lilodot

I have some similar macros setup but I definitely did not know that it could also summon a ghoul! That's fantastic
Also for trinkets I think it's easier to enter:
/use 13
/use 14
Will make sure that part of the macro is always up to date

Don't know yet, my test doesn't really provide conclusive data but it's certainly something to keep in mind. I think 51/0/20 is worth a try if you're having trouble keeping a rotation during those messy fights. When I get back in on the regular Naxx runs I'll probably test it a lot more.

 

Coldfuzion

Actually i find the 51/0/20 rotation to feel much more..clunky for lack of better words. Mind you I come from a rogue which in retrospect feels much more streamlined. The fact of the matter is obliterate gets rid of diseases which therefore means you spend time putting them back up. With a 51/13/7 the rotation seems much smoother, ie. toss on diseases obliterate, hs to hell dc when at 100 rp. Infact I'm sure that a macro could just be made to put heart strike and obliterate together. However on the downside the hit cap rises due to the lack of virulence while also losing 5% passive str and stamina increases from talents.

 

Pyros

Nice tip about DRW and ghoul, I never did it because I usually pop my ghoul first thing into the fight, and usually it gets first bloodlust, then when I resummon it it gets 2nd bloodlust(I assume they get bloodlust, if they don't it's still a way to get 2 ghouls in the same fight so fine with it). And since you start at low RP, I end up using ghoul before first DRW. Guess next time I'll keep it. As for hysteria, I always use it on our top fury dps war, he has a lot of gear upgrades(got lucky on /rolls, no dkp on our first runs ^^) and he's pretty much trashing everyone on damage meters. Also he doesn't have deathcoils and diseases in his DPS, so he benefits 100% from hysteria, while DKs have a bit of "wasted" dmg.

One thing however, you shouldn't macro Blood Tap with Empower Rune Weapon. Blood tap is a mini empower, it refreshes the closest blood rune, which lets you get another heartstrike in if both your bloods are on cd.

I used a gargoyle blood setup at first(well at first I used unholy, but another DK dinged 80 and he wanted to be unholy, and since I have better gear than him I went blood), but I found the strain of maintaining garg one minute every 2minute annoying, and it'd be very annoying on certain fights like kelthuzad where you have to Mind Freeze, or any fight where you take huge dmg or stand in an AE and need RP to pop AMS or IF. I switched to DRW mostly because of that. Also I was annoyed with the oblit taking off diseases.

Very happy with the spec however, I'm constantly in the top3 DPS, usually second, with the fury war way ahead, and my gear is not the best yet. I've had time to try all of them, and I think I like blood for DPS the best, even though unholy wasn't too bad either, but had to babysit that stupid ghoul a lot, and glyph the RP return on deathcoil heals because I ended up having to heal it. If I respeced to unholy, I'd probably get Night of the Dead to simply resummon a new one everytime it dies.


Few things though to add to the discussion. First Blood Aura. Someone said earlier in the thread he questionned the utility. I'm also not too sure. Most of it goes into overhealing, even on fights where there's a lot of raid dmg. What doesn't go into overhealing only heals for a little. It heals Hysteria dmg for the most part, but that's not really something to worry about. I think the points are somewhat waste in there. Now, there's not a lot of places where you can put points efficiently though. Rune Tap cooldown reduction maybe, I do use it on fights where you get knockbacked or whatever and you're running back. The rune will refresh before you need it due to having to reapply diseases and obliterating, and the self healing is pretty nice to take you out of a dangerous zone. Then again, it's not that big. The only other option seems Bloodworms, which I'm not too sure about, do they still go and aggro shit randomly like they did on beta? All other talents seem oriented for tanking, which I wouldn't want to do as blood spec anyway.

Second point is Mark of Blood. While I do use it occasionally, like on offtanks when healers are dieing or whatever, I'll drop it on their mob for a little healing help, it seems to be mostly unused. I also often have to move to go apply it where I want it. On the main tank it's been pretty worthless, but in heroics like when the healer dies to something and we finish the boss with mark of blood and taunt kiting. The range, the cooldown and the rune cost seem to amper it's easy usage. Wish it was free like hysteria, and 40y range. Again the bigget issue is there's nothing to put the point in, but more Rune Tap or Bloodworms.

 

Melchior

I could definitely use some advice on this spec, I have tried 51/13/7 a few times now in raids and each time I just end up wanting to pull my hair out (after my hands rest from spamming HS that is).

Main point is that it constantly feels like I am falling behind in terms of rotation. The opportunities to actually unload RP seem so few and far between that I am very often sitting at capped RP. I suppose this is simply due to Blood unloading runes slower than the other two builds, but just how much time do you guys generally find to throw DCs while DRW is on cooldown? Sudden Doom is probably helping to exacerbate that feeling of having too much RP during my rotations, but compared to Unholy I feel like I'm choking on the stuff sometimes. Is that pretty normal or am I not pushing my strikes out fast enough? I've been prioritizing pretty much all of my rune abilities (HS, Oblit, disease refresh) over DC when they are both available, is that wrong?

Also, it could be that Blood starts out slower with weaker gear compared to Unholy, but even single target I seem to be about 300 DPS off from my 17/0/54 build. Because of that (coupled with the above) it feels like I'm missing something when it comes to playing this spec. Help would be appreciated; after playing a Warlock for three years I am not real keen on continuing pet management if I can at least get up to par with the alternative(s).

 

level12wizard

Assuming I'm understanding the 8.5 second rule mechanic right, you can sometimes squeeze extra Death Coils into your crazy 51/13/7 rotation without really losing anything.

Scenario: Your frost and unholy runes are 6+ seconds on cooldown, and your two bloods are coming up, each 1.5 seconds apart. The first blood rune comes up, yo pop a DC, then continue heart striking, without losing time on your rune cooldowns.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's one of the things I've been trying to do. It seems to work well, but I only have PuGs to compare to.

It feels really wasteful for sure, sitting at 100 RP a lot. I'm not really sure if I should dump my Icy Touch glyph, as sometimes I do want the extra RP, especially at the start of a fight.

I'm also unsure as to when exactly Glyph of Obliterate becomes beneficial as Blood, and how it would affect me when I respec to Frost tanking for five mans. That is, if I could ever find it on the AH at all. bah

 

◊ Giant

I'm currently specced 50/0/21. I felt that I didn't like having to spend the points in frost which didn't really buff that much of the damage that do. I also felt that all the strength scaling points in unholy would likely help it scale past the 51/13/7 build in the long run.

I chose gargoyle over DRW as discussion on here seemed to indicate that the gargoyle was a better choice at this point however given the difficulties I've had in keeping the gargoyle alive (and this is only in 10 mans) I'm beginning to think that DRW might be a better choice.

Rotation so far has been:

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

The 2nd DC in the first cycle is dependant on RP levels as you can often find a GCD or two spare whilst the diseases are up before you OB them off.

I've only done 10 man raiding so far but this is a patchwerk 10 man parse. I let horn of winter drop which would probably have helped a little towards the end but otherwise my strike rotation was pretty close to perfect 6HS : 2 IT : 2 PS : 1OB.

 

wow

Apologies if i'm replying to this a little late, but I picked it up last night and during my testing it seems like it definitely has an internal CD. The uptime is nowhere near 100%, I get 1 proc out of a full rotation (6X HS) if i'm lucky, then it doesn't proc for a duration that makes me think it has an internal CD.

 

Khana

Mate, you're genius.

 

pfooti

I'm currently still a baby DK (only 73, and in a leveling spec), but I'm totally in love with Blood for DPS. My question is: at what point does it become fruitful to get into Unholy presence instead of Blood? The reduction in GCDs means you can get around 2 extra specials off per half-rotation.

The first-order approximation I was thinking about was: "are two non-crit deathcoils more than 15% of the base DPS rotation for blood?" That assumes you've got the RP generation to throw out two extra deathcoils every 10 seconds. My napkin math says that for most of my projected gear levels, it's better to stay in blood presence and cap RP. If, on the other hand, I was clipping rune repopulation for heart strikes and oblits, or unable to use Death Trance procs (the automatic crit makes the damage output pretty significant), then unholy presence would be better.

 

Lazareth

Hahaha. That's great!

I noticed that from time to time, I would get two ghouls on bosses, and I could never figure out why. Your post explains why, thanks!


I would disagree on this point. Maybe because it just makes me at least feel like I'm helping during those "oh crap" moments where a boss enrages or something I like Mark of Blood .. it's also a good farming/solo ability. I solo'd many many elites, and I'm sure this ability helped keep me alive.

Holy crap.

 

tedv

In the unholy thread, there's been good discussion based around the WWS parses. If anyone has blood parses to share from their recent raiding, I encourage them to post them so we can pick them apart. Hopefully it will give us insight into whether the 13/7 offspec is better or worse than the 0/20 offspec. Given the nutso stuff that Dancing Rune Weapon can do, it seems superior to the 0/21 offspec though.

 

• Zurm

As a side note, I have a friend in Vis Maior who's blood DK's DRW got a 37k crit on thaddius. The damage of this was exactly 2x the highest personal hit. Which makes me think... does DRW have a latent 5% crit like all pets, and simply copy damage per attack... and when it crits do a further double? I'll try to get a WWS link from him again today for that fight, but it was a very strange behavior I saw and couldn't explain any other way.

 

◊ Giant

I'll repost my 10 man pw parse - Patchwerk

I wasn't hit or expertise capped although I should be tonight. More than happy to post that one as well.

 

Naivar

Thank god someone finally made a Blood thread....

I have major beef with the 51/13/7 build.

When I got to level 80, I decided to spec into blood, as I saw it being a superior raiding/grouping spec. Anyways, I did research in the forums, and there was a general consensus that 51/13/7 was the better for the two. After specing into it, I began running heroics with my guild for about 3 hours until I Death Gated and speced to 51/0/20.

While I was 51/13/7 I was pushing around 1200 dps. where as 51/0/20 I saw an immediate jump in dps, as in 1500 average to 1600-1700 dps during boss fights. All I changed was my spec, and yes I was using the rotation on the dps com. With this spec, my obliterates were only doing around 9% of my dmg, where HS and melee were both around 23-25 %. To me, this makes necrosis and bcb a much more viable option.

Also, I am able to weave DCs between my rotations so by the time I obliterate, they only have about 6-8 seconds left on them anyways. I've found using DCs like this not only increases my dps, but also solves the constant max RP in blood spec.

I would just like for someone to PLEASE explain to me why 51/13/7 is considered better than 51/0/20. Not only is haste much more viable (And there is a decent amount on the Naxx raiding gear from what I have seen) due to Necrosis and bcb, but you don't have the talent point dumb to get to Annihilation.

Also, can someone please explain to me why in most 51/0/20 builds necrosis is at 3/5 where bcb is maxed? I know the DPS Com has their dps increases being far apart from eachother (6.09 vs 2.04), but I just don't see why. Unless I have made a serious error, necrosis seems far superior because it increases your white dmg. Where bcb scales to your weapon damage... which will always be much lower than your white dmg.

I really don't want to sound like I have figured it out all and thats that, because I'm sure I haven't, if you see any errors in thinking then please tell me (especially the necrosis vs bcb debate).

 

Lazareth

I guess people's mileage may vary with the spec. As 51/13/7 I can pull upwards of 2500 during a boss fight. On trash, blood will always be a lower DPS output due to the nature of World of AoECraft, but on single target fights, I tend to smash faces in with a very high DPS number. I've never tried 51/0/20 so I have no experience with that, but I do know that my experience with 51/13/7 has been different than yours.

Matter of flavor, I suppose?

Holy crap.

 

Naivar

I suppose. Do you have any idea of the exact TC behind 51/13/7? I really wouldn't mind speccing that if I knew why my dps was so horrible in it.

Like whats your usual rotation during Boss fights?

 

Lazareth

I'm assuming you're wondering why dump the points into frost and not Unholy. I suppose the main reason there is because your rotation is a full 20 seconds or so of using very hurtful attacks that rely on diseases being up. In one rotation you can get off three obliterates and six heart strikes, all without wasting the GCD/Runes to re-apply your diseases. Only time you re-apply is when the rotation starts over. With the points in Unholy, you're relying on a proc (BCB) to up your DPS.

My rotation is: PS > IT > HS HS > OB > DC (Sometimes two) > OB > HS HS HS HS > Runic power dump > Repeat

It's pretty simple, and easy to start over if you screw up halfway through.

Holy crap.

 

Leaflock

My spec has both Necrosis and BCB maxed. Looking over the web stats from last night's Naxx25, on most fights each talent accounted for ~3% of my damage. That's why I prefer 50/0/21 over 51/13/7-- ten points in frost buff Icy Touch, which did 4% of my damage, while with 50/0/21, Necrosis and BCB alone accounted for 6%. Not to mention that in 51/13/7, you're using Icy Touch less often.

Having to reapply diseases may do less damage than an Obliterate, but there's more to it than meets the eye. IT + PS (especially with the IT glyph) generates more runic power for Death Coil and Gargoyle, which I've found to be extremely useful on fights where you can't stay in melee range. I dpsed during Heigan's dance phase and on Sir Zeliek at range with Icy Touch and Blood Boil powering Gargoyle and Death Coil.

Gargoyle is really the reason for going 50/0/21 anyway-- my webstats show it doing ~1500 dps while up (varies quite a bit, I saw as high as 2k dps on Loatheb). Gargoyle alone accounted for 8-10% of my damage on boss fights, above Obliterate and below Death Coil. Obviously, Obliterate falls lower because I'm only using 1-2 per variable rotation. I need more practice keeping Gargoyle up, but I was usually able to sustain 30-40 seconds per use. Sometimes, this was simply because it got killed. If someone knows a good way to track when your Gargoyle is actually up other than the wispy thread graphic that connects you to it, I'd appreciate the info.

I picked up the Sigil of Haunted Dreams because it simply gets more use with my spec. Haste may not be ideal, but it does increase dps, and the buff is up almost all the time. When it procs together with the Meteoric Whetstone, I get ~18% haste. Unholy DKs get much more use out of the Sigil of Awareness.

One other observation after last night: Plague Strike glyph doesn't seem that great. Even with it on, PS did 2-3% of my damage. I'm going to swap it for a utility glyph like Icebound Fortitude, I think.

 

Vetinari

Just look at your buffs: You have a buff called "Gargoyle", that starts with a 60 second duration, and that you can click off at any time, if you find that the encounter/pvp requires you to have more runic power. The buff vanishes when your gargoyle does.

Use a mod that lets you control the display of your buffs, and you are set!

Clearly intellect is not your primary stat.

 

◊ Vontre

The funny thing about being capped on Runic Power is that magegraf indicates you can then do more dps in Unholy Presence.

http://www.magegraf.com/deathknight/...104839a2d04838

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

◊ forostie

On single target fights, Blood is about 5-10% better DPS than Unholy at our gear level. Both of us sit in Unholy presence and spam our respective nukes accounting for at least 20% of overall damage (HS and SS) and Blood pulls out front ever so slightly. Also, from what I can tell from our testing last night, is that a full duration gargoyle is only just slightly better than a full duration DRW. From what I can tell, they are both well balanced trees.

The World of Warcraft Armory (Me, Unholy)

The World of Warcraft Armory (Blood fase)

I'll have stasiscl/wws tonight to back up my claims.

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

Illundai

Hm, my testing on target dummies doesn't seem to agree. Sure I can dump my RP a lot better in UHP, but I don't seem to do more DPS because of the -15% damage dealt penalty.

[e] Magegraf gives me the EXACT same DPS for UHP & BP with my stats. Guess there's a breaking point where the presences equal out?

 

wow

Depends on what you mean by "slightly better". They do comparable DPS for their durations, and gargoyle obviously lasts longer, however limits your RP usage. I've seen quite a few logs of well-used gargoyles (lust, etc) pulling 2000+ over their whole duration. Personally, even when I use DRW with Lust, Hysteria and an AP trinket it doesn't do 2000 DPS over its duration.

As for comparing the two specs, for some reason there seems to be 0 good blood logs floating around (please prove me wrong, I just can't find any on my own), while a simple gander at wws.com's Patchwerk ranking shows me plenty of Unholy DK's pulling near or over 4500, without ghoul being accounted for by WWS. I wouldn't be so quick to claim Blood is better, we still have alot to learn in the coming weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if Unholy comes out on top based on what i'm seeing from both the numbers other people are pulling and the numbers i've been pulling since I specced from blood to unholy.

 

◊ forostie

Depending on what the boss wants to do tonight, I'll either have Patch 25 or Malygos 25 logs up tonight. Having said that, I'm a terrible player and Lilgentle is pro so chances are I'm just bad at DK

EJ Discourages experimentation with unique play-styles/specs/glyphs

Farstrider: "Of course you can fucking pronounce it. It's L-rigaton-may, you wanker."

 

primer

This intrigues me, what rotation do you use?