Wow Web Stats

My performance was abysmal (don't look at Patchwerk, they made the melee stand in the green slime which is a debuff of -90% stats). For some reason, on heroic bosses I've managed to pull amazing DPS, but last night in our guild's first Naxx-25 run, I was barely making a dent (or so it feels).

I don't consider myself a crappy DK, and my gear doesn't really suck, so I'm not sure what gives. I was having weird problems of dropping to 5-7 FPS while in combat, so I'm sure some of that is attributed, but it can't be the whole reason.

51/13/7 (going to spec back into Imp IT instead of Toughness tonight), with your standard rotation everyone else has mentioned.

I've tried in both Blood and Unholy presence, but didn't feel any gain either way. I think that's really more dependent on the situation than anything else. i.e. - Grobbulus and Heigan I'd use Unholy for the run speed increase, Gluth and Patchwerk blood (as examples).

The last couple WWSs I've seen have gearing WAY over the 8% hit cap. Ratings in the 360 range. I realize this helps with spell resists, but is that really helpful? Maybe you have few gear choices and there's lots of hit on that crafted helm (both you and a previous poster have it) but +100 hit rating over soft cap is exorbitant, especially with 25-man raid buffs. Testing the 8% hit cap last night I was at 7.95% hit and only missed 2 DCs and 2 ITs in a span of about 8-10 minutes on a dummy. You definitely didn't miss a single DC.

Looking at the parses, I see a low level of DCs with 70% crit. Are you only casting when Sudden Doom procs? That's less than optimal. With the built-in leeway on rune timings coming back up and natural RP burn time we have, don't be afraid to spam DC before you get to 100 RP. If you wait to use a rune, it will come back up in ~8 secs rather than 10. I wish I had WWSs of my own to give such a breakdown but I don't yet. Normally my dmg breakdown is ~25 white, ~22 HS, ~20 DC but my weapon also sucks. Perhaps someone else with more luck can share theirs.

The way I see it currently, the rotations are opening guidelines. Not optimals. Keep in mind our priority: diseases, powerful strikes, RP-dump before/at 100 RP. Overall your raid's ranged dps seems to dominate (2 shadow priests above you?). Your dps warrior should be way up there. There's something going on that's lowering your time on target or simply hurting the melee. How come you never got Blessing of Might or Battleshout during some of the boss fights? Heck you gained Wisdom more than Kings of Might... am I reading this wrong?

Edit: Misread your paper doll, thought you were not Expertise Capped.
Edit2: Not worth a separate post, but this post espouses the benefits of working in more OBs (when you have 2 Death Runes) instead of 2 HS, which frees up GCDs, efficiently uses runes, and gives you more time to DC.

It's just a gear drop issue for me. I'm going to be going for 4pc T7, so flipping the pants and helm I currently have, as well as putting Ruthlessness/Circle of Death in the other ring slot where the crafted is now will put me pretty close to where I want to be.

Daedelix definitely covered most of it.
Another thing to remember is that fights are rather lengthy, so popping your DRW early may mean that you will get to use it again in the same fight. I know that my DPS w/o popping all of my cooldowns (Trinkets+Hysteria+DRW+ERW), I fall down a few places on the recount meters. As soon as I pop everything, I jump up to first (for the time-being anyways).

I also noticed that I have a general low usage of DC compared to other WWS reports I've seen, and I guess I attribute that to the fact that I'm always doing something with my runes, never sitting at any "empty" spots where I can use DC without sacrificing time in which I could be re-applying diseases or something.

Obviously there's something I'm missing -- maybe I'm being too critical of the downtime on my diseases or the importance of always using my weapon strikes? I'm not big on Theorycrafting so there are a few intricacies that I don't understand quite yet (slow learner).

Thanks for the input and help, much appreciated and I still hope to learn more!

You have the standard rotation down, but where you've inserted your questions is where improvisation is needed. I believe you should always value your strikes over RP dumping (sans Sudden Doom proc). It all depends on how much RP you have at the time. A good rule to keep is to never let yourself max out on RP, so you don't HAVE to dump all of your DCs in one go, you could just throw one out after 4x HS if you're close to max, then start up your PS > IT rotation.

A few DK's I know start spamming things in the heat of a boss fight. Don't catch yourself over-spamming disease-refreshing moves.

On another note, my recount always shows my damage in this order -

White Damage
Heart Strike
Obliterate
Death Coil

Some people have reported that they have higher DC damage, but it might completely depend on Sudden Doom luck. (btw sorry if this has been asked before, but is there an internal cooldown on it?)

You never want to waste Sudden Doom procs because they're free DCs that are guaranteed crit. You don't want to HS four times in a row and not toss a coil if SD procs because another HS in that rotation might proc SD again. If you're extremely paranoid about your rotations, you should try using Unholy Presence instead. I've found that both presences' damages are roughly the same in the long run and you don't have to worry about wasting time dumping RP because you will always have time to fit everything in before the diseases fall off. I know what you mean because if you spend time throwing an extra DC during a rotation, your 4th HS will always hit for less because PS will have fallen off. Unholy Presence doesn't allow that to happen.

So, I'm having problems with my Death Runes screwing me over. Sometimes I have to move, and I end up with surplus Death Runes by the time I get back to the boss to DPS (typically after the 2nd Obliterate in the standard Blood rotation) so, essentially all 4 Frost and Unholy Runes are now Death Runes. The problem comes when I next use PS and IT - it will then use BOTH Unholy Runes (Death Runes at this time) in order to perform those 2 abilities and then BOTH Frost Runes on the next Obliterate. That then comes back to haunt me later when I try to IT, but its on cooldown because I have an Unholy Rune active instead of a Frost Rune. And then things bugger up because my diseases and runes are coming off cooldown in a fashion that doesn't support the rotation. I just end up saying '**** it' and blowing Empower Rune Weapon in order to restart.

Its a bit complex, but I imagine a lot of people here have been stuck in a situation when they have 4 Death Runes, they use abilities and it prioritises the Unholy Runes first.

So, I thought, why do I need Death Runes? Why am I doing 4 straight Heart Strikes when I have an abundance of Death Trance! procs and Runic Power?

Is it viable to avoid the Death Rune Mastery talent altogether and do the following rotation:

PS - IT - HS - HS - OB - DC
OB - HS - HS - OB - (RP dump)

Its not necessary to spec into DRM if you use that rotation, so I could spec into a little more utility instead (Spell Deflection/Improved Rune Tap/Mark of Blood) and I'm still not wasting any 'Rune Uptime'. I'm essentially just trading 2 Heart Strikes for an Obliterate and a Death Coil.

Thoughts?

The way to fix your issue is a slight change to your rotation when you have that. You'll start with B-B-D-D-D-D. We'll say you're starting your rotation over at this point. IT - PS will leave you with B-B-D-D-U-U. If you hit Obliterate at this point, it turns into B-B-D-F-D-U. So HS, HS, HS, Oblit, HS. More or less have to adapt to this problem as you go, I was having a lot of difficulty with it and was losing a lot of dps, until I realized this, and learned to adapt to it.

Edit: Nevermind, figured out what you were saying.

Okay, so I PS-IT-HS-HS and simply wait (or dump runic power) until I have b-b-D-D-U-U (lower case b to denote its still charging up), then OB and I'll be sitting at b-b-f-D-u-U. That sounds like a good solution without wasting too much DPS. Thanks.

Let me clear it up a bit more, sorry, I'm terrible at forums.

We'll say for whatever reason, my rotation went Oblit Oblit Hs Hs. You would end up with B-B-D-D-D-D. All on cooldown. For some reason, you have to move, stop dpsing, whatever, and all your runes come off cooldown. Reapplying your diseases would leave you with B-B-D-D-(U)-(U). I used the parenthesis to show which are on cooldown. Instead of doing hs x 4, you could use Oblit. Oblit would give you back 2 death runes, BUT, it always gives you 1 frost and 1 unholy as death, never 2 frost, or 2 unholy. So your runes would turn into B-B-(D)-(F)-(D)-(U). You could then HS - HS. Your last rune in the line would come off cooldown, followed by the other unholy, which is a death again. HS there. Then the other 2, the Frost and Death in place of frost would come off cooldown, so you could HS, using that other death, then Oblit, turning the Frost and Unholy back into Death, which should have your entire rotation back on track by that point.

Does that make a bit more sense?

I know what you mean... when things get hot, especially when switching targets rapidly, my finger always wants to hit Icy Touch.

I'm guilty due to waiting on my gear to drop, and wishing the ret pallys would stop rolling with me. Once I get the shoulders and helm im looking for, i should be right at the 9% from what i've calculated. For now... it's all I have, but yes I know I'm over.

No internal GCD, with a 1 out of 5 chance to proc on each HS. Yes its amazing :P

Wow Web Stats

I did quite a bit better this time. I took the advice and wasn't so anal (for lack of a better word) about throwing off my rotation. Every time I saw a Sudden Doom pop, I used DC and that seemed to help a bit. I also started making use of Pestilence on trash. Not having to re-apply my diseases shaved a lot of time off of being able to use my strikes.

On that note, anybody know of an addon that tells me when Sudden Doom procs? I installed a mod called Proculas, but it only puts a message in your chat box. Hoping for something a bit more ... obvious.

I set up a bright green NeedToKnow bar in the center of my screen for Death Trance, so I know when it procs. Since I was using NeedToKnow for disease timers anyay, it prevented me from having to install a separate mod.

Pondering switching from my current build to the following to drop DRM:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I don't really lose anything with my current rotation and pick up a decent self-heal. I just don't think DRM is proving to be particularly useful for Blood Presence and I'd like to try doing something else with those points.

I actually have this problem all the time, ty for the tip.

Hey, anyone able to write a simple flash game that would simulate runes? would be nice for practicing rotations and trying different variations here at work I googled around for a bit and couldnt find anything.

If you haven't tried it I like Mik's Scrolling Battle Text. It has notifications for Sudden Doom, Runestrike and other DK procs that are by default in the upper center of the screen. It also shows when cooldowns are up towards the lower center, overall it provides quite a large amount of useful information in an obvious but unintrusive sort of way, and is very customizeable if you want to add in your own custom notifications.

I really like power auras, Power Auras Classic : WoWInterface Downloads : Buff/Debuff/Spell Mods for notification. You can get very creative with your notifications I am currently use it to notify me when Horn of Winter or Bone Armor is down or when I get Runestrike procs.

And here is a wonderful demo video:
YouTube - WoW UI Mod Power Auras Mini Discussion Part 1

edit: The curse link was to the old, unmaintained version. Changed to link to the Power Auras Classic, which is now being maintained by a new author.

How do you make it show when you can use runestrike?

You change the Activator to a different one in the drop-down menu at the bottom. I think the option is "When usable" for things like Overpower, Rune Strike, Revenge etc., but can't be sure since I'm at work.