k dps easy, while I'm squeezing out every possible rune possible and using all my cooldowns as much as possible.
Fwiw I have similar gear and when I was tried speccing back to 51/13/7 blood I couldn't get over about 1550dps on the training dummy... Respeccing unholy I got 1750+ghoul on the dummy and 2100+ghoul on 10man patchwerk... I'm guessing that it's just a matter of blood spec scaling a lot with ap/str?
I have no idea why but with my current gear and having tested out all the specs I've found unholy to come out tops be several hundred dps(including ghoul)... Gear here: The World of Warcraft Armory <- oh great it's currently showing the half-tank set I was using to dps tank some group quest for... No idea when it'll update to give proper gear.
a 10% heal to your party doesn't do anything and is a waste of a blood rune.
Having blood worms adds ~50 dps and makes you a god when farming outside of raiding.
We'll agree to disagree then, because I'm sure a 10% heal to your entire party isn't nothing.
Blood Worms at ~50dps is relitavely minor, and a slight overstatement in damage in my opinion. I'm of the line of thought that I would rather have a 10% heal for myself and party when I need it, rather than have a trickle of heals when I don't.
In regard to your DPS post above, can we get some more information? A WWS or recount with damage breakdowns would be good. Also, specifically what rotation do you use and how well do you stick to it? For example, I have friends who cannot resist the urge to use a free DC when it procs even if it means breaking their rotation.
After picking up [Betrayer of Humanity] yesterday I started playing with haste. I know I know the Compendium values it waaay low but I have [Fezzik's Pocketwatch] just sitting in the bank!
Frankly I was surprised. I went from consistently 9th in the raid to 2nd (we've got an amazing hunter). I'm certain the upgrade from [Demise] has a great deal to do with it, but I can't help feeling Haste is getting a raw deal in analysis. Especially in light of the fact that more and more folks are seeing Undead Presence compete or surpass Blood.
Has anyone made a stab at reevaluating stat weights?
After picking up [Betrayer of Humanity] yesterday I started playing with haste. I know I know the Compendium values it waaay low but I have [Fezzik's Pocketwatch] just sitting in the bank!
Frankly I was surprised. I went from consistently 9th in the raid to 2nd (we've got an amazing hunter). I'm certain the upgrade from [Demise] has a great deal to do with it, but I can't help feeling Haste is getting a raw deal in analysis. Especially in light of the fact that more and more folks are seeing Undead Presence compete or surpass Blood.
Has anyone made a stab at reevaluating stat weights?
I think this jump of yours is due more to the 20% increase in weapon DPS + added stats. Weapon damage is the biggest scalar of DK damage dealing abilities. The fact that the weapon has haste on it is coincidental.
After picking up [Betrayer of Humanity] yesterday I started playing with haste. I know I know the Compendium values it waaay low but I have [Fezzik's Pocketwatch] just sitting in the bank!
Frankly I was surprised. I went from consistently 9th in the raid to 2nd (we've got an amazing hunter). I'm certain the upgrade from [Demise] has a great deal to do with it, but I can't help feeling Haste is getting a raw deal in analysis. Especially in light of the fact that more and more folks are seeing Undead Presence compete or surpass Blood.
Has anyone made a stab at reevaluating stat weights?
I fail to see how updating from a 89haste weapon to a 57haste weapon and getting more DPS leads you into thinking haste is responsible for the increase. Or is the point the trinket? Because you could probably equip any trinket, and I'm sure you'd see a DPS increase going from Demise to Betrayer.
Hello all. I've been following most of the discussions here with the different blood spec / dps comparisons, and have learned a lot. I thought I would help contribute how I have been doing after testing 51/0/20. First off, my spec is probably not 100% efficient for dps being I have 2/2 blood aura and corpse explosion on the unholy side :p, but I really have fun scaring the hell out of people when they're looting :P. Anyways.....the WWS Report 1st day and WWS Report 2nd day I'm sharing was from our first real weekend of getting into 10 man naxx, so my gear at the time is mostly basic blues and no real solid rotations. I've been trying to follow some of your guy's rotation examples, but I usually end up improvising a lot lol. Since then, I've gotten some great upgrades (no weapon yet ) and will post results again after this weeks Naxx to hopefully provide better stats for those still interested in the 51/0/20 performance.
I wanted to add one thing, that's a little off topic.... I've been experimenting with different major glyphs, and have found that the DnD glyph is simply AMAZING to the point of it honestly being a bit OP. I've been running a lot of heroics lately and found this DnD glyph to be a huge group saver, dmg mitigation, and quasi CC. Mobs that are in it are constantly interrupted from casting or dmg'ing... don't run away (since it's a cower animation they do), and give ample time for the tank to really grab hold of all the targets easier. I'm anxious to see it's effects with this weekend's naxx run on some of the AE pulls and boss fights like Gluth.
I've been toying around with 51/13/7 again tonight, and I'm starting to think Unholy Presence is a bit more powerful than I originally gave it credit for. I've always figured their intention was that Blood DPS in UP and Unholy DPS in BP (thus the aura talents crossing over the other benefit, and Blood being able to account for the longer rotations), but didn't think they got the numbers close enough to give it a fair shake. Playing around with the boss dummy in Ebon Hold, one thing I noticed was that when in UP I actually spiked higher when throwing DRW + Hysteria, in particular when they lined up nicely with the Mirror proc and ERW was up. In the end, they both seem to level off over 5 minutes or so around 2.4k in my current gear, but it makes me wonder if the additional influx of those short-duration buffs in a raid setting (and being able to dump more abilities in those windows) would help bump UP closer to where it should be.
It's probably been mentioned, but I also noticed that Horn of Winter triggers a 1.5s GCD whether you are in BP or UP.
I fail to see how updating from a 89haste weapon to a 57haste weapon and getting more DPS leads you into thinking haste is responsible for the increase. Or is the point the trinket? Because you could probably equip any trinket, and I'm sure you'd see a DPS increase going from Demise to Betrayer.
Looking back on my original post makes me cringe a bit. There's definitely a "duh" factor and I apologize for that. However look at the weapon speed and take into account the additional haste from the trinket. Speed is certainly an issue. There's also the potential quirk I noticed when using Rawr. When I switched from a 3.50 to a 3.40 and popped in that trinket the dps numbers for the haste enchant to cloak skyrocketed. We're talking a big jump over the other potential enchant, 22 Agility.
We're all operating on the idea that haste is to be avoided yet it's found on our tier gear, on the top end 2handers and on our badge sigil. There's also the numbers people are reporting when switching from Blood to Unholy. Heck the presence issue alone already seems to disprove the DPS compendium many of us are taking as bible.
More testing needs to be done to examine the worth of Haste and it's weight relative to attack power and other stats. My original post may have been a bit silly but the intents the same: dialogue on haste's worth to Blood spec'd DPS DKs.
Unholy Presence: Increases attack speed by 15%, increases movement speed by 15%, and reduces the global cooldown on all Death Knight abilities by 0.5 sec.
I see a lot of players talking about the haste part of Unholy Presence, but I don’t see a lot of players talking about the GCD reduction of 0.5 sec from this Presence. I spent some time at the training dummies last night and noticed while using UP, my rotation was off which caused me to auto attack for awhile until the cooldown timer of 10 sec for my runes refreshed.
The global cooldown is generally 1.5 seconds for all classes except rogues and cat form druids. The global cooldown affects the wait for the next ability, so using an item or ability with the standard 1.5 second cooldown will require waiting that long before a 1 second global cooldown ability can be used.
Our normal rotation is something like this:
IT -> PS or PS -> IT
HS -> HS –> OB/DS -> DC
HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> DC
With a common cooldown of 1.5 sec per ability, that rotation fits in nicely with 1 sec per set of runes where we swing, but when we lower the GCD our rotation is off and I had to redo what order I was using my abilities.
I will have to update this post when I get home, I wrote down what rotations I finally went too. Once I changed the order of abilities, on the second set, my dps increase by about 200+ from what recount was showing before the change.
I see a lot of players talking about the haste part of Unholy Presence, but I don’t see a lot of players talking about the GCD reduction of 0.5 sec from this Presence. I spent some time at the training dummies last night and noticed while using UP, my rotation was off which caused me to auto attack for awhile until the cooldown timer of 10 sec for my runes refreshed.
The global cooldown is generally 1.5 seconds for all classes except rogues and cat form druids. The global cooldown affects the wait for the next ability, so using an item or ability with the standard 1.5 second cooldown will require waiting that long before a 1 second global cooldown ability can be used.
Our normal rotation is something like this:
IT -> PS or PS -> IT
HS -> HS –> OB/DS -> DC
HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DS -> DC
With a common cooldown of 1.5 sec per ability, that rotation fits in nicely with 1 sec per set of runes where we swing, but when we lower the GCD our rotation is off and I had to redo what order I was using my abilities.
I will have to update this post when I get home, I wrote down what rotations I finally went too. Once I changed the order of abilities, on the second set, my dps increase by about 200+ from what recount was showing before the change.
Although the timeline you gave looks fairly accurate, what you're not taking into consideration are the other things you can do during the "auto-swing section". There you can use up any Sudden Doom procs, rebuff HoW if necessary, raise your ghoul, use DRW/gargoyle etc. All of this would impose on rune usage if the gcd was 1.5secs.
I'm starting to get the hang of blood spec, and am actually enjoying it quite a bit more than my leveling experience with Unholy. I'm still uncertain on the rotation though. Using the standard PS > IT > HS > HS > OB > DC rotation, I always seem to have about a GCD worth of time before my runes refresh for the next OB. If I've got runic power level from a previous fight or a Sudden Doom, I can fill it with another DC, but starting from zero that only occurs maybe 1 in 3 combats. I feel like something is missing when I have to just stand there and waste a GCD while runes refresh. Often I'll end up refreshing Horn of Winter, but that feels like a waste mid-combat. Am I just totally missing something or is this gap in ability use unavoidable in a stand up fight?
Obviously, that time is great to have when you're moving around extensively, though in fights like that rotation seems to matter less than prioritizing your abilities. Perhaps once Horn of Winter is changed to produce runic power instead of consuming it, refreshing the buff during the gap will feel more productive, but I'd really prefer some sort of dps solution for that time.
I'm starting to get the hang of blood spec, and am actually enjoying it quite a bit more than my leveling experience with Unholy. I'm still uncertain on the rotation though. Using the standard PS > IT > HS > HS > OB > DC rotation, I always seem to have about a GCD worth of time before my runes refresh for the next OB. If I've got runic power level from a previous fight or a Sudden Doom, I can fill it with another DC, but starting from zero that only occurs maybe 1 in 3 combats. I feel like something is missing when I have to just stand there and waste a GCD while runes refresh. Often I'll end up refreshing Horn of Winter, but that feels like a waste mid-combat. Am I just totally missing something or is this gap in ability use unavoidable in a stand up fight?
Obviously, that time is great to have when you're moving around extensively, though in fights like that rotation seems to matter less than prioritizing your abilities. Perhaps once Horn of Winter is changed to produce runic power instead of consuming it, refreshing the buff during the gap will feel more productive, but I'd really prefer some sort of dps solution for that time.
Using that standard rotation, you will always have 1 GCD worth of time to do other things. It is just the way the our abilities fall with the time it takes to refresh the runes. I almost wish there was a talent to lower the refresh of our runes to 9 sec.
PS > IT > HS > HS > OB > DC
We start with 2Br - 2Ur - 2Fr
With a 1.5 sec GCD
PS - 1Fr (0s) - ** 10 sec Rune Refresh starts **
IT - 1Ur (1.5s)
HS - 1Br (3s)
HS - 1Br (4.5s)
OB - 1Ur/1Fr (6s)
DC - 40 RP (7.5s)
9s - 10s Auto Swing - ** 1 GCD **
** 10 sec Rune Reset **
Using that standard rotation, you will always have 1 GCD worth of time to do other things. It is just the way the our abilities fall with the time it takes to refresh the runes. I almost wish there was a talent to lower the refresh of our runes to 9 sec.
Yeah, that 1 second just really annoys me. If my swing timer isn't synched to strike during that time (unlikely with a 3.whatever weapon) I get to just stand there like an idiot for a second. It's not that long, but it feels like an eternity while my character just isn't responding to inputs.
On a somewhat related note, has there been a consensus on using Sudden Doom? I've seen arguments both ways, and my natural inclination is to throw deathcoils as soon as a death trance pops, but it does prevent the last heart strike from hitting with full diseases. Choosing not to take advantage of a 5 point talent investment at every opportunity seems like a waste, and not at all what's intended. I often wish Sudden Doom would also remove that deathcoil from the GCD so as not to interfere with the spec's normal processes.
I did spike up to 5950 DPS during our first Patchwerk pull, but I got real lucky with my critrate there. I can say without a doubt I didn't even come close to this with 51/13/7...
A few questions. Based on the WWS, since you didn't use Death Strike, I'm assuming you use the Obliterate glyph and open up rotations with Obliterate? As in, ...OB PS IT HS HS DC...?
And when you say you didn't even come close as 51/13/7, how much less was 51/13/7 actually doing?
Has anybody noticed their DRW is no longer dropping D&D? I've tried multiple times in multiple instances and it seems to no longer want to do it. It still death coils and everything though.
I find myself waiting on RP and Runes to come back up when I DPS in unholy presense, basically I have to sit around just auto attacking for a bit. Because of that I won't be going to Unholy presence except when I'm PVP'ing or doing dailies.
After picking up [Betrayer of Humanity] yesterday I started playing with haste. I know I know the Compendium values it waaay low but I have [Fezzik's Pocketwatch] just sitting in the bank!
Frankly I was surprised. I went from consistently 9th in the raid to 2nd (we've got an amazing hunter). I'm certain the upgrade from [Demise] has a great deal to do with it, but I can't help feeling Haste is getting a raw deal in analysis. Especially in light of the fact that more and more folks are seeing Undead Presence compete or surpass Blood.
Has anyone made a stab at reevaluating stat weights?
It's likely the major increase you see is less an issue with the compendium and more that the [Betrayer of Humanity] takes advantage of your Orc Expertise Racial while [tem]Demise[/item] does not, in addition to what the others before me have stated.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
More testing needs to be done to examine the worth of Haste and it's weight relative to attack power and other stats. My original post may have been a bit silly but the intents the same: dialogue on haste's worth to Blood spec'd DPS DKs.
...no, it really doesn't. Not in 2-handed specs. Our damage come from:
1) diseases
2) white attacks
3) special strikes
4) RP dumps
Only 1 of those sources is remotely affected by Haste if we're using a 2-hander. Unlike Warriors and rogues who dual wield, haste does not scale with us or our mechanics. For them, haste helps them build rage, apply poisons, and white damage is a huge chunk of their dps. It's more like 20-30% for us and that's all that haste does - increase white hits. Even our talents that scale with haste are marginal talents and not critical ones. If we had a big time ability that was based on crits (like hunters and warriors) then haste/crit stacking might help more. But that's simply not how we're built. Moreover, the item budgeting on haste doesn't make it overly attractive over Atk Pwr.
Could more research be done on haste? Certainly. Does it help our dps? Certainly. Are we giving it short shrift? Definitely not. It's great in DW specs...
If you have some numbers to share, please do. But there's just no support either qualitatively or quantitatively to make us think that haste is worth anymore than it is when not dual wielding.
A lot of people are seeing low dmg due to lack of gear. One of the biggest upgrades you can get for Blood spec and really any DK spec is the weapon. Though I see a lot of DKs not hit capped 1. and then not EXP capped 2nd. With so many options from badges, heroics loot, how easy 10 man and 25 man NAXX are and the 2 dragons there should no reason you aren't hit capped.
Also I think 50/0/021 is a better spec for starter DKs and as you get better gear, more AP, better weapon and get comfortable with DKs then swap to 51/13/7.
So I did some testing with my own ratation this afternoon.
I'm specced 51/13/7
When is use the standard rotation:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DC
I reach around 2233 dps on the target dummy.
But I've been using this for a while now:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
I consistently get about 40 dps more with this rotation.
I do one attack less, but that time is spent depleting my RP with deathcoils
With the standard rotation you start deathcoiling when your diseases wear out, so that time
deathcoiling makes you miss out on disease dmg. Together with OB hitting a lot harder than HS, it makes up for that strike less.
And with the OB glyph, I suppose my rotation will keep doing more dps as my gear improves?
Or am I doing something wrong here, and should my standard rotation be doing more dps.
So I did some testing with my own ratation this afternoon.
I'm specced 51/13/7
When is use the standard rotation:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DC
I reach around 2233 dps on the target dummy.
But I've been using this for a while now:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
I consistently get about 40 dps more with this rotation.
I do one attack less, but that time is spent depleting my RP with deathcoils
With the standard rotation you start deathcoiling when your diseases wear out, so that time
deathcoiling makes you miss out on disease dmg. Together with OB hitting a lot harder than HS, it makes up for that strike less.
And with the OB glyph, I suppose my rotation will keep doing more dps as my gear improves?
Or am I doing something wrong here, and should my standard rotation be doing more dps.
Well, just doing quick math in my head (maybe not a good idea this early in the morning) looking at my average HS, Oblit and DC damage, assuming you always have enough RP to cast the extra DC you can fit in the second rune order, Oblit + DC should actually do more damage than HS + HS. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think that rotation is superior to 4xHS on the second set assuming Oblit is glyphed (for this spec, that is)?
Has anyone gotten to any definite results while testing 50/0/21 vs 51/13/7? Whats the gear breakpoint at which one is better than the other?
On a different note, I'm somewhat disappointed with the amount of DPS I manage to dish out. I cant break 3k in either spec, and on patchwerk I had about 2.7k using 50/0/21. I've seen WWS parses where DKs with my stats/spec do around 4.5k DPS, I just cant figure out what it is I'm doing wrong.
My rotation for 50/0/21 is
OB - PS - IT - HS - HS
HS - HS - HS - HS - OB
IT - PS - HS - HS and so on. I DC whenever SD is up, or when my runes are on CD.
My rotation for 51/13/7 is
PS - IT - HS - HS - OB
HS - HS - HS -HS - OB
PS - IT - HS - HS and so on. Again, I DC whenever SD is up, or when my runes are on CD. Basically every time I have FU up I use OB, and whenever its blood/death I use HS. I always refresh my IT/PS just before they fall off.
Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
(Just in case its not updated yet, I use the meteorite trinket from Ymiron instead of the pvp trinket when raiding)
What am I doing wrong? Any insights?
EDIT: I know I'm way above hit cap, I plan on regemming all those +hit gems to +str gems as soon as I find someone to cut me a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
So I did some testing with my own ratation this afternoon.
I'm specced 51/13/7
When is use the standard rotation:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> HS -> HS -> HS -> HS -> DC
I reach around 2233 dps on the target dummy.
But I've been using this for a while now:
PS -> IT -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
OB -> OB -> HS -> HS -> DC
I consistently get about 40 dps more with this rotation.
I do one attack less, but that time is spent depleting my RP with deathcoils
With the standard rotation you start deathcoiling when your diseases wear out, so that time
deathcoiling makes you miss out on disease dmg. Together with OB hitting a lot harder than HS, it makes up for that strike less.
And with the OB glyph, I suppose my rotation will keep doing more dps as my gear improves?
Or am I doing something wrong here, and should my standard rotation be doing more dps.
Not to mention sigil of awareness gets more work with that rotation
I decided to hit the dummy to check out the 2xOblit 2xHS rotation talked about a few posts up.
I found that the following rotation consistently pulled more DPS than the one listed in the compendium:
IT -> PS -> Oblit -> HS -> HS -> DC (x)
Oblit -> Oblit -> HS -> HS -> DC (x)
Here are the relevant Recount stats that I think probably explain the discrepancy:
Obliterate:
Avg. Hit: 2834
Avg. Crit: 6624
Heart Strike:
Avg. Hit: 1544
Avg. Crit: 3934
Death Coil:
Avg. Hit: 1575
Avg. Crit: 3152
So, basically on the second set of runes, due to time limitations the choice is always going to come down to HSx2 versus Oblit + DC, and as you can see from what I observed above, Oblit + DC wins that challenge pretty handily.
What I thought might happen would be an RP chokepoint where you might only have enough RP for one DC during your second sets, but it just doesn't happen when running Blood Presence because of Sudden Doom limiting your RP spending outside of DRW. I don't believe the same results would occur if you were running Unholy Presence because then you can always dump your maximum amount of DCs before your runes refresh.
Worth noting is that I have both the Sigil of Awareness and the Glyph of Obliterate slotted.
12/05/08, 1:00 AM
) and will post results again after this weeks Naxx to hopefully provide better stats for those still interested in the 51/0/20 performance.
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