Hi. You can get off your high horse now and pretend that 1) I've been reading and posting in this thread since the beginning, and 2) I have some idea what I'm talking about. For point of reference, the most often posted rotation over the last 4 pages is PS IT HSx2 OB (DC) PS IT HSx4 (DC). That's with PS and IT, but not Epidemic. That's why I asked what rotations people were getting these various post-patch results with, if they didn't mention it already in their post. Thanks to those of you who responded helpfully; I'll test it out some more.

I'm going to go into a slightly different realm of theorycrafting than is usually explored - if process analysis bores you, just skip this post.

For me, there is the build, the rotation, and the execution of the rotation. The first 2 topics are very well covered in this thread, and I have benefited greatly from the information being presented, but for me, the last topic is what I have been exploring and getting large benefits from.

For 3xob 4xhs, the standard rotation I have seen is:
ps-it-hs-hs-ob-hs-hs-ob-ob-repeat (rp dump, sd procs omited).

What I do instead is:
ps-it-hs-ob-hs-ob-hs-ob-hs-repeat

Although on the surface, this is the same as the previous rotation, the execution is quite different.

Think of (ps-it) as a F/U rune, and ob as a F/U rune, and hs as a B rune.

The rotation becomes
F/U-B-F/U-B-F/U-B-FU-B-F/U-B...

so now, rather than tracking what I've done last, I have a simple decision tree when I am deciding what to do with my next GCD.

1) Did SD proc? Y --> DC
2) Are my diseases about to expire? Y --> ps-it
3) is a blood rune off CD? Y --> hs
4) Is a F/U rune off CD? Y --> ob
5) RP dump

Another benefit of this rotation is you have at least 2 GCD's to fire off a DC after a SD proc, because every HS is followed by either an OB or PS-IT. That means less SD procs get wasted by being overwritten by another proc. This isn't a big issue on the target dummy, but in a raid situation, this has been a factor for me.

Another (minor) benefit of this choice of rotations is that it makes death runes irrelevant, so you get 3 more talent points to bury into the blood tree somewhere. I ended up taking survivability talents, but hey, it's up to you!

As you can see from my few pics from page 34, there's a solo boss target in TB that is usually ignored. You will not have any cleave issues from yourself or DRW there.

Hi, long time reader, first time poster

Tested 51/0/20 last night in obsidan sanctum 10 man last night, they hotfixed obliterate by the time i raided, i started off at about 3k DPS on trash which was alright, seeing as i was 0/32/39 last patch, then onto the bosses i think i was topping 2.3-2.4k with all CD's popped, i have 2952 AP unbuffed, using the DPS cycle

HS>HS>OB>OB

HS>HS>HS>HS

Rinse and repeat.

I still dont believe that blood is the best DPS spec, i still think that is DW, although the cleave effect on heart strike has defiantely given this spec more viability in raids

The rotation you posted is only going to work if you have annihlation. If you don't, then you're gimping your HS and Oblit dmg. Just thought I'd point that out for anyone who takes the time to read it. It's an interesting idea, might warrant some testing.

He stated it was for a 51/13/7 rotation...

It's a great idea. Not overlapping your SD procs would be great for your DPS and your RP.
What surprises me is that, we as a Forum are being very creative, to figure out even more rotations.

I use IT > PS > HS > HS > DC > OB > IT > PS > HS > HS > HS > HS > DC (until Blood runes are ready again) > HS > HS > OB > IT > PS > DC (until blood/deathrunes are ready again) > repeat


This is a light modification from the rotation some people already talked about:
So in general, I "ignore" the frost and unholy runes until the second set of FU runes will be at 2-3 sek cooldown. This way i get the maximum out of my diseases and can imidiatly refresh them after the second obliterate. The second obliterate lands 0,5 - 1,5 sec before the first disease (frostfever in this case) would fall off.



It really depends on the situation and/or how laggy the server is at the moment wich one i use.
I always try to use DCs every time i have no rune ready.
This sometimes leads to a very short "delay" where a rune is ready again but can't use it for 0,x sec because of GCDs but it seems like i get better results going this way instead of waiting 1-2 sec for a rune to refresh instead of using an additional DC during that time.

Next week or maybe the week after i will try a run without diseases, but i guess it will be roughly the same, because my gear isn't that great and my AP is rather "low" at the moment.
The rotation without diseases seem to scale better so it might be clearly better when i get more AP, but i am not sure about that at the moment. Short tests with the dummy indicates that they are nearly equal in my current gear (+-50-150 dps can be just bad luck with crits because 5-10 minutes of testing isn't very long).

So


hemonology you would say that the build you have is a well rounded DPS spec ???

4875 DPS on a DUMMY? With that gear your armory shows? I find that rather hard to believe, sorry. My gear is slightly better than yours, and trust me, i'm nowhere even NEAR that sort of DPS on the dummy.

Edit: Or maybe I'm just an idiot. What dummy are we talking about?
Edit2: Just redid some tests, I just don't see it. Can't say I'm a fan of the 51/20 diseaseless, at all.

Well I've changed some things around and I don't know what I was wearing when you looked,but the armory I have now is correct.

As to it being a well rounded spec,no in all honesty its not.Its severely buff dependant much like the old 32/39 spec,but single target noone is going to beat you if you time your cd's correctly,and use your SD procs' correctly.When I do naxx 25 this coming week I'll post a WWS to link you the data.

If you've run a 51/13/7 build I can see why you may not be a fan of it,it just goes against all reason that it would work as well as it does ontop of the fact that your use to applying diseases.Give it a shot,learn your rotation and see if it works well save your Hysteria/DRW for Heroism pop a speed pot,and watch the numbers fly.

EDIT*:Actually pop Hysteria at the beginning of the fight to equal out your dps,but when heroism is popped,then drop Hysteria aain with DRW this time around.

You said you got 4k + DPS on a dummy? I refuse to believe that somone of your gear level can do that much self-buffed only DPS. Provide a screenshot of your recount, and I might believe it. But unless you are doing something severely different from the rest of us, you should be in the 2.7k or more range, if that, with your gear level.


Are you sure you weren't attacking a level 55 dummy? or perhaps accidentally cleaving some of the lower targets? You were attacking a boss dummy and got those numbers?

When i tested I could still see the disease ticking on the dummy's target frame following the Oblit. This is with 51/13/7.

EDIT: This appears to be a debuff display problem in that the disease still shows even tho it has fallen off. Not sure if this is just me.

From checking WWS logs from Naxx25 I got no more ticks after an OB.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that you built up your RP, reset recount, fired off DRW, Hysteria, & empower rune weapon, did about 20 seconds of dps, and then took a screen shot.

If that's the case, we aren't really comparing apples to apples. Most folks post sustained DPS numbers, whereas if my interpretation is correct, you posted burst DPS numbers.

test on the lvl 83 dummy in the center of ebon hold.

For standardization purposes, all testing should be performed on a boss-level dummy. When doing so, ensure that you are not aoeing any other mobs with heart strike. You may need to go to thunder bluff to test. These tests need to last a few minutes, at least (let's say 3 minutes).

30 seconds of dps on a non-boss dummy with cooldowns is not an accurate test.

I went to a 51/0/20 Spec last night. you can look at my gear in the Armory.

With the ghoul out and everything the highest I got was almost 2800 DPS on the Boss Dummy from behind. I used no Diseases here. I don't have the rotation down right yet since I am so used to 51/13/7 so i did mess up a couple of times when my fingers went to hit IT and PS lol.

Its been a few days since I posted.
I am running Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
and my armory profile The World of Warcraft Armory

Now last night we were running the rest of the wings in Naxx, DK Qtr and Contruct Qtr.
We had 2 other DKs with us, both of them where the Frost/UnHoly hybrid spec that everyone says was doing so good.
On multi targets they still performed very well. But when he hit Patchnutz, their DPS fell to 5th place at around 2700DPS. Even with less quality gear (mind you I didnt have my T7 chest until the end of Naxx last night) I ended up pulling little over 80DPS higher then our best titan grip warrior.
I ended up with 3066DPS on patchwork. So I think over all the specs are more balanced now and perform equaly as well, but within diferent circumstances.

Blood in my experience has had superior single target DPS. The key is maximizing your time on the target, much like Rogues have to.

I run the 51/13/7 spec, with a pretty basic Blood Spec Rotation...

IT>PS>OB>HS>HS>DC
HSx4>OB>DC (if diseases/lag allows, Otherwise it's HSx4>IT>PS>OB>HS>HS>DC)

Multi-Mob Pulls I try to do....

IT>PS>Pest>HS>Ob>DC
HSx4>OB>DC

After that I try to roll into a priority rotation but adhering to the standard rotation as much as possible.

OS 10 man
Sartharion Death, no Drakes

A few things I know that can push my DPS higher is getting to the Expertise Soft Cap of 26.

Also, the HS change allows for much much higher AoE DPS with out dropping a DnD. I pretty much ignore DnD unless I need to help DPS down adds in a boss fight or something like that. It seems IT>PS>Pest and rolling into a HS rotation seems to be much more efficient way of spending runes.

That 51/0/20 build is the most smashing build I've ever tested so far. I finnished yesterday's Naxx run with ~ 1000 DPS more overall. And even though I don't have compareable Recount or WWS information at my fingertips I can say so.

Still I'm not too sure about the rotation yet. Been struggling around with those mentioned earlier.

1. IT -> PS -> HS.. -> OB -> DC
2. OB -> IT -> PS -> HS.. -> DC

or even HB and OB only..

I guess I'll need some more testing there..

Cheers!

Finding interesting the surge of people saying blood > all now, mostly without posting any wws or recount. From my own experience, and the numbers by others at the raid dps thread, DW is still by far our highest single target dps specc:

WoW Meter Online - The Best World of Warcraft Combat Log Analyse System!Fully support Wrath of the Lich King!

Thats me as DW 32/39, lower down is the blood DK (granted, worse gear, but not explaining such a big gap.

Now when we start to see those kinds of figures from blood, ill be interested, to me the patch changed very little, if at all.

He didn’t use Army, which is a decent chunk of damage. If you look at the wws logs provided on previous pages (which doesn’t include Army damage naturally, the #s become a lot closer).

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I really really wish I didn't have to tank patchwerk. The best example I have is Grand Window Faerlina where I did 5471dps. If you look at who I damaged, I only did 5500 damage to the adds and the rest was all on Faerlina. I use this fight because I feel that I had my rotation perfect. This was without army of course.

If you want to look at Loatheb, I am at 5541 dps compared to your 5841. Neither of us used Army.
I know none of these fights are an exact comparision but it's pretty easy to see that blood is definently competitve with the other specs now.

This was also my first raid as 51/0/20, I have been 51/13/7 since I hit 80. I think you might want to direct your blood DK to this thread.

edit: lol I just looked at my patch stats, I did 3k dps in full tanking gear + the polearm from H VH. I accidentally clicked my drw + hysteria macro (ooops!)! First time we have gotten patch in under 3 minutes, pretty excited about that