Cabal

I have been raiding blood dps for a couple of weeks now, chose 50/0/21 specc.

And there is something i havent seen mentioned anywhere else: Regarding this specc the major downside is widely considered the loss of Obliterate as a U/F dump because of no Anihilation talent. However I have worked around this by using Death strike, which coupled with the death strike glyph, and blood´s over-abundance of RP, makes it hit very very hard, critting in the region of 4k/5k (with the odd 6k sometimes).

Just something that worked fine for me, and havent really seen this concept anywhere else. I personally feel it should be at least mentioned on the Dps compendium, as it might not be imediately apparent to newer players to the class.

 

Vierbein

@Cabal

It's really good idea.
You could dump RP just before refreshing Dieaseses, as they don't affect DC.
You would build up RP again before next DS.

 

Skarabrae

@Cabal

I like this idea, if your DS is criting for 4k/5k, for how much you Obi hits/crits ?

 

Illundai

I'd have had a very good Naxx 25 parse but our server was extremely laggy last night, experiencing 3-10 sec lagspikes is not very fun in a tight rotation like the one Blood has... But here's the parse anyway:

Wow Web Stats


The bulk of my upgrades were from this run (Shoulders, chest, boots) so the whole run was in blues in those slots, so don't stare yourself blind on that :P.

 

clairecakes

What aura are you all using generally in raids? I know initial testing on the beta showed Blood to be superior to Unholy for raids. Heck I tested it myself and saw the numbers. Yet on live I'm finding Unholy to surpass Blood. During raids the utility of the short GCD is great on bosses with lots of movement. I wasn't consistently watching my numbers during the raid so I headed off to Ebon Hold for some dummy testing. I was surprised to find Unholy sometimes getting well over 150 dps more. Other times the gap was smaller. Consistently Unholy surpassed Blood.

Is this an isolated incident? Is Unholy simply having some weird synergy with [Demise]? Have you all found one particular aura to beat out another one whilst raiding?

 

Shalymar

At 2am this morning I respect from a heavy Unholy/Blood build (17/0/54) to a similar Hybrid build 44/0/26 and I really like it. I am experimenting with something similar. I get most of the great talents from Unholy, Master of Ghouls, Summon Gargoyle, BCB, Necrosis, etc and I get all the great talents in the blood tree minus Blood Gorged. Having a permanent pet, summon gargoyle and all the great healing talents in the blood tree, I almost cannot die and I dish out some serious dps in the process. I also picked up the Death Strike glyph and use that in place of Obliterate. My Death strike hits for a ton.

 

◊ Eej

Yesterday I was killing some elites in Icecrown and I hit my Hysteria macro which looks like this:

Somehow my DRW cast Hysteria on me and I had double Hysteria up. I haven't been able to replicate it since and I'm wondering if anyone has had this happen to them as well.

 

soscannonballs

I really have to disagree with the 51/13/7 spec. In theory it works out alright, but on actual fights it is very difficult to keep up the rotation, for what is basically just getting in one extra obliterate as opposed to refreshing diseases. I like 51/0/20 much better for dps, and I find that I don't need the increased disease duration for that spec either. Another thing I like about 51/0/20 is that I can use any SD procs I get immediately and not jeopardize my heart strikes getting the bonus from diseases.

 

EwokChilli

Odd thing I came across when I was testing different builds on the combat dummies. When i was (lvl 73) 51/13/0, I was running a solid 1180 dps with a IT -> Oblit -> HS -> HS -> HS (I found it to be 100 dps higher for me than IT -> PS -> Oblit -> HS -> HS and oblit + 4 HS after). This was in Blood Presence. I wanted to see what would happen if i were in Unholy Presence, and I was easily at 1250 dps with the same rotation.

What I'm curious about is whether the 15% damage is actually less than the 15% haste+0.5 GCD redux. Thinking about it, with the Blood rotation, you get on average 5 attacks off in 6 seconds (first attack is at time zero). This means that your first rune will repop at 10 seconds and your last run will pop at 16 seconds. With Unholy Presense, you get your first 5 attacks in 4 seconds. This means that your first rune repop is at 10 seconds and your last rune pop is at 14 seconds, you've shaved 2 seconds off your entire rotation, and 1 / (14/16) = 1.143. So you get a 14.3% increase to your dps because you get your full rotation in less time and your next rotation arrives sooner. It also definitely makes Rune Dumping super easy. Now, this is taking into account that I was lvl 73, in blues and greens and I'm just stating what I was seeing on the combat dummy. With better weapons, DC will become less of my DPS and blood will probably be a better presence again...maybe?

On a side not, is there a way to make a macro that does DC if Sudden Death is up or Heart Strike otherwise?

 

Aiva

I got that once, thought it was some sort of server lag or something.. not sure if it affected my damage or not tho, realized it too late, couldn't check it..

Btw, about the 51/13/7 rotation... Which advantages does IT->PS->HS->HS->OB->RD->OB->HSx4->RD have over IT->PS->OB->HS->HS->RD->OB->HSx4->RD ? need some clarification on this. And it isn't always possible to squeeze those 4 HS in before diseases wear off.. any tips ?

 

zagor

Just putting it out here.

A long time ago in the DK thread leading to wotlk it was theorised that blood dps spec like 51-13-7 will dps in unholy presence, and unholy and frost dps specs should be in blood presence.

 

• Dwimmerlaik

Taking the conjecture a little further, i'm going to be testing out 44/0/27. Personally, i feel the choice of Necrosis is garbage compared to other talents, and the loss of blood-gorged is, well.. it's a situational talent for a situation that generally doesn't occur all that often.

For Glyphs, going to run with Ghoul, Death Strike, and IT. It seems like it'll shine a bit better for bosses and such, working a rotation for burning Hysteria and nuking full-out, ending with a full RP bar, burning Gargoyle, and continuing. Most of the time will be spent squatting on max RP to maximize usage of Death Strike. Another pleasant side-effect will be healing being taken in, which will definitely help in Heroics and such.

 

◊ Eej

The "situation" in which Bloodgorged is at its full use is when you're DPSing, which, if you're in a Blood DPS build, is pretty much all the time. Nevermind that it gives you 5 expertise constantly and the 10% bonus damage is to everything, not just spells and abilities like Rage of Rivendare or Tundra Stalker. The fact that you pick up Outbreak in lieu of Necrosis is just .

What's situational is Master of Ghouls, because without Night of the Dead your Ghoul uptime will be horrendous on any boss with significant AE.

 

Royksopp

51/0/20 rotation, as far as I've been doing since beta, is as follows...

Obliterate -> Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Heart Strike x2 -> Death Coil -> Heart Strike x2 -> Death Coil -> Heart Strike x2 -> Obliterate -> Death Coil -> Repeat from Icy Touch.

This way you'll proc Abom's Might at the beginning of your rotation and maximize its uptime, as well as not having to worry about being in any presence other than Blood! Also, in that rotation, your last Obliterate will land at the tail end of IT's duration. :]

 

Narcoma

Being 51/13/7 specced, I also noticed being unable to get those 4 HS off before diseases are expired.

The second OB after [...]OB > DC tends to come with 1 or 2 seconds delay, too, because runes just aren't up already from IT/PS/1st OB.

Any suggestions to solve those problems?

 

Tsukigato

Only been raiding a week and a halfo r so, so I'm still getting used to DK, so try not to ream me too much, eh?

My first week I tried Unholy (17/0/54) through Naxx25 and Sartharion (Note the 2 points in OAPH, I've been reluctant to drop that just yet in this spec) just to try out Unholy in a raid setting, as our second DK was planning on being blood when he hit 80. I was in random blues and greens at the time.

Anyways, this week with a couple epics and more blues, I figured I'd try blood out as well, and our other DK hit 80 and was there for naxx, too. I was specced 51/0/20 (Notice OAPH again, instead of 1 in outbreak 1 more in BCB, probably get rid of it soon as raids are hard, I guess) and he was specced 50/0/21. WWS Report

Patchwerk in this parse on Sigrid's part I believe he said he felt his rotation over the fight was solid, however I don't know what exactly happened with mine and I found myself trying to fix it the majority of the fight. Most other fights I felt my rotation(s) were alright. I'm in a couple epics and blues, he's in blues and greens in this.

As for rotations, I was using two different ones over the course of the night.
IT - PS - HS - HS - DS - RPD
HS - HS - HS - HS - OB - RPD
The RPDs were just whatever I could fit in during the rune CDs, typically 2-3 depending on Sudden Doom procs.
Since I was trying out the glyph of OB for the night, I was trying a separate on things like patchwerk, which is partially the cause of my screwing up (after 2 nearly-flawless fight attempts we wiped on on patch, too..)
OB - IT - PS - HS - HS - RPD
HS - HS - HS - HS - OB - RPD

As for Sigrid, I'll just copy and paste what he told me in-game when asked.
[80:Sigrid]: it ps hs hs ds -> ( IT PS HS HS OB)[RP] IT PS HS HS HS HS OB [RP]
[80:Sigrid]: it ps hs hs ds -> ( IT PS HS HS OB) IT PS HS HS HS HS OB
[80:Sigrid]: it ps hs hs ds -> ( IT PS HS HS OB) IT PS HS HS HS HS OB
[80:Sigrid]: it ps hs hs ds -> ( IT PS HS HS OB)[RP] IT PS HS HS HS HS OB [RP]
[80:Sigrid]: RP dumps stopped on garg
[80:Sigrid]: during garg i stopped rotation for sudden doom
[W To] [80:Sigrid]: Why the ( ) for some of it?
[80:Sigrid]: sometimes i stopped HS spam for sudden doom too
[80:Sigrid]: the ( ) is my second
[80:Sigrid]: opening rotation
I'll try and get him to post for more clarification if needed on his spec or rotation or anything.

Feel free to criticize as long as it's constructive, since I'm still tinkering with things, more than happy to hear some advice from others. I'll try and bring a better parse next week, now that I'm feeling a little more comfortable with blood (even though I DID level as blood, it felt a bit odd raiding as it after raiding as unholy). I also apologize on the messiness of this post, it's turkey day, enough said.

 

Asari

I think this idea of using DS as our damage strike should be looked into further. If it can be proven to do more damage than obliterate, then that means we can ignore specs that dip into frost outside of OT specs.

 

Traek

I don't understand why the 2nd and 3rd row of that rotation is different. Why wouldn't he runic power dump in there? And what would a second opening rotation be?

Anyway, I've been quite confused on what to do for dumping runic power after the 4 HS + 1 OB part of a rotation (wherever that OB may be). Diseases fall off for a good 3-4.5 seconds after using 2-3 Death Coils. This makes sense, since I've seen several posts where people haven't been able to fit a final OB in before diseases fall off. After reading the compendium, it seems I should put diseases the moment they fall for 100% up-time. With Blood Presence up, the only way to have a 100% disease uptime is to not do a full RPD, sitting at full runic for longer than I want.

This makes me wonder. Am I doing something wrong? Or does this indicate Unholy Presence would be better for a Blood spec? If I have unholy presence up, I can consume my runes faster which allows me to do an RPD even sooner, hopefully enough time to do a full RPD and 100% disease uptime (or at least closer to it).

 

faight

I have yet to spec blood (was actually thinking about trying it out this weekend since Unholy is starting to get stale, and since every other DK in my guild is Unholy and we instance together someone loses their third disease) but I read this and I had a few questions:

Is Hysteria is off the GCD? I assume it is, like many other buff abilities of this nature. If so, this leads me to believe that due to the fact that you're using [target=player] it is specifically targeting you, and since your DRW copies your abilities perhaps due to lag it too is casting Hysteria on you?

Concerning DRW, I always see macros that /use trinkets before it comes out; does DRW take on these stats for the duration, or does it use the trinkets as if they were it's own? If you used say, Fire Leaf after summoning, would it pop Fire Leaf too?

This leads me to wonder if DRW will cast it's own Hysteria on other targets too, such as some crazy Fury warrior who suddenly gets two +20% damage buffs.

I'll probably experiment when I get off work in the morning, but is there a complete list of what DRW will do and what it won't do? I'm curious to know things like if you have Glyphed Rune Tap and you Rune Tap with DRW will it Rune Tap as well and mimic the glyph, healing your party for 10% + 10%?

A few other questions I haven't seen answers for:
Does DRW have it's own HP bar you have to worry about, or is it pretty much immortal for the 20 seconds it's up?

Will it continue to attack a mob should you run away?

Does it only mimic your damage, or does it do an attack when you do? IE: If I run away from a boss for some reason will it do HS/etc if I mash the buttons even though I can't possibly land the attack?

Sorry if this is basic stuff, unfortunately between this Thanksgiving holiday and work I've been unable to log in and try out Blood like I've been wanting to.

 

Pyros

I've tried various stuff on dummies(yeah, not theory, just random examples, so not an absolute rule), but everytime I tried to stick to a rigid rotation, only using DC when I had a GCD free for it to keep 100%uptime on diseases, I did less dmg than what I usually do, which is PS IT HS HS OB OB HS HS HS HS OB(this one might hit on only one disease depending on lag), then dump all my RP at once on death coils, and start again. I also DC during the rotation like for the first OB of 2nd part, since you have to wait for the frost rune to refresh 1.5s later than the unholy rune. This DC dumping at the end of the rotation means there will be a few seconds without any disease up, but for 51/13/7, it doesn't seem to be too problematic since you don't have BCB, and your disease are a very minor part of your DPS.

However the same tests shows that by sticking to a more rigid rotation, but using Unholy Aura to fit DCs in, I'd get roughly the same DPS, which was while I'm at it, ~1800DPS on raid dummy, with no buffs. So I'm really unsure currently what to do, because it seems it'd just be much easier to sit in unholy and dump RP as it comes, and stick to a "perfect" rotation. I'd probably need to respec for 51/0/20 to take advantage of the haste too.

At this point I'm not sure anyone has a perfect way to play the class, mostly because while the DPS compendium is really good, it was done based on beta info which was more or less oriented toward unholy DPS, and I'm unsure everything applies to blood the same way.


As for death strike, it won't outdps obliterate, there's no question about it. The question is, is the loss of damage compensated by higher disease uptime without having to spec into "useless" 10frost talents or not. I know I often death strike on fights that require a lot of healing, and it doesn't seem to amper my dps much. I have the death strike glyph as one of my base major glyph, mostly because that last glyph is hard to fit with something really useful, and I figured bigger self heals could simply save my life. And they did a few times already. It doesn't hit nearly as hard as oblit though, even at 100RP, or I've been extremely unlucky. My max Death Strike is around 5.5k or so, my max oblit is around 9k.

 

◊ Eej

Death Strike versus Obliterate is fairly simple to calculate.

Death Strike is (60% weapon damage + 178) * 1.40 glyphed

Obliterate is 120% weapon damage + 350 + 175*2 glyphed

If we say Weapon Damage = 1000 (very low)

Death Strike: 1089.2 base damage

Obliterate: 1900 base damage

Let's give them both a generous 50% crit rate.

1089 + 953 = 2042 average Death Strike hit (175% additional damage on crit)

1900 + 1378 = 3278 average Obliterate hit (145% additional damage on crit)

In any case, I'm still having a hell of a time getting a 51/0/20 rotation going. I find that I end up dumping Runic on Death Coils during the deadtime between Obliterate and getting diseases up again. Meanwhile my Blood Runes are already refreshed sitting there doing nothing. Maybe I should just Heart Strike without diseases up?

51/13/7 is a lot easier to play that's for sure.

 

Dillinger604

i was running the 51/13/7 build, and after reading the above points (Summoning ghul while DRB is up) and the effects of Death Strike, i switched to a 51/0/20 build with a noticeable increase in my dps, now my gear is completely horrible (so im not going to throw numbers at you), but so far i have noticed that Death Strike roughly does the same amount of damage as Obliterate (its easy to keep the 100 runic power while casing DC when the runes are down), and the extra healing has proved to be quite effective in heroics as well.

it can only go up from here, and I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same results. i can understand the counter argument and they are right... Death Strike will never do the same amount of damage as an Obliterate under the exact same circumstances/results. but it appears to run a very very close second, and in my opinion you are effectively making that DPS up and then some by trading 5% increase to strength, BCB, Outbreak, Necrosis (rank 3 in my case) for a higher damage IT, and weaving in Death Strike into your rotation instead of extra Obliterates.

regardless, ill keep watching this thread to see what people with decent gear find.

 

◊ Vontre

Ok so my point about Unholy Presence was totally wrong, just made a mistake. Blood Presence is always better.

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Cabal

The point I was trying to make, and proven practicaly in my personal case, is not that death strike will outdamage obliterate.

My point is that a glyphed death strike and the additional goodies in the unholy tree by far outweigh the alternative blood / frost build.

Oh and by the way the biggest damage difference I see between DS and Ob (non glyphed, but I doubt glyphed will make such a huge diference) is like 200/300, NOT the 1k+ difference that was calculated above.

 

Khana

True.
Annihilation is a must, it simply save you from in-rotation refreshes of plagues. This mostly translates into a "free" GCD to spam DC or refresh Horn of Winter (which this spec highly benefits from in term of pure DPS).

For people asking about 51/13/7 second-cycles... well, it all goes to your mastering of yout abilities and syncronization with the GCD and latency.
You start with IT, PS, HS, HS, OB, DC (I also noticed that -sometimes- anticipating OB before the 2 HS produces more DPS, but I cannot yet tell -why-, so it still falls under the experimental collaterals for me) then you simply try to judge the situation and go for priority needs. Usually after such a rotation you get 100 or quite-near 100 RP, so maybe it's time to clonate your weapon, summon your ghoul and start a new rotation ^^