This is a well thought out and written post. I do believe, however, that it is easy to say Diseases are not a Core Mechanic of Blood DPS. Even looking at our passive abilities as a Death Knight will show that Blood was not always intended on centering around diseases. There is no blood based fever, only frost and unholy; The fact that blood's moves are strengthened by diseases is simply a matter of play style and not a matter of requirement (the same can't be said for most classes). In the long scope of things it appears that Unholy is dependant on keeping 2 diseases up, frost can survive quite well with only 1 (some argue its better), and blood can survive with none at all. So while I agree with you that they are a core mechanic of Death Knights, they are arguably not a core mechanic of Blood Death Knights.

Arguably, 'Blood Plague' is a blood plague. If it's not, it's very poorly named. That it is applied by an Unholy skill consuming an Unholy rune is a symptom of a young class with still-forming mechanics.

Maybe it would be better to argue from a wider perspective: why add DKs to the game (apart from cool-factor)? What do they offer that was previously unsupported? Paladins offered a buff/melee option. Warriors offered a pure melee option. Death Knights are supposed to bring a debuff/melee option that would bear a similar relation to Warriors that Warlocks bear to Mages. The way this was achieved (in theory) was through the disease system.

This is, of course, grossly oversimplifying, but it might help to explain why people (myself included) are so inclined to crusade against diseaseless play. It's just not the class you signed up to play when you rolled DK.

I think the most reasonable counter-argument would be to say that the dual-resource system is the core of the class, and that everything else is secondary. Maybe it's supposed to offer more complex resource management.

At that point, we probably would just have to agree to disagree unless one of us were located in Irvine and could speak to the actual intent of introducing DKs.

Actually, with diseases out of the picture and your ghoul being a very small part of your DPS, Haunted dreams is excellent. It makes sense logically too when you consider that nearly every single bit of DPS you can do is affected by it. From my spreadsheets (that forever evolve) in a disease-less situation, Haunted Dreams is far and beyond the most useful sigil for blood. I wouldn't feel 'stuck' using a very viable (if not the most viable) option for this new and foul disease-less nonsense.

@ Megaera
Well, I'm looking at the talent tree descriptions on the Wow website, and it says

Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes.
Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos.
Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases.

So, I don't know where the conception that all DKs are a disease based class. I checked the interview as well and said nothing about DKs being a disease based or debuff melee class.

What debuffs do DKs bring to the table? We got 20% swing speed redux is you're frost... that's the only 'debuff' DKs have. DKs are simply a more complex class that revolve around 2 mechanics (RP and runes) instead of one and those two things must be managed in order to be optimal.

I totally don't understand why everyone wants all 3 DK trees to operate the exact same way either. All of the warrior trees operate pretty differently as far as playstayle, same with every other class. But every DK spec should be, apply diseases, make death runes, spam attack in the given tree. Sorry, I don't really buy that. I like how the DK trees are atm and that's not just because i'm diseaseless blood (i like 21/50 frost the most and was one of the ones to pioneer the PS less rotation).

As for blood plague, it sure does tick for shadow damage, so yes, seems pretty poor naming. It also has very poor synergy with any spec except for Unholy and if I recall, you're supposed to use abilities that are synergistic with each other, at least that's what other classes do. Make target take more bleed damage, apply bleeds. Make target take more fire damage, cast fire spells. Make yourself do more physical damage, do physical attacks. So, if they change DKs i'll be quite discouraged that they want all DK specs to play the same. Should have rolled a warrior i guess.

I was referring to the fact that it isn't listed under the Blood tab, so I would say it is poorly named and/or poorly placed. Death Knight is a Class I was looking forward to playing since hearing about its intended release. It is a combination of several in game mechanics from multiple classes and the Diablo II Necromancer. I am glad there are many play styles available to it and that Blizzard gave it such an amazing set of uses. The only class that could pull me away from being a Death Knight now is if they ever implimented a Bard Class (in a less April Fools Mannerism).

Ok, as most likely everyone already knew this didn't work out at all.
Best rotation for it ended up being:
OB, OB, HS, HS, spam DC and repeat rotation.

Running 25 man Nax my original main target was doing about 2927 dps after switching to the new deseaseless I was able to maintain about 3250 dps. The last boss in Naxx ended me at about 2875 dps.

Has anyone compared the following rotations (diseaseless):

a) OB - HS - DC - OB - HS - DC

vs.

b) OB - OB - HS - HS - DC

I guess the point with 'a' is to make full use of RP as well as not overwriting any SD procs.

I am pretty sure OB-OB-HS-HS is better. Of course I will use DC before next HS to make optimal use of SD procs, but to use DC before OB (even if SD procs) is not a good idea in my opinion.

Only insofar as it's necessary that each Warlock spec mandates the use of some dots. I wouldn't object to each spec having different numbers or kinds of diseases, so long as it's always optimal to use diseases in some fashion. I think I said in another thread that I'm not terribly upset with the current Frost setup. Would it be better if dropping a core ability weren't part of Frost, sure, especially if PS were buffed in a way more interesting than buffing the strike damage, but I'm not going to label it "broken", just improvable. I even wouldn't object to a sub-optimal diseaseless spec (on the order of 5-10% DPS loss). What I think is "broken" with the current setup (from a design standpoint) is that a far simpler and very un-DK playstyle (if you take diseases to be a core mechanic in addition to the dual-resource system) is rewarded the same as playing the class for what it is.

Why have you deemed the diseaseless rotation a 'un-DK' playstyle? There is no reference on any of the the Wow website about DKs being a disease based class (except for Unholy spec which they specifically say is a pet/disease spec). The only 'mechanics' we have are runes and RP. Seriously though, Blood isn't supposed to be Unholy-lite, with a little more kick and a lot less ghoul. They have short descriptions of what the three trees are supposed to be designed on and based on the information given about DKs, I don't see the diseaseless Blood rotation to be the least bit inappropriate for the class/spec.

Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes.
Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos.
Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases.

Comes right off the Wow website, under the class descriptions for DKs. If you want to play a disease based DK, then rock Unholy or DW. You'll be #1-2 on dps and get to use diseases to do it.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Diiseaseless dk specs

Are you factoring in the crap proc rate and uptime? Even with four heart strikes per ten seconds, with a 15% procrate the uptime is still going to be crap; even more so if it has an ICD.

Blood Plague is just a name that isn't going to change. One could consider it Unholy to plague someone's blood.

There were tons of interviews during the Beta phase as to why DKs were introduced. Basically, Blizzard wanted a class that can tank (to fix the tank shortage), wanted something that could start higher than level 1 (hero class), and wanted a class to use a new resource system. Adding new classes adds new content and experiences to the player base, which is important to a older game.

DKs are a smashing success, there are four viable PvE dps methods and three viable tanking trees. While they all play somewhat similar, they have different feelings to them.

If you don't like disease-less blood (which plays something like a dps Warrior), swap to something else.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Under Class Roles:

Not a statement that "DKs must use diseases." That part is covered by the GC quote in an above post.

I haven't factored for the ICD if there is one but I have assumed a 60% up-time and it still beats it out on average. Considering how cheap it is to get and how useless heroism emblems are about to become any 'free' upgrade is a worthwhile one. Blood doesn't have a lot going for it as far as sigils are concerned but if there is not an ICD it is the best at high levels of gear and raid buffs.

Edit: Some previous posters in this thread suggest it has a nearly 100% uptime and no ICD. If that is in fact true then it wins hands down over Dark Rider.

With respect to what's on the website/in interviews:

Remember the website description of Paladins during Classic? It didn't jive with the crit-stacking healmosters that Paladins had become by the time AQ opened, and it also didn't jive with what became the ultimate vision of Paladins in mid-late TBC. The posted descriptions are historically a pretty terrible guide to the current developer vision of the class, especially for a class that's in as much flux as ours. Hell, I remember a lot of debate over whether to keep or chuck the notion of Paladins healing from range altogether. Design revisions happen.

That's what we're discussing here. It's not a matter of "if you don't like the way it plays, don't play it that way"; the concern being raised is: is this a good design? GC doesn't seem to think so; folks here seem to fall on both sides.

I'm happy to be convinced that there's value in the variety that diseaseless play offers (assuming we fix the mechanics so that you hit more than 3 buttons), but the argument that's going to convince me is going to have to be an argument from some sort of principles, not from citing a months-old Blizzard release.

As for me, using 3 skills (OB HS DC) can be done without using of any macros. Also it's a bit simplest than your macros.
IMHO your rotation isn't good for DPS and aren't simplest way for using of abilities.

I do agree. Its not the best for any high dps. But on fights were movement is required to a certain extent. I found this rotation useful. My question is rather if there is any other rotation for fights like that. Lets say Sartharion 3d

Hopefully you meant 51/0/20.

OB > IT > PS > HSx6 then repeat is what you want to do. Using DC in between the HS cooldowns and SD procs immediately. This is by far my favorite rotation, it's simple and easy to keep going. I have done 6.5k on patch with this spec and looking at all bosses on WWS I average 4950 DPS

It is very viable and I am surprised more people haven't picked up on it.

edit: here is a parse of all bosses for a 25 naxx clear Wow Web Stats

I'm finally trying diseaseless blood, but immediately ran into a GCD logjam with the supposedly "easy" rotation that uses death runes for HS. Didn't have nearly enough time to use all my RP. So I tried using death runes for OB instead and found the rotation much more manageable (although "rotation" is a misnomer; I use a priority system). Every now and then I used 2xHS instead of one OB if it looked like I'd have the headroom. The main difference is that I wasted a lot less RP, and in fact hit DC whenever Sudden Doom procced instead of waiting for the "RP Dump" phase and potentially wasting the procs. (Actually, what I try to do is get my death runes out of phase so that each rotation consists of 4xHS/1xOB, to distribute SD probability more evenly.)

I went and beat on the target dummy for a while using both rotations, but not using ghoul, drw, or other cooldowns. Just kept HoW up and used HS, OB, and DC. DPS was essentially identical for the two rotations. (Out of curiosity I tried unholy presence, which of course gave me plenty of GCD headroom, and dps dropped by only around 15-20.) So my question is: is there something about 8xHS/2xOblit that scales with raid buffs/debuffs better than 4xHS/4xOblit? Is it better to sacrifice a few DCs in order to squeeze more HS's in? What am I missing?

Edit: oops, quoted the wrong post. but you get the idea.

The typical diseaseless blood is OBx2 HSx2, the person you quoted wasn't doing a diseaseless rotation at all. Then you don't even have to take DRM.

quote from wowwiki:

Currently, the normalized weapon damage for instant attacks is:
normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (X * Attack Power / 14)


In this way:

1xHS = 0.6 * 1.3 (Bloody Strikes) * bwd + 221 + nws * AP / 14
1xOB = 1.2 (glyph) * bwd + 602 + nws * AP /14

8xHS/2xOb = 8 * (0.6 * 1.3 (Bloody Strikes) * bwd + 221 + nws * AP / 14) + 2 * (1.2 (glyph) * bwd + 602 + nws * AP / 14 ) = 6.24 bwd + 1768 + 1.88 AP + 2.4 bwd + 1204 + 0,471 AP = 8.64 bwd + 2970 + 2.35 AP

4xHS/4xOB = 4 * (0.6 * 1.3 (Bloody Strikes) * bwd + 221 + nws * AP / 14) + 4 * (1.2 (glyph) * bwd + 602 + nws * AP / 14 ) = 3.12 bwd + 884 + 0.94 AP + 4.8 bwd + 2408 + 0.942 AP = 7.92 bwd + 3292 + 1.88 AP

where:
bwd - base weapon damage
nws - normalized cooficient (3.3 for two-handed weapons)
AP - attack power

so... if my math is correct then 8xHS + 2xOB scales a bit better


For example if you have 4k AP unbaffed and 6.5k (?) baffed and your bwd = 700 we get:
8xHS/2xOb unbaff - 8.64 * 700 + 2970 + 2.35 * 4000 = 18 418
8xHS/2xOb baff - 8.64 * 700 + 2970 + 2.35 * 6500 = 24 293
baffed better on 32%


4xHS/4xOB unbaff - 7.92 * 700 + 3292 + 1.88 * 4000 = 16 356
4xHS/4xOB baff - 7.92 * 700 + 3292 + 1.88 * 6500 = 21 065
baffed better on 29%




Summary? I don't have one -)

P.S. Ah! forgot! First page of this thread:

so IT typical diseasesFree rotation, it isn't?